May 27, 2012
By Victor Volsky
It is the iron law of "progressive" movements that having achieved their goals, they refuse to fade away. Rather than disbanding upon completion of their mission, these movements, now fully institutionalized, keep chugging along, and the farther they go, the more they resemble their sworn enemies, the rationale for their existence.
The labor movement that arose as a desperate defense against unbridled exploitation has degenerated into a stultifying, mafia-style monopoly whose grip on any business dooms that business to slow strangulation. The civil rights movement emerged to fight discrimination. But as its baton passed from Martin Luther King, Jr. to the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the movement's main motto transmogrified from equality -- i.e., abolition of white privilege -- into affirmative action -- i.e., establishment of black privilege. And equality has come to be denigrated by the new self-appointed civil rights elite as a particularly insidious form of racial discrimination. Feminism born of a legitimate earning for equal rights and dignity has turned into a female supremacy movement implacably hostile to the "patriarchy" -- i.e., the traditional social structure.
The gay rights movement, too, has been transforming itself before our very eyes. Once a movement fighting against persecution and discrimination, which is the reason why its initial demands enjoyed wide public support, it has gone from one triumph to another and won the war. Today, the issue is moot. But the gay movement has not declared victory and gone home. Central to achieving their goal is bending society to their will and forcing it to acquiesce to their agenda.
That's where same-sex marriage comes in. It's no mystery why it commands considerable support. After all, what can be more "American" than the idea of granting equality to a formerly persecuted group that has done nothing untoward other than being different in its sexual proclivities? Sort of like being discriminated because of the color of one's skin (even though many black leaders, jealously guarding their highly lucrative victimhood, take strong exception to equating gay liberation with the civil rights struggle). So recognition of gay unions as legitimate marriages seems to be an eminently innocuous idea. But appearances can be deceptive. Few things are more destructive than gay marriage, a poison pill devised to corrode the very core of a healthy society -- the institution of marriage.
Not a single society in the long history of mankind has ever attempted to substitute homosexual relationships for traditional marriage. Even in places where homosexuality was viewed as normal, openly practiced, and even encouraged (as in Sparta, where carnal relationship was regarded as forging an extra bond between warriors), marriage was sacrosanct and never called into question. Marriage has always been universally understood as a biological, social, and economic arrangement to bring into the world and rear the young, thus perpetuating the species. Indeed, humans took their cue from wild nature, where heterosexual family is virtually the sole organizing principle of life.
The rare exceptions only prove the rule, as do stable childless marriages held together by considerations of economic necessity or social convenience. Indeed, so central is marriage to human existence that it forms the basic building block and prototype of any society. The many forms of social organization are but permutations of the basic familial pattern; the clan, the tribe and the state are merely an extended family writ large.
Don't believe revolutionaries when they hold forth about their intention of building paradise on earth. Actually, they would be unable to build anything even if they wanted to. Their talk about the bright future is mere lip service, because in reality, any revolution is exclusively about destruction, with very little thought given to what will happen afterward ("we'll cross that bridge when we come to it"). But how do you go about destroying society? Where do you direct the blow so it will do the most damage? In his Theses on Feuerbach, Karl Marx provided the answer: destroy the traditional family.
True to the teachings of their prophet, socialist revolutionaries have placed the destruction of matrimony high on their list of priorities. Social upheavals have always opened the floodgates of debauchery and pornography. The socialist revolution brings about a breakdown of social conventions, with "sexual liberation" regarded as part of the overall drive for freedom. But while the rabble yearns to throw off the yoke of moral strictures to give vent to its animal passions, the revolutionary leaders see moral decay as a means of undermining the bulwark of the social structure -- the family.
Radical movements are merely battalions of the revolutionary army, each charged with a particular subversive task. Undoubtedly, the overwhelming majority of rank-and-file gays are well-meaning people who have sincerely bought into the myth peddled by their leaders that the marriage license is the ultimate token of recognition of their normalcy. They know not what they are doing. But the wizards behind the curtain know better, and there shouldn't be any illusions about their intentions: they want nothing less than to bring down the capitalist system, and they view their movement as a battering ram to shatter its principal bastion, America. Bringing down the traditional family is a crucial step in that direction.
