Love and Marriage - under attack. Why?
He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.
The Great Gatsby
Chapter 6, Gatsby on his first kiss with Daisy.
credit
Do you remember the first real kiss of your life? I don't necessarily mean the first "french kiss" per se, but rather a kiss that seemed to be more than simply a kiss?
"The music stopped!" She informed my closest ear and I found, to my horror, that everyone was watching us and, as my stupor became apparent, a horse laugh from all filled the gym. I became red as a ripe cherry. Now I could have said something smooth, like, "Dancing with you needs no music." Or maybe "You are all the music I need." But I said this: "Oh!" I hustled back to the sidelines to endure several minutes of razzing and a few jealous questions about how it felt to dance with Sherry. Sherry was the sixth grade equivalent of "hot." I had no idea she had been interested in me and I was far too embarrassed to get anywhere near her the rest of the night.
But then I actually "fell in love" and I knew better. I understood the words written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. A kiss that promised eternal devotion and a merging of self with self that left us both breathless with surprise and awe and wonder, a kiss that moved the world around us and made the rest of the world inconsequential in comparison to a true love.
Then I Kissed Her
Well, I walked up to her
And I asked her if she wanted to dance
She looked awful nice and so I hoped
She might take a chance
When we danced I held her tight
Then I walked her home that night
And all the stars were shining bright
And then I kissed her
Each time I saw her
I couldn't wait to see her again
I wanted to let her know
That I was more than a friend
I didn't know just what to do
And so I whispered I love you
And she said that she loved me too
And then I kissed her
I kissed her in a way
That I'd never kissed a girl before
I kissed her in a way
That I hope she liked for evermore
I knew that she was mine
So I gave her all the love that I had
Then one day she'll take me home
To meet her mom and her dad
Then I asked her to be my bride
And always be right by my side
I felt so happy that I almost cried
And then I kissed her
And then I kissed her
And then I kissed her
The Beach Boys from the Summer Days and Summer Nights album
Thankfully one great love isn't necessarily all you get in this life. I got another chance and I didn't blow that one! Anyway, the most common theme of novels and stories is the search for and the finding or losing of love. Boy meets girl, boy wins girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back in the end. That storyline and spinoffs from that storyline is the primary story that writers of fiction use, more than warfare or rebellion or any other subject..
"And they lived happily ever after." From Adam and Eve until today it is the very core of the human experience.
Grey's Anatomy star Katherine Heigl and her boyfriend, musician Josh Kelley, are engaged, their reps confirm exclusively to PEOPLE.
No wedding date has been set.
The couple met last year when Heigl, 27, appeared in a video for Kelley's song "Only You."
"At the end of the shoot, I said, 'You're gonna go eat dinner with us, and you can't say no,' " Kelley, 25, said in October. "So we ate, drank and just started hanging out after that."
(Later, Kelley arranged to propose marriage to his "Katie" by arranging to have dinner in the somewhat dingy apartment location where the "Only You" video was filmed and, after she said yes, they actually strolled out together on that same stretch of beach you see at the video's end. He apparently had to pay off the stoners who lived there to go away for a day or two. A hundred bucks to set up a perfect proposal? Not bad.)
Music is still part of their relationship: Kelley wrote a tune, "Katie's Song," for Heigl. "There is really nothing more romantic than that," Heigl told PEOPLE in December. "It was one of the most thrilling and romantic things that I've ever experienced, and it makes me really like him bad."
~~~~~~~
I have had small doses of fame from being a singer, all in the past now. It was fun to have someone come up to you at dinner and say, "Aren't you the guy who...?" or even have someone ask you to autograph something! (Yep, that happened on board a cruise ship back in 2005 or so. But that only happened to me maybe ten or twelve times in my life. A few times during my singing career and a few times on board that ship because I won a karaoke contest and wound up singing with the ship's band every night). I cannot imagine it happening a dozen times a day. It would quickly turn from kind of nice to exceedingly dreary. Famous people are hounded and feted. If you are a famous guy, women will be throwing themselves at you...which is why marriage needs to be something two people work at and, in the case of Josh and Katie, they must have to guard it and keep it private and of highest priority lest it goes all Tiger Woods...
Fortunately (for all concerned), my meager season of fame is past and my wife and I live in the real world. In some ways we are a 21st Century couple. We met online (Christian Cafe) at a Christian dating site and exchanged emails and phone calls before meeting. We met in late summer and married before the year was out. We just knew. In doing so we brought four kids and two kids into one family and they all liked the idea. Now we share two sons-in-law and three grandchildren and a bunch of "Godkids" together. A blended family whose parental units met online? Very 21st Century!
