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Bush
administration pressure on conservatives to accept the
nomination of Massachusetts Governor Paul Cellucci to
serve as our ambassador to Canada is a perfect example
of the great danger we face in the new administration
-- the temptation to accept the implicit repudiation of
our most fundamental goals for the sake of short term
partisan advantage. If moral conservatives are going to
draw the line at anything the Bush administration might
do, it will be this terrible appointment.
Governor
Cellucci has been an uncompromising advocate of the radical
homosexual agenda in Massachusetts. I will spare you the
details of his tireless -- and publicly defiant -- work
for this cause, but you can learn all you wish and more
about it by visiting the web site of the Parents Rights
Coalition. Suffice it to say that Cellucci has used his
office enthusiastically to provide government funding
and encouragement of compulsory homosexual recruitment
sessions for the public school children of Massachusetts.
I
want to focus today not on the litany of the Governor's
outrageous actions, but on the deeper reasons that advocacy
of the homosexual rights agenda is disqualifying for any
prospective holder of high public office. It is important
to review this argument so that we will remember that
we are simply not free to follow President Bush in such
acts of so-called (and misnamed) "tolerance"
unless we are willing to recognize them for what they
are -- the direct repudiation of our most important principles.
The
movement to achieve public acceptance of the radical homosexual
agenda is the most powerful attempt today to prepare the
nation to acquiesce in the abandonment of any notion of
right and wrong. I believe that in important respects
it has replaced the pro-abortion movement as the most
dangerous moral temptation we face. Those of us who are
keenly aware of the ongoing moral and physical cost of
abortion may not always notice it, but we have actually
won the moral argument about abortion. The advocates and
practitioners of abortion in America today carry on in
full knowledge that what they are doing is wicked and
violates fundamental principles of American life and belief
-- they simply insist that they have the power and will
to do this wrong and will not stop. They have, for the
most part, ceased the missionary crusade to convince the
rest of us to call abortion a good thing. This is progress.
Compare
this situation to the dispute over the homosexual agenda.
Here, we are still being told we have a positive obligation
to acknowledge moral parity between the homosexual "lifestyle"
and the marriage-based, two-parent family. Those who actually
defend the view that these two very different visions
of the nature and purpose of human sexuality differ as
right from wrong are stigmatized as bigots, no better
than the racists who form judgments of human moral worth
on the false basis of skin color.
Respect
for the family flows from understanding that the family
is the school of personhood -- the natural and divinely
ordained basis of our most formative attempts to discern
the will of God and our responsibilities to other human
beings. Our experience in the family reveals to us the
relations of pleasure to virtue, of private good to common
good and of liberty to responsibility, that constitute
the unchangeable structure of any well ordered and morally
fruitful human life. Human reason can discern that God's
plan for family and procreation is a plan for the formation
of morally excellent human beings and that the subordination
of sexual pleasure to the higher goods of fidelity, communion
and responsibility is a relation organic to human nature
itself.
For
these reasons, the assault on the family by agents of
the homosexual agenda is not simply the attempt to raise
one particular sin to parity with one particular form
of virtue. It is the embodiment of the desire to kill
in the nest the very possibility of the formation of young
people who can distinguish between virtue and vice, responsibility
and licentiousness. The dispute over the radical homosexual
agenda -- the fight about a redefinition of our understanding
of human sexuality -- is also, more fundamentally, about
whether we are going to continue to be a people capable
of making principled moral judgments at all. If it is
"intolerant" to refuse to re-order our common
life on the licentious principle of doing whatever we
want in sexual matters, it will soon be considered equally
"intolerant" to order our common life on the
basis of any moral principles whatsoever
If
these are the stakes, we should look very carefully at
what public figures say and do on the issue of sexual
responsibility and sexual conduct. We should apply such
scrutiny particularly to those who offer themselves as
leaders of the moral conservative cause, or with whom
that cause is tempted to align itself. For if we are not
careful, we will find ourselves committed to political
alliances and strategies that -- whether in the name of
"tolerance" or of "pragmatism" or
of whatever other buzzword is used -- represent the abandonment
of our resolve that there is no compromise of principle
possible on the question of the family.
