Thomas Fleming
“CONSERVATIVES” GIVING AID AND COMFORT TO THE ENEMY
Thu Jul 10 03:23:27 2003
208.152.73.35
“CONSERVATIVES” GIVING AID AND COMFORT TO THE ENEMY
by Thomas Fleming
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/HardRight/HardRight.htm
The Supreme Court’s ruling in Lawrence v. Texas has created panic and
confusion among conservatives. The confusion comes largely from the
representatives of the harmless right. On the one hand, they want to support
the three conservative justices who dissented from the ruling which struck
down Texas’ sodomy statute; on the other, they don’t quite know why. Some are
upset by this instance of “judicial activism,” though in other cases they have
been perfectly happy with the Court’s decision to intrude itself,
extraconstitutionally, into the affairs of the states; others simply cannot
make up their minds. Justice Scalia, thy say, must be wrong in thinking one
can make a rational distinction between sodomy practiced by the heterosexual
97 percent of our society and sodomy practiced by the homosexual three
percent. Last March, one prominent columnist summed up the consensus of
neoconservatives and mainstream conservatives alike: First, “The Texas law
says that gays cannot do what non-gays can do.” Second, he argued that the
Texas law could not be defended with states rights arguments, since the Court
had already assumed (in Bowers, 1986) the power to meddle in such matters.
This was, in essence, the reasoning (if it can be called that) of Justice
Anthony Kennedy, in writing the decision. Arguing from the basis of “equality
of treatment and the due process right to demand respect for conduct protected
by the substantive guarantee of liberty,” Kennedy concludes that “moral
disapproval of a group cannot be a legitimate government interest.” Sodomy
statues, he argues, are not just about sex: “When sexuality finds overt
expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one
element in a personal bond that is more enduring. The liberty protected by the
Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to make this choice.” If
Kennedy thinks intimate conduct is only one element in an enduring personal
bond, he must know very little of either prostitution or of the “gay”
lifestyle that encourages homosexuals to have, literally, hundreds of partners
in the course of a single year.
By “Constitution,” of course, Justice Kennedy means the anticonstitutional
decisions made by activist justices of the past five decades, and it is clear,
from the nature of Kennedy’s argument, that Justice Thomas was correct in
predicting that Lawrence will open the door to homosexual marriage. Leftists
know this and say so. Conservative supporters of the decision know it too, but
they prefer to say they do not.
The Lawrence decision is the usual farrago of potted history, bad logic, and
false consciousness that we are used to in Supreme Court decisions, and it
reveals the shallowness and ignorance of the men and women who control the
destiny of our country. After an historical survey of sodomy legislation that
might have been drafted by NAMBLA or Lambda, Kennedy can find no better
argument than the principle of equality. If person A may perform act X with
person B, then persons C through Z have the right to do the same.
To realize how absurd the argument is, apply the reasoning to other cases. In
forbidding adultery, incest, and statutory rape, state governments forbid some
people to do what others may do (namely, perform acts of consensual sex); in
forbidding strangers to spank rude children while allowing such punishments to
be performed by parents, in allowing some people over 21 (citizens) but not
others (aliens) to vote, in allowing priests to prefer the secrets of the
confessional, etc., governments are denying “equality of treatment” and “the
due process right to demand respect.”
In Lawrence, says Justice Scalia, the Supreme Court has taken sides in the
culture war—the revolutionary side. Although sodomy laws often did apply to
members of both sexes and to married couples, the Christian religion has
always stigmatized homosexuality—not just behavior but the inclination—as evil
and unnatural. It is true that even in the most rigorous Christian societies,
a distinction can be (and should be) drawn between sin and crime. Pride, envy,
and disloyalty may be more sinful than adultery and homicide, but the former
are typically ignored, while the latter are punished severely, often
capitally. Most Christian societies, however, have punished notorious cases of
homosexuality with rigor, partly out of a desire to extirpate a vice so
closely connected with paganism and partly in order to discourage homosexuals
from recruiting young men and destroying, so it is believed, their chances of
salvation.
