President Obama’s gun gaffe was nearly lost in the pre-Christmas flood of TV and internet chatter. But Breitbart’s Joel Pollak was right to highlight Mr. Obama’s bizarre post-election statement. One of the reasons he ran for re-election, Mr. Obama told Barbara Walters, was so he could have “men with guns around” as his daughters entered their teen years. What a gaffe!
We need to focus on that comment now, especially in light of his bromides about fathers in his Father’s Day message. Mr. Obama last week issued a typical Father’s Day Proclamation leading up to the weekend. In it, he said “there is no substitute for fathers.” But in the same proclamation, he takes it back, asserting that two moms will substitute nicely for a father in the home.
Of course, the Obama administration named Professor Chai Feldblum to a key position on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). This radical lesbian activist presses for a legal end of marriage. She advocates the idea that any number of concerned adults should be granted legal custody of any number of children. You can read all about it in the statement issued by Feldblum and many of her radical cohorts. Just think of the Village People instead of a mom and dad.
Teens in Chicago, the President’s hometown, feel keenly the absence of fathers in the home. But they certainly have plenty of men with guns around. Over this Father’s Day weekend, seven were killed and 41 wounded in a wave of shootings.
We don’t yet know, but we can readily surmise, that most of those shooting and most of those shot were fatherless young men. The numbers are daunting. Three-quarters of the teen rapists in our prisons and two-thirds of the teen murderers in our prisons are fatherless young men. The link between fatherlessness and violence is too well documented to be seriously doubted.
The Family Research Council’s Marriage and Religious Research Institute has produced a vast array of social science data that can help guide our discussions of the role of marriage and religious observance in American life. We need to have our elected officials and our government administrators thoroughly conversant with the work of MARRI.
And we should applaud those figures in the popular culture who have the courage to stand up for what is right. For example, FOX News contributor Juan Williams deserves credit for denouncing a notorious deadbeat dad. This bad actor actually brags of fathering twenty-two children by fourteen women. This cruel man has robbed his own children of their birthright -- the right to the protection and provision of a loving father.
Let’s face it, one of the major attractions of the Barack Obama candidacy was the idea that he and the lovely Michelle Obama and their delightful children would provide the best imaginable role model in the White House. Married and devoted to one another, the Obamas could speak with clarity, charity, and conviction on the importance of re-building a marriage culture in America.
It is a tragedy of historic proportions that under the presidency of Barack Obama, marriage, fatherhood, and family security are being dealt lethal blows. Last year, the Obama campaign even created “Julia,” a young woman living an ideal American life -- devoid of marriage and with no male present.
Despite kind words for dads in forgettable proclamations, the policy of the Obama administration reflects the views of sixties radicals: “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” Try telling that to the victims on the South Side of Chicago.
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