Look at this radical left-wing extremist going non-linear against the Democrats!
(H/T Gateway Pundit)
Republican amendments being removed?
Congressman Greg Walden says that his amendments are being stripped from the health care bill after they were approved in committee.
(H/T Gateway Pundit)
Marsha Blackburn on the secret negotiations
Here’s a video of my other favorite Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn talking about the health care bill.
She did a great job debating this issue.
What are some of the measurable consequences of pre-marital sex?
The kinds of problems most people think of when they think of pre-marital sex are problems like sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancy, abortions, reduced ability for stable marriage, and maternal poverty.
What’s the best way to prevent teens from engaging in pre-marital sex?
On the one hand, social conservatives on the right favor the traditional family structure, complete with a father who lives in the home and is an involved parent. On the other other hand, social liberals on the left favor laws that promote pre-marital sex and no-fault divorce, which tends to weaken marriage and break up families. Those on the right prefer strong families and involved parents, while those on the left prefer to tax money away from families and use that money to provide sex education, taxpayer-funded abortions, and single-payer health care.
Who’s right?
Well, consider this research paper from the Heritage Foundation, my favorite think tank.
It’s written by Christine C. Kim. The title is “Teen Sex: The Parent Factor”. (PDF)
She writes:
Many policymakers, health professionals, and “safe sex” advocates respond to these troubling statistics by demanding more comprehensive sex education and broader access to contraceptives for minors. They assume that teens are unable to delay their sexual behavior and that a combination of information about and access to contraceptives will effectively lead to protected sex, preventing any form of harm to youngsters. Not only are these assumptions faulty, they tend to disregard important factors that have been linked to reduced teen sexual activity. A particularly noticeable omission is parental influence.
[…]The empirical evidence on the association between parental influences and adolescents’ sexual behavior is strong. Parental factors that appear to offer strong protection against the onset of early sexual activity include an intact family structure; parents’ disapproval of adolescent sex; teens’ sense of belonging to and satisfaction with their families; parental monitoring; and, to a lesser extent, parent-child communication about teen sex and its consequences.
That parents play a role in teen sex points to at least two significant policy implications. First, programs and policies that seek to delay sexual activity or to prevent teen pregnancy or STDs should encourage and strengthen family structure and parental involvement. Doing so may increase these efforts’ overall effectiveness. Conversely, programs and policies that implicitly or explicitly discourage parental involvement, such as dispensing contraceptives to adolescents without parental consent or notice, contradict the weight of social science evidence and may prove to be counterproductive and potentially harmful to teens.
She supports her conclusions using her research findings and some very helpful graphs (see the PDF version).
My thoughts
So what does this mean? It means that parents need to be trained and equipped to talk to their children about topics like pre-marital sex. It means that unmarried men and women need to be serious about choosing their spouse so that there is an increased likelihood that the spouse will have the knowledge, the time, and the disposition to talk to their children about sex. The best way to find a spouse who can make moral judgments and be persuasive on moral issues with the children is to choose some who demonstrates those capabilities over a significant period of time, during the courtship.
I’ve noticed that many young people reject prospective mates who make moral judgments and who have definite ideas about moral issues. What young people seem to want is complete autonomy to pursue their own happiness. They don’t even want to deal with the normal demands of relationships with friends, co-workers, pets, children – and even with God. They just want to pursue their own vision. And if their own choices make them unhappy, then they blame others and demand to be bailed out, (often by the government).
But valuing amorality and permissiveness in prospective mates is not going to attract a spouse who is capable of teaching children right from wrong. Instead, young people should seek to marry someone who is informed on moral issues, and who is passionate about persuading others. Marriage is not the kind of thing that two selfish, amoral people can do well – there has to be a vision and a way of settling disagreements using a standard of objective morality and moral reasoning. Children don’t do well being raised by parents who have no vision for how the children ought to be.
