Gay Bourgeoisie?

I thought this was an interesting argument regarding the trend of liberal avant garde becoming ho-hum normal.

Two decades ago, the gay left wanted to smash the bourgeois prisons of monogamy, capitalistic enterprise and patriotic values and bask in the warm sun of bohemian "free love." And avant-garde values. In this, they were simply picking up the torch from the straight left of the 1960s and 1970s, who had sought to throw off the sexual hang-ups of their parents' generation along with their gray flannel suits.

As a sexual lifestyle experiment, that failed pretty miserably, the greatest proof being that the affluent and educated children (and grandchildren) of the baby boomers have reembraced bourgeois notions of marriage as an essential part of life. Sadly, it's the have-nots who are now struggling as marriage is increasingly seen as an unaffordable luxury. The irony is that such bourgeois values — monogamy, hard work, etc. — are the best guarantors of success and happiness.

That homosexuals would want the same things heterosexuals do--love, family, stability--shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone in the 21st Century. I'm sure there was a time when those identifying themselves as gay were doing so in an in-your-face f-u gesture, but I've met few gay people who felt that way. I would say that's a tiny fraction of the population. I have to agree with Goldberg on this part:

Personally, I have always felt that gay marriage was an inevitability, for good or ill (most likely both). I do not think that the arguments against gay marriage are all grounded in bigotry, and I find some of the arguments persuasive. But I also find it cruel and absurd to tell gays that living the free-love lifestyle is abominable while at the same time telling them that their committed relationships are illegitimate too.

How Children Lost Their Independence

This article is about Great Britain, but the same phenomenon is true in the U.S.

My father could roam the hills and valleys of West Virginia without his parents knowing where he was all the time. I could roam my own neighborhood in much the same manner. But my children? The youngest daughter isn't allowed to leave the house without her brother along (granted, she's old enough now that I figure she can ride her bike around the neighborhood, but the habit is ingrained).

Why are we limiting our children's freedom? I suggest 2 reasons. One is a fear of crime. We spend so much time watching the news about all the horrible things happening to somebody's children that we fear it happening to our own. This is why parents won't let their kids walk home from the elementary school alone, the way generations before them did.

The other reason, IMO, is a lack of sidewalks. My neighborhood has sidewalks within it, but the busy streets do not. This limits how far anyone can walk safely (kids do walk to the middle school and high school, but it isn't safe).

The greatest freedom to roam that most children have is on the internet, and that's probably far more dangerous than walking to the local strip center.

The Importance of Marriage to Middle Income Americans

A new and devastating study on the declining marriage rates of middle income Americans was released last week and here is the transcript.

Highly-educated Americans (those with a college degree or better) have a much higher rate of marriage and the author explains why:

First, they have access to better-paying and more stable work than their less-educated peers. This is important because marriage still depends on money — especially the financial success and stable employment of men.

Second, highly educated Americans are more likely to hold the bourgeois virtues – self-control, a high regard for education, and a long-term orientation — that are crucial to maintaining a marriage in today’s cultural climate.

Third, highly educated Americans are now more likely to attend church or to be engaged in a meaningful civic organization than their less educated peers. This type of civic engagement is important because being connected to communities of memory and mutual aid increases men and women’s odds of getting and staying married.

Finally, highly educated Americans are increasingly prone to adopt a marriage mindset — marked, for instance, by an aversion to divorce and nonmarital pregnancy, and a willingness to stick it out in a marriage — that generally serves them well through the ups and downs of married life. They recognize that they and their children are more likely to thrive — and to succeed in life — if they get and stay married.

Children raised in single parent households have few resources when times are tough. Their parents are poorer--there's power in pairs--and less able to help children adjust to the adult world. And these adults are more willing and prone to accept government aid. The rise in unmarried women with children who are Democrats (who want to redistribute wealth) is not without cause.

The gay marriage debate of the last decade has taken the spotlight off this pressing issue.

Indeed, the biggest marriage story among ordinary Americans is that cohabitation is mounting a major challenge to marriage as the preferred site for childbearing and co-residence in Middle America (as well as in many poor communities). This is disturbing because children and cohabitation do not mix. Children born to cohabiting parents are at least twice as likely to see their parents break up before they turn five, and they are much more likely to suffer educational and emotional problems, compared to children born into married homes. Finally, children in cohabiting households are at least three times more likely to be physically, sexually, or emotionally abused than children in intact, married families. And yet scholars estimate that more than 40 percent of American children will spend some time as the wards of cohabiting adults (one of whom is often unrelated).

