New Poll Numbers on Attitudes toward Marriage and Child Rearing

According to UPI, younger people in the U.S. perceive marriage as less important for couples with children. The destruction of the link between sex, procreation, and marriage, which has occurred through the increasing legitimacy of cohabitation and homosexual relationships will soon create the same population problems that Europe is currently facing. 

A Gallup Poll finds that younger people in the United States are less likely to view marriage as important for couples with children.

The poll mirrors what has been happening in the country. The percentage of U.S. adults who are married has dropped from 77 percent in the 1960s to 53 percent in 2000, the percentage of those who are divorced has grown from 3 percent to 11 percent and the percentage who are single or living together from 9 percent to 24 percent.

Respondents tended to view marriage as more important as a sign of commitment than as a necessity for children. While 65 percent say that marriage is very important when couples plan to spend their lives together, 37 percent say it is very important when they have children.

Eighty percent of respondents who were 65 or older and 69 percent of those aged 50 to 64 say marriage is very important for lifelong commitment, and 58 percent and 37 percent when a couple has a child. Among those aged 40 to 49 and 18 to 38, 63 percent and 57 percent think marriage is important for commitment and 33 percent and 30 percent for children.

(Posted by Trask)

New Adult-Child Sex Movement in Europe

According to UPI, a new party wants to legalize sex between adults and children in the Netherlands. This further takes Europe down a slippery slope that it has been following in the radicalization of any laws dealing with sexual morality.

A new political party in the Netherlands is dedicated to legalizing sex between adults and children. 

Ad van den Berg, founder of the NVD Party, told the newspaper AD that the party plans to lobby first to lower the age of sexual consent from 16 to 12 and then to phase it out completely. He said that pedophilia used to be something that people in the country were willing to discuss but, because of Belgian killer Marc Dutroux, they are all "being put in the same box."

"Forbidding makes children all the more curious," Van den Berg said. "Rearing is also about introducing children to sex."

He said that the party advocates only consensual sex.

The party plans its official launch Wednesday. Its full name is Naastenliefde, Vrijheid en Diversiteit, or Love, Freedom and Diversity.

(Posted by Trask)

The Threat of Same-Sex Marriage to Religious Freedom II

Maggie Gallagher has an excellent article at Real Clear Politics.

The story circulating on the Internet was hard to believe at first: A North Truro, Mass., volunteer fireman lost his position because he signed a petition opposing gay marriage?

I was lucky enough to get Leo "Skip" Childs on the phone. Skip is the kind of guy who makes you ashamed of yourself, but very proud to be an American. He volunteers many hours in the tiny town of North Truro, repairing fire trucks, saving lives. "Last month I went on 22 rescue calls, plus 10 to 15 hours of administrative duties," he told me.
. . .
After five years, Skip thought his reappointment to the Board of Fire Engineers would be routine. Then Selectman Paul Asher-Best spoke up: "Recent action you took, Mr. Childs, indicates to me that you think that gay people are less than fully human, and not entitled to all the civil rights that are afforded to them. The Supreme Judicial Court talks about marriage rights being a basic civil right. … I need … assurance from you that you would offer equal protection to everyone in Truro, including households headed by gay or lesbian people, because to me your action speaks otherwise."

Skip is scratching his head at this point. How could signing a marriage petition make you unfit to rescue people? He tried to be conciliatory: "I'm more concerned that a special interest group with a strong lobby would be able to influence a judge in our state. … I wouldn't have a problem with it if it passed on the referendum."

But with that comment, Paul Asher-Best went ballistic. As Asher-Best later told me, "I consider myself one half of a loving couple who has been together 27 years. I don't consider myself a special interest.

"Mr. Childs' explanation, just like I said, amplifies his bias," he pronounced, "and I think for that reason I couldn't support him."

The town council voted for a new Board of Fire Engineers, minus Skip Childs. The Childses were humiliated. After nearly a decade of volunteering every spare hour to rescue your neighbors, this is your reward? Dressed down as a bigot in public for signing a marriage petition?
. . .
But two ideas are clearly now on a collision course in America: 1) There's something special about unions of husbands and wives, and 2) there's no difference between same-sex and opposite-sex couples, and only hate-filled bigots think otherwise. In Massachusetts, the second idea is now the official view of the law.

