Tell CBS You Support Focus on the Family Tim Tebow Ad!

As you probably already know, CBS has come under fire from pro-abortion groups for agreeing to run a Focus on the Family ad during next week's Super Bowl featuring the story of homeschool graduate and Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow. Tebow's mother had received pressure from her doctor to abort but her Christian faith led her to continue her pregnancy. It's a heartwarming story, and one so compelling that it's really frightened the pro-abortion lobby.

The folks over at Catholicvote.org have put together a petition to CBS in support of their decision to run the ad. Please consider signing it to let the network know you stand with the Tebows and Focus on the Family in defense of those innocent unborn babies whose very lives are at stake.

We Appreciate Your Husband's Sacrifice, Ma'am, But You'll Need to Leave the Country

A young Marine sergeant stationed in Okinawa fell in love with a Japanese woman, dated her for a year, proposed, and then got deployed to Iraq. Two weeks after he left, they learned she was pregnant and arranged to marry by proxy. Their marriage was legal in Japan and recognized by the Marine Corps. However, one month after the proxy marriage and before he had a chance to see his new bride again in person, he died in the line of duty. His widow wants to immigrate to the U.S. so that her in-laws can help her raise the baby. U.S. immigration law, however, considers the proxy marriage invalid because they never saw each other after the ceremony to consummate the marriage.

Sometimes our legal system can be really stupid. She was pregnant with his kid when they married but the marriage was "unconsummated"? Regardless of whether one believes the couple ought to have had sex prior to being legally married, the baby is living proof they did. There is no reason to believe that the couple would not have engaged in it again after his return had they been given the opportunity. The fact that he got killed before they had the chance should not invalidate the marriage. The family has sacrificed enough without being put into legal limbo because of a technicality...

Baby #19 on the Way for the Duggars

Their 18th is only 8 months old, but Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar have announced that she is 12 weeks along with baby #19. Wow!

My youngest, Princess P., is the same age and I can't even begin to think about having another one so soon. I'm still adjusting to the 3 I've got now! DH does talk about wanting a fourth but I'm taking things one baby at a time. With Miss Scarlet and Rusty, I didn't start feeling like I was up to the challenge of having an additional child until about their second birthday.

Of course, had God seen fit to bless us with a new pregnancy sooner than that, we would've found a way to make things work. I do strongly believe that babies should be seen as blessings rather than burdens. But I just can't begin to imagine how Michelle Duggar and other moms who have very large & closely spaced families manage it.

6 Going on 16: Yet Another Reason to Homeschool

The other day I was walking through the park on our way home from the library with the kids when we passed two little girls who appeared to be practicing a cheerleading routine. They had bunches of flowers in their hands that they were waving around like pom-poms and they were doing high kicks, dance moves, and other cheerleader-type stuff. The two girls looked a bit younger than Miss Scarlet, who's 6 1/2. I would guess that they were 5ish. No parent/guardian was in the immediate vicinity.

What really bothered me about these two little girls was their provocative clothes and dance routine. I'm not a huge fan of midriff-baring spaghetti strap tanks and miniskirts even on teens but these were prepubescent children! And the sexualized routine just struck me as icky. Just because the Laker Girls dance like that does not mean kindergarten-age cheerleaders should, KWIM?

Miss Scarlet was fascinated, however. It struck me that if she were enrolled in a traditional school, this is what she might be learning at recess from her classmates.

I was reminded of this incident when I read a depressing article in the Rethinking Schools journal entitled "Six, Going on Sixteen". It was written by a veteran elementary schoolteacher who currently teaches a combined K/1 class. Here is what she describes happening in her classroom:

"I had 5-year-old girls vying for the attention of the 'coolest' 1st-grade boy. They would push to be near him at the sand table, and groan audibly if I didn't place them in his book group. Students in the class thought of each other as 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend.' Freeze dance and soul train, which are usually a big hit and lots of fun, had a new dimension as students danced out the social scenarios they had seen in music videos. Performer Chris Brown was the ultimate favorite, though 50 Cent and others were also on the scene. My 5-, 6-, and 7-year-olds played out and talked about 'being in the club' and 'drinking Heineken.' They wrote about the music world in their journals and turned the block area into a radio station. Sometimes they used the hollow blocks to build a stage to perform on. Small cylindrical blocks were their microphones. This type of play was OK with me, except who was 'in' and who was 'out' was a constant social battle.