Why Your Teenager Isn't That Smart Yet

The old joke about teenagers moving out while they still know everything still applies, but now, there's scientific evidence to back up what every parent already knows: teenagers have no forethought and don't consider the consequences of their actions.

More interestingly, to me, this research suggests that the decision-making center of your brain--the prefrontal cortex--doesn't fully develop until the late 20s. By that time, people have been through college (or dropped out), gotten married and had babies (not necessarily in that order). Is it any wonder young adults get in so much hot water so quickly with finances, careers, dating, and family? According to the science, they simply aren't mature enough to handle making these decisions. Yet the same guy who spends all his money on gaming systems has the same voting rights mature adults do.

Ann Coulter has proposed repealing the 26th Amendment, based on the crappy voting record of young adults. But given the research that shows 18-year-olds don't have the mental capacity to make good choices, maybe it isn't such a bad idea.

Why Marriage?

Interesting discussion about Prop 8 on Hugh Hewitt's show, highlighting the unintended consequences and unprecedented attack on religion inherent in the decision. Judge Walker's decision hinged on the idea that religion and religious views are inherently irrational and no basis for law. This is offensive at least and a blatant attack on Constitutional rights at worst.

Disagreeing with Conservative Majority Opinions

It's been one of those weeks for me, where I've spent a lot of time disagreeing with folks I normally agree with and agreeing with folks I usually don't. Here's the list:

1. I don't like building a mosque at Ground Zero for all the dhimmitude reasons around, but I don't oppose it, since I happen to think freedom of religion (even when I disagree with it) is pretty important.

2. I'm pretty unhappy with the way anti-Prop 8 advocates (like liberals in general since the 1960s) are hellbent on cramming gay marriage down the collective gullet of an unwilling public through the court systems rather than going the Constitutional route. But having said that, the thread at this post on Volokh Conspiracy provided (for me) the best arguments I've heard for gay marriage, and it's got me thinking it may be time. Granted, a lot of it is still anecdotal, and we won't know for decades how this affects other family relationships, but still.

3. Calls to alter birthright citizenship is nuts. And a sure loser at the polls. Do Republicans just want permanent minority status?

Ok, flog me.

Speaking of Jobs...

Maybe I should apply to be a burger flipper.



The first time I ever grilled a hamburger was yesterday and this is the photographic evidence to prove it.

Children and Materialism

This story on materialism and what it teaches our children got me thinking and remembering.

One day not long after Christmas, Sara comes home chattering eagerly about a new toy that has made its appearance—something that apparently stands out from the now mundane ponies, mermaids, and Barbies.

“It’s a stuffed animal that can transform into a fruit and even smells like a fruit,” she explains excitedly. “A Fur Berry. And there are four, maybe even five different kinds! And Tekla has one, and so does Flora, and Anna, and …” She stops her speech and looks at me expectantly.

“Well that’s great. Lots of Fur Berries, lots of opportunities to make swaps.”

But she’s shaking her head as if I don’t understand. I turn and face her. She is not eager or excited as I first thought, but agitated. In fact, her big brown eyes are blinking hard, fighting back tears. “No, Mommy,” she says with a hint of desperation. “Everyone has a Fur Berry—don’t you see?—everyone but me.” I may have been slow on the uptake, but now the message is clear. Swapping isn’t enough. A Fur Berry is not a toy one merely obtains on exchange for just a day or two at the most. Its importance lies far beyond its transient entertainment value. It will earn her social cachet, and it’s vital that I as a parent understand this. But somehow, I find myself unable to accept Sara’s urgent need for this fuzzy, pastel-colored plaything.

Days go by, however, and the Fur Berry is the only topic she’s willing to discuss, and always with the teary eyes. Eventually she does concede that, okay, not everyone has a Fur Berry. Only the girls. And well, not all the girls either, only a few. But they are the girls that matter. They are the girls who decide who is in and who is out.

My husband and I are dismayed. She’s only in first grade, yet peer pressure and the tyranny of cliques have already reared their ugly heads. Sooner than I expected, I find myself recalling my own painful struggles of early adolescence. I was never a popular child, introverted and bookish, awkward and unfashionable. And this last quality, my lack of style, was the most problematic. I was sadly aware of how popularity was connected to wealth, and that material possessions could impact one’s social standing: all my clothes came from the Sears catalogue, while many of the other girls were wearing trendy stone-washed Guess jeans. “A waste of money,” my mother would say, “and totally unimportant.” But I remember the looks of scorn on my classmates’ faces.

