Volunteers from the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property (TFP) visited Brown University during their state-wide tour for traditional marriage in Rhode Island. While peacefully demonstrating on the Ivy League campus, their pro-family banner was vandalized and a volunteer was spat upon in the face.
“What we faced at Brown University, an Ivy League university, had the flavor of a religious persecution,” said TFP Student Action Director John Ritchie. “Dozens of pro-homosexual students screamed, spat, taunted, and even attempted to destroy our traditional marriage banner.”
“Suddenly, a loud thud-rip noise was heard. I looked up and saw a pro-homosexual student literally crashing through our traditional marriage banner, attempting to destroy it,” explained Ritchie. “Running at top speed, he flung himself into it and ripped one side loose. Some students watching from a distance approvingly cheered the act of violence,” he said.
“Brown University students recently held a protest against traditional marriage at the same location where we held ours and their signs included the word ‘equality,'” Ritchie said. “However, they clearly wanted to impede our right to equally assemble.”
“One of our youngest volunteers, age 17, was spat upon in the face,” explained Ritchie. During our peaceful demonstration for God’s marriage, he walked over and asked: ‘What do I do with this on my face?’ First, we told him to wipe the spittle off his face and then reported the incident to the police.”
“Seeing the violent attitude of the pro-homosexual students, the police wanted to escort us to our vans after the campaign was over to protect us,” stated Ritchie. “And thank God they did, because when we pulled away from the curb, many pro-homosexual students closed in to hit the sides of our vehicles with their fists or palms. A hard object, maybe a rock, was even thrown against one of the vans.”
I would link to the video, but Youtube has censored it. Youtube is not what you would call a pro-free speech web site.
I wanted to write about a common mistake that I see men making today when they are selecting women for marriage.
Some women prefer men who don’t have strong views on moral, spiritual, economic and political issues, and who don’t try to lead them in moral and spiritual areas. This is because if men know a lot about things then they tend to have definite opinions which might constitute grounds for rejecting the woman if she does something wrong, and women fear rejection. For the spiritual leadership, again, if the man has studied this a lot, then the woman fears that he will make her do a bunch of reading and debating which may not be much fun for her. So, some women avoid men like that. The question I want to ask in this post is – should men marry a woman who doesn’t like that they know a lot about moral issues and spiritual issues? I don’t think that men should, and I’m going to explain why.
Good men will want to set moral boundaries and lead spiritually when they have children.
Children usually look to Dad for guidance about the real world, because he is viewed as more “practical”. And fathers tend to want to protect children by setting moral boundaries and debating moral issues. Additionally, fathers want to protect children from believing lies that may cause them to make bad decisions. So, fathers are going to talk about things like chastity and oxytocin, as well as things like the big bang and the cosmic background radiation. They do this to tell children right and wrong with evidence and to tell children the truth about the world with evidence. What they do is NOT just state opinions or preferences – these are not take-it-or-leave it. And this can be offensive to some women who reject that morality is one way or the other, or that the universe is one way or the other. Some women elevate happiness above morality and truth, and men need to be aware that those women will not let them state moral principles or tell the truth about spiritual things. They value “compassion” (the denial of moral absolutes and personal responsibility) and “pluralism” (the denial that anyone’s beliefs about the world can be false). If a good man has children, he needs to be sure that the woman is not undermining all of his boundary-setting and truth-arguing at home. He has to test for this during the courtship.
Sometimes men are stupid, and choose women without regard to what God wants from the marriage.
Let’s pretend that men are choosing medicine instead of a wife. Some men are choosing their medicine based on the pretty packaging, and yummy taste, and then complaining when it doesn’t fix the illness. They want to choose a medicine without knowing anything about their illness and anything about the candidate medicines. They want to be “free” to choose a medicine based on the feelings they have about the medicine – not whether it will do the job required. They say: “But it looked good and tasted good! Medicines that look good and taste good should work!” They think that they can judge everything about a woman in her physical appearance and her manner. (Women do this too, when they talk about wanting things like “a deep voice” and “confidence” – without looking for signs that the man can meet marriage/parenting requirements). The purpose of the woman and the marriage, for some men, seems to be to meet their needs. So their criteria are the only criteria that matter. God is nowhere in the picture. He supposedly doesn’t want a marriage and children that honor him – oh no. He supposedly wants the man to be happy. The customer of the marriage is the man, not God.
And men really need to be on the alert to detect women who will block them from doing what good men do with marriage and children, otherwise they will not be allowed to make moral judgments and to lead the family. Men – make sure when you are choosing a wife that you choose someone who loves moral judgments and the way that you like to build other people up to be effective and influential. If the candidate resents your setting of moral boundaries, or resents your knowledge of issues, or resents your efforts to “bully” them into correct views using reasons and evidence, then you need to pass on that woman. You are a man. Men are interested in morality, truth, fixing problems and making things better. You must make sure your wife is supporting you in that role. Make sure she is choosing you for the right reasons, using the right criteria. You are a quarterback. Do not play for a team where you will be reduced to cheerleader and mascot. You were not designed to do that.
