Tag Archive for: family

Russia’s Resolve: The Family Comes First

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A valuable lesson from my days toiling away in the imperial capital was how little Americans know about what is going on in the rest of the world. Back in the heady days of hegemony, the default American setting was ethnocentric. Wherever we went, there was CNN Headline News, American entertainment, tourist menus, guides and cordial concierges ensuring that our language deficit was not an impediment to spending money.

Joe Biden, the guy presently playing president, said America is an “indispensable nation”. Strictly speaking, we haven’t been a nation since the Civil War. We’re not indispensable either, but believing so is indispensable to imperial hubris. I digress.

Year of the Family

On 22 November, American media ran the usual fare that passes for news: the wars du jour, the JFK murder 60th anniversary, and travellers headed home for Thanksgiving.

Across the globe, something momentous was underway. Western media mostly missed it. The event? Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree declaring 2024 the “Year of the Family“.

In order to promote state policy to protect the family and preserve traditional family values, the President has resolved to declare 2024 the Year of the Family in the Russian Federation. 

The Year of the Family initiative was kicked off in early November via a motion by Russian Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko. The mission: “promote state policy in the field of family protection and the preservation of traditional family values.”

The official organising committee will be in place on 27 December, headed by Tatyana Golikova, Deputy Prime Minister for Social Policy, Labour, Health and Pension Provision.

Consider: motion made in early November, decree issued 22 November, implementing committee up and running 27 December. By government standards, that’s moving like greased lightnin’. Guess they remember the glacial pace of things under Communism.

Now, I’m an America first guy, but when countries with fewer resources get things done faster and better, there’s no shame in following their example.

Socially conservative

The custom of dedicating each year to a national cause was inaugurated in 2007 to focus attention on Russian priorities. This is part and parcel of President Putin’s nationalistic approach, designed to conflate patriotism with problem-solving. To a surprising degree, it works. However, President Putin deserves only partial credit. US/NATO sanctions have done more to rally Russians behind him than any big bucks PR campaign or “Ukraine liberation” ever could.

Much has been happening in Russia of late that would be of keen interest to Americans. By US standards, Russia is “right-wing”, aka woefully unwoke. Western elites regard Russia (per the late Senator John McCain) as “a gas station masquerading as a country”. Not so.

But we do have domestic culture wars in common, though the folks ruling the roost in Moscow have quite a different take on things than their Washington counterparts.

In 2013, Russia’s law “For the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating a Denial of Traditional Family Values” was enacted.  Commonly known as the gay propaganda law, it prohibited the dissemination of “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships” and materials that could encourage minors to “form non-traditional sexual predispositions”.

In mid-November, the Russian Ministry of Justice filed suit averring that the LGBT movement fomented religious and social strife. On 30 November, the Russian Supreme Court agreed, ruling that the movement was an “extremist organisation”, placing it legally on a par with terrorist groups. The ruling bans public displays and activities supporting LGBT lifestyles.

Right to life

On 3 November, President Putin addressed abortion: “Of course, the problem of abortion is so acute. The question is: what to do about it?”

He cited prospective measures that would “ban the sale of drugs that terminate pregnancy, or improve the socio-economic situation in the country, increase the level of well-being, real wages, social services, [and] assistance to young families in purchasing housing.”

The Russian Orthodox Church is lobbying for more restrictive abortion laws and proposing a package of reforms, including:

  • Requiring the husband’s “informed consent” for married women to have an abortion; requiring parental approval for underage girls
  • Mandatory pre-abortion counselling, including an ultrasound scan
  • Extension of the “contemplation period” from 48 hours to one week
  • Banning abortion after 8 weeks of pregnancy (current law is 12 weeks)
  • Allow rape victims 12 weeks to request abortion (current law is 22 weeks)
  • Prohibiting private clinics from performing abortions

In 2000, there were 2.13 million abortions in Russia. That has decreased to 506,000 in 2022. With a shrinking population, it is likely that further restrictions are in the cards. While that could bump up birth rates a bit, any significant reversal of falling fertility depends on – drumroll – priorities.

History

The first Year of the Family was in 2008, when the government reformed policies on the foreign adoption of Russian orphans. In 2012, Russia banned adoptions by Americans and is considering extending that to countries permitting “gender change”. In 2013, Russia outlawed adoptions by same-sex couples.

Following the dissolution of the USSR in late 1991, Russia’s birthrate collapsed to levels not seen since World War II, when an estimated 27 million Soviet citizens perished. The economy spiralled into depression while crime and a host of social pathologies spread like wildfire. Russia’s estimated fertility rate has since rebounded to between 1.4 and 1.6, but there is no decidedly upward trend.

In a late November address to the World Russian People’s Council, President Putin said:

We will not overcome the daunting demographic challenges facing us solely with money, social benefits, allowances, privileges, or dedicated programmes. True, the amount of the budget’s demographic spending is extremely important, but that is not all there is to it. A person’s points of reference in life matter more. Love, trust, and a solid moral foundation are what the family and the birth of a child are built on. We must never forget this.

Thankfully, many of our ethnic groups have preserved the tradition of having strong multigenerational families with four, five, or even more children. Let us remember that Russian families, many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had seven, eight, or even more children.

Let us preserve and revive these excellent traditions. Large families must become the norm, a way of life for all Russia’s peoples. The family is not just the foundation of the state and society; it is a spiritual phenomenon, a source of morality.

Like him or not, give credit where it’s due: President Putin is trying.

Latest legislative initiative

In response to widespread concerns about Russia’s demographic crisis, last week legislators from the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) proposed legislation entitled “On State Benefits for Citizens with Children” that would provide for the award 200,000 rubles (US$2100) per child to women who give birth before age 25.

The average age of a mother at first birth is inching towards 30. On introducing the legislation, LDPR deputies cut to the chase, saying, “Almost 40 percent of Russian women refuse to have children due to unsatisfactory financial situation and living conditions.” All women under age 25, regardless of financial situation, would be eligible for the benefit.

Why write about Russia? Look no further than our Mercator masthead: Mercator is your first stop for news and analysis that places the dignity of the human person at the centre of everything.

There are so many people in Russia, and everywhere else, for that matter, who agree. They are pro-family and our comrades-in-arms on the issues that count.

Today, we’re on the precipice of world war. Russia and America should strive for better understanding and expend more effort trying to get along than on antagonising one another. Direct people-to-people cooperation working for traditional family values can make friends and mitigate the geopolitical tangles contrived by avaricious elites. World peace depends on it.

Merry Christmas, Mercator fans!

AUTHOR

Louis T. March has a background in government, business, and philanthropy. A former talk show host, author, and public speaker, he is a dedicated student of history and genealogy. Louis lives with his family in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

RELATED ARTICLE: Why I don’t think the population will collapse in the long run

EDITORS NOTE: This Mercator column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Fathers Are Crucial to Healthy Outcomes for Kids, Studies Confirm

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As the U.S. celebrated Father’s Day 2023, two recent studies confirm that fathers play a central role in the mental health and behavior of their children.

In a report that compared dozens of studies conducted between 1987 and 2022, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) found “clear correlations between children raised in fatherless homes and developmental challenges ranging from bad grades, anxiety, and suicide to violent behavior, drug use, and criminality.”

The report pointed out the extent of fatherlessness in America, with 18.3 million children who currently live without a father in the home, or about one out of every four kids in the U.S. This statistic is at odds with the overwhelming consensus among Americans of the importance of strong families. A January 2022 Rasmussen poll found that 84% “believe a strong family is foundational to a strong America and that parents should bear the primary responsibility for raising children.” Only 11% said that raising children is a “community responsibility,” as suggested by President Joe Biden a few weeks ago.

Regarding educational outcomes, the study found that children with an engaged father in the home were “33% percent less likely to repeat a class and 43% more likely to get As in school.” It also found that children without fathers in the home were up to nine times more likely to drop out of school.

As to mental health outcomes, kids in single-parent families are “twice as likely to suffer from mental health and behavioral problems as those living with married parents” and have an almost “five times greater chance of developing mood disorders.” The report further pointed to studies showing that up to 63% of youth suicides and 85% of children who exhibit behavioral disorders are from fatherless homes.

Regarding criminal behavior, the report pointed to studies showing that “fatherless kids are 20 times more likely to be incarcerated,” with some data suggesting that children living without fathers “are 279% more likely to carry guns and deal drugs compared to peers living with their fathers.” The report also noted that in a study of 56 school shootings, 82% of the shooters “grew up in either an unstable family environment or grew up without both biological parents together.”

Joseph Backholm, senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement at Family Research Council, contended that there are serious societal consequences when children grow up with a lack of love from engaged fathers.

“When children are abandoned by their father, their little minds often conclude they are not worth loving,” he told The Washington Stand. “But that doesn’t mean they stop looking for love. Instead, they look to people who will pretend to love them, for a price. In other cases, children turn to substances to help numb the pain. Fatherlessness creates a deficit of love and a crisis of identity. The violence, substance abuse, crime, and educational failures seem to be the result of what happens when children look for love and identity in the wrong places.”

In addition, new studies in the world of neuroscience are continuing to uncover the critical importance of household stability for young children. In a groundbreaking study published in the June edition of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, researchers analyzing how children’s brains develop have found that “household instability before age 5 increases the risk of depression by age 21.” The findings revealed that a stable father’s presence during early childhood, among other factors, “benefit long-term development of mental health and well-being.”

