Pro-family

Pro-family is a code word coined by the religious right. It is a subset of family values and is used by politicians wanting to earn points with the families that they are supposedly for.

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Interpetation

What they really mean by this is pro-one particular configuration of the family. It is quite best summed up by the words of Dan Quayle:

“”Don't forget about the importance of the family. It begins with the family. We're not going to redefine the family. Everybody knows the definition of the family. [Meaningful pause] A child. [Meaningful pause] A mother. [Meaningful pause] A father. There are other arrangements of the family, but that is a family and family values.

Homosexuals, feminists, divorcees, widowed parents, confirmed bachelors, hippy communes, and uppity punk kids disrespecting their elders need not apply, apparently.

It is also interesting how the same people who claims to campaign for family value are awkwardly silent (or even supportive of) the separation of family occurring at the US border[1]. Family for me and not for thee would be a better description, one can presume.

Other uses

This concept is also used, for example, in religious right claims that the "family" is the fundamental unit of society. This can even be found in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which has almost global coverage, where it says that "The widest possible protection and assistance should be accorded to the family, which is the natural and fundamental group unit of society". [2] This is in opposition to other ideas that perhaps the individual is the fundamental unit and that larger groupings also have a key impact. For example, Hillary Clinton's book It Takes a Village, which focused on individuals outside the family and their effects on how a child is brought up, was met with ire from the religious right. Shortly after the book was released Bob Dole publicly disagreed, stating that "it takes a family to raise a child" and in 2005 Rick Santorum countered the argument with the book It Takes a Family.

gollark: *Can* you just magically feed all a reactor's output fuel back into itself via convoluted mazes of fuels?
gollark: Is that POSSIBLE?
gollark: It's not actually going to be *used* for anything outside of a hypothetical genetic-algorithms reactor optimizer.
gollark: Tin coolers probably not because I can't be bothered.
gollark: Moderators are on the todo list.

See also

References
  1. https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/KIND%20-%20Betraying%20Family%20Values.pdf
  2. Text of the ICESCR, Article 10(1). Wisely, the Covenant does not say what constitutes a family.
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