Community is not an aggregate: culture war at the school board

Commonweal, Oct 23, 1992 by John Garvey

But something much deeper is at stake here. The idea that a home centered in a man and a woman who live together in love, and love for their children, is more desirable than other alternatives is based on a long experience of family, and the deepest needs of children. There are of course perfectly horrible homes based on heterosexual marriages, and some "nontraditional" homes in which there is a lot of love. This does not mean, however, that we should not have any ideal at all, or allow any alternative to be seen as equally valuable. Should intolerance force us to accept patriarchal polygamy, or homes in which sadism and masochism are the rule, or incestuous marriages? Some might not see a problem with any of these, as long as all the adults involved gave their free consent. But if secularism reaches a point where one may not advance any understanding as superior to any other, we have to fight it. People like Irene Impellizzeri are being asked to see their own values as mere "lifestyle options," inferior to the desire-based indifferentist culture she criticizes. At home you may tell your teen-ager that chastity is right, or abortion is wrong; but he or she will not even hear chastity mentioned in school, and abortion may not be criticized as wrong, but must be mentioned as an option. This is not even relativism; it is the final triumph of extreme seculansm over any traditional understanding.

Toward the end of her speech Impellizzeri said, "There seems to be an extraordinary celebration going on around us, a celebration of the momentary, of the barren, of the terminal, of the involuntary, of the gross--a death-culture, in fact." I'm afraid she' s right, and the kind of outrage her speech provoked almost proves her point.