JOE writes:

Susan conceptualizes marriage as a type of business partnership, an idea supported by contemporary terminology, in which the point of “marriage” is rather like the business goal of “maximizing shareholder value (profit).”

Since marriage is not a commercial enterprise, and there is not an actual dividend to be paid, the “value” must necessarily realize in the form of other contemporary personal concerns: “[political] equality,” “self-esteem,” “pleasure,” “autonomy,” “self-expression,” etc. In practical terms, this means a constant, never-ending contention over transactional gain: inherently selfish scorekeeping. How is this good? To what end? What is the purpose of such a “marriage,” especially one deliberately without children?  (more…)

[NOTE: This entry has been edited. Kelli Connell used a model for the photos. They were not images of herself.]

A CHICAGO photographer has eerily illustrated the narcissism of homosexuality. Kelli Connell’s exhibit of photographs, Double Life, at a prominent Chicago art gallery, juxtaposes photoshopped images of herself, portraying a relationship between seemingly two women who are really the same person.

Kelli and Kelli (the women are a projection of the artist) are depicted in bed together, in a cafe, in an amusement park, in a pool hall, in the car. Their relationship is both icy and steamy, too close for communion. 

The Catherine Edelman Gallery will be exhibiting Connell’s works in September. Catherine Edelman is a lesbian. According to the gallery, the photos are part of Connell’s exploration of identity:  (more…)

  THE DISCUSSION about a husband's role as head of the family continues in this entry. It is no accident that it has ventured into larger questions.

PENNY STARR  of CNS News reports:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is offering advice to parents and teens about sex education, including assurances that teens may “experiment” with homosexuality as part of “exploring their own sexuality,” and that masturbation should be of concern only “if a child seems preoccupied with it to the exclusion of other activities.” (more…)

THIS PREVIOUS entry looked at a piece by Washington Post advice columnist Carolyn Hax. Hax’s response to a woman who had recently received a devastating blow showed the insensitivity that lies behind modern non-judgmentalism. The woman’s husband had left her for a man. Her friends and family were showing sympathy for him, even as her husband was posting indecent ads online with his boyfriend. Hax told her to get over it and move on.

Some excellent comments were added to that entry. Jill Farris wrote:

The proper response to evil and immoral acts should be anger and revulsion. A woman who is sickened by a husband who leaves her for another man and posts sex ads is doing her children a favor by showing her emotions. It is the right thing for her to do.

I grew up in the 1960’s when my parents and all their Ivy League colleagues were divorcing their wives and acting very immorally. It was the accepted thing among everyone we knew so the children kept quiet about their deep pain and sorrow over the break -up of their families. (more…)

CAROLYN HAX, the Washington Post advice columnist, is an incarnation of modern non-judgmentalism, which decrees that when someone does something utterly outrageous in his personal life, others must accept it and say, “Well, who are we to judge?” A woman writes to Hax and tells her that her husband has left her and their children for a man and is now posting indecent ads online with his boyfriend: (more…)

  NOW THAT charges have been dropped against Dominique Strauss-Kahn  on the basis of the character of his accuser, it is inconceivable that the case be closed. Nafissatou Diallo should be prosecuted for perjury and obstructing justice.

  SEE the coverage of World Youth Day in Madrid at Tradition in Action.

THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER features this story today of a woman who joined the Marines to follow in the footsteps of her deceased boyfriend, who was killed in the Marines. One can’t help but feel for this woman’s grief and loneliness, but warriors are not made in this way. (more…)

JOEL BAKAN, a Canadian law professor, writes in The New York Times,

WHEN I sit with my two teenagers, and they are a million miles away, absorbed by the titillating roil of online social life, the addictive pull of video games and virtual worlds, as they stare endlessly at video clips and digital pictures of themselves and their friends, it feels like something is wrong.  (more…)

WHO WILL this child be someday? His parents – a black woman and an Asian man – conceived him in a contractual arrangement. His mother lives with a white woman. They have all three fulfilled their desire for parenthood, without viewing the child as a whole, as a social being.

I always wonder what the people who work in the clinics that facilitate these kinds of families are like. I can’t imagine it. Life must seem so cheap to them. (more…)

THIS STORY OF foreign students protesting their wages at a chocolate plant in Pennsylvania is truly remarkable. The students came to this country on State Department work-travel visas, known as J-1 visas, which are commonly used to provide businesses with a pool of cheap foreign labor, especially in the summer. The students’ complaints, judging from the news accounts, are two-fold. One, they wanted to make more money for less labor. (They are paid $8.35 an hour.) Two, they wanted to have a good time.

One of the students came right out and said that she was expecting Charle’s Chocolate Factory, not a real manufacturing plant.  What an outrage. No Oompa-Loompas or Willy Wonka. No Veruca Salt or Mike Teavee. According to the New York Times,

When she was offered a contract for a job at a plant with Hershey’s chocolates, she said, she was excited. “We have all seen Charlie’s chocolate factory,” she said. “We thought, ‘This is good.’ ”

The State Department grants the students visas through an agency called the Council for Educational Travel. The Council works with employers around America to find foreign students jobs, a service unavailable to Americans. There are no agencies rounding up paying jobs and summer housing for any American college students who are without employment and would like to work. (more…)

WRITING IN The Sidney Telegraph, Columnist Miranda Devine last week discussed the publicity surrounding Finance Minister Penny Wong’s lesbian partner, who is expecting a baby. Devine spoke in fairly mild terms, condemning a fatherless society and same-sex marriage. She wasn’t in the least critical of Wong herself. (more…)

MICHAEL S. writes:

I find the comments of the Marriage Project with regards to the new marriage norm very interesting. Over the pass several months I have discussed marriage with my girlfriend. In the process I expressed a desire to marry and start having children. In my mind, the next step after marriage is starting a family. (more…)