One of the big rallying points in recent years has been the conservative cry for a "return to family values." They claim that every liberal is destroying traditional family values and undermining the fabric of the United States. So I figured I'd take a moment and address those accusations. Ready?
Yes, we are. We are actively moving away from your "traditional family values." And we're damned glad to be doing it. Wanna know why?
First off, let's take a look at what those traditional family values entail. When my father was growing up, and when I was too, the family unit was a thing. The mom stayed at home or worked part-time while the dad worked his 40+ hours a week to put food on the table. Mom's place was in the kitchen cleaning up after my brother and I (which, believe me, was a horrible job). But it goes further than that. See, girls were taught how to sew and cook and boys played baseball and football, and Boy Scouts prepared lads for the responsibility of being "men." Also, my father lived in the same town as his parents. And his brother. And when his sister left the state, his mother (my grandmother) was (to put it mildly) displeased. You should see the face-melting letters she wrote to my uncle for taking her daughter out of the state of Texas.
On the other side, my mother's family all lived within 50 miles of each other. Working as anything other than a secretary was scandalous, and it was the woman's job to squeeze out as many babies as possible. My mom's dad worked for Dow Chemical, as did my father's father and my father and my uncle and, for a while, so did I.
That is the way of "Traditional Family Values:" You work where your father worked. If you're a woman, you work in the home or in an administrative assistant position and make babies. And you never leave. You never grow. You never reach past your upbringing or the education available in your home town. If you leave to go to school, you get taunted with "college boy," as if educated is a bad thing to be. "Traditional Family Values" makes no room for you if you're gay, if you want to explore, if you are an artist, or even if you want to see what it is to live outside your city's walls. If you don't want children, if you'd rather raise dogs, if you really don't want your wife to be subservient or your husband to be a work-a-holic, or if you (God forbid) don't like football, or even if you choose not to believe in any particular religion, you are the enemy of "Traditional Family Values."
And you know what? I'm okay with that.
When I moved away from my home town, I was made fun of for being a "college boy." When I moved out of Texas, my father stopped speaking to me for "betraying my Texas roots" by moving to live with all those "damned yankees." I'm serious. When I came back, my father had a special coffee mug waiting for me... It has "Texas is God's Country" emblazoned across it.
But something interesting happened when I moved away.
I began to gain an appreciation for other cultures. I began to accept (notice, I said ACCEPT, not TOLERATE) other religions, other races, and members of the LGBTQ community. I began to understand that there was more to life than the tiny town in which I grew up and its three movie theaters in as many blocks. I began to see "traditional family values" for what they were.
Stagnation. In the case of my home town, it was also racism, homophobia, religious fervor, and elitism. "Traditional family values" was a code for "spending your life in the same five city blocks," and "never growing as a person."
So, yeah. We're moving away from your "traditional family values." And I, for one, am glad. And I think one of the largest problems with the phrase comes from that first word, "traditional." "Traditional" means "the way we've always done it." Maybe, but that doesn't make it right. We've "traditionally" subjugated other races, genders, creeds, and discriminated against people for the dumbest reasons, all because "that's how we've always done it." Maybe moving away from that kind of ignorance is a good thing. Maybe, just maybe, there's a reason why "traditional family values" are going away. Maybe it's because they don't work anymore.
Take a good look at the majority of the people who lament the loss of "traditional family values." White, rich, out of touch with reality... I'm sure they are screaming to the high heavens about it. Their way of life, the one in which women aren't worth as much as men and gays can't serve in the military, the one in which interracial marriage is a scandal and where black men don't belong in the White House, is being threatened. It's dying. Because we're learning. We're evolving. We're trying to be better than our "traditional" behavior. We're trying to break with tradition.
And it's about damned time.
So here are my new traditional family values. Women are worth as much as men. You don't need children to have a family, if you don't want them. Two men or two women can be a family, as can any combination where there is love. Boys and girls can play with whatever the hell they want to and whatever sport they want. And if they don't like sports, I'm cool with that too. And those who move away from the nest of their birth are celebrated because they're going out into the world to learn. Art is celebrated. Diversity is celebrated. Love is celebrated. Change is celebrated. And belief is a choice, not an indoctrination.
All hail the new family unit. Long may their traditions evolve.
--SAJ--
