Fractured Families and Social Engineering

We live in an age of ever escalating rights’ claims, but with ever decreasing emphasis on responsibility and obligation. Every day new claims to rights are being heard, often just pulled out of the hat. And each new day sees less and less talk of duty and of responsibility.

That is simply a recipe for disaster. No society can last and flourish if it thinks it can go rights mad while neglecting duty and obligation. Rights without responsibilities simply mean the end of a free nation. A nation obsessed with rights but which knows little or nothing of our social and moral obligations will soon spiral out of control.

And we are witnessing this very thing today. Daily newspaper headlines inform us of ever more rights being demanded, yet without any sense of responsibility or duty attached to them. These rights seem to come from nowhere, and indeed, were only recently seen as vices. Now we have turned them into virtues.

Consider the family unit. For centuries we have attached great importance to the family, that is: mother, father, child. We long knew that children do best when raised by their own biological parents, cemented by marriage. But with the new Assisted Reproductive Technologies in particular, and the war on marriage and family in general, we have thrown millennia of wisdom out the window.

Now we think that because science and technology allows us to do something, we should do it. Thus science has outstripped morality, and anything goes in our Brave New World. And all the old concerns about protecting the most vulnerable, and our obligations to them, have gone out the window as well.

The wellbeing of children used to be the paramount consideration in family and social issues. Now they are at best an after-thought and at worst a political football for the activists. They are simply guinea pigs in our social engineering schemes.

Consider this incredible story: “A sperm donor has been ordered to pay child support for the biological daughter he fathered to a lesbian couple who found him via Craigslist. Angela Bauer, 40, and partner Jennifer Schreiner, 34, placed an ad on the site three years ago for a donor which was answered by William Marotta. ‘We are foster and adoptive parents and now we desire to share a pregnancy and birth together,’ Bauer wrote in the online posting.

“Mr Marotta provided sperm which was used for artificial insemination by Ms Schreiner. In return, he gave up parental rights including financial duties for the child. The three signed a legal document which stated Mr Marotta, a married mechanic who fosters children with his wife, would have no rights to the child.

“Bauer and Schreiner updated Marotta on their daughter’s well-being occasionally but he has had little contact, according to the Kansas City Star. The arrangement changed earlier this year when Ms Schreiner, the only parent registered on her daughter’s birth certificate, applied for social welfare.

“Ms Bauer had been supporting the child but was left unable to work due to ill health. On October 3, 2012, attorney Mark McMillan filed a petition on behalf of the Department of Children and Families seeking a ruling that Marotta is the father of Schreiner’s child and owes a duty to support her.”

Oh, and the lesbian couple separated in 2010. There are so many levels of madness going on here that one hardly knows where to begin. How did we ever get to the place that we could buy and sell things like sperm and eggs as if they were simply CDs or plasma TVs?

How did the sacred nature of new life and its creation become just a crass commodity like any other? And what about the fundamental right of a child to be born and raised by his own biological parents, and to be raised in a household where marriage holds them together and sets them apart from all others?

And how does a sperm donor become the main one responsible for a child’s upkeep in such a socially messed up scenario? There are so many questions one can ask here, and seemingly so very few answers. Welcome to the Brave new World of child manufacture.

It is all part of the dehumanised and depersonalised scary new world of ART and bioengineering. Thus we have the purchasing and the manufacture of children; disposable and replaceable parents; scientists and labs making life instead of a loving husband and wife; bizarre family arrangements which even the wisdom of Solomon could not adjudicate.

These are just some of the many worms that have exploded out of the Pandora’s Box which may never be able to be closed again. We have sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind. Where all this will lead to no one seems to know. It just seems to get more spooky and out-of-control each passing day.

And as usual children will be the real losers here. But so too will be marriage, family, society and Western civilisation. Moreover, the really scary thing is we are often not even shocked or repulsed by all these things taking place. Back in 1997 bioethicist Leon Kass wrote an important piece entitled “The Wisdom of Repugnance”.

While dealing particularly with the issue of human cloning, it was a prophetic cry for modern man to wake up and realise what calamitous designs we are bringing about, and how we have lost the ability to even be jolted by these new developments. He said in part:

“Changes in the broader culture make it now vastly more difficult to express a common and respectful understanding of sexuality, procreation, nascent life, family, and the meaning of motherhood, fatherhood and the links between the generations. Twenty-five years ago, abortion was still largely illegal and thought to be immoral, the sexual revolution (made possible by the extramarital use of the pill) was still in its infancy, and few had yet heard about the reproductive rights of single women, homosexual men and lesbians. (Never mind shameless memoirs about one’s own incest!)

