Here it is, August 1, and the anti-Chick-fil-A crusade has
reached “epic fail” proportions. Far
from hurting Dan Cathy through his pocketbook, the threatened boycott has
generated the Atlanta-based QSR (and owner/CEO Cathy) millions of dollars of
extra business plus new regular customers, assuring that the boycott will
continue to generate revenue even after Mike Huckabee’s anti-boycott fades into
memory.
The British Submarine Service used to have a saying: “Never
mind your enemies; watch out for your friends.”
That was because a number of subs had been lost at sea when they were
struck by surface ships from their own fleets.
Boston mayor Dan Menino and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel did the pro-SSM
marriage cause more harm than good by their
over-the-top threats to ratchet their zoning and permit laws against the
chicken chain. While other cities
have joined the witch-hunt, the ACLU (mirabile
dictu) has fired
their own shot across the various cities’ bows: barring Chick-fil-A over the personal views
of its owner is an “open and shut” discrimination case. The
Boston Globe and the Chicago
Sun-Times, neither of which
qualifies as a right-wing paper, have both criticized their local leaders for
their threats of repressive tactics, and even AndrewSullivan wrote a we’re-better-than-that piece for the Daily Beast [reposted to his blog on The Dish]. Put simply, the “ban Chick-fil-A” movement
will die faster than Huckabee’s candidacy did.
What we’re seeing is an authentically
liberal backlash against a budding ersatz-liberal totalitarianism. However, we have to wonder if the backlash
has enough staying power to open up space for traditional-marriage supporters
to be heard. The kids may eat the
chicken, but will they listen to us after they’ve munched the last waffle fry?
I kinda doubt it. We’re
still alive at the plate after a lucky foul ball, but the pitcher ain’t done
yet. If only we can take this into extra
innings ….
The first problem, as Terry
Mattingly and Sarah
Pulliam Bailey at GetReligion.org have both pointed out, this is a story
that shouldn’t have been a story in the first place. Cathy’s support of pro-family stances is hardly
news; George Stephanopoulos and Ron Claiborne are more than a little disingenuous in accusing
Chick-fil-A of “starting a firestorm”.
But when combined with other news of “Gaystapo” pogroms — frivolous
intimidation lawsuits, exposure
of Maryland marriage petition signers to potential harassment à la the Prop 8 fight in
California, the
bogus accusations of scientific misconduct against UT sociologist Mark Regnerus
— it appears that the less-stable, more sociopathic elements of the gay-rights
lobby are losing patience with incrementalism.
No longer content with the subtle seduction of a voting populace that
is, in the main, ill-informed about sex and reproductive issues, these elements want
a full-court press (my, I’m full of sports clichés today).
The second problem is that it’s almost impossible to make
the case against same-sex marriage without simultaneously making the case that
homosexuality is a sexual dysfunction. Unfortunately,
that means more than separating the good science from the bogus studies done by
both sides. You must also force both
straight and gay people to confront a fact that most of our species is bent on denying
or ignoring altogether: The primary biological
purpose of sex and human sexuality is reproduction.
Good luck with selling that.
Combined with what The
Blogger Who Must Not Be Named calls “the average American posture …
of wanting to be let alone and not press-ganged into fussing about the private
lives of others” is an equal reluctance to connect the dots.
“Thinking means connecting things,” G. K. Chesterton reminds us, “and
stops if they cannot be connected.”
Humans have known for almost as long as they’ve been humans that sex
causes pregnancy; this was no special revelation of modern scientific
methods. (If you think about it, the
Middle Ages theory of sperm carrying humonculoids to be planted in the womb isn’t
all that far from the reality, although the reality is much more dazzling in
its complexity.)
But for just as long a time, men and women have been
motivated by the sensual pleasure to engage in what is essentially mutual
masturbation, even driven to take unnecessary, potentially lethal risks in their
choices of partners and circumstances. This
aspect of Eros has always carried with it a tendency to mentally dissociate sex
from reproduction, to blind ourselves to the intrinsic connection even as we
paid backhanded compliments to it through the ages-long search for effective
contraception. Even the term “sex drive”
testifies to this cart-before-the-horse mistreatment; properly, it should be
called the “reproductive drive”.
If we were all the good little Darwinians we profess to be, we
would see that same-sex attraction represents a (potentially) closed genetic
path, as it redirects the reproductive urge to target mates that by definition are
reproductively unavailable. If there is a “gay gene” — which is by no means
conclusively established — it would be a trait that depresses and discourages genetic
survival.
So what?
Because of the Pill, sixty-four years’ worth of bogus agenda-driven
social science and the ever-increasing porn monster — the down side of free
speech — we now have a culture which takes sex without consequence as an
entitlement rather than a contradiction in terms. As for marriage, not many people can see it
even as a contract, let alone a sacrament or a human institution with an
intrinsic social purpose; it seems rather to be an expensive and often
embarrassingly narcissistic occasion for the happy couple to celebrate their
decision to live and sleep together, and for the community to give it their
rubber stamp.
Joe Schmuckatelli might get worked up about blatant
disregard for the First Amendment. But
he really doesn’t give a rat what goes on in other people’s bedrooms. So what if gay sex doesn’t lead to kids? Who said married people had to have kids,
anyway? We’re free to speak … and they’re
free to not listen. That’s democracy for
ya.
Hope I didn’t spoil your chicken sandwich. But the high tide and the turn haven’t come
yet.
