Questions to Ponder in 2016
Published in Marietta Daily Journal Jan. 24, 2015
For anyone who wants to learn, knowing
the questions is as important as knowing the answers. Inquiring minds can usually find answers. The question is do we know the
questions. Here are 7 questions along
with a few corollary ones that beg for attention.
Is
there such a thing as “settled law”? Let’s
grant the lawyers their lingo but acknowledge that the expression has been
reduced almost to meaninglessness. Even
so, is a Supreme Court decision supreme?
Technically, maybe so, but in the minds of many, Roe v. Wade is not
settled. The issue of abortion is as
unsettled and as unsettling as ever.
Will Roe v. Wade ever be reversed?
Is the national conscience absolutely settled? Does an unborn baby have a right to life or
not? Without a doubt these questions
will arise – again – during the presidential election.
How
about “settled science”? Does anyone
remember the 1974 Newsweek cover showing an iceberg and the headline, “The
Coming Ice Age”? As for global warming,
columnist Charles Krauthammer, who is neither a denier nor a proponent, asserts
that scientists who think they know what global warming will cause 50 years
from now “are white-coated propagandists.”
For certain, global warming proponents are about as evangelistic as
anybody can be. Their evangelistic
efforts are, in Krauthammer’s estimation, “a crude attempt to silence critics
and delegitimize debate.”
What
stands between the Supreme Court’s decision on homosexual marriage and
legalized polygamy? Probably a
decade or less. Certainly no logical
argument stands between them. If two men
have a right to marry, or two women, why can’t a man and three women? If two men argue they love each other and
should be granted a marriage license, and are now in fact granted that right,
it would be totally inconsistent to deny a marriage license to any type of
plural marriage one can imagine. Harems,
anybody?
Have
any liberal Supreme Court justices ever opposed same-sex marriage? Yes. In
1972 three liberal justices dismissed the claim that there was a constitutional
right to same-sex marriage: Thurgood Marshal, William J. Brennan and William O.
Douglas.
What
is the chief point about the same-sex marriage decision that everybody is
missing or is just hesitant to discuss?
It is that re-defined marriage breaks all connection between marriage
and procreation. It re-defines family
while ignoring human sexuality. Being a social construct, family can be defined
any way we wish, but our sexuality is a physiological fact. (Transgenderism challenges this, of course.) The traditional definition of marriage is
inextricably tied to heterosexual intercourse.
As though the collapse of traditional marriage weren’t enough, we now
have a definition that weakens the bond between marriage and children. Since homosexual couples cannot procreate,
the Supreme Court has in effect declared that marriage has little to do with
children.
What’s
wrong with allowing women in combat?
For starters the decision to allow it was a social decision, not a
military one. It was another example of
using the military to achieve social goals: in this case, equality. Even if women can shoot and fight as well as
men, there are at least two things they cannot do. They cannot change the reality of sexual
attraction and the fact that it will forever be a distraction to men in the
military. They also cannot keep men from
feeling protective of women, a reality that would also be a distraction in times
of war. Using the military to achieve
social objectives is a huge mistake.
What
two social behaviors are contributing the most to poverty and crime? According to sociologist Nicholas Wolfinger,
it is the increase in single motherhood, particularly in the number of
never-married mothers. Research
economist Robert Cherry adds that poverty and crime are increased by the number
of mothers who have children with multiple partners. One study discovered that 22% of white
mothers and 59% of black mothers have had children with more than one man. According to Cherry, children raised in such
families are not only likely to be poor but are at greater risk of child abuse.
Regarding each of these questions,
some would say the horse is out of the barn.
Yes, and when horses get out of the barn they tromp things, doing great
damage. Sometimes horses need to be
corralled. Grateful we should be that
Copernicus questioned the “settled science” of Ptolemy, and that the 14th
amendment unsettled the settled Dred Scott decision.
When Socrates remarked that the
unexamined life was not worth living, he was referring to scientists and
lawyers of his day who were claiming that all truth was known and settled. Perhaps our own day is a time to question and
unsettle a few “settled” things..
Roger
Hines
1/20/16
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