By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
June 1, 2001
Few news stories bother me much anymore. In many ways, I've seen just about everything and, I think, the average American has also become a bit jaded with all the politically correctness that we've been subjected to in recent years. However, some of the comments that have been made concerning President Bush's decision to appoint what is being called a "marriage czar" in some media reports has really raised the hackles on the back of my neck.
FoxNews reports today a "controversial Bush Administration nominee advocates using federal funds to ensure that wedding bells ring more often in poor neighborhoods" sparking a national debate on just how politics and marriage should mix." Sometime, it seems, between my childhood and the present time marriage has become a controversial issue.
Dr. Wade F. Horn, president of the National Fatherhood Initiative has been nominated by President Bush to serve as the Bush Administration's "marriage czar" as an assistant secretary of Health and Human Services. (HHS) Believe it or not, in 2001 we have reached such a state of cultural decline that Dr. Horn's efforts to "encourage responsible fatherhood" and marriage are being widely ridiculed and attacked.
In fact, some believe a man who encourages responsible fatherhood is a menace to society. The National Organization for Women Legal Defense Fund's Senior Staff Attorney, Tim Casey, in fact said when Horn was nominated in April that "Horn's appointment is a major threat to women, especially low income single mothers. His principal, near exclusive, theme is that increasing the incidence of two parent families is a panacea-like solution for the many contemporary social problems for which he blames single mother families."
Marriage is a major threat to women? Especially low income single mothers?
Casey went on to explain, "Horn embraces many gender stereotypes, opposes abortion, criticizes no-fault divorce, and promotes a sexual morality that many have rejected." He then lists 29 criticisms of Horn to "prove" he is a threat to women. His criticism include: "He thinks privatizing Social Security is a good idea;" and ". Horn wrote during the presidential campaign that "one of the two major Presidential candidates" - Bush -- had been touching on issues of "hard work, self-sacrifice and taking care of others" and "Horn asserts that "Dads are Foundations of the Family Structure", the title of his June 16, 1998 column."
In discussing the apparently now controversial issue of marriage in the New York Times opinion page, Constance R. Arons, who claims to be a Senior Research Scholar for the Council on Contemporary Families, scolds: "The Bible Belt leaders and anti-divorce foot soldiers who push legislative, religious and economic agendas that are aimed at reducing divorce, cohabitation and single-parent households by increasing marriage rates are fighting a moral crusade while neglecting the needs of children. Instead, they could direct their attention - and money - to the needs of parents and children trying to survive in a society that is not meeting their economic and social needs."
This is what was being said back in the 1960s when Daniel Patrick Moynihan was concerned about the high rate of single mothers in what was then called the "Negro community." It had reached the staggering total of 10% of all black families. Today, in some of those same still all black communities, after all the civil rights protests and the nearly $5 TRILLION spent of taxpayer money on various Lyndon Johnson "War on Poverty" schemes, instead of 10% of the babies being born to single women, it is now 90% of the babies being born to single women.
There is simply no way that the "needs of parents and children trying to survive in a society that is not meeting their economic and social needs" can be met in a society that ridicules and actively discourages marriage and intact families. And, for decades that is exactly what has been going on in Washington, D.C.
In the first paragraph to the introduction to my book, COMING HOME - Families Can Stop the Unraveling of America, published five years ago, I wrote:
Suddenly, like a revelation from on high, America is caught up with a new idea. Families are important. Families must be strengthened and preserved, and, as heretical as it may sound, government can't do it, although some people believe it would help if government would stop financing family disintegration."
For decades the Federal Government spent billions of dollars in what certainly SEEMS like an effort to replace the traditional role of husband and fathers with government bureaucrats. I was one of the first women building contractors in both New York, and then, later, in California. After 29 years of marriage, in 1975 I found myself a single mother, no longer raising my children in an affluent suburb with the help of a husband, but alone, and in poverty, struggling to meet the needs of the four of my six children who were still home. Contrary to what we've been told by Hillary Clinton, it is not the "village" (meaning government) that is needed to raise a child. It's a father and mother that are needed to raise a child.
