Men today, where many young children were concerned, "are a bit like sun roofs in cars - nice to have but you can do without them", the Presbyterian General Assembly in Belfast has heard.
Former moderator Dr John Dunlop said "a great number of children are not being fathered".
Many of them "never know what it is to have a resident man about the place", he said.
"Heterosexuality, expressed in an undisciplined way," was "a real menace to society," he said. "You can lose stable family life in a generation but you cannot put it back together again in a generation, and stable family life is of enormous importance to this community." He was speaking on a resolution which affirmed "that society can only be strong and happy where the marriage bond is held in honour".
In the same debate Kilkenny's Rev David Moore criticised Minister for Justice Michael McDowell for setting up a working group on "civil partnerships".
The church had made written and oral submissions to the All-Party Committee on the Constitution and was delighted with its recommendation that the status of the family be preserved, he said. "Any apparent success was, however, quickly dashed by the almost immediate announcement of the Minister for Justice that he was to set up a working group in the Republic on domestic or civil partnerships . . ."
He also criticised the Minister and his department for not being "even-handed or neutral on the issue", noting that a recent conference organised by the department and attended by the Minister, was co-sponsored by the Equality Commission and the Gay and Lesbian Network (Glen), with not one of the listed speakers representative of "any constituency that opposed the introduction of civil partnership for same-sex couples".
Earlier, the General Assembly passed a resolution directing ministers and licentiates not to conduct services of blessing for couples involved in a civil partnership.
It passed a further resolution "that the General Assembly, recognising homophobia within our church and society, request the Social Issues and Resources Panel to prepare guidelines to help our church develop more sensitive and effective pastoral care."
The General Assembly was also told yesterday of "continuing acts of intimidation and threat" by Catholics where some Presbyterians in the North are concerned.
Rev Joseph Andrews spoke of a meeting last autumn between the former moderator Dr Harry Uprichard and his chaplains with over 100 members of the church "who had suffered in some way as the result of largely, though not exclusively, republican terrorist activity."
Some had lost loved ones or had been injured while serving with the RUC, the RUC Reserve, the UDR, or the prison service.
Others "seem to have been targeted because they were in business or going about their daily work.
"Yet others were targeted for no other reason than that they were Protestants," he said. He added that Presbyterian ministers at the meeting detected "a sense of disappointment" on the part of those they met with central church bodies, some of whose actions were regarded "as insulting to them".
Rev Andrews said the people they spoke to also felt "betrayed by successive British governments" not least over the disbandment of the RUC. Last weekend the outgoing Presbyterian moderator, Dr Uprichard, refused to attend an annual service for deceased members of the RUC because the Catholic primate, Archbishop Seán Brady, would be there.
