In case you weren’t aware, we’ve been embroiled in a bitter conflict with a nefarious enemy for years now.

Certainly following September 11, pundits and other political opinion leaders (like Bill O’Reilly) have created a new battlefield in our nation’s “growing culture war.” This is a deep-seeded struggle between O’Reilly’s “traditionalists,” and the “secularists” who want to remove God from the Ten Commandments and make you gay.

Aside from the immediacy, the sacrifice and the ruthlessness associated with the war metaphor, it consequently makes us all enemies of the other side. So you can’t just be an armchair traditionalist; we’re at war. A great man – I think it was George Lucas – once said, “You’re either with us, or you’re with the enemy.” And when one side wins this war, the other will obviously lose.

The issues we’re fighting over carry tremendous consequences. Gay marriage, for instance, involves the very survival of the family unit. Check this out (I think I understand): If two gay men – let’s call them Adam and Steve – are allowed to marry, pretty soon they’ll want benefits traditionally reserved for heterosexual couples. They’ll want tax breaks, hospital visitation rights, minivans and yes, children. And because gay couples cannot reproduce on their own, Adam and Steve will have to adopt a neglected or unwanted child. And because gays in general cannot reproduce, they will have to turn this child and perhaps your child, gay. Pretty soon, I have married my dog, and the fabric of modern society will have completely eroded into something sinister.

This ridiculous logic would not be nearly as scary if it wasn’t so real. The Texas house recently passed a bill that would ban homosexual couples from adopting foster children by a measure of 135-6. With two abstentions, it passed 135-6 because, according to the bill’s sponsor Rep. Robert Talton, “They (gays) are teaching something that is not conducive to our traditional families. God created man, and he created woman, and he created marriage, and there is a reason for that. It’s a tried and true method.” It’s the sort of statement that makes me almost wish we really were at war.

And gay marriage is just one battle in the many fronts of the global culture war. It seems like every day media focus is on another outrageous culture war battle. Today, Boy Scouts are banned from all Oregon cities. Who knows, maybe tomorrow students in California protest God’s magnificent love.

We live in a divided time. There are now two sides, and only two sides, to every issue. You’re a secularist or you’re a traditionalist, you’re liberal or you’re conservative, you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists.

The popular success of Michael Savage’s recent opus “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder,” shows just how receptive we are to these extreme viewpoints.

I really wish I could just joke about this, but every day lives are lost. If I had to choose, I’d characterize myself as a secularist within the thin rubric of General O’Reilly’s culture war. This is certainly thinking not peculiar to this problem. Opponents are often painted as diametrically dissimilar to win emotional support. We seem to be satisfying our aggressive tendencies through war on all things unpleasant and scary for years. Drugs, gangs, terror, personal freedom; I’m just waiting for a War on Figurative Wars.

The stereotypical enemies that this thinking creates (on both sides) can have tragic results. I don’t think we’re all different as far as politics goes; our American political spectrum looks like an ant farm on a potential scale of political ideology. Some of my friends voted for George Bush, and though I berate them for it, doesn’t bother me that much.

That’s because this is simply a war of words, and that’s all. This is only a “war” because Mr. O’Reilly says it is. “Terrorists” only “hate our freedom” because they’re “terrorists.” Orwell warned against giving control of our language to those in power until we eventually lose the ability to express ourselves “freely.” So this is my surrender. I am not at war because there is no war; just a few loosely-related and emotional issues with significant consequences portrayed as a war by those with the most to gain.

The one thing I would agree with Mr. O’Reilly is that we won’t be home by Christmas from this “war.” I’m sorry; we won’t be home for the holidays from this “war.” This will be a slog. There will be demonstrations and more outrage. Our collective intelligence will once again be accurately underestimated. The last straw will repeatedly break and eventually we will have gotten what we deserve: a quagmire.