Virginity for Sale

The Latin word for virgin—that would be virgo— refers to a young girl, a maiden or an in-tact woman.

At different times in different places the term has been used metaphorically to refer to sexually inexperienced boys and to people who are doing something for the first time. 

Nowadays, the genders have been bent and both boys and girls are considered to be “virgins” until they have engaged in their first act of carnal intercourse.

To me, the notion of male virgins is peculiar, almost an oxymoron. In politically correct circles men are required to share pregnancy, if only in word. Men today commonly announce their wives’ pregnancies by saying:  “We’re pregnant.”

If you were once a virgin, it makes sense that you would, after losing your virginity, become pregnant.

Of course, we all awaiting the moment when these pregnant male ex-virgins start showing.

In some ways this is not new. Some primitive peoples practice couvade, a sympathetic pregnancy where a man, for example, might suffer labor pains while his wife gives birth painlessly.

As though to test these radical new ideas in the marketplace, two virgins, one male and one female, have recently auctioned off their virginity to the highest bidder.

The one, a comely young Brazilian woman named Catarina Migliorini sold hers to a Japanese man for $780,000. Her male counterpart Alex Stepanov received a comparative pittance for his: $3,000.

If you wish to explore the question in more depth, the Huffington Post offers a mildly NSFW slide show of some of Migliorini’smarketing materials.

For reasons that do not defy understanding, there are no slide shows of young Stepanov.

Migliorini has promised to donate most of the proceeds to charity. Some have expressed skepticism.

These events bring us back to the hoary discipline that I have previously called hymenomics.

When we last examined the value of an intact hymen, we were studying the case of an American feminist, a woman’s study major fresh out of college, who had tried to auction off her virginity. She received bids as high as $3,400,000. 

The event was going to take place at a Nevada brothel, but, alas, the deal was never consummated.

Young women are taught, as a matter of indoctrination that their virginity has the same value as a man’s. This implies that it has little to no value, and that the hymen is merely a vestigial piece of flesh.

Young women who are encouraged to have sex like men are told to dispose of their virginity-- what used to be called their maidenhead-- as soon as they can. They are led to believe that it is a burden, even a stigma, a sign that they they are not liberated.

For all intents and purposes young women are told to give it away for free. Of course, giving it away for free cheapens it, and cheapens feminine sexuality.

It also, necessarily, lowers a woman’s self-esteem. A woman who does not know that being a woman is not the same as being a man will suffer a lack of self-esteem, a loss of self-worth, to say nothing of diminished  self-respect.

Once a young woman has learned that her virginity is worthless, the notion of exchanging it for four years of college and a new house does not seem quite so vulgar.

The feminist mindset has created conditions where selling virginity for money becomes an affirming gesture.

The free market has not quite affirmed gender equality. By declaring a woman’s virginity to be 250 times more valuable than a man’s it is affirming the fundamental difference between the sexes.

The market is also telling us that an inexperienced woman is wildly attractive to a man, but that an inexperienced man is not very appealing to a woman.

To examine the question more closely we must note that a man’s claim to be a virgin is always subject to some doubt. How can you tell whether a man has or has not ever engaged in an act of coitus?

You cannot.

  

With a woman, a man can know to a near certainty that she is a virgin. If her hymen is intact the probabilities are extremely high that she has never been deflowered.

Yes, we all know that modern medicine has devised ways to restore the physical aspect of virginity. And we know that a woman whose hymen is not intact might be as virginal as the driven snow.

Still and all, a woman’s value, her sense of her self-worth, her pride will be directly linked to the value she places on her virginity and her sexual favors.

A man’s self-esteem is more closely connected to his success in the world of work.

If a woman gives her virginity and her intimacy away for free, she is not only saying that they are not worth very much. She is also asserting that she is not worth very much.

She may feel proud of herself and she may feel empowered by her ability to dupe herself into thinking that she is having sex like a man, but, as Susan Walsh notes today at Hooking Up Smart, hers will a false pride and a false sense of empowerment.

But, not to worry, there's a pill for that.

Updates on Benghazi

The Obama administration Benghazi narrative is unraveling before our eyes.

Administration fabrications are falling away as more facts become available.

