The Steadfast Patriot

Dear Main Street,

Decided to leak a whole chapter from my new book I'm writing to see what you all think. It's almost finished, but still in the draft process.

-Jay Young

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The Nuclear Family: Its Not Rocket Science

    I hope I don't scare you by putting 'the family segment' as the first substantial chapter in this book. As a matter of fact, I think you'll enjoy it. I try to put things into everyday language as much as possible, though occasionally it may seem a bit confusing at first, but I thoroughly explain it and try to cover as much as I can. No, I can't work magic like Dr. Phil or fix your teen into an angel. This is just basic, common American sense that can be put into practice. So here goes.

    The sacred tradition of a family, a social unit headed by one man and one woman, has had a profound impact on society, culture, and life as we know it (I know, deep, huh?). Rooted in Judeo-Christian values and stemming from the beginning of time at the cradle of civilization, back to the biblical time of Adam and Eve.

    Even if you don't believe in religion, it's hard to deny the importance of the nuclear family and marriage as a stable, deep-rooted structure acting as a sort of anchor and foundation of our civilization. Families are, in essence, the smallest and most basic form of government in the world, a simple hierarchy or mini-state if you will, which comprise the basic building blocks of society. As a matter of course, the husband and wife are charged with certain jobs in distinct focus, originating from biblical principles as well as practical matters of human sexuality, psychological makeup, and social temperament based on that particular gender's natural inner subconscious and intrinsic strengths. Okay, big breath; in laymen's terms, these are just fancy words for their natural abilities and God-given gifts. For example, through custom and established practice, the father is (traditionally) the chief-breadwinner, chief-protector, and considered the head of the family's religious and spiritual needs. He is the one who is physically stronger and more able to go out and make the living, because the mother traditionally needed to stay home and raise the children. She is the child-bearer and raiser, given the very important and often underrated task of nurturing the next generation of Americans and, in doing so, is often the primary person who bequeaths the family values and principles.  She is blessed with the task of heading the household's domestic life, but radical feminists trash the role as wretched and meaningless, and portray stay-at-home moms as traitors to the "sisterhood". They wholly disapprove of a woman's crucial role in the family and decry marriage as an injustice created by male society to oppress women across the globe.

    American radical feminist Robin Morgan, a political activist and editor of Sisterhood is Powerful and Ms. Magazine, speaks of the significant roles men and women each play in marriage and their important differences as sexism and clearly she utterly despises it. "We can't destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage." To be fair, Mrs. Morgan (yes, she is married now, look it up if you don't believe me), we can't destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy men and women. That would mean wiping out the human race. Men and women are physically, biologically, and psychologically different, and each play essential roles in the circle of life which have natural-born differences. In stark reality to the radical feminist agenda, Robin Morgan couldn't be further from the truth. Marriage, while dolling out different jobs to best suit the particular needs and strengths of men and women, gives them an equal role and a level playing field as the dual ruling authorities, each with a fair voice.

    Leader of the feminist organization NOW, Sheila Cronin, fully complies with her radical colleague. "Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women's movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage."

    Out of touch with the moral majority and America's prized heritage, radical feminists like Cronin compare the "liberation" of women through the total and complete destruction of marriage to the freeing of black slaves and emancipation. It may sound crazy, but some people actually do believe in this radical propaganda. Again, getting back to reality and out of the pink clouds, marriage primarily protects women and their children from oppression and abuse. Wedlock, when properly maintained, ensures the children stability and a future, the wife love and security, and protects the family from a ditch-and-run father who bails out, either seeking to shed his responsibility or go after another, often younger, woman, leaving the family to deal with the consequences of his poor decisions. Long-term personal, legal, financial, and spiritual commitment makes it much more difficult for a husband to abandon his marriage when the going gets tough. Husbands and wives were meant to weather storms together as a family, perhaps wavering at times but never to falter. They are supposed to be unbreakable and inseparable, like the Cleavers in "Leave it to Beaver" or the superhero family from "The Incredibles". Unlike a woman who co-inhabits a house wither her boyfriend who can leave his "baby mama" at any moment that behooves him, marriage forces a man to discipline himself, make a life-long commitment to love and cherish his family, and stick with them as their husband and father, not the "baby daddy" or "mommy's boyfriend. It forces him wait until he is mature and truly ready to take on the responsibility of fully raising a family. Far too often, Uncle Sam becomes the daddy and hands out welfare and child dependency checks at the expense of taxpayers. Baby daddies, take responsibility. You're fathers now, and whether you like it or not you made the choice and what's done is done.

