Arthur C. Clarke on How to Destroy Marriage

The writer Jerry Pournelle has a blog, Chaos Manor, which I read regularly. A little while ago Pournelle quoted the late Aurthur C. Clarke on destroying marriage, and it was an interesting quote indeed.

Clarke's comments came from his 1953 novel Childhood’s End, which I read in my early teens, and of course remember nothing about what he wrote about marriage.

In the novel aliens land on Earth. I do remember they were called Overlords, and they enforced peace on Earth. What I do not remember is that they shared two of their inventions: a 100% accurate birth control pill and a 100% accurate paternity test.

What happens? Over the next 50 years (which is when the Overlords are to reveal themselves) marriage vanishes, along with traditional morality - and religion.

Clarke, who turned out to be basically a drunken homosexual with a predilection for young boys, thought this was a good thing. No surprise there about what he wrote.

A Catholic writer, G.E.M. Anscombe, had this to say in a 1972 essay, "Contraception and Chastity":

"I will first ask you to contemplate a familiar point: the fantastic change that has come about in people’s situation in respect of having children because of the invention of efficient contraceptives. You see, what can’t be otherwise we accept; and so we accept death and its unhappiness. But possibility destroys mere acceptance. And so it is with the possibility of having intercourse and preventing conception. This power is now placed in a woman’s hands; she needn’t have children when she doesn’t want to and she can still have her man! This can make the former state of things look intolerable, so that one wonders why they were so pleased about weddings in former times and why the wedding day was supposed to be such a fine day for the bride."

Clarke understood, as did Anscombe, that sex, marriage, morality and religion are all interrelated. It cannot be otherwise, since everything is interdependent.

Christianity was of course at odds with the ancient pagan world. For that matter, it still is, at least to the degree Christianity hasn't capitulated.

Just look at what we have now (which also existed in the ancient world): infanticide (in the form of abortion), pagan beliefs (look how many people - mostly women - fall for New Age nonsense), and the destruction of marriage and traditional morality.

What are pagans currently trying to do? Three things: the acceptance (indeed the insistence) that people accept homosexuality (and the coming pedophilia that is inherent in it), "post abortion," i.e., killing kids after birth, and cheering abortion, including the 70 million aborted. And euthanasia.

Since birth control and abortion are here to stay, the law has to change in order to save society, and in some ways that means returning to some older laws.

One: single woman are not allowed to keep their babies. The evidence that single mothers are catastrophes is overwhelming to the point there can be no argument about it. Orphanages should be reopened and the children go to them if the father does not want them.

Two: In a divorce the child goes to the father. Why? See above.

Three: the abolition of no-fault divorce. And since the child goes to the father, the mother has to pay support.

Four: women are not allowed to vote.

There are of course other laws I think might help but those four above would take care of a lot of a problems. However, the ones I listed would put a big crimp in single mothers and easy divorce - both of which are destroyers of civilization.

One other thing: I have for a while understood that comment about prophets being without honor in their hometowns. Instead they are attacked, mocked and insulted.

That is, until they win.

"Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little." - Samuel Johnson