The AFPI report includes numerous recommendations on how to remedy the fatherhood crisis in America.

“Local churches and faith-based organizations can be of assistance in the entire fatherhood space,” it notes. “Churches are well situated to lead in this space, as they have the personnel and mentorship potential to guide fathers to their highest potential, provide community-based resources, and mentor those without fathers.”

The report goes on to maintain that “policy officials and community leaders alike can support an all-out pro-fatherhood messaging campaign to amplify the importance of fatherhood across the Nation.” As reported by Breitbart, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is one lawmaker who has sought to pass legislation aimed at supporting families this year. “Never in my lifetime has it been harder to be a mom or a dad,” Rubio wrote in January. “Laws in our country should work to chart a new course and help parents balance child-rearing, work, and other priorities throughout day-to-day life.”

The AFPI report concludes, “To address this crisis, we must first speak openly about the problem of fatherless children. Then, we must focus on fixing it by promoting strong families, confronting cultural malaise, and sharing the joys of fatherhood. It is a tall task but a worthwhile one.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

The Number of Children Growing Up in Intact Families Is Rising

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Amidst the negative news surrounding the state of marriage and the family in the U.S., a bright spot is beginning to emerge: the number of children being raised by their married mothers and fathers is slowly rising.

A new analysis from Lyman Stone, a research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, found that “[s]ince a low ebb around 2014, the share of kids living with their parents has actually risen by about 1.5 percentage points.” While the relatively low growth rate might seem inconsequential, it stands in stark contrast to the overall pattern of decline in stable American families over the last 50 years. From the early 1960s until around 2014, the share of children living in intact families steadily nosedived from 87% down to around 62%.

As Stone observes, there are a number of reasons behind the increase in stable households for children. Even though marriage rates are falling, so is divorce, which means that the marriages that are happening are more stable. On top of this, the rate of children born to married parents has remained stable. At the same time, writes Stone, “birth rates of unmarried women have fallen very rapidly” over the last 20 or so years. So despite falling fertility and marriage rates, “the children who are born are more likely to live with two married parents.”

This is good news for children, as an abundance of studies show that kids raised in an intact, two-parent household have vastly better life outcomes than their peers who are raised in single-parent households. One recent research brief found that children raised in intact homes are “more likely to be flourishing economically, educationally, and socially” with regard to child poverty, college graduation rates, and rates of incarceration than their counterparts in single parent homes.

In addition, a summary of the effect that family structure has on children noted that kids who grow up with their married mother and father are more often involved in community activities like sports and other extra-curricular activities, spend more time with their fathers, are 20 to 35% more physically healthy, score higher in cognitive tests like verbal reasoning, and are less likely to exhibit problematic behavior at school than their peers from non-intact families.

As family sociologist Brad Wilcox and other researchers have observed, there has been a notable recent challenge to the social scientific consensus on the benefits that intact families give children in outlets including The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Harvard Gazette, which argue that family structure has negligible consequences on children. But as Wilcox contended, these arguments ignore what the consensus in the sociology field has been for decades. “It is simply the truth that white and black children usually do better when raised by their own mother and father, compared to single-parent and stepfamilies,” he wrote.

According to Stone’s most recent analysis, this means that the future is looking a little bit brighter for America’s children. “All in all, the decline in intact families in America appears to have bottomed out for now,” he wrote. Stone also noted that not even a global pandemic could stop the rising trend of children growing up in intact families.

“Naturally, these trends could change in the future, but as of now, it appears that not only did COVID fail to undo the trend of rising intact families, it may have accelerated it for certain groups,” he pointed out.

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

A Child’s-Eye View of Communism’s Absurdities

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Candid childhood memories of life behind the Iron Curtain

It is a truism to say that children have a grasp of reality different from adults; a clearer and more honest grasp that in most cases they lose with maturity. Rare is the man or woman who retains that innocent capacity to see through grown-up hypocrisy and pretence, presented to us so vividly in Hans Andersen’s memorable fairy-tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes.

In this humorous memoir of growing up in a city (unidentified) of 40,000 in the southern Urals of the Soviet Union in the 1970s-1980s, Fr Alexander Krylov, of Russian-German origin, manages to retain the undeceived eyes of childhood as he relates the absurdities and contradictions of life under Communism.

God and family

So many memoirs of living under the Soviet regime are, understandably, riven with bitterness and anger; the suffering has been too great to forget. The young Krylov, an only child, was protected from this by the love and faith of his family: his Catholic mother and grandmother and his Orthodox father.

The latter died when he was aged seven; showing unusual understanding for his age, Krylov realised that he was now “the one man in the family.” A certain independence of outlook seems to have characterised him from the start — probably because, despite the constant atheist propaganda impressed on him at school and in the wider society, “God’s presence in everyday life was… self-evident for our family.”

Much of this was owing to his grandmother’s influence for, as the family breadwinner, his mother had to work long hours outside the home. This grandmother, who had grown up in a German-speaking colony in Russia, resembled a traditional Russian “babushka” in her fortitude, her generosity and her strong faith that years of living in Leonid Brezhnev’s decrepit Soviet society could not erase.

In this world, all its citizens were officially atheist yet, as Krylov relates, everyone in his neighbourhood “knew” who the believers were and what religion they followed. His grandmother “saw an ally in every human being who was seeking God — Jews, Orthodox and Muslims” because — especially in death — “common prayer was much more important than any disagreement.”

There were no churches in his city and he only saw the inside of an Orthodox church (in western Ukraine) before starting school, aged six. Overwhelmed by its icons, candles and awe-inspiring atmosphere, Krylov told his mother, “Let’s stay here forever.” Undeterred, his grandmother erected a homemade altar in their small apartment, with its holy pictures, holy water, hymns and secret celebrations of the great Christian feasts. A candle would be lit in the window at Christmas; it was “somehow implicitly clear that God does not abandon human beings as long as a light is burning in at least one window on Christmas Eve and at least one person is waiting for the Christ-child.”

Economic woes

The author takes a gentle swipe at western society, obsessed with dietary fashions, when he explains, in a chapter titled “Healthy Diet”, why Soviet citizens had no choice but a healthy diet. Trying to survive in a corrupt and inefficient command economy, almost all families had an allotment with fruit trees and vegetables, to compensate for what they could not buy in the shops: everything possible was pickled, canned, stored or preserved. For some reason chickens were plentiful:

“Thanks to the poor work of the chemical industry, they were raised with no additives and usually looked as though they had walked by themselves from the chicken factory to the grocery store.”

I laughed aloud as I read this and other reminiscences, narrated in the candid way of a man who has not lost the artless gaze of a child. (After a distinguished academic career in Moscow, Fr Krylov decided to become a priest aged 42, on Easter Monday 2011 and was ordained in 2016.)

Another anecdote describes how he briefly worked in a grocery store where the shelves were often lacking common items buyers craved. Organising the shop’s store room, he noticed many such items, piled them on a trolley and wheeled it through into the shop, to the delighted surprise of the customers. The teenage boy could not understand why the manageress looked so discomfited and why his employment was suddenly curtailed.

Inner life

Just as the late Russian poet, Irina Ratushinskaya, who spent four years in the Gulag for writing “subversive” poetry, commented she was told so often as a child “there is no God”, that she began to believe in Him, Krylov reflects: “The prohibition against owning a Bible in the Soviet Union could only confirm its importance.”

In a telling incident in his teens, he describes a classroom meeting where these young Soviet citizens planned “to put socialist democracy into action.” This meant denouncing a fellow student who would not obey the rules. Krylov, who had befriended him, defended him in front of his classmates. They then turned on him, aware that he too was somehow “different.” The author comments, “Although I was always present, I lived my own life”. This hidden, inner life, which they sensed though it was never made explicit, presented an existential threat to his fellow student ideologues.

Inevitably, Lenin’s image was everywhere. Joining the Communist youth group, the Young Pioneers, one wore a red neckerchief and star. “Depicted on this star were the head of Lenin and three tongues of fire. I shared with no one my impression that this star depicted the head of Lenin burning in hell.” This was the response of a child whose private faith, never mentioned in class, helped to protect him against the atheism he was forced to listen to in public.

Finally, aged 15, overhearing the jocular remark of a friend’s father that vodka was “opium for the people”, Krylov comments: “Suddenly my eyes were opened: [I realised that] Communism had simply become a new religion.”

If the Emperor in this case was not exactly naked, nonetheless the short, discrete chapters of this kindly memoir remind readers that his clothes were uncomfortable, unsuitable, ill-fitting and threadbare.

This review has been republished with the author’s permission from The Conservative Woman.

AUTHOR

Francis Phillips

More by Francis Phillips

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

A New Sign of Our Times

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Robert Royal: The rise of populist Giorgia Meloni in Italian politics reflects a Europe-wide reaction against open borders and attacks on traditional culture, including the family. 

If exit polls hold, yesterday Italy elected its first female prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. The usual liberal voices will not be celebrating. Normally, Italian elections are of little interest. Since 1945, there have been seventy Italian governments – almost one a year, which might suggest instability. But Italians often say that the system is too stable. General elections just reshuffle members of the political class, which rarely change very much. Except maybe this time. A populist Italian prime minister (“extreme right,” “neo-fascist” in the mainstream media, of course) will have significant repercussions for Europe and America, and even the Catholic Church.

A prominent Italian theologian, now living in the United States has argued recently that Meloni’s election may “hurt Francis”: “The campaign has been vulgar and trashy, and all of the substantial issues – from the war in Ukraine to climate change – have been ignored.”

