Monthly Archives: April 2009

Transition a-comin’

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There’s a big transition coming up for me with this blog. I have no intention of ceasing blogging, but I do realize that I need to more effectively husband my time. Though most of my posts, even the longest ones, are written in minutes rather than hours, in my new life as a father those minutes are more at a premium than ever. I’ll be on another hiatus this week — spring break — though I will be posting reprints of old posts (2004-2007) every day; starting April 27, I’ll be putting up one-two new posts a week. I have other writing projects to which I need to devote myself.

When W.H. Auden was asked by a Michigan graduate student “What can I do to become a better poet?”, he replied (this may be apocryphal) “Stop keeping a journal or writing long letters.” What Auden explained was that we do our best writing from pent-up thoughts and feelings; if we release that tension in diaries, for example, we might miss out on the chance to do some first-rate work. I am no Auden, and I am no poet. But if I want to write something that gets published somewhere other than on my blog, I need to be willing to give a bit more time to that project. This blog will continue, and fresh writing will appear here regularly — but it might just be once per week.

Vermont gets it right again: adolescent sexting, adult prurience, and the need for some common sense

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As has been widely reported, Vermont (the first state in the notion to approve same-sex marriage through the legislative process) is now considering decriminalizing “sexting”, the much-ballyhooed practice by which teens take and send explicit images of themselves using their cell phones. The absurd prospect of having teenage girls arrested on child pornography charges for sending topless photos of themselves to prospective beaux has encouraged the sturdy Vermonters to do the eminently sensible thing; as Salon writes, “sanity prevails.”

From the standpoint of a teacher and a youth worker, the furor about “sexting” seems tinged with both media hype and an unpleasantly salacious curiosity about adolescent sexuality. The chief concern I have is with the emotional well-being of the young people who do share naked pictures of themselves; embarrassment is powerful and regret is real, particularly when — as so often can happen — an image meant for one person is shared with many more. I’m also concerned with the dynamics under which sexting takes place: to what degree do the young women (and, more rarely, young men) who take and send these photos with their phones feel pressured to do so? Coercion, peer pressure, and individual agency are key issues in any discussion of teen sexuality. Safe and responsible adults need to be able to initiate conversations with teens about their private lives — and the misuse of child pornography statutes to prosecute adolescent “sexters” is an ironclad guarantor that those conversations will not take place!

The Vermont law, as proposed, wisely distinguishes between a 15 year-old sending a naked picture to another 15 year-old and a 15 year-old sending that same picture to a 35 year-old she’s met online. In the latter case, the law could still be used, as we would want it to be, to prosecute an adult who solicits nude pictures from a minor. The minor would not be charged. Make sure that adults understand that soliciting and knowingly receiving sexually explicit photographs from minors is a crime. Apply that law with a recognition that a relationship between an 18 year-old and a 17 year-old is not dangerously exploitative (despite the minor-adult disparity) in a way that a relationship between a 17 year-old and a 28 year-old almost certainly is. The law, in other words, needs to center the emotional, sexual, and physical safety of young people; it does not need to center the scandalized indignation of adults.

In January, in a post about the “right to a past”, I touched on this issue. I’ve also touched recently on the issue of adolescent resilience, in a post written contra the “one mistake will ruin your life” narrative. To the extent that “sexting” is a reality rather than media-hyped phenomenon, it’s important for us to recognize the potentially coercive aspects of this adolescent innovation. But it’s also important that we avoid the lurid, exploitative hysteria that so often accompanies discussions of teen sexuality. As long as young people know that adult concern for them is rooted less in an obsession with their chastity and more in an interest in helping them develop healthy, mutually satisfying relationships, teens will be open with us about their lives. If we emphasize that foolish or impulsive decisions don’t necessarily need to lead to enduring shame or familial rejection, if we emphasize that our mistakes are character-building rather than soul-scarring, we empower young people to make better choices and recover quickly from the humiliation that is, in the end, the chief danger inherent in the “sexting” phenomenon.

As Vermont, so the nation. May it be so quickly.

Sins of Malice, Sins of Passion: of Jerry Falwell and Marilyn Chambers

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Conservative Catholic blogger Francis Beckwith is annoyed with what he sees as a media double standard in the coverage of the passings of porn star Marilyn Chambers (who died this past week) and conservative Christian activist and preacher Jerry Falwell, who died in 2007. Beckwith:

…the Rev. Falwell founded a university, started a social movement of great influence, pastored a church of several thousand for several decades, led many, many people to Christ, and as far as we know was a loving and devoted husband and father. (He was a person that even Larry Flynt called “friend”!) On the other hand, Ms. Chambers, who died young (as is the case with virtually everyone in her “profession”), is portrayed as a cultural trailblazer who enlightened our culture to the “blessings” of anonymous, promiscuous, widely diverse, and videotaped, copulation. For this reason, you will hear no lamenting of the innumerable lives on which her example made chic the infliction of countless miseries. You will not hear of the unborn children killed, the addictions borne and nurtured, the marriages decimated, the offspring abandoned, the spouses betrayed, or even the diseases contracted—spiritual, mental and physical—that her “trailblazing” facilitated.

