National
Harbor, Md. — Two marriage experts argued that feminism and gay rights are
contributing to the problem of fatherlessness at a Conservative Political Action Conference panel.
Father's
Day may one day be considered hate speech because saying that children need
fathers has become offensive to the gay rights agenda, Heather Mac Donald, the
Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the ManhattanInstitute and a contributing editor
of City Journal, argued on the Friday panel, "The Future of Marriage in
America."
The
panel was moderated by Kate Bryan ofthe
American Principles Project. Mac
Donald was joined by Wade Horn, former assistant secretary for Children and
Families, and Jennifer Marshall, vice president of the Institute for Family,
Community, and Opportunity at The Heritage
Foundation.
Marriage
matters because children need a mother and a father, the panelists agreed, and a
number of social ills, including income inequality, can be attributed to the
high number of single mothers. Over 40 percent of children are now born to an
unwed mother. And while teen pregnancies have actually declined in recent years,
there has been an increase in 20-something women bearing children out of
wedlock, Mac Donald noted.
Part
of the problem, Mac Donald said, is that "feminism has played a strong role in
discrediting the importance of fathers." Additionally, the Gay Rights Movement
has a "silencing agenda" against those who point out the importance of
fathers.
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