Notes from the Choir, Vol. 2

Hello, all! I've got about five minutes to post something before we leave for choir; been behind schedule all day, sadly.

I wanted to share this song, which we are doing for our Recessional Hymn this Sunday:

Praise, my soul, the King of heaven;
to his feet thy tribute bring;
ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,
evermore his praises sing:
Alleluia, alleluia!
Praise the everlasting King.

Praise him for his grace and favor
to our fathers in distress;
praise him still the same for ever,
slow to chide and swift to bless:
Alleluia, alleluia!
Glorious in his faithfulness.

Father-like, he tends and spares us;
well our feeble frame he knows;
in his hand he gently bears us,
rescues us from all our foes.
Alleluia, alleluia!
Widely yet his mercy flows.

Angels, help us to adore him;
ye behold him face to face;
sun and moon, bow down before him,
dwellers all in time and space.
Alleluia, alleluia!
Praise with us the God of grace.

Written by Henry Francis Lyte, this hymn focuses on several aspects of God: His kingship, His mercy, His succor of those in need, and His creation which joins the worshiper in adoring Him.

Many songs of the "Praise and Worship" variety try to praise God like these older hymns do, but few of them succeed. Focusing a little too much on the worshiper and not enough on God, these hymns manage to cloud the praise of God in a self-congratulatory tone. Consider some lyrics from this song by Petra:

Lord, I lift Your name on high
Lord, I love to sing Your praises
I'm so glad You're in my life
I'm so glad You came to save us

Though meant to be a song of praise, this song, like others in the genre (some of which are unfortunately in Catholic hymn books) has a little "I" trouble. The other song commands "my soul" to praise God, but then reiterates the command without focusing on the person singing--as it should be.

Got to run, or I'll be late for practice! :)

Crunchy Con blogging

I'm blogging at Crunchy Cons today--come on over, if you like! :)

Good news about jury duty for Texas moms

Good news for Texas homeschooling moms! From the Texas Home School Coalition website:

House Bill 319, also by Representative Raymond, will change the current statute that allows adults to be exempt from jury duty if serving on a jury would cause a child ten years of age or younger to be left alone, by extending the age to fifteen years of age. We supported this measure because home school moms have been caught between the requirement to serve on jury duty and the possibility of being investigated by CPS for leaving a child under the age of fourteen unattended. This has passed both the House and the Senate and was signed into law by Governor Perry. (Emphasis in original.)

While you don't have to be a homeschooling mom to benefit from this new law, which takes effect September 1, there's no doubt that homeschooling moms are the ones most impacted by it. Prior to this law's expansion of the age of a youngest child at home from ten to fifteen, a homeschooling mother had to arrange not only for child care but for the continuing schooling of her children while she served on a jury. I know some moms have been able to do this, and consider jury duty a civic service that they're glad to perform, but other families have found it very hard to lose as much as a week's worth of school and have to pay a sitter or make other child care arrangements when the jury duty summons arrived in the mail.

This new law is very family-friendly, in that it does not assume that all families are placing children in day care centers or schools every day, freeing both parents for such things as jury duty. Rather, it recognizes that the stay-at-home mom is already performing a civic service by being directly involved in the care and nurturing of her children, and makes it possible for her to continue to be there for her children until they reach an age where they are legally able to stay at home by themselves if necessary.

It's nice to get to share some good news!

Hmm. "Dipped cone" sounds right. And good...

Haven't posted one of these Blogthings quizzes for a while. So, just for fun:

You Are a Dipped Cone

You are dramatic, deep, and even demanding. If you're going to do dessert, you're going to go all out with something super rich. People might be surprised to know that you worry about how you're perceived. You've got an image to keep up, and you don't ever want to appear weak.

What Frozen Treat Are You?

Anybody else hot enough to play? Feel free to share your results in the comments! :)

A little learning...

I've been a bit busy, lately, and one of the things I've been doing is trying to pin down just what exactly Kitten will be doing for her first year of high school at home, beginning this fall. I'm not at all nervous about homeschooling a high schooler; I was homeschooled myself in high school, beginning about midway through my sophomore year.