But we are also very traditional. Our first night together was our wedding night. We have had fewer fights than we have had years of marriage. My wife is like my gift from God!
We belong to a church where we are part of the ministry and most of our friends are from our church family and friends we have made in Christian circles down through the years. Some of our friends are missionaries now. Many of the kids I have taught have grown up and married and started families. Our own children have all made it to at least 18 years old so our season of parenting is largely over...except me, my wife and my oldest son all work in the youth ministry with high school kids. So I have signed on to being a perpetual parent of sorts. There is a teenager who is about to ring the doorbell and hang out for awhile with me and Debbie and Rob. One of our main concerns is to instill the traditional values into this generation before they leave the nest and fly off into the cold, cruel world.
Most marriages are not famous, but the institution of marriage is...people have been joining as couples since the world began. The reason that marriage is apparently being attacked? Not for any good reason, but rather as a means of promoting the agenda of a small group of sexual dissidents who hate the Judeo-Christian ethic upon which American Society was founded and wish to attack it at every hand. Darwinism erodes faith in God. Social Darwinism leads to millions of murdered babies and tacit racism and class-ism. GLSEN and NAMBLA want to break down all sexual mores and taboos so that they can have adults "marry" children, those of the same sex, animals and what have you. Really, the push to destroy marriage is energized by pedophiles, for both GLSEN and NAMBLA seek to promote juvenile sexual activity. Do you really want your children "marrying" promiscuous adults? Because that is the stated goal of NAMBLA and GLSEN's unstated agenda as well. Kill off marriage and sexual restraints will soon be destroyed as well. The old guy across the street is NOT going to have sex with my children or my dogs! We cannot allow this stuff to happen.
Since its inception, the United States of America has been a country whose Founding Fathers recognized the need for God in public life, and the need for Bible principles of morality to govern and structure American society. Our Founding Fathers recognized that if our country ever strayed significantly away from these foundational moral, spiritual, and ethical principles, we would be doomed as a nation. For 150 years, our society recognized the importance of what some are calling the “traditional family,” i.e., a husband and a wife who marry for life and rear their children together. Divorce was almost unheard of in this country. When it did occur, it was regarded as deviant behavior. Family disruption in the form of separation, divorce, and out-of-wedlock birth were kept to a minimum by strong religious, social, and even legal sanctions. Immediately after World War II, most American children grew up in a family with both biological parents who were married to each other.
This state of affairs held sway up through the 1940s and 1950s. In fact, disruption of the traditional American family reached a historic low in the 1950s and early 1960s. But then something happened (see Whitehead, 1993). Beginning in about 1965, the divorce rate suddenly skyrocketed, more than doubling over the next fifteen years. By 1974, divorce passed death as the leading cause of family breakup. By 1980, only fifty percent of children could expect to spend their entire childhood with both their parents. Now half of all marriages end in divorce. Every year a million children go through divorce or separation, and almost as many more are born out of wedlock. People who remarry after divorce are more likely to break up than couples in first marriages. The same is true for couples who just live together.
Overall child well-being has declined, despite a decrease in the number of children per family, an increase in the educational level of parents, and historically high levels of public spending. The teen suicide has more than tripled. Juvenile crime has increased and become more violent. School performance has continued to decline. Some sociologists are now recognizing the incredibly harmful effect these circumstances are having on our country and the homes of America. They are beginning to realize the relationship between family structure and declining child well-being. Some are even admitting that the social arrangement that has proved most successful in ensuring the physical survival and promoting the social development of the child is the family unit of the biological mother and father.
But our society as a whole has been slow to see family disruption as a severe national problem. Why? A fundamental shift has occurred in our culture with reference to religious and moral value. Much of our society has jettisoned the Bible as the absolute standard of behavior. The Bible is no longer considered to be the authoritative regulator of daily living. Many, perhaps most, Americans no longer feel that divorce is wrong. “Irreconcilable differences” and “incompatibility” are seen as perfectly legitimate reasons for divorce—flying directly in the face of Bible teaching. Many Americans no longer feel that a couple simply living together without marriage is morally wrong. By the mid-1970s, three-fourths of Americans said that it is not morally wrong for a woman to have a child outside marriage.
We could debate the causes of this basic cultural shifting. I would argue that the influence of evolution and humanism in our educational system, the impact of feminism, the increased participation of women in the work force to the neglect of their children, the widespread prosperity that we enjoy as a nation (causing us to forget God and to indulge ourselves)—these and other factors have contributed to our moral decline. Hollywood, television, and the cinema have unquestionably glamorized, defended, and promoted divorce, premarital sex, unwed motherhood, abortion, and the use of alcohol, filthy language, and many other immoral behaviors.
