In comments reported March 13, 2007 by the Chicago Tribune, Marine Corps General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Peter Pace, compared homosexuality to adultery, saying he believed both were immoral. In response to questions regarding the military’s current policy toward gays, Pace said, “I do not believe the military is well served by a policy that says it is okay to be immoral in any way… I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts… Saying that gays should serve openly in the military, to me, says that we, by policy, would be condoning what I believe is immoral activity…”

The swift and condemning reaction to General Pace’s comments demand that we each know how to correctly respond to the rhetoric being thrown around, which is attempting, albeit indirectly, to establish a new morality. To be clear, General Pace said he thought “homosexual acts” were immoral thus he limited his comments to the behavior and did not condemn persons as he has been repeatedly accused of doing. Furthermore, General Pace placed homosexual acts in the same moral category as adultery, so he was not singling out “gays” or suggesting that homosexual acts are worse than any other immoral behavior.

The reactions to General Pace’s comments reveal a critical shift in the moral consensus that the Church, in particular, but also everyone concerned with a free and healthy society should be concerned with. At issue is the basis upon which we as a society determine and enforce the moral order. Those opposed to Pace’s comments accuse him of bigotry and hate – accusations which clearly represent absolute moral distinctions. Additionally, Jo Wyrick, Executive Director of the Stonewall Democrats said, “It is immoral to send our service members into battle without the proper equipment or plan. It is immoral to deny them proper medical care upon their return and it is immoral to revoke support for our troops…” I would agree, however Ms. Wyrick demonstrates the arbitrary nature of her morality and herein lies the problem – she clearly still holds moral convictions but she, like her counterparts in the gay lobby, selectively chooses which moral positions to which she will adhere.

At the heart of this dispute are the differences regarding the source and nature of morality and the proper relationship of moral judgment to law and public policy. On one hand we have the Judeo-Christian basis of morality and ethics, which derives from the longest surviving (and most successful) moral order in human history while on the other we have the modern secular perspective. The former is believed to be absolute in that it emanates from the infinite God and Creator while the latter, which is regarded as “evolving,” springs from the minds of men and takes its cues from the prevailing culture. The problem for all of us is that the secular approach to morality is arbitrarily determined and subsequently imposed by those capable of achieving the power to do so. This calls to mind the “morality” of the French revolutionaries (aka the Reign of Terror), National Socialists in Germany, the Bolsheviks and just about every other tyrannical regime in history.