This is an attempt at a fable: Once upon a time, there was a very rich man. He lived in a very nice house with a big picture window. The very rich man kept his money invested in promising businesses, and kept another portion in a savings account for his children and other people who needed to borrow large sums. Indeed, jobs were created with the money he spent with his upscale lifestyle. He also paid lots of taxes. What money he had after that, he plowed into his factory, inasmuch as the law allowed, to manufacture good products and keep his employees happy.

Then, these people came along and started driving their cars through his picture window. At first, he was forgiving. But as the plowing through of the window became a weekend routine, he decided to do build a stone wall. The kids just kept coming, breaking down the gate and driving through the window. It got to where the rich man had to cut back on his charitable contributions, his patronization of restaurants, and other small stuff. Then, he was wondering if he should sell his business or his house things were getting so bad. He put up a sign that said, “Please do not drive through my window.” But the kids just kept coming.

I liken that story to fornication. We could say that once upon a time, there was a rich man with all that stuff, but the poor people kept wanting to go to the club and party down and get pregnant. They could put the kids up for adoption or fostering or abort them. Any diseases would be treated at the clinics. It was all the same. The rich man on the hill would forgive and pick up the costs. Well, the rich man got tired and asked for some kind of law that would say, “Thou shalt not commit adultery or anything like unto it.” To that, the wayward Utes scoffed and partied heartier and derided our little old man for trying to help the world see his hard-earned money as a means to taking the community to the next level, rather than getting stuck in maintenance mode. Had the children listened, they each would have become a rich man on the hill, each taking the community to a higher level.

Instead, we are so nasty these days we think abortion is fine as long as the body parts aren’t sold. Come on. The baby’s already dead. What does he care what comes next? Our minds are so divorced from what takes us as a community to higher levels of excellence (speaking secularly) that we need to seek technicalities to fight atrocities committed against the human race. Also, since it is a given that your little eight-year-old in pigtails is a slut getting’ it on with eight committed partners under her schoolroom desk, we must not exclude the LGBTQ community from having full access to the devastations of fornicating at an early age.

I am not trying to be moralistic. We are all sinners, and I’m probably going to a lower level in Dante’s Inferno than any of you-lot. Our fallibility is not cause to redefine right and wrong. When we fall, or offend society (secularly speaking just to impair the metaphor), we get up again, try to be more considerate, and reset our sights on a more excellent way.