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By Maurine Jensen Proctor
Last week’s 6-3 Supreme Court decision overturning Texas’ sodomy
law has met with nearly deafening silence by Meridian’s readers. If we run an article on anti-depressants,
visiting teaching or whether Coca Cola is against the Word of
Wisdom, we are swamped by mail that nearly shuts down our systems. You have opinions. You
are passionate.
Yet, in a watershed decision that upends the moral underpinnings
of society, crafted in law and tradition for centuries, the mailbox
is nearly empty. We hope
this doesn’t mean your response in general is flat as well.
Dinner
Conversation
It reminds me of a dinner conversation we had some years ago. We
were talking about an earthquake that had left thousands of people
homeless. Our daughter, with a horrified tone in her
voice, said, “That is just terrible. That’s
the worst thing I’ve ever heard,” and then, with the dismay instantly
vanished commanded, “Pass the rolls.”
Pass the rolls. Life
is demanding, urgent. We
have stuff to do, places to put our attention. We
are torn and absorbed by exigencies. Did
something happen last week?
Didn’t you feel the tremors? It was not just about sodomy and a law which could have been struck
by the Texas legislature if enough of its citizens considered
it inappropriate. The
concern is that in striking down the Texas law, the Supreme Court
justices appealed to the due process clause, inventing a new
privacy right not found before in the Constitution—“the full
right to engage in private conduct without government intrusion.”—in
this case for consenting adults to engage in a certain kind of
sexual conduct. This may
sound acceptable until you begin to explore the ramifications.
It means, the court said, that constitutional right outweighs
the right of the citizens of a state to decide what sexual conduct
is legal.
End
of all Morals Legislation
Justice Antonin Scalia, in a dissent he felt so keenly he
took the unusual measure of reading it aloud from the bench,
noted that the Court was “effectively decreeing the end of all
morals legislation.”
“Countless judicial decisions and legislative enactments have
relied on the ancient proposition that a governing majority's
belief that certain sexual behavior is ‘immoral and unacceptable’ constitutes
a rational basis for regulation,” he noted.
Now, the Court has made a radical shift, saying that even
if the majority of the citizens felt something was immoral, it
is not sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the
practice. The promotion of the sexual morality of the majority, suggests
the Court, is not even a legitimate state interest.
Forget history, tradition, past laws, the intent desire of
the majority to set the moral climate in which they wish to live—in
the future a law on sexual practice may not—and probably won’t--pass
Constitutional muster, based on this precedent. Ah
well, pass the rolls.
Scalia said that every single state law against bigamy, same-sex
marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery,
fornication, bestiality, and obscenity “are called into question
by today’s decision.” Quoting an earlier he case, he stated, "The
law is constantly based on notions of morality, and if all laws
representing essentially moral choices are to be invalidated
under the Due Process Clause, the courts will be very busy indeed.
What happened is the people and their legislatures lost their
voices in an area of vast importance. The
litigation is about to begin as state by state, scores of laws
are sifted according to this new standard. As
one pundit said, “Prostitutes, get your lawyers.” Yes, yawn. Pass
the rolls.
What’s more, the homosexual agenda was energized and enlivened
by the decision, which they fully expect paves the way to homosexual
marriage. Conservative
commenter, Jonah Goldberg, shrugs, “Let’s face it. They’ve
won.”
Revamping
the Constitution
Then there’s what happened to the meaning of the Constitution.
Justice Anthony Kennedy said that if the framers of the Due Process
Clauses had known about freedom in all its “manifold possibilities,” they
might have been more specific. “They did not presume to have
this insight. They knew times can blind us to certain truths
and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary
and proper in fact serve only to oppress. As the Constitution
endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles
in their own search for greater freedom.”
This is not just the definition of an elastic Constitution. It
is elastic stretched so far, it has lost its pull.
Pundit Cal Thomas writes, “Justice Anthony Kennedy takes us
on a journey with no fixed origin, no map but a certain destination. His constitutional rewriting takes us to same-sex ‘marriage’ and
a Constitution that means to liberal judges what the Bible means
to liberal theologians—a document to be tailored to the whims
of culture, not the reverse.”
“That’s terrible,” we say. “Pass the rolls.” While we’re munching, or taking our children
to soccer practice, or trying to navigate the rapids of daily
life, while our attention was deflected, the seeds of radical
change have been planted—and we’ll look around someday at a society
that is vastly eroded morally and say, “How did all this happen?”
Charlton Heston once called us the most silenced generation
since the Concord Bridge, and frankly, it’s true, and no more
so than in anything that touches on homosexuality. We
are afraid to talk about that subject, knowing full well a blast
will follow.
