Children of the (Sexual) Revolution

Unfortunately, you can fool the children of the sexual revolution.

On the one hand, this is a good wake up call.  Excerpts:

Mark Greaves talks to Matthew Fradd, the 28-year-old who conquered his porn addiction and is helping others to do the same...

Fradd says people should be honest and admit that churchgoers can be addicted to pornography, too. “Those who sit next to us at church may not believe there’s a problem with pornography, and maybe they do and they’re up to their eyeballs in it.”

On the phone, he says he forgets that other people aren’t as comfortable talking about pornography as he is. “It’s kind of the main thing I do now,” he says...

From his own experience struggling against pornography Fradd recommends fasting and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament as well praying the rosary.

“If I can’t say no to that next slice of pizza or that next cup of coffee, how on earth will I say no to a temptation to look at pornography?”

He adds: “Prayer without fasting is like boxing with one hand tied behind your back, and fasting without prayer – well, we call that dieting.”

Fradd is a riveting, charismatic speaker, even on the phone. But he also seems quite sensible and down to earth: he is careful not to hold himself up as a model of virtue, and is scrupulously humble about his efforts.

Essentially, he says, the point is not about looking, or not looking, at pornography; it’s about trying to be holy.

“We want to be the kind of men that, when we’re dead, Satan throws a party. He says: ‘Thank God he has gone, he caused my kingdom too much damage.’ That’s the kind of man I want to be. And I think that’s the kind of man most men want to be.”

And Taylor Marshall has some spiritual tips on chastity:

Someone once asked Saint Dominic why he kept his eyes lowered to the ground during most the day.

The saint's response: "So that my eyes might be pure when I one day behold the Blessed Mother."

Incidentally, here is a good custom for men who try to keep their eyes and hearts pure. I have memorized the following Bible verse and I recite it when I am tempted by the eyes:

"I have made a covenant with my eyes, that I would not so much as look upon a virgin" (Job 31:1).

It's very effective and it's also worthy invoking the Dominican St Thomas Aquinas who is said to have been one of the purest men ever to live...

On the other hand, this is the culture in which we live and move and have our being (adult content warning).  Excerpts:

...This story on MSNBC.com asks if perhaps maybe a college professor kinda' maybe went a wee bit too far when he brought a stripper to his class to use a motorized sex toy on herself...

I wonder how many parents know they're taking out a second mortgage so their kids can attend a live sex show?

The lack of outrage over this story begs the question of whether our society has completely lost the ability to call a nutcase a nutcase. This guy deserves a rap in the mouth from an angry father. He deserves to be ostracized by polite company. That's the rational reaction.

But what do we get? We get him defending himself and the college helping him out and the media wondering if perhaps he maybe kinda' sorta' went a weeeeeeeee bit too far...

Father Longenecker is doing a series on the tactics of temptation in the Screwtape tradition (using the same characters he'd used in The Gargoyle Code) that seems very apropos.

And they're pushing for sex ed to look like this.

So--everybody. It's hard as hell out there.  We need to make sure we don't fail to temper justice with mercy, and do hold onto justice in the face of misguided compassion.  Why?  Cause almost everybody these days are among the walking wounded, but nobody has to stay there.

Noonan on Unions

A fascinating piece.  Excerpts:

...Let's look for a second at one of the most famous battles, in New Jersey. A year ago Chris Christie was sworn in as the new governor. He immediately faced a $10.7 billion deficit and catastrophic debt projections. State and local taxes were already high, so that if he raised them he'd send people racing out of the state. So Mr. Christie came up with a plan. He asked the state's powerful teachers union for two things: a one-year pay freeze—not a cut—and a modest 1.5% contribution to their benefit packages.

The teachers union went to war. They said, "Christie is trying to kill the unions," so they tried to kill him politically. They spent millions on ads trying to take him down.

And it backfired. They didn't kill him, they made him. Chris Christie is a national figure now because the teachers union decided, in an epic political drama in which arithmetic is the predominant fact, to ignore the math. They also decided to play the wrong role in the drama. They decided to play the role of Johnny Friendly, on whom more in a moment.

If the union leaders had been smart—if they'd had a heart!—they would have held a private meeting and said, "Look, the party's over. We've done great the past 20 years, but now taxpayers are starting to resent us, and they have reason. They're losing their benefits and footing the bill for our gold-plated plans, they don't have job security and we do, taxes are high. We have to back off."

They didn't do this. It was a big mistake. And the teachers union made it just as two terrible but unrelated things were happening to their reputation. In what might be called an expression of the new spirit of transparency that is sweeping the globe, two documentaries came out in 2010, "The Lottery" and "Waiting for Superman." Both were made by and featured people who are largely liberal in their sympathies, and both said the same brave thing: The single biggest impediment to better schools in our country is the teachers unions, which look to their own interests and not those of the kids...

This needs to be placed in persepctive by this and this.

By Your Acronyms Combined...I Am...Sex Ed!

The NEA at the UN advocating some adult stuff--reader, be warned.  Excerpts:

...Schneider, representing the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers union in the US, advocated for more “inclusive” sex education in US schools, with curricula based on liberal hetero and homosexual expression.  She claimed that the idea of sex education remains an oxymoron if it is abstinence-based, or if students are still able to opt-out.

Comprehensive sex education is “the only way to combat heterosexism and gender conformity,” Schneider proclaimed, “and we must make these issues a part of every middle and high-school student’s agenda.”  “Gender identity expression and sexual orientation are a spectrum,” she explained, and said that those opposed to homosexuality “are stuck in a binary box that religion and family create...”

No mention of biology...But haven't we heard from the NEA before? Oh, that's right:

It's all in Freire, all in Freire--my goodness, that's really all they teach in schools these days!