Our Threatened Freedom

Is There a War Against the Family

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: 26-169

Genre: Conversation

Track: 026

Dictation Name: Vol. C - Part 04 – Is There a War Against the Family

Location/Venue: Unknown

Year: 1980’s – 1990’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Is there a war against the family? This is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.

All of us assume that we know what a family is, and that there can be no argument about its definition. After all, we grow up and live in a family. Few things are more familiar to us. However, lately the family has been the target of a very serious redefinition by federal agencies. One of the most radical and revolutionary steps in the history of the family. According to these people, there are two kinds of families. The new family is the voluntary family, whereas the older and traditional form is the coercive family. It is important for us to understand what these terms mean.

The voluntary family is seen as any association in a common dwelling of two or more homosexuals or lesbians, it can also mean a sexual commune, or living together with a group of runaway youth. Such a family is regarded as having a moral status because it is a free or voluntary association. Not a compulsory or a necessary one. We are being told that the voluntary family must be granted status and legal protection.

The other kind of family, we are told, is the traditional or biblical family pattern. This is called coercive, and thus by implication, downgraded. The family members in the traditional family are supposedly not free, or are less free than those in the voluntary family, and hence not as socially advanced.

Some have advocated, as a right for children, the freedom to move out and choose their own homes.

Now the so-called voluntary family is really an anti-family group, a part of a group in war against the family. Someone once said that fascism would come in the name of anti-fascism. We can add that the planned destruction of the family is coming in the name of the family, the voluntary family.

The biblical family pattern however is basic to the life of man, to his mental, emotional and moral stability. To weaken the family is to weaken man and civilization.

Carl. C. Zimmerman, a Harvard sociologist, in his study of family and civilization, shows that the rise and fall of the stability and centrality of the family is basic to the rise and fall of civilization.

Zimmerman showed how disastrous it has been, again and again, to replace the family’s role in the life of man with an emphasis on lawless sex.

When men trust in sex as the marital and psychological cure-all, they do major damage, both to the person and to the family. They also produce moral anarchism.

Zimmerman, in ‘The Family of Tomorrow’, referred to a common theme in moral novels. This theme is, why did the world have to wreck my life? The truer question is, of course, why did I wreck my life? What right do I have to revolutionize the world and the family because I am a failure?

The failures of our day see themselves as an avant-garde, whose duty it is to change the world, and make all things over in terms of their failure and their own sins. As a result, we have a war against the family, and we had better know it. Our future is at stake.

This R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedoms.