Tag Archives: Topic: Culture

Heritage Foundation: Join us as authors Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George discuss about what marriage is, why it matters, and how to talk about it.

Robert Knight at Townhall: I want to switch gears here from politics to culture, because culture drives politics. Despite the flood of bad news, including 47 million people on food stamps amid a growing underclass, there’s a whole other America out there, swimming under the polluted media like a whale under a stormy sea. You know it’s there because a dorsal fin surfaces from time to time.

Mark Bauerlein at Public Discourse: Sneering at persons who are not social constructionists has become commonplace. Until defenders of inherent virtues, natural laws, divine beings, and other things that transcend social reality learn to overcome this initial set-up, they will be forever on the defensive.

Gary Bauer at Human Events: More and more political analysts and weak-kneed politicians are advising the historically pro-life Republican Party to abandon its pro-life stance for political gain. My first response is that if you cannot trust a party on the value of defending human life, how can you trust it on issues like marginal tax rates. Still, consider this: A common but bogus attack on the GOP is that it rejects science. Notice I said bogus. Isn’t it ironic that just as science is proving the humanity of the unborn child some in the party of Lincoln are tempted to abandon the most defenseless Americans of all?

Christian Concern: Girlguiding UK are consulting the public on whether the Girlguiding Promise should be changed to “make it more meaningful to girls and women.”

LifeSiteNews: The number of children living in single-parent homes has nearly doubled since 1960, according to data from the 2010 Census.

Wesley Smith at National Review: Decadence is on the march! And now, a defense of pedophilia as just another “sexual orientation” has been published in the mainstream left wing UK newspaper The Guardian. From, “Paedophilia: Bringing Dark Desires Into the Light:” . . .

Gary King at the NY Times: CONGRESS and President Obama have pushed through a relatively modest stopgap measure to avoid the “fiscal cliff,” but over the coming years, the United States will confront another huge cliff: Social Security.

San Francisco Chronicle: Facing a tidal shift among voters embracing same-sex marriage, gay Republicans are offering their party a graceful retreat. But religious conservatives warn that retreat will doom the GOP.

Guardian: Gay clergy in civil partnerships will be allowed to become bishops if they are sexually abstinent, according to new policy.

CNN: While 57.6% of incumbents, a majority of Congress, identify as Protestants, that number is lower among freshmen legislators, of whom 48.2% identify as Protestants, according to the study. Additionally, there are more unaffiliated, Unitarian, Hindu and Buddhists in the 113th Congress freshman class than in classes before.

U.S. News and World Report: Catholic and mainstream Protestant support for prayer in schools has sharply declined since the 1970s, while Evangelical support for the practice has remained steady according to a new study released Thursday.

Matthew J. Frank at Public Discourse: Yet it struck me that if denying same-sex couples the “right to marry” was such an obvious and gross injustice as to merit such energetic claims today, why had it never occurred to either of these august scholars decades ago, at the beginning or the middle of their careers?

Maggie Gallagher at Townhall: But we need, as well, a next generation of culture creators, of storytellers, with the credentials to name reality: empirical social scientists, novelists, poets, preachers and filmmakers. We need donors to invest in building the networks and communities through which such voices are born, flourish and give meaning to the lives of millions. The future belongs to those of us with enough hope to rebuild on the ashes of optimism, a new American civilization — uniting sex, love, babies, mothers and fathers in this thing called marriage.

Chicago Tribune: If anyone thought gay marriage legislation would pass easily in Illinois, the initial hiccup Wednesday in the state Senate illustrated how hard-fought the issue is likely to be every step of the way. A bill to allow same-sex marriage did not attract enough support to get a first hearing as Senate Republicans blocked an effort to allow the measure to be considered by a committee.

National Review: About 60 percent of Americans have a high-school diploma but not a degree from a four-year college. Forty-four percent of their children are born outside of marriage. This finding is the focus of “The President’s Marriage Agenda for the Forgotten Sixty Percent,” the fruit of the annual “State of Our Unions” report compiled by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and the Institute for American Values.

JDNews.com: An area church rallied outside the Onslow County Courthouse and the Onslow County School Board building this week, on a mission to put prayer back in schools.

Education News: …“socially conservative” independent faith schools – the vast majority of them Muslim – where pupils may be encouraged to cut themselves off from mainstream society.

