How to Build Up Your Fortitude

A few weeks ago I read a book I got excited about sharing. It’s my Congressman Dan Crenshaw’s book, Fortitude. I had the audio version from the library, which is excellent, because he reads it himself. But it made getting quotes difficult. So I ordered the hard copy and have been waiting for that to arrive (it was lost on delivery day once and had to be reordered—a first-world problem), and it just got here Friday.

Since I first heard Dan speak, when I was deciding who wouldget my vote in the primary, 2 ½ years ago, I recognized him as a good communicator. He’s clear, to the point, on target. And, a huge bonus—he’s cool in a way that connects with his generation, and mine. He’s within a year of my oldest son, Political Sphere, so he’s a millennial.

Dan, you’ll recall, is the guy with the eye patch. He was hit by an IED in Afghanistan in 2012, as a Navy SEAL. He stayed in the service and deployed twice more after that, and did a lot of training. But then, against his will, they decided a half-blind guy wasn’t suitable for service, a decision he’s still not happy about. But he went on to Harvard Kennedy School of Government for a master’s degree in Public Administration. He finished up in 2017, close to the time Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, his hometown, and he went to work mucking out houses. Also that fall, our previous Congressman Ted Poe announced his intention to retire. Over a weekend Dan and family thought it through, and, pretty much without financial resources, started running for US Congress, in Texas’s Congressional District 2. About 8 others thought that was a good idea, too, most of them better funded and better connected.

That first time I heard him speak, he said, among all those conservatives, we’re all saying the same things; we’re all going to vote pretty much the same way. The important thing is to inspire others to vote that way too. He was inspiring me to vote for him; I believed he could do it.

And I worked on his campaign, delivering yard signs, and got to talk with him in smaller house group Q&As a number of times. I became more and more impressed with the way he said things—and I am a collector of things well said.

Still, I wasn’t sure what to expect from his book. Maybe mostly the story about his SEAL team experience and the recovery after the IED. And maybe there would be some conservative politics in it. But the book is so much better than I expected.

The story is there—including the SEAL team experience. He tells about how, the first time he went through BUD/S, or “hell week,” the worst week of SEAL training, intended to weed out the weak—his leg broke, a stress fracture caused by the grueling training that’s beyond most human bodies’ ability to endure. That meant he had to rehabilitate for half a year, and then go through the whole ordeal again. Because he wasn’t going to quit. As he puts it, “There is no plan B.” And failure isn’t an option. So you do whatever it takes.

There’s almost no politics in the book. Although, if you think of politics as policy to implement principles, then there’s a fair amount of conservatism in there. But what the book really is is a guide for how to live your best life—a way to be the best version of you that you can be.

In the introduction, he’s talking about some of the cultural problems we’re facing, and how to fix them. He says,

We aren’t acting as a culture that is mature or enlightened or educated, we aren’t acting worthy of this beautiful country and political system that we inherited from our revolutionary ancestors. Rather, we don a mantle of fragility, of anger, of childishness, and are utterly shameless in doing so (p.9).

He has a message to the snowflake culture:

If you’re losing your cool, you are losing. If you are triggered, it is because you allowed someone else to dictate your emotional state. If you are outraged, it is because you lack discipline and self-control. These are personal defeats, not the fault of anyone else. And each defeat shapes who you are as a person, and in the collective sense, who we are as a people (p. 10).

The book is intended to help people develop the discipline and self-control to overcome the outrage culture. He states the book’s purpose this way:

This book is about actively hardening your mind so that you can be the person you think you should be. It is about identifying who that person is in the first place, and taking responsibility for the self-improvement required to become them. It is about learning what it means to never quit. It is about learning to take a joke and giving others some charity when they make a bad one. It is about learning what it means to never quit. It is about learning to take a joke and giving others some charity when they make a bad one. It is about the importance of building a society of iron-tough individuals who can think for themselves, take care of themselves, and recognize that a culture characterized by grit, discipline, and self-reliance is a culture that survives. A culture characterized by self-pity, indulgence, outrage, and resentment is a culture that falls apart. It really is that simple, and it is a truly existential choice (p.10).

Dan happens to be a good storyteller, with a good sense of humor—albeit somewhat dark, since that comes from the SEAL culture. (And, a warning for the very sensitive, there is some language in the book that is also part of SEAL culture.) For example, he starts out telling of the IED explosion by telling why the Taliban used that method:

Smart bombs aren’t cheap, and national security is an expensive pursuit. The Taliban spent about ten bucks, including the cost of labor and medical benefits.

To which he adds this footnote:

Note to the Fact Checkers: THIS IS A JOKE. Taliban don’t have health insurance.

When his buddies from the teams, Joe and Dave, were with him during his hospital recovery, they wasted no time before asking him, “So, Dan, we can start making fun of you for looking like a pirate for the rest of your life, right?” As he adds, “Never too early for the dark humor of the teams.”

He gives enough detail about the recovery—including the miracle that he regained his sight in his left eye—but he does it without any sense of self-pity. At all. Just gratitude. To doctors. To his wife, Tara, who was his fiancée at that time, and stuck with him through all the pain and irritability—including spending six fully conscious weeks post-eye-surgery lying flat on his stomach to prevent the retina from detaching and causing permanent blindness. And gratitude to the many good people in the military he had worked with—and particularly to those who gave the ultimate sacrifice, or ended up with disabilities much greater than his.

He teaches at least one principle for developing your personal character, in each chapter. I’d have to say the book is part LoneSurvivor, and part Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life. It’s a bit less esoteric than Peterson, which may be a good thing for some readers, but the depth is there. He quotes Peterson, and Jonathan Haidt, and mythology, and Star Wars, and a pretty wide range of sources—and seems equally at ease with them all.

Some of the key ideas are:

·         Emulating the right kinds of heroes.

·         Be all in; be flexible, but accept no plan B on your main goal.

·         Be still; learn self-control over your emotions.

·         Sweat the small stuff; pay attention to details.

·         Have the right sense of shame; hold yourself accountable.

·         Have a sense of duty; and do your duty.

·         Do something hard; challenge yourself.

