Gary Bauer in his mid September 2006 newsletter asks this question in light of rhetoric and reality. Here's how he addresses the question:
"Is Marriage Becoming Partisan? The citizens of 20 states have passed marriage protection amendments by such overwhelming margins that it’s safe to say traditional marriage is one issue that actually unifies Americans of both parties. That’s why I was surprised to read in this morning’s Washington Post that the Democrat governor of Virginia, Tim Kaine, is vigorously opposing Virginia’s proposed marriage amendment.
During his campaign, he repeatedly stated his belief that marriage was between a man and a woman, and it was his ability to win in a conservative state like Virginia that earned Kaine high praise by national figures as an “up-and-coming moderate.” As the newly elected governor of Virginia, he was awarded the high-profile task of giving the Democrat response to President Bush’s 2006 State of the Union address. However, this decision to oppose his state’s marriage amendment seems to be yet another sign that Democrats are prepared to allow same-sex “marriage.” STOP
So one wonders when we hear certain candidates saying they believe DOMA (Defense Of Marriage Amendment, passed under the Clinton administration) covered marriage protection and is sufficient (even in the face of numerous activist justices undermining DOMA), or that they are pro protecting 200 years of marriage law etc, whether they will really hold such convictions and uphold them in public policy, or whether something else is afoot. Perhaps a new kind of 'personally opposed but *won't impose*' kind of nonsense is emerging on a new deceptive front in the contest between the culture of life and the culture of death or the culture of 'whatever'. Clearly with activist judges and a slippery US Senate, and candidate duplicities like this one mentioned by Bauer above, there is much to wonder about.
It is too bad that it make those of us who want to know truthful convictions and political stances sometimes seem like we have a hobby horse when we ask questions from a number of different perspectives but the duplicities on issues protective of marriage, family, children, infants immediately before birth (partial birth abortion ban enforcement) and human cloning etc are just getting thicker and thicker and few are calling any to account. Thanks for the info Gary. Reading lips is nearly requiring a reading of minds in the current moral relativism. Pathetic and sad.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Your posting makes little sense. If you are so concerned about “family” that you would deny gays and lesbians the civil rights you take for granted, the rights and benefits that a state recognized committed relationship provides, then I ask you to address the following:
Perhaps a focus on the millions of orphaned children, many of whom you would prohibit from having the experience of same sex parents, and thus who may never have the love of a family setting. Are you campaigning to have more of your Christian heterosexual families adopt orphans rather than chose to bring only their own natural children into the world?
Are you campaigning to stop the divorce, and the associated adultery, clearly addressed by Jesus, that is so rampant in the heterosexual community that half of all marriages end in divorce with the attendant effects on children?
Are you campaigning to have scientific and medical community approved sex education in the schools, such that unwanted pregnancies and the troubling effect on those unplanned children is avoided, or that traumatic abortion procedures don’t happen?
Are you insisting that public schools instruct students on the responsibilities and consequences of having children, and that they get preparation appropriate to this most important responsibility in society?
Are you campaigning against the unchristian attacks toward gays and lesbians that often result in mental distress, suicide, and injury to them and their property?
Or are you just championing a focused fight to insure that gays and lesbians in loving, committed, relationships are forever to be discriminated and marginalized by civil law?
Some people do find some perverse satisfaction in the bias, prejudice, and intolerance towards a minority.
Hi Bill, thanks for your post. Each of your points could be a table of contents for a book length response. But in brief I do endorse civility in relationships, Constitutional protections, adoption, marital fidelity, stricter than 'no fault' divource laws and I do Not obtain pleasure from hate or haters. I do not believe the gay marriage debate is about the need for adoption of orphans nor that homosexuality is a minority in a legal sense, nor that the debate is about relational permanence. And I do not believe there is a causal relationship between a Fred Phelps church of 30 relatives hating and mental illness in the hated.
The last time the judicial activists sought to overturn the will of the people in all 50 States was when Roe reversed or liberalized laws protecting the preborn, developing child. With the advent of such educated choice and legality we would eliminate orphanages and unwanted children and all child abuse. Every child would be a loved and wanted child, etc. Your arguments of how judicial activism for gay marriage are going to help the children and prevent orphanages or find homes for unwanted children and stop hate via education and prevent mental illness strike me rather utopian.
Speaking of which, I've been accused of the same regarding a song I wrote which demonstrates that I have thought of these concerns your raise, before your raising them here and not in reaction to them. Give a listen HERE for my probing the church on its consistencies or rather lack thereof. Good to hear from you.
