"Families: Natural & Unnatural?"

A sermon by Dave Weissbard

delivered at

The Unitarian Universalist Church

Rockford, Illinois

2/26/06

. . . The natural family— part of the created order, imprinted on our natures, the source of bountiful joy, the fountain of new life, the bulwark of ordered liberty—stands reviled and threatened in the early 21st century. Foes have mounted attacks on all aspects of the natural family, from the bond of marriage to the birth of children to the true democracy of free homes. Ever more families show weaknesses and disorders. We see growing numbers of young adults rejecting the fullness and joy of marriage, choosing instead cheap substitutes or standing alone, where they are easy prey for the total state. Too many children are born outside of wedlock, ending as wards of that same state. Too few children are born inside married-couple homes, portending depopulation . . .

And so, we advance here a new vision and a fresh statement of principles and goals appropriate for the 21st century and the third millennium.

We see a world restored in line with the intent of its Creator. We envision a culture—found both locally and universally—that upholds the marriage of a woman to a man, and a man to a woman, as the central aspiration for the young. This culture affirms marriage as the best path to health, security, fulfillment, and joy. It casts the home built on marriage as the source of true political sovereignty, the fountain of democracy. It also holds the household framed by marriage to be the primal economic unit, a place marked by rich activity, material abundance, and broad self-reliance. This culture treasures private property in family hands as the rampart of independence and liberty. It celebrates the marital sexual union as the unique source of new human life. We see these homes as open to a full quiver of children, the source of family continuity and social growth. We envision young women growing into wives, homemakers, and mothers; and we see young men growing into husbands, homebuilders, and fathers.

We see true happiness as the product of persons enmeshed in vital bonds with spouses, children, parents, and kin. We look to a landscape of family homes, lawns, and gardens busy with useful tasks and ringing with the laughter of many children. We envision parents as the first educators of their children. We see homes that also embrace extended family members who need special care due to age or infirmity. We view neighborhoods, villages, and townships as the second locus of political sovereignty. We envision a freedom of commerce that respects and serves family integrity. And we look to nation-states that hold the protection of the natural family to be their first responsibility.

Let us begin by separating the sheep from the goats. If you would, I would ask all those who think they are living in natural families to stand as you are able.

Let’s get a little more precise and for the moment apply the criteria of the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society. You need to sit down if there are not both a male and a female parent present in your home; sit if you’ve ever been divorced; sit if the woman works outside the home; sit if you don’t have a “full quiver” of children which means you have limited the number of children through contraception or abortion; sit if you allow your children to attend day care and state schools instead of home schooling. Be clear that neither spousal nor child abuse is sufficient to eliminate you from the natural family category if you meet the other criteria. They note that “all families fall short of perfection and a few families fail,” but the structure is what is most important, not the quality of the family’s life.

Now I would like to ask all those who are members of “unnatural families” to stand as you are able. That means any combination of one or more of the following: the partners may be of the same sex, or there may be only one parent, or you’ve ever been divorced or never married, or live ina group home, or a woman works outside the home, or you’ve limited the number of children (which may be zero), or you have sent any children you may have to day care or state schools. (Please be seated.)

As I told you last fall and the Register-Star reported last Sunday, The Howard Center has prepared a “Manifesto on the Natural Family.” I warned you the Rockford City Council and the Winnebago County Board would be asked to endorse the manifesto in a resolution summarizing the manifesto’s high points – or low points if you, like me, are among the members of what they deem “unnatural” families. The paper reported that time is imminent.

I want to be clear that the Howard Center has only defined the “natural” family that it blesses; it is only logic and the dictates of our language that force us to conclude that in their eyes, those who do not meet their standards live in “unnatural” families. Strange that we should deem that pejorative. My dictionary defines “unnatural” as:

It is clear form the manifesto that for its authors, those of us who do not share their perspective outrageously violate what they consider natural feelings.

I believe the authors, Allan Carlson and Paul Mero are sincere and well intentioned. I also believe that Osama bin Laden is sincere and well intentioned. Sincerity and good intentions are virtues, but not sufficient. They have taken their own particular extreme religious view of what a family is supposed to be like and turned it into a standard by which they believe all should be judged. They acknowledge it is based on their understanding of Christianity, but they do not acknowledge that theirs is not necessarily congruent with the understanding of most, much less all Christians.

