The “Right to Marry”

It is time to stop being bamboozled by the rhetoric of the homosexual agenda. We as conservatives and libertarians of all people should be much more careful about “rights” talk than the socialists. For every right there must be a corresponding duty. If I have a right to health care, then the doctor has a responsibility to give it to me. So then what exactly does it mean to have a “right” to get married?

Please pay close attention: When one starts thinking precisely in this way, one realizes that it depends on what we mean by “marriage.” By marriage, do we mean merely the social institution by which one person binds oneself to another person through certain vows? Or do we mean that exact same institution which is also publicly recognized and ratified by government? Every good debate must define its terms.

Clearly, in the first sense, everyone already has the “right to marry.” There are no laws preventing gay people from binding themselves to each other, making vows to each other, living together, engaging in sodomy together,  expressing affection for each other, etc. etc. Nor am I advocating laws to prohibit such things. This is the emotional straw man that the left and many libertarians like to throw at conservatives.

However, it is certainly true the homosexual relationships are currently not recognized and ratified by the state. And WHY should they be? In order to answer that crucial question, we must ask ourselves why heterosexual relationships are recognized and ratified by the state.

Also, following the wisdom of Aristotle, it is injustice to treat unequal things equally. For example, there is no legal equality between children and adults in America for good and obvious reasons relating to intellectual maturity. Therefore, if we can find reasons that the state recognizes and ratifies heterosexual relationships which do not similarly apply to homosexual relationships, then we have found relevant inequality between heterosexual and homosexual relationships.

So why does the state legally recognize heterosexual relationships, i.e. marriages? Because they are the fundamental building block of society. On an existential level, new citizens and thus the perpetuation of society and the state depend upon enduring heterosexual unions. Moreover, heterosexual couples, i.e. parents, are the ones who raise and shape the character of future citizens of the state. These are the benefits that heterosexual couples provide to the state. Even the most powerful state cannot create a new human being and love him or her. Therefore, the state recognizes families, heterosexual couples, legally because of this unique role they play in any society and civilization.

Homosexual couples are necessarily infertile and scarce. There is no equality between heterosexual and homosexual unions. They provide no public benefit such as heterosexual unions do. They therefore do NOT deserve recognition by the state. It is as simple as that.

Ultimately, transfers of property, who can visit someone in the hospital, and every other example that turns into a sap story about “oppression” against homosexuals, all these things are NOT what marriage is all about and can be remedied through other current legal means (e.g. power of attorney, contracts, etc.). So please don’t bring them up. They are irrelevant.

All people have the right to “marry” whomever or whatever they choose. But only heterosexual unions, these unique relationships among human beings, have a right to the attention and recognition of the state.

Scienceolatry: Science as a Religion and Idol

Our student newspaper, the Battalion, seems to worship the All-Powerful, Almighty Science, who saves all from death and conservatism (secular sin), especially one staff writer in particular, Mr. Tiruvadi:

“[M]any Americans are just getting sick of sectarian bickering and dogma, turning away from organized religion and instead toward an optimistic humanism that accurately reflects 21st century hopes…. As time went on and pesky scientists were dealt with, the inevitable transition of atheism from the dark arts to an acceptable religious identity accelerated. What we’re seeing now is the natural extension of the spirit that started the science ball rolling centuries ago…. Religion is often associated with vehement opposition to stem cell research, classroom science lessons, individuals exercising their rights and sexual scandals while those that don’t believe are seen as intellectual elitists.”

The irony is that there would be no modern science without the Judeo-Christian tradition. Virtually all other religious traditions, those of the gentiles and pagans, thought of the physical world as permanently divine and thus irrational (for their gods were capricious). Only with the coming of Yahweh, the Creator of the natural world, did humanity powerfully come to see order and reason to the universe, an order which by human reason could be measured, studied, recorded, even manipulated. The story of Galileo has grown into an atheist/agnostic myth over time. There is no real conflict between science/reason and Christianity.  Humanism, divorced from divinely sanctioned morality, must degrade into horrific, totalitarian power-worship over time.