    The quote below is one of the most powerful, meaningful oaths that can ever be spoken by human lips. It is the traditional wedding vows, and you've probably heard them, or something similar, before.

    I [name] take you [spouse] to be my lawfully wedded husband/wife. To have and to hold, from this day forward. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish ?till death do us part. And hereto I pledge you my faithfulness.

    These compelling words, a vow of life-long allegiance, are not to be taken lightly. Unfortunately, these vows not mean to be broken until death are too often severed at the slightest human whim. Today in our morally-challenged society, half of all marriages end in divorce. How does this tragic ending, the opposite of all happily-ever-afters, effect families and society as a whole?

1.    Growing up in a divorced family greatly increases the chances of ending one's own marriage, a phenomenon called the divorce cycle or the intergenerational transmission of divorce.

2.    Single mothers are nine times more likely to live in deep poverty than the married family, with incomes less than half of the official poverty line.

3.    Fatherless children are three times more likely to fail school, require psychiatric treatment and commit suicides as adolescents.

4.    They are also up to 40 times more likely to experience child abuse compared with children growing up in two-parent families.

5.    Religious worship, which has been linked to better health, longer marriages, and better family life, drops after the parents' divorce.

Divorces have a general negative impact on all families morally, economically, psychologically, socially, and spiritually, as explained above.

The best protection for women and their children from abusive boyfriends and ditch-and-run "baby daddies", relationships that lack the stableness and security of marriage, is marriage. If a man or woman truly doesn't love you in the first place, he or she will most likely not even want to commit to a long-term relationship like marriage. And even if they do commit with the best of intentions, they can always bail, even at the moment you may need them the most. Half the people do anyway. Do you want that couple to be you?

So, what happens if all else fails? If the husband is repeatedly abusive of his wife and children, or the wife frequently cheats on her husband, or spouses commit other serious offenses against their family? There still is one way out; divorce. Do I sound like I'm contradicting myself?

As I have already explained, divorce has a general negative impact on families and on society, but if relationships are so bad that they are truly falling apart and the dye has been cast, that the problem is irremediable and uncorrectable, and if the offense is unforgivable and the family is unable to move on, that the couple and/or family have been through counseling and all other options have been completely exhausted, the only way to get to the healing process is divorce. That's why it exists; to act as a fail-safe.

Divorce, while an important "emergency exit" is just that; a way out for use only in an emergency. But unlike the last resort or desperate remedy it was created to be, divorce is all too easy to obtain and more often than not cause more damage than healing. In today's fast-paced world of iPods, touch phones, microchips, blogging, and Twitter, no-fault divorces are one of the worst offenders responsible for the dangerously high divorce rate in this country, one of the highest in the world. There was never meant to be an easy way out of marriage because it is a life-long commitment, lawfully ordered by human authority and sanctioned by God Himself. No-fault marriages destroy all that, allowing couples to separate simply if they are tired of one another. Fifteen states now offer some form of no-fault "easy-way-out" divorces, laws that should be illegal because they destroy families and drive poverty and crime sky high. The truth is, there is no easy way out. Marriage is a commitment until death.

    How should our government and lawmakers correct this problem, fight crime and poverty in the long-term, and reroute America's moral compass back to where it should be, pointing upwards?

1.    Establish greater tax incentives as well as tax cuts for married couples. Instead of punishing people for getting married, let's encourage them. Rather than have "daddy Sam" bankroll single mothers on welfare (we are not talking about widows or victims of rape here, but of women who make a conscious decision not to get married and then get pregnant) who take the "quick and easy" path, give the married couples the extra benefits in the form of tax cuts. Their efforts of long-term commitment help to keep crime and poverty low and ultimately better society. The cuts pay for themselves in the long run.

2.    End no-fault divorces for people with children under age 21, or better yet, abolish all no-faults. These forms of divorces implicitly break the vows taken on the day they said "I do", destroys family relationships, often leads to future hardships, and hurts children most of all.

