Dr. Patrick Fagan | December 10, 2011 | SHARE: 
The culture of the traditional family is now at war with a very different anti-culture—a war declared by only one side. The epicenter of this political and social storm is the sexual ideal and how it is viewed, taught and practiced—because how the sexual is harnessed has history-changing implications for every level of society.
Western society, the fruit of Christianity, is based on and organized around lifelong sexual monogamy—that is, having a sexual relationship with only one person, a spouse, in a lifetime. The competing anti-culture, which is growing virulently, is polyamorous, defined here as serial sexual relationships, before, after, or instead of, marriage.
This anti-culture now has an expansive institutional infrastructure gradually put in place over the last 200 years. They have learned that the sexual is the softest underbelly of human nature, and thus of Christians and the Christian West, and they are experts at exploiting it. Harnessing the insights of Fredric Engels—Marx’s collaborator and coauthor of the Communist Manifesto, who identified the family and religion as the two great obstacles to the triumph of the Communist State—his modern disciples and their allies have constructed an anti-culture that has deeply penetrated the United States over the last 50 years. To emphasize the sexual core of this war, this article will use the terms “monogamy” and “polyamory” to refer to these two sides to highlight the differences between Western Civilization and its opponent anti-culture, and the consequences of lifelong sexual commitment on the one hand, and polymorphous sexuality on the other.
Many people occupy a fuzzy middle between these two different cultures, which puts them—in practice—on the side of polyamory, even if they regard themselves as being of the culture of monogamy, or as being Christian. They are confronted with a choice of sides that differ in profound ways in the following basic societal structures.
Family. The culture of monogamy is built around and protects the traditional, natural family. In the culture of polyamory, the natural family is just one option among many, and is often considered a nuisance.
Sexual Restraint. In the culture of monogamy, men are anchored in their families and tied to their wives and children through the free and deliberate focus of their sexuality.
In the culture of polyamory, such sexual constraint by men and women is not expected nor is any attempt to foster such restraint considered acceptable, because at its core polyamory treasures sexual license masquerading as freedom. Such monogamous restraint would be the antithesis of the main project of the culture of polyamory, which is a polymorphous sexuality when mutually desired by two or more partners.
Religious Worship. The culture of monogamy is infused from top to bottom with the sacred, in personal, family, community and national life. Worship of God is frequent and assumed. Polyamory culture tends to worship God less and demand that religion be private.
Freedom. The culture of monogamy views freedom as the freedom to be good, while the culture of polyamory views freedom as the absence of all self-restraint.
Morals/Values. The culture of monogamy embraces universal moral norms, while the culture of polyamory embraces moral relativism across the board. The language of virtue sits well with the culture of monogamy but uncomfortably with the culture of polyamory, where even fundamental virtues, such as chastity and modesty, are held in disdain.
Law. In the monogamous culture, and traditionally in Western civilization, laws protect by forbidding certain actions. The culture of polyamory protects by prescribing programs and outcomes for all, no matter their choice. Above the floor of the forbidden, the monogamous culture leaves all goals and actions freely available to everyone. The polyamorous culture, having less of a floor, constantly increases prescriptive and regulatory detail, telling people how they must act.
Human Life. The polyamorous culture denies the personhood of the unborn and the infirm, thus denying the law’s protection of the innocent. In the monogamous culture, the key function and first principle of legitimate government is the protection of these most innocent human beings.
In the monogamous culture, all human life is sacred and protected, from the pre-born to the elderly. In the polyamorous culture, about one-third of the pre-born are killed by their mothers, and the handicapped and elderly are increasingly vulnerable to early elimination.
