AJC.com > Opinion > Woman to Woman > Archives > 2008 > May
May 2008
Should the government be in the business of promoting marriage?
Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, responds.
Rebuttal
Who’s to say whether marriage-supporting programs might work better than welfare? Well, dozens of extremely thorough studies, actually. Taxpayers spend billions annually to fight poverty, crime, drug use, and so on - all of which stem from the breakdown of marriage. And I don’t mean the broad concept of marriage as an institution. Literally, research shows that nearly all our costly social problems start with individual situations in which marriages fail or children are born to unmarried mothers. As just two examples among hundreds, 97 percent of all Atlanta housing welfare recipients are single parents, and 72 percent of incarcerated juveniles come from broken homes. Those stats come from a variety of sources, including AJC articles and Georgia Family Council (GFC) research.
For years, we’ve been spending immense amounts of money to treat symptoms - and that is still needed. But we should also be trying to “cure the disease,” so to speak.
A new, ground-breaking report sponsored in part by the GFC found that divorce and unwed childbearing costs taxpayers an astonishing $112 billion each year - at a minimum. While liberal leaders rage at $500 billion spent on the Iraq war in the last five years, principal researcher Dr. Ben Scafidi estimates that taxpayers spent at least $560 billion due to family fragmentation in that same period.
In a phone interview, GFC President Randy Hicks said policymakers and citizens must recognize the massive public cost to family breakdown - as well as the very real human cost. He pointed out, “We don’t hesitate to invest in education because we view it as a gateway to success. Why should we hesitate to acknowledge and promote other conditions that prevent suffering and help people thrive? If lack of education leads to suffering, and lack of family formation leads to suffering, we must invest in both.” Such an investment would more than pay for itself — even a 1 percent decrease in unwed childbearing would save taxpayers $1.1 billion a year.
Yes, it will take some time to evaluate and model the best of the brand-new marriage-promoting initiatives, but that doesn’t mean evaluation isn’t taking place. (It is, according to the unnamed Administration for Children and Families source that Andrea cites). And it certainly doesn’t mean that we should stop the long-overdue shift of a small percentage of resources from treating the symptoms, to curing the disease.
Should there be more restrictions on pay-per-view pornography in hotels?
Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, responds.
Commentary
Pornography use has become a major relational and societal problem. Internet pop-ups and graphic spammers have made porn difficult to avoid — and sexual addictions have exploded. National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families research shows that two-thirds of men in their 20s and 30s report being “regular users” of pornography.
Studies differ on what percent are actually addicted — with a compulsion they feel unable to stop, and a need to go harder-core to get the same “high” — but it is likely 10 percent or more. And this personal problem has become a major public one. For instance, a poll at the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers’ 2003 meeting found that “excessive interest in online porn” was a major factor in one-third of the divorces handled by those attorneys.
Into this loaded environment, hotel chains offer pay-per-view porn to millions of men (and, increasingly, women) who feel trapped by this compulsion. As with any addiction, users confronted with porn find it difficult to turn down. They can have the front desk block it — but also know that all they have to do is call back and change their mind.
A 2004 New York Times article noted that half of all hotel guests order porn. And since it accounts for 70 percent of in-room revenue, many hotel chains prefer not to look too deeply into how it is damaging their customers.
A family-groups coalition recently met with Marriott International representatives, and showed them just a partial list of the incredibly offensive titles and descriptions they were offering. By phone, National Coalition President Rick Schatz described the representatives’ shock. Time will tell whether the chain acts to eliminate porn entirely, or at least have guests “opt-in” to put it on their television, instead of having it there unless they opt-out.
Drury Inn, Ritz-Carlton and Omni hotels have all eliminated porn as an option. An Omni press release from early 2000 said the decision, “Was morally and conscionably driven … in response to what it perceives as a growing need for corporate America to support pro-family issues.”
The need is stark and obvious. Let’s hope Marriott and others make the hard but right choice to do something about it.
