feminine-genius

Who's your daddy?

We are aware that date rape has odd rules. We are aware that promiscuity is rampant. We are aware that alcohol leads to extremely poor choices (if they can even be called "choices" when the brain has been lubricated thusly). And yet the convoluted argument in this article has me bewildered. First, the ground rules as they stand Down Under:

A woman meets a man in a bar or at a party. She likes the man. He likes the woman. She may not normally be a sex on the first night kind of girl. But they have a number of drinks. Fuelled by alcohol, they put aside their inhibitions. The woman goes home with the man. She says yes to sex. In the morning, the man makes it clear it was a one-night stand. The woman is deeply offended and regrets her drunken decision. She claims rape. Under new rape laws introduced in NSW this year, that man is likely to be convicted as a rapist. He is likely to go to prison.

The article refers to this legal posture as "post-coital regret," and it has teeth. And yet Ms. Albrechtsen, who writes this piece for the Austrialian is incensed at the attempt to protect women.

[T]he fact that the woman who says "yes" to sex is drunk is highly relevant: it may vitiate her consent. But the man's intoxication must be ignored when working out whether he had "reasonable grounds" for believing consent was given. It is a curious law that says alcohol only affects the cognitive abilities of women.

These new rape laws degrade women. They treat them as helpless victims, stripping them of the power to make decisions about sex after consuming alcohol. Down a few too many Bacardi Breezers, and the law says you are no longer responsible for your actions. Is this really the message we want to send to young women?

One might think that, for the sake of equality, the writer is upset that women are off the hook while men aren't (which would be a valid concern) but rather she says that sex is naturally part of a night of carousing, and men shouldn't have to pay for that. Honestly, I'm not sure of her point, but it comes nothing close to saying that everyone should be more moderate with alcohol. Bottom line: it seems that this effort to cater to women is one more example of the government in the bedroom, which is intolerable.

Feminists are to blame for this "cat and mouse" game and, as usual, the men pay. But what if this made all men back off casual sex and made them less apt to take advantage? For centuries, many a man who courted a girl (who gladly encouraged him) had to pay when her father found out. It was a healthy form of deterrence that everyone know was part of the landscape.

In this fatherless world, even feminists are reaching out for authoritative protection. Crazy, perhaps misguided, but understandable in the end.

Trickle-down effect

For those who follow the effects of Title IX, which has radically realigned college sports so that there is an equal distribution of male/female athletes (no matter the inclinations of the student bodies), hang onto your foam fingers. The legislation will now apply to high schools, affecting younger participants, often dismantling entire legacies so that parity will be maintained.

At the center of the pro-quota activists’ marching orders for Congress today is something called the “High School Sports Information Collection Act.” It’s modeled after the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act (EADA), which for a dozen years has forced colleges and universities to annually report their athletic participation and expenses — broken down by sex — to the feds. The EADA was meant to be, and is, a one-stop-shopping list for trial lawyers and activist groups looking for schools to sue for failing to meet the Title IX quota. Now, courtesy of Senators Olympia Snowe and Patty Murray, they are about to have the same litigation hit list of high schools.

There comes a time when equality of opportunity is morphed into equality of outcome, and freedom ceases to be at the heart of the measure. Draconian steps are now in place to make sure fewer boys can continue the sport they enjoy so that girls will be encouraged to get moving -- at something, for the sake of quotas.

Interestingly, it doesn't work because of [gasp!] healthy differences between boys and girls that manifest themselves early.

Federal fiat, it turns out, can provide for the additional sports for girls, but it can’t make them come out and play. When gender bean counters told Martin County high schools that they “didn’t have enough” girls playing junior varsity sports, the county instituted a full court press to lure more freshman and JV female athletes. But response was so poor that one school had to cancel plans for girls’ varsity soccer, another couldn’t get enough players for JV basketball. At Martin County High School, the athletic director had trouble getting four girls out of a female student body of over 800 to come out for the new bowling team.

