On issues like gay marriage that require saying no" out of principle the average Americans sparkling self-image--or sometimes just his spiritual weariness--freezes the word on his tongue.
Im new to Facebook. Only took it up in order to promote my two latest books. (Oh and by the way... google
Climbing Backward Out of Caves or
Hitting Secrets from Baseballs Graveyard. Support shameless capitalism!) Now where was I? Yes so the other day being a tyro in this kind of skirmish I read the following post by a man well call Joe:
Quick rant: if people would worry about the things they can affect most like themselves and their families... Gay marriage would be so far down the list of problems.
If you want to make changes in this state or country start with you and your family then your work.
If all you do is gripe about politics you are virtually worthless to this state and country. Spend your time more wisely on the things you can impact.
Rant over.
Naively I dove right into a response without realizing that there were thirty others ahead of me. My hasty comment: But if you want to DESTROY the state then the family is the perfect place to start."
Nuff said as I supposed. But no... I had entirely misread the intent of Joes post and an almost instant return-comment alerted me a) that Joe was somehow uncomfortable with my sentiments and b) that he appeared to be nailed to his Facebook page 24/7. The return-fire read I
understand what you are saying but I still feel like if people focused on imposing their beliefs and creating the culture they wantat home then gay marriage would not be a problem for them." This retort brought me little by way of clarification but its mere delivery in I understand... but" terms proved that it was meant to take issue with my thoughts. I read more closely. Ah I get it! Joe is saying that we shouldnt give a fig about wedding-cake lawsuits or Supreme Court decisions. We should live and let live cultivate our garden and let others likewise have their own space to do what they want. Protesting the SCOTUS decree was whining impotently and not keeping your eye on the proverbial ball. It was rendering yourself worthless to the state". (And how I long to be of worth to this state!)
For some reason I took one more shot over my shoulder Parthian-like as I rode away. Absolutely. But this is all being pushed at its highest levels by ppl who want to make Big Brother everybodys daddy. And some are on record as saying so. Thats what I meant."
Well I think Joe knew what I meant all along. I think he was just saying that good citizens should mind their own business instead of stirring everyone up with conspiracy theories and witch hunts. When he was referring to those who gripe about politics" he was defining yours truly.
Trouble is Joe that our ability to govern the upbringing of our own children is precisely whats at issue. If you think that youre still free to rear your children in the belief that homosexuality is wrong... no Joe. Theyll be suspended from school if they ever express this view beyond your homes threshold. The truth is that children have been harassed over the past couple of decades if they even espoused a homespun view that premarital sex is wrong. Theyve been branded as troglodytes at bestor as haters" who judge others. Thats the gist of the thing Joe: though you may still (for a while) teach your children whatever you wish at home they are not allowed to learn it as a value system. Its just an alternate etiquette rather for a certain small spot on the map. Mama says to take our shoes off in the house and Papa says homosexuality is wrong while were at the dinner table.
Nella chiesa coi santi ed in taverna coi ghiottoniA pious psalm-singer in church a hearty guzzler in the bar."
What Joe and millions of other well-intentioned Americans dont understand is that a free society allows its citizens to teach their children principlesand that principles do not shift as one crosses the street. If my family lived beside a Pakistani who murdered his daughter because her skirt was too short am I to tell my children Well you see its okay in his house"? I realize that homosexuality isnt murder; but if my child asks Daddy why were Mr. Chuck and Mr. Dan kissing like you and mommy do?"... okay Joe what do I say then? Do I answer that its okay in their yard but not in ours? Is this the blueprint you have in mind for values-instruction? Wouldnt the clear implication be that no absolute virtue and vice exist--that its all a matter of geography and timing? Exactly what retention-rate for paternal moral lessons delivered from such a platform do you anticipate when your daughters turn sixteen?
When the state (that same state which we are to serve by minding our own business) deprives us of our right to disapprovenot to tar and feather but merely to teach and proclaim publicly this is wrong"then we no longer control the values imbibed by our children. Television and the Internet have already usurped this right from us almost irretrievably. Culture isnt a taco dinner or a pizza that you warm in the microwave for ten minutes. You have to mean it to pass it alongand to mean it you have to apply it in day-to-day experience.
