CB - I do see and understand your points. Can I just address your anology real quick? You said:
"when I was in high school, I hardly knew any guys who had sex and we had two girls in our school get pregnant in my 3 years there. When they did, they suddenly were gone for the rest of the year and reappearred the next year. I later found out that they went to live with relatives and their babies were both given up for adoption. Today, there are a dozen girls pregant at the school at any given time. Instead of a negative stigma being attached to it, they are given baby showers and it is celebrated."
OK so when you were in high school, they hushed the girls out of sight and made them feel like lepers, and possibly/probably didn't even give the girls an actual choice of whether to keep the baby or not. And this is "right?"
And nowadays, there are many girls who are preggers and no one cares in a negative way, and their parents are encouraging them to keep the babies and having showers. This is "right"?
Now then lets go back in time about 100 years, when girls as young as 13 years old were FREQUENTLY married to men around 30 years old - right here in our own country - because girls of age 13 were "women", did the work of women, contributed to the family as a wife and woman...back then, this did not seem like children being molested, but as full grown women doing what all female mammals do - comingle and procreate. This is "right"?
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Here is my point: in my opinion, what you are describing is a social phenomonon, no matter which way you look at it. Times change, opinions change, social constructs change, and what is "right" or "wrong" within a society changes.
This will continue to happen, for better or worse, forever. And you can go back in time, and find common social practices that were acceptable in the past which would be abhorrent now. I could give dozens of example.
So how do we really judge what is wrong, right, or just a social passing thing that is right for the next 10 years and will be wrong after that?
For myself, the answer to that question comes from a quiet voice within myself. That voice tells me what is right or wrong. And basically, kindness, forgiveness, and a loving attitude, is ALWAYS right - no matter time, nor place, nor social construct.
You can choose to feel like a coward for not standing up for what is "right" at the wedding. Or you can choose to feel like a hero for being kind and non-judgemental.
Believe me, I know things are very complicated, and the world is not always a loving and forgiving place. But I think that is the point of my quiet inner voice. BECAUSE the world will continue to change and because people have free will, God gave us a still small voice to always turn to for the "right" answer.