And he’s got a good final chapter on why America is a country worth loving, protecting, and preserving. He’s not about blindly assuming all is well. But we need to see more than flaws in a country this good:

So what is the right story? Is it just blindly assuming that whatever our country does is inherently good and righteous? No, that isn’t what I am suggesting. Just because victimhood ideology is toxic does not mean we have never had victims. But we must tell the story of America in a way that squares our suffering and injustice within the American identity without holding it in contempt for that injustice (p. 230).

Then he gives examples.

There’s José de la Luz Sáenz, a schoolteacher from Cotulla, Texas, who was called up to fight abroad in WWI and served with honor, hoping to emulate George Washington. He later formed the League of United Latin American Citizens.

There’s Frederick Douglass, who called on Americans to live up to the principles in their founding documents, saying, “The Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT” (p. 233).

There’s Martin Luther King, Jr., who faced true injustice, and stared it down, peacefully, until an otherwise righteous people recognized their wrong in subjecting people more civilized than they themselves were.

Dan Crenshaw rejects the Howard Zinn/Herbert Marcuse version of America. And with it the Ilhan Omar, Beto O-Rourke, and Pete Buttigieg disapproval of everything American from our founding to the present. Modern political “progressives” say,

“Give us power… and we will end human suffering. We will end failure.

But until we do, stay angry. Stay outraged.

Why is this the wrong approach? Here’s the real point:

It’s an approach that does more than diminish the country. Far worse, it diminishes people. That’s why you’ll never see a happy (or funny) social justice warrior: A system that falsely promises the end of suffering also strips individuals of the capacity to deal with it. It’s ontological malpractice (p. 240).

You don’t come out ahead by expecting someone else to end your suffering. It’s not good to make government into a god that makes such promises while taking away your confidence and ability to deal with and solve your own problems.

The better story to tell is a belief in self-reliance. If we are to reverse the current cultural trend,

We must decide that our happiness is ours to pursue, not given to us by a supposedly benevolent politician. We will decide that our story—despite all the suffering we may endure—is not the product of an external immovable force, but our own to contend with. We must decide that we will be empowered and in charge of our own destiny. We must decide to tell the story of America that embodies the founding ideals and gave us the miracle of opportunity that we have today. We must tell a story that we are proud of (p. 241).

Dan Crenshaw doesn’t set himself up as a hero. He sees himself as a more-or-less regular guy who is spending a lifetime working to be the best he can be. And he’s sharing what he knows, to guide others in that attempt at the “pursuit of happiness” and a meaningful life. Still, in today’s world, he does look pretty heroic by comparison to all but a select few.

I've had my yard sign up for a month already.

In our reading for church this week, we covered one of my favorite heroes. It’s a military hero in a time of unrest, who writes the purpose for their defensive war on a banner to remind the people. He writes, “In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children” (Alma 46:12).  God has granted them the basis for their liberty, just as He has for us; evil power mongers are attempting to force them into subjugation, a parallel to what we are facing. It’s a cause worth the fight.

This man who inspires his people by clarifying their cause is named Captain Moroni—not the same Moroni depicted in the angel atop our temples, but an earlier person by the same name. Of Captain Moroni it was said,  

If all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken forever; yea, the devil would never have power over the hearts of the children of men (Alma 48:17). 

I am considering applying these words to Dan Crenshaw as well. He warns in his book against making any particular person a hero, because every person is human and flawed. But you can look at the ideal version, the characteristics of the person that are worth emulating. It’s a practice George Washington began early in his life as well, to decide what kind of person to be, and to set out becoming such a person.

I pray that Rep. Dan Crenshaw may continue to be exemplary, like unto George Washington, who also proved himself in battle against tyranny before leading a righteous people in liberty. And I support him in his effort to share the message of how to develop yourself—how to live a life of Fortitude.

So I recommend the book—for young people who don’t yet know what kind of person to become, for adults who missed the teaching or need reminding, and for the rest of us who need a dose of inspiration to be better than we have been.

Don’t Mistake Rioters for Protesters

In Minneapolis Friday a police officer was arrested for the murder of a black man he was detaining and restraining in a manner that led to death. It was captured on video, so the whole country has seen it.

Protests break out calling for justice for George Floyd. The perpetrator is in custody. The other officers, who didn’t step in to prevent the officer’s actions, are also charged as accessories. All were immediately fired, not suspended, no waiting to see.

Terrence Floyd, brother of George Floyd, calls for peace.
"That's not going to bring my brother back at all," he says of riots.
Image from here.

The arrest wasn’t instantaneous. In such a high-profile case (because of the media), the prosecutors need to be careful not to charge more than they can prove. It doesn’t appear to be premeditated, for example, so if they charged first-degree murder and couldn’t prove it, the officer would be found not guilty. And, because of double jeopardy protection, he couldn’t be charged again for the same incident. So the charges are what they can prove for certain. If evidence later appears to prove a higher level crime, the charges can be raised.

There were things to take into account. I suggest this op-ed, which explains those legal details. 

But do you know anyone or have you heard anyone say that the brutality was justified and the police officer should be let off? In regular media? On social media? Anywhere?

This is one of those times that civil society is in agreement. A serious crime was committed, and there must be justice.

found on Ben Shapiro's Facebook page today

So what is being protested?

If justice is underway, what is the message of the protest?

I think it’s something like, “Until America can guarantee that this will never happen to another black person, America is evil.”

But that’s an impossible ask.

America was founded on the principle that all people are created equal—no one is entitled to more consideration under the law than another. Society isn’t stratified by birth, as it has historically been in most countries on earth throughout history.

Unfortunately, slavery of blacks was instituted on this continent by the Mother Country, and it needed to be rooted out. The Constitution was written with that expectation. It took too long, and it took a bloody Civil War to accomplish. But that’s what America sacrificed to make it happen.

Even then, people who had been taught their whole lives that people of a certain bloodline were inferior didn’t automatically unlearn that false teaching. It took another century for people to get fed up and actually grant equal rights.

We’re still divided. But let’s define things a little more carefully.