“Then one could argue, without embarrassment, that the new technologies of human reproduction — babies without sex — and their confounding of normal kin relations — who’s the mother: the egg donor, the surrogate who carries and delivers, or the one who rears? — would ‘undermine the justification and support that biological parenthood gives to the monogamous marriage.’ Today, defenders of stable, monogamous marriage risk charges of giving offense to those adults who are living in ‘new family forms’ or to those children who, even without the benefit of assisted reproduction, have acquired either three or four parents or one or none at all.

“Today, one must even apologize for voicing opinions that twenty-five years ago were nearly universally regarded as the core of our culture’s wisdom on these matters. In a world whose once-given natural boundaries are blurred by technological change and whose moral boundaries are seemingly up for grabs, it is much more difficult to make persuasive the still compelling case against cloning human beings. As Raskolnikov put it, ‘man gets used to everything — the beast!’”

It is a frightening time to be alive, for the minds of those who have no moral or spiritual constraints keep spinning further and further into the abyss. And we all pay the price for it.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2255241/Sperm-donor-ordered-pay-child-support-lesbian-couple-despite-giving-rights-child.html
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/medical_ethics/me0006.html

[1216 words]

23 Replies to “Fractured Families and Social Engineering”

  1. And underneath it all is the fact that both of these woman can’t be trusted.

    Having signed a legal document back then to remove any financial burden from the sperm donor, Ms Schreiner has abandoned the relationship (ha!) and the child – just like any irresponsible male parent, whose same behaviour would be decried by the femenazis, and who would be chased down and held to account.

    And naturally, on her own Ms Bauer finds it financially burdensome. But instead of keeping her word and upholding the agreement, Ms Bauer goes after Mr Marotta, and NOT Ms Schreiner who is named on the birth certificate. And she has the support of the Department of Children and Families.

    MADness!

    John Angelico

  2. Yet another case of beaurocracy gone mad.Will prbably deter others from supplying sperm – good. Trading eggs and sperm is little better than slavery and that was outlawed some time ago.

    Patricia Rogers

  3. Thanks again for another perceptive article – and yes so sad to see the ‘powers that be’ so corrupted that they have been captured by these satanic deceptions.

    As we know the “gay rights” and demand for their ‘marriage’ is one of the worst pieces of social engineering which several governments are seeking to impose.

    For an absolutely outstanding comment on the nature of real marriage, the origin of the word itself (its a Christian word!), and a veritable mine of information about this issue as “ammunition” against our secularist authorities, please see Keith Sisman’s excellent comments on
    http://www.cambridgecitycoc.org.uk/SSM.htm

    Wishing you Bill, and brethren and sisters on this blog, the Lord’s blessing for the New Year 2013.
    Thanks for your constant messages of truth and biblical based comment Bill.
    Graham Wood (UK)

  4. It strikes me that the bottom line to this all is materialism. I want a “marriage,” I want a “child.” But in both cases, the reality was not what was wanted. It was the idea that both of these gave to this mad woman. And you see this all over the place: gay people wanting “marriage.” It’s not the marriage they want. I remember years ago when the bishop of a diocese put it to his gay “couples,” and challenged them to live like a real married couple: put the house in both names, take out insurance on each other, make them sole beneficiaries, etc. And not one of the couples chose to take this route. And this reluctance to “be real” was never exposed. I just heard about it because I was standing near the bishop who was discussing it, but not openly.

    It seems that when ideas are not recognized as such, but made reality, and then people are told that they can have anything their little minds think up, that we get just what we are getting: chaos and suffering.

    Julia Marks

  5. Dear Bill, There is one angle you may have missed. The sperm donor gave his sperm while doing an immoral act. Of course that does not make the demands of the lesbians any better.
    Regards, Franklin Wood

  6. I’m convinced now that most people would find this story absurd. Then again, I don’t talk to lefty elitists so my audience is mainly the working class. But still I could run this story or anything like it by my friends and work colleges and my guess is they would shake there heads. Believers and unbelievers. So it’s true, just as Bill has been saying over and over again. Social engineers.
    These things like SSM and environmentalism etc are not coming from the people I’m talking to, because they say and always say to me: why is this happening, I never asked for this.
    And doesn’t the government work for us, as we pay their wages?
    My job in all of this is to help my audience to stop grumbling and muttering, and speak-blog-write otherwise you’ve got no one to blame but yourselves.
    Daniel Kempton

  7. John A, I think you missed some of the details of the case. It is not the lesbian couple pursuing this, but the state…

    “Ms Bauer and Ms Schreiner, who separated in 2010, plan to help Mr Marotta fight the state’s decision, saying they are ‘forever grateful’ for the child he gave their family.”

