Gays. And marriage. And rights.

As an indirect result of my influence -- I'm not "influential" in the Ross Douthat sense, but it's not Easter yet, so I'll drop it -- Donald Douglas gets into a discussion of gay rights and political correctness with Little Mister Loser:

James Webb, of Brainrage, has asked of me repeatedly: "I'm just curious as to your views on gay marriage if one of your own boys wanted the same rights that many gays are now denied by yourself and others of your ilk."

Now, you can go read the whole thing to get Dr. Douglas's take on the subject. He should be thankful he's got tenure, or he'd be fired for dissenting from PC orthodoxy and out here shaking the tip jar with the rest of us blogwhores.

While I claim to speak for no "ilk," personally, I'm sick and damned tired of the transparent nonsense being peddled as "rights." Judge Roy Moore got it right: An enormous and venerable corpus of Anglo-American jurisprudence classified homosexual activity as "a crime against nature," having no legal sanction and certainly not constituting a "right."

Yet scarcely five years after Lawrence v. Texas overturned Bowers v. Hardwick (a Supreme Court precedent that dated to only 1986) anyone who dares to question the existence of such a "right" is subject to vehement denunciation as a hateful troglodyte. We even have earnest young intellectuals telling us that gay marriage is "conservative," despite any inkling of such an idea in the writings of Burke, Weaver, Kirk, et al.

A scam is being perpetrated, because too many so-called "conservatives" lack the necessary organs -- two eyes, a brain, a spine, and a functioning pair of testicles -- to tell the truth, no matter how unpopular the truth may be, or what the consequences of speaking unpopular truth.

Men and women are different. They were created different, designed with a natural complementarity, to fulfill specific life functions. There is a natural order to human life, and marriage between man and woman is part of that order. The legal status of marriage did not create marriage, but is rather a recognition of a pre-existing natural order -- an order that was not created by human agency, but by the Creator.

The gay-rights movement would like you to believe that sexual behavior can be divided into two categories: Gay and straight. But according to the Creator, this is a false distinction. God divides sexual behavior into two categories: Righteousness and sin.

Righteous sex is the love between man and wife that creates human life, and which through that God-ordained intimacy knits together the couple in a permanent and exclusive union: "One flesh."

Everything else -- everything else -- is sin. And this was once recognized by Anglo-American jurisprudence, which in one way or another imposed sanctions against every type of sexual behavior except between man and wife. But in the decades after World War II, in the name of "modernizing" the legal code, these sanctions were gradually repealed. "Sexual liberation" was the name of the game, divorce skyrocketed and the lawyers cheerfully liberated wives from husbands, liberated husbands from wives, and liberated fees from clients.

If "anything goes" was the prevailing legal spirit of the new order, so that people could hook up, shack up, break up and move on at random -- well, in what sense was love between man and wife deserving of any special legal status?

American society stepped off the Solid Rock and onto the shifting sand, and it seems that no one -- especially not young punks like our Brainrage blogger -- even realizes that the old order ever existed, or what its fundamental principles were. "Conservatives" attempting to defend marriage tend toward citing sociological statistics, as if fundamental principles were a matter of charts and graphs.

To cite the most authoritative source -- the Word of God -- is to be accused of superstition, or of seeking to "impose your values" on others. But my values (or Dr. Douglas's values, or anyone else's values) are irrelevant. What counts is God's values, and these are not subject to amendment or public opinion polls.

No one today has the courage to stand firmly on biblical truth, without the aid of any other authority or reference. Yet the disorderly debate over gay "rights" we see today is, in its own way, clear proof of the Bible's authority:

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears.
-- I Timothy 4:3 (KJV)

The prophetic nature of the Bible is evidence of its authority, and if anyone wants to tell me that the successive disasters that have fallen on our nation in recent years aren't just a wee bit apocalyptic in appearance, the Bible can answer that, too: Let him that has eyes, see.

"Straight" people don't have any special dispensation to screw around willy-nilly and then point the finger of condemnation at gay people. You go into any church on Sunday morning and you know what you will see? Sinners. All of them, sinners. ("For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," Romans 3:23) The preacher in the pulpit, the soloist in the choir, the blue-haired old lady playing the piano -- sinner, sinner, sinner.

There is nothing more ludicrous than a professed Christian pretending to be anything but a wretched sinner, whose only hope of salvation is the unmerited grace of God.

Well, now, you can laugh or you can cry about this. I prefer to laugh, and so I joke around a lot. But sin is a very serious matter, and the worse thing you can do about sin is to pretend that it's not really sin. Call sin by its right name.

It recurred to memory a couple of hours ago, as I was writing an e-mail to friends, how this whole thing began with me trying to set up Clever S. Logan with Big Sexy. Think about it: There is no law that would forbid them from marrying tomorrow. Indeed, they could have been married many months ago. They have that right. So why aren't they married?

Beats me. Maybe it has something to do with . . . sin?

It's late. I'm tired. My beautiful wife is in bed, and I should turn off the computer and join her. I have that right. Too many people with itching ears have heaped to themselves teachers who tell them about their "rights." They will not endure the sound doctrine that tells them about their sins.

And me? I'm just another sinner, too. Maybe not as bad as I once was, but still bad enough to deserve nothing but destruction. ("Sinners in the hands of an angry God" and all that.)

Still, even when I was hopelessly lost, there's one thing I know: If I promised a girl I'd get her a box of chocolates, she'd doggone sure get that box of chocolates. What kind of miserable faggot would break a promise like that?

UPDATE: Welcome Cynthia Yockey readers. You might enjoy this response to Miss Yockey. It's irresistible, isn't it?