Parenting: Are We Getting a Raw Deal?

APRIL 1, 2016 ~ RHONDA STEPHENS

https://rhondastephens.wordpress.com/

PHOTO: H. ARMSTRONG ROBERTS/CLASSICSTOCK

Summer 1974. I’m 9 years old. By 7:30 am, I’m up and out of the house, or if it’s Saturday I’m up and doing exactly what my father, Big Jerry, has told me to do. Might be raking, mowing, digging holes, or washing cars.

Summer 2016. I’m tiptoeing out of the house, on my way to work, in an effort not to wake my children who will undoubtedly sleep until 11 am. They may complete a couple of the chores I’ve left in a list on the kitchen counter for them, or they may eat stale Cheez-its that were left in their rooms 3 days ago, in order to avoid the kitchen at all costs and “not see” the list.

If you haven’t noticed, we’re getting a raw deal where this parenting gig is concerned. When did adults start caring whether or not their kids were safe, happy, or popular? I can assure you that Ginny and Big Jerry were not wiling away the hours wondering if my brother and I were fulfilled. Big Jerry was stoking the fires of his retirement savings and working, and working some more. Ginny was double bolting the door in order to keep us out of the house, and talking on the phone while she smoked a Kent. Meanwhile, we were three neighborhoods away, playing with some kids we’d never met, and we had crossed 2 major highways on bicycles with semi-flat tires to get there. Odds are, one of us had crashed at some point and was bleeding pretty impressively. No one cared. We were kids and if we weren’t acting as free labor, we were supposed to be out of the house and out of the way.

My personal belief is that the same “woman with too little to do”, that decided it was necessary to give 4- year old guests a gift for coming to a birthday party, is the same loon who decided we were here to serve our kids and not the other way around. Think about it. As a kid, what was your costume for Halloween? If you were really lucky, your mom jabbed a pair of scissors in an old sheet, cut two eye holes, and you were a ghost. If her friend was coming over to frost her hair and showed up early, you got one eye hole cut and spent the next 45 minutes using a sharp stick to jab a second hole that was about two inches lower than its partner. I watched my cousin run directly into a parked car due to this very costume one year. He was still yelling, “Trick or Treat” as he slid down the rear quarter panel of a Buick, mildly concussed. When my son was 3 years old, we had a clown costume made by a seamstress, complete with pointy clown hat, and grease makeup. His grandmother spent more having that costume made than she did on my prom dress.

At some point in the last 25 years, the tide shifted and the parents started getting the marginal cars and the cheap clothes while the kids live like rock stars. We spend enormous amounts of money on private instruction, the best sports gear money can buy, and adhere to psycho competition schedules. I’m as guilty as anyone. I’ve bought the $300 baseball bats with money that should have been invested in a retirement account, traveled from many an AAU basketball game, or travel baseball game, to a dance competition in the course of one day, and failed to even consider why. Remember Hank Aaron? He didn’t need a $300 bat to be great. Your kid isn’t going pro and neither is mine, but you are going to retire one day and dumpster diving isn’t for the elderly. My brother and I still laugh about how, when he played high school baseball, there was one good bat and the entire team used it.

Remember your clothes in the 70’s? Despite my best efforts to block it out, I can still remember my desperate need to have a pair of authentic Converse shoes. Did I get them? Negative. Oh, was it a punch in the gut when my mother presented me with the Archdale knock-offs she found somewhere between my hometown and Greensboro. Trust me. They weren’t even close. Did I complain? Hell, no. I’m still alive, aren’t I? We’ve got an entire generation of kids spitting up on outfits that cost more than my monthly electric bill. There were no designer baby clothes when we were kids. Why? Because our parents weren’t crazy enough to spend $60 on an outfit for us to have explosive diarrhea in or vomit on. Our parents were focused on saving for their retirement and paying their house off. The real beauty of it is that none of these kids are going to score a job straight out of college that will allow them to pay for the necessities of life, brand new cars, and $150 jeans, so guess who’s going to be getting the phone call when they can’t make rent? Yep, we are.

Think back; way, way back. Who cleaned the house and did the yard work when you were a kid? You did. In fact, that’s why some people had children. We were free labor. My mother served as supervisor for the indoor chores, and the house damn well better be spotless when my father came through the door at 5:35. The battle cry went something like this, “Oh, no! Your father will be home in 15 minutes! Get those toys put away nooooow!” The rest of our evening was spent getting up to turn the television on demand, and only to what Dad wanted to watch.

On weekends Dad was in charge of outdoor work and if you were thirsty you drank out of the hose, because 2 minutes of air conditioning and a glass of water from the faucet might make you soft. Who does the housework and yardwork now? The cleaning lady that comes on Thursday, and the landscaping crew that comes every other Tuesday. Most teenage boys have never touched a mower, and if you asked my daughter to clean a toilet, she would come back with a four page paper on the various kinds of deadly bacteria present on toilet seats. Everyone is too busy doing stuff to take care of the stuff they already have. But don’t get confused, they aren’t working or anything crazy like that. Juggling school assignments, extracurricular activities, and spending our money could become stressful if they had to work.

I don’t recall anyone being worried about my workload being stressful, or my mental health in general. I don’t think my father was even certain about my birthday until about 10 years ago. Jerry and Ginny had grownup stuff to worry about. As teenagers, we managed our own social lives and school affairs. If Karen, while executing a hair flip, told me my new Rave perm made me look like shit and there was no way Kevin would ever go out with my scrawny ass, my mother wasn’t even going to know about it; much less call Karen’s mother and arrange a meeting where we could iron out our misunderstanding and take a selfie together. Additionally, no phone calls were ever made to any of my teachers or coaches. Ever. If we sat the bench, we sat the bench. Our dads were at work anyway. They only knew what we told them. I can’t even conceive of my dad leaving work to come watch a ballgame. If I made a 92.999 and got a B, I got a B. No thinly veiled threats were made and no money changed hands to get me that A. Ok, full disclosure, in my case we would be looking at an 84.9999. I was the poster child for underachievement.