Ironically—and tragically—the media have been working overtime to discredit the married, two-parent family by playing up instances of incest, violence, and abuse. If a family has religious inclinations, its members are depicted on programs as weirdos and deviants. In fact, it is surely disgusting to the sensibilities of the morally upright that what was once mainstream and normal (i.e., the religious, church-going, two-parent family) is being demonized and ridiculed, while behavior that once was considered deviant, reprehensible, and immoral is paraded before society—on TV, in the news, and in the courts—as the social norm. Anyone who lifts a finger to speak against such immorality is berated as “homophobic,” “prejudiced,” “judgmental,” “mean-spirited,” and guilty of a “hate crime.”
Two illustrations of the undermining of the marriage relationship as God intended are the recent decisions regarding homosexuality by the United States Supreme Court and the Episcopal Church. By a 62-45 vote, the Episcopal House of Bishops elected the denomination’s first homosexual bishop on August 5, 2003 (see Duin, 2003). Only days earlier, the Supreme Court ruled that sodomy laws are unconstitutional—even though sodomy was treated as a criminal offense in all of the original thirteen colonies and eventually every one of the fifty states (see Robinson, 2003; “Sodomy Laws,” 2003). Sadly, a generation has arisen who simply does not share the values of its parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. Sexual fidelity, lifelong marriage, and parenthood are simply no longer held up as worthwhile personal goals.
All of this self-centeredness has taken its greatest toll on the children. The erosion of basic moral values in exchange for pluralism, the growing tolerance of moral and ethical diversity, the shifting of emphasis to choice, freedom, and self-expression, have all inflicted great damage on marriage and the family—especially the children. The fuller body of empirical research now documents a number of startling conclusions:
What is even more startling is the fact that as an institution, marriage has lost much of its legal, religious, and social meaning and authority. For most of American history, marriage was one of the most important rites of passage in life. But now, marriage has lost much of its role and significance as a rite of passage. Sex is increasingly detached from the promise or expectation of marriage. Cohabitation is emerging as a significant experience for young adults. It is now replacing marriage as the first living together union. It is estimated that a quarter of unmarried women between the ages of 25 and 39 are currently living with a partner, and about half have lived at some time with an unmarried partner. Referring to this state of affairs as “the deinstitutionalization of marriage,” researchers at the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University concluded: “Taken together, the marriage indicators do not argue for optimism about a quick or widespread comeback of marriage. Persistent long-term trends suggest a steady weakening of marriage as a lasting union, a major stage in the adult life course, and as the primary institution governing childbearing and parenthood” (Popenoe and Whitehead, 1999).
Make no mistake: the social science evidence clearly documents the fact that the breakdown of the traditional two-parent, biological husband-wife family is a major factor contributing to the overall moral, religious, and ethical decline of our country. The social fabric of American civilization is literally tearing apart. The social arrangement that has proved most successful in ensuring the physical survival, and promoting the social development, of the child is the family unit of the biological mother and father. America is in deep trouble.
Our society is not likely to solve these massive problems. The liberal elite has been operating with great vigor for over forty years to push our country into “value neutrality” and “political correctness.” The clear-cut restraints and distinctions between right and wrong so typical of American culture in the past have been systematically dismantled. Relativism has taken the place of objective, absolute truth. The glorification of the individual has encouraged people to determine for themselves right and wrong—rather than looking outside themselves to the Transcendent Creator of the Universe. Consequently, whatever the individual feels is right is sanctioned as right—at least for that individual. The absolute standard of moral value and human behavior—that previously governed our nation—has been successfully supplanted. Subjectivity reigns supreme, and God has been effectively severed from human culture. “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:12).
God intended for the husband and wife to produce children who, in turn, are to receive nurturing and care from their parents in a stable, loving home (Ephesians 6:1-4; Colossians 3:18-21). In this divinely ordained institution of the home, God intended that children receive the necessary instruction and training to prepare them to be productive, honest, God-fearing, hard-working citizens of their country. The home was designed by God to impart to each succeeding generation proper religious, moral, and social principles that would in turn make their nation strong and virtuous. The Bible is filled with references to the essential ingredients of healthy family life (e.g., Deuteronomy 4:7-9; 6:1-9; 11:18-21; 32:46-47; Psalm 127; Proverbs 5:15-20; 6:20-35; 11:29; 12:4; 14:1; 15:25,27; 17:1,13; 31:10-31), including proper parenting skills (Proverbs 13:24; 19:18; 22:15; 23:13-14; 29:15,17; Ephesians 6:1-4).
Popenoe, David and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead (1999), “What’s Happening to Marriage?”
