By Orson Scott Card
|
http://www.ornery.org/index.html February
15, 2004
|
Homosexual
"Marriage" and Civilization
A
little dialogue from Lewis Carroll:
"When
I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it
means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
"The
question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many
different things."
"The
question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's
all."
The
Massachusetts Supreme Court has not yet declared that "day" shall now
be construed to include that which was formerly known as "night," but
it might as well.
By
declaring that homosexual couples are denied their constitutional rights by
being forbidden to "marry," it is treading on the same ground.
Do
you want to know whose constitutional rights are being violated? Everybody's.
Because no constitution in the United States has ever granted the courts the
right to make vast, sweeping changes in the law to reform society.
Regardless
of their opinion of homosexual "marriage," every American who
believes in democracy should be outraged that any court should take it upon
itself to dictate such a social innovation without recourse to democratic
process.
And
we all know the course this thing will follow. Anyone who opposes this edict
will be branded a bigot; any schoolchild who questions the legitimacy of
homosexual marriage will be expelled for "hate speech." The fanatical
Left will insist that anyone who upholds the fundamental meaning that marriage
has always had, everywhere, until this generation, is a "homophobe"
and therefore mentally ill.
Which
is the modern Jacobin equivalent of crying, "Off with their heads!"
We
will once again be performing a potentially devastating social experiment on
ourselves without any attempt to predict the consequences and find out if the
American people actually want them.
But
anyone who has any understanding of how America -- or any civilization --
works, of the forces already at play, will realize that this new diktat of the
courts will not have any of the intended effects, while the unintended effects
are likely to be devastating.
Marriage
Is Already Open to Everyone.
In
the first place, no law in any state in the United States now or ever has
forbidden homosexuals to marry. The law has never asked that a man prove his
heterosexuality in order to marry a woman, or a woman hers in order to marry a
man.
Any
homosexual man who can persuade a woman to take him as her husband can avail
himself of all the rights of husbandhood under the law. And, in fact, many
homosexual men have done precisely that, without any legal prejudice at all.
Ditto
with lesbian women. Many have married men and borne children. And while a fair
number of such marriages in recent years have ended in divorce, there are many
that have not.
So
it is a flat lie to say that homosexuals are deprived of any civil right
pertaining to marriage. To get those civil rights, all homosexuals have to do
is find someone of the opposite sex willing to join them in marriage.
In
order to claim that they are deprived, you have to change the
meaning of "marriage" to include a relationship that it has never included
before this generation, anywhere on earth.
Just
because homosexual partners wish to be called "married" and wish to
force everyone else around them to regard them as "married," does not
mean that their Humpty-Dumpty-ish wish should be granted at the expense of the
common language, democratic process, and the facts of human social
organization.
However
emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be, what
they are doing is not marriage. Nor does society benefit in any way from
treating it as if it were.
Marrying
Is Hard to Do.
Men
and women, from childhood on, have very different biological and social
imperatives. They are naturally disposed to different reproductive strategies;
men are (on average) larger and stronger; the relative levels of various
hormones, the difference in the rate of maturity, and many other factors make
it far, far easier for women to get along with other women and men to get along
with men.
Men,
after all, know what men like far better than women do; women know how women
think and feel far better than men do. But a man and a woman come together as
strangers and their natural impulses remain at odds throughout their lives,
requiring constant compromise, suppression of natural desires, and an unending
effort to learn how to get through the intersexual swamp.
And
yet, throughout the history of human society -- even in societies that
tolerated relatively open homosexuality at some stages of life -- it was always
expected that children would be born into and raised by families consisting of
a father and mother.
And
in those families where one or both parents were missing, usually because of
death, either stepparents, adoptive parents, or society in general would step
in to provide, not just nurturing, but also the appropriate role models.
It
is a demonstrated tendency -- as well as the private experience of most people
-- that when we become parents, we immediately find ourselves acting out most
of the behaviors we observed in the parent of our own sex. We have to
consciously make an effort to be different from them.
