In 2054, Lord willing, I’ll be 79 years old. And if Christ doesn’t return, America will either be 278 or fallen upon what Vladimir Lenin famously termed the “dustbin of history.”
The June issue of The Advocate magazine challenges its readers to imagine the America of 2054, when, in the words of homosexual attorney Evan Wolfson, “… [O]penly gay soldiers could be part of a battalion led by an out lesbian commander. Openly gay priests and ministers in monogamous relationships could conduct services without fear of a schism ripping apart their denominations. After winning the Super Bowl, a gay quarterback could scream to TV crews, ‘I’m going to Disney World with my boyfriend.’ The first lady could be the ‘first womyn.'”
The Advocate version of 2054 could never actually occur, though we are certainly on course toward it, but society simply cannot be sustained on such a culture. Rome fell for similar reasons.
Back in the time when statesmen studied these things, and when there were statesmen, Daniel Webster said of Rome, “Public virtue fell with private morality.” Throughout its existence, Rome had a law allowing for divorce. For 500 years, not a single individual is said to have taken advantage of that law. Culturally enforced, no one dared break the sacred marriage vows.
Then, said the great senator, “divorces were sought for and obtained under the most frivolous pretexts, and all domestic confidence was destroyed. The inevitable consequence was the loss of all public morality. Men who had been false to their private obligations would not be true to their private duties. Caesar divorced his wife, and betrayed his country.”
And Webster’s reflection on the rise and fall of nations ought to inform the urgency of our thinking today: “The sanctity of the nuptial bond, is, in my opinion, one of the principal, if not the chief cause of the superior refinement, freedom and prosperity enjoyed at the present time by Christian nations.”
That bond is being rent asunder at the moment. And while we still enjoy some mighty fine prosperity in the flesh, we all must face the overwhelming poverty of our spirit on the most basic levels.
Divorce in America, as in Rome, has long since been availed as an everyday sort of thing. And we all know that the proposed constitutional amendment defining marriage will do nothing but indicate that our character as a people is lacking the virtue requisite for the very preservation of constitutional government. An amendment will not make us a more moral people, it will only testify of our pathetic decadence.
We are, as Judge Bork has observed, “Slouching Toward Gomorrah.” But perhaps left-wing homosexual columnist Dan Savage has better captured the fun and the passion and the lightness with which we are “Skipping Toward Gomorrah.”
After all, Gomorrah and Sodom seem to be far more delightful places than that old Massachusetts Bay Colony where the Pilgrims and the Puritans were so harsh and strict. But Massachusetts itself, where sit the graves of Sen. Webster and his Puritan ancestors, is the site of thousands of same-sex weddings that claim in vain the blessings of our forefathers’ God.
That The Advocate homosexual magazine is one of America’s most popular magazines; that its advertisers include Subaru, Delta Air, Apple Computer, American Express, IBM, Time-Warner, Cadillac, Morgan Stanley, Tylenol, Jaguar, Volkswagen, Bridgestone, Avis and Xerox; that there is such a mainstream market for the destruction of the family; and that this homosexual magazine thinks the America of 2054 will be made in its image, ought to inspire us to consider the same question: What will America look like in 2054?
In 2054, will we still be able to say, with Daniel Webster, that the sanctity of marriage is “one of the principal, if not the chief cause of the superior refinement, freedom and prosperity enjoyed at the present time by Christian nations”?
Or will “Christian nation” be an outmoded term? Will America be a nation like the late Rome, or our cities like the late Sodom and Gomorrah?
I rather think not, and I’ve written just recently of my positive attitude about trends I see in my own generation. My optimism is staked on the hope that young people are seeing the dangers we face and will spend our lives putting America back on the right track. My vision of 2054 is bright.
But in order for a torch to give light, it must be lit. If our hope is to be real, we must fight for it, desperately.
