feminine-genius

A small but significant victory

Many eschew politics as tainted or corrupt. Even more difficult is the thought of working in and through the UN to make a positive difference in the world. Though we wash our hands of it, thankfully some remain to fight the fight, because a worldview (with billions of dollars attached to it) is at stake.

Austin Ruse of C-Fam has been slogging it out in New York for years, strafing anti-natalist policies hidden in literally mountains of clerical minutiae. With the help of a good congressman, he has just won an important battle:

In and unusual exchange this week in the US Congress, among the highest ranking UN officials admitted that the term "reproductive health" does not include abortion, at least in the context of the recently decided Millennium Summit Declaration.

The exchange came during a hearing of the US House Committee on International Relations when Congressman Chris Smith questioned Mark Malloch Brown, senior adviser to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Smith asked Brown three times if "reproductive health" included access to abortion. Brown finally admitted that it did not.

The Millennium Summit Declaration, decided two weeks ago after more than a year of negotiations, calls for "universal access to reproductive health by the year 2015." Pro-abortion forces at the UN prefer that these terms remain undefined so they can be interpreted broadly later on. Though the UN has never official defined "reproductive health" as including abortion, UN agencies and powerful non-government organizations interpret the term as including abortion and use it to pressure governments to change their laws. It is therefore extremely significant that one of the highest ranking officials in the UN Secretariat has admitted before a Congressional Committee that this interpretation is wrong.

This marks another in a series of ongoing victories for pro-lifers in the UN where the debate is almost always and tediously about the advance of abortion. Pro-abortion forces wanted the new Millennium Declaration to be chock full of vaguely pro-abortion language. What they got was a single mention of reproductive health that has now been announced by Kofi Annan's right hand man as excluding abortion.

To thank Congressman Smith, write to him at [email protected].  To thank Austin Ruse, pray for him, for his intentions, and if possible support this worthy group.

Just another business on the block

The porn industry is growing -- both in profits and respectability. It's moved from shocker to yawner, well -- except for the rapt audience.

Selling sex is one of the oldest businesses in the world, and right now, business has never been better. One of the biggest cultural changes in the United States over the past 25 years has been the widespread acceptance of sexually explicit material - pornography.

In the space of a generation, a product that once was available in the back alleys of big cities has gone corporate, delivered now directly into homes and hotel rooms by some of the biggest companies in the United States.

It is estimated that Americans now spend somewhere around $10 billion a year on adult entertainment, which is as much as they spend attending professional sporting events, buying music or going out to the movies.

The industry also has its own major stars, like Jenna Jameson, a teen beauty queen, turned showgirl, turned porn actress. With the approval of her family, she reportedly earned more than a million dollars last year performing sex for money.

“The way I look at it is, this is kind of an art to me. I'm performing. I'm not doing it for the gratification of another man,” says Jameson. “I'm doing it because this is my job and I'm entertaining the masses. So it's just like being Julia Roberts, but just a little bit further, one step further.”

It would be a self-perpetuating industry, with the addictiveness inherent in it. Thus, a voyeur is a dedicated consumer for years, unless he finds healing. This is the destructiveness of capitalism without a soul. Remember the "widgets" of Econ 101, the supply and the demand? Sadly, there are many forms of meat on the market with no moral distinctions. You buy, we sell, and families be damned.

Harassing the staff

The staff workers in Norway's hotels are upset and demanding that pornographic pay-per-view channels be dropped:

Norway’s biggest hotel and restaurant union has complained that men viewing pornography often call for room service asking for frivolous items like extra towels only to lure female staff to their room. “It can be very unpleasant to get called to a room to be met by a naked man,” said union official Eli Ljunggren, according to a BBC report. “Some have found themselves in the presence of men watching X-rated movies and several have been accosted.”

“We have received complaints from a number of our members who have found themselves in very uncomfortable situations while in the rooms," Ljunggren added.

What could this mean -- that viewing porn then endangers the safety and dignity of others? Let's say a man is watching porn in his girlfriend's apartment, and her young daughter comes in from elementary school -- might that endanger the child? Let's say adolescent boys are watching porn and then they go out for a burger -- might they verbally abuse the girls in the parking lot with references to what they saw? Let's say an older man watches porn, and then when he goes outside to get his mail he sees a woman jogger -- might he have something unpleasant on his mind?

If this union can succeed in getting the porn out of the rooms, bully for them. It would be a launching pad for all of us to move likewise to rid society of a toxin. This is no private issue, for it has nasty consequences for innocent bystanders.

Quote from LifeSite.com

"Blessed are you among women"

What draws Islamic men to praise their sisters in faith? Joining in acts of destruction.

On Wednesday, in a suicide bombing in northwestern Iraq, a woman disguised in a man's robes and headdress slipped into a line of army recruits and detonated explosives strapped to her body, killing at least six recruits and wounding 35. It was the first known suicide attack by a woman in Iraq's insurgency.