The reason high schools are having trouble finding as many girls to play sports as there are boys clamoring to take the field is apparent to anyone who takes the time to look: Girls have more varied extracurricular interests than boys. Girls out-participate boys in every extracurricular activity — band, drama, debate, student government — every one, that is, except for sports. The extracurricular gender gap so favors girls that the Independent Women’s Forum calculated that if the government were suddenly to require the same gender quota for participation in other extracurricular activities that it does in sports, 36 percent of female choir members, 25 percent of female orchestra members, and 33 percent of female debaters would have to be eliminated.

Boys run a greater risk of gangs, addictions to video games, drugs and alcohol, or other dangerous behaviours, and often struggle more with academics than girls do. They often turn to sports as a diversion, and outlet for excess energy, for bonding and for proving themselves physically. Now feminists are pulling the rug out from underneath them, and undermining girls in the process. Instead of allowing the girls to enjoy themselves with 4-H, Honour Society, or the latest play, gender-gurus are dragging them kicking and screaming onto the new bowling team to prove a sorry point.

Motherly hearts are intuitive and wise. Unfortunately, with the rejection of motherhood in its myriad forms, feminists are leaving some of the most critical skills behind in a shabby effort to be at best second-class men. Pity.

Dark side of the ERA

Technology has taken the world past the traditional categories, it would seem. Rather than scratching our heads and thinking that perhaps it's problemmatic, we just change the categories and carry on with our day.

A surrogate mother who has no genetic connection to the baby she is carrying does not have to be listed as the mother on a birth certificate, Maryland's highest court ruled Wednesday.

The case arose from twins born in the Washington suburbs in 2001. The woman who carried the twins for a father used an egg donor and had no genetic relationship to them. Both she and the father did not want her listed as the mother.

"Maryland's breaking ground here," said Dorrance Dickens, a Washington lawyer who argued the case for the father and the surrogate mother. Though judges routinely allow blank spaces for mothers on birth certificates in surrogate cases, Dickens said Maryland's court is the first to use a state Equal Rights Amendment to make the decision. In a 56-page decision, the majority argued that a man who can prove he has no genetic relationship to a child can be ruled not to be its father, so a woman should have the same ability.

"The methods by which people can produce children have changed," Chief Justice Robert Bell wrote in the decision. "... The paternity statute, clearly, did not contemplate the many potential legal issues arising from these new technologies, issues that will continue to arise unless the laws are rewritten or construed in light of these new technologies."

Aren't we clever! Methods change, and the law will just have to keep up. This justification carries tremendous portents within it:

"The majority, in essence, holds that if you do not intend to be the mother, you should not be responsible as a mother," Cathell wrote. "There are probably tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of fathers (and certainly mothers as well) who did not intend to be parents at the time of the actions that led to conception, who have been judicially determined to be responsible for the support of the child they did not intend to conceive."

Intention. That's a dangerous precedent, assuming that most men now seeking intimacy with women don't intend to be fathers. In fact, even many mothers are caught by "surprise." Could it be that all "accidents" will be without either parent on birth certificates of the future? Good thing God wants to father us; and Holy Mother Church extends her loving embrace as well. That's the adoption we count on!

A sentence from the dissenting opinion carries the money quote:

Not all judges agreed. In a dissent, Judge Dale Cathell said the father had the twins "manufactured" and then didn't want them to be listed as having a mother.

The children involved in such cases are chattel, products, consumer items -- customised, but merchandise all the same. This is at the heart of the Church's teaching about reproductive technologies. The child has rights -- and a basic right is to be created in a dignified way, as the result of a commited conjugal act. Anything short of that is abuse. It can be overcome in hard cases with grace and forgiveness (i.e. rape, or being born outside a committed union) but to have deliberately sought abusive conditions as the preferred setting is unconscionable.

What will be said?

This looks intriguing:

VATICAN CITY, JAN 13, 2007 (VIS) - On February 27, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, Holy See permanent observer to the United Nations in New York, together with the Path to Peace Foundation and the Vincentian Center for Church and Society of St. John's University in New York, will host an event within the framework of a meeting of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, entitled "The Human Dignity of Women in Contemporary Society: Addressing Violence against Women."

