Reigniting the Patriarchy

For the Christian nationalist Heritage Foundation, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence is an opportunity to move the country further to the right.

“Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years,” a report released in late January, makes clear that Heritage has not been satisfied by its success in implementing the agenda it laid out in Project 2025, its legislative guidebook. Now that the federal government is being starved and dismantled — despite warnings from progressive lawmakers and advocacy organizations throughout the country during the 2024 presidential campaign — they’ve turned their attention to undoing the gains of feminism, social welfare provision and higher education.

“The family is the foundation of civilization, and marriage — the commitment of one man and one woman — is the cornerstone,” the 168-page document declares. But as Heritage sees it, that cornerstone has become degraded, leading to fewer heterosexual marriages and to acceptance of marriage equality for queer couples. An uptick in cohabitation and college attendance by women, people of color, immigrants and members of the working class further angers the 53-year-old policy group. What’s more, a concomitant drop in childbirths, Heritage writes, has “reshaped” the American family and put the country on a dangerous course that can only be corrected by a renewed “societal commitment to revive the institution of marriage.”

According to Heritage, the erosion of the ideal family structure is due to “bad public policy in the 1960s exacerbated by cultural upheavals, Second Wave feminism, and the sexual revolution.” Why? Because these efforts to broaden opportunity for all promoted “an individualistic, child-free, marriage-free, sexual liberation.” Not surprisingly, casual sex, abortion, contraception and no-fault divorce are described as additional culprits, with blame centered on the “separation of the sex act from marriage and childbearing.” 

The report also blasts the War on Poverty, launched in 1968, for allowing “government welfare” to make it possible for impoverished households to survive without a male breadwinner. To that end, much of the Heritage Foundation’s criticism is directed toward higher education. According to “Saving America,” student college debt has caused young people to “delay marriage and family formation.” Heritage calls it “overcredentialing” and urges K-12 teachers and school administrators to “teach young people that graduating from high school, getting married, and having children — in that order — is a near-guarantee of life success.” 

But the Heritage Foundation intends to change the conditions of marriage, too. There are efforts to derail no-fault divorce — allowed in some form in all 50 states but the exclusive standard in 14 — and boost explicitly Christian covenant marriage, which are unions that can only be ended in a small number of egregious situations. The report idealizes heterosexual marriage and envisions a return to an era in which most middle-class women saw the household as their sole domain and had little public presence in the workplace or elsewhere.

Kathy Spillar, executive director of the Feminist Majority Foundation, calls the report “the playbook of the patriarchy” and says that the right wing’s plan to “weaken women’s political, social and economic power reflects the tremendous progress we’ve made over the past six decades.” She continues, “It’s why they want to straitjacket us, and even though we don’t know how the report’s recommendations will play out, we have to take it seriously.”  

Spillar expects right-wing lawmakers to introduce bills at both the state and federal level to advance Heritage’s agenda. “We have to fight on all fronts — at the grassroots, through media and litigation, in statehouses and at the ballot box,” she tells Truthdig. ”The midterms are coming up and we have to retake the House and win a majority of the Senate to stave off these attacks”

Annie Wilkinson, senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, an organization that works to counter authoritarianism, is also alarmed by the report. “Project 2025 was the end point of a 40-year project to end Roe [v. Wade] and roll back gains for trans people,” she says. “Roe is gone. We’ve already seen the curtailment of gender-affirming care for young people and there is an ongoing right-wing crusade against same-sex marriage.” 

Wilkinson also sees the Heritage’s report as an effort to “mold society into a form of white Christian nationalism. It aligns with efforts to stop immigration and push white Christian women to have more white babies. But the intent is to subordinate all women and LGBTQIA+ people so that we’re less able to fight back.”

The growing attempt to end no-fault divorce and champion covenant marriages is particularly concerning, Wilkinson says. Such unions are currently allowed in Arizona, Arkansas and Louisiana. 

Sydney Petersen, a spokesperson for the Washington, D.C.-based National Women’s Law Center, stresses the urgency of monitoring this and other legislation as bills move through the states. “Legislation at the state level moves quickly, and harmful measures can be signed into law within weeks,” she wrote in an email to Truthdig. “For example, states control whether married couples can access no-fault divorce, a critical protection for women seeking to leave abusive marriages. Yet, the Heritage Foundation is urging lawmakers to eliminate this safeguard, a move that could trap women in dangerous relationships and make their escape more expensive.” 

This conclusion does not surprise Ming-Qi Chu, deputy director of the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. “The benefits of policing family structures, restricting family roles and zeroing in on heterosexual married couples where women bear lots of children — while simultaneously taking resources from domestic violence and spousal abuse victims — fits into their game plan,” she explains. 

Right-wing victories are already apparent, Chu says. “The Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor has been abolished and grants for workforce development benefiting women and people of color have been curtailed.”

She notes that attacks on Head Start and child care funding — an overt goal of Heritage and other conservative groups — can be particularly devastating to working women, and limit their participation in the workforce since mothers are typically the primary caregivers of young children. “Similarly,” Chu says, “restrictions on safety net programs like SNAP and Medicaid and the weakening of civil rights protections are meant to make jobs held by women worse. The language Heritage’s uses makes its intent obvious: Women have become too educated and too independent and they’re intent on reversing this.”

Restrictions on who attends college and what they study is a key part of this reversal. 

Jasmine Banks is the co-founder of Parenting is Political, a podcast and online community that boosts the visibility of diverse families. 

She says that the right wing has long advocated for reduced access to college loans and financial aid and has sought to limit PLUS loans for professional degrees, including nursing, a field that is largely female. But Banks believes that there’s even more to their agenda. “I think we’re going to see an increased promotion of libertarian Christian universities,” she says. “I expect Liberty University, for example, to be heralded as a model to replace secular programs for those conservatives who want to get a degree.” That model, developed by the Rev. Jerry Falwell in 1971, seeks to “develop Christ-centered men and women with the values, knowledge, and skills essential to impact the world.” Loyalty to the conservative agenda seems to take precedence over knowledge and skills: According to a recent email sent to law students at Liberty, students interested in interning with the Department of Labor “MUST be aligned politically with President Trump and his administration,” but notes that “GPA is not a strong factor.” 

Like Banks, Joan Wallach Scott, a member of the American Association of University Professors’ Committee on Academic Freedom, sees the report as an attempt to return to an era when college attendance was less common for women and people of color. University expansion, including the growth of community colleges in the 1950s and ’60s, aimed to produce what Scott calls “a well-informed and democratic citizenry, with people who understand the need to participate in society. ‘Saving America by Saving the Family’ is the opposite of this.” Fighting back, she says, is essential, and requires using every means possible.

Spillar agrees and cites the need for broad coalitions between gender equity, civil rights, LGBTQIA+, educational access, disability justice, human rights, environmental and economic justice groups. Heritage may have succeeded with Project 2025, but that’s not a reason to cede ground in this next fight. “The patriarchy is defending itself,” she says. “I am optimistic that if we organize at the grassroots, win the midterm elections, and litigate to stop bad legislation and executive orders from taking effect, we will be able to save our democracy.”