George Mason Professor Bethany Letiecq is at the center of a firestorm of controversy over his article in the Journal of Marriage and Family declaring that the institution of marriage plays a key role in white supremacy. In considering what she labels “marriage fundamentalism,” Letiecq lashes out at the “two-parent married family” model. It is the latest example of what I have called the “radical chic” of academia, faculty who find publication and promotional opportunities in advancing highly racialized and radical theories challenging institutions, values, and even common expressions.
In today’s academic environment, there often seems a rush to racialize common practices or terminology. Publications clamor for such articles and discovering another hidden racist element in society can bring academic accolades. However, others have already staked out many areas such as mathematics, astrophysics, statistics, meritocracy, climate change, dieting, tipping, skiing, chess, and organized pantries. Most recently, the American Psychological Association declared that merit-based hiring may be racist. Even robots are now declared to be part of the supremacist menace because they are often made of white plastic.
Letiecq has spoken up to say that we should not forget marriage as we address “elements of White heteropatriarchal supremacy, such as structural racism, sexism, heterosexism, anti-immigrant nativism, and settler colonialism, operate and interlock to condition and constrain diverse family formation and functioning.” She notes that “there is abundant critical scholarship to unsettle the self.” That unsettling journey should include dismantling the institution of marriage.
As a threshold matter, Letiecq defines marriage as “the belief that a family composed of a cisgender heterosexual married couple (i.e., a man and a woman as husband and wife) is the ideal family form for rearing children, is the foundation of civilization, and is necessary for ensuring White, heteropatriarchal supremacy in America.”
As one might expect, that definition leads to fairly predictable conclusions on combating white heteropatriarchal nuclear families (WHNFs). She details how the institution was used for white domination:
“These efforts to coercively eradicate, delegitimize, and transform sex, gender, and reproduction via systems of racist heteropatriarchy were forms of assimilative violence understood as necessary for the production of marriage fundamentalism. … In colonized America, this new gendered and racialized social contract was institutionalized in the context of a White heteropatriarchal supremacist social order where the White heterosexual married-parent family served a particular purpose: to channel the flow of resources between generations of White male property owners to maintain their domination, power, and control over others.”
She notes that this will not be easy since “building new theories and models to understand and explain White heteropatriarchal family supremacy in a field heretofore dominated by White people, many of whom have benefited from Whiteness as property and WHNF advantaging, will require deep reflexivity and self-interrogation to unsettle the self.”
The fact is that many of us have long supported the right of adults to marry and foster families according to their own values and morals. I supported same-sex marriage for decades and have challenged “morality laws” that seek to impose such rules on others. As someone with long-standing libertarian values, I oppose orthodoxy in the law and efforts to coerce others into living their lives according the values of others.
However, this research, in my view, is emblematic of the scholarship that is now in vogue in academia. I encourage you to read the paper. It is a collection of jingoistic catch phrases and conclusory observations. The fact that marriage as an institution has existed throughout periods of colonialism and oppression creates a false cause-and-effect relationship. It may also be true that marriage was found early in human development to be socially, economically, or religiously beneficial institution — entirely separate from the racial or cultural conditions of any given country or time. The fact that the conventional family unit is fairly common throughout the world indicates that it may have other more universal benefits. This historical record does not inherently support the view of the institution in fostering “assimilative violence understood as necessary for the production of marriage fundamentalism.” It is also possible that such problems exist in society but correlation does not mean causation.
Letiecq works to show how marriage as an institution is “cisgender” and heterosexual even though most countries now have a broader definition. The core of the institution remains the union of individuals in establishing a family unit or relationship.
My disagreement with the paper of Professor Letiecq does not mean that I do not believe that it should have been published. It is provocative and challenging. My concern is the dominance of such scholarship in academia with the declining number of conservative or libertarian voices on faculties. These publications are far less likely to publish a work by an academic espousing the value of a traditional family unit. The result is a new type of orthodoxy and intolerance in higher education.
I feel certain Prof LeFriecq will approve of this God-awful silliness. And no, this is not an April Fools prank –
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/statue-fat-black-woman-chosen-adorn-londons-fourth-plinth
Does anyone else see that when Barry Sotero was elected our broadcasting networks changed? ABC, CBS and NBC became the official whitehouse networks, long respected science channels like the Discovery channel started pushing BS like mermaids, megladon and aliens on a regular basis. Look where we are now!
“BORN IN THE COUNTRY OF PARENTS (PLURAL) WHO ARE CITIZENS”
Barack “Barry Soetoro” Obama will NEVER be eligible to be U.S. president.
Barack “Barry Soetoro” Obama will never be a “natural born citizen.”
Barack “Barry Soetoro” Obama’s father was a foreign citizen at the time of the candidate’s birth.
