In our world today, there are a myriad of rights claims: women’s rights, gay rights, animal rights, sex worker’s rights. How does one evaluate such claims to determine their legitimacy?
From whence do rights come?
A right is a just claim to something. How does one determine whether a claim is just or unjust and thus, by extension, whether the laws based upon that claim are just or unjust?
“A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality (i.e. the dignity and worth of man who is made in the image of God) is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” [1]
"This idea of the dignity and worth of human personality is expressed eloquently and unequivocally in the Declaration of Independence. ‘All men,’ it says, ‘are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ ” [2]
Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote those words to explain the very foundation upon which he and the civil rights movement opposed segregation.
King, as did Abraham Lincoln and the Founders before that, recognized that man’s dignity derives from the Creator’s design. Skin color, in all its varied hues, is part of being human and therefore inconsequential. One’s character, not their skin color, reveals God’s image.
King continued, “All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the (dignity and worth of man who is made in the image of God)” thereby “relegating persons to the status of things.” [3]
The same unchanging voice that illuminates the unjustness of segregation, and slavery before that, also lights our way in the ubiquitous right claims of today.
Take, for example, marriage. Same-sex marriage advocates claim marriage is a right that justly belongs, not only to two people of opposite sexes but also, to two people of the same sex.
The same voice, which tells us that skin color is inconsequential, tells us the Creator designed sexual organs for the opposite sex. When used otherwise the “eternal and natural law” is violated, debasing God’s image within us.
Advocates claim that sexual orientation is part of a homosexual’s nature; that they are born this way.
A homosexual sexual orientation is a sexual desire toward a member of the same sex.[4] A desire, no matter how strong, is a subjective feeling. Yet, the homosexual’s physical sexual organs are made for the opposite sex. Therefore a homosexual union, by definition, cannot unite the human being’s sexual nature - for the sexual desire they have for the same sex conflicts with the sexual organs they have for the opposite sex.
Marriage between a male and a female unites both parts of a human being’s sexual nature – the physical sexual organs match the sexual desire for the opposite sex. The right of marriage between a man and a woman is rooted in the natural law and therefore is just. Same-sex marriage is unjust.
Claiming a right based on an inherent contradiction forces upon society “a human law that is not rooted in the eternal law and natural law” thereby rejecting the civil rights movement’s very foundation. It degrades the dignity and worth of the human being and destroys the very notion of “inalienable rights” which are endowed upon us by a Creator which founded this nation.
On this day we honor this man, Martin Luther King, Jr., who reminded our nation of the transcendent foundation upon which true rights stand, that would be unjust.
References:
1] Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963, reprinted in “A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr.”, edited by James M. Washington, First HarperCollins, 1986, pp. 293.
[2] Martin Luther King Jr., “The Ethical Demands of Integration,” Dec 27, 1962, reprinted in “A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr.”, edited by James M. Washington, First HarperCollins, 1986, pp. 119.
[3] Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963, reprinted in “A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr.”, edited by James M. Washington, First HarperCollins, 1986, pp. 293.
[4] Merriam-Webster Online Medical defines sexual orientation as “the inclination of an individual with respect to heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual behavior” http://medical.merriam-webster.com/medical/sexual%20orientation.
Inclination is defined as “a deviation from the true vertical or horizontal; especially: the deviation of the long axis of a tooth or of the slope of a cusp from the vertical” http://medical.merriam-webster.com/medical/inclination.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment