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Deconstructing the Traditional Family
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11186 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1993 |
4,305 Words |
| Author
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Franklin E. Kameny
Franklin E. Kameny has been a gay activist since before
founding the gay movement in Washington, D.C., in 1961. He has
served on the D.C. Commission on Human Rights and ran for
Congress in 1971 as the first openly gay candidate. He has
been on the board of the local D.C. ACLU and in 1962 initiated
the effort to lift the ban on gays in the military. |
In a nation and society based upon principles of individual freedom, as ours claims to be, we should not even be discussing whether or not "alternative families" can and should be tolerated, legalized, encouraged, and taught. From its inception, our system has been a permissive one (all conduct is permitted unless explicitly prohibited), not a proscriptive one (all conduct is prohibited unless explicitly permitted). The burden of justification for any prohibition rests upon those prohibiting--usually government but sometimes less formal entities such as society, community, or others. In the absence of compelling reasons to the contrary on an alternative-by-alternative basis, it should be sufficient that this is the way some individuals choose to conduct their lives.
The full burden of proof and justification for limitations and constraints in all contexts rests with those who would limit, constrain, abridge, and deny toleration, recognition, legalization, and encouragement. With respect to families, relationships, and associated life-styles, they have never shouldered that burden, at least in part because it is conceptually impossible to be shouldered.
THE FAMILY
The notion of the family--or, more recently, the "traditional" family--has been placed upon such a lofty pedestal of unquestioning and almost mindless, ritualistic worship and endlessly declared but quite unproven importance that rational discussion of it is often well-nigh impossible. The concept is enmeshed in a web of assumptions, which are not only often factually unfounded and quite unrecognized as assumptions, but are also taken as fact although unsupportable as such; of traditions worshiped solely because they are traditions and have been around for a long time, without question as to whether tradition itself provides sufficient and reliable guidance as to private conduct or public policy--or anything else; of religious, moral, and theological precepts, all of which serve needlessly, harmfully, and perniciously to bind, limit, and restrain individuals in the exercise of their freedom to enter into choices as to their intimate relationships. For most people, such choices are, by their very nature, the most important, personal, and subjective in their lives, matters into which society and other collective entities should intrude only warily.
As a lifelong iconoclast, I buy into none of these assumptions, challenge all of them, and reject most of them as intellectually and rationally unpersuasive, logically insufficient, and otherwise wanting. Therefore, before we can
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