Back in our day, high school was a testing ground for life. We were learning to be adults under the semi-vigilant supervision of our parents. We had jobs because we wanted cars, and we wanted to be able to put gas in our cars, and wear Jordache jeans and Candies. Without jobs, we had Archdale sneakers and Wranglers, and borrowed our mother’s Chevrolet Caprice, affectionately known as the “land yacht”, on Friday night. No one, I mean, no one, got a new car. I was considered fairly lucky because my parents bought me a car at all. I use the term “car” loosely. If I tell you it was a red convertible and stop right here, you might think me special. I wasn’t. My car was a red MG Midget, possibly a ’74 and certainly a death trap.

Look at your coffee table. Now imagine it having a steering wheel and driving it. I promise you, it’s bigger than my car was. The starter was bad, so after school I had the pleasure of popping the hood and using two screwdrivers to cross the solenoids or waiting for the football players to come out of the dressing room headed to practice. Those guys pushing my car while I popped the clutch, is a memory no 16-year old girl around here will ever have, and it’s a great one. Had I driven that car in high winds, it’s likely I would have ended up airborne, and there were probably some serious safety infractions committed the night I took 6 people in togas to a convenience store, but I wouldn’t go back and trade it out for a new 280Z, even if I had the chance. I was a challenging teenager, and in retrospect the fact that it was pretty impressive every time I made it home alive, may not have been an accident on the part of my parents. Go to the high school now. These kids are driving cars that grown men working 55 hours a week can’t afford, and they aren’t paying for them with their jobs.

And those new cars don’t do a thing for telling a good story. I tell my kids all the time, the very best stories from my teen and college years involve Ann’s yellow Plymouth Duster with the “swirling dust” graphic, Randy’s Valiant with the broken gas gauge, and Carla’s burgundy Nissan that may or may not have had a complete floorboard. A story that starts, “Remember that time we were heading to the beach in Carla’s Nissan and your wallet fell through the floorboard onto the highway?” is so much more interesting than, “Remember that time we were going to the beach in your brand new SUV, filled up with gas that your parents paid for, and the…well, no, never mind. Nothing happened. We just drove down there.” To top it all off, most of them head off to college without a clue what it’s like to look for a job, apply for it, interview, and show up on time, as scheduled. If they have a job, it’s because someone owed their dad a favor…and then they work when it “fits their schedule”.

We all love our kids, and we want to see them happy and fulfilled, but I fear we’re robbing them of the experiences that make life memorable and make them capable, responsible, confident adults. For the majority of us, the very nice things we had as teenagers, we purchased with money we earned after saving for some ungodly amount of time. Our children are given most everything, and sometimes I wonder whether it’s for them or to make us feel like good parents. The bottom line is that you never value something you were given, as much as something you worked for. There were lessons in our experiences, even though we didn’t know it at the time. All those high school cat fights, and battles with teachers we clashed with, were an opportunity for us to learn how to negotiate and how to compromise. It also taught us that the world isn’t fair. Sometimes people just don’t like you, and sometimes you’ll work your ass off and still get screwed. We left high school, problem solvers. I’m afraid our kids are leaving high school with mommy and daddy on speed dial.

We just don’t have the cojones our parents had. We aren’t prepared to tell our kids that they won’t have it if they don’t work for it, because we can’t bear to see them go without and we can’t bear to see them fail. We’ve given them a whole lot of stuff; stuff that will break down, wear out, get lost, go out of style, and lose value. As parents, I suppose some of us feel pretty proud about how we’ve contributed in a material way to our kid’s popularity and paved an easy street for them. I don’t, and I know there are many of you that are just as frustrated by it as I am. I worry about what we’ve robbed them of, which I’ve listed below, in the process of giving them everything.

• Delayed gratification is a really good thing. It teaches you perseverance and how to determine the true value of something. Our kids don’t know a damn thing about delayed gratification. To them, delayed gratification is waiting for their phone to charge.
• Problem-solving skills and the ability to manage emotion are crucial life skills. Kids now have every problem solved for them. Good luck calling their college professor to argue about how they should have another shot at that final because they had two other finals to study for and were stressed. Don’t laugh, parents have tried it.
• Independence allows you to discover who you really are, instead of being what someone else expects you to be. It was something I craved. These kids have traded independence for new cars and Citizen jeans. They will live under someone’s thumb forever, if it means cool stuff. I would have lived in borderline condemned housing, and survived off of crackers and popsicles to maintain my independence. Oh wait, I actually did that. It pisses me off. You’re supposed to WANT to grow up and forge your way in the world; not live on someone else’s dime, under someone else’s rule, and too often these days, under someone else’s roof.
• Common sense is that little something extra that allows you to figure out which direction is north, how to put air in your tires, or the best route to take at a certain time of day to avoid traffic. You develop common sense by making mistakes and learning from them. It’s a skill best acquired in a setting where it’s safe to fail, and is only mastered by actually doing things for yourself. By micromanaging our kids all the time, we’re setting them up for a lifetime of cluelessness and ineptitude. At a certain age, that cluelessness becomes dangerous. I’ve seen women marry to avoid thinking for themselves, and for some it was the wisest course of action.
• Mental toughness is what allows a person to keep going despite everything going wrong. People with mental toughness are the ones who come out on top. They battle through job losses, difficult relationships, illness, and failure. It is a quality born from adversity. Adversity is a GOOD thing. It teaches you what you’re made of. It puts into practice the old saying “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. It’s life’s teacher. Our bubble-wrapped kids are so sheltered from adversity, I wonder how the mental health professionals will handle them all after the world chews them up and spits them out a few times.

