I want to thank Concerned Citizens for America, and specifically Jan Klaas, for inviting me here tonight.  All authors are delighted when asked to comment on their work, and are especially delighted when others are prepared to buy into their argument.  The Resolution being discussed tonight is adapted from a considerably longer document entitled The Natural Family: A Manifesto.  Paul Mero, formerly with The Howard Center and now President of The Sutherland Institute, is my co-author.  I have been asked to saw a few words about the purposes of this document.

To begin with, The Natural Family: A Manifesto seeks to present a concise, coherent, and—we hope—compelling pro-family worldview and program of action.  It is inspired by The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 16(3) of which proclaims that “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the state.” 

The Manifesto begins by telling “the story of the family” and then places our current family crisis in historical context.  It offers our vision, a set of principles on which we build, and a concrete cultural and political agenda.  It outlines our view of liberty, responds to anticipated accusations, and explains our relationship to allied campaigns.  In the end, we summon all people of goodwill to join a great cause, the affirmation of the natural family for a new century and millennium.

Many have asked, why a Manifesto?  Well, this format pushes writers toward a clarity of vision and an economy of words.  It requires an articulation of principles and an honesty towards historical circumstance.  It discourages disheveled thought and half-truths.  It demands a careful balance between the universal and the specific.

Others have asked: With what authority do we write?  At one level, we are simply two men who share a deep concern for our children, our cities, our nation, and our civilization.  We cannot claim the backing of any political party nor do we speak as the leaders of large organizations.  However, we do offer here our respective backgrounds—one as historian and writer, the other as policy analyst and activist—and our common work through the World Congress of Families as credentials.  We make no claim in this Manifesto to having discovered something altogether new.  We have learned from many friends and colleagues, as well as from men and women of the past.  We ride here on their shoulders, hoping only that we have added to their work and legacy in some significant way.

Rather than continuing in my own words, though, let me draw on the comments of others about the Manifesto.  One person who fully understands what we attempted here is Professor Wilfred McClay, one of America’s most distinguished scholars.  He is Professor of History and holds The Sun Trust Bank Chair of Excellence in the Humanities at The University of Tennessee-Chattanooga.  His books include The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America and The Students’ Guide to U.S. History.  Regarding our Manifesto, he writes:

“That we are living through a period of unprecedented crisis in the very structure of family life is by now a truism. But too much of what has been written on the subject accentuates the negative, appealing more to our fears than our hopes. Such an emphasis misses the deepest problem facing us. That problem is not serial divorce, or gay marriage, or widespread elective childlessness, or the general disregard for the lives of the very young and very old. Those are only symptoms. The deepest problem is the loss of a generally shared vision, firmly grounded in nature, of what the family is, and why our destiny as individuals and as a society is inseparable from its proper flourishing. None of the other things would be happening if our vision of the family itself were not so confused and wavering.”

“This Manifesto represents a welcome change from that tendency. It does not flinch from addressing itself to issues of the day. But it does so in a much larger and longer context, seeking always to answer such developments with a positive vision of what family life is, and is meant to be. That vision is not a mutable cultural ideal or a Victorian ‘cult of domesticity,’ but instead something grounded in nature itself, and badly in need of recovery.  Therefore this Manifesto is not merely a political document. It is also a philosophical document, a brief but pithy inquiry into the true sources of human happiness." 

“I especially applaud its eagerness to address itself directly to the plight of young people who have wearied of the weightlessness of sexual ‘liberation’ and the siren songs of consumerism and vocationalism. There are many such people, and many of them already understand, often through lessons learned the hard way, that we are not made to be individualistic atoms, floating free. That they know---but they see no compelling alternatives.  This Manifesto offers them a countervision: that we are made to be conjugal and connected beings, whose lives are made whole and satisfying not only by the pursuit of our own pleasures, but by a lifetime of love and self-giving and mutuality and duty, commitments that bind us in the most elemental way to things larger than ourselves, and bind us to a past, and a future, that we can only dimly glimpse. It is only within the family’s dense web of duties and obligations that our achievements can matter, and our freedom be authentic. May this Manifesto help us recover that insight.”