As
with abortion, so with the homosexual agenda, much intermediate
progress may be possible and many alliances with those
who see only part of the truth may be advisable. But we
must always distinguish with clarity and firmness between
actions and words that seek only part of our goal and
actions and words that compromise our goal by falsely
conceding somehow that our principles are only partly
true. The unborn are wholly innocent and abortion is wholly
wrong -- even if we must proceed against this evil, at
times, in partial steps. Human sexuality is wholly ordered
to the marriage-based, two-parent family, and "alternate"
forms of human sexual relations have precisely no claim
to share in the dignity we accord to the family -- even
if we must at times acknowledge the weakness of the flesh
and the great difficulty of always living up to the ideal
of family life.
By
anything approaching this standard, Governor Cellucci's
appointment to office by the Bush administration is utterly
perverse. Then-Governor Bush summed up his position on
the homosexual agenda in the presidential debate by saying
that, "I'm a tolerant man. I just happen to believe
that marriage is between a man and a woman." Now
that he is President, Mr. Bush needs to understand that
he may not "tolerate" in his administration
high officials who say and do things that legitimize the
misunderstanding of human sexuality that puts personal,
individual, selfish and irresponsible gratification at
its center. He may not "tolerate" those who
remain willing allies of the effort to stigmatize the
moral convictions of people of faith on these issues,
dismissing as ill-tempered bigots those who wish to stand
up for the true principles of human dignity. He cannot
"tolerate" in his appointees those who would,
as Governor Cellucci has, violate our First Amendment
right to freely speak the truths of conscience.
Several
weeks ago, the world watched in puzzlement as President
Bush discovered that his promise to aggressively curb
carbon dioxide emissions was inconsistent with his goal
of increasing the energy supplies that are the life-blood
of free and flourishing economies. The Cellucci appointment
presents a similar picture -- the president has apparently
been resting in the serene confidence that he can continue
to be so tolerant of the family's ideological enemies
as to appoint them to represent this nation before one
of the great nations of the earth, and yet still have
an administration that "just happens to believe that
marriage is between a man and a woman." I suppose
his administration may just happen to have a majority
of officials who hold this quaint opinion, but it certainly
will not be capable of making to the world a coherent
proposal about the extremely important issues of moral
judgment and conscience that are necessary for the proper
defense of the family.
Due
to pressure from the White House, an expedited Senate
Foreign Relations subcommittee confirmation hearing on
the Cellucci nomination was held on Wednesday. As it became
clear that opposition to the nomination was gathering
strength, immediate votes in the full committee and full
Senate were likely to be scheduled with little or no advance
notice, suggesting strongly that the fix was in. By the
time you read this, Ambassador "Fistgate" Cellucci
may well be on his way to Canada.
As
the controversy over Governor Cellucci breaks into public
view, it is crucial that principled defenders of the family
fight hard to make their case as strongly as possible.
We absolutely should not reserve our fire until we believe
we have a good chance of stopping the nomination. By contending
against bad policy and bad appointments with determination
and vigor, even when we cannot necessarily carry the day,
we demonstrate to ourselves, our sometimes weak allies
and our opponents that we will defend principle consistently
and tirelessly. By fighting even the losing battles well,
we ensure that the Machiavellian calculations of our opponents
will have to include paying the price of struggle with
decent Americans every step of the way. They would like
nothing better than for us to reserve our moral zeal for
those cases we are sure to win. This leaves all the close
battles to them.
If
moral conservative outrage does not save President Bush
from this offensive blunder, the new Ambassador to Canada
may still serve some good purpose after all. His presence
in the Bush administration would be an ongoing rebuke
to any moral conservatives who "just happen to believe"
that they can blindly trust this administration's judgment
on the most important matters of public policy. If we
relax our vigilance, anything is possible.
Former
Reagan administration official Alan Keyes, was U.S. Ambassador
to the United Nations Social and Economic Council and
2000 Republican presidential candidate.
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