Who Gets to Define “Family” and What Happens to Everyone Else?

On January 8, 2026, The Heritage Foundation published, “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years”—a poorly argued and dangerous report that employs high-stakes, existential rhetoric to argue that the decline of traditional domestic family structures poses a lethal threat to the state.

The report is inundated with the use of dystopian metaphors and hyperbolic language, like comparing social welfare to “hospice care” or equating environmentalism with a desire to “prune” the human population. By framing the future as an unquestionable binary choice between societal collapse and a “Manhattan Project” for the family, the authors simplify complex sociological changes into an urgent moral crisis. Ultimately, the report illustrates the standard right-wing ideological strategy of using inflated argumentation to position the natural family as the only viable foundation for a surviving (American) republic.

The Heritage Foundation is the lead organization behind Project 2025 (formally, the “2025 Presidential Transition Project”). Undoubtedly, they have a rigid agenda to re-shape the world into their own image at the expense of anyone who doesn’t side with them.

There’s nothing wrong with being pro-family. However, perspective and recognition of the collective good are, in my opinion, requirements in determining what a healthy, caring, and sustainable family unit could look like outside rigid, exclusionary dogma and ideological thinking. This is for the good of the world and all peoples, not a single, select, and self-appointed group.

To be clear, the only part of a biological pro-family narrative I would support would be one that does not require the parents to be opposite genders, heterosexual, or limited to two parents of the opposite sex. Instead, a healthy family unit should teach acceptance and understanding for all varieties of human expression that is rooted in the common desire to care for a child’s upbringing and well-being. A parent’s sexual or gender identity has nothing whatsoever to do with their capacity to love, care, and support their child—whether they are a single parent, or partnered with another human being with the same desire to collectively raise a child.

As Fabrice Houdart writes in his article, What if they were right? (his weekly Substack newsletter on LGBTQ+ Equality):

“…history suggests that when people with institutional power and cultural dominance claim their way of life is the only path to civilization’s survival, we should be deeply skeptical—especially when those making the claim have never had to question whether they deserve their place in the world.”

What’s My Viewpoint?

This article is a lengthy analysis because I want to highlight the most problematic passages of this report—and there are many more that I simply cannot include here. I intend to expose not just the weak arguments, but how unjustified, illogical, non-factual, or factually distorted the majority of the report’s polarizing claims are.

An invitation and a caution: The content of this report is triggering. I become so anxious and depressed when I began this article that I had to take a few days off before coming back to finishing it. Let me just say that no single human being deserves to be pigeonholed into the intended outcome of the Foundation’s report. Their approach, reasoning, and viewpoint are anathema to a world of respect for human dignity, kindness, and open-heartedness.

It feels imperative that I provide as much detail and critique as possible. You may choose to skim the article for quotations pulled from the Heritage Foundation’s report and read my breakdown about the sections that strike you as the most problematic.

With that out of the way, let’s start at the beginning.

“To end America’s family crisis, policymakers and civic leaders should treat restoring the family home as a matter of justice, driven by two truths. The first is that all children have a right to the affection and protection of the man and woman who created them. The second is that the ideal environment in which to exercise this right is in a loving and stable home with their married biological parents.”

The report opens with the assumption that the American family is in crisis, which is a matter of urgent justice. The first logical error is that a child cannot receive affection and protection from a non-biological parent, regardless of gender. The second error is the assumption that a loving and stable home is an a priori result of the child living with their biological parents.

This is often the first line of attack by pro-family, right-wing Evangelicals: the belief that only biological and married parents can properly care for children, which automatically excludes all other possibilities.

For example, what if one of the parents dies, or the parents divorce (the author’s have much to say about this, but I will not address that here), while the child is very young, and the surviving parent remarries within a year? This demonstrates how this argument is a slippery slope: you cannot plan for death or divorce. Yet, what happens if the bereaved biological parent remarries and the stepparent/partner is just as or even more supportive, loving, and caring for the child, as if it were their own? This argument also precludes the possibility of a single parent, for whatever reason and biological or not, having the capacity to provide a loving a stable home.

