The Marriage of Bryan and Scopes’ Monkey: How Scientific Advances will Change the Course of the Values Debate

 by M. Dylan McClelland  

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Less than a century after the famous "monkey trial," America once again stands at the precipice of a traditionalist versus secularist battle over the fate of a nation and a culture.

We refer not to the New Jersey Supreme Court’s latest matrimonial excess.  1920’s America was immersed in the traditionalist versus secular debate popularized in the Scopes monkey trial.  Then, Tennessee biology teacher John Scopes was prosecuted for teaching the theory of evolution to his students.  The ensuing courtroom trial catapulted the debate between a “traditionalist” America and the bludgeon of scientific fact seemingly threatening those values and mores.  The case cemented in prominence the careers of Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan from courtroom to pulpit.

Now, nearly 100 years later America, again stands at the precipice of a traditionalist versus secularist battle over the fate of a nation and a culture.  45 states now have some form of “Marriage Amendment” or law explicitly banning same-sex marriage.  South Dakota recently rejected propositions legalizing medical marijuana and banning abortion, respectively.  Missouri followed California in enacting a stem cell funding initiative.  Democratic candidates running on claimed conservative themes proliferated across the map including, e.g., the successful Heath Schuler, and the unsuccessful Harold Ford.

Conservatives should be cautioned from concluding that despite huge electoral losses, the conservative movement advanced its principles in 2006 because Democrats co-opting conservative themes were successful.  Similar values trends were identified in the Republican victory in 2004, and ultimately proved inconclusive.  Then, commentators such as David Brooks in the New York Times and the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer explained that at closer look, “values voters” likely voted in no larger droves than in the 2000 election, and actually comprised nearly half of John Kerry’s votes.

The truth, as it almost always is, is probably somewhere in the middle.  Values, as variously defined, did matter strongly to some percentage of some voting block in the 2004 and 2006 elections, as they have in every election past.  But to conservatives and liberals alike I say rejoice, the battle will soon be settled, and it will be resolved not by the triumph of one philosophy or creed, not by the loudest scream in the town square, but by science and fact.

We start with the notion that tolerance is the primary civic virtue in America.  Tolerance comports with the Bill of Rights’ enshrinement of basic core freedoms such as speech and religion, with the Declaration of Independence’s proclamation that “all men are created equal,” and with Americans’ gut level rule of thumb that as long as one doesn’t infringe on the rights of others, they ought to be “let alone.”  This is “Tolerant America” and it inhabits every state, red or blue, every town, city, and hamlet.  Tolerant America sits on bar stools minding their own business, drives their kids to school in the suburbs, checks groceries at the local store, and presides over board meetings in New York City.  Tolerant America is America.

But no concept of tolerance requires acceptance or endorsement of every belief. Hence for example, each state recognizes and permits consensual sexual relations among adults while prohibiting it among minors (though minor is variously defined in the several states).  In legal parlance, as the Supreme Court has proclaimed, The Equal Protection Clause does not require the State to treat things which are different in fact, as though they are the same in law.

The debate over gay marriage, abortion, and stem cell research highlights America’s grappling with the line between tolerance and liberty on the one hand, and endorsement on the other. 

Take same-sex marriage.  For the past near-decade polls show a rough majority of the public favor protections from employment and housing discrimination against homosexuals.  The same polls and indeed this month’s election show overwhelming majorities oppose recognition of same-sex marriage.  Thus the tension between a basically tolerant “live and let live” America, and the agenda of a democratically-dismissive, endorsement-seeking, “progressive" cadre of a small minority; the Massachusetts and New Jersey Supreme Courts; and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome set on lecturing America about equality and tolerance.  “Tolerant America” respects individual opinion, choices, and freedom, but does not at the same time demand recognition of all theories and demands, particularly when high-jacked by the judiciary from the democratic process.         

