Fewer Than a Third Think There is a Democratic War on Religious Freedom

A YouGov/Economist poll found that only 29% think the Democratic Party is "waging war on religious freedom."

Even among weekly churchgoers and people who say religion is very important in their lives, most reject this recent culture wars theme.

More Good News on Teen Pregnancy

Teen pregnancy rate in the U.S.:

1990: 116.9 per 1,000.

2010: 34.3 per 1,000.

This is the lowest teen pregnancy rate in forty years.

The rate is going down because teens are having less sex and using contraception more.

The Belief That Women Are Not Different From One Another is a Distinctive Difference of Women

One of the hallmarks of difference feminism is that women tend to make different choices than men do, and this is fine. Equality of opportunity for women and men is not likely to lead to the same outcome.

Egalitarian feminism, by contrast, tends to see any difference in outcome between men and women - a difference in the proportion of CEOs of large corporations, for example, or of average pay - as evidence of discrimination against women. They are committed to the idea that women are essentially the same as one another, as well as the same in essence as men, so inequality among women is also evidence that something is wrong.

The belief that women are essentially the same as one another, and that justice means keeping equality among women is, Deborah Tannen has found, one of the distinctive hallmarks of women's communication and relations with one another.

The belief by egalitarian feminist women that women are the same is one of the women's differences that difference feminism accepts.

Happy Easter - Even if it is the Most Pagan Holiday

The Resurrection is the peak of the Christian calendar.

The American celebration of Easter is the most pagan of holidays. 

Nonetheless, both are happy occasions.  I celebrate them.

Little Men Continues the Virtuous World of Little Women

Some months ago I read Louisa May Alcott's Little Women for the first time.  I do like it as a moral tale.  I nominated her as a possible American equivalent of Anthony Trollope.

Today I read Little Men.  It is also a fine moral tale.  Since it is set in a school, it is full of opportunities for explicit moral instruction.  Most of these do not take place in the classroom, but in developing the characters of the boys (and some girls) in their interactions with one another outside of class. The charm is in the mild and humorous incidents.  The deep appeal of the novel, though, is about the shaping of good character.

In the comments on my post on Little Women, it was offered that we shouldn't compare Alcott and Trollope, since one was writing children's literature and the other adult literature.  The more I think about this distinction, the less I think it holds up.  I think what the authors have in common is more important than the age of the subjects they write about or for.  They are both portraying a God-ordered world in which good character and good conduct are right and true, and in which those who do right can be happy, whatever their worldly fortunes might be.

You Still Have Only a Slim Chance to Have Your First Baby in Your Forties

The number of women in their forties trying Assisted Reproductive Technologies of all sorts has gone up dramatically in the last few years.

The proportion who succeed, though, has not.  The Yale Fertility Clinic puts the success rate after 42 at 9%, where it has been for some years.

Yet many women coming to the clinic, who are highly educated and well-informed about many other things, have only a vague notion that fertility declines dramatically in their thirties.  They are often surprised, even offended, when told that they waited too long.

Good News From Burma

I am so encouraged by developments in Burma.  The military government seems to be gradually letting go.  They allowed 45 by-elections to go forward - not enough to control parliament, but enough to create a base for the previously banned opposition.

And the great news: Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nelson Mandela of Burma, was elected to parliament, and her party won 40 of the 45 seats.

We may see a free Burma within a few years.  And if President Aung San Suu Kyi tells me to call the country Myanmar, I will happily comply.

Manhattan Singles are a Life Stage, Not a Lifestyle

Eric Klinenberg, in Going Solo, notes that half of Manhattan households are made up of people living alone.  New York is certainly the capital of solo living in this country.  But they are not really representative of future trends elsewhere.

Many young people go to New York to try to make it big, or just to experience the cosmopolitan life - for awhile.  Then they pick a more realistic option elsewhere, or marry and move to the suburbs, or run through their trust fund or parental subsidy.

I think the fact that Klinenberg is a professor at New York University in Greenwich Village gives him a distorted view of how common, or sustainable, solo living is.

"Going Solo" is Not the Wave of the Future

Eric Klinenberg, an NYU sociologist, has generated some interest with Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone. He starts with the fact that about a quarter of American households today are made up of one person - more than the number of married-with-children households.

Klinenberg does treat the mostly sad cases of poor people living alone, especially the frail elderly.  But his real interest is in the young and financially secure solo living group, who make New York their capital.

Klinenberg shows that living alone and loving it is a growing fraction of the urban population in developed societies, which is true.  He argues that solo living will become the prevailing form of life, especially if a Swedish-style welfare state subsidizes it. He particularly argues that proponents of marriage are fighting a rear-guard action for an anachronistic idea of togetherness.  This, I contend, is not true.  It is certainly not proven by his cases.