We live in an age in which we know precisely what recycle bin our newsprint and soda bottles belong. But we have no idea what a human being is, what it’s supposed to do, or who or what it is permissible to sleep with. So, this is the lesson of our time: the “good” man is the one who treats his garbage with greater care than his own soul. This is why, for our cultural gatekeepers, Ms. Chambers is an icon and the Rev. Falwell did not die soon enough.

It wouldn’t have occurred to me to compare Falwell and Chambers, but I’m struck by Beckwith’s little post. Though it’s an obvious strawman to suggest that the left was uniform in its glee when Falwell passed (I was rather charitable, myself, or so I thought), it’s certainly true that many progressives were not overtaxed with grief when the founder of the Moral Majority gave up the ghost. It is also true that without bestowing upon Marilyn Chambers any particular degree of veneration, those of us fascinated by recent cultural history note her central role in elevating adult movie actresses to the status of pop icons. And we can disagree, as we do, about the degree to which pornography is responsible for the litany of ills which Beckwith, channeling Chesterton, provides.

Both Falwell and Chambers came to prominence in the second half of the 1970s; they became household names in the Carter Administration. Falwell was the ardent culture warrior, while Chambers was a symbol — at least for folks like the stout Baptist preacher — of the moral decay against which a coalition of indignant Christians ought to stand. But in one sense, a genuinely Catholic one, it may well be right to speak more gently of Chambers than of Falwell. Continue reading →

Thursday Short Poem: Auden’s “No, Plato, No”

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Whenever I find myself too enchanted by visions of abstemious self-denial, I find Auden — who delighted in the body, even in his frailty and his ageing — a wonderful corrective. Good stuff here.

No, Plato, No

I can’t imagine anything
that I would less like to be
than a disincarnate Spirit,
unable to chew or sip
or make contact with surfaces
or breathe the scents of summer
or comprehend speech and music
or gaze at what lies beyond.
No, God has placed me exactly
where I’d have chosen to be:
the sub-lunar world is such fun,
where Man is male or female
and gives Proper Names to all things.

I can, however, conceive
that the organs Nature gave Me,
my ductless glands, for instance,
slaving twenty-four hours a day
with no show of resentment
to gratify Me, their Master,
and keep Me in decent shape
(not that I give them their orders,
I wouldn’t know what to yell),
dream of another existence
than that they have known so far:
yes, it well could be that my Flesh
is praying for ‘Him’ to die,
so setting Her free to become
irresponsible Matter.

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“Kindly Remembrance”: of faith, ancestors, and debts to the past; a long post in response to Daisy B.

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After a week away, I’m back — just in time for midterms here at Pasadena City College. Our official spring break is next week, which I believe gives us the last in all of America. Some colleges are only days from finals, and we’re only halfway through.

Much about which to be blogged, but let me start with a couple of pieces from Daisy, who now blogs at Dear Diaspora. Daisy blogs as a young Jewish lesbian feminist, and many of her best posts at her old blog (and her comments around the ‘sphere) have been in defense of communitarian values. (See our exchange, as it were, around this post.)

As we eased into Passover, Daisy put up a pair of posts about what questions we who call ourselves people of faith ought to be asking. I’m in particular struck by her second post, in which she asks three questions:

What are the effects of practicing my traditions?
What are my obligations to my ancestors?
What are my obligations to my descendants?

Daisy sounds a bit like Edmund Burke here, suggesting that society is composed of three groups: the living, the dead, and those who are to be born. These are the sorts of questions traditionally asked not only by the religiously inclined, but also by those whose temperament is fundamentally conservative. Yet they’re worth reflecting on, particularly perhaps from a feminist standpoint. (Daisy asks another question about what Christians see as their “central question”, and I’ll try and get to that in another post.)

To summarize, the relationship between Western feminism and this Burkean sense of obligation to ancestors and unborn descendants is a complicated one. At the risk of over-generalizing, the feminist tradition in this country, at least, tends to be suspicious of appeals to grand obligations. It is women, more often than not, who have had to do the grunt work of living up to those obligations. It is women who tend to be the primary providers of care to the “living ancestors” (one’s grandparents or older in-laws.) It is women who carry in their bodies the “yet to be born”; historically, the labor of delivery is not the first nor the last “labor” of which women will assume a disproportionate share. So it’s no accident that the feminist message has so often been “You are more than the expectations of your parents and ancestors” and “You are more than a husband and a wife.” To be flip, sometimes feminist advice dovetails almost perfectly with the title of Sandra Tsing Loh’s famous commencement address at CalTech: “Dare to Disappoint your Parents.”

