The Family Obliterated

We live in strange times. So persistent and insistent have been the various radical minority groups, that increasingly we are living in an Alice in Wonderland world. Readers will recall this exchange between Humpty Dumpty and Alice:

Humpty Dumpty: When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.
Alice: The question is, whether you can make words mean so many different things.
Humpty Dumpty: The question is: which is to be master – that’s all.

That is exactly the situation we face today, with verbal engineers decimating commonly accepted meanings and definitions of words in order to bring about radical social engineering. And they have been very successful at this. This is especially so in the area of the family.

For millennia everyone knew that family meant one thing, and one thing only: mum, dad and the kids. Sure, extended families and the like were part of the picture, but family has always meant any group of people related by blood, heterosexual marriage, or adoption.

But our societal wrecking crews have managed to convince us that family can mean anything we want it to be. Three men and a dog? No probs, you got family. A football team? Sure, why not? So it comes as no surprise that an article in the mainstream media about a family consisting of one son and four mothers can apparently be written by a journalist with a straight face.

That such a story can even be passed off as serious journalism is simply staggering. But of course the MSM has long ago replaced objective covering of news and facts with advocacy journalism. Today many so-called news articles are little more than glorified editorials, pushing ideological agendas.

The piece in question, published in the June 16, 2007 Sydney Morning Herald, was penned by veteran feminist and familyphobe, Adele Horen. The article reads like something that could have been lifted straight out of the homosexual press. It is all about the normalcy of such a situation, and about seeking to foist this redefined ‘family’ onto the rest of society.

This is how Horen describes this grouping: “In his case, there are one, two, three, and, at a pinch, four women who are proud to call Eamon ‘son’. There is Mary Waterford, the mother who gave birth to him almost 21 years ago, and Jill Day, Mary’s partner at the time. After they split up when Eamon was about two, Jill moved in with Sarah Dillane; and then Mary and Judy Finch became partners when Eamon was about six. All the women have been constants in his life since he can remember.”

And on and on goes the story, describing this peachy keen social arrangement. Indeed, the story is really about the “long battle for equal rights for gay couples and gay parents”. Sorry, but equality only applies to that which is equal. There is nothing equivalent about the natural family, consisting of two biological parents, and a social arrangement in which any number of players are involved.

And as an advocacy piece, Horen is quite happy to play fast and loose with the facts. She makes this claim for example: “The 2001 census recorded 20,000 self-identified same-sex couples, a figure regarded as a gross under-representation.” Regarded by whom? The homosexual lobby of course. One might as well argue that the figure for cigarette smokers is a “gross under-representation”. It would be, by the tobacco industry of course.

Like all social revolutionaries, Horen is quite happy to ignore the mountain of evidence that now exists which shows that children do best when raised by their biological parents. But radicals seldom let the facts get in the way of their ideology.

So this is the madness we have come to. Family can now mean precisely anything whatsoever we want it to mean. We have certainly arrived at the state of affairs in which Orwellian doublespeak has become mainstream amongst our intelligentsia and media elite. “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength” was the motto of “The Party” in George Orwell’s prophetic 1949 novel, 1984. It seems that “the Party” is alive and well in the SMH in particular, and our intellectualoids in general.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/im-not-gay-but-my-four-mums-are/2007/06/15/1181414542339.html#

[707 words]

12 Replies to “The Family Obliterated”

  1. Oh the malignant MSM. When are they going to publish a wholesome perspective of the family and an indepth analysis of how enriching and fulfilling it is to a child to have their own biological parents of both sexes? Why not publish the actual figures which show that they do better emotionally, academically and all round? As you say, Orwellian doublespeak. And I have to say, you’ve inspired me to get out ‘1984’ for another read in the light of the insane world we now find ourselves in.
    Thanks Bill.
    Dee Graf

  2. Dear Bill and Dee,
    This is a letter that I sent to Mr Allan Johnson, the British Minister for Education, who last year came out with the statement that schools should not teach children the difference between right and wrong (let them make up their own moral code). I sent this letter challenging his claim that Britain is the success it is today because of the laws that at one time protected heterosexual, monogamous and enduring marriage, it has jettisoned. He was saying that faith schools should not be allowed to say that the Judeo-Christian model of marriage was the only one.

    Dear Mr Johnson,
    In the face of huge family breakdown, children having no moral compass, rampant violence and bullying amongst teenagers with knifings and shootings, yet another hike in the numbers of teenagers with STIs, unwanted pregnancies and abortions, one in ten children suffering from significant mental health problems, prisons so full that thousands are going to have to be released in order to take in fresh inmates….in the face of all this and more, the picture that you paint of a successful and more enlightened society is one, that no matter what type of spectacles I put on, I do not recognise. How you can claim on the Today Programme that you think that we live in a better society because of a relaxation of laws that, at one time, protected the family from disintegration? You don’t even believe it yourself! You are condemned out of your own mouth when you boast of the legislation, including the civil partnerships regulatations, that you and your party machine have introduced and which clearly is the cause of society unravelling before our very eyes.

    Naturally I have had no answer.

    David Skinner, UK

  3. Same with the lie that half of all marriages end in divorce, totally demolished in Thomas Sowell’s great book The Vision of the Anointed. This oft-repeated claim was based on statistics that showed in a given year, there were half as many divorces as marriages. Of course, the stats for marriage were only for marriage that began that year, while the divorces were for marriages that had begun any year previously. So this was like noting that there were twice as many births as deaths one year, then claiming that half the population was going to die any year!
    Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

  4. Bill,

    I’m puzzled by the title you chose for this piece. In what way is “the family”, which I assume you mean in the generic sense, obliterated simply because different types of family exist in the world?

