Is the Worst of the Sexual Revolution Over?
“As the invaluable Brad Wilcox notes in his recent testimony before the Senate Joint Economic Committee… by several measures American family life is getting better.” - David French
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Points for looking on the bright side, I guess. But I think has an overly rosey interpretation of the data.
- For example: Divorce may well be down because people are getting married less, shacking up in “serial monogamy” lifestyles instead
He’s probably right about abortion and his core thesis: laws aren’t the only way—and often aren’t the best way—to bring about change in a society. In the case of abortion, pro-life groups have accomplished way more by educating people and influencing attitudes than they have by passing laws.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
and no chance I’m giving David French any of my money!
I thought that one was unlocked. A bit hard to tell since I happily subscribed.
One of the few voices out there who is not batting for a corrupt political party. I’ll pay some more excerpts from the piece later. Much of it references a recent report to Congress that is public record.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
More from the French piece…
In the eight years following Roe, the abortion rate skyrocketed.
But then, something happened. The law remained permissive, but behavior became more conservative. As the invaluable Brad Wilcox notes in his recent testimony before the Senate Joint Economic Committee (if you care about family issues, follow Brad on Twitter), by several measures American family life is getting better. For example, divorce rates are down:
Later…
The share of kids living in intact married families is up:
And some analysis…
I’m not arguing that policy doesn’t matter. I’m saying that more is going on, and I’ve got an idea what at least some of that “more” might be. I can sum it up in one word – experience. Or, to put it another way, a generation of Americans tasted the fruits of libertinism and family instability and many of them recoiled. The human cost created a generational reaction.
I don’t get any $ for saying this, but everybody interested in conservative perspective on our times (as opposed to partisan perspective) should subscribe to The Dispatch.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
You’re going to argue that David—I support and defend drag queen story hour for kids at your local library as a quote “blessing of liberty”—French is conservative? On what planet? Is he anti-Trump? Sure. Conservative? Not my kind.
For the record, here’s the full quote from The New Yorker. “And, oh, by the way, you can’t define victory as the exclusion of your enemies from the public square. There are going to be Drag Queen Story Hours. They’re going to happen. And, by the way, the fact that a person can get a room in a library and hold a Drag Queen Story Hour and get people to come? That’s one of the blessings of liberty.”
Suggest reading what he actually says about that. And re-reading if necessary until understood.
Not everything wrong ought to be illegal and government enforced.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Your Trump hatred is blinding you to stuff that is just as if not more indefensible than what your complain that Trump is doing. But carry on.
There has been quite a thorough, maybe even “well orchestrated” attack on French by establishment Republicans—aka Trump loyalists. So there is quite a lot of widely repeated misrepresentation. Often repeated by folks who don’t really know what they’re talking about. (Robert says he’s aware, but his characterization isn’t consistent with that, so I don’t know what to make of that…)
This happens eventually to all conservatives who openly oppose Trump, if he, or those loyal to him, see them as a threat. French has been targeted more aggressively than most, probably because he’s not only conservative and articulate but also evangelical... And Trumpism doesn’t want conservative evangelicals to to be aware of what dissenters are saying.
As for French’s take on drag queen story hour, it’s a longish story and much of it has to do with opposing a new movement on the right to reject the classic civil liberties our country was built on in favor of a new authoritarian approach to public morality.
It should be obvious to Christians, of all people, that you can use law to retrain evil, but you can’t actually change people that way. You can’t change their beliefs and motivations that way. So coerced morality is superficial at best. I’m all for coercing it in protection of life and property, but it gets more oppressive the further we try to take it from those basics.
And let’s be real about this much: the kind of parents who take their kids to drag queen story hour are going to teach their kids those values regardless of whether there is an event at the public library. Who’s minds are being changed if we pass legislation that basically says “You are now required by law to shut up about what you believe?”
