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For free and unrestricted use with attribution.
Doesn’t Anyone
Care?
By Rabbi Daniel Lapin
Toward Tradition, Seattle
On Wednesday afternoon
the United States Senate voted against moving forward on a proposed amendment
which would have added to the constitution these words, “Marriage in
the United
States
shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman.” Some Americans are celebrating this as a
triumph of tolerance while others are mourning it as the defeat of
decency. However, I suspect that many
Americans, whose basic credo is live-and-let-live, are ignoring it entirely. It is to these readers, who regard the Senate
vote as largely irrelevant in their lives, that I address myself.
The majority of us live
our lives confronting challenges that demand that we make decisions many
times each day. Should I invest this
unexpected windfall or spend it on a long awaited necessity? Should we send our children to private or
public school? Should I remain in my
job or switch careers? Should I marry
the person I have been seeing or wait for someone else? Should I do my homework or go
swimming?
Many of these decisions
would be easy if we didn’t all live in a state of exquisite tension,
constantly suspended between two opposing poles. Almost every decision forces us to choose
between the two poles, each pulling us in a different direction. Sometimes the two poles appear dressed as
duty and pleasure. Other times they
wear the costumes of our short term interests versus our long term
interests. Often, in our own minds and
for our own emotional convenience, we interpret the two conflicting tugs to
be good and evil. However, for many of
us, that distinction usually reflects nothing but our own preexisting
inclinations.
Often our basic two
choices masquerade as continuity and change.
For instance, do I divorce my spouse or remain in a flawed
marriage? We all feel a pull to keep
doing what we have been doing, because continuity is comfortable and change
can be terrifying. On the other hand
we are also attracted by change with all its promise of excitement, novelty,
and perhaps improvement.
For many years now
American public policy seems to have been guided by the false credo that
instead of continuity, change is always the best path. To be sure the abolition of slavery and the
outlawing of child labor were overdue and good changes, but many public policy
decisions have also caused dreadful changes.
Things don’t just
happen. Many specific decisions, each
made with only good intentions, gradually made life in these United States
indescribably more squalid, more expensive, and more dangerous than it was only
say, about fifty years ago.
Violent and salacious
lyrics that would have made a hardened convict blush back then, now pound
remorselessly through the earphones of almost every suburban teenager. Do you recall how, in the 1950s, an
enviable middle-class lifestyle could be maintained for a family by the
earnings of one worker? Back then
women could walk safely at any time of the day or night through the parks of
any major city in the country. We
embraced the public policies that brought about these terrible changes. People like you and I failed to remember
that life involves reconciling continuity and change, not just thoughtlessly
accepting change.
Public policy decisions
do have consequences in our lives. You
may not feel the impact of a bill passing Congress until years have elapsed,
but feel it you will. Eventually it
will impact your children, your finances, and most other aspects of your
life; and not necessarily for the better.
Whether you personally
see the two poles as continuity and change, duty and pleasure, or present and
future, they are alluded to by the opening words of the Torah—“In
the beginning God created heaven and earth.” Rather than viewing this sentence as a
cosmological insight into Big Bang theory, ancient Jewish wisdom reveals it
to be a fundamental insight into the most basic dilemma of human existence:
the need to choose between heaven and earth.
Virtually every difficult choice resolves itself in terms of this
dilemma—at every confusing cross road, in the face of two choices,
reality restricts our footsteps to only one path. The trick is to identify the real nature of
the two paths regardless of what the signposts may say.
Clearly, the real
nature of the two paths is hinted at by the terms heaven and earth,
but what in our real lives do heaven and earth represent? Within no more than twenty words, the
Biblical text provides a hint: the choice is light
and darkness. For those of us still unsure a later verse
spells it out: “I have placed life and death before you, blessing
and curse, therefore choose life so that you and your children should live.”
Back in 1973 because
people like you and I considered public policy to be irrelevant to our lives,
and because some of us were seduced by the propaganda of choice and freedom,
the country chose death. It took many
years but today in most states, your teenage daughter can get an abortion
without your knowledge or consent.
At its deepest level,
the existential choice we each confront many times each day is a choice
between heaven and earth, a choice between eternity and mortality, and yes,
ultimately a choice between life and death.
The question we now ought to ask ourselves is whether publicly
sanctioned homosexual marriage corresponds to the path of life or that of
death. Can anyone really be sure of
the impact this legislation would have upon the essence of all our lives a
few years down the road?
To those who ignore the
public debate on homosexual marriage and to those who feel it is irrelevant
in their lives and to those who advertise their tolerance by singing
"live-and-let-live," I say the time has come to choose continuity
over change. The time has come to
choose heaven over earth, and yes, life over death.
Radio talk show host,
Rabbi Daniel Lapin, is president of Toward
Tradition—the American Alliance of Jews and
Christians—a Seattle-based, bridge-building organization providing a
voice for all Americans who defend the Judeo-Christian values vital for our
nation’s survival.
For
more information or to schedule an interview, please contact: Rachael Whaley
(206) 236-3046
www.towardtradition.org
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