Sean Penn's Foolishness

Sean Penn, accepting his Best Actor Oscar for Milk, snidely remarked that anyone opposing gay marriage should consider the shame with which their grandchildren will one day regard their stance on the issue. I have a few thoughts about this statement...

I have no doubt that future generations (at least for a time) will accept the idea of gay marriage more readily than our generation has. But I believe, based on my own religious convictions and observations relating to the historical composition of civilized societies, that they will be wrong to do so. Unlike Sean Penn, I see no reason to assume that our children's moral compasses will be more finely tuned than our grandparents' were simply because they are developed in the 21st century.

His view is based on the progressive assumption that society is gradually perfecting itself, moving ever closer to humanity's social and moral apex. It assumes that my grandchildren will necessarily be more enlightened than I am, and dismisses out-of-hand the prospect that future generations will regress in any way. This view can only be held by one who is idealogically blinded to historical realities.

It seems obvious to me that human history, rather than being a steady march toward perfection, has been and continues to be a moral revolving door - taking us sometimes in one direction and the next moment in another, but ever fixed around a central, unmovable point. I think most of what we would call social or moral "progress" today is nothing more than going around in the same old circles.

Perhaps another metaphor would be useful. Rather than being on a road, as most "progressives" tend to imagine, I think we are in a maze. We may be moving forward, but it is as likely as not that each step only brings us closer to a dead end - at which point we will have no choice but to turn around and walk back the way we came. C.S. Lewis explained this idea most clearly when he wrote: "We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man." (You might have noticed that I really like this quotation.)

Penn regards traditional values with childish disdain because, quite simply, he considers himself the pinnacle of morality and enlightenment. The rest of us can acknowledge that not all movement is necessarily progress. I hope that my grandchildren will not regard me as a fool or a bigot, but their opinion will say nothing about the rightness or wrongness of my views. My interaction with this world has taught me that things fall apart as often as they come together. Future generations will likely be as wrong about certain things as I have been about others. All that matters is whether they and I will choose to acknowledge Truth, insofar as God has revealed it to us.

And thankfully, Truth has no regard for consensus - whatever the actors may say.