William F. Gavin on a recent ” dramatization of an ideological act of faith “:
There I was, watching yet another Law and Order re-run on TNT. In this episode a scientist claimed to have discovered a gene for homosexuality. During the second half of the show, the district attorneys had their usual strategy pow-wow. Executive Assistant District Attorney Michael Cutter suggested the murderer might be an angry homosexual, because if there is indeed a homosexual gene it could lead to abortions by “homophobic” parents.
“That could lead to the elimination of an entire community,” D. A. Cutter said, obviously troubled.
I waited for one of the other characters to say something like: “But, Mike, that’s what abortion-on-demand does, eliminates communities. Hell, it eliminates whole populations. Gay, straight, male, female, black, white, whatever.”
Or, perhaps the resident Hot Babe Assistant D.A., a staple character on the show, could have said: “Mike, it’s a woman’s right to choose to kill her unborn child, even if she is a homophobic monster. We cannot make the choice for a gay-bashing, community-destroying, pre-life killing Nazi woman under those circumstances.”
But not a word was spoken by any character about Cutter’s concern. The highly educated, sophisticated, articulate, well-informed politically liberal characters — created by writers who share the same backgrounds and beliefs — went on trying to build a legal case, as if nothing odd had occurred.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