We
also expect our spouse to behave, as a parent, in the way we have learned to
expect from the experiences we had with our opposite-sex parent -- that's why
so many men seem to marry women just like their mother, and so many women to
marry men just like their father. It takes conscious effort to break away from
this pattern.
So
not only are two sexes required in order to conceive children, children also
learn their sex-role expectations from the parents in their own family. This is
precisely what large segments of the Left would like to see break down. And if
it is found to have unpleasant results, they will, as always, insist that the
cure is to break down the family even further.
The
War On Marriage
Of
course, in our current society we are two generations into the systematic
destruction of the institution of marriage. In my childhood, it was rare to
know someone whose parents were divorced; now, it seems almost as rare to find
someone whose parents have never been divorced.
And
a growing number of children grow up in partial families not because of
divorce, but because there never was a marriage at all.
The
damage caused to children by divorce and illegitimate birth is obvious and
devastating. While apologists for the current system are quick to blame poverty
resulting from "deadbeat dads" as the cause, the children themselves
know this is ludicrous.
There
are plenty of poor families with both parents present whose children grow up
knowing they are loved and having good role models from both parents.
And
there are plenty of kids whose divorced parents have scads of money -- but
whose lives are deformed by the absence of one of their parents in their lives.
Most
broken or wounded families are in that condition because of a missing father.
There is substantial and growing evidence that our society's contempt for the
role of the father in the family is responsible for a massive number of
"lost" children.
Only
when the father became powerless or absent in the lives of huge numbers of
children did we start to realize some of the things people need a father for:
laying the groundwork for a sense of moral judgment; praise that is believed so
that it can instill genuine self-confidence.
People
lacking in fundamental self-esteem don't need gold stars passed out to everyone
in their class. Chances are, they need a father who will say -- and mean --
"I'm proud of you."
This
is an oversimplification of a very complex system. There are marriages that
desperately need to be dissolved for the safety of the children, for instance,
and divorced parents who do a very good job of keeping both parents closely
involved in the children's lives.
But
you have to be in gross denial not to know that children would almost always
rather have grown up with Dad and Mom in their proper places at home. Most kids
would rather that, instead of divorcing, their parents would acquire the
strength or maturity to stop doing the things that make the other parent want
to leave.
Marriage
Is Everybody's Business.
And
it isn't just the damage that divorce and out-of-wedlock births do to the
children in those broken families: Your divorce hurts my kids, too.
All
American children grow up today in a society where they are keenly aware that
marriages don't last. At the first sign of a quarrel even in a stable marriage
that is in no danger, the children fear divorce. Is this how it begins? Will I
now be like my friends at school, shunted from half-family to half-family?
This
is not trivial damage. Kids thrive best in an environment that teaches them how
to be adults. They need the confidence and role models that come from a stable
home with father and mother in their proper places.
So
long before the Massachusetts Supreme Court decided to play Humpty Dumpty, the
American people had plunged into a terrible experiment on ourselves, guided
only by the slogan of immaturity and barbarism: "If it feels good, do
it!"
Civilization
depends on people deliberately choosing not to do many things
that feel good at the time, in order to accomplish more important, larger
purposes. Having an affair; breaking up a marriage; oh, those can feel
completely justified and the reasons very important at the time.
But
society has a vital stake in child-rearing; and children have a vital stake in
society.
Monogamous
marriage is by far the most effective foundation for a civilization. It
provides most males an opportunity to mate (polygamous systems always result in
surplus males that have no reproductive stake in society); it provides most
females an opportunity to have a mate who is exclusively devoted to her. Those
who are successful in mating are the ones who will have the strongest loyalty
to the social order; so the system that provides reproductive success to the
largest number is the system that will be most likely to keep a civilization
alive.
