In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan authored a prophetic study entitled "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action." Moynihan, then an assistant secretary of labor, chronicled the social problems in the black community and tied these problems to the disintegration of the black family. He related this crisis in the black family to the legacy of slavery and the deleterious effects of the welfare state. Moynihan predicted then that things would only get worse.
Things got much worse. Incidence of out-of-wedlock births, abortions, absentee fathers tripled over the next 40 years. What Moynihan did not consider then, in 1965, was that the situation in the black community provided a looking glass into the nation as a whole.
The experience of white America followed on the heels of black America by every measure of family collapse, promiscuity and out-of-wedlock births. Today the incidence of out-of-wedlock births among white women, 25 percent, equals the incidence among black women 40 years ago.
Almost 30 years later in 1993, Daniel Moynihan authored another prophetic article titled "Defining Deviancy Down." Moynihan continued to address the signs of social collapse in the country and attributed these to an inexorable relaxing of generally accepted standards of what is considered deviant. Just looking at New York City alone, he compared the illegitimacy rate in 1992, 45 percent, to what it was in 1943, 3 percent.
The fact that today's debate is about gay marriage and no longer about genetic predisposition of homosexual behavior shows that deviancy has already been defined down another notch. The Ten Commandments, which address honoring one's father and mother and not coveting thy neighbor's wife, have already been purged from display in the nation's public spaces. Legalization of gay marriage will complete the process and purge them from our national consciousness and from any unique relevance to our national life. At that moment, everything turns political.
Where will things go next? A philosophy professor at Princeton today makes elegant arguments for infanticide. Why not kill a baby born with a terrible and incurable disease? Blacks know what evil is and what it means to live in a society with no moral compass, that lives by rationalization rather than reason. We are trying to rebuild our communities that have been ravaged by power and politics.
Blacks are indeed outraged and legitimately so. Expect to read more about press conferences by black clergy around the nation and in Washington. Our lives and communities are at stake here. We won't sit this one out.
Star Parker is president of CURE, Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education ( www.urbancure.org ) and author of "Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can Do About It."