But one thing that does have me frazzled is trying to decide on curricula. It's taken me the last eight years to get a good elementary school curriculum organized, and now we're starting over again! I'm almost as bewildered as I was back when I was picking out overly-ambitious kindergarten workbooks for a little girl with serious eyes and a determined chin.

The serious eyes and determined chin are still there, but this girl isn't little anymore. She wanted to know earlier this afternoon how much a secretary earned in an hour. I gave her a rough number, and she went from that to annual salary pretty darned quickly for a girl who swears she doesn't "get" math. All I know for sure is she's looking forward to typing class, hence the questions about secretarial work.

But the difficulties haven't been in deciding about things like typing or other "extras." No, the difficulties have been centered around core curriculum materials. And one of the ones that is driving me a little bit crazy right now is science.

Granted, as a former lit. major I'm a bit wary when it comes to choosing a high school science course. I did fine, grade-wise, in science, but that doesn't mean much; I need the right sort of textbook or program to help me teach Kitten these complex subjects.

And I've hit a bit of a snag.

It's not that there aren't high-school science texts out there. There are even some that are specifically written for homeschoolers, by people who know how to design programs for students learning at home with some parental guidance. But so far I'm rather frustrated by one element: these books all seem to be written by creationists.

As a Catholic, I have, of course, no real quarrel with evolution. Sure, I don't believe that the soul evolved, and I also believe that if God chose to use evolution as His mechanism of creation, He still directly infused the first two human souls into a man and a woman; moreover, He still infuses each individual soul into each person. Our souls are not subject to the laws of evolution because they are immortal spirits, not something that will eventually and inevitably arise anywhere that evolution has gone on long enough. If there is sentient, souled life elsewhere in the universe, then God directly created the souls of those beings, too.

But Catholics don't have to reject evolution out of hand as one possible means God might have chosen to use when He created the world. Sure, Catholics don't have to--and shouldn't--accept evolution or any other scientific theory uncritically or in the absence of compelling evidence, either, but any sort of "hiding" of inconvenient evidence because we might dislike the theory on misguided theological grounds wouldn't be right. The Catholic scientist's approach to science should always be to examine the data critically and attempt to draw sound conclusions from it, wherever those conclusions may lead him. He need not fear that science will contradict his faith, because science and faith are not in opposition to each other, and, in fact, deal in completely different spheres of learning.

Science, for instance, can't observe or describe transubstantiation, but that doesn't mean that transubstantiation doesn't exist. It is a spiritual reality which transcends science, and if science could "prove" it, then man's free will to accept or reject it--or any other revealed truth--would be irreparably damaged. On the other hand, faith can't insist that particle physics be anathema as something which might damage a believer's notions about God's world. And faith can't dismiss evolution as something dangerous; it's no more dangerous than Einstein's theory of relativity.

Now, maybe someday some scientist will debunk Einstein, and we'll learn something new about the universe. And maybe someday some scientist will debunk Darwin too, by showing some mechanism other than evolution which God might have used in His act of creation--but there will still be a mechanism to be shown, if science is involved at all; science simply can't present "Fiat lux!" as something which can be empirically measured.

There may be some creation scientists who think that they have a better way than evolution to describe the mechanism of God's creative act--but thus far, the evidence for such a way has been scanty, and seems to be impelled by the creationists' faith rather than their science, for the most part (though I realize that there are exceptions). For a high school student, the bigger problem is that evolution is the currently accepted scientific theory when it comes to describing the origins of living creatures, and teaching otherwise means a decision to put the student outside of the mainstream of educational thought.

Granted, homeschoolers have no problems doing this, when faith and morals really are under attack. I won't use a history book that claims the Pilgrims came to America for mainly employment reasons, for instance--truth is at stake, and ignoring the Pilgrims' religious motivations isn't an honest thing to do. Nor will I use a "health" curriculum that is all about contraceptive use and encouraging teens to experiment sexually, because that is immoral and damaging.