This account of “all the substantial issues,” like much political analysis these days, leaves out a lot. Namely, questions that daily concern most Italians – like crime, out-of-control inflation, and illegal immigration – in a country struggling economically and bewildered, as many Western nations are, by radical social changes, making their country unrecognizable to many citizens.

And Ukraine – about which Francis himself has been an uncertain trumpet – has in fact received considerable attention during the campaign. Italians, like other Europeans, don’t like Putin’s aggression, but are also deeply worried about crushing energy costs – multiple times their recent levels, even now, before winter.

The real problem with Meloni’s election for progressive Catholics appears to be that, “A new government in Italy could very easily strengthen opposition to Francis and severely limit the social and political reception of his pontificate’s core message.”

What is that “core message”?

For starters, openness to massive immigration. Even before “Who am I to judge?” Francis chose to make his first trip as pope to the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, which is closer to North Africa than Cuba is to Florida.

Thousands of illegal immigrants enter Italy there, after perilous crossings of the Mediterranean – or die trying. Italy is not an ideal destination, especially given the large differences in culture and religion (mostly Islam) of the new arrivals. Large majorities of Italians – and Europeans generally – feel inundated by what are essentially open borders.

The pope occasionally mentions that countries, of course, need to consider how many immigrants they can accommodate. But his “core message” is that Europe should be taking in far more.

There’s a real debate to be had about this; and it may now actually occur, if a right-oriented government has indeed come to power in Italy.

Secular Europe still accepts the Christian notion of “welcoming the stranger,” a moral principle that carries no little weight. But there’s a difference in both principle and practice when strangers arrive in the millions and place heavy burdens on peoples and cultures – which have their own problems and claims to consideration.

The UK left the European Union in part over immigration. Hungary and Poland have adopted policies (as perhaps Italy will now as well) aimed at preserving national identity, which European elites dub xenophobia and Islamophobia. Even France seems headed in that direction. Some churchmen (Francis among them, it appears) regard calls to limit immigration as mere greed, selfishness, and callousness.

It’s not that simple, however, as we know in America, when our poorest citizens and illegal immigrants compete for jobs and resources.

Europe has just witnessed another stunning political development: liberal Sweden has elected a populist/conservative government, “a new far-right surge” according to The Washington Post, but in reality ordinary Swedes reacting to soaring crime, hundreds of Islamist bombings, and the highest incidence of rape in Europe

But European populism isn’t only about immigration. It also involves the “culture war,” something Francis has studiously tried to tamp down.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, recently warned that the European Union has “the tools” to deal with Italy if “things go in a difficult direction.” Even heads of Italy’s liberal parties felt obliged to remind the EU “not to enter into Italian affairs,” as one put it.

Von der Leyen mentioned how those “tools” (mostly withholding EU funds) were being used  against Hungary and Poland, not solely because of their immigration policies (Poland has generously absorbed tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees, almost all Christians, for example), but because of their support for traditional families, advocacy for more children and national identity, and – perhaps the sorest points for the EU – efforts to limit abortion and LGBT+ propaganda directed at young children, all tagged as tending towards “fascism.”

Meloni, however, is a poor candidate for the label. A Tolkien enthusiast who sees her work as protecting the Shire – i.e., Italy – she’s said, “I consider power very dangerous. . .an enemy and not a friend.”

She’s been cagey about abortion – willing to tolerate existing Italian law, but wanting to reduce abortion – this in a country where many medical professionals already refuse to be involved in abortion on conscience grounds. Her coalition will clearly favor more traditional social policies, something that triggers the international elites who have come to consider their own extreme positions on abortion, gays, and trans people as moral imperatives.

Pope Francis has spoken about abortion as like “hiring a hitman” and gender theory as a kind of Western cultural imperialism. At the same time, he has been quite indulgent towards pro-abortion politicians, and homosexual and trans groups. He has no stomach for the kind of culture skirmishes needed to make a difference.

As a non-Italian, it would be hard for him to criticize a political coalition that enjoys broad public support. The Italian bishops themselves will now be in a difficult spot between papal preferences and popular sentiment. It will be interesting to see if they can all get past the slurs about “fascism” and help Europe come to grips with a populism that is not without its perils, but has its reasons – a challenging new sign of our times.

You may also enjoy:

Brad Miner’s Meddling and Puritanical Jacobins

Alessandra Bocchi’s Italy Returns to Masses

AUTHOR

Robert Royal

Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent books are Columbus and the Crisis of the West and A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century.

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing article is republished with permission. All rights reserved. © 2022 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

The endgame of transgender ideology is to dismantle the family

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The stage is being set for the legal marginalization of mothers, fathers, and families by force of law.

Nancy Pelosi and her fellow gender-inclusive enthusiasts have taken a bold and much-disparaged move to erase language that expresses the reality of familial relationships. In the name of inclusivity, words like “father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, cousin, nephew, niece, husband, wife, son-in-law, and daughter-in-law” have been targeted for erasure from House proceedings.

If pursued, this scrubbing of gendered words from public communications in concert with other trans-inclusive initiatives will prove seismic in its effect on society.

Pelosi and her associates are echoing the socialist-feminist ideology articulated by Shulamith Firestone in the 1970s:

“It has become necessary to free humanity from the tyranny of its biology” and “eliminate the sex distinction itself [so that] genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.”

At its core, this means that male and female manifestations of the human body should no longer be legally recognized or culturally valued. We have been marching down this road for decades and are now approaching the endgame: a genderless society. The vilification of gendered language in public settings is a significant leap toward “freeing humanity from the tyranny of its biology” and undoing the significance of biological sex.

Mothers on the trash heap of history

Firestone made a stunning prediction. She jubilantly declared that when biology was subdued and “transsexuality” became the legal and cultural norm, “the blood tie of the mother to the child would eventually be severed” and the triumphal “disappearance of motherhood” would follow. And she was right. Legal movements surrounding transgenderism are setting the stage for the legal marginalization of mothers, fathers, and families by force of law.

Though Firestone’s astute prediction has been largely overlooked in the debate about transgenderism, the fact remains that when women legally disappear, so do mothers because “mother” is a sex-specific designation. The same goes for fathers. If there are not two specific, perceivable sexes that can be definitively recognized by law, then it becomes difficult to define or defend mothers and fathers—along with their parental rights—in legal terms. Therefore, the belonging of children to their parents is increasingly thrown into question and the family stands on trembling legal legs—which is precisely the point.

When parents’ ties to their children are obscured or weakened it creates an environment hospitable to government intervention and socialist-communist revolution. That is why Marx’s Communist Manifesto openly called for the “abolition of the family.” Dethroning the family creates a void that can and must be filled—though it is impossible to adequately fill it. If we are to avoid the destruction of the family and the domination of the state that necessarily follows, we must resist efforts to cancel biological sex.

Rejection of anatomy

The push for gender abolition seems to be accelerating. Last year a California state Senate committee attempted to ban the words “he” and “she” during committee hearings. The “rainbow voting agreement” in the Netherlands calls for “the registration of gender to be abolished wherever possible.” A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, arguably the world’s most prestigious medical journal, asserted that sex demarcations on birth certificates should be reconsidered because “assigning sex at birth perpetuates a view that sex as defined by a binary variable is natural, essential, and immutable.”

It is becoming difficult to keep up with the myriad initiatives being rolled out to forcibly suppress biological sex distinctions.

The legal and social embracing of transgenderism encapsulates rejection of the human body as inherently manifested in two distinct and complementary forms. This rebellion against anatomy is not only tragic for individuals, who wage war against their own bodies, but it also undercuts the inherent, two-pronged voltage of male and female that propels, balances, and drives the world.

If it becomes legally inappropriate to recognize the two bodily sexes or to articulate how the interplay of those sexes forges and perpetuates the basic relationships by which we fundamentally define ourselves (mother, father, son, daughter) then the core of civilized society is in peril.

What started out masquerading as a celebration of gender turns out to be an edict for the elimination of the sex distinction itself, which in turn erodes the family—the essential cradle of humanity. If we are to salvage the family and civilization with it, we must protect and defend the “gendered language” that is now on the chopping block.

COLUMN  BY

Kimberly Ells

Kimberly Ells is the author of The Invincible Family: Why the Global Campaign to Crush Motherhood and Fatherhood Can’t Win and is a policy advisor for Family Watch International. Contact her at kimberlyells@hotmail.com and InvincibleFamily.com.

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EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The endgame of transgender ideology is to dismantle the family

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Nancy Pelosi and her fellow gender-inclusive enthusiasts have taken a bold and much-disparaged move to erase language that expresses the reality of familial relationships. In the name of inclusivity, words like “father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, cousin, nephew, niece, husband, wife, son-in-law, and daughter-in-law” have been targeted for erasure from House proceedings.

If pursued, this scrubbing of gendered words from public communications in concert with other trans-inclusive initiatives will prove seismic in its effect on society.

Pelosi and her associates are echoing the socialist-feminist ideology articulated by Shulamith Firestone in the 1970s: “It has become necessary to free humanity from the tyranny of its biology” and “eliminate the sex distinction itself [so that] genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.”

At its core, this means that male and female manifestations of the human body should no longer be legally recognized or culturally valued. We have been marching down this road for decades and are now approaching the endgame: a genderless society. The vilification of gendered language in public settings is a significant leap toward “freeing humanity from the tyranny of its biology” and undoing the significance of biological sex.

