The Typical American Family?

While listening to the radio this morning, I heard a broadcaster state, "The Royal Family does not in fact look like a royal family, but instead the typical American family."

This is quite shocking to me. I believe this statement represents a larger gap in perception of what America actually is. The common American (what is that even defined as now?) seems to be stuck in the idea of a 1950s America with a few modifications.

Now I'm not saying that the change in our actual composition as a society is negative, for there are positives and negatives to almost every situation. The only point I want to make is that as a society, the labels no longer apply. We are too diverse in terms of family life, income, beliefs, cultures, intelligence, environment, and many other categories to even start a statement with "the typical American such and such."

So referring back to the first sentence, the new Royal Family looks like the ideal traditional family, not the typical American family.

Recent Events

In recent events, gay marriage has surfaced again as a large issue on the national level. Would just like to point out from a political perspective that this shouldn't even be an issue. Whether Republican (fighting for individual freedom through less government) or Democrat (fighting for equality of all through government empowerment), the solution of allowing a civil union between same sexes makes sense. It is an issue that distracts us from greater issues while causing unnecessary debate. As a Republican, you believe in the Constitution in its original form which means that there is a separation of church and state. Therefore allowing same sex marriage would be dealt with at church level since it is separate from state. This would achieve greater individual freedom from less government restriction on how to live one's life. From the Democratic viewpoint, (which really need not be explained since this party is the original warrior for this cause), people are achieving greater equality through the government's push to create policy allowing same sex couples to have a civil union.

On another note, there are plenty of children in this world created by straight couples but no longer have parents in their lives. Many gay couples adopt along with straight couples and are terrific caring parents for children who would otherwise be absent of love in their lives.  Artificial insemination is another topic to be debated.

As an American, it is embarrassing to see that as a country that was created by people escaping religious and social oppression, we are trying to reverse our progress by combining church and state. Forcing a belief on people is still not a successful way of capturing true believers, and this is coming from a believer himself.