Looking Back: The Moral Level of War in the Same Sex Marriage Debate -Part One of a Series

   

     Last year I read a book on the concept of Fourth Generation Warfare by William S. Lind. A lot of that book has stuck with me. It explains a lot of the reasons we did not win the war in Iraq. One of the biggest reasons was the moral level of war.
     Col. John A. Boyd, USAF says that war is fought at three levels: the moral, the mental and the physical. The most powerful is the moral. Wars are won or lost based on who holds the upper hand this area and keeps the upper hand.
     The moral level is not based on some common set of shared values that says that one side is more moral than the other in a sense that a Christian would think of it. Even though it was never clearly defined in the book, it seemed to be implied that the moral level of war are the means and arguments used to convince the general population that your side is in the right ad to keep them there for as long as it takes to win.

     So, you are asking yourself, what does all this have to do with same sex marriage?
     Make no mistake there is a war in the United States. It exists in both the spiritual realm and the physical realm. I will leave it to pastors to counsel you on the spiritual aspects of this battle and I will stick to the physical realm of which I have some observations.
     In the U.S., the battle rages in a lawfare setting. Lawfare, originally a term to describe the use of law to aid in war goals, seems to apply to the type of means used by the same sex marriage lobby to achieve their goals. It has tended to be asymmetrical in that the forces arrayed on the side of same sex marriage are formidable compared to the relatively few forces that Christianity has aligned with it. The media, politicians, sympathetic judges and a growing percentage of the population swayed by the means and arguments on the side of same sex marriage have produced a SCOTUS decision that has changed the face of America. Now, in a conventional war it is not always evident that the moral level is the most important but since this is not a conventional war but a law fought in the field of law and public opinion it is more clearly seen that the moral level is the most important part of this conflict.
     It is our intent to examine the situation, past and present, and find some paths forward for the side of religious freedom. We will examine the moral level of this conflict and see the strengths and weaknesses of both sides and see if we can, at least, find a way to keep the forces that seek to destroy religious freedom in this country at bay.
     So, how has it come to this is what we first must ask ourselves. The main problem has always been that we have had little to no control on the framing of the debate. The LGBT lobby has had significant allies on their side. The media has kept the debate always in their corner. Political think tanks have framed the ways forward for them. The biggest part of this alliance is the media publishing sympathetic pieces that show LGBT as normal everyday citizens who only want to love and be with each other. While showing photos of well dressed middle class Americans and hiding photos of the gay pride parades, they have taken what could have been a moral negative for the SSM side and made it into a moral positive. Also, the media has consistently changed the debate to hide the acts that homosexuals actually do to be homosexuals. The large majority of men cannot overcome the "yuck" factor when it comes to homosexual males, but the media in alliance with think tanks have made the bedroom off limits with the argument that it is private. For the best argument on a lot of reasons why we fell so far behind in this war, read this article by Thabiti Anyabwile that is excellent for showing their strategies.
     The biggest tactic they have used that ran them to the moral positive side was framing the debate in "love". This had the dual effect of making their opponents the side of "hate" and made almost everything we could do or say turned into a moral negative for our side.
     It has become increasingly obvious that the LGBT lobby has an overwhelming arsenal and manual of tactics to support their SSM arguments if we try to roll this back at this time. We can liken our side to a unit that has been forced by the overwhelming advance of the enemy to fall back and occupy another objective in hopes of stopping them there. That could be a good thing though. By forcing us off the objective of traditional marriage we have had to fall back to another objective, Freedom of Religion. It is through the strengths of this argument and being disciplined and improving our position that we could possibly keep the forces at bay. Freedom of religion is important, not just for Christians, but for all Americans, even atheists, because if this freedom goes we could be faced with a state that feels it can encroach on the next when it deems it necessary.
     In my next article we will go over some tactics, techniques and procedures that could possibly be of use to us. We will see what will work and what won't work, what is a moral positive for us and what is a moral negative.