But many feminists, particularly those outside the white middle-class American tradition, have suggested that this almost contemptuous attitude towards tradition risks throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. With the understanding that yes, almost every cultural tradition has a less than flawless record on women’s rights, some feminists have long called for ways to reconcile the “ways of the ancestors” and the sense of obligation to community with a deep-seated belief in women’s radical equality with men. Feminism needs to be about more than individual choice and empowerment; it needs to find a way to center women’s voices and needs in ancient stories which still have value. And perhaps a way can be found to honor ancestors, to honor parents, and to still proclaim an uncompromising and uncompromised egalitarian vision. Continue reading →

Away until the 15th

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I’ll be traveling for the next week for the various holidays, returning to regular blogging on Wednesday, April 15.

A very happy Pesach and a joyous Easter to all!

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“My wife is my best friend”/”My wife is my only friend”: the Guy Code, and the inability to get naked without getting naked

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I’ve been thinking lately about some friends of mine, getting a divorce after more than a decade of marriage. Children are involved, but the two spouses are as amicable as one could hope to expect. What is clear, however, is that the husband and the wife each have very different support networks — or more accurately, that the wife has a fairly strong support network of family and friends, and the husband has virtually no one. And looking at the two of them is a reminder of one of the particularly unfortunate ways in which we structure white American middle-class masculinity; too often, not only is a wife a man’s best friend, she is his only friend.

We live, after all, in a culture which shames displays of male vulnerability. Though some sociologists detect signs of a shift among younger men, millions of boys in this country still grow up with the “guy code” and its rules about toughness, competitiveness, and a steadfast refusal to cry. Even those young men who do everything they can to avoid playing by the “guy rules” — the sensitive, bookish lads, let’s say — find it difficult to find other men with whom they can be open, vulnerable, and safe.

A great many young women have had this experience: they’ve been dating a fellow for a while, things have started to get serious. A fight happens, or perhaps the dude has a setback of some sort or another. One night, he breaks down in front of her, surprising them both with his sudden vulnerability. He may say something like “This is the first time I’ve cried in years” or “I’ve never cried like this in front of someone before, not since I was a kid.” Now, it’s possible that he’s just being manipulative, seeing how far this kind of emotional flattery will take him. But dollars to doughnuts, there’s a good chance that he’s being honest — it’s only in romantically and sexually intimate relationships that many men find the chance to be vulnerable.

One rather flippant but generally sound piece of advice I gave (and still do give) in youth group about sex: “Don’t get naked until you’re ready to get naked”, meaning that in relationships, it’s often wise to have some degree of congruence between emotional and sexual intimacy. Generally speaking, emotional intimacy is a good precondition for sex; the danger lies in the attempt to reverse cause and effect, and using sex as a way of generating enduring intimacy. But of course, for many men, sexual intimacy is a kind of trailhead into some deeper and more concealed parts of themselves. This doesn’t mean that heterosexual men can only trust those women with whom they are sleeping, but it does mean that sex gives a kind of permission for a man to be vulnerable. (If I had a dollar for every woman who has ever asked me if it was “normal” for men to cry after sex, I’d have enough to take my family out for a nice vegan dinner. Many women are floored by these sudden post-coital displays of strong emotion; though not universal, it’s more common than many think.) Continue reading →

Of Abraham and Isaac, Peter and his lambs, the Amish and Heloise: how becoming a father has made me rethink my pacifism

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Added to the list of things that have shifted since becoming a father: I’m ready to say I’ve left my doctrinaire pacifism behind.

In October 2006, some thirty months ago, I wrote this post in the aftermath of the awful Amish school shooting. Here are two paragraphs from a childless man, excerpted from that post:

The third lie about pacifism is that it is hopelessly idealistic and has no efficacy. Once we convince our opponents that we aren’t cowards (after all, Christian pacifists are dying in places like Colombia and Iraq all the time), we usually get dismissed as “fanatics.” I mentioned in my post on Monday that I hoped that if it came to it, I would be willing to take a bullet for “my kids.” But I would not be willing to fire a bullet, even to protect the lives of my students or youth groupers. That always strikes folks as irresponsible and prideful; I seem to be putting my theological convictions ahead of my obligation to protect the lambs.

But as a Christian, I know that there is more to our story than our life on this earth. I love life, I love this planet, I love God’s incredible creation. But my story — our story — doesn’t end here. This is not my final home. I am a “resident alien” in a beautiful, violent, scary, wonderful place. I know that while death is overwhelming and terrifying, it is not the end. Not only do I have an even truer home elsewhere, so too do those lambs I am called to feed. They are Christ’s lambs, not mine. Their lives are precious, but so too are their eternal souls. Crazed gunmen can kill the bodies of the young and the innocent; crazed gunmen can break the hearts of a community. But crazed gunmen don’t get to write the final chapter of the story. After the tears, there will be rejoicing, no matter what, no matter what, no matter what.

