While this occurred in May 2016, I only recently became aware of action taken in Tennessee where Republicans finally grew a spine and used their brains to fight against anti-Christian and immoral social progressivism.
We often get myopic about how we can combat the things going on around us, leading to a feeling of helplessness and despair. While we all know that we can pray and trust in God, we often act as if that’s an afterthought rather than our first line of defense. God works in strange ways and in uncertain timelines, so us mere humans can sometimes get the feeling that our prayers are not heard if they are not immediately answered. It’s a somewhat natural reaction, which is why faith and trust are often sheer acts of will as opposed to nice and comfortable emotional joyrides. I sometimes contemplate the little chicken-and-egg type of sayings, like “I pray because I trust. I trust because I pray.” Well, which is it? It’s both, of course. I sometimes wonder if the very reason for a seemingly unanswered prayer is either because I didn’t trust enough that God would or could grant my request, or if He needs to test me by fire a little bit – force me to continue to trust even without getting exactly what I want.
So, while it is certainly fine that relying on prayer is a welcome myopia, at least as one of the actions we need to take, we often fail to use our brains in finding other ways to make a difference.
Let’s focus on some of the social issues around us and how we seem to never gain any ground – and in fact we always seem to lose ground. Whether it’s abortion or same-sex marriage, or whether it’s the new pet of the progressive left, transgender issues (or definition of what gender is, period) we seem to really rely on elections, laws, and Supreme Court decisions. If we lose an election at the federal level then, well, there’s nothing we can really do. Worse yet, there seems to be this reluctance to actually stand up for anything when we do have the chance to do it out of some fear of losing power. We continue to trade moral issues away out of some argument that this will preserve our power so we can do good in other areas. It’s not exactly the wisdom of Solomon. It’s the fear of a miser.
Lawmakers in Tennessee disagreed earlier this year. And it’s a great example of using the power you have to impact behavior.
Here is a story on the subject: Link to article
Notably, from the article, the bill
Bans UT from spending state funds “to promote the use of gender-neutral pronouns, to promote or inhibit the celebration of religious holidays, or to fund or support Sex Week,” most of which had already occurred.
What happened here is that the UT-Knoxville “office of diversity and inclusion” went off the rails of what they consider to be diverse and inclusive. Which isn’t particularly surprising. Many of these kinds of offices in Universities (as well as corporate America and government offices) long ago went off the rails. And until now most of the response has been “if you don’t like it, don’t go there.” Fair enough, but it’s also hypocritical. These are entities that receive public funding (i.e. tax dollars) and the people making these arguments would be the first to go apoplectic if someone on staff uttered the words “Merry Christmas.”
The office of diversity and inclusion apparently believes that banning all gender-specific pronouns like “he”,”she”,”him”, or “her” so as not to offend anyone struggling with gender identity. They also picked and chose acceptable and unacceptable religious holidays to make any sort of reference to, and they hosted what can only be called a completely offensive and inappropriate “Sex Week.”
So, the funding arm of the state Congress in Tennessee finally grew a pair and said “enough.” All funding to that morally bankrupt department goes to actually helping minority students pay for school. It was the right move, and a good move. One hopes that either this entire office goes away completely or it rediscovers its actual purpose – which is to actually promote real diversity, encourage dialogue – not just liberal mantras – and be fully inclusive (including Christians and those who want to use boy pronouns to talk about boys.)
I hope this helps set precedent and embolden other legislative bodies. We can push back – we don’t just have to accept cultural decay. We might not be able to do it everywhere, but we can do it in a lot of places. It’s time to use all the tools at our disposal.
Catholic Diatribes 