The New Eve - Lewis Robert [81]
2. Alternate forms of marriage arise and supplant traditional marriage agreements.
I once talked to a young groom-to-be who was bragging that he was going about marriage the modern way: by getting a prenuptial agreement. I told him there was nothing modern about it. The Romans were doing it in the time of Christ. They also sanctioned gay unions. Nothing new there either. But it's important to remember that Rome was not always that way. Rome and other empires were built on the traditional form of marriage. Only after a time of development and prosperity did they choose to relax and broaden the meaning of marriage, as we are now considering in America.
If history tells us anything, it's that once the meaning of marriage is redefined beyond the traditional one-man, one-woman arrangement, almost any union of people eventually finds legal sanction. Stanley Kurtz, a scholar of the forms and roles of marriage in contemporary society, said there is a growing push among lawmakers to “establish the principle that individuals have the right to create and define their families as they see fit.” This will no doubt include the right to take multiple wives and even marry underage girls. Kurtz went on to say that the acceptance of same-sex marriage may spell “the effective abolition of marriage itself as a legal status.”2
3. Feminist movements arise. Women lose their inclination for childbearing and child rearing. Birthrates fall.
The loosening of family and marital ties is accompanied and empowered by feminist movements. I'm not talking about the fight for gender equality—a fight we should all support. By feminism I mean the more radical movement that leads women to minimize or reject elements of their God-given feminine nature. One of the clearest ways this manifests itself is in the growing disinclination to bear and raise children.
This reality is on display in contemporary Europe and America right now. As mentioned earlier in this book, robust immigration (legal and otherwise) is the only reason the U.S. population continues to grow. Shut down the borders, and we’d find America at a population standstill. It is much more serious in many parts of Europe, where women's disdain for childbirth is a mark of their liberation from the villainized domestic-family model. Many European countries are in a population freefall that reminds me of ancient Rome.
When liberated Roman women stopped having babies and Roman men ditched their family and social responsibilities, the so-called barbarian immigrants from northern Europe came and filled the void. They served in the armies, they performed the labors, and they bore the children. It was the noncitizen barbarian, said Zimmerman, who in many ways kept the empire going for three centuries after Roman citizens sacrificed their future by giving up on marriage and family.
Zimmerman concluded his book by warning that America is falling into this same trap. He anticipated that America, like Rome, would be threatened by an increasingly comfort-driven lifestyle that is prone less and less to procreate and trusts in immigration to do the dirty work and fill the voids. He even suggested that one day we would have to turn to Mexico for a quick fix of surplus population. But, he warned, to trust in immigration is nothing more than a delay tactic before one's own cultural demise. If we ignore our God-given calling to repopulate and to build healthy marriages and families, it will prove disastrous.
As Zimmerman concluded, he reminded readers that “family and childbearing are the primary social duties of the citizen.”3 What Zimmerman ended with, Genesis begins with.
4. Destructive juvenile behavior increases.
Zimmerman also noted that the atomistic model engenders a growing disrespect for parental authority and for authority in general. It's tempting to pin this on the kids or society, but the fact is, it's the parents who are mostly to blame. When