Breakpoint

In the 2015 majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, a decision that overruled laws in dozens of states and imposed same sex “marriage” on the United States, Justice Anthony Kennedy rightly described marriage as an institution that is fundamental to society, that protects and ensures the well-being of children, and that is essential for a flourishing society. To withhold this institution from same-sex couples, Kennedy then wrongly concluded, would be to violate their dignity and disrespect their autonomy, especially the autonomy reflected in their intimate unions. What went missing in this opinion was a definition of what marriage is, and therefore why it is such an irreplaceable institution.  In the end, Kennedy’s decision failed in the same way that Matt Walsh’s new documentary What Is a Woman? reveals that transgender ideology fails. Repeatedly, advocates Walsh interviewed echoed the same refrain, that a woman is “anyone who identifies as a woman.” However, when pressed further and asked, “but what are they identifying as?” they had no answer. In the same way, under Kennedy’s reasoning, any relational arrangement we identify as marriage is marriage and warrants being included in the institution, even if it lacks the necessary ingredients that make marriage what it is. It is like saying, “The Rockefellers are rich, so I’m going to change my name to Rockefeller so I can be rich.”   Of course, this is not how reality works. Instead, Kennedy resorts to identifying marriage as an ever-evolving institution. In other words, marriage is not baked into reality like gravity. Instead, it is more like a speed limit, a social construct that changes as society changes.  If marriage is indeed just a product of abstract progress, untethered from any created intent or design, it suffers the same moral quandary as naturalistic evolution. There is no way to control what creature comes next, or to know, as Justice Kennedy assured us, that what followed would be better than what came before (or even if it will be good). There is no guarantee that marriage will remain an institution fundamental to society, that protects and ensures the well-being of children and contributes to human flourishing.  In fact, since Obergefell was decided, the rights of children to know their mom and dad, and to have their minds, bodies, futures, and most important relationships protected, have been replaced by the rights of adults to pursue their own desires and happiness. Justice Kennedy, it seems, has gotten his wish. Marriage has indeed evolved, or at least our conception of it has, but not for the better. Throughout human history, marriage was understood, including in law, to be a sexually complementary union, ordered toward procreation. No-fault divorce and now more fully same-sex “marriage” redefined it as an institution ordered only toward the vagaries of adult happiness.  Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives proposed the wrongly named “Respect for Marriage Act.” If it passes the Senate, this bill will result in a further stage of the legal evolution of marriage. When Obergefell was decided, the “T” had not yet taken over the ever-growing acronym of sexual identity preferences. The Respect for Marriage Act would not only encode Obergefell, but it would also further the reinvention of marriage in law. In effect, marriage would evolve into a genderless institution, not only unbound from its essential connection to children and sexual difference but to any embodied realities whatsoever. In other words, there would be no legal obstacle to extending marriage beyond couples to relationships consisting of multiple partners.   Even worse, redefining marriage not only redefines the definition of “spouse” but also “parent.” Parenting should be a sacrificial investment in future generations, but redefining marriage in this way has made it a self-determined right of getting “what we want.” Children have always borne the brunt of the worst ideas of the sexual revolution, especially when combined with new reproductive technologies. Rather than the fruit of a loving union, children are now increasingly treated as products of casually partnered consumers.  Further, if the Respect for Marriage Act becomes law, the worst parts of the Obergefell decision would be established in law in a way that abortion was not under Roe v. Wade. Like Roe, Obergefell was an act of judicial overreach. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in dissent, “[T]his Court is not a legislature…. Under the Constitution, judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be…. Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as constitutional law…. The majority’s decision is an act of will, not legal judgment.”   In his majority opinion, Justice Kennedy claimed that the decision would not affect people of conscience, especially “religious institutions and people.” That has proven to be flatly wrong. The Respect for Marriage Act contains no conscience protections.  Despite their party platform which claims a commitment to Constitutional originalism and religious freedom, this bill could find support from 10 Republican Senators. If it does, it will pass the Senate and become law. Please, if you live in a state with a Republican Senator who has not indicated he or she will oppose this bill, contact them today and tell them to do so. 

A recent NPR article lamented that “the end of Roe v. Wade has huge economic implications for male partners, too.”  According to a study quoted in the piece, “men  involved with a pregnancy and whose partners had an abortion were nearly four times more likely to graduate college” than those whose partners gave birth. And males under the age of 20 were more likely to earn more money if their partner had an abortion instead of carrying the child to term.   I guess we should thank the reporter for proving that legal abortion has always incentivized the financial well-being of men over the lives of the children they create. Still, presenting this as some kind of hardship for men is reminiscent of British slaveholders arguing against abolition by warning that sugar would cost too much without free labor. The whole moral picture is upside down.  Rather than arguing for legalized abortion on the basis of “disadvantaging men,” I’ll happily vote for a new idea other abortion advocates have come up with: requiring men to be financially committed to the lives they create... you know, like they are supposed to be. 