Now not all cultural traditions are good: much pernicious brainwashing can take place in their name (e.g. honor killings" of daughters in short skirts). All moral instruction of children however has to begin in cultural conditioning. Children are not capable of grasping abstract principles. We teach them first not to throw things in anger not to gorge on sweets not to monopolize a toy. Later we hope that they have internalized the core principle of not being ruled by passion. That they should merely want something is insufficient reason for them to abuse others in obtaining it to abuse themselves in surfeiting on it or to create a kind of solipsistic reality around it. Homosexual marriage to me embodies all of these moral failures. Its about sex: for if about friendship why the need of a sexual union? Its about self-centered sex: for if about other objectives what are theycertainly not childbearing! And isnt the marriage" side of the equation clearly about insisting that surrounding reality bend its tastes and laws to flatter ones personal whimsyfor when over the past half century or so has our society brutalized any gay couple for pursuing its fancy discreetly? This high-handed legislative fiat visited upon us by unelected appointed-for-life egomaniacs is all about forcing the general populace to
honor a practice that utterly undermines the conventional condemnation of an appetite-ruled will.
And indeed rule by appetite is just as pernicious in heterosexuals--a point made far too seldom. Marriage as a means of getting some luscious morsel into bed is not a sacriment but sacrilege. We dont seem to understand the difference even at that level. We stir in some of Justice Kennedys patented mush if our sexy magnet also listens to the same music as we do and claims to like the same movies and… were good to go. In an age of incessant Viagra commercials where tarts lolling on mattresses tease old men what would you expect? Wherein has the heterosexual community preserved any sense of honor in its couplings? How do heterosexuals argue to their occasional offspring that marriage is about family when abortion has proliferated until some progressive academics want the execution boundary line nudged past toothing?
Naturally none of this would fit into a Facebook postand I stand by my original telegram to Joe that the state-sponsored uni-family is the ultimate objective of the gay agenda. (And Joethere
is a gay agenda: the enormous resources driving this movement are not being contributed by good little citizens who stay out of politics.) Nevertheless the most interestingand deeply upsettingpart of my initial Facebook foray was the chain of responses that Joe had elicited before mine and that I hadnt read until much later. Heres a small sampling:
You should rant more often.
I totally agree. More Joe rants is sic bound to make the world a better place.
True words.
Well said.
If I copied and pasted ten times youd pretty much have the whole string. Now its entirely possible that I was just receiving a quick baptism into Facebook etiquette. So true. Rant on. Peace out. Youre so right. Like! Brain empty but happy." In other words maybe Facebook exchanges are the equivalent of normal conversation. It all reminds me so very much of certain scenes from
The Prisoner (Patrick McGoohan version). People who have been kidnapped and stuck in a gilded cage for the rest of their lives by a multi-national Big Brother pretend that theyre on holiday. If they say anything at all its Lovely day! Chance of showers later. Be seeing you!" The uncooperative are hospitalized" for psychiatric evaluation" (i.e. reprogramming). Happiness requires cooperation cooperation requires positive thinking and positive thinking requires a steady resistance to thought. The zen of stupidity one might say.
My favorite entries on Joes Facebook page went deeper than a mere Amen brother!"... deeper in the peculiar sense of clarifying their worrisome shallowness. One plunging little bluebird chirped Ahhh so agree! Sometimes I feel like people pick sides purely for the sake of picking sides and then to lecture each other on the merits of their argument. Aghhhh! I tell the mirror each morning we starts with me so stop whining and start shining."
Bluuuuggghhh! No my dear moral reality doesnt really begin in your battery-operated sparkle. It begins in principlewhich begins again (from a classical perspective: i.e. without stirring God into the formula) in the obligation of human beings to be ruled by mind rather than gut.
Another response: Wish more people had this attitude instead of trying to be in everyones business. Take care of number 1 thats all you can control." Yeah thats the spirit. Begin with me"and then it doesnt really matter if you get any we" out of it or not. And I thought
I was a cynic!
