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LONG BEACH (gorewon2000.net) February 3, 2001 -- The politicization of the American family is a travesty not only against individual liberty, privacy, and diversity, but a crime against the very institution of the family.
There was a time when "family values" referred to love and support between family members, parents sharing their personal beliefs and values with their children. It has come to mean something very different now. Now, family values have become a macro-societal concept, rather than an issue revolving around the nuclear family. Now, family values mean indoctrination into mainstream views, and government enforcing that indoctrination. Now, family values are used as a rallying cry to limit personal freedoms in the wider society, censor art, politicize education, and brand non-traditional families -- no matter how successful they are in producing healthy and productive children -- as deviant and dangerous.
Family values, as preached by conservatives, mean one thing: some families have more value than others. A mother who works inside the home is a better parent than one who leaves the home to go to work (but the converse is true for fathers). A two-parent family is superior to a single-parent family, but there is nothing wrong with sending military men away from their families for years at a time (though the converse is true for military women). A straight parent is better than closeted gay parent, who is better than an openly gay parent. A married couple with children has more value than a childless one (unless they have too many children and need government assistance, in which case they are branded "welfare cheats," or have not enough children, in which case they are branded as "selfish"). An evangelical family is more worthy of respect than a non-proselytizing family (unless the family is of a minority faith, in which case the opposite is true). Parents who practice corporal punishment are better than those who don't (no matter which parents produce the healthiest and happiest children).
Basically, conservative family values mean that there is a right kind of family, and a wrong kind, and government needs to do all it can to support the "right" families and discomfit the "wrong" families. Through adoption laws, tax codes, education initiatives, and a wealth of other government actions, large and small, conservatives are pushing us all -- and none to gently, I might add -- to conform to their image of the "proper" family. No matter that their definition of the "proper" family is internally contradictory, has no central organizing principle, and no evidence to recommend it, they forge ahead with breathtaking presumption and arrogance.
THEY HAVE NO RIGHT. It is time for us to rescue the American family from the pressures being brought to bear upon them. The American family, in all its glorious diversity, needs respect and protection. The American family should not be a political football. Being a parent should not mean giving up your civil rights, nor should it allow you to infringe upon the rights of others.
HOW DO WE WIN?
We win by being honest about our families. Pretensions of perfection only make others feel alone and unworthy. We need to be honest about sharing what has worked for us, and what has failed. Discussing dysfunction is not disrespectful to the family. We are, all of us, "beta testers" when it comes to family life. We learn through trial and error. What we learn benefits no one but ourselves if it is made a shameful secret.
We win by applauding successful families, even when they look and behave differently than our own. The success of someone who makes a different choice than we have made or would make, doesn't threaten us. Marriage and family are not zero-sum games. Despite different incarnations, we can all win. When any family succeeds, the entire society benefits.
STEP 4: DEMAND PERSPECTIVE
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