Anyone with a close sibling or preschool experience can think back to a time when disputes were settled through tears, pouting, and desperate cries to mommy and daddy for mediation and resolution.Of course, many of these childish habits usually fade away once we mature, for some more so than others.Yet, thanks to politics, many examples of these diaper-duals persist today from grown adults, as evidenced by an ongoing battle between a local equality organization and one of the University’s most prominent Christian groups.The dispute stems from a 2007 letter written by The Chapel on the Campus head pastor Dr. Dennis Eenigenburg to East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President Kip Holden, wherein the pastor expressed his concerns about the mayor’s support for the unsuccessful “One Baton Rouge,” a resolution intended to proclaim the city’s acceptance of various sexual orientations.In the letter, Eenigenburg claims homosexual behavior is “immoral” and “should not be promoted” by government.He also expresses concern over the mounting “gay agenda,” imploring the mayor to do his best to “stay out of social issues” to ensure a more “wholesome community” as our “more morally attuned ancestors” would have hoped.After receiving a copy of the letter, Capital City Alliance, a Baton Rouge-based equality organization with a predominately gay and lesbian membership, filed a complaint with the LSU Board of Supervisors, labeling the letter “extremely offensive and at the very least harassing to the thousands of gay citizens in and around the Baton Rouge area.”As a result, The CCA has urged the University Board of Directors to take action against the church, which currently holds an agreement with the University that allows them to lease their land at no cost.Should their appeals succeed, they would no doubt affect the thousands of members of The Chapel community, including the hundreds of students who take part in The Refuge, one of the University’s largest on-campus ministries.There is little doubt that equality organizations, like the CCA, and individual citizens have the moral obligation to protect their community from any and all bigoted civil rights violations.It seems rather peculiar, however, that a “compassionate” organization like the CCA would latch on to the same debauched political institution they claim forcibly violated gay rights in the past and then suddenly attempt to use that same force to promote their agenda.By embracing the political system as a mechanism for their personal ends, as the CCA has doubtlessly done over the past decade, its members seem to be ignoring the root of the problem: the corrupted nature of the political realm.It should be clear by now to everybody, regardless of sexual orientation or religious affiliation, that politics will never ultimately solve disputes, only exacerbate them.Once we peel back the thick layer of revisionist history, we can see that true social progress actually occurs when citizens reconcile their differences peacefully through shared philosophy rather than relying on government to “settle” disputes through coercion and constraint.When absolute power exists, people will always try to manipulate it for their own self-interest. That’s why we can be certain that the legitimized initiation of force — the underlying root of government authority — can never be rationally employed to settle social disputes.You don’t have to necessarily agree on ethics to recognize the immorality of exploiting an inherently unjust system.Just ask Jerry Falwell how fruitful his little political experiment turned out.In this particular case, Eenigenburg’s folly isn’t in defending his beliefs. It’s in implicitly legitimizing what is, by any definition, an illegitimate and manipulative institution and attempting to use it’s power to enforce his beliefs.If government should stay out of social issues, as Eenigenburg insists, he should demand it stay out of all social issues, including heterosexual marriage and abortion.Virtually everyone recognizes the danger of an overbearing government. That’s precisely why we should seek to avoid politics at all cost.If freedom is, indeed, from God — not man — than any person or legal fiction that claims the moral authority to remove or bestow freedom should be challenged immediately.Of course, it would be highly unfortunate if hundreds of students had to suffer because of one person’s words.But such is the nature of the messy game of politics.When people are too focused on the corruption in the political system, they often neglect to recognize the inherent corruption of a system that has the strange tendency to, through force, transform grown adults into piddling toddlers vying for control.That’s why all citizens should pursue and promote true liberty and voluntarism in their own lives rather than getting entangled in the futile realm of politics.But as long as we view ourselves as incompetent children wholly reliant on the nanny state, we’ll never be able to resolve disputes like rational, levelheaded adults.—–Contact Scott Burns at [email protected]