The Right Family Values
In an online piece titled “Liberals Love the Sin and Hate the Sinner,” conservative columnist Star Parker tells us that:
“Democratic politicians, who now are quietly luxuriating in the Craig scandal and Republican Party woes, will tell us that what they’re about is fairness, income gaps, two Americas and the poor.”
Her thesis is that Senator Larry Craig’s (R-ID) personal behavior has nothing to do with the validity and relevance of the traditional values he espoused before the scandal he is now embroiled in. I agree with her, it’s just that I don’t think they were valid to begin with. I think raising healthy, happy children who will grow up to fulfilled by being active in society and by following their own gifts are the best family value. I think this can be achieved in a one- or two-parent household, and I don’t think it matters what sex the parents are.
She sites Lawrence Mead, a professor of politics at New York University and author of seven books on poverty and welfare reform. He provides his conclusions as to the roots and causes of poverty:
“Although impediments to working may still affect some people, poverty is overwhelmingly a result of dysfunctional patterns of life. Families are poor in America in 2007 typically because unmarried parents have children and then do not work regularly to support them. … It has become difficult to avoid the conclusion that serious poverty in America is rooted in the culture of the poor.”
We’re poor because we have a culture of poorness. This may be more of a revelation than it sounds, but I’m just a bit put off by the whole thing. I’m afraid I grew up with too many friends who had divorced parents and who were fairly affluent to believe that dysfunctional patterns of life is the overwhelming cause of poverty. I need to know how Professor Mead defines dysfunctional. Starting with no money and connections or hope may lead to more poverty, but no marriage or a bad marriage with children is not a given cause of poverty nor is poverty necessarily dysfunctional.
When people assume that two people living together–whether they’re fighting, abusing the kids, ignoring the kids, or drinking–are automatically better for the kids than a single parent, I want to scream. But then to assume all single parents are better would make me scream as well. It is not a black and white world anymore, and while that may not be comfortable, we need to help people accept it.
There is, however, one statement Ms. Parker made that I can fully agree with. In terms of developing family values that put the child first and support and strengthen any family unit that works I agree wholeheartedly with this statement:
Whatever Larry Craig was doing in a men’s room in the Minneapolis airport has little to do with the relevance of these truths and their importance in our country today.
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Lisa,
I could not have said it better:
“I think raising healthy, happy children who will grow up to fulfilled by being active in society and by following their own gifts are the best family value. I think this can be achieved in a one- or two-parent household, and I don’t think it matters what sex the parents are.”
With 30 plus years in education I have enough experience to know that great parenting is indeed the best family value and it is accomplished in a wide variety of households.
Tom Hanson
Openeducation.net
Thanks Tom, I appreciate you kind words and I value your oppinion on this as a person and especially as a teacher. I myself am not a parent so I feel in someways that I’m casting stones from a glass house, but I know how hard my parents worked to teach all of their children values and how hard I see my friends work to raise their children, and I just know that effort, that love has to be more important than whether this couple is made up of two women or that couple is a man and a woman or the single mom who adopted a daughter. I just can’t find fault in any of these families.
Lisa
Thanks for your thoughts Tom. I appreciate your input especially as a teacher. It’s important to remember how critical the family is to the whole equation. I think we need to support whatever type of family. Not try and decide which type of family is the right or moral family and just drop any other family unit as unworthy. You can say it takes a village to raise a child, but only if the village isn’t actively shameing the child’s family.
Lisa
Regarding Sen. Craig and his alleged “cruising” behavior, let us pretend for one moment that his protest “I am not gay” was a desperate attempt to conceal an element of his personality that he feels he must hide because of the risk to his political career. Mind you, whether he is in fact gay, or bi, or hetero is his own affair, but let’s pretend as a thought experiment that he truly is what he says he is not, based on his alleged attempt to attract a male sex partner. In a culture guided by humanist ideals, he would not have had to hide his true inclination. Humanists would not harass him or exclude him from public life for being openly gay, because they would not accept the scriptural condemnation of homosexual love, which is the basis for most anti-gay activism and which has even informed such activism outside formal religious circles. He would not have had to go cruising in a public restroom to meet a male sex partner, because he could have pursued a relationship with a man openly and without fear, because humanists are so much less likely to condemn a person for pursuing personal fulfillment, as long as no one is victimized by that pursuit. Sen. Craig, if indeed he is gay in part or entirely, is a victim of the programmed intolerance that is inherent to those who lay claim to the Whole Cosmic Truth, as fundamentalists of any religion do. The regrettable fact is, if he is attracted to men, he has had to conceal his real approach to love for fear his constituents will punish him for it. An expansion of humanist values would run counter to this ugly factor in American political and cultural life, even if at this moment in history it will be an uphill climb.
Well, I think a more Humanist society might allow people the freedom to express themselves as they truly are. I think as you say at this point it would be an uphill battle. I don’t know if the public harassment is the basic problem as much as the inner shaming that goes on. That is also a big part of what makes people try to lead double lives and hide a part of themselves from the world.