Category Archives: Feminism

Marriage Redefined

April 8, 2013

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

Poor Jeremy Irons.  Poor, poor Jeremy.

He asked a basic question arising from the demands of same-sex couples to get the same tax breaks as married couples.  He asked a tax question…if we’re going to change the law so that people don’t have to pay inheritance tax…how can I get myself in on the deal?

In an interview with the Huffington Post, the 64-year-old actor said he doesn’t have an opinion either way on gay marriage, but he then asked, “could a father not marry his son?”  Later, after attacks by angry liberals, he tried to ameliorate the impact of his comment by claiming it was just a playful jestJeremy Irons 2.

You can tell that Irons tapped into a very real and very raw nerve.  Just look at the outrage and listen to the invectives spewed at him across the tabloids and on news shows.

Just when everyone was shouting “equality,” Jeremy pointed out that “equality” is being measured by the “dollars and cents of tax breaks.”  If gay activists think that Jeremy is the only one working with the financial inquisitiveness of a CPA…they have another think coming.

When the Post interviewer objected on the grounds of incest, Irons argued by referring to the gender issues being ignore.  “[I]ncest is there to protect us from inbreeding, but men don’t breed.”  Coming back to the core issue at hand, Irons piqued the public by asking if he were to marry his son…would it allow him to pass on his estate to his son without being taxed?

The gays have been “outed” in the truest sense.  For, most of the “debate” about gay marriage has been a diversionary tactic to redirect our sympathies to the emotional pain of gay people.  In truth, the underlying drive for same-sex equity is driven by money.  If there were no financial gains to be had, the crowds at the Supreme Court would dwindle to a trickle.

US Supreme CourtIn a key case at the Supreme Court, 83-year-old Manhattan resident Edith Windsor sued Uncle Sam because she was made to pay estate taxes after the death of her wife, Thea Spyer, that heterosexual widows would not have had to pay.  This case represents the core financial element of claiming marriage for same-sex relationships.

So why the tax breaks?  The government is never shy about collecting taxes.  Tax breaks and marriage certificates mattered from the day they were created because legislators recognized the social benefit of stabilizing the lives of families for the sake of their children…all accruing to the benefit of our civilization.  Tax breaks mattered because children mattered.

If we continue to deconstruct the institution of traditional marriage between men and women, then we have trouble identifying where to offer our social support for the benefit of children.  We have spent the past fifty years questioning the value of men and women, married with families, and toying with the idea that this isn’t important to us.  Same-sex marriage is just grabbing at the coattails of the cultural revolution.

Jeremy is asking the obvious question.  If marriage is not limited to one man and one woman, then what are the limits?  And if taxes are at stake…why stop with a marriage of two people?  If we are in charge of defining marriage to “anything we want it to be,” then all options should be on the table.

Tax experts are expert at maximizing tax breaks.  That is why Nevada and Delaware do a booming business as the states of preference for incorporating businesses in all fifty states.  That is why off-shore accounts are favored for large sums of cash.  And that is why out-sourcing your corporate call center to India or Ireland makes financial sense.

Supposedly, equality means my marriage is equal to yours, even if I am Wedding Ringsnot married to one person of the opposite sex.  So…can we extend “equality” even further?  Is there any justification for limiting the definition of marriage to two people?

Why not group marriage?  This is customary in some Muslim countries…one man with multiple wives.  Why not?

Why not the “other kind” of group marriage?  Why not permit one woman to be married to multiple men?  We already approve of multiple sexual partners for women.  Why not marry all of them?

Why not inter-family marriages?  Could a brother marry a sister?  We have ruled out the need to plan for children inside of a marriage.  We have multiple methods of avoiding and getting rid of children.  So genetic issues do not have to be an issue here.  A brother and sister?  Why not?

Jeremy’s off-the-cuff question is just one more in the list?  Why not a parent and child in marriage?

Why not two friends?  We don’t have to prove our bedroom habits in court; we don’t have to be gay lovers.  We can just be two friends with wonderful retirement plans.  Voila.  Married, we do not pay inheritance taxes.  We receive our spouse’s retirement in total, every single penny of it.  Even if we are not gay.  We can still get married.  Why not?

