Today is the 67th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. Major Dick Winters took part in that invasion and his heroism was made famous in the book Band of Brothers. Winters died in January of this year at the age of 92. Winters was a true American hero. He was a part of the 101st airborne division that was dropped behind enemy lines just before the D-Day invasion. He and the men he commanded from Easy Company fought all the way from Normandy to Hitler’s Alpine retreat at Berchtesgaden, Germany. His bravery and leadership is the stuff of legend, and that is why there is a book and a movie telling…
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Greatest Marriage Proposal Ever?
Matt Still has produced one of the most creative marriage proposals I have ever seen. It’s also the latest viral YouTube sensation making the rounds. He and his fiancée were interviewed on “The Today Show” this morning. You can watch the proposal above and then the interview below.
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The Hermeneutics of Gender
There was a lot of discussion last week of the Presbyterian Church’s (USA) decision to allow for the ordination of homosexual clergy. Christopher Cocca has an article at The Huffington Post, however, that pulls a thread that many have not picked up on. Cocca’s article is essentially about hermeneutics and the way that the Bible should inform our moral evaluation of homosexuality. But he comes at the issue from a different angle and argues that there is a connection between the ordination of homosexuals and the ordination of women.
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Gender-bending News Report
Sign of the times alert. Here’s the opening paragraph from a recent news report: Woman charged in transgender beating at McDonald’s ROSEDALE, Md. — An 18-year-old woman has been charged in an attack on a transgender woman over using a McDonald’s restroom in a Baltimore suburb —an incident captured on video by a McDonald’s employee. This is a sad story, and we should be outraged at the crime reported here. Nevertheless, the events in the report aren’t what I want to focus on. Instead, I want to highlight a subtlety in how the story is written that may go unnoticed. Notice that the victim is designated as a “transgender woman,” and…
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Can you defend the sexual revolution?
Anthony Esolen has a helpful article asserting the ideological bankruptcy of the sexual revolution. In essence, he argues that it undermines the common good to treat sex as if it were irrelevant to the flourishing of society. Here’s the first paragraph: “Why should two men who are sexually attracted to one another not be allowed to pretend that they are married? That we are even asking such a question is the result of our having accepted the premise of the sexual revolution, which is, essentially, that what people do with their bodies is their own business, so long as no one is harmed. By ‘no one’ we mean the people…
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An Atheist on Gender Neutral Bibles
Christopher Hitchens has high praise for the King James Bible in the latest issue of Vanity Fair. This year is the 400th anniversary of the KJV, and Hitchens makes the case for the superiority of the King James Bible over all comers. In one section of the essay, Hitchens takes umbrage with gender neutral language in modern versions. In particular, he criticizes the Contemporary English Version’s use of “my friends” in place of the KJV’s “brethren.” He writes: “Pancake-flat: suited perhaps to a basement meeting of A.A., these words could not hope to penetrate the torpid, resistant fog in the mind of a 16-year-old boy, as their original had done…
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Sexting Epidemic
“One day last winter Margarite posed naked before her bathroom mirror, held up her cellphone and took a picture. Then she sent the full-length frontal photo to Isaiah, her new boyfriend. “Both were in eighth grade. “They broke up soon after. A few weeks later, Isaiah forwarded the photo to another eighth-grade girl, once a friend of Margarite’s. Around 11 o’clock at night, that girl slapped a text message on it… Then she clicked open the long list of contacts on her phone and pressed ‘send.’ “In less than 24 hours, the effect was as if Margarite, 14, had sauntered naked down the hallways of the four middle schools… Hundreds,…
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Post-feminist Regrets
Jennifer Moses thinks that sexual liberation did not deliver on its promise to deliver the good life. And now, the specter of past sexual exploits haunts post-feminist mothers who feel hypocritical for trying to lead their own children to practice some sexual restraint. In an OP-ED for The Wall Street Journal, she writes: It has to do with how conflicted my own generation of women is about our own past, when many of us behaved in ways that we now regret. A woman I know, with two mature daughters, said, “If I could do it again, I wouldn’t even have slept with my own husband before marriage. Sex is the…
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Martin Bashir Talks about Bell Interview
I wrote earlier this week about Martin Bashir’s hard-hitting interview with Rob Bell. If you’ve been under a rock this week and haven’t seen it yet, be sure to take a few minutes and watch it now. Commenters under that earlier post have been asking about Bashir’s own faith commitments. They note that some reports paint him to be an atheist while other reports indicate that he is a Christian. What’s the truth? Bashir answered that question earlier today when he was interviewed on Paul Edwards’ “God and Culture” radio program. Bashir discloses that he is a committed Christian and that he attends Tim Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New…
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Grammy Malaise
I have a confession to make. I watched the Grammys last night. I don’t know how many years it’s been since I’ve seen the Grammys, but I decided this year to break my long streak of paying no attention to them at all. As I watched last night, I remembered why it was that I haven’t given heed to these awards. As a cultural moment, the Grammys are supremely and exquisitely vacuous. In fact, I would say that they are quite depressing. As far as the decline of civilizations is concerned, the Grammys are right up there with gladiatorial games and barbarian invasions.