The Republican Party was created to fight slavery. All slaveholders were Democrats. Even in the northern non-slave states before the Civil War, the pro-slavery people were only Democrats. Coincidentally, it is Democrats who run the cities with most of the racial issues. This is true in Minneapolis—local on up to the governor.

The Republican Party pushed for the Civil Rights laws in the 60s. It was Democrats, mainly from former slave states, that resisted letting go of the Jim Crow laws they had perpetuated.

Then, somehow, the lie got told that it was the Republicans all along who had been racist. The lie became that what conservatives wanted to conserve were the old, pre-Civil Rights, ways. That conservatives wanted to conserve the Democrat way of thinking and living. That was never even close to reality.

So, here we are, decades later, and the lie is bigger. Now, at a time when most Americans don’t even understand the mindset of a racist, and have never felt that way in their lives, have never treated different races with disdain—those people are being told they’re guilty of systemic racism.

What are the protests saying, then? That we should stop being white, or Hispanic, or Asian, because blacks need to be knelt down to? If that isn’t it, what is the message of the protest?

Houston Chronicle May 31, 2020

I’ve seen a number of people reference other protests—implying that this is just an escalation, because we didn’t listen before. Such a message covers the full front page of yesterday’s Houston Chronicle Sports section. Colin Kaepernick protested by refusing to stand for the National Anthem, and that offended us. “If only we had heard his message!” people say.

We did hear him. It wasn’t his method of protest that offended us. It was the lie of his message—that America is an evil, systemically racist country—this from a millionaire black man playing a ball game for a living, and not playing it spectacularly well enough to merit his hiring amid the bad media he brought on.

Black Live Matter protested. And when people of goodwill answered, “Yes, your lives do matter to us. All lives matter,” those people got shouted down with, “No! You’re not hearing us. Black lives matter!”

What is that supposed to mean? That our lives don’t matter because we don’t have the right skin color?

Their protests were related to the Ferguson incident, which wasn’t a case of racist police brutality; it was a case of a black thug attacking a police officer who defended himself; even black eyewitnesses testified of that. Still the protesters shouted the lie that the perpetrator had held his hands up and called don’t shoot and was just gunned down. When it was proven that didn’t happen, the protesters insisted, “It’s still symbolic of the systemic problem.” Then where is your real evidence?

I assert that there isn’t a systemic racist problem going on in America, particularly toward blacks. Black radio host Larry Elder has the stats. Such as today, when he pointed out that police are 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black man than the other way around. That studies that set out to prove racist police brutality found instead that, surprisingly, blacks are less likely to be harmed, because every officer is hyper-aware of the media ramifications of an error.

Elder recites the evidence often. So does black commentator Candace Owens. When they provide data, they’re called traitors. Sometimes they’re even called white supremacists, which is more than a little ironic. They get called these things because their experience and the data they provide does not coincide with the going narrative that there’s systemic racism in America. But those calling them those names don’t provide data; they only cite isolated incidents—which we all agree, when they actually happen, are injustices, and we all agree that justice should be done.

So, where is the evidence of this systemic, widespread problem that is making them so angry?

I’m not saying they don’t really feel what they’re feeling. I believe they do.

Steve Locke, who tells his story
of being detained because black
image from here

I read a story over the weekend, from an incident several years ago, that tells what they’re feeling better than most. It’s the experience of a black man, a college teacher in Massachusetts, who was heading to get a burrito for lunch before going to teach a class. Police pulled him over and questioned him, and then detained him. He fit the description, they said, of a black man, his approximate size, wearing a knit cap and a puffy coat, who had just robbed a nearby business. His jacket (a designer brand, and not a parka) didn’t look very puffy. He was wearing a lanyard showing his ID at the university. Everything he said checked out. He remained calm and respectful. Nevertheless, the police kept him, didn’t believe him, and were considering taking him to be identified by the victim. Fortunately, a detective arrived, saw that his story checked out. The new officer on the scene ran through the details and let him go.

This teacher had felt endangered. He believed it was because he was black. Literally, it was, because the actual perpetrator had been black. That is an unfortunate reality for blacks; they have a particular attribute that looks like the people who are doing an outsized proportion of the criminal activity. That’s a problem caused by those criminals, not generally by the police. But you can see how an officer—even a black officer—could come to be suspicious of people who, in their experience, so often turn out to be the bad guys.

I have sympathy for that teacher. It’s an upsetting thing to happen to a decent person. What could he have done to prevent it? Nothing. He even knew to handle the situation in a way that prevented escalation.

What could the police have done? Detected truth more accurately. Seriously. The detective who arrived later on the scene could tell almost instantly that this wasn’t the bad guy; this was a college professor, and his story rang true. Why didn’t the first officers see that? I don’t know. Maybe they need better training. Maybe they need more experience—combining more seasoned officers with newer ones until they learn? Maybe there’s something else.

But what I see is not racism, but police officers checking out someone who partly matched a not very detailed description of a criminal, a man who had the bad luck of being at the wrong place at that moment. That’s a very different thing from, “He’s black, so we’ve got it in for him. Let’s get him.”

No one’s arguing that racism never happens. Unfortunately, it does. The vast majority of Americans are not only not racist; they’re disgusted by actual racism.

We hear the peaceful protests. The message is, “We’re upset because of racism.” Yes. We understand.

It is similar to people who are afraid of the coronavirus. This fear is intensified for someone whose experience is that it has killed or severely affected someone close to them. So they insist on things that do not help fight coronavirus: economic collapse, wearing of facemasks alone outdoors, contact tracing at a point when prevalence is so widespread that such practices guarantee practically permanent loss of freedom. Yes, we understand you’re scared. The best solution is not to end society as we know it until every case of the virus in the world is gone; the best solution is for you to get a better understanding of the situation so you get over the fear. Then we can all cautiously get on with our lives with that new awareness.

We stopped being racist so long ago that most of us Americans have lived our entire lives without a racist heart. What more can we do? The best solution is not for all races to bow down to blacks in abject humiliation and repentance; that would be a lie coming from people who did not do anything wrong.

Protesters are saying this should never have happened. The people they’re protesting to? They agree. The message has been heard. The wheels of justice are underway. If you value civilization, it’s time to go home and watch the process play out.

