Part One: A Clash of Freedoms

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Keith A Fournier, Esq.
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Well, the United States Supreme Court only rendered its majority decision in Lawrence v Texas on Wednesday and the front line troops of the new Cultural Revolution are already forcing the crack in the door to a wide open status. Make no mistake; the winds of the new Cultural Revolution are blowing at gale force and the portals of the brave new world now open before us.

In the main section of my Sunday Paper I read a purported "news" story entitled "Gay pride Events Strive For Family Friendly Environment." It informs me of the new "families" of Dad and Dad, Mom and Mom and adopted, surrogate or manufactured baby. The main character in the "news" story is quoted in its conclusion: "My hope is that gay and straight will evaporate, to be replaced by the terms 'with children' and 'without children', where I just get treated like any other family guy."

My commentary section has an article by a confused "former" Christian youth minister asking the readers to "say a prayer", because the decision did not go far enough and there are still young people afraid to "come out"

Yesterday I was presented with a large story in the paper about two women ministers, a "partnership", who co-pastor a predominantly homosexual denomination. The masculine looking woman was quoted as saying something to the effect of "my people have been prejudiced against for too long." Who are the "my people?" to which she refers? This "people" are gay, bi-sexual, and "trans- gendered" people.

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In fact, one of the leaders of the revolution quoted in another of the plethora of alleged news articles (which are really advocacy pieces dressed up as news) of the last few days had the audacity to quote one of the most powerful acclamations from one of the Giants of American history, Dr. Martin Luther King, and try to make it his own: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!".

These powerful words, proclaimed with extraordinary prophetic power and eloquence on August 28, 1963 from the steps of the Lincoln memorial, were taken by Dr. King from the words of a powerful spiritual from the African American Church. Was this really the freedom Dr. King envisioned or the freedom to which this beautiful spiritual pointed? In this new Cultural Revolution, how one engages in sexual activities defines your identity in history. You can now join a "people" by engaging in homosexual sexual activity?

Thus, those who practice the kinds of sexual practices prevalent among homosexuals are now joined together in the same profound and deeply important way as are black people, Latinos, Asians...? They are all now a part of a new freedom march, a new civil rights movement? How profane and demeaning.

Does all of this really make sense? Does ones' sexual conduct, chosen to satisfy an urge, to respond to a disordered appetite, really now make one a member of an oppressed "people"? Is this really what the Civil Rights pioneers fought so hard to gain? Does the practice of sodomy, or other conduct "satisfying" these kinds of disordered sexual appetites now really constitute a "liberty interest" protected by the Due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution?

Yes, it does in our post Lawrence v Texas world. Why? Because the U.S. Supreme Court says so, that is what now defines the "law".

The Decision in Lawrence will do to family what the decision in Roe v Wade did to the right to life; turn it on its head and make it fight for its recognition. It is no surprise that the majority opinion uses the "logic" of the Roe opinion (and its progeny) to undergird this horrendous piece of judicial sophistry and social engineering. This decision is cut from the same absurd reasoning.

Just as the decision in Roe v Wade, slowly prepared by decisions like Griswold v Connecticut (which concerned the use of contraceptives between married people) and Eisenstadt v Baird (concerning the use of contraceptives between unmarried people) laid the groundwork for the "triumph of the will" to power, which has become popularly known as the "right to choose", wherein women were given the right to terminate the life of children in the womb throughout the nine months of pregnancy for any reason; so too this new "liberty interest", created in Lawrence, will now be used to eradicate any legal preference or protection of the two parent marriage bound, heterosexual family.

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Just as "choice" was redefined in the Roe opinion as a raw power over those who are unable to be heard because their voice is muffled by the walls of the womb (the first home of every human person including homosexual persons) so the word "liberty", once a term of art in Western civilization, has been redefined by the strained "logic" of this opinion as a right to do whatever one chooses.

This conclusion is not a "parade of horribles" argument or an overreaction. It is simply fact.

There is no legal precedent left, after this decision, with which to defend the family as the first vital cell of society. The very definition is now up for grabs and is quickly being rewritten - as the newspaper articles so clearly attest. The family will soon no longer be what it has been from its inception. It will become what the Cultural Revolutionaries say it is.

Frankly, under this opinion, all bets are off. I see no "legal" difference in the arguments to allow polygamous "families" to do what they choose. The 'reasoning" and "analysis" of the U.S. Supreme Court, and "precedent" now protect them under this decision. The reach of this new notion of "Equal Protection" is as long and wide as the imaginations of creative legal engineers and Judges who are complicit in their folly.

With the family will go the foundations of freedom and the social glue of the social order. The notion of freedom as having a moral constitution, as being bound by an objective truth; as a freedom for as well as a freedom from; these classical definitions can no longer be given any preference. The "new" family has arrived and freedom means the right to do whatever one pleases.

The Revolution is here and those who stand in its way are opponents of "liberty", "bigots", "homophobes"....you choose the disparaging term. Just as those who have dared to question the "super right" of an unencumbered "right to choose" (read "right" to abort) have been pilloried. We have been seen as enemies of this new profane counterfeit of "freedom" as a raw power over those who are weak. So too, those of us who cling to the "family" as Mom, Dad and the kids are soon to be suspect.

I had a discussion by E-Mail with a colleague recently. He said I might be overreacting, that the opinion was "narrowly tailored". Poppycock. It is what it is. Justice Scalia is right on this one.

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Does that mean that there is no hope?

To the contrary, it simply means that those who are Christians, in the classical sense of what the word actually means, must reassess our role in the culture. It is time for a new missionary age.

I will address that issue in my next installment.

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Keith A Fournier, Esq. is a constitutional lawyer and a deacon of the Catholic Church. He also serves as the Editor in Chief of Catholic Online and President of "Your Catholic Voice" Foundation.

Your Catholic Voice is a movement to promote faithful citizenship based on the fundamental truths of the Catholic Church relating to Life, Family, Freedom and Solidarity. For information go to Your Catholic Voice http://www.yourcatholicvoice.org