That the American family is changing and in a state of crisis is not new truth.  In fact, this change is one of the most disturbing cultural developments in recent history.  This perspective analyzes two alarming developments.
 
• First, the American Law Institute, an influential group of lawyers and judges has recommended sweeping changes in family law that would increase alimony and property rights for many divorced women, while extending such rights for the first time to many cohabiting domestic partners, both heterosexual and gay.  This set of recommendations will likely have a major impact because the Institute has had immense influence on the development of American law since its founding in 1923.  Family law is a state issue and local judges have vast discretion in divorce proceedings, so decisions on alimony, child custody and the division of property vary widely by state, even including judges within the same state.  The following is a summary of the salient recommendations of the Institute:

1. Amazingly, the report says that a parent’s sexual orientation should not be a factor in decisions on child custody and that domestic partnerships should be treated like marriage in many important respects.  The Institute declares, “Homosexual conduct, like heterosexual extramarital conduct, should be disregarded unless shown to be harmful to an individual child.”  Furthermore, the Institute maintains that “domestic partners are two persons of the same or opposite sex, not married to one another, who for a significant period of time share a primary residence and a life together as a couple.”  Therefore, they contend, “a domestic partner is entitled to compensatory payments” similar to alimony “on the same basis as a spouse.”  This is really a radical proposal, for few courts have ever awarded alimony payments to domestic partners.  For that reason, the Institute also recommends the equal division of property when a domestic partnership ends.
  
2. The Institute also recommends that decisions about alimony and the distribution of property should be made “without regard to marital misconduct.”  Thus, it contends, a wife who commits adultery should not receive less alimony, nor should a husband be required to pay more because of adultery.  This too is radical because about half the states treat marital misconduct as relevant to decisions on alimony.  Gone, in the eyes of the law, is any responsibility for the dissolution of the marriage.

3. The Institute also recommends that the law expand the number of people who can claim custody of a child or visitation rights.  Such claims could be made not only by the legal parents, but also by a “de facto parent,” defined as an individual who has lived with the child at least two years and “regularly performed a majority of the caretaking functions” without being paid.  This would of course apply to a lesbian partner of a child’s biological mother, who could now assert custody or visitation rights of the child once the relationship between the partners ends.  Further, the Institute claims that custody should be awarded to parents in proportion to the amount of time spent caring for the child before a divorce.
 
4. Under current state laws, alimony is awarded on the basis of some estimate of a person’s need for help.  However, the Institute argues that this is too vague.  Therefore, it proposes that alimony should be compensation for financial losses resulting from the breakdown of the marriage; alimony is “compensatory spousal payments.”  That “payment” should increase in proportion to the duration of the marriage and the disparity of the spouses’ incomes at the time of the divorce.

Obviously, the American Law Institute is attempting to radically equalize the legal status of marriage and domestic partnerships involving unmarried people of the same or the opposite sex.  The Institute is likewise accommodating family law to homosexuality and further legitimizing that lifestyle.  Finally, the Institute is downplaying the interest and good of the children involved in marriages or domestic partnerships and thereby elevating the selfish interest of adults.  In doing so, the Institute removes any legal accountability from those involved in marriage.  Adultery is no longer a factor in law!  It is difficult to view these recommendations as positive for American culture.  See The New York Times article by Robert Pear (30 November 2002).

• Second is the new book by Al and Tipper Gore, Joined at the Heart: The Transformation of the American Family.  The book acknowledges the changing nature of the American family by applauding “the explosion of new family forms and novel solutions to age-old problems.”  They do not advocate the traditional family model but instead approve of a whole range of permutations and combinations that exemplify the many new relationships.  Their book is filled with the stories of “families,” namely Mitch and Cindy, Pat and Todd, Josh and John, Minh and Thanh, each one suggesting different kinds of family life in America.  We also have Susan and Dick and Dee and Caitlan, whose six children from serial marriages coalesce into a “seamless, loving, blended family.”  The book focuses on newlyweds, a gay couple and immigrants but nearly everyone has been divorced and remarried at least once.  Here are some salient observations about the Gore book.

1. They seem to be saying, with approval, that being divorced is the new norm and that we really cannot say anything negative about divorce and its results.  Instead, Americans must be open to these new forms of family and embrace each of them.  This is rather astounding because Barbara Defoe Whitehead (The Divorce Culture), Wendy Shalit (A Return to Modesty), Maggie Gallagher (The Abolition of Marriage), and Dana Mack (The Assault on Parenthood), have all documented with immense research the devastating results of divorce on children and on the marriage partners.  Each offers incontrovertible evidence that divorce is hardly good for people or for the culture.  Yet, nowhere do the Gores even address the mountain of research data proving this claim.  Instead, this new “norm” is the wave of the future to be embraced. 

2. Amazingly, the Gores do not introduce us to any families headed by single mothers.  Yet, as Andrew Hacker has shown, “such families now account for more than a fifth - 21.9 percent - of all households with children, over double the proportion of a generation ago.”  The Gores also avoid any discussion of people who have had infants out of wedlock, even though today one of every three babies is born to unwed parents.  Quite frankly, if they desire that we be open to change and to new definitions of the family, how can they ignore 33% of the children born in the US? 