I still stand by everything — save, of course, for the line that has been struck through. I don’t know if I would kill to protect my own life; I might not even kill to protect my wife or other family members. But I would kill without hesitation to protect the life of my daughter. Clichéd as it sounds, everything shifted the moment she was born. My first thought: “I have finally done something I can’t back out of.” My next few thoughts were of awe and love for her and for my wife. And then, later, gently but firmly, the realization that yes, I would kill to protect the life of this child.

Nearly forty years ago, the Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder pointed out in What Would You Do? that there is almost always a third option between passive acquiescence and violence. In almost no other area of theological debate does the false dichotomy come up more often; the truth is, as Yoder points out in wonderful and reasonable and convincing detail, is that the choice between “killing or being killed” is far rarer than we imagine. Peace-making (from pax facere, the root of pacifism) is about the aggressive search for third options of the sort that maximize survival, maximize justice, and minimize bloodshed. I still think he’s right, but I know — as he knew — that there are still times and circumstances when there is no other third choice. And my preferred answer, for many years, is that I would trust God and place my faith in Him over my atavistic desire to kill in order to preserve my life or the life of another. Continue reading →

Comment bug

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Comments have been wonky. For some reason, for the second time in the past year, a gremlin caused all of my posts to close comments and to hold regular commenters in moderation. I’ve opened up the last couple of posts, and hope I have the problem fixed. Sorry!

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Rights and Sacrifice: more in response to Maggie Gallagher

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I want to return to the same Maggie Gallagher piece I wrote about yesterday. Gallagher, in making the case for what she calls a “marriage culture” (which she defines, oddly, as a culture which seeks to limit rather than expand the marriage franchise) suggests that what she calls “sacrifice” is at the very heart of what marriage is. And as it turns out, I think she’s right — at least, if we understand the real meaning of the word.

Gallagher writes:

These decisions are being made every day: Sacrifice or immediate gratification? The audacity of hope or the audacity of fidelity? Grownups have to choose. A marriage culture consists of offering a provisional answer to grownups about how they should choose. Marriage as an individual right offers no cultural basis for helping people answer the questions that matter most.

She’s a bit muddled there, but her last line makes good sense to me, though I stand on the opposite side. Rights don’t exist in order to provide a cultural basis for helping people grow; rights exist so that people may live their lives with the maximum degree of freedom possible without impinging too grossly on the rights of others. Marriage can be a vehicle for personal growth and transformation for some, but it is not the only such catalyst for individual change and happiness. When marriage is defined as a right rather than an expectation, and when that right is granted regardless of the reproductive potential of the persons involved, then we are all liberated. And while Gallagher thinks that all we’re liberated from by altering the definition of marriage is the duty to do hard things, I think we’re liberated from a very particular kind of idolatry.

Marriage advocates like Gallagher fantastically overestimate the power of this one particular institution to glue society together. Like a moonstruck teenager who thinks that life will be perfect when she finds true love, Gallagher thinks that the sooner we’re all in sacrificial heterosexual marriages, the more robust and joyful our common life will be. And the danger is that her very own enthusiasm for the institution undermines the long-term viability of traditional marriage. Raise young people with a reverence for marriage, combine that reverence with a denunciation of divorce as invariably selfish, and wham — you get falling marriage rates. You make an icon out of marriage, and you leave a generation of young people concluding that it either isn’t worth all of that “sacrifice”, or that they had better wait until they’re damn good and ready before dipping a toe into the nuptial pond.

Gallagher makes marriage sound like the Marines: “we’re looking for a few good straight couples”. Some young folks love the idea of joining the Marines — but most aren’t interested. We’re already seeing the signs that Gallagher’s efforts are paying off: the divorce rate, according to most sociologists, has begun to decline slightly. But it is only declining because fewer people are getting married in the first place. And contrary to what Gallagher might think, the increased accessibility of divorce and the drive for gay marriage is not the reason why so many young folks are delaying marriage (or giving up on the idea altogether.) It’s that the vision of marriage as a unique vehicle for human happiness seems more like a quaint romantic fantasy — and that the hard labor of commitment doesn’t seem very appealing. This doesn’t mean young people are lazy or afraid; it simply means that modern marriage doesn’t stand up particularly well to a cost-benefit analysis. (This is why, of course, so many social conservatives are desperate to preach abstinence — the more they can create the sense that orgasms are only licit after marriage, the greater the appeal of getting hitched.) Continue reading →