According to a communique made public today, the event "will identify the key contemporary social economic and legal issues that violence has upon women; discuss these issues through the prism of the dignity of the human person; describe current best practices and the applied ethics approach to the issue of violence and its prevention; and provide a forum for the exchange of experience across nations and enhanced communication among panelists and participants."

The meeting, which will be moderated by Marilyn Martone, associate professor of theology at St. John's University, will consider such questions as: Domestic Violence: Service and Policy Issues; Sexual Exploitation of Women and Girls: Trafficking, Prostitution and Weapons of War; and Gender-Based Violence: International Human Rights and Family Reunification Policy.

The question is whether there can be an honest exchange, or whether it will be bureaucratic gobbledygook. This is a critical topic for women worldwide, so we can only pray that forthrightness prevails.

"Thrives" may be stretching it

Blazing trails and forging new paths is exciting.

A woman in London, Ont., wants the Ontario Court of Appeal to recognize her as the third parent of a boy she's raising with her lesbian partner.

The application, if allowed, would be believed to mark the first time in Canada a child would legally have more than two parents, and would fundamentally change the definition of the word "family."

The biological father and mother and her female partner must remain anonymous because of a court ruling protecting their identities.

"The family has evolved over the years in a way that the law should recognize the reality of this little boy," said the father's lawyer, Alfred Mamo, "his reality being that he's got two mothers and a father with whom he thrives. They all want this for their son."

Perhaps we could look in on this "family" in about ten years to see how he's thriving. Some children suffer unforseen tragedies. Others have it deliberately foisted on them because the adults in their lives cannot see anyone other than themselves. "His reality" is that he's surrounded by selfish people, and he's a way cool pawn through which they can all affirm their lifestyle choices. Yippee.

One victory in the pitched battle

Prayers have been answered in one battle in a very protracted war. As faithful readers know, we began a prayer campaign months ago for the intentions of those who are protecting families and human life in the United Nations forum. Today we read of a hard-fought battle that ended well:

Commission on the Status of Women Deletes Abortion-Inclusive Language in Agreed Conclusions

By Samantha Singson

NEW YORK, March 17, 2006 (C-fam.org/LifeSiteNews.com) - As the 50th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) met for its closing ceremony last Friday, delegates were uncertain whether a set of Agreed Conclusions would be adopted. Negotiations went down to the wire as delegates struggled to come to consensus on the contentious health section of the draft text.

The original draft of the Agreed Conclusions' section on women's health focused almost solely on "sexual and reproductive health services and rights." As the Friday Fax has reported in the past, pro-abortion advocates have tried to establish a so-called international human right to abortion on demand using this terminology.

The European Union, joined by Turkey, Canada (under its new Conservative government elected in January), New Zealand and Norway, fought to keep the focus on sexual and reproductive health by referencing the reported 500,000 maternal deaths every year.

As negotiations wore on, many states expressed mounting frustration at the narrow focus on the sexual and reproductive health of women. Costa Rica, Egypt, the United States, Pakistan, El Salvador, Nigeria, Syria and Sudan were among those countries calling for the Commission to address women's health in a more comprehensive way, bearing in mind the myriad of health concerns faced by women throughout the course of their lives. Much to the consternation of delegates, the draft Agreed Conclusions contained no references to the top causes of death of women in the developing world, namely malaria and tuberculosis.

The NGO Pro-Life and Pro-Family Coalition presented statistics on the major causes of death of women and girls that were released by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2002's World Health Report. The Report attributed only 1.9 percent of women's deaths on maternal conditions. As stated in a fact sheet distributed to UN delegates by members of the pro-life and pro-family coalition, fully 89 percent of deaths of women and girls are attributable to causes unrelated to sexual and reproductive health.

The fact sheet caused an immediate stir among negotiators, forcing states to begin discussion on the other health care needs of women. At the end of the conference, consensus was finally reached on the Agreed Conclusions and the resulting health paragraph looked nothing like the original draft. In the end, reproductive health language was largely muted in the document, while a broader understanding of the health needs of women was included.