3.    Open the door to a new option - the "Covenant Marriage: - nearly unbreakable except for the worst circumstances, it is what marriage was originally and still is intended to be. While we shouldn't need a "special" Covenant Marriage since "regular" marriage itself is supposed to be the special covenant, this would greatly encourage long-term commitment and strongly deter divorce because it would be penalized. Plus, what wife would accept a "regular, average" marriage when they could have something more special? I can almost hear them now. "What, you want a regular ol' marriage just in case you wanna ditch me?!  Uh, uh, baby I don't think so!" Most women (and men for that matter) want a happily-ever-after and don't expect to break the oath of marriage later in life.

   These three basic steps, as well as additional divorce restrictions and regulations, would do much to lower the divorce rate, lengthen marriages, strengthen families, and fight long-term crime and poverty by getting to the root of the problem; dysfunctional families. Our lawmakers would do well to implement the recommended steps above, for the sake of our great nation. Indeed, building stronger, healthier family relationships will lead to better building blocks for society and is almost a panacea to help cure the nation of our moral flu and would be a big step forward in taking the lead in the so-called culture wars. The fact remains undiminished; conservatives still can win the culture wars. Sure, we are losing ground and falling behind, and we'll have to make up for that. But we still have the hearts and minds of the majority of the American people. All it takes is some courage, leadership, and the willingness to stand up and fight for what is right even if, at first, you're standing alone. Because I assure you, people will follow. We cannot be afraid to take afraid to speak up and take action. As 18th century English philosopher and the philosophical founder of modern conservatism once said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." We my friends are naturally stronger than them because we have the truth on our side. Now let us stop letting ourselves fall behind and take steps, like those I listed above, to win back our values and principles and the moral nation the founding fathers envisioned.

    We speak to the conscience of America, while radical feminists push an agenda that is contrary to everything this country has stood for in its brief, 200 and some years of existence. Their "values" are often in direct conflict with the principles of the moral majority and Americans at large. And while they preach "feminism" and proclaim themselves champions of women's rights and liberties, they stand idly by when those who don't fully oblige to their radical agenda are unfairly attacked.

    In this instance, I speak of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin when she was Senator John McCain's vice presidential running mate. She really energized the conservative base and had many Republicans, even Independents, on board. Palin shot fear straight into the hearts and minds of liberals, because she was tough, wasn't afraid to speak her mind, and she was a strong woman. Ironically, many liberals are secretly afraid of strong conservative women much more so than men.

    Let's get real here; McCain wasn't the real threat to the Obama machine or the liberal agenda. He didn't have the hearts and minds of the majority of Americans. But Sarah Palin did, so the liberals mobilized the Democratic war machine against her, the mud-slingers, dirt-diggers, character assassinators, sparing no mercy because the White House was up for grabs.

    We had heard Obama tell us and the bloggers to "lay off my wife". And I quote frpm an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America": "If they think that they're going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful because that I find unacceptable, the notion that you start attacking my wife or my family." He went on to call the strategy "low class" and perhaps it may be or may not. But its a double standard. Liberals and the elite media, of course, backed him up, citing the family is "off limits" since they weren't running for office. Okay, you have a point, though I would reason to say that anybody campaigning for a candidate (like his wife Michelle) should be fair game.

    But then it was revealed that Bristol Palin, the Governor?s seventeen year-old daughter, was pregnant. It was the top story for weeks, and the media had a firestorm with it. The tabloids, the liberal press, and of course NBC, had a bonanza with it. Finally, after all that dirt they had been desperately scarping to dig up, they found something even though it was only about Palin's daughter. They cast it in the national spotlight as a national embarrassment to Republicans and, more importantly, to Bristol and her family. She was humiliated on national television, newspapers, and magazines across the country by partisan elite media who will get what they want at any cost. For God sakes, she's seventeen! Why was Michelle Obama completely off limits when Bristol Palin was completely trashed? Isn't that a huge double standard?