AP: Like a handful of other countries, including Germany and Denmark, Iceland has official rules about what a baby can be named.

Our Sunday Visitor: Professor co-authors book on what the implications of redefining marriage could be on families, society

Speak Up Movement Blog: If same-sex “marriage” becomes the law of the land, then we are only fooling ourselves to believe our schools will remain enclaves of neutrality where the issue is not addressed. On the contrary, schools will undoubtedly be required to affirm such “marriages” in their health and family curriculum. Students who oppose such “marriages” on religious grounds will be labeled “intolerant” and forced to undergo “re-education” to help reform their “outdated” way of thinking to the new “normal.” This is already happening across our country.

Speak Up Movement: It is important that you as a pastor have the right information to convey to your church members about this issue. Alliance Defending Freedom has been at the forefront of these battles in courtrooms across the country and we want to ensure that you know what is happening in these significant cases so that you can take appropriate action.

Greg Baylor at the Speak Up Movement Blog: The Game of Life and Entertainment Weekly are both part of “the culture” that drives and shapes law and politics. And the shifting cultural consensus about homosexual behavior and the definition of marriage has profound consequences for the religious freedom of individuals and organizations. Threats to their freedom don’t come out of the blue; the ongoing attack on marriage didn’t start with the introduction of legislation or the filing of lawsuits designed to alter the legal definition of marriage. And the objective of these efforts is not simply to secure legal approval of homosexual conduct; it is to punish and marginalize those embrace the traditional understanding of marriage and sexual morality. As the EW writer declares, such individuals and organizations are “being shoved into a closet of [their] own.” Indeed. This means that our longstanding national commitment to religious freedom will continue to be severely tested in the coming year, as cultural trends translate into legal and political efforts to push traditional religious believers “into a closet of their own.”

LifeNews: The founder and editor of the highly-popular Drudge Report surprised pro-life advocates on twitter this morning with a tweet condemning abortion an highlighting how thousands of babies are killed on a daily basis.

CNSNews: Fifty percent of Americans now believe the country’s best years are past, according to Gallup, while 47 percent still say America’s best years are still to come.

LifeNews: A new photo of a baby reaching out of the womb and holding a doctor’s finger during a Caesarian section delivery has gone viral and is being passed around Facebook by tens of thousands of people.

Public Discourse: Any honest analysis of the Newtown tragedy must address the social problems caused by divorce, absent fathers, and the burdens of single motherhood.

Piero A. Tozzi at Turtle Bay and Beyond: International Planned Parenthood Federation’s Carmen Barroso sent around an e-mail today soliciting year-end donations. She illustrates the role IPPF plays throughout the Western Hemisphere by telling the story of Valeria, a young Argentine woman:

Salon: In a court motion, the defense claims that the state law against bestiality deprives 32-year-old Carlos Romero of his “personal liberty and autonomy when it comes to private intimate activities.” But it’s actually not quite as crazy a move as it might seem.

The Gatestone Institute: Opinion polls consistently show that growing numbers of ordinary German citizens are worried about the consequences of decades of multicultural policies, as well the emergence of a parallel legal system based on Islamic Sharia law.

Rory Gray at Speak Up Movement: Sometimes examining our neighbors helps us to gain a clearer view of ourselves. Do we, as Americans, want a government that defines equality, demands a certain level of uniformity in all walks of life, and enforces a secular, lowest-common-denominator code of morality to which all must pledge allegiance? Or do we still believe that the primary purpose of government is to protect individual liberty, that religious freedom is a fundamental God-given right, and that the family has the right and responsibility to train children in the way they should go? (Proverbs 22:6). Alliance Defending Freedom’s primary purpose is to keep the flame of liberty alive. And we invite you to join us in preserving religious freedom in America before we have a “National Observatory of Secularism” of our own.

