What Religious Liberty?
The Incredible Ever-Expanding Dead End
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
Whose Values in
Education?
Toppling
Dominos
Anti-Christians
don't have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
Intolerant Tolerance
The Emperor's
Clothes or a Cheap Tuxedo
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part I
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part II
Embryonic
Stem Cell Research Again
The Madness of
Secularism
"Don't Impose Your
Religion on Me"
Dictatorship of Relativism
Two Babies at Christmas
Living Will or Death
Warrant?
Court Ordered
Slow Motion Torture-Death Sentence
Men in Black
A Lot of Hot Air
The Culture War
Battles
"Stay with us, Lord"
Secular-to-English Dictionary
Moral Guidance for
Catholics in this Election
Christians
Losing America
Stem Cell Wars
Catholic
Pro-Abortion Politicians and Communion
Useful Idiots
Who Killed Jesus?
A Primer on Gay
Marriage
Whose Side are You
on?
Vouchers Revisited
Real and Fake
Cloning Bans
Broken Compasses
No Room in the Inn
Killing Fields
Revisited
Gay but not Merry
Adam and Steve?
The Battle for the Court
Victimless Crimes
More Salt, Please
The Next Big Fight
When Religion
Becomes Evil
Virginity Making a Comeback?
You've Come a Long Way,
Baby
The Incarnational
Approach
The Many Meanings of ACLU
Things Your Media Never Told
You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them. How Else
Are They Going To Learn?
Perplexing Christmas Questions
How Do You See Christ Today?
Now that there is Another Ewe, will there be
Another You?
What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
What Counts as a Mass?
What is a Covenant?
I Wish I had Your Faith
Are there Too Many Decrees of
Nullity?
Dutch Treats
Ecumenism
Going from Baby Doe to Granny Doe
Comments of Evangelium Vitae
The Exception Corrupts the Rule
Good Morality or
Good Medicine
Generation-X'ers Smart in Every Way But
One
A Matter of Good Breeding
Herod and Pontius Pilate at the
Polls
Hitler's Pope or Righteous Gentile?
The Unknown God
What exactly is wrong with
homosexuality?
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality,
and Common Sense
What Exactly is an Indulgence?
Infallibility and Error in the Church
Pilate Asked, "What is Truth?"
The Truth about Families
New Killing Fields
Choice of Language and Language of
Choice
A Lexicon for Our Day
Why are there so many bodies?
Marijuana, Medicine or Menace?
Medical Research and Ethics
Meditation
"You Taught me well,
Mommie dearest"
Moral Fallout
Neutral on the Wrong
Side
"These are the
Nineties After All"
Many are Wed but Few
are Married
"...Prepare him for
additional obligations"
A Useful Lie
A Partridge in a
Pear Tree
Religious Persecution in
the U.S.?
What Makes a Person a
Person?
The Point of a Point of
View
Politically Correct,
Morally Depraved
Population
Controllers out of Control
Practical Dreamers
Social Progress
through Immorality
Shall we Do Evil for
Goodness Sake?
Reason and Faith
Resurrection Glory
Same Sex Marriages?
Pearl of Great Price
"I used to be
schizophrenic, but we're all right now"
Sexual Morality
Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
Undesirable Side Effects
Some News is Good News
SOSSLQ's, not POSSLQ's
Spoils of Splits
Why Attend Mass
Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull
the Plug?
An Appeal for Intolerance
Topics Catechetical
A Voting Catechism
A Moral Guide to
Voting
Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal
if...
Get Rid of that Worthless
Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues
Prior to Voting
|
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by Monsignor James C. Brunner |
Faith Points |
“Don’t Impose Your Religion on Me”
The title of this article represents the cry of secularists in response to any legislation sponsored by religious people against such things as abortion and homosexual marriage and in favor of public prayer and display of religious symbols in public.
Calls to re-insert Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube or to ban pornography are not considered to be based on reason but on the personal preferences and prejudices of religious people, which have no more validity than preferences in flavors of ice cream. But the same charge can be lodged against secularists. The legality of abortion or homosexual marriage is also a personal preference. Moral positions of religious persons may have an origin in religion but that does not prevent them from being also reasoned positions.
Secularists might reply that opponents of abortion are procedurally in error because they base their moral judgments on religion and therefore implementation of their values is an unwelcome imposition of religion on others. All legal enactments are an imposition of someone’s morality. If you believe that a human being has a right to life from conception and you pass an anti-abortion law you are imposing your moral view on others who want to kill preborn humans. If you believe that it is permissible to kill a fetus at any moment in pregnancy, even as it emerges from the womb, passing a law to allow that is imposition of your values on pro-lifers.