– The requirement of “natural born citizen” for the office of president is superior and quantitatively greater than the requirement of “citizen” for the office of Congress and Senate.
– A mere “citizen” could only have been President at the time of the adoption of the Constitution – not after.
– The U.S. Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5, requires the President to be a “natural born citizen,” which, by definition in the Law of Nations, requires “parents who are citizens” at the time of birth of the candidate, and that he be “…born of a father who is a citizen;…”
– Ben Franklin thanked Charles Dumas for copies of the Law of Nations which “…has been continually in the hands of the members of our Congress, now sitting,…”
– “The importance of The Law of Nations, therefore, resides both in its systematic derivation of international law from natural law and in its compelling synthesis of the modern discourse of natural jurisprudence with the even newer language of political economy. The features help to explain the continuing appeal of this text well into the nineteenth century among politicians, international lawyers and political theorists of every complexion.” – Law of Nations Editors Bela Kapossy and Richard Whatmore.
– The Jay/Washington letter of July, 1787, raised the presidential requirement from citizen to “natural born citizen” to place a “strong check” against foreign allegiances by the commander-in-chief.
– Every American President before Obama had two parents who were American citizens.
– The Constitution is not a dictionary and does not define esoteric words or phrases, while the Law of Nations, 1758, did and does.
– The Law of Nations is acknowledged and referenced, at least, in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 10, of the U.S. Constitution: “To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;…”
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Law of Nations, Vattel, 1758
Book 1, Ch. 19
§ 212. Citizens and natives.
“The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as matter of course, that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens merely by their tacit consent. We shall soon see whether, on their coming to the years of discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they were born. I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.”
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Ben Franklin letter December 9, 1775, thanking Charles Dumas for 3 copies of the Law of Nations:
“…I am much obliged by the kind present you have made us of your edition of Vattel. It came to us in good season, when the circumstances of a rising state make it necessary frequently to consult the law of nations. Accordingly that copy, which I kept, (after depositing one in our own public library here, and sending the other to the College of Massachusetts Bay, as you directed,) has been continually in the hands of the members of our Congress, now sitting, who are much pleased with your notes and preface, and have entertained a high and just esteem for their author…”
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
To George Washington from John Jay, 25 July 1787
From John Jay
New York 25 July 1787
Dear Sir
I was this morning honored with your Excellency’s Favor of the 22d
Inst: & immediately delivered the Letter it enclosed to Commodore
Jones, who being detained by Business, did not go in the french Packet,
which sailed Yesterday.
Permit me to hint, whether it would not be wise & seasonable to
provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the
administration of our national Government, and to declare expressly that the Command in chief
of the american army shall not be given to, nor devolved on, any but a natural born Citizen.
Mrs Jay is obliged by your attention, and assures You of her perfect
Esteem & Regard—with similar Sentiments the most cordial and sincere
I remain Dear Sir Your faithful Friend & Servt
John Jay
You see in the great push
To get rid of George Bush
We failed to pay close attention
Way past 2016
You now see what I mean
A Marxist traitor has done quite the damage
But friends have no fear
For the long juice is here
To save and restore
Our great Nation
Trump 2024!
I found the law professor I was looking for earlier on this thread. She has her hands full. Her name is Amy Wax, and she is fighting the good fight. Now it looks like the univesity is trying to get her tenure taken away.
“Though Professor Wax had been a subject of debate for years, student demands for sanctions began in earnest in 2017, after she co-wrote an opinion article in The Philadelphia Inquirer. She argued that many of the country’s social problems could be traced to veering from 1950s norms, like getting married before having children, respecting authority and avoiding coarse language.
The article said “all cultures are not equal” and lamented “the single-parent, antisocial habits, prevalent among some working-class whites; the anti-‘acting white’ rap culture of inner-city blacks; the anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants.”
On a recent podcast, she said, “I often chuckle at the ads on TV which show a Black man married to a white woman in an upper-class picket-fence house,” she said, adding, “They never show Blacks the way they really are: a bunch of single moms with a bunch of guys who float in and out. Kids by different men.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/13/us/upenn-law-professor-racism-freedom-speech.html
My butt itches does yours?
See great minds think alike.
More nonsense from the nothing to offer crowd.
I came across this interesting scientific article:
AI deciphers cave writings of Homo Heidelbergensis (HH).
Homo Heidelbergensis is a critical human species in the Middle Pleistocene (~130–780 thousand years ago (ka)). We know from several beautifully preserved crania that this species had a large brain, within the lower range of modern human variation, and a less robust face than early fossil humans. Homo Heidelbergensis went extinct due to competition with Home Erectus.