Rebuttal
Hotel rooms are dangerous places for men, aren’t they? In addition to the temptations for the porn addict, there are the bottles in the mini bar to tempt the alcoholic, chocolate and chips to taunt the overeater.
In fact, the front desk should probably start collecting businessmen’s belts when they check in. After all, left alone with all these hellish vices, an anxiety-ridden traveler just might hang himself from the shower rod.
Removing all adult entertainment options from hotel systems because it’s too tempting for some is extreme. So it turns out that half of all hotel guests appear to enjoy watching other people have sex. What should we do about this? Call the FBI?
Well, that’s exactly what a coalition of conservative groups did in 2006, imploring the FBI and the Department of Justice to investigate pay-per-view movies that violate federal and state obscenity laws.
A spokesperson at the Department of Justice promised to get back to me pronto, to report on the status of that urgent 2006 request. I haven’t heard from her yet; maybe the DOJ is too busy working on their massive child pornography caseload. Where are their priorities?
I did just speak with Roger Conner, vice-president of communications for Marriott International, who told me two days after his meeting with conservative groups that a “constructive” conversation ensued.
“We’re a “very strong family company” Conner stressed, clearly not relishing the role of pornography defender. Yet he also explained that Marriott doesn’t have total control over their franchisee network and that, in the end, “we think it’s a matter of adult choice.” I agree, and admit to more concern over the women who choose this career than the men “forced” to watch the fruits of such labors.
When it comes to hotel entertainment systems, X-rated fare is not available everywhere, easy to avoid where it is, and expensive to boot. For some it’s worth the price. Others might find the bedside hotel Bible and a cold shower equally alluring, and they don’t cost a thing.
How can hotel chains deliver us from evil? They don’t define it; we do. So if you seek salvation along with your room key, then act like an adult. Choose it.
Is it taboo for prominent women to attack their peers?
Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, responds.
Commentary
To post your comment and to read other comments, scroll to Post Comment link at bottom of blog
Former Reagan speech writer and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan recently eviscerated Hillary Clinton for describing Barack Obama’s weakened support among “hard-working Americans, white Americans.” Noonan deemed the pronouncement “so vulgar, so cynical, so cold, that once again a Clinton is making us turn off the television in case the children walk by.”
Whether or not we agree with this assessment is beside the point; the writer has game. Noonan can dish it out and Clinton can take it. Male and female readers alike appreciate clever commentary that provokes with a purpose.
Therefore, I’d hate to have anyone misinterpret the furor over Charlotte Allen’s recent Washington Post article as a sign that women can’t handle a little in-house insurrection. “We Scream, We Swoon, How Dumb Can We Get?” keeps getting forwarded to my computer “in” box like bad penny. Why? Believe me, it’s not because it betrays the sisterhood.
The problem with Allen’s tack isn’t disloyalty, it’s mediocrity. The piece declares that Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been “marred by every stereotypical flaw of the female sex.” Huh? Here’s how average women are attacked: They talk about Botox! They watch “Grey’s Anatomy”! Finally, Allen brings out the big guns: we’re just not as smart as those supersmart boys.
If one is going to go up against one’s own kind — and who better to do that? — then make sure those knives have been sharpened. If you write a half-baked diatribe against other women just to be provocative, expect everyone to be annoyed. Allen’s editor eventually tried to bail her out by claiming it was intended as satire, but if the conceit falls so flat it requires explanation, you’re already lost.