This morning everyone is focusing on the new revelation that the State Department and the White House received real-time information, via email, about the nature of the attack. Link here.

Obama supporters are trying to obscure these revelations. They will be saying that the information was imprecise and required extensive analysis.

If no one understood the information and if it was not communicated quickly to the important decision makers, then the Obama White House is simply incompetent.

This morning, too, Frank Gaffney offers an alternative explanation for the administration’s failure: it has been arming Islamist rebels, in Libya, and eventually in Syria, and has been trying to cover up its operations.

According to Gaffney, Ambassador Stevens was running a Middle Eastern version of Operation Fast and Furious.

I cannot judge whether this is true or false, but the Obama administration certainly wants to help fund the Egyptian government led by the Muslim Brotherhood. Since money is fungible, there is absolutely no reason why Mohamed Morsi would not be use the money to buy the armaments that he says he wants to buy.

Most important, as I, following Col. David Hunt, have been posting, is the fact that senior administration officials watched the attack in real time and did nothing to rescue the victims from an armed contingent of Islamist extremists.

Perhaps Obama cannot wrap his mind around the idea that Islam has bred so many terrorists. Perhaps he sees them as freedom fighters. Whatever the reason, this represents a serious failure to fulfill a basic responsibility.  

Yesterday former Defense Department official Bing West argued a point that I have been emphasizing:

Our diplomats fought for seven hours without any aid from outside the country. Four Americans died while the Obama national-security team and our military passively watched and listened. The administration is being criticized for ignoring security needs before the attack and for falsely attributing the assault to a mob. But the most severe failure has gone unnoticed: namely, a failure to aid the living.

Since West, like Col. Hunt, possesses considerable expertise in these matters and far better sources I defer to his reconstruction of the events in Benghazi.

In West’s words:

By 4:30 p.m. Washington time, the main consulate building was on fire and Ambassador Stevens was missing. In response, the embassy in Tripoli launched an aircraft carrying 22 men. Benghazi was 400 miles away.

At 5 p.m., President Obama met with Vice President Biden and Secretary of Defense Panetta in the Oval Office. The U.S. military base in Sigonella, Sicily, was 480 miles away from Benghazi. Stationed at Sigonella were Special Operations Forces, transport aircraft, and attack aircraft — a much more formidable force than 22 men from the embassy.

In the past, presidents had taken immediate actions to protect Americans. In 1984, President Reagan had ordered U.S. pilots to force an airliner carrying terrorists to land at Sigonella. Reagan had acted inside a 90-minute window while the aircraft with the terrorists was in the air. The Obama national-security team had several hours in which to move forces from Sigonella to Benghazi.

Fighter jets could have been at Benghazi in an hour; the commandos inside three hours. If the attackers were a mob, as intelligence reported, then an F18 in afterburner, roaring like a lion, would unnerve them. This procedure was applied often in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Conversely, if the attackers were terrorists, then the U.S. commandos would eliminate them. But no forces were dispatched from Sigonella.

He continues:

It is bewildering that no U.S. aircraft ever came to the aid of the defenders. If even one F18 had been on station, it would have detected the location of hostiles firing at night and deterred and attacked the mortar sites. For our top leadership, with all the technological and military tools at their disposal, to have done nothing for seven hours was a joint civilian and military failure of initiative and nerve.

Secretary of State Clinton has said the responsibility was hers. But there has been no assertion that the State Department overruled the Pentagon out of concern about the sovereignty of Libyan air space. Instead, it appears passive groupthink prevailed, with the assumption being that a spontaneous mob would quickly run out of steam.

It seems likely that the “groupthink” reflected administration policy not to call Islamic terrorism by its name. If you believe in spontaneous mobs but not organized Islamic terrorists, you adopt different policies to deal with them. If you believe that you can tamp down terrorism by calling it something else, you are not going to be able to deal with it when it arrives.

Finally, as West implies, only the commander-in-chief  can make the final decision about launching or not launching a rescue mission.

No military options could have been considered without the president knowing about them. And no military action could have been taken without his approval. If military action was contemplated and then aborted or delayed, the responsibility is entirely his.

It appears that the man who courageously pulled the trigger on Osama bin Laden became gun-shy in Benghazi.