Where I disagree with French (if memory serves) is that I think local efforts to stop DQSH and the like can be an effective and appropriate response. If the community doesn’t want that going on in their library, they can probably act in Constitutional ways to shut it down. It’s perilous to get government involved in regulating speech, though. So I well understand French’s concern. That particular question really has nothing to do with Trump, other than the broader acceptance of authoritarianism on the right reflected in his ascendancy.
Didn’t realize I had so much to say on this. Maybe I should write something more formal and complete.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
I don’t know all the numbers super well, but it strikes me that surgical abortions are way down (not sure about what level drug induced/mifepristone(?) abortions are at), divorce is steady to down (though sadly, I learned about two divorces among my friends today), but I don’t see marriage numbers recovering—they’re still down.
That leaves a question I’ve not seen answered well; what is the rate of family breakup among non-married couples? Let’s just say that those who think marriage doesn’t matter for couples and kids probably don’t want to hear the answer.
And here’s a couple of potshots at Mr. French and Aaron….j/k…
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Aaron: “As for French’s take on drag queen story hour, it’s a longish story and much of it has to do with opposing a new movement on the right to reject the classic civil liberties our country was built on in favor of a new authoritarian approach to public morality.”
If you think our country was built on the liberty to have drag queens recruit kids in public facilities paid for by taxpayers, there really isn’t anything else to say. So I will leave you to your delusion, along with the devout hope that you are deeply disappointed when the Psalm 2 fulfilling candidate of the Democrats’ choice fails to reach the White House.
I encounter this sort of response pretty often. I’m always puzzled. Do people really believe ….
- it’s impossible to be against DQSH but also against government intrusion on free speech?
- it’s impossible that there is a nongovernmental solution to problems like DQSH?
- it’s impossible to believe Donald Trump is of too poor character to be president but also be opposed all the Democratic candidates?
Really? I wonder if this is truly how some see things or if it’s just posturing. (As for US Presidents, I’ve never supported a Democrat candidate and I really can’t see that ever happening. I just don’t happen to think that a candidate being our degenerate instead of their degenerate makes it OK to back him.)
There is one salient point there, though. What did the founders foresee? No, they did not foresee DQSH. What they had in mind was a society in which the populace exercises considerable self-restraint because it holds to religious belief and basic virtues. They would be self-restrained and not in need of government telling them what they can’t believe and talk about.
But we don’t have that society, as, ironically, our current President demonstrates. So what are we going to do? There are only two ways to deal with free speech in a society that lacks basic internal restraints. I’ve written an article on the truth about French and DQSH that will post next week, so I’ll leave anything more on that topic for then.
Getting back to the topic…
That leaves a question I’ve not seen answered well; what is the rate of family breakup among non-married couples? Let’s just say that those who think marriage doesn’t matter for couples and kids probably don’t want to hear the answer.
This is a different question from the success rate of marriages that occur after premarital cohabitation, because we’re talking about “family breakup” in cases where the couple never did marry. It really would be great to have numbers on that. I wonder if it’s been done in some smaller studies but just hasn’t be widely publicized.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
My daughter talked with me yesterday about how her psychology professor told the class to use the term “gay” instead of “homosexual” because the latter had negative connotations (“heterosexual” is OK, tho), and how the company line was taught, but without answering anything about correlations to homosexuality, transsexuality, etc..
(and of course, remembering my experience in junior high and high school, the notion that the word “gay” does not have negative connotations comes as something of a surprise to me, to put it mildly)
The instant thought I had was that perhaps—or most likely—the groups most interested in this really don’t want answers to these questions, and perhaps it’s precisely because they already have a very good idea of what the answers are. Try to find a study, for example, detailing the mean/median life expectancy of homosexuals. Try to find correlations between the various letters in LGBTQ….etc.. and other factors.
If you know what the correlations are, you may be able to find the causative factors, and then ….scary factor here….you just might be able to help people out of the lifestyle. And there’s a dangerous thing—if one can be helped, one cannot appeal for government largesse, etc..
So my best guess is that a lot of strongly politically connected groups simply don’t want the answers for very key reasons.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
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