The BYU symposium generated a bit of local publicity. Here is an article about my opening talk that kicked off the conference. The author did a reasonable job of identifying the important points of my talk.
Americans are being taught to believe they’re generic humans, that “we’re not men and woman, we’re generic parents, we’re not moms and dads,” she said. “Ladies and gentlemen, there are no generic people!” she said loudly. “There are men and women; there are boys and girls. That’s who we are, and to lose the sense of ourselves as gender is to lose a part of our humanity. … We’re dehumanizing ourselves.”
If a person believes that gender is meaningless and arbitrary, they will have a hard time believing that gender is significant to marriage and that the dual-gender requirement makes sense.
Her second argument for traditional marriage is that fathers and mothers are more than the sum of their parts, that their different genders contribute uniquely to a family structure.
“There’s more to me as a mother than a bunch of functions, a bunch of jobs,” she said.
Understanding that is important, Morse asserted, “Because one of the things that is happening to us is people are (saying), ‘If you can just figure out what moms do, if you can just figure out what dads do — and if all those jobs get done — then it doesn’t really matter who does them.’ ”She blasted that notion, saying it was the “same old song and dance” feminists argued decades ago when advocates said it doesn’t matter if a mother or paid help looks after children.
“People are being told there is nothing particular about the mother,” she said. “We think (as social scientists) that if we (can track) what people are doing with their time … that we’re done, that we’ve got it all figured out.”
This is more detail about a talk than just about any press coverage I’ve ever gotten. They spelled my name correctly too, and put a link to our website, too!