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The phrase “culture war” is a little bit like the word “abortion.” Both terms exist to obscure and soften what they really mean. Everyone knows that abortion means the termination of unborn life, yet the term itself is a neutral one, having no special lexical connection to fetal life or even the medical profession. The reality behind the word is muddled by the word itself; thus, voters can feel in the word “abortion” a valuable human right of sexual autonomy that they wouldn’t feel in a term like “fetal suction aspiration.”

“Culture war” is another (though less toxic) species of muddle-word. Most people understand what it means–the aggregated debates and legal contests between conservatives and progressives on issues like abortion, euthanasia, education, and marriage. But look closely at the phrase. It is ambiguous and a little superficial (“culture” can mean anything from philosophy to food to the Kardashians), and more than a little negative and combative. Combine those elements and you get a word that conjures up images of low-stakes shouting matches between factions that probably have no skin in the game beyond the political power they’d love to wield over the lives of strangers.

This connotation is why, I think, it’s so commonplace to hear people disparage the notion of “culture war.” The critique is often predictable: Culture war is causing division and acrimony in American society, with no real benefits other than power and influence to those waging it from above, and therefore we should stop culture warring and learn to love. Nike could summarize it as: Just Don’t.

I think David Brooks is giving too much credit to this erroneous understanding of culture war in his column today at The New York Times. The beginning of Brooks’ piece shows that he understands the greater spiritual and human dimensions to contemporary cultural debates. He surmises, correctly, that traditional Christianity is no longer a merit badge for Americans, and that many Christians now fear being seen as “pariahs” in their own communities. Having lost the battle for the legal definition of marriage last week, Christians and social conservatives, according to Brooks, now have a choice: Do they “fight on,” (to use Brooks’ description of this SCOTUS symposium last week at First Things), or they make a change?

Consider putting aside, in the current climate, the culture war oriented around the sexual revolution.

Put aside a culture war that has alienated large parts of three generations from any consideration of religion or belief. Put aside an effort that has been a communications disaster, reducing a rich, complex and beautiful faith into a public obsession with sex. Put aside a culture war that, at least over the near term, you are destined to lose.

Consider a different culture war, one just as central to your faith and far more powerful in its persuasive witness.

This other culture war that Brooks is describing would be, in his words, the war against social “formlessness and radical flux.” Brooks believes that this culture war is a war against poverty, familial decay, social stagnation, and loess of transcendence. In his words:

The defining face of social conservatism could be this: Those are the people who go into underprivileged areas and form organizations to help nurture stable families. Those are the people who build community institutions in places where they are sparse. Those are the people who can help us think about how economic joblessness and spiritual poverty reinforce each other. Those are the people who converse with us about the transcendent in everyday life.

Yes and amen. This is precisely what conservatives should be doing. The question is: Why must they be doing this OR fighting for marriage, instead of AND fighting for marriage?

It seems to me that Brooks is oscillating between a right and a wrong understanding of culture war. On the one hand, he says that speaking transcendence into a individualistic, fragmented society is a sort of “culture war.” He’s right. Personal autonomy, a doctrine that features prominently in the philosophy of the Sexual Revolution, has wrecked my generation onto an island of loneliness, shattered homes, and relational backwardness. Going against the religion of personal autonomy is culture war.

On the other hand, Brooks seems to think of the culture war over traditional marriage as an expendable sort of culture war. It’s a culture war that we should opt out of if we decide, in Brooks’ words, that “the defining face of social conservatism” is not one that is winning over our neighbors. If talking about marriage and the more explicit features of the Sexual Revolution makes us politically anathema, then, Brooks writes, we should change what we talk about.

But the culture war that Brooks thinks we should be having is connected in a meaningful way to the one he thinks we shouldn’t be having. Warring against society’s brokenness is, especially for Christians, a war against living, spiritual realities. Christian theology has a word for the decrepit state of our world, and the word is sin. Sin is why things are not the way they should be. For Christians who understand the world through the lens of Scripture, the battle for civilization is not ultimately a battle for civilization but a battle for souls, a battle to proclaim the victory over sin, both at the individual and societal level, achieved on the cross by the Son of God.

You can see how the term “culture war” obscures reality. For “culture war” is not, as its cynics might suggest, an intramural spat between aspiring gatekeepers but a spiritual and philosophical struggle for ideas and institutions that genuinely matter. Certainly there are skirmishes of the culture war that deserve far less attention than they receive. But my generation’s confusion about the definition of marriage is not simply a tug-of-war between the remnants of the Religious Right and the emerging “post-Christian” Left; it is a confusion about who we as human beings are, why we exist, and to Whom we belong.