A slight digression: The lived experience of many LGBTQ people is being forced out of their home by their biological parents for being different, and then having to create a new chosen family. There’s nothing in the report about the obligation of biological parents to love their children unconditionally. How convenient.

The report’s opening summary continues:

“In contrast, the default in American culture today is to put the desires of adults over the needs of children. Children are too often called to sacrifice what is due to them—the presence of their mom and dad under the same roof for the entirety of their childhood.”

Where is the evidence of the statement, “the default in American culture today is to put the desires of adults over the needs of children?” We are only three sentences into this massive report, and the hyperbole is not just unsubstantiated, it’s purposely polarizing and rooted in rage politics.

What I think most of us, if not all of us, can agree on is this: children deserve the right to live in a loving, safe, and stable home. The context of that framework is where Heritage Foundation seeks to limit and control the conditions and freedom of human flourishing.

Before we get into the most problematic argument in this report, let’s review the three “Key Takeaways” as published on the website version of the downloadable PDF report:

1) “The family is the foundation of civilization, and marriage—the committed union of one man and one woman—is its cornerstone. It is the seedbed of self-government.”

Is the family really the foundation of civilization? According to the authors, a prescription is required: marriage between a biological man and woman. This framing of family is neither universal nor historically fixed. What’s preposterous is the underlying religiosity in this declaration, one that is associated with a single religion, and one that has beed adulterated and abused from its original form and truth.

The seedbed of self-government, is not only a ridiculous double entendre, but it leads to the long-standing pathway of many religious fundamentalists. Self-government starts at home with the man in charge and at the top of the pyramid. The woman stays home and children are homeschooled to be protected from the realities of the greater world.

2) “The question that will determine the course of America’s future is: What happens to a nation when its citizens largely stop having children and eschew marriage?”

This is one of the many example of existential and dystopian rhetoric found in the report. It is entirely nonsensical as a “what if” proposition. Have you ever seen or visited suburbs in the United States? House after cookie-cutter house in neighbourhoods that are family focused. You simply cannot deny the truth that exists for everyone to see. If you have to base your argument on a worst-case scenario rooted in a small decline in birth-rates and marriage, you are grasping at straws. It’s not as if hospital nurseries and closing up across the country.

It is not false that birth-rates are declining. But in the past 100 years, world population has increased from 4 billion to 8 billion. I am not for culling the population (another insidious argument they refer to later on), but when we look at how we are killing the ecosystem based on the over-production of limited resources, we do need to consider alternatives to this Christo-fascist-capitalistic approach to making more babies.

What I’m not saying is that people shouldn’t have babies. What I am suggesting is two-fold. First, there are far too many children in need of adoption. If the authors of this report care so deeply for their so-called rights for children and providing a loving and stable home, they must clearly lack compassion for those children without parents or caregivers at all.

Secondly, if people would rather not have children, and if people who do get married and don’t want children, what’s wrong with that? The most nefarious answer is that if you don’t have children, you can’t mold them in your image to believe what you tell them unquestionably.

3) “The only way for America to thrive in the future is to rebuild the family—which can only happen with a societal commitment to revive the institution of marriage.”

Hyperbole: there isn’t just one way for America (or other countries for that matter) to thrive. While the report accuses LGBTQ+ people of having an ideological agenda, this is an example of the hubris and hypocrisy found in the pages of this report. This is a textbook example of rigid ideological thinking.

Is there anything to agree with in point number 3? Family can be an influential and supporting social organization in the upbringing of children. In my experience, I know that my biological parents who are still alive and still married provided me with care and support to the best of their abilities. I do not fault them for anything they did. I also know of numerous example of couples who are two gay men or two lesbians who either adopted, worked with a surrogate, or had a child of their own through a sperm-donor. Those families are loving and supportive, with their children growing up to become fully realized—and happy—adults.