Government. Most importantly, the constitutional state was the product of a monogamous culture; it could never have emerged from a polyamorous culture, cannot survive there, and has not emerged in non-monogamous cultures. The culture of polyamory got its greatest boost when the American Constitution was altered “in the name of privacy,” a principle found in the “penumbra of the Constitution,” so that the sexual norms of the country could be changed in Griswold in 1965, and most especially in Eisenstadt in 1972, when unmarried couples were given full rights to sex outside of marriage. The rationale for this decision was used again, devastatingly, in Roe v. Wade, to legalize abortion on demand. Planned Parenthood was the agent of legal change in all of these. [Editor’s Note: More recently, the concept of privacy was used in Lawrence v. Texas to strike down portions of sodomy statutes in several states, including North Carolina, and legalized certain private adult consensual sexual acts.]
Children. The culture of monogamy is future-oriented and full of hope because it is child-oriented, and the next generation is the main focus of society’s work. For the polyamorous culture, the main focus is the welfare of adults, even at the expense of children.
Men. The male ideal is totally different in both cultures. Despite the denials of radical feminists, the culture of polyamory aggressively fosters the male they most decry: the sexually harassing, abusing, and abandoning male. As a result, these and related dysfunctions are accepted but then used to justify and necessitate more safety nets and bigger bureaucracies. The degree of their attachment to their license is visible in the absence of the promotion of marriage or abstinence.
By contrast, in the culture of monogamy, men not only are anchored, they are required to be so. In the polyamorous culture, women are the anchors, while men can drift or be cast adrift, as they or their women desire, and they do so in very large numbers—to the massive detriment of all, especially children. The culture of polyamory also cultivates strong girls (a good) but at the cost of weaker boys (a great social weakness).
Citizenry and Social Policy. The culture of monogamy is more effective in raising citizens with habits and aptitudes needed by society, especially by democratic republics, while the polyamorous culture only fractionally achieves these, and always with major unintended consequences. For instance, its welfare program has engendered a permanent underclass. The culture of monogamy assumes responsible citizens, while the expanding social welfare state is built primarily on those who have been sexually irresponsible and have left marriage behind—members of the polyamorous culture.
The culture of polyamory’s social policy is not working, while marriage and worship are, and massively so. By contrast, without its welfare safety nets, the polyamorous culture would collapse under its own weight and disorder.
The political question that defines our day is whether it is possible for these two cultures to live together in the same political order? Over and above the differences just delineated, two issues leap to the fore in their political consequences. In population, the culture of monogamy is fertile and expanding, while the culture of polyamory is below replacement and contracting. Secondly, the monogamous culture is inexpensive, while the polyamorous culture is very expensive, and depends on a massive transfer of payments from the culture of monogamy.
Because of these two “killer conclusions,” and contributing significantly to the tension between the two, the culture of polyamory has figured out a way to thrive by controlling four critical areas of public policy, which yield big gains in “converts” from the culture of monogamy to theirs. These four are: 1) welfare, 2) childhood education, 3) sex education, and 4) adolescent health programs. By controlling these four, the polyamorous culture expands its reach into the traditional monogamous culture and gradually dismantles it, especially when aided by the entertainment industry, which now routinely portrays polyamory as a positive state with little downsides—deliberately undermining chastity and worship.
By controlling these four areas, the culture of polyamory diminishes the influence and dismantles the authority of parents from the culture of monogamy, particularly in their ability to form their children as members of their own culture. One could say they “snatch” children away. This “snatching” by these four programs is almost complete when teenage children of monogamous parents accept sexual intercourse outside of marriage as the norm. Every time these anti-monogamy programs and the media succeed in drawing teenagers into sexual activity they have captured another child and won a number of victories simultaneously, which include the following.
The polyamorous culture achieves all this without any overt attack, and it protects the control of these programs with a fierceness nothing in the culture of monogamy rivals in intensity. For instance, in the last decade, the rise of abstinence (or monogamy) education immediately galvanized the anti-culture of polyamory into a massive counter-attack, which culminated in the elimination of federal funding for abstinence programs. This came to pass despite all the good that came with abstinence, including reducing teen abortions, unwed births and STDs, while simultaneously increasing educational success.