What about a marriage club?  If someone has an inheritance exceeding one million dollars, they can join our “group marriage club.”  We will all inherit from everyone.

Don’t think these questions can predict reality?  Think again.  Fifty years ago, who would have thought that men could marry men?  Social changers have learned to bypass public wisdom and to press their claims in court…and if we entertain the redefinition of marriage,  these questions will all wind their way into our social fabric, one legal challenge at a time.

If we are going to change the definition of marriage, what are the outside boundaries?  What makes two gay women or men more privileged than any other combination of human beings who claim their “right” to be married? cropped-Family-Sunset-Beach.jpg

If we are talking about marriage equality…we already have that.  Any man can marry any woman, one at a time.  Society allows the privilege of spousal inheritance as a benefit to those who are open to the possibility of children as the natural consequence of married love between a man and a woman.  It is as simple as that.

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April 1, 2013:  Marriage Defined

March 15, 2013:  All Things Being Equal

 

Marriage Defined

April 1, 2013

The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.  ~~Albert Camus

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

From the beginning of time, there has been a special relationship between men and women. From the beginning of time, this special relationship has produced children and families.  And from the beginning of time, culture has acknowledged the special value that this relationship between men and women has for creating healthy families and building civilization.

Obvious?  Of course.  Without any need for explanation, the average person recognizes that we are speaking of marriage.  Thus has been the definition of marriage since the beginning of time… the special union of a man and woman through which we create and nurture children for the survival of our civilization.

This being true, it is surprising…and unfortunate…that the discussion of the issue of same-sex marriage has been characterized as a debate between those who have compassion and those who hate decent gay people and want to deny them their rights.

Researching the issue of marriage on the Internet, Cosby Show Familymost headlines use the word Equality to frame the debate.  It is rare to find a writer that discusses marriage as a matter of Definition.  And by ignoring the definition, we ignore the very heart of the matter.

The definition of marriage is not arbitrary.  Biology does matter.  Marriage is based on the created distinctions of man and woman.  It is based on the importance of fathers and mothers for the children who come into their lives.  The marital institution has provided for fathers and mothers, helping them in the roles of protecting, teaching and guiding children into adulthood.

On websites and in papers, discussion of same-sex marriage gives a brief nod to children and families.  But, when stripped to essentials, the key focus in the bid for redefining marriage is money.  How do gay people in relationships maximize their financial benefits of two incomes, two retirement plans and two inheritances?

Same-sex marriage proponents may be well-intentioned.  But they will find that their generosity in redefining marriage as a mere business construction will have long-lasting results for our children.  “Equality” as applied to marriage in the current debate is simply a strategic tool, useful for winning by infusing the debate with an emotional accusation.  If someone opposes same-sex marriage, they will be accused of being mean and hateful and bigoted.

If same-sex marriage is legally accepted, the term “equality” will ultimately be redirected from financial equality to gender equality.  Gender is barely acknowledged at this point in the battle for same-sex marriage.  But the ultimate goal of the most strident same-sex proponents is to declare an equality that does not exist.  When the last chips fall, these same-sex advocates will insist that every person in the culture must agree that men and women are “the same.”

Men and women, mothers and fathers, no longer will be celebrated for http://www.dreamstime.com/-image1329930their separate and unique qualities.  They will be considered interchangeable units in the family.  At the very moment that we are now coming to acknowledge the negative results of absent fathers in families, we will lose our ability to address this as a valid social concern.  Our culture will no longer have any ability to deal with the biological differences that are significant in raising children.

Mothers and fathers have unique and distinctive gender qualities that help their children develop healthy self-images.  But it won’t matter.  And the courts will once again be the venue for this battle.

Already, those in education have seen the fall-out of a culture that no longer values families built through the bonds of men and women who commit to each other in marriage.

  • Sex educators bristle at the notion that boys and girls look at the sexual act through a different lens.
  • For these educators, it is “offensive” to suggest that male and females have different biological and emotional needs related to sex and relationships.
  • The suggestion that fathers – men – are an essential ingredient in the recipe for families is decried as sexist.
  • Terminology in schools has been scrubbed of references to sexual differences.  Men and women are “people.”  Husbands and wives are “partners.”
  • Children in elementary schools are being encouraged to “try out” gender to see whether they prefer being a boy or a girl.

These attitudes are being used to push social agendas that negate the regular natural desires of boys and girls to be just that…boy and girls.  Consider just one case.  Last year a Rhode Island school district cancelled its father-daughter dance after the ACLU threatened to sue the district for gender discrimination. In the future, only parent-child events, not father-daughter dances or mother-son ballgames, will be allowed.

Dennis Prager in his column, Why a Good Person Can Vote Against Same-Sex Marriage, points to the shallow nature of our discussions about the potential redefinition of marriage.

The history of left-wing policies has largely consisted of doing what feels good and compassionate without asking what the long-term consequences will be; what Professor Thomas Sowell calls “Stage One Thinking.” That explains, for example, the entitlement state. It sounds noble and seems noble. But the long-term consequences are terrible: economic ruin, a demoralized population, increasing selfishness as people look to the state to take care of their fellow citizens, and more.

cropped-Family-Sunset-Beach.jpgFrom the beginning of time, culture has acknowledged the special value of the unique relationship between men and women in creating healthy families and building civilization.  There are long-term consequences for our children and grand-children in creating a society that no longer wants to acknowledge the significance of our biology.

Marriage between a man and woman is a definition that has meaning…and significance.  It is most certainly worth defending.

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March 15, 2013:  All Things Being Equal

May 14, 2004:  Order in the Courtroom!

All Things Being Equal

March 15, 2013

America is a country founded on equality.  It is an idea formalized in our Declaration of Independence:

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Yet, the modern understanding of equality is threatening to undo us, as we become more and more fractured in our attempts to make certain that we all get an equal slice of the American Dream.  Bluntly put, equality today means that I can have what you have, no holds barred.  You have it, and I want it.  I deserve it because we are both equal.

Equality is at the heart of the battle between the sexes.  And most recently, equality has been argued at the Supreme Court as the premise for redefining marriage to provide for equality.  Equality?  How so?

Ask any child what equal means.  PieAt the age of three, he knows what to look for….my slice of the pie is just as big as your slice.  And kids have a very simple way to enforce the rules of equality.  You slice the pie.  I get first choice.

Sadly, many adults have never graduated from this simple definition of equality.  They wildly bandy the term “equality” around, as if all of life is one big cherry pie to be shared.

Children grow in their sophistication.  9871057-pizza-slice-with-everythingSharing a pizza is so much more complicated than cherry pie.  Even when the slices are perfectly cut from the center of the pizza into identical slices, there are so many ways to go wrong in getting your equal share.

  • How many slices of pepperoni are on each piece?
  • Which slice has the most cheese?
  • Does cheese matter to me?
  • If I give you my cheese, what will you give me in return?
  • If my brother is twice as tall, does he get twice as many slices?
  • What if I missed breakfast?  Can I have more than my extra tall brother?

Pie ChartWhat does equality mean?  Quite literally, it depends on how you slice it.  Some may object to reducing the arguments for same-sex marriage to a pizza party challenge.  But there is more to the comparison than meets the eye.

Cherry Pie – we all have relationships that could compare to sharing a pie.  For instance, there is the line at the box office.  Every person in line is equal as my competitor.  Our equal chance to buy tickets to the concert is governed by who got in line first.  If tickets are few and the line is long, they may restrict each purchase to six tickets.  And still, at the end of the day, they will run out of tickets and there will be the haves and the have-nots.  Some will have $300 to pay for a ticket sold online.  Many will not be able to ante up the extra money and will have to read about the concert in the papers or hope for a YouTube upload.  Every person in line is equal as my competitor.  But at the end of the day…some have…and some have not.  As my mother used to tell me, life is not fair.  I will not get everything I want.

Pizza – we all long for the relationships that are special orders, people who are essential to our life in personal and unique ways.  Every pizza is specially designed to appeal to the one who will eat it.  If we are lucky, we may have many such special order relationships.  Common understanding is that we will be able to count these relationships on one hand.  If I am lucky to have five special people that I can relate deeply to, what is the likelihood that each of these relationships is equal to all of the others?  There is the parent who is my best friend.  My spouse is committed to the fulfillment of my personal dreams.  My child protects me in a new and expanding world with challenges that I need help to deal with.  My friend of 40 years knows the history of my failings…and he loves me in spite of them.  Each relationship is special, but none of them are equal to each other.

Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary CakeHow can we reduce marriage to a simple piece of cherry pie?  That is at the heart of the premise presented to the Supreme Court justices…that equality will solve our differences.

All things being equal…there is never a day when all things are equal.  The best we can do is discern the differences and ask what those differences mean to us.

Marriage?  Special order…made especially for whom?  This is what we need to ask.

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April 23, 2004:  m…m…Married?

May 14, 2004:  Order in the Courtroom!

 

Because I Said So

December 3, 2007

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

Another writer has put her best words forward, trying to prove the obvious.  The title of her book tells us what we already know:  Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!)

Unfortunately, though, knowing that we are a sex-obsessed culture and witnessing the damage it does to our children will not be enough to compel a cultural change.  Politicians, academics and editors refuse to support education that helps teach and mentor children to remain sexually abstinent.  What are they waiting for?  Research, they say.  Research and evidence.

Well, here in her book Prude they get what they want.  Carol Platt Liebau is no dummy.  Graduating from Princeton, she entered law school at Harvard and served as the first female managing editor of the Harvard Law Review.  Her work as a law clerk for a U.S. Court of Appeals Judge launched an impressive succession of legal and policy positions spanning fifteen years.

Evidence?  Politicians want research?  Fine.  Liebau gives them evidence…along with logical argument…she “puts all the facts at their fingertips,” detailing the radical sexual forces assaulting our children.

Kate O’Beirne, Washington editor of National Review can’t say enough about Prude. “All parents want their daughters to be healthy and happy. Smart parents will recruit Carol Platt Liebau to help rescue the girls they love from the destructive forces they face. Liebau sounds an alarm we dare not ignore in her brave, groundbreaking book.” 

Groundbreaking?  Hardly.

The books keep coming.  Each year, one or more valiant writers pull together the facts and give voice to victims of the sexual revolution. Each book lays out the research and the evidence.  It is never enough.

In 2000, at only twenty-three years of age, Wendy Shalit published A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue.  For her effort, she was mocked and ridiculed.  Again, in 2007, she wrote Girls Gone Mild, drawing on 100 in-depth interviews and thousands of e-mail exchanges with women from ages twelve to twenty eight.  Shalit documents how young women want a culture that affirms and promotes chastity.

In 2005, Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families hit bookstores.  Author Pamela Paul investigated the “all pornography, all the time” mentality of many younger men and its ripple effect on the culture.  Her in-depth interviews confirmed what much research shows.  Pornography damages relationships, negatively impacts libido and is highly addictive.

In 2006, Dr. Miriam Grossman penned Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student. Drawing on her ten years as a psychiatrist at the student health service at UCLA, she is armed with facts, evidence and research that disprove the tenets of the liberated sex mantra preached on college campuses.  No wonder that Dr. Grossman feared professional retaliation and listed the official author as “Anonymous, M.D.”

Dr. Margaret Meeker, a pediatrician for more than twenty years specializing in treating adolescents, has written several titles on teens and sex.  In Epidemic: How Teen Sex Is Killing our Kids, she presents research on the physical and emotional consequences of teen sex and makes these facts come alive through stories about the teens she has treated.

These books, and many others, evidence a large body of scientific research documenting the destructive consequences of “liberated sex”.  They support the need to restore sexual abstinence as an expected standard for our children and to set cultural norms affirming this goal.  Research is available to show that effective abstinence education programs are doing just that.

But the facts, the research and the evidence are not enough to satisfy the demands of those defending our sexualized culture.  The facts are never enough…for a very simple reason.

The sexual revolution in the 60s was not founded on facts, research and evidence.  It was founded to give us what we wanted.  Embracing birth control and abortion on demand, human sexual behaviors of all kinds were defined as positive and empowering.  Sexual self-control was defined as negative and unnecessary.

These definitions are self-justifying.  One cannot fight a definition by using research.  A chair is defined as a place to sit, not because research proves it true.  A chair is a chair…because I said so.

If a woman says sexual promiscuity harmed her, by the modern definition of liberated sex, she is simply repressed.  She is immature…”because I said so.”  By definition, sex is good.  Liberated sex is better.