However, why is it that America will only survive if it is controlled by an institutional concept (ideology) of marriage only between a man and a woman? Why is it that the family needs to be rebuilt? The answer to the latter is that it doesn’t, instead, the report’s authors have a more sinister agenda of patriarchal dominion, control, and authority over the family unit in which the woman is subservient and without autonomy or sovereignty. They won’t admit to that, but you need to follow the breadcrumbs of who authored the report and who they are associated with.

Home Is Where the Heart Is (Even for Communists!)

“The home is where fathers, mothers, and their children cultivate virtue and practice cooperation, responsibility, stewardship, and self-reliance.”

Where do these fathers, mothers, and children learn about virtue and the practice of these noble traits? In the time of the Ancient Greeks, these ideas were discussed by philosophers like Plato and Socrates. Of course, these are the concerns of humanity, debated and developed by religious thinkers, philosophers, and those in power over millennia.

These ideas are not limited to the myopic world of a single family. What’s not stated in this sentence is that these moral and ethical practices are based on unquestioned biblical prescription (albeit a bible that has been re-written, falsely translated, and mutilated to serve a single ideological purpose).

“Without families, a country cannot create meaningful work and prosperity. It lacks a storehouse of strong and brave men to protect itself from hostile aggressors at home and abroad. It lacks even the ingredients for responsible citizenship itself—without which no republic is possible.”

So, what you’re saying is that I can’t create meaningful work as a writer, a coach, or a strategic fundraiser without a family? But that’s not the worst part. Apparently, the authors of the report are still living in the Stone Age under the assumption that only men can protect the women and children from hostile aggressors. The last sentence is nonsensical drivel because it fails to identify the necessary ingredients that support such a claim.

“Despite their own radical philosophy, even the mad Communist dictators of the 20th century, such as Stalin and Mao, could not eradicate the need for the family.”

If all of your other arguments don’t work, revert to using your ‘Red Scare’ tactics: frame the Communists as bad, radical, and crazy. This is just lazy and sloppy argumentation that will trigger easy agreement with their base of supporters. The unspoken part is that this entire report is a subversive call for a dictator (the Heritage Foundation is one of the primary authors of Project 2025).

The Tyranny of the Majority

“In many respects, a strong family—dependent on God and one another—is itself a declaration of independence. It advances the cause of liberty by minimizing the need for government in daily life. In the immortal words of John Adams, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

This argument is based in the idea of cultivating a republic instead of a democracy. There’s nothing to debunk in this argument per se. Rather, I’m providing clarity about the use of their language and what they are directly coding, i.e., putting limits on majority power and back into the hands of “families” as they see fit.

The religious conservative authors of this report clearly want constitutional limits on what majorities can do, and decidedly a move away from democratic representation. Later in this report, they write about the “tyranny of the majority”—further hyperbole and hypocrisy. While they seemingly advocate for small government, they are highly skeptical of direct-democracy mechanisms (referenda, direct election reforms, etc.). Heaven forbid that the people would have the power to oust a dictator!

Hyperbolic Existentialism & Cellular Decay

“Before proposing policies to address the crisis of family formation in the U.S., we need to grasp how we got here. The decline of the American family—which began slowly in the first half of the 20th century—metastasized in the 1960s, leading to an epidemic of broken homes and often-broken children that continues today. A decline in stable married households headed by a father and mother is a menace to the future of every developed country, including the United States. The natural family is the cell of the social body, and no body can survive the death and decay of its cells. This is true for everyone, including those Americans who never marry or have children. The persistence of every civilization across time has certain prerequisites. Without the formation, stability, and fecundity of families, no country can long survive.” (Emphasis mine.)

