For the Sake of Our Children (Part 1)

Policy matters and engaging and informative weekly radio show and podcast produced by the North Carolina family policy Council hi this is John Ralston, presidency, family, and were grateful to have you with us for this week's program is our prayer that you will be informed, encouraged and inspired by what you hear on family policy matters and that you will feel better equipped to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state and nation. Today we bring you part one of an address delivered by Dr. Ron Anderson who was the keynote speaker at NC families. Major speakers dinner in Charlotte, North Carolina, on October 8. Dr. Anderson is the William E. Simon Senior research fellow at the Heritage foundation in Washington DC and is a highly sought after researcher, writer and speaker on many of the most pressing issues facing our culture today. We hope you enjoy tonight with John and asked me to do is just speak out some of the most important issues for social conservatives for religious conservatives are people who care about the family and freedom that are facing our nation facing the state today and for the foreseeable future and Soto asserted that this will be somewhat of a depressing talk. Just because there are so many pressing issues that are facing our nation on a whole host of of topics I would have marched through this what I want to do is distinct from the perspective of the child. I think when we say that we are for family values, and we say that we care about traditional values.

We really say that we want to sacrifice adult desires adult interests for the sake of our children and took most of us as responsible parents.

Do you know we come. Second, our kids come first in the same thing should be true when it comes to public policy when it comes to law when it comes to government, we should be making sacrifices for the sake of the next generation for the sake of our children are grandchildren inside his walk-through, something that would look like the early lifecycle of the child just start by simply recognizing that that child has a right to life. This will be the shortest part of the topics I think on this issue I were now in a place where I would doubt that anyone in this room feels uncomfortable having a conversation with a friend or colleague, a family member explaining why your pro-life, one of the great things that I've inherited from the work. Social conservatives have done for the past 50 years is that I know all of the arguments in the life issue. There were trailblazing pioneers in the months after Roe V Wade, who set up all of the pro-life organizations in this country set up the March for life set up in every state a pro-life organization lobbing their statehouse to one overturn Roby Wade and then to pass laws to protect the unborn, but sometimes we can therefore take it for granted that in the past 45 years there've been over a million babies that have been lost to abortion as I should clarify what is it knowing it was that year, not just sense really think it's now 47, 48, 49 million total since Roe is an astronomical unthinkable topic and that that's reality. I think we should kinda be sober about even as were making gains more pro-life laws have been passed in the past 10 years than the previous 35 years combined restrictive laws are being passed the abortion rate is at the lowest that it's been any point since Roe V Wade were making real progress. We should acknowledge that there still a far way to go there still million babies every year being aborted for as long as I can remember I've been pro-life. My parents did a great job raising me and my four brothers injustices something. It was obvious, of course, that's a child in the womb. What else is it click. What is that thing kicking in the room if it's not a person, but for me this is this kind of hit home in a deeply personal way, just about a year and 1/2 ago my wife came in with a little stick and it had a little + on it and we were expecting our first child, and then you know what was the highest 13 weeks. After that we go in for the ultrasound and then 23 weeks or 27 weeks under the math a beautiful little boy is born right and this weekend he will turn 14 months and it just kind of drives home. I would agree to gift every life is even if theoretically you always kind of known the right answer to the question about abortion.exe hold your son for the first time. I just reckon it is entirely a gift each and every one of us made in the image and likeness of God each and every one of us a special act of creation. A special act of love from God and to see how callous our country is with respect to so many of these gifts so the first thing to say, from the child's perspective that child has a right to life and so it's important that someone like John is at the statehouse advocating for those lives speaking up for people who can't speak for themselves how big business isn't going to do it. Hollywood's not going to do it. It's good to be you can be the North Carolina family policy Council to meet John Ross and sweet people like us to the second step is what else that child deserve not just a right to life, but that child has a right to a mother and a father. And if you think about what we owe to children. We owe them a relationship with the man and the woman who helped give them life that whenever possible. Children should be raised by their mother and their father. This is why when my wife and I checked out of the hospital a 14 months ago we didn't just want to go home with BBB we wanted to go home with our baby when the bracelet got on my wrist. I marked the baby with the permanent marker to make sure we got our our baby. I was a little paranoid you hear these horror stories of babies getting swapped at hospitals. The parents care and so it's entirely understandable why the children might care.

