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发帖数: 29846 | 1 Jun 29, 2011
Joe Carter
In his book The Future of Marriage, David Blankenhorn, a liberal, gay-rights
-supporting Democrat and self-professed “marriage nut,” offers this
sociological principle: “People who professionally dislike marriage almost
always favor gay marriage.” As a corollary, Blankenhorn adds: “Ideas that
have long been used to attack marriage are now commonly used to support same
-sex marriage.”
Blankenhorn provides almost irrefutable proof that this is the expressed
agenda of many—if not most—professional advocates of same-sex marriage.
Other scholars have noticed the same and have attempted to present the
public with the facts about the less-than-hidden agenda to use homosexual
rights to deinstitutionalize marriage and to separate sexual exclusivity
from the concept of “monogamy.”
Since the agenda is an open secret, how has this anti-marriage program been
able to advance to the level of public policy? And how did it happen so
quickly?
To understand this seismic cultural shift we should turn to an obscure,
decade-old political theory.
The Overton Window, developed in the mid-1990s by the late Joseph P. Overton
, describes a "window" in the range of public reactions to ideas in public
discourse. Overton believed that the spectrum included all possible options
in a window of opportunity:
Imagine, if you will, a yardstick standing on end. On either end are the
extreme policy actions for any political issue. Between the ends lie all
gradations of policy from one extreme to the other. The yardstick represents
the full political spectrum for a particular issue. The essence of the
Overton window is that only a portion of this policy spectrum is within the
realm of the politically possible at any time. Regardless of how vigorously
a think tank or other group may campaign, only policy initiatives within
this window of the politically possible will meet with success.
All issues fall somewhere along this policy continuum, which can be roughly
outlined as: Unthinkable, Radical, Acceptable, Sensible, Popular, Policy.
When the window moves or expands, ideas can accordingly become more or less
politically acceptable.
Overton’s model was developed to explain adjustments in the political
climate. But I believe it can also illuminate how profound and deleterious
changes are advanced in our culture. If the goal were to undermine cultural
institutions, the process for getting from Unthinkable to Policy would
follow these five easy steps:
Step #1: From Unthinkable to Radical — The first step is the easiest—
provided the issue can become a fetish or the topic of an academic symposium
. Since both the professoriate and the perverts have a fascination with the
faux-transgressive (the truly transgressive [i.e., Christianity] tends to
terrify them) all you need to do is get the attention of one of these groups
. It doesn't matter which you start with since the politics of the bedroom
and the classroom inevitably overlap.
Step #2: From Radical to Acceptable — This shift requires the creation and
employment of euphemism. Want to kill a child exiting the womb? Call it "
dilation and extraction” and infanticide becomes a medical procedure. Want
to include sodomitic unions under the banner of “marriage?” Redefine the
term “marriage” to mean the state-endorsed copulation of any two(?) people
who want to share a bed and a tax form. Be sure to say it is about “love”
—in our culture, eros excuses everything.
There will naturally be a few holdouts, of course, but those who reject the
shift from Radical to Acceptable can be shamed into approving. All that is
required is to deploy a stingingly suitable insult. The word “bigot”, for
instance, is more effective than a billy club at beating the young into
submission. There are few core beliefs they won’t change to avoid being
called a bigot. The disapproval of their Creator is unfortunate; enduring
the disfavor of their peers is unimaginable.
Step #3: From Acceptable to Sensible — There is nothing more sensible than
to submit to one’s god. And while Americans may profess to worship Allah,
Jehovah, or Jesus, we mostly worship an American Idol—ourselves. That is
why social libertarianism has become our country’s fastest-growing cult. It
has tapped into this self-idolatry by preaching a gospel of the Individual.
It’s a pragmatic and accepting message. You were, as its chief evangelist
Lady Gaga says, “born this way”: “It doesn't matter if you love him, or
capital H-I-M / Just put your paws up /'Cause you were born this way, baby.”
Step #4: From Sensible to Popular — This step merely requires personalizing
the issue. Do you know someone who is LGBT? Divorced? Had an abortion? Sure
you do, they are in your family, in your school, at your church.
Do you hate them? If not, then how can you still disapprove of their actions
? (Note: Be sure to talk fast so that no one follows the logic.) As it says
in the Good Book (or maybe in a Lady Gaga song), judge not lest God judge
you for judging. You want people to like you, don’t you? Then express
popular approval for what your cultural betters (e.g., people on reality TV)
believe should be popularly approved. Then you’ll be popular and it won't
be necessary to call you a bigot.
Step #5: From Popular to Policy — Commission a public opinion poll. Show it
to a politician. They’ll do the rest.
Of course not everyone in society will agree with every step along the way,
but that won’t stop an issue from sliding into policy. All it requires is
for a majority of the people who find the issue unacceptable to do nothing
at all.
Almost every culturally corrosive policy—from abortion to no-fault divorce
to gay marriage—has come about in America this way: Christians who find
such issues “unacceptable” tacitly accept this social-libertarian shift by
their refusal to take action.
Taking action is perhaps the wrong word, though, since what is most often
necessary is deliberate inaction. For example, if every Christian in America
who claimed to be pro-life would simply refuse to vote for any candidate—
regardless of party—who supports abortion, the abortion laws would change
within two election cycles. Similarly, if every Christian in America who
claimed to be pro-marriage had refused to support no-fault divorce, there
would be less poverty and fewer broken families in our country today. And if
every Christian in New York had made it clear that he would hold his
representatives accountable for attempting to redefine marriage, then the
recent expansion of homosexual-rights legislation would have never come to a
vote.
Sadly, such inaction has never happened and is unlikely to occur in the near
future. America has produced an overwhelming number of Christians who are
adept at explaining why they can support issues that are antithetical to
Christianity and depressingly few who can give reasons why we should adhere
to the teachings of scripture and the wisdom of the church.
History has shown that dedicated Christians can close the Overton window and
reverse the shift from “policy” to “unthinkable.” But it requires a
people who have courage and conviction and a willingness to be despised for
the truth. Do current generations have such virtues? Probably not. But I’m
holding out hope that our grandkids will be born that way.
Joe Carter is Web Editor of First Things and the co-author of How to Argue
Like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator. His
previous articles for “On the Square” can be found here. |
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