In a world where what's in today is out tomorrow, it's easy to tell ourselves that these fads aren't important, and that telling our children "no" is teaching them valuable lessons in avoiding materialism. But as the author herself notes, the humiliation of not having what others have can leave lifelong scars.

In Little Women, Amy succumbs to any and every fad at school, and eventually needs to buy pickled limes to repay her friends. Pickled limes? you might say. Why would anyone want something so disgusting? But fads are fads and yesterday's pickled limes becomes today's Lego Star Wars ship and tomorrow's Fur Berry. Yes, these trends are temporary, but sometimes there's more at work to them than first appears.

When I was in high school, designer jeans were all the rage. My family couldn't afford them. My mother had gone to college to get her BSN, and my father's $8-an-hour job didn't stretch much beyond the necessities. If I wanted spending money, I had to work for it, and I did so without complaint. Having my own, earned money was very freeing in most ways, but I couldn't afford designer jeans on minimum wage.

Because of our tight budget, I knew Christmas would be skimpy, and I didn't expect much of anything. Maybe a book I'd been wanting, or the latest Billy Joel album. But then, under the tree, was a tiny box that weighed next to nothing. In the box was a small strip of paper that read, I.O.U. one pair designer jeans. It was a humbling experience, knowing that my parents were willing to sacrifice something they wanted to get me something I wanted, and it was a lesson I never forgot. At that point, the jeans weren't just a pair of jeans; it was an acknowledgement that having what others had sometimes meant a great deal.

I still have that pair of jeans in my closet, believe it or not. They've traveled from my teenage bedroom at my parents' house to the tiny apartment I rented when I was a single woman to both the houses I've owned as a married adult. My husband has even asked me why on earth I have this old pair of jeans in the back of the closet? Why keep something so horribly out of fashion, something I'll never wear?

The answer, of course, is to remind me that loving your kids is about more than giving in to them every time they want something new. Those jeans remind me that my parents honestly cared about the travails of adolescence and the meanness of teenage girls, and that, for them, being a little late on some bill or not getting something for themselves was a small sacrifice to make to take away a little of that pain. And considering the amount of time my parents had spent lecturing my siblings and me on not following the crowd or giving in to peer pressure, the fact that even they understood the problems one faces in junior high and high school was comforting.

I don't buy my children every fad item that comes along. But I do buy some of them, particularly when my children have hit junior high, where fitting in becomes so important. We still don't have money to buy every new thing, but I've bought a single pair of outrageously priced jeans so that one daughter could look cool the first day of school. I've let my son have his shaggy hair the way he'd like, rather than insist he look clean and neat. And I'm sure there will be more of that balancing act in the future.

Unintended Consequences of China's One Child Policy

Liberals love abortion, embracing it as a woman's "choice" and a way for poor women to get out of poverty. And since they see abortion as a universal good, they tend to ignore what abortion has done in places like China, where girls are so despised that the sex imbalance will have devastating consequences in the 21st century. How do feminists justify their support of abortion in places such as this?

Teens Sues Mom for Facebook Harassment

It was only a matter of time before parents tracking what their children say on the social networking site Facebook would be sued for harassment by their children.

The Arkadelphia, Ark., woman said many of her son's postings didn't reflect well on him, so after he failed to log off the social networking site one day last month, she posted her own items on his account and changed his password to keep him from using it again.

"The things he was posting in Facebook would make any decent parent's eyes pop out and his jaw drop," Denise New said. "He had been warned before about things he had been posting."

Lane New, who lives with his grandmother, filed a complaint with prosecutors who approved a harassment charge March 26. His mother said she was doing what any good parent would do.

"Just because I don't have custody doesn't mean I don't care about him," Denise New said.

Neither New would say Wednesday which items on his Facebook site the boy had found slanderous...

In his handwritten complaint to prosecutors, Lane New wrote "Denise first hacked my Facebook and changed my password. She also changed the password to my e-mail so I could not change it. She posted things that involve slander and personal facts about my life..."

Denise New said the boy had written on his Facebook page that he had gone to Hot Springs one night and drove 95 mph on the way home because he was upset with a girl. Several other posts on his site also bothered her, but she refused to elaborate.