Recently, HH cave sketchings found in The Pit of Bones, in Spain, were deciphered. Using a pictograph decoding algorithm, the AI program discovered these fascinating bits;
female equal male
male equal female
male not have female
female have many males
males clean cave
males feed little ones
females go hunt big bears
females go hunt big long nose thing (mastodon???)
females fight little monkey men (homo erectus???)
little monkey men kill females
run to cave
make pictures
little monkey men come cave
aaargh!
From this, it appears that the first group of wokesters in the human lineage went broke in a big way. And extinct. I think they were trying to tell us something.
All we need to know is:
Women’s suffrage and women’s lib have led to the bizarre and impossible attempt at the masculinization of women, infanticide, and a fertility rate in a “death spiral.”
Translation: Milquetoasts who have succumbed to hysterical and irrational women will soon have killed America.
The inflection point that commenced the descent into madness for America was the election of the Marx-Lincoln ticket in 1860.
It is a collection of jingoistic catch phrases and conclusory observations.
I tried read Hawking’s “A Brief History Of Time”, cover to cover. The experience was interesting but difficult, because I couldn’t understand the mathematical language. Reading just the limited number of quotes in this post from Professor Bethany Letiecq was equally difficult, because it requires me to learn a language of which I have absolutely no interest.
THE ORIGIN OF MARRIAGE
“When was marriage first introduced?”
“Evidence suggests that marriage is around 4,350 years old and the first recorded marriage was in 2350 B.C. Marriage became a popular institution across ancient Hebrews, Greeks and Romans.
“Why did people get married back then?
“Unfortunately, marriage wasn’t based on love. Its purpose was for a man to ‘own’ a woman and to guarantee that children were the husbands biological heirs.
“The father would give his daughter away saying ‘I pledge my daughter for the purpose of producing legitimate offspring’.
“The ancient Hebrews were allowed to have several wives. Married Greeks and Romans were allowed to satisfy their sexual urges with prostitutes and teenage male lovers, whilst the wives had to stay at home and look after the household.
“If wives were unable to get pregnant, the men were allowed to give the wife back and marry someone else.
Religion got involved and things changed…
“The Roman Catholic Church became a powerful institution in Europe and marriages had to be legalised with a priest present.
“This was great for women, because men were taught to show greater respect for their wives, were not allowed to divorce them and had to be sexually faithful to their wives. However, the church still said that men were the head of the family and that wives had to fulfil their wishes.”
– Anonymous
Jonathan: I did a quick Google search about Prof. Letiecq’s article in the Journal of Marriage. Except for the usual right-wing suspects on Fox and in The College Fix–the latter that trades on attacks on the “cancel culture”–I couldn’t find the “firestorm of controversy” you claim in your column. I will reserve judgment until I’ve read the article–then I’ll get back to you.
Boy, what a busy week in the courts. Judge Cannon gave Jack Smith a victory, of sorts, but she has messed up her case so badly (probably on purpose) and has yet to set a new trial date. Through procedural missteps and other delays she hopes she can push off her case until after the election–as a favor to the guy her appointed her.
Then, the prosecutors in the SDNY just dumped 73,000 pages of docs, related to the Stormy Daniels case, on Judge Merchon. And another 31,000 docs are coming next week. Judge Merchon is not happy because he has to delay the trial until he can find out the reason for the delay in turning over the docs. All good news for DJT.
Finally, Ken Block has a new book out titled “Disproven”. For those who don’t remember Block is a software forensic expert DJT hired just after the 2020 election to find proof of “massive election fraud” in the swing states. Block was paid $750,000 for his efforts. And what did he turn up? Nothing, zilch, nada! In fact, Block found only 200 duplicate mail-in-ballot votes that had been fraudulently cast in ALL the swing states. Like with all messengers who bear bad news DJT fired Block and buried the report.
Now DJT is running around the country still falsely claiming the 2020 election was “stolen” by the Dems. And his loyal MAGA supporters, some of whom on on your blog, stand up, raise their right arms, and shout “Stop the Steal”. For them the truth doesn’t matter. It’s what their leader CLAIMS is the truth is the only thing that counts. Lemmings one and all!
Where the heck’s NUTCHACHACHA today?
She/it/her/he/him/they/them must really, really love marriage and her/it/she/he/him/they/them/their male husband.
Were the ballots checked with original signatures, dates, residences in counties and States, mail-in v. At poll, death certs and registrar lists of eligible voters by felons, people moved etc? Sounds interesting. I’ll get a glance at disproven. 17, 000 ballots were destroyed in Fulton.
DM – If Cannon schedules a trial in 2024 – that would be Lightning fast.
You are constantly calling out as delay – often alleging deliberateness, for significantly faster than normal process.
As to Smith’s “victory” – Cannon found that Trump’s argument was compelling, but that as it was not entirely based on the law, and that some of the facts in Trump’s argument were disputed that those facts had to be decided by a jury.