The Obama Record on Israel

In the last presidential debate President Obama was at pains to assert his warm feelings for Israel.

Obama portrayed himself as the best friend Israel has in the world. He said it so often that he appeared, as John Podhoretz pointed out, to be seriously worried about the Jewish vote in swing states. 

One likes to think that no one is dumb enough to believe Obama's fabrications, but apparently a majority of American Jews will.

By now everyone should know that Obama makes up facts as he goes along, confident that the press will be happy to run interference for him.

For those who care to examine the record, Anne Bayefsky has laid it out in clear and stark detail.

The data is damning. It’s worth quoting at length:

President Obama has never visited Israel during his time in office, despite having been as close as thirty minutes away in Egypt, and managing to go to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iraq.

President Obama told Jewish leaders in July 2009 that he was deliberately adopting a policy of putting daylight between America and Israel.

President Obama has legitimized the UN body most responsible for demonizing Israel as the world’s worst human rights violator.  The president joined the UN Human Rights Council in 2009 and is now seeking a second 3-year term, despite Israel’s requests that he do the opposite.  

President Obama made Israeli settlements the key stumbling block in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Starting in 2009 he chose to castigate Israel publicly, often, and in extreme terms at the General Assembly and the Security Council. The Palestinians took the president’s cue and ended direct negotiations until such time as Israel capitulates, even though the subject is supposed to be a final status issue.

President Obama treated Israel’s Prime Minister to a series of insulting snubs during his visit to the White House in March 2010.

President Obama cut a deal with Islamic states at a May 2010 meeting of parties to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, contrary to assurances given to Israel. He agreed to help convene a 2012 international conference intended to pivot attention towards disarming Israel and is currently negotiating the details of this diplomatic onslaught.

President Obama introduced in his September 2010 address to the General Assembly, a September 2011 timeline for full Palestinian statehood and membership in the UN, thus encouraging Palestinians to push the same unilateral move.  

President Obama suggested in May 2011 that Israel use the 1967 borders as a starting point for negotiations – knowing full well that Israel considers those borders to be indefensible, and that agreements require the border issue to be determined by the parties themselves.

President Obama created a “global counter-terrorism forum” in September 2011 and invited eleven Muslim states to join – on the grounds that they were “on the front lines in the struggle against terrorism.”  At the insistence of Turkey, he then denied entry to Israel.

President Obama told French President Nicolas Sarkozy in November 2011 – when he thought he was off-mike – that he regretted having to deal with Israel’s Prime Minister.

President Obama asked Congress in February 2012 to waive a ban on American funding of UNESCO. The ban had been imposed following UNESCO’s recognition of Palestinian statehood and was consistent with U.S. law denying funding for any international organization that recognized Palestinian statehood in the absence of a peace agreement with Israel.

  

President Obama has indeed put daylight between American and Israeli policy on Iran.  In August, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dempsey said: “our clocks are ticking at different paces” and he wouldn’t be “complicit” in an Israeli effort to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities. 

In September Secretary Clinton explained this divergence. In her words, the Iranian threat is “existential” only for Israel;  only Israel is “right in the bull’s eye.”  President Obama’s “pro-Israel” policy, therefore, is to wait past the point that the intended victim of the planned genocide believes is safe.

President Obama denied Prime Minister Netanyahu’s request to meet with him in September, despite the Iranian peril.

President Obama’s UN ambassador, Susan Rice, didn’t even attend the Israeli Prime Minister’s speech to the UN General Assembly in September – during which he made a plea for global attention to the Iranian threat.

Nuf said.

What Wasn't Said at Last Night's Debate

Time (and the election) will tell whether Mitt Romney was right to avoid a fight with the president in last night’s debate. Transcript here.

Romney supporters are saying that he was trying to look presidential. In that, he succeeded.

It also appeared that he decided, in sports lingo, to sit on a lead. It isn’t always the best tactic.

As I say, time will tell.

Since everyone is parsing the debate transcript to within an inch of its meaning I want to emphasize two things that were not said. Call it my “dog that didn’t bark” analysis.