Mothers on the trash heap of history

Firestone made a stunning prediction. She jubilantly declared that when biology was subdued and “transsexuality” became the legal and cultural norm, “the blood tie of the mother to the child would eventually be severed” and the triumphal “disappearance of motherhood” would follow. And she was right. Legal movements surrounding transgenderism are setting the stage for the legal marginalization of mothers, fathers, and families by force of law.

Though Firestone’s astute prediction has been largely overlooked in the debate about transgenderism, the fact remains that when women legally disappear, so do mothers because “mother” is a sex-specific designation. The same goes for fathers. If there are not two specific, perceivable sexes that can be definitively recognized by law, then it becomes difficult to define or defend mothers and fathers—along with their parental rights—in legal terms. Therefore, the belonging of children to their parents is increasingly thrown into question and the family stands on trembling legal legs—which is precisely the point.

When parents’ ties to their children are obscured or weakened it creates an environment hospitable to government intervention and socialist-communist revolution. That is why Marx’s Communist Manifesto openly called for the “abolition of the family.” Dethroning the family creates a void that can and must be filled—though it is impossible to adequately fill it. If we are to avoid the destruction of the family and the domination of the state that necessarily follows, we must resist efforts to cancel biological sex.

Rejection of anatomy

The push for gender abolition seems to be accelerating. Last year a California state Senate committee attempted to ban the words “he” and “she” during committee hearings. The “rainbow voting agreement” in the Netherlands calls for “the registration of gender to be abolished wherever possible.” A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, arguably the world’s most prestigious medical journal, asserted that sex demarcations on birth certificates should be reconsidered because “assigning sex at birth perpetuates a view that sex as defined by a binary variable is natural, essential, and immutable.”

It is becoming difficult to keep up with the myriad initiatives being rolled out to forcibly suppress biological sex distinctions.

The legal and social embracing of transgenderism encapsulates rejection of the human body as inherently manifested in two distinct and complementary forms. This rebellion against anatomy is not only tragic for individuals, who wage war against their own bodies, but it also undercuts the inherent, two-pronged voltage of male and female that propels, balances, and drives the world.

If it becomes legally inappropriate to recognize the two bodily sexes or to articulate how the interplay of those sexes forges and perpetuates the basic relationships by which we fundamentally define ourselves (mother, father, son, daughter) then the core of civilized society is in peril.

What started out masquerading as a celebration of gender turns out to be an edict for the elimination of the sex distinction itself, which in turn erodes the family—the essential cradle of humanity. If we are to salvage the family and civilization with it, we must protect and defend the “gendered language” that is now on the chopping block.

COLUMN BY

Kimberly Ells

Kimberly Ells is the author of, The Invincible Family: Why the Global Campaign to Crush Motherhood and Fatherhood Can’t Win, and is a policy advisor for Family Watch International where she works to… 

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EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

We Have Forgotten God

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It’s a cliché to say that this is the most important election in our lifetime. But I really feel strongly that this is the most important election in our lifetime.

There is so much at stake. Above all is the question of whether we will continue as one nation under God. Will we embrace America as founded or will we completely jettison all pretense of our national motto—In God we Trust?

I think our problems can be traced back to this simple truth: We have forgotten God. That’s why all these bad things are happening to us.

Founding father Patrick Henry warned, “It is when a people forget God, that tyrants forge their chains.”

The late Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was the great chronicler of what President Ronald Reagan rightfully called, “The Evil Empire,” i.e., the failed Soviet Union. The Nobel-prize winning author spent about a decade of his life in the Soviet Gulags (for a veiled criticism of Stalin in a private letter).

Solzhenitsyn said, “While I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”

As simple as those peasants’ statements were, the great novelist noted that no one diagnosed the problem better than they did. He continued: “Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”

Why is America seemingly sinking into the abyss? We have forgotten God. And the results of this rejection we can see on the streets of America:

  • We have strangers shooting strangers because they disagree politically.
  • We have daily riots and looting, with criminals immediately let back on the streets, thanks in many cases to George Soros money.
  • We have mobs chanting, “F*** your Jesus.”
  • We have liberal governors shutting down churches as “non-essential” during the COVID-19 crisis, while encouraging rioting, with or without social distancing or masks.

In America today people have forgotten God, and we’re living out the descent of man, as seen in Romans chapter 1. When people reject God and His righteousness and refuse to thank Him, He turns them over to their own devices.

Dennis Prager of PragerU once told me in a TV interview: “The Supreme Court changed America with the 1962 decision that prayer in school was unconstitutional. That was the decision that began the end of America as we knew it.”

The prayer ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court was this: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessing upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country.”

Prager continued: “It’s as universal a prayer and non-denominational as you could have. And as I often point out, within one generation, kids went from blessing their teachers to cursing their teachers.” [Emphasis added]

Many of our presidents throughout history have called on God and have called on Americans to set aside a time (usually a day) of prayer. For example, FDR, in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack, called for January 2, 1942 to be, “a Day of Prayer, of asking forgiveness for our shortcomings of the past, of consecration to the tasks of the present, of asking God’s help in days to come.”

Today, how much more are we in need of “asking forgiveness for our shortcomings”?

President Harry Truman even systematized the National Day of Prayer as an annual event. Truman declared in his proclamation (June 17, 1952): “From the earliest days of our history our people have been accustomed to turn to Almighty God for help and guidance.”

When there is no God to whom we must give an account, then the state can become god. That is certainly true in the minds of many a totalitarian dictator.

If we continue down this godless path, we will not remain free. How we vote will not change our national make-up. But it will make a difference in pushing away tyranny or rushing toward it.

Reagan once noted, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

©Jerry Newcombe, D.Min. All rights reserved.

Family Breakdown and the Rise of Identity Politics

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With months of race riots continuing in the United States, identity politics is a phrase all too familiar to us in 2020.

Often credited to French philosopher Michel Foucault, identity politics is a window on the world that sees all social relationships as a power struggle. Black versus white, male versus female, gay versus straight, and on the list goes. Each group, according to this worldview, is battling it out to advance their particular political agenda.

With humour and precision, Michael Bird, a lecturer at Ridley College, explains that in the new social pyramid:

Your authority derives not so much from achievement or ability, but from your minority status and experiences of victimisation. So, that means in an argument, a white woman trumps a white man; a black woman trumps a white woman, a disabled woman trumps a black woman, and a disabled black transgendered Muslim refugee trumps pretty much everybody.

Late last year, Australians watching Q&A encountered a rather confronting example of this new creed. One of the visiting guests was Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy, whose writings have appeared in The Washington Post, the New York Times and beyond.

To viewers’ surprise, Eltahawy labelled Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison a “white supremacist” and a “patriarchal authoritarian”. She went on to explain that, “for me, as a feminist, the most important thing is to destroy patriarchy.” At one point, Eltahawy bypassed the panel to address the audience directly:

How long must we wait for men and boys to stop murdering us, to stop beating us, and to stop raping us? How many rapists must we kill — not by the state, because I disagree with the death penalty… until men stop raping us?

Behind her biting words, of course, Eltahawy had some genuine grievances. Domestic violence, for instance, affects women especially, and it’s an issue dealt with by police every two minutes in Australia. Sexual abuse remains a serious problem in our societies, and one that predominantly affects women, too.

There are many social ills in the modern world, and they should concern us all. But Eltahawy’s biting tone was unnerving, and it is becoming more commonplace.

Westerners are finding it increasingly difficult to sift social concerns from heated ideas like identity politics. The pressure is on now, not just to provide care to the disadvantaged, but to prove your sincerity by embracing politicised viewpoints. Resentment, victimhood and grievance are the new currency.

In the interests of equality, we are learning to assume the best about some people and the worst about others, even if we haven’t met them. This hardly feels like progress. How did it all come to this?

Essayist and author Mary Eberstadt recently addressed this question in her book Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics. It’s a title worth the price of entry.

Until the 1960s, Western sexual ethics were more or less Christian sexual ethics: a man married a woman; sex was reserved for that covenant; children were a natural result; and the family unit was the safe place for children to be raised.

The Sexual Revolution changed all that. As faith waned and morals loosened after the wars, personal happiness was one pursuit we could all agree on. Sexual fulfilment played a crucial role in this. Consequently, rates of infidelity, divorce, teenage sex and unmarried pregnancy began to soar from the 60s, and they have stayed high ever since.

Other forces were at play. Abortion and the pill turned sex into a childless exchange. This made marriage optional. IVF therapies took this a step further by enabling children to be born in the absence of either a father or a mother. So what the family unit looks like now is limited only to the imagination.

Many consider all of these benign trends of the modern world, but Eberstadt disagrees. Having researched and published widely in this field, Eberstadt credits the Sexual Revolution and its impact on the family unit with a “sharp rise in psychiatric trouble among the young… the explosion of loneliness on a scale never before recorded [and] the rise in so-called ‘deaths of despair’ that are plainly related to loss of love.”

She explains how the weakening of family ties and identity has led to a ‘longing for belonging’ among many in the West. She quotes Arthur Schlesinger Jr, who reasoned that:

“the more people feel themselves adrift in a vast, impersonal, anonymous sea, the more desperately they swim toward any familiar, intelligible, protective life-raft; the more they crave a politics of identity.”

In other words, says Eberstadt, the breakdown of loving, stable homes in the West has prompted us to look for family and loyalty elsewhere.

Enter identity politics.