I know you’re calling me names right now, and mentally listing all the reasons this doesn’t apply to you and your kid, but remember I’m including myself in this. My kids aren’t as bad as some, because I’m too poor and too lazy to indulge them beyond a certain point. And I’m certainly not saying that our parents did everything right. God knows all that second hand smoke I was exposed to, and those Sunday afternoon drives where Dad was drinking a Schlitz and I was standing on the front seat like a human projectile, were less than ideal; but I do think parents in the 70’s defined their roles in a way we never have.I worry that our kids are leaving home with more intellectual ability than we did, but without the life skills that will give them the success and independence that we’ve enjoyed.

Then again, maybe it’s not us parents that are getting the raw end of this deal after all.

Cherry-picking Pope Francis

By Paul Kengor - 09/24/15 10:36 AM EDT

http://thehill.com/

The pope received an exuberant reception before addressing a joint meeting of Congress. (New York Times)

While papal visits to the United States are increasingly common, what is uncommon is to see political-ideological battle lines drawn around a pope. The tendency this time is especially acute among liberals, who eagerly frame Pope Francis as one of them — a categorization Francis has resisted. “I’m sure that I haven’t said anything more than what’s written in the social doctrine of the church,” he said as his plane approached U.S. soil.

To some degree, liberals are justified in linking Pope Francis to many of their concerns — climate change, wealth redistribution, poverty. And even many conservatives seem to concede this pope to the political left. In truth, however, both sides lack a full picture. To illustrate the point, I’ll focus on the subject area that brings Pope Francis here to America to begin with: A major international Roman Catholic Church synod on family and marriage.

Though Francis is absolutely forgiving and charitable and merciful, including to gay people, when it comes to marriage, family and gender, this pope has been unflinchingly orthodox in support of historic church teaching. Some of his language has been even stronger than his predecessors. The extent to which that is true is at times shocking. Here are just a few examples:

Last January, as nations from Ireland to America looked to redefine marriage, Francis gravely warned of the “forms of ideological colonization which are out to destroy the family” and “redefine the very institution of marriage.” Echoing his predecessor, he warned of the forces of “relativism” that would alter family, marriage and “threaten” society and humanity.

Shortly before that, in November, he insisted that all “children have a right to grow up in a family with a father and a mother.” This followed a vocal statement after the previous synod on the family in Rome, where Francis asserted: “What they are proposing is not marriage, it is an association, but it is not marriage! It is necessary to say things very clearly and we must say this!”

He has always been very clear in saying this. When he was a cardinal in Argentina, he declared same-sex marriage a diabolical effort of “the Father of Lies” (i.e., the devil). This was July 2010, and Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio blasted a bill to legalize same-sex marriage and gay adoption in Argentina. He said, “Let us not be naive: This is not simply a political struggle, but it is an attempt to destroy God’s plan. It is not just a bill (a mere instrument) but a ‘move’ of the father of lies who seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.” He added ominously, “At stake is the identity and survival of the family: father, mother and children. At stake are the lives of many children who will be discriminated against in advance, and deprived of their human development given by a father and a mother and willed by God.”

Particularly notable has been Francis’s constant emphasis on the differences and complementarity of men and women as parents and spouses. His words here could scandalize liberals. His condemnation of “so-called gender ideology” has been extraordinary. “Gender ideology is demonic!” Francis shouted at one interviewer. He has compared gender theory to “the educational policies of Hitler.”

In this, Francis has taken an activist role, serving as the spiritual inspiration for a gigantic June 20 demonstration at St. John Lateran, the official church of his Rome diocese. Its purpose was to halt the introduction of gender theory into Italian public schools. This massive “Family Day” rally was a reflection of Pope Francis’s Year of the Family, and it came only four days after the pope’s environmental encyclical, “Laudato Si.” They were marching not against global warming but gender ideology.

This is a mere snapshot of Francis’s statements. He has done almost two dozen general audiences on the family. Tellingly, right before leaving Rome for the synod on the family in Philadelphia, he again affirmed the “image of the family — as God wills it, made up of one man and one woman,” which, he said, “is deformed through powerful contrary projects supported by ideological colonizations.”

Alas, what I’ve laid out here on Pope Francis and marriage likewise could be done for the cause of unborn children. His forceful denunciations of the “throwaway culture” of abortion are equally emphatic, as is his belief in forgiveness for those who repent of abortion.

What does this mean? It means you shouldn’t cherry-pick this pope. You can’t grab this or that statement that fits your personal political-ideological preferences and think you have the full picture. The Francis picture has many shades.

This pope is neither liberal nor conservative. This pope is Catholic.

Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College in Grove City, Pa. His latest book is “Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage.”

Free Kim Davis

By Jack Cashill
http://www.americanthinker.com/
September 5, 2015


Kimberly Davis (Carter County Detention Center)

"I'm glad the court sent a strong message that you have to follow the law," said Timothy Love of Kentucky, one of the plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case that legalized gay marriage. The strong message that U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning was to send Kim Davis to prison.  Davis, the county clerk of Kentucky’s Rowan County, boldly refused to issue a marriage license to a gay couple.

Love’s comment raises at least two interesting questions.  One is this: when did the left develop this affection for following the law?  Regarding drugs, immigration, debt repayment, occupying stuff, shutting down stuff, and even burning down stuff, progressives have proudly and openly defied the law and encouraged others to do the same.

Classify this sudden outbreak of good citizenship as routine leftist hypocrisy.

