Father Absence Report

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5mg-kj6ecY

You could see it coming in January, in the wake of the surprise box office hit Juno and the pregnancy of Jamie Lynn Spears. ABC’s Deborah Roberts observed on Good Morning America that, “…teen pregnancy is the new hot topic in Hollywood….” 

As surely as gestation follows conception, Hollywood was going to cash in on teen pregnancy.

If conception took place in January, then Hollywood gestates a little more quickly than a human mother. By the end of June, NBC delivered its teen pregnancy “reality” show, The Baby Borrowers.  A week later, ABC delivered a drama, The Secret Life of the American Teenager.

The Baby Borrowers features unmarried teenage couples living in a house, taking care of real children as if they were parents.  Before the couples get the children, they live in the house together for two days, without chaperones, indulging in what one participant likened to a “honeymoon.”   Nevertheless, NBC is peddling the show as a public service, a form of “birth control,” because it shows teen viewers how difficult raising a child can be.

The Secret Life of the American Teenager makes no such pretense of social conscience.  The show is populated by a cast of characters with one thing on their minds.  Though Secret Life centers on a 15-year-old mother-to-be, the creator of the show, Brenda Hampton, told The Hollywood Reporter, “I don’t have anything to say about the issue of teen pregnancy.  I’m just telling a story about a girl who happens to get pregnant.” Hampton says plenty about the supposed inevitability of teen sex, however, when a devout Christian boy who warns others against having sex gets busy with the school slut during the very first episode.

Critics have panned the shows, but ratings were good for both opening episodes.  If viewership remains strong, ABC and NBC will soon be fattening their bank accounts.  But have they thought how much their profits could cost society as a whole?

America has witnessed an uptick in teen birth rates in the past year, and social critics are blaming what they call the “Juno effect.”  A child psychiatrist told CBS that Juno and similar movies, along with pregnant, unmarried Hollywood starlets, “might have glamorized the idea of pregnancy” and removed the stigma.  Whether Juno was the principal cause or just a contributing factor, something persuaded a dozen or so high school girls in Gloucester, Massachusetts that it’s okay to deliberately get pregnant.

Television shows depicting sexually active teens are likely to encourage teen viewers to become sexually active themselves.  Teens will abstain from sex only if parents and schools establish high expectations for them and teach them that sex outside of marriage is morally wrong.  Watching other teens engage in promiscuous sex, even characters on a TV show, will desensitize teens to moral considerations and reduce behavioral expectations.  Why shouldn’t they do it if everybody else is?  Why shouldn’t they do it if everybody expects them to? This is the prime reason that “comprehensive” sex education is a colossal failure.

If America sees teen sexual activity spike in the next year, no doubt the social critics will coin a new term, the “Secret Life effect.”  More teen sex will mean more STDs, more illegitimate pregnancies, more unwed mothers, more abortions, more innocence lost.  Hollywood may profit from exploiting teen sexuality, but real people will pay the price.

One of their pretend toys they offered was the Peek-a-Boo Pole Dancing Kit.  The kit included a three-piece tension pole that fits ceilings up to 8′6″ tall, a dance booklet, a garter belt and play dance money. 

One parent was a little upset to see this product in toy stores; they thought that their five-year-old was a little young for sex work.

Tesco has now pulled the product from toy shelves but it is still available to an older “more appropriate” audience as “Peek-a-Boo Pole Dancing Exercise Pole” on sites like amazon.com. 

Each year, marketers attempt to sell sensual products to younger and younger girls.  We must be vigilant and let manufactureres know that we will not stand for products of this type to be out there for our children and grandchildren!  

One of their pretend toys they offered was the Peek-a-Boo Pole Dancing Kit.  The kit included a three-piece tension pole that fits ceilings up to 8′6″ tall, a dance booklet, a garter belt and play dance money. 

One parent was a little upset to see this product in toy stores; they thought that their five-year-old was a little young for sex work.

Tesco has now pulled the product from toy shelves but it is still available to an older “more appropriate” audience as “Peek-a-Boo Pole Dancing Exercise Pole” on sites like amazon.com. 

Each year, marketers attempt to sell sensual products to younger and younger girls.  We must be vigilant and let manufactureres know that we will not stand for products of this type to be out there for our children and grandchildren!  

