Mary Cheney's Pregnancy Affects Us All

Mary Cheney’s pregnancy poses problems not just for her child, but also for all Americans. Her action repudiates traditional values and sets an appalling example for young people at a time when father absence is the most pressing social problem facing the nation. With 37 percent of American children born to fatherless families, Mary Cheney is contributing to a trend that is detrimental to all Americans who will live with the ramifications of millions of children whose anger and frustration at not knowing their father will be felt in the public schools and communities of our nation.

Mary Cheney is among that burgeoning group of adult women over age 20 that are driving the trend of women who don’t want a man in the picture, but want to have a baby. These older women are pushing out-of-wedlock birth statistics higher and higher. At a time when teen births and teen abortions are declining dramatically, older women are having more un-wed births and more abortions, including repeat abortions (indicating that they are using abortion as birth control).

Well-educated, professional Mary Cheney is flying in the face of the accumulated wisdom of the top experts who agree that the very best family structure for a child’s well-being is a married mom and dad family. Her child will have all the material advantages it will need, but it will still encounter the emotional devastation common to children without fathers.

One Georgia high school principal reported, “We have too many young men and women from single-mother families that don’t have the role models at home to teach them how to deal with adversity and handle responsibility. They’ve seen their mom work 60 hours a week just to put food on the table; they end up fending for themselves.”

When fatherless children get to be teens, the girls tend to start looking for love in all the wrong places and the boys tend to find as their role model the bad-boy celebrities of MTV, NFL and NBA.

As they grow older, fatherless children tend to have trouble dealing with male authority figures. Too often children in single-mother households end up angry at their absent fathers and resentful of the mother who has had to be a father figure, too. Typically, the boys who have a love-hate relationship with their mother end up hating all women. Numerous of them look for vulnerable women where they can act out their anger and be in control.

Mary Cheney’s action sets an example that is detrimental for mothers with less financial resources who will start down an irrevocable path into poverty that tends to be generational –– children in households without a father tend to themselves have unwed births later in life. Experts from both the left and the right cite a disastrous litany of negative outcomes that are predictable when a child grows up in a fatherless family. Such children tend to get involved in drugs, alcohol abuse, and delinquency; they tend to drop out of school and have teen pregnancies. An assistant principal in a Junior High School said that many of the behavioral problems that teachers face in the classroom stem from households without a father’s influence.

Mary’s pregnancy is an “in-your-face” action countering the Bush Administration’s pro-family, pro-marriage and pro-life policies. She continues to repudiate the work to which her father has devoted his life. Mary has repeatedly said that “studies” show that children only need a loving home. Her statement is incomplete because the experts agree that for the well-being of children, they desperately need a married father and a mother.

All those people who talk about doing what is best “for our children” need to get back to the basics: children need a married mom and dad. Children can do without a lot of the trimmings of childhood, but nothing can replace a home where the mother and dad love each other enough to commit for a lifetime and are absolutely crazy about their kids –– enough to be willing to sacrifice their own needs to see that their children get the very best.

Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D., Senior Fellow at the Beverly LaHaye Institute, a culturally conservative think tank for Concerned Women for America, is a recognized authority on domestic issues, the United Nations, cultural and women’s concerns.

One thing that fascinates me, is that for many FReepers, the legal-regulation issue is the only one worth discussing. ("Such-and-such is legal, right? OK. End of discussion.") Isn't it possible to talk about ethics, values, cultural trends and society from any aspect other than legality?

Oh it is not only possible, but mandatory. However my position is that what Mary Cheney does or does not do with her life is quite frankly between her and whatever God she perceives to be relevant to her life. If the Bible is (as I believe it to be) a literal document presenting God's Word and His Will for humanity, Mary Cheney and millions upon millions of homosexuals in this world are heading for an eternally fatal wakeup call. How God chooses to deal with them will be Just, Fair, and Perfect.

Not to mention tragic.

As Christians, we are obligated to point out the Scriptural Truths as revealed in God's Word not only on subjects like homosexuality, but in all areas of life. We are far from perfect, we as humans have our own faults and flaws within us, but if we trust in Christ and believe in Him and His Blood sacrifice made in our behalf upon the Cross, our sins and our shortcomings are covered. Literally. God has promised this. We will continue to live imperfect lives until our corrupt flesh gives up the ghost and we enter Eternity reconciled with Almighty God, not through any effort of our own, but through the Grace and Mercy of Jesus Christ, who died in our behalf - taking on what should be our rightful penalty of death for our sins against God.