Most young singles, including the young divorced, are looking to marry, as his own evidence shows.  Even Exhibit A, the founder of the blog Quirkyalone Sasha Cagen, says that as she gets into her late thirties she, too, is ready to settle down and would like to find a husband.

Most of the old singles are widows who lived out their marriages until death them did part.  The fact that they are living alone is not proof that marriage is an anachronism, but that we are a very rich society who can support the old in their own homes. In fact, those who stay married are more likely to have the resources to maintain independent living in their widow or widowerhood.

Going Solo is more of a life stage than a lifestyle.

The Silver Lining of the Trayvon Martin Case

Trayvon Martin was a black teenager who was killed by an aggressive neighborhood watch member in a gated community in Florida. 

The killer has not been arrested. So far, the local police seem to have barely investigated the shooting.

There has been national outrage that, as it seems now, a trigger-happy vigilante is getting away with murder because his victim was a black boy in a hoodie.

So what is the silver lining?

That there is national outrage over the killing a black boy in a hoodie in Florida. And, as a result of that national outrage, something like justice may be done.

The Capitol of Panem is Galt's Gulch

Mrs. G. and I are working through the Hunger Games trilogy, as are many around the world. The story of a slave rebellion in a dystopian future America is gripping.

The inspiration for Panem, the brutal dictatorship in which the Capitol forces the oppressed Districts to send children to die in gladiatorial combat, is obviously the Roman Empire. Suzanne Collins, the creator of this world, says her inspiration came from watching a juxtaposition of a reality show and the Iraq war on television.

I have had another strong feeling while listening to the story, though: The Hunger Games is a kind of sequel to Atlas Shrugged.

In Ayn Rand's novel of a dystopian future America, the competent few are besieged by the incompetent many.  The competent must run everything and invent everything to maintain the little worlds of the helpless masses.  These Atlases carry the world on their shoulders.  All they ask is to be unrestricted in making a profit and living as they please. I will not be spoiling the plot to reveal that these Atlases get tired of carrying the world, and shrug it off, to let it collapse into Dark Days.

Atlas Shrugged is the most preposterous story I ever finished, for reasons I have detailed here.

The place these Atlases all sneak off to is an impregnable valley in the Rockies known as Galt's Gulch.

The Capitol of Panem is an impregnable location in the Rockies.

I can see a direct line of continuity between the little city of the competent few who should rule over the incompetent many, and the brutal capital of a police state in which the technologically advanced control the many, whom they regard as incompetent.

I don't mean that Suzanne Collins intended Panem to be derived from Atlas Shrugged.  But I can see how the descendents of the intentionally selfish John Galt and Dagny Taggert could become the intentionally cruel President Snow.

The Main Points of the "Book of Mormon" are OK.

Mrs. G. and I went to see "The Book of Mormon." It is quite funny in the over-the-top way that you would expect from the "South Park" guys who wrote it.  The show is also respectful and even affectionate about Mormons as clean-cut, decent, nice people who want to help everyone.  They are not as respectful of some of esoteric elements of Mormonism, but mostly they just tell them straight and let the audience react.

The main points of the musical are:
a) prophets speak in metaphors; and
b) kind acts are not wrong.

I can't go all the way with them to the actual conclusion of their story, but I can accept these main points.

Oh, and there is a subsidiary point with which I heartily agree: Orlando is not all it's cracked up to be.

More Love in Domestic Violence Cases Than in Paternity Cases

A Family Court judge visited our "Family Life" class today.  He talked about the young couples he sees in paternity court, and the repeat customers in domestic violence court. 

The judge said, as he has said to us in past years, that the mothers in paternity court want the fathers of their children to be involved in their child's life, but hesitate to simply share custody - because, they admit, they don't really know the man they had a child with.

The judge also told us, as he has before, that it takes a beaten woman an average of seven strikes by her boyfriend before she leaves him for good.  She keeps going back to him because, usually, she does love him - she just wants him to stop hitting her.

This led me to a question I had not thought of before.  Is there more love in domestic violence relationships than in paternity relationships?

Yes, the judge answered without hesitation.

Paternity court cases come from high school romances, or the equivalent a few years later, that happened to produce a baby.  They never were a strong couple, and were often not very mature.

Domestic violence cases, by contrast, usually involve couples who are invested enough in each other and in their children to keep coming back even after dreadful blowups.

Please don't misunderstand - I am not saying that love makes domestic violence in any way acceptable.  But seeing that love is involved in many domestic violence cases does help me, whose life is far from first-hand experience of either domestic violence or paternity court, have a more realistic picture of the lives of those who end up before a judge in each case.

Professors Don't Like Evangelicals. Let's Be Careful About That.

This table comes from a study of American college faculty by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research. 

It is worrisome that professors have the most unfavorable view of a group that constitutes about a third of all Americans.

