Free Republic

Social science was never going to save marriage’s male-female infrastructure. What it can do—if the narrative the data reveals isn’t manipulated—is reveal what is really going on.Now that the Supreme Court’s oral arguments are behind us, and the justices have already privately cast their votes about the future (and the history) of marriage, perhaps it’s possible that the social science of marriage, sexuality, and child outcomes can catch its breath. Better yet, perhaps it can operate without the pressure-cooker of politically acceptable narratives. But after three years, and two separate inquisitions by my own university, I’ve come to conclude that...

The Church, I’ve been hearing, has to change, if she is going to have any leverage with men and women of our time. What that means, of course, is that they would like a sexual permission slip. It’s the only thing they care about. What’s it to them, after all, if the Church does not change her teachings, even if she could? They don’t obey them anyway. But perhaps they are setting their revisionary sights too low. Why change the Bride of Christ, when you might as well go for Christ Himself? Why trick out the bride in lingerie from...

Christian theology in the American Church has seen no greater evolution than in the last 10 years. In fact, what the American Church has faced, particularly the Mainline Church, has probably been best described as a devolution or deconstruction of the “faith once received.” Another first, the culture has followed the American Mainline, particularly the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Episcopal Church (TEC) in redefining human relationship, sexuality, and marriage. Dr. Del Jacobson, retired professor from Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, MN long ago outlined what the evolution of ideas or movements look like in Church and...

I stink at acronyms, and unfortunately we are awash in them. I live one block from SPS (Standard Pressed Steel) and a few more from CVS and SVS. (The latter is a mom-and-pop produce store, and I have no idea what the letters stand for.) ACLU is very close to ACLJ, but I wouldn’t want to dial the wrong number. AA is for drinkers; add another “A” and it’s for drivers—who had better not be drinkers. And as a relative newcomer to the cell phone world, I thought LOL meant “lots of luck” till I was apprised of its less...

A new study published in the February 2015 issue of the British Journal of Education, Society, and Behavioural Science appears to be the largest yet on the matter of same-sex households and children’s emotional outcomes. It analyzed 512 children of same-sex parents, drawn from a pool of over 207,000 respondents who participated in the (US) National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) at some point between 1997 and 2013. Results reveal that, on eight out of twelve psychometric measures, the risk of clinical emotional problems, developmental problems, or use of mental health treatment services is nearly double among those with same-sex parents...

A while ago, I read a blog post over at First Things that was a blast from my past. The author, a Lutheran pastor, recently left the ELCA to become a member of the newly-formed North American Lutheran Church (NALC). He said, “My real disaffection with the ELCA didn’t start with sex. It began in earnest over the ELCA abortion statement and the subsequent decision by the national council to treat elective abortion for pastors and dependents as a reimbursable medical expense under the church health plan.” It was this exact issue that was my first step on the path...

By our count at the Galen Institute, more than 46 significant changes already have been made to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: at least 28 that President Obama has made unilaterally, 16 that Congress has passed and the president has signed, and 2 by the Supreme Court. CHANGES BY ADMINISTRATIVE ACTION 1. Medicare Advantage patch:

May I make two requests? Love me, but remember that you cannot be more merciful than God. It isn’t mercy to affirm same-sex acts as good. Don’t compromise truth; help me to live in harmony with it.Over thirty years have passed since same-sex attraction rushed up from deep within my twelve-year-old frame. This attraction was unbidden and unwanted, yet simultaneously forceful and compelling. As a Christian, the conflict between my sexuality and my faith would become the deepest and most intense of my life. Now in my forties, I’ve gone from being closeted to openly lesbian to celibate to heterosexually...

It’s a matter of common sense that putting boys in a girls’ locker room would create confusion, anxiety and discomfort. It’s a matter of common sense that boys, with their greater muscle mass, should not be allowed to compete on girls’ athletic teams. Those norms are self-evident to an overwhelming majority of the public. On Thursday, the Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) will vote on abolishing those norms of common sense. A pending policy would end the traditional rule of dividing athletes by biological gender. Instead, it would grant boys with a “deeply felt internal sense” of being female...

The American Life League released an amusing video this week chronicling the “Planned Parenthood rejects” of 2014. The bottom line is that this year, American voters rejected the Planned Parenthood agenda and sided with pro-life values. Planned Parenthood catalyzed the campaign of failed Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis. If elected, Davis would have undoubtedly been good for PP’s business in Texas, as she demonstrated when she stood for eleven hours trying to filibuster a pro-life bill that the vast majority of Texans backed in 2013. Instead, Texas voters elected the 100% pro-life, Texas Right to Life-endorsed candidate Greg Abbott by...

