I posted not long ago about a situation in Massachusetts where 6-yr-olds were being taught homosexuality and transgenderism and a federal judge insisted the parent had no right to pull his child out of such indoctrination.
Now comes this from a nearby suburb. Deerfield high school, just a few short minutes away from Trinity Evangelical Divinity Shool, has issued a gag order on freshman students indoctrinated in gay behavior.
Officials at Deerfield High School in Deerfield, Ill., have ordered their 14-year-old freshman class into a "gay" indoctrination seminar, after having them sign a confidentiality agreement promising not to tell their parents. the school's officials required the 14-year-olds to attend a "Gay Straight Alliance Network" panel discussion led by "gay" and "lesbian" upperclassmen during a "freshman advisory" class which "secretively featured inappropriate discussions of a sexual nature in promotion of high-risk homosexual behaviors."
I have argued on many occasions that Christians, conservative ones, must not be looked at as power mad theocrats for simply resisting this mad push of the various destructive agendas down the collective throats of the young. What choice do Christians really have when there is a relentless push to normalize behaviors once considered far, far from normal -to give these behaviors the official stamp of government and societal approval and even praise?
Lest anyone link the opposition to this encroachment to be a concoction of Jerry Falwell, Don Wildmon or James Dobson, comes news that Pope Benedict now Pope urges to oppose laws favoring divorce, homosexuality, euthanasia. This is not prayerful passivity he encourages. He is not saying we should happily live our morality and let everyone else live their morality. He is saying some moral viewpoints are healthy for all of society and some are not. Those that are not should be actively opposed.
These values are not negotiable," he wrote, listing "respect for human life, its defense from conception to natural death [and] the family built upon marriage between a man and a woman."
But it is easy to be intimidated by the relentless slash and burn journalism of the secular media. Now oddly, a the Pentagon's top general is "clarifying" his remarks about gays in the military as the worldwide press feeds on his comments to make it sound as if he were viciously violently attacking gays in the act of merely discussing a moral position.
General Peter Pace now says his views are personal moral views. Don't get me wrong, I applaud him for saying anything at all, but how quickly he had to backtrack from any suggestion that sexual morality has consequences for society. For the record, Pace did not single out homosexuality.
"Saying that gays should serve openly in the military, to me, says that we, by policy, would be condoning what I believe is immoral activity," Gen. Pace told the (Chicago Tribune) paper. "I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way."
"Just like I would not want it to be our policy that if we were to find out that so-and-so were sleeping with somebody else's wife, that we would just look the other way," Gen. Pace told the Tribune. "We do not. We prosecute that kind of immoral behavior between members of the Armed Forces."
Unfortunately, he capitulated to the relativist viewpoint.
But Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, clarified his remarks somewhat, saying that while he "also offered some personal opinions about moral conduct," he "should have focused more on my support of the policy and less on my personal moral views."
This is the core assumption of our pluralistic culture, an assumption I fear is poisoning the roots of evangelicalism as it has rotted the foundations of most of the mainline. Morality is personal, never public or societal, unless it has to do with "social justice", in which case the opposite is true, it is never personal, but always systemic. But for most of Western history, as Benedict implied, morality can be and always is far more than personal. Whole cultures can have morals - and this culture once did, prior to enlightenment rejection of revelation and postmodern abandonment of reason.
Predictably, certain groups pounced on poor General Pace, such as the "Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN)."
SLDN reacted to Gen. Pace's original comments on its Web site by calling them "outrageous, insensitive and disrespectful" to homosexual troops. "General Pace knows that prejudice should not dictate policy. It is inappropriate for the chairman to condemn those who serve our country because of his own personal bias," said C. Dixon Osburn, SLDN's executive director.
Ah yes, prejudice, bias. Backward personal emotions that have no basis in reality, rational thought or wisdom of the ages - just vague feelings of hatred for those who are different. No possibility that Pace was discussing reasonable consequences to behaviors that involve more than just individuals and have the potential to harm whole families and erode the health and well-being of societies.
Chuck Colson weighed in on this military tempest:
This cuts to the core of the question of whether anyone in public office is free to speak his deepest religious or moral convictions. The Constitution says there will be no religious test for office, and yet we are applying one. We are basically saying that if you are the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, you are not allowed to express your moral or religious views—especially on matters of sexual preference and behavior.
His point is that we cannot have any sense of public virtue if we separate it from private morality. If we as a society insist that all truth is merely a matter of perspective, that all morality is a merely a personal choice, that ethical and moral behavior is simply a matter of subjective opinion, then we have no chance of holding our leaders accountable to standards we have collectively sabotoged. Colson referred to one of the all-time great C.S. Lewis quotes:
“Such is the tragicomedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. . . . In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
I'm not sure how many leaders of American Christians have chests anymore. Many of those who do are more and more routinely trashed for being arrogant, closed minded and - unbelievably - "political". Meanwhile the radical pluralism of our age is aggressively, incessantly, relentlessly using politics and the courts to destroy every vestige of what was once the common moral fabric of Western civilization. Politics is a cherished right for the left, but not permitted for the right. Where are all those who criticize Dobson, Falwell, Wildmon and others for allegedly "politicizing the faith" when faith itself is quickly becoming a crime and simple statements of moral behavior are portrayed as hate speech?
No comments:
Post a Comment