Ruth Institute Blog

By Kevin J. Jones

Washington D.C., Jan 25, 2012 / 05:52 pm (CNA).- A Democratic-leaning Catholic group’s favorable reaction to the Obama administration’s new contraception mandate is being criticized for neglecting the threat to religious freedom and wrongly claiming that contraception lowers the abortion rate.

“This is a real attack on the religious freedom of millions of Americans. People who care about the future of our country should not stand idly by,” said Eric Rassbach, national litigation director of the D.C.-based Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. Read more…

Delivered January 23, 2012 in Olympia, Washington

by Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse

I am here today to address those of you who have already made up your minds to redefine marriage.  History will not be kind to you.  Previous generations of social experimenters have caused unimaginable misery for millions of people.  Particular people advocated the policies that led to today’s 50% divorce rate and 40% out of wedlock childbearing rate. None of these people has ever been held accountable. Read more…

By Michael Worley, First year law student at J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University, and a 2011 graduate of the Ruth Institute It Takes a Family to Raise a Village program.

It is common knowledge that TV reports don’t tell the whole story.  Frequently a group of 75 undecided voters gather to share their responses immediately after a debate.  Such people provide instant commentary that the theorists of network TV may not be able to perceive.  However, these groups tend not to be predictive of overall election results. Random polling via phone calls shows us much clearer results.  Read more…

by Jennifer Roback Morse

This article was first published at familyinamerica.org on January 10, 2012.

Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men
Mara Hvistendahl
Public Affairs, 2011; 314 pages, $26.99

This brave and timely book has many strengths and one glaring, but understandable, weakness. The strength of this book is the reporting. Mara Hvistendahl, a liberal, pro-choice feminist, painstakingly documents the catastrophic consequences of the worldwide “choice” for male babies: gender imbalance leading to prostitution, sex slavery, and male frustration and aggression. The weakness of this book is the political analysis. She doesn’t understand how deeply Roe v. Wade changed American political culture, particularly within the conservative movement broadly conceived. But both these strengths and weaknesses work together to yield an honest and courageous book that should be read by anyone who considers himself (or herself) well informed. Read more…

by Douglas W. Allen

The institution of marriage must be fundamentally redefined to accommodate same sex couples, says a Canadian economist.

Douglas Allen is a Canadian expert on the economics of social institutions. He has discussed same sex marriage from an economic point of view in articles in leading law journals. MercatorNet interviewed him about the consequences of legalising same sex marriage. Read more…

by Maggie Gallagher

August 23, 2011 http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/08/3761

Presidential candidates in the next election should uphold marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

The mainstream media have labeled marriage the “hottest front in the culture war.” Much to the media’s surprise, several of the GOP candidates have already signed the National Organization of Marriage’s (NOM) Marriage Pledge. They were surprised by major candidates’ willingness to sign NOM’s pledge because this was supposed to be the year the social issues did not matter. Read more…

by Charles Capps, Stanford alumnus and co-founder of the Anscombe Society at Stanford University

November 9, 2011

Last weekend, a group of students and young professionals converged on Provo, Utah, for the second annual Strengthening the Family conference, put on by Students for the Family.  The conference planners selected a timely theme—“Engaging Issues with Courage and Civility.”  Anyone who reads the news knows that, when it comes to current debates about marriage and the family, civility is in short supply.  This makes courage in speaking the truth about these issues difficult but crucial. [Editor's note: The Ruth Institute was one of the sponsors for this conference.] Read more…

by Helen Alvaré

October 19, 2011 http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/10/4155

New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse refuses to see the truth about contraception, conscience, and religious liberty.

I wouldn’t be the first to question the judgment of New York Times‘ former Supreme Court reporter, Linda Greenhouse. That’s already been done by National Public Radio, the New York Times‘ public editor Byron Calame, and a member of the executive committee of the Pulitzer Prize Board, on account of Ms. Greenhouse’s penchant for bouts of very public, very raw, and quite emotional political partisanship, even while she was a “hard news” reporter for the Times. Now, as an “opinionator,” she’s grown worse. Read more…

by Maggie Gallagher

October 20, 2011 http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/10/4164

The decline of manhood and norms around sex, marriage, and family produces for young women what may in fact have to be endured. But it shouldn’t be celebrated.

In the cover story of the November Atlantic magazine, Kate Bolick declares her liberation from marriage: “It’s time to embrace new ideas about romance and family–and to acknowledge the end of ‘traditional’ marriage as society’s highest ideal.” Read more…

Infertility can bring so much heartache to couples desperately wanting a baby. Sadly, desperation opens the door for exploitation. Recently, two high-profile surrogacy attorneys, Theresa Erickson and Hilary Neiman, were caught exploiting surrogates, stealing from California taxpayers and, most horrifically, selling babies.  Read more…

The 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth shows that adults who grew up in intact families and currently attended weekly religious services are least likely to “ever assault someone.”

This article comes from the Marriage and Religion Research Institute. Read more…

by Helen Alvaré, Gerard V. Bradley and O. Carter Snead

by Jennifer Roback Morse

This article was first published at Mercatornet.com September 16, 2011.

Last week’s hearing in the California Supreme Court on whether the proponents of Prop 8 have standing to defend the measure in court seemed to go well for the defenders of natural marriage. But another issue lies beneath the surface of the court arguments. The issue is what kind of people are the marriage redefiners: Ted Olsen, Rob Reiner, and the American Foundation for Equal Rights? Read more…

By Maggie Gallagher

Shocking news: Virginity is on the rise in America.

The source is sober, academic, practically irrefutable: the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Its latest analysis of the sex lives of Americans age 15 to 44 includes a startling finding: Virginity is increasing among teens and young adults in the U.S. Read more…

Robert W. Patterson

This article was first published June 14, 2011, at WashingtonExaminer.com.

Since President Obama moved into the White House, the unemployment picture has gone from bad to worse. Unless things turn around, 2011 may be the third consecutive year with unemployment exceeding 9 percent, a first since the Labor Department began tracking the stat in 1948. Read more…

This article first appeared at PublicDiscourse.com.

by Helen Alvaré

The new, pro-contraceptive recommendations by the Institute of Medicine endanger the health and well-being of women.

 Richard John Neuhaus once commented that the “philosophes” of the French Revolution would turn over in their graves to discover how the Catholic Church had become the chief defender of the place of reason in the public square in the late 20^th century. Today in the 21^st century it is the feminist revolutionaries of the 1960s who are squirming in their rocking chairs as the Catholic Church dares to defy “the establishment” to stand for the freedom of women and of conscientious objection to federal mandates. Read more…

By Maggie Gallagher, Chairman of the National Organization for Marriage

John Garvey, the new President of Catholic University, announced last week that the university will return to single sex dorms. Many feathers were ruffled. It is a measure of the unisex madness in which we have become enmeshed that a Catholic university’s decision to house unmarried young men and women in separate dorms could be described as “controversial.” Read more…

by Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse

How science is consistent with the ancient Christian teachings

Now after all this theology and philosophy, you may be astonished by my next move. I am going to show that science now substantiates many of the important claims that Christianity has been making since the beginning.  Let me begin with the most basic. The human person is meant for love. Read more…

The Open Marriage, by Nena and George O’Neill, was published in 1972, as the sexual revolution gathered steam in America. The best-selling book encouraged spouses to “to strip marriage of its antiquated ideals” and, most famously in one chapter, to explore sexual partnerships outside their marriage, if they so desired. Read more…