Civilization Values, Part VIII: Marriage

This is the final part in the series on the values requisite for civilization. For the first seven parts, here are the links.

·         Part I: Life

·         Part II: Truth

·         Part III: Property Ownership

·         Part IV: God and Freedom of Religion

·         Part V: Civilizing Religion

·         Part VI: Repenting as a Civilization

·         Part VII: FamilyPerpetuates Civilization 

If we start with the values of honoring God, life, truth, and property ownership, family is how we teach and pass along those values. So we need to value family as well. The term “family values” has been tossed around for several decades, but for our purposes we need a more specific definition of what it means to value family. What is family?

As we’ve said, family is the basic unit of civilization. An individual is a unit even smaller, but it isn’t a unit of civilization—because society by definition requires at least two people to associate with one another. And civilization is a particular—good—kind of society. The fundamental relationship leading to civilization and its perpetuation, then, is family. We talked in Part VII about how well family does that.

Today we’ll talk about the relationship that founds a family.

This is not to say that individuals, unmarried people, grandparents helping raise children, foster care situations, and various other-than-the-ideal family structures don’t contribute. If the individuals in these other situations lead intentionally civilized lives, they do contribute to civilization. But the essential relationship—because it means a mother and a father raising their children to be civilized for the next generation—is a married man and woman. And what is essential for this relationship is complete fidelity and permanence.

There’s huge societal upheaval today trying to declare that other relationships are as deserving. But if any other relationship is designed not to produce children, does not require complete fidelity, and is not permanent, it does not offer society what marriage provides.

The section on marriage and fidelity in the Spherical Model website article “Family Is the Basic Unit of Civilization” is long. There’s a large section on why sex outside of marriage is always uncivilized. If there’s something our current society needs to learn, it is that. So here’s a portion of that.

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Sex Outside of Marriage Is Always Wrong

This is such a simple concept, and so many problems would be settled if people would believe it. It’s an essential of civilization. Every time a society attempts to “progress” or “evolve” beyond the old-fashioned notion of virtue, it slides into decay. Every time. This decay happens so frequently and is currently so widespread that the need for virtue must not still be self-evident. So we might as well spell out the reasons.

Human Children Take Time and Consistency to Bring to Adulthood

image from here

Human children grow slowly. It takes close upon two decades to get them from birth to functioning on their own, capable of supporting themselves, reproducing, and raising a civilized next generation. It requires consistency and care from someone with a stake in the child’s success. It takes a pair of parents, providing both male and female role models and ways of nurturing.

The best (really, the only) way to plan for children to be raised by the same two (one male, one female) parents throughout their growing up life is for those two parents to be permanently bonded to each other. To be married. (See Why Marriage Matters.[i]) Marriage isn’t as ephemeral as just a declaration of love between two lovers; it is a commitment to each other and to the entire society that they will stay together for life. This commitment establishes a family, the most basic unit of civilization. There isn’t any way to break up a family that doesn’t harm civilization. Therefore, there isn’t any possible way for sex outside of marriage to be acceptable behavior without harming civilization. Without the attitude of its sacredness, it is impossible to maintain virtue (chastity). And without virtue, families are always harmed.

Look, for instance, at what happens when two young people, believing they are in love, give in to sex. They have just admitted to each other that they value their own desires over the needs of the society they live in. They are both lessened for that selfishness. But what if they recognize that, though what they did was wrong, they could marry and move on? Yes, they could alter their course—what religious societies call repentance, change their thoughts and actions for the future. And if it is true that they love each other, they could go forward making a happy home, with very little harm to society. So, while society wouldn’t condone the mistake, it can easily forgive.

What if the couple decides not to marry? What if they realize they were just young and foolish, and gave in to selfish desires? They could stop, and go their separate ways. Again, it would be possible to repent—change their thoughts and actions for the future—without society being very much degraded for their temporary lapse. Because society never approved. Nor did they require society to grant approval. They realigned themselves with civilization’s requirements following their lapse.

What if a pregnancy resulted from their foolish episode? If they have any hope that they actually can love each other, then they can marry quickly, because forming a family in which to raise their offspring is the highest priority (a much higher priority than the honor of a big wedding celebrated by all their friends). Even if they’re too young to know how to establish and maintain a healthy family, the society around them—their parents, their church, their friends, counselors—can give them guidance and assistance as they finish maturing. It makes the beginning of their family more difficult than a more reasoned, more mature decision, but with effort and help they can succeed in sustaining, rather than degrading, civilization. So, again, while society doesn’t condone the sex outside of marriage, it can forgive without being decayed.