In Leonard Pitts’ mean-spirited column, he intimates that abstinence-only education is responsible for the 17 teen pregnancies in Massachussets. He also wrongly states that abstinence-only education can’t mention contraceptives - it can and does, but does not condone the use because there obviously is only one sure way to prevent STD’s, unwanted pregnancies or abortion, and that is abstinence-only.

Recently, an AP story about the growing number of states abolishing federal funding for Title V programs (Virginia is one) have turned a blind eye to the needs of America’s young people. Massachussets rejected the funds and watched pregnancy rates quadruple in one year at Gloucester High School. You see, Mr. Leonard Pitts, it really wasn’t due to the Bush administration at all.
 
Furthermore, this report states that faced with a culture saturated in promiscuity and STD’s, teenagers need to be equipped with the skills that abstinence education offers now more than ever. It’s time for politicians to put the teen in need of this programming first, so that they can successfully build healty relationships, refrain from sexual acitvity, aspire to marriage, and protect their health.

Shame on you, Mr. Leonard Pitts, and thank you, Mr. Bush

I also hope you will join me today on this 4th of July, the birthday of American independence and freedom, in praying for the safety of the members of our armed forces who are in harm’s way. They deserve no less, and much, much more.

Some suggested that the “glamorization of pregnancy” in pop culture have contributed to teen pregnancies.  This would include situations such as Jamie Lynn Spears’ pregnancy, as well as movies like “Juno.” 

Others have attributed the 17 pregnancies to the free day-care center at Gloucester High School and the comprehensive sex education curriculum employed by the school.  Abstinence education programs may have prevented the tripling of pregnancies at Gloucester High School. 

Sweet Land of Tolerance 

Religion in America

June 26, 2008 

“Survey Shows U.S. Religious Tolerance” was the headline of a New York Times article about the Pew Forum’s survey of America’s religious landscape.  It found that Americans have a “non-dogmatic approach to faith.”  In fact 70 percent of Americans who claim affiliation to a religious body—including Christians—agreed that “many religions can lead to eternal life.”  Nearly the same percentage said that “there’s more than one true way to interpret the teachings of my religion.” 

What’s true of faith is also true of morals.  Seventy-eight percent say that there are “absolute standards of right and wrong.”  But only 29 percent say that they “rely on their religion to delineate these standards.”  Instead, more than half o fhte respondents said that they rely on “practical experience and common sense.”  As the Book of Judges put it, “every man did what was righ in his own eyes.” 

Not surprisingly, the media repeatedly used the word tolerant to characterize America’s religious beliefs. 

But to be regarded as “tolerant” today no longer means extending “full rights of free speech and free expression” to those of all faiths.  Instead, it appears that “tolerance” now requires what journalist Terry Mattingly calls a “certain doctrine of salvation,” that regards all “religious paths” as leading “to the top of the same eternal mountain.” 

So, it is not possible anymore to debate religious truth claims respectfully.  Instead, the new “tolerance,” which has become our ultimate civic virtue, requires abandoning all truth claims lest we “offend” somebody. 

This applies everywhere: over the water cooler at work or even in presidential politics.  When asked recently in a private meeting with religious leaders whether Jesus was the only way to salvation, Barack Obama reportedly said, “Jesus is the only way for me. I’m not in a position to judge other people.”  Was he merely trying not to offend non-Christians?  Or could his answer reflect this growing relativism, even among Christians? 

The problem is that all religions make mutually exclusive truth claims.  Either Jesus is, as He Himself said, “the only way to the Father,” or He is not.  What Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Hindus say about the person and work of Jesus Christ cannot be reconciled.  They may all be false, but they cannot all be true. 

It’s called the law of non-contradicition—it goes back toAristotle: If proposition A is true—that is, if it conforms to reality—then proposition B, making a contrary claim, cannot be true as well. 

We can trace our debased definition of “tolerance’ back to French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau who rejected any distinction between “civil” and “theological intolerance.”  Rousseau did not believe that peole can “live at peace with those [they] regard as damned.”  He say Christian truth claims as being intolerant and a prelude to civil strife.  Specifically, he wrote, anyone who dared to say “no salvation outside the church” should be driven out of society—precisely what is happening.