Clinton deserves credit for running a campaign so viable it made its female trailblazing status a mere afterthought. Why can’t the pundits follow suit? All women know that criticism is part of having a seat at the table, and our spirited response shows that neither the airwaves nor the blogosphere remain a boy’s club. In the end we simply expect the same thing men do in debate — intelligent arguments with a razor sharp point. Now, if you’ll excuse me, “Grey’s Anatomy” is about to start…
Rebuttal
To post your comment and to read other comments, scroll to Post Comment link at bottom of blog
Charlotte Allen’s piece was both tongue-in-cheek and important: and all the feminine outrage serves only to prove her point that some women need to get a grip. She was calling women to a higher standard, embarrassed to see women swooning over Barack Obama like a rock star — and why do we scream over rock stars anyway? As Allen’s point implicitly asked, do you see men doing that? Why is it primarily women who make vacuous self-help books best sellers, or who get addicted to empty-minded soap operas? And why is asking that question cause for anyone to furiously forward Allen’s piece into Andy’s “in” box?
Or why is there such anger toward any woman bringing up the scientifically accurate statement that there are certain things men’s brains are more wired for than women’s brains? The reverse is also true, but no woman gets hammered for bringing those up — which, by the way, Allen did. But angry readers only focus on the fact that she dares to criticize her gender.
The furor has nothing to do with mediocrity - that is what Allen’s piece was about. No, the furor is entirely because women criticizing their own gender has become deeply offensive — even when the criticism is demonstrably true and you are doing so in order to encourage your fellows to better themselves. Men can do that with each other; women can’t.
Are we so insecure that we can’t take a little ribbing? So humorless that we can’t swallow any satirical criticism? Can’t examine reality and say, “yeah — good point — maybe it is embarrassing when fellow females swoon over rock stars and throw their underwear on stage?”
By phone, Charlotte Allen said she received more than 700 emails, most hostile, some obscene, some threatening her life. Just 20 percent supported her, for they thought the same thing. The bigger message clouded by angry feminists remains true: men and women are different. Each gender has strengths and weaknesses, and we should not only celebrate those strengths but work on those weaknesses. For example, brain science shows that women are wired better for communication and processing emotions. I just wish we hadn’t proven so good at making much ado about nothing.
Why is there such a visceral negative reaction to scientists exploring alternatives to evolution?
Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, responds.
Commentary
Ben Stein’s controversial new movie, Expelled, explores the strange, extreme bias against any scientist daring to mention the obvious holes in Darwinian macroevolutionary theory.
Darwin’s theory was published 149 years ago, and has been the primary origin-of-life theory since the 1930’s. Since then, evidence to support macroevolution (one species mutating to a different species) has advanced only marginally, while evidence questioning it has exploded. Advances in genetics, cellular biology, chemistry and many other fields have been seized to map human DNA and create wonder drugs. Yet they also raise questions about Darwinian macroevolution - which no scientist can follow up without being “expelled” from the respect of the scientific community. It’s absolutely absurd.
Why the visceral reaction when scientists even mention problems with the theory, such as (for example) that genetic mutation usually harms organisms instead of building complexity? Using direct observation and hypothesis — a tool of the scientific method - it looks like the scientific community is fearful of alternatives that might (they think) muddle science and religion.
Remember, Galileo’s heretical observation that the earth revolved around the sun eventually separated science from both philosophy and religion. Science required a willingness to change one’s views based on observation instead of blind allegiance to authority or accepted beliefs. For that willingness, Galileo was ostracized, forced to recant, and no longer allowed to teach or publish.
Sounds oddly familiar. Expelled highlights scientists who have had their freedom of speech and scientific inquiry violated; have been harassed, fired or blacklisted. In a phone interview, Dr. Carolyn Crocker explained that she regularly taught evolutionary theory at George Mason University, but then made one mention of its contradictions and the “Intelligent Design” theory as one potential solution. She was immediately removed from teaching and later fired. A cellular biologist, she sees DNA complexity that “doesn’t seem feasible from random mutation. I don’t know if ID is right or evolution is right. We are not at a place to say it is right. As scientists we need to able to explore.”
The scientific community has apparently adopted Darwinian macroevolution not as a simple scientific theory that they’re willing to examine, adapt and change, but as a philosophy of life that is just as fiercely protected as the beliefs in Galileo’s day.
