Letters to a Young Conservative (16 page)

Global warming? I confess that I am not agitated by it. Scientists estimate that the earth’s temperature has risen by one or two degrees over the past one hundred years. I repeat: over the past one hundred years. This is a problem? One of the drawbacks of life in the United States is that it’s too cold! If global warming is causing a rise of two degrees per century, by my calculation the United States will have the perfect temperature in the year 2700 A.D. True, by this time the people
along the Equator may have to put on quite a bit of sunscreen, but Brazil’s loss is Minnesota’s gain.

On a more serious note, Chris, I believe that the solutions of the environmentalists are even less plausible than their forecasts. How likely is it that the environmentalists can persuade people in the West, and in the Third World, to limit their aspirations to have a better life? How convincing is it to say to a Brazilian farmer, “We are more concerned about the rain forest than about your chances to feed your family?” Does it make sense to tell a poor logger, “Don’t cut down those trees because they are home to a very rare breed of ant?” There is virtually no chance for such arguments to succeed. Nor are the environmentalists likely to convince Third World people to have fewer children because the world is projected to have too many people in the year 2050.

The basic flaw of the environmentalist approach is its unremitting hostility to growth, affluence, and technology. Indeed, growth, affluence, and technology are the best hopes for saving the earth. Rich people—not poor people—join the Sierra Club. Only when countries become rich do they start worrying about pollution, and have the resources to tackle the problem. Moreover, affluence is a nation’s best contraceptive: It is a universal demographic law that when countries become wealthier, their birth rates drop. Indeed, the wealthiest nations have seen birth rates drop so low that they are considerably below replacement levels.

Finally, technology—not the naturalistic lifestyle—is the best way to preserve the environment. Organic farming, for instance, provides employment for lots of poor, simple folk and produces crops that upper-middle-class people are willing to pay more for. Organic farming, however, is inefficient. It consumes large tracts of land to produce very small potatoes and strawberries. High-yield farming is vastly more efficient. Pesticides and bioengineering help farmers produce the most crops out of the least amount of land. When we get higher yields from our farms, we leave more room for wilderness.

By opposing the solutions that have the greatest chance to work, the environmentalists reveal themselves to be unwitting enemies of the planet. We cannot rely on these people to save the earth. Rather, conservatives must assume the responsibility of being the true stewards of creation.

Dear Chris,

Recently I saw a group of gay men marching in a pro-choice rally. They were dressed in the stereotypical style of gay camp, and they carried banners that listed various homosexual organizations and said things like QUEERS FOR CHOICE. I asked myself, what possible interest could homosexuals have in this issue? Then I realized that gay activists hope to legitimize their lifestyle by promoting a view of sexuality that is completely severed from reproduction.

As the political activism of gays today suggests, homosexuality has become an
ideology.
That seems to distinguish it from homosexuality in the past. Among the Greeks, for instance, there were lots of homosexuals. Socrates, I suppose, was a homosexual. But this fact tells us nothing about what Socrates thought about democracy, or about poverty, or about how Greeks should treat
Persians. Now, by contrast, homosexuality has become a worldview.

“There have always been atheists among us,” Edmund Burke wrote. “But now they have become turbulent and seditious.” This is the way I feel about the gay movement. Following in the path of the civil rights movement, the gay activists have developed a shrewd three-step maneuver. The first step is Tolerance. Here the argument is, “You may think we are strange and disgusting, but put up with us.” And many Americans go along with this. Then the gay activists move to stage two. This step may be called Neutrality, and it involves a stronger claim: “You should make no distinction between heterosexuality and homosexuality.” If heterosexuals can marry and adopt children, for example, gays should also be able to do so. If this step is conceded, the gays are ready to advance to stage three. This step may be termed Subsidy. “We have been discriminated against for centuries, so now we want preferential treatment.” The military, for instance, could be required to admit a certain percentage of gays every year in much the same way that it enforces goals and quotas for women.

The big issue now is, of course, the issue of gay marriage. It does not appear that very many gays want to marry. The reason for this seems fairly obvious: Marriage could put a serious crimp in the promiscuous lifestyle of many male homosexuals. But gay activists have lined up behind the marriage cause, partly to collect health benefits and other legal advantages conferred by marriage, but
mostly to gain full social recognition for homosexuality. The real goal of the gay movement is to break down moral resistance to the homosexual lifestyle. Already gays have made considerable progress in this area. Not long ago homosexuality was considered an illness. Now moral criticism of homosexuality is described by gay partisans as a kind of psychological disorder. The person who has moral qualms about homosexual behavior is said to be “homophobic.”

Should gays be allowed to marry? Perhaps the most ingenious argument in favor of this has been offered by journalist Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan concedes that some elements of the gay male lifestyle, such as reckless promiscuity, endanger society as well as the lives of the homosexuals who live this way. Sullivan argues, however, that it is social ostracism that marginalizes homosexuals, especially male homosexuals, and makes them behave in this manner. If gays are allowed to be part of society—engaging in its normal rituals, like marriage—then Sullivan is confident that this outrageous element of gay culture would diminish. Sullivan’s argument can be condensed to the slogan “Marriage civilizes men.”

But Sullivan is wrong.
Marriage
doesn’t civilize men,
women
do. Ronald Reagan made this point many years ago. If not for women, he said, men would still be running around in animal skins and wielding clubs. Reagan’s point was that male nature needs to be tamed, and that the taming is done by women. I agree completely with Reagan on this point. Untamed male nature can be witnessed
in the lifestyle of gay men who have had hundreds, if not thousands, of anonymous sex partners. Female nature is something quite different, and once again we see it in the gay community. Lesbians seem far more capable than gay men of sustaining long-term relationships.

