Sexual Chaos … Is there no end?

                       Sexual Chaos … Is there no end?

           Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 3/10/19

            A message to three men whom I admire, U.S. Senators Isakson and Perdue, and my U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk:  Please tell the federal government to keep its hands off my grand-daughters, all 7 of them.

            If those granddaughters wish to join the military, I hope they will, but I don’t want them in combat with men.  Neither do I want the government ever to require that they register for military service.

            One of those granddaughters can scale a mountain as skillfully as a mountain lion.  She has a degree in Outdoor Leadership.  One of her sisters treasures a photograph in which the sister is posing with her first deer, the first deer she ever shot dead, that is.

            None of my granddaughters are shrinking violets, but if any of their fathers (my 2 sons and 2 sons-in-law) ever suggest it’s ok for them to engage in combat, we’ll have a talk.  My granddaughters have total authority in the matter, but I still have an opinion plus the testimony of nature, physiological science, and common, walking around horse sense.

            Women and men are different.  Is it not incredible how controversial such an assertion has become?  Because we have perverted the word “equality,” we now see it trivialized.  Don’t withdraw from the word “perverted.”  It merely means “distorted, twisted, or deviated from the norm.”  “Equality under the law” means we embrace the ideal that when we’re standing or sitting in front of a judge or jury, the floor is wondrously level.  It doesn’t mean that in our daily interactions we’re to abandon every ounce of common sense we possess, all for the impossible social goal of equality.  Equal we aren’t.

            Our deviation from the classical definition of equality has led to the cry that sexual differences are to be ignored, that masculinity is chauvinistic, that marriage-centric households are passé, that science is wrong about chromosomes, and that men and women together in trenches is just dandy.

            I’m sure that if I were in the trenches with a woman, I would be thinking about protecting the woman as much as hitting my enemy target.  I’m confident that 99 percent of the men I know, including the 20- and 30-somethings, think the same.

            “But that’s the way you men were taught.”  No, that’s the way we were made.  It’s also what we see.  My wife can birth children; I can’t.  I can sing baritone; she can’t.  What’s happening is rebellion against nature and norms.   As our favorite philosopher Woody Allen put it (after caught dishonoring a norm), “The heart wants what the heart wants.”

            My wife could also run the world.  I wish she could be president.  Oh, she could command the troops!  Her hold on the broad picture and its details would be firm and sure.  But that doesn’t mean she is equipped to do the task of a soldier.

            Sexual chaos stretches far beyond the military issue.  It has led to cheap sex and the decline of marriage, in fact an absolute marriage deficit.  According to the University of Virginia’s Institute for American Values, the out of marriage birthrate went from 13 percent in 1985 to 44 percent in 2010.  Writing for the Bloomberg News, former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen called this statistic a recipe for poverty.

            Still more areas reflect the chaos, so include my 3 grandsons in the Watchful Papa lineup.  Schools around the country, though maybe not too many in the Southeast, are teaching “gender-equity,” and are inviting drag queens to their libraries to tell children glorious stories of equality .  Transgender ideologues are making sure that “gender dysphoria” is given equal time, most likely causing children to think about gender for the first time.

 The Methodist Church has been affected.  A strong, time-honored Christian denomination is experiencing a good measure of turmoil over the ordination of LGBT clergy.  Though delegates voted in a recent conference to strengthen their ban on same-sex marriage and LGBT clergy, resistance continues. 

Fake genders are multiplying.  For 5 decades I’ve taught that personal pronouns, unlike the nouns to which they refer, are a finite group, a snooty, closed-class group of words that doesn’t admit new members.  They still are.  But some people still dream, resist, and pervert.

Sexual innovators will always be with us, as well as the elevators of the unnatural to the natural.  The results will be the same: craziness and sexual confusion.  But I for one will protect those I love most and will resist the chaos.

Meanwhile … Help, Senators Isakson and Perdue and Rep. Loudermilk. Help!

