Last night Bill O’Reilly launched into a tirade against his guest, Laura Ingraham, over some rumored feud between O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh over the gay marriage issue. As rival, ultra-liberal network MSNBC defined the feud as Limbaugh commenting on O’Reilly’s perceived flip-flop on gay marriage (here). I watched O’Reilly ranting at Laura Ingraham and his rudeness at cutting her off shocked me. He repeatedly yelled that he is the one who embraces the enlightened position on gay marriage, citing he has always supported civil unions and thinks each state should decide the matter. What struck me most was how he treated Ingraham, who has filled in as a guest host for O’Reilly many times over the years and been a frequent guest on his show. His volatile emotional outburst got me thinking about how all these hot button political issues always rest on emotional appeals to “fairness” and being “open-minded”, where anyone opposed to the latest societal push leftward starts out already marginalized and pigeon-holed as a bigot. Particularly telling was how two self-described devout Catholics, like O’Reilly and Ingraham argued over O’Reilly’s use of the phrase “thump the Bible”, a tactic which O’Reilly castigated traditional marriage proponents for using. Ingraham took offense to the term and based on the MSNBC piece, apparently Limbaugh commented on that too. O’Reilly argued that the anti-gay marriage folks (supporters of traditional marriage) need to make a “secular” case against gay marriage (or maybe what’s really called for is a compelling argument for gay marriage). O’Reilly condescendingly telling Ingraham that he was disappointed in her comments, demonstrates how these hot-button issues skid into emotionalism rather than serious debate. O’Reilly wanted to make sure his audience knows he is “fair-minded”, making the debate about his enlightened views rather than seriously debating same-sex marriage.
Decades of legislation precede this latest push to redefine marriage, all wrapped up in tidy, “fair-minded” secular language. If marriage is nothing more than a civil contract, then certainly same-sex marriage should not invoke much angst. Legislation forces cultural change, leaving in its wake fractured social institutions and a growing number of morally-confused people. Just a few examples to highlight my point, well, first last year Dr. Phil ran a show about a mother who wants the “right” to euthanize her severely-handicapped adult children (here). Dr. Phil and the mother framed the issue as putting these handicapped adults out of their suffering – an act of mercy. The vast majority of the audience embraced the idea of murdering these two adults with severe disabilities. Another “issue” that hit the news in recent years took the “viable fetus” argument off the table and in its place came the argument that between a woman and her doctor, should rest the decision to murder a child born from a botched abortion procedure. That these issues are even up for debate demonstrates the slippery slope of the left’s march toward their utopian visions of a “fair” society, devoid of the constrictions of our narrow-minded, patriarchal forefathers visions of “equal protection under the law”. And here’s a subject near and dear to my heart, our US military and the endless throes of integrating women and women’s issues on military planning and readiness. We’ve witnessed a decade of a cottage industry in the news business to promote and glorify moms deploying to Afghanistan and Iraq, pretending this is just peachy for all these children and that all these women have adequate long-term, 24 hour a day, childcare plans in place. No one wants to look too closely at the reality of how children, especially very young children, fare when their mother leaves them for a year. It’s all wonderful, so don’t look askance at a mother abandoning a baby, just smile and applaud these women who can have it all. Juxtaposed next to these happy human interest pieces are pieces like this Huffington Post article (here), citing that women in the military are twice as likely to divorce as their male counterparts. Here’s a 2009 CNN piece on military children being at a high risk of psychological problems when parents deploy (here).
After being hit with the same-sex couple dying partner trope for years, even some conservatives like me felt my heartstrings being pulled and I relented and reluctantly moved toward a less rigid stand against “civil unions”. No one wants to wear the bigot label, so the left’s relentless mainstreaming efforts work like magic over time and they know this. Jonah Goldberg wrote an excellent USA Today piece (here), where he explains how he feels about the gay marriage issue. Goldberg approaches the issue assuming goodwill on both sides, which sure sounds nice and “fair”. The only qualm for me rests on decades of experience watching how these cultural issues play out with political activists on the left. Are they arguing for a chance to have cozy traditional marriages or are they intent of destroying the institution of marriage from within and turning it into a meaningless contract from which they can rewrite all laws pertaining to family matters in society?. With one fell swoop do they intend to erase thousands of years of civilization’s lessons and remake society to their utopian vision? Can religion, as O’Reilly argues, really be completely erased from the secular arguments or are the lessons gathered from religious teachings vital to our civic undertakings? Do religious tenets of right and wrong form the basis of our laws?
Lots of questions left to ponder on the same-sex marriage issue and not much more than raucous political flame-throwing from both sides of the political spectrum. The supreme irony lies with the left pushing free-love outside the confines of marriage for decades and now they’ve come back to wrestle the institution of marriage from the hands of religion entirely and under the new incantation, marriage will be “transformed” into some new institution. That’s a certainty.. It wasn’t enough to urge women to abandon marriage as a evil remnant of our patriarchal bondage, now marriage is an institution that same sex couples aspire to, but oddly enough the left still isn’t too motivated to support heterosexual marriage. Where are the left’s mouthpieces rallying for heterosexual marriage and purporting the virtues of marriage, if as they insist, marriage is a civil right now that must not be denied to same-sex couples? Still here in the boonies waiting to figure out the devil in all these details.
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