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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
I was thinking the same thing, oddly enough.
I have come to see (thanks, Ricochet!) that abortion is deeply corrupting. If abortion was not just outlawed, but understood to be far beyond the pale, then there would perhaps return to sex (or at least to heterosexual intercourse) a sense of its importance, even its paradoxical, life-and-death sacredness. I have heard young people claiming they have a “right” to sexual activity —well, everything is a right, isn’t it?
This is the right that is being defended by abortion—the right of a woman to “do what she wants with her body,” that is, to experience orgasm or, if I may say so, to be present when a man does.
This is a paltry view of what a woman has the right to—this small, crummy liberty, the grim pursuit of a half-assed
“happiness,” the “right” for which one then trades the life of another, innocent being.
A few minutes spent combing the archives of “Shout Your Abortion” will persuade you that happiness isn’t even on the table.
Three points about this.
First, I agree with Hank on this one. The story of Onan is unusual to us, culturally. At the time, in Israelite practice, when a married man died without a child, it was the responsibility of one of his brothers to father a child with his widow, who would then be counted as the deceased brother’s child. This would preserve the lineage of the man who died childless. Onan refused to fulfill that duty.
Second, even if you take the story to be a prohibition on masturbation, it does not tell the Israelites to put a person to death for this offense. This story reports that God put Onan to death. There are plenty of places in the Law of Moses in which the law commands the Israelites to put an offender to death. This is not one of them (and this story actually occurs several generations before Moses).
Third, this account isn’t about masturbation at all. It is about coitus interruptus and the withdrawal method of birth control.
I don’t think that masturbation is a good thing, but that’s a different issue. I don’t think that it’s dealt with clearly in the Bible.
I have no objection to fighting a two-front battle here, but I think that we’ll have a better chance on the more recent error.
Homosexuality is the behavior.
One of the most deceptive moves of the pro-homosexual side of the debate was to redefine homosexuality in terms of desire, rather than conduct. This allowed them to claim that it wasn’t a choice, when the conduct is obviously a choice. It allowed them to claim the status of some sort of persecuted minority, rather than the status of a person who was engaging in behavior that was either prohibited or disapproved.
Imagine applying this argument to theft, or rape, or pedophilia.
I am continually surprised by the remarkable ability of many people to hold to moral arguments that are patently absurd, and which they would realize that they do not believe if they gave it a few minutes thought. I should not be surprised about this. Most moral argument is not about trying to figure out what is right or wrong. It is about trying to justify what we have already concluded to be right or wrong.
I agree, which is why I’ve been trying to analogize homosexual behavior with certain forms of heterosexual behavior. It strikes me that you can’t have it both ways (no pun intended). However, it seems to me that a good number of people opposed to homosexual behavior won’t go there out of fear of losing a significant portion of their audience.
I am always flummoxed by this argument. Would you apply it to someone doing something else, which you think is immoral?
I’ve known some pretty great guys who cheated on their wives. I mean, they were pretty great other than the whole adultery thing, which is awful. Should I conclude that adultery is perfectly OK? I would find that argument to be quite ridiculous. I don’t see why it’s any more convincing in the case of homosexuality.
What is going on here? Is there some expectation, which I would consider rather silly, that a person who has a serious sin problem must be utterly corrupt in every possible way? That’s not the way that people are. We all struggle with temptations to sin, and sometimes yield, in different areas and to different degrees.
I know a particular person who is homosexual, and is also a very intelligent, competent, and honest businessman. He is admirable in many ways. This does not mean that he is admirable in every way. The same goes for me, though I have somewhat different flaws and strengths.
The prerequisite for happiness is being good, which means, at a minimum, not killing people to solve our problems.
I do not think that there is any healthy expression of such desires. The details are quite unpleasant, so I don’t want to address them.
On your main point — how else would you measure homosexuality, if not by asking people? This is the best source of data that we have. It shows my point — that there has been a very pronounced increase, which completely contradicts two assertions: (1) that people are “born that way,” and (2) that you “can’t catch it” (as Gary suggested, which I interpreted to mean that the prevalence of homosexuality is not affected by societal attitudes). Those assertions are not in accordance with the facts. That means that they are wrong, empirically, and people should adjust their views accordingly.
The data show a very large increase. I agree that attitudes have gradually shifted since approximately the 1980s. What we see, in the data, is that the greater the level of social acceptance, the greater the proportion of the population identifying as LGBT. This is exactly what one would expect, if social attitudes have a significant effect on individual behavior and probably even individual desire. It is the opposite of what one would expect if the pro-homosexuality “born that way” argument was correct.
For me, it is not. I think that this is the official Catholic position, but I will leave it to our Catholic friends to confirm this.
In my view, sex is intended to be within marriage. This strengthens the marital bond, and the principal worldly effect of this is to create a more stable marriage between husband and wife. This creates the best environment for children, which is the principal worldly purpose of marriage. Even after the childbearing years, however, it is a very good thing for a husband and wife to continue to live together and take care of each other.
We do not prohibit heterosexual marriage between people who are unable to have children, either due to age or due to infertility for another cause (which is tragic). Though we don’t have perfect knowledge, so it’s always possible that a couple who appears to be infertile will end up having a child. In the Bible, it happened to Sarah, and Rachel, and Hannah (Samuel’s mother), and Elizabeth (the mother of John the Baptist).
I’ve wondered whether it’s the case that increasing acceptance has caused more people to adopt an LGBT lifestyle, or whether those people were always there and simply feel more comfortable talking about it than before.
