Define, please?
So far I haven't seen you acknowledging that there is any genuine meaning to the word, but every reference you have made to it as as a highly charged negative code term. So please clarify what you think its genuine meaning is, and how you think you can tell which usage people are using when they use it.
My first reaction was to pop off a list of values that I thought were family values. But, instead, I took some time and searched for sites where genuine family values are discussed and the term is not just a code word. I do not claim an exhaustive search, by any means, but I have not yet uncovered a list of family values, at least not one proposed by those who push the phrase, only the lists of those who mock. Perhaps the proponents would think me silly for looking for a list when they just assume that the list is in the Bible, I don't know. I just know that I didn't find a list. I went to this site that billed itself as "tshirts and gifts with family values" thinking they might offer tshirts with family values printed on them. Not a chance. Their tshirts have patriotic and Christian statements, but there was no list of values that one could wear.
moralitees.com
If I were to list what I considered family values, it would include such things as loyalty, sharing, kindness, industriousness, responsibility, devotion, helpfulness, etc. That's what I think of when I think of family values.
As for what others mean by the term, I found mostly code words for:
1. Christian theocracy
2. Christian morality
3. focus on and political support of the traditional family
4. a label for the traditional "side" in the culture war.
Didn't find discussions of actual values groups on those sites.
Here are a couple of examples that I happened to clip as I passed through:
<<The World Congress of Families promotes and encourages the stability, autonomy, and fecundity of the natural family.>>
<<The purpose of The Howard Center is to provide research and understanding that demonstrate and affirm family and religion as the foundation of a virtuous and free society>>
Personally, I think that the theme of family values has some important and useful secular application in our times. I wish the family-values folks hadn't usurped it for their purposes. Two applications of what I think of as family values and that I support are family-friendly workplace policies and a family-safe popular culture and public behavior. If the family values folks want to tackle those aspects in secular-friendly way, I'm with them all the way. |