First, Mitt Romney glossed over Benghazi. He did not mention Ambassador Stevens, the attack on our Embassy, the administration failure to protect Amb. Stevens, its mixed messages about who was responsible for the attack, or even the word Benghazi.

Romney was trying to look presidential by rising above the fray. Unfortunately, he had raised the issue of Benghazi in the previous debate and had been slapped down by the moderator and by President Obama.

One pundit yesterday predicted that Romney would have mastered the details of the attack and its aftermath and would have come to the debate ready to fight.

He did not.

This made him appear to concede the point to the president and the media.

Like it or not, it did not make him look good.

Perhaps more notable than Romney’s omission of Benghazi was Obama’s failure to speak the words Islam and Muslim.

In his first answer Romney did mention the rise of Islamic radicalism in Northern Africa. He noted that Egypt is now being ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The point was clear and cogent. Romney added a series of policy prescriptions that would move the Arab Spring in a more positive direction.

When called upon to address these issues, Obama airbrushed reality. Not once did he acknowledge the reality of what is happening in the new Muslim Brotherhood controlled Egypt. Never did the words Muslim or Islam pass his lips.

I will quote his remarks at length. One might argue that they are properly hopeful. Nevertheless, when your presentation is so unbalanced that you are looking at the situation through self-serving rose-colored glasses you are colluding with a fiction and telling the Muslim Brotherhood that you approve of what they are doing.

Last night Obama suggested that it didn’t matter who won the election. If it was democratic, this was enough. 

Next, he insisted that he expects the new Egyptian leaders in Egypt adhere to liberal values.

In Obama’s words:

But what I've also said is that now that you have a democratically elected government in Egypt, that they have to make sure that they take responsibility for protecting religious minorities -- and we have put significant pressure on them to make sure they're doing that -- to recognize the rights of women, which is critical throughout the region. These countries can't develop if young women are not given the kind of education that they need.

They have to abide by their treaty with Israel. That is a red line for us, because not only is Israel's security at stake, but our security is at stake if that unravels.

They have to make sure that they're cooperating with us when it comes to counterterrorism. And we will help them with respect to developing their own economy, because ultimately, what's going to make the Egyptian revolution successful for the people of Egypt but also for the world is if those young people who gathered there are seeing opportunities.…

And so one of the things that we've been doing is -- is, for example, organizing entrepreneurship conferences with these Egyptians to -- to give them a sense of how they can start rebuilding their economy in a way that's noncorrupt, that's transparent.

By now everyone but Obama knows that the young champions of liberal democracy have lost out in Egypt. Everyone but Obama knows that knows that women and Coptic Christians are being brutalized, repressed and persecuted.

To pretend otherwise is to be blind to the reality of Islamist oppression.

We are left with the impression that Obama is conducting a policy of appeasement. He seems to believe that engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood will ultimately lead them toward more Western values.

Seeing how well it worked with Iran, why not try again?

To imagine that “entrepreneurship conferences” are just what Egypt needs is absurd.

While it is true that Egypt has formally recognized the peace treaty with Israel, the organization that godfathered Hamas is never going to be a friend of Israel. It is expedient today to send an ambassador to Israel. At some point in the future it will not be so expedient.

As for Obama’s vision of the Muslim world, last night he offered this:

Well, keep in mind our strategy wasn't just going after bin Laden. We've created partnerships throughout the region to deal with extremism -- in Somalia, in Yemen, in Pakistan. And what we've also done is engage these governments in the kind of reforms that are actually going to make a difference in people's lives day to day, to make sure that their government aren't corrupt, to make sure that they are treating women with the kind of respect and dignity that every nation that succeeds has shown, and to make sure that they've got a free market system that works.

It’s as though Obama believes that only extremists mistreat women. Apparently, he does not know that honor killings are widely used to terrorizing women throughout the Muslim world.

Does Obama think that women in Saudi Arabia are being treated with respect and dignity?

Does he understand that the Muslim Brothers in Egypt are hard at work turning back the clock on whatever progress women had made in Egypt? And that they do not care what we think about it?

Does he know that the new president of Egypt wants to acquire nuclear weapons and that he attended a recent religious service where the imam called for death to the Jews? And does he know that Morsi did not just sit there in silence? He affirmed the sentiments expressed by the imam.

