A nation is nothing more than its people.
This nation is experiencing extreme inner torment and conflict at this time. To find the problem, perhaps we should examine the people.
Fifty-ninth General Assembly of the U.N., in a press release titled “Governments Reaffirm Critical Importance of Family to Society”: “The Family is the most important unit of society.”
If this is true, as the whole of the world’s leaders attest, than perhaps our ailment lies therein.
Winston Churchill: “Where does the family start? It starts with a young man falling in love with a girl - no superior alternative has yet been found.”
Herein lays our distress. The degradation of the core family unit in society is being heralded from all angles. Psychology has shown the adverse affects it has on both the individual happiness of adults as well as the development of children in (A) cohabiting relationships, (B) single-parent homes, and (C) same-sex relationships. Further, high divorce rates are a disappointingly crucial contributor to moral and mental instability for adults and children.
There are almost always exceptions to a rule. Many children and couples have found happiness in the above mentioned instabilities, but exceptions are not the rules.
Winston Churchill: “There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained.”
Aristotle: “All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.”
Elias Boudinot: “Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow.”
As mentioned before, this country was founded upon certain morals, values, and principles. If we attempt to remove the most important unit in society, the family, through neglecting its proper value in the nation, then we will see a cataclysmic downturn in this country’s productivity, freedom, justice, moral and ethical codes, respect, and original purpose.
If this nation is to ever retain and re-obtain the peace that it was designed to foster, actions by the PEOPLE of this country must be taken to sustain and defend the “most important unit of society.”
What can be done? I believe that those of us who wish to keep the strong foundation of loving, educational families are the vast majority of this nation’s people. You’re not alone; rally together with dignified peace. Reject all degrading trends and influences that are attempting to nullify the family. Remember what Aristotle said and teach your offspring tolerance and love, with all other correct moral principles this country was fabricated with. We, the people, constitute this nation, and we determine its strength and health.
I speak as the protagonist to moral, loving families, not as the antagonist to the alternatives.
If you destroy the people (families) you destroy the country.
Sterling Whipple is a sophomore undeclared major from Delta. He can be reached at tennisfreak2006@gmail.com.



16 comments
With 60-70 percent of Utah being LDS might one conclude the LDS family has some serious problems?
With 60-70 percent of Utah being LDS might one conclude the LDS family has some serious problems?
“The Supreme Court cases discussing the right to marry do not define the right those cases as a subset of the right to marry depending on the factual context in which the issue presented itself. For example, Loving addressed marriage; not interracial or opposite-race marriage. Turner v. Safley discusses marriage; not marriage involving inmates in penal institutions.”The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly described the right to marriage as “one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men”; a “basic civil right”; a component of the constitutional rights to liberty, privacy, association, and intimate choice; an expression of emotional support and public commitment; the exercise of spiritual unity; and a fulfillment of one’s self.Loving v. Virginia (1967) (“The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”); see also id. (“Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival.”) U.S. 535, 541 (1942).Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399 (The right “to marry, establish a home and bring up children” is a central part of the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause). (“[Th]e right to marry is part of the fundamental ‘right of privacy’ implicit in the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause”). Good parenting is not based on gender, what is in the heart of the parent...
David Blankenhorn, [Testified for the SUPPORTERS of Prop 8] wrote in "The Future of Marriage: A seminar coconvened and chaired by Blankenhorn" assembled a list of 23 “Positive
Consequences” of allowing same-sex couples to marry: (1) meeting the stated
needs and desires of gays and lesbians, (2) extending the benefits of marriage
to gays and lesbians, (3) more gay and lesbian people choosing to enter
committed relationships, (4) more stability and longer-lasting relationships for
same-sex couples, (5) less sexual promiscuity, (6) greater acceptance of
homosexual love and intimacy, (7) “a victory for the worthy ideas of tolerance
and inclusion,” and “a victory for, and another key expansion of, the American
idea,” (8) reaffirmation of society’s commitment to social justice, (9)
expanding the concept of human rights, (10) decline in anti-gay prejudice and
hate-crimes, (11) increased wealth-accumulation and higher living standards
for gays and lesbians, (12) making marriage more universally accessible, (13)
demonstration that marriage can be an adaptive social form, (14) decline of
“marriage lite” schemes such as civil unions, which can harmfully blur the
distinction between marriage and non-marriage, (15) reduced number of gays
and lesbians unhappily marrying people of the opposite sex, (16) reduced
number of younger Americans who believe that marriage is an outdated and
discriminatory institution, (17) increased birth rate, (18) more children growing
up in loving adoptive foster-families, (19) valuable national discussion of
marriage’s benefits, (20) end to today’s socially divisive and distracting debate
over gay marriage, (21) reduction in gender stereotypes, (22) new scholarly
research on a variety of topics related to marriage and parenting, and (23)
valuable local experimentation in matters of marriage and marriage law).