“But why should we prevent people who love each other from getting married?” This is the argument I hear repeatedly, both from gays and from non-gays. Here is the problem. Marriage is defined as the legal union of two adults of the opposite sex who are unrelated to each other. This is the basic definition. Now let’s assume we revise the definition to permit gay marriage. What if a group of Mormons, joined by a group of Muslims, presses for the legalization of polygamy? The argument proceeds along the same lines: “I want to have four wives, because we all love each other.” And another man says, “Why shouldn’t I be able to marry my sister?” And yet others make more exotic claims: “I love my dog and my dog loves me.”

The point is that love is a desirable but not sufficient condition for marriage. Why, then, does society have these specific criteria? Why privilege this particular arrangement and grant it special legal status, including the social recognition and tax benefits that go with it? The reason is that marriage is the incubator of children. It is the only known arrangement for the healthy cultivation of the next generation. Bearing children is one area in which gay couples are inherently deficient. In one incident
at Dartmouth, Professor Hart was approached by a homosexual English professor who said to him with intense conviction, “Jeff, I really want to have a son.” Hart replied, “Don, I think you’re going about it the wrong way.”

Andrew Sullivan is not satisfied. He points out that some heterosexual couples can’t have children, yet society doesn’t prevent them from getting married. This is a bad argument that misunderstands the nature of social rules. Consider this: You have to be sixteen years old to drive and eighteen years old to vote. The reason for the rule is that driving and voting require a certain level of maturity. True, some adults don’t have such maturity, yet we don’t exclude them. True, some minors could probably drive and vote effectively, but we don’t let them. The point is that rules are general propositions based on a presumed connection between the established criteria and the behavior that is desired, even though the result may not always be favorable. And so it is with marriage.

What about adoption? Should gays be allowed to adopt? Yes, under certain circumstances. Certainly I can see why an adoption agency might decide that it is better to place a child with Rosie O’Donnell, the lesbian television host, than to have that child grow up in foster homes. On the other hand, heterosexual two-parent families should in general be preferred to homosexual couples. The reason is that children benefit from having a father and a mother. Children relate differently to dads than to moms. I learned a lot about being a man from
my dad. There is no way I could have learned those things if I had been raised by two moms.

Gays in the military? Yes! What could possibly be the problem with this? Do you mean to say that, simply because large numbers of homosexual males are placed in the same barracks where they eat together, shower together, work out together, and sleep together, there’s sure to be sexual involvement? Nonsense! I think we can fully expect homosexual behavior to be just as rare in our military facilities as it was in the Spartan wrestling pit. Chris, just because gays are allowed in the military doesn’t mean they’ll use it as an outlet for their sexual urges. Next homophobes will say that gays shouldn’t be ordained as priests because they will take advantage of the altar boys.

Dear Chris,

I see you found my letter on homosexuals quite amusing. As a libertarian, you say that you have no moral objection to homosexual behavior, only an uncomfortable feeling about it. Even so, Chris, you don’t have to support “homosexual rights,” because homosexuals as individuals
do
have the same rights as everyone else. Yes, you will say, but what about the right to marry? Homosexuals
do
have the right to marry. They have the right to marry adult members of the opposite sex. Now, they may not avail themselves of that right, in the same way that people who have the right to vote may choose not to vote. But one’s refusal to exercise a right does not imply that one does not possess the right. Having said all this, I completely agree with you that the problem of family breakdown in our society has not been caused by homosexuals—it is entirely the fault of heterosexuals.

I am very sorry that we have reached the point where the family has become a political issue because now we have to be “pro-family,” and thus we are prevented from telling the whole truth about the family. You see, the family has been a major theme of Western literature, from Sophocles to Shakespeare to Jane Austen to Leo Tolstoy. And one of the major conclusions of this literature is that the family is a
pain.
The family is the locus of pettiness, drabness, and ongoing disagreement. Think of it: You are forced to spend your whole life with a bunch of people you didn’t even choose!

Such an arrangement is bound to cause problems. Unfortunately, we cannot publicly discuss those problems because we are “pro-family,” and we don’t want to give ammunition to those who would undermine the family. The great writers of the West had a more subtle view: They understood that, whatever the tensions inherent in family life, there is no serious alternative to the family. They knew the family is a flawed, but indispensable, institution.

The family is indispensable because children come into the world as barbarians. Over the years, I have come to realize that babies and toddlers are not just ignorant, they are also wicked. This point was also made by Saint Augustine. The church father urges us not to be fooled by infants. They
look
angelic, he writes, but consider how shrill, irascible, and demanding they become when their slightest want goes unfulfilled; notice the malevolence with which they strike out at the nurse. Augustine
concludes that babies do not lack the will to do harm, only the strength. So who will civilize these barbarians? Who will teach them knowledge and goodness? There is only one answer: the family.

The West is now facing what has been termed the “crisis of the family.” And it is a crisis. Nearly one-third of whites, and more than two-thirds of blacks, are born out of wedlock. Maybe I am using an old-fashioned vocabulary, but bastardy has become a normal feature of American life. Some people object: “Don’t say that word. It’s a mean word.” Yes, but it describes a mean condition. Common sense tells us, and studies have confirmed, that it is not a good thing for children to be raised by a single parent. Such children are more likely to be poor, undisciplined, unsuccessful at school, and psychologically disadvantaged, compared with children from two-parent families.

You ask, what has caused the crisis of the family? And are things getting better or worse?

I can think of three major factors responsible for the decline of traditional families. The first is technological capitalism. The problem began during the Industrial Revolution because it separated the workplace and the home. Before that, most people worked at home. Read Peter Laslett’s wonderful book
The World We Have Lost,
a study of pre-industrial England. Laslett shows us how the baker, his wife, his children, his servants, even the journeymen he employed, all worked, ate, and slept under the same roof. In a sense, they were all one family.