But why is gay marriage inimical to the traditional matrimony? How does society suffer if it gives legal sanction to the cohabitation of gay couples and bestows upon them the rights traditionally granted to spouses? In short, an approach based on individual rights is a bum steer. Legalization of same-sex marriage compromises the institution of marriage and thus undermines the family built on the foundation of marriage.
It has been known since the dawn of history that a family unit consisting of a man and a woman is the best nurturing environment for the children. According to the research center Child Trends, "[r]esearch confirms that children develop best in families formed by both biological parents in a low-conflict marriage." Even the best-intentioned gay couples raising children shortchange their wards. But the most militant gay leaders are not well-meaning. Just as the radical leftists started out on their Great March through the Institutions with schools and colleges as their primary targets ("We'll get you through your children," the radical leftist and gay poet Allen Ginsberg warned his erstwhile friend Norman Podhoretz), gay militants have children in their cross-hairs. A nationwide organization, The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, openly acknowledges that its objective is to promote a positive view of homosexuality among pre-teen and teenage students.
Aside from the tremendous damage same-sex marriage does to the well-being and normal development of children, by offering an alternative to a bedrock institution, gay marriage calls into question all traditional values. There is a strong correlation between the rise of homosexual marriage and the weakening of traditional matrimony. David Blankenhorn observes, "The deep logic of same-sex marriage is clearly consistent with what scholars call deinstitutionalization -- the overturning or weakening of all of the customary forms of marriage, and the dramatic shrinking of marriage's public meaning and institutional authority. Does deinstitutionalization necessarily require gay marriage? Apparently not. For decades heterosexuals have been doing a fine job on that front all by themselves. But gay marriage clearly presupposes and reinforces deinstitutionalization."
Marx's loyal cohort Friedrich Engels, in his influential work, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the States, disclosed the game plan in a single, succinct proposition: change the concept of matrimony, and the traditional family will cease to exist. And once the family is gone, society will fall apart. Knock out the cornerstone, and the whole edifice will crumble, which is precisely the ultimate goal of the revolutionary movement.
By Victor Volsky
It is the iron law of "progressive" movements that having achieved their goals, they refuse to fade away. Rather than disbanding upon completion of their mission, these movements, now fully institutionalized, keep chugging along, and the farther they go, the more they resemble their sworn enemies, the rationale for their existence.
The labor movement that arose as a desperate defense against unbridled exploitation has degenerated into a stultifying, mafia-style monopoly whose grip on any business dooms that business to slow strangulation. The civil rights movement emerged to fight discrimination. But as its baton passed from Martin Luther King, Jr. to the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the movement's main motto transmogrified from equality -- i.e., abolition of white privilege -- into affirmative action -- i.e., establishment of black privilege. And equality has come to be denigrated by the new self-appointed civil rights elite as a particularly insidious form of racial discrimination. Feminism born of a legitimate earning for equal rights and dignity has turned into a female supremacy movement implacably hostile to the "patriarchy" -- i.e., the traditional social structure.
The gay rights movement, too, has been transforming itself before our very eyes. Once a movement fighting against persecution and discrimination, which is the reason why its initial demands enjoyed wide public support, it has gone from one triumph to another and won the war. Today, the issue is moot. But the gay movement has not declared victory and gone home. Central to achieving their goal is bending society to their will and forcing it to acquiesce to their agenda.
That's where same-sex marriage comes in. It's no mystery why it commands considerable support. After all, what can be more "American" than the idea of granting equality to a formerly persecuted group that has done nothing untoward other than being different in its sexual proclivities? Sort of like being discriminated because of the color of one's skin (even though many black leaders, jealously guarding their highly lucrative victimhood, take strong exception to equating gay liberation with the civil rights struggle). So recognition of gay unions as legitimate marriages seems to be an eminently innocuous idea. But appearances can be deceptive. Few things are more destructive than gay marriage, a poison pill devised to corrode the very core of a healthy society -- the institution of marriage.