If this bill could find the support of 10 Republicans in the Senate who share this fuzzy view of marriage, it will pass, securing the federal government’s claim on marriage and creating even less room in public life for people who object to redefined marriage.

John and Maria discuss the Respect for Marriage bill before the Senate, which undermines traditional marriage, a bedrock of society. They link the importance of family to new data on the need for fathers and also recent news about the possibility of virtual babies in augmented reality.

If we never speak up, we’ll never find out what could happen...  After nearly 10 years of hosting its annual “Wilberforce week,” an Oxford college abruptly disinvited British group Christian Concern this March. Apparently, a handful of students accused the group of “hateful and invalidating” language.   In response, Christian Concern approached Worcester College and asked them to substantiate those accusations. The college was unable to do so and was instead reminded of a prior statement issued by its provost, that “the free expression and exchange of different views …  goes straight to the heart of our democracy and is a vital part of higher education.”  In the end, the college walked back the cancellation of Christian Concern and issued an apology.  Thank God for small victories like this, and for Christians willing to live out Peter’s command to respond with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak against us “may be put to shame.”  But this also requires Christians who, like the Apostle Peter, are willing to speak truth in the first place ... which takes courage, but who knows what God will do?  

One of the more helpful analogies to explain the personal and cultural damage wrought by the sexual revolution is that sex is like fire. When a fire is in the fireplace, it brings light, warmth, and ambience. It can even preserve life. When, however, a fire jumps out of the fireplace onto the curtains, it brings destruction, even death. A similar analogy compares sex to water. Our bodies need water to live, but we need water in the right place. When water gets in the lungs, it can be deadly.  One point of these analogies is that, like fire and water, sex is good. It has a design and purpose. The sexual revolution wanted sex to be “good,” but forfeited the “design and purpose” part. In fact, proponents of the sexual revolution argued that sex is only good if it is set “free” from all restraint, responsibility, and consequences.   This kind of fundamental error, like all bad ideas, is bound to have victims. With each day that passes, we meet more of them. Consider a piece published several months ago at Vice that announced a hip new way to find sexual satisfaction: “radical monogamy.” Don’t call it marriage (that’s for dinosaurs), but man, there’s something really fulfilling and safe (apparently) about sexual fidelity between two committed people. Or consider the recent book by Washington Post columnist Christine Emba. In Rethinking Sex, Emba argues that using the often vague ideal of consent as our only moral guidepost governing sexual activity has left a lot of people hurt, lonely, and frustrated.  All of this is pointing to an opportunity for the Church to offer something better. However, to do that, we must be careful and clear. If sex is designed, it is under the authority of the One who designed it. If it is, indeed, under God’s authority, and God is good, then rightly ordered sex is a good gift.   In other words, the full antidote to the toxic sexuality of the sexual revolution isn’t just to return it to the safety of the fireplace. The sexual morality we rightly talk about from Scripture isn’t the whole story of this beautiful gift. Keeping sex within the confines of a lifelong marriage between one man and one woman is a moral good, but just as loving our neighbors is much more than not actively hating them, respecting God’s design for sex is much more than not transgressing certain boundaries.  In His kindness, God has called us to the lifelong cultivation of being properly sexual. This is the virtue of chastity, something often mistaken by Christians and non-Christians alike for prudishness. Instead, the call to be properly sexual with one another is a calling for all of us, married and single, to pursue all our lives, before, during, and after marriage.   The Scriptures describe this well. Husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the Church. Christ laid down his life for His Church. And so, we give our bodies generously to our spouses, but not with degradation or violence.  Sex within marriage can still demean, degrade, and victimize. When sex is seen as nothing more than an act of mere pleasure seeking, or when sex is demanded or withheld out of anger or contempt, or when sex is pursued in body or in mind with someone who is not given to us in marriage, chastity is abdicated, and we are sinning against God, our spouse, and ourselves.  Wedding rings are not some “license to practice” in any and every way that comes into our minds. That’s reductionistic. Sex is allowed in marriage, but it is also still designed.  Often we think of biblical exhortations like the call to “love our neighbor” or to “seek the good of the other” as applying only to our actual neighbors, friends, or coworkers. But these verses also apply to our sexual relationships with our spouses. Practicing the virtue of chastity means to approach sex as an act of generosity. It’s not something to treat lightly or selfishly, even in marriage.  The sexual revolution sent the fire screaming out of the fireplace and then poured gasoline on the whole disaster. As more and more people are burned in its wake, the Church has a wonderful gift to offer, a gift that goes beyond the rules of the fireplace. When ordered rightly, the whole world will be blessed by its warmth, its light, and its life. 

