I’ve usually found Dennis Prager to be an insightful and intelligent commentator on religion and society. I’ve listened to him on the radio, on and off, for years. I haven’t always agreed with him, but I’ve usually respected what he had to say.
But the current gay marriage debate has sent him over the deep end. While I think it’s a tad — just a tad — unfair to claim, as others do, that he’s equating supporters of gay marriage with al Qa’eda, he manages everything but.
America is engaged in two wars for the survival of its civilization. The war over same-sex marriage and the war against Islamic totalitarianism are actually two fronts in the same war — a war for the preservation of the unique American creation known as Judeo-Christian civilization.
One enemy is religious extremism. The other is secular extremism.
One enemy is led from abroad. The other is directed from home.
Okay, well maybe it’s not unfair. Certainly there’s a moral equivalency placed here. Supporters of gay marriage are no better (if no worse) than Islamofascist terrorists, and everything from terror bombings to the WTC attack is as the moral and functional equivalent of support for gay marriage. That seems to be what Prager is saying here.
The first war is against the Islamic attempt to crush whoever stands in the way of the spread of violent Islamic theocracies, such as al Qa’eda, the Taliban, the Iranian mullahs and Hamas. The other war is against the secular nihilism that manifests itself in much of Western Europe, in parts of America such as San Francisco and in many of our universities.
Secular nihilism? I certainly don’t consider myself a secular nihilist.
America leads the battle against both religious and secular nihilism and is hated by both because it rejects both equally. American values preclude embracing either religious extremism or radical secularism. As Alexis de Tocqueville, probably the greatest observer of our society, wrote almost 200 years ago, America is a unique combination of secular government and religious (Judeo-Christian) society.
To be honest, while de Tocqueville had some very interesting things to say about the US, it was 200 years ago. That said, I think Prager both overstates the historic record of our having a secular government, and doesn’t see the irony that it is in fact the secular redefinition of our government in the last half-century that has led us to where we are today (and I say that as a Good Thing).
Not only has this combination been unique, it has been uniquely successful. America, therefore, poses as mortal a threat to radical secularism as it does to Islamic totalitarianism. Each understands that America’s success means its demise.
To the extent that radical secularists — who I suppose we can define as folks who want to do away with all religious expression in the public, and, preferably, the private forum — and radical religionists, who want to impose a religious cast (of their choosing) on both public and private life, are threatened by the multiplicity of American social religious expression and by the rigorous walls that have been set up around governmental involvement with and sponsorship of sectarian religion, I’d agree.
This is a major reason why the Left so opposes anti-Islamism (just as it opposed anti-communism). In theory, the Left should be at least as opposed to the Islamists as is the Right. But the Left is preoccupied first with destroying America’s distinctive values — a Judeo-Christian society (as opposed to a secular one), capitalism (as opposed to socialism), liberty (as opposed to equality) and exceptionalism (as opposed to universalism, multiculturalism and multilateralism). So, if the Islamists are fellow anti-Americans, the Left figures it can worry about them later.
In broad strokes, I can see where Prager is coming from with this. That the Hard Left seems to spend more time spewing bile at George Bush than at Saddam Hussein, or the mullahs of Iran, or the nutcase running North Korea, is as deep an indictment of their moral standing as the insistence on personal liberty, but only as long as it doesn’t involve gays doing icky things with each other, stands as an indictment of the Hard Right’s.
That said, Prager seems to be lumping an awful lot of positions under the banner of “the Left” — everyone from puppet-toting transnationalist anti-globalization protesters to … well, since I’m in favor of allowing gay marriage, me. Which is kind of funny, given that a lot of folks would probably think I’m a lost closer to Dennis Prager than, say, Noam Chomsky.
Prager, though, seems to be drawing hard lines. If you’re in favor of gay marriage, is the message, then you’re in favor of a whole raft of other Lefty lunacy. Which seems to be a gross oversimplification.
All this explains why the passions are so intense regarding same-sex marriage. Most of the activists in the movement to redefine marriage wish to overthrow the predominance of Judeo-Christian values in American life.
No doubt there are some who do. There are others who think that, given the highly-touted-by-Prager secular nature of our government, how the government treats marriage should also be as secular as possible.
Those who oppose same-sex marriage understand that redefining the central human institution marks the beginning of the end of Judeo-Christian civilization.
It’s difficult to take with a straight face that proposition. It certainly speaks poorly of Judeo-Christian civilization to think it so feeble.
Let us understand this redefinition as clearly as possible:
Oh, let’s.
With same-sex marriage, our society declares by law that mothers are unnecessary, since two men are equally ideal as mothers and as the creators of a family; and that fathers are unnecessary, since two women are equally ideal as parents and as the creators of a family.
The reality of the world is that there are many, many more children brought up in single parent homes, or in homes with neglectful parents of one or another (or both) genders, than are every likely to be raised by those gay couples who want to raise children. The “ideal” — assuming it can be defined to everyone’s satisfaction — is just that, the ideal.
And, of course, we allow gay individuals already to bear children, should they choose to. And we’ve allowed them to have custody of children. Ought we outlaw both? It seems to me that the added security of marriage — with both its privileges and responsibilities — would be good for kids of a gay parent.
Do I think having a female and male role model is important for kids of both genders? Sure. I think there are a lot of other things that are important for kids to grow up healthy and well-adjusted, too, but I don’t see society forbidding childbearing (let alone marriage) to those who are unable or unwilling to provide them.
With same-sex marriage, our society declares that there is nothing special or even necessarily desirable about a man and a woman bonding. What is sacred to the proponents of same-sex marriage is the number of people marrying (two, for the time being), not that a man and woman bond.