If you did not get the message, Obama repeated:

So across the board, we are engaging them in building capacity in these countries and we have stood on the side of democracy. One thing I think Americans should be proud of -- when Tunisians began to protest, this nation, me, my administration stood with them earlier than just about any other country. In Egypt we stood on the side of democracy. In Libya we stood on the side of the people. And as a consequence there is no doubt that attitudes about Americans have changed.

As Mitt Romney pointed out, this does not explain why Obama did not stand with democracy protesters in Iran.

It appears that Obama is congenitally indisposed to speak ill of Islam or of Muslims.

We saw the same attitude when Obama groveled before the Islamic world denouncing a no-account video. Doesn’t this suggest that Obama is willing to go out of his way to show his obeisance to Islam?

After all, he was keeping a promise he made to the Islamic world in his famous Cairo speech in June, 2009.

In Obama’s words:

So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed.  That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn't.  And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.

The last line received great applause from the audience. But, ask yourself this: since when has it been the responsibility of the President of the Unites States to “fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”

Isn’t blasphemy a negative stereotype? Isn’t blasphemy protected by the constitution? How can you fight negative stereotypes of Islam and still protect and defend the Constitution of the United States?

Is Obama saying that he will fight negative stereotypes of Islam when they appear in Europe or Israel or India?

And, why does Obama single out Islam? Does he consider it a presidential responsibility to fight negative stereotypes of Judaism or Christianity?

If one religion receives an official privilege from the President doesn’t that violate the establishment of religion clause in the First Amendment to the American constitution?

Diversity in New York's Private Schools

Why is this news?

Why has it taken decades for people to discover that affirmative action and diversity-based admissions are hurting minority children?

Case in point: New York City private schools have worked long and hard to increase the numbers of minority students.

I cannot imagine why it’s surprising, but when minority children debark at Dalton or Calhoun or Trinity they discover that they do not fit in.

Through no fault of their own. And through no fault of the large coterie of wealthy children who make up the student body.

It’s not about the rich and the middle class; it’s about the chasm between the hyperrich and the lower middle class. The income and status gap is too large to ignore.

Minority children at these schools do not come from the same neighborhoods, do not go on the same vacations, do not attend the same camps, do not go to the same restaurants or shows or athletic events.

Thus, the children self-segregate. Whites over here. Blacks over there. Whites are friends with white; blacks are friends with blacks.

Supposedly, all children will benefit by being exposed to children from different socio-economic backgrounds. In reality, the children self-divide by race, by ethnicity and by status.

Those who suffer the most are minority children.

The New York Times explains:

Students report feeling estranged, studying among peers who often lack any awareness about their socioeconomic status and the differences it entails. They describe a racism that materializes not in insults, but more often in polite indifference, silence and segregation. 

It continues:

Pervading their experience, the students say, is the gulf between those with seemingly endless wealth and resources and those whose families are struggling, a divide often reflected by race.

Worse yet, when minority children attend the best private schools they become alienated from their local community. Not feeling that they belong anywhere they suffer from anomie.

The Times reports on the experience of these students:

They struggle to bridge the two worlds, and some grapple with guilt if they pull away from neighborhood friends. They describe feeling like a guest at someone’s house: you can stay and look, but you don’t belong.

Why did no one understand this before? Are the school administrators so oblivious to human reality that they did not understand that children from grossly disparate backgrounds, having nothing in common, were not going to become best friends? Worse yet, they were not even going to get along.

Do school administrators believe that everyone is the same and that putting them all together in one school is all that is needed to get them to get along?

Or do they, as the Times suggests, believe that the solution to this problem is to make more movies exposing the problem, teaching enhanced sensitivity and hoping against hope that social reality does not exist.

Can anyone be that ignorant about the basics of human psychology?

Of course, minority children suffering from anomie are obviously not going to perform at their best. They will have difficulty taking pride in their achievements when many of their classmates believe that they are simply the beneficiaries of preference programs.

The Times article does not break down minority students by race. It includes Asian-Americans, African-Americans and Hispanic students. If SAT scores are any indication, these children do not perform at anything like the same level. An underperforming African-American child will not be seen the same way as an overperforming Asian-American child.

