During my senior year in high school- 1968- a great deal of national attention was charmingly given a college student (I forget which college, but it was a major one) who was the subject of disciplinary action by the dean for moving in with her boyfriend. In retrospect it seems incredible that any dean would even notice such a thing in 1968. But apparently there was sufficient recall of the common sense behind the "Ozzie and Harriet" family constellation of the '50's for this to be the case. Even the national news magazines covered the story. It was used as an object lesson by Pastor Sedory in our high school Doctrine class.
Now, despite the refusal of some few clergy- like yours truly- to perform weddings for couples who are doing so, most of us tend to
assume that couples will live together before getting married- that is, if they even bother get married
at all. And this despite the evidence of survey after survey that living together before marriage, far from reducing the chance of divorce, approximately
doubles it.
But we're even past
that now.
Nearly forty percent of American babies are born out of wedlock- and raised by struggling, impoverished single mothers oblivious to the wisdom of the parable of the cow and the free milk given to he who has yet to purchase it.
Admittedly, traditional Christianity opposes premarital sex, to say nothing of pre-marital parenthood. Doubtless this is one of the issues (abortion and passive euthanasia being two others) which
Newsweek's Jon Meacham has in mind when he suggests in
this article that "evangelicals" want to impose their religious beliefs on others. It's a common perception on the cultural Left, one which gives rise to all sorts of unrealistic and even bizarre fears of a coming theocracy in America. Of course, the cultural liberals who fear such a thing miss the same point the essentially Calvinist cultural conservatives who really believe that public policy should,
ipso facto, be made to conform to Christian doctrine seem to miss: that in a democracy, unless a majority of the voters subscribe to a particular religious belief,
to advocate a policy on religious grounds alone is inherently self-defeating. Nobody votes to enact
somebody elses's religious convictions into law!
Hence, to argue for any public policy on solely religious grounds is not only harmless (from the point of view of religious pluralism), but stupid (from the point of view of cultural conservatism). But again, neither liberals nor Calvinist "Evangelicals" (nor Arminian ones with a Calvinist doctrine on the role of the state) have quite caught on to this rather- excuse the expression-
fundamental point.
It's not merely unbiblical to have a baby before you're married. Nor is it merely a bad idea personally, dooming one as it does to a miserable and impoverished existence for at least long enough to get the kid out of the house or (less than likely) find a guy willing to pay to help raise another man's child. It's not merely harmful to the child for him or for her to grow up in a household without adult models of both genders to relate to (despite the propaganda of the advocates of same sex "marriage," the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates increased difficulties as adults in relating to people of the opposite sex among children who grow up without a parent of that sex in the home).
It's bad public policy not to discourage this. It harms the fabric of society to have nearly forty percent of our kids growing up in such circumstances- just as, for example, it harms us all when
Roe v. Wade creates a class of living members of species
Homo sapiens who are not persons before the law, and whose lives are not sacred. True enough, the line at which members of our species become persons can theoretically be drawn at many places. But conception is the only line that will not move the moment personal convenience or fashion dictates that it move, and which does not avoid carving in stone the premise that something more than humanity itself is necessary to be a person.
President Obama made a much-baleyhood speech on the subject of the relationship between religious belief and public policy a few years ago. I responded to it
here. And in another post, I've
pointed out why Mr. Obama was right (at least to a point), and Baptist luminary Dr. Al Mohler wrong, in a public exchange they had over the issue.
I don't think Mr. Obama fully recognizes that opposition to abortion, gay "marriage," passive euthanasia and even the attitude the culture takes toward premarital parenthood can be questions of public policy which, while they may be prompted by religious beliefs,
are not in themselves inherently religious. They are matters of public policy, which can be debated on purely secular grounds- on
grounds of public policy.
To Mr. Obama's credit, the main thrust of his argument was precisely that, to the degree that "religious" matters of that kind can be cast in secular terms,
they are completely legitimate matters for public debate. Mohler opposed making those arguments in such terms; Obama, as I said, didn't seem to recognize the degree to which they can readily be made in practice, as well as in theory.
But they need to be made. They need to be made precisely in
secular terms. It isn't merely the souls of parents and the lives of children that are at risk when nearly forty percent of our children are born out of wedlock, when the state sanctions an essentially dangerous practice like homosexual behavior, or when either the unborn or those who cannot speak for themselves but have potential inheritors who stand to profit from their deaths can be killed for the sake of other people's convenience. Society is harmed, and the harm need not be described in sectarian terms.It can be quantified and demonstrated and used as arguments with the potential to persuade intelligent people of all religious backgrounds, and none.
And it should be. No, it
must be. No longer can any of us afford for the secular Left to be allowed to get away with defining such issues as sectarian, and thus avoiding the necessity of addressing them on the merits.
