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.

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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.

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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? (more…)

KIMBERLY writes:

IN RESPONSE to complaints by Seattle area parents that their children are being exposed to hard core porn when they walk by library computers,  Barbara Jones, director of the American Library Association’s intellectual freedom office, said last week, “Sometimes, in a library, you’re going to see information that’s going to make you uncomfortable.”

The freedom of an adult to do anything he desires is more important to our morally-stupefied elites than the freedom of a child to visit a public library and return home with his innocence intact.

According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, one mother’s ten-year-old daughter was reduced to tears and unable to sleep after viewing violent sex while walking past a library computer in use by an adult patron. The woman was told by a librarian “the library is a public space; it’s more like a bus stop than a safe haven.”

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  A READER sent this proof of her own failure to use contraception.

JOHN PURDY writes:

First let me thank you and your participants for some very fine, well-argued writing in the post “Contraception and the Culture War.”

Speaking as someone who, regrettably, was never able to have children (though not for wont of trying) I have a hunch that, as society ages, we’re going to see a lot of rather sad and despondent seniors. I, myself, will most likely die alone and have very few people at my funeral. I feel cheated out of something. I, of course, took many actions myself but rejecting marriage and family, after I had grown up a bit, was never one of them. (more…)

  I HAVE quite a few comments, many of them excellent, regarding the recent post, "Contraception and the Culture War." I will be posting them over the course of the next few hours.

KEVIN MYERS, writing in The Independent, examines the differences between women’s and men’s tennis and the injustice of awarding equal monetary prizes to female and male champions. He also ponders the extent to which women’s tennis has become a matter of sexual allure.

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  SEE the ongoing discussion in this entry of the Orthodox Jewish community of Kiryas Joel, where families are large and less than 50 percent of the working age men are employed.

  NANCY PELOSI spoke warmly yesterday of the official relationship between Planned Parenthood and the now thoroughly leftwing Girl Scouts of America. According to our top female elected leader, an organization that supports abortion, rough sex and masturbation is just fine for little girls.  Remember the dizzying hopes of the suffragettes? They foolishly argued that the entry of women into politics would make for better mothers. What a delusion. Women who believe women should lead the world are enemies of motherly love and destroyers of girlhood innocence.

 JAMES P. writes:

Aren’t cheerleaders supposed to be feminine?

It is hard to believe her claim that she has not taken steroids.

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THE Huffington Post reported something stunningly new and unexpected this week. Conservatives are stupid. Surprise! It’s true: “Intelligence Study Links Low I.Q. To Prejudice, Racism, Conservatism.”  

The website posted a banner photo of the Klu Klux Klan over its piece, just in case you weren’t aware that conservatives are not only stupid, but very, very mean. Unfortunately, it did not post photos of some of the countless geniuses and super smart people who have believed in what The Huffington Post would define as conservative ideas.

The article is nothing new in itself as it represents a common and intractable belief among liberals that liberalism is true because so many smart people believe in it. But the piece does take this widespread notion to possibly unprecedented extremes. The Huffington Post states:

Dr. Gordon Hodson, a professor of psychology at the university and the study’s lead author, said the finding represented evidence of a vicious cycle: People of low intelligence gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, which stress resistance to change and, in turn, prejudice, he told LiveScience. (more…)