The Eclipse of the Normal
Nearly a century ago, G.K. Chesterton wrote of “the modern and morbid habit of always sacrificing the normal to the abnormal.” Today the very word normal is almost taboo. Perish the thought that there is anything abnormal—let alone sinful, vicious, perverted, abominable, sick, unhealthy, or just plain wrong—about sodomy. (Unsanitary? Let’s not go there.)
As one T-shirt legend puts it, “I’m proud of my gay son.” Sure you are, lady. I’ll bet when he told you, you blurted, “O darling, you make me so proud!” I mean, like, who wouldn’t? And then you went out and bragged to all the neighbors.
And do you enjoy picturing what he and his “partners” do together? If you’re curious, you can probably get the idea from a DVD. Just go into an “adult” DVD store and ask where the anal-sex section is. This should make you just burst with maternal pride.
Let me lay my cards on the table. I’m what they call homophobic, and I believe God loves me just the way I am. He may even regard homophobia as one of my finer qualities. To a much lesser degree, I’m also lesbophobic. I realize that lesbianism is also a form of sodomy, but that strikes me as a rather technical point, because, in my rather limited experience, it doesn’t involve the sort of repulsive practices male sodomy does. How often have you heard of a lesbian dying of AIDS?
This is hardly the place to discuss sexual practices in clinical detail. Such discussions are freely available, indeed unavoidable, elsewhere. To add to them here would be, as the old saying has it, carrying coals to Newcastle.
But I digress. (I wondered when you’d notice.) Most people realize that God made two sexes. Even the phrase gay and lesbian is an attempt to ape the natural symmetry of nature’s (two and only two) sexes. Male and female homosexuality are only superficially parallel; in fact, they are wholly different and dissimilar maladjustments. The male brand is madly promiscuous and indiscriminate; the female brand tends to be monogamous. This will surely be borne out by the upshot of the craze for same-sex “marriage”—an absurd contradiction in terms if ever there was one. (You might as well expect two bulls, or two lions, to form a lasting union.)
We are witnessing what might be called the eclipse of the normal—an eccentric phase of modern history in which huge numbers of people feign ignorance of what is perfectly obvious. The polite taboos on calling abortion “killing” and sodomy “perversion” are mere symptoms of this; Barack Obama, with his sycophantic solicitude for “gays,” is typical of the modern liberal mind-set. “Who is to say what is ‘normal’?” is now thought to be an insoluble conundrum.
Well, who is to say that, in all the fantastic abundance of nature, there are only two sexes? Or is that another tough one? After all, members of some species of marine life can even change sexes. It’s clear that anybody who can’t answer such questions just doesn’t want them to be answered. All sane people know the answers, and it’s a waste of time arguing with a man who pretends not to know, even if he’s the president of the United States. This nonsense has been going on far too long.
Who could have imagined, a generation ago, that organized Sodom would achieve such cultural and political power in the United States? And so soon, at that! “We are all sodomites now,” exults Andrew Sullivan, and he has a point, at least a semantic one. The word sodomy, as he notes, used to comprise all sexual perversions, including contraception within marriage. The real sexual revolution came to pass quietly, when contraception became generally accepted as a legitimate part of marriage. After that, it became hard to argue against virtually any sexual practice, inside or outside wedlock, short of rape. The revolution in morals occurred almost before anyone noticed it. And today it is taken for granted.
Few of us can now remember how sternly nearly all Christians disapproved of birth control before 1931, when the Anglican Church opened the floodgates with a few seemingly innocuous exceptions in certain cases of hardship. By now the old standards of chastity have melted away like ice in August. In today’s terms, they are well-nigh incomprehensible.
Modern man is thoroughly cut off from his past. He and his ancestors would be total strangers to each other. The essential problem is a new form of hypocrisy in which we all feel pressure to affect ignorance of things everyone used to know—and which most people still do know.
To put it bluntly, our moral standards would horrify our forebears. They would gasp in disbelief at the things we now accept as normal, for the simple reason that any civilized society would recognize those things as highly abnormal.
This article first appeared in the April 2010 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
Entries(RSS)
Thanks for pointing out the link between contraception and the current sexual morality morass. I have known several Catholic couples who left the Catholic Church to become born-again evangelicals. I had to wonder, however, at their true motivation when they repeatedly mentioned how they were now free from the archaic bans on contraception of their former church.
-----
Many Americans (and Canadians and Europeans) quite frankly idolize the bizarre and abnormal. It ranges from all the silly tattoos, piercings and ugly dress to any and every kind of sexual deviance. I expect there will be weirdoes pushing for the "right" of triples and quadruples to get "married" before long; and possibly the "right" to marry some favored furry friend. What’s to stop them?
It's like a helium balloon released into the sky. It will fly "free"
until it explodes and comes fluttering to earth in tattered bits.
What about the churches that want to sanctity homosexual abominations in marriage? It's not filthy beyond describing; no, it's natural! I don't have any patience, either, when some coward preaches tolerance or civility toward men who do those things, of which anal intercourse is probably one of the least repulsive. I do have sympathy, however, for the tragedy of parents with a son who announces, in effect, that he's got this thing for anal intercourse and eating his buddies' excreta. I'm sure they don't really think it's all that gay when they find out what he's been doing.
Lapidary, Joe, lapidary!
Great to see Joe Sobran back in the fight again. All he says is true. The whole Western world has been turned on it's head. The only true thing that that can be said about people who practice homosexuality, contraception, and abortion is that they will be replaced by those who don't.
