of the Presidency of Batthyány Circle of Professors, their Workgroup on Issues of Family and Demography and the Presidency of the Family Science Alliance
The traditional family model has been under intense attack under consumer society for many decades. It can now be said that a cultural war is being waged against the institution of marriage and the family. The three main fronts of this attack have been the legalisation and promotion of free love, homosexuality and transgenderism. However, a fourth front is now taking shape, the legalisation of non-monogamous relationships. All of them are aiming sexuality. The second and third fronts have been effectively managed by our government, but the first one, the spread of free love, which has fundamentally shaken and is shaking the chances and success of having and maintaining good marriages and families, has been virtually ignored. The political and economic powers that seek to dismantle the family have recognised properly that the best way to dismantle and break up the family is to influence people’s sexual behaviour. As a result of their success, relationships in our country have also become strained, and the institution of marriage and the family has been faltering for several decades. Same-sex marriage, gender ideology and, who knows what else, are all that is needed to push the wounded institution of marriage and the family to its grave sooner or later.
When there is a problem around the institution of the family, it is felt profoundly and bitterly by the whole of society, by all its structures, including education, churches, the workplace, health care and all the systems of state structure. Family stability is primarily determined by the harmony of marriages, but also by the culture of relationships.
Since the demographic crisis is one of the symptoms of the crisis of family life, it can and must be resolved only by healing the crisis of family life, of course, otherwise the general crisis of couples would further weaken the structure of society and thus further threaten and weaken its very existence.
Today, promiscuous sexuality has become widely accepted. Most people are misinformed or unaware of the late effects of different forms of relationship and lifestyle models. Thus, loss of culture and the level of selfishness in relationships is alarming. Much of the media and most of social science, as well as left-wing parties, all promote promiscuous sexuality. Young people see and hear virtually no alternative.
Those who support migration in Europe used to promote promiscuity. Both can lead to the elimination of the nation state, Christian culture and the white man. Thus, if we want to survive, we should pay equal attention to both.
The inhibition of extramarital partnerships, the key to the solution, is not only a matter for churches and NGOs, but also a direct concern, responsibility, task and duty of politics, science and the media, which are responsible for the common good.
Politics has a duty to represent the cause of the common good. Therefore, politics must not allow people’s physical and mental health and their most important human relationships to suffer and break down because of fundamental errors. In our country, even our Constitution as well as our Fundamental Family Protection Law oblige us to protect the institution of marriage and the family.
In this area, our Government has a more difficult task than it does on the issue of migration, because in the case of migration, the other side has not yet convinced the people that it is good for them if migrants settle here. Concerning free love, lying and inhuman persuasion has been applied and almost succeeded in the last fifty years. Fortunately, it can be measured that this persuasion has been based on false arguments, so the fallacies that have been caused can and must be exposed.
Of course, politics should not be concerned with the morale of private lives, but rather with making people aware of the short and especially long-term effects of different forms of relationship and lifestyle models. People have a basic right to be informed properly about this, and governments have a basic duty to do it. If people were putting arsenic in drinking water, then politicians would have a duty to act against it. It is worth to note here that it was the ‘sexual revolutionaries’ who radically changed people’s private lives, family stability and sexual habits.
It is clear from the results of a wide range of analyses that the crisis in family life and demographics is rooted in the generalisation of extramarital partnerships, i.e. free love. Free love has become commonplace and a high proportion of stable families in the same time is unthinkable. It follows that the demographic crisis will not be resolved until the proportion of extramarital partnerships is drastically reduced.
As long as family and demographic conferences do not address the foundations of anthropology, the effects of relationship models, the causes and consequences of the generalisation of free love, and the restoration of the ideal of sexual abstinence outside marriage, we cannot hope to see a remarkable long-term relieve of the crisis of family life and demographics.
We see the solution in a three-dimensional family policy:
(i) Financial support and material benefits for parents of children. Our Government is doing this very well.
(ii) We need to decline factors that make it difficult or impossible for good families to be formed and survive. This must be clearly brought to the attention of society and given a strong and prominent place in the media.
(iii) A basic set of values for educating culture of relationship and family life should be developed on a scientific and cultural basis, it should be made legitimate and as widely accepted as possible. In parallel, a well-founded programme in this field should be developed for pre-school, primary, secondary and higher education and introduced into education as soon as possible. It should also be widely disseminated in higher education, research and adult education. If these second and third dimensions of family policy are given sufficient scope, we can expect to see the institution of marriage and the family consolidated and the crisis in family life and demographics significantly alleviated and then resolved in the long term.
Our Constitution protects not only marriage and the family, but also Christian culture. Our opponents have also realised that there is no need to attack the churches, that it is enough to spread promiscuous sexuality and that religiosity is drying up. Preserving Christian culture is impossible with promiscuous sexuality. Marriage and, of course, Christianity are incompatible with free love. Civilisation did not create marriage, marriage created civilisation. A developed culture could only have come about in the course of history if sexual abstinence before marriage was expected by society for both women and men. This protected women, children, the family and ultimately society as a whole. When sexual norms have been broken down for whatever reason throughout history, in each case society has fallen apart within three generations. Let us not allow doing the same to our country.
Budapest, 21 August 2019.
