My article up on Huffington Post. Please comment on their site to ensure a diversity of opinions there.

Domestic violence, sexual abuse, incest, physical abuse and prostitution (quelle surprise) -rooted in a lack of fathering or a lack of mothering… these are not gender based issues. Radical feminism has not been the antidote to a lack of love. Love is the antidote to a lack of love. Erin Pizzey says many things, truthful, wise and all of it counter to the domestic violence narrative, including this: “The radical feminist movement has nothing to do with the pain and suffering of people and children. They’re not interested. It is an empire. It is an evil empire.”

This will be the best half hour you spend today… unless you have some parenting to do.

You can only support abortion if you don’t look too closely or think about what you are seeing. This article attempts to make an abortion provider into a hero. It’s long. Then, toward the end, this:

But then he brings in one that’s nine weeks and there’s a fetus. … Floating near the top of the dish are two tiny arms with two tiny hands.

When human body parts floating dismembered are a matter of routine, it is not compassionate work. Just to state the obvious.

The trailer came out this week for the Fifty Shades of Grey movie.  It will of course be released on Valentine’s Day. (May romance never die.) I never read the books but I watched the trailer. It made me queasy.

Both Matt Walsh and Jonathon Van Maren wrote good pieces about the Fifty Shades phenomenon. I included some portions of their articles below.

The fact that the series is a bestseller is very depressing. What will future generations think about this one? Our bestsellers aren’t literary masterpieces. They are poorly written BDSM filth.  And how poorly written? Walsh includes a few shocking examples here.

I can just imagine how those books or movies would have seriously screwed me up had I read/watched them as a tween or teen. (‘This is what guys expect? This is what sexuality is all about? This is normal?’) I don’t think my parents would have ever let this kind of garbage into our house, but you’d be surprised what is laying out in the open at friends’ homes or a babysitting clients’ homes or…how many young kids and teens are going to be exposed to this?

Ugh.

Van Maren:

It might seem sadistic and rapey, but hey, sexual freedom has allowed us to celebrate “bondage” and sexual liberation has allowed us to liberate our darkest demons from the recesses of our skulls and allow them out to play in the bedroom. Boys used to get taught that they shouldn’t hit girls, but now the culture is telling them that it’s actually a turn-on.

I genuinely feel sorry for many teenage girls trying to navigate the new, pornified dating landscape. I genuinely feel sorry for the legions of fatherless boys, exposed to pornography before they even had a chance to realize what it was, enfolded by the tentacles of perverted sexual material before they even realize what, exactly, they are trifling with. It brings to mind something C.S. Lewis once wrote: “Wouldn’t it be dreadful if some day in our own world, at home, men start going wild inside, like the animals here, and still look like men, so that you’d never know which were which.”

Walsh:

As you may have noticed, the first 50 Shades of Grey preview debuted this week. Apparently it premiered on the Today Show at 8AM, which surely enchanted the millions of parents who might have made the mistake of turning on network television in the middle of the morning while their kids were in the room. Silly moms and dads, what makes you think you can do something like that without being greeted by a nice dose of sadomasochism and stylized sexual violence? Besides, why do you even have problem with a trailer for a movie based on a book that romanticizes a sociopathic pervert who sexually dominates a young, impressionable woman? Puritans. Your kids are in preschool now, it’s about time they learn about this stuff. […]

This isn’t really a film. Film is art. Art exists for a reason. It speaks to us. It communicates a truth. Art is beautiful, moving, real.

This is a business decision. It’s about as artistic as the end cap display at the grocery store. It’s a marketing gimmick. It exists to be consumed, and for no other reason. It will enter into your mind — your medulla oblongata, if you will — and lessen you. It will steal another piece of your humanity. It’s the opposite of art — it’s a complete inversion. It is to art what a black hole is to the sun.

Nobody responsible for this movie ever at any point said to themselves, “Geez, now this is a story that really needs to be told.” It doesn’t need to be told and it isn’t a story. It’s loveless sex and degradation. No narrative, no message, no redemption. If that’s all you want, you’ll find plenty of it at the strip club down the street.

What are these materials good for? I’d say a fire pit. Planned Parenthood would disagree. Apparently Fifty Shades is good sex-ed material. The Colorado attorney general is now investigating Planned Parenthood. One of their counselors recommended to a Live Action actor, posing as a 15 year old girl, to engage in 50 Shades activity:

The anonymous female employee suggested the investigator read the book Fifty Shades of Grey or “even do some internet research on it,” such as viewing porn on her phone so her parents would not see her search history.