If this case ever goes to a jury – regardless of what the jury verdict might be, if the Jury’s finding’s of facts matches Trump’s rather than Smith’s – Cannon will dismiss the case. Alternately if during the course of the case it becomes clear that Smith can not or has not made the case for his version of the disputed facts – Cannon will dismiss the case. Contra your post, Trump won all aspects of the law, the motion to dismiss fell short because in addition to the law, it rested on facts that remain in dispute.
I have no idea who Block is – no one here that I am aware of has every refered to him or his information.
Nor have you provided any basis for what you allege to be his claim.
I am not aware of a single individual who can credibly claim to have examined ballots in all swing states.
In FACT there are very few places in the country where ballots were examined after they were counted.
And there is no place where all ballots from any state were subject to any examination.
So any claim matching what you claim Block said is obviously false.
Nor have YOU or any other left wing nut EVER put a dent in the solid evidence of election fraud in 2020.
There are only two places in the US where any effort was made to find duplicate ballots.
One was a lawsuit in GA that found evidence of hundreds of duplicate ballot scans in Fulton county – the Plantiffs were not given access to actual ballots only ballot scans. Partway into the case the Judge under preasure reversed himself and decided that the plantiffs did not have standing and the case was not allowed to proceed further.
The Other was The AZ Senate authroized audit of Maricopa county.
You can read the report filed with the AZ Senate on the Audit of the Maricopa county election – they found just under 50,000 duplicate mailin ballots recived from just under 15000 registered voters.
DM – how would a forensic software expert find evidence of duplicate ballots ?
You introduce someone I have never heard of – and I am very familiar with most of the significant people involved in the most well examined election fraud claims in 2020 – there are thousands of allegations, so no one is familiar with all of them – and most of those thousands of allegations had absolutely no examination at all.
So we have you making a claim that you do not provide evidence for – you are NOT a trusted reporter – how do we know this Block even exists ? Your claimed credentials for mr. Block reflect that he would have been hired to examine computer software, not search for duplicate ballots. So you are alleging that an unknown expert is now backtracking on claims he allegedly made, outside of any field he would have been hired for ?
Many people have been hired to look at the software and equipment. Todate no one has found evidence that the equipment WAS hacked – though election officials have been incredibly uncooperative in providing access to the equipment, routers and logs to verify that.
But in pretty much every instance it was found that all the election equipment was an remains trivially hackable.
The above is very important – it is why Fox should never have settled. Claims by Powell and others that DVS equipment was hacked from overseas have not held up under examination. But what Has held up – is that hacking our election equipment is without any doubt possible.
That DVS and many involved know that – and have known that for a long time. That they have done nothing about it.
Foreign hacking of US elections requires that at one time or another that equipment -is connected to the internet.
Election laws and standards require that election equipment is air gaped from the internet. What examination has found is that has frequently not been the case.
Election equipment can also be hacked by anyone with physical access to the equipment. That generally si NOT foreign bad actors.
But it does include many in government and we have plenty of evidence that there are lots of dishonest people in government.
So far there is no evidence that any election equipment has actually been hacked – though only a very small amount of equipment has been checked. But it has been universally found that pretty much every peice of election equipement in the US is hackable in minutes by a script kiddie – that is a very low skill hacker.
I would note that it would not be unusual for the majority of those thousands of allegations of fraud to turn out to be false or to have reasonable explanations. The fact that many allegations prove false, does not man all do. In fact 100% of allegations of fraud could prove false – and still have massive fraud.
As an example A statistical analysis using what is called “bentham’s numbers” found evidence of fraud within days after the election.
The Bentham’s numbers analysis is used by the IRS to find fraudulent tax returns. That tool – which is incredibly effective at finding fraud rests on the fact that the distribution of digits in “random” human transactions distributes according to a very clear pattern. One that is never duplicated when the numbers are fraudulently created, rather than reflecting actual transactions.
The problem with applying Bentham’s analysis to election returns is that election returns are not an example of random human transactions.
First Voting precincts within any state have very similar total numbers of voters. and the distribution of digits within numbers of votes reported will be determined by the percent of the vote each candidate got. Again – Not a random number.
The Bentham’s number analysis was an excellent approach – if the counts reported by precincts did not reflect patterns int he way precincts are created and the intentionality of voters.
Regardless, my point is that disproving a few allegations of fraud – does not disprove fraud.
Aside from the Bentham numbers analysis there are many other statistical analysis’s that found patterns that likely reflect fraud that remain solid.
DM – there is a “firestorm of controversy” regarding Letique right here. If her views are not controversial in academia – that would be a damning indictment of academia.
Regardless as with all the left wing nut attacks on western values – these ALL fail for pretty uniformly the same error.
While western values fall short of perfection, they are the result of a 10,000+ year process of evolving human values starting with cave men deciding when it was and was not justifiable to bash in the skull of a fellow tribesman to take their wife or food.
