Several South Dakota Democrats in the South Dakota legislature sponsored H.B. 1092 that would redefine marriage as “any union between two people.” When that came up for debate, as would be expected, a member of the South Dakota Family Policy Council testified against the bill. Their testimony cited scientific research indicating that “toddlers living with a stepparent are 40 times more likely to be abused, and children living with an unrelated parent are 50 times more likely to be killed than those living with biological parents.”
At the end of that hearing, the committee debating the bill voted it down. After that, Erin Healy, one of the bills sponsors, took to Twitter and said, “Extremist group Family Heritage Alliance said this morning that the safest place for kids are in families that have a married mom and dad. What a dangerous and un-American belief.”
Of course the blowback was swift and strong. But the sentiments Healy expressed truly represent her sincerely held beliefs, and the beliefs of the other people who cosponsored the bill with her. It didn’t matter that the view of the bill’s opponents represented both sound science and common sense, her ideology compelled her to promote her desire to redefine marriage. She and her ilk are determined to, literally, change the face of society.
Of course, the attempt to change the face of American society is not limited to the attempt to redefine marriage. It is also seen in the push to promote abortion, change the nation to a socialist economic system, defund the police, promote racism in our public schools via critical race theory, legalize recreational drug use, overwhelm the legal immigration system, and the list could go on and on. If it can be used to disrupt society, Healy and those who think like her are all for it.
But all of this begs the question, “What in the world would possess these people to advocate for all of these policies that will break down society?” Actually, there is a powerful rationale behind it.
Naturalism is the belief that the natural universe, operating by natural laws, is all that exists. Naturalists don’t believe in God or the existence of any transcendent reality. On the moral front, since it is not possible for there to be a transcendent moral law giver, they believe that human beings themselves must create their own morality.
What must they use, then, to determine what should be considered right and wrong, moral and immoral? There is only one possibility – it is their own personal preferences. Beyond that, there is only one way to enforce their preferences – brute force. This is why naturalistic philosophy, when applied in the political area, virtually always leads to totalitarianism.
America was founded upon biblical principles where there is an objective moral law made possible by belief in a transcendent God who revealed right morality based on His own character. When a society accepts that, it creates laws that reflect what is moral based on biblical teachings. Beyond that, the people feel compelled to follow it, not because they are forced by strong arm tactics, but because they personally know the one who is the source of the laws, and it is deemed to be right based on their own personal convictions. Thus, making up one’s own moral rules and the use of brute force to enforce it are not needed. But Healy, and those who believe like her, don’t accept that.
More specifically, the desire to break down the natural family has a particular purpose, and it is rooted purely in the desire to completely do away with the sexual morality that is taught in the Bible. These people want to be able to define what is proper and right sexually for themselves. They don’t want the notion of marriage between one man and one woman to be the objective foundation stone upon which society defines sexual morality. So, if the natural family can be set aside as a standard, then anything goes – fornication, nonmonogamous marriage relationships, polygamy, polyandry, homosexuality, and so on.
Another part of this is the desire to destroy even the very notion of human sexuality. If there is no such thing as a “man” and a “woman,” then even the concept of marriage is meaningless. Thus, the attempt to introduce multiple “genders,” and the desire to make marriage “any union between two people” makes perfectly good sense in their moral system.
When this gender revolution began to happen, homosexuality was not generally accepted by society. It was still broadly seen as abnormal. Advocates, at that time, pushed for it using the rationale that it shouldn’t be against the law for people who love each other to be together. They started by simply trying to get rid of blue laws that outlawed homosexual behavior. Then it moved on to promoting civil unions. From there, they worked to force homosexual marriage on society in general by getting it passed in some states, and finally on the entire country by judicial decree from the U.S. Supreme Court. The next step is to persecute, and prosecute, anyone who disagrees with them – which is already happening in some places.
But obviously, even that is not enough. Now they want to actually change the definition of the word marriage to make it nearly impossible for those who believe it is immoral to even push back against it. And when people do push back, even with actual statistical data, they call the resistance “a dangerous and un-American belief.” This, in spite of the fact that this type of relativistic understanding of sexual morality has NEVER been a part of the thinking of American society.
What we have here is not merely a difference of opinion. What we are witnessing is the attack of religious zealots who want to destroy biblical Christianity and the influence it has had on American society throughout its history, and replace it with naturalistic religion.
Yes, that’s right! Naturalistic belief is a religious belief. This actually comes as quite a shock to most people who are naturalistic Atheists. Almost without exception, if you ask them what they believe, they will say they have no beliefs. They do this based on the assertion that they do not believe in God.
But the fact that a person does not believe in God does not, in any respect, mean that they have no beliefs. The statement that they don’t believe in God only tells you what they don’t believe. It says nothing about what they do believe – and they do believe something. If they are naturalistic Atheists, they believe that the natural universe, operating by natural laws, is all that exists.
For someone who believes that, there are some pretty profound implications. For them to believe that the natural universe, operating by natural laws, is all that exists, they must also believe that:
1) the material that makes up the natural universe is either eternal or that it emerged spontaneously out of nothing.
2) life spontaneously emerged out of non-life.
3) the life forms that exist had to have naturally evolved from less complex life forms.
4) consciousness emerged out of non-consciousness.
But here’s the deal: Not a single one of these things is actually demonstrable by science. To believe any of them, one must do so by faith. In other words, the very core of Naturalism’s beliefs are religious.
And as for the values that emerge out of that kind of belief … there is no place for them to come from but the personal preferences of human beings. There simply is no other possibility.
This, then, brings us full circle back to why Erin Healy considers the Family Heritage Alliance to be an evil group, and why their contention that the natural family is the safest place for kids to be is bad. It also explains why she thinks that a belief in traditional marriage is a “dangerous and un-American belief.” It totally contradicts her religious beliefs. She is a naturalistic zealot and cannot abide beliefs that represent a different faith point of view.
The truth is, though, naturalistic philosophy does not align with reality. And even worse than that, the implications of its beliefs do not align with its own foundational doctrines. It is simply a false religion, and the values it promotes, rather than building up individuals and society, are destructive to both. Only the beliefs of biblical Christianity hold up as a representative of the way reality actually works.
© 2023 Freddy Davis