Essence and Behavior

The great sociological and cultural struggles in 21st century America are, it seems to me, a result of a disagreement on one simple, fundamental point.

Is behavior a civil right?

Traditionally, civil rights have been understood to stem from an individual’s inherent, unchangeable being or essence. For example, the color of one’s skin, one’s gender, one’s age, and any permanent physical disability, if applicable. The individual has no choice in the matter; he is born with the feature and has no say in whether he desired the particular skin color, gender, age, or disability he is or has.

Behavior is a choice and, like it or not, society as a whole has an obligation, for its survival and self-perpetuation, to favor certain behaviors over others.

The two hot topics of the day both center squarely on behavior. I am talking about the push for amnesty for illegal immigrants and the efforts towards the normalcy of homosexuality, as manifested in the oxymoron of homosexual marriage. The first violates the legal law, the second the natural and moral law.

I’ve sometimes heard it declared by proponents of amnesty that “a human being cannot be declared illegal.” That is certainly a correct view, but it is a mischaracterization of those who interpret the law as something to be enforced. That adjective “illegal” refers not to the person’s inherent, unchangeable being or essence (and thus has nothing to do with his race) but whether or not that person chooses to obey the legal system in his process to go from visiting non-citizen to naturalized American citizen or legal immigrant. If they choose to disobey the law, they are referred to as “illegal”.

Common sense, right? Just as commonsensical as the fact that no one is denied the right to marriage, provided we keep the millennia-old definition of marriage as the legally recognized (and sometimes sacramental) unity of a man and a woman. Two men or two women uniting is what’s called a civil union. Civil unions have the same legal rights and protections as marriages do. This is not an issue of civil rights. It is an issue of changing the culture to approve of homosexuality.

That is the gist of the whole fight. Anything otherwise is misrepresentation, name-calling, exaggeration, and various crows of self-superiority of intellectual or emotional natures. Venting or arguing, in other words.

Just a Clarification from the Department of the Ostensibly Obvious.