Mary Eberstadt’s thesis is a compelling one — that the erosion of the family unit has led us to find our identity in fragmented groups. Whether or not hers is the best explanation for the social splintering we now see in the West, it is a trend that shows no signs of slowing down.

Having taken individualism to an extreme and tasted the loneliness it can cause, we now face a new kind of tribal warfare — a postmodern caste system. We are losing the ability to see each other as individuals, and instead as mere symbols of rival groups.

This is not progress. We will need something greater than the sum of our parts to pull us back together. Perhaps we can begin with the wise words of C.S. Lewis, who said:

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.

COLUMN BY

Kurt Mahlburg

Kurt Mahlburg is a teacher, freelance writer, and the Features Editor of the Canberra Declaration. He contributes regularly at the Spectator Australia, Caldron Pool and The Good Sauce. He hosts his own… .

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EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Personhood Florida’s Pro-life PAC Endorses Over 65 Candidates for the 2020 Primary and General Election

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Personhood Florida’s Pro-Life PAC has endorsed the following 65 Pro-life Candidates for the 2020 Primary and General Election:

2020 Federal ProLife Candidates

Race Party Name
US Representative – District 19 REP Dane Eagle

2020 State ProLife Candidates

Race Party Name
State Representative – Dist 27 REP Zenaida Denizac
State Representative – Dist 42 REP Fred Hawkins
State Representative – Dist 84 REP Eileen Vargas

2020 Brevard County ProLife Candidates

Race Party Name
City of Palm Bay Mayor NP Rob Medina
Republican State Committeewoman REP Kim Adkinson

2020 Citrus County ProLife Candidates

Race Party Name
Property Appraiser REP David Gregory
Superintendent of Schools REP Paul John Reinhardt
Supervisor of Elections REP Maureen “Mo” Baird

2020 Clay County ProLife Candidates

Race Party Name
Clerk of the Court REP David Coughlin
School Board District 2 NP Beth Clark
Superintendent of Schools REP Charlie Van Zant

2020 Flagler County ProLife Candidates

Race Party Name
Sheriff REP Rick Staly

2020 Indian River County ProLife Candidates

Race Party Name
Board of County Commissioners – Dist 3 REP Tim Zorc
School Board – Dist 3 NP Laura Zorc
School Board – Dist 5 NP Alla Kramer
Sheriff REP Charles Kirby

2020 Jackson County ProLife Candidates

Race Party Name
Superintendent of Schools REP Dallas Ellis

2020 Lake County ProLife Candidates

Race Party Name
County Commission District 1 REP Tim Sullivan
County Commission District 3 REP Kirby Smith
County Commission District 5 REP Josh Blake
North Lake Co. Hospital Board NE Seat 3 REP Ralph Smith
North Lake Co. Hospital Board NW Seat 5 REP Anita Swan
School Board Member District 2 NP Patricia Nave
School Board Member District 4 NP Betsy Farner
School Board Member District 4 NP Sandy Gamble

2020 Lee County ProLife Candidates

Race Party Name
COUNTY COMMISSIONER 1 REP MICHAEL J DREIKORN
PROPERTY APPRAISER REP MATT CALDWELL
SCHOOL BOARD 2 NON MELISA GIOVANNELLI
SCHOOL BOARD 3 NON BRIAN DIGRAZIO
SHERIFF NPA CARMEN MCKINNEY
SHERIFF REP JAMES A LEAVENS

2020 Manatee County ProLife Candidates

Race Party Name
Linda Ivell REP Republican State Committeewoman

2020 Marion County ProLife Candidates

Race Party Name
COUNTY COMMISSIONER – DIST 1 REP Mike Behar
COUNTY COMMISSIONER – 3 REP Bobby D. Dobkowski
COUNTY COMMISSIONER – 3 REP Jeff Gold
PROPERTY APPRAISER REP David Moore
PROPERTY APPRAISER REP Neil Nick Nikkinen
REPUBLICAN PARTY STATE COMMITTEEMAN REP John H. Townsend IV
REPUBLICAN PARTY STATE COMMITTEEMAN REP Randy Osborne
REPUBLICAN PARTY STATE COMMITTEEMAN REP William Richhart
SCHOOL BOARD – 1 NP Allison B. Campbell

2020 Martin County ProLife Candidates

Race Party Name
Property Appraiser REP Kelli Glass Leighton

2020 Okaloosa County ProLife Candidates

Race Party Name
County Commissioner, Dist. 1 REP Wayne Richard Harris
County Commissioner, Dist. 5 REP Richard Scott Johnson
County Commissioner, Dist. 5 REP Mel Ponder
Superintendent of Schools REP Ray Sansom

2020 Palm Beach County ProLife Candidates

Race Party Name
Republican State Committeewoman REP Cindy Falco-DiCorrado

2020 Pasco County ProLife Candidates

Race Party Name
County Commissioner – Dist 4 REP Gabriel (Gabe) Papadopoulos

2020 Santa Rosa County ProLife Candidates

Race Party Name
County Commissioner – Dist 1 REP Geoff Ross

2020 Sarasota County ProLife Candidates

Race Party Name
Sarasoto County Hospital Bd., At Large Seat 1 REP AUDIE ELIZABETH BOCK

2020 St. Lucie County ProLife Candidates

Race Party Name
City of Fort Pierce Commission, District 1 NP Kenneth Robinson
City of Fort Pierce, Mayor NP Donna Diehl Benton
City of Port St. Lucie, City Council District 2 NP David H. Pickett, Jr.
City of Port St. Lucie, City Council District 2 NP John Francis Haugh
County Commissioner, District 1 REP Betty Jo Starke
County Commissioner, District 5 DEM Fritz Masson Alexandre
School Board, District 4 NP Jason William Palm
School Board, District 4 NP Jennifer Anne Richardson
Sheriff REP Richard Williams, Jr.

2020 Volusia County ProLife Candidates

Race Party Name
County Council Member, District 3 NP Johan D’Hondt
County Council Member, District 4 NP Heather Post
Daytona Beach Commissioner Zone 4 NP Stacy Cantu
Edgewater Council District 4 NP Eric Rainbird
South Daytona Council Seat 4 NP Theodor Eric Sander
State Committeeman REP Santiago Avila, Jr.
State Committeewoman REP Debbie Phillips
State Committeewoman REP Maria Trent

2020 Walton County ProLife Candidates

Race Party Name
School Board – Dist 4 NP Jeri Michie
School Board – Dist 4 NP Marsha Winegarner

©All rights reserved.

What Marriage Was Like before Bureaucracy Marriage by Sarah Skwire

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Marriage is not what it once was.

FEE contributor Steve Horwitz’s new book, Hayek’s Modern Family, reminds us all that “the use of ‘traditional’ as an adjective for either marriage or the family more generally is … ahistorical.” Marriage and the family, he argues, have always been changing and evolving institutions, and we are mistaken when we take the practices of one period and valorize them, and them alone, as “traditional.”

What is true for the institutions of marriage and the family is also true for the institutions of betrothal and weddings. By now, we all surely know that traditions like the white wedding dress and the diamond engagement ring are late innovations. The white dress came about after Queen Victoria set the fashion when she married Prince Albert. And while rings had been a popular wedding token for a long time, the diamond engagement ring became all the rage only after a successful campaign by DeBeers in the 1930s. But it is not merely the decorative furbelows that are modern innovations. Nearly everything we think of as defining a betrothal and a wedding used to be up for debate.

I spent some time recently looking at and discussing Jan van Eyck’s famous painting The Arnolfini Portrait. The painting is probably most often called The Arnolfini Marriage Portrait, though scholars have debated for decades over whether it depicts a wedding, a betrothal, or some other legal ceremony. Others have felt it might simply be a portrait of a married couple, or even a memorial for a wife who died young. We’re not entirely sure.

But in the discussion I was involved in, we thought of the painting as a wedding portrait. Because of that, several of the folks involved were a little startled to see the woman looking decidedly pregnant. (In much the same way that we don’t really know the occasion for the portrait, we don’t really know that the woman is pregnant. The style of her dress may just make her appear to be. But to a modern eye, she looks at least seven months along.) Was van Eyck making a moral judgment on the sexual morality of this couple — depicting them as newly married, but with a pregnancy that far advanced? Or is her pregnancy an argument against the notion that this is a wedding portrait, since 15th century morality would not have allowed for premarital sex and pregnancy? What kind of wedding portrait was this, exactly?

I’ll leave the arguments about the accuracy of our thinking about The Arnolfini Portrait to the art historians. What I want to talk about is the accuracy of our thinking about what weddings used to look like.

As the historian Lawrence Stone points out in his book The Family, Sex, and Marriage,

Before 1754 there were still numerous ways of entering into [marriage]. For persons of property it involved a series of distinct steps. The first was a written legal contract between the parents concerning the financial arrangements. The second was the spousals (also called a contract), the formal exchange, usually before witnesses, of oral promises. The third step was the public proclamation of banns in church, three times, the purpose of which was to allow claims of pre-contract to be heard.… The fourth step was the wedding in church, in which mutual consent was publicly verified, and the union received the formal blessing of the Church. The fifth and final step was the sexual consummation.

While parts of the process Stone describes are a little antiquated, they don’t seem completely unfamiliar. And the whole thing sounds remarkably orderly — though it is worth noting that wealthier couples found ways to evade the more tedious parts of the process, such as the triple proclamation of banns, by buying a special license. But the apparent orderliness and familiarity of the process falls apart rapidly when we look just a little more closely.