Western values ARE at the moment the pinnacle of the evolution of human values.
Anyone arguing that they have flaws we should correct is with certainty correct in general, though the odds are they are wrong about specific claims as well as likely wrong regarding the best means to correct them. Finding flaws in western values is not hard – doing better is near impossibly difficult. Those arguing to toss them and replace them wholesale – usually with poorly thought out mishmashes that aren’t even consistent are both wrong and unworthy of consideration.
I have to laugh at those who rant about colonialism or white oppression.
While humans have been conquering and often enslaving their neighbors for 300,000 years, what is typically refered to as colonization started in the 16th century as europeans gained the naval capacity to travel the world.
The colonization of the “new world” took place in the 16th and 17th centuries – almost exclusively done by the Spanish.
The colonization of africa, India and parts of asia by european whites did not occur until the 19th century.
The mongols “colonized” most of Europe for far longer than Whites have colonized anything.
Yet nut job leftists want to recast all of human history based on distorted allegations about whites who have only been ascendant for a tiny portion of human history. Yet someone white westerners are responsible for the corruption of all of human history.
With Respect to Letique – most enduring human institutions exist because they served a critical purpose. It is nearly impossible to impose something by force for hundreds of thousands of years that does not work. That does not make those institutions perfect, but it does Falsify the claims of bomb throwers like Letique.
DM – there is ZERO doubt that D’s engaged in large scale illegal political censorship by government and govenrment entitites during the 2020 electon to the advantage of Biden and disadvantage of Trump.
The only question is how much MORE illegal activity Democrats engaged in – of COURSE the election was “stolen”.
That is what it is called when you cheat to win.
I would further note that the lawfare Democrats are engaging in now – just reinforces that.
Democrats do not beleive that they can win the election in 2024 if the voters get to decide.
Nor did they beleive they could win in 2020 – otherwise why all the cheating ?
Why do you have to engage in mass censorship through government and government funded entities if you beleive you have a powerful message and a competent, decent and honest candidate ?
You do not seem to grasp that the gaming of the system you do TODAY reinforces the evidence of the fraud you engaged in 4 years ago.
Technically Trump lost his efforts to remove Willis. Yet McAfee’s decision was a major victory for Trump.
Only the most die hard lefties do not understand that Willis is corrupt and had to go. MKcAfee is not even a blatant partisan like Engoron, Kaplan, or Merchan. Yet, while listing all the many many many reasons Willis had to go, he still let her stay.
If a more moderate democrat like McAfee can delude himself or be pressured into this decision regarding Willis – why should we beleive anything that comes from the courts that favors democrats ?
Or there is the allegedly slam dunk A14S3 “self executing” claim of hundreds of top left wing nut legal scholars that was rejected by all but the most partisan democratic courts, and that was flushed down the tubes 9-0 by SCOTUS including ALL democrat justices.
All this does is discredit the lawyers and judges involved.
These are not close decisions.
With E Jean Carrol and Kaplan – the left proved to us all why statutes of limitations exist.
With James/Engoron the left proved why the social contract requires that all crimes must have someone who is actually harmed.
Bragg and Merchan will do their darnedest to prove that once again.
Willis is proving why people who live in glass house should not throw stones.
Over and over again the left proves to the majority of people that you are criminally corrupt, that you are tyranical fascists,
and that whatever you accuse others of – that is who you are.
Trump did not do this to you – you are doing it to yourself.
Bethany could use a Guinness Beer or five, and then maybe she will get lucky, find herself a leprechaun and be happily married unlike her present miserable existence.
To all the Irish readers of the blog, and those turning Irish tomorrow for a day, Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.
☘️
Professor Turley Writes:
As someone with long-standing libertarian values, I oppose orthodoxy in the law and efforts to coerce others into living their lives according the values of others.
……………………………………….
Here Professor Turley sounds reasonably liberal. Does this mean he supports reproductive rights?
Turley is NOT saying the Constitution envisions a Christian-leaning state, nor Christian-influenced court rulings (like the Dobbs decision).
One should note that opposition to abortion is almost entirely based on religious views. For 50 years the anti-abortion movement has been driven by Catholics and Evangelicals.
In fact, the Supreme Court’s Federalist majority is made up entirely of Catholics! And not coincidentally, the Federalist Society was founded by Catholic activist Leonard Leo (see link below).
What’s more, Johnathan Turley is a Catholic Federalist. But what does that mean in terms of intellectual spectrum?
Historically the Catholic Church was a global political empire. How does that jibe with the Libertarian emphasis on individual liberty? Logically the two perspectives lack a certain synergy. Like the corporate merger that wasn’t quite-thought-out.
Does it make sense that a diverse nation, like the United States, which champions religious freedom, has a Supreme Court dominated by Catholics??
