Brad Wilcox Lies a Lot, Part Whatever

I have been over Brad Wilcox’s dishonesty many times, but for some reason credulous people keep giving him the benefit of the doubt. That’s a mistake. People who lie without remorse or reparation are not trustworthy.

One way that Wilcox lies is by saying something that is true but deliberately misdirected. Maybe this makes him feel like he is not lying, which, as a person of character, he presumably believes is important. But that’s wrong, because his purpose is misleading. As Wilcox knows from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead into error someone who has the right to know the truth.” If you work to ban chocolate but in your speeches only say you like vanilla, that’s lying.

Brad Wilcox is deeply against same-sex marriage. He fought diligently to prevent it from become legal, including coordinating the efforts of right-wing think tanks and foundations, concocting bogus research, and then manipulating the peer review process to get that research before the Supreme Court. After they lost, and the Supreme Court granted marriage equality in 2015, Wilcox lent his name to Marco Rubio’s campaign for president, as Rubio declared, “We’re gonna be a country that says that marriage is between one man and one woman.” Wilcox’s latest book, Get Married, does not include the words “gay” or “lesbian.” Wilcox believes gay people getting married and raising children is bad (and single parenthood, too). He has been promoting marriage for straight people only, and now he’s promoting births for straight-married people only. This is easily discoverable, and yet he won’t just say it.

Gold standard pronatalism

In his current work promoting pronatalism, with Lyman Stone, Wilcox has been clear — as clear as he ever is, which is to say not clear — that he is not talking about promoting births among same-sex couples or people who aren’t married. That’s what you get from this contorted piece of nonsense at the conclusion of his most recent essay with Stone, in the Atlantic: “Even pronatalists like us do not want more births regardless of the dangers to the lives of mothers, the basic well-being of children, or the integrity of the family. The ultimate privilege for any child, even the richest, is a stable, loving family headed by their own two married parents.” In their code, the phrases “integrity of the family,” “stable, loving family,” and “own two married parents” mean straight, married people of different sexes with their biological children.

In polite society — that is, among the liberal media — Wilcox understands that his exclusive, patriarchal attitudes are considered rude. So to maintain his status in that milieu his strategy is to avoid mentioning them. He also seems happy to contribute to the invisibility of sexual and gender minorities, whose existence he does not want to encourage by the act of identification. (His Institute for Family Studies, now more than 11 years old, has yet to publish its first piece of research on gay and lesbian couples or parents.)

On the website of their Pronatalism Initiative, Stone wrote, “our vision is simple: everybody should be able to have the family they want to have.” But that’s obviously not true, as you can see from this paragraph that follows:

“Our vision of pronatalism is inseparable from our vision for family life. In general, children thrive best with two married parents biologically related to the child. Of course, we want to make sure children in other circumstances have opportunities and resources to thrive as well and do not face undue discrimination. But fundamentally, there is no path to successful pronatalism that doesn’t run through greater public and political commitment to married parenting, and that extends the benefits of married parenthood to more of society.”

So it’s that simple: Everyone should be able to have the family they want, and the Institute for Family Studies will be promoting that outcome for those who are straight-married. (Also, what is “undue discrimination”?)

Anyway, Wilcox was on The 1A to talk about pronatalism the other day, where host Jen White let him get away with this obfuscation. She asked him, “How do you define pronatalism?” His answer was: “We want straight, married people to have more children.” It just took him 287 words and two interruptions to weasel it out. From the show’s transcript (at 14:45):

White: How do you define pronatalism?

Wilcox: Yeah. That’s a great question, Jen. So our kind of basic approach to pronatalism is to try to help women and and families have the kids that they would like to have. I think that’s part of what we’re we’re about. And then also trying to recognizing too that, we are concerned about, sort of, the families that kids are growing up in as well. And so, we’re particularly kind of supportive of measures and ideas that would make marriage kind of stronger and and lay the foundation of any effort to revive the the sort of fortunes of fertility here in the United States as well.

White: And is that marriage for everyone?

Wilcox: So right now, marriage is for everyone. So that would be for everyone. But it’s important to, I mean, both straight and gay and lesbian couples, but it’s important to understand that right now in the United States, what we see is that less than 1% of kids are being raised in same-sex married families. So effectively, we’re talking really about kind of, at least in terms of the current patterns here in the US, of trying to help heterosexual couples, you know, get the, or have the kids that they would like to have.

White: But but when it comes to how the Family Studies Institute approaches the pronatalism movement, you are talking about an inclusion of all families regardless of how they’re structured.

Wilcox: We are. That’s correct. But, again, I think it’s just important to understand and appreciate that, you know, what we sort of see in the research is that the vast majority of families that are being formed today are being formed in a heterosexual context. And so when it comes to sort of thinking about, you know, how these policies are playing out, we’re kind of focusing on heterosexual couples as the couples who are the primary drivers in these family trends in America.

Listen closely: “So right now, marriage is for everyone. So that would be for everyone.” This means: “I wish it weren’t, but that’s what we’re stuck with.” My suggestion: Just tell the truth. Making a marginalized minority group — whose existence you oppose — invisible in your work and claiming it’s just because the group is small does not equal “talking about an inclusion of all families regardless of how they’re structured.” It is speaking against the truth in order to lead into error someone who has the right to know the truth. And that’s a lie.

Things that make you say hmmm. Stone has said he is against the White supremacist kind of pronatalism, which I appreciate. But they have six items on their initiative website, and each has a piece of stock photography, and I can’t quite place it but there’s something about them.

—

Previously Published on familyinequality with Creative Commons License

***