I think a pretty good question to ask a prospective mate is “how would you like your children to turn out?”. What you are looking for is a person who wants their child to have respect for objective moral values and duties and a strong relationship with God. And then ask a second question, “what capabilities do you think your spouse should have to achieve that vision?”. And finally ask, “how have you prepared yourself to guide your children towards that vision?”. These are the questions that we should be asking during courtship to find out whether prospective mates are capable of imparting moral knowledge to their future children.
Story in the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Suzanne at Big Blue Wave)
Excerpt:
A toxicology expert from the Forensic Science Service, which analyses evidence for the police, told the Mail he had come across only one sample of blood or urine containing Rohypnol – the most commonly talked about ‘date-rape’ drug – in the past decade.
‘The reality is drink spiking is very, very rare’, said senior forensic scientist Michael Scott-Ham. ‘Alcohol itself is the problem.’
A controversial study, published last week, claimed drink spiking is an ‘urban myth’, a modern scapegoat for a generation of women who cannot face the fact that the vast amounts of alcohol many are imbibing could be in any way responsible for a loss of control, which can have devastating consequences.
‘Something very curious is going on,’ says Dr Adam Burgess, who spent a year researching the issue at the University of Kent‘s school of social policy for a project funded by the British Academy.
‘How can you account for this great big gap between lack of any evidence for drink spiking and what so many women believe is going on?
‘There’s a displacement exercise going on here. Why, despite all the evidence, do women so readily blame the spiker rather than the amount of alcohol they are drinking? That is the real issue here.’
[…]Could it be that women instinctively feel that if they admit to themselves how much they had drunk they would also be admitting they were somehow to blame for putting themselves at risk?
Believing your drink was spiked transfers the blame to a malevolent, external force, something which women have no control over. It shifts responsibility.
[…]Dr Burgess and his team interviewed 236 women at three universities in Kent, Sussex and London during 2006 and 2007.
They sought to investigate students’ knowledge of ‘date rape’ drugs, whether they or someone they knew had been a victim and whether they had changed their behaviour in relation to the perceived threat.
And consider closely how the attitudes of these women diverge from reality, such that they perceive themselves as helpless victims, even though they are in fact directly responsible for their own misfortunes.
Only ten out of the 236 claimed to have experienced drink spiking personally and none had been subject to sexual assault.
Yet 55 per cent claimed to have known someone whose drink had been spiked.
But among respondents, 75 per cent believed having a drink spiked with drugs was a more significant risk factor for sexual assault than drinking alcohol or taking drugs, despite the fact that police believe the opposite is true.
Another pivotal study offers further evidence that alcohol is the drug to be guarded against.
The study, conducted by the Forensic Science Service in 2005, examined 1,014 cases of ‘drug facilitated sexual assault’ by analysing blood and urine samples from victims gathered by police forces in England and Wales.
In only 21 – about 2 per cent – were traces of drugs found that the women had not taken voluntarily.
These included Ecstasy, gammahydroxybutyrate (GHB) and tranquillisers. Alcohol was picked up in 46 per cent of cases. Illegal drugs such as cannabis and cocaine were in 34 per cent of cases.
Suzanne, who is pro-life, adds:
I am certain that massive amounts of alcohol consumption contributes to abortions in this country.
If you’re a woman who drinks large amounts of alcohol around strange men looking to score, you’re placing yourself in danger. That is the reality.
Unfortunately, people have a strange way of denying reality.
[…]You are responsible for the foreseeable consequences of your actions. Doing something stupid under the influence of alcohol is one of them. That’s obvious. So don’t get drunk.
Well said!
My previous article on women behaving irresponsibly is here. An article from Laura of Pursuing Holiness also talked about the danger of women refusing to take responsibility for their own choices. Her article has a lot of scary examples. And a previous post that documents how leniently women are treated when committing domestic violence is here. According to the best available research, women commit acts of domestic violence at about the same rate as men, even though male victims are almost never recognized by social services.
WINTERY KNIGHT 