Ruth Institute Blog

Ruth Institute Staff post

We were all transfixed this afternoon as Tiger Woods took the international podium to follow in the footsteps of countless other men in the public eye who got caught inflagrante delicto by offering his heartfelt apologies both to us and his (absent) wife.

So….what? Do we believe him? Do we not? Does it matter? Was he actually contrite about what he did or just for getting caught?

This man is arguably the most visible athlete in the civilized world; his trail cuts and leaves a wide swath in our society, and hence in the minds of our children.

Should Tiger be held to a higher standard? What do you think, Ruth supporters and blog readers?

We put up a short poll about this to the right of this page, but we want to know how you feel beyond the numbers. Weigh in here and tell us what you think the ramifications of this marriage scandal are, or will be?

by Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.

State-sanctioned same-sex marriage restructures the incentives for child-rearing arrangements, and much else. Few are thinking through how people will react. Read more…

By by Helen Alvaré, J.D.
Senior Fellow in Law and Ruth Institute Advisory Board Member

In my last column, I concluded that while public and private actors have taken many different and sometimes logical approaches to reducing out of wedlock pregnancies, they have also missed a crucial aspect of the problem: the difficulties men and women are experiencing in their relationships with one another, as evidenced by their unwillingness to commit to one another, even after a baby is conceived.

Read more…

Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.
IN 2007, THE MEDIA HAD A FEEDING FRENZY around a voice-mail message actor Alec Baldwin left his daughter. He screamed at her for not answering her phone. The public was shocked: many assumed that he was yet another self-absorbed celebrity, with neither control over himself nor regard for his daughter. But in fact, Baldwin had been caught in the web of the totalitarian nightmare known as the American family court system. Read more…

Report on the Panel on “the Politics of Marriage and Family” at the 2009 National Summit on Marriage, Parenting and Families at Hampton University.

By Lynn D. Wardle, Bruce C. Hafen Professor of Law, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University.

I was honored to participate in the recent National Summit on Marriage, Parenting and Families at Hampton University, September 29-30, 2009, co-sponsored by the National Center on African American Marriages and Parenting.  My panel on Wednesday addressed “The Politics of Marriage and Family” and included in addition to myself former Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears of the Georgia Supreme Court, former Judge Arthur Burnett of the District of Columbia Superior Court, two Virginia elected officials (a state Senator and a city councilman), and Theodore M. Shaw, former President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund was moderator.   Read more…

by Helen M. Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law
In two previous columns I suggested that a not insignificant cause of the current rates of out of wedlock pregnancies in the US is a breakdown of healthy relations between women and men.  Past attempts to address high rates of nonmarital pregnancies failed to note this possible cause.  Read more…

by Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse

Ruth Institute Founder

Many commentators read Pope Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate as if it were a think tank white paper, and ask whether he endorses their particular policy preferences. It is a mistake to read the encyclical in this way. A close look at the document’s introduction makes plain that Benedict is not a man of the Left or of the Right: He is a non-ideological man of God. Read more…