Honor thy father

One of the most popular arguments, if you can call it that, for sodomy, is the parent/child relation. This is a variant on the popular argument from experience. The parents are opposed to sodomy until they discover that their own grown child is a sodomite, and suddenly that changes everything.

This is a form of emotional extortion. And the implication is that it’s a parental duty to rubber-stamp whatever your kid does. My kid can do no wrong.

I would note, first of all, that this is far from being a cultural universal. Indeed, most societies are shame-cultures in which dishonorable conduct on the part of a family member brings dishonor on the family name.

What has developed in this country is a moral inversion of a shame-culture. Because so many parents view their kids as an extension or mere appendage of themselves, they identify with their kids and whatever their kids do to the point where, if a kid does wrong, they react in the same defensive manner as if they themselves were caught in wrongdoing.

A father (or mother) has no more duty to accept and empower a grown child’s homosexual lifestyle than he has to hustle a son out of the country with a plane ticket and offshore bank account because his son committed date rape and then killed the girl to dispose of the evidence.

Notice that this is not a form of parental love, but self-love. I see myself in my child, so I defend whatever he does since whatever he does is a reflection upon myself.

In addition, we have effeminized the role of fatherhood, so that kids expect the same unconditional acceptance from Dad that they expect from Mom.

But aside from the fact that unconditional acceptance is immoral, fathers have a different role to play than mothers. A father is supposed to be the standard-bearer, not a rubber-stamp. He is supposed to set limits and set a good example. He is supposed to lay down the law and abide by the law. His kids are under his authority because he is under the authority of God’s word. He is the leader, not the follower. He is not supposed to be led through the nose by his own kids. That’s an utter abdication of his parental responsibilities.

Pay close attention to what Scripture says: It doesn’t say that parents are supposed to honor their kids; rather, kids are supposed to honor their parents. The relationship is not symmetrical or invertible.

In addition to effeminizing fatherhood, we have also fostered a culture of arrested development in which parents are expected to make the same allowances for a grown child as for a young child or adolescent. In which grown children still think that Mom and Dad owe them something.

Grown children are responsible for their own choices. And there comes a point where the duties are reversed: where their parents owe them nothing, and they owe their parents everything; where they should be caring for their parents, and not the other way around.