Good, faithful, and conservative friends of mine have written off Keyes as a political vigilante, a moral demagogue, and utterly unelectable. Perhaps there's some truth there. But he seems to be the only one in the Republican Party who has the capacity to intellectually and substantively reflect upon the issues involved, and the philosophical bases of the conclusions he has come to, rather than fumbling through a 'policy-by-the-polls' approach or a crude reactionism. Listen to him weigh in on homosexual marriage:
"When you talk about those rights endowed by God and you talk about issues of affirmative action or any other issues, one of the core principles as it relates to the notions of natural law is the idea, as you well know, that you cannot be judged for those things which you are powerless to affect - gender, race and so on. If, in fact, as some scientific studies suggest, that being homosexual is, in fact, biologically determined, what then would be wrong with granting rights, and even the right to marry?"
"First, no study has made such a determination. . . . And I say that unequivocally. I've looked at the question many times. Second, we are all in a certain sense genetically and biologically predisposed to a kind of sexual promiscuity. We want to engage and indulge our sexual appetites in ways that have no respect for basic human requirements, conventions, family responsibilities and so forth. That's not just true of homosexual people. That's true of heterosexual people. Healthy, red-blooded males who are sexually attracted to every attractive woman they see, and vice versa.'"
"We as human beings cannot assert that our sexual drive is uncontrollable. If we do, civilization is ended. These are not things we can't control. Our passions are precisely subject to our moral will and our rationality. That's what makes us human. So if you're going to tell me that the sexual impulse of anybody -- not just homosexuals -- is uncontrollable and you've got to do it, then you have removed us from the realm of human moral choice and you have consigned us to the realm of instinctive necessity and animal nature. And we are not there. I will not deny our humanity."
"So I think that in this area as in all the areas of passion: our anger, our greed, our resentment, our jealousy -- these are all passions that can be very strong in us but which we know must be disciplined and regulated by our moral will for the sake of conscience and human community. And we have to expect that of one another. Do you realize that the very idea of freedom and self-government is absurd if we are, in fact, subject to uncontrollable passions? Then we're not free. We're slaves to our passions. But that's not so. We believe in this country, in liberty, in . . . true moral choice. And that moral choice is possible with respect to sexual action to such a degree you don't even have to engage in sexual activity. You can refrain from it altogether, if you think that is required by the dictates of moral conscience. And that capacity shouldn't be denied in any human being. And I don't think it's a question of homosexual or heterosexual. It's a question of humanity.''
I mean, come on, the man talks like he's reading from a Thomistic manual on moral theology. (Courtesy of
My Domestic Church.)
