Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
One Man, One Woman
I am a traditionalist and I seem to find myself in a tiny minority. Sometimes it feels like a minority of one, though I know that there must be a few others who share my views.
There has been a tremendous Leftward shift in many public attitudes over the past 20 years or so, with homosexuality being one of the most notable changes. I have been shocked and mystified by this shift. Within my adult lifetime, we’ve gone from widespread condemnation of homosexuality itself to widespread condemnation of opposition to homosexuality. This seems to have happened even on the political Right, among people who consider themselves conservatives, including many of you, dear readers.
This shift in attitude has coincided with a widespread campaign of propaganda, misrepresentations, vilification, and slander. The campaign has been carried out by the Wokeist methods of “cancel” culture, which so many of you appear to condemn. Yet many of you seem to have accepted the radical Leftist conclusion on this issue. And, strangely, you still seem to consider yourselves conservatives. What, precisely, do you think that you are conserving? Low capital gains tax rates?
My first complaint, frankly, is about the public discussion on this issue. This is supposed to be a “center-right” website. I listen to a great many of the podcasts. Perhaps I am forgetting someone, but I cannot think of one single podcast at this website that advocates the traditional moral view of homosexuality. You know, that it’s a bad thing, and should not be supported in the law in any way, and certainly not elevated to a status equal with the traditional family: one man, one woman. Can you name any single Ricochet podcast host who takes this position?
Even if you can think of one, or a handful, isn’t it strange that the consensus position on this issue is so entirely one-sided?
In my case, I thought homosexuality was a bad thing even back when I was an atheist. Now, as a follower of Jesus, I have His clear teaching on this point, particularly as applied to marriage:
Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” [Matthew 19:3-6.]
In this statement, by the way, Jesus was quoting Genesis, so this is the Jewish teaching as well. Recognition of homosexuality as a bad thing has been the near-universal teaching of Christianity for 2,000 years, and of Judaism for around 3,500 years and I understand that Muslims agree about this point, as well.
I realize that not everyone shares my Christian faith, but doesn’t it strike you as strange that, at a supposedly conservative website, I can’t think of one single podcaster or one single contributor who holds to this traditional view?
Eric Weinstein has two interesting ideas applicable here. He posits the existence of the DISC (Distributed Information Suppression Complex) and the GIN (Gated Institutional Narrative). He describes the DISC as a loosely coupled emergent structure, not under central control, that suppresses ideas and protects institutions from individuals who have valid and reasonable points. (Further explanation here.) The GIN is a sociological method whereby the media and political classes misrepresents or, perhaps more often, omits stories and viewpoints that do not fit the preferred narrative. (Further explanation here.)
Many of you may not know Eric Weinstein or his brother, Bret Weinstein, they’re certainly no conservatives. If you think that I am some closed-minded troglodyte, you should realize that I listen to them quite regularly, along with other non-traditional and even Left-leaning thinkers (among them Douglas Murray, Jordan Peterson, and Jonathan Haidt; and if you think that any of them are conservatives, then maybe you’re not actually very conservative).
Back to my main point: I get the impression that traditional Protestant conservatives are almost nowhere to be found, here at a supposedly conservative website. According to the 2016 exit polls (here), Protestants were the largest single religious group — 52% of the electorate — and they voted for Trump over Clinton 56% to 39%. Breaking it down further, the biggest religious sub-group was “white born-again or evangelical Christians,” 26% of the electorate, supporting Trump 80%-16%. Catholics were the next largest group, 23% of the electorate, narrowly supporting Trump (50%-46%).
If you do the math, votes for Trump from white evangelicals, people like me, were 21% of all votes cast. Protestant votes for Trump were about 30% of all votes cast. The President carried about 46% of the popular vote; so about 2/3 of his support was from Protestants, and almost half of his support was from white evangelicals.
This wasn’t a Trump thing, by the way. According to the 2012 exit polls (here), white evangelicals were 26% of the electorate in 2012 as well, and supported Romney 78%-21%.
