Wednesday, January 21, 2009

natural law--2

In my earlier discussion of natural law, I mentioned that there is a problem with the 7th commandment--thou shalt not commit adultery. If we restrict the meaning of "adultery" to mean sexual violation of the marriage covenant, then this commandment follows from the Golden Rule. If, however, we take the commandment to mean, as the supporting material in both the Old and New Testament, clearly declare it to mean, any sexual activity outside the bond of legal marriage, then the commandment does not necessarily follow from the Golden Rule--as many liberals and libertarians clearly state. Of course, one possible reason for the drive to define the union of two men or two women as "marriage’, is to make it legitimate to those who profess belief in scripture, but I suspect that is a minor motivation.
If we keep with the narrow definition of adultery, then a bachelor is free to indulge his sexual appetite with equally free women, e. g. prostitutes. Liberals and libertarians are quick to point out that there is nothing really wrong with this because it occurs between "consenting adults". Although, I suspect, that they would be quick to state that they personally find the practice abhorrent, they would state that there is nothing really wrong with sexual liaison with animals. Currently, pedophilia is officially deplored, but the number of people practicing it is growing so rapidly, that there can be little doubt that those who do will soon have the political clout to make it as respectable as sexual promiscuity between adults of both sexes is today.
There is, of course, good reason why these practices were condemned in scripture. They are enormously addictive and destructive. The AIDS epidemic that has afflicted so many in Africa is said to have stemmed originally from animal-man sexual liaison. The promiscuity so widely heralded as a "right" by liberals and libertarians has resulted in the curse of abortion, in which women come to hate their most intimate neighbor--the one in their own bodies--a fact eloquently declared by Mother Teresa at a National Prayer Breakfast at which many political leaders including the Clintons who favor abortion participated.
The tolerance of sexual deviations invariably leads to the belief that natural laws and natural rights are whatever those who exercise power say they mean. It explains why so many liberals and libertarians, while sometimes giving lip service to belief in scripture, do not believe in it as a source of information about natural law. But if we do not go to scripture, where do we go? We invariably descend into a Darwinian cesspool where survival of the fittest is the only natural law. The recourse to such a society is always violence. Kipling describes such a society by stating "we were promised a fuller life--which started by loving our neighbor, but ended in loving his wife." The consequence? "Till our women had no more children"(They are all aborted as unwanted) "and our men lost reason and faith." How much reason is there in what the Federal Government is currently doing "to get us out of the recession?" My own feeling is that a careful analysis would show a direct correlation between acceptance of sexual promiscuity and deviation and the acceptance of more obvious violations of natural law such as taking one man’s property for the benefit of another because doing so will help "get us out of the recession".
But America was, and to a certain extent, still is, the proof that there is a law above that of survival of the fittest. Jerry Brown’s--and so many other of our political leaders’ schemes--are really attempts to undermine that proof.

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