There was another aspect of this that negatively impacted our classroom community, and that was the idea of certain kids wearing the 'right' sneakers. This was among a group of boys, but the rest of the class was affected. It was something we had class meetings about, and tried to minimize the negative effects of, but it was a continuous struggle. One morning, as they walked up the stairs to our second-floor classroom, a kindergarten boy and a 1st-grade boy got in a pushing and hitting fight because the younger boy said he was wearing 'Carmelo Anthonys' and the older boy said, 'No, those are Jordans.' Another boy, whose mom refused to buy expensive sneakers, had repeated meltdowns (crying, throwing things, yelling) when other boys arrived at school with new sneakers, stylish shirts or outfits, or big plastic gold rings."

These types of narratives just reinforce our decision to homeschool. The homeschooled kids of my acquaintance don't exhibit this type of pseudosophistication. The little girls dress their age rather than looking like mini-streetwalkers. If there's dancing, it's typically something like the Hokey Pokey or ballet.

3 Kids is a "Large Family"?

Opening up my email this morning, I saw an invitation to join a website called "Large Families Today". This struck me as just a bit odd since I only have 3 kids. Maybe because I'm Catholic and also have a number of Mormon friends, but I don't consider myself as having a "large" family just yet. It's only since the birth of our 3rd in January that I've even started to think of myself as having a medium-sized family. To me, a "large family" has 5 or more kids.

We may get there some day- I'm only 32 and taking it one baby at a time. DH has already started in about wanting baby #4 but I told him to check back with me in a year or two. Right now I'm still adjusting to having a 3rd! For me, being "open to life" does not equal "have as many babies as physically possible". It means seeing children as gifts from God and not setting an arbitrary limit on family size. It means keeping an open dialogue with God and DH about whether to try to conceive, try to avoid pregnancy, or something in between.

Large families are wonderful and I personally believe our society would be better off if there were more of them. It makes me sad when I hear others give materialistic reasons as justification for having only 1 or 2 kids. Wouldn't it be nice if children were again seen as blessings rather than burdens?

Would You Give Contraceptives to Your 14 Year Old Daughter?

Remember all that controversy a few years back over the New York Times article "Truly, Madly, Guiltily" by novelist Ayelet Waldman? In it, Ms. Waldman admitted that she'd rather all 4 of her kids die than her husband:

"What if, God forbid, someone were to snatch one of my children? God forbid. I imagine what it would feel like to lose one or even all of them. I imagine myself consumed, destroyed by the pain. And yet, in these imaginings, there is always a future beyond the child's death. Because if I were to lose one of my children, God forbid, even if I lost all my children, God forbid, I would still have him, my husband. But my imagination simply fails me when I try to picture a future beyond my husband's death."

The whole piece came off as rather creepy to me. I love my DH but I'm not obsessed with him the way Ms. Waldman seems to be with hers. My whole identity is not so wrapped up in our marriage that I would not be able to function should God forbid it end. Would I be devastated? Absolutely. Can I "imagine no joy without [him]" as Ms. Waldman puts it? The truth is that I believe I would be able to work through my grief in time; while I would certainly miss him, I'd still be able to find joy in other parts of my life. God has given me many blessings. The loss of one, even of a major one like my marriage, would not end my ability to appreciate the remaining ones. In fact, I would likely come to treasure them even more.

Anyways, Ms. Waldman has a new provocative piece on NPR.org and linked to by Lisa Belkin's New York Times "Motherlode" blog. In the piece, she relates how she decided to place a stash of prophylactics she'd received as a freebie in her kids' bathroom (her oldest is a 14 year old girl):

"I was about to throw them away, but after an internal debate that seemed at once to encompass every attitude, preconception, goal and belief I have about parenting, I took the bag and put it on the very top shelf of the cupboard in the kids' bathroom."

I had friends growing up whose parents put them on the Pill at 16 and allowed them to stay out all night with their boyfriends. They were clearly given the impression that teen sex was okay; not surprisingly they lost their virginity on the early side and had a high number of partners as teens. They are now in their early 30's and still single.

