It was good to see 20,000 Penn State students come out recently for a vigil to express their deep compassion for the boys who were victims of sexual abuse at the famed school. These students wore blue ribbons and chose to stand apart from those — estimated at 3,000 — who had rioted when the legendary Nittany Lions coach Joe Paterno was summarily forced out of his job heading the school’s football program.
Those 20,000 Penn State students are helping to redeem the school’s good name. And we may hope for a restored commitment to vigilance in protecting children from sexual predators. These heartless abusers are killing these boys’ childhoods. It is a crime against nature.
These unfortunate boys have been routinely described as “disadvantaged” in the media. What that means is most of them were probably fatherless, or living apart from their dads. Most were doubtless deprived in one way or another of that one person in their world who should have been first in line to defend them and their innocence.
For tens of thousands of Americans, the horrific stories out of Penn State will bring painful memories of childhood abuse. We are paying for this abuse daily.
I have memories, too, but they are happy ones. When I was 10, the youth group leader in our town wanted to take the boys from our church on a camping trip overnight. Normally, this would be a fine idea, except he wanted no fathers along. My parents refused.
They yanked me out of that youth group. The youth leader was indignant. How dare anyone impugn his honor, his reputation like that? My strong father wouldn’t budge. I thank God for him and his vigilance today.
Was that young man a predator, as Jerry Sandusky is charged with being? Hopefully not. But he was most unwise not to welcome the fathers’ participation. Fathers are the first line of defense for vulnerable youth. And fathers are the greatest protectors of all.
It’s only natural. My friend Tom Glessner heads up the National Institute for Family and Life Advocates. Tom reports that when unwed mothers see their unborn children on ultrasound, something loving and nurturing is born within their hearts.
But when a father sees his unborn child, he becomes a fierce guardian of his own flesh and blood. This is nature’s protective instinct. It is a law written indelibly on our hearts.
Those natural sentiments — the love of mothers and fathers for their children — should begin at conception and end only with the parents’ death. And perhaps not even then.
Bill Cosby was the last father figure portrayed with respect and great good humor on network TV. He told his teenage son, Theo, “You’re not gonna do drugs. When you’re 21, you’re not going to do drugs. When you’re 80 and I’m in my grave, you still won’t do drugs.”
Drug pushers and pedophiles prey on vulnerable youth. Married mothers and fathers are what Edmund Burke called “those little platoons.” They are his “cheap defense of nations.”
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted recently to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. They were actually voting to repeal marriage. When everyone may marry, no one may marry.
In so doing, the Democrats are also abolishing fatherhood. And millions more boys and girls will be made more vulnerable, virtually orphaned, by their unconscionable actions. The media will make this a story of the failings of Paterno, but it’s really a story of the failed paternal.
Robert Morrison is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council and helped craft the Defense of Marriage Act.
