[National Review Online, May 9, 2003]
Got big plans for Mother's Day? Candy and flowers, hugs and kisses? Maybe snapping some heartwarming photos of Grandma with the multiple generations of progeny gathered all around?
Boy, are you out of it. Didn't you know that playing with grandchildren is something women do just to keep themselves from thinking about how they've wasted their lives?
[The American Conservative, April 21, 2003]
Feminist Fantasies, by Phyllis Schlafly, Spence Publishing, 262 pages
Not every fifty-something mother of six decides to go to law school; not every one who does graduates near the top of her class. Not every woman juggles these high-octane pursuits with a syndicated column and an uphill battle against the Equal Rights Amendment. But then again, not every woman is Phyllis Schlafly. You can hear three decades of bruised feminists breathing “Amen.”
[Touchstone, November 2002 — expanded version of “Free Love Didn’t Come Cheap”]
In the middle of the room there was a woodburning stove. The small iron door was open on this chilly day, and the red flames could be seen leaping within as if in time to music. For there was music, too, a marching song, and the little girls who circled the stove marched around it in time. The girls were not happy.
Each girl was holding in her arms her favorite doll. These were pretty dolls with painted faces, who usually wore fancy clothes reflecting current fashion. But today the clothes had been left in a pile, and the wax figurines were exposed, hard and bare. One by one, each girl marched up to the open door of the stove. One by one, each girl threw her doll into the “angry-looking flames.”
[National Review Online, September 20, 2002]
Let’s Have More Teen Pregnancy
True Love Waits. Wait Training. Worth Waiting For. The slogans of teen abstinence programs reveal a basic fact of human nature: teens, sex, and waiting aren’t a natural combination.
Over the last fifty years the wait has gotten longer. In 1950, the average first-time bride was just over 20; in 1998 she was five years older, and her husband was pushing 27. If that June groom had launched into puberty at 12, he’d been waiting more than half his life.
If he *had* been waiting, that is.
[Unpublished, June 2000]
MEMO
To: DavidFrom: Mom & Dad, Inc.Re: Offspring
Congratulations! Mom & Dad, Inc., are pleased to hear that you and Marcella have had a baby. Good work. Though a new baby is a demanding project (for further reference, see top end, bottom end, intermediate regions, etc.) we anticipate that this investment of time and effort will be as rewarding to you as similar endeavors have been to us (see family scrapbooks).
While the project has been labor-intensive so far, with Marcella even pulling a couple of all-nighters there at the end,
[Beliefnet, April 3, 2000]A while back I was invited to a strategy meeting to combat “the gay agenda.” I went in hopes of getting a better understanding of what my friends see the threat to be. As a committed Orthodox Christian I affirm my Church’s teaching that sex outside heterosexual marriage delays progress in union with Christ. Of course, I don’t expect people outside my faith to agree with that, but I’d welcome a chance to display this beautiful faith in its entirety, not distracted by that one guideline. Even for us Orthodox this is a private matter, between a person and his or her spiritual director. Why did my friends think it necessary to organize a public response? I wondered what they saw that I didn’t.
[Christianity Today, April 3, 2000]
What do you think about homosexuality? Why do you think it?
Whatever your answer, you’re probably in there: “What Christians Think about Homosexuality: Six Representative Viewpoints.” In his book, Larry Holben presents six different ways that Christians look at the homosexual condition, and critiques each from the point of view of the others. It’s the perfect volume for people trying to understand what others believe.
[Touchstone, Summer 1994]
When I joined the college newspaper as a shy freshman many years ago, the editor gave me my first assignment: “Find out what’s all this stuff about women’s lib.” I was baffled as to how to do that; reports of feminism (which was then usually called “women’s lib”) were just beginning to titillate the public, just beginning to show up in Johnny Carson jokes about “bra-burners.” Was it possible to dig up any local “libbers”? My editor had a suggestion: go to the Student Union and have them announce over the loudspeaker, “Anyone representing the women’s liberation movement, please come to the information desk.”
[Religion News Service, January 23, 1996]
It’s not every day you get to see a photo of a woman folding a man up and pushing him into a suitcase. But there she is: standing outside a compact car, shoving an amiable-looking fellow in a rugby shirt into a carrying case.
Make that a “#4858944 Zippered Nylon Carrying Tote.” Yes, this is Safe-T-Man, the inflatable bodyguard, “a life-size, simulated male that appears to be 180 lbs. and 6 ft. tall.”
[Adapted from Real Choices, Conciliar Press, 1997]
Glance around any room where people are gathered and a curious pattern emerges: they tend to be in pairs. At a church, a concert, a movie theater, a male head is usually near a female head of roughly the same age. Other creatures gather in herds or flocks, or peel off as solitary loners, but humans prefer the couple bond. They gravitate toward it naturally; it’s how they seem to want to go through life. Why?