    To make matters worse, soon we started seeing pictures of Palin photo-shopped into bodies wearing skimpy bikinis and wielding rifles like some sort of lawless, wild western cowgirl. And the liberal media lambasted Palin for the amount of money spent on her clothes but spoke nothing of the elaborate outfits worn of Michelle, Hillary, and Jill Biden. Who are the hypocrites here? While the media and press was being outright dirty and sexist, the feminists stood idly by as if they were mute, deaf, and blind. Where is the outrage? Feminists are supposed to be protectors of women and warriors against sexism, but they did not stand for Sarah Palin, or her daughter Bristol. Apparently, since they didn't share the same extreme views and didn't fit their radical agenda, they sat quiet. Even the McCain campaign didn't stand up for her, and shame on them! That probably cost them the election.

    Palin soon resigned from Governor after having been left with thousands of dollars in legal fees from frivolous lawsuits, most of which if not all were thrown out of court and none of which she was ever convicted. Sarah is now left to clean up after the Democratic war machine and the mud spewed onto her family. Clearly, feminists care more about their radical agenda then they do the rights of women.

    The same radical feminists go so far as to even defend pornography, nudity, and prostitution as "women's rights". In reality, these immoral acts only destroys women and lowers their social standing by objectifying them and giving men the message that women are material things, to be used, and then discarded, that they are objects and only good if they're hot or still young, and if they're not, they're worthless. Prostitution is also physically and emotionally dangerous to women do to abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, and all kinds of other causes, so why do radical feminists defend it?

    Bottom line; radical feminists are hypocrites. Not your typical neighbor "I'm for women's rights", but the radical, extremist feminists. Now that I've made my point, let's move on to another family and moral issue that currently plagues politics today; gay marriage.

    Fact: marriage is the union between one man and one woman. If you didn't see the period there, I'll just spell it out: period.

    Liberals and feminists would scream at me for claiming this as fact, but it's true. This is how marriage has always been defined and how it has been since it was created. It's natural; it's how we reproduce. You don't see any gay partners in the wild because it isn't natural. Sure you have the occasional, bizarre instance, such as the couple of confused and lonely penguins in a San Francisco zoo who lived as a nesting couple, but Harry the penguin ditched his roommate Pepper after six years. Sorry, Pepper, but when he was given the chance to see a female penguin, he decided to move in with her, and now Harry and Linda are a happy couple. Poor pepper, but love hurts.

    Once we extend marriage rights to the LGBT community, not only will that destroy families and marriage as we know it and destroy a semi-moral society, other morally-challenged groups, such as polygamists, will want it as well, leading to further degradation of our society. Fifty year-old men will want the right to marry eight year-old girls because "its true love" and "they have rights, why don't I?". Will incest be legalized? Where does it end? Will rights extend so far that Tommy will be able to petition to marry his pet turtle, and win? "But I love it, that's all that matters!" Welcome to the marriage of the future. "I now pronounce you man and tortoise."

    If you're gay and want to get hitched, go do it in Sweden, but not in this country. It's not what we stand for, nor what we have ever stood for.

    I have no problem with gay people; I am certainly not homophobic. And to be candid, I sympathize with gay people who want to get married, as I happen to know many and understand them, and am on friendly terms with them. But it's just not America. I am against gay marriages, but I am not against laws allowing partnerships. To be honest, I think that is their concern and we have no business forbidding people to love each other, even if we don't understand or may not agree with it. And if they want to go get married in a foreign country, great! Who knows, maybe I'll even attend. We do, however, as moral American citizens, have a right to protect society and the institution of marriage as defining it for what it is; between a man and a woman.

    So how do we solve this moral dilemma? Write a federal law defining marriage as between "one man and one woman."

    Now many strict constitutionalists (like many conservatives) are against this, arguing that it's supposedly "unconstitutional" and that the matter should be left up to the individual states. The fact is, if we left everything of such moral and ethical importance to each individual state, nothing would ever get done and we couldn't grow together as one nation under God. And if you still want to make the claim that it's unconstitutional then the heck with it, make it a constitutional amendment; then it's constitutional! The only way to solve a national problem is on a national level. Marriage must be a universal term, not a state or local term that varies from city to city; that's too complex and confusing. A federal Defense of Marriage Act or a Sanctity of Marriage amendment to the Constitution of these United States would help our nation get back on track and we would be one giant step ahead in winning the culture wars. It's as simple as that. So call and write your senators and representatives, and tell them to support a federal law or constitutional amendment (in which two-thirds of the states must adapt in order to be enacted) on the basis of defining marriage as between "one man and one woman".