Abortion, too, frames the picture of a tolerant, but moral America.  Polls still find, by an albeit shrinking margin, a majority of Americans are “pro-choice.”  The same polls show overwhelming majorities in excess of three-quarters favor banning partial-birth abortion.  Why?  Americans react viscerally against child murder. Tolerant America is uneasy at the thought of denying choice, but will do so willingly where, as in the case of partial birth procedures, it appears that some other life’s choice to live is being infringed, or, punctured in the head and vacuumed out.   

But one other political act of this election cycle may do more to resolve the values debate than all others.  Missouri voted in favor of stem cell research and, quite possibly, human cloning. Californians in 2004 passed Proposition 71 by large margins to spend $3 billion on stem cell research.  Liberal California, as it is often known (though it was California which kicked off the property tax revolt and twice elected Republican conservatives Ronald Reagan, George Deukmejian, and Pete Wilson), voted with its heart to unlock the mysteries of life.  In pursuit of cures to be sure, but to unlock life nonetheless.   Missourians, known more as a bell weather purple populous, were similarly moved by emotional appeals from the afflicted, such as Michael J. Fox.  Lost in the debate somehow were the facts: that embryonic stem cell research is already legal in every state and in fact receives less venture capital funding precisely because its prospects for finding cures are weaker than that of adult stem cells, a research area the Bush Administration wisely funded.  To date worldwide, more than 80 treatments have been developed from adult stem cell lines.  Zero treatments from embryonic research.   Though William Jennings Bryan must have rolled in his grave, the traditionalist revolution may have just received its seed capital.  More science weighs strongly in favor of conservatives’ values arguments. 

We already know that at twelve weeks a human fetus has all its parts, and the remaining 28 weeks involve merely the growth in size of those limbs and organs.  Suppose, in unlocking the origins of the stem cell, scientists discover that an embryo is indeed an independent life?  On what moral basis would tolerant America then differentiate a second week or even second trimester abortion from infanticide?

As America’s revulsion at the dilation and extraction partial birth procedure shows, and as the passage of laws such as the Lacey & Connor Act (making the homicide of a fetus by a third party murder) embodies, Tolerant America does not believe in killing children, no matter what the reason. 

Science as the salvation of the values debate strikes you as unlikely?  Research scientists looked at a sheep and decided “let’s clone that.”  And they did.  Does anyone seriously doubt whether some enterprising researcher will determine whether technology can grow an embryo through gestation to life?  Particularly when our intrepid doctor now has the capital and arguably the Nation’s largest state’s mandate?  Moreover, he can now do so with the law’s protection in Missouri.  As liberals will tell you, such research might after all lead to cures for Alzheimer’s, cancer, or leukemia . . .

Ah, but to our liberal friends I say rejoice for science may yet be your salvation too.  Several decades of studies on homosexuality have yet to show a genetic or biological causal connection to homosexuality.  Each study purporting to show a genetic, hormonal, or biological link – as an example an enlarged hypothalamus in the brain – have proved to be irreplicable, and debunked for poor methodology.  The study purporting to show that an enlarged hypothalamus caused homosexuality, for example, was rejected when a close examination of the study showed all of the test subjects were autopsied male AIDS patients and the changes in the neurological system better correlated with the effects of that devastating disease or the drugs used in its treatment.

Constitutional scholars will tell you that in the jurisprudence of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, an immutable (or unchangeable) trait such as race or gender entitles the bearer to strict protection from discriminatory governmental action on that basis.  And so the Supreme Court, in Loving v. Virginia, struck down the nation’s miscegenation laws barring mixed-race marriage, and later in the VMI military academy case, likewise heightened scrutiny of state action which discriminated based on gender.

Apart from Constructional law, it strikes “Tolerant America” in its core belief that we are “all created equal, endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights . . .” that we should not discriminate against individuals on the basis of traits over which they have no control; thus the now popularly supported and common anti-discrimination laws protecting classes such as age, race, gender, national origin, and handicap. It strikes most that none of these characteristics are relevant to a person’s worth and, hence, discrimination on their basis is unacceptable.

