All morally and ethically grounded persons around the world have been stunned by the current historic ruling of the US Supreme Court to approve gay marriages over all fifty states. Here in Trinidad and Tobago we are still reeling under the recent shock manifestation by one of our learned and elite intellectuals, Trinidad-born United States judge, Helen Whitener: she was “accompanied by her wife, Lynn Rainey…” (Trinidad Express June 17th); sounds like faulty grammar, doesn’t it?
Whitener “challenged the relevant authorities to remove the laws that discriminate against homosexual people in Trinidad and Tobago.” She said, “the move was mandatory since it had evolved into a human rights issue.”
The problem here is Whitener’s interpretation of “discriminate,” a word that has grown in popularity within recent times, in many cases inappropriately employed by most modern-day intellectuals. According to the Merriam-Webster (online), this word carries several nuances—(i) “the practice of unfairly treating a person or group of people differently from other people or groups of people”; (ii) “the ability to recognize the difference between things that are of good quality and those that are not”; (iii) “the ability to understand that one thing is different from another thing.” It also means “to discern,” that is, to distinguish between right and wrong.
Many secular thinkers, like Whitener, have virtually stripped the word of all its nuances, but one—“the practice of unfairly treating a person or group of people differently from other people or groups of people”—connoted almost everywhere this word is used nowadays. Certainly one of the reasons why the laws of Trinidad and Tobago and those of other governments still uphold the buggery law and other prohibitions is because the laws identify with a good-making quality of “discrimination,” that is, “to recognize the difference between things that are of good quality and those that are not”; that which will safeguard the nation instead of destroy it.
Have the advocates for legal protection of LGBTIQs become so blinded by the need to cover-up that they can no longer discern or recognize the difference between things that are of good quality and those that are not anymore? To use the law merely to protect “a deep feeling towards a particular sex or sexual practice” (sexual orientation), oblivious to wrong or right, is hypocritical and preposterous if at the same time the law does not protect the driving or compelling “deep feelings” of the paedophile or the serial killer, the thief, or even the murderer. That’s how ludicrous it gets.
Put another way, isn’t the law discriminating against the human rights of convicted persons since they too carry “deep feelings” to do what they do? “Certainly not,” many would argue, “since the law recognizes the difference between things that are of good quality and those that are not, and makes wise decisions.” Then why should other violations of morality such as LBGTIQ practices not be treated in the same way and judged for their bad-making quality since they are contrary to nature, and thus not true human rights? That is the real discrimination, don’t you think?
Human rights are inalienable rights; rights which naturally accrue to us as human beings (basic definition). They cannot evolve over time to match expanding human fancies as the learned judge wants us to believe. They must be based on “what is already there,” not behavioural inventions that are nothing but abominable violations of God’s creative order, begging for the law to cover them. Truth is not convenience.
Indeed, lawmakers are double-faulting by firstly employing a myopic view of “discrimination” restricted to “violation of a person’s human rights,” and secondly compounding the problem by accepting as “human rights” every imagination of the human heart, however deviant, abnormal, queer or counterproductive —grave intellectual dishonesty, and properly,devaluation of true human rights. The overwhelming quest for pleasure and not purpose has landed modern society into this endless landscape of abnormal human practices—from L to G to LGBTIQ to God knows where else.
The intellectual smokescreen seems deliberate. Supreme Court judges, presidents, legal framers are all imposing their “power ethics,” championed by Plato: “X is good once those who have power in the community say x is good.” They totally ignore the fact that true ethics deal with prescription (what we should be doing) and not merely description (what is in fact being done). Ironically, their loose, but conveniently coined application of “discrimination” masks one’s natural human rights to discern or “recognize the difference between things that are of good quality and those that are not” (positive discrimination). How could we build laws on that? What a shame! Thank God He is still the righteous Judge.
Apostle Dr. J Vernon Duncan
is the Senior Pastor of
Divine Encounter Fellowship
D’Abadie, Trinidad
Contact: 646-8268. 646-0203 or 766-0723
