Thanks to a recent court case in Massachusetts, issues of marriage and family now cover the front pages. But the family crisis is much larger than same-sex marriage or homosexuality.
The family today is under attack on many fronts: pornography, popular culture, public schooling, abortion. But to see these as serious threats to the family is like ascribing the defeat of an army to people shooting at it. If the family were sound it could withstand these pressures.

The most serious attack on the family today is the one that comes at its weakest point: the father. Anthropologists have long recognized that the father is the family’s weakest link. By destroying fathers, the government can, and does, destroy families.

Until now, fathers have not been heard much on family issues. That is about to change. I have recently had the honor to be named President of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children. This is the largest group representing fathers and their families in America. Unlike organizations you probably know, it is not a group about fathers, or for fathers; it is a group of fathers—fathers who can speak for themselves and who intend to start doing so.

Until fathers are part of the dialogue on marriage and family, that dialogue will be empty chatter. And I don’t mean fathers as prison inmates, as the Justice Department would have it. I don’t mean fathers as subjects of government therapy, as the Department of Health and Human Services wants. I don’t mean fathers as labeled by the government as "deadbeats," "batterers," and "pedophiles." I mean fathers as heads of their families, fathers speaking for their children rather than allowing government officials to do it for them, in some cases fathers defending their children from those same government officials.

No, this is not another victim group, not another whiny special interest. For unlike most political professionals, the fathers standing up and speaking out are not activists but citizens. The difference is that activists are moved by abstract ideologies. Citizens act out of love for family, cooperation with neighbors, loyalty to country, and faith in God.

It is an ideal that, in a very short space of time, has been all but lost in modern politics. And it is very likely no one can restore it, except possibly the fathers.