Historically the United States was dominated by Protestants. For decades Episcopals and Presbyterians composed a disproportionate share of the power elite that ran this country’s institutions. They were the true WASPs as in ‘White Anglo Saxon Protestant’.
Those WASPs who ran America from colonial times to the late 20th Century were naturally leery of Catholic influence. They didn’t want the Vatican meddling in American politics. The Vatican already had too much influence. America wanted to be different in that regard.
So it seems like the irony of ironies that here in the 2020’s our Supreme Court is dominated by Catholics and a Catholic activist, Leonard Leo, essentially functions a H R Director of the court.
This ironic development has come at a time when the Catholic Church is basically rotting from inside; seemingly unable to staunch pedophilia in the priesthood and ever-declining attendance.
Yet amid all this, Federalists like Johnathan Turley claim they ‘oppose orthodoxy in the law and efforts to coerce others’.
Shia LaBeouf found joy and meaning in life. You can too
I did read part of LeFriecq’s nonsense, and in essence, she reminds me of the far less-educated sovereign citizen types, who latch onto a key term or phrase, and then pursue it to crazy ends. The SovCit works off a presumed legal framework that has no basis in reality – but is easily understood within their own cult. Such as, “is this an admiralty court, or is this a common law court”. Within that framework, it makes perfect sense to notice the fringe on the American flag. Outside that framework, and courts start calling for competency hearings.
The same goes with LeFriecq and her ilk. She provides us her SocCit-like framework, to wit:
“In this article, I draw upon critical feminist and intersectional frameworks to delineate an overarching orientation to structural oppression and unequal power relations that advantages White heteropatriarchal nuclear families (WHNFs) and marginalizes others as a function of family structure and relationship status. Specifically, I theorize that marriage fundamentalism, like structural racism, is a key structuring element of White heteropatriarchal supremacy.”
Pull out the “structural oppression and unequal power relations” log, and the whole Jenga block structure falls to pieces. Leave that log in, and you get this kind of drivel:
“So ideal is the WHNF that the state has promoted, privileged, and advantaged this family form for centuries through the instantiation of over 1000 laws and policies embedded in a wide range of social institutions that determine one’s access to benefits, resources, rights, and financial and legal protections (Brown, 2021; Letiecq, 2019; Polikoff, 2008; U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2004). While institutionalizing WHNFs as best, the state has also systematically excluded, penalized, and punished non-WHNFs at a structural level, denying certain peoples the rights to marriage and privacy based on race, nation, and/or sexual orientation, and conditioning access to benefits, resources, and state protections as a function of family structure (Polikoff, 2008; Vasquez-Tokos & Yamin, 2021; Wacquant, 2009). To justify these exclusions, the state has propagated racialized and gendered narratives of deviance and immorality, blaming Black single mothers or queer or cohabitating couples rearing children (among others) for causing family instability and poor child outcomes and casting them as threats to the social order (Biblarz & Stacey, 2010; Letiecq et al., 2013; Moffitt, 2015; Roberts, 2022; Russell et al., 2022; Skolnick, 1981)”
Huh???
So when has there been a structural barrier to black Americans getting married the last 150 or so years? She will not ask that question because the structural barriers are presumed. Evan Sayet says this is why the Democrat Left is always on the wrong side of any issue. He starts at 2:48 of the video
If the people of American want to improve their standing in civilized society, I would suggest they try marriage, family, promoting education, hard work, and respect for others.
OT: Hey everyone: I just mowed the grass for the first time this year (riding mower). (and I heard the peepers out near the small pond in the back.) Ah, the smells and sounds of Spring! Enjoy yours!
Lin,
Peepers are out here too! The breed pair of Mallard ducks are back. So are the Robins.
Unfortunately, starting tomorrow we get snow and cold again. Bummer.
Turley says I should read this article, which he describes as “provocative and challenging.” No, it’s boring cookie-cutter stuff. I’m training myself not to respond to trolls, and the article is not only a form of trolling, but of a type that jumped the shark some time ago.
This is an ‘academic’ version of the kids who film themselves doing incredibly stupid, and often dangerous, stunts to post online to gain attention.
The universities are filling up with halfwit professors clamoring for attention. Now this one has gotten attention. She may regret it. It would have been cheaper and faster to draw an “I AM A MORON’ sign and hang it around her neck. But she doesn’t need to now.
From Bethany Letiecq: “White heteropatriarchal supremacist social order where the White heterosexual married-parent family served a particular purpose: to channel the flow of resources between generations of White male property owners to maintain their domination, power, and control over others.” This is a typical rationalizing statement vomited up from the land of pseudoscience that is meant to prove/support a political viewpoint versus theories that, hopefully, originate from unbiased observation and experiment.
Answer for yourself to make a few preliminary observations to juxtapose to Bethany Letiecq’s statement:
-how long has the “married-parent family” arrangement known to have existed?