Carlson and Mero are motivated by their observation that the family is in jeopardy today, with which I agree. They attribute that jeopardy to two sources: “the challenge of industrialism” [and again I agree]; and to “the assault of new, family-denying ideas” from “the enemies of the natural family” which include feminists, humanists, Malthusians, sexual hedonists, liberals, supporters of no-fault divorce, pro-choice advocates, and supporters of day care and public education. They have a large enemies list for which I qualify in many ways.

I do not accept that I, nor the others on their list, am their enemy, except to the extent that they wish to impose their narrow vision on us. So long as they do not abuse spouses or children, nor seek to impose their vision on me or our community, I believe they should be free to advocate for their vision of the family so people can choose the most fitting for them among the options. Carlson and Mero, however, consider any alternative to their restrictive structure to be a threat, and they are probably right: Most people, if given options, will probably not choose the unfreedom of their “natural family.” Nature, by the evidence I’ve seen, prefers variety to uniformity, freedom to tyranny. The authors of the manifesto, like most tyrants, define “authentic freedom” as coming through submission – in their case, to the rules of their “natural family.”

The authors anticipate the criticisms that we might, and do level against them, and I shall use their list as a guide in responding.

They really bought into “Leave it to Beaver,” “Ozzie and Harriet,” “Father Knows Best,”and “The Donna Reed Show,” and seem not to be in touch with what family life was really like in that decade for many people. In her book, The Way We Never Were, Stephanie Coontz points out:

Not only was the 50's family a new invention, it was also a historical fluke, based on a unique and temporary conjuncture of economic, social and political factors.

That was the era when women started taking heavy doses of tranquilizers to deal with their frustrations. Coontz points out that tranquilizers were virtually nonexistent in 1955, but that consumption had reached 462,000 pounds in ‘58 and 1.15 million pounds a year later. The pills were viewed by physicians as meeting the needs of women. The 50's family model was dependent upon a woman remaining in the home. Coontz quotes David Blankenhorn of the Institute for American Values who warns that “employed women do not a family make.” The reality today is that most families require two full time incomes to keep up. To their credit, Carlson and Mero do recognize that their euphoria does not apply to the Black family in the 50's.

What they apparently mean is the right of women to be protected by their men and to fulfill their natural destiny of motherhood. They claim that they do not oppose women’s entrance into jobs and professions, but they don’t say how they are supposed to do that and home school the children and pamper their man in the style to which some men wish to become accustomed, which may mean as their mother did if she stayed home, or did not if she worked outside the home.

• They maintain that their vision of the family is an “attribute of all humankind.”

There is no apparent recognition that what they are describing is very culture and time-bound and is not even typical of families in America over its brief history. In the past, death impacted on families so that the average duration of a marital relationship was about 12 years – far from a lifetime. Today, it is suggested, divorce has become what the historian Lawrence Stone suggests is “a functional substitute for death.” It is clear that traditional Muslim families may include as many wives as the husband can support - hardly the “natural family” of the Howard Center.

Their definition of “empirical science” certainly includes “Intelligent Design” which is, of course, no science at all. People who share the authors’ perspective keep citing each other in articles in non-scientific publications. Actual empirical studies, when they compare apples to apples, consistently come to conclusions with which the “natural family” advocates are in direct conflict. Every single reputable health and child welfare organization agrees that gay and lesbian families are every bit as healthy as heterosexual ones. That includes:

[It is true that 60 of the 60,000 members of the American Academy of Pediatrics withdrew and formed the American College of Pediatricians because of their opposition to homosexuality and abortion.]

There is one so-called psychologist, Paul Cameron, who heads a group called “The Family Research Institute” who has devoted his career to opposing homosexuality. He said in a press conference that “Homosexuality is a crime against humanity in the same ballpark as genocide.” Both the American Psychological Association and the American Sociological Association have ejected him because he has “constantly misinterpreted and misrepresented sociological research on sexuality, homosexuality and lesbianism.”

According to the ACLU’s publication, “Too High a Price: The Case Against Restricting Gay Parenting,” every single reputable study has shown that there are absolutely no disadvantages to children living with gay or lesbian couples. There are some issues with single parents because of the trauma of family conflict which leads to divorce and the difficulty of supporting a family on a single income, but when these are filtered out, there is no demonstrable need for more than one parent in a home, except that it is easier on the parent to have adult support. The key factors in the healthy development of children are identified as:

• the affection, reliability, consistency, and limit setting, responsiveness and emotional commitment of parents;

There is no indication these factors are more present in straight families than in gay and lesbian ones.