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed what is known as the Respect for Marriage Act. Despite its traditional-sounding name, this bill is anything but. It’s an attempt to make legislatively secure what was decreed by the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that redefined marriage for the entire nation.  It’s not surprising the bill passed the progressive-controlled House, but 47 Republicans joined all the Democrats in the vote. And it seems at least possible that Dems could find 10 Republicans in the Senate, which would make the deceptively named act a law.   There’s nothing conservative about the state redefining marriage and forcing it on a nation as Obergefell did. If so-called conservative lawmakers don’t get that, it seems there is little left for conservatism to conserve.  Too many political conservatives are philosophically rootless. Their ideas are built on sentiment or nebulous “values” instead of the solid rocks of Scripture and common sense. If society is ever to re-embrace creational norms about marriage and family, our so-called conservatives must reject “the Hallmark-ization” of ethics. They must stop prioritizing sentiment over conviction. 

In 2016, psychologist Dr. Peter Langman compiled biographical data on 56 American school shooters. He found that 82% had grown up in dysfunctional family situations, usually without two biological parents at home. The trend has sadly continued. The shooter in Uvalde, Texas, hadn’t lived with his father in years. The Sandy Hook shooter hadn’t seen his father in the two years leading up to that massacre.  Last month, new research from the Institute for Family Studies demonstrated, once again, how important fathers are, especially for boys. For example, boys growing up without their dads are only half as likely to graduate from college as their peers who live with dad at home. Strikingly, those numbers remain steady even after controlling for other factors such as race, income, and general IQ. Boys without a dad at home are also almost twice as likely to be “idle” in their late twenties, defined as neither working nor in school, and are significantly more likely to have been arrested or incarcerated by the time they turn 35.  These are only a few of the data points which demonstrate that fatherlessness is one of the most pressing crises our culture is facing. Why doesn’t our culture talk more about this?  One reason is that this crisis intersects other “third rails.” Our culture got to this point via the sexual revolution, which encouraged promiscuity by redefining freedom and prioritizing autonomy over responsibility. When sex outside of marriage becomes normal, it is mostly women who are left on their own to raise the resulting children.  There are other contributing factors as well, many of which were made possible by legislation. Divorce has been largely destigmatized, not in small part by making it legally easier. The legal demand for same-sex “marriage” brought with it the demand for same-sex parenting, which by definition asserts that kids do not need both a mother and a father. Certain forms of assisted reproduction likewise assert that children are less the fruit of a committed marriage than they are a commercial process.  And now here we are, with 32% of American boys growing up in homes without their biological dads. If there’s anything that we should learn from the grim outcomes of this social experiment, it is that dads aren’t replaceable. This was true from creation, but even more so in a fallen world with each of us born with a fallen human nature. We only learn to grow from socially, emotionally, and spiritually immature children into adults so that we can live together in a healthy way by seeing healthy behavior modeled and by having unhealthy behavior corrected.   Scripture passages affirm that mentoring in righteousness requires demonstration, as much or more than just explanation. Christ repeatedly told his followers to “do as He did.” When He washed His disciples’ feet, He offered it as an object lesson: “I give you an example, that you also should do as I did to you.” Paul told believers in Corinth and Ephesus to be “imitators” of him, just as he was an “imitator of Christ.”  In other places, Scripture even points to modelling and mimicry in sex-specific ways. In his letter to Titus, Paul instructed men to be “dignified” and “self-controlled” and to “urge the younger men to be self-controlled.” He also told the older women to “teach what is good” and to “train the younger women” to be “self-controlled,” “pure” and “kind.”   That, of course, is another cultural third rail. We are so desperate to pretend sexual difference isn’t built into our biological reality, we simply cannot abide the suggestion that our genders are critically important in parenting. But the numbers don’t lie. As Dr. Ryan Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, puts it, “[T]here is no such thing as ‘parenting.’ There is mothering, and there is fathering—children do best with both.”  Christians can challenge the growing public safety crisis that is fatherlessness, and we must start in the Church. We must affirm, in word and in action, that there are men and there are women and that both matter in parenting. We have to de-normalize absent dads, challenge men to take responsibility for their sexual choices and for their children, and fill in the gaps whenever and however necessary.  No matter if our technologies and cultural dogmas pretend otherwise, every child has a father. These new statistics show, again, that every child needs their father. We have no right to deprive them of