But as a Catholic, I don't see evolution as immoral or damaging, provided the student learns that whatever mechanism best describes God's acts of creation, the key points are that God is responsible for our existence, and, as I said before, that in due time He directly infused the first two immortal human souls into one man and one woman, the ones we call Adam and Eve. Exactly how He chose to do everything else may be theorized scientifically without doing faith any harm; but pretending that evolution is on the verge of being disproved is, sadly, also something dishonest and misleading to teach children.

So I still don't know just what Kitten will use for science class this year. But I do know that I wish some sound Catholic scientist would start writing a truly Catholic high school science program, which accurately reflects Church teaching not only on evolution, but anywhere else that faith and science might intersect.

Blogging for Cash

You may have noticed (or maybe not) that there aren't any ads on this blog. I don't have any problem with bloggers deciding that they'd like to put ads on their blogs and make a little money on the side, though I know that a "little" money is all anyone's ever likely to make. But for me, the only paid blogging I do is when I'm blogging at Crunchy Cons as Rod Dreher's occasional substitute host--and then I'm being paid to write, as decisions about advertising sales and placement aren't made at the level of individual bloggers at Beliefnet.

There is, however, another way for a blogger to earn some cash--and that's raising some concern:

Ms. Padilla typically acknowledges in each review which products were sent to her by companies and which items she bought herself. Other items on her site include her own videos for brands like Healthy Choice, which she labels as sponsored posts. But unlike postings in most journalism outlets or independent review sites, most companies can be assured that there will not be a negative review: if she does not like a product, she simply does not post anything about it.

The proliferation of paid sponsorships online has not been without controversy. Some in the online world deride the actions as kickbacks. Others also question the legitimacy of bloggers’ opinions, even when the commercial relationships are clearly outlined to readers.

And the Federal Trade Commission is taking a hard look at such practices and may soon require online media to comply with disclosure rules under its truth-in-advertising guidelines.

A draft of the new rules was posted for public comments this year and the staff is to make a formal recommendation to be presented to the commissioners for a vote, perhaps by early fall.

“Consumers have a right to know when they’re being pitched a product,” said Richard Cleland, an assistant director at the Federal Trade Commission.

Read the whole thing; I have a feeling bloggers are going to have to be aware of issues like these in the future.

Why? Well, for one example, I'm a homeschooling mom, and I sometimes mention, by name, some curricula or textbook I'm using. I've never been paid to mention anyone's product, and I'm free to praise or to criticize anything I like. But if the FTC starts keeping a close eye on bloggers and products, I might have to start any such post with a disclaimer to the effect that I'm giving my unsolicited opinion for which I have not been compensated in any way, or some such thing, before I mention any book or program I use.

Bloggers who review books might have to clarify whether they received the book gratis and whether they are being paid for the review. Same for mommy-bloggers who rave about a toy or safety product for toddlers, or for gardening bloggers who push a brand of seeds, or anybody who ever mentions a product.

What concerns me about this isn't that bloggers like the one mentioned in the above article are receiving free goods or services and/or being paid to discuss those goods or services in a positive light only; frankly, anyone savvy enough to turn on a computer successfully isn't likely to be naive enough to buy such "reviews" without the proverbial grain of salt. What concerns me is that people who aren't being paid to review products might have to think twice before recommending a book, or a movie, or a truly leak-proof toddler cup just because they like it; depending on how rules about product mentions are crafted in our legislature, bloggers may lose a little of their freedom of speech.

And that would be a shame. I can understand why some would be annoyed that the "blogomercials" out there aren't required to say up front, "Hey, I got this product for free, and the company will probably send me more free stuff and/or a check if I tell you how much I like it and to go buy it for yourself." But if too-stringent rules make it impossible for a thoughtful person to review a book, recommend a movie, or rave about the online outlet sale at their favorite casual clothing catalog company without having to load the post with disclaimers and legalese intended to clarify that no money, goods, or services changed hands in the process of creating the post, some people may start to be more hesitant about offering such honest opinions.