The attack in Tal Afar appeared aimed at showing that militants could still strike in a town where U.S. and Iraqi offensives drove out insurgents only two weeks ago. A female suicide bomber may have been chosen because she could get through checkpoints — at which women are rarely searched — then don her disguise to join the line of men, Iraqi officials said.

Iraq's most notorious insurgent group, al-Qaida in Iraq, claimed responsibility for the attack in an Internet statement, saying it was carried out by a "blessed sister." The bombing came a day after U.S. and Iraqi officials announced their forces killed the No. 2 leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abdullah Abu Azzam, in a weekend raid.

"Blessed" in Christianity means something else. Usually holiness, humility, generosity, self-sacrifice. Something like the Virgin Mary, the pinnacle of virtue. If this is really Islam, it needs serious retooling. Blessed are they who weep and mourn, not those who cause it.

Benedict, our man!

Carrying forward the beauty of JP2's phrase about women, Benedict reminded some Mexican bishops (on their ad limina visit) of the treasure they have:

After underlining the fact that in Mexico too "the genius of women is frequently apparent," Benedict XVI identified "one challenge of our times" as "changing people's mentality so that women are treated with full dignity in all fields, protecting their unique mission to be mothers and the first educators of their children."

Mexico does have lovely women who have carried the pro-life, pro-family torch for years against great opposition. I'm glad for this comment, and always touched by the Church's affection for women's gifts. And this:

The Pope affirmed that the pastoral care of young people "is an important task. ... Many of them have the false idea that taking on commitment and making definitive decisions means loss of freedom. On the contrary, they should be reminded that men and women become free when they unconditionally commit themselves to truth and goodness. Only thus is it possible to discover a meaning to life and to build something great and lasting, if they have Jesus Christ as the center of their lives."

Amen.

Like no locker room I've ever seen

Aaaargh! My beloved hockey may have to stay out of this house an additional year. After a lockout shutting down the season last year, they're trying to recoop their losses ... with woman-flesh.

The commercial, produced by the NHL, opens with a quote from Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu: "A clever warrior is one who not only wins, but excels at winning with ease."

It then shows a bare-chested hockey player sitting on a wooden bench in a candlelit room, approached by an attractive woman in a flowing dress, displaying plenty of cleavage. The woman touches the man's shoulders, asking him, "Ready?"

The bogus response is thus:

"This ad shows no disrespect for women," Mansur told the Star. "On the contrary, the woman is the spiritual and physical trainer for the 'Warrior' and is his mentor, preparing him for the competition."

What warrior turns to a woman for guidance? Ever? Anywhere? On any battlefield? And a woman with her shirt open, at that? She's the battlefield spoil if he manages kills her family. Even the worst of knights knew a lady's handerchief had to do as inspiration, while his training came from the Lord of the Manor. And spiritual training? That would be the sacraments at the hands of a priest, because of the likelihood of a gruesome death.

This locker room looks like something out of a cheap love shack, where a quick trip to the Candle Outlet tries to compensate for the lack of moral integrity. Has anyone smelled a hockey glove? A used skate? Bengay? None of these are conducive to a candlelit tryst, which is the underlying message.

Sadly, Martha Burk is not the right messenger for this attack on the NHL. She blew it with her ridiculous history with the PGA, but someone needs a smackdown. Ray Bourque, call your office.

The saints work for me

Cute and fluffy piece on names.

Sometimes a name just sounds right. In the '80s, everyone wanted names starting with "J" (Jessica, Jennifer, Jason, Justin, Jonathan). Lately, vowel sounds have been on parents' lips: Half of 2004's top 20 girl's names start with vowels.

Vowel names like Ella, Eva and Ava for girls and Ethan, Emmett and Eli for boys are finding their way onto more birth certificates every year, says Pamela Redmond Satran, co-author of Beyond Jennifer & Jason, Madison & Montana.

Give me a solid saint or two for a name (and prayer backup!) and I'm happy. Then again I seem to be a throwback to the 1880's as well, having used five of the names on that list. (Just didn't want the kids to sound trendy.)

Parental notification means little

Parental notification means little in Ohio if it is this easy for minors to procure abortions:

All it took last year for a 14-year-old "Jane Roe" was a cell phone number. A staffer at a local Planned Parenthood clinic called the number and got permission - from a 21-year-old man who was molesting the girl and coerced her into an abortion.

The man, now in prison, pretended to be her father on the phone, then posed as her brother at the clinic. He paid with his credit card, and had the girl injected with Depo-Provera birth control, so he could resume having sex with her three days later.

Now at the heart of this is the fundamental problem with underage sex: when is "consentual" sex actually coercion? Always. What mentally stable man beds children? Whether the girl is molested or agrees to have sex, she is still immature, impressionable, and ultimately abused. How many adult women are continuing their sex lives using habits that started with such abuse at a young age? This abortion added insult to injury and yet this man is simply one monster (among how many thousands?) who got caught. Hiding behind "privacy" and profit, Planned Parenthood is complicit in ongoing child abuse and should be formally charged.