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All this ties in with a discovery Oxford anthropologist J.D. Unwin made as long ago as 1934 in his study, Sex and Culture (Oxford University Press).

Having researched more than 80 cultures past and present on this subject, Unwin discovered that societies, which do not impose some restraint on their sexual behavior, cease to develop significant social energies after only one generation.

Conversely, when social regulations forbid indiscriminate satisfaction of sexual impulses, the emotional conflict is expressed in another way. In other words, civilizations are built upon sacrifices in the gratification of innate desires.

That, too, appears to be a phenomenon linked to natural law, which according to St. Thomas Aquinas can be blotted out from men's hearts, not as a general principle but "in the case of a particular action … on account of concupiscence (desire) or some other passion."

As the highest authority on civil law, the Supreme Court and similar secular institutions of the Western world were in a sense also guardians of natural law to which they owe their very existence, at least as seen from the theological perspective.

This has nothing to do with imposing any particular religion on the secular state. Until relatively recently non-Christians supported the tenets of what believers call natural law because they held society together, preventing bloody chaos.

It appears that the Supreme Court, kowtowing to ideological agendas, has steadily moved toward an abandonment of this guardianship, starting with Roe v. Wade in 1973. So then, who nurtures this gift that is written upon our hearts? There's nobody left but the Church.

What does this mean for churches that are themselves moving toward blessing same-sex unions and ordaining active homosexuals as pastors, priests and—as will probably soon be the case in England and New Hampshire—bishops. Whose job should it be to keep order?

Well, not those churches. With their shenanigans they are shriveling into oblivion, anyway. But there are other, faithful churches whose finest hour may be near now that even the Supreme Court seems to have succumbed to a fad. Not that these faithful denominations (and confessional groups within the mainline churches) should usurp the functions of the secular state in upholding natural law.

It will be sufficient if they reassure the majority of the people in what most know already—that a natural law is written upon the created order and their own hearts. In the context of the present sexuality debate, that law very much includes an insight best formulated 1,600 years ago by the British Bible scholar Pelagius: "Once lust is unbridled it knows no limits. In the order of nature those who forgot God did not understand themselves either."

Uwe Siemon-Netto is religion editor for United Press International.

Opinions expressed in Speaking Out do not necessarily reflect the views of Christianity Today.

Copyright © 2003 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Previous columns by Uwe Siemon-Netto on ChristianityToday.com include:

Spittle and Self-Righteousness | Beware of responding too indignantly to those on the other side of the war debate. (March 28, 2003)

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June (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47