All the President's Records

There have probably been conspiracy theories during every presidential administration. None have been so enduring, perhaps, as the theories which surrounded the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, but such theories will pop up in every time period, I think. During the Bush administration one of the most well-known was the theory that somehow the President knew about, or even orchestrated, the 9/11 attacks, for example, and in this current administration the whispers keep on circulating about the President's birth certificate:

U.S. Army Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook filed a request last week in federal court seeking a temporary restraining order and status as a conscientious objector with the intent to stall and eventually prevent an upcoming deployment to Afghanistan.

In the 20-page document — filed July 8 with the United States District Court, Middle District of Georgia — Cook’s California-based attorney, Orly Taitz, asks the court to consider granting his client’s request based upon Cook’s belief that President Barrack Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States and is therefore ineligible to serve as commander-in-chief of U.S Armed Forces.

Cook further states he “would be acting in violation of international law by engaging in military actions outside the United States under this President’s command, and that Plaintiff would thus be simultaneously unable to perform his duties in good Rule 65(b) Application for Temporary Restraining Order 22 conscience and yet be simultaneously subjecting himself to possible prosecution as a war criminal by the faithful execution of these duties.”

I know that plenty of enterprising military members have used creative ways to try to get out of a deployment, and maybe Major Cook's lawsuit is just a new iteration of that sort of thing. Certainly only a handful of right-wing websites or blogs have continued to raise questions about whether Barack Obama was born in the United States and whether, if he was not, he is eligible to be president considering the "natural born citizen" requirement of the Constitution. Everyone else seems to consider the matter of Barack Obama's birth certificate a settled one.

And that's probably true. Except for one small detail: while plenty of people have seen Barack Obama's Certification of Live Birth, his actual birth certificate--the "long form" or "vault copy," as some call it--has not been publicly released.

Does that mean that the actual birth certificate would end up proving Major Cook's claim? Not necessarily. There are plenty of reasons why the Obama administration might not want the original birth certificate to become a matter of public record. It might, for instance, show some embarrassing fact or other about Obama's parents (such as their marital status) or some similar detail that Obama doesn't want to be in the public eye.

I can understand those sorts of considerations, even if I think the wiser tactic would be just to release the original birth certificate rather than fight lawsuit after lawsuit to keep the certificate sealed, as Obama's lawyers have done up to now. What's much odder to me is that this administration, which has promised to be an open book, has never released Obama's college records.

President Bush, after all, took a lot of grief from late-night comics and the media elite over his not-so-inspiring college grades. Other presidents have pointed to their academic records with pride, or at least with self-deprecation. But Barack Obama's college records are sealed. We don't know how well he did at Occidental College or Columbia University, let alone what his law school days at Harvard were like. We do know he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, though, so clearly Obama's not hiding bad grades there, though he wouldn't be the first person to coast through undergrad work and then buckle down and get serious post-grad, if that turned out to be the case.

Why the secrecy? Why not inspire young men and women--particularly young African-American men, who absorb all sorts of negative cultural messages about college and hard work--by showing how he managed to get through school and get a law degree? Why cover up something that really should be open to the public?

I really can't think of any reason why a sitting president would continue to demand that his college records be kept sealed. I'm certain this level of secrecy would never be tolerated in a Republican administration--the news media would demand access to these records, and hint darkly on evening newscasts that the president must be hiding something damaging enough to avoid the traditional step of making his college records public. But the media has been inclined to avoid asking Barack Obama how his college grades were--or why he's never revealed them to the public. And in an administraton that promised "change," this change toward secrecy and a cover-up of something that's routinely revealed during most candidacies seems more than strange.

Cats

I should begin this with a disclaimer. Or two, actually. First, this post isn't about our desire to add a cat to our family; sorry. Second, I don't really think, at this point, Sarah Palin ought to run for high office. If she gains some experience and figures out how to thwart the media's narrative that she's incurious, unthoughtful, unserious, and so on, it might be different; but until then, she's probably going to do more harm than good, and her family will bear the brunt of the media's dislike for her.

