Marriage, it is under attack, on both sides of the Atlantic! And Phyllis Schlafly's niece, Suzanne Venker, knows why, because Venker has spent many years studying at the base of Schlafly's gargoyle hooves, and she's picked up a little information along the way. Before we even get in to reading, and thus mocking, this column, let's make a guess as to how it goes: Feminists ruined marriage by saying "Hey, we would like to be equal and also not be shamed about sex," which led to gays taking marriage and making it more egalitarian, and now the straight men have no power, and nobody in Europe or US America gets married, and all because some pit-haired 1960s lady named Bernice wanted the freedom to fuck. Let's see how close we are!

Venker will seek to answer the question, "Why are men here and abroad avoiding the altar in spades?" Here are the answers she came up with:

Because they can: Men used to marry to have sex and a family. They married for love, too, but they had to marry the girl before taking her to bed, or at least work really, really hard to wear her down. Those days are gone.

Um, actually. Men used to marry as a property transaction, and we are not sure which part of history Venker is referring to when she says they had to take a wife in order to Make Sex To Woman. The Founding Fathers part, where they were fucking and impregnating slaves? The Bible part, where they had multiples wives AND concubines? Which parts, Suzanne Venker, WHICH PARTS?

Because there’s nothing in it for them: What exactly does marriage offer men today? “Men know there’s a good chance they’ll lose their friends, their respect, their space, their sex life, their money and — if it all goes wrong — their family,” says Helen Smith, Ph.D., author of "Men on Strike." "They don’t want to enter into a legal contract with someone who could effectively take half their savings, pension and property when the honeymoon period is over. Men aren’t wimping out by staying unmarried or being commitment phobes. They’re being smart.”

Now, godless liberal types might point out that, if he is a man worth marrying, the idea of building a lifelong partnership with an equal lady partner might count as "something in it for them," but that's crazy talk. Apparently, ladies are just friend-stealing bitches who close up the sex dairy the second the milk has been bought and paid for, and besides, they only look for husbands in order to attain financial security, which, wait ... isn't that more like the old traditional contract, the one that Schlafly and Venker wish we could get back to? Hasn't Venker said several times that ladies need to quit their jobs and churn out babies, because they absolutely need men to survive? We are very confused, perhaps because Venker seems to be talking out of both sides of her ass here.

Venker says that "unlike women, men lose all their power when they say 'I do,'" which would come as a shock to all the opposite-married men we know (including our dad!), who seem to be happily married and somehow NOT powerless. Maybe Venker is hanging out with the wrong people, or perhaps she gleans her wisdom from the toenail clippings of her Aunt Phyllis, and therefore knows nothing of the real world.

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Venker, of course, blames this on the fact that husbands on teevee used to be all "Father Knows Best," and nobody questioned their infinite wisdom, but now all the husbands on sitcoms and commercials are big dumb stupids. Yes, she seems to be arguing that all have ceased marrying because "Everybody Loves Raymond" was a steaming pile of shit. Then again, liberals didn't keep that show on the air -- conservatives did.

Also, too, something about how nobody in these new agey, millennial, liberal marriages -- which don't exist, of course -- takes care of anybody anymore:

If women no longer expect or even want men to “take care of” them — since women can do everything men can do and better, thank you very much, feminism — perhaps the flipside is the assumption that women don’t need to take care of husbands, either. And if no one’s taking care of anyone, why the hell marry?

Ooh, a cuss! We, again, do not know what the view is like from the perch on her Aunt Phyllis's taint upon which Venker sitteth, but we are pretty sure that, in the evolving, more egalitarian approach to marriage, the whole effing point is that BOTH spouses are taking care of each other!

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Anyway, Venker closes by saying that bitches just get married so they can get a dude -- "usually the one they're sleeping with" -- to put babies in them, so that they can divorce the dude and take all his money, so really, what's in it for the dudes? We were going to try to answer her question, but we feel that it would be better if Venker's therapist fielded that one.

[Fox News viaMedia Matters]