Turned back only briefly by the Senate's prudent rejection of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, "family" gathers steam for the election season. Expect to hear it at least once in every campaign spot, several times in any speech.
A trademark of the Republican party, "family" more often finds its way into the mouths of Democrats, who are wary of ceding "values" turf to the opposition. In fact, scan the candidates' campaign websites and you find the word "families" more often on those of Democrats than those of Republicans. Jon Porter's site is remarkably innocent of family reference, but the word turns up no fewer than five times on the home page of Tessa Hafen, his Democratic opponent.
Neither "family" nor "families" turns up on Bob Beers' gubernatorial campaign site, and Jim Gibbons invokes the plural only to acknowledge guests who turned up for an event. Meanwhile, Democrat Jim Gibson welcomes a labor endorsement with: "The support of the working men and women of this state is something I value highly ... Their issues and concerns for the future of their families echo those of Nevadans across the state." You have to click a link on Dina Titus' page, but soon enough, there it is: "American families are besieged by soaring gas pump prices, health care costs and a deficit that is mortgaging their children's future ... Congress needs to focus its attention there, not on political gimmicks."
The gimmick she cites is the "Protection of Marriage" amendment.
But "family" might be the lamest gimmick of them all. Of all the unexamined givens of American politics, the assumption that the family is the indispensable building block of society is among the least credible—right behind the idea that same-sex couples getting married somehow "threatens" the family.
The amendment fell well short of the 60 votes needed for the Senate to approve a constitutional amendment. But it gained a vote from the previous attempt, and a majority of those voting approved it, 49-48. That it was transparently a ploy to rally the administration's pious base is damning enough, but consider the long view of history, from a future when today's pathetic political maneuvers will look as ridiculous as Guy Fawkes' Gunpowder Plot. If the anti-gay-marriage amendment, and its fraternal twin, the anti-flag-burning amendment ever despoil the Constitution, historians likely will recall those moments as watersheds in national decay: "In the early 21st century, Americans began twisting their testament of freedom into a codebook of moral repression, thus accelerating the decline of the once-great nation ..."
But of course the marriage amendment's supporters, confusing the erosion of traditional mores with the collapse of society, imagine themselves confronting decline. They cannot, however, say how, specifically, marriage is threatened by the union of two men or two women. It is hard to imagine how a practice with a 50-percent success rate can be ravaged any further than it has been already by heterosexual couples.
Their argument, though, is that the Mom-Dad-and-kids family is the bedrock of the society, and tinkering with it constitutes fatal error. And they can point to research correlating crime and broken family structure. In 1965, when he was an assistant secretary of labor in the Johnson Administration, the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a now-legendary report about illegitimacy in urban, African-American families. He correctly predicted a crisis as the number of black males raised by single mothers increased along with inner-city crime rates. But "family structure" was both cause and effect in a welter of social variables, including failures of public policy and of community and personal responsibility. Moynihan would later criticize both liberals unwilling to take "family structure" into account and conservatives who used it to promote "family values."
In any event, it does not necessarily follow that, absent the other pathologies of inner-city life, illegitimacy and single-parenthood are inherently dangerous. Again, looking back from a putative future, it might be found that in this era we began to develop a variety of social and community structures in which the "traditional family" has little or no role to play.
Meanwhile, "family values" advocates might well keep in mind that their religion does not buttress their ideals, either. In her book, Buddha, the religion scholar Karen Armstrong observes: "Right from the start, Siddhatta Gotama took it for granted that family life was incompatible with the highest forms of spirituality. It was a perception shared ... by Jesus, who would later tell potential disciples that they must leave their wives and children and abandon their aged relatives if they wanted to follow him."
I have nothing against families. I was blessed with mine. But psychiatrists would be out of work if everyone were similarly favored. This is well worth keeping in mind when we consider making "family" the basis of policy.
Chuck Twardy has written for newspapers and magazines for more than 20 years. His website,
www.members.cox.net/theanteroom, has a forum.