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The Golden Globes

Last Sunday, I watched the Golden Globes Awards on TV.  I like to do that because it reminds me of how much I don’t know about current movies and television, and the actors who perform in those mediums.  I lost track of things years ago, soon after the disappearance of Gary Cooper and Bette Davis.

Watching the Golden Globes and the Oscars also reminds me that there is no such thing as an actress anymore.  While there are female actors, there are no actresses.

And it keeps me up to date on how much of her naked breasts a Hollywood woman is allowed to exhibit while remaining within the realm of good taste and just barely outside the realm of obscenity.  I estimate it’s about 67 percent at the moment.  When I was a boy, Hollywood breasts were important; but they were usually clothed in those far-off, un-progressive days.  That was before we realized we need to get on “the right side of history.”

One of the highlights of the show was a special award given to Ellen DeGeneres.  This was given to her in part because she’s a talented entertainer.  But mostly because she’s a lesbian who, by “coming out” on TV a few decades ago, made a significant contribution to the popular acceptance of homosexuality in the United States.  We were told that it was very “courageous” of her to do that.  I wonder how much courage it takes to jump on a trend at just the right moment.  It takes plenty of smarts, I agree.  But courage?

What would be truly courageous would be for a Golden Globe award winner to stand up in front of the Hollywood elite and a national TV audience and say something like this: “I dedicate this award to every Christian who has been called a homophobe for affirming what Christianity has taught from the beginning, that homosexual practice is a great sin.”

Then there was an award winner, an actress (oops, actor) I had never heard of, who in accepting her award delivered a homily in praise of “choice” (which is of course a liberal euphemism for killing babies in the womb).  She is happy that she lives in a country that allows her to have babies when she wishes and with such partners as she likes.  She is also happy that this country allows women who choose not to abort to be able to do so.  In other words, she is happy that America is so even-handed about abortion that it does not compel women to undergo abortions.  It encourages abortion but does not (yet) compel it.

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Nobody asked her if, for the sake of being logically consistent, she was happy that, prior to the Civil War, a great section of the country allowed people the “choice” of owning or not owning slaves.  “If you don’t like slavery, don’t own a slave” – as a (hypothetical) South Carolina bumper sticker might read.

I am astonished at the success the Great Progressive Propaganda Machine (GPPM) has had at promoting the moral acceptability of abortion and homosexuality, especially the latter.  Half the nation or more now believes abortion to be a good thing.  Not good in and of itself. Rather, good as a somewhat unfortunate necessity; an instrumental good, not an intrinsic good.

Homosexual practice, on the other hand, is widely seen to be a good in itself, at least for those persons deemed to have been “born that way.”  More than half the nation believes that it is not just a tolerable thing, but a positively good thing, for two men or two women to have sexual intercourse with one another; for in doing so they are acting in accordance with their nature, or (as liberal Christians would put it) they are acting in accordance with the way God made them.

The GPPM tolerates, to some degree, Christian criticism of abortion – although there are some university locations where such criticism is effectively silenced as a form of hate speech.  But the GPPM has no tolerance at all for criticism of homosexuality, which it counts as homophobia, and it regards homophobia as an evil equal to racism.  Just as we no longer tolerate racism, not even a little bit of it, so we must no longer tolerate homophobia, even when it comes in the guise of an exercise of free speech or free religion.  It is simply hatred.

It used to be said that homosexuality was “the love that dare not speak its name.”  Now it is the ancient Christian disapproval of homosexual practice that dare not speak its name.  Christians who disapprove mostly do so in silence.

This is especially true of Catholics.  Evangelical pastors often speak out against homosexuality, Catholic priests almost never.  On the question of illegal immigrants, our Catholic clergy are often vocally in agreement with, say, the ACLU.  On the question of homosexuality, they are rarely in open agreement with Saint Paul.

When you say, as the GPPM says, that abortion and homosexual practice are morally acceptable, you are saying that traditional Christianity is wrong about these matters; and you plainly imply that it is very probably wrong about many other matters as well.  The endorsement of abortion and homosexual practice, in other words, is tantamount to a denunciation of old-fashioned Christianity.

This is not at all strange given that the GPPM is mostly made up of four institutions dominated by atheists and near-atheists: (a) the mainstream news media, (b) the entertainment industry (which was on display at the Golden Globes), (c) our best colleges and universities, and (d) the Democratic Party.  These are the “command posts” of American culture.

Who will defend Christianity if Catholics won’t defend it?  Shall we leave its defense up to Evangelicals?  Or – who?

Let us keep in mind that God helps those who help themselves.

 

*Image: Michelle Williams praises abortion. [Getty]

David Carlin is a retired professor of sociology and philosophy at the Community College of Rhode Island, and the author of The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America, Three Sexual Revolutions: Catholic, Protestant, Atheist, and most recently Atheistic Humanism, the Democratic Party, and the Catholic Church.