“Everybody chill out…can’t we just get along?” This was the gut of John Kasich’s remarks regarding the controversial HB-2 legislation passed in North Carolina. A part of me feels sorry for Kasich; whether the question involves same-sex marriage or the emergence of trans/queer concepts of gender and sexuality, he has no firm, convictional allegiance in these debates. Yet he finds himself ever lonelier in a disappearing middle ground. To make matters worse, these questions are not fading away; unceasingly, they bombard the news headlines and are on everyone’s mind, as America continues to descend into a cultural civil war.
Many predicted that the verdict of Obergefell v. Hodges would both settle the disagreement over same-sex marriage (thus establishing a “right” side of history) and conclude the extent of institutional social change. But now we see that the culture war is far from over and that the moral revolution has much farther to fly. This raises an important question, which is, “Just how far will these winds take us?” Finding the answer requires us to evaluate the nature of our society’s transformation.
Today we stand in the midst of a moral revolution. Not a moral change, but a revolution. Albert Mohler makes a brilliant distinction between these two that allows us to understand what is happening in our society. On the one hand, a moral change is the fleshing out of a foundational moral framework. For instance, the abolition of slavery in the 1860s and the Jim Crowe laws in the 1960s reflect the gradual, consistent application to society of the moral principle that all humans are created equal. Meanwhile, a moral revolution is the renunciation and overthrow of a society’s deepest moral principles and their replacement with an alternative moral framework. America’s recent redefinition of marriage and the current LGBTQ revolution fall into this latter category.
Marriage has classically been recognized as the most foundational institution in all of society. As an institution, it is exceedingly beneficial to mankind and arguably the bedrock of civilization. Consider this report by the Brookings Institute, which regards marriage between adults as one of the greatest predictors of living above the poverty line in America, alongside graduating high school and working a full time job. The Judeo-Christian worldview, which has been instrumental in the development of Western civilization, understands marriage to have been defined and established by God alongside the creation of human beings as male and female.
Meanwhile, the LGBTQ movement seeks to renounce the Judeo-Christian worldview in such a radical way that it is not simply desiring to depart from the Judeo-Christian moral framework, but from any sense of an objectively ordered creation. This is essential for the LGBTQ movement’s ideological integrity, given that it advocates a radical autonomy that is guided by the authority of subjective experience. In other words, it claims that every person’s subjective experience is an absolute reality that must be recognized as such in the public square and by every individual. Any objective understanding of reality that might conflict with a person’s subjective, autonomous understanding of reality is perceived as a threat.
The proponents of the moral revolution take this so seriously that they even turn against their own when transgender individuals don’t subscribe to complete subjectivity of experience. For example, when Caitlin Jenner inadvertently held up a binary understanding of gender, leaders of the LGBTQ movement lashed out. Jacob Tobia’s reaction and others like it are vital to protecting the integrity of their cause—not because they perceived Jenner as a “bigot,” a “homophobe” or a “transphobe,” but because anything other than a complete deconstruction of gender via “gender fluidity” limits this unbounded autonomy, which is the ability to define what something is by an act of sheer personal will.
Removing the objective framework in society requires re-engineering the building blocks of society at the most fundamental level. And indeed this is happening, from the debate over bathrooms to the new “gender-neutral” preschools that attempt to eliminate the basic structure of gender binaries through education at a young age. As Albert Mohler puts it, this “moral revolution takes no prisoners.” The end of this revolution is the supremacy of an individual’s will at the expense of any objectivity that threatens to cross it.
John Kasich wants the controversy of marriage and bathrooms to abate so that our culture can reclaim peace, but the reality is that this cultural war is inevitable because it is about something deeper. The reason why there is no intellectual middle ground is that the disagreement at stake is about the fundamental nature of existence. We must ask ourselves, “Is truth, reality and morality objectively defined or autonomously defined?” There is no getting around this dilemma; we must think through the question.
Are we the only measure of ourselves? I don’t think we are. If person X rapes someone, is it only wrong if he decides it is? Or if enough people say it is? Or if it simply has undesirable consequences? None of these make an action truly “wrong” in itself, because for an action to be truly wrong, it must be wrong regardless of time or culture or circumstances. The understanding that such an act is morally wrong, regardless of what people on earth believe about it, requires a transcendent moral code that comes from above—a supreme personal being.
The same God who gives you the basis for real and true justice also tells us who we are, what we are and what it is each of us was made for – to know and have a loving relationship with Him. Is your autonomy worth more to you than that? That is a question only you can answer.
Addison Merryman is a Trinity junior. This is his final column of the semester.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.