Molly Worthen at the New York Times: Alan Sears, president of the legal advocacy organization Alliance Defending Freedom, sees an unprecedented threat to religious liberty in the harsh fines facing employers who refuse to cover contraception in their insurance programs. “It is a death penalty. It is a radical change,” he told me. “It’s one thing when you’re debating about public space, but it’s another when you say, if you don’t surrender your conscience, you’re out of business.” . . . These legal efforts are less an attempt to redefine religious liberty than a campaign to preserve Christians’ historic right to police the boundary between secular principles and religious beliefs. Only now that conservative Christians have less control over organs of public power, they cannot rely on the political process. Now that the “nones” are declaring themselves, and more Americans — including many Christians — see birth control as a medical necessity rather than a sin, Mr. Sears sees a stark course of action for the Catholic and evangelical business owners he represents: “Litigation is all that our clients have.” Their problem, however, is more fundamental than legal precedent. Their problem is that America’s Christian consensus is fragmenting. We are left groping for something far messier: an evolving, this-worldly, compromise.

One News Now: Alliance Defending Freedom’s Matt Sharp points out that God is being left out as a solution in the debates about what to do to protect children in schools from another massacre like the one in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14th. But that, he says, is exactly the opposite of what this country needs. “We really need to call out for everyone to kind of return to God in times like this, to realize that He is the true source of our strength, our source that descends through so many scriptures — from the psalmist about God is our refuge and the cleft in the rock that hides us in times like this Psalm 18:2; 46:1),” the legal counsel cites.

Patheos: One of my intentions for Philosophical Fragments — and for the Evangelical Channel at Patheos in general — is to bring together some of the finest examples of evangelical thought leaders engaging the issues in the public square. So I’ve been honored to host excellent guest posts recently from Peter Wehner of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Jennifer Marshall of the Heritage Foundation, Josh Good of the American Enterprise Institute, Greg Scott of the Alliance Defending Freedom, Andrew Marin of the Marin Foundation, and famed apologist Ravi Zacharias.

When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defence of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man.

Spiegel Online: Archeologists are studying the ruins of a buried Christian empire in the highlands of Yemen. The sites have sparked a number of questions about the early history of Islam. Was there once a church in Mecca?

Bloomberg: Three and a half years after the worst recession since the Great Depression, the earnings and employment gap between those in the under-35 population and their parents and grandparents threatens to unravel the American dream of each generation doing better than the last. The nation’s younger workers have benefited least from an economic recovery that has been the most uneven in recent history.

First Things: The FamilyScholars blog is hosting a symposium on marriage this week to mark the release of “The President’s Marriage Agenda for the Forgotten Sixty Percent” (PDF here), a new report from the National Marriage Project and the Institute for American Values. The “sixty percent” in the title refers to the roughly three in five Americans who have graduated from high school but not from college—a group whose members are rapidly becoming less likely to marry and more likely to have children outside of marriage, with all the disadvantages those trends imply.

Public Discourse: Young adult men’s support for redefining marriage may not be entirely the product of ideals about expansive freedoms, rights, liberties, and fairness. It may be, in part, a byproduct of regular exposure to diverse and graphic sex acts.

Boston Globe: A New Hampshire judge has ruled that a high school girl can continue to play on the boys’ varsity ice hockey team even though her school has formed a girls’ team.

Christian Concern: A report commissioned by the BBC has suggested that its children’s programmes should include more lesbian, homosexual and bisexual people.

Kathleen Parker at the Washington Post: “Marriage is not merely a private arrangement; it is also a complex social institution. Marriage fosters small cooperative unions — also known as stable families — that enable children to thrive, shore up communities, and help family members to succeed during good times and to weather the bad times. Researchers are finding that the disappearance of marriage in Middle America is tracking with the disappearance of the middle class in the same communities, a change that strikes at the very heart of the American Dream.”

John S. Dickerson at the NY Times: I believe the cultural backlash against evangelical Christianity has less to do with our views — many observant Muslims and Jews, for example, also view homosexual sex as wrong, while Catholics have been at the vanguard of the movement to protect the lives of the unborn — and more to do with our posture. The Scripture calls us “aliens and exiles” (1 Peter 2:11), but American evangelicals have not acted with the humility and homesickness of aliens. The proper response to our sexualized and hedonistic culture is not to chastise, but to “conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God” (1 Peter 2:12).

Toledo Blade: The latest Ohio poll suggested 45 percent of registered voters support gay marriage and 47 percent oppose it. The results, however, suggest a softening of Ohioans’ position on the issue.