Put yourself in the child's perspective they want to be raised not just by any old parents annual generic adults. They want their mom and their dad. It makes a difference to them. I one of the saddest things I've ever seen was a report from the Institute for American values. Values titled my daddy's name is donor all these children who have been conceived by anonymous sperm donations who report these longings. The these feelings of theirs and absence. They don't know half of their identity and what our Supreme Court do five years ago. At the utterly redefined the nature of family, the nature of marriage is out any two consenting adults, it doesn't matter if it's a man and a woman, a mom and a dad, a husband and a wife and if you think that you're somehow bigoted. You're somehow engaged in discrimination you're somehow kind of backwards in your thinking, what they did was they overturn not just several thousand years of human practice, not just the testimony of Scripture, but they overturn the law written on the heart. This is one of those truths that built into the human condition. One of those trees that St. Paul talks about is the law written on the heart and anthropological truth that men and women are distinct and complementary were not interchangeable in a biological fact that reproduction requires both the man a social reality that children deserve both the mother and a father with the court did several years ago we just ignore all that, the court says no any two consenting adults. It's all the same thing. Now this most recent redefinition of marriage is the consequence not the cause of the breakdown of the family. The family started breaking down about 50 years ago, when Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote his famous Moynihan report right. He was pointing out that marriage was starting to fall apart in the country. Back in 1964 Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan at the time he was the secretary of labor. He was a liberal professor from Harvard University.

He was a Democrat senator from the state of New York and he was accused of being a racist. At the time when he wrote his report because he pointed out that birds to single mothers in the African-American community were approaching 25% and he said this is going to be a crisis. If 1/4 of all of the children within a certain community are born outside of marriage. They don't have fathers in their lives were going to see a whole host of negative consequences.

Moynihan was accused of being a racist because they didn't like the messenger right so they were shooting the messenger, but the reason he wrote that report was precise because he wasn't racist he cared about those kids and so 1964 births to single mothers in the general population about 5% in the black community.

There were 25% fast-forward to today in the general population. 40% of all Americans are born to single mothers. It's 50% of Hispanic babies and at 72% of African-American babies.

These children have done nothing wrong in life, but they are being set up on a road with all sorts of elevated risks, elevated challenges, they don't have a fair shot at life and this is why it's so important that we have a family policy group who's looking out for these children's interest, who's in a try to strengthen marriage with her at strengthening marriage in the tax code. Strengthening marriage by returning the law on marriage to reflect the truth about marriage, you need someone engaged in that task. Now another thing to say on this marriage topic is that when I point out that right now. 40% of all American kids are born outside of marriage, gays and lesbians are to blame for that gay marriage didn't create other problems that we see in our marriage culture today.

The sexual revolution did think that what happened in the 60s but Moynihan is writing his report what's going on with the sexual revolution we get the introduction of the hookup culture. Read the introduction and normalization of premarital sex. We then have the introduction of no-fault divorce laws. All of that takes place for two generations among straight people and then the Supreme Court says weight of all you straight people aren't taking permanency or monogamy or exclusivity very seriously. Why should we take sexual complementarity very seriously and so we've seen in the past several years after the court said man and woman is interchangeable for marriage law.

All of a sudden you see people embracing the idea that this should lead to polyamory so they created a new word of the word is through Apple for three-person couple.

So take the word couple chop off the sea and added THR and so you're the same-sex couple, when you go to the Supreme Court to say Anthony Kennedy I have a constitutional right to marry the person I love. Why can't you and to other people go to the Supreme Court and have a constitutional right to marry the people I love. If two men can be married. Why can't three or 472 men into women right such orientation is no bearing on this the way that we arrived at monogamy was at its one man one woman who can unite as one flesh in the action that can create new life in every new life has one mother and one father. So what happens when the court throws this out. What happened in the courts as all of human history off human experience is now contrary to our enlightened notions of justice someone's good have to be standing in that Defend even the principle of monogamy because the logic of the sexual revolution is that consenting adults should do whatever consenting adults want to do right that the only value in the realm of sexuality's consent entirely ignores the needs or the rights of children focuses entirely on adult desire undermines.

It turns upside down. The way in which society should be structured in which adults restrain their desires for the sake of their children. So yes, children have a right to life, they then also have a right to a relationship with both their mother and their father in the way that society throughout all of human history had try to secure this right was by an institution that united that man to that woman and the two of them united to each other being united to that child. Think of every delivery you know of whenever a child is born.

A mother is close by. She's normally in the same room right that's simply a fact of biology. That's a fact of nature and the babies born the mom is right there.

The question for culture and therefore the question for law will a father be close by, and if so for how long. And right now what were seeing is that 40% of all Americans. A father's not close by for many Americans. The father's not around for long roughly around 40% of all marriages end in divorce. The numbers are higher for second marriages and third marriages were not seeing what we would hope to see is that men and women commit to each other permanently and exclusively every child being born inside of marriage with the relationship with their mom and dad mom and dad sticking together for the long haul. There's a lot of work to be done on marriage and the family is been part one of a three-part series featuring Dr. Ryan Anderson, who deliver the keynote address at NC families annual Charlotte dinner on October 8.

Be sure to tune in next week.

Report to the program to listen over and to learn more about NC families work to inform, encourage and inspire families across North Carolina go to our website it into family.org that's in see family.org. Thanks for listening and may God bless you and your family