The second and more salient question is one that Davis herself has raised: “Under what law am I authorized to issue homosexual couples a marriage license?”

In a letter to his supporters, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee clarified the decision by Democrat Davis.  “The Supreme Court cannot and did not make a law,” said Huckabee.  “They only made a ruling on a law. Congress makes the laws. Because Congress has made no law allowing for same-sex marriage, Kim does not have the Constitutional authority to issue a marriage license to homosexual couples.”

In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton referred to the judiciary as the least dangerous branch of government.  He argued that under the Constitution, judges would possess “neither force nor will, but merely judgment.”  The Tenth Amendment of the Constitution further restrained the judgment of the federal judiciary.

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,” reads the amendment in unmistakably clear prose.  The Founding Fathers obviously made no provisions in the Constitution for same-sex marriage.  In fact, they made no provisions for marriage at all.  Laws on marriage age, eligibility, blood tests, witnesses, divorce, and the like were reserved to the states.

The impasse in Rowan County developed because the United States Supreme Court dramatically exceeded its mandate.  In Obergefell v. Hodges, the decision that legalized same-sex marriage, Judge Anthony Kennedy all but acknowledged as much.  “While the Constitution contemplates that democracy is the appropriate process for change,” he observed, “individuals who are harmed need not await legislative action before asserting a fundamental right.”

The Constitution does more than “contemplate.”  Article 5 spells out the process for amending the Constitution with commendable precision.  Given that the full-scale legalization of same-sex marriage would do something unprecedented – namely, undermine, even criminalize, the traditional practice of the nation’s dominant religion – a constitutional amendment would have seemed the way to go.  As bad as Roe v. Wade is, it did not make anyone do anything that violated his or her faith.

As I argue in my new book, Scarlet Letters: The Ever-Increasing Intolerance of the Cult of Liberalism, undermining faith is the driving impulse of the same-sex marriage movement.  The progressive activists pushing it have no real interest in gays and even less in marriage.  Their interest is in subverting the traditions that undergird America, none more consequential than Christianity.

In his greater wisdom, Kennedy cared not to know this.  He thought the gay marriage issue too urgent “to await further legislation, litigation, and debate.”  He worried about the “pain and humiliation” gay couples would suffer if denied a right that even President Obama opposed as recently as three years ago.

While running for president, in fact, Obama championed not only traditional marriage, but also the Constitution.  As he argued in Audacity of Hope, that august document “encouraged the very process of information gathering, analysis, and argument that allows us to make better, if not perfect, choices, not only about the means to our ends but also about the ends themselves.”

As to people of faith like Kim Davis concerned about “the ends themselves,” Kennedy told them not to worry.  “The First Amendment,” Kennedy wrote, “ensures that religions, those who adhere to religious doctrines, and others have protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths.”

A federal judge has sent Kim Davis to prison for sticking to the principles Kennedy promised to protect.  However, since no relevant legislature has codified any sex marriage laws, no legislature has had the chance to codify any exceptions for people of faith.

So Judge Bunning did what the left and the media expected of him: he improvised by sending Davis to prison.

One would think, though, that if the Fourteenth Amendment safeguards gays from suffering the “pain and humiliation” of being denied marriage, the First Amendment should certainly protect practicing Christians, Muslims, and Jews from the pain and humiliation of being denied their very freedom.

“Further legislation, litigation, and debate” just might have sorted this all out.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/09/free_kim_davis.html#ixzz3krQvZOBM
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The Stupidity of Sophisticates

By Mark Steyn
http://www.steynonline.com/
July 7, 2015



May 1, 1933 file photo shows German President Paul von Hindenburg, left, and Adolf Hitler, right, in a car during a labor day celebration in Berlin. (photo credit: AP)

Last week, I swung by the Bill Bennett show to chew over the news of the hour. A few minutes before my grand entrance, one of Bill's listeners had taken issue with the idea that these Supreme Court decisions weren't the end and, if you just got on with your life and tended to your garden, things wouldn't be so bad:

Claudine came on and said that's what Germans reckoned in the 1930s: just keep your head down and the storm will pass. How'd that work out?

David Kelsey writes from the University of South Carolina to scoff at that:

In one corner, we have government recognition of marriage contracts between gays. In the other corner, we have Jews, Catholics, gays, their sympathizes [sic] and other undesirables being put in Nazi concentration camps.
One of these things is nothing like the other, unless you're a lunatic. Maybe the reason conservatives keep "losing everything that matters" is because they really can't tell the difference. Which causes increasing numbers of people to recognize them as lunatics.

Since you call me and Claudine "lunatics", allow me to return the compliment and call you an historical illiterate. If "one of these things is nothing like the other", it's because that's never the choice: It's never a question of being Sweden, say, vs being the Islamic State (although, if you're a Jew in Malmö, they're looking a lot less obviously dissimilar than you might think).

All societies exist on a continuum. Neither Claudine nor I said a word about "concentration camps". But you give the strong impression that that's the only fact you know about Nazi Germany: Nazis = concentration camps, right? No wonder you think everything divides neatly into opposing "corners". In the world as lived, there are no neatly defined corners. Things start off in the corners and work their way toward the center of the room.

Claudine and I were talking about Germany in the Thirties - before the concentration camps and the Final Solution, before millions of dead bodies piled up in the gas chambers. So you need to have an imaginative capacity. It's not clear from your email that you do, but give it a go: Imagine being a middle-class German in 1933. No one's talking about exterminating millions of people - I mean, that would be just "lunatic" stuff, wouldn't it? And you belong to a people that regards itself as the most civilized on the planet - with unsurpassed achievements in literature and music and science. You might, if you were so minded, call it Teutonic Exceptionalism. And you're "progressive", too: you pioneered the welfare state under Bismarck, and prototype hate-speech laws under the Weimar republic. And yes, some of the beer-hall crowd are a bit rough, but German Jews are the most assimilated on the planet. The idea that such a society would commit genocide is not just "lunatic", it's literally unimaginable.

So don't even bother trying to imagine that. Instead try to imagine it's early 1933. The National Socialist German Workers Party is the largest party in parliament and thus President von Hindenburg has appointed its leader, Herr Hitler, as Chancellor - not der Führer, just Chancellor, the same position Frau Merkel holds today. And the National Socialist German Workers Party starts enacting its legislative programme, and so a few weeks later the Civil Service Restoration Law is introduced. Under this law, Jews would no longer be allowed to serve as civil servants, teachers or lawyers, the last two being professions in which Jews are very well represented.

But that wily old fox Hindenburg knows a thing or two. So as president he refuses to sign the bill into law unless certain exemptions are made - for those who've been in the civil service since August 1st 1914 (ie, the start of the Great War), and for those who served during the Great War, or had a father or son who died in action. And the practical effect of these amendments is that hardly any Jew in the public service has to lose his job.

And so in April 1933 it would be easy to say, if you were a middle-class German seeking nothing other than a quiet life, that, yes, these National Socialist chappies are a bit uncouth, but the checks and balances are still just about working. What's the worst they can do?

Paul von Hindenburg died the following year, and his amendments were scrapped.

That's Germany's civil service in 1933. What of America's civil service in 2015?

Right now across the land town and county clerks are resigning because they cannot in conscience issue same-sex marriage licenses. In one Tennessee county, the entire clerk's office has resigned. They are observant Christians - which is to say they hold the same view of marriage that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton claimed to until the day before yesterday. But an observant Christian can no longer work in the American civil service, or at least in those branches of it responsible for issuing marriage licenses:

County Clerk Katie Lang cited religious beliefs as her reason for refusing to file the marriage application for Dr. Jim Cato and his partner Joe Stapleton. She did, however, promise that someone in her office would accommodate the couple.

Not good enough. Dr Cato and Mr Stapleton are suing Ms Lang. What else you got?

A Kentucky clerk of court wants the state to issue marriage licenses online so he doesn't have to...
Monday, Davis tried to meet with Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear to ask him to call for a special session of the state legislature so it can pass a law allowing people to purchase marriage licenses online, similar to the process of purchasing a hunting or fishing license.

That's not good enough, either. Who the hell are you to compare a lesbian wedding to a fishing license?

So observant Christians will no longer be able to serve as town or county clerk. Are comparisons really so "lunatic"? The logic of the 1933 Civil Service Restoration Act is that the German public service will be judenrein. The logic of the 2015 Supreme Court decision is that much of the American public service will be christenrein - at least for those who take their Scripture seriously. That doesn't strike me as a small thing - even if one thought it were likely to stop there.

But don't worry, Supreme Arbiter Anthony Kennedy, like President von Hindenburg, has struck a balance:

Finally, it must be emphasized that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned.

That's a very constrained definition of religious liberty. He's not saying you'll be able to live your faith, but he's willing to permit you to "advocate" for it.

And that's mighty big of him considering that there's not a lot of Churchillian magnanimity-in-victory to be found elsewhere. Big Gay's supporters are already arguing that churches should lose their tax-exempt status, so if you want to "advocate" your hate you can pay full freight to the US Treasury. And a Pennsylvania newspaper announced it would not permit advocates of non-"equal marriage" to do any advocating in its op-ed or letters pages. So you haters can advocate to each other all you want for an hour on Sunday morning, but when you come to work or you pick up a newspaper you better have left that so-called religion of yours in the back seat of your car. The intention is that Christianity is something that gets banished to the fringes - to the corner, as Mr Kelsey would say - but is incompatible with government, media or a successful and rewarding career.

What else were Germans doing in 1933? Well, on April 8th - one day after the passage of the Civil Service Restoration Act - the German Student Union announced the Säuberung - the cleansing, the purification - of German culture. That's book-burning to you and me. The Germans were a far more literate people than we are, so book-burning wouldn't get you very far today, although the cleansers and purifiers of our own time have gone quite a long way on that - to the point where a Los Angeles school teacher is in the fifth month of his suspension for reading his class a passage from Huckleberry Finn. But, as I said, we're not as literate as the Germans and we disseminate thought-crimes by other methods, like telly and movies and stand-up comedy.

So, for example, an ancient TV show called "The Dukes of Hazzard" has vanished from the rerun channels because the principal characters in the course of their adventures occasionally travel by motor vehicle and on the roof of said motor vehicle can be glimpsed a verboten emblem. They haven't yet burned all existing prints of the show, although I wouldn't entirely rule it out: the owner of the actual car is already painting the roof.

Meanwhile, apparently non-"lunatic" persons are discussing across the cable networks whether the motion picture Gone With The Wind should be banned from cinema and television screenings. Oh, don't worry, they won't burn all the prints. If you're a credentialed researcher researching a thesis on racism in 20th century racistly American racist culture, you'll be permitted to go to some vault in Sub-Basement Level 12 of the Smithsonian Museum of the Forbidden and arrange a screening.

Incidentally, you know who else banned Gone With The Wind? The Germans - notwithstanding that Margaret Mitchell's book was a personal favorite of Eva Braun's. Alas, in occupied France Miss Mitchell's French readers identified with the Confederates and cast the Germans as the Yankees. Nevertheless, enlightened American "liberals" are now proposing to ban the same subversive stories the Nazis banned.

What else can we ban? The Washington Post - the establishment newspaper of the capital city of the global superpower - had an op ed yesterday by two professors - one who teaches something called "American Encounters 1492-1865" and another who heads up a "department of gender and race studies". It takes not one but two leading intellectuals to explain toWashington Post readers why it's not just "Dukes of Hazzard" and Gone With The Wind: the young comedienne Amy Schumer is also responsible for those Charleston church burnings. Miss Schumer apparently tells edgy jokes:

I used to date Hispanic guys, but now I prefer consensual.*

I agree that's not as hilarious a joke as a pasty-faced metrosexual eunuch being Chair of the Department of Gender and Race Studies and persuading liberal whites to take out six-figure loans for the privilege of mastering such grueling scholarly disciplines as "post-Katrina hip-hop". But Stacey Patton and David J Leonard go further and argue that Miss Schumer's joke is somehow connected to the fact that "80 percent of Central American girls and women crossing Mexico en route to the United States are raped". So these Hispanic guys, if I follow Prof Patton's and Prof Leonard's logic, are being driven to rape by Amy Schumer's rape jokes. As David Kelsey likes to say, "one of these things is nothing like the other, unless you're a lunatic": The Nazis thought Jewish bankers were responsible for the Great War - that's lunatic. American liberal intellectuals think Amy Schumer is responsible for 80 per cent of Latinas being raped by human traffickers - that's entirely rational.

There is a virus in the American bloodstream right now, frothing away at Miss Schumer, "Dukes of Hazzard", and a million other things none of which is particularly consequential in itself. But the trick of civilizational self-preservation is to spot this stuff when it's just small things and stop it at the itsy-bitsy stage. It's never one thing that is unlike the other, two opposing corners of civilization and barbarism, an express train rocketing from one to the other. It's always a continuum. The gleefulness of the culture warriors - the abandonment of even any pretense to the tolerance of differing views - does not speak well for where we're headed. The left takes the view that, in Kathy Shaidle's words, it's different when we do it. So banningGone With The Wind is bad when Nazis do it but good when progressive liberals do it.

For some of us, that won't do: what matters is the abandonment of first principles - on free speech, freedom of association, freedom of religion and much else - and when that happens you stand against it, because it won't stop there. It never does.

[*Laura Rosen Cohen thinks Amy Schumer isn't apologizing. I'm not so sure.]

Fear Not, Faithful Catholics

PAUL KENGOR
http://www.crisismagazine.com/
June 25, 2015

Many Catholics, especially conservative ones, obviously aren’t thrilled with the pope’s new encyclical. I find myself once again spending a lot of time explaining to non-Catholics why the current pope is either not a Marxist or is being yet againmisunderstood for the 999th time. Frankly, I’ve lost most of my credibility with these folks, who surely see me as a hopelessly blind Catholic.

This constant defense-mode has been unique in the case of this particular pope. Sure, much of the fault is with those looking to remake this pope and this Church in their own image, and I’d even add (in Francis-like thinking) that the Devil himself has made a mess of things. Yet, much of it is absolutely the pope’s own doing, as Francis is the master of the imprecise word and off-the-cuff sloppy statement. He—and they—keep us faithful Catholics busy. All of which brings me to the new encyclical on “climate change.”

The secular left, of course, loves this encyclical. As I write, the farthest reaches of the left, People’s World, house organ of Communist Party USA, has two articles singing atheistic hosannas to the bishop of Rome. This has become common at People’s World. The successor to the Soviet-directed Daily Worker is a vigorous champion of this pope. There truly has never been a pope that communists have embraced like Pope Francis. Believe me, I research this, I know.

“The Roman Catholic Church and the U.S. labor movement are working more closely together than ever,” celebrates a feature article at the current People’s World.

“The Pope calls for serious and immediate action to address climate change and other environmental crises,” crows a second article. “The encyclical addresses issues of water stress, biodiversity, pollution, the declining quality of life, economic inequality, and more.”

Noticeably absent among the “more” were Pope Francis’ eloquent statements about protecting other of God’s creation, such as unborn babies, the most innocent victims of secular progressivism’s “throwaway culture.” That’s one aspect of the encyclical that the left is avoiding like toxic waste. Indeed, the People’s World article closes: “while the Pope is progressive on many issues including climate, the Catholic Church continues to be backward on issues of reproductive health, women’s choice, same sex marriage, and other issues.”

That brings me to the reason I’m writing today. I write with encouragement to faithful Catholics who understand that the elephant in the global living room right now—especially in the West—is not carbon emissions or fossil fuels but family and marriage. And in that area, here’s the crucial point: this pope has been superb and seems to be growing steadily stronger. It is the main issue, the issue of our time, and it’s the main issue for this pope.

It is more than ironic that in Pope Francis’ Wednesday general audience announcing the release of his encyclical he talked mostly about family and marriage. He mentioned the encyclical only at the end. He noted it was his nineteenth (yes, nineteenth) general audience on family and marriage. He has been hammering this issue non-stop. I’veshared here his many excellent statements, everything from his January warning on the “forms of ideological colonization which are out to destroy the family” and “redefine the very institution of marriage,” to his November remarks on how “children have a right to grow up in a family with a father and a mother,” to his complaint just after last fall’s synod: “What they are proposing is not marriage, it is an association, but it is not marriage! It is necessary to say things very clearly and we must say this!” That’s a mere snapshot of the man who once declared same-sex “marriage” a diabolical effort of “the Father of Lies.”

It was fitting that on the Sunday before the release of the environmental encyclical, Francis was again talking family. He spoke to the families of Rome, his diocese, where he celebrated the “diversity” and “difference” of male and female before a crowd of 25,000 at the opening of the annual Ecclesial Convention, which this year is dedicated to (you guessed it) the family. He exhorted parents to (again) protect their children from “ideological attacks” that “destroy society, the nation, [and] families.”

Particularly notable is Francis’ constant emphasis on the complementarity of men and women. His condemnation of “so-called gender ideology” has been downright extraordinary. “Gender ideology is demonic!” Francis shouted at one interviewer, saying it fails to recognize “the order of creation.” He has compared gender ideology to “the educational policies of Hitler.”

In this, Francis has even taken an activist role. There was a huge demonstration in Rome this week (June 20) protesting attempts by Italian leftists to promote gender theory in schools. As one article reported, “Hundreds of thousands of people from all over Italy responded to Pope Francis’ repeated warnings about gender ideology, by taking part in an enormous demonstration in the square of St. John Lateran in Rome on Saturday. The ‘Family Day’ was aimed at defending the traditional family and stopping the spread of gender ideology in schools.”

Some estimates were higher, as organizers had hoped to draw a million marchers. “It’s fantastic,” said one attendee, a father of six from northern Italy. “Finally, people have gathered to fight this terrible ideology.” One organizer celebrated from the stage, “The Holy Father is with us,” as indeed he was, being the event’s spiritual inspiration.

Think about it: Just four days after the pope’s encyclical, they were marching at St. John Lateran not against global warming but gender ideology. Does that not say something?

Really, this is just the start. In fact, whatever momentum the environmental issue picked up at the Vatican will evaporate into the ozone when Francis comes to America for the synod on family and marriage. Actually, that ball is already rolling. On Tuesday, the Vatican released its much-anticipated “working document” for the October synod. A hefty 21,000 words, and thus far only available in Italian, it is intended to serve as the statement of record for the bishops. What it says on same-sex “marriage” is very good news. As Edward Pentin reports, “On the issue of homosexual relationships, the document firmly rejects same-sex unions, saying that ‘there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.’” This, Pentin notes, is a quote taken from the authoritative but much-reviled (by liberals) 2003 document from Cardinal Ratzinger’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Pentin adds that the document “also speaks strongly against pressure exerted on clergy to accept same-sex ‘marriage,’” and even condemns as “totally unacceptable” the demand by certain international organizations that poor countries receive aid only if they establish laws inventing same-sex “marriage.”

Again, given Pope Francis’ many previous statements on family (I haven’t even mentioned his numerous comments blasting abortion) none of this is a surprise. This is the leadership we need right now, globally, in the West, in America.

So, in sum, I urge faithful Catholics to take heart. A faithful Catholic, after all, has faith in the chair of St. Peter and the Holy Spirit-led cardinals who chose the occupant. Looking back, one can discern a Providential hand in certain popes being where they were at pivotal times. And right now, the issue is family and marriage. This pope gets that. His common cause with liberals on the environment should earn him at least a drop of trust and moral authority with them on these other issues.

To be clear, I’m not saying that faithful Catholics should ignore their pope’s passion for “climate change.” Let the liberal Catholics be cafeteria Catholics. Let them pick and choose what to take seriously. My very fallible sense, however, is that the burning issue of our day is the “forces of ideological colonization” hellbent on taking down family and marriage. “The future of humanity,” says this pope, “passes through the family.”

Fear not, faithful Catholics. Keep your eye on the ball. It’s less the future of fossil fuels than the future of the family.

(Photo credit: CNS photo/Paul Haring) (Pope Francis taken on March 25, 2013.)

Tagged as Family Policy, Laudato Si', Papal Strategy/Style, Pope Francis, Same-sex "Marriage", transgender (gender-identity disorder)

Paul Kengor is Professor of Political Science at Grove City College, executive director of The Center for Vision & Values, and author of many books including The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor and, 11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative (2014). His latest book is Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage (2015).

Confidential Meeting Seeks to Sway Synod to Accept Same-Sex Unions

Around 50 participants, including bishops, theologians and media representatives, took part in the gathering, held at the Pontifical Gregorian University.


By Edward Pentin
http://www.ncregister.com/
May 26, 2015


Pontifical Gregorian University

ROME — A one-day study meeting — open only to a select group of individuals — took place at the Pontifical Gregorian University on Monday with the aim of urging “pastoral innovations” at the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the Family in October.

Around 50 participants, including bishops, theologians and media representatives, took part in the gathering, at the invitation of the presidents of the bishops’ conferences of Germany, Switzerland and France — Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Bishop Markus Büchel and Archbishop Georges Pontier.

One of the key topics discussed at the closed-door meeting was how the Church could better welcome those in stable same-sex unions, and reportedly “no one” opposed such unions being recognized as valid by the Church.

Participants also spoke of the need to “develop” the Church’s teaching on human sexuality and called not for a theology of the body, as famously taught by St. John Paul II, but the development of a “theology of love.”

One Swiss priest discussed the “importance of the human sex drive,” while another participant, talking about holy Communion for remarried divorcees, asked: “How can we deny it, as though it were a punishment for the people who have failed and found a new partner with whom to start a new life?”

Marco Ansaldo, a reporter for the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica, who was present at the meeting, said the words seemed “revolutionary, uttered by clergymen.”

French Biblicist and Ratzinger Prize-winner Anne-Marie Pelletier praised the dialogue that took place between theologians and bishops as a “real sign of the times.” According to La Stampa, another Italian daily newspaper, Pelletier said the Church needs to enter into “a dynamic of mutual listening,” in which the magisterium continues to guide consciences, but she believes it can only effectively do so if it “echoes the words of the baptized.” 

The meeting took the “risk of the new, in fidelity with Christ,” she claimed. The article also quoted a participant as saying the synod would be a “failure” if it simply continued to affirm what the Church has always taught.

