Woke Vs Natural Law

I mentioned briefly in yesterday's post the contradiction that emerged in the US Left after the first phase of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. The general abolitionist argument dating from the 18th century was that Africans are fully human and can't, unlike animals, be treated as property. Lincoln's very similar arguments against slavery were always natural-law arguments concerning human rights:

That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles -- right and wrong -- throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, "You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.

Or more succinctly, at the same link:

I have made it equally plain that I think the negro is included in the word "men" used in the Declaration of Independence.

A problem arises when other movements, seeing the tremendous success of the natural law argument behind first, abolitionism, and then its successor, the Civil Rights movement of the earlier 1960s, attempt to hitchhike on natural law to claim equivalent prestige. This happened beginning in the late 1960s with an assertion of equivalent natural rights for the same-sex attracted, but this fell into something of a gray zone from the start. Natural law theory would in fact suggest that same-sex acts are against nature, but there's a separate question of whether they should be criminal that is much more distant from just natural rights.

The current Roman Catholic pontiff just recently expressed a position that isn't really opposed to Catholic tradition, which itself is generally based on natural law:

“Being homosexual isn’t a crime,” Francis said during an exclusive interview Tuesday with The Associated Press.

Francis acknowledged that Catholic bishops in some parts of the world support laws that criminalize homosexuality or discriminate against LGBTQ people, and he himself referred to the issue in terms of “sin.”

But sin isn't always a crime -- it's a mortal sin to stay away from mass, and it's a mortal sin to cuss in the name of the Almighty, but nobody wants people arrested for those things. If you do stay away from mass or cuss in the name of the Almighty, I'm sure any pastor is delighted to welcome you back if you change your mind and want to stop, which I think is Francis's meaning here. And he's still perfectly clear on transsexualism:

“Gender ideology, today, is one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations,” Francis said in the conversation.

The pope made the comments in a March 10 interview with Argentinian newspaper La Nación — the conversation was translated into English by the Catholic News Agency.

“Why is it dangerous?” he continued. “Because it blurs differences and the value of men and women.”

“All humanity is the tension of differences. It is to grow through the tension of differences,” the pope said. “The question of gender is diluting the differences and making the world the same, all dull, all alike, and that is contrary to the human vocation.”

This is a natural law argument. Transsexualism is against nature, especially if it involves changing our bodies to mimic the other sex via surgery or hormones. (In fact, I think it's a confirmation of natural law that, as some studies are beginning to show, almost nobody wants to have sex with a transgendered person -- they just don't appeal to our natural instincts.) Here's where President Biden's remarks from yesterday are especially sad:

On Transgender Day of Visibility, we want you to know that we see you just as you are: Made in the image of God and deserving of dignity, respect, and support.

We’ll never stop working to create a world where you won’t have to be brave just to be yourself.

In the natural law context, as articulated just weeks ago by the Holy Father, people who want to deny the differences between men and women are pretending both men and women weren't created individually in the image of God, specifically male and female, not as generic unisex beings. President Biden, a nominal Catholic but a man without insight or reflection, approved words written for him that contradict recent statements by the pope himself -- indeed by a pope who is thought in some quarters to be a heteodox liberal.

The overall problem is what happens to a country whose founding principles have been deliberately turned against natural law.