-did “married-parent family” exist before there was a “White heteropatriarchal supremacist social order”?
-has the “married-parent family” existed in any non-white societies let alone ‘White heteropatriarchal supremacist social orders’? For example, did “married-parent family” units exist in Asia and when?
-in societies where the “married-parent family” arrangement existed, when compared to similar societies with no “married-parent family” units, which society was more successful at survival (and survival is Nature’s only passing grade)?
Nature tolerates an abundance of experiments in all realms of existence but rewards only a few with extended survival. The very difficult quest is to determine the true factors that combine for the success of that extended survival. And the main potholes on the path to discovering truth is bias and rationalization of that bias. And, yes, you can make a living off of potholes.
“Nature tolerates an abundance of experiments in all realms of existence but rewards only a few with extended survival.”
That, my friend, is an excellent sentence that belongs in a textbook. Good for you.
Baby momma’s living in poverty put the lie to her theory.
Ex Dem said: “The very difficult quest is to determine the true factors that combine for the success of that extended survival.”
Author Robert A. Heinlein once wrote (sorry, unable to find the exact quote at the moment) that “marriage is an institution designed for the protection of children.” That definition still works pretty well for me. I strongly suspect that should you successfully complete that “very difficult quest” you postulated, you would find that the result very closely follows Heinlein’s opinion.
I agree with your quoted author but I will go a little further than ““marriage is an institution designed for the protection of children.” That institution enhances the survival of your DNA, as do the Ten Commandments, the Golden rule and many laws. But that is a topic for a different discussion.
A formerly respected journal publishes that dreck??
Dreck? Oh, no! That is the cloth that is so finely woven and delicate, that only the very sophisticated can see it.
If LeFriecq had any real intelligence left, and had not already fried her brain on patriarchal post-colonist oppression gobbledy-gook, she might have noticed the obvious lesson in all this – maybe black people should do what the mean old white folks are doing to get ahead – get married and go to school.
So it is only when , “White Men,” marry that they go to school? Is marriage what incites people to go to school?
Yours is the first mumbo jumbo to have come across this forum.
I apologize. I did not realize that English was not your first language. Here, maybe this will help. “and” and “then” do not mean the same thing.
and – used to connect words of the same part of speech, clauses, or sentences, that are to be taken jointly.
“bread and butter”
1.
then at that time; at the time in question.
“I was living in Cairo then”
2.
after that; next; afterward.
“she won the first and then the second game”
I hope that helps!
Yours is the first mumbo jumbo to have come across this forum.
Trying to pick a fight?
Keys to massive success:
Go to school every day
Graduate
Learn a trade, or go to college
Dont make a baby until you marry
Its universal, Open to people of all colors, genders, zip codes.
Iowan2,
Notice most people of any color who follow that formula succeed?
I would only add, dont get in trouble of the illegal kind or associate with those who do.
It’s easy to slam some dingbat academic about the family culture proposed for our country. What would be much more engaging (less escapist) is to take up serious questions about family formation, and how to repair it — everyone who reads non-fiction knows that marriage and 2-parent childraising is in trouble, and those not able to participate in this institution face poverty and diminished social mobility for the children raised by the single mom.
One theory (the biological roadmap) says for older teens to pair-bond with their first love around age 16-19, and get married. They should continue educations in preparation to become good earners. Childbearing can be soon after marriage or delayed by choice. Parents and grandparents help the young couple with nest building financially, with an understanding of a decade-long period of financial emancipation. The advantage of the biological roadmap is that natural reproductive instincts are accommodated, including the emotional strength of first love, and the best interests of grandchildren are looked after by involved grandparents.
The status quo doesn’t deserve to be called a theory, because it is nothing more than ad-hoc adaption where family-formation is placed subordinate to free-market economic and social forces. Under the status quo, parents might or might not contribute financial support starting around age 16-22. It’s the school of hard knocks or entitlement. Eligibility for marriage is tied to earning power and other social attributes based on looks and maturity. As a result, only half of young adults are marrying by age 40. They tend to go through temporary relationships which end with commitment escape.
Which of these 2 approaches is better? Are inclined to bow out of the discussion based on “we know it’s bad, but we can’t do anything about it”, or “anything except what the woke want for family culture”?
I tell you one way to repair marriage. First, no child support for any child born out of wedlock. Neither from the father, nor from the State. Let the girl go to her family or to a church for help. Those options will not help her if she doesn’t get her poop in one sock. Mandatory DNA testing, and if the husband is not the father, no child support if he chooses to leave her. Next, no mandatory child support for a woman who leaves a marriage without good cause. The Court MAY order child support, but do not make it mandatory. Remove the financial incentives to divorce, and take any child support off “the chart.” You get a couple of hundred dollars a week, even if hubby is a millionaire. I would have Food Stamps available for one adult and one child, but if there is an additional child, no increase. I would end welfare housing for unmarried mothers. They can stay at home, or go to a church for help. Once again, I think people will help them, but they will have to get their poop together.
