Ships in the Night

Cycle of Terror, Graydon Parrish

Many of us are very concerned with our surrogate morality of politics.



From this base we mobilize against the enemies of our rights, gracing our elegant platitudes with the Constitution's old lace. Thus we are kept secure and fervent for awhile. We cannot be assailed in our perfection of doctrine. Is there anyone more doctrinal than one American trying to prove a legal point to another. 

It's not a question.

We often hear we should respect the office of the president even if we do not respect the man. This is perhaps not so clear or shocking as the greater fabric of propaganda that feeds the American desire of divine imperial right, of secular sanctity. Jupiter and Jefferson, Neptune and Ben Franklin.

Our Pantheon, like any which is untrue, is manipulable, subject to the requirements of the time. Our views and values shift, some towards decay, others toward growth and fertility. I am not suggesting that allowing our political system to change as development requires is inadvisable. But allowing our political construct, which is intrinsically changeable, to become the basis by which we measure the human good -- to allow popular consensus to override the necessity of moral considerations -- is deranged.

Since when has the populace en masse been a moral authority. It has become the surrogate morality.

Those who support gay rights may very well have a legal basis for doing so. But considering a woman may choose to sue a family if her child hurts himself of his own fault on said family's property, or considering the hypocrisy of asserting the "right to choose" whilst forcing religious institutions to forgo that right, who should place his faith in the republic?

It becomes more and more apparent that supporters of gay rights are not a minority. They are making slow headway toward the achievement of their ironic goal. This is the public thing. It is a part of the ideological doctrine, and it will be enforced.

So why debate the issue on the legal plane? Why discuss in the arena a question of fundamental import to the understanding of the human person and his dignity. The sanctuary in the stock exchange.

I don't believe that the majority of those concerned with the effects of homosexuality on the cultural -- and indeed the personal -- sphere give two little lumps of refuse about what is legally sanctioned in the United States of America, or any other state for that matter. The question has political implications, sure, but it is, at its root, a theological discussion requiring a holistic approach.

Hence the absurdity of claiming a political institution such as civil marriage as a sort of banner of moral rectitude. Civil marriage is ultimately an agreement between two human beings who do not necessarily understand the spiritual significance of human relations. Civil marriage is something surfeit, another part of that ideological framework that says freedom is doing what one likes. It even speaks to the machinery of capitalism, the form of the business agreement. Civil marriage is for one or both parties who are not yet capable of acknowledging the transformational significance of sacramental marriage.

Doubtless, there is meaning if the promises made are kept, but that meaning derives from the secular desire to give just as much as one must without sacrificing the farcical ideal of the autonomous self. Moreover, let us remember that the official acts with the authority vested by the state.

The state is a format. It is not an authority. It's the clothes we wear, and no one needs a talking hat (unless there are some magical, faerie qualities of which I am unaware).

In the end, if same-sex unions are permitted, nothing will have been proved. It will simply be fact. Arbitration du jour.

Deep ontological disturbance will remain beneath the animal accretions of the postmodern self who seeks to war in arrogance like a prancing bird of paradise in its alpha display. See me. Love me. That is my only cry though it is the burning song of hatred.

Finally, the postmodern homosexualist rests his argument upon the naught. If his rationale is "liberal" and "progressive", then it has foundations in youthful inexperience and discounted sophism. If it is based on the state, then it is simply unseasonal (if he is trying to prove the goodness of homosexual acts). Freedom is meaningless if used to refer to a political "right". "Goodness" is meaningless if dressed in the same trappings. We determine the state. It does not determine us.

The only determination that is meaningful will be a discussion on a theological basis: what is the meaning of man? And the "progressive" "liberal" must join if he is to be considered. Otherwise, his cries are irrelevant, his attempted discrediting of religion (from a position of postmodern secular doctrine) laughable. The cart does not lead the horse: politics must nod to the wisdom of religion. Things go badly when they do not.

This is not a question that the state can answer or was designed to answer. The impending legislation is asinine: posterior end first. Again, the state can rise, fall, remain with a limping mediocrity -- this has no bearing on the question of what is right, what is good, what is fitting. Parties on either side of this debate must not be afraid to abandon the town hall (if it becomes a center of propagandizing) for the churches and universities.