Have we been so taken in by our own culture that we have abondend truth?  The antidote to this is what I have written about in my book, The Faith.  Christians need to be grounded in our basic beliefs, or we will, indeed, be swept up in the tides of surging relativism. 

At the end of the school year, the school nurse had given  150 pregnancy tests.  The school pregnancy rate increased 400% in one year! 

The media is saying that more contraception available to high school students is the answer.  How will that help girls who have a mindset determined to get pregnant?  Increasing available contraception is NOT the answer. 

NAC believes that abstinence education is the key to preventing future teen pregnancies and protecting the health of high school students! 

Being a good friend 11% 

Being a good community citizen 18%

Being a good partner 27%

Being a good parent 44%

The desperation that this girl felt led her to an act that cost her the life of her child.  (”It was a very emotional experience for us both to witness her pass her baby and my granchild into the bedpan,” her mother said of the experience.)  But the act eventually led to seizures and cardiac arrest and the loss of her own life.  Two lives lost that could have been spared.

Every time you have a sexual relationship with someone, you’re risking more than the possibility of pregnancy.  Think of it this way, you’re having sex with every other person that they have slept with as well.  You are exposing yourself to 25 STD’s in one moment of passion. 

I was young once; I had raging hormones.   Teens today do not have a market on this.  The pressures were the same when I was growing up as they are today.  I heard, “You would if you really loved me”, etc.  My answer (and yours) should be “you wouldn’t pressure me if you really loved me”.  It’s hard to say “no” but it’s the only way to protect yourself and honor yourself.   Make a commitment to abstinence or  secondary virginity.  Stand above the masses and stay strong.    

I just finished reading Wendy Shalit’s “Girls Gone Mild” and while it took me almost a month and a half, only getting to read a chapter every couple of days, the impact of this book was in no way lessened. This book made me think. In fact, a chapter at a time was really all that I could handle as each one possessed so much information that allowing for an intellectual digestion period was mandatory.

There were countless quotes, anecdotes, interviews, and statistics that struck me, sometimes floored me, and left my heart broken and despairing for the girls of the twenty-first century, but what I was most impacted by was how relevant the book was to me, personally.

I have always considered myself a modest girl, a “good” girl (in reference to Shalit’s terminology, which is the essence of this book - the discrepancy between the “good” and “bad” girl), and, consequently, upon beginning this literary adventure, did not anticipate that Shalit’s work would really have that much in store for me.

Famous last words, anyone?

I not only saw myself in this book, I saw my mom, my aunt, my best friend, even my six-year-old cousin - this book touched almost every facet of what I considered to be my “modesty worldview” and challenged me on almost every one too. To go into considerable detail would be lengthy and, frankly, not worth your time as the reader of this blog because my revelations from this book are simply that, my revelations. If you truly want to understand what I am referring to, all I can suggest is that you read the book yourself.

I will, however, comment on one quote that, upon reading it, made me think to myself, “I HAVE to share this with every girl I know - it’s pure genius!” To give you a bit of context, Shalit was remarking on what appears to be this generations’ attempt to swing the sexual pendulum back towards the modesty side of things, away from the hippie-love generations’ legacy of sexual pervasiveness and extremism. 

“While members of the new generation are pining for courtship and milkshakes, all they get fed is more explicitness, which only increases their longing [for the aforementioned]. Sex may sell, but at our current degree of saturation, mystery and honor will sell even more…We are hungry for examples of uniquely human striving, to be reminded that we can still experience genuine feeling and not just bodily contortions” (75).

Genius, right?!!

And not just genius - straight up true! In a world where the most frequently run nightly news stories center around the latest Hollywood-ette’s sexual trysts or public exposure and politicians are expending their energies and budgets on co-ed public bathrooms, there are still those who aspire to chivalry, the thrill of a meaningful first kiss, and the prospect of being respected and admired for more than their measurements and their body mass index.

Right here, in this public forum of sorts, I will join the ranks of those girls who have gone “mild” and say, without shame, that I am one of those girls who is fed up with explicitness, who appreciates the chivalrous boy, and who demands to be seen first and foremost as a spiritual, intellectual, intelligent and emotional being, not just some mass of flesh that might look good in a two-piece.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ErYcScPcaHg http://youtube.com/watch?v=ErYcScPcaHg>

Rita Rudner