So why can I not think of one single podcaster or contributor at Ricochet in this demographic? I mean, how can folks like me simultaneously be the largest group in the Republican electorate and an apparently endangered species?
OK, I know, David French…. but give me a break. He was on the pro-SSM side, for crying out loud.
Back to homosexuality. I reject the idea that the debate is over. Peter Hitchens, the public intellectual who is probably most closely aligned with my own views, called the SSM debate a “pointless Stalingrad.” His attitude is that the battle for Christian civilization was lost with no-fault divorce. But he’s a Brit, and I’m an American. I have not yet begun to fight.
While I’m not terribly fond of an analogy that places me in the position of the Red Army, I note that Stalingrad was not pointless. Stalingrad was the turning point. There could be no Kursk, no driving the Nazis out of the Motherland, no fall of Berlin unless the enemy was stopped at Stalingrad. You have to fight on the ground on which you find your enemy.
It is utterly bizarre to me that I seem to be almost alone in this position. This has been the official Republican Party platform since at least 1992. A review is in order.
1992 Republican Party Platform (here):
The culture of our Nation has traditionally supported those pillars on which civilized society is built: personal responsibility, morality, and the family. Today, however, these pillars are under assault. Elements within the media, the entertainment industry, academia, and the Democrat Party are waging a guerrilla war against American values. They deny personal responsibility, disparage traditional morality, denigrate religion, and promote hostility toward the family’s way of life. Children, the members of our society most vulnerable to cultural influences, are barraged with violence and promiscuity, encouraging reckless and irresponsible behavior.
. . .
We also stand united with those private organizations, such as the Boy Scouts of America, who are defending decency in fulfillment of their own moral responsibilities. We reject the irresponsible position of those corporations that have cut off contributions to such organizations because of their courageous stand for family values. Moreover, we oppose efforts by the Democrat Party to include sexual preference as a protected minority receiving preferential status under civil rights statutes at the federal, State, and local level.
1996 Republican Party Platform (here):
We are the party of the American family, educating children, caring for the sick, learning from the elderly, and helping the less fortunate. We believe that strengthening family life is the best way to improve the quality of life for everyone.
Families foster the virtues that make a free society strong. We rely on the home and its supportive institutions to instill honesty, self-discipline, mutual respect and the other virtues that sustain democracy. . . .
This is the clearest distinction between Republicans and Clinton Democrats: We believe the family is the core institution of our society. Bill Clinton thinks government should hold that place.
. . .
Our agenda for more secure families runs throughout this platform. Here we take special notice of the way congressional Republicans have advanced adoption assistance, promoted foster care reform, and fought the marriage penalty in the tax code. . . . They passed the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines “marriage” for purposes of federal law as the legal union of one man and one woman and prevents federal judges and bureaucrats from forcing states to recognize other living arrangements as “marriages.”
2000 Republican Party Platform (here):
We support the traditional definition of “marriage” as the legal union of one man and one woman, and we believe that federal judges and bureaucrats should not force states to recognize other living arrangements as marriages. We rely on the home, as did the founders of the American Republic, to instill the virtues that sustain democracy itself. That belief led Congress to enact the Defense of Marriage Act, which a Republican Department of Justice will energetically defend in the courts. For the same reason, we do not believe sexual preference should be given special legal protection or standing in law.
2004 Republican Party Platform (here):
We strongly support President Bush’s call for a Constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage, and we believe that neither federal nor state judges nor bureaucrats should force states to recognize other living arrangements as equivalent to marriage. We believe, and the social science confirms, that the well-being of children is best accomplished in the environment of the home, nurtured by their mother and father anchored by the bonds of marriage. We further believe that legal recognition and the accompanying benefits afforded couples should be preserved for that unique and special union of one man and one woman which has historically been called marriage.