Monogamy
depends on the vast majority of society both openly and privately obeying the
rules. Since the natural reproductive strategy for males is to mate with every
likely female at every opportunity, males who are not restrained by social
pressure and expectations will soon devolve into a sort of Clintonesque chaos,
where every man takes what he can get.
Civilization
Is Rooted in Reproductive Security.
There
is a very complex balance in maintaining a monogamous society, with plenty of
lapses and exceptions and mechanisms to cope with the natural barbaric impulses
of the male mating drive. There is always room to tolerate a small and covert
number of exceptions to the rule.
But
the rule must be largely observed, and must be seen to be observed even more
than it actually is. If trust between the sexes breaks down, then males who are
able will revert to the broadcast strategy of reproduction, while females will
begin to compete for males who already have female mates. It is a reproductive
free-for-all.
Civilization
requires the suppression of natural impulses that would break down the social
order. Civilization thrives only when most members can be persuaded to behave
unnaturally, and when those who don't follow the rules are censured in a
meaningful way.
Why
would men submit to rules that deprive them of the chance to satisfy their
natural desire to mate with every attractive female?
Why
would women submit to rules that keep them from trying to mate with the
strongest (richest, most physically imposing, etc.) male, just because he
already has a wife?
Because
civilization provides the best odds for their children to live to adulthood. So
even though civilized individuals can't pursue the most obviously pleasurable
and selfish (i.e., natural) strategies for reproduction, the fact is that they
are far more likely to be successful at reproduction in a civilized society --
whether they personally like the rules or not.
Civilizations
that enforce rules of marriage that give most males and most females a chance
to have children that live to reproduce in their turn are the civilizations
that last the longest. It's such an obvious principle that few civilizations
have even attempted to flout it.
Even
if the political system changes, as long as the marriage rules remain intact,
the civilization can go on.
Balancing
Family and Society
There's
a lot of quid pro quo in civilization, though. Not all parents are good
providers, for instance. So society, in one way or another, must provide for
the children whose parents are either incapable or irresponsible.
Society
must also step in to protect children from abusive adults; and the whole
society must act in loco parentis, watching out for each other's
children, trusting that someone else is also watching out for their own.
The
degree of trust can be enormous. We send our children to school for an enormous
portion of their childhood, trusting that the school will help civilize them
while we parents devote more of our time to providing for them materially (or
caring for younger children not yet in school).
At
the same time, parents recognize that non-parents are not as trustworthy
caretakers. The school provides some aspects of civilization, but not others.
Schools expect the parents to civilize their children in certain ways in order
to take part safely with other children; parents expect to be left alone with
some aspects of child-rearing, such as religion.
In
other words, there are countless ways that parents and society at large are
constantly negotiating to find the best balance between the parents' natural
desire to protect their children -- their entrants in the reproductive lottery
-- and the civilization's need to bring the greatest number of children, not
just to adulthood, but to parenthood as committed members of
the society who will teach their children to also be good citizens.
America's
Anti-Family Experiment
In
this delicate balance, it is safe to say that beginning with a trickle in the
1950s, but becoming an overwhelming flood in the 1960s and 1970s, we took a
pretty good system, and in order to solve problems that needed tweaking, we
made massive, fundamental changes that have had devastating consequences.
Now
huge numbers of Americans know that the schools are places where their children
are indoctrinated in anti-family values. Trust is not just going -- for them
it's gone.
Huge
numbers of children are deprived of two-parent homes, because society has
decided to give legal status and social acceptance to out-of-wedlock parenting
and couples who break up their marriages with little regard for what is good
for the children.
The
result is a generation of children with no trust in marriage who are mating in,
at best, merely "marriage-like" patterns, and bearing children with
no sense of responsibility to society at large; while society is trying to take
on an ever greater role in caring for the children who are suffering -- while
doing an increasingly bad job of it.