Stone continues, “But it cannot be emphasized too strongly that according to ecclesiastical law the spousals was as legally binding a contract as the church wedding.… Any sort of exchange of promises before witnesses which was followed by cohabitation was regarded in law as a valid marriage.”

Marriage required no certification by the church or the state. Two individuals merely promised to marry one another in front of witnesses, and then lived together. That was sufficient. And sex and pregnancy in the months between the spousals and a church wedding, if one ever got around to having a church wedding, were routine and accepted.

This sounds like an ideal situation from a libertarian perspective. It’s certainly how I’d prefer that marriages take place. But things soon got even more complicated.

After the Reformation, the Catholic Church required the presence of a priest for a wedding to be valid. The Anglicans did not, though a church wedding came to be expected. However, lawyers still recognized the spousals as valid. And they distinguished between two kinds of spousals — one was not followed by consummation and could be broken. The other was followed by consummation and was binding for life.

Stone reminds us of a few other complexities.

The canons of 1604 stipulated that a church wedding must take place between the hours of 8 am and noon in the church at the place of residence of one of the pair, after the banns had been read for three weeks running. Marriages performed at night, in secular places like inns or private houses, or in towns or villages remote from the place of residence … were now declared illegal [but] they were nonetheless valid and binding for life. This was a paradox the laity found hard to understand.

It could be hard to tell, in other words, if you were married or not. It could be hard to tell, in other words, whether one was engaging in legal married sex or illicit and illegal fornication.

This problem is a key part of Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure, which begins with the arrest of Claudio for fornication with Juliette. Claudio is shocked to be accused of the crime, because, as he says:

… she is fast my wife
Save that we do the denunciation lack
Of outward order.

But with the exacting Angelo now in charge of the city, the more rigorous definition of a legal marriage is being enforced, and Claudio is in trouble.

The attempt to codify and enforce a well-understood and long-standing traditional practice made that practice so complicated that it was incomprehensible and often made criminals out of well-intentioned and honest individuals. (Those who are thinking about the mess that is the discussion of bathroom laws in North Carolina may find that problem familiar.)

There’s little doubt now about who is married and who is not married. The United States has spent years in a painful debate over that question, but we finally do have legal clarity. But as two dear friends of mine head down the aisle this month and I listen to the complications and fees they are facing over the licensing of their marriage and their officiant, I do wonder if we’ve solved anything since the days of spousals contracted in front of witnesses or if we’ve just piled on unnecessary layers of legal complications, forms, and fees.

Sarah Skwire

Sarah Skwire is the poetry editor of the Freeman and a senior fellow at Liberty Fund, Inc. She is a poet and author of the writing textbook Writing with a Thesis. She is a member of the FEE Faculty Network. Email

RELATED ARTICLE: How to Avoid an Illicit Marriage: Marriage Banns.

Social Science and the Nuclear Family by Steven Horwitz

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The question of the importance of family structure, specifically marriage, is back in the limelight. Conservatives are promoting three papers that provide some strong evidence that children raised by married parents do better along a number of dimensions than those raised in other household forms.

For many commentators, this makes for a strong case against those who appear to claim that family structure has either a minimal effect or doesn’t matter at all. As someone who might well fall into that group, or at least appear to, I think there are several responses to these new studies, all of which can acknowledge the empirical evidence that being raised by two loving parents is better for kids than alternative family structures.

One side note: conservatives might wish to not use the term “family structure denialists” as Wilcox does in the link above.

Comparing a legitimate disagreement over empirical evidence and public policy to those who would deny the overwhelming evidence of the Holocaust is an unacceptable rhetorical move whether it comes from leftists speaking of “climate change deniers” or conservatives speaking of “family structure deniers.” The disagreements in both case are legitimate objects of intellectual discussion and the language of “denier” indicates a refusal to engage in good faith debate.

On the substance of this issue, the conservatives cheering these recent studies don’t always note that there are differences among single-parent households formed through: 1) the choice to have and raise a child by oneself; 2) death of a spouse; and 3) divorce. Each of these presents a different set of circumstances and tradeoffs that we might wish to consider when we think about the role of family structure.

The conservative defenders of the superiority of the two-parent family (and it’s presumably not just “two parents” but two parents of the opposite sex, which raises a whole other set of questions), might wish to disentangle the multiple reasons such a family structure might not be present. For example, the children of widows do better than those of women who choose not to marry the fathers of their children, and the children of widows have outcomes that look more like those of kids from two-parent families.

The empirical evidence under discussion has to be understood with an “all else equal” condition. A healthy marriage will indeed produce better outcomes than, say, single motherhood. But there is equally strong social scientific evidence about the harm done to children who are raised in high-conflict households. Those children may well be better off if their parents get divorced and they are raised in two single-parent households with less conflict.

When parents in high-conflict marriages split up, the reduction in their stress levels, especially for women, leads to improved relationships with their children and better outcomes for the kids. In general, comparisons of different types of family structures must avoid the “Nirvana Fallacy” by not comparing an idealized vision of married parenthood with a more realistic perspective on single parenthood. The choices facing couples in the real world are always about comparing imperfect alternatives.

In addition, to say that married parents create “better” outcomes for kids does not mean that other family forms don’t produce “acceptable” outcomes for kids. It’s not as if every child raised by a single mother, whether through divorce, widowhood, or simply not marrying the father, is condemned to poverty or a life of crime.

Averages are averages. Though these three recent studies do continue to confirm the existing literature’s consensus that marriage is “better” for kids, there is still much debate over how much better those outcomes are, and especially whether other family structures are or are not sufficient to raise functional adults.

And this leads to the next point, which is that parents matter too.

The focus of the “family structure matters” crowd is almost exclusively on the outcomes for kids. That parents matter too is most obvious with divorce, where leaving a bad marriage may be extremely valuable for mom and/or dad, even if it leads to worse outcomes for the kids. The evidence from Stevenson and Wolfers that no-fault divorce has led to a decline in intimate partner violence, as well as suicides of married women, makes the importance of this point clear.

We can acknowledge that higher divorce rates have not been good for kids, but we can’t do single-entry moral bookkeeping. We have to include the effects of divorce on the married couple, because adults matter too. When we add this to the idea that conflict in marriage is bad for kids, the increased ease with which adults can get out of marriages, and the resulting single parenthood, is not so clearly a net problem when we consider the well-being of both children and adults.

These calculations are complicated and idiosyncratic, which seems to suggest that they should be left to those with the best knowledge of the situation and not artificially encouraged or discouraged by public policy.

This last point raises the final question, which is what do these studies mean for public policy?

If two-parent families are better than the alternatives, what does this imply? Are conservatives suggesting that we subsidize couples who have kids? Should that apply to only biological parents and not adoptive ones? Isn’t this a case for same-sex marriage? Should we make divorce more difficult, and if so, what about the probable result that doing so would reduce the number of marriages by increasing the cost of exit?

I would certainly agree that we should stop subsidizing single-parenthood through various government programs, but I’d make the same argument about two-parent families as well. In any case, what’s not clear is what the conservatives trumpeting these studies think they mean for public policy.

Perhaps, though, they think the solutions are cultural. If conservatives wish to argue that these studies mean that we should use moral suasion and intermediary institutions such as houses of worship to encourage people to marry and stay married if they wish to have kids, or that we should encourage young people to use contraception and think more carefully about when and with whom they have sex, that’s fine. And in fact, teen pregnancies are down.

But if intermediary institutions can do all of that, then they can also play a key role in helping single parents who make the difficult decision to divorce or continue a pregnancy in the complicated circumstances of their lives. Such institutions will also likely do that more effectively than can the state.

So if we are genuinely concerned about single parenthood, we should be asking what are the best ways to deal with it. Libertarians like me might well agree with such conservatives if they think the solutions are cultural or should rest in the hands of such intermediate institutions. But if they think there are public policy solutions, particularly ones that limit or penalize the choices facing couples, I wish they would spell them out explicitly in the context of their discussions of these studies.

One last thought: It ill-serves libertarians to deny the results of good science and social science, whether it’s climate change from the left or family structure from the right. We should, of course, critically interrogate that work to make sure that it is, in fact, good. But if it is good, we should welcome it as we should first be concerned with the truth and not our ideological priors.

The next questions we should ask, however, are about the implications. In the case of these recent studies on family structure, it is incumbent upon us to assess both the quality of the work and its implications, and we should pay particular attention to what is not being seen and what questions are not being asked.

Just because one family structure is better for children all else equal means neither that other family structures aren’t good enough for kids, nor that all else is always equal, nor that we shouldn’t consider the well-being of adults when we discuss the consequences of alternative family structures.

This post first appeared at the excellent philosophy blog Bleeding Heart Libertarians.

Steven Horwitz
Steven Horwitz

Steven Horwitz is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics at St. Lawrence University and the author of Microfoundations and Macroeconomics: An Austrian Perspective, now in paperback.

What if there were “Straight Guys Pride Parades and Festivals” nationwide on Fathers Day 2016?

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Father’s Day falls on Sunday, June 19th, 2016. What would happen if fathers and straight guys across America held “Straight Guys Festivals” or “Straight Pride Parades” in every city, town and community in America?

What if personalities like Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Mark Wahlberg, Robert DeNiro, Tom Selleck and Arnold “the Terminator” Schwarzenegger appeared leading the parades and giving speeches about the importance of being a straight man and father.