Ah, but there’s the issue. People who do not value civilization are using this moment for their own nefarious purposes.

Protests are acceptable—even when their message is wrong, a lie, or misguided. Wrongness in a protest message has more to do with emotion overriding reason than it has to do with moral wrongness. So we value their right to express their views in peaceful protest.

Riots are not protests. Riots are evil acts of violence. They are literally anti-civilization; they are savage. They destroy property. They harm people—usually innocent people, sometimes even the demographic of people the protests were stated to support. And sometimes they take lives.

Rioters are criminals. Sometimes they get away with their crimes by overwhelming the law enforcement resources. That is intentional.

Some riots grow naturally out of crowd emotion. Mob mentality. Those are always bad.

The riots we’re seeing now are even worse; they are unnatural. They are instigated. They are planned. They are funded.

We don’t know all the details yet. And who knows whether the stories we’re seeing will turn out to be true.

Antifa is involved. US Attorney General Barr has identified them as the organizers of looting and mob violence across the country. And President Trump is right to label them a domestic terrorist organization. 

There’s a collection of photos from various cities, where people have noticed pallets of bricks showing up, mysteriously overnight, where there is no construction going on. They have cones placed around them. They’re staged strategically to be available—for throwing by rioting thugs. One instruction included a suburban neighborhood, miles from downtown, with the intention of making the previously safe feel unsafe.

Bricks pre-staged for rioting, image found here

Minneapolis, where the incident took place, and possibly Houston, where George Floyd was from, were not surprising locations. But these things are happening in cities all over the country. What is the message when thugs deface the Lincoln Memorial, where MLK gave his historic speech in the fight for Civil Rights? There is no connection between the damage caused by the evil rioters and the anti-racist message of peaceful protesters.

Anarchist rebels tend to make a common mistake—that once they set things in motion, people will rise up and join them.

What we need to have happen is the arrest and prosecution of each and every perpetrator of the crimes involved in rioting—violence, property damage, theft, assault, murder. Cleanse our free society of those who are actively working to oppress destroy our way of life so that they can get us vulnerable enough to easily oppress.

I believe the numbers of actual believers in the anarchist Antifa worldview are small. People of goodwill do not join such savages.

A community near Minneapolis held a food drive
to help victims of the riots. Image from here.

One good sign is that people showing up in the mornings—to clean up the damage. Pick up debris. Wash off graffiti. Repair what they can. That is what good people do: the exact opposite of the evildoers.

Here are eight examples of good things that have happened. 

Here’s a story of people in Minneapolis bringing groceries to the aid of victims of the riots.

Here is George Floyd’s brother calling for peace. 

What we need is overwhelming civilization to wash away the savagery. Let’s pray we can do it.

What Kind of Family Is the Basic Unit of Civilization?

Yesterday there was an exchange (fairly brief and respectful) on Facebook I promised to respond to, after having given myself time to think and be somewhat thorough. And this is among people I think will be respectful, so it is worth responding.

This is going to be long. I probably ought to have split it into two or three posts. Nevertheless, here it is.

The post I’m quoting below is in response to a notice about a pro-family rally off campus near BYU-Idaho. It’s honoring “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” which declares our Church’s basic beliefs related to family. You can read that proclamation here. This came out in 1995, when such beliefs were so widely held, it seemed like they should go without saying, but when you read the proclamation today you can see the prophetic wisdom in declaring these beliefs ahead of the cultural shift.

So here’s the central part of BG’s Facebook post:

When you think of the family being defended here, what kind of family do you imagine? Would I be safe to assume you imagine the nuclear family relationship?

I ask because there is so much emphasis on the nuclear family as though it's what holds civilization up. But honestly, it's the nuclear family TOGETHER with all the other types of family that really hold civilization up. Single parent family, friends, extended family, work family, adopted family, national family, international family etc. The point is, the family is so much more than an isolated nuclear family setup.

I am forever grateful for everyone outside of my nuclear family that has kept us going when times have been tough.

Two individuals of the same sex that are together does not threaten any type of family. If anything it strengthens all types of families because there is more trust and acceptance with each other to help support one another. We become a bigger, stronger family.

The real threat to families in my opinion is our inability to listen and understand other family that might be different than we're used to.

And now my long response.

Family is the basic unit of civilization. To understand that, we need to know what family is and what civilization is.

Let’s start with defining civilization, because then we can see whether whatever family we’re looking at has what is necessary for civilization.

Definition of Civilization

I’m using definitions I’ve written before, on the Spherical Model website:

I will be using the terms Civilized and Savage somewhat more specifically than the usual dictionary definitions. Civilized will be more than a society where people write records, have a certain amount of technology, and live together in cities. I think it is clearly possible for all of those things to exist in societies that have sunk into savagery. Nazi Germany is the most obvious example from recent history. And it is also possible, though not really seen in today’s world, for innocent but unrefined people to live in harmonious civilization. Many families that settled the American West exemplify civilization at a micro level….

In the northern circle of the Spherical Model that is the goal—Civilization—families typically remain intact, and children are raised in loving homes, with caring parents who guide their education and training, dedicating somewhere between 18 and 25 years for that child to reach adulthood, and who then remain interested in their children’s success for the rest of their lives.

Civilized people live peaceably among their neighbors, helping rather than taking advantage of one another, abiding by laws enacted to protect property and safety—with honesty and honor. Civilized people live in peace with other civilized people; countries and cultures coexist in appreciation, without fear.

There is a thriving free-enterprise economy. Poverty is meaningless; even though there will always be a lowest earning 10% defined as poor, in a civilized society these lowest earners have comfortable shelter and adequate food and clothing—and there’s the possibility of rising, or at least for future generations to rise.

Creativity abounds; enlightening arts and literature exceed expectations. Architecture and infrastructure improve; innovation and invention are the rule.

People feel free to choose their work, their home, their family practices, their friendships and associations. And they generally self-restrain before they infringe on the rights and freedoms of others. Where there are questions about those limits, laws are in place to help clarify boundaries of civilized behavior. When someone willingly infringes on the rights or safety of another, the law functions to protect that victim as well as society from further uncivilized behavior from the offender.

