Decades ago, Gracie and I sat beside a woman on an airplane who held a leadership role in an Episcopal women’s organization. Our conversation turned to the church’s acceptance of homosexuality, and I asked whether she thought the denomination would eventually perform same-sex marriages.
“Oh, no,” she replied. “I don’t think we will ever go that far.”
The next level of depravity never introduces itself as depravity. It arrives as compassion for a newly identified victim.
I pointed out that approving homosexual relationships while withholding marriage had simply moved one moral boundary while leaving another in place: fornication, or even adultery.
She looked stunned. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
At the time, same-sex marriage was politically inconceivable to leaders in both parties. Whatever else changed, surely that boundary would hold.
“That far” is now many exits behind us.
We heard the same assurance about abortion. Bill Clinton repeatedly said it should be “safe, legal, and rare.”
Safe sounded responsible. Legal settled the political question. Rare acknowledged that abortion was regrettable. “Rare” did not survive.
Abortion moved from tragic necessity to a right increasingly defended against stigma. Then on August 10, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) signed the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act.
The old law allowed abortions after 24 weeks only to preserve the mother’s life or health or because of a lethal or grave fetal diagnosis. The new law removed those specific conditions and left the decision to a physician’s professional judgment. The statute sets no upper gestational limit.
That is a long way from “safe, legal, and rare.”
In 2022, actress Anne Hathaway said abortion “can be another word for mercy.”
Hathaway and I have very different definitions of mercy.
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No one announces the destination at the beginning. They rarely do. Each step arrives as an exception, an accommodation, or an act of compassion. We would never go that far.
Ten days after Healey signed the law, hundreds of people, most of them women wearing pink, gathered outside a Massachusetts courthouse in support of Lindsay Clancy.
Clancy does not deny killing her three children. Cora was 5. Dawson was 3. Callan was 8 months old. Her defense argues that postpartum psychosis left her unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of her actions; prosecutors contend that she knew what she was doing.
Postpartum psychosis is real. Women suffering from it need urgent treatment and compassion. Whether it relieves Clancy of criminal responsibility belongs to the jury.
But something broader is happening outside the courtroom. The rally was for Clancy. Her attorney says letters supporting her fill three banker’s boxes. He has become a social-media celebrity, praised as a “feminist icon.” When a reporter asked whether the children were being forgotten, he said, “Have a good weekend,” and walked away.
The legal line between abortion and homicide is birth. Yet in the public drama surrounding Clancy, the adult increasingly becomes the central victim while the children — victims in the most literal sense — fade into the scenery.
Rush Limbaugh often warned about the consequences of pushing the boundaries of social acceptance. What begins as a demand for tolerance becomes a demand for acceptance, then affirmation, then punishment for dissent. He predicted that normalizing homosexuality would lead to same-sex marriage, followed by another challenged boundary, and then another.
His larger point was that removing one boundary rarely contains the consequences. A movement built around victimhood also cannot afford to run out of victims; victory would put it out of business.
So another oppressed class must be identified. Tolerance is no longer enough. Acceptance, affirmation, and celebration are demanded, and dissent becomes suspect.
The next level of depravity never introduces itself as depravity. It arrives as compassion for a newly identified victim.
We ease up to a boundary, test it, then break it. Once it falls, we move the marker and stigmatize anyone who remembers where the line used to be.
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Scripture’s oldest account of human rebellion begins with one boundary and a voice asking why God should impose it. Eve looked, desired, and ate. Then she gave the fruit to Adam. He did not merely tolerate her choice. He embraced it.
The argument has never improved. It has only been rebranded.
This tendency belongs to human beings. Give us a boundary that interferes with something we want, and we will manufacture a compelling exception.
That’s why “we will never go that far” is not reassuring. A boundary based only on what society currently accepts is not a boundary. It is a pause.
Then a speed bump. Eventually, a paved highway we are all forced to travel, with a tollbooth no one can avoid.
They say we will not go that far. They always say it. Then we do.
“That far” always becomes here.
Gay marriage, Abortion, Lindsay clancy, Postpartum psychosis, Scripture, Murder, Feminism, Opinion & analysis