That said, though, I find myself shaking my head over recent columns by Peggy Noonan and Maureen Dowd. (Dowd's most recent attempt, a fake "diary" entry supposed to be written by Sarah, is so embarassingly juvenile, so journalistically inept, so revealing of Dowd's own inner emptiness that I'll do her the favor of not bothering to link to it.) First, here's Peggy:

In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn't say what she read because she didn't read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough. Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence. "I'm not wired that way," "I'm not a quitter," "I'm standing up for our values." I'm, I'm, I'm.

Has Noonan bothered counting the appearance of the personal prounoun in Obama's speeches? He, too, has a little "I" trouble. It's indicative of our age--but it's not restricted to Republicans, nor even to those Republicans who haven't amassed the right credentials to appeal to the party elites.

But Noonan's gentle clawing isn't even on a par with Dowd's vicious hissing:

Sarah Palin showed on Friday that in one respect at least, she is qualified to be president.

Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy.

Usually we don’t find that exquisite battiness in our leaders until they’ve been battered by sordid scandals like Watergate (Nixon), gnawing problems like Vietnam (L.B.J.), or scary threats like biological terrorism (Cheney).

When Lyndon Johnson was president, some of his staff began to think of him as “a sick man,” as Bill Moyers told Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Moyers and his fellow Johnson aide Dick Goodwin even began reading up on mental illness — Bill on manic depression and Dick on paranoia.

And so it was, Todd Purdum learned, as he traveled Alaska reporting on Palin for Vanity Fair, that the governor’s erratic and egoistic behavior has been a source of concern for people there.

“Several told me, independently of one another,” Purdum writes, “that they had consulted the definition of ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — ‘a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy’ — and thought it fit her perfectly.”

Gee, Maureen. I wonder how many people have said the same exact thing about you--with one difference. A New York Times columnist may be a legend in her own mind, but I doubt you've ever drawn the kind of screaming crowds Palin does--not even twenty years ago, when your hair was still a somewhat-natural color. Why do I get the feeling Palin would rather be "Caribou Barbie," complete with Caribou Ken and a group of smiling children, than "Times Columnist Barbie" who comes with a little laptop and an aura which banishes all thoughts of commitment from her gentlemen callers?

There's one aspect of Palin's appeal that the cats on the right and left will never get. I think it might just be the way Palin manages to deal with her opponents without ever showing her claws. This trait will serve her well in the private sector, where I think she'll soon be giving these columnists a run for their money. Maybe literally.

We have a really cool Pope

This is awesome:

The pope gave Obama, who last March lifted restrictions of federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research, a copy of a recent Vatican document on bio-ethics in which the Holy See explains its opposition to such practices.

"Dignitas Personae" (dignity of a person) condemns artificial fertilization and other techniques used by many couples and also says human cloning, "designer babies" and embryonic stem-cell research are immoral.

The document defends life from conception to natural death and a Vatican statement issued after the meeting said the topics discussed included "the defense and promotion of life and the right to abide by one's conscience."

The pope's private secretary told reporters after the meeting: "This reading can help the president better understand the Church's position on these issues."

"We know that this (abortion) is a crucial theme for the pope. There is no need to hide it. It (giving him the booklet) was an attempt to be clear, it was not polemical," Lombardi said.

Who knows? Maybe all those prayers for Obama's conversion of heart on the abortion issue will pay off one of these days...

Notes from the Choir, Vol. 1

I've decided to do a "theme post" on Thursdays, since Thursday is our choir practice day.

Ever since I became a choir member a couple of years ago, I've discovered a lot about how a choir operates. So much depends on whether the priest is musically inclined (and, if so, whether his musical taste is more traditional or more modern), on the congregation, on the choir director's knowledge and experience, and on the choir's abilities, that when people assume a choir director is single-handedly or unilaterally scheduling the less-desirable songs, they are often assuming incorrectly.

Our choir director is a friend; she also grew up in the Byzantine Rite, and became Roman Rite when she married. So her understanding of what is "traditional" has partly been formed by what has been in hymn-books since her adulthood--and yet, possibly because of the beauty of music in the Eastern tradition, she usually prefers the more reverent, more traditional, more solemn music, and we sing quite a bit of that.