Roger Hines

3/6/19

We’ve got to get tougher

                               We’ve got to get tougher

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, Feb. 3,2019

An aging man sat on an upside down nail keg in the far corner of his combination corn crib / tool shed.  Neatly stacked dried ears of corn lined one side of the building.  Well sharpened hoes, fertilizer buckets, mule harnesses, and ropes adorned the opposite wall.

            The entire one-room building bespoke the man’s interests, his livelihood, his bent for neatness, and his total past.  He was leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees and his hands cupping his forehead as though he were praying.  His body was heaving. He wept quietly, as though to muffle his grief.  Because I had never seen him even come close to crying, fear enshrouded me.

            “Daddy, what’s wrong?”  I asked.

            Startled and obviously embarrassed, he quickly stood up but looked the other way.

            “Oh, nothing.  Just go on about your business.”  But I had no business at the crib.  I was waiting for the school bus.  I had approached the corn crib because the door was open.  I assumed my father was already in the fields.

            I was 15.  All day long at school I worried about my father.  A good man, he was usually totally quiet.  I knew not to press him about his weeping.  He was 65, slowing down a bit from arthritis, but still an incurable lover of the soil and hard work.

            That afternoon I would learn from my mother that he had been laid off at the sawmill.  He was now only a part time farmer, cultivating small “patches” instead of the vast, sweeping fields.  A night watchman job at the sawmill provided needed income.

            At supper, instead of his predictable meal time “blessing,” my father prayed slowly and more personally.  Etched indelibly on my brain are the halting last few words of his prayer: “…and give us thankful hearts and strength for the storms of life.”

            Moments like this helped me forgive my father for being so incommunicative and seemingly disinterested in his children.  If a father can teach his children by word and example to face the storms of life with strength and hope, what does it matter if he’s not touchy-feely?  Besides, at age 65, he still had a 17, a 15, and a 12-year-old to feed.

            Coupled with my sweet mother’s oft-repeated, “Well, just go on,” my father’s response to his job loss strengthened me beyond measure.  From weeping over loss in the morning to praying with gratitude that evening, he infused in me an abiding hope.

            Today in both rural and urban America the working poor, those like my parents, are still with us.  Two things give me concern.  One is that the waning of faith and moral influence has left us without “strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,” as one old hymn puts it.  We’re simply not as tough or resilient as our parents and grandparents were.  There are reasons for this.

            The other concern is that those who have plenty are not always teaching their offspring to be strong.  They are instead fostering softness and weakness.  Schools do it.  So do young parents: coddling, withholding discipline, smiley faces for everything, participation awards for nothing, worship of youth, fear of our own teenagers, the absence of expectation, the allowing of casualness and mediocrity.

            In 1924 Irving Babbitt, one of the rare traditionalists at Harvard College, wrote that “economic problems will be found to run into political problems, political problems will run into philosophical problems and philosophical problems will be indissolubly bound up with religious problems.”  In other words, there are things that take precedence over economics, politics, and philosophy, things like dealing with the storms of life, no matter what our politics are.

            Jefferson sought the ideal of an agrarian society where the little man can be self-sustaining.  Lincoln broadened Jefferson’s vision, seeking equality for all, but “equality before the law,” not the meaningless, trivializing equality regulated on us today.  FDR would learn of Southern poverty and seek “a measure of comfort for all hardworking Americans.”

            Yet, with more “stuff” than ever before, we now have delirium in the land: loss of contentment, refusal to accept the results of elections, pervasive anger, and political unrest.  This is new for America.  Why aren’t we happy?  States aren’t seceding – yet – but individuals and groups are.

            In 1867 poet Matthew Arnold, England’s Inspector of Schools, wrote, “The Sea of Faith was once at the full / But now I hear its long, withdrawing roar.”  I’m glad Arnold warned England and grateful that my father taught his children to let the Sea of Faith roar.  America needs to now.   

Roger Hines

2/27/19