Much of this describes the societal goods you get from civilization. But, in short, civilized people have a critical mass of people who honor God, life, family, truth, and property ownership.

Definition of Family

Before I go any further, let me say something very direct: While there is a necessary preferred family form, that does not mean that other family forms have no value and make no contribution. I’ll go into that in more detail later.

Here’s what families do for civilization, also from the Spherical Model website:

Families have the responsibility to safeguard women and children for the greatest benefit of both current and future generations. Families provide food, shelter, clothing, education, spiritual guidance, and training in how to live a civilized life in a civilized society. Elderly are honored for their wisdom. Youth are honored for their potential. Women are honored for giving and nurturing life, among their other abilities. Men are honored for providing and protecting, among their other abilities. Families are the main economic force, as well as the very means whereby civilization can perpetuate. Civilized societies therefore protect The Family as sacred.

But family can mean so many things, and can look very different from one another. What do we mean? We mean a married mother and father raising their own children. That is the ideal. That is what there needs to be a critical mass of—which is probably quantifiable, but I would estimate well north of 50%.

Stronger extended families are a great support to the nuclear family. The more we have of that in a society, the better. But,

It is possible to have a civilization one family in size.

This is true—if that family is a married father and mother caring for their own children.

Here is our traditional family,
being a basic unit of civilization,
during our growth years, 1996.

It is not true if that family is missing an essential ingredient—namely, a mother or a father. A well-functioning traditional family is a civilization, in and of itself. And it contributes to an ever larger civilization. Any other family form might contribute to civilization, not because of what it is, but in spite of what it lacks.

Historically, this has been known by every civilization for millennia, and we shouldn’t assume people didn’t know certain things by observation and experience over long periods of time simply because a social science database hadn’t been invented. But, it turns out, the more social science data we gather, the more we see that mothers and fathers—both—are essential ingredients for raising the subsequent civilized generation.

Other Family Forms

While we know what is the best family form, that does not preclude success by other family forms.

Married mother and father of adopted children do very nearly as well as parents of biological children. Challenges faced by adopted children are often mitigated by the knowledge that a devoted mother and father love them.

Stepfamilies can bring about mixed results. The most likely to succeed (but certainly not the only ones) are those who can come together entirely, without having to share with absent other fathers or mothers. For example, if a parent has died and the remaining parent eventually remarries, full integration of the new parent can create outcomes very similar to original biological parents. But otherwise stepparents can put children at higher risk of abuse than even single parenting.[i]

Single parents generally have a harder time. But among these, those with a parent who has died fare better[ii] than those who are single because of divorce or never marrying. The reason is that the parent who has died can be talked about as a positive force—a person with principles that would have been taught, a person with love for the surviving parent and the children. The deceased parent’s legacy is better than simple absence of parent from the home.

Single parents have a tough row to hoe. Children need influence from both a male and a female parent; that is critical. That does not mean that no single parent can succeed; it means that the task is likely to be harder. The parent needs to find outside resources to help—maybe grandparents, maybe aunts or uncles or other extended family, maybe coaches or youth program leaders. But the parent will need to find that additional input. And the parent will have to do it while being the sole provider for the family, however much extra time that takes, and then do the daily boots-on-the-ground parenting that would have been divided among two adults, giving them each occasional rest and recharge time.

Single parents have a more likely chance of success—if they are surrounded by fully functional two-parent nuclear families. Because those neighboring basic units of civilization may have social capital to spare.

It takes social capital to make up for the deficits of a family without both mother and father. The more families that can’t bring that to the table, the heavier the toll on civilization.

You can see the outcomes in social science data. One collection I use is Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-One Conclusions from the Social Sciences. Mine is a 2005 version, from the Institute for American Values. I have picked a few, and mostly I have paraphrased. The footnotes are theirs:

·         Cohabiting parents—even biological parents—report relationships of lower quality than do married couples: more conflict, more violence, and lower levels of satisfaction and commitment, resulting in children less likely to know how to live in a committed marriage for the next generation.[iii]

·         Divorce, as well as unmarried childrearing, increases poverty for both children and mothers.[iv]

·         Married parents build more wealth than either singles or cohabiting couples, thus benefiting their children.[v]

·         Parental divorce is a major contributor to children’s school failure[vi] and reduces the likelihood that children will graduate from college and achieve high-status jobs.[vii]

·         Children living with their married parents tend to have better health than children in other family forms.[viii] Divorce has been shown to lower children’s life expectancy by four years.[ix]

·         Marriage leads to reduced alcohol and substance abuse for both teens and adults.[x]

·         Marriage leads to better health and longer lives for both women and men, compared to singles controlled for other variables.[xi]

·         Children of divorced parents have higher rates of psychological problems[xii] and significantly higher rates of suicide.[xiii] Meanwhile married mothers have lower rates of depression than do single or cohabiting mothers.[xiv]

·         Boys raised in single-parent families are more likely to engage in delinquent and criminal behavior. Even after controlling for factors such as race, mother’s education, neighborhood quality, and cognitive ability, boys raised in single-parent homes are about twice as likely (and boys raised in stepfamilies are three times as likely) to have committed a crime that leads to incarceration by the time they reach their early thirties.[xv]

·         Marriage appears to reduce the risk that adults will be either perpetrators or victims of crime.[xvi]

·         Married women appear to have a lower risk of experiencing domestic violence than do cohabiting or dating women.[xvii] Cohabitors engage in more violence than do spouses.”[xviii]

·         Children living with single mothers, stepfathers, or mother’s boyfriends are more likely to become victims of child abuse.[xix]

The conclusion of Why Marriage Matters is this:

Marriage is more than a private emotional relationship. It is also a social good. Not every person can or should marry. And not every child raised outside of marriage is damaged as a result. But communities where good-enough marriages are common have better outcomes for children, women, and men than do communities suffering from high rates of divorce, unmarried childbearing, and high-conflict or violent marriages.

What I and the social scientists are saying is, marriage—man and woman “good enough” marriage—is essential for civilization. The odds are better for children as well as the adults when we start with the traditional nuclear family.