David Limbaugh at Human Events: With absolutely no intention of offending adherents of any other faiths, I firmly believe that no other worldview or religion comes close to describing and providing an answer for the human condition and for the evil, pain and suffering in the world. As loving beings, we will never be able to process fully and bear such indescribable pain as the Sandy Hook parents are now experiencing. But the God of the Cross provides us authentic hope and refuge, because unlike any other gods ever contemplated by the mind of man, the God of the Bible suffers right along with us and, because of His superior capacity for love, to a degree immeasurably greater than even we experience.

Inside Higher Ed: The six-month lifespan of Queer at Patrick Henry College, a blog focusing on the struggles of gay students at the evangelical Christian college in Virginia, has been turbulent, to say the least.

Gatestone Institute: The census data shows that the number of Christians in England and Wales declined by 11% (4.1 million) during the past decade, from 37.3 million in 2001 to 33.2 million in 2011. During the same period, the Muslim population in England and Wales increased by 80% (1.2 million), from 1.5 million in 2001 to 2.7 million in 2011, making it the second-largest religion in Britain.

Christian Post: Christian radio talk show host Frank Pastore, who was described by his colleagues and friends as “larger than life,” died Monday, one month after a motorcycle accident on a Southern California freeway left him in a coma. He was 55. In perhaps prophetic words on the same night as the accident, the former Major League Baseball pitcher had talked about a strikingly similar scenario in which he said his soul would leave his body.

CNSNews: Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.) said Tuesday, “I do think the respect for life is something that we were built on certainly in our country and that means – obviously different things to different people.”

Washington Times: The disappearance of marriage in “middle America” is tracking with the disappearance of the middle class in the same communities, and “strikes at the very heart of the American Dream,” scholars Elizabeth Marquardt, David Blankenhorn, Robert I. Lerman, Linda Malone-Colon and W. Bradford Wilcox said in a paper released Sunday. They offer 10 recommendations to President Obama and other policymakers to renew a marriage culture.

Vancouver Sun: Whatever the causes, the loss of church men and boys has caused a dramatic rise in the proportion of female members – and female clergy – in Canada’s liberal-to-moderate denominations. And it’s causing mixed feelings.

Ed News: This year religious schools accounted for six out of 10 primaries where every pupil reached the expected standard for English and maths at the age of 11.

AP: Philippine legislators passed a landmark bill Monday that would provide government funding for contraceptives and sexuality classes in schools despite strong opposition by the dominant Roman Catholic Church and its followers, some of whom threatened to ask the Supreme Court to block the legislation.

Interview with Mr Piero Tozzim of Defending Freedom Alliance, a defender of life . . . There is something truly ironic and downright perverse that the United States is currently promoting the civilization of death, not only in their area, but also abroad. Meanwhile, in the post-communist countries are reborn movements for the defense of life and the renewal of Christian identity – says Mr Piero Tozzi, American lawyer and defender of life . . .

Mark Davis at Townhall: It is about acceptance. The agenda on this issue has less to do with the real-world lives of gay married couples than with the desire to have homosexuality recognized as just another way to be, like red-haired or left-handed.

Ryan T. Anderson at Ricochet: Redefining marriage would abandon the norm of male-female sexual complementarity as an essential characteristic of marriage. Making that optional would also make other essential characteristics—like monogamy, exclusivity and permanency—optional, as my co-authors and I argue in our new book, What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense.

Washington Post: The White House and the nation’s most prominent charities are embroiled in a tense, behind-the-scenes debate over President Obama’s push to scale back the nearly century-old tax deduction on donations that the charities say is crucial for their financial health.

Reuters on Yahoo News: The number of Christians in England and Wales declined by 13 percent over the past decade, while the non-religious population grew from 15 to 25 percent, the most recent national census has revealed.

San Diego Gay and Lesbian News: Elizabeth L. Hillman, a respected scholar in military law and history who was part of the fight to overturn “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” has been appointed Academic Dean at the University of California Hastings College of the Law.

Politico: “I’m personally grateful to Speaker [John] Boehner for being willing to defend the law, but it’s clear GOP elites don’t want to talk about it and want to keep it as quiet as possible,” said Maggie Gallagher, a founder of the National Organization for Marriage and a fellow at the conservative American Principles Project. “That’s so obvious, I don’t see any point in pretending otherwise.”

