Joe Doakes of Como Park emails:

“I, Pencil” is a famous Economics essay that makes this startling claim: Nobody knows how to make a pencil.

Consider the ordinary No. 2 lead pencil children use in grade school. No single person knows every piece of knowledge needed to make a pencil: forest management for the wood; polymer science for the paint; ore mining and refining for the metal and graphite; how to make whatever the eraser is made of; and the manufacturing process to bring the components together. A pencil is a simple tool but the result of a complex set of discrete processes, all of which must work in perfect harmony. If enough elements are removed, the result is not a pencil. If what you needed was a No. 2 lead pencil, removing some of the essential elements of a pencil leaves you worse off than you were before the changes were made.

President Obama’s recent “The First Time” campaign message uses a losing-your-virginity sexual theme to advise young voters that their first vote should be cast for someone who cares about women getting birth control, not somebody who studies in the library; in other words, someone cool and casual, not someone boring but permanent. The thinking underlying this ad is similar to the thinking behind the sexual revolution that led to the gay marriage movement and all are delusions dangerous to long-term societal stability.

 

The concept of marriage looks as simple as a pencil but it’s actually a complicated collection of rights and policies. Before 1970, the family was the fundamental organizational unit of society because, as Robert Heinlein famously noted, it was the most successful institution ever devised for protecting children while preserving family wealth. Marriage was hard to get into (blood tests, waiting periods) and hard to get out of (good cause required and alimony paid). But the incentives were good: sex outside marriage was illegal, children born outside marriage were denied rights, unmarried couples were denied tax breaks and were social outcasts.

The sexual revolution convinced us the individual should replace the family as the focus of society. Satisfying the desires of individuals became more important than sacrificing for one’s family. The changes to society were slow to manifest but breathtaking in scope. No-fault divorce made marriage temporary. Child custody assumptions turned fathers into powerless, occasional visitors. Abortion made casual sex outside marriage risk-free. Childhood illegitimacy and poverty rates skyrocketed while test scores plummeted and child abuse and neglect rates exploded.

A society focused on individual gratification at the expense of children’s futures cannot prosper long-term. By every economic and social measure, people raised in traditional families today are miles ahead of single-parent or never-married families. 40 years of evidence shows Heinlein was right. The sexual revolution removed some of the essential elements supporting traditional marriage and as a result, society is worse off.

Gay marriage advocates assure us that re-defining “marriage” away from one-man-one-woman won’t hurt the institution of marriage a bit. I can’t agree. I think we’ve already stripped the pencil of the eraser, metal holder and paint. If we strip the lead out, what’s left won’t be a pencil at all. That’s not a problem if we have ballpoints and highlighters and crayons to substitute for the pencil. But what’s the substitute system for protecting children and preserving family wealth? What’s the substitute for the next generation, and the one after that?

Joe Doakes

Como Park

More tomorrow.