One problem is, when you are a single parent, marriage becomes harder to get, because most people do not wish to raise children who are not their own. Cleaning diapers is not fun. Waking up at 2:00 AM to feed and change a baby is not fun. And if a woman has more than one child, either in-wedlock or out-of-wedlock, her chances for a successful subsequent marriage goes down. If there is more than one child, the chances go down even more. So this needs to be discouraged, not just for the mother’s sake, but for the sake of the children. No more “no fault” divorces if there are still children in the home. Divorce used to be unusual in the country, and it should be again.
Currently, you can go to any inner city black neighborhood and see the results of Feminist Theory and a matriarchy. American black men have been emasculated by white liberals. They are the only free men in the history of the world who can not go out, fall in love with a woman, get married and raise a family. By the time they meet the girl, she has two kids, two baby daddies, and is an emotional and mental wreck, with a baggage train 10 miles long. Black men have become pretty much useless in their own community.
FWIW, I am a male, and I was a single parent at age 22. This was back in the 1970s. I had to grow up fast. And that is what needs to happen to a lot of these unwed mothers. But it isn’t.
Floyd, we do not punish children for the sins of there mothers.
There is an approach to parenting that is called “love and logic”.
simplified, it boils down to the job of a parent is to provide children with the opportunity to make choices, to take risks,
protecting them enough from the consequences that the poor choices of children do not determine the rest of their lives,
but to allow enough to the natural consequences to endure that both good and bad choices result in actual learning.
I think that is at the core of your comment – and I agree with that – if not the specific way in which you impliment it.
I don’t see withholding of benefits as punishment, but I agree that mine is a very harsh position. I just do not see any other way to force a change. I have done a divorce case or two in my time, and quite often it is the short term benefit that motivates the woman to file. One of my own family members divorced her husband, and she knew she was going to get about $2,000 per month child support, which was quite a lot 20+ years ago. Worst mistake she ever made. If however, she was only going to get $200 per week, she would have had second thoughts.
I know a lot of laws changed to obviate the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children, and way back then, it seemed like a good idea. But it has turned out to have horrible consequences, particularly in the black community. Having a baby is a way to get benefits, and when you are undereducated and not brought up with a decent set of morals, then why not? And, if “all the girls around you are doing it” – then why not. Frankly, if the little monsters were being raised well, and going to school, and getting ahead in life, I would not much give a hoot, But they aren’t. I wish there was a way to punish just the mother without affecting the kids, but I don’t see how.
Good discussion. There is a a lot that can be changed policy-wise to promote the nuclear family and formation of new ones. The “all family forms are equal” belief is just hogwash, when you look at long-term effects on social mobility.
Who is breaking the norms of successful rearing of families? We all break norms but for the Democrat Party and the left, destroying the family seems to be their aim.
Let’s look at what the left considers some of their successes.
1) Single parent families
2) Paying to have children
4) Destroying education
6) Sexualization of children
7) Drugs
8) Crime
. First, no child support for any child born out of wedlock
Yes. People need to be accountable for their actions.
But you forgot the full equation in baby making.
No govt cash unless the mother Identifies the father, so he can be held accountable.
One of the problems that many of us have with the left is that implied in your comments is the assumption that whatever the results of your debate over marriage, that those conclusions should be imposed by government.
You address free markets touching on but not quite aware of the fact that free markets are just the way we make decisions outside of government. Atleast you note that there are free market social forces.
What is wrong with freedom being the way we work these things out.
We can have whatever public debate people choose.
Each of us can participate or not as we choose, and decide how we wish to go forward in our own lives.
If we make poor decisions – we get poor outcomes,
If we make good decisions we get good outcomes.
And the outcomes of the past decisions of others provide the instructive input to our own future decisions.
Though by all means, she should put her temper tantrum out there for all to mock, it isn’t provocative or challenging, it’s more of the same robotic grievance nonsense that dribbles out the ears of anyone for whom wokeness has liquified their brain. I mean, seriously. The piece itself states the paper is all too predictable; the benefit of the doubt expired long ago.
These people are incapable of original thought, innovation, creativity, or *building* anything. They are a joke, and a rather dumb one. If there were no coattails for them to ride or preexisting content for them to co-opt, they’d literally be inert and/or still eating Tide Pods.
A perfect example of a society that Prof Letiecq is promoting that is totally void of “White heteropatriarchal supremacist social order ” is Haiti. Haiti is totally void of “white institutions” such as marriage, two adult families, i.e. nuclear family and this is what she is teaching that society emulate.