Social Justice jingoists now proclaim that “Love is love.” Have you seen this new expression? Love is love! What does it mean? Where did it come from? Why is it being promoted?

After a bit of searching, I found one famous person using this expression. “Love is love,” voiced President Barack Hussein Obama on June 26, 2015, as he celebrated the Supreme Court’s profoundly controversial 5-4 ruling making same-sex marriages legal in the USA. Because the President said that and many applaud the spirit of what that decision means, few of us have challenged what Obama and those who share his sentiment are really saying. 

Instead, the “Love is love” refrain is showing up on yard signs and bumper stickers in many parts of America. It will surely enter the halls of conventional wisdom if the extremists in the Human Rights Campaign get their way. I have my own doubts, however, about the wisdom of the saying.

Image: Love is love (edited).

There are all kinds of love. Our literature is full of inspiring love stories many tied to emotional generosity and genuine sacrifice.

More recently, though, the Social Justice extremists are twisting love in all kinds of directions. Their ideas of love have many similarities to the Silly Putty we played with as kids. I can play that game too.

For example, I have recently come to love Turkey Hill’s Belgian Style Chocolate Ice Cream. When I think about it, my taste buds tingle. As I enjoy a serving of this new favorite, however, I know I am adding unneeded calories to my already husky physique. I also realize that my intake means the consumption or destruction of that which I say I love. Thus, this love eliminates the very thing I love and is not good for me when taken to excess.

In the famous movie about the Viet Nam War, Apocalypse Now, Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore exclaims outrageously, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” Napalm is a nasty weapon that sets ablaze everything and everyone it touches. This hard-to-forget line leads many to conclude that Kilgore’s love is crazy and sick. When I try to fit what the poets and Lt. Col. Kilgore say about love, I struggle to reconcile the two.

In my examples showing two different types of love, the human desire to self-gratify plays a big role. I suspect that there is an excess of selfishness in our time which will be self-destructive to our society.

The Social Justice extremists who favor all kinds of selfish love often label the Bible as “hate speech.” In the Bible, however, we find Paul’s hymn about the supremacy of love (1 Corinthians 13). At weddings, which are a celebration of love, 1 Corinthians 13 is often read as a reminder to the couple and the guests of the way that love “oughta” be.

Here are some of the points Paul makes about love. Love is:

• Patient
• Kind
• Not envious or boastful
• Not arrogant or rude
• Does not insist on its own way
• Not irritable or resentful
• Rejoices at truth and rejects wrongdoing
• Capable of bearing all things
• Hopeful
• Never ends

From my perspective, it seems like the Social Justice extremists are hell-bent on rebuilding Sodom and Gomorrah in the 21st century. They want to transform sexual perversion into socially acceptable practices, and one way to do this is to dress everything up as “love.”

As I write, Social Justice warriors are trying to remove pedophilia from our lexicon and replace it with softer-sounding “minor-attracted persons.” With this verbal sleight of hand, they want us to forget that pedophiles prey upon innocent children and bring unutterable suffering into their lives. They defend themselves by chanting “Love is Love.” They confuse love with wicked lust.

Paul says that love rejoices at the truth and rejects wrongdoing. From my perspective, the “Love is Love” crowd rejoices at wrongdoing and rejects the truth.

Ultimately when Social Justice activists argue that “Love is Love,” they are siding with groomers and predators. Love involves building up the person loved. Sexually abusing children has nothing to do with love. It reeks of selfish lust.

Ned Cosby, a regular contributor to American Thinker, is a pastor, veteran Coast Guard officer, and a retired career public high school teacher. His newest novel OUTCRY is a love story exposing the refusal of Christian leaders to report and discipline clergy who sexually abuse our young people. This work of fiction addresses crimes that are all too real. Cosby has also written RECOLLECTIONS FROM MY FATHER’S HOUSE, tracing his own odyssey from 1954 to the present. For more info, visit Ned Cosby.