The New York Post announces the big news: a baby with three dads. This is supposed to be a historic first. A major milestone in human history. Here’s the Post with the details:
A gay, polyamorous California throuple made history in 2017 when they became the first family in the state to list three parents on a birth certificate. Their reproductive journey and legal battle to become fathers to Piper, now 3, is detailed in “Three Dads and a Baby”, written by one of her dads, Dr. Ian Jenkins. Jenkins and his partners, Jeremy Hodges and Dr. Alan Mayfield, don’t see their family — which now also includes their son, Parker, 1 — as unusual.
Of course, it is by definition “unusual.” It is not possible for a thing to “make history” and not be unusual.
More from the Post:
Jenkins met Mayfield, a psychiatrist, while they were completing their medical residencies in Boston. The two were together for eight years when Hodges, who works at a zoo hospital, came into the picture. Although their relationship with Hodges began as a friendship, things quickly turned romantic. After five years of throuple-dom, the trio started seriously discussing parenthood when friends offered to donate their leftover embryos to them.
Leftover embryos. Isn’t it inspiring to hear human life referred to this way — like it’s a slab of meatloaf sitting in a Tupperware container in the fridge? Unfortunately, the “leftover embryo” — i.e. human life — wasn’t viable. The next attempt also didn’t take. Finally, a helpful friend gave them some of her eggs, which were fertilized in a laboratory and implanted in the uterus of another friend. Meanwhile some fancy legal footwork was performed with the help of lawyers and tens of thousands of dollars of legal fees. And then, presto chango, just like magic, a child with “three dads” was born.
If you are feeling not-terribly-excited about our new and improved society where babies can have three dads, that’s because you are a normal and sane person. Sure, the men feel great about their Dad Trio, but their emotional needs aren’t the primary concern of normal and sane people. We are worried about the children, who are being regarded more as fashion accessories than human beings. To respect their humanity is to acknowledge that children need mothers, too. It is an absurd idea that the role of the mother can be adequately replaced just by adding more dads into the equation.
But if adding dads is the plan, why stop at three? Why not four dads, five dads, six dads, seven (this is beginning to sound like a creepy children’s book that I’m sure someone will eventually write)? It is not a rhetorical question. This is something we really need to think about because the floodgates are officially open and have been for some time. Once society moves away from the nuclear family — not just in practice, but in a categorial denial that it is the ideal family structure — then there is no remaining boundary, no limiting principle. This is where the so-called slippery slope argument comes in, and it’s why those who warn about slippery slopes are usually proven correct, even as the Left guffaws at the notion that perhaps sometimes one thing might lead to another.
The point with the slippery slope is that when you tear down a boundary without any idea as to where to rebuild it, or get rid of a word’s definition without even a suggestion as to what it’s new definition ought to be, then you have, obviously, and it would seem by design, sent this now boundary-less, undefinable thing tumbling into insanity and incoherence. You haven’t actually moved the boundary or changed the definition of the thing but simply destroyed it.
As I have observed many times, this is the process playing out right now with respect to gender. We are told that the word “woman” no longer means “adult human female,” which is what it had meant since the dawn of time. So what does it mean? If not that, then what? Those who seek to erase the word’s “traditional” definition have, apparently, no plans for giving it a new one. They do not seek to promote a new or expanded concept of womanhood, but to annihilate the concept itself. It is not a slope but a free-fall plunge into obliteration.
Each new stage in our moral and logical descent is predictable and inevitable. If our biological identity has no meaning, and can be changed on a whim, then the same will be done with age, race, and every other aspect of our identity. It is not a question of “if.” It will happen, and is already beginning to happen, because there is no reason why it would not happen now that the precedent has been set and the logical and moral barriers preventing it from happening have been removed.
And so with marriage and family. We have seen three men call themselves “dad.” Soon that will not be the strangest combination. Give it enough time and even the self-professed “conservatives” will be defending the three dad concept as valid and equal, while offering polite pushback to the newer “four dads and three sex robots” family units. This is the path we put ourselves on when we moved away from the mother-father nuclear family structure. The truth is that every child needs and deserves both a mother and a father. We preserve that, or preserve nothing. There is no middle option. You either defend it with all you have, never giving it an inch, or you surrender and let it have its way with the culture. We have made our choice. We chose poorly.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.