What if they called “being straight” a civil right? What if they demanded special treatment under the law for being straight? What if they called those who oppose men being men “straightophobic”? What if they demanded that marriage be defined as between one man and one woman? What if there was a million straight man march on Washington, D.C.

Check out this YouTube video from Broke Straight Boys. This is what is happening across America. Which is better, this behavior (boys selling sex to the same sex for money), or being straight, married and with a traditional family? You decided after watching this revealing video of the Denver Gay Pride Parade (WARNING: This video contains graphic material and language and is not suitable for children):

Why those who are not straight would come out fighting mad as they did in Columbus, Ohio.

straight white guy poster

For a larger view click on the poster.

According to Sean Brown from Mad World News:

” It’s often said that the same people who promote ‘gay pride’ parades and other such events that promote a certain race or lifestyle would get upset should heterosexual or white people hold similar gatherings, even though they claim to be for equality. A series of joke flyers that were placed around an Ohio town has proven what many of us have known to be true. A spoof flyer was posted around the Columbus area advertising the Straight White Guy Festival to be held at Goodale Park, which is home to the annual Gay Pride Parade. They claim the festival will be held in September, according to [WBNS Channel] 10 TV.”

The flyer reads: “Come help us celebrate our enjoyment of being straight white and male.”

Brown notes, “This was obviously done as a joke to mock the left’s hypocrisy in their promotion of minority groups at the expense of others. The head of an organization that pushes same-sex marriage saw the flyers and expressed his discontent in the creator’s humor, even though the fake flyer said ‘everyone welcome.'” 

“This kind of thing implies there’s some kind of struggle going on for being a straight white person in Ohio. Straight white people are doing just fine,” said Michael Premo.

But are straight white guys “doing just fine”? Isn’t there a struggle going on in the U.S. to denigrate, if not eliminate, the straight guy?

When President Obama uses an Executive Order giving hiring preferences to homosexuals on federal contracts some might call this “discrimination against straight guys.” Or when Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg who offhandedly came up with seventy-one categories for non-straight men and women.

As a straight guy I understand the pressures from the President, his political allies and certain media outlets to get in touch with my “feminine side.” LOL!

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘True Blood’ actor Nelsan Ellis: Former star quit because he did not want to portray a gay vampire – DC News FOX 5 DC WTTG

Pope Francis: “The Enigma” – The Real Mystery of Faith

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Hope all is well on this “Feast Day of the Blessed Trinity” as we all know that explaining the mystery of the “3 Persons in One” to any other Catholic is tough – let alone, trying to explain it to a non-believer…All the Homilies in our beloved churches tried to do that today on this special Feast Day as Father Mark Mlay at St. Peter Church did a nice job with his assignment. Even some of our most astute priests in our diocese have a tough time explaining this phenomena. Father Brian King does a very good job with it.

Let’s see, the Immaculate Conception is another tough one. The Resurrection…The Transfiguration…I can go on and on. Oh, and we also have the “4 Mysteries of the Holy Rosary” which adds that much more mystery to our beloved Catholic Faith…

But, the biggest mystery the majority of you who are reading this e-mail have come across the past “2 years, 2 months and 12 days” is the “Mystery of Pope Francis” – which I refer to as “The Enigma – The Real Mystery of Faith”…There is no better word or description that I can use to describe what our 266th pontiff has accomplished and laid out in his short pontificate thus far. Like the majority of you (some of whom have written Pope Francis off the day after he uttered those famous 5 words “Who am I to Judge”?) – I am confused, perplexed, frustrated, upset and bewildered by quite a few of the comments that our beloved pope has made and what direction he appears to be taking the 1.2 billion Catholics in this world in…The jury is still out and I do not like jury duty…

Friends: When Pope Francis was elected back in 2013, I was ecstatic! I shared my excitement with our own Bishop Barbarito, who also loves St. Francis of Assisi. The first South American pope ever! A pope that spoke my Spanish language. Just the mere fact that he took the name of my all-time favorite saint of the church – the first to ever bear the Stigmata…Simplicity and humility. I absolutely loved the pope’s initial approach, coming out of the gate. But, these past 16 months has been a lot more complicated and misleading and when you throw in the fiasco of Obama and Castro with Cuba in one of his more questionable moves, it does not sit well with many people – including the beloved Cuban exiles who live in this America. And, many of the upper hierarchy church leaders the pope has assigned over the past year, scare me to death…(Take a look at the first article below, which lists the more controversial figures the pope has asked to lead our church in 2015)…Beyond scary…All while we said our good-byes to the late Cardinal Francis George, as our beloved Cardinal Raymond Burke watches it all from a remote island called Malta…

Once again, I respect our pope, pray for our pope and listen to our pope (in English and Spanish) – but, I just don’t know where he is going with this misleading “progressive” agenda of his – and neither do many of the 70 million Catholics in this country…Let’s be honest, folks. I am not the only one…The majority of you echo my sentiments, but may prefer to keep them to yourselves or at least not put it out publicly because you may be afraid of being criticized or attacked…That is what I am called to do by the Holy Spirit. I am a Catholic activist. I act for a living. I also write for a living, then, put all my writing into action so I am not afraid to write what I feel when I know that I am telling the Truth about our Church…It is easier to walk the talk when you only write about the Truth…

Saint John Paul II, in his beyond-amazing 27 years as our Holy Father, taught me one thing for sure – “BE NOT AFRAID” – and I take my all-time favorite pope’s advice to heart in everything that I do. One cannot be an activist and an evangelist and make a difference in this world if he does not have the courage to put his life on the line for his faith every day of the year by walking that talk… And, if one can’t take the heat – stay away from the fires of hell…That’s my goal…

In that same P.B. Post interview over two years ago, I told the writer that “I think the pope is holding a “Global Open House” – inviting every single walk of life to the banquet table in the Vatican – atheists, liberals, abortionists, murderers, democrats, ruthless sinners and even our favorite – the homosexuals – as it appears that the pope has embraced them more than any other group, as of late. Then, when he has everybody’s undivided attention – he will sit them down and teach the entire world what the Catholic Church is all about”…That was my prediction about 26 months ago, and I am still holding my breath. I have terrific lung capacity – I happen to be a professional Harmonica player…

But, until Pope Francis boldly comes out and specifically tells the ever-anxious and confused 1.2 billion Catholics in the world that the immoral act of SODOMY is not part of Catholic Church teachings – that two men being married and having sex with each other – IS NOT PART OF WHAT THE CATECHISM TEACHES – then, those who don’t know better, will all simply continue to follow in the pope’s footsteps, take the 5th and continue to say “Who am I to Judge?” It’s the easy way out. It’s time the pope comes clean and tells the world that the Catholic Church and the Holy Bible deem homosexuality to be an abomination and it has never been part of the Catholic Church teachings – and never will be. Period! There is no re-defining here, folks. If the pope does not clear the air with this simple issue and tell the world in black and white what the Catholic Church teaches about the immoral and appalling act of Sodomy, then, we are all going to be in a world of hurt – and those 9 liberal attorneys in black robes who seem to rule the country, are salivating and licking their chops right about now, thinking that the Catholic Church is not even putting up a fight…Roll over, Catholic Church. USCCB and Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, where are you??? Cardinal DiNardo, hello, is anybody home??? Don’t even bother with that other cardinal from New York…

Now is the time for the pope to make a bold statement loud and clear – before it is too late, when come, late June – the Supreme Court Injustices rule in favor of the Gays. Now is the time he has to not re-define marriage – but, re-define what he truly meant when he uttered those “famous five words” on that infamous plane ride back from World Youth Day in Rio. What good is it to have a Family Synod in September when the Rule of the Land has already been declared in late June and Gay Marriage is legal in all 50 states? (I pray that I am wrong). Why on earth is the USCCB holding our “4th Fortnight for Freedom” from June 21st-July 4th when the Justices will already have redefined the Sacrament of Matrimony? What the hell are we thinking, people? Why did we not hold this Fortnight months ago? Why would Pope Francis come to Philadelphia to discuss the importance of Traditional Family & Traditional Marriage with 200 bishops and cardinals while those liberal judges are voting on redefining marriage right now as we speak and coming out with an answer in June? Are you with me? Where’s the horse? Where’s the buggy? Am I the only one who is scratching his head? Folks, the horse has already been out of the barn – been to the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and heading to the Belmont Stakes next Saturday – and the Catholic Church is just sitting back and watching it all unfold. Are they taking bets? I thought we got rid of the ruthless Egyptian Pharoah centuries ago. Now the American Pharoah is here to haunt us and probably win the Triple Crown…I am NOT horsing around here and I pray that this does not go over some of your heads…

Wake up, Catholics!! Be Pro-Active – Pope Francis, cardinals and bishops! History has taught us that being re-active will get us nowhere…Ask the 57 million aborted babies in our country who wished to GOD that the Catholic Church would have been Pro-active & Pro-Life back in 1973…

The 5th Commandment took the 5th Amendment…

Once again, the last time I checked, Sodomy was NOT part of GOD’s Plan – it is unnatural and unGODly – and it is only the beautiful union of a Man and a Woman in the Blessed Sacrament of Holy Matrimony who can “Pro-create”. Two men or two women can only “Rec-create”! And, if Pope Francis does not come out now in June, while the Supreme Court is going through their liberal sessions and way before the Family Synod in “The City of Brotherly Love” in September and proclaim to the entire world – to the United States – to the Catholic Faithful – that Sodomy is a Mortal Sin, that Gay Marriage will NOT be accepted in the Holy Catholic Church – then, that entire 4-day conference becomes a total farce and Philadelphia can just simply change its jovial slogan to “The City of Homosexual Love”…

It’s that simple, folks. I, for one, am not enthusiastic at all about this already-rocky, Family Synod (which I have referred to as “Rocky VI”…Yes, it’s in Philadelphia) – because it will be obsolete when it takes place – 3 months behind the 8 ball. Maybe it’s because I know a little too much about what is taking place behind the scenes. Maybe it’s because I have read too many terrific articles and interviews from some of my Catholic heroes like Cardinal Burke, Cardinal Cordileone, the late Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop Paproki, Bishop Jenky – and my own spiritual director, Father James Molgano – to name a few who Tell the Truth and refuse to “water down our beloved Catholic Faith”. While so many other liberal cardinals and leaders of the Church have blasphemed and embarrassed the Catholic Church and are fighting the good, wholesome cardinals – I refuse to pay attention to MAN anymore when it comes to my Faith, my evangelization and my salvation. My faith and hope lie entirely in Jesus…

JESUS, I TRUST IN YOU!!!