“It can be really fun,” she said.

The employee asked if the investigator and her boyfriend had ever gone to a sex shop. “They have whips, ties, everything,” she said.

“That would be a good place for you guys, I think, to go together,” she said, “and get educated together.”

It is illegal for minors to enter sex shops, and in many parts of the country intentionally facilitating a young teen’s access to pornography violates laws against corruption of a minor.

What a world. I’m off to cuddle my kid and pretend we live in a world where we act like we have some kind of moral responsibility towards each other.

If you support conscience rights for physicians, please sign this petition. Here’s an excerpt:

Forcing physicians to disregard their conscience or moral and ethical beliefs in the provision of legally sanctioned non-emergency medical services has serious and far-reaching consequences that affect the integrity and practice of medicine. Cultivating a medical culture that encourages physicians to disregard their conscience by forcing them to do what they believe to be wrong or harmful has the potential to compromise the well-being of patients, physicians, and society.

(You don’t need to create an account or log in to sign the petition at iPetitions.)

As you are already aware, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario is reviewing their current policy on conscience rights for doctors. They have favoured conscience rights for non-emergency procedures to date. This reasonable position is at risk of changing.

What you can do:

Go to this web site, and choose how you want to give feedback. I found it easiest to send a quick email, which said this:

Every physician must be free to practice medicine using their hearts and minds. Restrictions on conscience removes the ability to do so. There will always be disagreements on what constitutes good treatment and this is healthy dialogue to have in a democratic society. Physicians must be free to respond to patients, using their own medical expertise and their conscience, not the enforcement of an outside regulatory body. There is a responsibility on the patient to discern, again, using his or her own conscience, whether they want a different doctor. If conscience rights are restricted, Ontario will lose good doctors.

You can use my letter, or part of it, or just write “I support freedom of conscience for doctors.” Really, it’s that easy. So do it today. They are accepting opinions until August 5.

This is important–and if freedom of thought is curtailed for doctors, we all lose.

It isn’t news that we live in a time where relationships with our pets have transformed from greatly loved companions to equals. I remember several years ago when ethicist Margaret Somerville warned us at a pro-life gathering that this cultural shift was occurring in the ”intelligentsia.” I didn’t doubt her. Nor did I doubt our rudderless North American culture to be able to reason against the notion that pets are people too.
Are we at the point where pro-lifers must start from scratch and use animal images to stir hearts? To identify when life begins?
So be careful who you share this with. These graphic images come with their own warning and may disturb you. Disturb you because the fuss is reserved for the animal kingdom today, not the pre-born of the human species.

____________________

Andrea adds: I am very unhappy to see these animals killed for no reason. People who protest abortion are very often sensitive to a lack of care for the natural world too, myself included. That we should limit our empathy to animals, though, is beyond all reason.

It’s almost like they are little developing people, in the womb. Imagine that.

Speech isn’t the only thing that babies absorb while in the womb. Studies have shown that around the 20th week of pregnancy the sensory systems for taste and smell have developed. And that allows the baby to experience some of mom’s favorite foods as nutrients pass into the womb.

I decided after the Miley Cyrus debacle that I was disgusted with Robin Thicke. And absolutely couldn’t dance to his song, Blurred Lines, in spite of how fun the beat was. I recall the cultural-disaster-sliding-into-the-sea-as-a-society-morals-are-dead-I-wish-I-was-too moment at the MTV awards–which I didn’t watch. Of course, we were all “treated” to hearing about it afterwards.

Now, people of goodwill no longer have to choose. Weird Al provides a positive messaging version of the same song. Everyone can dance to this one. (I hope this post is grammatically correct.)

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc]

Watch this. Sweet. A mom, and I gather a Gold-medal winning gymnast, watches her daughter perform as she comments. (With enthusiasm, shall we say. She’s really living it with her daughter. Which does remind me of my mom, albeit at an entirely different level of sport. If you can call what my sister and I did a “level of sport” at all. Nonetheless, my mom was there, living it, excited. I’d call it a small blessing, except it’s not. It’s a big one, to have supportive parents, these days.)

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycYmjAYaUt4]