But then they say they don’t know what to do about it, so politics should focus on money and budgets instead. I think their hesitation is based on the notion that we don't have any moral principles to reason from. And yet right in the country's beginning we have a statement of those moral principles.
When Abraham Lincoln spoke the words “Four score and seven years ago,” he was identifying 1776 as the beginning of our country for one reason — because it was in that year that the Declaration of Independence was written. The Declaration provides the most fundamental and constant basis for the resolution of our moral questions as Americans — because it constitutes a definition of the source and limits of our freedom. That source, according to our founding national document, is God. And the limits of our freedom are quite clearly defined: we cannot use the freedom in such a way as to claim unto ourselves the authority which is the basis of our freedom.
Decent people who want to help lead their fellow citizens to a better understanding of our moral obligations as Americans should take heart, and guidance, from the Declaration. When we hear someone claim that women have the authority to decide whether the child in their womb shall be granted equal dignity with other human offspring or not, we can point out that the Declaration says they cannot claim that authority. According to the Declaration, it is the Creator who decided that all men are equal from creation itself. It is the Creator who endowed us with rights. We do not decide whether to grant dignity to our child. If we claim the right to make that decision, then we deny the authority which is the basis for all our rights.
The logic of the Declaration — that our freedom comes from God — shows us right away that freedom is not an unlimited license, an unlimited choice, or an unlimited opportunity. Freedom is first of all a responsibility before the God from whom we come.
Once we think through the tremendous consequences of this founding American truth, we realize that the Declaration also warns us against the understanding of rights which is based upon radical selfishness. We can’t base our claim to rights on radical selfishness without asserting that we are, ourselves, the source of those rights. But once we follow the Declaration in declaring that our rights are an endowment from God, then radical selfishness becomes a contradiction of freedom.
Having recalled this underlying conception of our freedom, we will be much more able to make the best argument in many of the vexing moral disputes and debates of our day. For example, we will understand that the public policy argument against the homosexual “marriage” agenda must be based on the proper understanding of freedom.
From the point of view of public policy, what is wrong with the homosexual union is that it is based upon an understanding of human sexuality that is radically selfish. By definition, its participants are in the relationship in order to gratify themselves. But the foundation of the natural family is actually an understanding of the necessary responsibility and obligation, transcending self-gratification, of the spouses to the child that may be born of the marriage. If we accept homosexual marriage in our laws and institutions, we are rejecting the responsible understanding of freedom that is implied in that Declaration.
Obviously, Declaration reasoning can have implications that some people won’t like. But that was true in Lincoln’s day as well. And Declaration reasoning won’t resolve every issue, nor avoid every crisis. But it will certainly help us to frame the crucial issues in a better way. I believe it will lead us, more often than we might suspect, to resolutions acceptable to the great majority of Americans precisely because we have recalled them, in our arguments, to the principles of real human justice on which this nation was founded.
(Dr. Keyes recently founded and serves as chairman of the Declaration Foundation, a communications center for founding principles. To visit their website click here.)
