For centuries if not millennia, a pernicious institution has arisen in our midst. This institution seeks to place loyalty to it above loyalty to the law, or religion or community. This institution has special exemptions from normal rules of evidence in courts of law. Police have been known to encounter individuals in severe mental or physical distress within one of these institutions but have determined that the institution itself is best-placed to sort out what happened and what should be done about it. Even when people are placed are great risk as a result. This institution often promotes arranged marriages, compulsory choices about education, career path, friendships, and its demand for new concessions only grows as other ones are allowed.
We refer of course to the "family", or, for it is a menace that too few are willing to so label: Familo-Fascism. It is time to end the scourge of spousal privileges, unanswered knocks at the door, "she fell down the stairs", "the dingo took her", "you're going to [insert school here]", "you want to marry him/her!!!?" -- and acknowledge the true bedrock of Western Civilization: that we are all just atomistic individuals with identical rights and responsibilities before the law.
And if you think we're implicitly advocating the Saudi legal system for everyone, we refer you to the last sentence this Mike Power post.
A more serious Rowan Williams post
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