Friday, February 20, 2015

Ten Quotes: Making Gay Okay by Robert Reilly

Robert Reilly's Making Gay Okay is a natural law defense of traditional marriage from a Roman Catholic perspective. He covers how the sodomites invert natural order and then walks the reader through the different ways sodomites have gained power in psychology, education, the military, Boy Scouts, and foreign policy. The book is filled with common sense, covers a lot of ground, and is worth your time. Some of these quotes will be men Reilly quotes throughout the book. All emphasis is the authors. Brackets are mine.
What they [homosexuals] want is legal recognition that obliges everyone to recognize  the legitimacy of their act. 
Being queer means pushing the parameters of sex, sexuality, and family, and...transforming the very fabric of society...we must keep our eyes on the goals of providing true alternatives to marriage and of radically reordering society's view of reality. [Paula Ettelbrick, former legal director for Lambda]
When morally disordered acts become the defining centerpiece of one's life, vice can permanently pervert reason, and the inversion of reality becomes complete.
The central insight of classical Greek political philosophy is that the order  of the city is the order of the soul writ large. If there is disorder in the city, it is because of disorder in the souls of its citizens.
Aristotle taught that man cannot reach perfection by himself; he needs society and the political order to reach his full potential. The polis is necessary to him. Rousseau asserted the opposite: man begins in perfection which the formation of society then takes from him. 
[Here Reilly is commenting on the idea that a refusal to allow same-sex marriage is an injustice.] Before justice can be enlisted on behalf of this cause, we should ask ourselves: What is justice? The classical answer to this questions is that justice is giving to things what is their due according to what they are. In other words, to act justly, one must first know what things are. Without this knowledge, one cannot act justly. This may seem self-evident, but its application is far more difficult than one might first think. In order to know what things are, one needs metaphysics and epistemology. 
The separation of sex from procreation logically leads to the legalization of contraception, then to abortion, and finally to homosexual marriage and beyond. The logic is compelling, in fact, inescapable. Only the premise is insane.
What began as a plea for diversity ends with a demand for conformity. [Here Reilly is commenting on the proliferation of sodomite literature in schools.]
Homosexuality is incompatible with military service. The presence in the military environment of persons who engage in homosexual conduct or who, by their statements, demonstrate a propensity to engage in homosexual conduct, seriously impairs the accomplishment of the military mission. [Department of Defense Directive given in January 1981.]
Homosexuality is one of America's most successful cultural exports. [Ronald Lee, former homosexual.] 
And One:
 Justice Kennedy teaches, unassailable "private conduct between consenting adults" made under the inviolable "autonomy of self" is at the heart of liberty. But this cannot be right, particularly if it leads to self destruction...The reason is that the key to democracy is not free choice...the key, as our Founding Fathers knew, is virtue. Only a virtuous person is capable of rational consent because only a virtuous person's reason is unclouded by the habitual rationalizations of vice. Vice inevitably infects the faculty of judgment. No matter how democratic their institutions, a morally enervated [weakened] people cannot be free. And people who are enslaved to their passions inevitably become slaves to tyrants. Thus, our Founders predicated the success of democracy in America upon the virtue of the American people...Our culture no longer corners us into virtue, however, but impels into vice. 

1 comment:

Benjamin said...

Thank you for posting, Pastor Jones! Good stuff - what a phrase - "a morally enervated people". It is haunting.

Let the saints be joyful in glory, let them sing aloud on their beds, let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two edged sword in their hand, to execute vengeance on the nations, and punishments on the peoples; to bind the kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron. Psalm 149:5-8