The closed-door meeting, masterminded by the German bishops’ conference under the leadership of Cardinal Marx, was first proposed at the annual meeting of the heads of the three bishops’ conferences, held in January in Marseille, France.

The study day took place just days after the people of Ireland voted in a referendum in support of same-sex “marriage” and on the same day as the Ordinary Council of the Synod of Bishops met in Rome. Some observers did not see the timing as a coincidence.

The synod council has been drawing up the instrumentum laboris (working document) for the October synod on the family. Integrated into the document will be the responses of a questionnaire sent to laity around the world. Those responses, particularly from Switzerland and Germany, appeared to be overwhelmingly in favor of the Church adapting her teachings to the secular world.

Why the Lack of Publicity?

No one would say why the study day was held in confidence. So secret was the meeting that even prominent Jesuits at the Gregorian were completely unaware of it. The Register learned about it when Jean-Marie Guénois leaked the information in a story in Le Figaro.

Speaking to the Register as he left the meeting, Cardinal Marx insisted the study day wasn’t secret. But he became irritated when pressed about why it wasn’t advertised, saying he had simply come to Rome in a “private capacity” and that he had every right to do so. Close to Pope Francis and part of his nine-member council of cardinals, the cardinal is known to be especially eager to reform the Church’s approach to homosexuals. During his Pentecost homily last Sunday, Cardinal Marx called for a “welcoming culture” in the Church for homosexuals, saying it’s “not the differences that count, but what unites us.”

Cardinal Marx is also not alone, among those attending the meeting, in pushing for radical changes to the Church’s life. The head of the Swiss bishops, Bishop Büchel of St. Gallen, has spoken openly in favor of women’s ordination, saying in 2011 that the Church should “pray that the Holy Spirit enables us to read the signs of the times.” Archbishop Pontier, head of the French bishops, is also known to have heterodox leanings.

The meeting’s organizers were unwilling to disclose the names of everyone who took part, but the Register has obtained a full list of participants. They included Jesuit Father Hans Langendörfer, general secretary of the German bishops’ conference, who has been the leading figure behind the recent reform of German Church labor laws to controversially allow remarried divorcees and homosexual couples to work in Church institutions.

Father Schockenhoff

Among the specialists present was Father Eberhard Schockenhoff, a moral theologian. Faithful German Catholics are particularly disturbed about the rise to prominence of Father Schockenhoff, who is understood to be the “mastermind” behind much of the challenge to settled Church teachings among the German episcopate and, by implication, at the synod on the family itself.

A prominent critic of Humanae Vitae (The Regulation of Birth), as well as a strong supporter of homosexual clergy and those pushing for reform in the area of sexual ethics, Father Schockenhoff is known to be the leading adviser of the German bishops in the run-up to the synod.

In 2010, he gave an interview in which he praised the permanence and solidarity shown in some same-sex relationships as “ethically valuable.” He urged that any assessment of homosexual acts “must take a back seat” on the grounds that the faithful are becoming “increasingly distant from the Church’s sexual morality,” which appears “unrealistic and hostile to them.” The Pope and the bishops should “take this seriously and not dismiss it as laxity,” he said.

Father Schockenhoff has also gone on record saying that moral theology must be “liberated from the natural law” and that conscience should be based on the “life experience of the faithful.” 

He has also insisted that the indissolubility of marriage is “not seriously called into question” by admitting remarried divorcees to holy Communion, writing a book to push his thesis in 2011 entitled "Opportunities for reconciliation?: The Church and the divorced and remarried". He has further proposed that the term the “official Church” should be done away with because of a growing gap between the institutional Church and the Church of the faithful. 

Also present was Marco Impagliazzo, president of the Sant’Egidio lay community; Jesuit Father Andreas Batlogg, professor of philosophy and theology and chief editor of the liberal periodical Stimmen der Zeit (Voices of the Time) — the journal has devoted its June issue to same-sex relationships and the synod — and Salesian Msgr. Markus Graulich, prelate auditor of the tribunal of the Roman Rota, one of very few Curial officials to attend. Some of those participating, such as Msgr. Graulich, took part in the previous synod.

Media Participation

Also noted were the large number of media representatives. Journalists from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, German broadcasters ZDF and ARD, the Italian daily La Repubblica and French-Catholic media La Croix and I-Media were also present. Their presence was “striking,” said one observer, who predicted they will be used to promote the agenda of the subject matter under discussion in the weeks leading up to the synod.

Monday’s meeting is just the latest attempt to subtly steer the upcoming synod in a direction opposed by many faithful Catholics. A statement on the study day released by the German bishops’ conference May 26 said there was a “reflection on biblical hermeneutics” — widely seen as code words for understanding the Bible differently from Tradition — and the need for a “reflection on a theology of love.”

Critics say this, too, is undermining Church teaching. By replacing the theology of the body with a “theology of love,” it creates an abstract interpretation that separates sex from procreation, thereby allowing forms of extramarital unions and same-sex attractions based simply on emotions rather than biological reality. Gone, say critics, is the Catholic view of marriage, which should be open to procreation.

The statement, which conspicuously failed to mention sin, ended by saying that “further discussion on the future of marriage and family is necessary and possible” and that it would be “enriched by a further, intensive theological reflection.”

This, too, is code for wanting a change in teaching, giving the impression that the doctrine in these areas is open to change. But for the Catholic Church, it is a settled issue.

“Imagine if the Church accepted homosexual relationships,” said one source speaking on condition of anonymity. “Ultimately, that is what these people want.”

Edward Pentin is the Register’s Rome correspondent.

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/confidential-meeting-seeks-to-sway-synod-to-accept-same-sex-unions/#ixzz3bKlbbUyh