Archives for 2009

Well, I’m pretty sure I know the answer.

Ever since Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? I’ve had a morbid fascination with dating shows. It’s kind of like the sick compulsion to eavesdrop on a couple having a fight at the next table in a restaurant, or the glee small children have when they can watch a sibling getting in trouble, except there are no innocent victims because everyone involved actually consented to going on a reality show, for crying out loud.

Anyway, the latest round got off to a rousing start last night. (I do laundry in front of pulp TV. When I’m not solving differential equations and stuff.) What’s peculiar about the show is that the “Bachelorette” in question was, a few short months ago, proclaiming her undying love for The Bachelor Jason (himself a reject from an earlier session of The B’ette, DeAnna, who was kicked to the curb by Brad … it’s like a daisy chain of moronic exhibitionists) and yet now proclaims herself ready for true love (plausible enough) and expecting to find it on TV.

The 30 men competing, for their part, signed up without even knowing who the lady in question would be. So they’re coming on this show, purporting to want to marry at the end of it, when they don’t even know who their prospective bride is.

I’ve long thought that the Harlequin-ization of our culture of relationships, in which The One will send electricity sizzling through you and provide you with emotional, sexual, intellectual, social and psychological satisfaction forever and ever, or else he’s not The One, is really harmful. Arranged marriages don’t strike me as that great either, but given the two extremes, I’d say a considered attempt to match yourself with someone of a compatible background, with shared values and goals and beliefs who wants a similar lifestyle, is more likely to lead to happiness than letting your hormones decide for you in a matter of days. Certainly you’re more likely to find lasting happiness with a kind and good person who shares the above, whom you grow to love profoundly, than with someone who has all the right pheromones but has a divergent outlook on life.

So is it kind of nice, that there are people out there willing to say “I want a long-term relationship, and finding someone who wants what I do is my goal” when they don’t even know what the other guy/girl will look like? Or are these just a bunch of fame-hounds looking for booze-fuelled hot tub action?

On second thought, don’t answer that.

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Andrea adds: Glad you added that last line, Rebecca. No answer from me then.

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Brigitte wonders: You fuel your hot tub with booze?

Apparently this ad is creating a bit of a kerfuffle. Wonder why, eh? Think it’s likely to discourage teenage sex? [warning: graphic]

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frHOZn3tpdQ]

The controversial video is the latest weapon used by a local primary care trust in the fight to reduce teen pregnancies, it said.

The clip, dubbed Teenage Kicks, was created by NHS Leicester City and features a girl giving birth on a school playing field surrounded by her peers.

It was created as part of a campaign to warn youngsters about teenage pregnancies.

The video is currently posted on video sharing sites popular with young people, including YouTube and Kontraband, and the primary care trust said it has now been viewed around 72,000 times.

Filmed in the style of a “happy-slapping” on a mobile phone, the video is designed to appeal to young people in a bid to spread the message.

It shows a gang of teens running towards a crowd of other schoolchildren.

In the middle of the jeering crowd is a girl giving labour, while another helps her.

The clip ends with the slogan: “Not what you expected?” followed by, “Being a teenage parent might not be either”.

It then refers young people to the campaign’s website, hey-babe.co.uk

So President Obama wants dialogue and compromise on abortion? This lawyer in Washington DC suggests he start “by curbing fetal pain.”

He writes:

But about 10% of all abortions – approximately 150,000 per year – occur in the second or third trimesters, when scientists are uncertain exactly when the ability to feel pain begins. Methods of abortion after the first trimester can be particularly gruesome, such as the procedure opponents call “partial-birth abortion,” which is now illegal in some circumstances under federal law. But even other, less controversial methods of abortion have been described – by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an abortion supporter – as “brutal,” involving “tearing [a fetus] apart,” and “ripping off its limbs.” Any fetus capable of feeling pain would surely suffer greatly during such dismemberment. …is it too much to ask that they not be tortured to death in a manner we would not permit to be used on a terrorist, a murderer or a dog?

