By: Paul Murano – May, 2014
There has been a lot of media coverage on David Sterling’s racially insensitive remarks recorded in private conversations. Disparaging remarks against the human dignity of any people make no sense and should be condemned. I will let others debate the legality of making private remarks public without one’s consent, the precedent this may set for the future of privacy of speech in America, and the fact that there are countless people saying things just as reprehensible each night on the internet. As the moral outrage in the media continues 24/7, the ethical issue in this story I would like to bring to our attention is one that no one is talking about. The fact it has been completely ignored speaks volumes about the moral imbalance of our age.
Ignored in this story is the issue of adultery. Rochelle Sterling has been married to her husband for over fifty years. His mistress, who he parades around at public events including Clippers games, and who happens to be a third of his wife’s age, is at the center of this saga. Mrs. Sterling had to sue this girlfriend in order to get some of the millions back for her family that her husband has lavished on her. Apparently all this means nothing to the public. Why? Because it is a “private matter”. Really? Was not the conversation between Sterling and his mistress a private matter? And don’t we understand that marriage is performed in public because it a public matter? Then why do disparaging remarks made in private produce more public outrage than a broken vow made before God and the community? How does such an injustice and public humiliation go unnoticed?
So this is the question we need to ponder: Why is dragging a marriage through the mud and embarrassing a wife of over 50 years “nobody’s business” while a private conversation is everyone’s? Let me offer two reasons it is seen as such. First, sex has become a major sacrament to the god of self who is worshiped in the current leftist religion of secular humanism. No statement will ever be allowed in public that threatens one’s “right” to premarital and extramarital sex, regardless of the pain and injustice it causes. The second reason is that radical individualism has permeated our culture, making the god of self into an autonomous being. The irony of this new doctrine of man is that when you try to replace interdependence with independence you end up with dependence. In this respect the libertarian ideal is its own worst enemy.
Today we strive to uphold the equal dignity of the races (which is a good thing), and we denigrate the equal differences of the sexes (which is a bad thing). Everyone, it is believed, must be an independent agent in need of no one to complement or enrich one’s life. The autonomous individual of today must be an even blend of masculine and feminine traits to minimize difference and create androgynous wholes. This absurdity serves as the foundation to justify the breakup culture of couples and families so common today for the sake of the individual. This new form of selfishness is now branded as “liberty”.
Such liberty has its costs. For example, one extreme to this so-called liberty leads to mass killing in the name of independent ‘private’ freedom. Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., visits college campuses around the country heralding what she calls the “black genocide” (http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/17277/). The media ignores her. The fact that African-American babies are being targeted and killed at a significantly higher rate disproportionate to white babies, 16 million aborted since Roe vs. Wade, is apparently irrelevant. However, some individual saying foolish things to his mistress behind closed doors is earth-shattering news. Human life and family are being destroyed, the African-American community is hit the hardest, and the media ignores it. That is racism at its core.
Adultery and abortion, both related and both ignored by our morally blinded culture, creates an imbalance in our thinking. Condemning racist rants by ignorant individuals is a positive thing, but one wonders if the hysteria that accompanies it is our way of over-compensating for the anti-life, anti-family culture we have created with our chosen “private” behaviors. Guilt has a funny way of transferring itself in the attempt to feel better about ourselves.