We’ve been cowed, shamed and embarrassed. We’ve been gagged. We’ve seen what happens to those who oppose the homosexual agenda.
The
Attack is Personal
It is not their thoughts that are debated, their arguments
that are discussed and probed. Instead,
the attack is personal. The
homosexual activists and their supporters in the media, who claim
to decry hate speech, become the most hateful and name-calling. It
is not argument, but character assassination. Speak on any issue regarding homosexuality,
and you will be vilified and pilloried. You will be called a
homophobe. You might ask, “Is this the stake I want to be burned
on?”
We get it. We’re not
slow. It’s not cool to
oppose the strident marching forward of the gay agenda in America. In fact, it’s downright dangerous, which should
send up red flags. Even
though the majority of Americans poll as being against homosexual
marriage, the media calls that stance “right-wing” or “ultra-conservative.”
Justice Scalia who wrote a dissenting opinion has become the
latest whipping boy. For
decrying the end of society’s ability to create morals legislation,
he is public enemy number one.
Maureen Dowd’s acid tongue took him on in The New York
Times. She first accused him of belittling and then, ironically,
launched these more than belittling salvos—including taking
on Scalia’s Catholicism. “He’s so Old School, he’s Old
Testament, misty over the era when military institutes did
not have to accept women, when elite schools did not have to
make special efforts with blacks, when a gay couple in their
own bedroom could be clapped in irons, when women were packed
off to Our Lady of Perpetual Abstinence Home for Unwed Mothers….
Antonin Scalia is Archie Bunker in a high-backed chair. Like Archie, Nino is the last one to realize
that his intolerance is risibly out-of-date.”
Andrew Sullivan, a gay conservative commentator, says of Scalia, “What
troubles me about Antonin Scalia is not so much the substance
of his views (although I share very few of them) but the angry,
sarcastic, bitter tone of his judgments…The truth is: anyone
whose views are that inflamed shouldn’t be anywhere near a federal
bench.”
This week, pundits have accused him of “industrial strength
prejudice.” They have
called him Ayatollah Antonin and those who made and upheld Texas’ law,
the Taliban. Those who oppose the homosexual agenda are “mindless
bigots.” One headline screams “Justice Scalia has a dirty mind.”
This kind of commentary is not designed to match argument
for argument but to marginalize and paralyze the opposition—anyone
who dares stand in the way of the homosexual version of progress.
Frankly, it works. Very
few conservative commentators have taken on this issue from the
Supreme Court this week, even though the possibilities for how
it might impact us are sweeping. Who
likes to be cut by the media’s sharpened barbs or be labeled
as a hate-monger just for raising legitimate questions?
So how about us—a family-centered people, socially conservative
who have already fought battles in California, Alaska, Nebraska
and elsewhere to defend marriage as an institution between a
man and a woman. Do we
watch the world change around us without so much as a whimper
or do we speak up, write letters to opinion shapers, and get
involved?
The homosexual activists are persistent, well organized and
funded, and they have ploughed ahead on their agenda to restructure
society with the precision of a sniper’s rifle. Though family-centered
people have made efforts to defend the natural family, we have
not matched their gusto, their funding, or their zeal, and the
results are clear.
Our
Hesitations
What are our hesitations?
The few letters we have received from readers ask a range
of questions and make interesting points. We don’t pretend to
begin to answer them here, but only suggest some possible ideas.
Some readers point out how homosexuals deserve fair treatment,
that historically they have been shunned and disdained. People have been bigoted and prejudiced against
them.
We agree with
these readers. The hate
that has been piled on homosexuals is not Christian and not loving,
and we do not want to be a party to that in any way. This
does not mean, however, that we can support the radical restructuring
of society in a way that undoes marriage and promotes a lifestyle
that many studies have shown shortens life and leads to personal
upheaval. (See Jim Birrell’s “Relativism and the Homosexual Agenda” http://www.ldsmag.com/ideas/030605relativism7.html) This is a social experiment that flies in the face of the accumulated
wisdom of human history and social science.
Some of you say, it doesn’t matter. We
know that the world will disintegrate before the Lord comes,
so why should I try to stand up against what is inevitable?
So what’s the
timetable on the Lord’s return? You
pretend to know? In many
periods in history, things looked dire, and the world changed
for the better because of the relentless effort, good will and
sacrifice of people.
“I’d like somebody to tell me how
granting the right to homosexuals to marry in any way hurts traditional
marriage.”
Society has a
vested interest in supporting and promoting those institutions
that give it strength and stability. The
natural family and the children nurtured in that setting is society’s
very foundation and must be accorded the widest possible support.
