More Important Things?

Making phone calls, I get all kinds of different responses, from the "I agree with you completely and am voting Yes on Proposition 8" (I love this kind), to the name callers (actually I've only had one of those so far), to "we have so many more important things to be worrying about".

I have to say that last one puzzles me. More important than a dramatic change in the basic structure of society? Because this is what we are talking about here. I imagine the gentleman responsible for that quote was thinking about wars and economies and such. All very important, I admit. But I think we need to step back and consider here.

Steven Covey teaches some principles about time management that I think might apply here. He devides our activities into four quadrants, based on the importance of an activity and the urgence of an activity. Activities may be Important/Urgent, Important/Not Urgent, Unimportant/Urgent, and Unimportant/Not Urgent. We can prioritize our activities based on which of these quadrants they fall into--i.e., Important/Urgent is obviously a high priority, but so is Important/Not Urgent; Unimportant/Urgent things often get in the way of the Important/Not Urgent. And we are all prone to giving more time than is warranted to things it the Unimportant/Not Urgent categories.

I think something that is happening with this election is that many people do not understand the importance and/or the urgence of defending the traditional family structure. We see the stock market roller coaster playing havoc with our retirement savings, for example, and our internal alarms go off--we have to solve this crisis! The Crisis of the Family in our country is much more subtle, because the effects of changes in family structure and function take a long time to play out--at least as long as it takes for a new generation of children to grow up under the new family conditions. Folks, we can't wait that long. This is far to critical to take a "wait and see" approach to the changes being pushed on our society. At this point, it is still a small but very vocal minority who really want the definition of marriage and the structure of the family to be radically altered. The majority of Americans still believe that the traditional family structure, in which a mother and father unite to raise their children within the bonds of marriage, is best. But those who want to alter this structure are working hard to convince us that their alterations really are not important, they won't change anything for us, and maintaining the integrity of the family is neither and urgent nor a worthwhile cause.

I beg to differ. I can think of nothing on our collective political plate at the moment that needs more urgent or dedicated attention. The world of a generation from now is the world my children will inhabit, the world my grandchildren will be born into. If that doesn't matter, I don't know what does. When we take a stand for the families of America, we take a stand for the future of America. Help us perserve the integrity of Marriage!