Box Turtle Bulletin

A Modest Proposal (by Peter Barber Gallagher-Sprigg)

With the Supreme Court case looming, it’s good to get multiple perspectives on marriage, so here’s a guest column from  Peter Barber Gallagher-Sprigg. It was originally published elsewhere a couple years ago, but it remains relevant today, and he’s kindly granted us permission to reprint it.

A Modest Proposal
by Peter Barber Gallagher-Sprigg

Children have a right to a mother and a father.

That’s uncontroversial, right?  Any opposite-sex couple, no matter how callous, abusive, or drunken, will make better parents than any same-sex couple.  Protectors of traditional marriage have made this point so often that it must feel truthy by now.

The problem is this:  they don’t go far enough.  If every child has this right, and if parenting is about the needs of the child, not the wishes of the adult, then let’s take the next logical step.  And so, full of courage, I modestly propose the following law:

The federal government will strip widows of their children.

That’s right.  Take them away and give them to women who had enough sense to keep their husbands.  Does this need explanation?  Is it not obvious?  Truthfully, how many of you are smacking your head right now, saying, “D’Oh!  Of course!”  But for those of you who have no respect for the traditional family, let me anticipate your objections.

Why only widows?  Why not divorcees? That’s easy.  A child of divorced parents still has a mother and father.  Even in unbroken homes, the mother and father are often in different rooms — it’s the same for divorced parents, except the rooms are really far apart.  That’s why we focus on making “gay” marriage illegal even as we ourselves are remarrying and remarrying and remarrying.

Why only widows?  Why not widowers? This is a really stupid question, one that only a liberal could ask.  We spit on you, stupid liberals!  But we’ll answer your question.  As our anti-homo colleagues have pointed out, mothers and fathers are different:  two fathers could never raise a child because children need a mother’s nurturing instinct, the kind you see in a mama grizzly or a good retriever bitch.  Obviously, then, a single dad — good lord! — will quickly abandon his kids, dumping them by the side of the road along with the family cat and any dog not used for hunting.   Once the children are safely deposited on a random street corner, we can be sure someone will see to their well-being.  A single mother, though, will cling to her children (that’s how boys become homosexuals).  So we must take them away.

What if the widow promises to remarry? That’s a great question.  It nails the real purpose of the law: Getting those widows to find their kids a dad.  What could better accomplish that than threatening to take their rugrats away?  So we’ll give mom some time to hitch herself back up.  Not too long, though.  The longer a child stays with an unmarried mother, the more likely he is to accept the unnatural as natural.  And become homosexual.

How much time is the right amount of time? A year is too long, obviously.  A week seems hasty.  Let’s say eight weeks.  If that’s long enough for a newborn puppy to be ready for adoption, it’s plenty for kids, too.

What if the government can’t find an opposite-sex couple to take care of the kids? We put them in orphanages.  Anything is better than letting them think their single-parent family is normal.  We ought to make the orphanages as unpleasant as possible, all the better to make the kids long for a mother and father.  We don’t want them to be homosexuals, so we’ll segregate them by gender.  The boys can reinforce each other’s masculinity by competing in sports, and wrestling, and playing snap-towel in the showers.  The girls can sew.

Right now you’re thinking the plan is perfect, but actually it’s not.  This may surprise you, but I’m a feminist (the real kind, not one of those fakes who want unequal genders treated equally).  I know it’s hard for a woman to raise her children and have a job and find a husband.  Who would want such a creature?

We need to make men desperate enough to take her.

This is where the plan turns genius.  It’s part 2 of the law:

The federal government will dissolve childless marriages.

Marriage is about procreation.  That’s it.  There’s no reason to let a marriage stand if it’s not churning out babies.  That goes for the elderly, too.  By dissolving those worthless marriages, we’ll free up men, depriving them of sex, ready to be caught in our widows’ webs.  Hopefully by week 5, so there’s time to plan a proper wedding.  We want this to be a traditional family, after all.

Not only is this plan morally sound, it’s fiscally conservative, too.  By shmushing families together, we’ll eliminate the need for programs like Welfare and Aid to Families with Slacker Children — oops, sorry, let’s be politically correct: dependent children.  This will cut federal spending and open the door to lower taxes and a smaller, less intrusive government.   God, I’m good.  I’m Peter Barber Gallagher-Sprigg, and I’m here to make the world better.