She said he has since opened a new Facebook account.

New should have simply taken the computer away from the boy. Allowing children to sue their parents for disciplining them is nonsense.

Gay Teen Goes to Prom Then Complains She Wasn't Invited to Other Party

Well, that's what should be the headline. Instead, Constance McMillen is complaining that she went to a "fake prom" while the "real" one was held elsewhere.

To avoid Constance McMillen bringing a female date to her prom, the teen was sent to a "fake prom" while the rest of her class partied at a secret location at an event organized by parents.

McMillen tells The Advocate that a parent-organized prom happened behind her back — she and her date were sent to a Friday night event at a country club in Fulton, Miss., that attracted only five other students. Her school principal and teachers served as chaperones, but clearly there wasn't much to keep an eye on.

"They had two proms and I was only invited to one of them," McMillen says. "The one that I went to had seven people there, and everyone went to the other one I wasn’t invited to."

McMillen was invited to the prom--that's the school sponsored event. The other party was just a party, regardless of what they called it. It's understandable that McMillen should feel hurt and angry that she was left out of the other event, but obviously a lot of people were uncomfortable with her political statement about lesbianism. And, unfortunately, the more vocal and in-your-face homosexuals get about their sexuality, the more they will be subjected to such passive-aggressive tactics.

Mean Girls?

Recently, a friend of mine became aware of the suicide of a teenage girl in Massachusetts, ostensibly because of bullying by "mean girls." The girl, Phoebe Prince, had moved to the United States from Ireland, and evidently, she had been the vicitm of bullying before "because she was pretty and other students were jealous of her."

The case has become something of a sensation, with columns and opinion pieces both here and across the pond, most tut-tutting that administrators and teachers should have "done" something. But what, precisely? Followed Phoebe from class to class, to and from home, on every date (it seems she had a few)? Should they have read every text, every comment on MySpace and Facebook? And is this, as some are saying, an epidemic.

Sorry, ladies, but the answer is no.

The National Crime Victimization Survey, a detailed annual survey of more than 40,000 Americans by the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, is considered the most reliable measure of crime because it includes offenses not reported to the police. From 1993 through 2007, the survey reported significant declines in rates of victimization of girls, including all violent crime (down 57 percent), serious and misdemeanor assaults (down 53 percent), robbery (down 83 percent) and sex offenses (down 67 percent).

Girls aren't more violent. They just aren't. Why do girls like Phoebe Prince commit suicide? It's probably a mixture of the bullying and Phoebe's reaction to the bullying. Personally, I blame the 24/7 contact that modern teens have. When I was a teenager back in the Stone Age, the problem with bullies at school stayed at school. When you went home, you didn't have to deal with them anymore because they weren't likely to be calling you to harass you (unless it was a prank phone call, of course).

There have always been bullies. The way children are expected to deal with them has changed. Perhaps some of the problem is based on the way we expect children to handle taunting and teasing. Perhaps we don't prepare our children as well to deal with such things. Or maybe the teasing and taunting is just meaner. Regardless of the reason, mean girls aren't more violent than they were in previous generations. But don't expect the myth of the mean girl to go away any time soon.

Pandagon Watch: The Unbelievably Stupid Jesse Taylor Editon

God bless Chuck Serio for monitoring Pandagon for me (since Amanda Marcotte not only doesn't want me commenting on her site; she blocked my IP address so I can't even see it), because without him, we wouldn't get to see the naked stupidity and unbelievable callousness of jerks like Jesse Taylor.

Apparently, Jesse's wound up because Tim Tebow is making a commercial with a pro-life message, and the commercial will air during the Super Bowl.

The former Florida quarterback and his mother will appear in a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl next month. The Christian group Focus on the Family says the Tebows will share a personal story centering on the theme “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life.”

The group isn’t releasing details, but the commercial is likely to be an anti-abortion message chronicling Pam Tebow’s 1987 pregnancy. After getting sick during a mission trip to the Philippines, she ignored a recommendation by doctors to abort her fifth child and gave birth to Tim.

Jesse's enraged that the football star and his mother actually think not killing your babies is a good thing! Can you imagine?! The doctors told this woman she would die if she had the baby...and she selfishly didn't die but gave birth to a healthy baby who then went on to do wonderful things and have a great life! How utterly selfish of her!