I totally just saw Joe on an old episode of the Firing Line with Buckley and Kenneth Minogue. It was good stuff, but I thought Buckley was gonna fall outta his chair he was leaning so far back (he was pretty old at that point, I take it).
Also, Minogue lectured briefly at the University of Oxford Libertarian Society in November of last year--the video is floating around on the intertubes somewhere.
Any comments on the merits of Minogue's work? What I've see (just the videos mentioned above) has been very interesting and am considering searching out his various books.
Every group is vying for victim status. To each of these we are required to pour out tears of deep pity for the grave injustices done them, no matter how immoral, pathetic, or perverted their practices may be. In this bizarre world, to be offended is regarded as worse than an actual, physical attack; what one thinks of you is worse than an actual crime. And the views of the majority mean nothing. The rules are made for us by those above who truly ‘know’. Truths become lies; facts become meaningless; and history is something to be fabricated. To speak out against what has been asserted, no matter how absurd, is to commit the gravest sin of all, showing you to be a racist, homophobe, or some other horrible, evil thing. However, under this banner of equality, not all groups are granted the same privileges, as Dr. Wilson’s “On Being America’s Red-Headed Stepchild” attests. This selection process is every bit as confusing and nonsensical as the rest. It seems to be a game created by an idiot to be taught to fools. Here the majority is to be treated as a minority and the ‘consent of the governed’ is to be tossed into the dustbin of history.
Contraception is #1 of the "four sirens" referred to by a number of commentators. The following is excerpted from: http://www.singularity2050.com/2010/01/the-misandry-bubble.html
------------------
The Four Sirens : Four unrelated forces simultaneously combined to entirely distort the balance of civilization built on the biological realities of men and women. Others have presented versions of the Four Sirens concept in the past, but I am choosing a slightly different definition of the Four Sirens :
1) Easy contraception (condoms, pills, and abortions): In the past, extremely few women ever had more than one or two sexual partners in their lives, as being an unwed mother led to poverty and social ostracization. Contraception made it possible for females to conduct campaigns to act on their urges of hypergamy.
2) 'No fault' divorce, asset division, and alimony : In the past, a woman who wanted to leave her husband needed to prove misconduct on his part. Now, the law has changed to such a degree that a woman can leave her husband for no stated reason, yet is still entitled to payments from him for years to come. This incentivizes destruction because it enables women to transfer the costs of their behavior onto men and children.
3) Female economic freedom : Despite 'feminists' claiming that this is the fruit of their hard work, inventions like the vacuum cleaner, washing machine, and oven were the primary drivers behind liberating women from household chores and freeing them up to enter the workforce. These inventions compressed the chores that took a full day into just an hour or less. There was never any male opposition to women entering the workforce, as more labor lowered labor costs while also creating new consumers. However, one of the main reasons that women married - financial support - was no longer a necessity.
Female entry into the workforce is generally a positive development for society, and I would be the first to praise this, if it were solely on the basis of merit (as old-school feminists had genuinely intended). Unfortunately, too much of this is now due to corrupt political lobbying to forcibly transfer resources from men to women.
4) Pro-female social engineering : Above and beyond the pro-woman divorce laws, further state interventions include the subsidization of single motherhood, laws that criminalize violence against women (but offer no protection to men who are the victims of violence by women, which happens just as often), and 'sexual harassment' laws with definitions so nebulous that women have the power to accuse men of anything without the man having any rights of his own.
Yes, great to see Joe Sobran back. Always fresh air.
Let's all pray for Joe's health. We need him.
Hello Joe Sobran - Good piece. My idea about the "normal" comprises two aspects, one theological, the other political. In terms of theology, "abnormality" has replaced the concept of grace, which, according to St. Thomas, supports and perfects Nature. Once this Thomistic notion was dispelled, the road was left open for the perverted idea that anything counter to Nature means that one has been "saved." Hence the fervid idolatry of technology in the modern era and, in our own day, the worship of "gay marriage" and other absurd manifestations of the doctrine. As for politics, which comes limping in the wake of theology, the centralization and empowerment of government has been the result of the so-called sexual revolution, which has sold a counterfeit 'freedom.' Plus: government loves eunuchs, wimps, gays, and other abnormals. Easy to control!
Gentlemen,
If you support normal marriage, normal family life and a wholesome well adjusted society, then you do not want to support women working outside the home. By supporting feminism, you have sown the seeds of societal self destruction. There can and should be exceptions, of course, but today it's only accepted and taught that young women should "work" outside the home and have "careers". There is much work to be found in a happy home -- many women find true happiness there and have escaped the harried life that many have chosen to adopt.
What is needed today is to keep men busy working and creating, which is their normal role in this world.
We are troubled today by the abnormal because because many men have chosen to support it.
Cheers,
Always a fan of Joe Sobran even though he doesn't believe that Shakespeare was Shakespeare. My observation about gay people in general and I know a few, is that almost to a person they are an unhappy bunch of people who haven chosen a lifestyle that may have been attractive when they are young but as they age (and age) causes unhappiness, loneliness, ill health and mental health issues. Being gay is a curse of nature (and shouldn't be celebrated) and we should pray for these unfortunate people who think by saying "I do" will make their problems go away. O tempora , o mores!
Hear, hear Joe. And hear, hear Patrick. We should likewise pray for women who've gotten abortions. They similarly destroy themselves when they destroy their child. Would-be mothers and (ironically) would-be fathers both usually lead shattered and confused lives trying to come to terms with themselves. I pity them more than anything.