The confluence of Father’s Day and my 75th birthday within two days of each other this year reminded me of the power of families, and of the key role of fathers in the family.

My father turned 75 in 1993, when I was 46. Like all of us, he was imperfect. But he was faithful, loyal, and loving. If he had a motto, it was “Always Do the Right Thing.” He put himself through Georgia Tech after the Depression and then fought in World War II. His father was in the first class at the Auburn University Veterinary School, then raised five of seven children to adulthood. My father’s grandfather fought in the Civil War as a teenager and then was the Postmaster in Auburn, and in his later years was a circuit-riding Baptist preacher; on his gravestone is written, from Proverbs 22:1—“A good name is more desirable than riches.” He raised eleven children. My Dad’s great-grandfather was a lawyer, farmer, potter, and Union sympathizer in eastern Alabama during the Civil War, with twelve children. Two generations earlier, Irby Hudson fought in the Revolutionary War in Virginia.

None of them was a hero, but all of them took the responsibility to stay close and to provide both physical support and moral leadership for their wives and children. And each positively impacted the larger community outside their individual families.

I have written several earlier posts on the importance of Fathers and Families, and I hope you might take a look at them–“In Awe of Families”  and “Spiriutal Warfare and The Family: Some Thoughts for Husbands.”

My emphasis here is different: to simply assume the importance of fathers, mothers and their gender role models, and to emphasize how utterly normal and ordinary were all these men in fulfilling their responsibilities. It was (and is) the natural order of things for men to behave this way, because it is how God created us.

I appreciate and have repeatedly acknowledged that not every man and every woman behaves according to a template of gender roles. See, for example, “Men and Women are Different”, which I wrote in 2014.

On the other hand, the vast majority do. Because that’s how God has created us, male and female—both in His image. Both equally important. With many similar, but some different, roles, particularly for the family, the basic building block of every society.

That’s just how it is now, and has been forever—and not just with humans, but in the entire animal world.

So my point here is that I’m really tired of people at the extreme edges of the bell curve pushing and forcing their behaviors on the rest of us, staying constantly in our faces, as if they are holding us down until we cry “UNCLE—Yes, you’re perfectly right! All of Creation as we knew it before you came along must have been wrong. You must be right! The normal, traditional, vast majority will bend to your narrow demands so that you will be satisfied, which is the most important thing in the universe. Clearly keeping you from being offended or victimized is the most important issue for our nation today. We are so glad that you and your group came along to show us the right path after all these millennia of mistakes. THANK YOU!”

In particular, I’m upset that:

The natural male/father qualities of provision, protection and instruction are derided as at least unnecessary, and at worst privileged and destructive. The truth is that what is actually destructive is not having a father in the home—financially, psychologically, and spiritually. See “Where Have All The Fathers Gone?”

The percentage of men accepted to top universities and graduate programs is falling drastically, often below 50%. Since women as a group on average cut back on their work time as their families expand, that means less long-term income for individual families, and for society as a whole, less practicing, well trained professionals in medicine, law and all other vital areas of experience and expertise.

Biological males, as Transgenders, will compete against our daughters in athletic events and usually defeat them, not because they trained harder, but because they have a different, gender-defined physique. And then shower with them?!?

Gay men and women, not content with a legal, civil union to protect their relational rights, have instead demanded and redefined thousands of years of Marriage, a sacrament which specifically foreshadows the relationship between our Savior and his bride, the Church, and not to mention also puts one of each of the different and complimentary genders into the union that raises and trains the next generation.

Joining the entertainment and social media sirens, Teachers and Administrators in our schools now groom our children of all ages with constant references to sexual identity and behavior that subverts the key role of the family in this process, driving a new, powerful wedge, with the extra authority of the school, between the child and the parents.

These same voices often encourage teenagers to undergo irreversible sex-change procedures and operations. Why, at what risk, and on whose authority?

Then there are the woke corporations. How ridiculous. I have a friend who resigned as the well-paid CEO of a high-tech company. His Board would not defend him from employee criticism because he didn’t enthusiastically embrace every LBGTQ+ initiative that the HR Department thought up. And another friend and senior manager at an international company who is now being “investigated” for a conversation he had with an employee on the same subject.

Can you imagine the bruhaha if I needed to find a job with a major corporation? Someone would go to HR, give them the link to this blog, and proclaim that even being in the same building with me, since I am clearly a bigot, would trigger terrible feelings of danger and terror which they/she/he could not stand. I wonder what it was like in Munich in 1933: “Did you know that the Hudson guy over there has a Jewish housekeeper?”

Let me be very clear that what two or more adults do in the privacy of their homes is not the state’s business and should not be regulated or legally harassed. See “The Coming Persecution For Our Beliefs on Marriage.”  And I mean that—I’m not just saying that begrudgingly from some place of false moral superiority—I know what it means to defy God (See On The Edge, which I wrote thirty years ago). So I know that I am the chief of sinners, and that no human is the real enemy.

But I am tolerant of those actions under the old school definition of tolerance—I love and accept those who participate, but that does not make what they are doing right. In fact, they are wrong. Any sexual activity outside of a committed marriage between a man and a woman is wrong, and not God’s plan for us. Eventually, most participants in some way suffer. To use a phrase popular today—such behavior is sub-optimal. And God tries to warn us.

So, my message here to those who feel the screaming need to push and push the rest of us until we sign some document that affirms that Yes, you are “accepted” is Yes, you are accepted. Done. Now, please leave us alone. And…maybe you should also think about accepting us, the vast majority, who still believe in equal but different gender roles, the sanctity and benefit of male + female family leadership, and the primacy of parents in every aspect of their children’s behavioral education. All for the purpose of raising the next Godly generation (Malachi 2:15).