As another day ends, a new one will soon begin, and slowly but surely America is stumbling out of a summer that has dimmed her ability to be a moral leader in a world tarnished by the temporal and drowned in debauchery.
For those of us keeping track, this summer has produced a scorecard not favorable to the people who are knee deep in the culture war to reclaim America's values and dignity. The area suffering the largest number of casualties — marriage and traditional family values.
There is no question about it: the Summer of 2003 will go down in history as the Summer of Sodomy. The Buggery Battalion, forever diligent in its quest to lay siege to America's cultural institutions, has made tremendous strides in replacing traditional Judeo-Christian values with a New Age doctrine of tolerance and acceptance — i.e., unconditional acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle. Put simply, there is not a social structure existing today that has not been touched by the homosexual movement.
In Hollywood, the informal pronouncements of the Hayes office have been indefinitely canceled, while the Bravo Network prides itself for airing the gay reality show Boy Meets Boy. The schools have long fallen prey to the homosexual movement, so it should come as no surprise that New York City has created, and funded, a high school strictly for homosexuals. As for the arts — move over Michelangelo, it is time to make way for Mapplethorpe. To close off the summer, homosexuals finally laid claim to our last bastion of hope: the Church. Just last week the Episcopal Church USA cast aside 2,000 years of scripture and tradition and ordained a homosexual bishop.
One of the most successful campaigns of the summer occurred when homosexual activists scaled the walls of the “Hall of Justice,” raised the rainbow flag over the Supreme Court of the United States, and convinced the Court that sodomy was a “mystery of life” that cannot be proscribed. The teachings and morals of the world's greatest religions were “rejected” with one swipe of a pen — a pen held by Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Justice Kennedy, in his majority opinion striking down the Texas sodomy statute, wrote: “the right to liberty … gives [homosexuals] the right to engage in [sodomy] without intervention of the government.” Kennedy reasoned that the values that seek to deter and proscribe homosexual conduct — the values held as truths by the Catholic Church and the world's other great religions — “have been rejected elsewhere,” thereby justifying the Court's decision to swing open the doors to consensual acts of sodomy. By the way, Kennedy is a Catholic.
Under § 209 of the Code of Canon Law of the Catholic Church, “Christ's faithful are bound to preserve their communion with the Church at all times, even in their external affairs.” § 212 continues by stating, “Christ's faithful, conscious of their own responsibility, are bound to show Christian obedience to what the sacred Pastors, who represent Christ, declare as teachers of the faith and prescribe as rulers of the Church.”
While many things come and go and change over time, the Catholic teaching pertaining to homosexual behavior has remained steadfast — homosexual acts are “acts of grave depravity.” Pope John Paul II has stated that “such union is to be opposed,” and de facto unions “between homosexuals are a deplorable distortion ….” Most importantly, in a comment directed to those who would use liberty to justify homosexual behavior, John Paul states: “To think of liberty as a moral permissiveness or the ability to infringe the law, is to twist its true nature.” Justice Kennedy must have missed that homily.
For too long Christians in positions of authority, particularly those proclaiming membership in the communion of the Catholic Church, have separated their Catholic obligations from their public responsibilities. Justice Kennedy celebrates homosexual sodomy, Senator Ted Kennedy advocates for increased abortion rights, and the list goes on and on. It is now time for the Catholic Church to stand up and defend the faith. It is time for the Church to excommunicate such cafeteria Catholics from communion with the Church — and it should start with Justice Kennedy.
The sad fact is that the traditional values exalted by the Christian churches no longer retain their prominent place in our society. Christians and conservatives alike have ceased being the culture and are slowly become the counter-culture. Such a change in status requires a change of plan.
We must begin a new offensive to reclaim our position in our culture, and this offensive must begin at the foundation of our cause, the Church. The Church, Catholic and Protestant alike, must lead by example and must show its members, and the world, that actions have consequences. By excommunicating Justice Kennedy, the Catholic Church would be defending its faith, preserving its people, and protecting those nations who still hold true to Christian values. Protestant churches must follow suit, cleaning their house of members who only pay lip service to the message of Christ.
There are too many wolves in sheep's clothing lurking around our sanctuaries, and the time has come to send these wolves packing. Until we reclaim our own house, we will never be able to reclaim a country, let alone a culture.
Joe Murray (jmurray@afa.net) is a staff attorney for the Tupelo, Mississippi-based American Family Association Center for Law & Policy. The Center specializes in constitutional litigation.
(This article courtesy of Agape Press.)