Obviously, Christian societies in Europe and North America were less than
strict in enforcement of antisodomy laws. Even before the Renaissance, members
of the European ruling class (such as Edward II of England) were widely
believed to have been homosexual, but in times as recent as Victorian England,
the post-Christian establishment knew how to throw the book at someone (like
Oscar Wilde) whose reckless disregard of public opinion made himself
obnoxious. What Kennedy and the conservatives are saying is not only that
Christian morality is a minority position in the United States (which it is),
but that it is bunk and always has been.
Although it is a mistake to reduce all political conflicts to questions of
principle, Lawrence represents a self-evidently absurd ideology, which
conservatives have very unwisely embraced: the abstract principle of equality,
which not only supersedes but positively eliminates the reality of human
differences based on sex, kinship, marriage, nationality, religion, and
morality. Throughout human history (and pre-history), these particular
relationships were at the heart of all moral and political understanding until
they began to be undermined by political dreamers during the Renaissance and
Enlightenment. But even in the past three centuries, no government, not even
Communist Russia or Nazi Germany succeeded in eliminating them. Only
revolutionary liberals (some of whom now call themselves “conservative”) have
been so bold.
The Texas statute was not “silly” (Justice Thomas’s adjective) when it was
passed, and it is not silly now, and even if it were, “the Constitution of the
United States,” as Sam Ervin used to say, “gives every man the right to make a
damn fool of himself,” and, as Senator Sam would have added, it gives that
same right to every state. But in the revolutionary America defended by
conservatives, neither the Constitution nor Christian morality are of any
account.
This is an important lesson for Christians to learn. On every important moral
and social principle, the three branches of government are supporting the
cultural revolution that the left has been waging since even before
Robespierre substituted the worship of “The Supreme Being” for the Christian
religion. This decision was written by a Reagan appointee and supported by
Bush appointee David Souter, Ford appointee John Paul Stevens, and Orin Hatch
appointee Ruth Bader Ginzburg. Sandra Day O’Connor, also a Reagan appointee,
while not entirely agreeing with Kennedy’s reasoning, also voted with the
majority.
There are many sound reasons for voting Republican in elections, but resisting
the cultural revolution is not one of them. We live, not in a degenerate pagan
society whose individuals are open to moral and spiritual conversion, but in a
post-Christian society whose every principle is opposed to us. No election
will change that reality.
It is time for us to face this reality, like men and women. The problem is not
homosexuality per se—a common vice in the history of the world—but the failure
of heterosexuality. Christians don’t have the time and resources to police the
neopagans. We can, however, take care of our own business. This means
restoring marriage to its proper place and stigmatizing divorce, adultery, and
fornication as anti-Christian practices we shall not tolerate in our
communities. If we belong to a church that condemns homosexuality, we can make
sure that there are no openly “gay” pastors, including gay pastors who claim
to be celibate. If you belong to a tolerant denomination, you can find another
church. Today.
=========================================
911 FOREVER
by Thomas Fleming
A pragmatic friend wrote in to say that he appreciated Chronicles' February
issue on Iraq, which "fairly presents the respectable antiwar case."
Nonetheless, he reluctantly concluded,
Given the belligerence and resentment of the failed Arab culture, Saddam has
come to represent a power-challenge that probably has to be taken up if we are
to have any hope of breaking the back of Arab terrorism. If surreptitious
state-sponsored terrorism is the threat that I think it is, it may be
imperative to give the world the lesson that we can and will destroy
governments who even flirt with such activities.Our best defense may be to
create a situation in which the third world thugocracies decide that such
activities are not a useful means of pressuring us, but rather a mortal threat
to themselves. Certainly action will lead us into unforeseeable circumstances
that it would be best to avoid if we could. It is most uncomfortable to feel
oneself lined up with the "national greatness" boys, with their insouciance
over unfathomable consequences. While one might hope for a spread of notions
of limited government to the Arab world, to anyone who knows anything about
Arab culture, there would seem to be little reason to imagine this will ever
come to pass. All we can do is hope for the best.
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