Robinson, B.A. (2003), “Criminalizing Same-Sex Behavior,”
“Sodomy Laws in the United States,” (2003),
Whitehead, Barbara (1993), “Dan Quayle Was Right,” The Atlantic Monthly,
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So this is an old article and some of the links may not work. In 2003 Miller clearly saw the path the country was taking. We are another 8 years down the road and it is worse than ever! The attack on the nuclear family shows up in poor education, bad behavior, higher incidence of drug and alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancy and STDs, suicides...our children are paying the price as deviant adults do whatever they can to tear down marriage. We even have a chief executive who has instructed his administration not to defend the laws of the land - the DOMA lawsuits filed by the radical deviants will not be challenged by the representative of the President? I thought he was sworn to defend the Constitution and the law? Pathetic.
Another aspect to the attack on marriage is the emergence of the Super State and Gendercide- take for instance, Communist China:
Historian Niall Ferguson reminds us that Ernest Hemingway once penned a collection of short stories entitled Men Without Women. The stories are haunting, demonstrating the brutality that comes to men without the presence of women — and especially without the companionship of wives.
~~~~~~~~
credit
What happens when there are MILLIONS of young men with no chance of finding a mate? Do they fall prey to sexual deviancy? Will they become the point of a spear pointed at other countries, an army of soldiers with no family to leave behind? Will they rebel and turn to crime and anarchy, or will they subject themselves to a perceived groupthink goal greater than themselves as a propagandized mass of automatons? They have no chance at an ordinary life. When man cannot have a life, he is more likely to be motivated to take yours away from you...Genocide, gendercide, sexual deviancy being enforced by law on free society? It cannot end well. This is the fruit of society separated from God. This is what man looks like when God is not respected and obeyed. Is it any wonder that God wiped mankind from the face of the planet once before? How long before He cannot tolerate these crimes against humanity foisted upon humanity?
The Great Gatsby
Chapter 6, Gatsby on his first kiss with Daisy.
Do you remember the first real kiss of your life? I don't necessarily mean the first "french kiss" per se, but rather a kiss that seemed to be more than simply a kiss?
An embarrassing moment from my childhood - It was the sixth grade dance. Us boys hung out on one side of the gymnasium. The girls were on the other side of the gym. Some of them danced to some of the songs but not one of us boys dared be the first to ask a girl to dance, lest we get relentlessly teased by the other guys or, even worse, GET TURNED DOWN! Unthinkable! I was plastered to the sidelines with the others, even though my fifth-grade girlfriend, Susan, might have been glad to say yes if I had asked. But I wasn't going to risk being first.
There was a lottery set up by the French teacher in which random names would be drawn to pair up the boys and girls for a dance. Unbeknownst to us boys, the teacher and the girls had colluded to allow some of the girls to chose their dance partners and I wound up paired with Sherry. The music began playing - a slow song - and I had to take her in my arms and dance with her pressed close to me. I was entirely intoxicated by the smell of her perfume and her hair, the feel of her head against my chest, my hand was overjoyed to find and slightly caress the small of her back. I don't remember the song. But I do remember literally falling into a state of awestruck awakening of new feelings and urges so that, when the music stopped, I didn't. I kept dancing with Sherry when everyone else stopped.
Later in high school I had my first kiss real french kiss with a pretty girl I really liked a lot and it seemed like time stopped while she and I lived in the fantasy world of love and joy contained in a seeking, yearning kiss. I thought that was the real thing.
What I wanted and expected was to enter into the world of a song popular during my grade school days -
Then I Kissed Her
Well, I walked up to her
And I asked her if she wanted to dance
She looked awful nice and so I hoped
She might take a chance
When we danced I held her tight
Then I walked her home that night
And all the stars were shining bright
And then I kissed her
Each time I saw her
I couldn't wait to see her again
I wanted to let her know
That I was more than a friend
I didn't know just what to do
And so I whispered I love you
And she said that she loved me too
And then I kissed her
I kissed her in a way
That I'd never kissed a girl before
I kissed her in a way
That I hope she liked for evermore
I knew that she was mine
So I gave her all the love that I had
Then one day she'll take me home
To meet her mom and her dad
Then I asked her to be my bride
And always be right by my side
I felt so happy that I almost cried
And then I kissed her
And then I kissed her
And then I kissed her
The Beach Boys from the Summer Days and Summer Nights album
I thought and hoped that life was like that and that our love would be forever. Being in love would make it all work. We'd have our picket fence and a little house and raise little miniatures of us and...but love isn't magic and strong feelings alone do not love make nor preserve it. I was not ready for such a commitment at age 21 and life is way more complicated than a Beach Boys song. I was raised at a time when the Summer of Love and Woodstock and the Love The One You're With philosophy had changed the morality of my generation. Because I had not accepted the moral absolutes of the previous generation, the formula didn't work for me. Rolling stones don't stay put in a rock garden.