Finding that their socialist agenda has failed miserably, it appears that what we now have going on is a NEW agenda. Once all the government programs were supposed to HELP raise the children. Now, it seems, if the people like Constance Arons and Tim Casey get their way, the government bureaucrats are determined to simply eliminate the family, especially the husband and father, and take total control of the child raising.
One New York Times commentator, Martha F. Davis, who claims to represent the National Organization for Women (NOW) Legal Defense and Education Fund, came up with a novel notion to reduce the number of divorces. She suggested that cutting down on marriages would lower the divorce rate. "Marriage is a wonderful institution, but it isn't right for every couple. Just look at the rates of domestic violence and child abuse."
And, when we look at the rates of domestic violence and child abuse, which Davis doesn't go into, what do we find? As Dr. Wade F. Horn writes on his website at http://www.fatherhood.org/, we find:
·
Almost 75 percent of American children will experience poverty before they turn 11 years old, compared to only 20 percent for families where there are two parents.
· Violent criminals are overwhelmingly males who grew up without fathers: 60 percent of America's rapists, 72 percent of adolescent murders and 70 percent of long-term prison inmates.
· Children living in father absent homes are also more likely to be suspended from school, or to drop out; be treated for an emotional or behavioral problem; commit suicide as adolescents; and be victims of child abuse or neglect.
We find that children of unwed mothers, where the couple are cohabitating without being married, is where by far the majority of domestic violence and child abuse is taking place. The best protection a woman and a child have against violence and child abuse is the protection of a husband and a father. Why would anyone encourage MORE domestic violence and child abuse by discouraging marriage?
Established organizations, whether churches or organizations like the Boy Scouts, that encourage responsibility and traditional family values are under a full scale attack today. The Boy Scouts, which was organized in 1910 by Lord Robert Baden Powell in England, was designed to build good husbands and fathers. As Gavin Grooms, National Chairman of Save Our Scouts puts it (http://www.saveourscouts.org):
"For years the Boy Scouts have been under attack, not only in America, but throughout the world. In some countries the Boy Scouts have given in to the pressure and no longer teach many of the principles that made Lord Baden Powell's dream great:'Camping, good turns, jamborees, he said "are all means, not the end. The end is character with a purpose. And that purpose, that the next generation may be sane in an insane world, and develop the higher realization of service, active service of love, and duty to God and neighbor.'"Yet, in some Scout programs in the world, you will no longer find God. You will no longer find a safe and morally straight environment for young men who once had a program that taught them how to become courageous, honorable and loyal husbands and fathers.
"…Why, do you suppose, has there been such a determined effort on the part of people who do not WANT or cannot possibly BECOME a husband or father to force changes in Scouting so they can be members of a Boy Scout troop?
"Why would a radical feminist, a practicing homosexual or a dedicated atheist demand the "right" to join an organization that was founded to teach them to become a God fearing "husband and father?"
"Simple logic tells us their effort to change or destroy the Scout program has nothing whatever to do with "fairness" or "equality."
Men like Dr. Wade Horn and Gavin Grooms are on the front lines leading the battle to REALLY solve the problems of poverty, child abuse and violence by teaching men and boys how to become real men who will protect not only their families, but also will protect and defend our culture and our country. Give them your support and write to your members of Congress, especially the Senate, and urge them to support the nomination of Dr. Horn.
To contact your member of congress: http://www.bannerofliberty.com/PLobby/ContactCongress.html
Other Contacts:
Gavin Grooms - Save our Scouts petition: http://www.saveourscouts.com/index.html#petition
To e-mail Gavin Grooms - scouter@saveourscouts.org
Dr. Wade Horn -National Fatherhood Initiative - http://www.fatherhood.org
To comment on this analysis: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com
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