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|---|---|
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Are Fathers Necessary?
00:04:41
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| Anyway, apropos of the subject, the subject is not, are fathers necessary? | |
| That's tangential. | |
| We all know they are. | |
| They're unbelievably necessary. | |
| The question is, how did it develop that people would think they're not? | |
| We went from Father Knows Best, a major sitcom of the 50s, to Fathers Are Unnecessary, Inside of a Generation. | |
| And apropos of this... | |
| Ali has a magnificent documentary now available. | |
| It's at SalemNow.com as it happens. | |
| The Streets from My Father, about fathers, and about God for that matter. | |
| And my video was up at PragerU this week, also about fathers being necessary. | |
| So we're talking about how this happened. | |
| And you gave a very important and honest answer, saying it wasn't just ideology. | |
| Because there are bad fathers. | |
| There are abandoning fathers. | |
| There are molesting fathers. | |
| All of this is true. | |
| But as I said, it's like saying, because there are so many car accidents, we don't need cars. | |
| One has nothing to do with the other. | |
| And so it's mostly been ideology. | |
| All right, let me take some calls here, and of course, I'd like you to react as well, obviously, Lee. | |
| Kim in Castaic, California. | |
| Hi. | |
| Hi, how are you? | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | |
| Thank you. | |
| So I just had this conversation with my best friend of 35 years. | |
| I grew up with my dad, my grandparents, my grandfathers, both of them, seven uncles. | |
| She grew up with... | |
| No father in the house, no male, just her mother, her grandmother, her aunties. | |
| And she just told me the other day that her daughter, she thinks, is a lesbian. | |
| And we had a conversation about that. | |
| But she felt like it's because her father was not a good father and she didn't really allow her father to parent. | |
| It's like she protected her daughter from the father as if, you know, he wasn't needed. | |
| And I've seen her basically teach her daughters now, a next generation of young black girls, that men are not necessary. | |
| Fathers are not necessary. | |
| And I think that my theory on that is because it justifies, in her case, her bad decision making and her values that she was taught. | |
| which I think are wrong. | |
| And I think that that's why a lot of black women accept That's fascinating. | |
| So first, let me comment quickly on the lesbian issue, because I distinguish, I've done massive research on homosexuality. | |
| Last 15 years, no, not 15, 25 years ago, I wrote a 17,000-word essay on the subject. | |
| And I believe that female homosexuality and male homosexuality have little in common. | |
| They have some things in common. | |
| They're obviously both same-sex attraction. | |
| But I think female sexuality is not as... | |
| Built in, to use a non-scientific term, as male homosexuality. | |
| But in any event, I just wanted to comment on that. | |
| But again, there's a lot of dysfunction, unfortunately, in the black community with regard to fathers. | |
| And she is saying, this black woman who just called, it leads to some bad decisions like, men are not necessary, I'll have a baby anyway. | |
| I think, though, Lee, that the government and policies have added a tremendous amount, unfortunately, of substance to that belief, I don't need a man. | |
| Any thoughts? | |
| No, there's no doubt. | |
| Look, when you have welfare rules that reward a woman for keeping the man away, and that if the man joins and they earn just enough money, they lose all their health benefits. | |
|
Faith of the Fatherless: 1999
00:00:22
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| They lose their medical benefits. | |
| There are actually incentives that just... | |
| Cut the wrong way for folks. | |
| But, you know, Dennis, back to that experience. | |
| It was a tremendous book, and I know you did this back when the book came out in 1999 called Faith of the Fatherless. | |
| All right, hold it there. | |
| Hold it there, Lee Habib. | |