What about a research study of a thousand women who say sexual promiscuity harmed them?  Well, they are all repressed…because we said so.  The study “proves” these women need to be treated so that they will enjoy liberated sex.

The more we are pushed to gather evidence, the further we drift from the truth.  We can pile up research, and we can write a book.  Many will laud our efforts to restore common sense and save our young women.  But, our book, if not mocked as a puritanical tract, will be ignored by those who hold the power to direct a cultural change.

You may have facts.  Unfortunately, though, you will never have enough facts and research.  Modern definitions have been chiseled in stone:  liberated sex is good sex…and sexual restraint is bad.  That’s just the way it is…”because I said so.”

What It Means to Be a Woman

September 24, 2007

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

This year at Smith College, in the Connecticut River valley of western Massachusetts, according to their website, a “world-class faculty of scholars are fully engaged with their students’ intellectual development, and an open curriculum encourages each student to explore many fields of knowledge.”

At this nation’s largest college for women, 24 course offerings explore what it means to be a woman.  The “Seminar on Gender and Social Change” sums it all up:  students explore “the intersection of race, class and sexual orientation” as they are revealed in “case studies [to] include feminist, lesbian and gay, right-wing, self  help, anti-abortion, and pro-choice movements.”  In short, being a Smith kind of woman requires a motherly embrace of abortion.

Whether it is Smith College or Harvard or Columbia or any American university, young women…and men…are being taught that abortion is the ultimate feminist right that guarantees the ability of women to succeed in life.  If you are pro-woman, you are required to be pro-abortion.

Woe to any student who might enter college holding a reverence for life.  This is the kind of “mistaken notion” that will cause the ire and ridicule of professors to fall upon on her, doom her to Cs and lower on papers and deny her access to fellowships and faculty positions.  In most cases, these women will survive.  They will be converted.

Battered from every side, our college daughters will eventually come to believe that no self-respecting woman could ever claim to be pro-life.  In a curriculum closed to real academic inquiry, they will never hear the truth about Elizabeth Cady Stanton who wrote feminist papers opposing abortion and infanticide in The Revolution, a newspaper she published with Susan B. Anthony.

Neither are college professors likely to disclose Stanton’s letter to Julia Ward Howe, the creator of Mother’s Day, where she wrote, “When we consider that woman are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to dispose of as we see fit.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton is not the only woman college professors choose to neglect.  Not surprisingly, their slate of “undesirables” includes all women who embrace the life-giving capacity inherent in the very nature of being a woman…Jane Addams, Susan B. Anthony, Pearl S. Buck, Dorothy Day…and many others.  The curriculum at Smith College may be advertised as “open”, but not that open.

Luckily, college is not the only place where one can get an education.  Thanks to modern feminists who are reclaiming the definition of what it means to be a woman., it is possible to join the company of real feminists, both past and present, who affirm the value of every human life, no matter how small or humble it may be.

Like those who paved the way before them, Feminists for Life has refused to be controlled by the politics of abortion.  Believing in the strength of women and the potential of every human life, FFL President Serrin Foster has built a strong force of women reaching out to women with information and support.  We deserve better than abortion…we deserve better choices.

This year Feminists for Life has gathered a group of eloquent women speakers who tell it like it is…what it means to be a woman.  Traveling to university campuses around the country, they are truly engaging the students’ intellectual development, presenting case studies which illustrate the feminist case against abortion.

Finally, our daughters entering college do not have to accept the status quo dished out by college professors who want to indoctrinate with a pro-abortion bias.  Feminists for Life has paved a way to truth.  We can help.

Think of the young women in your life who are in college.  Tell them about Feminists for Life  and the full range of resources they offer to college students:  helping with abortion research projects, providing pregnancy resources and leading campus workshops and lectures.

Taking heart from women who have paved the way, it’s time for freshmen entering Smith College…and any other college…to teach their professors a thing or two.  Considering what it means to be a woman…when you are talking about abortion…we deserve better.

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When a man steals to satisfy hunger, we may safely conclude that there is something wrong in society – so when a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is an evidence that either by education or circumstances she has been greatly wronged.    

                         Mattie Brinkerhoff, The Revolution, 1869