Category Archives: Marriage & Family Life

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Feminism and a loveless future

Here’s something closely related to my last post.  At the Atlantic, Ann-Marie Slaughter calls us to commit ourselves more fully to the feminist dream:  more public day care so that women can spend their days self-actualizing in an office while their children are raised by paid professionals.  Sunshine Mary isn’t buying.

[...] The best option, both for individual children and for society as a whole, is high-quality, affordable day-care, either at the workplace or close by. High-quality means care provided by trained professionals who are specialists in child development, who can provide a stable, loving, learning environment that can take care not only of children’s physical needs but also provide stimulation and socialization.

Day care workers do not love the children they care for.  They may care about them, but they do not love them; it is dishonest and denies human nature to claim that they do.  Should children spend fifty hours per week with someone who does not love them?  Only a very sick society would choose this, but Mrs. Slaughter is fully on board with it.

Continue reading →

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Must a Traditional Man Accept Modern Marriage?

A guest post by Dalrock.

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Alan Roebuck recently asked Can Man Live Traditionally?

Alan answered yes, and went so far as to argue that a man has an obligation to marry even though this means marrying in a legal and social regime which has done all it can to eradicate traditional marriage, and even if this means marrying a woman who wouldn’t have been considered appropriate to marry by tradition minded men of past generations.

As a member of what I have dubbed the traditional marriage group within the manosphere, I asked Alan if he would be interested in me providing a response as a guest post. Alan very graciously accepted. I suggested this because while I differ in some important aspects with Alan’s position on the topic, I was impressed with his willingness to go against the grain of our thoroughly feminised culture and acknowledge the unpopular truths regarding what our society has transformed marriage into. While I think it is unlikely that opinions will be changed on either side, my hope with this exchange is that each of us will better understand the positions of the other. Continue reading →

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Real marriage and kinship

For those of you who haven’t seen it, the article on gay marriage by John Milbank (Mr. Radical Orthodoxy) is pretty good:

During the course of recent debates in the British Parliament over the proposed legalisation of gay marriage, it has gradually become apparent that the proposal itself is impossible. For legislators have recognised that it would be intolerable to define gay marriage in terms equivalent to “consummation,” or to permit “adultery” as legitimate ground for gay divorce….Why, then, should Christians worry, if this is all just a matter of terminology? Can we not live with differing definitions of marriage? …This may, indeed, be the direction that the churches now need to take. However, the graver fear surrounding the new legislation is that secular thought will not so readily let go of the demand for absolutely equal rights based on identical definitions. In that case, we face an altogether more drastic prospect. Not only would “marriage” have been redefined so as to include gay marriage, it would inevitably be redefined even for heterosexual people in homosexual terms. Thus “consummation” and “adultery” would cease to be seen as having any relevance to the binding and loosing of straight unions…

Secondly, it would end the public legal recognition of a social reality defined in terms of the natural link between sex and procreation. In direct consequence, the natural children of heterosexual couples would then be only legally their children if the state decided that they might be legally “adopted” by them.

And this, I argue, reveals what is really at issue here. There was no demand for “gay marriage” and this has nothing to do with gay rights. Instead, it is a strategic move in the modern state’s drive to assume direct control over the reproduction of the population, bypassing our interpersonal encounters. This is not about natural justice, but the desire on the part of biopolitical tyranny to destroy marriage and the family as the most fundamental mediating social institution.

Heterosexual exchange and reproduction has always been the very “grammar” of social relating as such. The abandonment of this grammar would thus imply a society no longer primarily constituted by extended kinship, but rather by state control and merely monetary exchange and reproduction…

It is for this reason that practices of surrogate motherhood and sperm-donation (as distinct from the artificial assistance of a personal sexual union) should be rejected. For the biopolitical rupture which they invite is revealed by the irresolvable impasse to which they give rise. Increasingly, children resulting from anonymous artificial insemination are rightly demanding to know who their natural parents are, for they know that, in part, we indeed are our biology.

Set aside for the moment that heterosexual divorce is as great an abomination as gay marriage, and you’ll agree that Milbank ably makes two key points.  First, gay marriage does affect straight marriage by forcing straights to radically impoverish their understanding of their own unions.  Second, this is an attack by the state on a rival social structure, the kinship group.

Next, Milbank realizes where his logic is leading him and tries to draw back:

From this it follows that we should not re-define birth as essentially artificial and disconnected from the sexual act – which by no means implies that each and every sexual act must be open to the possibility of procreation…

Perish the thought.

By the way, the discussion we had here earlier on paternity testing got my thinking about what marriage really means from a purely legal standpoint.  Here is what I came up with:

Marriage is an agreement that party A (the husband) should automatically be recognized as the father of any children born to party B (the wife), “automatically” meaning that once the marriage is contracted, neither party may refuse to acknowledge A’s paternal rights and duties to any children subsequently born to B.

There is much more to marriage, of course, but it’s all built on top of this.  The point of marriage is to legally establish fatherhood.  Once this is explicit, it is quite obvious that 1) marriage is heterosexual (such a contract would still be meaningful for an infertile heterosexual couple, but not a homosexual one); 2) a woman can have no more than one husband (since having more than one father would negate the essential paternal authority of all of them); 3) women may not divorce and remarry (because otherwise fatherhood would depend on the mother’s subsequent will, in violation of the contract).  Again, everything else is on top of this.  Love is the reason to make this contract, but it is not the essence of the contract itself.  This contract is a fitting metaphor for the union of Christ with His Church, but only because it already has a nature fixed apart from theological considerations to make the metaphor apt.

