The family is a subject on which, for obvious reasons, there is no shortage of public or private views. Google records 368 million items under the word 'family', as against a mere 170 million under 'war'. All governments have tried to encourage or discourage procreation and passed laws about human coupling and decoupling. All the global religions (with the possible exception of Buddhism) and all the 20th-century ideologies have strong convictions on these matters. So have masses of otherwise politically inactive citizens, as the rise of electoral support for religious fundamentalism indicates. It has been plausibly argued that 'moral issues' (i.e. abortion and homosexual marriage) won George W. Bush his second term in office.

LRB 4 August 2005 | PDF Download