Time Immortal

All those atheists who assert that raising a child as a Christian is tantamount to child abuse should be salivating over this court case:

A ruling from the Virginia Supreme Court, if it goes the wrong way, could yank a 6-year-old girl from the Christian home her mother has created and set her up to be “paraded as a political trophy of the homosexual community in Vermont,” according to a lawyer who argued the case before the court today.

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Among the precedents developing in the case is whether one state can force another to recognize its “same-sex” arrangements or whether states’ sovereignty will prevail. Also at issue is the acceptance as valid Christian values parents use to raise children.

“That’s true. Janet Jenkins, in court documents in Vermont, argued because [Lisa Miller] prays for her daughter and her well-being, and even prays for Janet, that in fact that is not in the best interests of Isabella. She [Jenkins] says because Lisa prays for her daughter, and tells her she’s praying to do God’s will, Janet has taken the position that … Christianity is harmful to children,” Staver told WND.

I guess we’ll get to see where American courts really stand on the issue of freedom of religion, won’t we?

And pace what I asked Joel earlier, here we have yet another example of a non-Christian (the article doesn’t say, but I for one am relatively certain that Janet Jenkins is secular) attempting to deny a Christian a fundamental human right — the right to worship. Whither the Constitution?

Update: Welcome, Steynians! Binks is absolutely right; people who share Richard Dawkins‘ thinking are probably salivating over this case.

The problem with choices made is that once they are made, we have to live with them. It is a strange facet of our post-Christian society that women would concoct elaborate fictions in order to seem as though they belong to “the secret club of women with children” — and in order, perhaps, to satisfy the urge toward motherhood that is an integral, if ignored, part of their being — and yet remain entrenched in their “choice” to never have children of their own, for real.

For the truth is that motherhood is no more a secret club than is womanhood. And yet for many, it is a far distant country, or seems to be, because they have swallowed whole the lies that society has fed to them.

Interesting reflection on how a society that has more children is also, in general, a society that has and values more innocence.

Wouldn’t it be fair to say that children keep us all a little more innocent, a little more pure, and a little less corrupt? By rendering the child an endangered species of sorts, we have done our world the disservice of catering to more adult desires. We are therefore inadvertently exposing the few children left to these adult messages and tainting that which used to help keep us from all our perversion.

Be it far from me to place the responsibility of upholding society’s standards of morality on a child. They certainly don’t need that sort of pressure. But, by their very existence, they do make us watch our mouth, be good examples of courtesy and kindness, and love immeasurably. In short, they make us better.

It’s easy to forget what gems these little ones are. We more often hear about their carbon footprint, and how very expensive they are. They are, after all, the “unwanted” in “unwanted pregnancy.” Well, that is child un-friendly, to say the least. The media really has outdone itself.

What a deep pit we have sunk ourselves into, no? What is truly damning and alarming about all this is how the wages of sin so often exhibit the symptoms of positive feedback: fewer children leads us to become a more “adult oriented” society, resulting in more “adult” pressures being prematurely applied to what few children are left, which in turn accelerates the “adultification” of society (resulting in still fewer children) and thus leads to even more adult pressures being applied to the even smaller number of children found in the following generation. Repeat until extinct.

Count Roland writes in with a follow-up thought to this article.

How about women who ‘adopt’ lifelike dolls (we would not want women to BUY child surrogates) and ‘love’ and ‘care’ for them like one does for an actual child - change, cuddle, but not wake up throughout the night to feed etc., and, as a doll, stays an infant forever?

Indeed — all the pleasures, but none of the attendant hardships. That’s a pity for several reasons, both because it weds people to the delusion of permanence that infuses this age, and because true happiness doesn’t just come from the good experiences, but from the bad as well (and the learning that accompanies said same).

What a predictable thought process for our age, O Reader, that we should pander to the very natural desire of women to love, care, and nurture children, and yet do so in a way that utterly removes from the picture those circumstances where nurturing care is at its most poignant. Although I suppose, in an age where women are encouraged to sidestep — by use of ingested hormones — the natural processes at work within their own bodies, and in which fulfillment in a woman’s life has been defined by society to include all manner of employment and material success, and in a society that regards semi-permanent adolescence as something to aspire to, that we should not be surprised that women are encouraged to soothe certain biological needs with dolls that provide only a simulacrum of the real process of raising a child.

How long, I wonder, before Aldous Huxley’s vision of periodic hormone treatments — to mimic the chemical changes that accompany a completed pregnancy and in so doing “fool” a body into thinking it has sated its desire to nurture new life — will become standard fare for women?

Update: Welcome, WebElf readers!

Learning these sorts of things first-hand about the differences between men and women is one of them:

I was not ever going to allow my children to play with toy guns or encourage aggressive play, and if I had a son; by golly, he could play with all the dolls or Barbies his little heart desired and then some. I never bought toy guns but I was taught by my first son that everything is a weapon. And I do mean everything. To this day, I never understood where he got the idea of stripping the Barbies down to the buff, bending them overm and sticking them feet first in the front of his pampers to use as his six-shooters. Who would have thought it would be the daughter who ended up as the designated marksman?

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I was also forced to acknowledge by the time I had two sons that the male mind really does approach problems differently than the female mind. Before I had the second son I put down the differences between the male and female minds as all due to the socialization process. Two sons tipped the balance. It�s like this - the bookcases looked cool to climb to the Last Amazon. She tries once when my attention is on other matters, falls and deduces it was a bad idea. The sons� perceive the bookcases as a mountain to be conquered at all costs and they are prepared to pay any price to crown themselves King of the Bookcases. See the bookcases, take the bookcases or die in the attempt. It did not matter how many times they were thwarted or injured, they refused to give up. Each time they went into the assault with the premise that this time - it will end in triumph.

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One of the biggest challenges I have had to face has been the issue of fighting. This is where I just might have to concede defeat. I never forgot one of many melees when Montana was about 3 years old. I was explaining patiently that fighting is bad, wrong, bad, and he turned to me and said, �But, Momma, I like to fight, fighting is fun.� Ah, I thought, now I have got him, and patiently explained that when you fight you can get hurt, and you don�t like to get hurt do you? He lifted his soft brown eyes into mine and very earnestly said, �No, I don�t like getting hurt but I sure do feel a lot better when I hit�em back! In the end, I was forced to rely on that old parental standby, superior fire power triumphs all. You fight, I fight you. That worked fine until he went off to school and was no longer under my eye.

We have lived in this 19th century townhouse in the downtown eastside of Toronto for the past 10 years. There are many advantages to living here but the one downside has been that the local school he attends is also a feeder school to three of the toughest housing projects in the city. I was forced to reach back into my childhood and make him learn the kid�s rules of fighting. Don�t fight girls, any one younger or smaller, anyone with glasses, physical impairments, etc. And don�t ever throw the first punch. That worked more or less okay. He never started a fight though he never did learn the art of standing down or walking away. It also made him a big hit with the girls and younger kids. Anyone pick on a girl or a younger child and Montana was in their face, ready to go.

If I can have a son like that, I’ll count my future life as a parent a rousing success.