By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
It’s confusing, isn’t it? There was a time not that long ago when almost everyone in the country would have responded to the demands of LGBTQ activists with a dismissive shrug and the comment, “It’s not normal.”
I am not exaggerating for emphasis. As recently as 30 years ago, outside of some radical circles, no one would have felt any need to refute demands for same-sex marriages and transgender locker room rights with a patient and reasoned explanation. The reaction would have been, “That’s crazy. It’s not normal.” Case closed.
This has been a cultural change of great dimensions. Nowadays if someone were to say, “It’s not normal,” or “it’s unnatural,” in response to a photo of Bruce Jenner in his latest ensemble, it would be met in polite society with expressions ranging from disbelief to outrage. The “better” people would be aghast; they will accuse the individual using the term “normal” with being hateful, intolerant, and close-minded, with seeking to make his personal beliefs binding on others. You might hear the terms “totalitarian impulses” and “fascist tendencies” applied as well.
So what happened? Why do modern leftists get so indignant in their opposition to the idea of normalcy? I don’t know if every college kid with blue hair and body-piercings has thought it through, but left-wing intellectuals have. They realize that if we accept that some behavior is normal and some is not, we have to then ask ourselves what yardstick should be applied to make that determination. And also who designed the yardstick. If there is normalcy and a natural law, there must be a lawmaker. We are talking about a Supreme Being, a Creator, God.
The world of the left-wing intelligentsia does not permit that proposition to enter the equation. They cast as their ideal the morally autonomous individual who lives by his own lights, whether he makes his decisions about morality in a discussion in a Left Bank café or while driving alone “on the road” like Jack Kerouac. They demand a world where the Bible has value only as it is interpreted by the individual, where Jesus does not matter, except to the extent that His words may inspire personal judgments about morality; where Western Civilization is seen as an attempt to force others to live by our prejudices.
I don’t know if it is possible to shake committed leftists from this understanding of life. It has been a long time in the making. But perhaps if we could get them to read a few essays by C.S. Lewis, it would make some difference. The leftist’s moral relativism is a worldview based on faulty logic. Lewis was able to show that with powerful clarity; to demonstrate that we all recognize the existence of norms, whether we admit it or not.
The old cliché about there being “honor even among thieves” makes the point. Gangsters talk about a “fair” division of their ill-gotten loot, about the dishonor in being a “rat.” They have their codes of conduct, an understanding of what is noble and what is not, even if in a debased formulation.
In an essay found in the anthology The Joyful Christian (Macmillan: 1977), Lewis offered examples of everyday expressions that illustrate the universal belief in norms. Everyone, wrote Lewis — conservative or liberal, rich or poor, well educated and not, white or black or yellow — routinely uses expressions such as: “How’d you like it if anyone did the same to you?” — “Leave him alone, he isn’t doing you any harm” — “Come on, you promised.”
Lewis focuses on how all these remarks say more “than that the other man’s behavior does not happen to please” the speaker; that they appeal “to some kind of standard of behavior which he expects the other man to know about.” Moreover, “the other man very seldom replies; ‘To hell with your standard.’ Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse.”
Put otherwise, writes Lewis, “both parties have in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play, or decent behavior, or morality, of whatever you call it, about which they really agreed.” “Quarreling means trying to show the other man that he is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are.”
I would add some expressions that are commonplace in our time, but were not in Lewis’ day, that make the same point. The enlightened liberals who deny that there are universal norms in regard to sexual behavior will routinely criticize those who say “hurtful” things, people who are not “team players,” who are not someone “we can count on,” not someone who “will have our back” in tough times, who are not “real friends.”
They are also quick to condemn those who do not appreciate the benefits of diversity, or not understand the threat of global warming. The bottom line: They are fine with norms that express their views. What they oppose are norms that reinforce traditional values.
Permit me to offer some anecdotal evidence: I recently went to see a local theater group’s production of a play about a retired Southern woman’s experiences when she hires an instructor to teach her the basics of ballroom dancing at her home. That was all I knew about the play when I bought the tickets. I thought it could be an amusing way to spend an afternoon. (There is also a good restaurant nearby.)
And in many ways it was. The woman’s struggle to master the steps and the instructor’s exasperation elicited frequent laughter from the audience. But — I bet you guessed — there was another angle to the plot. It wasn’t long before it was revealed that the instructor was a homosexual. And that the woman was the widow of a Southern Baptist preacher.
The dialogue was dominated by references to the cruel treatment the instructor had experienced at the hands of “rednecks,” “military macho men,” and “religious hypocrites,” usually in singles’ bars in the South. As well as recollections by the woman of her husband’s narrow-minded intolerance of what he called “pansies,” of blacks, of Jews, of anyone who was “odd.” There were also her tales of his cruelty and cold indifference toward her. Through her discussions with the dance teacher, she came to realize her husband’s problem was likely to be a result of the “suppression” of his sexuality.
The audience got the message. There were many nods and sighs of sympathy for both the homosexual dance instructor and for the woman, for the cruelty they suffered at the hands of those in society who dared to make moral judgments about those different from them, people who “dealt in stereotypes.”
You can see the irony. In his attack on those who believe that there are norms governing human behavior — such as Baptist preachers — the playwright came up with a dramatic enactment meant to depict as wrong, as in error, as inhumane, as unjust — as abnormal — an array of stereotypes of Southern Christians who live their lives by what is taught in the Bible.
OK, OK, I don’t know if the playwright, if asked, would use the word abnormal for these Southern Christians. I suspect that he would come up with a more value-laden and intolerant term to condemn them, something like “bigots.”
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