The Antietam of the Culture War
It took Joe Biden's public embrace of same-sex marriage to smoke him out.
But after Joe told David Gregory of Meet the Press he was "absolutely comfortable" with homosexuals marrying, Barack Obama could not maintain his credibility with the cultural elite if he stuck with the biblical view that God ordained marriage as solely between a man and woman. The biblical view had to go.
Obama had to move, or look like a malingerer in secularism's next great moral advance into post-Christian America.
Consider. Obama had an appearance coming up on The View, where Whoopi Goldberg would have demanded to know why he lacked the courage of Biden's convictions. He has a $40,000-a-plate fundraiser at George Clooney's, where the Hollywood crowd would want to know why he does not end discrimination against homosexuals.
He has appearances lined up before gay activists raising millions for his campaign. Monday, his press secretary was pilloried for his feeble defense of Obama's now-abandoned position.
His hand was forced. Yet the stand Obama took could cost him his presidency. Same-sex marriage may yet be a bridge too far, even for a dying Christian America.
On the plus side for Obama, his decision is producing hosannas from the elites and an infusion of cash from those who see same-sex marriage as the great moral and civil rights issue of our time.
But Obama may also have just solved Mitt Romney's big problem: How does Mitt get all those evangelical Christians and cultural conservatives not only to vote for him but to work for him?
Obama, by declaring that homosexual marriages should be on the same legal and moral plane as traditional marriage, just took command of the forces of anti-Christian secularism in America's Kulturkampf. And Nov. 6, 2012, is shaping up as the Antietam of the culture war.
Obama's second problem is that he may soon be seen as America's champion of same-sex marriage, but an ineffectual advocate. For Obama can do nothing, as of now, to impose homosexual marriage on the American people.
Thirty-one states have voted to outlaw it. A constitutional amendment supporting same-sex marriage could not win a majority of either house of Congress, let alone the necessary two-thirds of both.
Hence, Obama is going to spend six months winning cheers by calling for same-sex marriage. But the price of those cheers will be the rallying of millions of opponents of homosexual marriage, who will fight this battle where they are winning it, at the state level.
Only six states have approved homosexual marriage, while 30 have imposed a constitutional ban. In North Carolina, a ban not only on same-sex marriage but also civil unions, though opposed by Obama and Bill Clinton, carried on Tuesday with 61 percent of the vote.
Republican turnout in North Carolina's primary was up half a million, the highest in history. And this is a state Obama carried in 2008, a state whose largest city, Charlotte, will host Obama's convention.
Even in liberal California in 2008, while John McCain was getting a smaller share of the vote than Barry Goldwater in 1964, Proposition 8, restricting marriage to men and women, won.
How does Obama propose to win this battle?
He has one path to victory—the Supreme Court.
The New York Times, declaring that homosexuals' right to marry is "too precious and too fragile to be left up to the whim of states and the tearing winds of modern partisan politics," is looking to the court as the last, best hope to impose same-sex marriage on the nation.
Can't trust voters, can't trust elected legislators, can't trust Congress. Homosexual marriage, says the Times, is too important to be left to democratic decision. The republic must be commanded to accept it by unelected judges who serve for life and against whom the people have no political recourse.
That process of judicial tyranny has begun. A California judge has overturned the decision of California's voters to ban gay marriage, and his ruling is headed for the high court.
The Supreme Court thus will tell us whether this issue is to be decided democratically by voters and their elected state and federal legislators, or dictatorially by themselves.
Four liberal activists on the Supreme Court—Elena Kagan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor—are probably ready to declare that homosexual marriage is a constitutional right, as their predecessors declared abortion to be a constitutional right.
But Obama needs one more justice. If elected, he will get it, and same-sex marriage will be forced on all of America. If Romney wins, the Supreme Court will likely leave the issue of same-sex marriage to be decided by the people and their elected representatives.
Thus everything is up for grabs this November: the House, the Senate, the presidency, the Supreme Court and whether we still call the United States of America God's country.
Game on!
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An excellent column.
I don't disagree for a second that Mr. Buchanan's analysis is correct. What he doesn't mention is that opinion polls keep swinging more in favor of gay marriage every time a new one is reported. (If that isn't true, please correct me.) What is to be done to reverse this trend? (And has anyone out there also read William J. Watkins, Jr.'s eye-opening article in the April 2012 Chronicles, "When Judicial Supremacists Attack?", which strikes me as a tactical argument of the utmost value? [BTW, Mr. Watkins' occasional pieces in Chronicles are among the staggeringly many vital reasons for subscribing to Chronicles.])