A couple of problems I foresee with this. 1) President Obama had not a bit of problem with letting born babies die alone, voting against Infants Born Alive legislation more than once, I believe. If he’s unconcerned about the pain of born babies, what are the chances the pain of the unborn will be a problem? 2) Pro-abortion types go apoplectic when you draw attention to any factor that allows the public to understand that the fetus in the womb might be sentient. 3) Obama might say he wants dialogue, but in reality, there has been a dialogue going on here for decades–and any time he’s ventured into the fray it’s been to inflame the proceedings by choosing an extreme position.

In short, I’m not as charitable as this Washington lawyer. (I’m sure there’s a joke in there somewhere, one that doesn’t make me look very good.)

If such an act were introduced to protect the fetus from the pain of dismemberment, sure, I’d support it. But I’m guessing I know already who wouldn’t. (His name starts with “O” and ends with “ama”.)

I’d love to be proven wrong. But I fear that the whole topic really is above Obama’s paygrade.

A spectacularly moving piece about a woman whose son lived less than a day. This woman is amazingly brave and courageous and I can only wish that, were I to find myself in a similar situation, I would be as brave and courageous as she was. Thank you for writing, Ms. Phenix.

About that poll, which Andrea highlighted earlier, that says most Americans now call themselves pro-life, here. Personally, I find the piece irritatingly wishy-washy. I also tend to be highly suspicious of opinion polls – it’s too easy to say anything on the phone just to make the caller go away and get back to the dinner table. Maybe I’m just grumpy…

Hey, remember this story about the British 13-year-old boy and his 15-year-old girlfriend having a baby? Here’s an update:

DNA tests have revealed that a 13-year-old British boy who claimed to have fathered a child with his 15-year-old girlfriend was not the dad, according to a court judgement made public Monday.Claims that baby-faced schoolboy Alfie Patten made Chantelle Steadman pregnant when he was aged just 12 triggered national soul-searching about Britain’s high level of teenage pregnancies.

But the story, reported in February just days after the birth, sparked claims from other boys who lived nearby that they could also be the father and social workers organised a DNA test.

The results, revealed in a high court judgement last month which was only made public Monday, showed the father was 15-year-old Tyler Barker, who lived on the same housing estate as Steadman in Eastbourne in southern England.

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Véronique adds: Phew! So the dad was really 15. What a relief…

The recent discussion here about reclaiming words, the blind spot of orthodox feminists who favour all abortions except those conducted because the fetus is female, and why women are less prominent in the pro-life movement than in the pro-choice movement, are things I’ve been mulling over. One of the more powerful compulsory texts from my high school education was Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, the dramatization of Thomas More’s refusal to endorse Henry VIII’s divorce and marriage, which culminated in More’s execution. At one point More’s son-in-law suggests that More should falsely condemn a man who will contribute to More’s conviction, and More refuses, saying he would let the Devil himself go free if he had broken no laws, even though his son-in-law would rather break laws for the sake of a greater good. More asks him:

And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s, and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”

I believe that the vast majority of abortion advocates think they are on the side of right; they are acting in good faith, even if they are choosing wilfull blindness, as increasingly they must as the age of viability is pushed further and further back. Because they interpret feminism as advancing the cause of women in a zero-sum game, the movement has become increasingly anti-male and anti-child, born and unborn.
Women and men need each other. A culture that demeans and disrespects men is as toxic as one that demeans and disrespects women. And a culture that holds any human life as worthless is capable of holding all human life as worthless.

This is what feminists have done: they have cut down the forests that could be protecting them. They raze the notions that sex ought to be linked to marriage and that both parents have an inviolable responsibility to their children; they deny that sex is intrinsically linked to procreation; they reject the very idea of differences between the sexes. And then they are horrified that abortion is used to cull unwanted daughters.

Abortion isn’t the only example. A welfare recipient in Germany was told last year that if she refused a job as a prostitute in a licensed brothel her benefits would be cut off, just as they would be if she had an offer to work as a waitress or office clerk and chose instead to stay on welfare. You cannot insist that prostitutes are empowered and not victims, that hiring someone to have sex with is no different than hiring someone to cut your hair, that “women and children first” is a nasty bit of patriarchy and not noble, and then be astonished at the idea of women being coerced by the state into prostitution. Taboos and mores about sex and life protect all of us, and when we strip some people of their protection, we end up making all of us more vulnerable.