Surviving Sodom, by Anthony Esolen

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Image: The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by John Martin

By Anthony Esolen, Crisis Magazine, February 4, 2020

Anthony Esolen, a contributing editor at Crisis, is a professor and writer-in-residence at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts. Dr Esolen has authored several books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization (Regnery Press, 2008), Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child (ISI Books, 2010) and Reflections on the Christian Life (Sophia Institute Press, 2013).

Anthony EsolenBack in 2014, I wrote a book called Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity. I spoke not as an interpreter of Scripture or of the teachings of the Church. My arguments were based on observation, logic, history, anthropology, and culture. As far as I know, no Catholic on the left has taken them up. My arguments included analyses of what we have already done wrong and why, and predictions as to what must happen if we yield to the lures of Sodom.

Opponents at that time fell into two groups. By far the larger of the two predicted that nothing would happen. The re-definition of marriage would only extend to a relatively small number of couples a good that was available to everyone else, and that would be no less available to them for being so extended. A development unprecedented in human history, involving any society’s most important institution, would have no effect upon the common good. The second group consisted of a small number of theorists and activists who had sought the change in order to destroy the institution, which they saw as atavistic, patriarchal, and resistant to the ambitions of progressive politicians who for our own good would oversee and direct all that we otherwise do, from the womb to the grave.

We should listen to what our opponents say when they are speaking to one another, rather than to their easy marks among journalists, television audiences, school teachers, little children reading cartoon propaganda, and women riffling through the pages of Cosmopolitan.   ….

Read more here  crisismagazine.com/2020/surviving-sodom