…of pornography. Just recently I stayed in a hotel. You turn on the TV and before you know it, there’s a seductive young woman telling you that porn is available without any capacity to be caught. Can’t remember the exact words, but it was something like saying there’s no filters, and no one will know.

I like hearing about this hotel chain ceasing to offer porn. The owner is doing it of his own free will:

We wish to reiterate that plea here, however, by holding up to the American hotel executives the highly laudable actions of Petter Stordalen, owner of Nordic Hotels, one of Scandinavia’s largest chains. Mr. Stordalen, after becoming involved in international efforts to fight the horrific practice of trafficking women and girls into sexual slavery, announced that pornography would no longer be offered to his customers. In a public statement explaining his decision, he said: “The porn industry contributes to trafficking, so I see it as a natural part of having a social responsibility to send out a clear signal that Nordic Hotels doesn’t support or condone this.”

I think people ought to get more involved in getting rid of these things. Don’t go to government and get a law passed. But do figure out a way to send the message to business owners. I’d happily seek out and preferentially choose a hotel chain that got rid of their porn channel. In fact, I may start asking this when I book. You can too.

Becoming one of my fave annual events, The Freethinking Film Society brings in a lot of documentaries you wouldn’t otherwise see. Here’s the trailer for this year’s event. (Aftermath is also playing this Monday, September 9. This is the story of how Poland grappled with the cover-up of Poles as perpetrators of Holocaust crimes in Jedwabne, one Polish town, in World War II.)

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMsNIRQR4mc&feature=youtu.be]

Summer 2013 is coming to a close, officially that is. (I personally drag it out until I force friends to camp with me over Thanksgiving.) I am not sure how this happened. I had plans. Like creating a toolkit for pro-lifers to talk to the media, and quite frankly, for them to talk to us. (Still forthcoming.) Like reading Anna Karenina. (Likely not forthcoming. Who was I kidding?) In any event, we’ve now hit Labour Day weekend, and I’m off to the wilderness for a last hurrah of the (official) summer. If we don’t disappear like Tom Thomson (who died in the very park we’ll be camping in under mysterious circumstances–something I’m sure to recall when I have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night) then I’ll be back with a vengeance–a vengeance? perhaps not that aggressively–after Labour Day. Have a good one.

Remember the suit against Joyce Arthur from many months ago?

First, we are delighted to announce – to our existing and prospective clients, community partners, and our donors – that pro-choice activist Joyce Arthur’s lawyer, and now BC Supreme Court Madam Justice Russell, have said that serious allegations in Ms. Arthur’s 2009 publication, Exposing Crisis Pregnancy Centres in British Columbia, do not apply to our charity or either of our charity’s CPCs in Vancouver and Burnaby.

Second, however, we are disappointed with the court decision dismissing our defamation claim against Joyce Arthur and members of the Pro-Choice Action Network for their publication (the “report”). Ms. Arthur succeeded in having our case dismissed without her being required to prove the truth of any of the allegations in her report concerning crisis pregnancy centres. The report remains posted on the internet.

Our Board of Directors will take some time to consider whether to appeal the decision dismissing our lawsuit.

Read more here. Read LifeSiteNews’ coverage here.

It’s a real pity that CPCs have to occasionally defend themselves against these types of allegations, when they should be able to invest 100% of their time doing the good, pro-woman and pro-life work that they do:

Notwithstanding our Board’s decision on this important matter, we will continue to do what we do best – serve our clients.

For example, Jessica (not her real name), who came to us the day she planned to commit suicide. Her husband previously beat her to cause a miscarriage. He was now coercing her to abort their second child or he would beat her again. With our help and our shelter, Jessica and her daughter are both alive.

For example, “Melody”, whose unborn child was of mixed race, so her parents demanded she abort or forever be cut off from her family. They followed through. And then there is “Heather”, seeking help for post abortion grief, referred to us by an abortion clinic. And also “Ali”, a refugee needing prenatal services and material support.

To date, our modest charity has helped over 16,000 women in crisis.

Thanks, Jonathan Van Maren, for expressing how I feel. Bolds are mine:

As pro-lifers reaching out to our culture, we make the argument that abortion is a human rights violation because it violently ends the life of a human being. We don’t use religion to make our point—and we don’t need to. But when reading a story like this one, I can’t help but think how tragic it is that our society has so completely perverted and destroyed the concept of love. It is one of God’s great blessings that when two people love one another, that love can bring about a completely new human being. Now, that human being is considered by many to be a threat, an inconvenience—even, some say, a parasite. God uses human interactions to bring about brand new, unique, unrepeatable human beings—and we violently carve “Return to Sender” into their tiny corpses and fling them back into Eternity. I shudder to think of it—God’s Blessings, millions upon millions of tiny souls, appearing before Him after the briefest of tenures on Earth, hacked short by the blood-stained hands of those still below.

