|
Townhall...
Defining
Deviancy Down
by Star
Parker
Mar 12,
2012
In 1993,
then Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan published a paper in which he
coined the
phrase “defining deviancy down.”
He was
ringing an alarm about what he saw as a dangerous social unraveling as
result
of our redefining deviant behavior as normal, rather than doubling down
on
traditional standards of behavior.
It’s
through this lens that we should view the Obama administration mandate
that
employers provide free contraception and sterilization and its refusal
to grant
an exemption to morally opposed religious institutions.
Our
audacious president, as part of his ongoing enterprise to transform
America,
has gone beyond defining deviancy down. Abortion, sterilization, and
sexual
promiscuity have not just been redefined as normal. They are considered
“reproductive rights” for which we all should foot the bill.
Consider
Rush Limbaugh’s much ballyhooed verbal assault on a Georgetown law
student for
testifying before Congress in favor of forcing her Jesuit university to
provide
students free contraception.
In a Gallup
poll done in 1969, 68 percent said pre-marital sex is wrong and 21
percent said
it is not wrong. Few young women in 1969 would have felt comfortable to
publicly declare they sleep around and it’s doubtful that any
politician or
media personality would have condoned her behavior.
By 2009, in
response to the same question, 32 percent said pre-marital sex is wrong
and 60
percent said it is not wrong.
Are we a
fairer and more progressive nation today, or have we defined deviancy
down?
If you
think we’re a better nation today because sexual promiscuity is viewed
as
normal and acceptable, so you must also be comfortable with the rest of
the
social developments that go along with this.
Most
notably, the transformation and breakdown of the traditional American
family.
In 1960, 72
percent of American adults were married. Today 51 percent are.
The most
dramatic transformation here has taken place in those communities most
likely
to be supporting Democrats and Obama - blacks and Hispanics.
In 1960, 14
percent of white adults had never been married. The percentage of never
married
blacks and Hispanics then was not much different – 17 percent.
By 2008,
the percentage of never married white adults had increased to 23
percent. But
among blacks it grew to 44 percent and among Hispanics 34 percent.
If you see
family breakdown as a negative development, so it is clear that
defining
deviancy down has had the most deleterious effects on those communities
in
which traditional institutions were weakest to begin with.
As part of
the process of defining deviancy down, the words don’t change – only
their
meaning changes.
So the
website of Law Students for Reproductive Justice, the organization of
Sandra
Fluke, the young woman Limbaugh attacked, says “all people are entitled
to
equal protection of the law, the free exercise of rights, and the
enjoyment of
economic, political, and social well being.”
These noble
words, which sound like they could have been written by Thomas
Jefferson, are
perversely interpreted to mean religious freedom may be denied to a
Catholic
University, while forcing it to pay for contraception and sterilization
for
students.
Our nation
is drowning in debt, with unfunded liabilities of our Social Security
and
Medicare programs estimated in the range of $70 trillion.
Yet Ms
Fluke’s idea of injustice is a student relating “how embarrassed and
powerless
she felt when she was standing at the pharmacy counter, learning for
the first
time that contraception wasn’t covered….”
This
warranted a personal call from the President of the United States to
assuage
her hurt feelings from Rush Limbaugh’s tough language.
Today
deviancy has been defined so far down it has been turned on its head.
The Obama
administration idea of deviant is any presumption to religious liberty
and any
sense that individuals should be personally responsible for the costs
and
consequences of their own behavior.
Read this
and other articles at Townhall
|