The amount of hyperbolic, high-stakes, urgent, and existential rhetoric used by the authors to frame their arguments and emphasize the apparent gravity of the "family crisis" is exhausting. I will give the authors credit only for their creative attempt at utilizing biomedical and moralistic superlatives (“metastasized,” “epidemic,” “broken children,” “menace”) to create urgency and disgust, which only indicates to any critical reader how desperately they are grasping at rhetorical straws. If what they are trying to achieve wasn’t so terrible, this would be funny.

The paragraph equates “the American family” with one normative structure (“stable married households headed by a father and mother”), then connives to use that definition as a universal claim about everyone’s survival. Furthermore, societies aren’t organisms and families aren’t cells in any strict explanatory sense, so the analogy is a false substitute for proof.

Stubborn Facts or Forced Falsehoods?

“The Founders knew a hard truth: that when a nation fails to preserve the family, the state soon fails to preserve itself. This is fixed by the stubborn facts of human nature: It takes one fertile man and one fertile woman to reproduce, and young human beings are wholly dependent on others for many years after birth. One knows from universal experience that children are best raised in homes with their married mothers and fathers. More-over, abundant social science research confirms that every alternative to the natural family with married parents has proven across space and time to be, on average, inferior for couples, and especially for any children that arise from their union.”

At 168 pages, the authors have gone to great lengths to repeat their weak logic and argumentation. The sentence, “It takes one fertile man and one fertile woman to reproduce, and young human beings are wholly dependent on others for many years after birth,” tries to substitute “common sense” for evidence. “One knows” and “universal experience” are rhetorical shortcuts that turn a contested claim into a supposed shared fact. It also combines two unproven assertions: that there is one clear way children are “best” raised, and that this depends on a mother and father being married. That marriage requirement is not an empirical conclusion; it’s a moral ideal oh-so-quietly slipped into the argument.

If the authors didn’t have an ideological agenda, they’d make an evidence-based argument in which they’d define what “best” means, provide outcomes, and show why marriage itself—rather than stability, resources, and minimal conflict—is the causal factor for a happily nurtured child.

Culling Civilization (It must be the queers)

“Population growth,” people are told, “threatens environments at global, national and regional scales.” This message has only become more strident in recent years. Dennis Meadows of the Club of Rome warns ominously that he hopes the “necessary” pruning of the world’s population down to a billion people can “occur in a civil way.” “Stop Having Kids” is just one of many efforts to denigrate parenthood.
Contrary to these dystopian canards, however, the United States faces not a population bomb, but a population bust.
On top of these tectonic culture forces undermining family came the LGBTQ agenda which, through the Supreme Court of the United States, redefined marriage and severed it in law from its natural biological function and purpose of reproduction. This blow to marriage was followed shortly thereafter by gender ideology such that by 2018, CNN’s feature story on Father’s Day weekend was titled “He gave birth. He breastfed. Now, he wants his son to see him as a man.” The story pushed the idea that men can get pregnant on a holiday that honors fathers. But the rabbit hole goes further: One 2023 GQ story titled “The Deeply Human Love Stories of People and their Sex Dolls” is as dystopian as its headline suggests. It posits that future generations may have to ask whether both participants in a “marriage” are even human. New York Magazine published a “practical guide to polyamory” in January 2024 that seemed to signal its resolution to make “marriages” involving three or more people the Left’s next civil rights cause.”

This is moral panic writing: it labels change as decay, posits LGBTQ equality as a conspiracy, and then manufactures inevitability by connecting unrelated examples into a single ‘slippery slope’ narrative. I’m surprised they didn’t utilize the classic trope of connecting gay sex with paedophilia or beastiality. However, with the recent release of even more of the Epstein files, it would seem the the authors have lost their Trump card.

Let’s break this beast down, shall we?