Thankfully one great love isn't necessarily all you get in this life. I got another chance and I didn't blow that one! Anyway, the most common theme of novels and stories is the search for and the finding or losing of love. Boy meets girl, boy wins girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back in the end. That storyline and spinoffs from that storyline is the primary story that writers of fiction use, more than warfare or rebellion or any other subject..
"And they lived happily ever after." From Adam and Eve until today it is the very core of the human experience.
An old-fashioned love story as played out by a couple of celebrities.
The artist is Josh Kelley, a former college golfer who realized that music was in his blood (his brother is a successful musician also). The woman in the video is his wife of three year-plus years, actress Katherine Heigl by stage name, with whom they share an adopted daughter and a life. The two met during the taping of this music video! They do make a being a couple look good. Now imagine how hard it is to manage a marriage and a home life when you are a music star who must tour and your wife is an actress? But I do know they got something started right, as quoted from wikipedia:
During a taping of Live With Regis and Kelly, Heigl stated that she and Kelley chose not to live together before they were married, saying, "I think I just wanted to save something for the actual marriage... I wanted there to be something to make the actual marriage different than the dating or the courtship."
People magazine:
People Exclusive
Grey's Anatomy Star Katherine Heigl Engaged
Heigl and Kelley in February
Lisa Rose/JPI
Grey's Anatomy star Katherine Heigl and her boyfriend, musician Josh Kelley, are engaged, their reps confirm exclusively to PEOPLE.
No wedding date has been set.
The couple met last year when Heigl, 27, appeared in a video for Kelley's song "Only You."
"At the end of the shoot, I said, 'You're gonna go eat dinner with us, and you can't say no,' " Kelley, 25, said in October. "So we ate, drank and just started hanging out after that."
(Later, Kelley arranged to propose marriage to his "Katie" by arranging to have dinner in the somewhat dingy apartment location where the "Only You" video was filmed and, after she said yes, they actually strolled out together on that same stretch of beach you see at the video's end. He apparently had to pay off the stoners who lived there to go away for a day or two. A hundred bucks to set up a perfect proposal? Not bad.)
Music is still part of their relationship: Kelley wrote a tune, "Katie's Song," for Heigl. "There is really nothing more romantic than that," Heigl told PEOPLE in December. "It was one of the most thrilling and romantic things that I've ever experienced, and it makes me really like him bad."
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"Like him bad" must be Heigl for "love" as they apparently have a successful marriage going. I hope it will be one that lasts. Famous people tend to not connect the dots concerning relationships, tending to live in an alternate reality in which they are treated as royalty and both doted upon and constantly hounded by fans and bloodsuckers. I hope this couple makes it work!
Fortunately (for all concerned), my meager season of fame is past and my wife and I live in the real world. In some ways we are a 21st Century couple. We met online (Christian Cafe) at a Christian dating site and exchanged emails and phone calls before meeting. We met in late summer and married before the year was out. We just knew. In doing so we brought four kids and two kids into one family and they all liked the idea. Now we share two sons-in-law and three grandchildren and a bunch of "Godkids" together. A blended family whose parental units met online? Very 21st Century!
But we are also very traditional. Our first night together was our wedding night. We have had fewer fights than we have had years of marriage. My wife is like my gift from God!
We belong to a church where we are part of the ministry and most of our friends are from our church family and friends we have made in Christian circles down through the years. Some of our friends are missionaries now. Many of the kids I have taught have grown up and married and started families. Our own children have all made it to at least 18 years old so our season of parenting is largely over...except me, my wife and my oldest son all work in the youth ministry with high school kids. So I have signed on to being a perpetual parent of sorts. There is a teenager who is about to ring the doorbell and hang out for awhile with me and Debbie and Rob. One of our main concerns is to instill the traditional values into this generation before they leave the nest and fly off into the cold, cruel world.
Most marriages are not famous, but the institution of marriage is...people have been joining as couples since the world began. The reason that marriage is apparently being attacked? Not for any good reason, but rather as a means of promoting the agenda of a small group of sexual dissidents who hate the Judeo-Christian ethic upon which American Society was founded and wish to attack it at every hand. Darwinism erodes faith in God. Social Darwinism leads to millions of murdered babies and tacit racism and class-ism. GLSEN and NAMBLA want to break down all sexual mores and taboos so that they can have adults "marry" children, those of the same sex, animals and what have you. Really, the push to destroy marriage is energized by pedophiles, for both GLSEN and NAMBLA seek to promote juvenile sexual activity. Do you really want your children "marrying" promiscuous adults? Because that is the stated goal of NAMBLA and GLSEN's unstated agenda as well. Kill off marriage and sexual restraints will soon be destroyed as well. The old guy across the street is NOT going to have sex with my children or my dogs! We cannot allow this stuff to happen.