And women – it makes no sense to complain that men are not raising the children properly if you deliberately chose a man who didn’t believe in moral judgments or truth. If the man makes you behave morally in the courtship, he will make your children behave morally. If the man makes you believe true things in the courtship, he will make your children believe true things. You will just have to learn to like being judged on moral grounds and being led about spiritual things.
I often tease women for being too focused on happiness and feelings, but Dr. J isn’t like that at all. She is all about economics, incentives, and moral boundaries. She thinks about the big issues. She once chastised me in an e-mail for being too emotional. I think she has had it with the feelings-based arguments from the socially-liberal left.
This lecture does not repeat much from her previous lectures.
Keep in mind that this speech was given to Wisconsin Catholic seminarians, so there is a lot of rah-rah Catholic stuff. I’m an evangelical Protestant, so I just smile when she talks about that. At least there was no Mary in it. Yay!
SUMMARY
Contraception:
– contraception does not reduce the abortion rate
– contraception is bad because it makes sex a recreational activity
– contraception fails, which leads to the need for abortion
– 80% of abortions are done on unmarried women
– teenagers do not think that contraceptives will FAIL for them
– they don’t understand that the probabilities is PER ACTION – more actions increases probability
– the more you rely on something that has a small chance of failure, the more chance you will get a failure
– more sex, means more chances for a person to get a failure
– older women are naturally less fertile, so they skew contraceptive effectiveness figures higher
– contraceptives are most likely to fail for the young, the poor and the unmarried
– contraception means that women cannot ask men to promise to marry them before sex
– the pressure for a man to marry if the woman gets pregnant is gone
– the presumption is that the woman will have an abortion
– women who want to get married are at a disadvantage to get male attention now
– because men will prefer women who are willing to have an abortion if they get pregnant
– when people argue for these social changes, they don’t accurately assess consequences
– they think that they can have the happiness-making freedom without damaging anything else
– they think that no incentives will be created so that others start to act differently
– example: no-fault divorce – there were terrible consequences that were minimized by the social engineers
Divorce:
– people who wanted this believed myths in order to get the happiness-making freedom for the adults
– they said that divorce would be less harmful for children than if the parents stayed together
– they argued for no-fault divorce because they wanted happiness and didn’t care about children
– in a low conflict marriage, it is better for children if the parents stay together
– in a high-conflict marriage, it is better for children to divorce
– but for high-conflict divorce, you could have gotten a divorce for cause
– what people pushing no-fault divorce really wanted was to divorce to pursue happiness elsewhere
– there is also a financial incentive to divorce for no reason – alimony, child support, property
– but divorce really disrupts the lives of the children
– the VAST MAJORITY of divorces are in low-conflict situations
– the social norm was that low-level conflict meant that you stayed married for the sake of the kids
– a pregnancy after a re-marriage is devastating to children of the first marriage
– not being able to have a normal relationship with both biological parents is devastating to children
– what often drives people into co-habitation is the fear of screwing up their own marriages
– pro-divorce people want women to re-marry afterwards to provide kids with a “father-figure”
– the presence of a stepfather increases bad behavior in the kids, as well as risk of abuse
– but actually, stepfathers spend little time with kids, and draws mother away from the kids
– biological fathers spend the most time with the children
– disciplining the children is more complex with a non-bio dad
– normally, dads wants the kids to behave, and moms want the children to be happy
– often, the woman will forbid the father from disciplining the children
– the father will just drop out of parenting completely when his authority is not respected
Co-habitation:
– social engineers understate the risks of co-habitation and overstate the risks of marriage
– but research shows that co-habitation makes no positive contribution to marriage
– feminists love to say that marriage is very risky, but without comparing it to alternatives
(feminists don’t like marriage because of the “unequal gender roles”)
– when compared with the alternatives, like co-habitation, marriage is better on every measure
– feminists say that married women do not report abuse in marriage, that’s why marriage LOOKS better
– but murders HAVE TO BE reported, and co-habitation results in NINE TIMES more murders than marriage
– children are killed FIFTY TIMES more with co-habitation with an unrelated adult than with 2 bio-parents
– the live-in boyfriend is the culprit in 85% of these cases
Same-sex marriage:
– alternatives to marriage change rules and incentives, it is NOT the same thing as marriage
– necessarily, one of the parents will not have a close relationship with one bio-parents
– social engineers say that mothers and fathers are interchangeable – but they are different
– SSM undermines the presumption of paternity, and substitutes state-ordered parenting
– the public purpose of marriage is to attach mothers to fathers, and parents to children
– SSM elevates private purposes for marriage over and above the public purpose of marriage
– SSM will lead to fathers being marginalized from the family
– the state will have to force people to equate SSM and natural marriage
Artificial reproductive technology:
– it is the next substitute for marriage
– highly educated career women do not have to prepare for a husband to get a baby
– her behavior through her life changes because she doesn’t have to care about marriage
WINTERY KNIGHT 