If the couple find themselves in the very sad situation of being pregnant while also realizing they are incompatible, then, again, the highest priority is the need for a family for the child. There can be no civilized focus other than that child whom their behavior brought to life. A child needs, and is entitled to, a loving two-parent family. The two young people should do everything within their power to make sure the child gets this entitlement. This is a much greater concern than whether they themselves love the child and want to be near him/her.

[Note: I am not advocating here that some distant government entity step in and make these difficult decisions and insist that the child be adopted out. I am advising that, for the sake of society, the child’s welfare must be of greater importance than what the foolish accidental parents may want. There should be pressure from society—again, from their family, their church, their friends and mentors—to help these young people see society’s need for them to value the child. Societal pressure and expectation, even shame, coming from a truly civilized society, is much more likely to bring about the best choices following mistakes than rigidly written laws could do. But laws should make it possible for society to be supported in the pressure.]

Let’s assume that, if these two people are at all susceptible to civilizing influence, then they want for their child what every child is entitled to. If they themselves cannot provide the child’s family, then adoption is the most likely way to provide it. The least that can be expected from the young mother is to bring the child to term and then give the baby to a loving two-parent family, being willing to grieve at her own loss of the child because the child gains so much. That’s a lot to expect of an immature young woman, but civilization requires that it be expected.

The young man absolutely should be held accountable. (This has historically been a major failing of many attempts at civilization.) Society should decide how. My personal belief is that, if marrying the young mother was not what he could do, then he should, for the next 18 years at least, provide support, possibly a trust for the child’s college or other needs, taken out of everything he earns until that child is an adult. This should be done even though the adopting family is expected to be able to provide; it is necessary for the sake of civilization that the young man be held responsible. And the young biological father should have no expectation of visitation; he gave up that right by giving up the opportunity to be the father in a marriage with the mother. Sexual indiscretion does not entitle a male to being honored as a father; he has to actually be one, in partnership with the mother, to earn that. Individual communities may find other solutions, but civilization requires that the father be held accountable for his actions.

Adoption should never be seen as the mother not loving the child enough. It should be seen as the positive, probable, expected course for such a situation—without prolonged stigma to the mother, and certainly without stigma to the child. As long as both biological parents provide for the child’s needs, society can forgive without civilization being decayed.

Adoption family, image from here

I believe that, in a truly civilized society, there will never be insufficient families willing to adopt. Children are too highly valued, and fertility problems come up frequently in nature. [Note: Undervaluing children and celebrating or causing infertility to avoid inconveniencing adults who choose to be sexually active without forming a family are two signs of a decaying society. The documentary Demographic Winter is a good source.[ii]] But, hypothetically, if the young mother were unable to place her baby in an adopting family, she could, if her parents stepped in to assist, raise the child at home. This is, self-evidently, less valuable to civilization. There’s a child without both parents, and the mother’s choices caused that to happen. So her folly can never be condoned. But it can be forgiven, because civilization, no matter how far advanced, is made up of imperfect human beings. The way society sees the situation is what affects whether society is decayed by it. And if this type of situation were rare (which it would tend to be if there were serious stigma against it), then society could absorb the difficulty for the individual child. While maintaining that adoption should be the usual choice, I believe civilized society can allow the young mother to get her own answer through prayer about whether she should keep her child.

There’s more. I’ve written more about this issue than just about any other. Refer to “Defense of Marriage Collection,” from July 2013. http://sphericalmodel.blogspot.com/2013/07/defense-of-marriage-collection.html  I’ve now written six more years of posts. Many of these appear to relate to LGBT issues, but to me this is always about defending real marriage in an effort to build civilization and repair its decay. Here are a few additional posts I believe are worth checking out:

·         Family Proclaiming, April 9, 2015

·         Millennia of Marriage, May 7, 2015

·         Another Nail, February 20, 2017

·         Surprise at Old News, August 10, 2017

·         Family Isn’t Extinct, October 12, 2017

·         Normalizing Has Already Gone Too Far, August 2, 2018

·         Stop Throwing Out the Baby, May 23, 2019

That’s it for this series on civilization values. In summary, civilization requires that we value God, life, family, truth, and property ownership—which, coincidentally, summarizes the Ten Commandments. It’s been good guidance for a very long time, and it works every time it’s tried. Simple, not easy, but worth trying from the family level on up.

