Ice Cream Everyday

The library has been pretty busy this morning. I didn't know so many people would need to use it on a Saturday morning. It's usually pretty quiet at times like this.

It's been a while since I last volunteered at Longwood Gardens. I've tried both e-mailing and calling them, but I haven't received a reply. I guess I'll have to try calling when I know someone will be there.

( Ice cream quiz result )

EDIT: Oh, also, happy birthday to onib!

Sexual Revolution 9

There was a link to this article on slfcllednowhere's journal, and I thought I had enough to say about it to merit my own post.

Basically, as I said in a comment on Quinn's journal, the whole thing basically strikes me as a way for closed-minded, bigoted control freaks to make sure their children are never exposed to anyone but other closed-minded, bigoted control freaks. Admittedly, I'm not a huge fan of the whole dating scene myself. I didn't have a girlfriend until I was 22, and that relationship ended up lasting four and a half years, and counting. I'm glad it did, and I don't regret not having dated in high school or college. But it wasn't my parents who made the choice. Shouldn't the choice be left up to the individual? Sure, a lot of kids are stupid, and make bad choices. But, when you get right down to it, a lot of parents are the same way. And parents like the ones mentioned in the article are likely to make their kids marry people who are very similar to them, so the kid never gets exposed to anything new.

I don't know. You hear people (mostly conservatives) talking about "the sexual revolution," and how society is becoming more depraved. I was actually discussing this subject with bethje recently, though, and she brought up the point that it's become more difficult to get away with sexual abuse and the like nowadays. A lot of people still DO get away with it, but it doesn't seem to be as easy as it was back in the Golden Age to which the fundamentalists look back fondly. I get the feeling that, when people talk about "sexual revolution" and "erosion of society," what they often really mean is "adult white males not being able to get away with whatever they want to do, just because they're adult white males."

That said, sure, there's a lot of garbage being spewed out by the pop culture media, and I'm sure I hate some of the same things that our friend Tom McMinn does. There's a lot of blatant sexism on TV, but this seems to take the form of "women are sex objects" or "women are liberated and can hold down jobs, but they're incredibly slutty, and obsessed with attracting men," rather than the "women are property" approach that Mr. McMinn prefers. The thing is, I don't think the problem is a lack of traditional family values, but rather that sex and sleaze sell, and you'll never go broke appealing to the lowest common denominator. And isn't mammonism pretty much the cornerstone of conservatism?

Getting back to the article, here are a few excerpts that I found worthy of comment:

"When his children were in their mid-teens, Tom McMinn put his foot down on certain coed activities like pizza parties and youth group events that, he thought, could've led to compromising situations."

Compromising situations at a pizza party? Like what? Having a boy eat her crust? :P

"Courtship proponents like to point to these centuries of tradition -- especially when they show up in Scripture"

Incest and polygamy also show up in Scripture, and not always in a negative light. (Abraham married his half-sister. Jacob married two of his cousins. Both had children with their wives' servants.) Do these people approve of THOSE, also?

"It was Christians going back to the blackboard and saying, 'We can't just take whatever the culture's giving us as an assumption.' "

But you CAN take what the churches give you, and your own interpretation of the Bible, as assumptions?

(I love going off on rants about articles like that one. These entries practically write themselves. {g})