If her preferences alone were all that was consulted, I think we'd rarely sing the worst of the modern stuff (though not all modern music is bad, of course). Yet one of those annoying pieces is scheduled for this week. Were I in the congregation, I'd consider this song one sour note among some lovely pieces, but I happen to know the "behind the scenes" story, which is: parishioners have requested this piece. They used to sing it all the time back when the music ministry was made up of well-meaning volunteers with little musical background, and it is missed.

I wonder how often that happens--how many times a choir director is in the position of doing a sort of "balancing act" between the desire for music to be solemn, majestic, appropriate, and the push from parishioners--or even a pastor--to sing things that are more current, familiar, upbeat, and the like. I suspect it happens more than we know, and that choir directors often take an unfair share of the blame for endless rounds of "Be Not Afraid" or "Eagle's Wings," let alone the much less palatable modern hymns, some of which are theologically deficient as well as musically lacking.

It really helps to have a pastor who understands sacred music. A former pastor of ours really did (and we miss him!). This week, we're singing one of his favorites:
Since it's public domain, I've attached a copy; click it to see it better.

And now, off to choir practice!

Holy Charity in Truth, Batman!

No, this is not a post about Caritas in Veritate, per se. The document is about 55 pages long (if you print it out). I learned speed-reading techniques in the seventh grade, so I have skimmed the encyclical in its entirety, and have made mental notes around some of the more interesting passages. But I have not read Caritas in Veritate to the degree of depth and contemplation for which it would be minimally necessary in order to make the slightest bit of intelligent commentary about any of it, and I won't do my readers the grave disservice of pretending that I have.

But I will talk about the reaction to the encyclical, because as so often happens the reaction on all sides to this papal gift is creating most of the news about it. In a soundbite-driven world, that is, perhaps, inevitable.

On the right, you have assorted chuckleheads who insist that we ought to ignore those parts of the encyclical that deal with the United Nations, the environment, and matters of social justice generally.

On the left, you have assorted soberheads (because they never chuckle, and how dare you insult them by thinking so!) who find the social justice parts praiseworthy but wish the Pope would't insist on tying life issues into questions about how we treat each other (because surely how we treat embryos or the aged doesn't matter, so long as we respect the planet, right?).

In the middle are those who say, wait a minute! The Pope is writing about Truth, and isn't it just barely possible that Truth is bigger than the left-right construct of American politics?

That might seem like the sort of notion which ought to be just about self-evident to Catholics. After all, didn't the people of Jesus' day make rather similar mistakes about Him? Didn't they want Him to be a political leader, an entertainer, a provider of free food, a prop to the Sanhedrin, an enemy of Caesar--or even Caesar's friend? Didn't they argue among themselves as to Who He really was, based largely on their preconceived notions of Who He ought to be?

A couple thousand years later, we still haven't learned the lesson. The Pope writes an elegantly thoughtful encyclical which reminds us to seek the truth and gives us examples of how we might do so, and we immediately begin to squabble about whether the Pope is on "our side" or not. Never mind that one uncomfortable truth we avoid, as Catholics in political life, is that neither of the two major American political parties is really on "our side." On the right we have the "strip-mine it all!" approach to the environment, the apologies for torture, the eagerness to get involved in foreign wars which this Pope and our last one have already condemned, the knee-jerk defense of consumerism which flirts with the heresy of seeing material prosperity as a sign of God's blessing, and similar matters; on the left, of course, we have the bloodsucking eagerness to kill human embryos for fun and profit, to promote an ugly sluttification of human relationships with government-provided condoms and other moral idiocies, and to re-cast the Statue of Liberty to show her hand extended toward Washington, symbolizing our national addiction to the government dole.

The truth we don't want to face (with charity or otherwise) is that politics is a very flawed human operation that frequently falls short of anything even approaching the eternal verities. If anything, the Pope's encyclical should serve as a reminder that it is these truths, not political gain, partisanship, or side-taking which should inform our political minds, such that we are always uncomfortably aware of the vast gulf between ourselves and the leaders of these parties, whose eyes are almost never elevated beyond the immediate worldly goals of the party to see the unchanging otherworldly demands of the Truth Whom we worship.