But heres our prize-winner: There have been many families built on lies where one parent was secretly gay but had to appear otherwise for many reasons. Ive sic known that in knowing the people I have known and I have known what keeping up a facade can do to ruin A LOT of lives. If someones gay they can go live freer and more authentic rather than marry someone they dont prefer. Families will be the first benefits sic from this new legislation." I dont know if you really know what you know though palknowing you like I dont.
My fingertips itched to get at this one but I recognized that the only suitable reply would be in a venue like ICfor such crusading champions obviously arent browsing the Internet for a discussion. I would have said to Tom (as I shall call him) Tom my dear there are even more families where one or both parents occasionally want an extramarital fling. To constrain them within their vows is oppressive: it wears upon them day after day warps their self-expression deprives them of true happiness etc. etc. Why not liberate these sad prisoners to have a red-hot weekend once in a while with their secretary or the parking-lot attendant? Why not structure marriage flexibly so that the periodic infidelity would no longer be stigmatized? Participants would return home invigorated and prepared to make a new commitment to Johnnys soccer team and Rachels tennis lessons. Liberation man!"
See what I mean? In my irrepressible sarcasm" mode I would have lost all my invaluable Facebook friends in a triceand forget about selling any books!
I should also have liked to know from Tom a little more about the fate of this miserable (if hypothetical) familys children. Would they never have been born since the gay parent would never have walked down the wrong aisle? Or would they spend every other weekend with Dad and his husband"? Or would the happy new couple simply adopt them despite alarming statistics about the psychological struggles of children raised in gay households?
Of course thats needlessly muddying the waters. Marriage isnt about kids is it? Its about hedonistic happinessor about a dash of spiritual companionship AND great sex of just the right kindwith any children added later as desired by adoption or... whatever. Lets keep our priorities straight.
Quickly let me perorate by sharing with you what I believe to be going on here. Joe is not a bad guy. I like him. In fact Im very much of a mind your own business" type myselfwhich is why I resent having to mingle in politics almost daily to keep the Gestapo out of my garden and my bedroom. Now Joe is just Average Joe a regular guy--certainly not an ideologue. Most polls appear to show that Middle America has shifted to a solid majority endorsement of gay marriage. These Facebook exchanges begin to tell me why. For one thing people like Joe are busy with their jobs and their private lives and they dont have the energy left over to follow what institutions the robed clowns of the Supreme Court are shredding at the moment. I think some of them probably realize if only subliminally that things are getting really bad; and so to resist a depression that can be incapacitating they adopt a lifeboat" mentality. Look I cant do anything about that sinking ship. Ive got an oar and Ive got water and Im not going to sit here and pine until I get sunstroke." Theres a certain commendableyet misplacedindependence to this mindset. I call it misplaced because the same wolf pack that sank the ship is coming after your lifeboat.
Substantial numbers of Americans alas are less admirable. They enjoy thinking the very best of themselves and theyll do it at the expense of common sense moral decency and the Bill of Rights. They vote Republican when some specific issue starts to gnaw at their pocket book; but they veer Left on social issues because these are easy occasions for them to appropriate warm-fuzzy words for themselves as they take that morning look into the mirror. I am tolerant. I am compassionate. I am broad-minded. I have superior moral judgment to the crude bourgeois hypocrites around me. God is love and God loves me especially because I love everyone. Those other people who are such haters... I dont know how God puts up with them." Mirrors it turns outthough they may not liecan listen to a whole heap of lies without comment.
Ive concluded on the basis of my e-excursion that this is why the Tea Party suffers such a bad rap in popular culture. It isnt really because of a calumnious media-machine; its more because Middle Americans themselves need the Tea Party to be right-wing extremist" so that they in contrast may preen their moral feathers before the mirror and coo about their compromising mediating well-balanced fair-minded virtue. The average American is bloody full of himself... and his children God help them will pay for it. But when is the last time he really thought of his children? When did he ever sacrifice one sparkle of his scintillant self-esteem to confront a real issue like a mature adult?
You know Joe Im going to hit my garden again this afternoonsmy survival garden where I have enough peanuts to get me through at least a couple of months. But Im not doing it Joe to be of worth to the state". Im doing it because our state is virtually worthless thanks to the complacent inattention of nice guys like you.
