Defending the Family

     As you look at the rhetoric around social issues over the past 40 years, one thing becomes very clear.  The people who have the truth on their side have been very clearly put on the defensive.  We live in a world so corrupted by the pollution that is moral relativism that there is no more “normal”.  Without a “normal” there is no presumption of truth or that there is a right way to do anything.

       Two generations ago it was taken for granted that a wedding ceremony would involve a biological male, a biological female, and a church.  If you were meeting a child’s parents, you would have expected to meet a biological male and a biological female who had been married prior to the birth of their children.  If a woman was pregnant, regardless of circumstances, you assumed she would give birth to the child.  None of these assumptions can be made today.  Yet, what is the common thread, what do they all involve – the definition and social expectation of what constitutes “a family”.

      The family has been under constant assault for a long time, but only in the last 40 years has it become the very culture of the western world itself that has become anti-family.  The knee jerk reaction of those who would defend the family has been to engage with those on the other side.  To debate the pros and cons of gay marriage, abortion, birth control, sex outside of wedlock, etc. 

      This approach has backfired, badly, and for a very logical reason.  It gave away the affirmative position in the debate.  Instead of the burden of proof being on the argument devoid of truth, the burden of proof was put back on the truth.  Furthermore, if you dared argue against any of these causes, you were quickly labeled a “bigot” or “closed minded”.  These were weak comebacks of course, but nonetheless all too effective in creating the perception of moral high ground. 

     So the pro-family forces in this country need to regroup and quickly.  The reality is there is a generation growing up in this country that will always know “gay marriage” to some degree.  They will likely have gone to school with Jack or Jane who have two mommies or two daddies.  They may even grow up knowing someone who had an abortion.  To ask them to take a position in the abstract that would cause them to condemn real people in their lives will be futile.  So what is the answer?

     I believe the answer is to reclaim that which we were defending, the traditional family.  This is not about “family values” as some of this rhetoric was derisively tagged in the 1980s, this is literally a campaign for the family itself.  Why did we spend almost 2,000 years with a simple definition of marriage between a man and a woman?  Must be something to it right?

     Could it be that men and women are endowed by their Creator with unique and complimentary physical, mental, and spiritual gifts?  Is there a reason that dads went to work and moms stayed home all of those centuries?  Could it be it just worked so darn well?  When my 2 year-old and 4 year-old instinctively gravitate towards dad for protection and mom for comfort, is there something deeper we should understand there? 

     The answer to all of these question is of course yes, yes, yes, and yes.  It is not about condemning choices that fall outside of the traditional definition of family, but it is about making sure the choice of the traditional nuclear family is fairly represented.  I think that is the great opportunity before us.