Money certainly has been the villainous elephant in the room during another midterm bombardment of horrifically childish political advertising. Democrats have used every trick in the book to paint their Republican opponents as blue blazer-wearing Chatsworth Osborne Juniors, with the Rick Nolan campaign, for example, smugly referring to Stewart Mills as Stewart Mills the Third, apparently because thirds, in a "Great Gatsby" kind of way, have all the dough. Nolan might be running the dumbest campaign in the history of campaigns. He is trying to tell the people of northern Minnesota, who might very well be employed at a Mills...

"I could never vote for anyone who favors the destruction of innocent life in the womb," Sam stated bluntly. Fred replied, "I'm opposed to abortion as much as you are, Sam, but there are other issues you know." Sincere and well-meaning Christians who oppose abortion too often speak of it as if it were on a par with tax cuts, Medicare, or Social Security. There are many "Freds" out there. Maybe you know a "Fred." Maybe you are a "Fred"! You want to be fair- minded, and you do not want to be labeled a "one-issue" voter. If you really...

Earlier this year, an event happened that did not receive wide notice. The last of the Von Trapp Family Singers, the last of the children—the real ones—died. Her name was Maria—not to be confused with the lady played by Julie Andrews, Maria Augusta Trapp, who died in 1987. Maria Von Trapp’s death in February 2014 marks the end of an era. The Sound of Music deserves its accolades as the Movie of the Year (1965) and one of the finest films ever made. Even my one-year-old granddaughter is mesmerized by the puppet scene. As a film it is an icon....

The coercive program of homosexual liberation, cloaked as always in the language of love and justice, and backed ultimately by court edicts and intense political and social pressure, is now working its way into the American heartland, just as it is working its way into the church in this and other Western countries. Last year IRD reported on controversy in Springfield, in southwestern Missouri, where a proposed ordinance for homosexual rights prompted a dispute between local clergy over the meaning of the gospel as it pertains to homosexuality, and an eloquent defense of Biblical morality by Dr. George O. Wood,...

Public Discourse recently published a very important essay titled “Breaking the Silence,” in which Janna Darnelle wrote with heartbreaking candor of what she and her children have suffered since her ex-husband abandoned their marriage, married another man under state law, and obtained joint custody of their children. When Darnelle’s essay was published, I had just finished reading Anthony Esolen’s new book Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity. As I read her essay, I realized that her story encapsulated nearly every one of the book’s arguments. Anthony Esolen is well-known to readers of Public Discourse, and his writings adorn many other...

Segregation was based on irrational, peculiar prejudice. By contrast, protecting marriage between one man and one woman is based on universal truths about our human nature.As readers of Public Discourse know, some proponents of homosexual pseudogamy now assert that argument is no longer necessary. We do not argue with segregationists, they say. We ignore them, we scorn them. They are not worth our time. They are mad or wicked. So too our courageous Ryan Anderson, who says that marriage by nature requires a man and a woman. “Shut up,” they explain. I fear that our age is so enslaved to...

Spend any time talking to defenders of abortion, and pretty soon you’ll notice that more than a few words seem to suddenly change meanings. No, you’re not going crazy; pro-aborts simply find that some…creative…tweaking of the English language is necessary to make their logic work. Fortunately, we’re here to help. Armed with this guide to Team Abortion’s most common linguistic fictions, you can spend less of your next rhetorical excursion deciphering sophistry, and more time dismantling it. Here we focus on redefinitions surrounding the debate’s basic medical facts; Part 2 will set them straight on ethical terminology.

We have all heard what has come to be a liberal dictum, that the State must remain neutral as regards religion or irreligion. One can show fairly easily that the men who wrote our constitution had no such neutrality in mind, given the laws that they and their fellows subsequently passed, their habits of public prayer at meetings, and their common understanding that freedom without virtue, and virtue without piety, were chimeras. To show that that understanding persisted, all one need do is open every textbook for school children published for almost two hundred years; or recall that Catholic immigrants...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: Whoever lives beneath the cross of Jesus, and has discerned in the cross of Jesus the utter ungodliness of all people and of their own hearts, will find there is no sin that can ever be unfamiliar. Whoever has once been appalled by the horror of their own sin, which nailed Jesus to the cross, will no longer be appalled by even the most serious sin of another Christian; rather they know the human heart from the cross of Jesus. Such persons know how totally lost is the human heart in sin and weakness, how it...

Despite the lack of cultural support for positive practices that help couples toward healthy marriage relationships, the good news is that individuals have control over their relationship choices.Most young people want a happy marriage and family life. As a new report from the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia shows, the choices people make in their relationships prior to marriage matter. Unfortunately, the laissez-faire sexual practices embraced and promoted in our culture today don’t build a strong foundation for marriage. According to the report, authored by Galena K. Rhoades and Scott M. Stanley of the University of Denver,...