    Owing to divorce, death, alcohol, drugs, domestic violence, poverty, ignorance and other factors, many children are not raised in the “natural family” circumstances that you hold up as the only acceptable “real” family.

    Surely the most important factor is that children are raised in a loving, caring, providing environment, and this story certainly indicates that this young man has had such an upbringing.

    Steve Angelino, WA

  5. Dear Jonathan, on the question of stastistics you are probably aware of Josh McDowell’s Stewed Tomato analogy: a student claims that by puting a stewed tomato in his right track shoe he is able to do a 100 yard dash in 10 seconds, plus experience a peace, love and joy that he had never experienced before. Josh goes on to say that it is difficult to argue with a student like that if his life backs up what he says. However he then goes on to ask how many other people in that college, town, country and continent had experienced the same love, peace, joy and increased track speed as the result of stewed tomato in thier right track shoe.

    If we apply that test to Eamon Waterford’s experence of being related to four lesbians, we come to the same absurd conclusion. But when we ask how many children, grandchildren, communities and towns have experienced the same creativity, stability, care, respect, responsibility and self-sacrifice by being related to the heterosexual, monogomous and enduring family, the answer is that millions from all backgrounds, nationalites and professions have seen their lives elevated to new levels of peace and joy by following the Judeo/Christian model for the family.

    David Skinner UK

  6. Jonathon
    Thanks for that bit of info. But I hear the bit about ‘half of all marriages end in divorce’ advocated all the time in Australia and the US. I always thought it was accurate.
    Damien Spillane

  7. Damien,

    Jonathan didn’t actually provide any info. While it’s true to say that you can’t compare marriages and divorces in any one year to determine the long-term divorce rate, the “analogy” in the last sentence about the death rate is a misleading example of the kind of the error involved.

    The actual divorce rate in Australia, i.e. the percentage of marriages that end in divorce, depends on what period of time you look at the figures. It currently stands at 40% according to the AIFS, but other sources suggest it is about 46%. Not exactly great news.

    I’d like to know what Jonathan thinks the rate is. It may not be 50% but it’s not far below it.

    Steve Angelino, WA

  8. Dear Bill, Proverbs 14:12: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.”

    The homosexual war will be won, in the initial stages, by mimicking heterosexual marriage, but the homosexual community does not really want to replicate traditional marriage. When the homosexual community is offered marriage there is not exactly a stampede. The evidence shows that marriage does not suit their lifestyle, which in their own view is at the very cutting edge of Metro life. What they want is the acceptance and recognition, but it is heterosexual-like marriage which is easiest to sell to the wider heterosexual community. Even those who do want marriage – especially gay men – tend not to see a need to restrict their sexual activity to their menage. Is this the real face of a homosexual family?
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=408666&in_page_id=1879&in_a_source=

    If people believe marriage is just an invention, then they will feel free to change it, redefine it, or even discard it. Clearly the ultimate aim is to destroy marriage completely.

    David Skinner, UK

  9. When a couple marries they do so with an intention to begin a family.
    Children are the fruit of a normal heterosexual relationship and regardless of how much love the homosexual group proclaims they cannot produce children.
    The homosexual group “chose” their lifestyle and as such should accept the consequences of their choice.
    If the fruit of the marriage is children and a homosexual relationship is unable to produce a child then how can it be recognised as a true marriage.
    If my child behaved in the same manner as many “left winged radicals” I would tell her to grow up.
    A person is faced daily with choices, we must abide by the results of our decisions not be blaming others others or trying to raise sympathy because what we decided to do did not produce the results we wanted.
    Jim Sturla

  10. Thanks Steve

    It is obliterated by being redefined out of existence. And of course death, accidents and many other unfortunate situations often mean the family unit is broken up: eg., the death of a parent, and so on. But that is quite different from deliberately seeking to remake the family unit. Everywhere around the world the mother-father-child unit has been the norm. Today we are embarked on a radical social experiment which is undermining the natural family unit.

    And as I said here and so many places elsewhere, you are absolutely wrong in stating that family structure makes no difference to the outcome of children. It overwhelmingly matters, as over 10,000 international studies from the past three decades have made absolutely clear.

    So decisive is the data, that we can even document how kids will in fact do worse when a parent leaves the family because of divorce, than if a parent leaves a family because of death. The research on this has been very thorough and very meticulous.

    By every indicator – be it educational outcomes, suicide rates, drug abuse, criminal involvement, etc. – the research is unmistakeable here: children do better, all things considered, and with all variables accounted for, when raised by their biological mothers and fathers, preferably cemented by marriage. There are exceptions of course, but exception do not make the rule.

    So the issue here is not, say, the tragedy of a parent dying, but of deliberately bringing a child into the world knowing that one of the two most important players will be absent, by choice. So whether it is a same-sex couple, or a single woman choosing to parent a child, this is in fact a form of child neglect, as the social science data so clearly and decisively shows.

    Finally, it is interesting how on so many other issues you make yourself out to be concerned only with the facts, evidence and data, not faith or felling. Yet on this issue Steve, you are ignoring or denying the data and evidence, while going instead on faith or feeling.

    Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

  11. The Islamisation of western society will put an end to all this. Just as Mohammed rose up against a corrupt Christianity in his day, so will Moslems today. Wait and see.
    Rev. Greg Brien

  12. Damien

    I am still reading that Sowell book when I have time. He has some interesting facts about domestic violence as well. He shows that the women who are safest from domestic violence are wives. Women in de facto relationships are much more often the victims of violence.

    Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

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