In some ways, we should welcome what is going on. Watching the pols squirm this way makes clear that being “personally opposed but” is a ruse that serves no purpose other than letting a politician have it both ways with the voters. Unfortunately, it is a ruse can work. Maybe there are some politicians who have been punished by the voters for talking out of both sides of their mouths like this on abortion, but I can’t think of any.
There is a danger that we can overdo the charge that the “liberal media” is to blame when things don’t go our way, but in this case it is an accurate charge. The media’s response to the “personally-opposed-but” politicians can be compared to the famous dog that didn’t bark in the Sherlock Holmes story “Silver Blaze.” This was the case, you may remember, when Holmes, while investigating the slaying of a racehorse, mentions to Dr. Watson “the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.” Watson, as usual, doesn’t know what to make of Holmes’ logic. He responds, “But the dog did nothing in the nighttime.” To which Holmes replies, “That was the curious incident.” Holmes explains that he was able to identify the dog’s master as the killer of the horse. That was why the dog did not bark. The dog found nothing alarming about the killer being present because he was comfortable with his presence. The dog thought his presence normal, routine.
It seems to me that the reporters and television talking heads who find nothing incongruous about the “personally-opposed-but” line of thinking do so for the same reason. Just as the dog did not bark, they do not ask the follow-up questions that should pop to their minds immediately when some politician gets that anguished look and explains why he is unwilling to “impose” his personal morality on those who disagree with him on abortion or homosexual marriage. What follow-up questions am I talking about? The obvious ones: “Why are you personally opposed to abortion, Senator?” “Why are you personally opposed to homosexual marriage?”
It should strike the reporters that the “personally-opposed” defense works only when the matter at hand is of relative insignificance. I can see someone saying, for example, that he is personally opposed to smoking in restaurants, riding a motorcycle without a helmet, or swimming without a lifeguard present — but that he sees no need for a law stopping others from doing these things. Permitting others to do them does not put the lawmaker in the position of “doing nothing” while something he considers a great evil takes place.
Consider, in contrast, what is implied when someone takes the position that he is personally opposed to abortion or homosexual marriage but is willing to let them take place anyway. There is only one reason to be “personally opposed” to abortion: your conviction that it is the taking of an unborn human life. It is incoherent for someone who is convinced that this is what happens during an abortion to say that he is willing to give those who want to take that life the legal right to do so; to say that you wouldn’t kill an unborn child yourself, but think it intolerant to prohibit someone else from doing it.
In the same vein, there is only one reason to be “personally opposed” to homosexual marriage: your conviction that homosexual behavior is unnatural and objectively immoral. It is jumbled logic for someone who thinks this is the case to simultaneously hold that it is a good thing for our laws (which, after all, are a reflection of our society’s notion of right and wrong) to give legal sanction to this activity, to make it the moral equivalent of the institution that most Americans, until quite recently, routinely referred to as “the holy bonds of Matrimony.”
To make the point, apply the “personally-opposed” logic to some other behaviors. How would Tim Russert treat someone on Meet the Press who argued that he is personally opposed to slavery or wife-beating, but would not favor laws restricting the choices of those who view these things as “alternative lifestyles”? John Kerry would not use the states’ rights argument that he now raises when dealing with the question of homosexual marriage to defend the cause of the Southern states in the 1950s on the question of segregated schools. When was the last time you heard a politician or media guru warn us of the impropriety of being “judgmental” about Mormons who cling to the belief that polygamy is God’s will or Muslims who inflict female circumcision on young women?
Quite the contrary: We are encourage to “take a stand” on the moral issues that matter to feminists and the civil right’s movement. Those who don’t are scolded for their “apathy.” The protestors with placards marching with Martin Luther King appear over and over on our television screens as paradigms of moral commitment, while those outside abortion clinics or courtrooms where homosexual marriages are being performed are cast as ignorant bigots. There is apathy and there is apathy. There is moral commitment and there is moral commitment.
I guess it is too much to hope for, but it would be appropriate and fair play for John Kerry to be asked a simple question by one of the reporters in one of the upcoming presidential debates: “Senator Kerry, you have made clear that you do not favor a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting homosexual marriage; that you want to leave this matter for the states to decide. But you have also made clear that you do not personally approve of homosexual marriages, that you favor civil unions for homosexuals instead. Why is that, Senator? What do you think is wrong with homosexual marriage?” Don’t hold your breath waiting for that dog to bark.
James Fitzpatrick's new novel, The Dead Sea Conspiracy: Teilhard de Chardin and the New American Church, is available from our online store. You can email Mr. Fitzpatrick at fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net.
(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
