By Christopher M. Reilly
Some prominent politicians are doubling down on the rhetoric about the “rights” of homosexuals. Vice President Biden is calling transgender rights, including the right to serve in the military, the “civil rights issue of our time.”
Really? Don’t we have a few civil rights issues with more egregious violations against many other segments of the population?
Biden is a 21st-century liberal, part of a dwindling political group that is being blindly manipulated by progressives. His liberalism—once the intellectual champion of human rights and an apparently disadvantaged economic class—now seeks out every supposedly injured interest group in America.
Biden and his allies are the ambulance chasers in our political circus. More people whining equals more votes.
Liberals at least try to make arguments for connecting their favorite concerns for victims to a foundation in real human rights. Progressives, on the other hand, use “rights” arguments to prey on the compassion of Americans and further the progressives’ long-term social schemes.
Now, let’s make this very clear: Homosexuals and transgender people have human rights. They’re human. They ought to. They also deserve our love.
Taking only a particular segment of society and claiming something like “transgender rights,” or ignoring the uniqueness of human dignity to discover “animal rights” has absolutely no logical connection with human rights or appropriate compassion. These are logically manufactured concepts intended to forcibly transfer resources or privileges from you and me to others.
Why do progressives care so much about homosexual and transgender rights? Is it because these groups are the most injured in our society? It is for the same reason that progressives have championed the rights to unrestrained sexual behavior, abortion, and sterilization, which are often subsidized with government money for the poor. They seek to promote pleasure above all—above God, above morality, above the truths established by Christ and His Church. They have even invited Planned Parenthood curricula into the public schools to actively teach this stuff to our children. To this end, they destroy the family, for a house divided—by hedonism, by promiscuity, by lust—will surely fall.
Families are the target. Traditional families are naturally conservative in their cultural and decision-making preferences. Traditional families care for and treasure the elderly, the preborn, and disabled members whom progressives see as unproductive and incapable drags on society. Traditional families divert financial resources to childrearing and emphasize conservative and religious values—at least compared to the general population. Traditional families prefer private, parental control over the education of their children.
A society without families will relinquish private control over the education and even the reproduction of human beings. Our science community invests heavily in new technologies that supercharge in vitro fertilization into an irresistible opportunity to design the characteristics of babies. Those same techniques make it much more attractive for homosexual and transgender consumers to buy a baby “off the shelf.” New parents will act more like manipulated consumers than the natural protectors of their intimately conceived offspring.
A society without families will not care much if there are strict government regulations affecting the number and type of children. But progressives do care. Did you notice that the declared number one goal of the State Department under the previous secretary of state was population control? Not Russia, not Iran, not Benghazi. Population control.
A society without families will be more focused on the ideologically-determined goals of a broad society than it will care about personally determined child-rearing. Progressives in the Department of Education dearly want to centralize and determine the values that are taught to children, and these do NOT include a religious understanding of the origins of the world, anti-abortion sentiment, and patriotic or parochial cultural traditions.
As our Holy Father Pope Francis stated at the Festival of Families:
Family is beautiful but there is effort involved and there are problems. In families there are inimicable relationships. Husbands and wives quarrel, can end up badly, separated. Never let the day end without making peace. In a family, you can’t finish the day off not being in peace.
May God bless you. May God give you hope, the strength to move forward, let us look after the family. Let’s protect the family. Because it’s in the family that our future is at play.
In this world, the family IS life. Defend it.
Christopher M. Reilly is director of external relations at ALL. He holds a master’s degree in public and international affairs and has done graduate work in bioethics, public policy, and marketing. His book Deadly Progressivism: The Rebirth of Eugenics in the 21st Century will be available in November.