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[i] Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-one Conclusions from the Social Sciences, © 2002 Institute for American Values.

[ii] Demographic Winter, video available at www.demographicwinter.com. See also the follow-up, Demographic Bomb.

Family Isn't Extinct

I’ve been watching a new sci-fi series on BYU-TV called Extinct. One of the creators is Orson Scott Card, who wrote Ender’s Game, it’s sequels, and many other sci-fi fiction books and series. Even with those high expectations, I’m surprised at the quality of this show. I don’t know how they do it out of a college campus media program.

It was introduced October 1^st, with two opening episodes. But BYU-TV did something I’m really appreciating. Besides showing one episode a week for the next month and a half, followed by a season finale, they put the first eight episodes online right away, for streaming at your convenience.

So I binge-watched that first week, up through episode 5. And then I decided to slow down, because I didn’t want to have a huge gap between those eight episodes and the finale. Anyway, I recommend the series, if you like sci-fi at all.

There was a moment in episode 5, “Broken,” that I want to highlight.

The premise of the show is that aliens came and wiped out the human race 400 years ago. But those aliens or others (not sure) recorded the DNA and memories of a number of the humans, and then they try to have the human race repopulate centuries later.

The humans wake up, one at a time, in a lake, with their memories from their previous life intact. They are at the age of their prime (mid-20s to mid-30s), regardless of the age at which they died. One character, Abram, was a psychologist near retirement age in his previous life.

I don’t want to give away too many surprises, but Abram has been trying to decode messages from a mysterious obelisk in their fortress, where there used to be a settlement. Rummaging around the place, he finds a notebook with shorthand notes—in a type of shorthand he invented for himself, back when he was a therapist. So it’s not possible that someone else wrote that notebook; he had been there before, trying to decode those very same things.

In episode 5, we get a flashback of the old Abram visiting his wife, Tasha, in the hospital before she dies. Then we see the new, younger Abram, in the fortress, talking with the drone (a floating metal robot about the size of a basketball) as he’s looking for something. If you watch the full episode, this two-minute clip comes at 18 minutes in.

Embed:

Here’s the dialogue from the essential part:

Drone: Looking for something?

Abram: My notebook proves that I was here before. Maybe there’s proof Tasha was too.

Drone: What makes you think your wife may have been reborn?

Abram: Ezra and Lynn. Feena and Duncan. There’s a pattern of restoring couples.

Drone: I’d hardly call four people a reliable statistical sample.

Abram: Not statistics. Sociology. If you want to start a community and generate offspring, you need strong, monogamous relationships.

Drone: You don’t need monogamy to create offspring.

Abram: No, but you need it to create stable families. And you won’t have much of a civilization without those.

This isn’t the only time Orson Scott Card has his characters mention how important family is. I wrote about one place here.

The alien attack, when these Extinct people’s original bodies died, was approximately our day. It’s interesting that it’s an older character who understands, both intuitively and scientifically, the importance of family for building civilization, because in our day, especially among younger generations, that’s not always common knowledge.

For example, there’s this guy whose presentation came up through Mindvalley (a self-help organization, providing information on things as diverse as meditation, healthy eating, breaking through mental blocks, how the brain works, and other informative and sometimes weird things) on Facebook. The guy, Dan Savage, does a longer presentation called “The 3 things we get wrong about love, sex, and monogamy.” I apologize for the bleeped profanity; the subject itself is profane, but in the two-and-a-half-minute promo video [https://www.facebook.com/mindvalley/  October 4, 2017], Savage says,

Every monogamous relationship is a disaster waiting to happen. If you are with someone for 50 or 60 years, and you cheated on them one time, you are terrible at monogamy. It’s an impossible standard of perfection, and it’s why we all fail at it. Those who attempt it almost all fail at it. Those who attempt it almost all fail at it.

And we tell people, and people believe, that if someone touches someone else, someone who’s committed to you, made a monogamous commitment to you, touches someone else with their genitals even once, they didn’t love you. They never loved you. That your entire relationship was a lie, and your…the only corrective is divorce. You must leave that person. We define it as an unforgivable betrayal, and then we experience it as an unforgivable betrayal.

And we sit around with our thumbs in our a—s wondering why the divorce rate is as high as it is, when what we should be telling people is that you will grow up, you will fall in love. Perhaps if monogamy is right for you or what you think you want—a lot of people think they want it and actually don’t—you will make a monogamous commitment. And, asterisk, that doesn’t mean because you’re in love, you’re not going to want to f— other people. You’re still going to want to f— other people; so does your spouse. What monogamy means is you will refrain from f—ing other people, hopefully.

