The Different Sexual Signals of Different Baby-Making Cultures

All children have the right to the marriage of their biological parents because without it they will not become the persons they could have become.  This however is more honored in the breach than the observance.  There are exceptions but they are few; and that paucity proves the rule.

Many today disagree with this statement of this universal natural right of the child. Not because it is not true, but because they claim their own adult rights trump the rights of their biological children.   Such ‘rights claims’ make for different communities--communities that differ in their “baby-making life scripts”--and the induction of their children into these scripts.  That induction, though it starts in infancy, becomes very serious at puberty.  It is then that sexual signals and what they convey regarding “baby-making” life scripts becomes an intense topic of discussion for all: for the teenagers, their parents, their pastors and their teachers.

Different cultures have different life-script sexual signals but all have signals.  And different sexual signals indicate different cultures and the need for boundary marking and honoring of those borders.  The response to such signals is one of two:  “I am part of your community” or “I am of a differing baby-making life script community”.  When the response indicates a difference then the respondent in turn expects “OK, and I respect the difference.”  Should that happen there is comity, should it not we have the beginning of tyranny at an interpersonal level.

Today more flash points between modern communities or subcultures are arising. Radical individualism is not only forming its own very different culture and baby-making communities, but increasingly is adopting a non-accepting attitude to differing life script communities.

This totalitarian attitude is even more dangerous because the social science data repeatedly demonstrate that the intact (monogamous) family that worships weekly is the most socially productive on all measures, and the further one moves away from that “best model” the weaker the children produced.  Thus the radical individualism turned totalitarian is in danger of destroying the best, that which is most deserving of protection.   And the first duty of government is to protect the good and the innocent, which clearly includes the intact married family that worships weekly --- in community. It has very clear and different sexual signals.

America protects the radical individualist communities and cultures. The issue of the day is whether it can it protect its older communities and cultures as well as the new immigrant communities who have many of the same “baby-making scripts”.

Pat Fagan, Ph.D.
Director, MARRI