In offering an explanation on why the Evangelical Christian, mega-church Pastor Rick Warren has disavowed his prior support for California Proposition 8, which reinstituted traditional marriage in the State, Michael Erickson focused on the sin involved, when he wrote as follows: “Perchance as the added publicity, which is likely to emerge from this disavowing of the struggle for traditional marriage, sells more copies of The Purpose Driven Life, Pastor Rick Warren may have the material comforts in home and money to think upon the matter of pleasing men at the expense of God.” Still, there is a secular dimension to this story.

Traditional marriage is the bedrock of stable, family life; and families provide a cultural restraint on the State, in that they provide an identity to children separate from the State, one that instills in them a love for their homestead and the liberties needed to protect the same from the encroachments of government. There is a reason why tyrannts, whenever they acquire power, undertake to limit or to destroy family life altogether, sometimes by literally foisting children away from their parents at an early age. It is because they want to rear a new generation of wards of the State, thus obliterating over time the memory of freedom and the desire for anything other than government sanctioned self-indulgence.

Just as traditional marriage is a restraint on the State, so is it a restraint on globalism. The exclusivity implicit in traditional marriage, and its focus on rearing children, focuses said populace on protecting what is “theirs” from what is “foreign.” It creates the spirit first of family, then of tribe, and finally of nation; by contrast, the very idea of the global system, where there are no borders between cultures, will be viewed with the eyes of suspicion, if not outright hostility, by those who uphold a traditional view on marriage.

Thus, the Statist and the Globalist have a common enemy: traditional marriage, especially as it focuses on an exclusive relationship between a man and a woman for the purposes of conceiving and rearing children. From their perspective, what better than to denigate such a cultural ideal altogether, by replacing traditional marriage with a modern definition, one that sees “marriage” as unrelated to children or even commitment?

As it is naturally impossible for any homosexual union to create children, “gay marriage” serves this new definition, by separating the very idea of “marriage” from conceiving and rearing children. If there is any doubt, then consider the situation in Sweden, where such a new definition came into the law awhile ago. Since “gay marriage” became legal within Sweden, younger, heterosexual couples have abandoned marriage in droves for a lifestyle of “serial monogamy” without serious commitment, where the norm is for children to be “raised” by a blur of “parents” coming and going. Indeed, in that system, it takes a village to raise a child; and the Swedish nanny state is only so happy to oblige with its services.

Rick Warren has acknowledged his membership in the Council on Foreign Relations, one of the primary spearheads of modern globalism, as discerned in his response to a question from World Net Daily on an unrelated issue. That article is the first one reprinted below.

Then, below the World Net Daily article, I have reprinted an editorial found presently on the Council on Foreign Relations website, as written by CFR Senior Fellow Max Boot. In this editorial, Mr. Boot argues that defending traditional marriage indeed is a lost cause. I cannot but think that his rationale gives justification for those “conservatives” within said CFR who then consistently oppose amending our federal and state Constitutions, or doing much of anything really, to safeguard traditional marriage as our cultural and legal norm. After all, if we follow the example of men like Rick Warren and either do nothing against the onslaught, or even worse disavow ever having endorsed in the first place a traditional marriage initiative, then are we not helping by omission in the emergence of a new world order? Is not Rick Warren’s recent step in fact in support of the larger aims of the CFR?

On another note, should we be surprised at this affiliation? I have no doubt as to the skill and talent of Rick Warren in preaching and in marketing; but there are many preachers in Evangelical Christianity, and within the Churches generally, who are similarly talented. I cannot but think that the enormous success of his book, and the marketing coup of having both of the Presidential candidates in the 2008 election appear at his mega-church for his highly publicized forum, had something at least to do with such affiliations. If so, then we may presume that the price to be paid for selling ones soul will include discarding even as fundamental a Christian precept as traditional marriage. 

Mega-Pastor Rick Warren Admits He’s In CFR, by Joseph Farah (WND) 

Rick Warren, the superstar mega-church pastor and bestselling author of ''The Purpose Driven Life,'' had a Damascus Road experience last week- and like Saul of Tarsus, one of the after-effects appears to be blindness.

Warren went to Syria and could find no persecution of Christians. He could find no persecution of Jews. He could find no evidence of extremism. He could find no evidence of the sponsorship of terrorism.

Despite the temporary loss of vision that prevented him from seeing any evil in the totalitarian police state, Warren's hearing was apparently not affected-for his ears were tickled by what he heard
and apparently accepted lock, stock and barrel from the second-generation dictator, Bashar Assad, and his state-approved mufti.

But that's not the story Warren is telling-at least not in the official press releases he is sending out from Rwanda in response to my confrontations with him last week in which I accused him of betraying his own country in a hostile foreign land and of being a propaganda tool of the Islamo-fascist regime in Damascus.

In fact, after I called him out last week in my column, Warren e-mailed me claiming to have been misquoted by the official Syrian news agency.

''Joseph, why didn't you contact me first and discover the fact that I said nothing of the sort?'' he pleaded. ''The trip was a favor to my next door neighbor, had nothing to do with policy, and was done with the State Department's knowledge-who told us to expect exactly what Syria did-a PR blast. I don't pretend to be a diplomat. I'm a pastor who just gets invited places.''

I pointed out to Warren that WND had indeed attempted to contact him about his trip. No one from his Saddleback Church ever returned our calls the day the story broke.

''I'm sure since you were warned in advance by the State Department that you took the precaution of recording your own words,'' I suggested in my response. ''We look forward to seeing the transcripts
or hearing the recordings.''

