Educrats selling snake oil

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 13, 1996 | by Eugene Narrett

St. Patrick's Day came and went in Beantown this year, and the South Boston Veterans' Committee hosted its annual parade without being forced to sponsor the Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual club, or GLIB, that has afflicted it in the recent past. Assisted by vigilant bedfellows in the ACLU, GLIB in 1993 had the commonwealth's high court redefine the parade as a "public accommodation" -- like a hotel -- to compel it to admit the club to the parade.

Although that legalistic contortion has been straightened out, March 1996 found the anticultural agenda in full spate in the realm of Ted Kennedy and Barney Frank. To appreciate the context, consider the following letter from a doting young husband.

"Dearest, I am so glad to hear the news of your successful delivery. Please cherish our little son for me, if he is not too much trouble. But I understand whatever you feel you must do. I send you my strongest affection. Remember, that will not change." So wrote the new father to his young wife, balancing love and deference. He would like his son to live but, after all, it's a woman's choice. He's only the father; what's it to him?

Surprise No. 1: This letter is not from an American man of the nineties. It's from an Egyptian citizen of Rome, circa 140 A.D. Surprise No. 2: the letter's most striking feature is not infanticide but sexual mores and moral decay. The writer who accepted infanticide was the brother of the new mother. Get used to it.

Brother-sister marriage was legal in the Roman Empire from about 100-300 A.D. Partly this trend was pushed by families seeking to protect an inheritance of land. But it also reflected a culture that betrayed its roots in polis and civitas to dabble in foreign habits. Standards based on ancient wisdom and restraints lost hold except among the Jews and the dispersed communities of that new Jewish sect, the Christians.

Reading the rest of the above-quoted letter in Life in Roman Egypt, one notes sincere affection. Why shouldn't brother marry sister since there were material advantages and they truly loved each other? Why not, in a culture bereft of its gods?

If affection is the sole criterion for marriage, it should be allowed not only for gays and lesbians but for any two, three or five people who wish to join together. Given no-fault divorce and our throwaway ethos, incestuous or homosexual unions may be brief but no more so than those of a contemporary husband and wife, to wit, as long as the partners feel like it. So why not try it? How else to know whether you might like it?

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These thoughts are prompted by a sex quiz recently given students by a "health educator" at a Massachusetts high school. Today, health education means "gender sensitivity" and, thanks to the educrats, the choices our schools offer young people are nearly as diverse as those of imperial Rome.

"Are you heterosexual because you fear the same sex? How do you know you wouldn't prefer sleeping with someone of the same sex? Do you merely need a good gay experience?" The principal suggested these questions are not homosexual advocacy, but that's nonsense; the quiz all but tells teens to go ahead and try it.

It may be argued that such tempting of the young by adults is criminal, based upon false pity and the ignorant premise that if you encourage children to behave perversely, lesbians and gays never will be insulted or have their feelings hurt.

Gay and lesbian issues might be especially painful because they often arise from emotional wounds suffered early in life. When sexuality emerges, slowly after age 7, more quickly after 10, it shapes itself to existing strengths and problems. Some people spend life trying to resolve fears or feelings of emptiness by turning in on themselves, incurvatus in se, according to the Latin. Natural sex hardly guarantees virtue, but it does indicate sexual identity is largely intact.

More so than at any time since pagan Rome's decline, adolescents struggle to integrate their sexuality amid a storm of evil messages tempting them to be ruled by their passions and discard traditional moral teachings. Many become acutely self-conscious and uneasy. Some act out; others get defensive. There is not less friction and disorder, but more.

It is rude, cruel and counter-productive to mock gays or lesbians for their inclinations or private behavior. But courtesy and tolerance do not mean accepting homesexuality or incest as normative or meriting traditional status in family life. Close behind the push to legalize same-sex marriage (as currently in Hawaii) and to mainstream youth sodomy will be the call to legalize pedophilia. Attitudes of some in this nation are so diseased that last year a widely read liberal weekly carried an article excusing the agenda of the North American Man/Boy Love Association. It happened in Rome; it's happening here.

Children do not thrive from being told all their feelings and acts are wonderful (especially if they are perverse or involve a condom). They need to be told what's right, helped to do it and praised accordingly. When we so act, the fraction of the population practicing same-sex behavior will be even less than its current 1.5 to 2 percent.