Skip Childs is one of the first casualties of this new conflict. But as our senators debate a Marriage Protection Amendment June 5, they should be forewarned: If they leave marriage to the courts, he won't be the last.

(Posted by Trask)

EU Officials Attempt to Strike Balance Between Free Speech and Religious Sensitivities

According to the Associated Press, EU officials are holding meetings with religious leaders to determine how to balance between free speech and religious sensitivities. 

Senior EU officials were holding talks Tuesday with Christian, Islamic and Jewish leaders as well as Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama to discuss how to strike a balance between freedom of speech and religious sensitivities.

Attention has been focused on the issue since newspaper caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad triggered protests by Muslims worldwide. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel were co-chairing the talks that aim to ease tensions between religions around the world, Barroso's office said.

Barroso told reporters going into the talks that the meeting was "a brainstorming with no pre-hatched conclusions," hoping to build on respect for diversity.

"It really is an opportunity to discuss freely amongst ourselves," Barroso said.

The EU leaders and their 16 religious counterparts were to debate ways on how the religious leaders can better handle tensions like the ones that spread amid the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, which sparked a series of violent protests across the Islamic world.

Many Muslims joined by other faiths denounced the drawings as offensive. But media outlets from a number of countries have carried the Danish cartoons asserting their right to free expression.

Schuessel said regular meetings with religious leaders should be set up.

"We have so many problems to overcome, we need really all forces, all moderate and constructive forces, to help to create a better world," Schuessel said.

I have two problems with the statements of the EU officials in this article. First, the second that one attempts to create a balance between free speech and religious sensitivities, free speech has already been lost. Free speech means that the state cannot restrict individual expression of ideas. The state can place some limits on how ideas are expressed if those restrictions are not based on the content of the speech. However, any attempt by the state to regulate the content of people’s ideas is extremely dangerous territory. If everybody in a society already knew what ideas were good and bad, perhaps it would not be so dangerous for the state to suppress ideas. The problem is that there is an extreme amount of disagreement in society about what ideas are good and bad. As a result, it is necessary to test ideas through free and open debate so that the people can determine what ideas are good and bad. Suppression of free speech increases the risk that bad and dangerous ideas will rein in a society because those ideas will go untested by debate. Additionally, restrictions on speech inevitably produce extreme abuses of government power since the state can use its power to regulate speech to suppress dissent against repressive state policies. A world in which religions cannot be publicly criticized is a very dangerous world because there are many bad and dangerous religious beliefs. In a world where religious belief and the state can be subject to abuse, it is necessary that free speech be available to provide accountability against those abuses. The proper response to an untrue or offensive idea is to counter it with one’s own idea.

The second problem that I have with the statement of the EU officials is that they expressly state that their goal is to increase respect for diversity while at the same time stating that they had no pre-hatched conclusions. This is in fact a lie because they already stated that the goal of these discussions was to reduce tensions among religions and increase respect for diversity. These are not neutral principles. What business does the state have in attempting to make religions like each other more? If one religion commits some act of violence against another religion, then the state should enforce the laws that prohibit that type of violence. However, the state cannot and should not ever have anything to do with making religions like each other more. This could not be a more offensive attack on religious freedom. If one cannot state that one’s religion is better than other religions, then there is no religious freedom. If one cannot hate other religious belief systems, then there is no religious freedom. If one cannot state that other religions are tools of Satan, there is no religious freedom. If one cannot state that other people in other religions are going to burn in hell, there is no religious freedom. If one cannot create a cartoon making fun of other religions, there is no religious freedom. Since all of these are examples of expression, the inability to do all of this is also a violation of the right to free speech. By the way, I am not making any normative claim here about whether it is good or bad for people to say anything that I have just listed here. It is just my simple argument that if one does not have the right to express these types of ideas, then there is no religious freedom or free speech. The great hypocritical irony of this whole situation is that the EU is implicitly creating a state religion through this meeting. It is establishing a state religion of religious pluralism where each religion must accept as valid the beliefs of other religions. This state religion is no more valid than the others that have dominated Europe for centuries. If people cannot reject the doctrines of religious pluralism, then there is no religious freedom or free speech.

(Posted by Trask)