    Blessings
    Mark Topping

  8. Bill,
    Are you against ART in principle? Can you give me an indication of where your thoughts currently sit on this?
    Thanks

  9. Thanks Saul

    Let’s put it this way: I have plenty of concerns about it (moral, social, legal, biblical, etc) and I hope to express many of those concerns in a new book on the life issues. But until then, much shorter pieces of mine can be found in my section on bioethics. The more than 100 articles there will offer many such concerns:

    https://billmuehlenberg.com/category/ethics/bioethics/

    And for example, see these pieces about one type of ART, and some issues surrounding it:

    https://billmuehlenberg.com/2007/08/30/concerns-about-ivf/

    https://billmuehlenberg.com/2009/06/15/more-concerns-about-ivf/

    Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

  10. While we may speak of God-ordained rights at law for human beings, I believe we ought to understand that sinners by virtue of their fallenness and guilt, have lost all moral right to anything other than death – the wages of sin! Humanity has compelling needs – the liberating and transforming salvation offered by Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. Should we be speaking of human needs rather than human “rights”? “Blessed are the poor in spirit…”
    John Wigg

  11. Same sex couples and statistics have made it clear that life long faithfulness is not a priority for the same sex lifestyle. Heterosexual marriages and partnerships seem equally short-lived. I think the “sexual economics” of “supply and demand” that the author and academic Mark Regnerus spoke of sheds some light on the dynamics of how sex becomes cheapened. If a woman is married in a faithful union for life then her unavailability leverages her value as a sexual being within society. Obviously such a notion is deeply offensive to a lot of other people! With the advent of birth control, financial independence and the proliferation of pornography, women felt empowered by not being dependent on men but the downside, in Regnerus’ opinion, is that it has made sex cheap and easily available with women being the losers.

    If sex becomes cheap and laws and the technology of human reproduction make it possible for everyone to have what they want when they want it, because of their rights or because of fear of giving offence, it follows that the outcome of sex, namely children, will suffer at the expense of adult self-centredness. Children are for life and need their biological parents for life down the generations. Life itself must retain a high value or our civilization will descend into barbarism. I think the protection of a child’s birthright to its own biological parents is something we should all give alot more thought to.

    Rachel Smith, UK

  12. C.S. Lewis said ‘The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse (such as the demand for tolerance, or kindness, or happiness or pleasure) of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of them which will not make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it is not. If you leave out justice and truth you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials ‘for the sake of humanity ’, and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man’, Mere Christianity, Chapter II.

    http://www.truthaccordingtoscripture.com/documents/apologetics/mere-christianity/Book1/cs-lewis-mere-christianity-book1.php#b

    Michael D. O’Brien says ‘How long will it take for our people to understand that when humanist sentiments replace moral absolutes, it is not long before very idealistic people begin to invade human families in the name of the family, and destroy human lives in the name of humanity (and tolerance)? This is the idealist’s greatest temptation, the temptation by which nations and cultures so often fall. The wielder of power is deluded into thinking he can remould reality into a less unkind condition. If he succeeds in convincing his people of the delusion and posits for them an enemy of the collective good, then unspeakable evils can be released in society. Those who share a mass-delusion rarely recognise it as such, and can pursue the most heinous acts in a spirit of self-righteousness.’

    http://www.studiobrien.com/articles/the-new-totalitarianism-qhate-crimeq-and-same-sex-qmarriageq.html

    David Skinner, UK

  13. Teresa May, the UK Home Secretary, who, whilst giving her first major speech on LGBT rights at an event hosted by the gay lobby group Stonewall, interspersed her speech frequently with comments like:
    “I think that shows how far we, as a society, have come;”…. “As a country we have come a long way;” and “as a party, my own party, the Conservatives have come a long way. We now have more openly gay MPs and openly gay ministers than ever before.” And yet again: “We’ve come a long way. I said at the start of my speech that as a nation we have come a long way, and we have.”
    Incredibly proud that she and the Home Office came top of this year’s Stonewall Workplace Equality Index. She has said:
    “despite the real progress we have seen in recent years, there is much still to do.”…. “And we will go further – we will implement section 202 of the Equality Act which will remove the ban on civil partnership registrations being held on religious premises.”
    Later she said “We are committed to taking action to tear down these barriers and to help build a better Britain.”
    What barriers is she talking about? She is talking about those mores that qualify a person to get married.
    Peter Tatchell, ex member of the neo- Marxist Gay Liberation Front has stated clearly in an article Beyond Equality, “In many ways, our transcending of heterosexual mores is a positive and immensely liberating experience. Compared with most straights, queers tend to be more sexually adventurous with a wider repertoire of sexual behaviour, less bound by the strictures of traditional morality, and more experimental in terms of relationships. We don’t need a marriage certificate to validate our partnerships. On his web site, “I loathe marriage. It is a patriarchal institution,” he sees marriage as being eroto-phobic and sexually repressive, a limit to absolute sexual liberation.
    When he was recorded at this year’s World Pride as saying,“ There are no borders or boundaries when it comes to LGBT human rights. No nationality, no culture, no belief system can stand in the way of the historic quest for LGBT freedom,” this was an open declaration of war on the true church of Christ, which represent the last obstacle to his appropriating, changing and then discarding marriage, altogether.
    Peter Tatchell is being manipulated by a Marxist political elite who when he has served his purpose will be disposed of, along with the other countless “useful idiots” who have furthered the cause of Marxism.
    Shortly after this speech, London witnessed gangs of nihilistic youths going on the rampage burning down buildings, looting and smashing any thing they could lay their hands on. In America we have just witnessed children in possession of automatic weapons committing the most appalling massacres.
    Mike Huckabee, an American candidate for President of America recently said:
    “We dismiss the notion of natural law and the notion that there are moral absolutes and seemed amazed when some kids make it their own morality to kill innocent children. We diminish and even hold in contempt the natural family of a father and mother creating and then responsibly raising the next generation and then express dismay that kids feel no real connection to their families or even the concept of a family.”
    http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/response-to-newtown-even-in-the-face-of-horror-there-is-hope?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=5461957de9-LifeSiteNews_com_Intl_Headlines_12_17_2012&utm_medium=email

    David Skinner, UK

  14. But whilst the gays, are clamouring for the right to be married, the young generation are not. The Telegraph says, “A wide-ranging study of children’s attitudes to life has found that today’s girls are increasingly sceptical about the idea of marriage – in stark contrast to boys. Polling for the Girl Guides found that only a small minority view finding a husband as a mark of success and less than half of girls still see marriage as the “best” kind of relationship. Meanwhile less than a third of girls believe that married couples together make better parents than unmarried people, a suggestion that a clear majority of girls disagree with.”
    They have been taught that it is medieval institution that is past its sell by date, fit only to be thrown out and given to the dogs to finish off.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/9592430/Girls-fall-out-of-love-with-fairytale-weddings.html
    The plan is therefore to get the government to legalise gay marriage. Once this is done, no matter what assurances the Cameron gives to the Anglican or Catholic church, exempting it from having to perform gay wedding, with four safety locks, the Soviet European Union, under Angela Murkelites ill sweep aside these worthless promises and the gay legions will invade the church, Protestant and Roman Catholic alike, demanding to be wedded in church, mistakenly believing that the church can and must hand over the title deeds to marriage, when it is God’s possession. Congregations and vicars who refuse to play ball, will be pitched out of their churches, as they have already in the USA and now in Scotland with St George’s Tron, Glasgow, maybe and their buildings sold off to fill the coffers of Andreas Whittam Smith CBE, First Church Estates Commissioner.
    As children in care and potential Christian foster parents have been denied the right in creating Christian home environments, with the shutting down of Catholic Adoption agencies and the removal of Eunice and Owen Johns from the pool of prospective foster parents, so the public will find that they have been denied to the right to establish a uniquely Christian marriage, for the simple reason that Churches and registry offices, that used to provide this service no longer exist and such marriage licences no longer exist anyway. After this the sudden demand for gay marriages will cease for gays will have performed their function which like the prostitute at the court of King Solomon, is to destroy what they cannot have naturally, and make sure that no one else has access to it either.
    Simultaneous to this attack on the citadel of society, the enemy will invade our schools, eliminating teachers who do not teach homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality and transsexuality. Pupils and students who resist will be put on intensive diversity training or excluded from education altogether. Parents who do not teach their children this new of kind of love may well find that their children are taken away and put into social care, which as we have seen are already suppliers of young flesh for paedophiles.

    David Skinner, UK

  15. Dear friends the days are getting darker and time is running short. Equal Marriage is being wilfully and recklessly steamrollered through government, ostensibly for the sake of a tiny minority of people who wish to identify themselves as gay and who abuse God’s creational ordinance: first in their attempt to bond with others in a perverted and sterile form, called civil partnership and secondly from that mongrel amalgam so formed to produce and raise children, by resorting to Frankensteinian reproductive processes.
    We must now give way to the approximately 50,000 gay couples in these uncivil partnerships ( one fifth of entire homosexual population)and even specifically the 5000 gay couples in such partnerships in the UK (0.017% of the entire British population) with dependent children- derived from previous marriages, an obliging opposite sex person, IVF and adoption – and who will define for us all and our children what a modern, progressive and 21st century family will looks like. Our marriage and birth certificates, passports and other legal documents will all soon become obsolete as we are forced to re- register ourselves and our children, using words that no longer denote moral and category judgements, such as faithful, adultery, consummation, fornication, father, mother, husband, wife, son, daughter, uncle, aunt, grandfather, grandmother, grandson, granddaughter. Finally wedding vows such as “If for any reason these two should not be joined in holy matrimony…….”will be banned as discriminatory.
    In their place will be amoral open relationships, IVF embryos, egg and semen donors, surrogates, recreational sex with whoever or whatever one wants will create parent 1,2,3,4…., partner A,B,C,D……and products of pregnancy, or increasingly unwanted body tissue, in the case of abortion. Even children will cease to be called girls or boys, as in Sweden, where the genderless word “hen” has been introduced. http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/04/25/neither-he-nor-she/
    http://www.thelocal.se/45070/20121214/
    Already in the Equality and Human Rights list, that defines human existence, four out of the nine protected groups in society, based on age, disability, race and religion are now outnumbered by those defined by sex and it the rights of homosexuals who trump all the rest. According to the apostate Bishop of Buckingham this can only enrich marriage. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=n6aI-fnllNg&NR=1
    SOME PEOPLE CLAIM TO BE GAY AND SEEK TO DOMINATE SOCIETY. GET OVER IT OR ELSE.

    David Skinner, UK

  16. Forty years ago I worked in a tribal society to the north of Australia where immorality was rife, but that society condemned any immorality in the strongest terms. Australian society now practices and condones immorality in the strongest terms from the Prime Minister down.
    Greg Brien

  17. Dear Bill,

    Indeed it is a frightening time to be alive and even though this sounds a bit selfish as an elderly woman I am glad I will be spared the full force of the effects of so called ‘women’s liberation’ which in reality is nothing short of a new form of slavery for women.It will only get worse but the aftermath is all too evident now with literally thousands of confused and broken-hearted children everywhere and an underclass of irresponsible, angry and drug and alcohol fueled young men who resort to violence on the slightest pretext. These children who, if they managed to be born never stood a chance because they never knew the love and protection of two biological parents who were willing to love them enough to work hard for them.

    I was incensed the other day when Jenny Macklin had the audacity to say that she could live on the pittance that single mothers and their children are now expected to survive on. Who was it who encouraged women to be single mothers by making divorce easy?Who was it that encouraged women to think that marriage to men was a form of slavery? Who was it who encouraged them to kill their babies in the womb if they wanted to pursue a career and made it legal? Who pushed for women to dump their defenceless children in childcare centres to be looked after by strangers while the majority of their working class mothers were herded into the work force to work in hum drum repetitive jobs because it was no longer possible to manage on one wage? Who was it who made single motherhood respectable by housing them and giving them welfare payments encouraging the fathers of their children to renege on their responsibilities? It was the evil feminist ideology of the sixties of which Jenny Macklin, Julia Gillard and the whole cohort of women in the Labour Party known as Emily’s list who are responsible. These together with the weak men who did not stand up to these evil, selfish women.Even decent politicians like John Howard caved in to them when they awarded generous baby bonuses to all expectant mothers but did not stipulate that these bonuses should be conditional on the couple being married.He either didn’t have the courage or he didn’t have the support of his colleagues many of whom are rabid feminists themselves.

    I remember Jenny Macklin about thirty years ago at a political gathering near my home and her evasive answers to my questions about what the Labour Party was going to do for single income families. They had been in opposition a long time and Jenny Macklin was clawing her way up the Labour Party because it had better opportunities for women politically. I had a vested interest at the time because my daughter was struggling to bring up two children on a single income and her husband was often forced to work long hours so they could give their two children a private education.

    I think the time can’t come soon enough when the Labour Party and these feminist relics of the sixties with their outdated ideas are thrown out of office.

    Patricia Halligan

  18. All fathers must be held financially responsible for their offspring, including sperm donors, one night stands, those under age, and their names should be on the childs birth certificate. This would help taxpayers, the mothers, and especially the children.
    Johannes Archer

  19. These things come at a time when the Transhumanists want to become immortal Gods, so of course this is the new normal, FOR MANY. Gotta love geoengineering, genetic modification, and anything else NOT created in Gods image, thats the plan of the Beast arising, is that not what God warned us would happen??? The nephilim taught all these things, but most christians dont even know who they were, well now would be a good time to research it, because this is upon us again. Start in Genesis 6.

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