15 lies about Family and Marriage

From a lecture on June 30, 2011, at a fundraiser for the Love and Fidelity Network and Grupo Solido, an Argentine project supporting marriage, chastity, and fidelity.

1. Sexual desire is something that can and should be gratified, not restrained. This gratification is known as “health.”

2. One’s sexual “orientation” or “identity”—even one’s “gender”—is a variable thing. Maybe genetics has something to do with it, maybe it comes down to freedom to choose—maybe a little of both. But wherever you wind up, it’s all good. Until you wind up somewhere else, and that’s good too.

3. Everyone is entitled to marry the person he loves (at this particular moment). Coming soon—marriage to the multiple persons one loves!

4. There is no significant difference between men and women with respect to any sexual matter. “Gender” and “identity” are “social constructs,” which we can accept or reject at will.

5. The differentiation of male and female roles is a species of oppression. (Even if you choose the role? What happened to the freedom to choose your identity? Never mind, don’t ask such questions!)

6. “Hooking up” for casual sexual encounters without commitment is just what young people do if left to their own devices. And it is good so to leave them, as these serial relationships are normal and healthy.

7. “Safe sex”—that is, the use of contraception and disease-preventive measures—and consent are the only moral strictures that universally apply to sexual matters.

8. Virginity past one’s late teen years is, well, freakish.

9. Cohabitation before marriage is downright expected, and is a healthy trial run of a relationship.

10. Marriage is optional and certainly not permanent, nor need it be characterized by sexual exclusivity. “Until a loss of interest do us part.” Why should it be work?

11. Out-of-wedlock childbearing is normal and has no adverse consequences, anyway not for you.

12. Abortion is always available, always will be, and has no adverse consequences, anyway not for you. “It’s a woman’s right to choose.”

13. “A family” is whatever we say one is. Who are you to say different?

14. Where children are wanted and nature does not supply, science can make up the deficit at no moral or social cost (albeit considerable financial expense) by sperm donation, egg donation, surrogacy, in vitro fertilization, etc.

15. Any child can have mommies and/or daddies in any number and combination, by blood, marriage, or adoption. There is no harm in any of these possibilities, for children are blank slates, fully adaptable to all adult choices.