Compare their outcome with those of my friends whose parents held more conservative beliefs about teen sexuality. They were virgins at high school graduation and while most of them did not wait all the way until marriage, they tended to have few or even only a single partner. The majority of them are now married or engaged.

These are anecdotes, but research findings back up the notion that a lower number of premarital sex partners leads to better marital outcomes. People who marry their first sexual partners are less likely to cheat than those who have multiple partners before marriage. Also, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control, women having no non-marital sexual partners had an 81% chance at a stable marriage. By contrast, when a woman had just one non-marital sexual partner that chance dropped to 54%. If a woman had five sexual partners outside of marriage she has only 30% chance of a stable marriage.

Which would you want for your daughter(s)- promiscuity as a teen or a better chance at a happy marriage when she's an adult?

Memo to Facebook: Moms Nursing Their Babies are Not "Obscene"

I'm a fairly modest person and when I'm nursing a baby, I personally prefer to look for a place where I can have some privacy if we're away from home. But I strongly support the right of other moms to nurse in public if they so desire. God designed a woman's body to feed her child, and it's not at all obscene for her to do so. Just because I personally feel more comfortable with a higher degree of privacy when I'm nursing does not mean that other women should be required to do the same.

I was therefore appalled to discover via Lisa Belkin's "Motherlode" blog on the New York Times that Facebook considers pictures of moms nursing their babies to be "obscene". Several moms have apparently had the site censor photos of them nursing.

A spokesman for Facebook told Ms. Belkin:

"[Nursing] is a natural and beautiful act and we’re very glad to know that it is so important to some mothers to share this experience with others on Facebook. We take no action on the vast majority of [nursing] photos because they follow the site’s Terms of Use. Photos containing a fully exposed [bosom] do violate those Terms and may be removed. These policies are designed to ensure Facebook remains a safe, secure and trusted environment for all users, including the many children (over the age of 13) who use the site. The photos we act upon are almost exclusively brought to our attention by other users who complain."

Facebook allows all kinds of highly provocative photos that I find distasteful and not particularly appropriate for minors. But a mother feeding her child? That's not obscenity, people!

On December 27th, there's going to be a virtual "nurse-in" on Facebook to protest the policy. Anyone can participate, whether they're a nursing mom or not. All supporters have to do is to change their profile photo to a picture of a nursing mom and to and to change their status to the sentence, “Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!”

I don't have any photos of me nursing, and wouldn't really feel comfortable posting them to Facebook if I did, so I'm thinking of using Our Lady of La Leche. And nobody could reasonably complain that that is "obscene"...

Government-run School Sponsors Field Trip for 1st Graders to Gay "Wedding"

I haven't really talked much about Proposition 8, the California Marriage Protection Amendment. which would restore the traditional definition of marriage in the state as that of one man and one woman. Not because I don't think it's important but because it's one of those issues where you either hold traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs or you don't. Supporters and opponents can talk each other blue in the face and nobody's going to convince the other side of anything.

The whole argument about legal rights is a smokescreen because homosexual domestic partners in California already had the SAME rights as married couples under state law BEFORE four activist judges overturned the will of the people back in June. Nothing in Prop. 8 would change that!

Where Prop. 8 IS important is how marriage is presented in the state's government-run schools. The CA Ed Code requires teachers to instruct children as young as kindergarteners about marriage- and if Prop. 8 does not pass, that would include gay "marriage". Teachers in government-run schools would have to treat gay "marriage" as NO DIFFERENT FROM traditional marriage regardless of how parents feel about the issue. Obviously this is an issue about which there is tremendous controversy, which is why PARENTS ought to be the ones making the decision about how they want it presented to their own children in accordance with their own family's values.

What prompted me to bring up the subject of Prop. 8 today is a story that is shocking but sadly not surprising. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, a government-run school in San Francisco sponsored a field trip Friday by a FIRST GRADE class to a GAY "WEDDING" officiated by mayor (and notorious adulterer) Gavin Newsom.