Mr. Buchanan,
So, is Joe Biden the Union Army forcing Lee to fight at Sharpsburg and likewise forcing Obama to play his gay hand? Is Obama a latter day Lincoln needing a victory to wave his gay marriage proclamation from? I don't know, the reference to Antietam confuses me. Maybe some smart person can explain how the coming election is like Antietam, because I can't see it. If Mr. Buchanan sees homosexual marriage as the watershed issue in a bloody, hard fought battle this November, I would have to digress. I don't disagree that some folks are trying to change the definitions of things as Mr. Buchanan says. I don't disagree that Obama wants to change the Supreme Court so they legalize gay marriage either. But the thing is, this here battle between 'traditional' marriage and 'gay' marriage is a lot like a battle between traditional gravity and gay gravity. What does it accomplish to ratify traditional gravity by law or to enshrine gay gravity in the Constitution? I modestly submit that gravity will be completely unmoved in either case. If I'm wrong, maybe we should pass laws respecting traditional heat as the one true hotness in case someone gets the idea there should be a gay version also? Along with traditional marriage, gravity and heat, there seems to be no end of things gays might like to define in a homosexual manner. I wonder, will water still be wet if Obama is re-elected? Probably not, lets pass some more laws. While we are busily engaged in codifying our separate realities we should not forget to dump traditional insanity into the dustbin. The new, improved insanity will be defined as the denial or break from unreal realities as defined by law. So anyway, what's the point? Yes, that's it, this so-called battle is being waged by people who have a very tenuous grasp of the basics. Basics like calling a rose an automobile doesn't make it so. Not even if you pass a law or Constitutional amendment saying so. And, passing a law in support of traditional gravity is just as stupid since gravity will only procreate with an opposite sex partner no matter what any judge may rule. Thus, I see people straining themselves in desperate battles for and against reality wielding swords of illusion. Maybe we should just laugh at the silly homosexuals and call it a day?
Sounds like it is getting pretty sporty out there, fellows. But I can almost see the other side of the river from here, "let us cross and rest in the shade of the trees." As for any possible or potential reinforcements? Pat, surely you jest.
There are sound secular reasons for limiting marriage to one man and one woman yet these arguments are not being made.
For people of the same sex to "marry" requires a redefinition of the purpose. The purpose of marriage is family formation and orderly transfer of property and other interests, including responsibility for any offspring should the marriage dissolve. This purpose derives from natural processes (procreation and the value created by the husband and wife in supporting the family). While you can argue that homosexuals can establish a family, it is on its face "unnatural" in that procreation is impossible except by artificial and contrived means. Such a redefinition was not required to remove laws prohibiting interracial marriages, an argument frequently made to support the civil rights argument in favor of same sex marriage.
Many argue, particularly libertarians and their fellow-travelers on the left, that "the state should get out of the marriage business" and leave it to religious organizations. This argument, which is very popular even among conservative bloggers needs to be countered. The state has a legitimate interest in marriage and family formation. Marriage ensures a legal bond between the father and his children. When this bond is not present, the state becomes the husband and father and the women and children largely end up in poverty and disfunction.
Once the wall is breached and relationships between/among homosexuals are legalized, other relationships will be legalized as well. That's how the law works - precedent is important and the civil rights argument for homosexual marriage cannot be limited to two people. There will be no reason to prohibit legalization of relationships between or among mixed or same sex groups or siblings. Along with civil unions and domestic partnerships, the menu of legal relationships will continue to expand and the notion of the family as we know it will disappear. It's well on the way there now.
I believe many independents, the voters most coveted by both parties, can be reached with these arguments because it is difficult to caricature proponents of secular arguments in the way the press does regularly with religious people. With secular arguments you are basically arguing on their turf and they will have a harder time responding.
All aside from the fact, of course, that the idea of marriage between two or more members of the same sex is ludicrous on its face.
It is a long stretch to think that Romney, a liberal from Massachusetts, will not sell out his voters on this issue, like every other Republican president. Or that he will make a reliable Supreme Court appointment. Remember Souter, Blackmum, Stevens, etc.
"nuts"
The whole issue is moot, as one could see the handwriting on the wall even in the mid to late 80's. Why even lament the death of Christianity anymore? What did Christians do when the late 60's started all of this mess? They did nothing, and the virus of humanism grew to epic proportions. Sure Falwell and his Moral Majority woke some of the people up, but it was too late, as many "believers" succumbed to the temptations of modern living, trapped by all its advertizing propaganda in the mass media. The cold hard facts are that Christianity was a useful tool for the political elites for the past 2000 years to keep the sheep in line and to give cohesion to small to medium sized European states who needed unity above all just to keep existing in times of war, etc. The morality play of Christianity kept the peace, and civilization in place as well. The problem was, the elites saw a more insidius and more complete way in keeping the people in line by making them feel that they were free, when in reality, they were being economically enslaved via the trojan horse of democracy. At the same time, the elites know that they can never have any sort of unity at all among the people or their power could be challenged. Why are socialist and communist groups or parties tolerated, but right wing parties are castigated for being evil incarnate? Simple, they usually are nationalisitic in origin, and want to promote a dominant group, which in turn will provide any sort of unity to fight the corrupt elites currently in power. As neither major political party in the United States represents the people it own't make a hill of beans who wins in November. In our lifetimes, we will see gay marriage in this natioin.
Judge Bartley, on May 13th, 2012 at 3:58 pm Said:
State laws permitting homosexual “marriage” are void as a violation of natural law. No one has the power to change the meaning of words.
MA’RRIAGE.n.s The act of uniting a man and woman for life. Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary, 4th Ed.
