Here’s an article I wrote in 2008, as
commentary on a disturbing trend. It's still very much relevant, if not more so. You may like the way in which it accounts for
the intersections of various crises in today’s culture wars. (Or you may not!)
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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.
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.
