by Jennifer Johnson
Published on March 2, 2017, at clashdaily.com.
This is an image of the Holy Family that I used to keep in my office.
I would look at this image from time to time and pray to Jesus for wisdom for defending marriage and the family. One day I was looking at this image
and saw a triangle between the head of Jesus, His mother Mary, her husband Joseph, then back to Jesus. I thought to myself, “Wow, that’s the family
structure! It’s a triangle! It is not only a reflection of the Holy Family, it is a reflection of the Trinity!”
This excited me for a couple reasons. For one thing, I’ve discovered that the average person doesn’t understand what “family structure” or “structural
issues” mean. Policy wonks, like me, tend to take for granted what we mean when we use phrases like that. To be able to show the family as a triangle
means that the average person now has a simple way to understand what those phrases mean.
I was also excited because I wondered how it would apply to my own childhood.
I had not been raised with my own married parents. My parents divorced when I was three and went on to subsequent marriages, divorces, different children,
a lot of back and forth between “two homes,” and a lot of chaos.
So I went home that night and applied the family triangle to my situation.
I carefully drew it all out, using several pieces of paper. It took me several tries to get everybody to fit onto the page in a way that made sense
and was proportional.
As I worked on it, I could tell that it was going to be far more complex than I had ever imagined.
This is what I saw:
That’s me, in the bottom center circle.
What do you think? What is your gut response to this?
The first few hours after I finished the drawing were surreal, and I was in a daze.
Seriously, what is this? How was I supposed to navigate this as a child, alone?
In fact, I didn’t navigate it at all. I blocked parts out as time went on, out of necessity. That’s why it was such a shock to see it all there in
a two-dimensional way.
One of the first things that stuck out at me was how ugly it is. It looked like a malformed spider’s web.
It was not pretty like the simple triangle I had seen.
I had a flood of emotions come over me, as it brought back memories of people that left my life due to divorce, so I was supposed to have forgotten
them when that happened.
My initial excitement had turned to tears of sadness.
And so I cried, a lot at first.
As time went on, I became angry at God for showing this to me. I couldn’t understand why He would make me feel old pain like that. Why bring it all
up again? Why have this ugly family structure burned into my mind now? Wasn’t I better off just burying it all in the back of my mind, as if it
never happened? The diagram made me feel ashamed. It was always very difficult to have so many different adults and new family members to reckon
with constantly, and I didn’t like having them thrust into my face again all at once.
Is it safe for me to say that I just wanted my own family? MY family, MY triad, MY home?
Social conservatives believe in equality for children, because they believe in this for every child:
When every child has this, without the extraneous people as I had, it is a form of equality.
The problem with this argument is that conservatives are not drawn to it. Equality is not a primary ideal in conservatism. But if we stop to think
about it, I think it is fair to say that our recent loss over same-sex marriage may have been because our argument did not appeal to people’s sense
of fairness. The appeal to equality was an appeal to fairness, after all.
Let’s consider the pro-life movement and see if there is something there that can help us. Crux.com recently published some interesting remarks by
Daniel K. Williams, author of Defenders of the Unborn and associate professor of history at the University of West Georgia. He makes the
argument that the pro-life movement started as a liberal movement based on social justice and human rights. He believes that the movement gains
vitality and appeal when its proponents frame the issue using liberal values.
I discovered that we can do the same thing. We can embrace the liberal value of equality. The ancient Christian teachings on sex and marriage means
that every child is to be raised with his or her own married mother and father, except for an unavoidable tragedy.
That’s a type of equality that people don’t talk about, but it is real. And there are other equalities that flow out of that one. When the family breaks
down or doesn’t form according to the triad, inequalities for children multiply. I think it is exciting to see that this form of equality has been
the flip-side of the ancient Christian teaching on marriage and sex all along.
You can learn more about this form of equality, and about the inequalities children face who were not raised with their own married parents. Go to
the Ruth Institute website and order my new Special Report, called, “Marriage and Equality: How Natural Marriage Upholds the Ideal of Equality
for Children.” It includes stories and easy-to-understand diagrams that will help you reopen this discussion with your friends and family members
who may believe in same-sex marriage.
By embracing the liberal value of equality we can show people that we hold an ideal that they care about. This may help them listen to what we are
saying. After all, “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
Go here to order this Special Report now:
http://www.ruthinstitute.org/store/pamphlets-and-booklets/marriage-and-equality
I don’t want to give away too much, but remember how I said I cried when I drew the diagram of my family structure? If you order the report, you read
the story of how God worked that out for good.