Dave Miller wrote this in 2003 (From Apologetics Press):
The Sacredness of Marriage
| by | Dave Miller, Ph.D. |
Since its inception, the United States of America has been a country whose Founding Fathers recognized the need for God in public life, and the need for Bible principles of morality to govern and structure American society. Our Founding Fathers recognized that if our country ever strayed significantly away from these foundational moral, spiritual, and ethical principles, we would be doomed as a nation. For 150 years, our society recognized the importance of what some are calling the “traditional family,” i.e., a husband and a wife who marry for life and rear their children together. Divorce was almost unheard of in this country. When it did occur, it was regarded as deviant behavior. Family disruption in the form of separation, divorce, and out-of-wedlock birth were kept to a minimum by strong religious, social, and even legal sanctions. Immediately after World War II, most American children grew up in a family with both biological parents who were married to each other.
This state of affairs held sway up through the 1940s and 1950s. In fact, disruption of the traditional American family reached a historic low in the 1950s and early 1960s. But then something happened (see Whitehead, 1993). Beginning in about 1965, the divorce rate suddenly skyrocketed, more than doubling over the next fifteen years. By 1974, divorce passed death as the leading cause of family breakup. By 1980, only fifty percent of children could expect to spend their entire childhood with both their parents. Now half of all marriages end in divorce. Every year a million children go through divorce or separation, and almost as many more are born out of wedlock. People who remarry after divorce are more likely to break up than couples in first marriages. The same is true for couples who just live together.
Overall child well-being has declined, despite a decrease in the number of children per family, an increase in the educational level of parents, and historically high levels of public spending. The teen suicide has more than tripled. Juvenile crime has increased and become more violent. School performance has continued to decline. Some sociologists are now recognizing the incredibly harmful effect these circumstances are having on our country and the homes of America. They are beginning to realize the relationship between family structure and declining child well-being. Some are even admitting that the social arrangement that has proved most successful in ensuring the physical survival and promoting the social development of the child is the family unit of the biological mother and father.
But our society as a whole has been slow to see family disruption as a severe national problem. Why? A fundamental shift has occurred in our culture with reference to religious and moral value. Much of our society has jettisoned the Bible as the absolute standard of behavior. The Bible is no longer considered to be the authoritative regulator of daily living. Many, perhaps most, Americans no longer feel that divorce is wrong. “Irreconcilable differences” and “incompatibility” are seen as perfectly legitimate reasons for divorce—flying directly in the face of Bible teaching. Many Americans no longer feel that a couple simply living together without marriage is morally wrong. By the mid-1970s, three-fourths of Americans said that it is not morally wrong for a woman to have a child outside marriage.
We could debate the causes of this basic cultural shifting. I would argue that the influence of evolution and humanism in our educational system, the impact of feminism, the increased participation of women in the work force to the neglect of their children, the widespread prosperity that we enjoy as a nation (causing us to forget God and to indulge ourselves)—these and other factors have contributed to our moral decline. Hollywood, television, and the cinema have unquestionably glamorized, defended, and promoted divorce, premarital sex, unwed motherhood, abortion, and the use of alcohol, filthy language, and many other immoral behaviors.
Ironically—and tragically—the media have been working overtime to discredit the married, two-parent family by playing up instances of incest, violence, and abuse. If a family has religious inclinations, its members are depicted on programs as weirdos and deviants. In fact, it is surely disgusting to the sensibilities of the morally upright that what was once mainstream and normal (i.e., the religious, church-going, two-parent family) is being demonized and ridiculed, while behavior that once was considered deviant, reprehensible, and immoral is paraded before society—on TV, in the news, and in the courts—as the social norm. Anyone who lifts a finger to speak against such immorality is berated as “homophobic,” “prejudiced,” “judgmental,” “mean-spirited,” and guilty of a “hate crime.”
Two illustrations of the undermining of the marriage relationship as God intended are the recent decisions regarding homosexuality by the United States Supreme Court and the Episcopal Church. By a 62-45 vote, the Episcopal House of Bishops elected the denomination’s first homosexual bishop on August 5, 2003 (see Duin, 2003). Only days earlier, the Supreme Court ruled that sodomy laws are unconstitutional—even though sodomy was treated as a criminal offense in all of the original thirteen colonies and eventually every one of the fifty states (see Robinson, 2003; “Sodomy Laws,” 2003). Sadly, a generation has arisen who simply does not share the values of its parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. Sexual fidelity, lifelong marriage, and parenthood are simply no longer held up as worthwhile personal goals.