According to a recent article in The Guardian, the theory of evolution may be in trouble. For the first time in a long time, scientists are bucking the so-called “Neo-Darwinian synthesis,” which has dominated the sciences since the early 20th century.   This doesn’t mean “evolution” is finished as a theory, but it could mean the end of thinking of it as the only theory.   There’s a lesson here for Christians. Every new fad, whether in science, the arts, government, or social issues, comes with the temptation to capitulate or avoid being on “the wrong side of history.”   In the past, proponents of the death of religion, the looming “population bomb,” utopian Marxism, and all kinds of other theories have made this claim, only to be proven completely false as time went on.  As a theory of everything, neo-Darwinism has failed. As a theory of the origins of biological diversity, it is clearly failing. Christians have no cause to abandon what Scripture reveals just because an idea, lifestyle, or theory becomes popular.  

Nineties kids (and their parents) may remember the Tamagotchi craze, a tiny egg-shaped video game that dominated toy markets for a time. Kids would raise a virtual pet that could hang from their backpack like a keychain. I’ve been told it was a great toy—the trauma of forgetting it somewhere and then finding it had passed on to greener digital pastures notwithstanding.  Now, in the age of the Metaverse, something else is here … and it is even creepier. “Augmented reality babies” offer users the virtual experience of “parenting” an algorithm designed to behave like a real baby. Using virtual-reality goggles, or even potentially wearable gloves which can simulate physical touch, users can interact with a digital baby as it grows … or, optionally (and even more creepily), as it stays exactly the same.   Some gurus are heralding AR babies as a new age of parenting.  “Make no mistake that this development, should it indeed take place, is a technological game-changer which… could help us solve some of today’s most pressing issues, including overpopulation,” says Catriona Campbell, a former technology advisor to the British government, and author of the book AI by Design: A Plan for Living with Artificial Intelligence.  Some argue this new development could also ease loneliness for those who want children but are unable to have them,   or for those who feel they can’t afford to have children. While the average kid costs about $230,000 by the time they reach age 17, reports the New York Post, “a digital kid … could have all its needs met for less than $25 per month.”  And as a bonus, no changing diapers!   In light of these possibilities, Campbell offered a somewhat unsettling prediction: “I think it would be reasonable to expect as many as 20% of people choosing to have an AR baby over a real one.”  On one hand, it’s hard not to be cynical of Campbell’s bright-eyed tech optimism, especially given the current dubious state of Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse. No matter how good it gets, augmented reality simply cannot replace many of life’s best experiences. Playing a video game in the Metaverse, for example, is fun. Eating a slice of cake... not so much.   By misunderstanding why people become parents in the first place, many proponents of augmented reality misunderstand the essentials of what it means to be human. Logging off from an AR “baby” might be easier, but all the labor spent on an actual child is something that simply cannot be simulated or replaced by a simulation.   And of course, the entire idea of global overpopulation continues to fall apart as its predictions continue to prove false. Should it actually work, this technology will almost certainly be adopted in countries where the most acute problem is underpopulation, not to mention increasingly devastating rates of loneliness. It’s a common trend in the modern world—much like prescribing marijuana to combat anxiety—that our “cures” only further aggravate the problem.   Spending over seven hours every day staring at screens for work, leisure, and connection has led many people to think technology can replace real relationships. But the opposite is true. Technology can do wonders, but putting a virtual baby in the hands of a lonely person is akin to giving a glass of salt water to someone dying of dehydration.   Likewise, it is simply not true that a life free of responsibility is the one which will produce the most happiness. As any parent knows, real kids are noisy, expensive, and inconvenient. There are days when they seem to constantly take our reserves of energy, and sometimes the last strands of patience. But, they’re worth it.   Jesus’ words that “it is more blessed to give than to receive,” aren’t just a pious aphorism. They’re describing a core piece of what it means to be human. The surprising source of real life, joy, and vitality is from serving others, not just ourselves.   No matter how sophisticated they may someday be, virtual babies will always be just a piece of code, a vain attempt to meet the felt needs of lonely adults while never providing for their true needs. If that’s what people want, it would be best to avoid any pretense of “parenting” and buy them a Tamagotchi instead.