There seems to be some sturm und drang in some quarters regarding today’s Supreme Court decision shooting down the Clinton “Defense of Marriage Act.”
I am not among the particularly peeved.
My attitude is much more aligned with Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds’ view that the country he wants to live in is one where same-sex couples are secure in their Second Amendment rights.
Now, I do think it’s a legitimate concern that some of the critics of today’s USSC decision have, regarding the general erosion of the stability and desirability of traditional, heterosexual, child-producing families in the USA. In this process of erosion, governmental action has not been helpful, but as in most things, government policy is the result, not the cause, of a more general dysfunction in society at large.
You can call that dysfunction by many names, but at its core lies the most pernicious and destructive of humanity’s many pernicious and destructive urges. Urges that have names like Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride.
Everybody experiences them. All of human history is written with these vices as primary motivators of human behavior. In stories, those that let these urges dominate them usually come to bad ends. Unfortunately, we’ve all also seen, in history and in our own lives, people who use these urges to grab, hold, and wield power over others.
The fundamental, corrosive dysfunction in today’s Western Civilization is the systematic conversion of these human urges from vices into virtues. But even worse is the use of these vices to entice people in democratic countries to cede their rights and powers to the privileged few who seize the reins of power, and are loathe to ever drop those reins.
You can watch that sordid process going on daily in Washington, D.C., in State capitals, and in most major urban City Halls.
This will not end well. It never has before, and people haven’t really changed since the ancient Iraqis invented irrigation.