Parents
in a stable marriage are much better than schools at civilizing children. You
have to be a fanatical ideologue not to recognize this as an obvious truth --
in other words, you have to dumb down or radically twist the definition of
"civilizing children" in order to claim that parents are not, on the
whole, better at it.
We
are so far gone down this road that it would take a wrenching, almost
revolutionary social change to reverse it. And with the forces of P.C.
orthodoxy insisting that the solutions to the problems they have caused is
ever-larger doses of the disease, it is certain that any such revolution would
be hotly contested.
Now,
in the midst of this tragic collapse of marriage, along comes the Massachusetts
Supreme Court, attempting to redefine marriage in a way that is absurdly
irrelevant to any purpose for which society needs marriage in the first place.
Humpty
Has Struck Before.
We've
already seen similar attempts at redefinition. The ideologues have demanded
that we stop defining "families" as Dad, Mom, and the kids. Now any grouping
of people might be called a "family."
But
this doesn't turn them into families, or even make rational people believe
they're families. It just makes it politically unacceptable to use the word family in
any meaningful way.
The
same thing will happen to the word marriage if the
Massachusetts decision is allowed to stand, and is then enforced nationwide
because of the "full faith and credit" clause in the Constitution.
Just
because you give legal sanction to a homosexual couple and call their contract
a "marriage" does not make it a marriage. It simply removes marriage as
a legitimate word for the real thing.
If
you declare that there is no longer any legal difference between low tide and
high tide, it might stop people from publishing tide charts, but it won't
change the fact that sometimes the water is lower and sometimes it's higher.
Calling
a homosexual contract "marriage" does not make it reproductively
relevant and will not make it contribute in any meaningful way to the
propagation of civilization.
In
fact, it will do harm. Nowhere near as much harm as we have already done
through divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing. But it's another nail in the
coffin. Maybe the last nail, precisely because it is the most obvious and
outrageous attack on what is left of marriage in America.
Supporters
of homosexual "marriage" dismiss warnings like mine as the
predictable ranting of people who hate progress. But the Massachusetts Supreme
Court has made its decision without even a cursory attempt to ascertain the
social costs. The judges have taken it on faith that it will do no harm.
You
can't add a runway to an airport in America without years of carefully
researched environmental impact statements. But you can radically reorder the
fundamental social unit of society without political process or serious
research.
Let
me put it another way. The sex life of the people around me is none of my business;
the homosexuality of some of my friends and associates has made no barrier
between us, and as far as I know, my heterosexuality hasn't bothered them.
That's what tolerance looks like.
But
homosexual "marriage" is an act of intolerance. It is an attempt to
eliminate any special preference for marriage in society -- to erase the
protected status of marriage in the constant balancing act between civilization
and individual reproduction.
So
if my friends insist on calling what they do "marriage," they are not
turning their relationship into what my wife and I have created, because no
court has the power to change what their relationship actually is.
Instead
they are attempting to strike a death blow against the well-earned protected
status of our, and every other,real marriage.
They
steal from me what I treasure most, and gain for themselves nothing at all.
They won't be married. They'll just be playing dress-up in their parents'
clothes.
The
Propaganda Mill
What
happens now if children grow up in a society that overtly teaches that
homosexual partnering is not "just as good as" but actually is marriage?
Once
this is regarded as settled law, anyone who tries to teach children to aspire
to create a child-centered family with a father and a mother will be labeled as
a bigot and accused of hate speech.
Can
you doubt that the textbooks will be far behind? Any depictions of
"families" in schoolbooks will have to include a certain proportion
of homosexual "marriages" as positive role models.
Television
programs will start to show homosexual "marriages" as wonderful and
happy (even as they continue to show heterosexual marriages as oppressive and
conflict-ridden).
The
propaganda mill will pound our children with homosexual marriage as a role
model. We know this will happen because we have seen the fanatical Left do it
many times before.
So
when our children go through the normal adolescent period of sexual confusion
and perplexity, which is precisely the time when parents have the least influence
over their children and most depend on the rest of society to help their
children grow through the last steps before adulthood, what will happen?
