Ruth Institute Blog

Did you hear about the two young guys in New Zealand who got married to enter a contest to win rugby tickets? I wrote about them the other day. The contest was open to married couples. The two guys are not gay, but have been buddies since they were 6 years old.  They got married to be eligible to enter the contest.

Now some gay activists were indignant about this marriage. They claimed that it trivialized marriage itself and made a mockery of the efforts of gay activists to win marriage equality.  I agree with them, except for this point: removing the gender requirement already trivialized

BFF! Let’s get married! Why Not?

marriage.

But I will not press that point here. I want to ask a different question.

Q: Do you or I care whether these two rugby buddies stay married for a lifetime or divorce next year?  Does the public have any interest whatsoever in the success or failure of this particular friendship?

A: The public has no conceivable interest in what two men do together. Whether they are rugby buddies or golfing buddies or sodomy partners, the public couldn’t care less. (As a matter of fact, I don’t really want to know!)

Why then, does the public have any interest at all in the relationship called marriage? Read more…

Have you ever seen a dog race up to the boundary of a yard, and abruptly stop?  It looks very odd, until you realize that the dog is wearing a fancy collar.  You surmise that there is an invisible electric “fence” embedded in the yard. The dog has been shocked so often that it stops itself before it actually touches the invisible fence line.

This image flashed in my mind as I was reading “Home Economics: The Consequences of Changing Family Structure,” by Nick Schulz. Mr. Schulz does a fine job laying out the harmful effects of the deconstruction of the family, both to individuals and to the larger project of the free society. This nice little book lays out the economic consequences of family breakdown.  But he studiously avoids anything that might have even the remotest chance of getting him tagged with the label of “moralizing.”  Or perhaps I should say, anything that would “zap” him with such a label.  

He throw out the obligatory protective covering right at the beginning of this small paperback by promising to refrain from “passing judgment about divorce or out-of-wedlock births.”  I think this is rather an odd position to take while describing such  socially destructive trends.   But that is where we are as a culture, due to the systematic strategy of the Life Style Left of zapping anyone who dares to challenge their Orthodoxy. You know the Orthodoxy, don’t you?

• The kids will be fine as long as their parents are happy.  Read more…

By Wesley J. Smith

Decadence is on the march! And now, a defense of pedophilia as just another “sexual orientation” has been published in the mainstream left wing UK newspaper The Guardian.  From, “Paedophilia: Bringing Dark Desires Into the Light:” Read more…

By Dr. Keith Ablow

In an interview published Monday, Hollywood director Nick Cassavetes, whose new movie Yellow tells the story of a fictional love affair between an adult sister and brother, claimed that incest is just the latest frontier in people throwing off the shackles of rigid, cultural convention and following their hearts. Read more…

by Charlie Butts

Thanks to an executive order from Mayor Tim Burchett, registered sex offenders are no longer allowed at 19 Knox County libraries. Liberty Counsel attorney Harry Mihet believes it is a sensible approach “to say that we’re going to protect our children at a library, at a place of information. We’ll keep those places safe by prohibiting registered sex offenders from coming to these libraries and transforming them into a place where they can prey on the young children.” Read more…

The response to my post, A Word on Terminology has confirmed my intuition that I am correct to abstain from using the term “same sex marriage.”  Three things have led me to conclude that my instincts are correct about this:

1. The wailing, weeping and general indignation meeting being held all around the Left side of the Blogosphere.

2. My friend, Bill May, of Catholics for the Common Good, confirms my opinion. (I always listen when Bill talks.) He pointed me to a tract that his organization has written on the subject, a tract which I highly recommend to all Regular Ruth Readers, Friends with Wrong or Right Ideas.

3. Finally, and most importantly, in the aforesaid wailing and indignation, advocates of the redefinition of marriage have, perhaps inadvertently, revealed just how radical they really are.  See for instance, comment #12, which states  in part: Read more…

The last part here cracks me up: The APA only considers it a mental disorder if they’re distressed by their actions or behavior. “I’m distressed; therefore, I have a mental disorder. Nah, I’m okay with it now. No mental disorder.” I’m definitely starting to question the APA’s  discernment.

by Charlie Butts

Liberty Counsel Action‘s Matt Barber attended the conference and says he felt he was on a different planet, as the presenting professionals aimed to remove pedophilia from the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). That would mean that pedophilia would no longer be considered a mental disorder. Read more…

Red diaper baby David Horowitz is an expert on the mentality of the Radical Left. In his pamplet Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution, (which I highly recommend, by the way) David makes the following point:

An SDS radical once wrote, “the issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”  In other words, the cause-whether inner city blacks or women–is never the real cause, but only an occasion to advance the real cause, which is the accumulation of power to make the revolution.

I would add, whether the cause is the redefinition of marriage or the expansion of entitlements for homosexuals, the issue is never the issue: the revolution is the issue.

Exhibit A: This April 2011 story, from Radio Netherlands, Read more…

The presentation at the UN Committee on the Status of Women that talked about “orgasm, oral sex and masturbation” in the schools generated a lot of controversy, around the internet and right here at the Ruth blog. One of our permanent commenters suggested that I go listen to the whole speech, and that I would find the original article had misrepresented her.

I think our commenter was correct that Ms. Diane Schneider was not explicitly advocating that “orgasm, oral sex and masturbation” be taught as activities in the school.  However, I don’t think the discrepancy salvages her speech in the slightest. Read more…

A representative of the NEA, the US’s largest teachers union, has a different idea about the purpose of comprehensive sex ed.  She tells all to the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women.

Comprehensive sex education is “the only way to combat heterosexism and gender conformity,”(NEA representative, Diane) Schneider proclaimed, “and we must make these issues a part of every middle and high-school student’s agenda.”  “Gender identity expression and sexual orientation are a spectrum,” she explained, and said that those opposed to homosexuality “are stuck in a binary box that religion and family create.”  (Whose kids are they, anyway?) Read more…