Rebuttal
Welcome to the lab of Critical Thinking. Let’s start by putting this week’s question under a microscope. See any reality mutations?
There’s simply not a visceral negative reaction to scientists exploring alternatives to anything—why, that’s what scientists do. Contrarian by nature and unwilling to settle for guesswork, they’re only portrayed as peer-obsessed cowards when non-scientists don’t like the answers they’re getting.
Do Intelligent Design proponents really think that the thousands of geologists digging their lives away wouldn’t be thrilled to discover mammal fossils down in the age of fishes? Darwin would spin in his grave, but so what? Scientists want to be right. For this reason, they study Intelligent Design tirelessly. Too bad that the evidence for it just isn’t there.
Speaking of things that aren’t there— Blacklist Fever at George Mason University, where Dr. Carolyn Crocker was supposedly immediately terminated for merely mentioning Intelligent Design. A quick check with University spokesperson Daniel Walsch reveals that Crocker finished out the term of her contract and simply wasn’t rehired in the fall, a common occurrence with non-tenured professors. Now we have Crocker and company getting their martyr party started in the movie Expelled, a Docu-dagger aimed straight at secular science.
Mutations in reality like Intelligent Design are truly harming science curriculum and scientists all over the country. ID shows a great deal of respect for a spiritual creator, as do many scientists who find religion and evolution to be quite compatible. Yet respect for scientists themselves is on the wane; ID advocates willfully tear down anyone resisting their pre-ordained conclusion.
Here’s Expelled’s Ben Stein, explaining to Christianity Today why those rats in lab coats don’t earn his respect: “..It’s not as if science has covered itself with glory, morally, in my time. Scientists were the people in Germany telling Hitler that it was a good idea to kill all the Jews.”
Really, Ben? You’re going to exploit the Holocaust to prove a theory that simply sounds better to you than a century of evidence building? Fortunately, most Americans are on the side of both God and good science, unwilling to let their faith in one shake their faith in the other.
Wow. There’s a highly evolved organism for you.
Should commencement speeches reflect the values of a university?
Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, responds.
Commentary
Distinguished staff and faculty, proud family and friends, and the Class of 2008—welcome to my diatribe against commencement speaker selection politics.
It’s become a post-spring break tradition, hasn’t it? A fierce ideological litmus test goes unheeded, an uproar ensues.
The recent sexual harassment problem at the University of Georgia (six male employees were implicated) caused some, including Professor Janet Frick, to question UGA’s pick of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Frick explains: “any speaker embroiled in controversy about sexual harassment—-yes, that includes former President Bill Clinton-would be seen as an ill-advised choice this year.”
Frick’s concerns may be partisan-free but I doubt that’s ubiquitous; politics are usually at play in these disputes. In 1992, the choice of Condoleezza Rice was criticized by many liberals at Stanford. As one senior declared, “My concerns are Rice’s policies and actions, not her personally.” Fine,but this isn’t an election, it’s a speech, given by a Stanford grad and former provost of significant stature.
Liberals and conservatives alike gripe on websites and organize petitions and boycotts. NAACP head and civil rights activist Julian Bond’s selection riled Republican students at George Washington recently, and a couple of years ago the Catholic Cardinal Newman Society added another self-proclaimed “mildly pro-choice” leader to their list of commencement villains. Who got added to the conservative group’s hit list? That’s right—Condoleezza Rice.
Is a commencement speaker’s job to inspire a life path similar to their own? What an impossibly tall, presumption-filled order . With countless speakers on the docket and the sonorous recitation of hundreds of names, most of us want a stimulating guest that keeps us awake. No wonder Stephen Colbert, hilarious and controversial, won with polls of students from Miami University to Notre Dame to Princeton. Princeton got him this year; too bad he can’t clone himself.