Already
any child with any kind of sexual attraction to the same sex is told that this
is an irresistible destiny, despite the large number of heterosexuals who move
through this adolescent phase and never look back.
Already
any child with androgynous appearance or mannerisms -- effeminite boys and
masculine girls -- are being nurtured and guided (or taunted and abused) into
"accepting" what many of them never suspected they had -- a desire to
permanently move into homosexual society.
In
other words, society will bend all its efforts to seize upon any hint of
homosexuality in our young people and encourage it.
Now,
there is a myth that homosexuals are "born that way," and we are
pounded with this idea so thoroughly that many people think that somebody,
somewhere, must have proved it.
In
fact what evidence there is suggests that if there is a genetic component to
homosexuality, an entire range of environmental influences are also involved.
While there is no scientific research whatsoever that indicates that there is
no such thing as a borderline child who could go either way.
Those
who claim that there is "no danger" and that homosexuals are born,
not made, are simply stating their faith.
The
dark secret of homosexual society -- the one that dares not speak its name --
is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing
seduction or rape or molestation or abuse, and how many of them yearn to get
out of the homosexual community and live normally.
It's
that desire for normality, that discontent with perpetual adolescent sexuality,
that is at least partly behind this hunger for homosexual "marriage."
They
are unhappy, but they think it's because the rest of us "don't fully
accept them."
Homosexual
"marriage" won't accomplish what they hope. They will still be
just as far outside the reproductive cycle of life. And they will have
inflicted real damage on those of us who are inside it.
They
will make it harder for us to raise children with any confidence that they, in
turn, will take their place in the reproductive cycle. They will use all the
forces of our society to try to encourage our children that it is desirable to
be like them.
Most
kids won't be swayed, because the message of the hormones is clear for them.
But for those parents who have kids who hover in confusion, their lives
complicated by painful experiences, conflicting desires, and many fears, the
P.C. elite will now demand that the full machinery of the state be employed to
draw them away from the cycle of life.
Children
from broken and wounded families, with missing parents, may be the ones most
confused and most susceptible. Instead of society helping these children
overcome the handicaps that come from a missing or dysfunctional father or
mother, it may well be exacerbating the damage.
All
the while, the P.C. elite will be shouting at dismayed parents that it is
somehow evil and bigoted of them not to rejoice when their children commit
themselves to a reproductive dead end.
But
there is nothing irrational about parents grieving at the abduction-in-advance
of their grandchildren.
Don't
you see the absurd contradiction? A postulated but unproven genetic disposition
toward homosexuality is supposed to be embraced and accepted by everyone as
"perfectly natural" -- but the far stronger and almost universal
genetic disposition toward having children and grandchildren is to be
suppressed, kept to yourself, treated as a mental illness.
You're
unhappy that your son wants to marry a boy? Then you're sick, dangerous, a
homophobe, filled with hate. Control your natural desires or be branded as evil
by every movie and TV show coming out of P.C. Hollywood!
Compassion
and tolerance flow only one way in the "Wonderland" of the
politically correct.
Loss
of Trust
The
proponents of this anti-family revolution are counting on most Americans to do
what they have done through every stage of the monstrous social revolution that
we are still suffering through -- nothing at all.
But
that "nothing" is deceptive. In fact, the pro-family forces are
already taking their most decisive action. It looks like "nothing" to
the anti-family, politically correct elite, because it isn't using their
ranting methodology.
The
pro-family response consists of quietly withdrawing allegiance from the society
that is attacking the family.
Would-be
parents take part in civilization only when they trust society to enhance their
chances of raising children who will, in turn, reproduce. Societies that create
that trust survive; societies that lose it, disappear, one way or another.
But
the most common way is for the people who have the most at stake -- parents and
would-be parents -- to simply make the untrusted society disappear by ceasing
to lift a finger to sustain it.