After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence, and millennia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization, the union of a man and a woman in marriage. Attempts to redefine marriage in a single state or city could have serious consequences throughout the country, and anything less than a Constitutional amendment, passed by the Congress and ratified by the states, is vulnerable to being overturned by activist judges. On a matter of such importance, the voice of the people must be heard. The Constitutional amendment process guarantees that the final decision will rest with the American people and their elected representatives. President Bush will also vigorously defend the Defense of Marriage Act, which was supported by both parties and passed by 85 votes in the Senate. This common sense law reaffirms the right of states not to recognize same-sex marriages licensed in other states.
2008 Republican Party Platform (here):
Republicans recognize the importance of having in the home a father and a mother who are married. The two-parent family still provides the best environment of stability, discipline, responsibility, and character. Children in homes without fathers are more likely to commit a crime, drop out of school, become violent, become teen parents, use illegal drugs, become mired in poverty, or have emotional or behavioral problems. We support the courageous efforts of single-parent families to provide a stable home for their children. Children are our nation’s most precious resource. We also salute and support the efforts of foster and adoptive families.
Republicans have been at the forefront of protecting traditional marriage laws, both in the states and in Congress. A Republican Congress enacted the Defense of Marriage Act, affirming the right of states not to recognize same-sex “marriages” licensed in other states. Unbelievably, the Democratic Party has now pledged to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which would subject every state to the redefinition of marriage by a judge without ever allowing the people to vote on the matter. We also urge Congress to use its Article III, Section 2 power to prevent activist federal judges from imposing upon the rest of the nation the judicial activism in Massachusetts and California. We also encourage states to review their marriage and divorce laws in order to strengthen marriage.
2012 Republican Party Platform (here):
The institution of marriage is the foundation of civil society. Its success as an institution will determine our success as a nation. It has been proven by both experience and endless social science studies that traditional marriage is best for children. Children raised in intact married families are more likely to attend college, are physically and emotionally healthier, are less likely to use drugs or alcohol, engage in crime, or get pregnant outside of marriage. The success of marriage directly impacts the economic well-being of individuals. Furthermore, the future of marriage affects freedom. The lack of family formation not only leads to more government costs, but also to more government control over the lives of its citizens in all aspects. We recognize and honor the courageous efforts of those who bear the many burdens of parenting alone, even as we believe that marriage, the union of one man and one woman must be upheld as the national standard, a goal to stand for, encourage, and promote through laws governing marriage.
2016 Republican Party Platform (here):
Traditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman, is the foundation for a free society and has for millennia been entrusted with rearing children and instilling cultural values. We condemn the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States v. Windsor, which wrongly removed the ability of Congress to define marriage policy in federal law. We also condemn the Supreme Court’s lawless ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which in the words of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, was a “judicial Putsch” — full of “silly extravagances” — that reduced “the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Storey to the mystical aphorisms of a fortune cookie.” In Obergefell, five unelected lawyers robbed 320 million Americans of their legitimate constitutional authority to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The Court twisted the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment beyond recognition. To echo Scalia, we dissent.
I understand that the conservative movement and the Republican Party need to be a big tent, but for crying out loud, I’m the guy whose right foot is pinned under that big pole at the center of the tent. How can it be that I am pretty much alone, in the very middle of the crowd?
I’ll tell you why I think this is: I think that our side has been cowed by the slanderous vilification peddled by the radical Left. I think that it has been internalized by a great many people who think that they are conservatives. Some of them may actually believe it and many more may feel afraid to speak.
I don’t think that Ricochet actively tries to silence traditional conservative voices. It may be as simple as the fear of losing advertising revenue, and the advertisers may themselves react with fear to the Wokeist mob. It may be that the podcast lineup is drawn from people who have already gained prominence in the institutional media, and who have therefore already been filtered by the DISC (distributed information suppression complex) to ensure some degree of compliance with the GIN (gated institutional narrative).
So what to do about the mess that we are in?
I go back to the beginning. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That’s Genesis 1.
