What Can Be Done to Protect Families?

The strength of communities and nations rise or fall on the strength of their families. Communities with strong, traditional families have better schools and less crime. Communities with mostly fatherlessness homes endure more crime. Strong families bring less abortion and fewer gender issues. Strong families are the glue that strengthens communities and nations.

There is a faction in our nation that is trying to destroy families and their influence in our society. The people in the faction are those who push gender issues on grade school age children and biological men into women’s sports. Parents are standing in their way, so they are trying to take away the rights of parents to be involved in decisions concerning their children. However, parents need support from state legislatures and other governmental units.

The North Carolina Legislature overrode veto from Democrat Governor Roy Cooper on Wednesday and enacted five or more bills without the support of the governor. According to Joshua Arnold at The Daily Signal, some of the bills “protect minors from the harmful effects of irreversible gender-reassignment procedures, guarantee parental rights in education, and clarify that women’s sports are for women.” 

Arnold explained some of the bills. HB 808 makes it “unlawful for a medical professional to perform a surgical gender-transition procedure on a minor or to prescribe, provide, or dispense puberty-blocking drugs or cross-sex hormones to a minor.” There is an exception for any treatment courses started before August 1, 2023. Enforcement of this act is revocation of licenses. However, it also protects medical providers who object to doing the procedures and prevents the use of state funds for performing the procedures on minors.

“SB 49 establishes a ‘parents’ bill of rights’ and requires ‘public school units and all public-school unit personnel’ to ‘fully support and cooperate in implementing a well-planned, inclusive, and comprehensive program to assist parents and families in effectively participating in their child’s education.’” Information required to be shared with parents include “academic information and notifications about their child’s physical and mental health, which include ‘any changes in the name or pronoun used for a student.’” It also requires “age-appropriate instruction” for children in kindergarten through fourth grade and excludes “instruction on gender identity, sexual activity, or sexuality.”

“HB 574 requires ‘athletic teams designated for females, women, or girls shall not be open to students of the male sex,’ and it recognizes sex ‘based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.’”

Strong families must be supported and protected because the family is the core unit of society. Local, state, and national government must provide the environments in which families can thrive and grow strong. Otherwise, society will continue to devolve into chaos and crime.

Protect Families

                Families, communities, and nations are strengthened when all individuals strive to protect their individual families and The Family as the core unit of society. Living prophets and apostles warned the world in 1995 about the disintegration of the family and what the results will be if the family fails.

                “We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring, or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets and modern prophets” (The Family – A Proclamation to the World). 

                One of those ancient prophets was Malachi, who warned parents to turn their hearts to their children and children to turn their hearts to their parents, lest the whole earth be cursed (see Malachi 4:6).

                The above paragraph from the proclamation on the family notes three key warnings: (1) violation of covenants, (2) abuse of spouse or offspring, and (3) failure to fulfill family responsibilities. Why are these three areas so critical? They are most important because they strike directly at the family.

                Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles stated, “Let me say again that the family is the main target of evil’s attack and must therefore be the main point of our protection and defense. As I said once before, when you stop and think about it from a diabolically tactical point of view, fighting the family makes sense to Satan…. When evil wants to strike out and disrupt the essence of God’s work, it attacks the family. It does so by attempting to disregard the law of chastity, to confuse gender, to desensitize violence, to make crude and blasphemous language the norm, and to make immoral and deviant behavior seem like the rule rather than the exception” (“Let Our Voices Be Heard,” Ensign, November 2003). 

                Do you believe that disintegration of the family will bring about calamities? One example of the problems caused by the destruction of the family is the black community where men are merely sperm donors who leave the women to rear the children. Of course, there are many black men who are true fathers to their own children and even mentor other children, but there are far too many children born outside the bonds of marriage.

                We need look no further than Chicago, Illinois, the murder capital of the United States, for what happens in society when the family disintegrates. Blacks are killing blacks in Chicago on at a high and possibly increasing rate. Young men are growing up there without the guidance of their fathers and seek that influence in wrong places. One very important way to stop the murders of children and youth is to bring fathers back into the family.

                The black community is not the only place where children are born out of wedlock and fathers are not involved with their children. This is a problem everywhere. Children need the influence of both father and mother in their daily lives in order to become well-balanced, law-abiding citizens. One way we can strengthen families, communities, and nations is by supporting and promoting policies that “maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society” (proclamation on the family).