Our public policy with regard to the family should be based on five principles: sex is good, sex
is for marriage, marriage is between a man a woman, children are good, children
are for marriage. That's it. Only
policies that support these principles should be adopted, and any policies that
subvert these principles should be flatly opposed.
Case in point: taxpayer-funded contraception. The utter
disaster I call MussoliniCare may soon make contraception free (which means
everybody else pays for it) to women in the U.S.
This is a perfectly terrible idea. If couples want to
have sex outside marriage, and don't
want to conceive children while doing it, let them buy their own contraception
or get it from some non-taxpayer funded charity foolish enough to
support sexual irresponsibility.
It is grossly wrong to force taxpayers to cough up dough
to make it easier for other folks to indulge in sexual promiscuity. As Thomas
Jefferson said, it is both sinful
and tyrannical to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the
propagation of opinions which he disbelieves. Im with T.J. on this one.
To use taxpayer funds to subsidize contraception for
unmarried folk is to subsidize sexual immorality, and you always get more of
what you pay for. Ask yourself: is there anyone out there, anywhere, who is
looking at our culture and saying, you know, the problem here is that we just
don't have enough people fooling
around?
So no taxpayer funded contraception period for unwed men
and women. Period. Not another dime to Planned Parenthood since they insist on
handing the stuff out to single people like candy while scarfing down hundreds
of millions of tax dollars.
And we shouldn't
force Americans to pay for married-couple contraception either. Many Roman
Catholics, for instance, believe contraception itself is immoral. To force them
to pay for other people to get it is to violate Jeffersons dictum.
If married folk want to have sex without having kids, let
them get their own contraception. (To my squawkish friend on the left: note
that I am not saying contraception should be illegal.) We want married couples
to have more children, not fewer. Our problem is not that married couples are
having too many kids, our problem is that they arent having enough.
Our fertility rate right now is barely at replacement
level, and thats with 40% of our
children born out-of-wedlock -- bastards, to use the quaint and correct term (dictionary:
bastard: a person born of parents
not married to each other). Thats not name-calling, its telling the truth.
Russia has seven million fewer people than it did twenty
years ago. The native population in Europe is dying, and Europe is experiencing
massive social problems with the Muslims they've imported to make up for the fact they aren't having children of
their own. Japans fertility rate is in such decline that Foreign Policy
magazine estimates that the last Japanese child in history will be born
before the end of this millennium.
The last thing we need is any public policy that
encourages married couples to have fewer children. In fact, the American
standard ought to be a minimum of three children per married couple.
Gods
original instruction to our first parents was to be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth. This command, which
theologians call the Cultural Mandate, has never been rescinded. Its still
in effect today, just as much in effect as it was when first uttered 6,000 years
ago.
In order to multiply
- that is, to grow in number - each couple has to have at least three children.
If you have two, you're not multiplying, you're just replacing yourself. Now
some couples may have infertility problems, or other medical problems.
Such medical problems limited my wife and me, for instance, to two children.
Those things are unavoidable in a fallen world.
But to adopt policies that make it easier to replicate by
choice circumstances which are either tragic or unfortunate is foolish and
short-sighted and harmful to America, its future, and its prosperity.
Capitalism and free enterprise, which together have made
the United States the most prosperous, free, and powerful nation in the history
of the world, requires one thing: people. An economy cannot grow unless its
population grows.
As the ancient proverb has it, In a multitude of people is the glory of a king, but without people
a prince is ruined (Prov. 14:28). It was true then, and its true now.
The problem is that the Western world is breeding itself
out of existence and our socialist friends in President Dudes administration want to help. Its time
they were stopped.
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the
authors and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family
Radio.)