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Can Man Live Traditionally?

The problem with TradCons is that it [sic] proposes men behave according to traditional behaviours while the underlying rules that supported that behavior doesn’t [sic] exist.

- A commenter at Oz Conservative

…traditionalism is a collectivist ideology.

The problem is tradcon thinking and language has been completely taken over by feminism.

-An individual calling himself “Pro-male/Anti-feminist Tech,” at his blog

It is said by many (not just the individuals quoted above) that since the traditional rules of traditional society have been overthrown, a person cannot live traditionally without incurring a severe penalty.

In response, we traditionalists say that indeed, man must always make some accommodations to his environment. But to be properly virtuous, a man or woman must not live just for himself. He must also live a life that contributes to his family, his people, his religion, and his nation.  And this can only be done by living, to a greater or lesser extent, traditionally.

The topic is large, and this post will only respond directly to one of its manifestations: It is said by some in the Manosphere that we traditionalist conservatives are betraying men by urging them to act according to traditional rules of chivalry towards women, with the result that women have the advantage over men. In brief, they say we traditionalists urge men to submit to women. Continue reading →

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The Cause of Homosexuality

In reaction to my post “Say No to Same-Sex Pseudo-Marriage,” commenter “The Man Who Was…” objects to our claim that homosexuality is largely caused by one’s upbringing. He says no evidence exists for this claim.

The truth is rather different. That homosexuality is largely due to the environment in which one is raised is very nearly true by definition, and is therefore not subject to either proof or disproof by empirical means. If The Man Who Was… objects that “studies” don’t prove that homosexuality is induced by a disordered environment, he’s probably failing to notice that “studies” also don’t disprove it. Continue reading →

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Say “No” to Same-Sex Pseudo-Marriage

The officially-mandated legitimization of same-sex pseudo marriage is absurd, contemptible and even evil. So naturally our ruling elite are enthusiastic about it, and the regular people are increasingly falling into line.

It therefore seems likely that homosexual pseudo-marriage will soon be enshrined into law throughout the United States. Our nation—at least most of our leadership class—is eager to defy God, nature and human tradition.

As traditionalists, we of the Orthosphere know that the legitimization of homosexuality—currently the most popular of the destructive leftist fads—is a great wrong. Let us therefore summarize the reasons why it is wrong so that those capable of acknowledging reality can at least have the satisfaction of a clear statement on this important topic.

We will not, of course, convince our opponents. And so we will not try, that is, we will not attempt to dot every “i” and cross every “t.”When someone is wrong about something as obvious as the superiority of heterosexuality to homosexuality he is not wrong because of inadequate reasoning. He is wrong either because he dares not defy the spirit of the age, or because his spirit rebels against God.

So we will simply make a series of true assertions, and not attempt to rebut every pseudo-objection raised by the other side. Continue reading →

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Enemies of the cross of Christ

For many walk, of whom I have told you often (and now tell you weeping), that they are enemies of the cross of Christ; Whose end is destruction; whose God is their belly; and whose glory is in their shame; who mind earthly things.

– Philippians 3:18-19

Today is Holy Wednesday, in which we commemorate the betrayal of Jesus by one of his own. Fittingly enough, today was also the day when large numbers of Christians publicly expressed their betrayal of the cross of Christ (or continued to express, rather) in order to align themselves with the spirit of the age by agitating for gay “marriage.” I witnessed this today among my own friends, many of whom rushed to change their Facebook profile pictures (in concert with about ten million other “critical thinkers” who all happen to think and dress and talk exactly alike all the time without any apparent coordination) to a giant equals sign, for, yanno “marriage equality.” Because, they say, Jesus was all about equality, tolerance, and acceptance.

Thank God we’ve got the dumbest generation of spoiled, incompetent narcissists in the history of the world to tell us how Jesus really feels about gay “marriage.” I guess Genesis 18-19 was a giant head fake.

Let us take some time this week to do penance on behalf of these useful idiots (emphasis on the latter word), the better to console the sacred heart of our Lord, wounded as it is by the sins and ingratitude of men.

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Open discussion: Reactionaries and paternity testing

This story of a cuckolded man court-ordered to continue paying child support to his adulterous ex-wife (with whom he fathered only one of her four children) got me wondering about the appropriate reactionary position on paternity testing.

On the one hand, prudence alone would seem to support it. “Just take her word for it” might have made sense when adultery was severely socially punished and divorce nearly impossible, but today, cuckoldry is cheap, easy, socially permissible, and legally facilitated. The consequences of that cuckoldry for hapless husbands can be absolutely ruinous (financially, socially, and emotionally), and paternity testing provides a fairly quick and inexpensive remedy against it. Signing a birth certificate shouldn’t be like clicking through the terms of service on iTunes, after all.

Actually, the only downside I see would be the hurt feelings of a genuinely faithful wife treated with (what she would no doubt experience as) suspicion by her husband. But I’m also not very bright, so I’m probably missing some things.

Thoughts?

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Catholic asceticism and the permanent diaconate

I recently came across an intriguing article by Catholic canonist Ed Peters. It turns out that not only is the married (and sexually active) permanent diaconate a historical divergence from the Latin Church’s ancient theological patrimony of clerical continence, it may even be a departure from the plain letter of canon law.

I had no idea this was the case, but it suggests the possibility of something deeply pernicious: widespread disobedience to Church law on the part of Catholic bishops during the immediate postconciliar era, and especially in the United States, where something like half the world’s permanent deacons reside. An effort to stir up agitation against priestly celibacy, perhaps?