I would start with an in-depth consideration of John Paul II's positive explication of human sexuality, which is not based on a fervid desire to discount the validity of homosexuality, but a desire to understand man. Hence, you will not find the popular phraseology you seek. Bring your anti-ego.

He starts from the beginning. Head first.


See Susannah Black's Brave New Cold War

A Defense of Child-bearing

Frantisek Kupka, "The Beginning of Life"

Who has been blessed with those mysterious moments in which an infant for the first time toddles forward on her feet, unaided by any guiding hand or low object, in deep concentration upon the next step? In these moments especially do we not empathize most readily with the parents of this beautiful creature, and wish ourselves progenitors and recipients of this most wondrous gift that can only be divine? Love surges in our hearts, mysterious love without the need for rationale, mysterious love that gives birth to hope, hope that asserts the goodness of this new and curious life. 

Some say that a pregnant mother is irradiated with the burgeoning life within her, that her eyes are alight with the joy of expectation. We, as witnesses of this joy, must wonder how there may be any question as to the benefit of having children, of raising a healthy and numerous family. The more persons, we would say, the better. The greater number of human beings in society, the greater chance that society may grow to be great, not only in size but in quality. Saying “yes” to the possibility of children is the ultimate social act, the ultimate affirmation of the human community, and the ultimate renunciation of selfish interests. Yes, one should have children, if only because one must have children if history is to continue. We know by the very fact of mortality that the story we live is not our own. We prepare, well or poorly as the case may be, for those who come after.

The object, then, is to prepare well, and to prepare well first of all requires the existence of the reason for which we prepare: children themselves. As Pope John Paul II has said, “The future starts today, not tomorrow.” If we are to “plan for the future,” as we moderns so proudly declaim, we must not postpone or neglect the begetting of the stewards of the future. What use is a future without people? We are always speaking of the “avant-garde” in art or technology or politics as a state to be envied, and yet this obsession becomes insane when we are equally obsessed with maintaining an isolation and a lack of responsibility that contradicts this very attraction for newness by claiming it only for our moribund selves. Indeed, on a very rational level, whether or not we “like” children, humanity is nothing without reproduction. Children are the very proof that only love is eternal and we ourselves are ash.

The French spirit of this age, the spirit of ethnic extinction, is one that upraises the image of the unbound self, free and unfettered by worldly ties or the demands of relationships. The mobility to do as one pleases is prized above all else. “This existence, this here and now,” the modern Frenchman might say, “is the great thing, the only occupation worth intellectual or spiritual involvement.” And yet, by agreeing with the Frenchman, we would most ardently disagree. The idolization of the independent self above all else is the same as the hatred of the self above all else, for the self is nothingness without relationship to others, divine or human. The self asserts nothing if it does not assert the perfection of itself, which lies – unexpectedly to some – in the engendering and nurturing of new life like oneself, an infinite affirmation of self-worth. Imagine the great pain and emptiness felt by Hannah as she wept and prayed in the temple, mourned her childlessness in abject loneliness in the darkened tent, swept her garments about her to cover the shame of being known, facelessness being better than barrenness. How she wept and prayed, a woman beginning to wrinkle with age – but what did the purity of desire gain her, all her attentions devoted in ecstasy toward a possible and improbable new life to give hers meaning: reward. Reward in another heartbeat to join her own in the acclamation, the drumbeat and song of life's praise.

We take the ability to procreate for granted, as if this seemingly ubiquitous biological ability we must necessarily also possess. Would it not be a terrible shame if those who now artificially postpone the possibility of children until they have reached what they deem as the appropriate time find themselves, when that time arrives, to be incapable of the greatest blessing afforded us in our briefness upon this earth? Is this awesome blessing, then, not to be pursued with passion and dear effort? Are we not to bend all our will upon the attainment of this treasure that ratifies the very proposition that life is worth living? Are we not to be exceedingly grateful if we are able in the requirements of circumstance to conceive and bear a child? Indeed, we must be and we must do, for as we believe there is a soul, children are a gift from the Divine, and therefore sacred from their conception, and what is sacred must be sought without ceasing.