Family Under Siege

During the past week, a couple of prominent New York Giants football players came out in support and opposition to gay marriage. Michael Strahan, who was one of the best defensive ends for the Giants in the 90’s and 00’s was in favor of gay marriage while one of his former teammates, David Tyree, who you may remember as the receiver that made the miracle catch in Super Bowl 42 to help the Giants beat the undefeated New England Patriots, was opposed to it. As I listened to both men’s arguments for and against gay marriage, I began to think about the state of the family in the United States over the past few decades and how the sanctity of marriage has eroded on all fronts and left in its wake broken homes, broken hearts, and broken bank accounts.

In the 1960’s, we had the sexual revolution which was typified by a dramatic shift in traditional values related to sex, and sexuality. Sex became more socially acceptable outside the strict boundaries of heterosexual marriage. Studies have shown that between 1965 and 1975, the number of women who had had sexual intercourse prior to marriage increased significantly, and as a result, the nation for the first time in its history had to deal with a high volume of unwanted pregnancies.

To solve this issue, the Supreme Court in 1973 ruled in the case of Roe vs. Wade, that it was a woman’s right to have an abortion. Just over 700,000 abortions in the United States were performed in 1973 as a result of this decision. This year, it is estimated that 1.5 million abortions will be performed in the United States and 75 million worldwide. It has become over the past two decades, one of the most common surgical procedures.

At the same time as the sexual revolution was gaining steam, Feminism emerged and was largely concerned with issues of equality other than suffrage. The champions of this movement told women that they were on par with men and that they should not just be regulated to child bearers in the home. This propelled women into the workforce and by the early 1980’s women were told they could have it all – a husband, career, and children and the “supermom” motto emerged. On its heels, however, came rising divorce rates as husbands and wives tried to figure out how to coexist in the new model family where mom went to work and the kids went to day-care.

So, it should really come as no surprise to any of us that gay marriage is now on the table and is passing acceptance across the nation at a rapid rate, despite the overwhelming data that shows what is best for children is a mother and a father who are the parents of that child, raising that child in a stable, married relationship.

We began as a nation destroying the sanctity of marriage and the family structure more than five decades ago and every generation it seems since then has taken more steps to ruin the one union that was instituted by God and actually pictures the relationship of Jesus Christ and the Church (see, Ephesians 5:22-33).

If the United States as a nation has any hopes of regaining its lost prosperity, it will not be found as President Obama thinks in American ingenuity but in American integrity. We have lost the very underpinning of any successful society - the family unit - because we have forgotten God and no civilization, anywhere can hope to prosper that does not have as its foundation the sanctity of marriage, life, and the sacredness of God.