Wednesday, July 6, 2011

The Homophobe Card

Roman Catholic scholar George Weigel explains the the totalitarian impulse of those who would impose the acceptance of gay marriage on others, including civil society and religious institutions.

If, as its proponents claim, resistance to gay marriage is nothing more than hateful bigotry, why should Americans tolerate institutions like the Catholic church? Such immoral institutions should be marginalized, if not stamped out completely.

Already the churches and people who hold such traditional views of marriage are being vilified by gay activists and their straight liberal allies. The pressure to accept the new government-approved definition of marriage is growing more and more intense.

Writes Weigel:
As analysts running the gamut from Hannah Arendt to Leszek Kolakowski understood, modern totalitarian systems were, at bottom, attempts to remake reality by redefining reality and remaking human beings in the process. Coercive state power was essential to this process, because reality doesn’t yield easily to remaking, and neither do people. In the lands Communism tried to remake, the human instinct for justice — justice that is rooted in reality rather than ephemeral opinion — was too strong to change the way tastemakers change fashions in the arts. Men and women had to be coerced into accepting, however sullenly, the Communist New Order, which was a new metaphysical, epistemological, and moral order — a New Order of reality, a new set of “truths,” and a new way of living “in harmony with society,” as late-bureaucratic Communist claptrap had it.
When the gay lobby went after the Boy Scouts of America to pressure that organization to accept openly gay scouts and scout leaders it prevailed upon politicians and local governments not to do business with the BSA. Point out the thuggish tactics used by gay activists and you get called a homophobe and a bigot yourself.

As Weigel points out:
... (this) line of attack nicely demonstrates the truth of Oscar Wilde’s famous observation that the only way to rid oneself of temptation is to yield to it. For crying “homophobia” is a cheap calumny, a crypto-totalitarian bully’s smear that impresses no serious person.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of unserious people who take themselves quite seriously when they play this ugly game.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

You can't be serious. As a Catholic, I think that the Catholic Church is a haven for pedophiles. And the church has much bigger bullies than the LBGC, look at how long they've covered up their atrocities and got away with it. For God's sake, they've destroyed more lives than I could even count. And they also have much larger issues, due to their defenseless underage victims. Have you ever reported a priest for engaging in activity that is inappropriate? I think NOT. You'd be shocked.

Gays have nothing to do with pedophiles. However, the hypocrisy of the church commenting on anything can not be ignored. People are born gay, was the church born hateful?

July 6, 2011 at 2:32 PM 
Blogger Spencerblog said...

Anon - The Catholic church has made serious mistakes when it comes to protecting pedophile priests. It is paying for those mistakes. What that has to do with whether gay marriage is a good idea for America is beyond me.

But calling the church "hateful" is, it seems to me, about as fair as blaming gay people for the AIDS epidemic.

As for you being a Catholic, you're allowed to leave the church whenever you want. And why would you remain a member of an organization you find so hateful?

Though I am not a Catholic, I think that overall, the church has been more a force for good throughout world history than a force for bad. From education to charity to social work, the Catholic church has done much to improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world. It's record over the centuries is at least as impressive as that of the LGBT community.

July 6, 2011 at 7:16 PM 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anon: I could not agree more with Mr. Spencer's reply to your post. You have a choice: Live with the Church or leave the Church. But as you consider your choice, please also take note of the decision by the Senate of the State of California which is moving toward passage:

"The state Senate has approved legislation that would require California's public schools to include gay history in social studies lessons.

The bill, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Mark Leno of San Francisco, passed Thursday on a 23-14 vote. The measure now goes to the Assembly."

Kudos to the 14 no voters in the California Senate who will now be labeled as Homophobes. And let us hope that the majority of the Assembly will be willing to be labeled in the same way and vote the intiative into oblivion.

Because what starts in San Francisco and becomes law in California spreads from the land of fruits and nuts east toward Pennsylvania... We have substantial cuts in educational funding. But if this movement reaches school districts like Wallingford-Swarthmore, we're going to have to fund a new course of study and the payroll for the required life-style appropriate teachers to educate our children on gay history...

July 6, 2011 at 9:37 PM 

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