Renowned Expert Expounds on Why Natural Families Will Endure and Why Wise Governments Should Encourage Reproduction
"The nature of equality is to set up a legal system allowing men to be men and women to be women. The sexes should be able to fulfill their biological destiny as a marital pair. It comes down to another saying of G.K. Chesterton's in which he describes a human being as a quadruped with four legs in two different bodies. This is based on the Biblical message of two becoming one flesh. That's the nature of our species. Androgyny denies our complementary nature. Men and women differ biologically in matters of human reproduction so the law must protect and cherish those differences." - Dr. Allan C. Carlson
Dr. Allan C. Carlson, President of the Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society and the Director of the Family in America Studies Center, is one of the leading experts on family and marriage in the United States. The following are excerpts from an interview by writer Bernard Chapin touching, in part, on Carlson's latest book The Natural Family: A Manifesto, co-written with Paul T. Mero. To read this great interview—which covers everything from traditional marriage, to anthropology, to how socialism impacts families in its entirety—click on the link provided below.
First off, let me ask about your manifesto itself...
We have to recognize that the family is something older, more natural, and innate than government. Yes, the government can persecute and undermine the family in the short-term, but, in the long run, it will triumph as it is the more enduring institution...
...Couldn't one make a convincing argument that the United States government currently interferes in our privacy to a massive degree (particularly in regards to marriage)?
...Even in our age, the child's greatest chance of being happy and healthy is to be raised by two natural parents; having a mother and a father increase the chances of a child's success dramatically. Ideally, that's why government gets involved. They should encourage reproduction. That's what a wise state would do and such a government would be a limited one. The state must protect the home as a healthy society is built upon healthy homes.
You argue that socialism gains greatly from the denigration of the family...
Dr. Allan Carlson: ...Of course the joke here, the supreme irony, is that in Scandinavia feminism turned this into a very odd development. Women's work became socialized and transferred to the state. The government then took on the traditional function of the home and family with the state providing child care. Then women, in turn, rejected the private sector and largely took jobs within the government. They continued to do what has traditionally been women's work except now they provide child care for other people's children. Their role has not changed but now they're married to the state.
