Having a Gay Old Time

I was pleasantly surprised recently to find that an overwhelming majority of my Composition students agreed with a peer's proposal that abortion rights should be severely curtailed because abortion is murder. I allow the students to choose the topic for their final essay, and it has not been uncommon for abortion to appear among their choices. The significance of yesterday's discussion was the number of these late generation Y'ers who did not believe abortion is just a clinical process some women are justified in choosing. I expected them to be fully marinated in the feminist soup of women's rights, but found them to be delightedly pro-life.

A couple years ago, Gallup reported that Americans were more pro-life than pro-choice. The margin in that poll was 51% lifers to 42% choicers. It marked the first time pro-lifers came out ahead, and the trend seems to be steady. A more recent poll measured the gap by party and then further by religious tendencies and showed a remarkable correlation. We are doing a good job refuting the feminist argument within a significant slice of the population.

There is another topic that always comes up for discussion with my students: gay marriage. In this case conservatives appear to be losing the battle. Gallup released a poll last year trumpeting "For First Time, Majority of Americans Favor Legal Gay Marriage." 53% to 45% Americans favor same-sex marriage with the same rights as "traditional" marriage. Granted, the results show that most of the increase in favorable positions came from Democrats and Independents; Republican opinion has remained virtually unchanged.

Back to my admittedly biased classroom; I did not poll them, but I sensed that if I had, most would have favored allowing gay marriage. Those who did speak agreed with the three students who proposed that gay marriage should be legal in all 50 states. And why not? "Love is love," as one proposal put it, and the benefits of marriage should not be denied to anyone who professes love for another regardless of gender. The other two proposals were based on the perceived discrimination against same-sex couples. This line of reasoning also garnered acceptance in the classroom. I asked if marriage rights should be granted to a man and his daughter or a man and his beloved sheep. The response (after extreme expressions of distaste) was resoundingly negative. I suggested that a man may love his daughter/sheep or whatever enough to want to marry her/it; doesn't the law discriminate against him as well. The silence was deafening, but they looked like I had fed them lemons.

So where are believers in this debate? We cannot quote Leviticus or Romans to argue against gay marriage in a pluralistic republic. Regardless, I believe there are still sound arguments against a homosexual lifestyle which do not rest on Biblical injunction.  I believe we should plot a course similar to the one Right to Life took with its sonogram displays. If we show people the real consequences of their choices, they can make better decisions. A fascinating article by the Family Research Council details the multitude of health issues present in the homosexual population. The most poignant is the undeniable fact that life expectancy is cut short by twenty years on average. Let's trumpet that from our billboards.

The Apostle Paul said that he would be willing to use any means necessary to win the lost to Christ. Let's use the same reasoning to influence behavior. With national health care looming on the horizon, there is a golden opportunity to use the liberals' arguments against them. If smoking is bad because it raises health costs and shortens life span, let's put homosexuality in the same category. The straight majority should not be expected to pay the exorbitant costs of treatment for aids or STI'S brought on by lifestyle choices. (This argument works even if Obamacare is repealed because we all pay for this kind of thing one way or another.)

Believers should lobby their local school boards to stop presenting the homosexual lifestyle as merely an alternative without consequences. Faced with information like that presented in the FRC article, I believe many could be convinced to change the policy of tolerance and open acceptance of homosexuality to one of warning and dissuasion. Homosexual behavior is a choice; report after report after report refutes the idea that it is genetic or otherwise biologically caused. If there are people who are genuinely confused about their gender identity, we owe the whole truth to them. Homosexuality is a deadly lifestyle, not because Leviticus says so but because science says so. It wouldn't be the first time science and the Bible were in agreement.

What Price Peace?

When I first heard the statement, it shocked me. After a moment's thought, it frightened me. An apologist for the welfare state opined on Fox News this morning that we have to continue the unemployment benefit extensions and the expansion of food stamps so that we don't end up with riots like Greece. Really? Americans will turn to violent revolt if we don't give them what they want. Has it really come to that?

As Rome slouched toward collapse twenty centuries ago, one contemporary commentator moaned that her citizens were being bribed with "bread and circuses." The comment I heard this morning sounds eerily similar. In her column posted last year on the Bloomberg web site, "The Danger of Living on Bread and Circuses,"  Alice Schroeder said, "Drowning a country in vicarious debauchery may be a lousy way to sustain a civilization. Still, there is something to be said for Half Pint Brawlers and its ilk. TV-watching keeps people at home, instead of marching in the streets."