• “Dystopian canards” is a smear, not an argument. It frames opposing views as fraudulent instead of engaging with them, or even considering the reasons and value for world-population-growth controls.
• “Tectonic culture forces undermining family” assumes the conclusion. It doesn’t show what is being undermined specifically or in what way. It simply labels cultural change as harmful. I suppose because the underlying ideology of this report is rooted in a 2,000-year-old set of rules, an evolving culture is anathema to its authors.
• “The LGBTQ agenda” is pure prejudice. Calling LGBTQ equality an “agenda” implies planned manipulation and illegitimacy, rather than democratic challenge to hegemonic norms (like marriage), civil, and human rights. It labels LGBTQ people as a threatening political group rather than human beings. This also positions the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling as having been captured by an act of ideology. Oh, the irony!
• It treats marriage as having a single “natural biological function”: reproduction. That’s a normative theological/ideological claim made to seem like a fact. Even within heterosexual marriage, the laws and culture in various countries recognize humane outcomes that include mutual support, caregiving, and relationships, regardless of fertility or intent to reproduce. The paragraph doesn’t argue why reproduction is the defining purpose; it simply declares it.
• “Gender ideology” is used as a slur that turns trans people a threat narrative. The Father’s Day example is used to trigger disgust. It insinuates that recognizing trans men as fathers is an attack on fatherhood itself.
• LGBTQ → trans pregnancy story → sex dolls → “not even human.” This is pure manipulation of the reader by using a guilt-by-association argument. These final sentences string together unrelated stories as if they are part of a coherent “leftist” agenda, so that acceptance of LGBTQ people sits adjacent to dehumanizing scenarios. This is classic moral-panic sequencing: if you accept X, soon you’ll be forced to accept Z. Which is precisely what the authors allude to when they write, “Whether both participants in a ‘marriage’ are even human.”
• Lastly, they frame “The Left’s next civil rights cause” as something cynical strategy, instead of a response to harm, stigma, or exclusion. That’s the authors’ moral judgement about political legitimacy: if it’s not based in their beliefs or worldview, all other rights claims are propaganda.

Saving the Family Will (gasp!) Stop Global Warming

“The truth about the climate should reassure would-be parents, new parents, or anyone racked with climate anxiety: Today’s children can inherit a planet that is improving. Human flourishing and sound environmental stewardship are complementary, not mutually exclusive.
No one should decline to have kids or more kids because of fears that children will expand the human “carbon footprint” and despoil the planet. The hopelessness of climate alarmism is misplaced. Children, properly raised in a flourishing culture, can grow up to do more to help the environment and solve climate problems than to exacerbate them.”

The report authors have chosen to ignore the overwhelming mainstream evidence that global warming is human-caused and that risks rise with each increment of warming. Just because there is uncertainty in science, doesn’t mean your ideology trumps the wealth of well-researched, global scientific analysis. The burden of proof rests with these perfect, opposite sex married parents whose children are going to get so much love, that they will grow up to solve all the world’s problems.

My dear parents, your kids better get started with this research:

1. World Meteorological Organization (WMO) — “State of the Global Climate 2024.” This is a direct “things are getting better” rebuttal based in observation. The report documents record heat, record ocean heat, and ongoing sea-level rise. It also reports 2024 as the warmest year in the instrumental record and places recent years in a clear long-run pattern.
2. Global Carbon Project — “Fossil fuel CO2 emissions hit record high in 2025.” This is clear reporting on the reality of emissions: fossil CO₂ emissions are still at/near record highs, which undercuts any suggestion that the planet is “improving” in the way that matters most for future risk. The 2025 update projects fossil CO₂ emissions reaching a record high.
3. “The 2024 Global Report of the Lancet Countdown.” The latest report reveals the health threats of climate change have reached record-breaking levels.