The interim director of the Creative Arts Charter School, Liz Jaroslow, justified the trip on "educational" grounds thus:

"It really is what we call a teachable moment....I think I'm well within the parameters....As far as I'm concerned, it's not controversial for me."

If the teacher in question had chosen to invite her students to attend her "wedding" outside of class time, then I wouldn't really have a huge problem with it. That would've been a non-school event and no taxpayer dollars would've been spent funding it. I might still question its appropriateness for such young kids, but that's a judgment call for the students' parents. But this trip was done during time that the state is paying this school to educate the children.

I looked up the data on the Creative Arts Charter to see if the school is doing such a wonderful job that it can afford to waste time on non-academic pursuits such as this field trip. Here's what I found:

Percent of students scoring Proficient or Above in Math: 28.6%
Percent of students scoring Proficient or Above in Language Arts: 56.8%
Ranking of this school compared to others in the state with similar demographics: bottom 10%

Seems to me the administration needs to spend a bit more time teaching its students academic basics and a bit less time on indoctrination...

Sexual Activity Doubles Rate of Depression in Teen Girls

A new study published in the September 2008 issue of the medical journal Journal of Health Economics has found that teen girls who are sexually active exhibit double the rate of major depression when compared to girls of similar backgrounds who remain virgins. The research team based at the University of North Carolina examined data on more than 14,000 girls aged 14-17 from across the U.S. and found that these negative feelings could be directly ascribed to sexual activity, rather than outside influences such as family difficulties.

Dr Trevor Stammers, a lecturer on sexual ethics and chairman of the British Christian Medical Fellowship, told the Daily Mail that the new study confirmed that most girls:

"retrospectively showed regret about early intercourse....[The study] also shows as closely as we have been able to show so far that there is a genuine link between increased risk of depression and adolescent females engaging in sex. My experience is that, for girls, depression, regret and shame are very common."

This is just further proof that teenage sexual activity is unhealthy, particularly for girls. Not only do teen girls face the highest risks of any age group for unplanned pregnancy and contracting sexually transmitted diseases, this new study shows that they also face significant risks to their mental well-being. Regardless of one's beliefs on the morality of teen sex, it is quite clear that from a public health standpoint, abstinence is the only way to go for teens. As a society, we need to make sure this is the message we are sending to impressionable young people.

Why Isn't There More Attention Given to Maternal Mortality?

*HALF A MILLION* women this year will die as a result of pregnancy- or childbirth-related complications. While we moms fortunate enough to live in developed countries face a lifetime risk of maternal death of around 1 in 8,000, those in developing world face a risk of 1 in 76. In the worst countries of sub-Saharan Africa, the rate is a jaw-dropping 1 in 7. The majority of these moms die because they lack access to skilled birth attendants, proper pre- and post-natal care, and emergency obstetrical care.

Noting that the global epidemics of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis now receive lots of international attention and billions of dollars in funding, UNICEF's chief of health Peter Salama called for a similar effort for reducing maternal mortality:

"The time is right. We now know exactly what to do for maternal mortality reduction to make this one of the next big issues in global health."

I can't help but wonder how much racism plays a role in the neglect of attention paid to the problem of maternal mortality. 99% of the maternal deaths occur in the Third World, with over half occurring in sub-Saharan Africa.

I don't mean to belittle breast cancer activism, but that disease claims around the same number of women annually (the World Health Organization estimates there were 548,000 deaths from breast cancer worldwide in 2007) yet it receives far more attention than maternal mortality does. When's the last time you saw a pink ribbon for breast cancer awareness? When's the last time that you heard anyone talking about all the moms dying needlessly during pregnancy or childbirth?

Read for a World Record & Help Support Early Literacy

On Thursday, October 2, 2008, the JumpStart non-profit organization is sponsoring "Read for the Record" events all over the country. For each $10 donation, an at-risk child will receive a copy of the picture book Corduroy by Don Freeman. The goals are to promote early literacy among disadvantaged children and to set a new world record for reading the same book on the same day.

On the S.F. Peninsula, the Shelter Network organization will be hosting "Read for the Record" events at its homeless shelters for families in Daly City, San Mateo, Redwood City, and Menlo Park. They are also looking for volunteers to come read to a homeless child from 6-7 P.M. More information on the Shelter Network events can be found here.

