PAULA BLANCHARD wrote the following e-mail to the corporate office of J.C. Penney today to protest the hiring of the lesbian Ellen DeGeneres as the company’s official spokeswoman. See the family retailer’s response to Mrs. Blanchard below.

To J.C. Penney:

I am NOT a member of One Million Moms. I have shopped J.C. Penney for many years, however, and am very disturbed by your new spokesperson. Ellen started out by criticizing a huge customer base. In my experience, many of your customers are traditional families with traditional values. I do not appreciate having Ellen’s “Gayness” thrown in my face every time I see a J.C. Penney ad. Read More »

THIS COPY of Raphael’s Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn (1506) does not do justice to its incomparable depth and beauty. The colors are not here. But the painting is magnificent even in a lesser form.

The portrait went under many restorations and evaluations over the years before it was conclusively determined in 1927 to be the work of Raphael. It is believed to have been inspired by the Mona Lisa and the subject – the noblewoman Maddalena Doni – shows the same captivating psychological integration. Soul, intellect and affections are in perfect harmony. There is such calm watchfulness in her eyes. She is child and woman all at once.

The unicorn is a medieval symbol of purity. Thus we must conclude that a portrait of a modern woman with a unicorn in her lap would be most inappropriate.

In her Story of Painting, Sister Wendy wrote:

Raphael is one of the most acute of all portraitists, effortlessly cleaving through the external defense of his sitter, yet courteously colluding with whatever image the ego would seek to have portrayed. This duality, looking beneath the surface and yet remaining wholly respectful of the surface, gives an additional layer of meaning to all his portraits. We see, and we know things that we do not see; we are helped to encounter rather than evaluate.

IN RESPONSE to yesterday’s announcement that the Pentagon will place more women near the front lines as military police, radio operators, intelligence analysts and support staff, a reader shares her experience as a military police woman.

PAULA BLANCHARD writes:

THE organization One Million Moms is mobilizing resistance to the middle class department chains for their public approval of homosexuality. J.C. Penney’s has chosen the openly lesbian Ellen DeGeneres as its spokeswoman. And Macy’s recent catalogue featured an ad with two grooms on a wedding cake.

Ellen DeGeneres yesterday called the organization’s members “haters.”

According to a release by One Million Moms:

OMM began contacting JC Penney after the store announced that comedian Ellen Degeneres (sic) would become the company’s new spokesperson. Read More »

MIKE ADAMS has a piece at Townhall relevant to the recent discussions here about the “reproductive freedoms” of college women.  I disagree with his point that university students in America should be fighting for women’s rights in Islamic countries, but his other points about the deliberate corruption of students by Women’s Resource Centers are excellent. The piece is titled “Hannah and Her Blisters.” He writes:

Dear Concerned Grandparent:

I am so sorry to hear that your granddaughter has dropped out of school less than halfway through her course of study in English Literature at a public university supported by your tax dollars. I am especially sorry to hear that she has contracted herpes and that, just before Christmas, she spoke of ending her life. Read More »

JILL FARRIS writes:

My husband and I are Protestants. Twenty years ago, we were the proud parents of two children; a girl and a boy. Our family was “complete.” We were against abortion, involved in Right to Life and volunteering at pregnancy centers. Then we were loaned a book called The Way Home by Mary Pride, whose hard-hitting writing educated us in the history of birth control and “planned barrenhood.” To our dismay (and discomfort), we learned that the Catholic church had not stood alone against birth control for centuries. No, indeed, both Protestant and Roman Catholics had wisely understood that choosing to control the timing of pregnancy was a dangerous (and ungodly) choice and would quickly lead to the widespread acceptance of abortion.

After much heated discussion,we humbly (and, admittedly, with fear and trembling) repented of our use of birth control and told God we were willing to raise up many children if He chose to send them to us. We were blessed with six more children.

How can I describe or explain the awe and wonder we have experienced as we look at the children we could have missed? Read More »

TOM B. writes:

Thank you for your blog. My wife and I both “survived” the divorce holocaust of the seventies. We are now ten years married, and homeschooling our four children, ages 8,7,6,6.

We live in Silicon Valley, and sometimes feel like partisans in an insidious ideological war. Our life experiences made us conservative; having children compounded the effect. Read More »

JOSH F. writes:

Just imagine that at the same time those decrepit old slobs in Congress and professional sports officials RAIL INCESSANTLY about athletes using PEDs (performance enhancement drugs, particularly artificial hormones) and claiming  the poor example it sets for our children, we have “American”  universities and society at large practically shoving artificial  hormones down the throats of our daughters from the very start of  puberty well into their twenties. Our daughters are taking steroids to  overstimulate their reproductive systems in order to render their reproductive capabilities non-functioning. All the while these  “elite” stuff their faces with Viagra, Xanax, Prozac and the like –  all considered performance enhancement drugs by anyone with some intellectual honesty.