I would not suggest in any way that they support violence, but peace in their families is to a significant degree dependent upon a woman and the children “knowing their place.” Many studies in the 50's blamed women and children for “threatening” the men and causing the violence of which they were the victims. Family violence went largely unaddressed.

• They insist “while distinct family systems change, the design of the natural family never does.”

They support this with the statement “From our very origin as a unique creature on earth, we humans have been defined by the long-term bonding of a woman and a man, by their free sharing of resources, by a complementary division of labor, and by a focus on the procreation, protection and rearing of children in stable homes.” The authors have apparently studiously avoided reading portions of the Hebrew Scriptures or anthropological studies of the human family.

Polygamy was not rare in the Bible, nor in human history. The “protection and rearing of children” have only become a priority for most people in recent times. Children were long sold into slavery and sent to work in mines and farms and the homes of the wealthy at very early ages. Coontz points out:

In 1900, 120,000 children worked in Pennsylvania mines and factories; most of them had started work by age 11 . . . Children made up 23.7 percent of the 36,415 workers in southern textile mills around the turn of the century.

Their concern is “catastrophic population decline” which is why they stress a “full quiver” of children as “the earth’s best hope.” I am not among the population alarmists, who I believe are, in many cases, worried about sustaining the economic advantages of the US population, but I have found no credible evidence of a troubling decline either. The good (and to them the bad) news is that reproductive rates tend to decline with economic stability. Many people have large families in order to be sure that some survive to support them in their old age. One must question whether the population of India or China is “sustainable.”

As bad as uppity women demanding real equality and respect, the availability of divorce and abortion are, the gut wrenching issue for many who support the “natural family” is the threat of homosexuality. “Remember,” many conservatives tell us, “in the Garden it was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Cute. But then again, it was right out of the garden that Cain killed Abel, and where did the women come from whom their children married, anyhow? The reality that people are different is too painful for them to contemplate. E.J. Graff, in her Beacon Press book, What is Marriage For? suggests:

The fight over same-sex marriage is so rhetorically violent, so upsetting to so many, for the same reason as so many other debates over the past two hundred years have been: it insists that each of us matters, and that each of us must choose for ourselves how to live. Living in a pluralist nation is a fundamentalist’s nightmare, a reminder that a democratic society keeps its institutional doors open wide.

Because conservatives feel so threatened by those who live differently and whom they wish to undermine, they assume that those who live differently are equally threatened by their lifestyle and wish to undermine their chosen family style. Are there a few people who have been so injured by the dominant culture that they attack the dominant style of marriage as a tyranny, a prison? Of course there are some, but few. Most who reject the conventional marriage as not fitting them, simply say, “We want to be respected for whom we are.”

If the “natural family” is so natural, why is it that the 2000 census showed that only 24% of American households consisted of a husband, wife, and children under 18 – and some of them were second marriages! If nature has any power at all, which I trust it does, it seems as if that which was “natural” would dominate. It does, of course. What is natural is that there is variety. People are not all alike and nothing we can do will change that. We have different religious views. We have different social views. We have different political views. One of those views, as demonstrated by the manifesto, is that “all people should be like me.” The modern view is that “My being me is not inherently threatened by your being you, unless you deny me the right to be me.”

The Howard Center’s manifesto declares “The time is close when the persecution of the natural family, when the war against children, when the assault on human nature shall end.” I hope that is true, as is their declaration that:

The enemies of the natural family grow worried. A triumph that, not so many years ago, they thought complete is no longer sure. Their fury grows. So do their attempts, ever more desperate, at coercion. Yet their mistakes also mount in number. They misread human nature. They misread the times.

Yes! Yes, indeed, but the “natural family” I have in mind is not theirs but the one indicated by a 1990 Newsweek Magazine poll which showed that while 22% of the respondents defined family in terms of blood, marriage or adoption, 74% insisted that a family is any group of people whose members love and care for one another. THAT truly is a “natural family.” The Howard Center and other organizations like it may issue all the manifestos they wish, and they may “call on all people of goodwill, whose hearts are open to the promptings of this spirit, to join in a great campaign,” but theirs is a losing battle, the death throes of a world disappearing. They are the enemies of the natural, diverse family.

But we must not turn our backs and ignore them because dying faiths can inflict damage on their way out. We dare not just assume that the Rockford City Council and the Winnebago County Board will reject the manifesto. Unless one reads carefully and between the lines, the true significance, the fear and hatred contained in the manifesto might pass unnoticed. Who is going to dare to vote against “Motherhood and Apple Pie?”

We, the undersigned, are deeply offended by the attempt of a small group of religious “true believers” to have you endorse its vision of family as the only “natural” one and, by implication, designate our families as “unnatural.” We have no desire to ask you to endorse our various family constellations nor to condemn theirs. We do not believe that it is the role of governmental bodies to impinge on the freedom of citizens to create loving families that meet their needs, so long as the well-being of children is not demonstrably threatened. We urge you to reject the proposed resolution.

I ask that you take a copy of each of them and in the week ahead, you talk to at least fifteen friends or neighbors about the true meaning of the manifesto and the importance of keeping the government from endorsing one form of family as more natural than others.

I have also obtained 100 copies of the bumper sticker that Colleen has had on her car for years. It says, “We are all family & We all have value.” You can publicly declare your respect for all families for a dollar and a half.

I grew up in a family with two parents of opposite sexes and two children. It did not fit the manifesto in that my mother was a librarian and worked outside the home, and my parents limited their family to two rather than “a quiver.” My first wife, Linda, and I had three daughters (and a son who died in infancy). After Linda’s death, I married Karen and we have Hilary. Each of my grown daughters represents a different family style: Lisa, my eldest, is in a long-term, committed relationship with Valerie, another woman, and they have no children; Shelley is married to Dean and is the stay-at-home mother of three; Meri is married to Ray and is the mother of two and a full time teacher. The decisions each of us have made to be true to what feels right to us do not impinge on the right of the others to our love and respect for choosing what feels right to them. That is only as it should be.

Our nation, at this time, while espousing “family values” is one of the most hostile to family security of all of the developed nations, and it is getting worse. May we seek the wisdom to stop arguing about whose family is more natural than another’s and unite in seeking to turn around the hostile policies of our government and our businesses so that all families can feel supported in providing the love and care that all need and deserve.

Please turn to that place of deepest honesty and connection which is within you, and join me in a time of prayerful reflection. During this week, during which some public voices speak of Marriage Equality and others of Marriage Protection, let us recommit our own hearts once again to stand on the side of love.

We offer up our gratitude for all of the love which has sustained us throughout our lives—the love of family and friends, teachers and mentors, the love of this church community. Those of us who have found one other person to whom we have pledged enduring commitment offer up particular gratitude for that covenant, which has sustained us and challenged us and ultimately reshaped our very being.

No long term relationship is easy, and so we offer prayers of protection and support for every family, knowing that our larger community is blessed and strengthened by steadfast couples.

May every relationship be free from violence, physical, emotional, or spiritual.

May every marriage know the importance of relaxation and the pleasures of unstructured time.

May each of us accept a partner's foibles with grace, knowing that we too, though imperfect, are fully accepted.

May we be free from the culture's rampant greed which would have us ask, "What is in this for me?" rather than “What more can I give you?"

May the stresses and strains of our relationships, no matter how large they loom, never blind us to the one with whom we fell in love.

May we know that we are always accompanied by the love of our community, through loss of jobs or livelihood, health problems, tough times with children or aging parents, natural disasters, and human cruelty or injustice.

May every relationship, whatever the gender of its members, be supported and accepted by the larger community.

May our elected officials turn their attention to policies which strengthen the wellbeing of all of us, rather than tearing us apart by labeling some love as holy and other as profane.

And, someday, may every couple equally know the protection and support not only of a loving faith community, but also of a larger civil society.

May we support and protect one another, even as we continually seek to extend our understanding of who we mean when we say "we the people.'

Carlson, Allan C. And Paul T. Mero, “The Natural Family: A Manifesto,” a special issue of “The Family in America,” published by The Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society and The Sutherland Institute, 2005.

Cooper, Leslie and Paul Cates, “Too High A Price: The Case Against Restricting Gay Parenting,” 2^nd Edition, ACLU Foundation, 2006. (Can be downloaded from ACLU.org)

Coontz, Stephanie, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, Basic Books, 1992.

Graff, E.J., What is Marriage For?: The Strange History of our Most Intimate Institution, Beacon Press, 1999.

Stacey, Judith, In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the Postmodern Age, Beacon Press, 1996