Since the 1960s the polyamorous culture has led to a massive weakening of the U.S. through a weakening of our citizens in the five basic tasks of every society, family, and individual. These are the tasks of 1) sexuality, 2) religion, 3) learning, 4) income and 5) governance. Normally, we call these tasks the institutions of family, church, school, marketplace and government. In all, we are weaker.
State controlled programs today, almost universally, are polyamorous-friendly and monogamy-hostile. This is unjust because those who choose monogamy are the most effective, the cheapest and the safest in raising the next generation. But it is unjust mainly because it is the inalienable right of parents to raise their children as they see fit in their own culture. It is also a universal right of every child to have the married love of both parents to reach his full potential.
Even more egregious: the social welfare state asks the monogamous to support the polyamorous, and uses universal safety net insurance schemes to ensure that the monogamous pay more to support the polyamorous and their pathologies. This is plainly unjust, but even more so because the monogamous do not have their own culture-friendly programs, while their children are the target of the polyamorous culture’s child-snatching scheme. One way to reduce tension and increase justice would be to have the culture of polyamory pay its own costs.
The presence or absence of the father is one of the great defining differences between the two cultures. Men are at the epicenter of this competition, and unless they act, their place in society will be defined for them by those from the polyamorous culture. Their women and children need them in the sacred core of the family; society needs them in the same way—out front, taking their fight for their culture right to the center of this discourse.
Every male in the monogamy culture, and especially every father, will naturally find his way to be engaged in this protection of his children and his culture. The battle will come to him with increasing frequency, and he will either engage or yield to the opposing anti-culture. Given what is at stake—the protection of their families, and their own way of life—all men and women of the culture of monogamy will come to expect aggressive protection of their own cultural territory for their family and its free presence in society.
Fathers must fight for control over what is their family’s just due, what their taxes fund, and what they can use to raise their children—the four big programs of welfare, childhood education, sex education and adolescent health—so that they can be carried out in a way that supports the norms of the culture of monogamy. In this rearrangement, parents of the monogamous culture have the same control to do as they wish for their children as the polyamorous-friendly bureaucracy now does.
Now, we are tasked with exhorting each other and drawing to our side not only monogamous men but all fathers, including those who have strayed into the culture of polyamory. Their children need them to protect them from the present forms of the Big Four programs.
Western Christian civilization, the culture of monogamy, has never before encountered this type of competition, nor has the family faced such an attack. Mothers and fathers must engage, if we are to have an equal standing as citizens in all spheres of national life and the peace that comes with it. We need men of courage, all of whom must be men of tremendous trust in God.
To redress and change our weak position we must first get control of our own families and institutions for our own good, especially in the following areas:
Restoration of the defense of chastity by men, in public, is needed and will make a huge difference. We have the best sexual relations and give the best to our wives. We need the courage to request modesty of dress from women around us.
In our universities, we need to develop the economic sciences more, showing the intimate connection between marriage and the economy: that marriage and worship together have profound strengthening effects on the economy. Both have profound effects on the growth of small businesses (the major employment sector of the major economy on earth and the source of 80 percent of the growth of the major economy on earth). Family businesses are intimately linked to marriage, so too is the growth of capital, stocks, investing, and the payment of taxes.
The future needs a new type of warrior: both tough and tender. Men who are tender in their families (though occasionally tough when their children need it), and who are tough in their public stance (though tender with those wounded by the polyamorous culture). The time is already here when we need a confident “warrior” mentality in our men and our women. Furthermore, we have to form our children as confident “warriors.” For never in human history have we had to confront democracies going sour on the family before.
Such is the work that lies before us, and it is best achieved from the bottom up: first at the personal level, then at the local and state levels. That is where most of us live out our lives, and where services are delivered in schools, hospitals, and doctor offices. The research is all on our side, illustrating, anew, the way God made man. And the pen (and persuasion) is mightier than the sword.
