It’s not a war, and I am not a warrior.

Andrew Sullivan, in 2006, failing to give credit where credit is due:

First, they came for the homos, then the near-dead, then the pregnant women. But you know who their ultimate target will be:

I am a breeder. Not just a breeder, but a breeder who has bred. I treasure my children, and regard them as the greatest among many gifts my union with my wife has brought me. I know as well as anyone else that conceiving children can be one of the great joys of having sex.

But I deeply resent the suggestion, the assertion that by taking steps to avoid an unplanned pregnancy, or engaging in intimate acts that could never result in pregnancy that we have somehow degraded our love for one another, or debased the intimate time we spend together. I resent it when someone says that about my wearing a condom or my wife using contraceptives, and I resent it when someone says that about two men loving one another or two women loving one another. However it’s said, it’s an outright assault on the most precious, personal aspect of the relationship between me and my wife.

I didn’t demand my wife prove her fertility before we were wed, nor did she ask the same of me. We became lovers, and then became husband and wife in large measure because of the sexual desire we felt for one another. And I deeply resent the assertion that the way I feel about my wife can only be justified by the possibility of conception.

Well, that’s what the Pope believes; and it’s therefore what Kathryn-Jean Lopez believes should be reflected in American social policy. I’m glad more and more heterosexuals are waking up to the theocon agenda.

It’s not a small thing to invoke the phrase “First they came for…” It’s provocative, and Sullivan is smart enough to know that. After all, provocation is Sullivan’s business, and he’s good at it.

But the provocation business model has externalities. That’s not news, and I make no claims to wisdom or insight by noting it here.

I am thinking about it more — because I am older, because my children are older and I’m thinking about the sort of world I want them to live in, because Spring has come early and mowing my lawn makes me ruminous.

It is not a war, and I am not a warrior.

Above: January 1942, Kerch, USSR — Families identify dead in Kerch, Crimea.
Below: A father salutes the casket of his son on March 23, 2012. Buckley Air Force Base honored Lance Cpl. Christopher Mies when he arrived home.