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in – and base public policy upon it -- without violating the law or being silenced by liberal opponents.
It is neither necessary nor desirable to silence anti-family voices, so long as the pro-family
ones are allowed to compete equally in the marketplace of ideas. We believe that pro-family ideas,
reasonably and clearly expressed, will win the day.
What follows is a reasoned argument for the pro-family position in entirely nonreligious
terms to help you explain the logic of pro-family thinking to non-believers.
Religious or Secular?
Too often the “conservative” or pro-family position on issues such as homosexuality and
abortion is assumed to be entirely religious in nature, while the “liberal” or pro-choice position is
assumed to be non-religious. This misunderstanding leads some to believe that the pro-family
viewpoint cannot be advocated by school teachers and other public officials without violating the
Establishment Clause of the First Amendment (the so-called “separation of church and state“). This
is a false conclusion.
While it is true that most world religions are doctrinally pro-family, and that many of the
most vocal advocates of the pro-family position are strongly religious people, the belief in the natural
family, marriage and family values is not inherently religious. Indeed, the “father” of pro-family
argumentation is the ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, an entirely secular figure in world history.
The essence of the pro-family perspective is a belief in empirical observation and logical
deduction. Aristotle gave the name “teleology” to this approach to understanding the world.
Teleology assumes that all things have a purpose and that the purpose of each thing can be discerned
from its design and function.
For example, we can determine that the purpose of the eye is to see, since it is obviously
designed to do so and that is how it functions.
Another name for Aristotle’s philosophy is natural law, although his definition of this term is
different from that of some later philosophers. One group of natural law thinkers of whom Aristotle
would likely have approved is America’s founding fathers. Their Declaration of Independence from
British rule claims its authority from “inalienable rights” deduced from “self-evident truths” emanating
from “Nature and Nature’s God.”
Another important natural law document is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
adopted by the United Nations 1948. Its reaffirmation of “the inherent dignity and of the equal and
inalienable rights of all members of the human family” is the legal and moral inspiration for nearly
every human rights treaty provision in international law.
The common denominator in these examples of natural law thinking is an adherence to the
belief that observations about what is can guide us as to what ought to be.
In like manner, activists in today’s pro-family movement believe that the optimal approach
to dealing with social problems, particularly those associated with sexual behavior, can be deduced
from observations of and respect for the self-evident nature of things. Simply, we choose to assume
that following the design of things will produce good results while ignoring the design will produce
Redeeming the Rainbow 86