But even living imperfect lives, yes - we are obligated to point out what is morally right and wrong, what is ethical, what is correct. If I point out something immoral and someone says to me "you can't say that, you hypocrite!", my response is "we are ALL hypocrites in one way or another, but my hypocrisy does not negate the fact that YOU are in violation of God's Laws. Even a hypocrite like me must speak the Truth."

But once we do that (and I am reasonably assured that Mary Cheney has heard more than a few Biblical arguments against her chosen life style), it becomes a matter between the individual preached to, and God Himself, i.e., it becomes "their private business" because only God sees fully the motives, intentions and contents of the human heart. HE will deal with Mary Cheney exclusively in the eternal scheme of things.

And a related question: howcome Mary Cheney can do articles, call-ins, interviews, books, and talk-shows ---- and when people try to respond, there's all this huffing and eye-rolling: "OMG, will you keep your nose out of her private business!!"

If she chooses to present her views in public forums, I see no reason not to engage those views, challenge those views, and refuse to yield one inch of the moral high ground.

Now this issue of Mary Cheney having a baby has prompted all sorts of demagoguery, much of it coming from conservative Christians, and in my online travels I happened to read the following screed by the illustrious 'Coach Dave Daubenmire':

http://www.ptsalt.com/blog/coach_dave/2006/12/dick_cheney_should_resign

Apparently the 'Coach' thinks that our Vice President is responsible for the actions of his adult daughter (which is NOT Scriptural based upon Ezekiel 18:20) and the funny thing is, I submitted a respective and polite feedback taking issue with his assertion that our VP should step down over this issue, citing the above Scripture, and I'm not surprised that my challenging his UN-scriptural position has been ignored.

Sorry, as the saying goes "alas I digress".

My position on homosexuality is that God is opposed to it, therefore I am too. He condemns it, as do I. But as Christians we are to hate the sin and love the sinner, and I continue to try and do that. Sometimes (often times) I fail miserably. But I keep trying. We are here to occupy until He Returns, not to fight a rear guard action and surrender territory to the enemy inch by inch.

How 'bout that Mrs. Don-O? ;)

Good God, I don't think that I or anybody else here is saying that babies in sub-optimal circumstances should snuffed out, no matter what the to-do of their conception, even if things were out of kilter and even somewhat desperate. If "ill-gotten" babies weren't born and raised somehow, nobody would be alive on earth today --- not one soul. Because we, or our ancestors, came into existence amid some degree of disorder. But, between hammer and anvil, lived. Thrived even. Such is the human race.

So God bless all the baby-having women.

But I'm trying to make a different point. My point, which I must have expressed badly, is that there are new trends developing which are both intentional and unwholesome. Designing a family so that a father is deliberately cut out of the picture forever is not designing a family with the child's needs paramount.

By way of analogy: kids are born every day missing an arm or a leg from natural causes, and God bless those kids: we'll do what we can to help, to heal, to cobble-together, to compensate, because a legless life is damn-sure better than no life at all. But to intentionally set things up so a baby won't have legs: that's wrong

And to intentionally design things, to set things up so a baby won't have a father? Same category. But I guess what powerful adults want is going to trump what children need. They don't get a vote.

My point is that if you declare all homosexuals unfit to be parents because homosexuality is a mental disorder, any judge or lawmaker can go find a psychiatrist who will declare you to be suffering from "homophobia" and take away your rights.

And I can GUARANTEE you if you issue a blanket declaration that an entire class of people unfit to adopt because you feel their lifestyle will harm a kid, they will take that and go right after "a gun in the home," people who homeschool and devout Christians.

The problem with evangelicals is after all their (correct) complaining that government is immoral, politicans are immoral and society doesn't share their views, they immediately promote the idea of giving government and politicans, who bend to society, the power and authority to enforce moral views.

How do you think we end up with things like hate crimes laws, speech codes and "sensitivity training?" That's just liberals taking the power and initiative conservatives give them and legislating their own morality.

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