Patrick Fagan, family scholar at the Family Research Council.
Cunning Minx, the sexy blogger and podcaster over at Polyamory Weekly, had a tweet yesterday that alerted her followers to a story about Patrick Fagan from The Family Research Council, who took a decidedly strong stance against the culture of non-monogamy when he was at the World Congress of Families in Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago. He blamed polyamorous folk for “snatching” the impressionable minds of children by turning them away from the concept of monogamy and directing them towards non-monogamy. According to Fagan, poly folk are doing so by exerting their “control” of the public “education of children, sex education, and adolescent health.”
Really?
Fagan portrays a scene from a cult-like horror flick in which no child is spared from the vicious grasp of polyamory. No one is doing any “snatching”. Polyamorous folks, while certainly growing in numbers, are still a small segment of the population. We have no more control over these policies than Fagan does. I would surmise that the majority of poly folk with children are passionate about their child’s education and want to be able to make specific value-led decisions about their sexual health. But I don’t know one polyamorous person who seeks to abolish monogamy as a construct. We only want to not be vilified for making a personal decision to shun the model of monogamy, as is our right. There is in fact, a much larger segment of the population who also eschews monogamy, yet do so surreptitiously and duplicitously – people who cheat. How does Fagan separate their ideals and intentions from the polyamorous crew?
Austin Ruse, the author of the article reports, “On the life issues, Fagan said that in monogamous culture ‘all human life is sacred and protected, be it the pre-born, the handicapped or the elderly’ while in polyamorous culture about one-third of the pre-born are killed by their mothers and the handicapped and the elderly are unwelcome and increasingly vulnerable to early elimination.”
Really?
Where are the statistics on the “pre-born” being killed by polys and the elderly and handicapped being exterminated? This is so absurd that it is laughable. But, truly, I would like to know Fagan’s sources, because it seems to me that if he is going to make such a defamatory statement that he should probably back it up with some facts.
And by his argument, is he implying that ALL women who have abortions are non-monogamous? This must be, since, as he asserts, monogamists view “all human life is sacred … be it the pre-born”. So, by that token, one must assume that monogamous women never have abortions. The statistics on the number of partners of women who have abortions are virtually non-existent, yet still, right-wingers such as Fagan have force-fed us the assumption that promiscuity is the leading factor in the high abortion rate. I’m not buying the fact that monogamous women don’t have abortions. Just as I’ve never bought the fact that one cannot simultaneously value human life while maintaining a right to have a choice in the matter.
But really, what Fagan wants is control; control over “what is his and his family’s just due, what his taxes fund, and what he can use in raising his children”.
Which is another way of expressing his desire to abolish legal abortion in order to protect “his” family. As if the mere existence of the option requires his family to choose it.
Really?
I find it interesting that Fagan is using the polyamorous community as the scapegoat in his mission to abrogate abortion rights, seeing as the poly culture was founded on the premise of romantic love and the “ideology that openness, goodwill, intense communication, and ethical behavior should prevail among all the parties involved.”*
Yes, we are, as a whole, a very far cry from the emotionless Pod people who dispose of other humans in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Yet, Fagan still believes that our children, our elderly and the handicapped should beware.
Really.
Go figure.
Comments
He is not referring to us polys; he's carelessly misusing the word to mean something else: what he calls in the article "polymorphous serial polygamy, or ‘polyamory' for short." He means people who remarry after divorce, which is forbidden to good Catholics. Or who have a relationship before marriage, ditto.
His creepy extremism aside, he needs to be called out for misuse of the word (which now has an official dictionary definition, one might point out).
Any statements, or comments coming from groups like 'Family Research Council', or 'Focus on the Family', or the 'National Organization for Marriage' are ridiculous 99.9% of the time. I see these guys on tv, debating issues and discussing their agenda's and I can't help myself from watching them because they are truly entertaining and humorous. Yes, I can't stop laughing when they got on their moral high-grounds. It's funny and a bit sickening. I can't look, yet, I can't turn away.
It is funny, but also really scary to think that many people will believe what he says!
I find him and those of his ilk neither entertaining nor humorous in the least. Sad, pathetic, frightening, a reality, and a voting block is what they are. One wonders how people can grow to maturity and remain so feebleminded.
This poor fellow is yet another victim of bleedingly obvious ignorance backed up by fear of that which is different.
His ignorant and blatantly misleading article has greatly angered me. I wrote a massive rebuttal on Modern Poly:
http://community.modernpoly.com/content/my-response-mr-fagans-article-ti...
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