Monday, January 27, 2014

Courage and correctness

This morning I watched the Meet the Press podcast of yesterday's (1/26) show. At the end the producers aired a piece about Billy Jean King. She is traveling to the Winter Olympics as part of the US Presidential delegation as are several other high profile homosexual athletes. Harry Smith conducted a warm interview with Ms King interspersed with bits of her tennis days. 

During the interview she described some of the struggles that fell on her for being "outed" by a former partner. With courage and fire she is anxious to travel to Russia to stand against the mistreatment of homosexuals in that country. I admire Ms. King's courage. I'm sorry that her skills could not carry her past the ambush she endured in the tennis world. I admire her present fire to set wrongs right. 

Unfortunately courage and fire doesn't make a person's morals correct. I understand that morality is now considered a relative pursuit. In that vein Ms. King stands as a fine spokesperson for the power of love and conviction, while those who attacked her seem so much less. What if Ms. King is wrong? The quality if one's opponents doesn't make one right. Taking out a heterosexual Bobby Briggs is no feat. What if Ms. King's sexual attraction to women is morally wrong? 

I know the flow of history is freeing us from all those outdated morals, even as the ideas of slavery and racial superiority fell. Many of those who fought for the rights of women and the races took their energy from the words in the Bible. I don't believe they would be found among those declaring homosexuality permissible today. 

It is not immoral to exist or receive equal treatment as other races or gender. That sort of thinking is a failure. Morality has to do with choice. What will I do in response to feelings or ideas that are out of bounds? Will I flow with the look another woman tosses at me or will I look only to my wife? Will I slip that trinket in my pocket out of sight of security or leave it be? Will I let my thoughts wander from what should be to what could be? That is the moral question to me. 

Now my moral problems are about as big as any you can imagine. I have lied and lusted, stolen and hated, attacked with fists and words. I am no expert on living a virtuous life. I have no right to declare anyone a sinner or a failure from personal experience. I have struggled with feelings that are out of bounds with very uneven results. When I ask a question about the rightness of someone else, I would be a fool to presume any right to do so. I ask about Ms. King's rightness as a fellow struggler to find the right and live it. I just feel society is leaving something precious behind by embracing homosexuality as acceptable and promoting those who have made that choice to make a statement. 

What are we leaving behind? I have an opinion as a fellow immoralist. Purity. 

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