William Saunders, VP at Americans United for Life, has written an update on the HHS Mandate at theCatholicThing. The penultimate paragraph I think makes a point that is so characteristic of ruling elites:

Deciding who is exempt because of their religious beliefs, who is to be “accommodated,” and who receives no protection whatever (the people in the pews), sounds much like the position Obama took in a recent Supreme Court case: it is up to his administration to strike the balance on religious freedom.

They’re the experts in everything, social, economic, moral, legal, animal, mineral, and vegetable. They know best about nutrition for preschoolers, who qualifies as a preschooler, what math standards should be, when kids should be taught sex ed and what they should be taught, who should own guns and what kind and how many bullets, what sorts of “services” a Catholic employer must provide, what sort of light bulbs we can’t buy, energy supplies, and on and on, with little end in sight. There is no resemblance between this and the US Constitution of the United States of America. One nation, under DC, with liberty and justice for all as they regulate, enforce, or refrain.

Speaking of Death and Afterlife (two posts back), here is the latest wrinkle on human existence brought to us by technology: Continue Tweets after you die….Will there be any way to know if you have followers? Somehow, I don’t think you will be worried about Twitter after death.

Iceland is making a move to restrict internet porn, reports the Telegraph. Let’s hope someone somewhere in the US Government wakes up and acknowledges the abuses that go on within the porn industry, the harm that is does to viewers, addicts, families and children–and begins to at least enforce anti-porn laws that are on the books, then write some newer and tougher ones. Porn harms.

Not only was a young girl shot and killed within a mile of President Obama’s house, but this week a nearby parade of decadence in higher education called  Sex Week at the University of Chicago exposes the nakedness and bankruptcy of western civilization at this present stage. I hope the President will say something.

Mark well: this IS what many “education” dollars are doing: leading students to confirm the false tenets of the sexual revolution. Education means “lead forth,” or “train”–in other word, pull them along and teach them the way the world is.

This experiment in human biology will not, indeed can not, end well. It already has a body count that continues. No amount of chemical, pharmaceutical, technological manipulation of the human body will overwrite the natural laws written in our bodies.

Science confirms that the one-flesh union of husband and wife arises not from the head of some religious visionary back in ancient times but from the barely-understood but astonishingly complex, intricate, fragile, and life-affirming biological, hormonal, neurological, and even genetic dance that makes up marital relations, conception, childbirth, breast feeding, and child nurturing. The two become one and three.

I would wager that the promoters of Sex Week at the University of Chicago–not an easy school to gain entry to, mind you–are quite committed to ecological and environmental causes, champions of “the natural,” organic foods and natural fibers. But when it comes to the ecology of the human body, they are most unnatural, supporting the invasion of womb, ovaries, and other body parts of the male and female with chemicals, devices, materials, saline solutions, surgical instruments, and bursts of bestial lust sometimes only possible under a haze of drugs or alcohol. If birds could talk, if bees could watch and make comment, what would these well adapted creatures of nature say about the unnatural madness of an affluent and “educated” population having slain 55 million of its offspring since 1973 in order to protect the lies of the sexual revolution?

Meanwhile, the shootings in the neighborhoods surrounding the Island of Hyde Park and the University of Chicago continue. We’re told gun control is the issue. I don’t doubt that something is broken when it comes to that. But the two things–young men (mostly without fathers) shooting off guns at others–and the sexual revolution–are related. Gun control? What about young men learning self-control when using an item infinitely more powerful than a gun. A gun can take a life. The other thing can create a life. Once created, that life needs a father and a mother. If you follow the logic of the abortionistas, the problem isn’t too many abortions, the problem is too few. It’s a very organized crime against humanity. Sex Week is just its sideshow.

The Respect Life Office of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago is holding a conference addressing addictions–to alcohol, drugs, porn, and sex. March 2, 2013. Details may be found on this FLYER.

The Marion E. Wade Center of Wheaton College, Illinois, is pleased to present a free public lecture this coming Thursday, February 14, 2013, by John Granger (a Touchstone writer):

From a story at Christian Newswire about Ryan Bomberger, who spoke last week at Speak Out Illinois:

“It is ironic that a black man is being sued by the nation’s oldest civil rights group for exercising his most basic civil right — the freedom of speech,” said Bomberger. “This threat of legal action from the NAACP is nothing more than a multi-million dollar organization’s attempt to bully someone who’s simply telling the truth. Our inner-cities are crumbling, two-parent married families barely exist, 72.3 percent of our children are born into homes without fathers, and the NAACP wants to silence me for pointing out its support of abortion.”

He says the NAACP is the National Association for the Abortion of Colored People. Bomberger himself is black. And a powerful speaker.

Another death here (in Germantown, MD) another there (in Chicag0)…pay no attention. Never mind. Repeat: Abortion is good for women, good for children (no unwanted children, fewer abused babies by killing them first), abortion is good for anti-poverty efforts (see the stunning results on Chicago’s South and West sides), abortion is good for the social fabric, good for the village, the neighborhood, the community; abortion is good for the Unites States of America. Brought to you by the US Supreme Court, 1973: Great choice!

Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor, writes this at the Witherspoon Institute’s Public Discourse,

Why the animus against the Boy Scouts? Because Copernicus was wrong. The world does not revolve around the sun. The world revolves around the predilections of upper- and middle-class feminists and their satellites.

The Boy Scouts retain the commonsense notion that it is not wise to bring boys into close quarters with men who are sexually attracted to boys, regardless of whether they act on those attractions. They retain the commonsense notion that if it were widely known that such men were scoutmasters, the boys would check out.

But it’s not really primarily about the Boy Scouts and the current controversy. It’s about BOYS and what has happened to them since the launch of the Great Society and the War on Poverty.

What, on the dreadful day of doom, will that boy in Philadelphia say to the rich who have ignored him, or worse, who have profited by his confusion?

You really should read Esolen’s stunning reply to his question, which includes this:

“You declared a War on Poverty, aimed at me, when you should have declared a War on Vice, aimed first of all at yourselves.”

Read the whole post. We are paying the high price for sins of denial. “Woe to the man by whom the temptation comes!”

David J. Theroux writes at the Independent Institute’s blog The Beacon about the Rescher Award given to Alvin Plantiga by the University of Pittsburgh for his work in philosophy. Writes Theroux:

Plantinga is widely known for his work in the philosophy of religion, epistemology, metaphysics and Christian apologetics, and he has revolutionized scholarly interest in Christian theism, shown naturalism/atheism to be self-refuting and incoherent, and set the new standards for the defense of free will, individual agency, consciousness, rational inference, science, objective truth and morality, and more. As a result, Plantinga has both directly influenced the entire field of philosophy and has mentored and inspired new generations of top scholars who are critiquing the reductionism, relativism, materialism, collectivism, scientism, positivism, determinism, and de-humanization of the modern era. In short, Plantinga has devastated the prevailing view in Western elites that human beings are merely “matter in motion” (i.e., purposeless, accidental, robotic products of a closed, natural world ruled solely by physical laws and that truth, reason, morality, and God are illusions).

Many links are provided on his post to Plantiga’s writings and videos of his PBS appearances. His latest book, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism, will be reviewed by Louis Markos in the March/April 2013 issue of Touchstone. (You may subscribe here. Why wait any longer?)