UFI logo

Let’s add some data from “The Fatherhood Study Fact Sheet” from United Families International:

·         A study of incarcerated women showed 41% grew up with a mother as sole provider.[xx]

·         Youths in father-absent households had significantly higher odds of incarceration than those in mother-father families. Youths who never had a father in the household experienced the highest odds.[xxi]

·         A 2002 DOJ survey of 7,000 inmates showed that 39% of jail inmates had lived in mother-only households. Approximately 46% of jail inmates in 2002 had a previously incarcerated family member; 20% experienced a father in prison or jail.[xxii]

·         Among adolescents charged with murder, 72% grew-up without their fathers.[xxiii] 

·         High-crime neighborhoods are characterized by high concentrations of families abandoned by fathers.[xxiv]

·         Fatherlessness is a primary generator of violence among young men.[xxv] 

·         Of children with highly involved fathers in two-parent families, 50% reported getting mostly A’s through 12th grade, compared to 35.2% of children of nonresident father families.[xxvi]

·         What fathers provide includes protecting daughters from sexual overtures of other men, and providing models for the kinds of nonsexual relationships with men that daughters need to develop if they are to avoid the ploys of sexual abusers.  Daughters who grow up without fathers do not enjoy such protections from sexual abuse perpetrators.[xxvii]  

·         Teens without fathers were twice as likely to be involved in early sexual activity and seven times more likely to get pregnant as an adolescent.[xxviii]

Same-Sex Parents

We haven’t yet touched on same-sex parenting. The data is only beginning to appear, since this is a relatively new family form. Early reports were that there were relatively few differences. However, a closer look showed that comparisons were between homosexual parents and heterosexual parents, including all single parents—not between homosexual parents and married biological parents. Even so, the data was showing that gender identity and confusion, and other sexual related markers of adolescent health, were inferior in same-sex parented families.[xxix]

There are a couple of basic facts we can’t get around. 1. Children need the influence of a father and a mother; same-sex families do not provide that. Period. Full stop.

And 2. Same-sex parents do not engage in reproductive behavior. It is not as if they are equivalent to a heterosexual couple experiencing infertility. They are not typically infertile—with someone of the opposite sex. The coupling is infertile because together they biologically cannot engage in reproductive activity. Under some circumstances (previous heterosexual marriage, invitro fertilization) one of the parents might be biologically related to a child, but in no circumstances can both be related.

We know from adoption in married heterosexual couples that biology isn’t an absolute necessity. But to purposely place a nonbiological child into a family that cannot provide both a mother and a father is to deprive that child of what is necessary for healthy growth.

Some argue that having two loving parents must be better. But better than what? Better than a single mother, perhaps. There are possibly two incomes, and two parents to share the parenting work. But there are not both male and female role models.

Unfortunately, more recent data is coming out with more troubling outcomes. Much of this comes from adult children raised by homosexual parents, which started coming out around 2015, in testimony before the Supreme Court in the Obergefell decision. For example, Dawn Stefanowicz testified graphically of her childhood with a homosexual father who later died of AIDS.

It is quite difficult to discuss the implications of growing up in a gay household until later in adulthood when we have developed a measure of personal identity and independence apart from our GLBT parent, partners and the subcultures. We are often forced to approve and tolerate all forms of expressed sexuality, including various sexual and gender identity preferences.

And this from Robert Oscar Lopez, the son of a lesbian woman, who told how homosexual activists had harassed his employers and spread lies about him on the internet following his coming forward about his childhood experiences:

Children raised by same-sex couples face a gauntlet if they break the silence about the “no disadvantages” consensus…. In such a climate, I must conclude that placing children in same-sex couples’ homes is dangerous, because they have no space or latitude to express negative feelings about losing a mom or dad, and in fact they have much to fear if they do.

There’s a fairly recent memoir written by the daughter of fantasy fiction writer Marion Zimmer Bradley, who was a lesbian, and the author’s father was gay—and both were pedophiles. Moira Greyland’s account, The Last Closet, The Dark Side of Avalon, is both frightening and horrifying, also well documented, since it was her testimony that convicted her father. But it isn’t just her personal experience with these particular parents that is at issue. It is this more general conclusion:

Moira Greyland, image from moiragreyland.net
found here

Every single child of gay parents with whom I spoke had certain things in common. Those with only same-sex parents in the home ached for their missing parent and longed for a real father, and nearly all of us had been sexualized far too young.

That brings us to the difficult issue related to same-sex parenting. We tend to look at others with the assumption that they are like us. I’ve coined the word “heteromorphism” to mean looking at same-sex relationships and attributing to them what we see in our own heterosexual relationships, things like permanence and fidelity. It’s hard to look at what we see on the surface and assume differently. We don’t want to assume differently. And most of us don’t know any of these couples—particularly long-term same-sex couples—well enough to feel comfortable asking some pertinent questions, such as, “What does fidelity in your marriage mean to you? Is it a complete physical/sexual fidelity, or more of an emotional fidelity?”[xxx]

Because the data shows—and has shown for already a couple of decades—that committed “married” same-sex couples have on average 8 sexual partners a year.[xxxi] Lesbians are slightly less promiscuous but still much more than heterosexual women.[xxxii] Single lesbians, by the way, tend to have at least one male sexual partner per year, in addition to their homosexual partner(s).[xxxiii] Oddly, homosexual teens, whether bisexual or not, are four times more likely to have gotten pregnant or gotten someone pregnant than an equivalent aged heterosexual teen.[xxxiv]

Committed heterosexual couples—particularly religious couples—tend to go through life with complete fidelity. Overall, heterosexual marriages have 75-80% of husbands and 88-90% of wives remain faithful throughout the marriage.[xxxv]

A typical heterosexual non-religious male averages 14 sexual partners in a lifetime, a female averages 7.[xxxvi] A typical homosexual is likely to have hundreds, some even thousands.[xxxvii] Their sex isn’t about love and commitment; it is about trying (apparently unsuccessfully) to satisfy personal lust. It appears much more like sexual addiction than heterosexual family loyalty and fidelity.