Commencement, despite the “bon voyage” atmosphere, signifies the beginning of something. Class of 2008, I can’t think of a better way to launch into real world living than by listening to a thought-provoking commencement speaker, whether or not they share your values.
And if you really hate what a speaker represents? Head off campus, take that energy you would put into changing the speaker, and change the world instead. Don’t they still teach that in college?
Rebuttal
Many universities have become so steeped in ideological groupthink that students should recruit speakers to challenge it: I just think they should do that at every time other than graduation. Maybe then they will actually hear something to stimulate their thinking before they become set in their ideology - at the ripe old age of 21.
Commencement celebrates years of hard work. Administrators should schedule speakers to exhort graduates and challenge them to excel, not present a specifically ideological message that they know will be offensive to many. The school should be applauding their students, not disrespecting them. I believe that even in the case of one of my pet peeves: state schools that shouldn’t even have an entrenched (often liberal) ideology. And it’s even more true with values-driven private schools.
Remember the fracas last fall when Columbia University invited Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak? Would Andy really want Ahmadinejad - a thug who denies the Holocaust and calls for the elimination of Israel — to give the commencement speech to Yeshiva University, a Jewish college down the street?
Should a female-only school like Mount Holyoke invite a male speaker? Not that a man would necessarily be offensive, but since the school exists to inspire women shouldn’t a woman give the final trumpet call? Likewise, there are 99 black colleges, 32 tribal colleges, and hundreds of religion-specific colleges in the United States. Wouldn’t a speaker be a disappointment if they cannot intimately identify with the audience’s history, culture or beliefs?
In an email interview, Liberty University Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. said they look for speakers, “who reflect the values of Liberty University, who are appropriate role models for the graduates.” Should this dedicated Christian school really invite a dedicated atheist to speak? Falwell indicated, “We have invited a more diverse group of speakers during the school year,” but for commencement, “We, of course, would not invite a speaker whose lifestyle and values are not compatible with the school’s mission. We want to inspire graduates …to establish priorities that are appropriate to be successful in family life, their careers and their relationship with God.” Clearly, someone like atheist author Christopher Hitchens fails to meet this criteria. Perhaps Columbia can get him.
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Commentary
By Andrea Cornell Sarvady
“Healthy marriages are not the result of government programs. Healthy marriages are the result of individual conviction and personal responsibility, neither of which can be mandated by government.” Thank you, Ron Paul. We don’t always agree, but I couldn’t have said this one better myself.
For years, we’ve watched as disastrous marriage incentive programs—get married and keep your welfare benefits!—morphed into the Healthy Marriage Initiative, with few quantifiable results. Remember the administration’s first marriage whisperer, Wade “the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church” Horn? As assistant secretary for the Administration of Children, Youth and Families, Horn gave a significant share of his $47 billion budget to religious right organizations, pushed for abstinence-only programs to target adults up to age 29, and hired conservative columnists to promote marriage.
Hoping things are a little more balanced now that Wade has departed for a cushy consulting job, I spoke with one of the new heads at his old organization, directly asking if there’s an evaluation process for the Healthy Marriage Initiative. I was stunned by the response. “There will eventually be an evaluation, but the criteria aren’t specific,” this high-level spokesperson (who asked to remain unnamed) casually told me.
Amazing. I worked in the non-profit field for years, and in my experience, programs never received a dime of public or private funding without submitting a detailed evaluation process from the beginning.
Proponents of marriage promotion frequently cite powerful arguments for matrimony—economic gains and evidence that two-parent households benefit children. No argument there. Yet where is the proof that any form of government intervention builds better relationships? Moreover, the Healthy Marriage Initiative is funded by robbing Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) funds. Who is to say that marriage classes do more for strengthening a beleaguered family than established TANF programs, like subsidized childcare?
I look forward to a new administration that views accountability as more than a programmatic afterthought. These faith-based partnerships may answer to a higher power, but the U.S. Government, last time I checked, still answers to the citizenry it serves.