The following Q&A is part of an exclusive interview with professor Paul Kengor on his new book, “Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage”.
WND: Professor Kengor, you’re an established bestselling author and historian who has written over a dozen books on the Cold War, communism – you wrote the definitive book on Frank Marshall Davis, Barack Obama’s communist mentor – on socialists, on progressives and even on dupes. Why this one? Why get into this culture war issue?
Kengor: It’s precisely because of my background in those areas that I was drawn into this. It’s because those past leftist extremists – communists, socialists, far-left radicals and so-called “progressives” – have been looking to reshape, redefine and take down natural-traditional-biblical family and marriage for two centuries. I know that past. I know how it fits into the present. Most people don’t, including those hellbent on redefining marriage and family with no hesitation whatsoever. They have no clue of the deeper, darker forces long at work in this wider movement. They are signing on to something that, whether they or know it or not, has important links to much older and more sinister attempts by the far left to redefine family and marriage.
WND: In a sentence or two, tell us what people really need to know, the essence of why you’ve written “Takedown.”
Kengor: The typical American who supports gay marriage has friendly motives, looking to extend a new “right” or new “freedom” to a new group. I get that. I don’t agree, but I understand. Unfortunately, these Americans don’t realize that, for the far left, gay marriage is the Trojan horse to achieve what the earliest communists called the “abolition of the family.” To many Americans, gay marriage is about “marriage equality,” but to the far left, it’s about the final takedown of the family that it has long desired.
WND: So, are today’s gay-marriage advocates part of a grand communist conspiracy?
Kengor: No. I very carefully state that this isn’t a conspiracy. I want to be clear on this. Liberals, please do not caricature me and my argument. We do a disservice to the truth when we boil down complex things to simple caricature. However, just as we can easily overstate things, we can also easily understate them, and to do the latter, likewise, would be a mistake here.
What the left has steadfastly said and written and done to marriage and the family over the last two centuries cannot be ignored. Those actions have been undeniable contributing factors – along with many other factors – that in part help explain where we are today.
Same-sex marriage is not a Marxist plot. It is, however, a crucial final blow to marriage – the only blow that will enable a formal, legal redefinition that will unravel the institution. It has distinct origins traceable to the far left’s initial thrusts at this once unassailable monogamous, faithful male-female institution.
WND: You do, indeed, take pains to make this clear in the book. You write: “To reiterate, this is not a grand communist conspiracy, or any kind of conspiracy. I am not laying the entirety of the culture’s collapse at the feet of communists. I am not asserting that Marxists have given us gay marriage.”
Kengor: That’s correct. And yet, as I note after that quotation, what the left has steadfastly done to marriage and the family over the last two centuries – from Marx and Engels and early utopian socialists like Robert Owen and Charles Fourier to modern cultural Marxists and secular progressives – cannot be ignored. The current rapid redefinition of the male-female marital and parental bond that has undergirded civilization for multiple millennia is the end-road of a steady evolution that should not be viewed entirely separate from some very successful attacks by the communist left and radical left generally. The journey had many prior destinations. A people do not just one morning wake up and ditch the sacred and natural character of the male-female marital union that served their parents, grandparents, great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents. Ground had been plowed to ready this soil.
WND: And it was the far left that helped ready the soil?
Kengor: Absolutely. No question.
WND: As you note, however, the likes of Marx and Engels were not advocating gay sex or certainly gay marriage.
Kengor: Of course not. Anyone advocating something as culturally unthinkable as male-male or female-female “marriage,” in any time other than ours, from the ancient Greeks and Romans of 2,000 years ago to the Democrat and Republican parties of just 20 years ago, would have been laughed at – maybe even hauled off by the authorities as dangerous public menaces. Marx and Engels were under surveillance by the governments in their countries simply for arguing for non-monogamous marriage. Even gay people weren’t thinking they’d soon live in a culture where not only was the mainstream population supportive of gay marriage but where liberals – our great champions of “tolerance” and “diversity” – would be suing, picketing, boycotting, demonizing and dehumanizing a Baptist grandma who begs them not to force her to make a cake for a gay wedding. Marx and Engels and even wild cultural Marxists like Herbert Marcuse and Wilhelm Reich – who broke down sexual barriers in areas like homosexuality and bisexuality – would be rolling over in their graves. Nonetheless, they would be thrilled to see that every-day (non-communist) Americans have finally found a vehicle to assist the long-time communist dream of (to quote the Communist Manifesto) “the abolition of the family.”
WND: But you do emphasize one important source of clear commonality, from the early 19th to early 21st centuries, that unites these old communists with modern liberals in their general willingness to redefine marriage and family. What is it?
Kengor: Yes, it is this: As modern liberalism/progressivism and the Democratic Party have become increasingly secular, often anti-religious, or certainly dismissive of traditional notions of morality, the embrace of same-sex marriage has become possible. For communists, two centuries ago and still today, that requisite anti-religious secularism has been there all along. That disregard if not outright rejection of Christian ethics has brought all of these forces full circle in a joint willingness to permanently alter the historic Western/Christian understanding of male-female matrimony.
They all share the fatal conceit first expressed in the Garden of Eden: Ye shall be as gods.
WND: They are their own gods?
Kengor: They are their own determinants of truth, of morality, of what is right and wrong. They render under themselves the right to determine everything from what is marriage to what is life. These things used to be the province of nature and nature’s God. Now, each and every liberal renders that right unto himself or herself. And when someone disagrees with them, they attack them with fire and brimstone.
WND: Clearly, you’re coming at this from a religious perspective. Does your faith form the boundaries of where you stand on this issue?
Kengor: I’m Roman Catholic. My position on marriage is precisely that of Pope Francis and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. But I come at this issue not only spiritually but with numerous other influences that have shaped society’s position on marriage and family for, oh, several thousand years. It has long been common sense and experience that the best thing for a society and for children is a home with a mother and father. Pope Francis says that every child has a “right” to a mother and father. To be sure, not every child will get that. But when they don’t, it hasn’t been because the culture and state are creating a new form of “marriage” that is motherless or fatherless. A fatherless or motherless home has never been what society has strived for as a matter of deliberate policy. That is now changing with this fanatical, no-second-thoughts push for gay marriage.
WND: We’re going to pick up this conversation in our second interview, but tell readers what you describe as the “ultimate kicker” in this rapid willingness to redefine what you call “the laws of nature and nature’s God,” because it really sums up what you’ve said here today.
Kengor: It’s really a rather stunning development: The radical left could never have achieved this ultimate takedown of marriage without the larger American public’s increasingly broad acceptance of gay marriage. The public has been the indispensable handmaiden to the radical left’s ability to at long last redefine marriage and the family. That is a realization that ought to give the public pause, if it ever became aware of it.
WND: Will they become aware of it?
Kengor: If they read “Takedown,” yes. Most liberals, unfortunately, will not read this book. Despite their incessant claims of “tolerance” and “diversity” and demands for “dialogue,” liberals only tolerant viewpoints they agree with. Just ask the evangelical photographer that they’re suing for pleading not be forced to photograph a gay wedding. That said, I wrote this book for such liberals. I’d love if they proved my pessimism wrong. But I’m not optimistic. I don’t expect to change the minds of them or their culture or our courts, but they really need to be aware of this crucial political-ideological history at work.
PropagandaGuard 