The year is 2200 and almost no one gets married. Many raise children who are perfect clones of themselves. While a few conceive children the old-fashioned way, most use IVF and a gestation chamber to incubate and pre-educate and deliver their one or two children. Sometimes groups of friends get together to form a collective child, whom they attempt to raise together. Because of legal wrangling that occurs when these groups splinter, this procedure is allowed only after many safeguards been put into place.
Almost no one gets married. The exception in the United States is a large colony of Amish settlers in central Pennsylvannia and a large community of Catholics in the panhandle of Florida (much of it having been bought up by the Catholic millionaire Thomas Monaghan about 50 years ago).
Raising children is a difficult adventure whose short term difficulties are much more apparent than its long term benefits. Hence there would be a steadily decreasing population except for collectives where IVF children are raised by professional caregivers.
It takes a month or two to realize it, but the greatest crisis in the history of the United States occurs on or around April 1st of year 2200: all forms of contraception and artificial fertilization fail. Condoms melt upon contact with sperm. Ovaries deliver ova in spite of contraceptive pills. Attempted abortions, if successful, have debilitating effects on mothers, requiring about nine months of bed rest.
With a baby boom on the near horizon, the collectives temporarily shut down and preparations are made for the new, albeit not-that-welcome arrivals. Major investments are made to find the cause of contraceptive failure. Eventually, it is concluded that something like a virus was spread by an unknown bioterrorist. It alters the DNA in a manner reminiscent of how a spider's bite changed Peter Parker in a 20th century comic called Spiderman. For that reason, this condition is called PeterParker's disease.
After a year or two of an explosion in the fertility rate, it becomes impossible to continue to do research to undo the affects of PeterParker's disease, as political and economic instability and the shear danger attending major military engagements make it difficult entanglements and world instability make it impossible for the USA, China, Europe, South Africa and Quatar to conduct and coordinate research. Nevertheless, during these two years it also becomes apparent that this problem is not limited to the sudden increase in pregnancies: the murder rate goes up very significantly as well.
Details about murder rate... wives of adulterous husbands castrating their spouses when asleep, monitoring of children, entertainment changes from treating sex as consequence-free to sex as dramatic and dangerous.
Peace breaks out once folks recognize the need to promote CHASTITY in the unmarried. This is concomitant with seeing reproductive behavior as requiring a commitment and marriage as the expression and achievement of that commitment.
Adultery is penalized...
Pornography prohibited because it interferes with the virtue of chastity needed to protect good marriages...
Free love seen as childish...
Even gays would think gay marriage silly, because they recognize that heterosexuals need to regard sex in terms of its relation to procreation in order to promote the virtue of chastity, which in turn leads to happy marriages with happy children.
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