Tiruvadi also writes, “As our excellence in science, arts and business increases we will see a shift in public misconceptions of A&M, fortified by our increasingly knowledgeable faculty and research focus…. In the coming decades we’ll find ourselves deeper into the vanguard of science, a place where our definition of tradition will really be tested and we’ll be confronted with controversial opportunities. For example, will A&M’s participation in stem cell research be an affront to its tradition? If you define A&M’s tradition as wholly steeped in conservatism then yes, we’ll have to forsake our brain just to be a big heart. Will we let misconceptions of the theory of evolution get in the way of how we teach biology? Luckily the integrity of science is still strong at A&M, but growing reactionary views can bring even science dangerously close to conservatism’s guillotine.”

Ironically, the guillotine was the instrument of the “progressive” French Revolution, which also idolized rationality and science and attempted to destroy all signs and symbols of organized religion. How appropriate that those who worshipped rationality would execute their heretics by chopping off the seat of such rationality! “Conservatism’s guillotine” is an oxymoron.

Media Credit: Jordan Bryan

Obama seems to have become Tiruvadi’s Scientist in Chief: “This may very well be the closest we get to a scientific-messiah-president, and that’s good news for every American…. America is still at the vanguard of scientific innovation, with brilliant minds paving the way…. The promise of stem cells as a viable cure in any disease is still up in the air, but as science always says, you don’t know until you know. And now, with a President that doesn’t resort to religion-laden stem cell rhetoric, we might finally know.” Thanks Yogi! Brilliant!

Science says touch your toes…. Touch your head. No, you’re out, I didn’t say “Science says“!

And they call us religious nuts? Who says science can’t be perverted into a religion (scientism) with their own messiah and dogma to go with it?

I could argue with Mr. Tiruvadi ad nauseam. But nothing I could say would be as powerful as three movies: The Island, Gattaca, and Brave New World. As I’m sure he would agree, seeing is believing, no? These are three must-see movies for everyone.

Science has methods and nothing more. It has no ethical standards in and of itself. Ethical standards must be applied to science from without. Science is knowledge and thus power. Power has no ethical standards in and of itself. Power-worship merely takes different forms throughout history. The golden calf, the hammer and sickle, and the swastika have all seemingly been replaced by the glass test tube.

Yet this is precisely what Mr. Tiruvadi and others like him seem to claim: science can do no wrong. They are not willing to engage in a moral debate because science sets the terms of morality, or, even worse, has “determined” that morality is a biological-sociological phenomenon, a delusion of sorts. “There is no good and evil; there is only power and those too weak to seek it.” When does human life begin? Does innocent human life have dignity and thus deserve protection, no matter the stage of its growth and development? These questions are brushed aside as heresy, as challenges to scientismic dogma.

Ironically, science itself tells us when human life begins: conception. Humanity can be scientifically defined, more or less, by genetic material, 46 chromosomes. And life can be defined, more or less, by the presence of cells, especially those which grow and divide. Thus conception is the exact moment at which humanity and life become one and find coexistence. So tell me, which book of the Bible or religious dogma did I just cite? The left abandons reason rather than embracing it.

In contrast, scientism and its acolytes often wish to define human dignity on a sliding scale based on intelligence; the intelligent may thus oppress or even enslave the ungifted and untalented. The mentally disabled, the senile, the comatose, and even the child, within or outside the mother, are thus expendable according to this strict logic.

We have seen communism and fascism, leftist ideologies both, deny human dignity and use the power of the state to commit genocide and enslave human beings. Perhaps the worst is yet to come under neo-pagan scientism, for it promises a power over human beings that not even Hitler or Lenin could have imagined, a miserable totalitarian power that only fictional movies can capture and illustrate…for now.

Flawed Premises of the Homosexual Agenda

This past summer I had a discussion with a friend of mine, a fellow D.C. intern, on the topic of gay relationships. It was the most enlightening and surreal experience that I have had in quite a while. Bits and pieces of it have been replaying over and over again in my head, and I can’t help but write about it. Only now have I gotten around to publishing it.

Though I’ve heard or participated in quite a few debates on this topic, this discussion in particular seemed to crystallize in my mind the false premises that underlie the push for so-called “gay rights”:

1. Biological urges, feelings, and attractions dictate and/or are equivalent to morality.

This was the most important and disturbing tidbit that I learned (or re-learned). When talking with people of the opposing point of view, the conservative soon gets the impression that the opposition recognizes no morality whatsoever. Talk of “imposing morality” on people and how we can’t know “whose morality” is correct inevitably arises. And when this happens, conservatives can’t help but label liberals as moral relativists because moral relativism is exactly what they are espousing.