For many years now Shelby Steele has drawn attention to the fact that affirmative action programs unfairly stigmatize black achievement.

And Thomas Sowell has often argued that putting minority children in schools where they cannot perform at the same level as the other students renders them a disservice.

Even when a black child was accepted in a private school or a university on his merits, the existence of affirmative action makes his achievement suspect.

Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor argued in a recent essay that university affirmative action programs hurt minority students.

They explain:

There is now increasing evidence that students who receive large preferences of any kind—whether based on race, athletic ability, alumni connections or other considerations—experience some clear negative effects: Students end up with poor grades (usually in the bottom fifth of their class), lower graduation rates, extremely high attrition rates from science and engineering majors, substantial self-segregation on campus, lower self-esteem and far greater difficulty passing licensing tests (such as bar exams for lawyers).

The most encouraging part of this research is the parallel finding that these same students have dramatically better outcomes if they go to schools where their level of academic preparation is much closer to that of the median student. That is, black and Hispanic students—as well as the smaller numbers of preferentially admitted athletes and children of donors—excel when they avoid the problem of what has come to be called "mismatch."

Would the same be true of the minority children who are attending New York’s most prestigious private schools?

Unfortunately, the New York public school system is so bad that one hesitates to speculate.

The Widening Gender Gap

In the midst of an intricate analysis of how the gender gap will affect the election outcome, the New York Times’ pollster extraordinaire, Nate Silver remarks:

The large gender gap comes despite the fact that men and women’s economic roles are becoming more equal — according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women represented 47 percent of the labor force as of September — and that women suffered at least as much as men in the recent economic downturn.

Silver is puzzled to see that at a time when men and women are becoming “more equal” in the economic sense, the gender gap has been getting wider.

Not to worry, James Taranto responded in a tweet. The seeming paradox is not a paradox at all. It is the natural consequence of feminism.

Taranto tweeted:

Prefeminism, the sexes' economic roles were complementary and cooperative. Postfeminism, they are in competition. Hence "gender gaps."

Before feminism men and women cooperated; their “roles” complemented each other.

Feminism was having none of it.

Feminism has turned men and women into economic competitors. It has taught them to give their lives over to “class” struggle. Not merely in the workplace, but also in a home and in their relationships.

Those who, like Silver, believe that feminism is about equality and that equality will produce comity should rethink their views. Feminism has deftly disguised its roots in radical leftist ideology, but the effects it has produced are in perfect harmony with its radicalism.

Taranto has grasped the salient fact that feminism is about undermining cooperation between men and women and turning everyday life into a constant conflict between the sexes. It's class warfare in your personal life. Remember when feminists rallied to the idea: "the personal is political?"

And you were wondering why we all just can’t get along…..

Does Mitt Romney Threaten Your Values?

Does Mitt Romney threaten your values? Is his life an affront to everything you hold sacred?

Apparently, Romney’s life defies the American counterculture. He is a threat to everything Nicole Rodgers holds dear.

You probably haven’t heard of Nicole Rodgers, editor a gender-bending feminist website called Role/Reboot. If so, you aren’t missing anything.

Nevertheless, I am grateful to the friend who drew my attention to her article, because it states, starkly, what so many other people believe but refuse to say.

While Democratic politicos and pundits are happy to pay lip service to Mitt Romney’s sterling personal character and exemplary private life, behind the scenes many of them are surely thinking what Nicole Rodgers is thinking, namely that Romney’s life represents a counterrevolutionary, even a reactionary force in American cultural politics.

Rodgers got herself totally lathered up because Romney dared to suggest, at the last presidential debate, that there would be less gun violence if there were fewer illegitimate births.

In truth, the point is not even controversial. Everyone but Nicole Rodgers knows that children who are brought up in families that look like the Romney family do much, much better in life than children who are brought up in any other family configuration.

This does not mean that we do not admire and respect the single mothers who shoulder the job of bringing up children in homes without fathers, but a mountain of sociological data demonstrates that illegitimacy contributes mightily to the crime rate and the poverty rate.

