Facing the Facts and the Hypocrisy

Perhaps you have heard the bru-ha-ha about Randall Tobias. Tobias was the deputy secretary of state and the first global AIDS czar. Appointed by President George W. Bush, his policies concerning AIDS reflected the president's values. The czar's approach was abstinance education first, including marital fidelity, and the use of condoms only as a last resort. Such an approach is largely untested, showing success only in Calcutta, India because it has only been tried there (by Mother Teresa for the sake of family planning rather than AIDS).

It was discovered that Tobias has been ordering the service the services of a local brothel, probably comitting adultery (though Tobias won't admit to anything more than getting massages for $300 a visit). Another politician has let us down. No surprise, there, really - politicians live in a world of power and money and constant temptation and they fall to it no matter what their political bent. Still, it certainly hurts the cause of promoting public morality to have one of its spokesmen fall to sin.

Of course, the modernists jump all over it. Another hypocrite claiming moral superiority while living a secret life of debauchery! Of course, political commentators rightfully should call politicians on hypocrisy. However, modernists are not content to call out a hypocrite. To a modernist, hypocrisy and any failure to live up to an ideal as proof that all ideals are worthless. Take Ellen Goodman's judgment of Tobias' downfall:

ELLEN GOODMAN: It's The Hypocrisy, Stupid

But there's something worse than hypocrisy, surely worse than finding another bureaucrat who can't practice what he promoted. It's an administration willfully rolling out programs that don't work. It's policymaking that's evidence-proof.

Ms. Goodman does not save her venom for the man who falls, but shares it with the entire ideal of abstinance and self-control.

The believers continue to insist that abstinence is the only 100 percent sure way to prevent pregnancy and disease. But 95 percent of Americans have sex before marriage. In real life, that's a 95 percent failure rate.

Let's examine that claim. We live in a culture that promotes recreational sexuality, that ostracizes virgins, that tries to abolish marriage, that holds a pornographic myth as reality, that relegates the practice of chastity to moralizers who are deep down unable to practice what they preach. And the reason that 95% of Americans have sex before marriage is that abstinence education has failed? I would say rather that 95% of Americans have sex before marriage because America has never tried abstinence education.

Goodman says of Tobias,

The price he'll pay for his "gals" is humiliation. But the biggest flaw in the world of this president and his enablers is not hiding their eyes from human frailty. It's refusing to face facts.

What facts are not being faced? According to Goodman, the facts are that human beings cannot control themselves. Human beings are incapable of saving sex for marriage or of remaining faitful to a spouse. I guess, according to Ellen Goodman, we are nothing more than rutting animals.

Modernists need to face the facts. Human beings have an intellect and a will. They are therefore capable of giving sexuality deeper meaning. They are also therefore capable of exercising self-control and self-determination. Another fact that modernists have to face is that failure to live up to ideals does not invalidate the ideals. Ideals call us to become better than we are. When we fail to live up to them, their presence reminds us of our failure to draw us into compunction, and then to conversion. When we succeed in living up to them, they enoble our lives and protect us against sinful desires.

Removing the consequences for our sins and giving up on our ideals does more damage than exposing us to the danger of AIDS. It destroys our humanity - making us into animals that use each other and that live only by the dictates of power. Face the facts - ideals are necessary and good, including chastity.