Jesse's upset that Pam and Bob Tebow (a) didn't do what the doctors told them to do and (b) actually found a doctor who agreed to care for her so she wouldn't die (that selfish bitch!) and that the baby wouldn't die (that more selfish bitch!)

What this teaches us is that abortion is evil, so long as you have around the clock medical care and are lucky enough to defy the odds, not die and not have your baby come out stillborn. That’s the major problem with us pro-choicers: we keep forcing women to make hard moral choices like “Do I want to chance my own death?” rather than just telling them to suck it up and face it like a man. Well, if a man was about to potentially pass a lump of dead biological matter through their nonexistent vaginas and potentially die in the process.

Yeah, Jesse. That's the message. It couldn't be a message more along the lines of, Lots of people will pressure a pregnant woman to do what they've decided is the best thing for her and kill her baby, because making her own choice--which is what they spend so much time telling us they are for--is evil. These people always support a woman choosing to kill her own child for any reason whatsoever. But risking one's life for one's children is just plain stupid, vile and, yes, morally wrong.
Here's Jesse's flippant response to my argument:

Pam Tebow made a decision based on her circumstances. She chose to take a risk, and it worked out. Good for her, she should have had that choice. But there’s a rare breed of woman, called “most of them”, who might not have an all-day, every-day doctor on call, or who might be in more danger than Pam Tebow, or who make a different calculation and don’t want to run the risk of being the dead mother of a dead baby. Fie on their monstrous asses, though. Fie!

See, the problem isn't that Pam Tebow defied her doctor, risked her life, and loved her child more than herself. It's that she and her husband sought and found medical care to help her. Oh, and she didn't die like she should have.

But wait, there's more! Most people won't have famous and athletic children, and you won't know anyway, so it's ok to kill your babies (not just the ones that are medically risky but the ones you decide you don't want just cuz).

There’s also the teensy problem of the presumption that every woman having an abortion is somehow ending the life of Football Jesus. You will never know who 99.99% of people in this world are. You won’t read the novels they don’t write, you won’t listen to the music they don’t produce. This is not to say that human life isn’t valuable. This is to say that if your case against abortion is that your future child could be a one in a several hundred million talent, you need a better case.

Of course, Tim Tebow is about to fail miserably in the NFL like most of the rest of us six billion-plus schmucks would, so maybe this is a better ad than I thought...

I'm not surprised in the least that Jesse Taylor put together such an outrageously insensitve and stupid post. Like Amanda, women having abortions to prove that they have a "choice" is far more important than women actually making principled choices that have longer term consequences. So-called pro-choicers like Jesse and Amanda let the mask slip every time they write things like this, because it shows that they don't support women's choices; they only support women having abortions. Because choosing to have medically risky babies or financially risky babies or life-altering, career-changing babies is just plain stupid or, at best, simply unnecessary risky behavior.

This Will Make Your Child Straight

Apparently, this phone will make your child straight. At least,
that seems to be the complaint here.

Sociological Images has a post up featuring this cell phone for children which has big buttons representing parental speed dials. Assuming, of course, that all children not only have two parents, but that they're of opposite sexes as well. Heteronormativity is everywhere, but it's the everyday small things that can be most insidious.

Damn those rightwing phone providers!

Obamacare and Maternity Health: What's Missing...

...from this article?

Perhaps the biggest loss for women's health reform is that with all the drama over abortion, maternity care has remained a huge blindspot — and a costly one, at that.

The US spent $86 billion on maternity care in 2006 and another $26 billion caring for babies born preterm, now also at a record high of 12 percent. Prematurity is a leading cause of infant death, yet the majority of premies are induced or surgically delivered too early. This over-medicalisation means that childbirth costs Americans more than twice per capita what other countries with better outcomes spend. Medicaid picks up nearly half the bill in the US. If we gave just a little attention to improving care, we could literally save billions.

"Improve quality and reduce costs" — this has been Obama's mantra for health reform. How is it that instead of addressing real threats to women's and babies' health, "reform" has led us toward rolling back abortion access? Advocacy groups have been defending "abortion rights" and, to a lesser extent, "birthing rights," but it's possible that such a single-issue focus has helped to marginalise. To what other bodily system or medical procedure do we attribute rights? We don't have endocrine rights or MRI rights; men don't have testicular rights or Viagra rights. Rights belong to human beings. We have rights.

