The one thing a greasy-handed, fluff-headed politician can make ring like a silver hammer is the phrase “traditional family values.” Maybe half the people in his audience are divorced but, hey, it’s 2015, you gotta find your Christians where you can.
I’m 58, not 108, but I was raised in a traditional family, by parents and grandparents who had traditional Christian family values.
Nowadays, traditional family values are pretty much the flag (either variety, Southern or Northern), the Pledge of Allegiance, prayer in school and no gay marriage.
If you remember, or have heard of, real traditional family values, you know the list used to be a lot longer.
So, let’s run down the list as given to me by parents, Old Country grandparents, nuns and my 1963 world, and see how you do.
“Maybe then,” as a truck driver friend of mine says, “you’ll quit talkin’ about that thing that you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Ladies. Ever have a child out of wedlock? If so, you’re a tramp.
Gentlemen. Ever get a woman pregnant and not marry her? You’re a bum and real men don’t want you around. Sending child-support checks and seeing the kid on weekends doesn’t count, either. Fathers live with their kids or they’re bums. Anyway, what kind of man has to ask a judge how to run his family? You’re a man. You’re supposed to know.
And, by the way, those out of wedlock kids you have? They’re “bastards.” There is no other word.
Divorced? My father once told me he wouldn’t vote for a divorced man because, “I won’t for anybody who can’t run his own house.”
That’s just divorced men, of course. Divorced women are, as my mother thought, failed women who “couldn’t keep a husband.”
Cheat on your wife? You’re a failed man because you can’t keep your word.
Cheat on your husband? Tramp again.
My grandmother, who spoke no English, once spit out the French word for “whore” when someone told her of a woman who couldn’t cook.
Forty and not married? There’s “something wrong with you.” If you’re a woman, you’re “dried up.” If you’re a man, you’re either a “fruit” or you don’t have the guts to take on a real man’s responsibilities.
Woman in a bar alone? Tramp. Man who doesn’t wear a tie to church? Bum.
Oh, yeah, and nobody named “Cruz” runs for president. People named “Cruz” pick lettuce for 10 cents an hour. They’re not smart enough to do anything else.
That’s Christian traditional family values as experienced by me and tens of millions of other people who grew up back when it was a serious thing.
Wanna live that way? Go ahead. But be aware, you can’t pick and choose; you have to do or not do everything on the list. “You can be a stand-up guy for 20 years,” my father used to say. “If you’re a punk for 20 minutes, the 20 years don’t count.”
If you can do everything on the list for 50 or 60 years, you can tell me about how your Christian traditional family values won’t let you live across the street from gay married people.
Until then, shaddap.
Marc Munroe Dion is a nationally syndicated columnist.