Totalitarianism or Anarchy?
Last month in this section, we noted how Michael O’Brien, a novelist, contended in The Catholic World Report that same-sex “marriage” (and hate-crimes legislation) constitutes a “New Totalitarianism.” Now we learn from The Catholic World Report (Aug./Sept.) that “same-sex marriage leads to anarchy in family life” (it wouldn’t in the opposite-sex Catholic families we know), and will result in outright anarchy. We also learn that “Anarchy is the widespread rejection of established authority, or the refusal to accept that there are limits or boundaries that should not be transgressed. Anarchy need not arise because of a bloody revolution. It can result, less dramatically, from widespread acceptance of license…” So says Seana Sugrue, an Associate Professor of Politics at Ave Maria University in Naples, Fla.
So, what is it? A “New Totalitarianism” or “Anarchy”?
Sugrue says, “anarchy doesn’t last very long,” so she settles for what she calls a “soft despotism,” which is quite a ways from totalitarianism, which is a hard despotism.
Sugrue’s big point is that “marriage is a pre-political institution.” So what? So are polygamy, adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, rape, violence, theft, war, and so forth. They are all pre-political.
You May Also Enjoy
Michael O'Brien is an accomplished Catholic novelist. His strength is fiction.
Freedom-of-conscience clauses are an implicit admission that the law might be unjust, and if a law might be unjust, it ought not to be passed at all.
In 2010 then-Cardinal Bergoglio sent a letter to the Carmelite nuns of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires asking them to pray that God spare their nation from the harm of same-sex marriage.