"The clear-cut restraints and distinctions between right and wrong so typical of American culture in the past have been systematically dismantled. Relativism has taken the place of objective, absolute truth."
- Divorce almost always brings a decline in the standard of living for the mother and children, plus a dependence on welfare; children in single-parent homes are far more likely to propagate the same behavior.
- Children never fully recover from divorce. Five, ten, fifteen years after a divorce, the children suffer from depression, under-achievement, and ultimately, their own troubled relationships.
- Young adults from disrupted families are nearly twice as likely as those from intact families to receive psychological help.
- Children in disrupted families are nearly twice as likely as those in intact families to drop out of high school. Those who remain in school show significant differences in educational attainment from those children who grow up in intact families.
- Remarriage does not reproduce nor restore the intact family structure. The latest research confirms that stepparents cannot replace the original home.
- For children whose parents divorced, the risk of divorce is two to three times greater than it is for children from married parent families.
What is even more startling is the fact that as an institution, marriage has lost much of its legal, religious, and social meaning and authority. For most of American history, marriage was one of the most important rites of passage in life. But now, marriage has lost much of its role and significance as a rite of passage. Sex is increasingly detached from the promise or expectation of marriage. Cohabitation is emerging as a significant experience for young adults. It is now replacing marriage as the first living together union. It is estimated that a quarter of unmarried women between the ages of 25 and 39 are currently living with a partner, and about half have lived at some time with an unmarried partner. Referring to this state of affairs as “the deinstitutionalization of marriage,” researchers at the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University concluded: “Taken together, the marriage indicators do not argue for optimism about a quick or widespread comeback of marriage. Persistent long-term trends suggest a steady weakening of marriage as a lasting union, a major stage in the adult life course, and as the primary institution governing childbearing and parenthood” (Popenoe and Whitehead, 1999).
Make no mistake: the social science evidence clearly documents the fact that the breakdown of the traditional two-parent, biological husband-wife family is a major factor contributing to the overall moral, religious, and ethical decline of our country. The social fabric of American civilization is literally tearing apart. The social arrangement that has proved most successful in ensuring the physical survival, and promoting the social development, of the child is the family unit of the biological mother and father. America is in deep trouble.
Our society is not likely to solve these massive problems. The liberal elite has been operating with great vigor for over forty years to push our country into “value neutrality” and “political correctness.” The clear-cut restraints and distinctions between right and wrong so typical of American culture in the past have been systematically dismantled. Relativism has taken the place of objective, absolute truth. The glorification of the individual has encouraged people to determine for themselves right and wrong—rather than looking outside themselves to the Transcendent Creator of the Universe. Consequently, whatever the individual feels is right is sanctioned as right—at least for that individual. The absolute standard of moral value and human behavior—that previously governed our nation—has been successfully supplanted. Subjectivity reigns supreme, and God has been effectively severed from human culture. “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:12).
GOD’S VIEW OF THE MATTER
The fact remains that there is a God in heaven (Daniel 2:28). God has spoken to the human race through His written Word, i.e., the Bible. In that inspired communication, He has designated the structure of society. He created male and female with the intention for one man to marry one woman for life (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:4-6). Here is the foundational building block of humanity. That is His simple will on the matter. He hates divorce (Malachi 2:16). The only way He permits divorce is if one marriage partner divorces the other marriage partner for the one reason that the marriage partner has committed fornication, i.e., illicit sexual intercourse. Upon that basis alone, God allows the innocent partner to put away that unfaithful mate and form a second marriage (Matthew 19:3-9).God intended for the husband and wife to produce children who, in turn, are to receive nurturing and care from their parents in a stable, loving home (Ephesians 6:1-4; Colossians 3:18-21). In this divinely ordained institution of the home, God intended that children receive the necessary instruction and training to prepare them to be productive, honest, God-fearing, hard-working citizens of their country. The home was designed by God to impart to each succeeding generation proper religious, moral, and social principles that would in turn make their nation strong and virtuous. The Bible is filled with references to the essential ingredients of healthy family life (e.g., Deuteronomy 4:7-9; 6:1-9; 11:18-21; 32:46-47; Psalm 127; Proverbs 5:15-20; 6:20-35; 11:29; 12:4; 14:1; 15:25,27; 17:1,13; 31:10-31), including proper parenting skills (Proverbs 13:24; 19:18; 22:15; 23:13-14; 29:15,17; Ephesians 6:1-4).
CONCLUSION
How simple! The solution to the confusion and corruption that has gripped American civilization is simple—if hearts are humbly yielded to the will of God. If we could get our families back on track according to God’s will, we could get our nation back on track. It starts with you and me. We must believe in, affirm to others, and conform ourselves to the sacredness of marriage.REFERENCES
Duin, Julia (2003), “Gay Bishop Sets Off Talk of Episcopal Schism,” The Washington Times,Popenoe, David and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead (1999), “What’s Happening to Marriage?”