Fidelity translates as security. Infidelity translates as upheaval. For a child being raised in a home of upheaval, that is significant.

Summary

The data I’m providing today is not unknown. Most of it I’ve had in my possession for a couple of decades, with more coming in over time simply because I’m attuned to it. But it is practically forbidden to mention in mainstream media. Just citing data is enough to get a person cancelled in today’s culture.

If it were true that the family forms were equivalent, then it would be safe to reveal the basic data about them and find ways to improve them all.

Again, none of this is to say that any particular family, regardless of its form, is destined for success or doomed to failure. Those who currently find themselves in an other-than-ideal family form should still keep earnestly striving to love and give all that they can muster for the sake of their family members. That will always be better than succumbing to the opposite of civilization, which is savagery.

But they really ought to increase their odds of success by surrounding themselves with a critical mass of most-likely-to-succeed traditional families. Because that means they’re surrounding themselves with thriving civilization, and they’re going to need that.

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[i] Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, 1996. “Evolutionary Psychology and Marital Conflict: The Relevance of Stepchildren,” in Sex, Power, Conflict: Evolutionary and Feminist Perspectives, eds. David M. Buss and Neil M. Malamuth (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 9-28.

[ii] Timothy J. Biblarz and Greg Gottainer, 2000. “Family Structure and Children’s Success: A Comparison of Widowed and Divorced Single-Mother Families,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 62(2) (May): 533.

[iii] William H. Jeynes, 2000. “The Effects of Several of the Most Common Family Structures on the Academic Achievement of Eighth Graders,” Marriage and Family Review 30(1/2): 73-97; Donna Ruane Morrison and Amy Ritualo, 2000. “Routes to Children’s Economic Recovery After Divorce: Are Cohabitation and Remarriage Equivalent?” American Sociological Review 65 (August): 560-580; Lingxin Hao, 1996. “Family Structure, Private Transfers, and the Economic Well-Being of Families with Children,” Social Forces 75: 269-292; Wendy D. Manning and Daniel T. Lichter, 1996. “Parental Cohabitation and Children’s Economic Well-Being,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 58: 998-1010.

[iv] See, for example, Pamela J. Smock, et al., 1999. “The Effect of Marriage and Divorce on Women’s Economic Well-Being,” American Sociological Review 64: 794-812; Ross Finie, 1993. “Women, Men and the Economic Consequences of Divorce: Evidence from Canadian Longitudinal Data,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 30(2): 205ff. Teresa A. Mauldin, 1990. “Women Who Remain Above the Poverty Level in Divorce: Implications for Family Policy,” Family Relations 39(2): 141ff. See also Sara McLanahan, 2000. “Family, State, and Child Well-Being,” Annual Review of Sociology 26(1): 703ff; I. Sawhill, 1999. “Families at Risk,” in H. H. Aaron and R.D. Reischauer (eds.) Setting National Priorities (Washington, D.C.: Brookings): 97-135.

[v] Lingxin Hao, 1996. “Family Structure, Private Transfers, and the Economic WellBeing of Families with Children,” Social Forces 75: 269-292; Kermit Daniel, 1995. “The Marriage Premium,” in Mariano Tommasi and Kathryn Ierullli (eds.) The New Economics of Human Behavior (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 113-25. See also Rebecca M. Blank, 1997. It Takes a Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty (New York: Russell Sage Foundation).

[vi] Timothy J. Biblarz and Greg Gottainer, 2000. “Family Structure and Children’s Success: A Comparison of Widowed and Divorced Single-Mother Families,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 62(2) (May): 533.

[vii] Zeng-Yin Cheng and Howard B. Kaplan, 1999. “Explaining the Impact of Family Structure During Adolescence on Adult Educational Attainment,” Applied Behavioral Science Review 7(1): 23ff; Jan O. Johnsson and Michael Gahler, 1997. “Family Dissolution, Family Reconstitution, and Children’s Educational Careers: Recent Evidence From Sweden,” Demography 34(2): 277-293; Dean Lillard and Jennifer Gerner, 1996. “Getting to the Ivy League,” Journal of Higher Education 70(6): 706ff.

[viii] Ronald Angel and Jacqueline Worobey, 1988. “Single Motherhood and Children’s Health,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 29: 38-52.

[ix] J. E. Schwartz et al., 1995. “Childhood Sociodemographic and Psychosocial Factors as Predictors of Mortality Across the Life-Span,” American Journal of Public Health 85: 1237-1245.

[x] Jerald G. Bachman, et al., 1997. Smoking, Drinking and Drug Use in Young Adulthood (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates); Carol Miller-Tutzauer et al., 1991. “Marriage and Alcohol Use: A Longitudinal Study of Maturing Out,” Journal of Studies on Alcohol 52: 434-440.

[xi] Lee A. Lillard and Linda J. Waite, 1995. “’Til Death Do Us Part: Marital Disruption and Mortality,” American Journal of Sociology 100: 1131-56; Catherine E. Ross et al., 1990. “The Impact of the Family on Health: Decade in Review,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 52: 1059-1078.

[xii] E. Mavis Hetherington and John Kelly, 2002. For Better or For Worse: Divorce Reconsidered (New York: W.W. Norton & Co.); Paul R. Amato, 2001. “Children of Divorce in the 1990s: An Update of the Amato and Keith (1991) Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Family Psychology 15(3): 355-370; Judith S. Wallerstein et al., 2000. The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25 Year Landmark Study (New York: Hyperion); Paul R. Amato, 2000. “The Consequences of Divorce for Adults and Children,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 62(4): 1269ff. Ronald L. Simons, et al., 1999. “Explaining the Higher Incidence of Adjustment Problems Among Children of Divorce Compared with Those in Two-Parent Families,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 61(4) (November): 1020ff.; Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee, 1989. Second Chances: Men, Women and Children a Decade After Divorce (New York: Ticknor and Fields).

[xiii] Gregory R. Johnson et al., 2000. “Suicide Among Adolescents and Young Adults: A Cross-National Comparison of 34 Countries,” Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 30(1): 74-82; David Lester, 1994. “Domestic Integration and Suicide in 21 Nations, 19501985,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology XXXV (1-2): 131-137.

