The ‘Choice’ / ‘Tyranny’ Bait

And Switch

To the Editor:

A Bee letter writer asks if opposition to same-sex marriage is Biblically based. That would not explain five millennia of human history, predating the Bible, on every continent, among people of every religion and no religion. Chalking it up to irrational “phobias” of just about every culture in history would be without warrant. Same-sex marriage is supported by only 28 percent of Americans, according to a Times-CBS poll; it’s unlikely that the other 72 percent rely on the Bible, or are irrational. Much opposition is based on the First Principles of Practical Reason, the Tao, Natural Law or “public reason,” and nonreligious analysis of sociological studies.

Aside from those reasons, others may be concerned about what will follow. All too often what has been sold as “choice” is delivered as “tyranny.” “What could it hurt?” is too often followed by, “How could we have known?”

Abortion? Sold to us in the 70s as a first-trimester choice for tough cases, it morphed into abortion at any time for any reason. The tyranny begins when the European Union and groups in America want to force doctors and pharmacists to participate in something the original Hippocratic Oath did not allow. Amnesty International, founded to aid political prisoners, has been highjacked in Europe and thinks those who refuse to perform abortions should be arrested for “assault” and “acts of violence” — without irony.

 Assisted suicide and infanticide? In Europe, what was sold as “choice” is rapidly becoming — as the nonreligious head of a major secular bioethics think tank told me — the power of hospital bean counters and avaricious family members to kill you if you refuse to go peacefully. And consider what Hugh Hewitt says about the Dutch Groningen Protocol (google it): “The establishment of ‘independent committees’ to dispatch non-consenting humans is nothing but a death-penalty committee for innocents. If the severely retarded may be killed upon appropriate motion, second, debate, and majority vote, why not … anyone the ‘independent committee’ deems as usefully dispatched?”

 Same-sex marriage? It’s now against the law in Great Britain for private, religious schools to teach the major, 2,500-year-old ethical theory that predates Christianity; Massachusetts judges sneer at lower-income parents, saying that if they do not want their kindergarteners taught about same-sex marriage, they can send them to costly private schools. The same state would rather see Catholic adoption agencies shut down than apply religious exemptions, though there are plenty of secular agencies. In Canada, it’s illegal for some teachings – whether Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox Jewish, Baha’i or Islam — to be disseminated. Apparently certain conclusions of Aristotle, Plato, and even Gandhi are “hate crimes,” as the all-powerful State reaches into every corner of our hearts and minds.

 This isn’t about “prejudice.” Civil unions provide all the civil rights needed. Can our legislators guarantee that the change to “marriage” will not result in the abrogation of parental rights and freedom of religion, speech, thought, conscience, assembly? That is the real question — not the red herring of whether opposition is based on the Bible.

Mary Taylor

31 Jeremiah Road, Sandy Hook                                    April 24, 2007