Cultural Shift, Majority Rule or Might Makes Right?

In reading the local paper this morning, I came across the following headline: "Cultural shift driving change in military's gay policy."  This was an associated press story, and the link to the entire article (dated February 3, 2010) is provided below, along with a previous piece dated February 2, 2010):

AP Article - Change in Military's Gay Policy

AP Article - Signs of Cultural Shift

My intention here is not to deal with the merit of men or women who have adopted and espouse a homosexual lifestyle actively serving in the military, whether under "Don't ask, Don't tell" or otherwise.  Rather, my concern is more to how we are making decisions in this nation on important moral, ethical and lifestyle issues in our contemporary culture.

Even up to the near recent past, homosexuality as a lifestyle was considered wrong.  Morally wrong as a lifestyle because it was considered sinful, and hurtful to the individual and to the society at large.  This feeling was largely based on the stance on such issues from a Biblical framework.  Biblically the behavior, lifestyle and/or practice is never condoned and is in every case condemned as abhorrent and profane.  The position was clear, the behavior was morally wrong.

In the two articles, however, the idea of right and wrong is absent from the text.  In its place are peppered phrases like, "attitudes and circumstances have changed", "gays and lesbians have been given comprehensive legal status as a protected class", "59 percent of Americans favor allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military", and "the US census has for the first time begun tabulating information about gay couples who live together."  It begs the question, "What does this have to do with whether homosexuality is right or wrong?"

The more I pondered the topic, the more I began to think that the articles did say something about right or wrong.  Perhaps in our contemporary culture whatever is popular culturally at any given time is the right thing, morally, ethically or otherwise.  Perhaps the comments about attitudes, opinions, and circumstances are the pure determining factor as to good, right and truth.

If this is the case, if what is good, right and true is determined by culture then there are some ramifications that must be acknowledged.  If that is the case, then we in America have chosen to call God a liar, or at least have told Him that He cannot exist.  We will have arrogated to ourselves the responsibility of deciding that which is right and that which is wrong.  Whatever God has called good and right is heretofore irrelevant in our society.  We are choosing to expel God and instead ourselves be the pure measure of all things.  Maybe that's the way we want it, maybe we see this as our culture to do with as we wish, maybe we like having the power to decide for ourselves.

I can only say, beware.  We have seen, and we have been told before how that kind of experiment will turn out.  If God does not exist, then we have no excuse and must live up totally with the cultural outworkings of that kind of ideology.  If popular opinion is the litmus test for right and wrong, if God does not exist and is irrelevant in moral choices and we are nothing more than a mindless, pointless collocation of atoms existing only to pass on genetic information then nature read in tooth and claw is the only way, and what remains is not good or bad, objective right or wrong, but might makes right.  First the majority will rule, and decide how culture will go.  Then a popularly elected body will decide for everyone how things will go.  Eventually one man (or woman) will decide how things will go, and those who sound the victory bell now will hear the death knell of freedom and liberty and cry out for answers as to why it all came to pass.

Is this synical, maybe.  Is this extremist fear, hardly.  We have countless accounts through the years of the dangers of a culture driven by the winds of cultural "attitudes and circumstances".  The founders of this nation were keenly aware of the precipice on which this democratic republic stood, and how a religious backdrop was absolutely necessary for morals and the established government to function.  Not Church control of the government, but a society (public, private, government or otherwise) submitted and obedient to an absolute Governer.

I am not addressing here whether or not homosexual men or women should be allowed to serve in the military.  I do not fear or hate any homosexual man or woman.  What I do know is that if such weighty and important moral and ethical questions are to be left to public opinion, to majority rule, to an ideal of might makes right then our nation is not on the proverbial slippery slope, but has rather stepped off the edge by inverting reality by denying what God has deemed good and right and true and instead arrogating to ourselves that solemn duty.