Some on the political right would have us duplicate Neville Chamberlain’s infamous 1939 appeasement of Nazi Germany when it comes to today’s culture war. Fortunately, a majority of conservatives are still willing to defend the gates of the city against the amoral barbarians. Most conservatives, however, lack enough ammo to get the job done.
Make no mistake about the following things:
- Appeasement won’t work in this war any more than it has in any other.
- We didn’t start this war – the sexual revolution/pro-aborts/pro-“homosexual rights” crowd did.
- It’s the political left that’s obsessed with the social issues, not the political right.
- Civilization is impossible without morality.
- You can forget about achieving a sound and growing economy if your society decays from within.
The questions that outline this values war are simple: What’s right? What’s wrong? What’s healthy? What’s unhealthy? What’s normal? What’s abnormal? What’s conducive to preserving the social fabric and what destroys it?
The pro-life forces in America have done a terrific job promoting the pro-life message and they can boast of the only progress for conservatives in the past thirty years. Opinion polls now show a majority of the country is pro-life.
Those who have sought to help Americans understand the nature of the “homosexual agenda” haven’t fared as well. They’re not alone in that conservatives who support limited government have been abject failures, as have those who’ve fought for lower taxes and a free market with as few government restraints as possible.
Let’s put aside the topic of abortion, limited government and free markets for now and focus on clearing up the confusion regarding the so-called “homosexual rights” agenda. This confusion exists at the foundational level, and unfortunately few commentators know enough to address the issue at that level.
One example of this failure to address the important foundation of the issue is in a recent post from nationally syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher. Having read Gallagher’s work for years, I know she gets it – but she again fails to address it in this latest article. She writes that those who support the homosexual agenda have “a clear vision for America”:
It will be a place where, in order to remain respectable citizens, Christians (and others with traditional moral views) will simply have to drop not only Leviticus, but Genesis, and oh by the way, Jesus’ own words in Matthew 19.
Christian moral understanding of sex, gender and marriage will simply have to change [opponents suggest]. Why? Because [they] say so. To do otherwise is to be mean [to] gay people. Our very existence, our identity as both good Christians and good citizens is an offense to [them].
Once it was enough to accept norms of civility — to speak and treat each other with respect in spite of our important moral differences and disagreements. That was so 2003. Now gay leaders expect that those who disagree with them will be silent or face a wall of wrath.
Gallagher suggests that religious liberty should trump so-called “homosexual rights.” But why? To answer that question you have to have more information about the nature of homosexuality and she doesn’t provide it, nor do most other conservative commentators.
In the same column Gallagher addresses the desire of some on the political right to just surrender. She writes that a “large number of conservative elites who want to declare the war over and get out of the way.” She also writes, “The will to lose on gay marriage among conservative elites is palpable.”
Let me state what should be obvious but isn’t because it’s never stated. Those very same conservative elites have presided over three decades of failure in the economic/limited government arena. If they were as smart as they pretend to be they’d admit that failure and show more humility when approaching the culture war.
Up next: The First Amendment and critical thinking.
Read the entire series here.