So if “Science” determines that sexual orientation, too, derives from genetics or immutable biological imperatives, same-sex marriage proponents may find their deliverance.  If sexual orientation, like race or gender, is immutable, on what moral basis would “Tolerant, but Moral America” differentiate same-sex marriage bans like the 45 currently in effect, from the now widely-condemned but earlier popular, miscegenation laws of prior centuries?     

But, my conservative colleagues scream, “homosexuality is behavior!”  We might, they contend, discover pedophilia is immutable by some evil quirk of fate, but we would not then repeal the laws protecting children, they plead.  The courts hold the criminally insane and mentally retarded responsible for their behavior when it violates the criminal law they urge.  Biology is not destiny.  All true.  Pedophilia, and murder by the insane or developmentally disabled, however, involve harm to others.  Those acts violate not only the social compact, but our instinctive bent towards endowed equality so long as it does not trample the rights of others.

The Supreme Court in Loving declared that there was no harm to prevent, much less a compelling need, to prohibit marriage between blacks and whites.  Race being such an incidental construct of life, immutable much like the size of one’s nose, eye color, or height, strikes us as largely irrelevant and unimportant to love and commitment, and in turn we do not deny such a vitally important institution as marriage to those with love and commitment who by the random chances of life happen to bear different skin tone.               
 
So then, if sexual orientation is scientifically revealed to us as immutable and biologically-caused, will Americans extend “Tolerant America” to include same-sex marriage as they did inter-racial marriage? 

Perhaps more interestingly, will “traditional conservatives” who prize the marital institution as the bedrock of 2,000 years of civilization, embrace loving and committed gay couples as they did interracial couples in the generations which followed Loving?  Ah, but you snort dismissively over your morning latte, America is not tolerant of interracial couples?  To the doubters then, we ask, how many copies of People magazine were sold with Mr. and Mrs. Tiger Woods on the cover?

Does one side seem more likely to prevail?  We know that every day in American hospitals, caring and trained physicians utilizing today’s technology can sustain, nurture, and enliven 21-week term babies outside of the womb. We also know that despite the efforts of an aggressive, belligerent, seemingly democratically-hostile and dissatisfied gay rights’ minority, all but five of the nation’s states joined the federal government in defining marriage to include only a man and a woman.  Tolerant America bears no ill will to gay couples, but it does not yet see a need to embrace and endorse a lifestyle which seems alien or suspect to many.

As technology and science advances, as man comes closer to the mysteries of life, one thing seems clear – the end of moral relativism.  Abortion will not be a choice about whether you believe or don’t believe an embryo is a life, it will be a question of whether we tolerate infanticide at the embryonic level through childhood.  The cheering throngs clustered outside a Redwood City courtroom as the Scott Peterson guilty verdict was read, the mothers and fathers in this country left distraught and speechless after the nightly newscasts about school shootings or the crimes which demand sexual predator reforms, suggest “Tolerant America” and “Moral America” converge in clear cases.
 
Early odds, therefore, would seem to lie with the conservatives, but who knows what will happen when scientific advancements eventually introduce Bryan to Scopes’ monkey?

President George W. Bush was the first president to federally fund stem cell research.  Because of a “moral” decision to fund only some research, the Left, sensing a new demographic to bribe and patronize, co-opted the issue and it became a political war with incendiary charges that Bush was insensitive to the infirm and dying and that Christopher Reeve would soon walk if only Bush would step aside from the door to the stem cell schoolhouse.  Sometimes, my Liberal colleagues, you have to be careful what you wish for.  The sensible folks from Missouri’s heartland, voters who adopted a Marriage Amendment in 2004 and voted in favor of stem cell research in ’06, may have just shoved us all down the road towards our answers.

Feminism, Abortion, Euthanasia

Read more articles by M. Dylan McClelland