Fathers must take charge of their sons' sexual education, resist 'toxic' sex ed: scholar
WASHINGTON — Fathers must take stewardship of their sons' sexual lives and understand that nefarious forces have long been at work to dismantle the family, warns Pat Fagan, a Catholic scholar of marriage and family.
During a panel discussion at the Watchmen on the Wall National briefing on Thursday, Fagan, director of the Marriage and Religion Research Institute, which is based at The Catholic University of America, unpacked the history and key players who advocated for abolishing the family unit, particularly the push to take down fathers.
"When we have weak men, our children are not protected," Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council who moderated the panel, said in his opening remarks. He further noted that there is an all-out "assault" on masculinity.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Alongside two other panelists, Fagan began his comments by noting that "on every single outcome the federal government researches, the more people worship the more you get of the positive things on every single outcome: education, happiness, income, savings, longevity, health," he said.
"Family structure, same thing," he added.
When mom and dad are married raising their own kids together, the statistics reveal the best results.
"In total, on every single outcome in this country, and this should be used in every debate at every level of government. The in-tact married family that worships God weekly on everything, does best, adults and kids, no exception. And those who deny it, don't know the data," Fagan said.
The same holds true internationally, he continued, "including, most especially, sexual satisfaction."
"The Left has sex totally wrong, totally wrong," he emphasized.
Two sexual revolutions have ravaged families over the centuries, the scholar elaborated.
When the Christian faith first spread across Europe what traveled with it were in-tact families and marriages.
"Marriage was for life, divorce was not present. I'm sure some did it, but everybody knew to be a Christian was to be married [for life]. And with that came tremendous strength. And now with the retreat from marriage and the guidance of the social sciences we can see how much weaker that means. So the old rise of Europe as an international power and a great civilization depended on marriage, which was Christ's gift," Fagan continued.
The French Revolution was the beginning of the modern assault on the institution of marriage, which at one stage there was a prostitute on the high altar of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris with an orgy party occurring around her consisting of the revolutionary leaders, he explained. In subsequent decades, Marx and Engels with their international socialist endeavors identified the family and religion as the main obstacles that stood in their way. In 1919, when Vladmir Lenin took over Russia, marriage was abolished; it was reinstituted a decade later due to the social chaos.
And that same chaos, which the contemporary Left is presently pushing, will grow in the United States and will destroy the social fabric, he stressed.
In 1923, Marxist intellectuals in Germany set up the Institute for Social Research, also known as the "Frankfurt School," and many of them eventually migrated to Columbia University in New York. They were asked by Lenin how the West could be defeated from within since the proletariat was supposedly never going to rise up. They figured out that to undermine Western society, the family and marriage had to be chief targets.
Among their ranks were feminist Marxists like Kate Millett, author of Sexual Politics, and Shulamith Firestone, author of The Dialectic of Sex, both of whom were influential thought leaders and instrumental in groups like the National Organization for Women and other feminist groups.
Fagan recounted how, around the time of the founding of NOW, they convened for several weeks and began their meetings with Millett, who chaired the gatherings, asking: "Why are we here today?" to which they would respond "To make revolution."
"What kind of revolution?" she replied.
"The Cultural Revolution," they would say in response.
"And how do we make Cultural Revolution" Millett then asked.
"By destroying the American family!" the women said.
"How do we destroy the family?" she pressed them.
They replied: "By destroying the American Patriarch."
The chanting continued as the women resolved to destroy the father by taking away his power. They would do that by destroying monogamy by promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution, and homosexuality.
"These were all brilliant women, Oxford degrees, Columbia degrees," Fagan said of the NOW founders. Through their efforts and influence, women's studies centers were established at elite universities and proliferated throughout the nation.
He emphasized: "The man is the target. The father in the family, father is the target. Take him out and the family collapses, society collapses. We can see that happening. This is by design. What will it collapse into? Exactly what Lenin asked for."
"How do you collapse the West from within? Short answer: Destroy the father. How do you that? Sex gone wild. Us guys are suckers for it. Every single one of us in this room knows that," he told the crowd. "It's very easy to be tempted. It's very easy to fall."
Amid the breakdown of manhood and the scourge of fatherless homes, Christians must be about solutions, the panelists asserted.
"The way forward is articulated by our Lord Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity who came to save us, but who also came to reveal man to himself," Fagan said.
Jesus changed the paradigm of the Old Testament, and raised the standard, he said, forbidding both divorce and even looking at a woman lustfully.
"Followers of Christ, you and everyone you preach to, are called to ... celibacy. You are called to celibacy, all your children, everyone else. Some, a few, for life. The majority 'til marriage."
"What we need now," he said, "are fathers who will take over the sexual education and formation of their sons, and they'll have to take it over themselves in the home, because everything else out there is toxic, in the schools and all the rest. So they've got to step up to the plate ... we need warriors."
Such warriors, he continued, are the ones who will go to the school systems hellbent on indoctrinating their sons with ungodly sexual dogma and refuse to allow them to be corrupted and say: "He's mine, and I'm going to make a man of him. A real man who will be a fantastic husband, and I'll teach him how. He will be a great lover of his wife, sexually and in every other way, and then will be a great father. And that's my vocation, that's my calling. I brought him into life sexually. Nobody else here can claim that."
"You say it to the school board, you say it the principal, you say it to the teacher: He's mine. Keep your hands off him," Fagan stressed.
"Preach that," he emphasized to the pastors in the audience.