For those living elsewhere, you can find a local "Read for the Record" event here.

This is a great way for parents to teach their children the importance of giving back to the community because it's understandable even by the very young. It's good to hear the call to practice charity in our churches/synagogues on the Sabbath but we need to show our kids how to put those teachings into action.

The "Nanny State" as the Price of Moral Relativism?

There's a very interesting argument in the recently released book Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!) by Carol Platt Liebau that the moral relativism so in vogue over the past four decades is a direct cause of the rise of the "nanny" state. She writes (emphasis mine):

"A society that denies the validity of any morality because of an ethic of moral relativism ultimately loses the capacity to compel decent public behavior....When cultural forces combine to encourage the indulgence of a people's appetites while eroding any competing constraints on them, it becomes increasingly likely that people will eventually become ruled by their passions.

That, without more, is deeply inimical to the flourishing of a truly free society- for when people cannot control themselves, ever more government intrusion into the private sphere becomes necessary to avoid a descent into disorder or even chaos.

Indeed, without sexual self-restraint, the private realm cannot remain truly private. With indiscriminate sexual activity comes a host of ills that ultimately require the government to intrude into the most intimate realms of its citizens' lives- from the agencies devoted to extracting child support from unmarried, deadbeat fathers to the armies of social workers employed to check on the well-being of children born to unmarried teen mothers who, too often, are completely unable to provide them with the loving, stable homes they deserve.

It's ironic that sexual liberation- and all the cultural forces that support it -actually end up making a society less free. But as the Founding Fathers recognized, liberty and self-government are impossible without a nation of citizens willing both to cultivate personal self-discipline and to establish informal social institutions that reinforce behaviors that help a society flourish with minimal governmental control.

As John Adams wrote in 1789: 'We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion....Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.'"

Powerful food for thought, don't you agree?

Better Them than Me: Duggars Expecting Baby #18!

It seems rather on the early side for an announcement given that Michelle is 41 and by my calculations only 6 weeks along, but the Duggars are expecting their 18th child on New Year's Day.

Best wishes to Jim Bob and Michelle and their growing family!

Abstinence Education Works!

A new meta-review of the research literature on abstinence-only sex ed done by the Heritage Foundation has found that 16 out of 21 studies reported:

"significant positive behavioral outcomes...such as delayed onset of sexual activity, reduced lev­els of early sexual activity, and fewer sexual partners among adolescents."

None of the remaining 5 studies found any negative results (indicating that the effect is at worst neutral), and some reported positive findings that just fell short of statistical significance.

The Heritage Foundation report also discussed the methodological flaws of the much-publicized Mathematica study, which claimed there were no significant differences between students who received abstinence-only education and those in control groups.

The Centers for Disease Control also this week reported that share of all U.S. pregnancies accounted for by teens has declined from 15% in 1990 to 12% in 2004. The abortion rate for teens has dropped by 24% over the same time frame.

Unfortunately, critics of abstinence-only education such as Planned Parenthood are lobbying Congress hard to kill Federal funding for these effective programs :-( Of course, they have a financial conflict of interest when it comes to pushing contraceptives since 50% of all unplanned pregnancies are the result of contraceptive failure and nearly half of those will end in abortion. The more teens who abstain from sex, the less money PP will make from providing abortions...

Another Threat to Homeschooling Freedom in Europe

Most people are familiar with the persecution of homeschoolers in Germany by now, but did you know that there is also a threat to homeschooling freedom and parental rights in Belgium? I had no idea until I saw an article from the Brussels Journal entitled "Crackdown on Homeschoolers: It’s the UN Wot Done It [sic]".

Paul Belien and Alexandra Colen are homeschoolers living in the Flemish region of Belgium. Their oldest four children are now successfully attending university while their youngest is finishing up high school at home.

In 2003, the Flemish regional parliament decreed that all homeschoolers in the region must sign a document agreeing to raise their children in compliance with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. Furthermore, the document states that government inspectors decide whether families comply with the UN’s ideology and if there are two negative reports, the government will force the child to enroll in "an official government recognized school".