But this is actually mere posturing of an impossible neutrality. Liberals often pretend that life in a moral vaccuum, a moral neutrality, is possible and desirable. They do this for for a moment or two, or rather, for as long as it takes to stonewall and deny the Christian view of sexuality (or of morality in general) without examining and critiquing the view in itself.

But liberals cannot logically even begin to chastise conservatives for anything if they really believe that there is no morality or that even if there is that we can’t know it. If liberals think conservatives are wrong about something, they must be appealing to some code of morality, however perverse and incorrect, which they think they know with sufficient certainty.

So one has to dig down deeper, past the contradictory rhetoric, to understand what the liberal is really trying to say. “It is wrong to discriminate against someone for something they are born with, something they can’t help or change. No one chooses to be gay.” Here we go! Finally, the liberal firmly plants her feet and takes a moral stand. The moral relativism of just a few minutes ago magically vanishes from ear and memory. A real discussion can finally begin.

This is where I ask my friend, “Are sexual acts chosen?” It is crucial to establish that people freely choose to engage in sexual relations of any kind, that human beings are not mere animals that cannot control themselves. In this way, one makes a fundamental distinction between a person’s freely chosen behavior and a person’s urges, feelings, desires, and attractions.

The situation was all the more ironic to me because I am a man and my friend is a woman. Surely, a woman would not say that human beings are unable to control their sexual desires. To say such a thing is to give license to the rapist, the supreme violator of sexual morality (even the liberal does not condone rape). If the homosexual cannot control his or her own sexual urges, neither can the rapist or the pedophile. We must be fair and equal and consistent, right?  Thankfully, my friend embraced some notion of individual responsibility.

Now a radical liberal may deny that we have free will at all and thus once again undermine any notion of morality (to be a wrong act, it must be freely chosen); you are back to where you started and unlikely to make progress. Thankfully, my friend did not go down this path.

So if all sexual acts are freely chosen, then all homosexual behavior is freely chosen. At this point in the discussion, the conversation should have focused specifically on the nature of homosexual acts. But my friend temporarily would not retreat from talk of feelings and attraction. “It is not right to force someone to deny who they are, to deny they’re feelings for other people.” So I couldn’t help but ask point blank the fundamental question, “Do biological urges determine morality?”

She said yes, more or less. I was shocked. Did she realize what she was saying? So sexual acts are freely chosen AND sexual morality is determined by our urges? This was more radical than saying people can’t control themselves. Her logic had managed to vindicate the rapist and the pedophile anyway. According to her logic, it would be immoral not to act on one’s sexual urges when they arise.

2. Sex is a necessity.

“So you want homosexuals to just deny their urges and never have sex?!” my friend asks. Oh no! Never have anal or oral sex at all?! What a cruel, unfulfilling fate! I guess people who don’t have sex at all aren’t fully human in some way? If conservative Christian morality deprives homosexuals of this “necessity,” we are apparently uncompassionate. As if our morality were depriving them of food and water! But my friend insisted that sex is a necessity.

This second premise is actually a logical continuation or corollary of the first. Morality is a necessity, so if biological urges, especially sexual libido, determine morality, then sex is a necessity too. And strictly speaking then, it is a necessity every time one feels the urge!

I guess the left would argue, more or less explicitly, that anal and oral sex with someone of the same sex are necessary for “individual self-fulfillment,” for reasons of “authenticity.” But this kind of talk merely turns the individual ego into the arbiter of morality, thus destroying any notion of morality. For what is morality if not independent of individual egos and wills? It is nothing, nonexistent then.

3. There is no ideal family structure.

What exactly do we mean by “ideal”? Ideal for who? For adults? For children?

Family and its structure is most relevant and important for children. Adults have acquired knowledge and skills that naturally make them independent of their parents; adults start their own families by having their own children. Children on the other hand are weak, dependent, and immature both intellectually and biologically. Therefore, any discussion of family and its structure must primarily revolve around what is ideal for children, not the fulfillment of adults.

Empirically, there is no doubt that the family structure of two biological parents is ideal for children in comparison to all other conceivable variations. We do not need to rely merely on Scripture to tell us this ideal when social science (reasoned observation) can tell us this too.