All deaths are bad, but focusing on 1% at the expense of the 99% makes no sense. Bu then pro-abortion forces aren't known for their common sense but for their rabid desire to make money at the expense of families.

It's not over. Please continue the daily Magnificat for these important intentions.

60 Days of Prayer

Over the last six months, feminine-genius has tried to draw your attention to the needs of women world-wide, and to the fact that these needs are best met in the family as ordained in natural law and revelation. From Africa to Asia, from the ghettos to the gulags, it is evident that women are lacking basic dignity and respect, and the further their culture is from that of the Gospel, the worse it is.

As the saying goes, God forgives always, man sometimes, nature never. Considering domestic abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, promiscuity, and cultures where women are chattel, there is much to be done to help women, which in turn will make for healthier and better adjusted children.

Now, that said, Austin Ruse of C-Fam brings to our attention something on the horizon that can only be tackled by intense prayer and fasting on our part:

The UN is about sixty days away from a five month series of global meetings that will bring together governments and non-governmental organizations to force countries to legalize abortion, accept homosexual marriage, make the Gospel message on homosexuality a hate crime, and much else.

These four meetings start in January and run through the spring. They go by the seemingly innocuous names like the Commission on the Status of Women, the Commission on Human Rights, the Commission on Population and Development and the Commission on Social Development

What happens at these meetings is that documents are "negotiated" which frequently means little more than coercing smaller countries to do the will of the radicals. Small Christian countries are ganged up on by the European Union, radical elements of the UN bureaucracy, pro-abortion and anti-family UN agencies like the UN Population Fund.

We saw amazing things happen in Cairo and Beijing when the pro-family, pro-life forces were outlandishly outnumbered. We continually see Davids take down Goliaths, which is the Hand of God. Could we commit to praying the Magnificat each day for this cause, for love of our sisters worldwide who are lying in the path of this legal tsunami? Things are bad enough and the "solution" offered by the United Nations might well be the death knell for any chance these cultures have of bringing themselves out of the dark of death and disease into the beauty of knowing what their Creator wants for them.

Beyond prayer, keep up-to-date with Friday Fax's free weekly newsletter here. Consider a much needed donation to this heroic group here.

And most importantly pray and fast. A copy of the Magnificat is here -- download it and pray it daily so that Austin and his band of "Davids" can be faithful to their mission and take on the enemies of life and authentic family love.

Nag alert! I will nudge you on this weekly, and we'll keep you informed on the battle about to be joined at the United Nations. God has a plan -- let's do our part with confidence so that He is free to do His.

Give us help against the foe: for the help of man is vain. With God we shall do bravely and he will trample down our foes (Psalm 108 12-13).

Legal disconnect -- update

Is it possible to flee Africa or the Middle East because of Islamic fundamentalism, to arrive in North America to start anew, and to find that the legal system allows the domestic laws to be set aside so that Shari'ah will still dictate family decisions? Yes, if you live in certain places, and people -- women especially -- are hopping mad.

OTTAWA (CP) - Protesters will take to the streets this week in cities from Amsterdam to Victoria, all because of a bureaucratic proposal that would allow Islamic law to be used in Ontario family arbitration cases.

The long-delayed decision on whether to formally include - and regulate - Shariah religious arbitration in the province has raised alarms among Canadian and European women's groups, dissidents from hardline Islamic states such as Iran, human-rights activists, writers and humanist advocates.

Lest you think that it's not possible in the United States, think again:

Leaders of the Al-Islah Islamic Center asked the [Hamtramck, Michigan] council for permission to broadcast calls to prayer — a centuries-old tradition in Islam. A prayer is sung five times a day to invite Muslims to pray. They’re often broadcast by loud speaker in predominantly Muslim countries, but are seldom broadcast in the United States.

The council wrote and approved an amendment to the city’s noise ordinance, sparking waves of outrage from Christian groups across the country that claimed Hamtramck was giving special rights to Muslims.

Interesting that culture can dismantle the Judeo-Christian foundations that have guided family life for centuries, calling it archaic, myopic, and oppressive. And yet, in a misguided quest for multi-culturalism, they can make room for Islamic laws that undermine the very license they've been seeking. Odd.

UPDATE: Another accomodation has been reported at LGF --

CLIFFSIDE PARK, New Jersey (AP) — Yasmeen Elsamra had a simple request: While her classmates were eating lunch, she wanted to go off by herself for a few moments to pray.

The 14-year-old was told she couldn’t, and went home distraught that afternoon in October 2003. Praying five times a day is a cornerstone of her Muslim faith.

“If I wasn’t allowed to pray my second prayer at school, I couldn’t do it at home,” she said. “When school finishes, the third prayer begins.”

Her family contacted a Muslim advocacy group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which asked the school district to reconsider. Eventually, the district acknowledged it had no policy preventing a student from praying on his or her own during free time, and allowed Yasmeen to use an empty classroom to unfurl her prayer rug, face Mecca and touch her head to the floor in a few moments of worship.

Her case was part of a nationwide grassroots effort by Muslim parents to make public schools more friendly and accommodating to Muslim students. The movement has gained strength since the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Again, the point is not the prayer, which many Christians would support, but the fact that Christians may not pray, and Muslims may. Is it just that Muslims are uncompromising about the tenets of their faith and Christians have become ambivalent? And will this lead to accomodating Shari'ah in the US later?

NEW UPDATE: Ontario has rejected Shari'ah.

Ontario will not become the first Western jurisdiction to allow the use of a set of centuries’ old religious rules called Sharia law to settle Muslim family disputes, and will ban all religious arbitrations in the province, Premier Dalton McGuinty told The Canadian Press on [11 Sept, 2005].

Of course, what looks good at first glance is a blow to all religion in Ontario:

Currently, Ontario’s Arbitration Act allows civil disputes ranging from custody and support to divorce and inheritance to be resolved through an independent arbitrator, if both parties agree. Catholics, Mennonites, Jews, aboriginals and Jehovah’s Witnesses, among others, have — until now — used the act to settle family law questions without resorting to the courts.

But those who opposed permitting Sharia family arbitration argued that the reforms would give legitimacy and an unenforceable appearance of oversight to a legal code they say is — at its heart — unfair to women.

McGuinty said the debate around Sharia gave his government time to “step back a little bit” and look at the original decision to allow religious arbitrations in Ontario.

No Shari'ah means no religious influence for any families at all. Everyone is subject to the secular law, no matter where that takes them. Victory, eh? Not likely.

Sexual exclusivity is so "white picket fence"

Mary Hunt, co-founder of WATER, has written a piece this summer that is essential reading for anyone who wants to educate himself on challenges to the legal and moral framework of marriage. Claiming that the Religious Right has pressed the non-hetero crowd (we'll use her term LGBTQ for lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender advocates) into a false paradigm: wanting to be hitched, two-by-two for the sake of marriage benefits, she raises the flag for individualism, since there are far more diverse ways to be otherwise connected than traditional pairs.

I appreciate this honest and straightforward article. She carries weight, because she is a leader in her circles and has long voiced views at odds with the established mores of revealed religion, and her points should make us stop and refine our own arguments.

1. Why marriage? Isn't it just access to economic benefits?

Progressive people, and especially progressive religious people, must do better if relational justice for all—and not just more rights for a few—is to result. Connecting rights to marriage is, in my view, an outmoded approach to the common good.

The operative problem is not same-sex marriage, but heterosexual marriage. Hetero- marriage is not a right, but a privilege- granting machine that favors those who are lucky in love by making them even luckier in the business of daily life. I see no reason to extend that privilege to more people, and every reason to curtail it, so as to level the socio-economic playing field for all.