It
is parents who have the greatest ability to transmit a culture from one
generation to the next.
If
parents stop transmitting the culture of the American elite to their children,
and actively resist letting the schools and media do it in their place, then
that culture willdisappear.
If
America becomes a place where the laws of the nation declare that marriage no
longer exists -- which is what the Massachusetts decision actually does -- then
our allegiance to America will become zero. We will transfer our allegiance to
a society that does protect marriage.
We
will teach our children to have no loyalty to the culture of the American
elite, and will instead teach them to be loyal to a competing culture that
upholds the family. Whether we home school our kids or not, we will withdraw
them at an early age from any sense of belonging to contemporary American
culture.
We're
already far down that road. Already most parents regard schools -- an
institution of the state that most directly touches our children -- as the
enemy, even though we like and trust the individual teachers -- because we
perceive, correctly, that schools are being legally obligated to brainwash our
children to despise the values that keep civilization alive.
And
if marriage itself ceases to exist as a legally distinct social union with
protection from the government, then why in the world should we trust that
government enough to let it have authority over our children?
They
Think They Have the Power.
The
politically correct elite think they have the power to make these changes,
because they control the courts.
They
don't have to consult the people, because the courts nowadays have usurped the
power to make new law.
Democracy?
What a joke. These people hate putting questions like this to
a vote. Like any good totalitarians, they know what's best for the people, and
they'll force it down our throats any way they can.
That's
what the Democratic filibuster in the Senate to block Bush's judicial
appointments is all about -- to keep the anti-family values of the
Massachusetts Supreme Court in control of our government.
And
when you add this insult onto the already deep injuries to marriage caused by
the widespread acceptance of nonmonogamous behavior, will there be anything
left at all?
Sure.
In my church and many other churches, people still cling fiercely to civilized
values and struggle to raise civilized children despite the barbarians who now
rule us through the courts.
The
barbarians think that if they grab hold of the trunk of the tree, they've
caught the birds in the branches. But the birds can fly to another tree.
And
I don't mean that civilized Americans will move. I mean that they'll simply
stop regarding the authority of the government as having any legitimacy.
It
is the most morally conservative portion of society that is most successful in
raising children who believe in loyalty and oath-keeping and self-control and
self-sacrifice.
And
we're tired of being subject to barbarian rules and laws that fight against our
civilized values. We're not interested in risking our children's lives to
defend a nation that does not defend us.
Who
do you think is volunteering for the military to defend America against our
enemies? Those who believe in the teachings of politically correct college
professors? Or those who believe in the traditional values that the politically
correct elite has been so successful in destroying?
Let's
take a poll of our volunteer military -- especially those who specialize in
combat areas -- and see what civilization it is that they actually volunteered
to defend.
Since
the politically correct are loudly unwilling to fight or die for their version
of America, and they are actively trying to destroy the version of America that
traditional Americansare willing to fight or die to defend, just
how long will "America" last, once they've driven out the traditional
culture?
Oh,
it will still be called America.
But
out of the old American mantras of "democracy" and
"freedom" and "home" and "family," of
"motherhood" and "apple pie," only the pie will be left.
And
even if few people care enough to defend the old family values against the
screaming hate speech of the Left -- which is what they're counting on, of
course -- the end will be the same. Because with marriage finally killed,
America will no longer be able to raise up children with any
trust in or loyalty to or willingness to sacrifice for that society.
So
either civilized people will succeed in establishing a government that protects
the family; or civilized people will withdraw their allegiance from the
government that won't protect it; or the politically correct barbarians will
have complete victory over the family -- and, lacking the strong family
structure on which civilization depends, our civilization will collapse or fade
away.
Remember
how long Iraq's powerful military lasted against a determined enemy, when the
Iraqi soldiers no longer had any loyalty to the Iraqi leadership. That wasn't
an aberration. It's how great nations and empires fall.
