This week, the National Assembly of Hungary added constitutional recognition and celebration of the natural family to their national laws, recognizing marriage specifically between a mother and father “as the basis for the nation’s survival.”
#Family before all else, God above us all. As a mother of three children, I encourage all families in #Hungary where the schools are closed from today, in #Europe and all around the #world in these demanding days: #prevention, prevention, prevention. Take care of each other.
— Judit Varga (@JuditVarga_EU) March 16, 2020
One of the drafters of the new constitutional amendment is Hungarian Justice Minister, Judit Varga. A young wife and mother of three, who publicly proclaims “family before all else, God above us all,” Varga announced the official constitutional statement from Hungary on her personal Facebook page,
“Hungary protects the institution of marriage as a community formed by a voluntary decision between a man and a woman and the family as the basis for the nation’s survival. The basis of family relationship is marriage and the parent-child relationship. The mother is a woman, the father is a man.”
It is a very bold and historic move. Declaring that family is far more than just one personal life-style choice among many, they are revealing the emptiness of popular sentiments like “love is love” and “love makes a family.” Hungary is recognizing and telling the rest of the world that marriage, family, and parenting are essential to the continuation of a thriving nation. But doing even more than that, this permanent change to Hungarian national law elevates three very essential angles of family life that have come under brutal attack of late.
Their first is that family is founded on marriage, over and against mere cohabitation. This is very wise public policy. There is a great deal of compelling social science research published in scores of academic journals over the last 50 years showing why marriage provides irreplaceable goods for children, women, men and society that cohabitation simply fails to provide.
Second, family is not just about the adults involved, but even more importantly, about children and parenting as well. Family is about creating and raising the next generation of humanity. It is richly documented that the greatest natural threat to the future of humanity is that mothers and fathers are not producing enough children to continue the race into the foreseeable future.
Their third point is that parenting takes place between the two binary parts of humanity, male and female, mothers and fathers. In fact, it cannot be missed that they added in stark and plain language “The mother is a woman, the father is a man” just so there is no confusion about what they are referring to regarding the natural, objective nature of gender difference. In any other ages, such a basic statement would seem silly, in the category of explaining that balls are round or fire is hot. But of course, such basic and essential truths are under aggressive fire today and our young people are unfortunately getting swept up in the great lie that male and female are not biologically rooted and actual. Hungary as a nation is standing against that.
This marks a very wise and brave declaration from a significant nation in our global community that holds up precisely what the world needs much more of and stands against a very pernicious and illogical deconstruction of the family. May more nations follow Hungary’s valiant and common-sense example.
Photo from Facebook