I also asked if he could respond specifically to the words put in his mouth by the Syrian news agency. And lastly I suggested that he should have ''counseled with me, or other people knowledgeable about the Middle East before doing so much damage with your reckless trip.''

I really didn't expect to hear back from Warren-but, a few minutes later, I did, with an absolutely stunning retort.

He let me know he is a close friend of President Bush ''and many, if not most, of the generals at the Pentagon.''

He also told me he did not tape anything while in Syria, ''because it was a courtesy call, like I do in every country.''

Warren explained that he had also counseled with the National Security Council and the White House, as well as the State Department, before his little courtesy call for a neighbor.

''In fact,'' Warren added, ''as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Oxford Analytica, I might know as much about the Middle East as you.''

He continued: ''I hope you'll not choose to believe Syrian propaganda even though, as you pointed out at the start of your article, you've been wanting to criticize me for some time. In spite of your rush to
judgment, I think you write great, insightful columns. You are almost batting 1,000.''

No sooner had I received this surprising response from Warren, I also got an e-mail providing a link to a YouTube video of Rick Warren in Syria explaining how great the Assad regime treats Christians and Jews and how Damascus ''does not permit extremism of any kind.''

Not one to let lies go unchallenged, I wrote back to Warren with a link to the YouTube video: ''If you didn't tape anything, what's this? Do you really believe Syria does not allow extremism of any kind?
There are more terrorist organizations based in Syria than anywhere else in the world!''

It might be that Rick Warren, deep in the bush of Rwanda, never received those last questions, because he never responded-at least not in the last three days.

He did, however, within minutes make sure the YouTube video he recorded independent of his meetings with the Syrian brown shirts was removed from the network. Vanished. Kaput. Sterilized. Cleansed.

Stay tuned for more on Rick Warren's ''Agenda-Driven Life'' in the coming days-sponsored, of course, by the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Right Can’t Win This Fight, by Max Boot (CFR)

For decades, social conservatives have been fighting and losing culture wars. Contraception and abortion -- once taboo topics -- have been enshrined into law. The rates of premarital sex, out-of-wedlock births and divorce have soared since the 1950s (though lately most of these indexes have leveled off or declined slightly). In school, prayer is out; sex education is in. On TV, characters used to say "gee whiz" and sleep in twin beds; now they curse as if they had Tourette's syndrome and flash skin as if they were Gypsy Rose Lee.

This doesn't mean that America is in cultural decline; no one who saw the response to 9/11 can think we are soft or decadent. It does mean there is little mystery about how the latest culture war -- over gay marriage -- will turn out. Opponents of same-sex marriages may have most of the public on their side for now, but they've already all but lost this battle.

How do I know? Simply by looking at the arguments being advanced by both sides. Advocates of same-sex marriage speak in the powerful language of civil rights and liken their cause to that of African Americans fighting anti-miscegenation laws in years past. And what do opponents say in response? Once upon a time, the case would have been open and shut: Sodomy is a sin, period. Many people may still believe that, but that's no longer a tenable argument in our secularized politics.

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down anti-sodomy laws last year. The Episcopal Church has appointed an openly gay bishop. Many newspapers carry the equivalent of wedding announcements for gays. Same-sex kisses, once shockingly daring, are now almost as common on TV as commercials for Levitra or Prozac. Given this seismic cultural shift, anyone who makes avowedly moral arguments against homosexuality now gets treated the same way homosexuals were treated only a few years ago -- as a sex-mad pervert.

Traditionalists have tried to put forward various nonmoral arguments against gay marriage, but none is particularly convincing. They argue, first, that we shouldn't tamper with thousands of years of tradition that holds that marriage is between a man and a woman. But 141 years ago we tampered with an equally old tradition: slavery. Their second argument is the slippery slope -- first gay marriage gets legalized, then polygamy, pederasty, incest and who knows what. But this kind of reductio ad absurdum can be applied to just about anything. If liquor is legal for adults, why not for children? Society always draws the line somewhere.

The final and strongest argument of gay marriage opponents: Don't let courts or a handful of mayors change the law on their own. Let's debate this democratically. Fine. But that will only delay the legalization of gay marriage; it won't stop it in most places. The Massachusetts judges whose diktat led to gay marriages in that state starting this week aren't operating in outer space. They are only slightly ahead of the societal consensus, just as the Supreme Court was only slightly ahead of the societal consensus when it legalized abortion in 1973. Nowadays, no matter what the court says, there isn't a state in the union that would illegalize abortion (though some might pass more restrictions than the justices would allow). In a few years, that may be true of gay marriage as well.

Faced with virtually inevitable defeat, Republicans would be wise not to expend too much political capital pushing for a gay marriage amendment to the Constitution. They will only make themselves look "intolerant" to soccer moms whose views on this subject, as on so many others, will soon be as liberal as elite opinion already is.

The good news, from the conservative point of view, is that it's hard to imagine that legalizing gay marriage will make much difference in the lives of most people. Certainly it will have considerably less corrosive effect on society than the prevalence of divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing.

If conservatives are worried about destigmatizing homosexuality, that's already happening. If they're worried this will lead to hordes of new "recruits" for the "other team" (as "Seinfeld" put it), that's not going to happen. Homosexuality always has been and always will be the preference of a tiny minority; most of us are biologically hard-wired for heterosexuality.

Since the ultimate concern of conservatives is to preserve the institution of marriage, they would probably be better off caving on gay marriage rather than acceding to the most popular alternative: civil union. Gay marriages won't affect straights. But if civil union laws were to catch on, as Jonathan Rauch argues in his provocative new book, "Gay Marriage," many heterosexuals would probably eschew marriage altogether. That would be worse for society than seeing Rosie O'Donnell get hitched.