I agree in part and disagree in part. I do not agree about contraception. I think that contraception is acceptable within marriage. This is a Catholic-Protestant divide, and I don’t think that we’re going to resolve it. We do have much agreement on other points.
The feminist assault on marriage started much earlier than you think. It started with first wave feminism, the suffragettes, back around the 1910s and 1920s. Many laws against adultery were weakened at that time.
Also, contraception was around well before the 1960s, specifically condoms, and marriage does not appear to have been weakened in that period. The Pill was something new, and apparently more reliable, so I agree that it contributed to the widespread abandonment of traditional morality.
On your final point: I’m not looking to cast blame on homosexuals. I think that we have a long battle to fight, to get back to traditional sexual morality. I think that the battle should start at the current battle line, which is homosexuality. You could argue that this battle was already lost, at the Supreme Court, but it was not lost in the public debate, and bad SCOTUS decisions can be reversed. In any event, it’s the most recent battlefield, so I think that it’s the place to start.
I certainly don’t want to put words in your mouth, but would it be fair to say, then, that your objection to homosexual behavior is that it cannot be within marriage (assuming one accepts the traditional definition of marriage) and not that it cannot be procreative?
There was a gallup(?) survey a few years back that asked people in various cities around the US whether they self-identified as homosexual. As would be expected, the city with the highest percentage was San Francisco. It came in at roughly 6%. In what would have to be considered the most homosexual-friendly city in the US.
I think the degree, in a chronological sense, to which one has been around homosexuality is very much based on personal and geographic variables. In my case, I lived in an area that was heavily gay and it was so because of the continued influx of people who were already gay, not because the milieu was creating “converts.”
Or they are lying to get the questioner to stop hitting on them.
You don’t think there’s any possibility that increasing use of chemicals in food and elsewhere, among other issues, could have an increasing effect on sexuality of younger people?
Just be aware that people’s answers are not always accurate.
In high school if anybody asked me if I was gay I said no.
Predictably, given the time and place.
’It’s all we have to go on’ doesn’t make it a great measure.
In high school the gays evolved to the position that everyone was gay but too stupid to notice.
alright then. Yup, you nailed right there! /sarc off
By “use of chemicals,” I assume that you mean something that is added to modern food that was not present in earlier times, and that you mean to include both intentional additives (iron in flour, vitamin D in milk, preserving agents) and unintentional additives (perhaps pesticides or hormones that end up in food).
I have no idea whether this could be affecting sexuality, or anything else. It is not completely implausible, but would require careful study and proof.
When I was growing up, the allegedly authoritative Kinsey Report claimed that 10% of the population was homosexual. I recall a lesbian producer claiming that meant that 10% of all the adult-age women in the country would come to see her film, and each would pay $10 to see it, so her investors would be guaranteed $100 million. Needless to say, it didn’t work that way. For the past 50 years, the National Institute of Health and the American Psychological Association, as well as left-leaning sources like NPR, have used a range of 3.7-4.1 percent. The only trend they found worth noting has been a slight rise in lesbianism, which traditionally has only half the numbers of male homosexuality.
My approach to homosexuality has been for fifty years, live and let live. If anything this got more pronounced when I became a Christian. I have seen live and let live everywhere for fifty years, and I don’t recall personally seeing or being told first-hand of any anti-homosexual provocation, ever. I’m sure that there are such things, and I’ve worked and associated with gays, but I don’t recall ever actually seeing it. Maybe I lived in a particularly accepting city, I don’t know. Maybe I don’t get out enough.
But I will add that I was in New Orleans coincidentally at the time of a gay pride parade and it was, honestly, filthy and unfit for most people, let alone children. For example, giant life-like phalluses we being sported by men on floats. This isn’t acceptance they were looking for, or pride in their sexuality for that matter, they were flaunting their sexuality in the faces of pedestrians and all society. Is this really what gays have wanted all along? This is not live and let live.
My own view is not well captured by either of these positions.
Since my conversion to Christianity, my basic view is simply Biblical. The Word of God says that this is a sin, so I accept that and proceed accordingly. God doesn’t have to justify His commands to me.
However, I also see the practical importance of sexual morality, and I suspect that these are the reasons (or among the reasons) that God has given His commands.
I think that, for almost all of us, the highest earthly calling in our lives is to be either a husband and father (men only), or a wife and mother (women only). Traditional sexual morality serves this important end. Further, having children is generally the best way that you can repay your parents for all that they did for you. My experience is that people want grandkids very much. It must be a terrible disappointment, to a parent, to have a child who does not choose this path.
As a policy matter, I think that the important point is the consequence of various moral choices. I want public policy to favor the best structure for children — mom, dad, kids. That is the ideal, and should be favored, so we get more of it.
I don’t know about equally, but Yes.
And it doesn’t really make a difference: Even if it’s a reason, it isn’t a legitimate excuse.
I know this is the generally accepted understanding, but I think there was a lot more wrong with this than masturbation. He was commanded to have sex with his brother’s wife specifically to give her children. That he had sex without inseminating her, and denying her children, was the moral crime.
Oh good, an excuse to roll out the single best article The Onion ever printed:
https://www.theonion.com/gay-pride-parade-sets-mainstream-acceptance-of-gays-bac-1819566014
Gay-Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance Of Gays Back 50 Years
excerpts:
And it certainly wasn’t masturbation. It was coitus interuptus.
Yes, I was going to mention the Kinsey Reports as being an example of… self-identification?… gone bad.