I urge my fellow faculty members to bend over backwards to be fair to evangelical Christians.  It is easy for both groups to feel like a beleaguered minority.  This situation leads to fear and reaction.

Moderates Expect a Broader Range of Views on Facebook Than the Extremes Do

Most Americans use social networking sites such as Facebook.  About 60% of all liberals and moderates do, and about half of all conservatives do. This is from a new study by Lee Rainie and Aaron Smith.

I was drawn to three particular findings of this study.

First, 38% were surprised to find that some of their friends had different political views than they thought they did. The moderates were the least surprised: only 33%.  By contrast, most of those on the extremes - very liberal (52%) and very conservative (54%) - were surprised to find out what their friends' views were.

I think this means that moderates are more attentive to what other people think, and less likely to assume that their friends agree with them.

Second, the extremes were more likely to say that they always agreed with the political posts of their friends - 20% of very liberal and 17% of very conservative, vs. only 5% of moderates.

This suggests to me that the extremes are more likely to live in an echo chamber of people who agree with one another.

Third, liberals were more likely to block someone because of their liberal views (28%) than either conservatives (16%) or moderates (14%) were. This part of the study did not distinguish between liberal and very liberal, on one end, and conservative and very conservative, on the other.

This suggests that liberals are more intolerant of differing views than other people are.

Arab Fertility Decline Means a Less-Scary Future for the Middle East

The Arab world is having a population explosion now.  This is an important push-force behind the "bloody borders" of Islam that Samuel Huntington cited in the "clash of civilizations" argument. This youthquake is also an important push-force behind the Arab Spring, of democratically oriented youth not willing to live under another generation of tyrants.

But the demographic tide is already turning.  As usual, economic growth, educational improvements for women, and, eventually, democracy, lead to a fertility decline down to replacement levels or below.  The young adult bulge in the Arab countries is scaling back their own fertility as they enter full adulthood.

Stable fertility in the Arab countries and Iran will match the stable fertility in Israel.  All of which promises a future in which the push-force of demography, at least, will ease up on the many strains in that region.

The Medium-Term Impact of Normalizing Mormonism

Mormons today are like mainline Protestants in the 1950s.  They are church-going, family-oriented, pro-business, mostly Republican, and don't see much difference between taking care of people through the church or through the state. Governor Mitt Romney exemplifies this way of dealing with the world.  Candidate Romney feels obliged to step away from his position, at least temporarily.

But that is not my main point today.

The thing that happened to the mainline Protestant churches was the Sixties. Many good things came from that cultural revolution, especially for the equality of the races and the sexes. But the Sixties were mostly a disaster for the mainline churches.  From that moment their cultural decline began, which has not slowed down to this day.

I think the Mormons are in for their own Sixties. 

If Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee for president, as I expect he will be, that will go a long way toward fully normalizing the LDS church as a regular American denomination. In that way, a Romney nomination would do for Mormons much what John Kennedy's election did for Catholics.

But I think the counterpart of Mormon normalization now would be a cultural revolution in the next generation.  Normalizing Mormonism will also normalize Mormon diversity.

Spanx is a Happy Success Story

Sara Blakely is a self-made billionaire selling very effective women's underwear, Spanx.  She is, at 41, the youngest woman who made her own fortune on the Forbes list of the world's richest people.

She invented her product and her business herself, while also being married and a mother. This fact would not be remarkable for a man, but is very unusual for a female CEO.

She cites as her influences, all from afar at first, Wayne Dyer, Richard Branson, and Oprah Winfrey. She learned from failure.  She overcame her fears.  She seems to be a decent person. 

And now she promotes other female entrepreneurs, just to give back.

Better is Better: A Response to Impossible Perfectionists

Bill McKenzie, a columnist for the Dallas Morning News and an old friend, asked a variety of religious leaders and professors in Texas to respond to my post on "The World is Getting Better." Some agreed with me, some disagreed.  A few, though, seemed not to accept the idea of "getting better."

My favorite response along these lines came from Cynthia Rigby, professor of theology at Austin Presbyterian Seminary.  She wrote:

Until every stomach is full, until every family is housed, until every child can go to school healthy, clothed, and with a pencil and notebook in hand, the world has not improved enough to throw around such generalities.

It is part of the Gruntled creed to believe that better is better.  Making things better is worth doing, even if we don't - or can't - make things perfect.

The Least-Happy City is Still Overwhelmingly Happy

Gallup has a nifty new well-being index of the 350 largest metropolitan areas in the country.

One of the items measured was happiness. 

The lowest-scoring city: Springfield, OH, at 82.3%
The highest-scoring city: Caspar, WY, at 94.2%

You know what is even more important than the happiness gap between these two cities?  How high the happiness percentage is in both of them.  Even in the least happy city, the overwhelming majority of people are happy.