There must be other less costly, more righteous ways to keep people from "marching in the streets." Certainly there are better ways to spend one's time than watching anything television has to offer. In fact, I suspect that modern entertainment does more to incite marching in the streets than to curtail it. The glorification of wealth, power and sex which dominates all forms of entertainment only whets the appetite of already hungry people.

A 2009 study cited by Schroeder claimed that people over 15 spent 58% of their leisure time in front of either a TV or a computer. My guess is that the majority of those TV hours were not on the History Channel and the Internet time was not spent taking free online college courses. Entertainment, games and social networking consume vast quantities of most Americans' time. Given such a diet filled with "vicarious debauchery," it is not surprising that a mood of unrest might be abroad among the people.

And so because my conservative values preclude any thought of censorship of the circuses, I can only agitate for self-discipline. I struggle with it myself, but I recommend the Apostle Paul's attitude of being content no matter the circumstances. I wonder if I am being utterly foolish to think that the only healthy way to keep Americans from marching in the streets is to encourage healthy habits at home: reading the Bible instead of watching WWF Smackdown; playing Monopoly instead of Grand Theft Auto; taking an invigorating walk through the nature center instead of spending an inebriating evening at the sports bar.

God help me; I think I may have turned into a crazy old geezer. Now I am frightened again; this time I fear that a conservative, biblical lifestyle, which is the answer to almost all society's problems, begins to sound ridiculous. Maybe we had better increase the food stamps.

Character Counts

A story on Fox this morning asks if watching what students do outside of school is reaching beyond the schools' legitimate interests. Todd Hess, the head of the Indiana principals' association explained the rationale behind the law which grants schools permission to consider student behavior outside of school. He said relevant behaviors would have to cause "interference with school purposes" or be necessary to "protect those that [sic] are in the school."  Cyber bullying was cited as an example of a behavior which might cross over from outside to inside school. The interviewer asked whether drinking or drug use might come under scrutiny by the school. Hess remarked that those activities were illegal, leaving the impression that other agencies (the police?) were responsible to monitor them.

It is unclear what the producers at Fox were pushing in this piece, but the headline over the video on the web site asks if the Indiana law is overreaching. Usually when media types ask questions like that, they are answering in the affirmative even if they don't say it explicitly. I have to ask myself why a conservative outlet like Fox would be asking such a question. I wonder if they were just trying to look "fair and balanced" by presenting the law as overreaching, or whether there is a drift among the east coast conservatives driven by the raging tide of political correctness.

It is clear why progressives would be opposed to such a policy. A law that allows school officials to consider private behavior infringes on privacy rights. Progressives are all about protecting those rights and even making some up where necessary: privacy rights like the privacy of the womb which allows a mother to snuff out the life of the little person growing there; privacy rights like those enjoined by President Clinton when his amorous affairs were being investigated; privacy rights like those granted to prisoners which afford them amenities generally associated with luxury hotels. It may even be this kind of thinking that causes the main stream media to overlook the extravagant getaways of the first family and cabinet level tax cheats and congressional nest featherers.

But in virtually every instance of see-no-evil ignorance of private behavior, someone in the public sphere is being affected. Returning to the academic setting, it is plain that situations which begin off campus infect the atmosphere on campus necessarily. The Facebook bully creates a dynamic that affects in-school relationships. When Johnny gets drunk on Friday night, he will often take his school buddies with him when he misses the curve at high speed and destroys their lives. The entire campus will be affected the next Monday. When Susie has unprotected sex (perhaps with a drunken Johnny,) her pregnancy cannot be separated from her school experience. In most cases, she will be separated from her school.

While they claim to be defenders of individual freedom, progressives don't really like freedom because free people seldom conform to the progressive agenda. Free people will drive SUV's and use 100 watt incandescent bulbs. Free people will reject the government subsidized electric car and CFL light bulb. Ignore for the moment that the politically correct choices will cost many multiples of the item they replace. When the government decides what is best for its citizens, the government must mandate much of what would otherwise be private choice. This situation puts the lie to the entire choice argument.

And choice is what makes us what we are. Barring divine intervention, humans are nothing more than the cumulative result of the choices made from day to day. Therefore, character is the result of choices made on campus and off. Kudos to Indiana for writing into law a common sense principle for principals. This suggests to me that someone in Indiana has decided that character building is an important part of the education process. Or maybe I am too optimistic; maybe it just means that they were taking another step towards governing every action so that their Utopian society can finally emerge. I hope it is the former.