At bottom, pro-lifers believe people are miracles. It is easier to see in small children, particularly small children you have known since birth. Once a silent, crying, helpless thing, these babies become people who talk, look like their parents, or don’t, tell jokes, do cartwheels, give hugs, demand peanut butter sandwiches and stories…and on it goes. Some may of course go on to commit great crimes but that doesn’t change the fact that there was nothing, and then there was something–something that has free will and a soul, to do great good or great evil. I use the word “evil” while understanding I hold that in my own heart, as I sit here before you right now. Therefore, this is not an “us against them” proposal and it doesn’t change the fact that people are amazing miraculous things that we choose to toss aside at out own peril.

There is a Canadian National Pro-life Conference happening on PEI October 24-26. I’m excited to be going there. I’m also excited because at this link, they have us listed as “speakers and entertainers.” So really, you just never know whether I’ll speak or pull a Gene Kelly, or what. I like to keep people guessing. And yes, I do think of myself as entertaining, so I’m glad that someone, finally, has noticed this.

This is a rare confession for a girl of the policy wonk persuasion but I have liked Mark Ruffalo ever since 13 Going On 30. Someone told me once I look like Jennifer Garner (not true) however, this allowed me to dream about a world where Mark Ruffalo and I get married and live in a very pretty house, somewhere, I believe, just outside New York City, see above.

So it’s sad that he so wholeheartedly misinterprets what his mother experienced with abortion.

I have a mother who was forced to illegally have an abortion in her state where abortion was illegal when she was a very young woman. It cost $600 cash. It was a traumatizing thing for her. It was shameful and sleazy and demeaning. When I heard the story I was aghast by the lowliness of a society that would make a woman do that. I could not understand its lack of humanity; today is no different.

Abortion, legal, illegal, is typically degrading and demeaning to women. (Broad strokes here, you always have a minority who claim it was the best thing ever and end up working for NARAL.) I know I can’t expect much from Hollywood, but I am sad about this one, for sure. It just may be that Mark and I can’t get married after all.

Hahahahahahahaha.

Being topless in B.C. is legal. We have the right to be topless and this is wonderful,” GoTopless spokeswoman Denise Belisle said to a photo-snapping crowd that followed the marchers to Vancouver’s Robson Square. “What we need is respect. We need respect from society, we need respect from all of you.”

Really. (File under “The Onion in real life.”)

…join the prude revolution.

Now was MTV ever considered family-friendly? I think not. I have a pretty funny memory about being repulsed by MTV as a kid. It wasn’t that my parents said, “You can’t watch that,” because to the best of my memory, they didn’t. My 12-year-old self just couldn’t understand why you want to smash perfectly good instruments–too many guitars crashing around and getting wrecked.

Today Miley Cyrus’s obscene performance at the MTV awards is causing people to get flustered. From the little I’ve seen, it sure was obscene. That said, nothing you haven’t seen before… even WHEN YOU ARE TRYING DESPERATELY NOT TO.

So what to do? For adults, nothing much, except to identify that being that openly hyper crassly sexual ain’t sexy. Of course, things get harder for those raising kids. This isn’t a terribly friendly world for little people. Up to a certain age, you can keep them in a box (not literal) but after that I can only hope and pray that this hyper-sexualized world isn’t too damaging for them.

Like I keep saying, join the prude revolution. Ever so liberating. The elegance of Audrey Hepburn will endure, where Miley will be one short, sad flash.

PS I only just realized how rude this song is. Too bad. So fun for dancing.

Everyone needs to take a break and practice handstands now and again

I’ve been on holiday. Many thanks to Faye for the most excellent blog posts this past week. I found myself mostly under water at a beautiful lake in the Ottawa Valley with my nieces. I was a kid again, evidence above.

I’m in Toronto now and early this morning I saw four pro-life protestors standing with tape over their mouths that said “Life.”

I just felt it was so encouraging. It’s a simple thing they are doing. But I certainly noticed. I pulled over to shout out my thanks. They waved.

There must be an abortion clinic near that corner, I’d guess (Dufferin and Lawrence).

I came home to read an article in the National Post, Requiem for a Dreamer. One Laura Atlanta Only Genus died last week at age 107. She marched with Martin Luther King Jr.

Which prompted me to look up my favourite Martin Luther King Jr. quote:

You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid…. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer…. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand.Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.”

I have about eight months to memorize that one, before my 38th birthday. At which point on a particular day in April, I will go forward loudly proclaiming.

107 years. Imagine that. And yet, even at 107 life is still short. Very short. We are but mists on a field, here today and gone tomorrow.

Here ends the rambling.