Next, He created man, in His own image. It was not good for the man to be alone, so God created woman. That’s Genesis 2, affirmed by Jesus as quoted earlier, and affirmed again in our own Declaration of Independence.
“That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” Genesis 2:24. That’s marriage. One man, one woman.
So it seems to me that these are the foundations. Faith in God. Marriage and family.
This is where I am going to take my stand. Alone if necessary. Let me know whether or not I am alone in this.
BLM delenda est.
Published in Marriage
The Bible does not prohibit homosexuality but rather the behavior:
“‘If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” — Leviticus 20:13
In other words, loving another guy is fine as long as you don’t sodomize him. I think sodomy laws were on the books in a number of states until recently and it has to do with this Biblical passage.
Man and woman have distinct roles. We therefore cannot lie with a man as we would with a woman.
I too see “feminism,” parts of the homosexual rights movement, and now the transgender rights movement as one continuous battle to try to cover over the reality that there are two sexes, and that they are different from each other.
See my question immediately above. Is this prohibition on homosexual behavior ultimately based on a belief that sex is to be procreative?
Yes, 100%! Why is sex so pleasurable? For one reason only; to encourage us to procreate.
I generally agree, but think modern Westerners overestimate the viability of heterogenous societies without a unifying worldview and common morality.
Civil marriage can coexist with sacramental marriage as a minority alternative, like a generally Christian society can tolerate an atheist minority. But without a strong demographic majority a society loses its essential and unifying character. It fractures into a flurry of whimsical, contradicting, unsatisfactory laws and customs.
We are a nations of ideas, rather than ethnicity. But freedom of expression, justice for all, and rule of law are not cornerstones of every ideology / philosophy / religion. Christianity provided the foundation which protected Jews and agnostics. Like the EU, America’s elites are learning that the big tent will not stand without its center pole.
So therefore there are heterosexual behaviors that are equally “wrong” from a moral perspective?
Masturbation is also prohibited under penalty of death:
8 Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.” 9 But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. 10 What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death also. Genesis 38:8-10.
The purpose of arousal is to procreate. Arousal for the sake of self-pleasure is a crime since, once again, as in sodomy example, you are not utilizing that pleasure for the purpose it was intended — to procreate.
Yes, yes, yes! They violate the purpose of that pleasure, to procreate. Violation of God’s intent is as immoral as it gets.
There was a wise man who told his disciples: “I will never tell you not to want to sin. That desire will always be there. Instead, I am going to keep you so busy practicing kindness to others that you won’t have time to sin!” Leisure time is our enemy.
On Ricochet, even Protestant ministers can talk like Jewish vaudeville comedians!
I think that’s a common misreading of the verse. I think it was the disobedience and defiance, and not the act of masturbation itself, that was the cause of G-d’s of displeasure. In the story.
For twenty years television has been unrelenting on showing homosexuals, rather than as the perverts they are, to be the wittiest, artiest, smartest, fairest and everywhere.
The ship has sailed. No one voted for homosexuality in almost any vote I know of. It was rammed down our throats by the Supreme Court. It’s not about to be undone.
In the end, I think most people conclude that being homosexual is perverted, but people have a right to be perverts.
If we’re going to undo wrongs committed by the Supreme Court, let’s start with abortion. If we ever make headway on that, then I’ll be willing to take on perversion. Culturally, homosexuality is now accepted.
I’ve been here since 2012 and somehow missed most of the war, maybe because I didn’t much care. My only objection to SSM is that SSM is an oxymoron if society’s definition marriage is a monogamous union of a man and a woman. The whole idea of re-defining marriage to accommodate 2 to 3 percent of the population seemed ridiculous to me. Oh well, it’s water under the bridge now.
Afternoon Hoyacon,
If we consider that most of human life was at the tribal level and that our modern traditions have been built on the tribal traditions that were the most successful, then procreation and child survival were at the heart of tribal culture. Tribes succeeded in their ability to turn resources into children who lived to parent children who followed the tribe’s customs. Larger tribes could field more warriors, larger tribes could control more lands and herd more animals and survive hardships that would erase smaller tribes.