[xiv] Susan L. Brown, 2000. “The Effect of Union Type on Psychological Well-Being: Depression Among Cohabitors versus Marrieds,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 41 (September): 241-255.

[xv] Cynthia Harper and Sara McLanahan, 1998. “Father Absence and Youth Incarceration.” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association) (San Francisco) (August).

[xvi] Ronet Bachman, 1994. “Violence Against Women,” A National Crime Victimization Survey Report NCK-145325 (Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics) (January): See Table 2 and 3.

[xvii] Margo I. Wilson and Martin Daly, 1992. “Who Kills Whom in Spouse Killings? On the Exceptional Sex Ratio of Spousal Homicides in the United States,” Criminology 30(2): 189-215; J.E. Straus and M.A. Stets, 1989. “The Marriage License as Hitting License: A Comparison of Assaults in Dating, Cohabiting and Married Couples,” Journal of Family Violence 4(2): 161-180.

[xviii] Nicky Ali Jackson, 1996. “Observational Experiences of Intrapersonal Conflict and Teenage Victimization: A Comparative Study among Spouses and Cohabitors,” Journal of Family Violence 11: 191-203.

[xix] C.D. Siegel et al., 1996. “Mortality from Intentional and Unintentional Injury Among Infants of Young Mothers in Colorado, 1982 to 1992,” Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, 150(10) (October): 1077-1083.

[xx] Thomas E. Hanlon et al., “Incarcerated Drug-Abusing Mothers:  Their Characteristics and Vulnerability,” The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse 1 (2005):  59-77. 

[xxi] Cynthia Harper, and Sara S. McLanahan, “Father Absence and Youth Incarceration,” Journal of Research on Adolescence 14 (September 2004): 369-397.

[xxii] Doris J.James, “Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002,”  (NCJ 201932). Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, July 2004.

[xxiii] Dewey Cornell “Characteristics of Adolescents Charged with Homicide” Behavior Sciences and the Law 5 (1987): 11-23.

[xxiv] The Real Root Causes of Violent Crime: The Breakdown of Marriage, Family, and Community by Patrick F. Fagan Backgrounder #1026 March 17, 1995.

[xxv] David Blankenhorn, Fatherless America (New York:  BasicBooks, 1995): 31.

[xxvi] National Center for Education Statistics. The Condition of Education. NCES 1999022. Washington, DC: U.S. Dept. of Education, 1999: 76.

[xxvii] David Popenoe, Life Without Father:  Compelling New Evidence that Fatherhood and Marriage are Indispensable for the Good of Children and Society, (Harvard University Press:  Cambridge Massachusetts, 1996): 67-68. 

[xxviii] Bruce J. Ellis, John E. Bates, Kenneth A. Dodge, David M. Ferguson, L. John Horwood, Gregory S. Pettit, and Lianne Woodward. “Does Father Absence Place Daughters at Special Risk for Early Sexual Activity and Teenage Pregnancy,” Child Development 74 (May/June 2003): 801-821.

[xxix] Loren Marks, “Same-sex parenting and children’s outcomes: A closer examination of the American psychological association’s brief on lesbian and gay parenting,” Social Science Research, Volume 4, Issue 4, July 2012, pp. 735-751. See also Ana Samuel, “The Kids Aren’t All Right: New Family Structures and the ‘No Differences’ Claim,” The Witherspoon Institute, June 14, 2012, http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/06/5640/#_edn1 . [See the footnotes.]

[xxx] Consider, for example, the research of McWhirter and Mattison. They interviewed 156 male couples and concluded that in these relationships "fidelity is not defined in terms of sexual behavior, but rather by their emotional commitment to one another" (The Male Couple; David P. McWhirter, M.D., and Andrew M. Mattison, M.S.W., Ph.D.; Prentice-Hall, 1984; p 252, 3).  The researchers—a gay couple themselves—reported that two-thirds of the couples began their relationship with the expectation of sexual exclusivity, but that the partners became more permissive with time. They found that ALL the couples who had been together at least 5 years had incorporated some provision for outside sexual activity in their relationships. In fact, the authors concluded that "the single most important factor that keeps couples together past the ten-year mark is the lack of possessiveness they feel. Many couples learn very early in their relationship that ownership of each other sexually can become the greatest internal threat to their staying together."  See also After the Ball; Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen; Doubleday, 1989. The book acknowledges that "the cheating ratio of 'married' gay males, given enough time, approaches 100%.... Many gay lovers, bowing to the inevitable, agree to an 'open relationship,' for which there are as many sets of ground rules as there are couples" (p 330). 

[xxxi] Xiridou, Maria, et al, “The Contribution of Steady and Casual Partnerships to the Incidence of HIV infection among Homosexual Men in Amsterdam,” 1029-1038 AIDS, 17 (7) May 2, 2003. “Those with a steady partner and those without reported having an average of 8 and 22 casual partners per year, respectively.”

[xxxii] Fethers, Katherine, et al., “Sexually Transmitted Infections and Risk Behaviors in Women Who Have Sex with Women,” Sexually Transmitted Infections 76 (2000): 348.

[xxxiii] Zipter, Yvonne, “The Disposable Lesbian Relationship,” Windy City Times, (December 15, 1986), p. 18, and see Zipter, a lesbian, in an article in Chicago’s gay journal for the quote.

[xxxiv] Allie Shah, “Gay Teens Have Higher Pregnancy Rates than Their Straight Peers,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, August 6, 2015: http://www.startribune.com/gay-teens-have-higher-pregnancy-rates-than-their-straight-peers/320842991/

[xxxv] Robert T. Michael et al., Sex in America: A Definitive Survey (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1994). See also Michael W. Widerman, "Extramarital Sex: Prevalence and Correlated in a National Survey," Journal of Sex Research 34 (1997): 2.

[xxxvi] Derek Beres, “Men claim they have more sexual partners than women. But is it true?” Big Think, July 30, 2018, https://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/men-claim-they-have-more-sex-partners-than-women-but-is-it-true

[xxxvii] G. Rotell, Sexual Ecology: AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men (New York, Dutton, 1997).