My Response to Friends Who Believe Supreme Court in Masterpiece Cakeshop Ruled ‘in Favor of Discrimination’

Woman Speaks from Experience about the Deceptions of the World and of the Flesh

Heartbreaking.  A memoir for our time.

On NPR’s Fresh Air, Terry Gross interviews Sarah Hepola about her book, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget.  The world convinced her that she should drink as much as men, and sleep around as much—and consider it as casual and meaningless—as men.  As the publisher’s summary on Amazon puts it,

For Sarah Hepola, alcohol was “the gasoline of all adventure.” She spent her evenings at cocktail parties and dark bars where she proudly stayed till last call. Drinking felt like freedom, part of her birthright as a strong, enlightened twenty-first-century woman.

Things You Hear on NPR: All the News That Fits the Narrative

If you think a child this young (R) should get to radically redefine gender and parenting roles, maybe you’re the one with “gender-identity confusion”

If NPR were really interested in reporting the news impartially (as opposed to conducting a social-engineering propaganda campaign), they would probably report on this interesting development, reported by Life Site News (also covered at The Federalist Papers Project):

(Short version: Maya Dillard Smith was the interim ACLU director for a whole state; she’s impeccably liberal but resigned because she cannot support the militant new transgender activism.)

The African-American woman who leads a state chapter of the ACLU has resigned, citing her own daughters’ “frightened” reaction to biological males using the women’s restroom.

Drumpf Jumps for Trans Dumps

Well, look who caved in and kowtowed to political correctness:

North Carolina should allow people to “use the bathroom they feel is appropriate,” Donald Trump said this morning of the state’s new law that bans people from using bathrooms that don’t match the sex indicated on their birth certificate.

(Emphasis added.)

‘Most people become “ready to get married” when they get married.’

Dennis Prager offers some incisive observations about our culture and growing up.

The same holds true for becoming a parent. Very few people are “ready” to become parents. They become ready . . . once they become parents. In fact, the same holds true for any difficult job. What new lawyer was “ready” to take on his or her first clients? What new teacher, policeman, firefighter is “ready”?

‘I can’t deny I was married. I can’t deny I have children . . . But I’ve moved forward now and I’ve gone back to being a child. I don’t want to be an adult right now.’

Uh…

Whether this is a true story or not, the above line may be the perfect encapsulation of our culture today.  Pathological narcissism, check.  Increasingly parodic refusal to be a grown-up, check.

Divorce: A Firsthand Account

Kate Mulgrew speaks frankly about her divorce, and what it did to her children:

We were driving across the Mojave Desert toward Mammoth Mountain. Ian was in the front seat, next to me, and Alec was in the back. It was late afternoon. I could feel the sun withdrawing; so I accelerated, hoping to make it to the mountain before dark.

The energy in the car was high, lit by a strange blue flame.

“Why isn’t Dad with us?” Ian demanded. “When is he coming up?”

Even NPR Agrees: Maybe the Culture of Fornication and the Atomization of Society Aren’t Such a Good Thing

In a pair of stories this evening, NPR wonders whether some of the secular left’s remaking of society has been such a good deal for most of us, and starts to sound almost like the church, or Mark Steyn.

From “In Twitter Rant, Tinder Blasts ‘Vanity Fair’ Article On New York Dating Culture”:

Nancy Jo Sales’ article devoted five thousand words to the modern dating culture spawned by Tinder and other similar apps. It wasn’t a pretty picture.

‘Bruce Jenner’s Transformation Is a Lose-Lose for Liberal Ideology’

Bruce ‘Caitlyn’ Jenner recently came out as “transgendered” and “a woman”.  The left wants to celebrate, but Daniel Davis at The Federalist points out that this has exposed a contradiction embedded in modern liberalism:

This is a problem for the broader liberal sexual movement. It wants to celebrate transgenderism, but it cannot do so without referring to—and thus, at least tacitly affirming—gender norms. . . .

Things You Hear on NPR: Unintentionally Humorous Coverage of Women in the Military

If NPR can’t make it sound good, no one can:

It’s a recent morning out in California’s Mojave Desert, and Marine Lance Cpls. Paula Pineda and Julia Carroll are struggling to pick up and maneuver Carl. He’s a 220-pound dummy, and a stand-in for a wounded Marine.

