It is clear that we continue to be a divided nation, which means we are not having a national dialogue, but rather two national monologues — each side not hearing the other.

Whether we talk about gay marriage, abortion, Second Amendment rights, the economy or national defense, it seems that we are having different conversations based on two incompatible views of our nation’s heritage, most notably, how we interpret the Constitution.

At the time of its writing, the concept of “self-evident truth” was easily discernible because truth was interpreted through the lens of natural law. Even with diverse religious and political sensibilities in play, our founders very easily agreed upon certain guiding principles of our young government. At that time in history, we interpreted nature as evidence of God’s will and, therefore, as supernaturally endowed by God. We simply looked to nature to ascertain those “self-evident truths” that must be recognized and protected as God-given (naturally present) rights.

The Constitution (and the government that serves to protect the Constitution) then must be understood to be a protector of rights given by God… and not, as so many seem to think today, as the progenitor of rights.

If a government can create my rights, then it can take them away.

Our rights must not be relegated to the arbitrary will of those in power, but recognized (and enumerated in our founding documents) as being endowed by God first. The rampant left-wing attempts at extracting all religion from government is an attempt to completely undermine and redefine the source of our rights — a human tendency first accounted for in the Biblical telling of the Tower of Babel, in which man, with his inflated sense of self-importance, attempted to create his society in his own image, rather than in the image of revealed and timeless truth.

The result was a world much like we have in America today, where nobody speaks the same language, making unity impossible.

As I write this, gay activists in California are storming a church in their collective anger about Proposition 8. In Connecticut, the state Supreme Court has redefined marriage to include gay couples.

It’s worth noting that Californians, perhaps the most liberal electorate in the country, did not vote to “ban gay marriage,” though that was the effect of the proposition. Californians voted to uphold natural law in recognizing the original intent of marriage as being exclusively between a man and a woman; a union of opposites, as opposed to a union of any two consenting adults. In short, Californians rejected activist attempts at redefining marriage.

Philosophically, this means that exterior realities matter. The outward distinction of male and female points us toward an invisible reality of the meaning of two genders. They are not insignificant realities. This is a far cry from what gay activists think it means. It doesn’t mean that two men or two women are incapable of loving or committing to each other in a relationship. It does mean, though, that two men who engage in sexual expression that is fundamentally at odds with the purpose and nature of the sexual act in the first place should not be sanctioned by the government because it serves no ultimate purpose to preserving the family or society.

Redefining marriage to suit the desires of same-sex couples has forced the government to expand its role in the private sphere of the family well beyond what is reasonable. When two females or two males attempt to build a family, which is impossible to accomplish by natural means, the children lose their right to a relationship with both biological parents. The state now becomes the ultimate arbiter, deciding which parent “wins” the role of parent and which one is summarily dismissed from duty. Natural law is nowhere to be found in this somber and disturbing duty.

In Europe, for instance, birth certificates no longer recognize a “mother” and “father,” but instead ask for “Progenitor A” and “Progenitor B.” If our society is forced to accept a redefinition of marriage, the government is then forced to sanction what is essentially a counterfeit version of the family, where one parent’s rights must be terminated in order to accommodate the desire of the replacement parents.

We would not even be debating this, except that our culture began rejecting the sanctity of sex when it completely divorced sexuality from procreation. Sexual expression has become a matter of recreation that barely pauses to consider its primary anthropological purpose, which is parental bonding for the long-term interest of the family.

Certainly, gay couples may indeed be capable of providing a loving home to children who would otherwise languish in serial foster care placement. Still, this is no justification to intentionally deny children a rightful relationship with their biological parents by the bizarre and increasingly common practice of using artificial insemination and surrogate motherhood. This is an artificial approach to “producing” children in service to gay couples, who insist that the world accommodate their need to feel like a traditional family. This is the wholesale degrading of the procreative process in service of the ego.

Our refusal to acknowledge the natural law as a pillar of our constitutional protections also leads us to secure an indiscriminate right to kill (abortion and physician-assisted suicide), while failing to protect what is explicitly stated as a primary right, “the right to life,” which, by no accident, must precede the other two unalienable rights: “Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

After all, if we don’t have the right to life secured, what good does it serve to have the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness? That should be self-evident.

Federal Way resident Angie Vogt: vogt.e@comcast.net. For past columns and further commentary, visit www.soundupdate.com.