TRAGEDY AND RAMPAGE

Two news items crossing the screen today epitomize the culture war in America.

Item number one: Jamie Hubley, a gay 15-year-old commits suicide, leaving blogs on the Internet which chronicle his depression and pain.

Item number two: A Chicago Christian school is vandalized for hosting a pro-family event.

Hubley’s schoolmates plan a memorial performance in his honor. He is remembered as a happy kid, always smiling and giving everybody hugs in the halls.

His blogs paint a different picture. Peppered with F bombs, they reveal a troubled soul who indulged in self-mutilation and hated being the only homosexual in his school.

He expressed love for his parents. Didn’t blame them for his depression. But anti-depressants and counseling didn’t help.

In his final blog, entitled “You can’t break when you’re already broken,” he calls himself ‘a casualty of love.’

Raging teen age hormones, blotting out the call of reason, blotting out concern for parents, blotting out everything but self-loathing and despair.

Pathetic? Certainly. Teen-age suicide is always a tragedy. But the near epidemic of it among homosexuals should hoist a warning flag.

And it does. But the flag gives a mixed message. Some say the message is that universal acceptance and approval of homosexual conduct is needed so that the Jamie Hubleys of the world will not be lonely.

And some say that homosexual conduct is irrational and should be discouraged.

That’s the gist of the message being broadcast by Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, which sponsored a banquet and lecture at Christian Liberty Academy in Arlington Heights, Illinois two days ago.

When the faculty and staff arrived on the morning of October 15, they found a number of windows and doors shattered with bricks. The vandals were not exactly shy. One brick carried a note which read, “This is just a sample of what we will do if you don’t shut down Scott Lively and AFTAH.”

Later in the day, an anonymous posting on the Internet boasted of causing the vandalism to protest the event, accusing Americans for Truth About Homosexuality of being a ‘hate group’ and accusing Lively, who was to be given an award, of founding another ‘hate group’ called Watchmen on the Walls.

An activist organization called the Gay Liberation Network tried to persuade the academy to call off the event, but has taken no responsibility for the damage.

Peter LaBarbera, founder and president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, characterized the attack as a ‘hate crime’ against people who espouse Christian values. “If this would have occurred at a gay church, there would have been a public outcry,” he said.

And so it goes.

Eight years ago, in the case of Lawrence v Texas, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down state laws against sodomy. It was a classic example of judicial legislation.

One of the problems with judges making laws is that they tend to get ahead of the curve. Six black robed geniuses in Washington are not competent to declare what is culturally acceptable or unacceptable.

To overturn centuries of human experience and attitude by a 6 to 3 vote is, to say the least, a rather expansive notion of the judicial prerogative.

Did they really expect to silence Mr. LaBarbera with a stroke of the pen?

Or create a welcoming freshman class for Jamie Hubley with their sophistic theories about what the 1789 Constitution ought to have intended?

I suppose there aren’t a lot of folks who would blame Jamie’s suicide or the Christian Liberty Academy vandalism on Justices Kennedy, Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter and O’Connor.

But I do.

The Supreme Court never takes a case they don’t want to hear. They should have left Texas law and Texas culture to the people of Texas.