I don’t care who you have sex with. How and with whom you choose to exercise your freedom of friction is your business.

Let’s keep it that way.

And let’s also understand that in this particular pursuit there is for some of us opportunity beyond mere pleasure. For those engaged in heterosexual intercourse, there is the possibility of procreation. New people enter society through the procreative act, and these new people need certain civil protections.

These protections are derived from our constitution and were codified in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. Each of these categories encompass individuals with procreative potential. Because people of any race, color, religion, gender, and national origin can have babies with citizenship rights in this country, they must be protected in order to have equal access to employment, voting opportunities, housing, and all the resources helpful in the maintenance of self and in the building of community.

In 2020, civil protections for people of either sex was reinterpreted by the Supreme Court to include sexual orientation and gender identity after a gay man was accused of mismanaging funds. He sued his employer on the accusation that he was only audited in the first place because he was excited about promoting his gay softball team and now we have landmark legislation guaranteeing protections under a revised Civil Rights Act.

I’m not lying. Look it up.

It was hardly a home run. There were lots of dissenting opinions, including at least three Supreme Court judges, but the ruling stuck and now I believe we have a problem.

Before I get into that, I want to address an obvious question some readers might have, namely my belief that civil protection from discrimination should only be afforded to those with procreative potential.

What is salient here is the concept of choice (which doesn’t actually exist for anybody) when considering procreative potential. Persons unable to reproduce should, of course, be protected out of civic compassion.

Similarly, we are not concerned with those capable of reproduction who choose not to. That is not a legislative matter. It is a personal one, though government does have a stake in framing sterilization and abortion options because of the magnitude of societal change that can occur if these choices are exercised at scale.

And now we’re back to the problem.

If we’re comfortable with the idea that civic law is concerned with ensuring a stable and sustainable community, and we recognize the basic requirement of population maintenance for any society to function, then the idea of extending civic protections to a group of people who have opted out of the procreative enterprise makes no sense.

Now go back to my first sentence. Do what you want with whomever you want. That’s between you, your partner, and the God that made us all. And if you have like-minded friends, enjoy that. Build yourselves a nice, receptive community.

Just don’t come at the rest of us with an agenda.

The Alphabet Lobby does not agree with me on this. They want their evolutionarily-disruptive sexual choices socially supported, constitutionally protected, and institutionally promoted. Disney is currently feeling the wrath of Alphabet advocacy after being accused of not doing enough to support teaching queer values to Florida’s kindergarteners. Apart from being developmentally inappropriate, there is no civic value in advancing a sexual agenda that is effectively a Darwinian dead-end.

I’ve argued elsewhere that an ethics of inclusion is a function of misguided idealism and does not map to the reality of human need or experience. Our species is selective, as are the forces which shape and govern the rest of the natural world. And it behooves us to be similarly selective about who will receive civil protections.

The Supreme Court, intoxicated by contemporary aesthetics and utopian rhetoric, has seen fit to empower the Alphabet Lobby with civic protections that are now being weaponized to reshape culture in ways that do not bode well for social integrity, the core of which has always been the procreative promise of the heterosexual family. In twisting the intent of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, we now find our legislative, judicial, and popular energies tied up in an absurd game of relentless accommodation that is no longer tied to the project of ordering and protecting communities; that would require the establishment of limits and exceptions. Rather, the 2020 Supreme Court ruling establishes advocacy and inclusion as virtues in their own right, independent of intent or trajectory.

The result is rampant entitlement, cancel culture, and deepening communal neuroses as we each ponder our unique opportunities for marginalization so as to qualify for state and federal protections. Families disintegrate as we re-envision domestic life not as a place of duty and hierarchy, but rather a place to explore ourselves with an expectation that all will be supportive of whatever we discover. And with each fractured home we compromise the chances of birthing and raising competent, emotionally balanced, responsible, and mature citizens.

Dust and Tribe welcomes any and all to join us outside or to dialogue here. We harbor no ill will toward individuals who make choices that we disagree with.

This all changes with scale and intent, though. If a whole lot of people get together and move from making personal choices to advancing a collective agenda that begins to affect the way we all live and the context in which we are required to raise our children, we will push back. This isn’t any different from the idea of separating church and state: we can all believe what we want, but we cannot leverage the American legal system to compel others to practice as we do.

And we are remarkably short-sighted when we assume an advocacy position to lift up people making choices that run afoul of basic societal requirements. Rather we need to stand up against the normalization of behaviors that cripple society at its very roots. And we need to support people in their right to build their own communities without encroaching on ours.

It’s our civic duty.

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