5/24/2010 – Jennifer Marshall –
It’s hard to imagine the unemployment rate rising steeply for decades without public outcry. But that’s exactly what’s happened in the case of another significant indicator: the unwed birth rate.
Hardly anyone noticed this spring when new data showed 40% of all births are to unmarried mothers. That’s way up from 7% in the mid-1960s, when a young White House appointee named Daniel Patrick Moynihan tried to sound the alarm. [Read more…]
Townhall | by Janice Shaw Crouse | 3/9/2010
March 9, 2010, is the first day that same-sex couples in District of Columbia (D.C.) will be able to have legal marriage ceremonies. More than 100 couples — some coming from nearby states — have licenses for ceremonies. So-called same-sex “marriages” are legal in five other states — Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont — where the words “bride and groom” are replaced with the names of the individuals, who are each called “spouse” or “Person A” and “Person B.”
Those who oppose same-sex “marriage” are called by derogatory labels: bigot, narrow-minded, hate-filled among the nicest. Such name-calling obscures the very real problems associated with watering down and denigrating traditional marriage. [Read more…]
AOI | Feb. 5, 2010
Russian Orthodox Church leaders called on Christians on Thursday to be firm in defending traditional marriage and lamented the family crisis in the country.
According to some estimates, over half of the marriages in Russia end in divorce. Women in the 140-million-strong country undergo some 1.5 million abortions annually.“We, Christians of different denominations, should profess the inviolability of the evangelic norms on the holy matrimony between man and woman,” Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia said in a welcome message to participants of an inter-Christian forum for former Soviet republics held in Moscow. [Read more…]
Touchstone | by Patrick F. Fagan | Jan. 5, 2010
The Rising Polyamorous Culture Is Out to Get Your Children
The culture of the traditional family is now in intense competition with a very different culture. The defining difference between the two is the sexual ideal each embraces. The traditional family of Western civilization is based on lifelong monogamy. The competing culture is “polyamorous,” normally a serial polygamy, but also increasingly polymorphous in its different sexual expressions. [Read more…]
Touchstone Magazine | by Mark T. Mitchell | September 2009
“Are you ever afraid that homeschooling your kids will make them, um, oddballs?” We were staring into the campfire. The kids had all been tucked more or less comfortably into their sleeping bags, and we parents were savoring the opportunity to talk. With the cool night crowding us closer to the fire, the conversation was lively, though tinged by a reflective mood.
As anyone who is the parent of small children will know, the conversation eventually turned to kids. Soon we were talking about how to raise godly children in a culture that, in many ways, seems intent on undermining their faith. And not only their faith. Many of today’s cultural forces create impediments to a sound education as well as a solid faith. These must be resisted. But that persistent question remains. [Read more…]
AOCA | Fr. Kevin Scherer | Summer 2009
“Keeping Our College Students Connected to the Church” is a tagline for Orthodox Christian Fellowship (OCF). You’ll find it throughout our literature and even on our stationery. It says concisely what we believe to be our primary mission. I’ve spent hours thinking about it, talking about it, and wrestling with it. To be honest, I think it needs some unpacking, some clarification.
When I see the word “keeping,” I wonder whether some people unconsciously expect OCF to handcuff students to the church pew—because we know what’s best for them! The word “keeping” conveys the idea of preservation. The question is: What are we preserving? It’s helpful, I think, to reflect on the why, what, how, and who of keeping students connected to the Church. [Read more…]
OrthodoxyToday | Jonathan Price | June 2009
Environmental activists want us to change our lifestyle to save the planet. We must drive less, fly less, eat less meat, and take fewer baths. Green political parties and activist groups such as Greenpeace design policies to stimulate green choices, and to tax polluting ones. Bookshops are full of cheerful little guides which tell us how to reduce our carbon footprints by growing our own vegetables, using shampoo but not conditioner, and going on one long holiday instead of several sort ones.
Yet amidst all this detailed advice, these green knights remain silent on two of the most important ecological catastrophes: the explosive growth in singles, and divorce. In other words, the decline of the bourgeois family both as cultural ideal and reality. [Read more…]
Touchstone | Stephen Baskerville | February 2009
“We’re from the Government, and We’re Here to End Your Marriage.”
The decline of the family has now reached critical and truly dangerous proportions. Family breakdown touches virtually every family and every American. It is not only the major source of social instability in the Western world today but also seriously threatens civic freedom and constitutional government.
G. K. Chesterton once observed that the family serves as the principal check on government power, and he suggested that someday the family and the state would confront one another. That day has arrived. [Read more…]
BreakPoint | Allan Dobras | Jan. 7, 2009
A December issue of Newsweek featured a cover story entitled “Our Mutual Joy” that purported to offer a “religious case” for gay “marriage.” Author Lisa Miller claimed, “Opponents of gay marriage often cite Scripture. But what the Bible teaches about love argues for the other side.” Really?
It is interesting that apologists for the homosexual lifestyle typically say, on the one hand, that religious conservatives don’t really understand Scripture; if they did, they would see that there is no prohibition against homosexual love or marriage. On the other hand, they tell us the Bible is not to be trusted as a modern-day commentary when it speaks on moral issues—particularly sexuality. As Miller put it, “the Bible is a living document, powerful for more than 2000 years because its truths speak to us even as we change through history. In that light, Scriptures give us no good reason why gays and lesbians should not be married.” [Read more…]
American Thinker | Monte Kuligowski | Jan. 15, 2009
The Today Show recently featured a segment with Madelyn Fernstrom, a diet and nutrition expert, in which parents were taught how to facilitate their children, “some as young as seven, eight and nine,” who “choose meatless diets.”
Who knows whether it even occurred to the Today Show producers that in many traditional cultures kids don’t choose what to eat for dinner; many are happy just to have dinner. Regarding the people having emigrated from traditional countries to live in the States and the traditional people having been born and raised in America, the premise of the segment — that young children are free to choose to radically alter their diets — is shocking, to say the least. [Read more…]