When she explains her thinking about traditional marriage, Rodgers drips contempt:

There is something telling about Romney’s advice to “get married to someone” that’s worth exploring. He didn’t say to marry your beloved, your partner, your boyfriend or girlfriend, or your lover, because the who is unimportant. Marriage is a palliative to all social ills: Want to reduce crime? Marry someone! Stuck in poverty? Marry someone!

For him, it’s the institution of marriage that is king, not the relationship. Suckering someone, anyone, into signing that old marriage license is, in itself, a victory. But he’s not alone in his simple-mindedness.

Actually, Romney’s not alone. None of the studies that measure the consequences of a stable family life distinguish between the different kinds of emotional attachment in marriage.

To my knowledge, no one, even certified Romney haters, has ever suggested that his is anything but a loving marriage.

Rodgers goes on to say that, somehow or other, marriage is not what it used to be. She suggests that the Romney family is no longer a reality, but is an “ideal.”

Apparently, she doesn’t know what the word “ideal” means. The Romney family is more or less the norm in most parts of the world and was the norm in America until the counterculture undermined it.

The new way of marriage is, at best, a social experiment. It will not be judged in terms of personal fulfillment but in the arena of international competition.

Other nations practice more traditional forms of marriage. The future will tell whether their cultures are more productive, more stable and more competitive than ours.

As of now, the crime and poverty rates among children who live in single-mother households far exceed those of children who are brought up by their married parents.

Rodgers uses the classical leftist rhetorical ploy. She suggests that a great wave of history is washing over us, dragging traditional marriage out to sea, leaving in its wake  new forms of marriage and new family units.

In her words:

The important question for those of us in the reality-based community is how to meet people where they are. Just think about your own extended family: Do they all resemble Romney’s ideal of what a family should be? Do your friends? My guess is probably not. There is nothing inherently damaging or intrinsically problematic about family structures that deviate from some nuclear family ideal. Presidents Obama and Clinton were both raised in single-mother households, after all.

Rodgers is right to see that the counterculture has severely damaged the institution of marriage. When feminism arrived in the American consciousness it produced a massive number of divorces.

Surely, some children turn out just fine, but the Obama and Clinton examples are anecdotal, and thus, of little consequence. In this case reality lies in the statistical correlation.

To buttress her argument Rodgers trots out some research suggesting that only recently have people come to believe that marriage should be therapeutic.

Unfortunately, this asks marriage to do something that it was not designed to do, and thus, the requirement has made marriage more difficult.

Traditional marriage is an arrangement between families whose purpose is to produce children who will symbolize the union of the families. Belonging to both families, children embody the oneness and solidarity of a community formed of different families.

Since Rodgers suggests that the institution of marriage was changed irrevocably once it became about self-fulfillment, it is worth looking at history.

The most important change in the history of marriage occurred in the seventeenth century when the Anglosphere started granting women a free choice of husbands. Thus, they introduced personal freedom for women into the marital equation.

At the emphasis was on free will and a free choice, not on making marriage an expression of love.

Everyone knows that most women exercise considerable intelligence in choosing a husband. Love is a factor in the decision, but it is certainly not the only factor.

Let us be clear here. Even if you consider marriage to be the ultimate expression of love—it isn’t—the truth remains, that giving women a free choice was designed to grant them more responsibility for their choice of husband. It was an effort to solidify the institution, produce a more stable home life and make adultery less attractive.

Now, Rodgers is seriously threatened by Mitt Romney’s stable home and family life.

After all, if your life and/or the lives of your friends and neighbors is anarchic and dramatic, then a life manifesting good order, discipline, a loving family and harmonious relationships would clearly be a threat.

Surprisingly, Rodgers does not suggest that American should try to emulate Mitt Romney. She joins the chorus of those who would demonize him.

One thing I can guarantee you, when significant voices in the culture rise up to attack Mitt Romney’s family values they are encouraging people to have disordered and chaotic lives. They will be telling people that they need not live in harmony with their fellow humans, but with the Zeitgeist.

Why is this so threatening?

If a stable family life is an option, then one might choose to have it or not to have it. If you don’t have it, the reason is your own free choice. If the choice is free, then blaming it on the Zeitgeist is an evasion of responsibility.

If there’s one thing people like Nicole Rodgers hate more than they hate Mitt Romney, it’s their own freedom.