In this morning’s paper there was an opinion piece by Mr. Stan Simpson.  In the article Mr. Simpson wrote about the troubled life of Aaron Hernandez, the Patriots’ football player accused of murder.  The major thrust of the article was about the difficulty that Mr. Hernandez had because his father died when he was a teenager.  Mr. Simpson used that case as a lead in to discuss “the crisis in masculinity.”  In his discussion, he quoted a minister and former football player who said that “Forty percent of all children go to bed without their biological dads in the house.”  Such a statistic is tragic.  We all have images in our minds of daddy coming home from work and greeting the children, taking them fishing or helping them learn something such as car repair, carpentry or even math.

Journalists are fond of bringing up such statistics without thinking logically about what the full scope of the issue entails.  The foundation of the whole issue presupposes a traditional marriage between a man and a woman.  Our society is in the process of eliminating support of traditional marriages and yet authorities in that society decry the problems that are created by eliminating traditional marriage.  These days if you support traditional marriages, you find yourself on the firing line.  I find that audaciously hypocritical.

Stable traditional marriages between a man and a woman are known to produce stable and responsible children.  Troubled marriages, single parenthood and other difficult situations statistically bring about greater numbers of troubled children who become troubled adults.  Our society is disintegrating from its core, which ought to be stable traditional marriages.  You can’t trash marriage and then complain when the results of trashing it show up in society.

By the way, I don’t think that the Hernandez case is a good example to use as a lead in to this topic.  He and his brother went to school with my children.  A lot of people have a lot of different opinions of what went wrong in Mr. Hernandez’ life.  In the end, only he and God and maybe a few close associates know what really went on.  It would be better to simply leave it alone and let the courts work it out at this point.