Social Conservatives

I was recently made aware of a Methodist pastor who had a sex change operation, going from "Ann Gordon" to "Drew Phoenix." The question is whether he should be able to keep his ordination and his job. (I believe President Bush is a Methodist.)

[An aside . . .Drew? This guy should be stripped of his ordination right there - for poor style. Why would a lady change into a dude only to become Drew? Sure, there was football hero Drew Pearson, but then there's Drew Barrymore. I once was acquainted with an engaged couple whose names were Chris and Drew. I could never remember which one was Chris and which was Drew. If I saw on the church sign that the pastor's first name was Drew, I'd still assume the pastor was a woman.]

As time goes by, the less these things matter to me. I don't find the issue perplexing, because I just don't care. I don't know what it is, perhaps because it is hard to agree with social conservatives on anything anymore.

The ongoing sexual revolution has supposedly been bad for "the family," a mythological institution that supposedly reached perfection in 1950's suburbia. As the family goes down, the argument goes, so will the country, and then civilization itself.

Yet even before the 1960's, when America was still a "Christian" nation and bourgeois values reigned supreme, there was plenty of rotten stuff the country did. Sure, Christians were leaders in opposing slavery, but other Christians defended slavery. The same could be said for Jim Crow. Protestant Christianity and fervent nationalism went hand-in-hand in exterminating the American Indian, establishing imperial colonies, and getting involved in World War I. The darkness in our nation's soul was there long before Hugh Hefner was even born.

And America seemed to reach its apex around 1988-2001 - 15 years after Roe v. Wade and more than two decades after the sexual revolution, subsidies for out-of-wedlock births, etc. were established. And if America is falling apart now, that seems less to do with the sexual liberalism than with the breakdown of our political and legal institutions. And who was behind that?

- Who cheers militarism and endless war - the transgendered, or social conservatives?
- Who endorses torture of "suspected" terrorists - people in gay marriages, or social conservatives?
- Who corrupted our system of justice by passing victimless crimes, and created a stacked deck that forces innocent people to plea-bargain - pornographers, or social conservatives?
- Who defends warrant-less wiretapping - feminists, or social conservatives?

It is social conservatives, not the "libertine left," that is aiding and abetting America's outright slide into a totalitarian, Big Brother, Police-State dictatorship. They are the ones behind the country's collapse.

After the invasion of Iraq, I found it hard to respect the pronouncements of any Christian leader who supported it. If the Church can't recognize a pointless, unjust war when it sees it, the sex and sexuality of its pastors won't make any difference.