Another commentator who fully understands our purpose here is Dr. Albert Mohler, President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, America’s largest seminary, based in Louisville, Kentucky.  He writes:

“As Carlson and Mero make clear, the natural family opens the portals to the good life, to true happiness, even to bliss.  In the face of the family's enemies, who routinely criticize the family as a limiting institution that represses individuality, Carlson and Mero understand that the mutuality and generosity of family life, propelled and formalized by mutual obligation, cements the family together in shared experiences and common goals.” 

“As touching and true as these passages are, this Manifesto is important for the fact that it identifies the larger social context of family life. Carlson and Mero understand that the natural family is civilization's most fundamental economic unit. Beyond this, they also understand that political life also flows out of natural family homes.  More specifically, a just political life emerges out of the context of the natural family…. As the authors of this Manifesto are bold to declare: ‘States exist to protect families and to encourage family growth and integrity.’”

“The Manifesto these authors have offered in defense of the natural family demands the attention of all those who would defend civilization's most basic institution. This important document has emerged at just the right time.”

Other commentaries include:

From Rabbi Daniel Lapin, President of Toward Tradition:

“This family Manifesto is nothing short of a blueprint for Western survival.  The durability of our culture and of its peace and prosperity will never be seriously jeopardized by outside threats. The only real perils our future faces are the forces eroding the foundations of marriage and family. The safety of women, the security of our children, and the sturdiness of our civic institutions all depend on sculpting the raw rock of masculine aggressiveness and sexuality into the work of art we call marriage. Prudent people protect it.  The family Manifesto is not only a blueprint for survival, it is a bugle call.”

From Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse of Concerned Women for America:

“We have needed an unambiguous statement about the family that explains: family structure makes a difference; that the traditional family with a faithful, married mother and a father is essential to the well-being of women and men, as well as vital to the well-being of children.”  

From Dr. Ted Baehr, the Editor of Movieguide:

“The Natural Family: A Manifesto is brilliant—the most important manifesto of the last one hundred years.  Every person should read it, especially those in government and the mass media.  In clear, concise, winsome language, it argues the critical importance of the role of the family in society and what needs to be done to create a better world.  This Manifesto is for the United States and the world.”

From Anisa Abdel Fattah:

“The National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW), America’s first and only Muslim organization that is dedicated to protecting American families, American values, freedom, and a pro-life agenda, endorses the aims of The Natural Family: A Manifesto.”

And from Dr. W. Glenn Jamison, Staff Psychiatrist, Clifton Springs Hospital in New York:

     “A healthy family is not simply one among several options.  Traditional family structure is as organic and normative as a healthy heart or liver or brain, but on a higher systems level.  The family is an integral human function, reflected in biological and psychological design at every level.  Humans can survive, but cannot thrive, if basic family structures are manipulated and distorted.  Built-in family dynamics will always struggle to reassert themselves in a pathogenic society….The Manifesto dares to restate the obvious, in a powerful and affirmative way.”

Finally, I want to share a few thoughts about the part of the Manifesto labelled, “The Vision.”  It is these words that have been adapted into the proposed Resolution brought forward tonight.

These paragraphs, I underscore, represent an ideal: not our situation in Rockford, or the world, as it is; but the situation as it ought to be.  This ideal does build on a central finding of modern social science: namely, that children predictably do best when they grow up with their two natural parents in stable, married-couple homes.  These children have the highest potential to be healthy, happy, and well educated and the best prospects for becoming productive, constructive citizens.  Any variation away from this model—any—results in a higher likelihood of negative outcomes for the children.

All the same, no society can ever fully achieve this goal.  Tragedies alone, such as the premature death of a young parent, mean that the ideal will always be tempered by the reality.  This means that public servants will have to craft certain policies to deal with those circumstances that fall short of the Vision.  However, they must always keep their minds focused on the ideal, on the Vision, as the goal for public policy.  They must ensure that all laws and public acts reflect and encourage, or at least do not damage, the Vision of a world restored, one resting on the natural family.