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It’s Not The Homosex, Stupid
With all due respect to savvy Mark Steyn who quipped “It’s the Demography, Stupid,” I wish Steyn would have pushed back for us the curtain of Western society’s bedroom a little further in order to give us a glimpse of the smirking elephant in the closet. Heaven knows we desperately need a paradigm shift in our thinking about sexual “freedom” in the bedroom.
With all due respect to savvy Mark Steyn who quipped “It’s the Demography, Stupid,” I wish Steyn would have pushed back for us the curtain of Western society’s bedroom a little further in order to give us a glimpse of the smirking elephant in the closet. Heaven knows we desperately need a paradigm shift in our thinking about sexual “freedom” in the bedroom.
Is it my imagination or do you notice that
a great many “conservative” culture warriors—individuals and organizations,
Christians and otherwise—have taken to lobbing grenades at those promoting and
engaging in homosex, making that the defining strategy, if not obsession, of
their war? According to them, among the top threats to our civilization is the
“homosexual” agenda.
So let me ask you. What would you think of
drivers who ignored red lights but who regularly demonized speeding drivers as
the real enemies on the road? Comical? Yes, but consider this. Heterosexuals
who rail against homosex, which indeed is a particularly odious variation of
sterile sex, are—with strikingly few exceptions—themselves egregiously addicted
to their own pleasurable variety of sterile sex. Equally comical, of course, if
you consider sterile sex per se to be
in a league with dangerous behaviours such as running red lights.
But please don’t jump ship at this point.
Hear me out. I know that our post modern society, parroting the relativism of
its enlightened pulpiteers, considers this subject settled and entirely off
limits. Any suggestion to re-open it is probably constituted an offense in
itself—a possible relapse to a prudish repressive sexual ethic of Victorian times.
“But we believe in real marriage, the traditional
kind, one man and one woman for life, and sex only in that context. That’s the
correct standard because it’s God’s standard. A married man and woman can make
their own decisions in good conscience about the kind of sex they engage in.
It’s nobody else’s business.”
Indeed, that’s the claim, but tragically
these days it rarely goes beyond a claim. For too many conservatives, yes, and
Christians also, who normally relish opportunities to expose politically
correct speech, the lack of reasoned debate and evasions of the truth, a remarkable
about-turn takes place when the truth concerning sexual disorders gets a little
too close to home.
Whoa there! Truth? Disorders? According to who?
Can it be a shock to the reader that throughout two millennia of Western civilization—as well as nearly two millennia of Jewish thought which preceded it—the moral consensus on sterile sex could be summed up like this: All sexual activity, both heterosexual and otherwise, practiced with a view to circumvent procreation constitutes a perversion of God’s order and an abomination.
Here we could take our pick of sources,
from the Early Fathers through to Martin Luther, John Calvin, or any other
reputable preacher, bible scholar or theologian, right up to the early and mid
1900’s. All—without exception—considered these acts as “a most unnatural
wickedness, and a grievous wrong.”
Thus we had the American and Canadian laws
which prohibited the sale and distribution of devices that aided in such
perversity and which were not rescinded until the 1960’s. Thus we record the
witness of some of Western society’s most public figures, such as U.S. President
Theodore Roosevelt, who matter-of-factly labeled the practice of birth control
as “the capital sin” against civilization.
But are such ideas peculiarly Western, or
even Christian? A surprising number of non-Western cultures throughout history
fully squared with Christian teaching on this point. Mahatma Ghandi, a world
famous reformer and Hindu, condemned sterile heterosex as a corrupter of
morals, a destroyer of marriage and a further degradation of women.
But regardless, truth—the old-fashioned
objective kind—is no respecter of cultures and the fallout in our society from
a denial of this particular truth has been debilitating. Take note of the
Anglicans, the first Christian denomination to break rank with the faith of
their fathers on this major doctrine. They formalized the opening of a
Pandora’s Box in 1930 by allowing certain exceptions for sterile heterosex and
are now being rent asunder by the practice of sterile homosex in the bedrooms
of their Bishops. Coincidence?
The extreme break with Christian tradition
represented by this acculturated disorder raises serious questions about just
how much hostility towards God we have harbored this past generation or two.
