The Screwtape Report: The Irrelevance of Fathers
By Adam Graham (06/18/07)
Father's Day is a happy day of celebration for some people. For others, it's a day when their guilt gets the better of them and they buy the man a tie and place a phone call in order to feel less guilty about a year of neglect.
For some, Father’s Day is a source of pain because of abusive or absent fathers.
My general opinion is that Father’s Day is hooey. I didn’t have a father around growing up, and neither did any of my illegitimate children in various remote vacation spots around the world. I turned out fine, and so did they (as far as I know.)
But, this raises a key point as to how Democrats can secure the votes of values voters and those concerned with such emotional concepts as “family.” We have taken a few key steps. The first and most important step is the redefinition of family.
For years, if one were to picture a family, you would picture the patriarchal vision of mother, father, and children, with grandfathers and grandmothers, aunts and uncles around. Now we recognize family can be anything. Family can be two gay men, two lesbian women, or a single woman adopting. Family can be non-related people brought together for non-sexual purposes. The phrase, “They’re my family” is used at thousands bars across America. The word “family” means anything and to value family one can value anything from a traditional model to a nice dinner at the Olive Garden.
The second key is to establish all family models as equal. This has been a bit of a challenge. While the right tries to establish an environment for ideal families to flourish, we refuse to acknowledge any intrinsic difference in outcome in child-rearing results with a single parent, two lesbians, two cohabitating heterosexuals, two male homosexuals, an intact heterosexual marriage, or divorced parents sharing custody. The fact is that we can find many stories of children who turned out fine raised in each of these circumstances, therefore they’re all equally okay.
What social conservatives harp on is which arrangement produces the best results for children overall. The issue is irrelevant. Children are not here for their own benefit, but for that of their parents. They are a commodity to which all people should have equal access without regard to race, marital status, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Now, this is not to say abuse can be tolerated. Should there be abuse (which naturally includes any kind of corporal punishment) a child can be removed just like you’d remove cable television from a home where you found someone wasn’t paying their bill.
Remember, we as Democrats can proudly stand for great principles, including not only family, but also faith, patriotism, and freedom—provided that we define those terms in an advantageous way and declare our definition equal, if not superior, to all others. This is Dave Screwtape.
The Screwtape Report is written by Adam Graham. The Screwtape Report is written from a Democratic perspective by a conservative in order to reveal Democratic strategy and thinking.
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