Laurie Higgins is the Director of the Illinois Family Institute’s Division of School Advocacy, and her writing is as good as it gets when it comes to defending traditional values. Below is just an excerpt from one of her latest articles (you should read it in full here). This column recommends that you read – and send to your elected officials – everything she writes.
By Laurie Higgins
I am on occasion interviewed by high school and college students. I have learned that many are spectacularly ignorant:
- They believe without evidence that homosexuality is ontologically equivalent to race. They and anyone else who employs arguments based on the flawed analogy between homosexuality and race should be asked to provide justifications for this analogy. For example, all public educators who use such an analogy should be required to explain the ways they believe homosexuality is like race and that they explain to students the weaknesses of and challenges to this analogy.
- They believe that laws prohibiting same-sex “marriage” are analogous to laws prohibiting interracial marriage. This reveals that they don’t understand the difference between homosexuality and race/skin color. They don’t understand that anti-miscegenation laws were based on the erroneous belief that black men and white men are ontologically different, whereas laws prohibiting same-sex marriage are based on the true belief that men and women are ontologically different. These young people also don’t understand that when a black man seeks to marry a white woman, he is seeking to do the same thing that a white man is doing, so the discrimination inherent in anti-miscegenation laws is discrimination based on race or skin color. In the case of same sex “marriage,” however, the discrimination is based on behavior, which is legitimate. In the case of same sex “marriage,” a man is seeking to marry a man, which is an utterly different act that a man marrying a woman. Laws prohibiting same-sex marriage are not discriminating between people based on immutable, morally neutral conditions; these laws make rational distinctions between behaviors or acts.
- They believe that marriage is solely a private relationship.
- They have no understanding of the reasons why the government is involved with marriage.
- They believe that disapproval of homosexual acts constitutes hatred of persons, and yet curiously they don’t apply that principle consistently. They don’t assert that their moral disapproval of particular beliefs or volitional acts constitutes hatred of persons.
- They believe that to demonstrate love, one has to affirm all beliefs and all behavioral choices of others, and yet they don’t apply that principle consistently. They believe that it’s possible for them to love those whose moral beliefs and behavioral choices they do not affirm.
- They have no idea that until the late 20th Century, there were no Catholic or Protestant theologians who embraced “gay” theology.
- They believe that homosexuals constitute 10% of the population (a long-discredited figure).
- They believe that science has proved that homosexuality is 100% heritable even though they can’t produce even one study to prove that claim.
- They have no idea that “Queer Theory” argues that homosexuality is mutable and fluid.
- They have no understanding of church-state relations. They would be stunned to read what Martin Luther King Jr. said about law in “Letter From Birmingham Jail.” I’m often asked if my opposition to legalized same-sex marriage violates the Constitution. Because students have such a lousy understanding of the First Amendment, they have trouble answering this question: If someone attends a church that affirms homosexuality, should they be prohibited from imposing their religious beliefs in law through support for legalized same-sex marriage?
Click here to read more by Laurie Higgins.