Some say our rejection of God—played out in this sexual arena—has so cursed our
Western society as to account for not only our sex-crazed degeneracy but also
family and marriage deformities and breakups, the abortion holocaust,
dangerously higher quotas of immigration due to falling birthrates, the growing
threat of Islam, the secularization phenomenon with its evil twin
Christianophobia and a mounting civilizational self-loathing.
This is a hard pill for many to swallow.
But can we admit this much at least: Steyn got it perfectly right when he
prophesied the death of Western society due to reproductive sterility. Not for
a moment did he suggest that even ten thousand new conferences and/or books on
Islam, the tyranny of homosex, the battle for marriage and the family, secular
humanism or Christophobia would save us. No, very clearly he stated that it was
the question of birthrate which we have refused to address. That alone will
cause our society to implode. Steyn put his finger on the precise nature of the
problem. Likewise the solution, if it was any closer, might jump up and bite
us.
The yearning of many contemporary
Christians for a cultural fix through revivalist and “biblical” calls to
repentance must also take the birthrate—and sterile heterosex—into account.
Though some will contest the point, it must be admitted that any conversion wrought
through the preaching of a Whitefield, Finney, et al will not only demand our
hearts get right with God but will necessarily reinstitute cultural
prohibitions and taboos supporting the age old and exegetically superior
biblical interpretation of the sin of Onanism.
The very thought makes many shudder and
some to say,
Surely, God, we can instead pay women to have babies,
still hold on to our hard earned sexual “freedoms” and save our future.
Otherwise, God, this is really going to hurt!
The suggestion that our future hinges on the abandonment of sterile heterosex is utterly disconcerting. It’s too much to grasp—let alone admit—that old fashioned traditional Western wisdom on sexuality was spot on.
But no, it was much more than that. It truly was a civilizational bulwark.
Preachers and pundits would do well then to
cease from their various crusades against homosex, Islam, etc. in order to
refocus their energies and resources to formulate a new strategy which targets
the real enemy. By attacking the ideology and behaviour which is directly
fuelling our demographic demise, our odds of making gains in this war are
markedly improved.
Another point must be raised. The defense
of current phony and lethal sexual “liberties” may be worthy of the label
progressive but hardly worthy of the label conservative, and certainly unworthy
of the name Christian, at least historically. Such perversions of true liberty
were legitimized by the victories of yesteryear’s liberals yet they currently
enslave us because they are defended by today’s “conservatives.” Conservatives
must seriously examine their own complicity in the sterile sex agenda—which has
aided in the destruction of society and has rightly identified them as
co-conspirators—and be encouraged to instead stand in defense of established
Western wisdom.
Conservatives must decide what it is that
they are fighting to conserve. Indeed, what else deserves conservation, other
than the collective wisdom and institutions central to Western thought and
civilization? Isn’t this precisely why conservatives fight unhesitatingly
against abortion, attacks on marriage, disintegration of family, pornography,
lowering of morals, etc? Yet why have we not been fighting the one mortal enemy
which Western wisdom has explicitly warned—in loudest fashion this past 100
years—would spawn precisely such an epidemic of evils? Sterile heterosex is a
beguiling demon of tremendous significance and must be opposed with all our
energies and by all possible means.
Instead, we have been trying to beef up our
society in order to withstand the intense battering spawned by our own
endorsement of sexual license: Educate about the radical homosexual agenda.
Expose the dangers and tyranny of secular humanism. Equip Canadians to confront
the threat of Islam. Bolster the family and marriage and fight those who attack
it.
It’s like trying to engineer more impact
resistant cars rather than require drivers to stop at red lights. At this
stage, it seems we have even forgotten the red light is there, or perhaps by
now we have removed it entirely from the intersection. Is it any wonder the
“culture war” is being lost?
So yes, it is the behaviour and
specifically it’s sterile sex—of all brands. With great courage, it needs to be
identified as such, properly condemned and duly proscribed.
Which again brings us back to Steyn’s
famous line and his sober closing:
It's the demography, stupid. And, if they can't muster
the will to change course, then "What do you leave behind?" is the
only question that matters.
