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National Marriage Day & the UK riots

By Warwick Marsh - posted Tuesday, 16 August 2011


Today Tuesday August the 16th is National Marriage Day. This is a day to celebrate the joy of marriage and the natural family. So what has this celebration got to do with the UK riots?

Well let me explain.

Unless we begin to promote marriage and the natural family by events like National Marriage Day we will soon face the societal disintegration currently being experienced in Great Britain and it won't be good.

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The sight on the TV of young people looting and burning down whole suburbs in the UK has shocked us all. With over $300 million dollars AUD in damages, 5 dead, scores injured and whole suburbs still under siege. Many are asking, "Did anyone see it coming?"

The answer is yes.

In April 2008 a well known Family Law Court Judge in the UK made the following dire prediction.

"Without being in any way over-dramatic or alarmist, my prediction would be that the effects of family breakdown on the life of the nation, and ordinary people, in this country will, within the next 20 years, be as marked and as destructive as the effects of global warming".

Whilst the doubts about global warming are growing stronger each day there is no doubting the fact that Justice Coleridge's words have come true in the UK riots this last week just as he said they would.

The 2008 article in the UK Telegraph by Sarah Womack goes on to point out the judge's intervention was without precedent and "comes as new figures show marriage levels are at their lowest since 1862, and the number of children living with a single parent has doubled in 20 years".

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So what exactly is happening in Great Britain and why is Great Britain not so great? Maybe English journalist Peter Osborne in his article about last week's riots "The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom" has some of the answers:

"Indeed, I believe that the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society. The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite.

It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat. An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up...Something has gone horribly wrong in Britain. If we are ever to confront the problems which have been exposed in the past week, it is essential to bear in mind that they do not only exist in inner-city housing estates... It is not just its damaged youth, but Britain itself that needs a moral reformation".

English MP David Lammy commented:

"There is none of the basic starting presumption of two adults who want to start a family, raise children together, love them, nourish them and lead them to full independence. The parents are not married and the child has come, frankly, out of casual sex; the father is not present, and is not expected to be. There are not the networks of extended families to make up for it. We are seeing huge consequences of the lack of male role models in young
men's lives. . ."

Social commentator Niamh Ui Bhriain in her article Why is London Burning says:

"The decline of marriage has left a significant proportion of children with a confused understanding of stability and of boundaries. And the lack of male role model means that young men in particular seek out the toughest in the gang for an authority figure rather than their father. That means just one bad apple can influence a whole community of young teens.

The rioters this week were mostly teenagers, young people who seemed to believe that the best way of expressing their discontent was to loot, smash and assault innocent people. Some of them were just kids: one an 11-year-old boy who is before Highbury Corner Youth Court as part of a gang who looted a Debenhams store on Monday night.

Some commentators called the looters feral... but I think that description lets the people who have contributed to this mess off the hook. The truth is that society is falling apart... mostly because of the social engineering which is driven by the affluent chattering classes...

So, while liberal (usually affluent) policy-makers have spent decades talking down morality and ridiculing "old-fashioned" notions of family values, they make sure that their own families benefit from the security those values bring to their lives. Meanwhile, working class children increasingly grow up without a Dad or a sense of responsibility, and the rates of teenage pregnancy, poverty, school dropout and crime continue to spiral".

But perhaps it was Melanie Phillips from the UK Daily Mail who really nailed the problem.

". . . at the very heart of these problems lies the breakdown of the family. For most of these children come from lone-mother households. And the single most crucial factor behind all this mayhem is the willed removal of the most important thing that socialises children and turns them from feral savages into civilised citizens: a father who is a fully committed member of the family unit.

Of course there are many lone parents who do a tremendous job. But we're talking here about widespread social collapse. And there are whole areas of Britain, white as well as black, where committed fathers are a wholly unknown phenomenon.

In such areas, successive generations are being brought up only by mothers, through whose houses pass transitory males by whom these women have yet more children - and who inevitably repeat the pattern of lone and dysfunctional parenting.

The result is fatherless boys who are consumed by an existential rage and desperate emotional need, and who take out the damage done to them by lashing out from infancy at everyone around them."

Melanie Philips points out that all of this chaos and social destruction is the fruit of the policies of the powerful elites many of whom are "ultra feminists." These people have been in positions of power in Great Britain in both media and government for many decades.

These elites are often heterophobic and share a common hatred for marriage, common sense morality and the natural family. They are slaves to political correctness. The results of their policies speak for themselves.

The really sad thing is that the exact same thing is happening here in Australia. This Tuesday, 16 August 2011, the National Marriage Day celebration is being held in the Great Hall, Parliament House, Canberra.