Or do we? A society that would force a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy would also force her to have major abdominal surgery. Women won't get real health reform until we reform this fundamental lack of respect for women. The bus stops here.

The author, an abortion supporter, notes that women's health care is about far more than abortion, even though that one procedure sucks all the oxygen out of any conversation. She then goes on to discuss the difficulty many women face trying to have a Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC).

The Vbac ban is only a subset of a much larger problem. Decades of research tell us that optimal maternity care is something very different from what most American women receive. Optimal care means that the physiological birth process is supported with minimal intervention: labour begins spontaneously, women are free to move around and push in upright positions, and providers avoid surgical intervention unless absolutely necessary.

Meanwhile, the majority of labouring women are confined to hospital beds, strapped to mandatory but ineffective fetal monitors, induced or sped up with artificial hormones, and consequently experiencing unnecessary pelvic trauma and the highest cesarean section rate on record, at 32 percent (10-15 percent is considered the maximum we would expect for health reasons). If you question whether this has anything to do with women's bodily integrity, talk to a woman who's had an infected caesarian scar or an episiotomy that tore into her perineum.

But why do women face so many roadblocks to birth the way they want? The author doesn't address it, but the answer is simple: money and liability. Sites like this one help the prospective plaintiff look for a John Edwards-style ambulance chaser to help them get their jackpot justice. This forces doctors, hospitals and insurers to go to greater lengths to thwart lawsuits. That means forcing women to have cesareans rather than allowing them to determine the risks and rewards of vaginal births, pain medication, fetal monitors and so on.

Those really concerned about protecting women's bodily autonomy should include tort reform in any health care bills. I don't expect that to happen in the Democrats' Obamacare debates.

In France, Shouting at Your Wife Could Make You a Criminal

Married couples in France could end up with criminal records for insulting each other during arguments.

People who love each other shouldn't shout, hurl epithets or threaten each other with violence. But some people--in fact, most people--do one or more of these things at some point in their relationships. In France, that could be called "psychological violence."

It would cover men who shout at their wives and women who hurl abuse at their husbands - although it was not clear last night if nagging would be viewed as breaking the law.

The law is expected to cover every kind of insult including repeated rude remarks about a partner's appearance, false allegations of infidelity and threats of physical violence.

To me, this creates a whole new can of worms for police officers to deal with in domestic violence situations. What if nagging is considered psychological violence? How many times asking your spouse to take out the garbage does it take to become psychological violence? If your spouse notes that your trousers are too tight, your belly too big, your breasts droopy, does that amount to psychological violence? Could saying truthful things like, "You've gotten a lot more gray hair in the last year or so" be considered psychological violence if the "victim" is sensitive about graying hair?

Moreover, this sort of idiotic law makes a mockery of real domestic violence, which is nothing to laugh at. It's hard to classify punching someone in the face with calling the same person a bitch. It's insulting to those who actually suffer domestic violence.

When Are Parents No Longer Financially Responsible for Their Children?

It could be as old as 23 in Virginia if a new bill passes.

Married parents don't have any legal obligation to pay for their adult children's college education or living expenses. But a bill just introduced in Virginia's legislature would require divorced parents to pay for such expenses.

HB 146 would extend child support beyond age 18 to age 23 when the "child" is attending college. Right now, child support in Virginia usually ends soon after the child reaches the age of majority.

Such provisions have been struck down in some courts and upheld in others. But such laws create an unfair burden for divorced parents that married parents do not have to bear.

As an intake lawyer for a non-profit law firm for over 6 years, I saw cases of aging divorced parents forced to pay the college bills of ungrateful offspring with whom they had an acrimonious relationship, even though they could ill-afford to do so – like a father dying of an incurable liver disease forced to pay his estranged daughter’s graduate school expenses, under a state law permitting child support to be awarded for adult children.

In my personal case, for example, such a law would require me to provide material support for one of my children but not for the others. Such a law creates an unfair advantage for children of divorce, rather than simply placing them on an equal footing.

The law should do what it can to protect children, providing those outside marriage with similar provisions as children within a marriage receive. But forcing parents to bear the financial burdens of their adult children is unfair.

Want a Greener Planet? Kill Babies!

That's China's recommendation: if you want to help the environment, institute a "one child" policy like China has, complete with forced abortions.

“The [Chinese] policy on family planning proves to be a great success,” Zhao was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying in Copenhagen, where she is one of Beijing’s delegates at the U.N. climate conference.