LifeSiteNews: The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) has launched a federal investigation over a conversation between a Huntsville JROTC instructor and a lesbian student about the Bible and homosexuality.

Evan Wolfson at the NY Times: Now here we are, with the Supreme Court heading toward decisions on both the state and federal marriage discrimination that same-sex couples endure. And if we do our part over the next months, building on the irrefutable momentum of 2011 and 2012, we can give the justices confidence that when they stand on the right side of history, their rulings will not only stand the test of time, but be true to where the American people already are.

Nathan Cherry at Engage Family Minute: Sure, there is a great chance that legalizing same-sex “marriage” won’t affect you. But I can promise you that your kids and grandkids will be affected each and every day if it is legalized. Is that what you want your legacy to be?

AP: Some 59 percent of residents said they were Christian, compared with 72 percent in 2001. A quarter said they had no religion, up from 15 percent a decade earlier.

Ryan Anderson at Ricochet: Same-sex relationships weren’t on anyone’s radar. (It may be hard to remember, but until just recently same-sex marriage was inconceivable to almost everyone.) The marriage movement leaders’ concern, like that of today’s leading conservative scholars and activists, was much broader . . . The question of whether to redefine marriage to include same-sex relationships didn’t take center stage until 2003, when the Massachusetts Supreme Court claimed to find a constitutional right to it.

Ryan T. Anderson and Andrew T. Walker at National Review: Regardless of what Will might imagine, support for marriage isn’t a relic of the past. A careful look at the polls reveals complex and dynamic trends. But how those polls change over time will depend on human choice, not blind historical forces. The right question is not what will happen, but what we should do. Would George Will give up market economies if polls showed an “emerging consensus” in favor of socialism? We think not.

AP: Merck’s charitable foundation has stopped giving money to the Boy Scouts of America.

PressTV.com: Just as days for the Pakistan’ general elections are getting nearer, people in Pakistan are struggling for an Islamic system in their country, and in the northwest, tens of thousands of them gathered to hold a ‘Long Live Islam’ conference.

Mona Charen at National Review: It in’t a matter of urgent national importance when non-parents choose to live together without benefit of clergy (I love the old-fashioned expression). When children come into the picture, it is. There is simply no controversy about the data: Two-parent married families are best for children — and best for society.

Stephen M. Krason at Crisis Magazine: How can one talk about changing the libertarian divorce laws—much less the divorce culture—in the Age of Obama, when the national administration and the ruling political party is pushing the most permissive sexual and family agenda in American history? There is no place to work from but the ground up, and we should always keep in mind that the bright future of new historical ages is often fashioned in the throes of a troubled and declining socio-cultural era.

AP: Mormon leaders made their most significant outreach yet to gays and lesbians, unveiling a new website Thursday that encourages church members to be more compassionate in discussions about homosexuality.

Philip Cohen at The Atlantic: ”As the role of the extended family, religious rules, and other institutional pressures declines,” he wrote, “choices are increasingly free to be matters of taste.” Mary—both a traditional American name and a symbol religious Christianity—embodies this trend.

AP: Walking the catwalk in a Brazilian bikini is a nerve-racking experience for even the most seasoned of models, but for Felipa Tavares it’s nothing short of terrifying. The 6-foot-tall Tavares is among Brazil’s small but growing ranks of transgender models – leggy, high-cheekboned sirens who were born men and are causing a splash here as well as in Paris and other international fashion capitals.

Sohrab Ahmari at Wall Street Journal: So is it still possible to pull back from the brink of America’s Europeanization? Mr. Mansfield is optimistic. “The material for recovery is there,” he says. “Ambition, for one thing. I teach at a university where all the students are ambitious. They all want to do something with their lives.” That is in contrast to students he has met in Europe, where “it was depressing to see young people with small ambitions, very cultivated and intelligent people so stunted.” He adds with a smile: “Our other main resource is the Constitution.”

Amanda Marcotte at Slate: Given the choice between two stereotypes—the passive princess whose charm and beauty brings a man to one knee or an insecure needball who nagged a reluctant man into marriage—women will pick the former every time. In order to change that, we’d have to dramatically restructure our cultural understanding of gender and romance, away from stereotypes of promiscuous men who love only reluctantly and overeager women who just want to put a ring on it.