The Anti-Reproduction Movement

     There are things we’re “not supposed to say.” Quite a number of those things are tied up with sexual variations. The reason we’re not supposed to say them is that a small community of activists has deemed them “offensive.” And of course, we wouldn’t want to be “offensive,” we confrontation-averse Americans of the Twenty-First Century, so we don’t say them.

     But we must say them. Those activists, knowingly or otherwise, are creating a powerful and evil set of disincentives. Specifically, they’re creating incentives not to have children.

     And so I, Francis W. Porretto, Catholic, novelist, commentator, and Curmudgeon Emeritus to the World Wide Web, will say those things we’re not supposed to say, and let the chips fall where they may.

     First, allow me to draw your attention to an essay I wrote some eighteen years ago. It concerns the consequences of male homosexuality. Those consequences have been established objectively over the course of several decades.

     Yet there was a consequence of homosexuality – and this applies to lesbian couples as well as male homosexuals – that I did not include in that essay. Homosexual couples cannot reproduce. They need the cooperation and collaboration of a third party even to attempt it…and most don’t. Therefore any encouragement of homosexuality is inherently a discouragement of human reproduction.

     Some homosexual couples adopt. While it is laudable that children without loving homes should be given a chance for one, it is unknown what attitudes toward heterosex and heterosexual reproduction such an adoptee will absorb from homosexual adoptive parents. Whether such kids, once grown, will enter into normal heterosexual unions at a frequency comparable to the children of ordinary married couples has not been studied. It behooves us to ponder why.

     Second, there is the current absorption with transgenderism. Now, I am not an absolute opponent of that practice. I’ve written two sympathetic transwomen into my most recent novels. One of my “alpha readers” is a transwoman, whose intellect and opinions I respect. But transgenders are about as likely to reproduce as homosexuals.

     Transgender evangelism, therefore, is also inherently a force opposed to reproduction. The motives of the evangelist don’t matter. The attempt to persuade children that they can change their genders at will is a suggestion that the consequences be treated lightly. But the consequences of committing to a life without progeny are not small.

     To whatever extent the promoters of transgenderism succeed, to that extent will future generations diminish.

     The general exaltation of sexual pleasure above all else must be addressed next. Sex is wonderful, doubt it not. It confers a huge array of pleasures, satisfactions, and reinforcements upon those who “do it right.” But “doing it right” involves more than getting your rocks off.

     Sex is the most powerful of all bonding activities. He has to earn access to her body; she has to decide, consciously, to let him past her defenses. Time was, the event was considered committal. Few couples that had “gone all the way” would not be serious enough about it to be contemplating permanence – marriage, a single household, and children.

     Now, there are reasons for the declining birth rate in advanced countries that I need not discuss at this time. They pertain primarily to economic considerations. Moreover, I’m not going to condemn sex between unmarried persons, as long as neither of the participants is promised to someone else. But the “tickle in the pickle” is not a sufficient reason for getting out of bed in the morning, going to one’s daily labors, and putting in an honest effort. You don’t have to be much past thirty to realize that.

     Why labor? Why strive for excellence rather than mere subsistence? Why put in forty or fifty years establishing yourself, gaining recognition and status, and improving your material situation if you have no one to whom to leave it? Do you really think anyone will care, fifty years after your demise, about the terrific game you invented, or the nifty new marketing plan you invented for the widget maker that pays you?

     Homosexual and transgender activists are demanding that schoolchildren as young as kindergarteners be introduced to their variations and be told that “there’s nothing wrong with that.” For reasons beyond the scope of this tirade, “educators’ unions” are in favor of this. The evangelists for these sexual variations, and those who argue for sexual pleasure as an end in itself, are earnest and persuasive. Whether or not they’re aware of it, they’re creating disincentives toward the production of children. I regard the foregoing observations as sufficiently conclusive – and remember that I said whether or not they’re aware of it.

     Mark Steyn has said that “The future belongs to those who show up for it.” No truer statement has ever been made. Add to this that normal, heterosexual couples considering whether to have kids must face the prospect of having those children harangued – in classroom situations, by persons they’ve been told to respect as “authorities” — about the mutability of “gender,” the delights of homosexual play, and the pleasures of “childfree” living. What do you think that does to the normal and laudable desire of ordinary people to marry and produce children to love and raise?

     Whatever children result – and it won’t be as many as it would have been before all these pernicious influences were set loose – some percentage of those kids will be seduced into non-reproductive lifestyles and arrangements. Live births will fall further, as will life expectancies. Does anyone think this bodes well for America or the West in general?

     What triggered this, you ask? Quite simply, the massive campaign of slander against the bill, now awaiting the signature of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, that bans the “teaching” of homosexual and transgender concepts to children in kindergarten through third grade. The bill’s opponents are straining to denounce it as a “hate law.” It’s nothing of the sort. But if you’ve been reading up to this point, you’ll have your own opinions.

     I’ve written before about the death cults: those forces organized to encourage Mankind toward extinction. They are several, tightly focused on their objective, and more active than you might imagine. The anti-natalists are of the same mind, though their methods differ. Consider these arguments. How does their author view the human future?

     The rest is left as an exercise for my Gentle Readers.

“Of their own will they are barren: I did not know till now that the usages of Sulva were so common among you.” [From That Hideous Strength.]