The day that I put my faith & hope in the men who Pope Francis has selected to help run the Catholic Church is the day that I will make the same mistake that so many others have made – drink that “Church of Nice Kool-aid” – and totally forget about what Jesus commanded Peter to do upon that solid rock over 2,000 years ago. I come from the old school and that is the foundation on which I put my total faith into, but unfortunately, today, that rock is on quick sand, sinking fast, and until Pope Francis steps up and begins to make the Catholic Church teachings more clearer and has it in him to Tell the Absolute Black & White Truth about our beloved Faith – and not lead the Catholic Faithful into a confused state of nebulous opinions, thoughts and hypothesis – then, and only then – are we ever going to be on the same page and same book – the Holy Bible…

As a former NCAA Basketball Official (with the SEC, the Atlantic Ten, the OVC, etc.), my job as a referee was to “judge” every play that came my way. I could not afford to “take the 5th” and tell the ever-irate coaches “Who am I to Judge?”…Hell, that was my job! I had a split-second decision to make that call and millions of people watched it on ESPN. And, it is only appropriate that the game of college basketball has “3” referees in each game – similar to the Holy Trinity (which we are celebrating today). Like the Holy Trinity, all 3 referees are of equal significance, with none of us being more important the the other. We had to work “Two-gether” as a TEAM. Our job was to get the play right, be fair to both sides and maintain a level playing field. Tough to do with the speed the game is played at today and with the athletic ability these players have…and, with what is at stake in today’s collegiate game – MONEY, people’s jobs and livelihoods, recruiters, boosters, etc.

And, to this day the toughest call in the game of basketball is the “Block/Charge” call. I taught the hundreds of referees who came to my Annual Referee Camp to “referee the defense” – to make sure that the defensive player had established a “legal guarding position”. And, as many times as we saw that play over and over again – we still found it so difficult to get it right. Sure, the instant replays showed it in slow motion, but, the block/charge call cannot be reviewed in the instant replay. We did not have that luxury and we had to live and die with that gutsy call…

What I am getting at with all of this is that as an NCAA basketball referee, there is NO grey area when making a call – it is either black or white. True or False. Right or Wrong. NO COMPROMISING! It is either a Block or a Charge! You have to have the guts and integrity to make the right call – regardless of the outcome! We could not afford to call a “Blarge”! That is when one ref calls a Block and the other calls a Charge…Total chaos! What in GOD’s name do you do now? Confusing, perplexing, frustrating, bewildering…All hell would break loose and it threw everybody off – including the players, the coaches, the fans, the commentators… Mass confusion…

And, speaking of Mass Confusion (that is when the Catholic Faithful attend Mass and walk out all confused about the Homily) – now you know how the millions of Catholics in this world feel about some of the more radical comments that Pope Francis has made over the past two plus years and the direction he seems to be heading in. His comments on the homosexuals is difficult to decipher, hard to get a real feel for. Not sure where he truly stands with this issue – confusing the Catholic Faithful and all of his clergy even more – allowing each cardinal, bishop and priest to interpret it how he sees fit. Again, no definite interpretation here. This is what I refer to as that “Blarge” call I eluded to above. With this particular, sensitive issue, the pope is not providing the Catholic Faithful with a clear call – with a True or False explanation – with a concise, perfectly clear Black or White call. He has only provided us with very nebulous, confusing and misleading calls. No Block. No Charge. Just a “Blarge” – which, once again – leads to chaos, confusion, frustration and people losing faith and trust in our own Holy Father.

And, the more our beloved pope leaves the Catholic Faithful “guessing” and not coming with explicit and concise Truths & Facts about our beloved church teachings – the more Catholics will be leaving the church and trying to find the Truth elsewhere. And, with the elections of 2016 lurking around the corner and with the majority of the 70 million Catholics in this country still trying to figure out which church leader, cardinal or bishop is correct when it comes to Gay Marriage, the atrocity of abortion, the fate of divorced couples and other religious freedom issues – while the pope allows it all to get even cloudier and murkier – the Family Synod in Chilly Philly in September may just be the last straw that broke the camel’s back…And, is that a one hump-camel? Is it a two-hump camel? Is it a dromedary? Is it a Bactrian Camel? A Hybrid?

WHO AM I TO JUDGE? Let’s just try to get over this hump for right now…

Sex Education Today

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In the 1940s and 50s, what passed for sex education was literally about the birds and bees as metaphors for inception and child birth. The emphasis was on waiting until marriage to engage in sex. There were instructional books with a mostly medical orientation to the information they provided but whether they could be found in the schools is anyone’s guess.

Somehow that generation (and earlier ones) managed to learn enough about sex to engage in it within the context of a society that regarded sex outside of marriage as sinful. By the 1960s, the generation fathered in the wake of World War Two told everyone not to trust anyone over thirty and that sex, drugs and rock’n roll were the only things that really mattered in life.

In 1979, with Jimmy Carter’s blessing, the federal government took control of the nation’s educational system via the Department of Education, but the real takeover began much earlier. It has been in serious decline ever since with huge dropout rates and failures to learn reading and math that put us well behind when compared to other nations. Traditional American values have often been abandoned.

Eugene Delgaudio, president of Public Advocate of the United States, recently emailed members and those who follow the organization’s issues about “a little first grade boy (who) asked his mother if he was ‘transgender,’ and if he could be ‘a girl in love with a girl.’”

His school, Mitchell Primary School in Maine was teaching about the “transgender” lifestyle. His mother was upset to learn about this, but as is frequently the case, parents are the last to learn about sexual information and attitudes being taught. In this case, isn’t first grade just too damn early for transgenderism to be a part of the curriculum?

Delgaudio is largely focused on “the radical Homosexual Lobby and their allies in the education system (that) routinely refuse to give parents any options that threaten their anti-Family agenda. And, fearing retaliation…the school administrators and superintendent ignored the parents’ outrage.”

The pro-family MassResistance recently informed members and those who follow their issues about “unbelievable surveys given to children in Massachusetts and schools across America” in public middle schools and high schools during school hours. The surveys are “officially” anonymous and voluntary, but are administered in the classroom with pressure to participate.

The major survey is “Youth Risk Behavior Survey” put together every two years by the National Centers for Disease Control. State and local education departments can modify it if they wish. These surveys are now ubiquitous.

Among the questions students must answer was whether they were heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual or “not sure.”

“Have you ever had sexual intercourse (oral, anal, vaginal?)”

“How old were you when you had sexual intercourse (oral, anal, vaginal) for the first time?”

“During your life, with how many people have you had sexual intercourse (oral, anal, vaginal)?”

There were nine pages of the questions and answers to be provided. I was astounded at how personal and intrusive the survey was. And I seriously wonder whether such information would have any impact or influence regarding the behaviors involved. Indeed, the survey went far beyond the topic of sex.

I don’t like having the government involved in such intimate areas of student’s lives. These are questions and issues parents should address with their children, determining the right time to do so and providing whatever information they deem appropriate.

Having said that, it would be naïve to suggest that today’s youth from a very early age cannot access tons of information about sex from the Internet. A 2010 study of 177 sexual health websites by the Journal of Adolescent Health concluded that 40% of those addressing contraception and 35% of those addressing abortion contained inaccurate information.

In early April, Cosmopolitan posted “11 Facts About Sex Ed in the U.S. That Might Surprise You.”

“While teen pregnancies are on a decline,” said the article, “teens are having more sex—and contracting more STIs (sexually transmitted illnesses) than ever before. The problem, according to a new report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is that sex education isn’t happening early enough.”

Cosmopolitan noted that only 22 states and the District of Columbia require that public schools teach sex education. In addition, 33 states also mandate HIV/AIDS education, and 35 states let parents opt out on behalf of their child.

Does it surprise anyone to learn that the 1981 Adolescent Family Life Act which promoted “chastity and self-discipline” was ended by the Obama administration in 2010? We have all being living with an administration which dismissed enforcement of the Marriage Defense Act and is the most pro-homosexual administration in the history of the nation.

We are a sex-drenched nation in terms of popular entertainment. It is experienced from the earliest years of any child’s life. This means parents have to be pro-active to ensure their children get the education they need to avoid the STIs and more importantly not to impregnate or get pregnant.

In the meantime, there is no knowing what they are learning, for good or ill, in school.

© Alan Caruba, 2015