If anything, same-sex marriages have fueled the wedding business (catering, photographers, flowers, receptions and gifts galore) and reinforced the notion that “good” gay and lesbian people come in happy twosomes. I favor other economic priorities (like health care for all) and know that many lesbian and gay people are single, between relationships, or quite content to live outside the long arms of the state. But choice is choice and I support it. Nonetheless, my long term goal is not same-sex marriage. I seek a broader, perhaps more utopian, trajectory toward full citizenship for all with an emphasis on the common good upheld by structures that support individual choices.

2. Is marriage really about sexual exclusivity?

A second problem with marriage, delicate to handle without being accused of promoting promiscuity, is one raised by LGBTQ Canadians who have the right to marry but do not seem to be exercising it in the same proportions as their US counterparts. Is hetero-marriage, with its presumption of sexual exclusivity, really what lesbian and gay people want? Do we intend to perpetuate what one Canadian referred to as the “white picket fence model,” the fiction that happiness and relational goodness only come in matched pairs?

3. Is marriage, with all the divorce out there, best for children? Why not "the village?"

The more I examine marriage, the more obvious it becomes that the laws are written to favor a certain two-by-two lifestyle that is simply a fiction. A divorce rate above forty percent and the growing number of longtime single people in our society suggest that for many people marriage is at best a temporary state of affairs. It would seem to make more sense to draw the legal lines vis-à-vis those who have children or even those who care for elders, privileging them because they have taken on the care of those who cannot care for themselves. But doing so in the case of children would reinforce the notion that children “belong” to their parents, rather than being the responsibility of society as a whole; it would reinforce that elder care is family- rather than society-based.

4. Can we repackage religion to be more "open" about its definition of marriage. (This is important, because she seems to want the "spiritual seal of approval" yet wants to morph revelation according to her own standard, meaning it's not really revelation at all.) Thus is marriage "revealed" by God or a "paint-by-numbers" invention?

Many progressive religious people, including me, have been supportive of the same-sex marriage movement. I believe that we need to continue that public support, including risking ecclesial and/or civil disobedience in doing so. But at the same time, and without risk of contradiction, I think we need to raise the kinds of issues I am flagging here so as to avoid being co-opted by the Religious Right one more time.

Religious leaders would do everyone a favor by breaking out of the moral mold and talking frankly about what we know to be the many and varied ways good people live their relational lives. We need to bring the moral energies of religion to the realities of contemporary social life. This does not mean that we abdicate ethics, but that we listen hard and speak honestly about the fact that two-by-two is not the only, and for some not the best, way to live. It is because religions put such a priority on those who are vulnerable or marginalized, like the young, the old and the infirm, that religious leaders can dare to entertain relational models other than marriage without risking the loss of what marriage now purports to protect. Someone has to start the conversation.

THUS: it is evident that we have to engage in explaining why:

1. Marriage benefits society

2. Sexual exclusivity is morally and physically better

3. Children thrive in stable homes with mother and father

4. Revelation cannot be changed (this is tricky in a secular state)

I'm intrigued to think that she thinks the "religious right" has buffaloed the LGBTQ crowd, when we feel bullied by them at every turn. Rather than being pushed into marriage, I think the LGBTQ's are walking into this fight fully cognicent, with the abolition of marriage as their end-game. Whether or not she is being coy, I don't know, but we have to understand their arguments and she lays them out cohesively for us here.

Tokenism rules

Sorry, folks. This new legislation is not a step forward for the sisterhood.

The Knesset amended a law Wednesday requiring the presence of women for all future state policymaking. Amendment 4 to Women's Equal Rights Law ensures that women will have a voice in the shaping of diplomatic and security policies. This is the first time women have won such a legislative victory.

Knesset Member Yuli Tamir (Labor) praised the law as a step for women and good governance. "In all my years of politics and extra-parliamentary activity," Tamir said, "I've noticed one clear trend - women are the ones who come up with revolutionary politico-security ideas and men in established positions adopt and implement them."

Tokenism clear and simple. One mandatory "uterus in the room" does not a revolution make. It means that we have formulated a simple quota which, in frothy language, reduces women to stereotypes.