Carroll’s knees buckle for a moment, but as a dusty wind picks up, the two women pull Carl off their light armored vehicle. They carry him to safety, careful not to let his head drag on the rocky ground.

So that’s something!

What Women Want

No kidding, these and only these two things came in the mail today:

(1)  Current issue of National Review.  Cover story: “Jailhouse Feminism: What the raging gets right”, Mary Eberstadt.  Excerpt:

Yet listening in on some of the conversation today suggests an explanation other than simple venality. Something else is up out there making female trash talk all the rage — something unexpected, poignant, and, at the same time, awful to behold. It’s the language of bondage and captivity, told by prisoners of the sexual revolution.

‘To a Jeweler’

Found in an old Mad Magazine (1971, No. 147):

Upside-down

Overheard at work (quoting from memory):

Woman 1 (recalling when she found out she was pregnant):  I told her, I can’t marry this guy—there’s no way.  And she said, That’s OK.  I’m so glad she didn’t say, Then why were you having sex with him?

. . .

Woman 2:  You don’t have to have sex with someone just because you’re married to him.

Feminism = Liberalism?

Damon Linker at The Week asks, “Is ‘feminism’ just another word for ‘liberalism’?”  What do you think?

He (mostly) sounds like a liberal, for whatever it’s worth—e.g., he states without qualification, “Women continue to be paid less than men for the same work,” which we know either isn’t true or isn’t known—but even he is struck by the implicit tension between different “waves” of feminist doctrine.

Is this politically savvy anti-abortion woman an anti-feminist? Or a feminist role model?

Maggie Gallagher on Marriage: Keep Fighting

Maggie Gallagher reflects on the culture war and recent Supreme Court decisions in an interview with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez.

Marriage, after gay marriage, is an under-defined commitment to love and caretaking, whose public character and status is newly uncertain. Why love? Why sex? Why just two? What does this have to do with parenting? What other relationships have an equal right to be counted as marriage?

Culture of Death

Mark Steyn reflects on “abortion” “doctor” Kermit Gosnell’s grisly murder business, and how differently the mainstream news media treat its death toll from, say, those of the Jared Loughner and Adam Lanza shootings.

Gosnell’s murderous regime in Philadelphia reflects on him. The case’s all but total absence from the public discourse reflects on America . . . .

Exploitation of Women at the University of Cincinnati, Courtesy of—You

Another example of the unintentional ironies of feminism:  Students at the University of Cincinnati are going to protest the objectification of women (you know, treating women as if they were nothing more than a collection of sexual body parts) by displaying “12 billboard-sized photographs” of female genitalia on a green in the middle of campus this Thursday.

UPDATE (March 4th, 2013):  A reader has pointed out to me that the event link below now actually shows one of these explicit pictures, which was not the case when I first linked to it.  Please be warned and do not click on that link unless you are willing to have that picture on your screen.  (I would remove the link entirely for obscenity, but since it’s what we’re discussing, I don’t think I should make it more difficult to find the proponents’ explanation of their point of view, even though they are editing it and making it more vulgar post facto.)  I have added another warning below.  I apologize to anyone who was inadvertently exposed to the picture between when I posted the link and when it was pointed out to me that the picture had been changed.

Quick Thoughts on the Superbowl

I watched it (people at my church invited me to their Superbowl party).  I thought it was an exciting game, and I don’t even watch football!  The Baltimore Ravens ran up a seemingly insurmountable lead in the first half; the San Francisco 49ers made an impressive effort and almost caught up in the second half, but ultimately were unsuccessful.

Obama Campaign Jokes that Voting Is Like Losing Your Virginity, Sneers at Remaining a Virgin until Marriage

As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.

In case there was any doubt about whether the Democrats are the party of the culture of fornication, this ad comes from the Obama campaign—not some conservative parody*, not some independent liberal group; barackobama.com:

Recommended

A few interesting readings I’ve run across recently:

1.

Via Rush Limbaugh, John Kass responds to President Obama’s recent comments with a tribute to his hard-working father, and the rest of his family, who ran a small business.

(President Obama said last Friday, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.”  That’s not taken out of context; on the contrary, in context, it sounds even worse.  Don’t take my word for it; read as much of the context as you’d like.)

2.

Project Veritas, run by James O’Keefe, appears to have caught union bosses on video agreeing to help get government money (that’s your money) to pay people to dig holes and fill them back in: