..... In today's entertainment culture, it's easy to get desensitized to sexual ethics and practices that are contrary to our Christian beliefs. In other words, the new battleground for sexual temptation isn't the bedroom, but our brains.Well said, Camerin. Check out the whole article.
I'm startled every now and then when watching Friends or Alias or the latest blockbuster flick to find myself not at all fazed when a couple winds up in bed together on the first date, or when I find myself even rooting for the consummation of a long-awaited romance or the breakup of a marriage so a third party can enter the scene.
I'm not proud of these things, but they're true. And I know from a few candid conversations with friends that there are many of us desperately trying to keep from being products of our over-sexualized culture.
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This is also a reason we need to allow others who share our faith into the messier parts of our lives as well. I need the loving accountability of friends who will call me on certain decisions when I'm perhaps tuning out God's voice or having a difficult time hearing it. What a vital role we can play in each other's lives, drawing us closer to each other and to God, as we take the risk to be real with one another.
Infosys said all the walls have been blown away in the world, so now we, an Indian software company, can use the Internet, fiber optic telecommunications and e-mail to get superempowered and compete anywhere that our smarts and energy can take us. And we can be part of a global supply chain that produces profit for Indians, Americans and Asians.
Al Qaeda said all the walls have been blown away in the world, thereby threatening our Islamic culture and religious norms and humiliating some of our people, who feel left behind. But we can use the Internet, fiber optic telecommunications and e-mail to develop a global supply chain of angry people that will superempower us and allow us to hit back at the Western civilization that's now right in our face.
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Indeed, it is worth asking what are the spawning grounds for each. Infosys was spawned in India, a country with few natural resources and a terrible climate. But India has a free market, a flawed but functioning democracy and a culture that prizes education, science and rationality, where women are empowered. The Indian spawning ground rewards anyone with a good idea, which is why the richest man in India is a Muslim software innovator, Azim Premji, the thoughtful chairman of Wipro.
Al Qaeda was spawned in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, societies where there was no democracy and where fundamentalists have often suffocated women and intellectuals who crave science, free thinking and rationality. Indeed, all three countries produced strains of Al Qaeda, despite Pakistan's having received billions in U.S. aid and Saudi Arabia's having earned billions from oil. But without a context encouraging freedom of thought, women's empowerment and innovation, neither society can tap and nurture its people's creative potential — so their biggest emotional export today is anger.
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Both Infosys and Al Qaeda challenge America: Infosys by competing for U.S. jobs through outsourcing, and Al Qaeda by threatening U.S. lives through terrorism.
the Brussels-based World Observatory of Terrorism, an independent think tank affiliated with the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, points to five major reasons that cast doubt on the involvement of ETA.
First, ETA generally warns Spanish authorities moments before launching their attacks in which civilians are likely to be harmed. This, obviously, was not the case on Thursday.
Second, ETA traditionally targets representatives of the government or the administration, such as policemen, the military, magistrates or even journalists who oppose them.
Third, ETA customarily selects "symbolic" targets, such as military barracks and administrative buildings. Although ETA's largest attack to date was in 1987 against a supermarket in Barcelona that killed 21 people, this was the exception rather than the norm.
Fourth, ETA always claims its attacks. Following any ETA bombing, ETA militants call in a claim to Spanish authorities. This failed to happen this time.
Fifth, ETA has never in the past carried out multiple attacks. According to some sources, at least 10 bombs were detonated almost simultaneously on Thursday.
On the other hand, these murderous attacks bear the traditional hallmark of al-Qaida: multiple bombs detonating a few seconds apart and programmed to cause the largest possible number of human casualties.
MADRID (Reuters) - Simultaneous bomb blasts ripped through packed commuter trains at three stations in Madrid on Thursday, killing 182 people and injuring about 900 in Europe's bloodiest attack for more than 15 years.Numbers expected to rise as the day goes on.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria AznarPrager noted how some explicitly refered to terrorism while some others did not.
"There is no possible negotiation with these killers. ... Our aim is to win over terrorism. Only by being firm we can stop (terrorism). We must be firm fighting the terrorists and opposing the final aims they want to achieve."
U.S. President George W. Bush
Bush called the Spanish Prime Minister to express "solidarity with the people of Spain at this difficult moment." Bush condemned what he called "vicious acts of terrorism" in the strongest possible terms and expressed his condolences to the families of those killed and wished a speedy and full recovery to the hundreds injured.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan
"Once again we see senseless killing of innocent people. The killing of innocent people cannot be justified regardless of the costs. I offer my deepest sympathy to King Carlos of Spain, to the government and people of Spain, and to the people and friends who were killed or injured. I hope that the perpetrators will be brought to justice swiftly."
French President Jacques Chirac
"These irresponsible acts, which cannot have any justification whatsoever, are to be fully condemned. ... In these appalling circumstances, I want to offer you the most sincere condolences, both in my name and in that of the French people.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair
"This terrible attack underlines the threat that we all continue to face from terrorism in many countries and why we all must work together internationally to safeguard our peoples against such attacks, and defeat terrorism."
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder
"With grief and outrage, I have heard of the terrible attacks in Madrid this morning. I am horrified at the high number of deaths and injured. I ask you to convey our sympathy to the victims' families and the Spanish nation. Those who were injured, I wish a speedy and complete recovery."
Russian President Vladimir Putin
"Terrorism has once again shown it is prepared deliberately to stop at nothing in creating human victims. ... An end must be put to this. As never before, it is vital to unite forces of the entire world community against terror."
But the spirit behind this "optimism" is revealing -- the idea that the war is going badly is a reason to be "optimistic." And I suppose it is, if you think that getting rid of George Bush is more important than, you know, winning the war. And the evidence is that for an unfortunately large minority of Democrats, that's where the priority lies.Read the whole thing.
That's a recipe for disaster, of course, electoral and otherwise, and more sensible Democrats know that. The problem is that the Democratic nominee -- pretty much sure to be Kerry -- will have to deal with the baggage that the "Hurray! We're losing!" crowd represents. That places an extra burden on Kerry if he's to prove himself acceptable on national security grounds. So far, he's not there, though he's offering a few reasons for, er, optimism.
Kerry's Super Tuesday victory speech contained only one specific on national security, and it's not too specific:
We will rejoin the community of nations and renew our alliances because that is essential to final victory in the war on terror.
I'm not sure what this means -- next time we won't go to war unless the French allow it? Hard to believe that's what Kerry meant, since he's okay with unilateralism in circumstances that are far less central to American security, saying about Haiti:
"I would intervene with the international community, and absent an international force, I'd do it unilaterally," he said, adding the most important thing was to protect democracy.
There's a lot more democracy in Iraq than there was before Saddam fell, which makes me wonder what the difference is -- besides the fact that Bush went in "unilaterally" to Iraq, except for a bunch of other countries like Britain, Australia, Spain, Poland, Japan, etc. who apparently don't count because they're not France or Germany.
As a Democrat, I have two big fears about John Kerry. The first is that he'll lose. The second is that he'll win. Let's take the second possibility first. One reason Kerry might lose, after all, is an inchoate public intuition that he would not be a successful president.Read the whole thing if you are (or not) leaning towards Sen. Kerry.
Moral and practical reasons: Let me set aside for a moment the constitutional doctrine (I'll get back to it below), and focus on moral and practical judgment.I think Volokh makes excellent points here. My provisional and tentative bottom line for now is this: (1) the FMA is doubtful to be approved and probably isn't a good use of the energies of the pro-traditional marriage side (2) allow the states to hash it out with calm discussion from both sides (will that actually happen?) (3) are we headed toward a mix of "religious marriage" (man and woman) and "civil unions" (man and woman, same-sex) as the resolution of the current situation? Is that a plausible legal construction? I'm a molecular biologist not a lawyer.
I oppose bans on interracial marriage because I think that race is literally only skin deep (with a very few exceptions, such as certain hereditary diseases that are more common in certain racial situations). A black-white couple is no different, morally or practically, from a white-white couple or a black-black couple. There is no inherent, either biological or very deeply rooted social, difference between a black parent and a white parent.
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But people's sex is not skin deep. Men and women are different biologically. To my knowledge, this difference reflects itself in substantial biologically driven differences in parenting styles, behaviors, emotional interactions, and the like; certainly there are at least some very deeply rooted social differences there, but I suspect that they're biological, too. Certainly given the current state of biological knowledge, the claim that there's a biological difference in men's and women's parenting styles is much more plausible than there's any such difference in blacks' and whites' parenting styles.
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But the arguments against same-sex marriage mentioned above are not ridiculous arguments, nor arguments that can only be justified by irrational hostility or contempt. These are arguments that sensibly cautious and methodologically conservative people can reasonably make against proposed changes in a fundamental social institution.
This is why my view on same-sex marriage is that of cautious and tentative support. I do think that it will probably be good for society to allow same-sex marriage; and I'm pretty sure it will be good for gays and lesbians. But the real differences between men and women (differences that aren't duplicated as to race) give me pause. So does the fact that the male-female marriage model has been broad, deep, and longstanding in our legal system in a way that bans of interracial marriage were not....
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Constitutional: But, people say, what about Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 case in which the Supreme Court struck down bans on interracial marriage? Loving held that a law which considers a partner's race in deciding whether a marriage is allowed is a form of unconstitutional race discrimination (even if both whites and nonwhites are equally covered by the law). Later Supreme Court cases held that sex classifications are similar to race classifications. Therefore, a law which considers a partner's sex in deciding whether a marriage is allowed is a form of unconstitutional sex discrimination (even if both men and women are equally covered by the law). QED.
Not so fast: Analogies between race discrimination and sex discrimination are sometimes helpful, but often not. This is one case where I think they aren't.
To begin with, let me just make some observations that should remind us that race and sex discrimination are not the same. Consider these pairs of case:
Racially segregated restrooms
Men's rooms and women's rooms
Racially segregated schools
Boys' schools and girls' schools
Whites-only basketball teams
Girls-only basketball teams
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Men and women are different. They are different in purely obviously biological ways (women get pregnant, men don't, women are shorter than men, especially at the right tail of the bell curve), and in social ways that likely flow from this biology or are at least very deeply rooted (men and women generally want privacy from the opposite sex in certain situations, boys and girls behave differently in mixed-sex settings than in same-sex settings, we think that being the best woman basketball player is a noteworthy achievement in a way that being the best under-6-foot basketball player or the best Vietnamese-American basketball player is not). The law recognizes that there is a difference here.
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Conclusion: Let me say it again: I tentatively support allowing same-sex marriage. I would vote for a proposed California law implementing allowing same-sex marriage. I think it's the fairer result, and the practically most useful one.
But I also realize that I may well be wrong. Perhaps we shouldn't be tampering so quickly with an important aspect of a fundamental social institution. Perhaps -- and there is reason enough to think that this is a plausible claim, though not an obviously correct claim -- there is something in male-female relationships that is uniquely valuable for one of the most important tasks of any society, raising the next generation of its citizens, and perhaps the law should therefore officially sanction those relationships in a way that it doesn't sanction others. Perhaps it would be better if people are taught that children are best reared in male-female relationships and not male-male or female-female ones.
These arguments aren't strong enough to persuade me to oppose same-sex marriages. But they are strong enough to persuade me that same-sex marriage rights ought not be imposed on the whole country by unelected federal judges, or imposed on most states by the actions of one or two states.