3. The Gores maintain that their “definition of family relies less on structure and more on subjective experience.”  They see “family” as an arrangement based on shared experience and mutual self-interest.  They see marriage as a support group and companionship, not as a permanent institution.  For the intellectually honest, this is absurd!  Without structure and without the law to support structure, the way the Gores define family could apply to a college fraternity or to a “Seinfeld” arrangement.  What social science research shows us is that these kinds of arrangements are devastating for children. 

In short, the Gores’ book demonstrates the devastating consequences of moving away from the biblical definition of family.  That definition is not based on “subjective experience.”  It is based on the revelation of the One who created the institution in the first place.  If we follow the Gores, we will see more pathological behavior among children, more dysfunction in human relationships and the ultimate destruction of the most important social institution God has created.  As they seek to be recognized and publicized in their quest for the presidency, the Gores are contributing to the destruction of that which God regards as sacred.  See Andrew Hacker’s devastating critique of the Gores’ book in The New York Review of Books (5 December 2002), pp. 20-25.

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A NEW FORM OF TERRORISM

During the Thanksgiving holiday, a devastating terrorist attack occurred in Kenya.  This suicide bombing of an Israeli owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, which killed 13 and injured dozens, comes six weeks after suspected al Qaeda operatives killed more than 190 people in Bali.  This new form of terrorism focuses on vulnerable or “soft” targets, not the predictable targets like embassies, military installations, airports, etc.  The difficulty now is how we guard against such attacks.  How should we think about this arguably horrific change in terrorist strategy?

• First, if the Kenya attack was indeed organized by al Qaeda, then this represents an alarming broadening of al Qaeda’s goals.  Before, they struck primarily American targets rather than Israelis or Jews.  But as a follow up to al Qaeda’s attack of a Tunisian synagogue in April, this might signal a desire to be drawn into the PLO-Israeli conflict.  If so, this will cause major problems for the US, which has always tried to cultivate the support of the more moderate Arab states.

• Second, at the exact moment of the Kenya hotel attack, some 20 miles away, terrorists fired shoulder-launched Russian-made missiles at an Israeli airliner leaving Mombasa, but missed.  The plane was carrying 261 passengers, mostly tourists returning to Israel.  This is a rather startling development.  Such portable missiles pose a formidable threat to commercial aviation.  Airliners lack some of the protective features - like distracting flares - found on combat aircraft and are particularly vulnerable immediately after takeoff and just prior to landing.  This could mean that commercial aviation will face a new form of terrorism that could make travel even more dangerous.  Al Qaeda has made it clear that its goals are to do spectacular terrorism - that which has high symbolic value, produces massive casualties and severe economic damage to the American economy and that which maximizes psychological trauma.  Using SAM missiles against commercial airliners would accomplish all of these goals.

The terrorist attacks over Thanksgiving weekend might spell a shift in the al Qaeda strategy.  See Eric Lichtblau, The New York Times (30 November 2002).

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THE HEALTH OF JFK

In the December 2002 issue of The Atlantic, historian Robert Dallek writes of the incredible medical condition of President John F. Kennedy.  Newly uncovered medical records reveal that the scope and intensity of his physical suffering were beyond what we had previously imagined.  What he endured and what he hid from the public enlarges our understanding of his character.  Dallek examined the medical files in the Kennedy Library with a physician, Jeffrey Kelman, after being given permission by the committee that controls access to the Kennedy papers.  Dallek’s article (“The Medical Ordeals of JFK”) reveal a man not only in almost constant pain, but under nearly constant medication - from a longstanding series of ailments including irritable bowel syndrome, osteoporosis, Addison’s disease and serious propensity for infection.  A partial list of his medications included hydrocortisone, testosterone, codeine, methadone, Ritalin, antihistamines, anti-anxiety drugs, barbiturates to help him sleep, and regular injections of Procaine to ease his back.

Without question, these medications allowed him to do his job and allowed him to project the image of a healthy chief executive, even an athletic one.  But, it is difficult to imagine that at times such a litany of drugs did not also impair his judgment.  There is no evidence that they did, but it raises that strong possibility.  Further, such evidence now raises the question of how much information like this should be made available to the public while the person is in office.  There is no question that virtually all of this information was not known while JFK was president.  Should it have been made public?  It is the obligation of public servants to be honest with their constituency.  Were he alive today, he could not hide the truth about his health.  That he and his aids were so secretive says something about him and about the culture of the 1960s.  JFK was not what he and his advisors tried to convey.  He was a very sick man.  He was also a very immoral man; and he was a very dishonest man.  History will not be kind to JFK.  History will not be kind to his aids, who even today attempt to cover up the truth.  As The New York Times shared editorially (19 November 2002), “The time for making careful judgments about what the public should know about John F. Kennedy is past.  The truth, at last, is more important than political necessity.”

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