Thanks Joe for commenting back. I think there is more to consider here than theology. How about also considering psychology – new research suggests that perhaps 27% of the population are “authoritatively controlled conservatives”. John Dean explored a bit of this recently in his book “Conscience of a Conservative.
I returned recently from living abroad, including 2 ½ years in The Netherlands. And despite the popular myths about Holland, the country is quite moral. In fact they have 13 times less people incarcerated than we, and much less crime. It is rather safe walking around the streets anywhere, anytime there. And with recreational drugs tolerated, Dutch youth use them LESS than do American youth here where they are prohibited. The Dutch with their open-minded approach to sex and the body, have young people who grow up without the Puritanical hang-ups inflicted on our youth.
And legal gay and lesbian marriage seems not to have torn the fabric of society there. In fact Holland is a far more tolerant and enlightened society.
I have attempted to have a discussion about the lock step cultish mentality of far right religious zealots with some of the religious right.
I’ve offered, time and again, to have a conversation that might lead to a mutual understanding – and time after time they only repeat mantra, like being stuck in a groove of an old vinyl record.
Yes, I do hear God’s voice in the Bible. And I also hear God’s voice outside the Bible -- to not would be to diminish God, to suggest that prayer is only a communication without a reply, that there are no other places in experience where God’s voice would not resonate with my moral fiber.
1 Corinthians 13:11-12 "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."
To live my life in the context of my childhood understanding, and, now as a man, continue to look unquestioning to authoritative parent figures for my choices, would be to deny my responsibility for finding my own way in life, and in the finding of God’s truth that resonates with my own God given reason and moral compass. And, for me, discoverable truth is also God’s truth.
This is why my acceptance of scientifically proven fact trumps superstition and pseudo science. This is why I defer to scientific and medical conclusion over tradition, over speculation, over bias.
For me this does not conflict with God’s will, it only increases my love and amazement for Him and what He has created.
Bill, this is a response to your second post about 'authoritatively controlled conservatives' and the blessed Holland experience. Two quick thoughts.
My father and mother were not authoritarian and I believe neither would say I was raised in a particularly Christian home. That said, I find that some submit to scientific theory and the most politically controlling academic departments in universities (the social sciences) as their variety of authoritatively controlled leftist, or Marxist, or liberalism ideologies. Alas isn't appeal to such prone to the genetic fallacy anyway?
Second, the Holland experience. I too enjoyed Holland by daytime a few years back. I enjoyed seeing where the ten Boom family hid the Jews during the Nazi occupation and I enjoy mini vacations reminiscing to Holland Michigan as well. But Amsterdam by night is something else. And in places where the qualifications for criminality are different and group sex and violent roleplays are considered popular, and police action is loathed and reports do not get prosecuted...well yes there is less crime. Glad you felt safe.
Do you have a 13 year old daughter and if so, would she feel the same? At night, alone in downtown Amsterdam where no moral hangups keep people moral. (-: OK, I'm teasing a bit here.
I know that a police State is no good. I felt safe at 2am in downtown Joberg during Botha's reign but who wants to live in that extreme either. Not me. I think the Amsterdam / USA crime stats need to be careful to be comparing apples with apples.
As to the legalization of drugs and our criminal justice system related to prison population explosion and pot use, even repeat offenders of such, we may have similar feelings. I have never endorsed and have strongly and emotionally discouraged use of all illegal drugs. I was once a pothead and I see nothing socially redeemable about it. But our 'get tough on crime' criminal justice system related to pot is out of perspective. I could perhaps lean libertarian with you (apparently) on at least part of this issue.
But in the more radical cases of both, isn't declaring the crime 'not a crime' sometimes only a fancy dodge for the moral desensitizing of a culture? Kind of the flip side of alleged American Puritanicalism?
Lastly about science and authoritarianism. I have a friend in a Ph.D. program in science from the PRC. This friend has unwittingly questioned Darwin and felt the room temperature drop considerably in response. I told this Chinese student what another Ph.D. student from the Peoples Republic of China once told me. "In China it is safe to ridicule and question Darwin, but it is NOT safe to question and ridicule the government. In America it is safe to question and ridicule the government, but in the citidel of open-mindedness, the Western university in social sciences and natural sciences especially it is just NOT safe to question Darwin."
Authoritarianism comes in all shapes and sizes.
For a discussion of judicial and criminal justice system "apples and oranges" between the USA and Holland as well as the so-called social benefit argument, and the Marcusian liberational argument, civil rights, free speech, and other related arguments, all responded to with data and by a non-emotive, evangelical lawyer and author, check out John S. Court's classic HERE. The book is out of print but used copies are still sold on Amazon inexpensively. It is a very worthy read.
Post a Comment