The Altar at which Every Business must now Bow - or Perish

Aldi

Most Saturday mornings you'll find me at 8:00am doing the family shop in Aldi. It's cheap, you get a choice of only "10" loaves of bread rather than "100" and Aldi employees work hard: hard work is good. (Oh, and they sell interesting gadgets: it's how they pull the men, who think differently from wome, into grocery shopping).

A surprise

So I bring home the weekly mag last week and notice the front cover. It says that four "families" have swapped from one big brand to Aldi and saved themselves 35% in the process. But then you examine the photo carefully and discover that the four "families" shown are two traditional families (mother, father and children) plus two same-sex couples.

There are two most strange things about this photo

First, the stats are all way out.  Only 0.2% of all family units in the UK are same sex (34 out of every 18,997, according to ONS below). Aldi have given the impression that 50% of the population live in same-sex families, an inflation rate of a whopping 250! They would have been closer to reality if three of the couples had been traditional families and one had been a single parent family (single parent families make up 14% of family units, 2817 out of every 18,997). In this way, they would have been honouring the many hard-working single parents who no doubt shop at Aldi. So there is something very “off” about the statistics. 

Perhaps they did not mean that the two same-sex couples shown were sexually cohabiting, perhaps they are just two lady friends and two man friends who happen to live in the same houses in a platonic relationship. You could call that a “family." Mary, Martha and Lazarus lived together in a family unit in Bethany and were friends of Jesus, it would seem. (On the mission field, it is common for two lady missionary ladies to share a house, it’s cheaper and it’s company, and platonic: it is also quite possible for two men to live together as friends, and two women to live together as just friends. For many years as a student I shared a flat with a male friend.) Perhaps that is what Aldi meant. But the stats, again would be way out.

Perhaps they mean “half of all customers at Aldi are same-sex couples.” Surely the stats would not bear that one out.

No, in the present climate, Aldi does not mean “lads or lasses living together platonically shop at Aldi” or even “half  of our shoppers are same-sex couples.”

We all know exactly what Aldi mean. Aldi mean, “We support homosexuality and we support a new definition of the family that includes a couple of any combination.” 

In other words Aldi are bowing to the pressure upon every UK company to actively support homosexuality – or perish. In the Roman Empire you could believe whatever you wanted about other gods, as long as you ALSO bowed down to Caesar. It was a totalitarian state where you had to take a public line even if you believed something very different in the private of your own mind and heart and home. You could be hypocritical and half-hearted about it, but provided you worshipped the Imperial Cult in public, all was peace.  That’s what is happening in the UK. Companies are being forced to take a public line, THE PUBLIC LINE, no matter what the directors of a company might personally believe.

If they don’t, as in times of old, they’ll be thrown to the lions.

The other strange thing

There is however a sign that this magazine photo was squeezed out of Aldi perhaps reluctantly. We notice that neither of the same-sex families have children. Of course, strictly speaking that is biologically precise for a man and a man can’t have children and nor can a woman and a woman. Why did they leave out kids - an almost glaring omission? Was it because in their hearts they did not agree that same-sex families are the best environment to bring up kids? And perhaps to counter this unPC personal belief they went way way over the top statistically by multiplying the number of same-sex families in the UK by 250?  We can perhaps imagine the tension in the boardroom - or the dining room of the director and his wife.

And here is another strange thing. Why two parents in each family? Once you have set aside the complimentary man and woman, why stick to two? Why not have four men, or two women and one man?  Once you set aside the historic, common-sense, global, biological and scientific family structure of one man and one woman, there is no reason to have only two adults in each of Aldi's families.

What is a family anyway?

The Aldi Ad raises the larger question as to what a family is. There are very many good reasons why the ideal family should be made up of a  mother and a father and children. For one, that is how biology works. We should call these families biological or scientific families. Second, all alternatives are sterile by biological fact. Third, it is wise for a child to have an adult male and female role model in their lives. (I know with single parent families this isn’t always possible, but perhaps aunts and uncles can help here). Fourth, since unlike our animal counterparts, it takes many years before a human child can stand on their own feet, it is wise for the mom and dad to marry – make promises to stay together, promises that will see them through the ebbs and flows of married life, for the sake and stability of their little ones. Fifth, bringing up children is hard work (I know, I have raised four) - how much wiser to have involved in the task rather than one.

We live in an anti-biological and anti-scientific age. Biology, science, millennia of tradition all point to the common sense view that the ideal family is a man and a woman, and where God grants them little ones, children.

DATA from:  Family's UK 2017 Data