I think David Brooks understands this. What I wish he would have written is that the definition of marriage and the personhood of the unborn are precisely the kind of ‘transcendence” that social conservatives must be speaking into our culture. I wish he would have directed our attention to the legacy of the pro-life movement, a generation of “culture warriors” who have fought in the shadow of Roe v. Wade for 40 years to win not just laws but hearts and imaginations to see the personhood of the unborn. From free health clinics to crisis pregnancy centers to shelters for those fleeing the sex industry, pro-life conservatives have spoken a Gospel word of hope and salvation to a post-Roe society, a word that has borne much fruit and will, I believe, bear much more. Would such fruit have happened if these pro-lifers had determined that the cause of the unborn was no longer a “persuasive witness”?

The Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage last Friday may not be as lethal as its redefinition of personhood in 1973, but the fact remains that marriage is a transcendent, spiritual institution, one whose right ordering is of urgent interest in any society that wishes to flourish. It matters that our laws reflect a proper valuation homes with mothers and fathers. This is a culture war worth carrying on, because culture war isn’t just political theater. It’s a conversation about the shape of our society and where we must go to thrive. That’s a question worth getting right.

Liberal law center demonizes Christian foes of LGBTQ agenda as ‘hate groups’

August 18, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — In the vast array of leftist lies, one of the most dangerous is that groups and people defending historic Judeo-Christian sexual morality are somehow guilty of "hate." The main perpetrator of that “big lie” these days is the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which has turned smearing and demonizing social conservatives fighting the homosexual-transgender agenda into a very profitable business.

The SPLC is attempting to pull off one of the nastiest and most audacious “bait-and-switch” propaganda coups in history — equating the Christian-conservative led effort to defend biblical morality against the aggressive LGBTQ lobby with vile racists, Neo-Nazis and anti-Semitic extremist groups.

The Birmingham, Alabama-based SPLC’s “hate” campaign is helped along by lazy, biased journalists and online “social justice warriors” who delight in using its past anti-racism credentials to advance the Left's immoral and deviant sex-gender agenda.

CNN lends legitimacy to SPLC

Yesterday, CNN shamefully assisted the SPLC’s bogus “hate” narrative by running a story featuring its “hate map” under the initial headline, “Here are all the active hate groups where you live.” It was accompanied by a graphic of the SPLC’s “hate map” of alleged “hate groups,” which includes, under Illinois, my organization, Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH). We have been slandered as an SPLC “hate group” for the last several years.

On the SPLC ‘s Illinois map, AFTAH and other Christian pro-family groups are listed alongside a KKK group, a "white nationalist" outfit, and some affiliates of the Aryan Nations Sadistic Souls MC, another Nazi group. This is the SPLC’s vicious handiwork, treated as “fact” by the media.

After protests by those miscast as “haters,” CNN changed its headline to "The Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of hate groups.”

Similar stories featuring the SPLC’s bogus “hate map” have popped up across the country, including one in the The Boston Globe headlined, “Where hate calls ‘home’ in Massachusetts.”

The following pro-family groups join Americans For Truth in having the distinct “honor” of being lied about by the cunningly deceptive, sleazy and, yes, downright evil SPLC:

Abiding Truth Ministries (Scott Lively)

Alliance Defending Freedom (the SPLC recently attacked Attorney General Jeff Sessions for addressing this group)

American College of Pediatricians (Dr. Michelle Cretella)

American Family Association (Tim Wildmon)

American Vision

Center for Family and Human Rights (C-FAM; Austin Ruse)

Citizens for Community Values

Conservative Republicans of Texas (Dr. Steve Hotze)

Family Research Council (Tony Perkins)

Family Research Institute (Dr. Paul Cameron)

Heterosexuals Organized for a Moral Environment (H.O.M.E.)

Illinois Family Institute

Liberty Counsel (Mat Staver)

Mass Resistance (and its chapters in various states; Brian Camenker)

Mission: America (Linda Harvey)

Pacific Justice Institute (Brad Dacus)

Pass the Salt Ministries (Coach Dave Daubenmire)

Pray in Jesus Name Project (“Chaps” Klingenschmitt)

Public Advocate of the United States (Eugene Delgaudio)

Ruth Institute (Jennifer Roback Morse)

Save California (Randy Thomasson)

Traditional Values Coalition (Andrea Sheldon)

World Congress of Families/Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society (Allan Carlson)
As you can see, this is quite a large group, representing many millions of Americans and including some of the most accomplished and effective pro-family leaders in the United States. Who knew that these great Americans were the moral equivalents of neo-Nazi Stormtroopers and the Ku Klux Klan?

Hating truth

They are not, of course. Not even close. Could it be that leftists who deliberately conflate mere opposition to the LGBTQ agenda — a revolutionary sin movement that has destroyed the sanctity of marriage in the law and is leading the assault on citizens’ right to live according to the dictates of their faith with hatred— are the ones truly guilty of hate-mongering?

