Following her husband’s lead, Hillary Clinton has shifted from
opposing gay marriage to endorsing it, a complete reversal from
both Clintons’ support of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which
defined marriage as between a man and a woman, and was signed into
law by President Bill Clinton. America’s progressives hope that
enough Supreme Court justices will join them in merrily jettisoning
this antiquated law and multi-millennial-old
institution.
Like her husband, Mrs. Clinton now fancies herself a
“progressive.” It’s funny, I wrote an entire
book on Hillary Clinton, where I dealt with her position on gay
marriage at length, and not once did I hear her refer to herself as
a “progressive.” She had been a liberal, a Democrat, an occasional
moderate, and once even a Goldwater girl. But a “progressive”?
Well, that’s just as well. The progressive tag fits best, as it
does for most liberals. Very few actually match the term “liberal,”
a problematic label. “Progressive” fits better. After all, that’s
what these leftists are doing: they are ever evolving, reforming,
changing, moving, progressing along to something. Their
positions are forever in flux, with the only commonality being that
they favor more government power and centralization to handle
anything they consider an injustice. The evolution across issues is
so vast, and so unceasing, that no progressive can tell you where
they will stand years from now. They merely know that they’ll be
progressing.
The marriage issue is an excellent case in point. No progressive
100 years ago could have imagined their ideology and Democratic
Party embracing gay marriage. Woodrow Wilson and William Jennings
Bryan are rolling over in their graves.
Gee, merely a decade-and-a-half ago, the entirety of the
Democratic Party supported traditional marriage, codified under
law. And yet, Democrats turned on a dime in faithful obedience to
Barack Obama’s mountaintop-message sanctifying gay marriage a year
ago.
Obama promised “change” and “fundamental transformation.” His
legions of blind faithful roared in approval, projecting upon his
blank screen whatever they vaguely had in mind. In Obama’s mind,
this included bestowing unto himself the monumental ability to
literally redefine marriage, granting himself and his government a
power heretofore reserved for the laws of nature and nature’s
God.
(In an equally breathtaking development, libertarians have
jumped on board, generously lavishing upon government — which they
claim to want to limit — an enormous and unprecedented power.)
As for the Clintons, consider their change, their
fundamental transformation, their progress on
this bedrock issue:
As noted, in 1996, Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage
Act. The Arkansas Baptist stood for marriage as always
understood.
As for Hillary, the lifelong Methodist was once firmly in the
camp of not rendering under government the ability to redefine
marriage. Her youth pastor and mentor, the Rev. Don Jones, once
said: “Surely, she is for gay rights…. But I think both she and
Bill still think of heterosexuality as normative.”
Yes, they did. Campaigning for the U.S. Senate in 2000, Hillary
held to that position, to the consternation of gay-rights groups.
In White Plains, N.Y., in January 2000, Hillary stated: “Marriage
has historic, religious and moral content that goes back to the
beginning of time, and I think a marriage is as a marriage has
always been, between a man and a woman.”
That was pretty clear, as was this Hillary remark to New York’s
WNYC in June 2003: “marriage … should be kept as it historically
has been.” She reaffirmed that position throughout the 2008
Democratic primaries.
Alas, jump ahead to this week, where a beaming Hillary proudly
proclaimed: “LGBT Americans are … full and equal citizens and
deserve the rights of citizenship. That includes gay marriage.”
Gee, what happened?
Well, if you’re confused, you simply need to unravel the
confounding illogic of progressive ideology. By progressive
thinking, the Hillary and Bill of, say, 5, 10, 15, or 50 years ago
were not finished progressing. This should also mean (I
think) that both Clintons were in fact wrong at each way-station in
their journey to today’s progressive “truth” on marriage. Thus,
too, it should mean (I think) that every Democrat who agreed with
them on marriage in the 1990s was wrong. Current progressive
ideology asserts that only current progressives are currently
“right” on marriage.
Are you with me?
Thus, here lies yet another crucial illustration of why
progressivism is a disaster. It means, or has to mean, that the
Clintons’ position on gay marriage was never right. It was always
in a state of progression to where it is now. And yet, the Clintons
never knew, at any point, that their position was wrong.
But here’s the kicker: How can the Clintons — or any modern
progressive, for that matter — know that they’re right now? How do
they know they’ve progressed to the final “correct” point on
marriage? Or are they still progressing to whatever that magical
point might be? Progress, after all, never stops progressing. And
so, for progressives, where’s their next redefinition in the
ongoing process of redefining marriage? Does the evolution end with
one man and one woman, or one man and one man, or one woman and one
woman? Why could it not next progress to one man and multiple
women? Could it involve an adult and a minor? Could their evolving
redefinition of marriage include married first cousins or a parent
and child? Could it include multiple homosexuals or heterosexuals
in single or even joint or group spousal relationships?
The answer: progressives, by their very definition, cannot
answer you.
We do know, however, that progressives (with the support of
libertarians) are happy to do with marriage what they do with
everything: give it over to the federal government. That much we
know. Render under government what is government’s; that’s
really the progressive credo. And what is the province of
government? It’s anything that progressives decide it to be.
As for Bill Clinton, a loyal Democrat who once assured us “the
era of big government is over,” he’s on board for the grand
project.
Hey, I’m not surprised. I’m never surprised by anything these
folks do.
As for conservatives, the world at least knows where we stand:
we look to tradition, to Biblical law, to Natural Law, to worthy
and time-tested things that have upheld because they work — not to
the past for the sake of the past, but to the past for the noble
values that endure for good reason. There, we see marriage best as
it has been since the Garden of Eden. As a liberal or progressive,
you can take issue with that, but at least we conservatives can
tell you our end-goal, our ideal. Progressives cannot.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a train-wreck of an ideology,
with literally no end to its havoc. It is currently careening into
the most fundamental building block of human civilization: the
family.
Let the wreckage begin, as America’s “fundamental
transformation” continues. We can thank not only the progressives
and their latest fashionable interpretation of “progress,” but the
stunningly naïve millions of duped traditional Democrats who
blindly pulled the lever for this madness.
Photo: UPI