Not a single society in the long history of mankind has ever attempted to substitute homosexual relationships for traditional marriage. Even in places where homosexuality was viewed as normal, openly practiced, and even encouraged (as in Sparta, where carnal relationship was regarded as forging an extra bond between warriors), marriage was sacrosanct and never called into question. Marriage has always been universally understood as a biological, social, and economic arrangement to bring into the world and rear the young, thus perpetuating the species. Indeed, humans took their cue from wild nature, where heterosexual family is virtually the sole organizing principle of life.
The rare exceptions only prove the rule, as do stable childless marriages held together by considerations of economic necessity or social convenience. Indeed, so central is marriage to human existence that it forms the basic building block and prototype of any society. The many forms of social organization are but permutations of the basic familial pattern; the clan, the tribe and the state are merely an extended family writ large.
Don't believe revolutionaries when they hold forth about their intention of building paradise on earth. Actually, they would be unable to build anything even if they wanted to. Their talk about the bright future is mere lip service, because in reality, any revolution is exclusively about destruction, with very little thought given to what will happen afterward ("we'll cross that bridge when we come to it"). But how do you go about destroying society? Where do you direct the blow so it will do the most damage? In his Theses on Feuerbach, Karl Marx provided the answer: destroy the traditional family.
True to the teachings of their prophet, socialist revolutionaries have placed the destruction of matrimony high on their list of priorities. Social upheavals have always opened the floodgates of debauchery and pornography. The socialist revolution brings about a breakdown of social conventions, with "sexual liberation" regarded as part of the overall drive for freedom. But while the rabble yearns to throw off the yoke of moral strictures to give vent to its animal passions, the revolutionary leaders see moral decay as a means of undermining the bulwark of the social structure -- the family.
Radical movements are merely battalions of the revolutionary army, each charged with a particular subversive task. Undoubtedly, the overwhelming majority of rank-and-file gays are well-meaning people who have sincerely bought into the myth peddled by their leaders that the marriage license is the ultimate token of recognition of their normalcy. They know not what they are doing. But the wizards behind the curtain know better, and there shouldn't be any illusions about their intentions: they want nothing less than to bring down the capitalist system, and they view their movement as a battering ram to shatter its principal bastion, America. Bringing down the traditional family is a crucial step in that direction.
But why is gay marriage inimical to the traditional matrimony? How does society suffer if it gives legal sanction to the cohabitation of gay couples and bestows upon them the rights traditionally granted to spouses? In short, an approach based on individual rights is a bum steer. Legalization of same-sex marriage compromises the institution of marriage and thus undermines the family built on the foundation of marriage.
It has been known since the dawn of history that a family unit consisting of a man and a woman is the best nurturing environment for the children. According to the research center Child Trends, "[r]esearch confirms that children develop best in families formed by both biological parents in a low-conflict marriage." Even the best-intentioned gay couples raising children shortchange their wards. But the most militant gay leaders are not well-meaning. Just as the radical leftists started out on their Great March through the Institutions with schools and colleges as their primary targets ("We'll get you through your children," the radical leftist and gay poet Allen Ginsberg warned his erstwhile friend Norman Podhoretz), gay militants have children in their cross-hairs. A nationwide organization, The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, openly acknowledges that its objective is to promote a positive view of homosexuality among pre-teen and teenage students.
Aside from the tremendous damage same-sex marriage does to the well-being and normal development of children, by offering an alternative to a bedrock institution, gay marriage calls into question all traditional values. There is a strong correlation between the rise of homosexual marriage and the weakening of traditional matrimony. David Blankenhorn observes, "The deep logic of same-sex marriage is clearly consistent with what scholars call deinstitutionalization -- the overturning or weakening of all of the customary forms of marriage, and the dramatic shrinking of marriage's public meaning and institutional authority. Does deinstitutionalization necessarily require gay marriage? Apparently not. For decades heterosexuals have been doing a fine job on that front all by themselves. But gay marriage clearly presupposes and reinforces deinstitutionalization."
Marx's loyal cohort Friedrich Engels, in his influential work, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the States, disclosed the game plan in a single, succinct proposition: change the concept of matrimony, and the traditional family will cease to exist. And once the family is gone, society will fall apart. Knock out the cornerstone, and the whole edifice will crumble, which is precisely the ultimate goal of the revolutionary movement.
American Thinker