I think what is sacred is the bonding itself, the reasons for it, not the genders of the folk who choose to bond. The majority of those cases seem likely to always be male-female, and that’s great (speaking for myself, that’s wonderful). I don’t see why, for those for whom it doesn’t float their boat, that should be the only consideration.
With same-sex marriage, when taught in school about sex, marriage and family, children will have to be taught that male-male and female-female sex, love and marriage are identical to male-female sex, love and marriage. And when asked, “Who do you think you will marry when you grow up?” thanks to the ubiquitous images of media, far more children will consider members of the same sex.
And the problem here is …?
If this were 19th Century England, I might write,
With cross-class marriage, when taught in school about courting, marriage, and family, children will have to be taught that love and marriage between the upper and lower classes is identical to that between those of the upper class, or those of the lower class. And when asked, ‘Who do you think you will marry when you grow up?” thanks to the ubiquitous images of media, far more children will consider mates regardless of class.
Heck, there are circles in the US today where that would seem an equally profound and dire prediction. I could change around the words a bit and make it say “color,” too. Or set it in India and make it “caste.” Or set it in various theocracies and put “religion” in there.
Most Americans, though, would reject those distinctions, would reject that the world and civilization will go to heck in a handbag if we let those people date us people. Why we should lend credence to the argument when it’s about gender, I’m not altogether certain.
With same-sex marriage, no adoption agency will ever be able to prefer a married man and woman as prospective parents. Aside from the tragedy of denying untold numbers of children a mother and a father, this will lead to a drastic diminution in women placing children for adoption, since most of these women will prefer something that will then be illegal — that agencies place her child with a man and woman, not with two men or two women.
In other words, the prospect of adoption by a gay couple will so distress a “drastic” number of women that they’ll never consider putting their kids up for adoption. That strikes me as wildly unlikely.
Nonetheless, for those who are so distressed, I believe there are plenty of private adoption agencies that may, as private institutions, screen applicants based on criteria that public institutions may not. For example, a Christian adoption agency may insist on adoptive parents being Christian, and a woman can put her child up for adoption there with the knowledge that it will be raised by Christians, as opposed to (gasp) Jews or Muslims or some other dreaded heathen group … should that be of paramount importance to her.
With same-sex marriage, any media — films, advertisements, greeting cards — that only depict married couples as a woman and a man will be considered discriminatory and probably be sued.
No more than greeting cards that show married couples as white folk get sued by the NAACP.
Will there be an increased number of same-sex anniversary cards? Sure. But, again, given the relatively small number of gays in the population, I don’t expect it to be a very big market.
But I mean, come on now — we should rally folks to oppose gay marriage for the sake of the greeting card industry?
With same-sex marriage, those religious groups that only marry men and women will be deemed beyond the pale, marginalized and ostracized.
What happened to the much-touted barrier between secular government (which is responsible for legal things like marriage law) and society? The corollary of Prager’s argument seems to be that because most churches don’t approve of gay marriage now, it should not be allowed by secular government … which doesn’t seem to make the government all that secular, if you ask me.
I would not expect most Christian denominations (or others) that don’t currently support gay marriage to do so merely because it’s legal. There are a lot of things that are legal that various churches (including mainstream denominations) do not officially sanction. I do expect that, over time, some denominations will do so, as a reflection of social changes amongst their membership, just as some denominations, as a reflection of social attitudes about sex and race, allow women as clergy, or folks of different races as clergy.
If churches are so weak, though, that they cannot take a principled moral stand on what they believe because some or even most people in society point and laugh at them, then they aren’t very worth saving to begin with.
There have been many Christian countries, and they are no longer. They have been replaced by secular countries, and they are weakening. Only American civilization remains strong, and it does so because of its unique amalgam of values rooted in Judeo-Christian morality.
What has kept the US from falling into the trap of many other Western countries that were once more ostensibly Christian than we are, is that, for the most part, we’ve avoided entanglement between Church Law and Civil Law. There has been no Official Church of the State. In those nations where the Church dictates how things should be, then it becomes embodied as the Old Political Order; when that order changes (as it inevitably does), the Church loses its standing, too. France has gone that way; so, to some degree, has England.
In the US, expression of religious law within civil law has come about largely because of a relative homogeneity of religious faith; when everyone more or less agrees on the basics, those basics become universals. Even then, we’ve seen systemic and legal discrimination by the government against some religious groups because their faiths were different — Jews, Catholics, and Mormons come to mind.
To the extent that we have strengthened the secular nature of government, and recognized the heterogeneity of religious and spiritual viewpoints, we’ve improved matters. Trying to make government adhere to religious law per se, though, for the sake of keeping a particular religious viewpoint in society strong, seems bass-ackwards. If Prager truly believes in Judeo-Christian values in society as a key to America’s strength, he should be pushing for those values in society, not in law.
This civilization is now fighting for its life — as much here as abroad. Join the fight, or it will be gone as fast as you can say “Democrat.”
In a changing world, all things evolve to meet the change, or die. Our recognition of personal liberties for our citizens without regard to gender or race or religion is an adaptation we’ve made in the ongoing evolution of our society — the idea of a black woman as a respected cabinet official to the President, for example, would have appalled or sickened or panicked many of our Founding Fathers (and, likely, de Tocqueville). Those adaptations have been driven in many cases by evolving religious and philosophical sentiment amongst the populace, by recognition that what was taken for granted, sadly accepted, or even joyfully supported by our forefathers was not always wise or just.
With each of these changes, there have been those who have warned of the end of civilization. Should women get the vote, some said, our nation and culture are doomed. Should blacks be given an equal place at the table, and be allowed to intermarry with whites, it will mean the mongrelization of our Great White Society. It is ironic that Prager, often a very intelligent and insightful commentator, should find himself echoing the same bankrupt cries of gloom and doom as have come before.