National Marriage Day is a celebration of the joy of marriage and the natural family. I am speaking at this event and helping those who are organising it, but we are having difficulty in getting a Labor party member to speak on behalf of the importance of marriage and the natural family. One of the reasons given is that our Labor friends don't want to offend Penny Wong.

Congratulations have flowed to the well known radical feminist Penny Wong and her lesbian partner on the impending birth of her partner's new baby.

But where are the tears for a child who will grow up without her father in her home? Or where are the tears for the fatherless children who will soon occupy 70% of the capacity of our already overcrowded goal system? Where are the tears for the fatherless children who medicate their father-wound through their self destructive alcohol, drug, porn and sex addictions and who will in many cases end up taking their own life.

Penny will surely be a good mother, but she will never be a good father. Children need a mother and a father. Marriage between a man and woman is the best way to guarantee that children have that right.

The destruction of marriage and the natural family, as in Great Britain, is the best way to spread the epidemic of fatherlessness and social dysfunction. But Penny Wong and many of her Labor Party colleagues seem intent on following their English counterparts and robbing children of their biological birthright. It would seem the Australian Labor Party, under the leadership of radical feminist Julia Gillard, one of the founders of Emily's List, is keen to promote a fatherless and a marriageless society. Julia's defacto marital status being a classic case in point.

So what do Australians want more than anything else in life? Is it to follow in the footsteps of the Prime Minister?

In a revealing article, Miranda Devine shows that's not the case:

"The latest snapshot of Australians' hopes and fears from the pre-eminent social researcher David Chalke, from Quantum tells us what Australians really want - and it's not a carbon tax. More than anything, they say they want a good marriage.

That would be their greatest accomplishment, 83 per cent of Australians said in the latest AustraliaSCAN survey. Coming a close second was the ability to be in control of their lives (which received 82 per cent of the nominations); and third was to have happy and successful children (81 per cent)."

David Chalke, chief consultant for the AustraliaSCAN project said to me when I rang him to verify the figures said that having a successful marriage has been the number one priority and considered the greatest accomplishment, for over 20 years. He said that this holds for both young people and old people. He also said that Australians want to celebrate 'ordinary decency and morality' and are really keen about family.

David went on to say that there are no surprises in these statistics unless you read the 'broadsheets', particularly the Age or the Sydney Morning Herald and watch ABC TV because these media outlets are out-of-step with the great bulk of Australians.

David Chalke also pointed out that the ruling elite in the government and the Canberra Press Gallery live in a different world, have a different agenda and a different mindset to the great bulk of ordinary Australians. He talked about the ABC media program, Insiders, and said that the name itself is a good example of the 'group think' of the 11-12% of people who control our media and governmental world.

I will let Miranda Devine finish the story:

"But the biggest divide between the insiders and the outsiders - or between the so-called elites and Middle Australia - is based on what used to be called family values.

Whereas 75 per cent of Middle Australia believes in the proposition: 'It's time this country got back to basic moral values like honesty, hard work and putting families first', the same was true for fewer than half of the elites.

Australians want to celebrate 'ordinary decency and morality', says Chalke. Which is why reality shows celebrating the achievements of ordinary people, like MasterChef, rate...

Yet how rarely are happy marriages and well-adjusted children spoken about or celebrated. Instead, a Martian arriving in Australia could be forgiven for thinking all we have are dysfunctional unions, cheating spouses, and "Polly has two mummies" controversies.

Marriage is the best way to keep people out of poverty and keep children happy. Yet screenwriters, novelists and journalists dwell on its dark side, on breakups, violence and betrayal."

And yet sadly in spite of the wishes of the Australian people who place heterosexual marriage as their number one accomplishment in life the current Gillard Green government seem hell bent on destroying the natural family, fatherhood and marriage both by example and legislation.

The current roll back of our Shared Parenting laws that will be enacted in the coming weeks by the Gillard Government are a prime example. These new anti-father laws will ensure that more children will grow up fatherless. As Bob Dylan sang so many years ago "When will we ever learn?" Maybe the call by Journalist, from the UK Telegraph, Peter Osborne for "a moral reformation" in England could well be applicable to Australia.

One thing I do know is that the best way "to cure selfishness and greed," which has become so acceptable in the ailing nations of the western world, is to get married and raise children. It will either cure you or kill you! I can tell you now it is a great way to 'die to self'.

Just ask my wife. She has had to put up with me for the last 35 years, she deserves a Gold Medal.

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About the Author

Warwick Marsh is the founder of the Dads4Kids Fatherhood Foundation with his wife Alison. They have five children and two grandchildren and have been married for 34 years.

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