Secularists might reply, “In the case of pro-lifers the values are based on religion whereas for secularists they are based on reason.” Nothing prevents religious moral positions from being reasonable ones. What makes the secular value superior? How is the current secular value (secular values are subject to change) that born children may not be killed superior to the religious one that agrees with that? Where does the Constitution or reason say secular line-drawing is superior to religious line-drawing? No matter where you draw the line in law you are forcing someone’s morality on others. The question is not whether laws should be based on someone’s moral principles but whose. It is saner to debate the validity of different moral positions rather than eliminate some because they may also have a religious origin. The origin of a principle does not determine its validity.
Secularists themselves who charge that religious people legislate their religious morals impose their morality on others, and often not through legislatures but through courts. How do they impose their morality? Let me count some of the ways.
1) Secularists hunt down Boy Scouts on public property and public facilities as if they were predators because the organization will not allow openly homosexual scout masters or members. They are imposing their morality on millions of boys.
2) Secularists are determined that religion should have no place in the public square by banning crèches, ten-commandment monuments, and public prayer. They are imposing their atheism on others and violating the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.
3) It is secularists who use public schools to foster acceptance of a gay life style, who hand out condoms and contraceptive pills without parental approval or even knowledge.
4) They also use public schools for leftist indoctrination such as blaming Israel for the world’s hatred of the America.
5) Secularist public schools are vigilant to oust any theory of the origin of the world except a Darwinian one. They are concerned that an evolutionary theory that posits intelligence and design might lead to the conclusion that there is a Designer of the universe.
6) Secular endorsement of homosexuality logically leads to banning religious speech condemning it even in churches as has already happened in certain countries. Expressing a religious conviction on the morality of homosexuality is not free exercise of religion but hate speech punishable by law.
7) Secularists compel acceptance of abortion without any restrictions and thus impose their culture of death on innocent human beings. They oppose notification and permission of parents before minor children are allowed to abort thus undercutting parental authority.
8) Secularists who denied food and water to Terri Schiavo sentenced her to death for being functionally impaired thereby imposing their notions of who may be allowed to live.
9) Secularists force their values on others when they resist any effort to stem the flow of pornography or to shield children from accessing it.
10) Secularists who preach free choice deny it to pharmacists who elect not to dispense contraceptive or abortifacient drugs. Secularists say that women must have control over their bodies but deny pharmacists the right to control their own bodies by refusing to dispense certain drugs. Under our laws publishers may print pretty much what they like but bookstores cannot be compelled to carry their publications. Secularists deny the right of pharmacists not to stock certain drugs.
Secularists are even guiltier of imposing their morality than the religious they allege are doing this. Why should only secular policies be allowed to guide public policy? Secularists try to have it both ways. They say that moral principles are idiosyncratic but their idiosyncrasies are the only valid guides for public policy.
Though religious people may use religion as the inspiration for their morality it does not follow that their principles are not confirmed by reason. The commandment not to kill has a religious origin but that does not prevent it from being defended on a rational basis. Take another example: the secularist position that homosexuality is normal. This “normal” activity produces abnormal results. AIDS has killed more men in the US than six Vietnam wars combined and 83% of all cases in the US are white homosexual men. Homosexuals who are 1-2% of the population have 50% of the nation’s syphilis cases. Seventy-eight percent of them are afflicted with at least one STD. They account for half the cases of gonorrhea of the throat and intestinal infections. They have abnormally high rates of hepatitis A, B, and C, herpes, enteric infections, cancers and tumors. Gays who die from AIDS have a median life span of 39. Gays who die from other causes have median life spans of 42. By contrast unmarried men in general have median life spans of 57 and married men 75. Nearly half the homosexual and bisexual men aged 20 today will not reach their 65th birthday. Gays have a 40% shorter lifespan than heterosexuals. “The evidence [of health hazards of homosexuality] is so overwhelming that even if all moral judgments and religious biases are set aside, homosexuality—by its very nature—cannot play a part in a healthy society” (National Association for Search and Therapy of Homosexuality, September 24, 2002). Instead of a lifestyle homosexuality should be called a death style. The consequence of violating religious principle shows its validity. There is a reasonable basis for condemning homosexual practice that is not based solely on religion. When secularists declare religious moral positions out of bounds they exempt themselves from defending their positions.
I never thought that I would agree with the ACLU on anything but I join in their complaint that I do not want their atheistic human secularist religion and their culture of death imposed on me.
(Printed July, 2005)