Mr. Belien and Dr. Colen refused to sign the document because they feel the UNCRC undermines their parental authority and transfers it to the state. They also objected to bureaucrats deciding on the basis of arbitrary criteria whether parents are in compliance with the imposed philosophy.

The Ministry of Education has asked the judiciary to press charges against Mr. Belien for child neglect, which is a criminal offense. Last week, he was hauled before the police as part of the inquiry process.

The UNCRC is full of very vague language that on the surface seem like things with which basically everyone would agree. However, the problem comes when the U.N. interprets innocuous sounding wording in such a way that clashes with parents' deeply held beliefs.

For example, consider Article 29:

"States Parties agree that the education of the child shall be directed to:

(a) The development of the child's personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential;

(b) The development of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and for the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations;

(c) The development of respect for the child's parents, his or her own cultural identity, language and values, for the national values of the country in which the child is living, the country from which he or she may originate, and for civilizations different from his or her own;

(d) The preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes, and friendship among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups and persons of indigenous origin;

(e) The development of respect for the natural environment."

Sounds pretty reasonable, right? But how I would personally interpret "human rights", "fundamental freedoms", "tolerance", "equality of sexes", etc. may be extremely different from how the U.N. interprets those.

The U.N. Committee for Human Rights goes on and on about the "right to life" but then explicitly excludes unborn babies from that right and furthermore defines abortion as a "human right". I could provide many other examples but that's a post for another day.

It is absolutely outrageous for the Flemish authorities to require parents to accept the UNCRC as a precondition for homeschooling!

The "Labeling" Question

Via J.J. Ross at "Cocking a Snook", I read a very interesting post by Dale over at the "Parenting Beyond Belief" blog about his 6 year old daughter Laney's calling herself "humanist" when asked her religion. Dale and several of the commenters on the thread expressed a discomfort with parents raising their kids within a religious tradition because they feel it's "imposing" a "label" on them. Writes Dale:

"I am adamantly opposed to labeling children, or even allowing them to label themselves, with words that imply the informed selection of a complex worldview....Once a label is attached, thinking is necessarily colored and shaped by that label. I don’t want my kids to have to think their way out from under a presumptive claim placed on them by one worldview or another."

This attitude is one that I've run across before. The playwright Julie Pascal wrote an article for The Jewish Chronicle last spring where she called religion a form of child abuse:

"Perhaps organised religion should carry a health warning and only be made available at 18 with the right to vote. Isn’t it child abuse to imprint religion and identity on an infant? In our Western democracies, we say we believe in the freedom of the individual to make their own life choices but we allow parents to enforce their own dogma on their offspring. Why not teach children about all religions, as well as secularism and humanism, and let them decide how they wish to identify when they become adults? The 1989 UNICEF Convention on the Rights of the Child expressed the importance of 'respect for the views of the child', but which son or daughter is ever consulted about which religion they wish to follow? You get what your parents give you."

The question I have for Dale, Ms. Pascal, et. al. is whether they feel the same way about parents who are vegans for ethical reasons raising their children as vegans. Isn't that "enforcing their own dogma on their offspring" too? Would they truly advocate forcing vegans to feed their children animal products against the parents' deeply held ethical beliefs? Or would they be okay with the argument that the children will be perfectly free to eat animal products once they grow up should they choose to but until such time the parents have the right to raise their offspring in accordance with their values?

I suspect that the same atheists/agnostics who are so vehemently against religious believers "imposing" their family's faith on their offspring would be perfectly fine with vegans raising their kids as vegans. Which just goes to show that their criticism isn't really about "respecting the views of the child" but really about hostility to organized religion.

Abstinence and the College Girl

Contrary to the image in the popular press of college coeds as "ambulatory mattresses" (as a classmate of mine once described the members of a particular sorority), a sizable percent of women (nearly 1 in 3) are still virgins upon graduation. Those who are sexually active are reporting having 25% fewer partners in the previous year compared with students surveyed in 2000. A 2006 survey at Harvard found that nearly half the undergrads had never engaged in intercourse.

Pro-abstinence student organizations have been formed at Harvard, Princeton, MIT, and even at the quintessential party school Arizona State.