And if you make it through 50 years, and they cheated once or twice, and you cheated once or twice, you were good at mono… you get a monogamy gold medal, like the snowboarder who fell down that day. You should have a monogamy gold medal around your neck, not a noose around your neck.

I’ve been with my husband for 23-ish, 24-ish years, I can’t remember, but a long time. And for 18 of the last years, we have been non-monogamous. I have had conversations with people in monogamous… who are appalled by the fact that we’re public about it, that I’ve talked about it, the fact that we’re parents and we’ve talked about it publicly, and this is how these conversations have gone. I’ve had people look at me and say to me, “I could never do what you and Terry have done, because I value commitment and loyalty too highly.” And I look at them like…  I don’t say anything, but I’m thinking, “You don’t think I’m…  What?”  And the next thing out of the m—f—‘s mouth is, “All three of my marriages have been monogamous.” And I’m like, “Oh, what you’re committed to and loyal to is monogamy, not these a—s you keep marrying and divorcing, but monogamy.” We are committed and loyal to monogamy to such an extent that we are not committed and disloyal to the people we’ve married.

Let’s unpack this, because he’s making a living telling quite a number of untruths.

He’s not in an actual marriage; he’s in a same-sex relationship that cannot produce children (yet they got children from someone who did produce children). He says he’s married, but this doesn’t include the essential sexual relationship that leads to reproduction. And it does not include exclusivity as a marriage contract requires. He calls what he has a non-monogamous committed marriage. And the problem, he says, on his authority, is that the rest of the world thinks marriage should require monogamy.

He claims that nearly all marriages include infidelity, because fidelity is an impossible standard. That is, he thinks it’s hard, and therefore you should give up on the very idea. The social science shows that essentially all long-term same-sex relationships include infidelity—more so for gay men and for lesbians. So if he’s going by his limited experience, that’s about right. But their numbers don’t reflect what is normal for heterosexuals.

Among real marriages—between men and women, married for life, with exclusivity, or in other words monogamous—well beyond half, 70% or more continue without divorce. Of those, 78% of men are never unfaithful, and 86% of women are never unfaithful. Compared to the numbers for gays, those statistics are a sharp night-day contrast.

Heterosexual marriages that face infidelity are severely strained. Often they end in divorce. But where the straying spouse is repentant and willing to do whatever it takes to make amends—and this often takes professional counseling for both spouses—there is no requirement that the marriage ends. Savage is saying the goal is no divorce, which you get if you are willing to stay in a marriage with unrepentant infidelity. He’s not clear on the concept if he thinks that makes for a better actual marriage.

I’m raising an eyebrow at his casual reference to sex, like it’s a typo. If the person committed to you “touches someone else with their genitals even once,” like that could so easily happen. It doesn’t happen accidentally; we don’t walk around in public places with those body parts uncovered, where they could just accidentally bump into someone else’s. No, it happens when you make a number of decisions, a number of steps toward having sex with a person. If that’s with a person you are not committed to, then you did indeed commit betrayal. You lied. Maybe you thought you loved your partner, but apparently not enough to control your lust.

This guy holds himself up as an expert when he has no idea what an actual marriage is like. He doesn’t know that huge numbers of people are happy in their marriages—the vast majority of them with total fidelity. It means something when sex is an expression of love in marriage. It means something else entirely when sex is just about self-gratification within or without a relationship. It matters. Because when it’s about self-gratification, it isn’t an expression of love.

People are happier when sex is an expression of love. And that love grows when the two committed parents bring children into their forever family. Maybe, just maybe, God knew how we were most likely to be happy when he required us to limit sex to within marriage.

Because that’s the only way you get civilization. Without civilization we have savagery. There’s been plenty of that in the news this week. Consider: would it be better for us to slake our lusts wherever and whenever we want—so that whatever Harvey Weinstein and others like him do, we just shrug our shoulders and give them a pass? We don’t even think it’s wrong?

Weinstein’s defense? “Everybody makes mistakes.” Not big, felonious ones. Not dozens or hundreds of times. Not endlessly until caught and finally held accountable.

Who is happier when no one considers sex under any conditions wrong? Not those he has used.

Family--with a man and woman married and faithful, raising their children--is still necessary for civilization.