A weapon of Mass. destruction

Whenever people in the gay marriage debate insist that they don't want to interfere with my marriage, I just smile. Wryly. Painfully. Because it's blatantly untrue.

This article helps to illustrate why:

BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts, the first state to legalize gay marriage, sued the U.S. government Wednesday over a federal law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

The federal Defense of Marriage Act interferes with the right of Massachusetts to define and regulate marriage as it sees fit, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said. The 1996 law denies federal recognition of gay marriage and gives states the right to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Boston, argues the act "constitutes an overreaching and discriminatory federal law." It says the approximately 16,000 same-sex couples who have married in Massachusetts since the state began performing gay marriages in 2004 are being unfairly denied federal benefits given to heterosexual couples.

"They are entitled to equal treatment under the laws regardless of whether they are gay or straight," Coakley said at a news conference to discuss the lawsuit. [...]

The Massachusetts lawsuit challenges the section of the federal law that creates a federal definition of marriage as "a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife."

Gay marriage advocates, you see, aren't content with getting a few states who really don't care much about marriage and are perfectly willing to subsidize immorality, cohabitation, serial marriage, out-of-wedlock childbirth, and a host of other social deviations from the marriage norm to call their unions a sort of "marriage." They want to force all of us to do so--and in doing so, they want to interfere with my marriage--and yours. How?

By redefining what marriage is.

It's true that marriage has, over the centuries of human existence, had a few major variations. Those variations ended up resolving into two competing definitions: marriage was one man and one woman, or marriage was one man and more than one woman. There really haven't been, in the past few thousand years, any major variations other than these, and since the dawn of the Christian world polygamy slowly began to die out. Certainly by the time our Constitution was written it was taken for granted that the word "marriage" implied a contract, religious, legal, or both, between one man and one woman.

Why have such a contractual relationship? Most relationships are either relationships of blood or relationships of chosen association. A cousin may be a friend, but a friend doesn't have to be a cousin; blood ties and chosen ones may sometimes overlap, but the two belong to different categories of relationship.

If marriage is, as gay marriage advocates insist that it is, a relationship of chosen association, then why have any sort of contract around it? One doesn't enter into a legal relationship every time one forms a new friendship, or joins a social club (most of them, anyway) or otherwise ventures into a voluntary chosen association with members of his community. Why should a man and a woman, or a man and a man, or a woman and a woman demand a contractual bond around their relationship when the relationship itself is nothing more than a kind of friendship, one which frequently, but not necessarily, involves some sort of sexual activity? Plenty of people engage in that activity with other friends, or even causal strangers, to whom they aren't married and have no desire to marry. So what makes this thing we call "marriage" different enough, or special enough, or important enough to require a contract?

The reality is that marriage is the one type of relationship which is designed to be both a relationship of chosen association and a relationship of blood. While it is true, as the gay marriage apologists insist on every opportunity, that not every marriage between a man and a woman will produce children, the nature of the relationship is such that the possibility that each marriage may produce children must be considered, especially in the contracts dealing with such relationships. A tiny handful (relatively speaking) of heterosexual marriages will fail to produce children, either because of infertility or advanced age; but the presence of these few infertile heterosexual marriages does not change the biological reality that the vast majority of heterosexual marriages will produce children--that is, that the relationship, which begins as a relationship of chosen association, will become a relationship of blood.

In fact, the traditional understanding of marriage considered the "blood relationship" part of the marriage relationship to begin, not with the birth of the first child, but with the marriage act itself. Once a couple had consummated the marriage a divorce or annulment used to be much harder to get (in the civil law sense, of course; Catholic annulments are a different matter, as the validity of the marriage, not its consummation, was and is the vital point). The fact that the couple had entered into marriage and then consummated the marriage with the act necessary to reproduction meant that theirs was no longer a mere relationship of chosen association--they were understood to be "one flesh," and were, in many ways, treated by the law as one person. Whether or not they were then, in due time, parents of children who truly were related to them both, equally, by blood was a secondary (though still important) consideration.

