Religious Liberty versus Orientation Liberty

Since postmodernism came on the scene as a major force in society, there has been a constant attack on societal norms. There is no truth, only truths. There is no privileged culture, only a multiplicity of cultures, beliefs and norms. There is no universal justice, only interests and the competition of interest groups.

The assault on American values has become a culture war that is fully understood by the barbarians, much like the war on terror is best understood by the terrorists. Most Americans fully appreciate neither war and the results could be devastating. The shocking news from Boston is a prime example.

Catholic Charities of Boston, one of the nation's oldest adoption agencies, was getting out of the adoption business. We have encountered a dilemma we cannot resolve. . . . The issue is adoption to same-sex couples. Paula Wisnewski, adoption director for the Home for Little Wanderers, told the Boston Globe: It's a shame because it is certainly going to mean that fewer children from foster care are going to find permanent homes. Marylou Sudders, president of the Mass. Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, said simply, This is a tragedy for kids.

Maggie Gallagher in the Weekly Standard 05/15/2006 explained how this tragedy happened. Massachusetts law for a decade prohibited orientation discrimination and the Massachusetts Supreme Court order to permit gay marriage completed the square. To operate in Massachusetts, an adoption agency must be licensed by the state. And to get a license, an agency must pledge to obey state laws barring discrimination--including the decade-old ban on orientation discrimination. With the legalization of gay marriage in the state, discrimination against same-sex couples would be outlawed, too.

Thus a mere two years after the introduction of gay marriage in America, a number of latent concerns about the impact of this innovation on religious freedom ceased to be theoretical.

Doug Kmiec of Pepperdine law school clarified the issue: A successful analogy will be drawn in the public mind between irrational, and morally repugnant, racial discrimination and the rational, and at least morally debatable, differentiation of traditional and same-sex marriage. Maggie Gallagher amplifies this point: For if sexual orientation is like race, then people who oppose gay marriage will be treated under law like bigots who opposed interracial marriage. And the law will intervene in powerful ways, as shown by the closing of the Catholic Charities adoption arm.

Major forces are at work trying to change America, using activist courts as powerful levers. And the majority of Americans, some 60-80% who have voted against same-sex-marriage every time they got a chance, seem helpless to do anything about it. Clearly there is a fear of being labeled a bigot. But the moral paralysis seems to be even more firmly rooted.

In a remarkable new book called White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era, Shelby Steele, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, explains why America seems to lack moral authority. He calls it white guilt because people stigmatized with moral crimes-- racism in America, racism and imperialism in Europe-- lack moral authority and so act guiltily whether they feel guilt or not. And this stigmatization is power because it affects the terms of legitimacy for Western nations and for their actions in the world.

Steele goes on to show that the stigmatization associated with white guilt explains why America since WWII has fought its wars with a policy of minimalism and restraint that makes a space for the enemy. In Vietnam this Johnsonian policy led to our defeat and in Iraq it has led to another long and rather passionless war against a weak enemy. The war effort in Iraq is focused more on democracy building and social work than on war fighting; it’s what Steele calls war as the Great Society.

And the result of white guilt is global in its dimension. Anti-Americanism, whether in Europe, or on the American left, works by the mechanism of white guilt. It stigmatizes America with all the imperialistic and racist ugliness of the white Western past--- one need only be anti-American in order to be "good," in order to have an automatic moral legitimacy and power in relation to America.

Steele’s analysis is true, of course, and it also explains why the movements for gay rights and immigration rights have employed the rubric of the civil rights era. Americans will do almost anything to escape from the bonds of white guilt. It’s time we got over it.