If I can say that homosexuality IS perfectly acceptable, that I can grant this principle absolute and unquestionable moral supremacy and ontology, then I would argue it is the fact of the granting of the supremacy that is most salient, and not the immediate content.
Can we not imagine a day when today’s processes have continued to the point where “science” and “common sense” make it impossible to square any form of religious belief with public piety, and that anyone who retains such beliefs is to be considered, ipso facto, as insane, and in need of conciliatory psychiatry so as to reconcile them with the actual truths of human experience, as condensed, codified, and turned into a code of universal conformity by “science”, which is to say an oligarchy of anti-patriotic, anti-moral, emotionally superficial, arrogant de facto sociopaths?
When I go into things, I try to go deep. I look at the surface, see what it is showing, then dive in to research the depths. And I believe I can go quite deep.
There is a direct, linear correlation between criminalizing Christians for beliefs that were universal 50 years ago, and scarcely controversial ten years ago, and my ideas on the necessity both for cruelty and conformity I developed in my Cultural Sadeism piece. This is exactly what I predicted.
People who fail to conform are not considered as just having differing views, but as innately evil. They cannot be conversed with. The possibility of an honest and reconcilable difference of opinion is not and cannot be considered, once one walks far down this path.
Superficially, Cultural Sadeists can of course seem quite congenial, even fun. But in their hearts, they cannot brook true, qualitative difference of the sort embodied in continuing religious beliefs.
I am told that the arguments against gay marriage are similar to those used against inter-racial marriage. That was before my time, but let us assume that is true. How has the Civil Rights Movement worked out? How has the use of coercive Federal power to force integration worked out? Brown v. Board of Education. Busing. Everyone gets a shot at a good school.
Culturally, what I am feeling is that the nascent black consciousness was never given a chance to stand on its own. They were not forced to negotiate difference, face to face with people who judged them. Granted, this work was hard. But it was ennobling. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a great man.
If I might compare it with individual acculturation, it was like “momma” did everything for them, protected them from everyone who might hurt them, never let them stand on their own, never let them test their legs, never let them fail on their own and learn from that failure. They were never trusted to work things out on their own, to use their freedom to mature as people and as a discrete culture with the American nation.
The Civil Rights Movement is an abject failure. Success would have looked like full integration, and a demographic equality between whites and blacks. Success would mean color no longer mattered.
But in point of fact, color is all some people want to talk about even today.
And who is doing most of the talking? Momma, which is to say white liberals who do not understand the black experience, have no intention of living it as it is being endured today, and who are absolutely unwilling to take ANY responsibility for continuing to push policies which were obvious failures 30 years ago.
Similarly, gayness is not integrating into the mainstream. It is concentrated in certain urban centers, largely, and this court decision, I’m sure, has left a lot of people furious with them, and in no mood for conciliation.
Christians do preach and in a great many cases in fact practice love. Everything may come up sunshine and roses for the Gay Rights Movement. But it will not be because contempt, hatred, and social violence was not heaped on people guilty of nothing more or less than attempting in the face of opposition to carry on cultural beliefs which are many thousands of years old.
My sense is that many years from now, this period will be seen as the beginning of our final decadence, our final separation from the principles and laws that once protected American success economically and political freedom.
And again this has nothing to do with my particular beliefs on this issue. I don’t care if gays get married or not. It is the tone of this non-debate that concerns me.
Within our lifetimes we may see attempts–I think we will see attempts, and over some time horizon successful ones–to get religious language banned from the public sphere outright. The mention of Jesus will be as anathema as were positive references to Trotsky under Lenin.
To those who say this is ridiculous, I ask why? Was gay marriage even on your radar five years ago? The whole thing, soup to nuts, played out in less than that. The attack on the Confederate Flag lasted less than a week. The propaganda, and the those addicted to it and fully compliant with and dependent on it, is largely perfected. Anyone can be successfully assaulted any time, with no fear of public reasoning, any sense of proportion or history or context, or of a backlash.
We should all be concerned with this, as I am describing nothing less than the final triumph of totalitarianism in the purported “Land of the Free.”
I want freedom for all, mutual respect for all, common decency, and common sense, There will come a time, probably soon, where these are “code words” for whatever that Agit Prop practitioner needs them to be. Anything to stir up the hate and fear, and anything to make sure there is never any time for people to take a breath, talk to one another as individuals to work out their differences, and use the brains and reasoning and empathetic skills that alone make us superior to animals.
I feel sometimes like an Old Testament prophet. It is a feeling of frustration. I can see danger, but people in all too many cases don’t want to hear it. Yes, I more than most get that life’s wounds can make it much harder, that the pressures of everyday living leave little room for negativity, or even for introspection. And practically, I never judge people face to face, or even on the internet. I am judging ideas, by and large, except when it comes to the Sadeists. They deserve a special place in Hell, and I sense they will get it.