Monthly Archives: June 2012

News

Marcia Segelstein’s article on chastity in the newest issue of Salvo magazine

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Here’s the article that is available online on the Salvo Magazine web site.

Here’s a bit about the author, Marcia Segelstein:

Marcia Segelstein, a senior editor of Salvo, is a part-time writer and a full-time mother. A former senior producer for CBS News, she has also written for First Things, Touchstone, and OneNewsNow.

And here’s a snippet from the article:

Dr. Jenell Williams Paris is the author of The End of Sexual Identity: Why Sex Is Too Important to Define Who We Are. She told Relevant that Christians need more than rules to live chastely. What’s often missing, Paris believes, is a compelling story and an understanding of the “whys” behind the rules. To explain what she means, she uses the example of parents teaching their little girl to look both ways before crossing a street:

A young child may follow this rule solely because of the power of her parents’ authority, which is appropriate. As she grows, the child [continues to look both ways,] but for a deeper reason that she owns for herself. She sees the broader context of traffic, understands the benefits and dangers, and makes choices accordingly. Rules are external and authority-bound: Maturity requires knowledge of why to do the right thing, not just what the right thing is.

Chris Jessee is the Youth and Family Pastor at First Baptist Church in Waynesville, Ohio. Last year, he organized an event in conjunction with True Love Waits, an organization that promotes abstinence till marriage, and several area churches. Unlike other such events he’s been involved with, he included parents in this one. “Every year we did True Love Waits without the parents, we were missing out on a critical aspect of it,” he explained in an interview. “I believe parents are the key element when it comes to discussions of purity with teens.”

In his view, the church’s role should be to encourage and train parents to address abstinence issues with their children. Echoing Dr. Paris’s approach, Jessee believes a critical aspect of that training is providing both parents and their teens with the “whys” they need to defend their faith and its practices. Merely laying out the rules isn’t enough.

Statistics back up Jessee’s views on the crucial role of parents. A study conducted by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, titled “With One Voice 2010,” asked teens aged 12 to 19 who is most influential when it comes to decisions about sex. Almost half, 46 percent, said their parents were most influential, with friends coming in second at 20 percent.

That’s exactly right – we need to have reasons and evidence when talking about chastity – and call young people up to a higher standard of romance, intimacy and commitment. They need to know what they are getting by embracing chastity, and not just what they are giving up. On my blog, I often post about the research that shows the benefits of chastity, as in this previous post. I love chastity and I highly recommend it – especially to Christian men.

And yes – I really did write the sidebar for this article, and you can see it online. The sidebar is about practical tips for chastity. It’s based on some of my previous posts on how to be chaste. The older I get, the more I thank God that I still have my wits about me when it comes to women. Chastity allows you to be very circumspect about women and to make sure that they really are as good as you think they are and that they really can do the things that you need them to do in a marriage.

News

Ten ways that the Obama administration could lower gas prices right now

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From the Heritage Foundation.

Here’s the list:

  1. Lift offshore and onshore exploration and drilling bans
  2. Approve Keystone XL
  3. Require timely environmental review
  4. Permitting process
  5. Issue leases on time
  6. Allow development of oil shale
  7. Stop the land grab
  8. Implement 50/50 revenue sharing
  9. Prohibit greenhouse gas and Tier 3 gas regulations
  10. Repeal the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS)

Here’s the detail on #3 and #6 and #9:

3. Require timely environmental review: Environmental review requirements for oil and gas projects to commence on federal lands under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) take too long. Congress should place a reasonable 270-day time limit on NEPA reviews.

6. Allow development of oil shale: Oil shale production in the U.S. could be a global game changer since we hold the largest known reserves in the world. However, 70 percent of those reserves lie beneath federal lands. The Obama Administration has introduced new regulations, time frames, and significantly reduced the land available for leases. Congress should make permanent the 2008 guidelines for oil shale development in order to provide regulatory certainty.

9. Prohibit greenhouse gas and Tier 3 gas regulations: In 2010, Interior suspended 61 leases in Montana alone because environmental groups charged that the energy production would contribute to climate change, demonstrating the need to permanently prohibit any federal agency from unilaterally regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, the proposed Tier 3 gas regulations to lower the amount of sulfur in gasoline are costly with no measurable benefits. Congress should prohibit the implementation of these regulations. Unelected bureaucrats should not hold such power over the economy.

Are these steps unreasonable?

Well, Canada already streamlined their environmental review process. Canada also doesn’t let global warming socialism block job creation in the energy sector. Canada’s government strongly opposes global warming socialism. They’ve even pulled out of the Kyoto treaty. Their energy industry is booming, and taking their economy with it. Can’t we do the same? Why is the Democrat Party’s energy policy all about giving money to green energy firms and imposing burdensome regulations on energy companies who do create jobs?

News

Half of all Americans live in households that get government handouts

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From the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

49.1%: Percent of the population that lives in a household where at least one member received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2011.

Cutting government spending is no easy task, and it’s made more complicated by recent Census Bureau data showing that nearly half of the people in the U.S. live in a household that receives at least one government benefit, and many likely received more than one.

The 49.1% of the population in a household that gets benefits is up from 30% in the early 1980s and 44.4% as recently as the third quarter of 2008.

[…] As of early 2011, 15% of people lived in a household that received food stamps, 26% had someone enrolled in Medicaid and 2% had a member receiving unemployment benefits. Families doubling up to save money or pool expenses also is likely leading to more multigenerational households. But even without the effects of the recession, there would be a larger reliance on government.

The Census data show that 16% of the population lives in a household where at least one member receives Social Security and 15% receive or live with someone who gets Medicare. There is likely a lot of overlap, since Social Security and Medicare tend to go hand in hand, but those percentages also are likely to increase as the Baby Boom generation ages.

[…]The more people who receive benefits, the harder it’s going to be to make cuts, and it’s never popular to raise taxes. In some respects that argues for letting a combination of tax increases and spending cuts that is set to automatically hit in 2013 take effect. There’s just one problem: the Congressional Budget Office says it would sink the economy into recession.

All of this dependence on the government is not good for us. How can we compete with the rest of the world when we just sitting around borrowing money from our kids and spending it?