I recently submitted a letter to the Deseret News Readers' Forum, and only a postscript I had added to it got printed. That disrupted the letter's continuity and collective argument. This resubmission should clarify it.
We have certain unalienable rights. One is in the biological imperative to procreate. Another is such as the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," as in our nation's founding inspiration. Both are God-given, not man-given, and therefore are fact, not opinion.
But still no right, unalienable or not, is unconditional. Our right to life does not exceed another person's equal right to life, for instance. And our right to drive a car is conditional upon our promise to not violate other people's equal rights on the roadways. We implement that promise to each other with drivers' licenses.
A much more vital and far-reaching concern though, is our unalienable right to "multiply and replenish the earth." God-given, not man-given. But every discussion of it we hear anymore just assumes no God-given absolute values come with it. Just self-righteous personal opinion.
In that context, the current immoral challenge that increasingly drowns out all others preaches that the procreative act is only the business of two consenting adults. That destructive falsehood motivates this article.
There are four parties to any physical indulgence in the procreative act, not just two. All four have absolute conditions that must be met or the act is immoral.
Proof is in both God-given unalienable biology and those God-given unalienable rights our nation is based upon.
Parties 1 and 2: the two consenting adults.
Party 3: the next generation, whether in living progress, or just in chance gamblings. These children, actual or implied, have the biologically mandated unalienable right to be born to committed, moral parents.
Party 4: all the rest of us who will be impacted by that upcoming generation — for good or for bad. As fourth party we are all also protecting advocates for Party 3.
As our promise in the right to drive a car is a license, the promise required by God-given procreative indulgence is also a license. A marriage license.
Bottom line is that no one has a right to sex out of wedlock. Saying anyone does says unalienable rights are just personal opinions. "Alternate lifestyles," such as the convenient "gay" inversions of reality, are fictions.
It is a sad commentary that tax money is allowed to be used in public libraries by "morally challenged" supporters, even celebrators, of immorality.
Raeo Passey
Midvale