Common sense and logic tell us that those who resist a deviant-sex movement that has produced such profound evils as “pregnant men”; perversion-positive “Christianity”; and teaching little children that they can “become” the opposite sex though medical manipulations of their young bodies, are motivated not by malice or bigotry but rather a heartfelt desire to ward off the social destruction that comes from celebrating unnatural behaviors.

There is a popular saying in Christian, pro-family circles today: “Those who hate the truth call truth hate.”

I believe that at some level that is true, because when “journalists” cavalierly repeat politically calculated tripe like the SPLC’s “hate” smear as if it is authoritative and meaningful, they demonstrate contempt for sincere people of faith simply trying to follow God.

Besides, one of the “old school” rules of “fair” journalism is that in covering a cultural debate, you do not rely on one group’s biased characterization of its opponents, to preserve the ideal of a disinterested, neutral news story. Of course, those days are long gone as most media have shorn any pretense of objectivity and are increasingly fanatical cheerleaders for Big Gay and Big Trans. (What’s next, Big Poly?)

Go with the Big Lie

And so we behold a Fourth Estate very much interested and dutiful in advancing the “narrative” of one side of the “culture war” over homosexuality and “transgenderism,” using the noble-sounding cover of “civil rights.” Most media don’t even bother anymore to get viewpoints of the “other side” on this issue, or if they do, it’s often just a token quote to help reporters feel like they’re being fair.

This makes the SPLC’s goal of advancing its bold, pro-LGBT “hate” lie much easier than it should be.

It turns out that the “Big Lie” tactic attributed to Hitler was something he accused “the Jews” of doing in his 1925 autobiography, Mein Kampf, years before he led a demonization- and then genocidal government campaign against them. But history records that the mustached Nazi dictator and his henchmen (most notably Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels) became masters of the tactic, ultimately using it as part of their horrifyingly evil program against Jews, Poles, and other “undesirables.”

Hitler wrote: “For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.”

Today’s leftist liars understand this harsh reality and know that their “end justifies the means” approach toward delegitimizing pro-family conservatives as “hateful” bigots yields big political and cultural dividends — and scares the media away from featuring conservatives in their stories.

So rather than oppose pro-family groups civilly on public-policy issues concerning homosexuality and gender confusion (transgenderism), the Left resorts to a sophisticated version of name-calling. It began in the post-Stonewall ‘70s, as radical “gay” activists held up signs equating prominent religious opponents of organized homosexuality, like Anita Bryant, with Hitler.

From there it went to tarring their foes as “homophobes,” a term invented by pro-“gay” psychologist George Weinberg, who neatly flipped the pathology from homosexual behavior itself to opposing homosexuality.

Ultimately, the SPLC “codified” that Big Lie, as it were, with its “hate-labeling” strategy that preposterously mixes Christian, pro-family groups opposed to the LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer) Lobby with vile neo-Nazis and white race-warriors.

The SPLC claims it is not demonizing moral and religious opposition to homosexuality but only the methods that the above conservative groups use to oppose the LGBTQ movement, but this is an absurd technicality. In another column, I will expose the arbitrariness of the SPLC’s “criteria” for determining which groups belong on its “anti-LGBT” “hate map.”

‘I’m not a hater?’

And yet, despicable as the SPLC’s hate-smear campaign is, it is highly effective. Making the spurious charge against morality-defenders as “haters” is far easier to do in our post-Christian, morally dumbed-down culture than defending oneself against the loaded accusation.

Indeed, forcing conservatives and Christians to plead defensively, “I’m not — ” is part of the SPLC’s propaganda strategy. We have become a society of simplistic slogans, like “Love is love” and “marriage equality.” In such a culture, accusing good-hearted Christians and conservatives of “hating gays” merely because they oppose (very unhealthy) homosexual behavior, “gay marriage” and creating sin-based “rights” is par for the course.

Denying that you are a “hater” when the most powerful forces in society — media, corporations, academia — are matter-of-factly echoing the SPLC smear — is sort of like denying that you beat your wife. You would never beat your wife — you are called to love her sacrificially as Christ loved the Church — but suddenly you are accused of having abused her, by an organization lionized by the press. A cunning, well-funded organization masquerading as a “civil rights” champion whose allegations are repeated far and wide with an air of moral authority and respectability.

Your pleas about the falseness of the outrageous smear are shared by friends (some similarly accused of beating their wives) but together you are drowned out by a chorus of enemies who have won the sympathy of the corrupt media.

Your only hope for justice is that a large and growing army of people — aided by some counter-cultural media leaders — comes to your aid and exposes the hateful slanders and the wicked organization behind them, so that nobody will ever believe its lies again.

This is how we must counter the SPLC’s calculated, cynical “Big Lie” against people of faith who humbly set out to speak truth, in the love of Christ, about one of the most difficult issues of our age.

Next: The shoddy research, irrationality and arbitrariness of the SPLC’s LGBT “hate group” lie.