That’s the title to Robert R. Reilly’s new book which I just received from amazon, put out by Ignatius Press. I won’t list Reilly’s credentials – they are off-the-chart impressive! But whenever you use the phrase, “everyone should read this,” you better mean it because if you use it too much it won’t come with the earnestness you intended. So with great reservation, I am saying, “everyone should read this”  – and I do mean everyone. Here is the inside jacket write-up:

“Why are Americans being forced to consider homosexual acts as morally acceptable? Why has the US Supreme Court accepted the validity of same-sex “marriage”, which until a decade ago, was unheard of in the history of Western or any other civilization? Where has the “gay rights” movement come from, and how has it so easily conquered America?

The answers are in the dynamics of the rationalization of sexual misbehavior. The power of rationalization – the means by which one mentally transforms wrong into right – drives the gay rights movement, gives it its revolutionary character, and makes its advocates indefatigable. The homosexual cause moved naturally from a plea for tolerance to cultural conquest because the security of its rationalization requires universal acceptance. In other words, we all must say that the bad is good.

At stake in the rationalization of homosexual behavior is the notion that human beings are ordered to a purpose that is given by their Nature. The understanding that things have an in-built purpose is being replaced by the idea that everything is subject to man’s will and power, which is considered to be without limits. This is what the debate over homosexuality is really about – the Nature of reality itself.

The outcome of this dispute will have consequences that reach far beyond the issue at hand. Already America’s major institutions have been transformed – its courts, its schools, its military, its civic institutions, and even its diplomacy. The further institutionalization of homosexuality will mean the triumph of force over reason, thus undermining the very foundations of the American Republic.”

And as an example of what you will read, consider chapter six, “Inventing Morality,” on page 79 where Reilly is talking about court cases and comes to the case, Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. This case was challenging a Pennsylvania law that said a woman wanting an abortion had to notify (not gain consent, just notify) the father. The Court struck the law down as a violation of the woman’s right. This is an example of the domino effect of cultural “force over reason,” and the change of reality itself from “good to bad.”  Reilly then says:

“In other words, a father might act to save the life of his child, which would be an infringement on the mother’s right to kill the child. This decision represents a reversal of the wisdom of Solomon’s famous judgment in the Old Testament, in which he discovered that the real parent was the one who was willing to forsake her child in order to save his life. For the Supreme Court, the real parent is no longer the one who wishes to preserve the life of the child, but the one who is willing to take it.”

This is what this unprecedented debate is all about – it is about changing the very meanings of good and bad, right and wrong, for all of us. But know this: if you are intolerant of the gay rights agenda in any way, you are bad and you will not be tolerated – you will be silenced and punished . . . and the day is coming . . . Marshall Law and imprisonment . . . the end of a free society . . . the end.

Read the book.