Category Archives: Commentary

Commentary

What is Obama’s position on gay marriage?

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This article from the liberal Washington Post is dated July 19, 2011.

Excerpt:

The Obama administration announced Tuesday that it will support a congressional effort to repeal a federal law that defines marriage as a legal union between a man and woman.

White House spokesman Jay Carney denounced the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), saying the administration will back a bill introduced this year by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to remove the law from the books.

Feinstein’s bill, called the Respect for Marriage Act, would “uphold the principle that the federal government should not deny gay and lesbian couples” the same rights as others, according to Carney.

The Senate is scheduled to hold an initial hearing on Feinstein’s proposal on Wednesday.

“The policy was wrong then and it is wrong today, and I believe it should be repealed,” Feinstein said Tuesday morning during remarks at the National Press Club.

Obama’s decision came five months after his administration instructed U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to stop defending DOMA and represents a continuing evolution in Obama’s views on same-sex marriage. In February, Holder said parts of DOMA were unconstitutional because of “classifications based on sexual orientation.”

[…]Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese hailed Obama’s decision to back the congressional push.

“We thank the President for his support of the Respect of Marriage Act,” Solmonese said in a statement. “By supporting this legislation, the President continues to demonstrate his commitment to ending federal discrimination against tens of thousands of lawfully married same-sex couples.”

I just want to leave no doubt about where Barack Obama stands on gay marriage: he is doing everything he can to destroy traditional marriage, and if he is re-elected, it will be the end of traditional marriage in the United States. In the churches, in the schools, in popular culture, in the arts. That is his aim.

Commentary

Iain Duncan Smith’s defense of traditional marriage in the UK

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Dina sent me this article from the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

Iain Duncan Smith will make the Coalition’s most explicit official statement in favour of parents marrying and staying together.

He will say that children from such homes are most likely to end up with a good education and a job.

The Work and Pensions Secretary will make the declaration as he announces an Early Intervention Foundation to raise millions of pounds from private investors to help disadvantaged children.

The Social Justice Strategy Paper will set out plans to tackle the causes of poverty and disadvantage.

It makes clear that the stability of parents’ relationships is a key factor in children’s prospects.

Marriage is particularly good for children, the paper says. The Government is “concerned” by the long-term trend away from marriage, it says.

Mr Duncan Smith will say the strategy marks a change in the approach to marriage. Successive governments have done too little to promote stable families, he will say.

Mr Duncan Smith has had a long personal interest in family issues but the main paper he will publish today constitutes a government commitment to promote marriage.

The command paper quotes evidence showing that “children tend to enjoy better life outcomes when the same two parents give them support and protection”.

Children who have experienced the breakdown of their parents’ relationship are “more likely to have poor cognitive development and education and employment outcomes than those who have lived with both birth parents”.

“Outcomes” are better for children when parents stay together, the paper says. Research shows that about one in three cohabiting couples splits up before a child’s fifth birthday, compared with one in 10 married couples.

“This Government believes marriage often provides an excellent environment in which to bring up children,” it says. “The Government is clear that marriage should be supported.”

Mr Duncan Smith said he was not “lecturing” parents on how to live, merely setting out the facts on the advantages of marriage and commitment.

I keep expecting to hear more statements like this from thoughtful conservatives here and abroad. There are so many conservatives, but very few of them are willing to make a case for marriage using the evidence.

Commentary

Attention Deficit Disorder? The disorder is with lack of parental attention

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From Stuart Schneiderman.

Excerpt:

A month or so ago David Goldman, aka Spengler, wrote an extraordinary column about how America is failing its children.

America is a country that likes to solve problems. If children are a problem America has a solution. Or, I should say, American science has the solution.

If children are in trouble, cognitive neuroscience and child psychiatry are at the ready to solve the problem by changing their brain chemistry.

I have often praised the interesting work being done by cognitive neuroscience and its adjunct field, behavioral economics. I have also warned, to the extent that I can, against an overly mechanized view of human behavior.

Many neuroscientists replaced the mind with the brain, free will with determinism, and reason with irrational emotion.

Cognitive neuroscientists are so caught up in their discoveries, so drunk with their newfound power and prestige that they now claim to have all the answers to all the questions.

Of course, most psychiatrists today are gaga over the power of pills. Compared to the psychoanalytic therapy they had been offering, medication seems to represent a step in a better direction. Still, in many cases it is a step too far.

Therapists used to believe that it was all in the mind. Now they have gone to the other extreme, thinking that it’s all in the brain.

Whatever the cause of the problem with American children, America, Spengler writes, has been trying to solve it by prescribing pills and technology.

Imperiously, perhaps even tyrannically, it has diagnosed 10% of America’s children with one or another form of attention deficit disorder. And it has filled classrooms with computers, the better to make learning fun and creative.

But now, Spengler reports, physicians and psychologists are beginning to recognize that Ritalin and Adderall are not as effective as we like to think, and that, over time, these amphetamines are actually harmful.

If you’re a parent, then you should read the rest. He gets quite judgmental and exclusive – and that’s a good thing!