As Aquinas wrote:
“Secondly, a change in the natural law may be understood by way of subtraction, so that what previously was according to the natural law, ceases to be so. In this sense, the natural law is altogether unchangeable in its first principles: but in its secondary principles, which, as we have said (4), are certain detailed proximate conclusions drawn from the first principles, the natural law is not changed so that what it prescribes be not right in most cases.”
So natural law is unchangeable except in its secondary principles–that is principles that don’t depart from the core principle, but that are further expositions of the core principle. The core principle of marriage is man and woman.
And gay “marriage”, is an illegitmate subtraction from that core principle.
Beyond that, marriage is a biological union. Homosexual marriage is not a biological union, for it can produce no offspring. As Dr. Charles Rice put it, “[H]omosexual activity is a dead end. It rejects life and focuses on excrement which is dead.”
Could Indiana have rightly redefined Pi? Could Minnesota rightly change the definition of “ex post facto”; or “man” to mean “beasts of the field”? Or could a legislature, like the villains in 1984 (or was it Brave New World?) say “war is peace”. Or change the definition of “theft” to exclude thefts from people making over $100,000 a year. The suggestion of mutability is uncommonly absurd and even dangerous.
I'd say the most pathological virus among public Christians like Pat Buchannan has been cowardice, exemplified in this case by euphemistically attributing the anti-Christian motives of the likes of Kagan, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor to sheer crap like "liberal activism."
"The cold hard facts are that Christianity was a useful tool for the political elites for the past 2000 years to keep the sheep in line and to give cohesion to small to medium sized European states who needed unity above all just to keep existing in times of war, etc."
Yes, these are some of the cold hard facts and consequences of the warm hearth and home for human hearts the Christian Revelation provided. It is still about choosing something other than abstract national choices, which are a block and not a door towards heaven. Our destiny is in our first principles and whatever of those we thought we held as a nation once upon a time have been divided or smashed into a thousand pieces. The only two principles we can agree on today as a country is the law of supply and demand and abstract charity -- as in somebody needs to do something for my neighbor.
I thought it was profoundly humorous and revealing when Wendell Berry recently finished his remarks for the annual Jefferson Lecture and one of the government officials who had invited him stood up and reminded the audience that Berry's remarks did not necessarily represent those of the Federal government.
Oh, Really ? Really ? The official must have been referring to Berry's profound insights that rats and roaches also live by the laws of supply and demand. That unjust wars are as deadly and expensive as just wars for the folks who fight them, but less, not more, honorable for the folks who start them. That eating and drinking could be considered necessary economic activities too. And other obvious things that are not "national policy." For heaven's sake!!
Judge Bartley, this post deserves to be circulated everywhere in the world, but all I can say is that I hope you have good locks and your house is not made of flammable material: when there is nothing refutable, as is the case with your post, they will go for the physical onslaught
Mr. Nicholas: "Judge Bartley, this post deserves to be circulated everywhere in the world, but all I can say is that I hope you have good locks and your house is not made of flammable material: when there is nothing refutable, as is the case with your post, they will go for the physical onslaught."
Thank you, Mr. Nicholas. I am attempting to engage Mr. T as my bodyguard.
Thank you, Mr. Nicholas. I am attempting to engage Mr. T as my bodyguard.
Not a bad idea. (By the way, "Nicholas" is my first name. In France surnames are often capitalized to avoid confusion in transitioning between situations that demand various conventions in the ordering of names.)
i hear the eunuched boys of summer in these tunes. falsetto lads just reaching for the sky to plead surrender. clairvoyants seeking refuge neath the shade, mootdame sosostris reading writings on the wall, and no-names calling betters cowards. oh hear these boys of autumn in their morsing mournful tunes, they're not the men their fathers were- perhaps the sons of talc and pinch. reinforcements? no ! athanasius will do in a pinch.
r.a.,
Excellent choice. I can tell you that murderers still want their palms read after the crime, that "mootdame sosostris" is still a cross dresser, and Athanasius still lives and breathes "in the very heart of the Church." Thank you for the excellent post. I found it quite delightful and encouraging.
I'm still waiting for somebody to explain the Antietam reference. Surely, somebody has a clue? Don't be afraid, I won't pretend to know everything. Much.
Dan, your point is excellent. As much as I admire wise and well intentioned Catholic lay commentators like Mr. Buchanan, I can't just ignore the fact that the Catholic Church is still denying, ignoring or rationalizing their rotten leadership. God only knows what the nuns have been up to all this time. Every week sees a new lawsuit against a perverted priest or bishop. Will the Church ever clean house? If not, they have nothing to say to me, the barbaric Muslims, Obama, or anyone else. Own your perverted leadership, excise it and renew your faith. Failing that, I have nothing but contempt for your homo-centric perversion gorging itself on the billion dollar trough of micro-regulated and ironically named, 'faith-based initiatives'. If Luther was alive, he would burn you down. Shake off your cowardice, stop making excuses and maybe you can be relevant once again. Failing that, the Muslims will allow you to live like the worms you are. Cheers.