Friday, February 1, 2008

Interesting Misuse of Privacy in Court Cases and the Degradation of the state of Marriage

I have been told by those that I love that I am someone that is such a radical that they cannot believe that I am who I am. They believe that I am an idiot for what I believe and that I need to learn ethics, and at this general ethics because Christian ethics has led me to be this idiot. Well I decided to read an ethics book. It is by J. Budziszewski entitled "True Tolerance: Liberalism and the Necessity of Judgement." Well from reading about a 1/3 of it so far everything I have read in it is brilliant. This guy is completely ethical, and did not alienate me or change my point of view. He actually made me feel like I had something to fight for, in that my rebellion against what society tells me is right, is what I should be doing. In Budziszewski's words true tolerance is a formula where "an evil must be tolerated in just those cases where its suppression would involve equal or greater hinderance to goods of the same order, or any hinderance at all to goods of higher order." To be truely tolerant is to walk a fine line of when to know to stand up for something that will help towards a greater good, and when to sit back because it will do more evil to stand up then to let it go. It doesn't mean not having an opinion or thinking everything has the same value, to be a neutralist. It means standing up for what you believe in when the timing is right, when you are going to work towards a greater good by doing so. I hope that with God, this is what my life will contain, these chances to make a difference towards the greater good. I think that by living the lifestyle that Keith and I have chosen being open to life and defending life through NFP in former and being pro-life activists in the latter, I think we are leaning towards true tolerism as long as we do not abuse others in doing so.

For a long time I have been trying to understand why society and those around me have certain views on what a women should be allowed to do with her baby and what a married couple should be allowed to do in their own lives. And in this book I came upon a section that what entitled "Abuse of the Concept of Privacy" Budziszewski explains how the martial and family norms have been so degraded by "eccentric Judicial interpretations of privacy." He explains that there is two types of privacy the first being the innocent form concerning what people should know about one's affairs and what one does with one's "things". This type of privacy fosters the intimacy of relationships in a good way. However, the second type of privacy is not innocent, Budziszewski describes it as "concerns not what others may know about my affairs or do with my things, but what I myself may do and whether others may discourage me in any way from doing it. Probably because jurists fail to distinguish false privacy itself from true, false privacy is often defended in the name of the same goods which true privacy nutures." (p.50 TT) This type of privacy slowly poisions marriage and what is good about it. The following four cases have been ruled in favor of false privacy.
1) Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), by use of false privacy somehow made it seem criminal for married people to not be able to use contraception.
2)Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) used false privacy to be able to then distribute contraception to unmarried folk as so they could procreate as they liked.
3)Roe v. Wade (1973) used false privacy to allow a woman to kill her unborn child during all nine months of pregnancy, and a sister court cause allowed it for almost any reason.
4)Atkisson v. Kern (1976) used false privacy to allow unwed people to cohabitate in a manner that they had to be together for their children that they had been allowed to have as a result of case 2, and at the cost of our goverment dollars funding it.

It's a wonder to me that in fourty years we have come to think that all of this is so accepted in society. No one would think twice about telling someone that they can't use contraception. No one would think twice about unmarried people living together, especially not in gov't subsidized housing where it happens all the time. And the right to have an abortion and/or to use the morning after pill is what women want, right? Why? Why? Why? I must ask. Why have we let society degrade in this manner, what is the cause of it? Well, to try to understand why, I looked at the characteristics of the generations that made these decisions, and were a product of these generations. Well there were 2 crucial generations that were involved in the development of these defining political moments. The main contributor being the baby boomer generation, this generation was one that was politically active in its protests and its human rights movements. While they did some good with civil rights and rights of the handicapped, they set us back a ton when it came to what they thought was sexual revolution and women's liberation. The following generation, known today as Generation Jones, also had an impact in this, all I could find about this generation was that it was cynical and had a major distrust for governmental authority. They felt like they were lost in a way I think they were, as the generation before them made major decisions that would cause their children to feel even more alienated. Next, is the product of the sexual revolution and women's lib, generation X. This generation is known for its lack of traditional values and its general cynicism. Working amongst this generation, I find this very true. Probably why my generation, is the opposite of these people, we again are like the revolutionists of the baby boomer generation, except, imagine this, we are fighting for morality and ethics. Granted not all of us are in this boat, many of us are so disoriented from past generations propaganda that we are stuck in a rut that hopefully we will remove ourselves from one day. But even though we are stuck in these ruts, we want to help others and make a difference. The only dilemma is now how should our generation do it. I think that I am starting to see a way for myself. Thank God for that.

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