“It not only contributes to reduction of global emission, but also provides experiences for other countries – developing countries in particular – in their pursuit for a coordinated and sustainable development.”...

A report on Zhao’s comments in the state-run China Daily said she acknowledged that the one-child policy was not without “consequences” – but the only ones she mentioned were the skewed gender balance and a rapidly ageing society.

“I’m not saying that what we have done is 100 percent right, but I’m sure we are going in the right direction and now 1.3 billion people have benefited,” she said.

I'm sure many on the left would agree with this, given their rabid anti-child philosophies.

"How Does My (Gay Marriage, Cohabitation, Out of Wedlock Birth) Affect Your Marriage Anyway?"

Whenever conservatives defend traditional marriage, you will invariably be asked why you care about somebody else's gay marriage (or living to gether or out of wedlock birth). After all, it's not going to affect your marriage, right?

The answer, of course, is that not everything has to affect you directly to affect you in the long run. These trends can affect your children's attitudes about marriage.

Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker report back with findings that raise challenges for the future of marriage as an institution...

Regnerus and Uecker note, among other findings, that the “majority of young adults in America not only think they should explore different relationships,” including sexual intimacy, “but they believe it may be foolish and wrong not to.” This belief has much to do with their ideas regarding sexual chemistry, which emerging adults tend to think of as a form of spontaneous combustion rather than smoldering possibility. Such concepts as the preservation of independence and “being your own person” combine with the belief that marriage is about finding the perfect “soul mate” to persuade emerging adults that a period of trial-and-error with various prospects is necessary to find the best fit for the permanent oasis of marriage.

Chemistry and biology are not necessarily compatible in this course of self-fulfillment. Most of the emerging adults the researchers studied desire to have children (albeit they are seen as drags on such perceived imperatives as career selection and travel), but to postpone that particular life change until later. While the findings the researchers excerpted for the Heritage conference did not address this factor directly, the reality that female fertility declines as a woman reaches age 30, and sharply so after age 35, does not seem to have impressed itself upon emerging adults as a prime consideration. Moreover, the potential impact of having multiple premarital sexual partners for comparison’s sake on the health of a later, permanent relationship, where such comparisons may hamper sustained intimacy and happiness, is a question that can be deferred but not avoided.

The sociological result is that the age at first marriage in the United States is rapidly rising, to 26 for women and 28 for men. In addition, the out-of-wedlock birth rate is approaching 40 percent for all U.S. births and is at 60 percent for the age group that Regnerus and Uecker studied. These changes follow both experiential disappointment with marriage (children watching their parents’ struggles) and cultural devaluation and deinstitutionalization of marriage. Such phenomena as no fault divorce, cohabitation, and same-sex marriage may not be altering the marriages contracted 20 years ago, but each may be playing a role in affecting the marriages not yet contracted and the families not yet formed. We are learning more, rapidly, about premarital sexual activity, with much more to learn about the hopes and hazards for post-sexual-activity marriages.

As attitudes about sexual activity change, it affects the society as a whole. In this case, it causes a delay in marriage and delay in having children (or just not having them). You might think that's acceptable. After all, it's their "choice." But as a society, should we be encouraging a lifestyle that ensures the destruction of the traditional family?

I'm not really talking so much about gay marriage here, but more about heterosexual relationships (or lack thereof). I bring up gay marriage simply because I've frequently heard the title charge when arguing about gay marriage. But where heterosexuals are concerned, this narcissistic worldview that put career and self-actualization ahead of family can and will lead to disaster. How? Because our retirement systems, particularly Social Security and Medicare, are dependent on generations after ours footing the bill. And, more practically, we will need those younger people to help take care of the old folks. What will the world look like when young people don't have children?

Now, You Can't Even Watch Your Own Children at the Playground

...because you might be a pedophile.

This is in the U.K. Thank God we haven't gone quite this nutty here.

Parents are being banned from playing with their children in council recreation areas because they have not been vetted by police.
Mothers and fathers are being forced to watch their children from outside perimeter fences because of fears they could be paedophiles.
Watford Council was branded a 'disgrace' yesterday after excluding parents from two fenced-off adventure playgrounds unless they first undergo criminal record checks.

Children as young as five will instead be supervised by council 'play rangers' who have been cleared by the Criminal Records Bureau.

Councillors insist they are merely following Government regulations and cannot allow adults to walk around playgrounds 'unchecked'.