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Re: NYT: Are Family Values Outdated -Room for Debate
I found the Log Cabin Republican one particularly interesting. It's too bad his party doesn't support him.
From "One Man, One Woman", this part made me
While increasingly complicated families and households have required increasingly complicated family law, ?boring? stable mom-and-pop families are often creative incubators and economic juggernauts, consolidating their unique talents and their incomes, and giving birth not only to new people but also to new opportunities for their fellow citizens (like homebuilders and schoolteachers, to name but a couple).
How do single parent families, or gay parent families not create opportunities for homebuilders and schoolteachers? How do they not have unique talents? THis doesn't even make sense.
It depends on what is being debated, I suppose. When the Right talks about family values, it is valuing a very specific type of family and they see anyone outside of that not only as different, but as a threat to their family. Gay families, single moms, unmarried couples, etc..... It's kinda paranoid. These peoples' lifestyles could infiltrate their children's brains and ruin America. But then that same Family Values crowd is sort of silent when it comes to things like supporting programs for children in poverty or things that would maybe help out families that don't meet their criteria.
If you broaden the definition of "family" and were more specific on what needs to be valued, the debate could maybe get somewhere. Right now it's just stuck.
Above Us Only Sky
This one is excellent.
?Family values? talk is literally fantastic, because it is utterly improbable. Just as we place hope in winged horses and caped crusaders, the rally cries of ?protect marriage? and ?preserve decency? only work to stir the troops. Will campaign speeches curb the divorce rate? Does a party platform make couples think twice about the morality of living together? Is prayer a reliable form of birth control? Answer to all: No, no and we wish.
?Family values? talk mobilizes voters. It identifies an enemy ? which most likely is the progression of time ? that allows citizens to channel frustration about the state of today?s world. Imagine: a room of people all wishing for the good ol? days. Men worked, women cleaned, children obeyed and ?everyone knew each other and we all got along.?
I'm going to go all Pi here... but statistically states like Massachusetts have very low divorce states while states like TN and MS have very high states yet preach family values. Mass was the first state to allow gays to marry and yet it doesn't seem to threaten traditional marriage.
Above Us Only Sky
More like "a tool we use to demonize, shame and persecute anyone who looks, acts, or believes differently from us." And "a tactic used to whip our base into a frenzy of fear, ensuring that they will continue to vote for us."
Also, a big fat DITTO to the fact that it all means nothing when they only care about people before they're born, or people who look, think, and act like them.