People sometimes ask me why I founded the Ruth Institute. I always reply that young people who want lifelong married love need and deserve accurate information and adult support. People sometimes have a hard time believing me when I try to convey just how crazy campus life can be. But now, I don’t need to say anything. Yale University is proving my point for me. Yale (where I taught economics from 1980-85) sets aside the week surrounding Valentines Day to be Sex Week at Yale. Minneapolis Star Tribune Columnist Kathy Kersten tells us about it:
This being Yale, the week started with a veneer of academic respectability: Read more…
Social critic Lee Harris scores great points in his analysis of the Tea Party movement. Though his analysis is indirect: he is critiquing David Brooks’ analysis. But, Harris leaves no doubt where he stands.
Here we come to the most puzzling aspect of David Brooks’s column. Why did he feel the need to make his derisive and gratuitous reference to Wal-Mart shoppers? The answer appears to be that Brooks is engaged in a sly argumentum ad hominem. He is attacking the Tea Party movement by pointing out that those who sympathize with it are likely to shop at Wal-Mart. Now, as a sociological observation, there may be an element of truth in this contention. But it is also possible to take the remark as a not terribly subtle appeal to his reader’s latent (or not so latent) snobbery. After all, what could be more déclassé than shopping at Wal-Mart? It is a bit as if David Brooks had winked at his sophisticated Read more…
One of my facebook buddies (actually one of our Ruth Institute alumni) is going back and forth about my post on the Washington Archdiocese from a couple of days ago. I posted a reply to them, but thought regular ruth readers might be interested in this issue.
Here is the quote from my original post:
“According to the Washington Post, at the end of civil marriage ceremonies judges will say ‘I now pronounce you legally married,’ Read more…
I have blogged about this Quebec Policy Against Homophobia when the document first appeared. I pointed out that the Quebec government has written itself a blank check: they plan to wipe out homophobia and heterosexism. Now, heterosexism is the view that heterosexuality is normal. News flash: heterosexuality is normal for our species. It is simply not possible to wipe out this view and all its manifestations. Hence, my claim that the Provincial govt has given itself permission to intervene in every aspect of civil society.
I was beginning to think that I was the only person who noticed or cared about this massive state power grab. But, now, I have discovered this hard-hitting essay by Prof Douglas Farrow of McGill University.
The Québec policy against homophobia was released in December with introductory fanfare Read more…
has an intelligent and down to earth analysis of Joe Stack, the suicide flyer who flew his plane into a federal building. Lee Harris points out that the chattering classes have rushed to try to pin Mr. Stack on their ideological enemies. But Harris observes that this just betrays their own biases. Ordinary Americans by and large, do not think in ideological terms. And the best way to understand Joe Stack is as a visceral response, not an ideological response.
The blind spot of the political class is that they systematically tend to overrate the importance of their own stock in trade—namely, ideas and ideologies. Read more…
I decided to break this very long post up into three parts. this is part 3 analyzing this interview with Lisa Miller, and the significance of the Miller Jenkins case for whether we really ought to go careening over the cliff and redefine marriage. See Part 1 and Part 2.
3. Of all the appalling things in this appalling case, the malpractice of the therapists is probably the worst. Lisa Miller had a couple of therapists suggest to her that she was a lesbian. When she was hospitalized after her suicide attempt:
So, it was when I was in the psych ward – you get put through evaluations, group therapy, individual therapy and it was through this process of them trying to figure out what was wrong with me that they said, “Well, we don’t really know but we really think that you are probably a lesbian and you are having problems with coming out issues.” Read more…
I decided to break this very long post up into three parts. this is part 2 analyzing this interview with Lisa Miller, and the significance of the Miller Jenkins case for whether we really ought to go careening over the cliff and redefine marriage. See Part 1 and Part 3.
2. This case is particularly relevant to the question we considered a couple of days ago on this blog: who counts as a lesbian? In this case, Lisa Miller comes across as a confused person, a deeply unhappy person, but not a lesbian. Read more…
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