Wendy Shalit has written an excellent book called Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It's Not Bad to Be Good. on how more and more young women are rejecting the radical feminist notion that sexual promiscuity = empowerment. The trend towards greater abstinence among college women IMHO shows that today's coeds realize that one can be smart, independent, assertive, aspire to a career, etc. and still be modest, kind, and treat sex as a sacred gift between husband & wife.

Rules to Obey, Not "Carefully Consider"

There's an interesting discussion going on in the comments of one of Dana's recent posts over at "Principled Discovery" about why some people raised in Christian homes turn away from the faith as adults.

Sunniemom from "A Woman on Purpose" wrote:

"I venture to say that the reason some ‘run’ from Christianity and the Bible is because of what it teaches-they aren’t running from ‘indoctrination’, but from ideas such as generosity, compassion, tolerance, and sacrifice. That is why so many ‘come back’ when they get all grown up."

J.J. Ross from "Cocking a Snook" replied:

"I don’t believe it was the tolerance, generosity and compassion [the preachers' kids] all were fleeing, but the weight of endless expectations and examples and limits, and rules and restrictions in every direction except OUT."

I actually happen to agree more with J.J. than with Sunniemom here because it's not the generosity and compassion that's so difficult about Christianity but the requirement for self-discipline. It's hard to deny ourselves things that may feel good for our bodies but are bad for our souls, especially when modern society so often glorifies vice and mocks virtue.

In recent decades, our culture has turned away from the moral absolutes of traditional Judeo-Christianity in favor of a wishy-washy moral relativism. This cultural trend has really polarized religious believers into two camps: those who've embraced relativism and those who've resisted it.

For an example of this, here are two very different approaches to teaching children about the 10 Commandments:

"There are ten, there are ten
There are ten commandments to consider carefully
There are ten, there are ten
There are ten commandments to consider."

Contrast that with:

"[The 10 Commandments] were written on tablets of stone; they could not be changed or erased. They are God's laws for every one of us. A law is a rule or command that everyone must follow. If people abide by these rules, everyone can be happy and safe. They are not rules just for the classroom, or the home, or the streets; they are rules for life. By following these Commandments of God, everyone can be happy....If anyone breaks a Commandment, he sins. Sin displeases God and a person must be sorry for his sins and try to do better."

The first makes it sound as if the 10 Commandments are optional, just things to "consider carefully" and then accept, modify, or reject as the individual feels is best at that moment. The second is black-and-white: the rules are for everyone at all times to obey as God decreed to Moses or else the person is sinning.

The first quote happens to be from the lyrics of a song on a Jewish holidays CD by Peter & Ellen Allard and the second quote happens to be from the teacher's manual of the catechism program we're using (Our Heavenly Father by Ignatius Press). However, there are plenty of liberal Catholics who ascribe to the sentiment in the Allards' song and plenty of conservative Jews who would agree with the sentiment in the catechism. Catholicism and Judaism by all means have real theological differences, but the 10 Commandments isn't one of them (leaving aside the minor numbering variation).

The good news is that the fastest growing faiths here in the U.S. are traditionalist ones: Mormons, Pentecostals, non-denominational Evangelicals, and Catholics. Within Judaism, the fastest-growing group are the ultra-orthodox Haredi. The largest declines are among the liberal Protestant denominations. This is due to both a higher birthrate among religious traditionalists and also their success in attracting adult converts.

Help Protect Our Daughters- Support "Sarah's Law"

"Sarah" was 15 years old, pregnant and scared. Without her parents' knowledge, she underwent an abortion and the butcher abortionist Dr. Moshe Hachamovitch tore her cervix. Four days later she was admitted to the hospital with fever, chills, nausea, pain, and foul-smelling discharge. Sarah's body was wracked with abscesses, spreading infection that had entered her body through the damage the abortion had done to her uterus. Her brain was swollen. Her fetid fluids made their way up through her damaged bowels and into her lungs. The infection eventually claimed her young life.

