The Right to Be Perverse

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Aug 23, 2010

What are we up against in fighting the public facilitation of sexual perversion? We’re up against nothing less than a global culture which regards a person’s desired form of sexual expression as a basic human right. I don’t mean that everyone in every country views things this way, but there are substantial groups of influential media leaders, politicians and judges in a great many places throughout the world who do—perhaps in most places.

The news is the same from Western Europe, North America, a growing number of countries in South America, Australia and New Zealand, and many places in the Far East (though with perhaps a greater emphasis on profit than on ideology). Powerful forces are at work to push Eastern Europe and Africa in the same direction. In one place after another, laws against sexually perverse (and seriously abusive) activities are falling and, in particular, relationships between homosexuals are being recognized as “marriage”.

The current firefight in Mexico is a case in point. The Mexican supreme court recently decided to impose same-sex marriage on all of Mexico’s states, an action growing out of a law in favor of gay marriage which had been passed for Mexico City. Church leaders—especially Cardinal Archbishop Juan Sandoval Iñiguez of Guadalajara and Cardinal Archbishop Norberto Rivera Carrera of Mexico City—have led the resistance to the court ruling. They have also claimed they have evidence that the justices received substantial bribes to reach their decision.

But the consequences of speaking out have been little different in Mexico than in many other places around the globe recently. Political leaders have gone on the attack, filing complaints against the two cardinals and the spokesman for the Archdiocese of Mexico City, Fr. Hugo Valdemar, for “homophobia” and “moral damage.” These complaints have been filed in the liberal and socialist venues where they are most likely to be upheld, much as the human rights commissions in Canada have been used to obtain the same results. Opposition to public acceptance of homosexuality, and in particular to homosexual marriage, is rapidly being criminalized throughout the world.

In response, the embattled Church leaders have decried what they call a “new religious persecution” and have held their positions. But clearly the justices of the Mexican supreme court and the leading politicians in Mexico City are willing to defend gay marriage as a matter of human rights.

To see how much this mentality has seeped in, we need only turn to an equally recent incident in England, in which it has been revealed that the British social service system is paying for sexual indulgence (usually called “sexual therapy”) for those with disabilities. Under a £520 million social service program called “Putting People First: Transforming Adult Social Care”, local social service councils have used funds to encourage sexual expression among the disabled, including visits with sex workers, striptease artists and massage therapists, as well as paid trips to prostitutes, including at least one case in which a disabled man was sponsored for a trip to a brothel in Amsterdam.

The social worker for this man defended the decision by (you guessed it) stating that “refusing to offer him this service would be a violation of his human rights.” The man, who had attended two “sexual health and sexual awareness courses” now wants to “try it”. In another classic argument often used to defend the institutionalization of evil, the social worker asked:

Wouldn’t you prefer that we can control this, guide him, educate him, support him to understand the process and ultimately end up satisfying his needs in a secure, licensed place [Amsterdam] where his happiness and growth as a person is the most important thing?

Americans (among others) will recognize this as the exact same argument used to justify widespread implementation of pagan sex education programs in public—and all too many private—schools.

But it is the appeal to human rights that interests me most. This is a mantra which is growing daily in both repetition and volume. And those who oppose human rights, as everyone knows, are evil, while those who defend human rights are good. The “good” can—and apparently will—use their clout to prosecute the “bad” as criminals. All it takes to set this up is the ability to use the secularist media to discuss each new sexual temptation in terms of the right to sexual fulfillment or sexual expression, and to portray how badly some carefully selected downtrodden individuals feel when they are not able to express themselves as they would wish.

It will come as no surprise to those who have been paying attention that this will be a major battleground in the near future. And for those with the courage to defend and advance what is truly good, this human rights gambit will be the most effective method to fine and jail them. In many places, the courts have already slipped beyond the point where legal distinctions or constitutional arguments can be helpful, and natural law theory has long since been almost universally rejected.

In fact, I believe this is one of those evils which demonstrates, by its utter imperviousness to reason, how futile the struggle against it will be without grace. All of us have our arguments and our programs, CatholicCulture.org not excepted, but it is becoming clearer by the day that if we are not also praying hard for the conversion of those to whom our arguments and programs are directed, then we don't understand that we are really fighting against principalities and powers far stronger than ourselves.