If we look at this understanding of civil marriage and compare it to the reality of gay relationships, we can see that there is a fundamental difference between gay relationships and heterosexual marriage. A marriage, once consummated, creates a relationship of both chosen association and of blood between the man and the woman who have entered it; the blood relationship may merely be in anticipation of their potential parenthood, but it is still a reality. A gay relationship cannot honestly be said ever to be "consummated" in the sense in which that word is ordinarily used; the specific type of physical encounter which has always been an important element of a valid marriage is not even possible for two men or two women, to state, as delicately as possible, the blindingly obvious. Moreover, there is no possibility for any gay couple of potential parenthood as a couple. While they can manufacture children using IVF or other immoral means, raise children from previous heterosexual encounters, or adopt children, they can never create as a couple the relationship of blood--not just a few gay couples because of accidental or age-related infertility, but all gay couples; no gay couple can ever become parents of their own biological children as a couple.

So by insisting that the word marriage must be redefined in such a way that two men or two women can "have one" so to speak, gay marriage advocates are interfering with your marriage and mine. Their view of marriage is that it is only a relationship of chosen association, like friendship, club membership, or other (usually temporary) voluntary associations. A gay marriage can never be a blood relationship, because a gay couple can't even potentially become the parents of their own biological children as a couple. The assumptions which go along with blood relationships completely fail when gay relationships take place: the mother of a son, for example, doesn't expect an additional son to be added to the family by marriage, but a daughter; grandparents don't expect to have to "share" their granddaughter with her two dads, her biological mom, and the biological mom's parents, in addition to the second "dad's" parents who have no biological connection whatsoever with the child their son is raising, but whom the child is taught to call "Grandma" and "Grandpa," giving her a total set of three such grandparents.

So gay marriage doesn't just redefine marriage--it redefines family, blood relationships, and these ties for generations at a time. Gay marriage doesn't just interfere with marriage; ultimately, it will impact all of civilization. And I think it will quite likely destroy it.

Paging Dr. Frankenstein

I shamelessly stole the title of this blog post from my friend Ed Shuman, who emailed the links to this story to me:

Scientists in Newcastle claim to have created human sperm in the laboratory in what they say is a world first.

The researchers believe the work could eventually help men with fertility problems to father a child. [...]

They began with stem cell lines derived from human embryos donated following IVF treatment.

The stem cells had been removed when the embryo was a few days old and were stored in tanks of liquid nitrogen.

The stem cells were brought to body temperature and put in a chemical mixture to encourage them to grow. They were "tagged" with a genetic marker which enabled the scientists to identify and separate so-called "germline" stem cells from which eggs and sperm are developed.

The male, XY stem cells underwent the crucial process of "meiosis" - halving the number of chromosomes. The process over creating and developing the sperm took four to six weeks.

Just how evil do you have to be to kill children in order to create sperm cells that could theoretically be used to make more children--children whose father was literally murdered before he could be born? Or worse--children whose "father" was a female embryo altered and processed to produce male gametes?

I recently read Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel Brave New World, and was surprised that I'd never gotten around to reading it before. Less surprising, sadly, is how close we already are to the consumerist, anti-family "paradise" envisioned in the novel, where children are manufactured in a laboratory and raised in institutions, and where the mantra "everybody belongs to everyone else" signals the hideous shallowness, infantilism, and emptiness of the lives lead by all. Scientific "progress" of the type described above just brings us closer to the sort of world where words like "mother" and "father" stand for obsolete social constructs, and mean nothing more than some temporarily significant adult figure in a child's life--if the child is lucky enough to have such a figure, called, most probably, a "parenting partner" to remove any heterocentric notions about who that person ought to be.

We're rapidly on our way toward creating a world where Dr. Frankenstein would feel right at home. Of course, it's entirely possible that the terrible evil of destroying living humans as the mad scientists in the article do for fun would be too much for good Dr. Frankenstein, who had the decency to conduct his experiments on the dead.