Depriving
us of any democratic voice in these sweeping changes may not lead to revolution
or even resistance. But it will be just as deadly if it leads to despair. For
in the crisis, few citizens will lift a finger to protect or sustain the elite
that treated the things we valued -- our marriages, our children, and our right
to self-government -- with such contempt.
After the above essay was published in
the Rhinoceros Times, the paper received a letter to the editor criticizing it.
This is OSC's response. (To see the text of the letter, visitthe Rhinoceros Times and scroll down to
the letter titled "No Teetering Here".)
I
toyed with publishing, along with my essay, a mock letter listing all the
cliche "arguments" against it. I'm glad I didn't; Mr. Herman saved me
the trouble. I'll take his points in reverse order:
My
column made it very clear that homosexual "marriage" is merely the
latest, not the worst, damage done to marriage in America; thus his penultimate
paragraph, far from refuting my essay, reinforces my main point and suggests
possible topics for public debate - if debate is still allowed in Mr. Herman's
anti-democratic America.
"Inclusion"
is an empty word when used as a general virtue. Its value depends entirely on
what is and is not included. Every inclusion of one group is an exclusion of
another. I think even Mr. Herman would agree with me that there are certain
groups that should be perpetually excluded from civilized society. Where we
differ is only on our list of those groups, not on the principle.
As
for what "studies have shown," I'll pit my "studies"
against Mr. Herman's "studies" and see who can outvague the other.
I
already conceded the point that society must compensate for bad parenting. But this
is not done by institutionalizing the absence of heterosexual role models,
especially since this would result in the schools relentlessly propagandizing
all children toward homosexual "marriage" as a desirable choice.
All
heterosexual marriages, with or without children, present normalizing role
models that affirm the institution of marriage; childless people can still
function as effective surrogate parents in society at large, encouraging
children to remain within the cycle of life. It is absurd to claim that
homosexual "marriages" are in any way parallel to childless marriages
in their effect on society in general.
Woman
suffrage? Abolition of slavery? You can bet that I approve of those changes.
But Mr. Herman, those social revolutions were introduced by the constitutional
process of amendment. It took long public debate and national struggle -
including civil war - before a consensus emerged.
The
real precedents for what we're getting now are judicial diktats that imposed
the view of an elite group on the whole nation without democratic process. One
thinks of Plessy vs. Ferguson and Dred Scott. Wow. The courts do such a good
job of inventing new constitutional laws when they don't have to wait for
democracy.
Since
the 1970s, judges have been bolder and bolder about inventing new laws and
forcing them on the American people. Mr. Herman is content with this, because
he is part of the elite that has seized control and agrees with the forced
experiments. But I'm quite sure that if a different group were using the same
mechanism to force social experiments on an unwilling people, he would have a
very different opinion.
Courts
that follow their own conscience instead of the letter of the law are an
appalling form of government, however noble their intent. If Mr. Herman is so
sure gay "marriage" is a good idea, then why doesn't he want us to
reach that result by national debate and legislative process? Why does he
despise the principle of majority rule? Why does he regard democracy with such
distrust?
His
entire attitude can be summed up by his closing paragraph, which ends with
telling me: "Stick to what you know." So much for inclusion, eh?
What
is it that disqualifies me to enter the public debate? The fact that I reach
conclusions different from him and the rest of the current dictatorial elite.
In
Iran, people whom the ayatollahs don't approve of are barred from running for
office or taking part in public discussion. The ayatollahs have the right to
impose their ideas on the whole nation because they're really really really
sure that they are correct about everything. All their friends agree with them,
and anybody who disagrees with them is obviously evil or stupid.
Apparently,
as long as he and his friends get to be the ayatollahs, Mr. Herman thinks
that's a good system.
Me,
I prefer democracy - even if it means letting dumb people like me have our say
- and our votes. Studies have shown that when you let dumb people vote, it
works out way better than letting experts make all the political decisions.