PENTAGON officials announced today – with a perfectly straight face, as if they were talking about serious military affairs instead of an immense public folly – that 14,000 combat-related positions will be formally opened to women this summer, pending approval by Congress. According to the LA Times, women will “serve in non-infantry battalion jobs, such as radio operators, intelligence analysts, medics, radar operators and tank mechanics. They could be placed together with combat forces, such as supply convoys in areas of fighting.”

The move, which makes a less formal arrangement to that effect official, was not greeted warmly by representatives of female advocacy groups. But then have these martinets ever greeted anything or anyone warmly? Imagine the burden of trying to accomplish what no country serious about defending itself has ever accomplished. No wonder they are grim. They said the Pentagon should open all combat positions to women. As is typical, they did not offer a single substantial reason why women in combat would help the military better fulfill its mission. Sure, women in the military have helped soldiers frisk women in burqas but that is no reason to open tens of thousands positions to them.

No one wants a soldier for a mother. That’s something they also never mention. Nor do they mention how the very appearance of a female soldier, however capable she may be, is one of the most depressing and demoralizing sights in the world, tangible evidence if there ever was any that the spirit of feminine nurture has been trashed.

Reader Henry McCulloch writes: Read More »

KEVIN STAY writes:

In much of the recent discussion on contraception and children, contributors mention the idea of happiness. Many today are misled down dead end paths in its pursuit.

I do not know how to better state this without sounding unduly Eastern and metaphysical, so forgive that in advance. But the beginning steps on the path to true and enduring happiness require certain realizations. First, we are in fact the children of a Creator every bit as real as you and I. Second, one of the primary goals of the Creator is that each of us receive a full measure of joy/happiness. Third, all of existence is described and governed by laws and rules. (We have at best a very limited understanding of those laws and rules.) So, given those three things how do we best go about finding real happiness? Read More »

ACCORDING to the Associated Press:

Students at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania can get the “morning-after” pill by sliding $25 into a vending machine, an idea that has drawn the attention of federal regulators and raised questions about how accessible emergency contraception should be. [emphasis added] [OH MY, QUESTIONS HAVE BEEN RAISED!!]

Read More »

THE NATIONWIDE INCREASE IN FERTILE CENSUS TRACTS

By Jesse Powell

A traditionalist or patriarchal subculture is growing throughout the United States among all religious groupings (and presumably among people more secular in orientation as well). This is what a close analysis of the 2000 Census and the 2010 Census reveals. To support this claim I look at what I will call Fertile Intact Census Tracts (FICTs). A FICT is defined as a census tract with more than 2.5 children per married couple that has children, a greater than 90% Married Parents Ratio (MPR), and more than 500 children in the census tract (all these measures are applied to the white Non-Hispanic population only). A FICT census tract has high fertility, a high proportion of intact families, and a big enough population to prove the positive indicators are not an accident but truly represent the character of the neighborhood. FICTs can be assumed to be highly religious census tracts; an upper class neighborhood might have a high MPR but it is unlikely to have a high fertility rate. A neighborhood with both intact families and a high fertility rate is a marker of religious influence.

Neighborhoods that are merely upper class are declining throughout the nation; they are declining in terms of their white child population and in terms of their white MPR. Read More »

ANOTHER READER sends proof of her failure to use contraception. Her daughter was born just over a week ago.

When contraception is widely available, when it is embraced as normal, when births are planned and scheduled, when deliberation replaces surrender, when convenience replaces hardship and struggle, every child seems like a choice, the product of human will and desire. This delusion represents immense hubris. No child is chosen. What is chosen in this face? It’s a gift too good to be true.

Read More »

LAUREN writes: 

JAMES P. writes:

Bruno claims that Catholicism is a “very harsh doctrine” because it requires that one sacrifice materialistic pleasures like buying a new car or new home or taking a vacation in order to have children. Even if one accepts the argument that the requirement to procreate and raise children is “very harsh” (though humans throughout history have somehow happily done this), what exactly is the point of belonging to a Church that makes no demands on its members? If all you want to do is what makes you happy, why belong to a Church at all? No doubt Bruno will respond that this is exactly why he does not belong to a Church. However, he appears blissfully unaware of the numerous moral and practical objections to his philosophy of selfish hedonism.

Read More »

MANY CATHOLICS encountered official outrage at church yesterday over Obama’s recent ruling that under his healthcare plan, Catholic hospitals must include coverage for contraception and abortion-inducing drugs in their health plans for employees.

As Christopher Badeaux argues at RedState, this outrage on the part of America’s bishops is in many cases highly hypocritical.

Where were the bishops and pastoral leaders when Obamacare was proposed or when Obama, a candidate who clearly supported abortion, was running for president? Better yet, where have the bishops been for years while Catholic politicians who openly supported abortion received communion, as have those who admitted to voting for them? Read More »

KIMBERLY writes: