IN DEFENSE OF COMMON SENSE
By Hetty Gray
# 144
“Twilight Zone?”
Sometimes I feel as if I have been sent through some sort of time bend and find myself in the purview of Rod Serling.
I suppose that only someone over 55 would feel the same. I certainly fit that bill, since another two years will find me hitting the seventy mark.
The sense of propriety lived and shown by our Founding Fathers is not only ailing, it is in terminal condition. News outlets highlight the prurient and neglect the larger issues of the day, choosing instead to stand aside and watch as the country slips into the abyss of tolerance.
Once, the statement, “I won’t tolerate that” was heard night after night in households across the nation in exchanges between parents and children. Children toed the mark and rules not only existed, but parents enforced them. Promiscuity was taboo, as was sexual activity among teens. Sex belonged in marriage, and the occasional slip into out-of-wedlock pregnancy was handled far differently. Girls simply disappeared and returned months later, and the progeny placed into a secure adoptive home.
In the 1960s, while segregation was the rule in many areas of the country, the Negro family was alive and well. More than 95% of all black families consisted of father, mother and children. Many claim that the incredibly strong cohesion stemmed from the fact that so many families were torn asunder during the era of slavery. Not only is that understandable, it is a testament to the importance of marriage.
Church was a foundation to the Negro community and much of their music is so familiar to Americans that the genesis of the tunes is lost. They are American music. Ah, so true! Spirituals not only caught the ear of the America, they also touched its heart.
I anguish over the countless babies that have been aborted in the name of women’s reproductive rights. For those of us who believe that life begins at conception, abortion is nothing short of murder.
Consider the widely ignored trial of the Philadelphia doctor who deliberately terminated live babies during late-term abortion procedures. Contrast this nearly invisible media response to one where a serial killer of small children stands trial. Is this Gosnell person any different?
I wonder what those stalwart, long-suffering folks would think if they could see the conditions today when a high percentage of black children are born into homes without fathers? I wonder what they would say to the young people who seek escape in drugs and aberrant behavior? I don’t restrict the problems to the black community, because it is far wider in scope and envelops every ethnicity.
The sad story is that generation after generation will grow up without a father in the home. Role models so strong in the past now dissolve into sports heroes, and those who live wholesome lives are rare.
Pray for our nation. When government condones handing out the “morning after pill” to girls as young as fifteen without parental knowledge, what is next? I shudder to consider that at all.
Each morning brings a new day, but so many of those days are such disappointments to those of us who believe that the America we love is dying. Courage is the ability to face down evil and do the right thing. Courage is not coming out of a bigger and bigger closet and flaunting homosexuality. Privacy is privacy. If some people feel that they need to live that lifestyle, let them do it — but in private.
I do not know what it will take to change course, but I pray that God will give us the guidance we need. He is there for us. We have only to ask. Think about it.