Changing the Definition of Family

                I noticed recently that there seems to be a bit of a trend in the message of a majority of children's media in the past, say, 20 years. When I start going through a list of movies that I have seen, dating back from the early 1990's, most of them seem to embrace the idea that family is not necessarily  blood-it's the people who love you the most. Most of these movies star characters that are orphans or whose parents are divorced and in the end the child comes to the realization that they have a family after all. While I certainly realize that such situations are exceedingly painful, and that no one wants to feel like they only have half of a family, or no family at all, the truth of the matter is that the concept of a family has been slowly redefined in my generation, and will probably be more so in the next.

If you will notice most of the Disney movies that originated in the 1950's featured a child that generally had siblings, and both parents. (An exception would be The Parent Trap, in which the plot of the story is that the girls are trying to get their divorced parents back together.) Movies that were done (or redone) in the 1990's typically feature only one parent, or step parents, step siblings, etc. The conflict between the parents provides an integral part of the plot.

 Now, I'm not advocating the boycotting of movies that use this idea-in my opinion that would be going overboard. It isn't hard for a child to see that the lives of the child and parents in the movie are messed up. My problem lies more with the slow redefining of family than with the plot of the movies.  Upon stepping back and looking at the assertion that family is a group of people that love each other, I see an agenda. If a child's family can be just Mom, or just Dad, or their friend's family that takes them in because their own parents don't care, or whatever...what's to say family can't be two Moms or two Dads? The eroding of the idea that a family is Dad and Mom (who are  married and live together) and the children opens up the door to the idea that family can be two men and their adopted children, or two women.  I think that that is exactly the purpose.

As I look through history I see a slow turn in people's thinking from generation to generation. The idea that ‘the ends justify the means’, or Situation Ethics, is a theme of the kid's movies in the 1950's. Most people believed that right was right and wrong was wrong, but the idea has gradually crept in that it's ok to lie if you have a good reason, or it's ok to steal someone's animal if they're abusing it. The same thing is happening with homosexuality. The idea is being gradually introduced into mainstream media that it is ok to be "gay".

I was reading a parenting magazine last Friday (sitting in the waiting room of a tire shop) and noticed several references to dealing with your kids' school mates that  "have two mommies or daddies" and how to explain that to your kids. YUCK! I sit and watch as kids' shows and books promote this new definition of family, and I wonder, what will my children's generation (and I hope not my children) think of homosexuality? Most people in my generation, while not approving, are used to it.

 It doesn't shock me any more to see two men or women together. It's disgusting, but not appalling. What will our children think, as they grow up with stories that have this altered idea of family? We have been exposed more and more to the idea that homosexuality is normal. There are magazine articles and talk shows featuring homosexuality as normal or "just different." Homosexuals are frequently on reality TV shows, either as guests or hosts. Still, we don't think twice about why this "diversity" has become so prevalent. We don't see the motivation behind the magazine articles and the TV shows. We don't stop and think when we hear "Family can be anyone you love" at the end of the family movie. We seem to miss the rather apparent agenda. Why don't we realize there are forces that are after our children's minds to blind them from the truth? Are we blind already?

Faulty Logic

When I was about ten years old, my Dad brought me a book from the library. It was thin, hard covered, with a funny looking cover illustration depicting various farm animals. It was titled Animal Farm and was my first introduction to satire. Later, in college, I was assigned to read an essay by Jonathan Swift, titled A Modest Proposal. It is along these lines of satire that I endeavor to write a parable of my own, in order to point out a grand fallacy in the thought process of a very vocal portion of Americans.

It is well known that many vegetarians refuse to eat meat, or meat products, because it requires taking the life of an innocent animal. Thence the slogan “Meat is Murder”. I however, have developed an idea that would allow cattle marketers to circumvent that resistance and open up a new corner of the market, in addition to reducing the cost of raising beef, pork or mutton. The idea simply stated is this: The farmer simply takes a pregnant cow, pig, or sheep, near the end of her term, sends her into premature labor, and butchers the calf before it takes its first breath. This meat would then be available for ready consumption by vegetarians, as, after all, the calf was never really alive.

I daresay that most people upon reading this would find my proposal particularly disgusting and ludicrous, yet consider my interpretation of this satire:

Every day in America, the Land of the Free, the Land of Liberty, thousands of human children are being legally murdered before they can take their first breath. Proponents of this slaughter argue that the child is not really alive until it is completely born. Strangely enough to me, the same people that would protest the use of unborn calves as meat commend and condone the daily slaughter of human beings, as a woman’s right. While preparing to write this blog, as an assignment, I reviewed several websites, and came across an ad that really opened my eyes to the priorities of our Nation. The ad questioned, “Will you be pro-life after she is born?” and went on to say that if a person was not willing to devote equal time to fighting war, poverty, homelessness and ‘our planet’s degradation’, then they should stop defining themselves as ‘pro life’. I want to ask the American people, how is it that the primary right for a child to exist, unmolested, and defined as a person can be put on equal footing with saving the rainforests and taking political actions to improve the standard of living for adult persons. I definitely agree that it is a sad and terrible thing that people are living in poverty, but at least they have been allowed to live! Please, this debate is not about political action, it is about defining the unborn as a person with the same existing rights of protection that are allotted to adults. I ask a question posed by many fellow supporters of these unborn children: why are sea turtle eggs protected by the government, but Human embryos are legally used in genetic experiments? Why is it a crime to fight pit bulls, but legal to dissolve an unborn human in saline? Why do people consider veal a disgusting product of animal cruelty, and support stem-cell research that obtains its experimental material from the bodies of aborted babies? Why will people chain themselves to trees to prevent logging operations in the Amazon, and vote for candidates that approve government funding of abortions? What is wrong with us? When Jonathan Swift wrote A Modest Proposal he was speaking out against the treatment of the Irish people. His essay was based on the idea that the Irish were being treated like animals, and he used this satire to shock people into hopefully realizing what they were doing. What is most amazing to me is that in writing my little paragraph of a satire, I had to compare animals to people, because people are more easily moved by the plight of beef cows than by the slaughter of unborn children. And we say we have made progress?