In all the tribes we know of, marriage was the structure that defined the shape of marriageable partners, by defining who was in your family and not available for marriage, and who was outside your family and available for marriage. Marriage was also the structure that defined the network of obligations which provided the tools of education and support. In the Cheyenne, in hunting and war parties your brothers (your cousins were also called brothers) were immediately included. In most tribes males are obligated to provide meat to another relatives, again in the Cheyenne, males provide meat to their mother-in-laws family but the Cheyennne custom is that the son-in-law and the mother-in-law never talk directly to each other. As girls become women, often grandmothers guard and instruct their grand daughters on how to be good women and insure that they will be prepared for marriage. In the Cheyenne, female family members help with the delivery and wet nurse the baby for the first several days. Think of all the quirky customs, like a man has to marry his brother’s wife if the brother gets killed or dies. Remembering the purpose of enhancing child survival, this type of marriage maintains the network of obligations and support. Children are of the highest value and it takes great effort to raise one to adulthood. For most of tribal life, death of a parent or child was common if not the rule, so marriage with its defined relational structure was the only safety net. Leveriate marriage was a custom of both the Jews and the Cheyenne.
Concerning the Cheyenne and heterosexuality, there are men who choose a different role. They would be the Contraries and they would either become transvestites, and become a second wife, or they would be one of the Contraries warriors. These warriors live apart from the camp, never marry, and are known for doing the opposite of everyone else, and for their exceptional daring. If the tribe attacks from the front, they by themselves attack from the side. To become a Contrary warrior, one has to buy the bow from a Contray warrior. Once a Contrary warrior has sold his bow, he can return to normal life. The Cheyenne limit the number of these Contraries to a handful. Also consider that Cheyennne women have no analog, I think that is because a childbearing mother is more scare than a man.
Our modern world has given us the resources to rent child care and hire other people to love and raise our children, to adopt children, to live more independently (that is when the grid is working) than in the past. The modern world has created the illusion that we are self sufficient, we are independent, we are masters of our own fate. Bunk, as Titus has said we didn’t birth ourselves and we didn’t invent the language we speak, and we didn’t invent the customs that we so casually destroy. So, before were throw away the fence we have pulled down maybe we should try understand why the previous generation put it there.
The credit for paragraphs goes to @henryracette, @miffedwhitemale, and @garyrobbins.
Religious views and what used to be’s aside, I think this issue of gay marriage and all it’s variants is not a singular issue but one that is intricately intertwined with the Marxist Left’s desire to destroy all of our most precious civil and religious institutions.
I know many here are offended by the ground lost on this one particular issue of gay marriage from what things used to be, but I think people need to realize we must fight this onslaught by the Marxist Left attack on the entire spectrum of our civil institutions as one thing not as individual issues for instance where I could support the ban on SSM but not counter the attack on Free Speech or Gun Rights for example. Breaking this down to individual issues will only lead to giving up all our rights. Such a strategy will not work because it will devolve to mere partisanship.
We are lucky. We have the originalist interpretation of the Constitution to act as bulwark for our ideas, but we must strictly adhere to what that originalist interpretation of Constitution should be, or our ideas will be pilloried as just partisan politics and in our present partisan environment where the Left will always fight dirty we will lose almost every time if this or any other issue becomes just a partisan issue.
On the issue of Gays, Trans-sexuals and Gay Marriage we need to separate our religious views from the rights we enjoy from the Freedom of Religion and other rights.
Marriage at it’s foundation is a religious institution and should not be allowed to be messed with by our government. The government long ago got involved in regulating marriages, in ways that violate the Freedom of Religion. France for instance separates Marriages, a religious institution from Civil Unions, a civil one. That way Gays can be united in a civil bond that imitates Matrimony but aren’t really married religiously. It would also allow certain religions like the Episcopalians to marry gays if they want. One needs to understand what is important and fight for that important right. It is important for Religions to marry who they choose and in the way they choose and not be told what to do by government.
It is also important that our other public institutions like schools not take a side on these important political issues, religious issues like Gay Marriage and abortion among them, and try to indoctrinate students to a particular way of thinking, which of course they have been doing unconstitutionally for generations.
One of the more egregious recent examples of this is the restrictions placed on Free Speech and Public Assembly by our schools and Universities. Too many pseudo-conservatives sat back and said we have to let that issue go and don’t fight it, but now since we have let it go, the demands to squelch ” so-called hate speech” have grown exponentially and verge on the outrageous.
Marxists know that three things have to be destroyed before they can win, whatever “win” means. Those three things are: Religion, Private property, and Family.
Power is the principle. The most effective route to power in a democratic republic is to sell people their sins. Sound diabolical? Well yeah.
Under the American plan, the devout for a long time supported a broad secular sphere that left room for the plurality of devout traditions in the American melange. Over the last decade, that covenant has gone by the boards as anti-republican forces have sought to paint the devout themselves as the evil other in need of purging. Not a new development. 18th Century France whooped up on a very corrupt Catholic Church of the day and trying to replace Christ Himself with very flimsy idols indeed.
I am an American and a Christian. I am not of a mood to be driven underground by racist Communist trash or their super-corporate allies. My ancestors fought on both sides in the Indian Wars, the Revolutionary War, and the Civil War, and on the US side in WWI and WWII. All lives matter is a fundamental Christian principle, Jesus Christ died for everyone who will or has ever lived leaving the Christian with no room to act hatefully toward another.
The labeling of all lives matter as a microaggression is purely demonic, and obviously so on its face. It is how evil identifies itself to the children of the Creator of the universe. It is an accusation, and Satan, the Prince of Lies whose name means accuser, is in full support of such lies. They work so hard to show us what they are, how can God’s children not rise in opposition?
At CHAZ/CHOP, preacher Bevelyn Beatty took the opportunity to preach the Word to the ones making idols of George Floyd. The better videos have disappeared, but her instincts were flawless and her performance fearless as she faced down hatred and venom from men three times her size. A white male street preacher was beaten, the hate behind the movement on full display. Lord bless and keep your faithful as they preach your holy name.
I do not oppress the sinners, I pray for them. And if the opportunity arises, I help them find their way to Him. If I act in hate I am more the sinner than they are, because I know the Holy Spirit and His law.
Jerry Giordino, count me in the trad moral column. This world is not our home. It wasn’t long after I learned right from wrong that I learned how much wrong was acceptable. Can’t get much worse than 47 years with abortion legal. The list of possible sins we might commit is a long one, sins of the spirit more harmful than sins of the flesh. Homosexuality, a sin of the flesh, is on the long list but not at the ‘top’. We are stuck living with ours and other’s sins, but ditinguished by knowing what sin is. I’m so backward I don’t even believe in divorce, much less remarriage.
It is based on the Word of the living God. Feel free to ask Him His thinking.
“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” Leviticus 18:22
“19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. 20 These are what defile a person.” Matthew 15:19-20
Well, I would like to know His thinking–first hand. But since the Bible doesn’t say much about the use of condoms in heterosexual sex or certain other forms of non-procreative heterosexual “activities,” I’m left to draw my own equivalencies.
It depends I suppose on one’s perspective on God and divine revelation. In the natural law tradition sex has a dual purpose: procreative and unitive, i.e. to unite a couple in lifetime monogamous marriage along with any children their union might produce.
Alternately, some might argue that God is the divine lawgiver, and he said the behavior was prohibited, therefore it is prohibited. No further ultimate reason required. This seems to be the predominant method of interpretation in Islam, but it also prevails in some branches of Christianity.
The whole thing gets ridiculous after a bit. Suppose a couple wants to marry, but one is completely sterile. Procreation is obviously not an option, so can the marriage still take place? How about “conjugal relations” since there is no possibility of conception? If they go to their doctor(s) and have examinations and the husband cranks it up and gives a sperm sample, is he subject to death, or does he get a pass because it’s a medical procedure?
Above my pay grade.
When someone comes to Jesus claiming righteousness, the bar always turns out higher than they expect.
Spoiler! You will not die sinless.
My best friend in my Midwest high school came from a deeply evangelical family with east coast roots. The youngest of 5, a soccer player, brilliant in math and science and very impish, I have great memories of all we got up to. She was very religious, especially after a few beers (this was one of her “quirks”) and we had many late night conversations about faith, mostly one sided because it wasn’t something that tortured me the way it tortured her. There were always rumors she was a lesbian, but I and her other friends vociferously defended her (“She’s just SPORTY!”) She got into into Middlebury and went to evangelical youth camp the summer before to prepare for the attack on her faith. She came back changed, all impishness gone, very sober, refusing all alcohol and dancing and ended up in a substance free dorm, deeply unhappy and isolated. This was around 2000 and college politics weren’t Insane yet. She switched to a small Christian college in the Midwest. We all traced a huge change in her personality back to “Christian camp”, and she was never as relaxed afterwards.
One day she called me and said that after years of struggling with her sexuality (she never told me about those struggles), she was going to pursue a straight heterosexual lifestyle. I did not criticize her. But her increased religiosity was not as fun to be around and I felt almost invited to pursue a lie with her in some way, because I didn’t think she could change being gay and we ended up going our different ways. I always thought that if she had stayed at Middlebury, she would have majored in biology, made Dean’s List surely, gone off to Antarctica on an internship and collected penguin droppings for some prestigious laboratory. She would have had a girlfriend. I see a very linear career path.
She ended up majoring in history at Christian college (she was never great in humanities – that was my speciality) and then nannied for her sister who 5 kids for a few years, starbucks barista back home for a while etc etc.
My sister found her on Facebook and we reconnected. She’s in Alaska (good! Check!), with a girlfriend, getting a teaching degree. Still in contact with her family, but relations seem strained esp with the beloved brothers. She’s pretty far Left now. (I am here, so politics divide us once again!)
My experience knowing her makes me think homosexuality must be something innate, otherwise she wouldn’t have been one. And goodness knows she struggled against it. She lost the golden part of her youth fighting it. She was too distracted to capitalize on her great talents. I am haunted by the disintegration of the traditional family, feeling almost guilty for my feckless liberalism. But I can’t believe my friend’s homosexuality amounts to a choice or a perversion. She just isn’t a strayed heterosexual
“Weaponized ambiguity” – I like that, Scott! Excellent description.
Oh, geeze, I’m never gonna catch up with these comments, so I’ll just jump in here. Jerry, I think you know you and I agree on this subject, but we’re going to disagree on the particulars.
Feminism was still putting its stockings on when marriage was mortally damaged by the widespread acceptance of contraception. When we separate the marital act from procreation, is it any wonder an intrinsically sterile sexual relationship between two people of the same sex eventually co-opts “marriage?”
The Church was right about contraception, right about the permanence of marriage, right about chastity within marriage. . . That marriage is a one-flesh union between a man and a woman was naturally assumed prior to contraception.
Rather than looking around to cast blame on homosexuals, maybe Protestants and Catholics who don’t give a second thought to their/our own contraceptive mentality should look in the mirror.
And, I will add, I’m still in this fight because I will not be made to lie about the reality of marriage, which is modeled on the Holy Trinity: the Father and the Son exchange such perfect Love that it is expressed in a Third Person — the Holy Spirit.
Marriage is a real thing and reality has a way of reasserting itself. I will never bend to the unreality of SSM.
Which is where I was going–less effectively–with some of my comments above.
Yeah, but politically it’s a done deal. I think focusing on abortion will be easier, and the SSM laws will crash at the same time.
Right, I’m not all that interested in the political/legal fights. I’m willing to continue the cultural battles. This is only going to be fixed by persuading one person at a time.