THE NEW ABNORMAL
May 10, 2012
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments as follows:
The new normal is yesterday’s abnormal: what was seen as bizarre, if not literally crazy, is now seen as normal. The converse is also true: those who still value the judiciously exercised role of shame, guilt and modesty are now seen as representative of the new abnormal.
The following examples are taken exclusively from news
stories of May 9 and May 10:
• The president of the U.S. thinks it’s fine for two men
to marry
• Homosexual and transgender characters—all positively
portrayed—are proliferating on TV (by contrast, positively portrayed Catholic
characters are almost nonexistent)
• There is a bill in California
that would make it illegal for a trained psychologist to convert gays and
lesbians
• New York’s
top court said it is perfectly fine to view unlimited amounts of child
pornography online
• The cover of Time magazine shows a young boy standing on a
chair sucking his mother’s bare breast
• Tupperware parties run by suburban moms have been replaced
by sex-toy parties featuring vibrators and lubricants
• A Nebraska
mother has been arrested for charging men to have sex with her daughters, ages
7 and 14
Not all of these incidents are of equal moral weight, but
put together they convey a powerful message: cultural ordinates are being
obliterated. And when boundary lines disappear, the social fallout can be
wicked.
Put differently, if it were our goal to create moral anarchy, we couldn’t have done a better job. There is a risk in pointing this out, but it’s worth being tagged the new abnormal.