The Only Way is Their Higher Way

Let’s cut right through their bullshit…

“American family life is truly at a crossroads. One path is marked by unwed childbearing, low rates of marriage, low fertility, low commitment, and easy divorce. This path is associated with the view that family formation (or its avoidance) is primarily about fulfilling adult desires and adult needs. The other path elevates the family unit as an inherent good based on the commitment and sacrifice of husbands and wives for each other’s sake and for the sake of children that their union would welcome into the world. This path is associated with the view that all life is sacred and that sees the family as a source of fulfillment for adults because they direct their energies to the good of the family unit instead of to themselves alone. Underlying this view is a deep sense of gratitude in knowing that human beings are here by God’s grace and that children are divine gifts.”

The authors present false dichotomies, namely that the future of American life is a choice between two binary paths. One path is characterized by “unwed childbearing,” “low commitment,” and “adult desires,” while the other "elevates the family unit as an inherent good" based on “commitment and sacrifice”. This narrative overlooks alternative family configurations that may still prioritize child well-being.

Furthermore, if “knowing that human beings are here by God’s grace and that children are divine gifts”, why do so many right-wing Evangelical “Christians” either force their LGBTQ children into conversion therapy, disown them and kick them out of the house, physically harm, or even kill them? If children were truly divine gifts from “God” then no God-fearing Christian would ever dare not to love their child unconditionally.

The Last Straw

Or is this the last straw-man argument? Like most of the authors’ arguments, the report is inundated with hubris, binary thinking, and inflated metaphors.

“We, the authors, undertake these efforts motivated both by deep convictions about the importance of family and by a profound sense of humility. We welcome comments and good-faith criticisms because we realize that in a world of tremendous complexity and uncertainty, some of these proposals may not produce the results we expect and desire. Nevertheless, the times demand the courage to re-examine old orthodoxies and test new approaches. A problem of this magnitude requires a culture-wide Manhattan Project that marshals America’s political, social, and economic capital to restore the natural family.” (Emphasis mine.)

• If indeed the authors were motivated “by a profound sense of humility”, they would not have written a report so conniving, misleading, full of bad logic, and bad faith arguments.
• Surprisingly, they claim to “realize that in a world of tremendous complexity and uncertainty, some of these proposals may not produce the results we expect and desire.” May I remind the authors of their claim that “Children, properly raised in a flourishing culture, can grow up to do more to help the environment and solve climate problems than to exacerbate them.” Sure, good luck with that.
• I strongly agree with this statement: “Nevertheless, the times demand the courage to re-examine old orthodoxies and test new approaches.” Yes! Let’s re-examine your biblical belief systems that cause harms to LGBTQ people, the health of the planet, and the freedom of entire countries to live without a dictatorship.
• The authors just can’t help themselves by claiming that a “culture-wide Manhattan Project” is needed to restore the natural family, a term traditionally reserved for high-stakes military and scientific mobilization. In other words, an atomic bomb dropped on whatever they disagree with.

My Last Words

To manage my mental well-being, I almost trashed this writing project. It was an effort that felt masochistic on the one hand, yet imperative and something that I needed to do on the other.

I was raised Catholic. As a young boy and into my teenage years, I loved the church. I was an altar boy, an usher, and then a lector. I was devout and was considering the priesthood. Then everything changed at 16 or 17 when I realized I could no longer reconcile the emerging awareness that I was gay with the moralistic teachings of the church. Later, I was very active in the late 80s at university, standing up to anti-gay Evangelicals espousing their prejudice and lies on campus.

I’m against religion, not faith. In other words, I’m against ideological thinking, especially when it excludes people and denies equal rights and freedoms. We each need to believe what we think to be true (hopefully based on evidence, observation, and contemplation) to understand how the world works and our place in the collective that we call community. I don’t think this is an ideal, rather, I think this is how we must think for a world of 8 billion people to find meaning and get along.

What has been presented in the Heritage Foundation’s report, “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years,” is dangerous, purposely deceptive, and highly prejudiced. This report cannot be ignored or swept under the rug. The report’s authors hold a lot of influence over the current American administration. If helpful, feel free to use whatever you need from this article to take a stand for the freedom to love a family of your choosing, without limits, rules, or restrictions.