Married-parent homes have less violence, promote safer communities,
produce children with fewer physical, emotional and behavioral
problems and who delay sexual activity longer. Children from
stable families do better academically, financially, and are
healthier. A mother and
father each play a key and unique role in a child’s life. Society
has to promote what keeps it stable—and that is the natural family.
To call any kind
of loving relationship marriage, dilutes and dissolves this foundation
for the future, removing any clear vision of what marriage is
for the next generation. To
open the definition of marriage to nearly everything obliterates
marriage to nothing. If marriage can be between two members of the opposite sex, then
why not between several people? Legalizing
homosexual marriage removes marriage between a man and a woman
as society’s norm and its ideal. It suggests that tomorrow’s
children should grow up looking at several styles of marriage
as options.
What is the Church’s stance on same-sex
marriage?
In The Family: A
Proclamation to the World, it states:
We, the First Presidency and the Council
of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a
woman is ordained of God.
In California
and a number of other states, the Church has urged members to
actively campaign for defense of marriage laws—whose object is
to define marriage specifically as being between a man and a
woman.
In the November
1998 Ensign President Gordon B. Hinckley answered the
question:
What is your Church’s attitude toward
homosexuality?
In the first place, we believe that
marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God. We believe
that marriage may be eternal through exercise of the power of
the everlasting priesthood in the house of the Lord.
People inquire about our position
on those who consider themselves so-called gays and lesbians.
My response is that we love them as sons and daughters of God.
They may have certain inclinations which are powerful and which
may be difficult to control. Most people have inclinations of
one kind or another at various times. If they do not act upon
these inclinations, then they can go forward as do all other
members of the Church. If they violate the law of chastity and
the moral standards of the Church, then they are subject to the
discipline of the Church, just as others are.
We want to help these people, to
strengthen them, to assist them with their problems and to help
them with their difficulties. But we cannot stand idle if they
indulge in immoral activity, if they try to uphold and defend
and live in a so-called same-sex marriage situation. To permit
such would be to make light of the very serious and sacred foundation
of God-sanctioned marriage and its very purpose, the rearing
of families.
Some people say: I don’t know what
to do about all of this anyway, but lament when I read these
articles.
Here are some ideas.
United Families International is a group headquartered
in Arizona that “seeks to secure a safe future for families by
influencing public policies and programs created at the local,
national and international level.” They “seek
to educate and inform citizens and governmental officials on
issues affecting the family unit.” They
also “unite the pro-family efforts of individuals and organizations
to work synergistically together to strengthen the family as
the fundamental unit of society. To find out more about UFI or join their ranks
go to www.unitedfamilies.org
Another Watershed
It is expected that the Massachusetts Supreme Court
will in the next few days legalize same-sex marriage, and since
the Constitution’s
Full Faith and Credit Clause provides that a contract made in
one state is legal in any one of them, other states may be forced
to legalize same sex marriage or at least find their defense
of marriage laws in jeopardy, a conflict that would undoubtedly
end back in the Supreme Court. Richard Wilkins points out, In
light of the reasoning applied by the majority of the Supreme
Court in the Texas case, “it is not outside the realm of possibility
that they could also ‘find’ some other constitutional basis for
legalizing same sex marriage in the due process or some other
clause.” Many suggest that the only solution is a defense of marriage amendment
to the U.S. Constitution. For more
information on this issue, as well as to sign up for periodic
updates on this serious threat to marriage and the family, please
go to www.defendmarriage.org.
Political Candidates
Since the Supreme Court’s decision has moved the issue
front and center, every candidate running for office in the
next election will be asked for his/her stance on homosexual
marriage. Work for and financially support those candidates
that support the natural family. They
will need to know they have a swell of support in order to
be encouraged.
Lawmakers cannot afford to offend their constituents,
thus if the homosexual lobby is loud, persistent and backed
by the liberal media, they will need to hear from the largely
silent majority who don’t support homosexual marriage. Even
if you are busy raising a family, for their sakes, this is
the time to be politically involved. The next Senate may be
in the position to confirm Supreme Court justices whose stance
on this issue will be important.
Become knowledgeable and write letters to your congressmen,
the editors of your newspapers and periodicals. Know how the
homosexual agenda is infiltrating your children’s schools and
curriculum. Make an uproar, but an intelligent, measured one. This
is not the time to stand back and politely and passively watch
to see what happens next.
Courage
It may seem that it demands uncommon courage to speak
on this issue that is so volatile. Silence
may appear safe, but it is not golden. It will take a groundswell
of people who are willing to have voices to stop this freight
train. Fear—or perhaps ignorance--has silenced too many people
on something that is so central to the well being of our world.
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© 2003 Meridian
Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
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