When the authorities performed an inspection of the abortion mill clinic after Sarah's death, they found the staff was inadequately trained in how to properly sterilize instruments. The administrator, was evidently aware of the fact that the autoclave used to sterilize instruments was not functioning properly. As for the instruments themselves, "two loop forceps, two tenaculums and one curette were found to have small particles of dried brownish-dark red material on them. Three speculums were found to have small particles of dried clear material on them." "The only sterilized abortion tray in the procedure room was found to contain a curette with a loop whose edge was visibly jagged instead of smooth."

Five other women also died as a result of abortions performed by Dr. Hachamovitch or his henchmen employees. As of 1999, he had been named in at least 28 medical malpractice lawsuits alleging negligence and other problems. Two of his minions employees were convicted of manslaughter after 26 year old Lisa Bardsley was left to slowly bleed to death in one of his slaughterhouses clinics.

How can we protect our daughters?

"Sarah's Law" would help protect young girls from butchers like Dr. Hachamovitch and also from sexual predators. If approved by California voters, Sarah's Law would require abortion providers to notify one parent in writing 48 hours before performing an abortion on a girl under 18. In cases of an abusive parent, an adult family member such as an aunt or uncle, grandparent or adult sibling over 21 may be notified. A girl would also have the option of seeking confidential approval for the abortion from the juvenile court.

Under current law, a minor needs parental consent to take an aspirin from a school nurse or attend a class field trip yet a child as young as 12 can be taken for a secret abortion that often has long-term physical and mental consequences. As we've seen from Sarah's tragedy, it can even be fatal.

A study of over 46,000 pregnancies of school-age girls in California found that over two thirds were impregnated by adult men who were an average of seven years older. Abortion mills clinics routinely ignore laws mandating they report cases of sexual abuse and statutory rape. 89% of minors undergoing abortions who reported that neither parent knew about it said that their sexual partner had arranged for the abortion. The number was 93% for those aged 15 or younger.

Family Notification will help parents and law enforcement in their struggle to protect our state’s minor daughters from sexual predators. It has also been shown to reduce the risk of teen girls contracting an STD (a proxy for risky sexual behavior) by an average of 20% for Latinas and 12% for Caucasian girls.

What you can do to help

From now until the end of March, supporters are gathering signatures of registered California voters to place Sarah's Law on the November 2008 ballot. You can request a petition by calling (866) 828-8355 or emailing petitions@FriendsofSarah.com. If you are technically savvy enough, you can even download one to print here.

It's Time for Those in Authority Positions to Act Like Adults

As a thirtysomething mom, I've put away teen fashions in favor of more appropriate attire. While I look younger than I am (product of good genes, daily use of sunscreen, and never smoking) and could easily dress in whatever the college coeds are wearing these days, that's just not who I am any more. Not that I'm a frump in shapeless denim jumpers like the stereotypical Christian homeschooler (actually, I don't know anybody IRL who dresses that way!) But I do think that I ought to dress in a manner reflecting my status as a mother.

I'm currently reading a very interesting book by journalist Diana West called The Death of the Grown-Up: How America's Arrested Development is Bringing Down Western Civilization. I'm not very far into it, but her premise is that since the middle of the 20th century, adults have embraced an adolescent mindset and refused to grow up. Parents, teachers, and other authority figures have rejected their authority status and ceded control to children.

A news story I read this morning perfectly exemplifies this problem. A 39-year-old substitute teacher in Louisiana has been suspended after several parents complained about her blue hair and nose piercing. The school's dress code requires staff members to be "professional in their dress and state that attire and personal grooming should not be a distraction to students."

Ms. Harmon claims to be "confused and hurt" by the complaints and defends her appearance as
"professional". Friend and fellow parent Jessika Perkins stated in an e-mail to the Shreveport Times:

"Her hair and her nose piercing are not a distraction to the children. And she has always dressed very modestly around all of the students she has taught. What has happened to her was discrimination. Anyone who takes the time to look past what they see will agree with me that she is one of the most giving and best people you will ever meet."

Ms. Harmon may well be a nice person and a good teacher. But it's simply ludicrous to say that her appearance is not distracting or unprofessional. She's not some avant garde artist- she's a middle-aged schoolteacher. Her appearance needs to be appropriate to the setting. One does not wear a bathing suit to the prom nor a ball gown & pearls to the beach. And blue hair and a nose piercing do not belong in the classroom.