Robinson, B.A. (2003), “Criminalizing Same-Sex Behavior,”
“Sodomy Laws in the United States,” (2003),
Whitehead, Barbara (1993), “Dan Quayle Was Right,” The Atlantic Monthly,
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So this is an old article and some of the links may not work. In 2003 Miller clearly saw the path the country was taking. We are another 8 years down the road and it is worse than ever! The attack on the nuclear family shows up in poor education, bad behavior, higher incidence of drug and alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancy and STDs, suicides...our children are paying the price as deviant adults do whatever they can to tear down marriage. We even have a chief executive who has instructed his administration not to defend the laws of the land - the DOMA lawsuits filed by the radical deviants will not be challenged by the representative of the President? I thought he was sworn to defend the Constitution and the law? Pathetic.
Another aspect to the attack on marriage is the emergence of the Super State and Gendercide- take for instance, Communist China:
The Global Threat of Gendercide
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Historian Niall Ferguson reminds us that Ernest Hemingway once penned a collection of short stories entitled Men Without Women. The stories are haunting, demonstrating the brutality that comes to men without the presence of women — and especially without the companionship of wives.He recalls the Hemingway collection in order to underline what is at stake in the growing global threat of missing girls and women. The global gender gap in favor of males is a reversion of the natural pattern. How did it happen? By the widespread practice of aborting and killing baby girls — what is rightly called “gendercide.”
As Ferguson explains, “The mystery is partly explicable in terms of economics. In many Asian societies, girls are less well looked after than boys because they are economically undervalued.”
Years ago, economist Amartya Sen put the number of missing girls and women at 100 million worldwide. As Ferguson argues, that number is surely far larger now.
Consider the scale of the problem:
In China today, according to American Enterprise Institute demographer Nicholas Eberstadt, there are about 123 male children for every 100 females up to the age of 4, a far higher imbalance than 50 years ago, when the figure was 106. In Jiangxi, Guangdong, Hainan, and Anhui provinces, baby boys outnumber baby girls by 30 percent or more. This means that by the time today’s Chinese newborns reach adulthood, there will be a chronic shortage of potential spouses. According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, one in five young men will be brideless. Within the age group 20 to 39, there will be 22 million more men than women. Imagine 10 cities the size of Houston populated exclusively by young males.
Ten cities the size of Houston? This staggers the imagination!
Ferguson warns that this gender imbalance has led in the past to outbreaks of expansionism and imperialism. Others have more directly warned of militarism and violence from China’s young men who have no prospects of marriage and a normal family life. These young men are described as China’s “broken branches.” There are millions of these young men in India, as well.
We must look beyond these warnings and see the even larger horror — the tragedy of young girls, aborted and murdered just because they are girls. This, among other vital reasons, is why even the earliest Christians understood abortion to be such a horrific evil. Given the reality of human sinfulness, we now compound abortion with infanticide and gendercide. Is this of interest only to historians and economists?
Niall Ferguson, “Men Without Women: The Ominous Rise of Asia’s Bachelor Generation,” Newsweek, March 14, 2011 (posted March 6, 2011).
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What happens when there are MILLIONS of young men with no chance of finding a mate? Do they fall prey to sexual deviancy? Will they become the point of a spear pointed at other countries, an army of soldiers with no family to leave behind? Will they rebel and turn to crime and anarchy, or will they subject themselves to a perceived groupthink goal greater than themselves as a propagandized mass of automatons? They have no chance at an ordinary life. When man cannot have a life, he is more likely to be motivated to take yours away from you...Genocide, gendercide, sexual deviancy being enforced by law on free society? It cannot end well. This is the fruit of society separated from God. This is what man looks like when God is not respected and obeyed. Is it any wonder that God wiped mankind from the face of the planet once before? How long before He cannot tolerate these crimes against humanity foisted upon humanity?
To take away the moral absolutes brings about the worst consequences. Hundreds of millions of unborn babies slaughtered by evil adults will weigh down the balance scale of justice on the side of destruction for those responsible. All forms of Social Darwinism and Humanism lead inevitably to the same end, the complete destruction of morality leads to the destruction of society and real freedom for the vast majority of mankind is lost. We are sliding back towards the time of a ruling elite and teeming masses of serfs. What do you think life in China is like for the average young man? God help you if you are a girl growing in your mother's womb, there is a pair of forceps and a knife and a suction tube coming for you! Pedophilia and Gendercide.
How could I take us from a love story to a horror story? More to come...