We find ourselves in a liminal spot, one between long-taken-for-granted traditional relationships anchored in marriage and the future relationship system characterized more consistently by “confluent love.” There will not be two dominant systems.
Pillar: Sexuality & Family
Sexuality & Family
The second pillar of a decent society is the institution of the family, which is built upon the comprehensive sexual union of man and woman. No other institution can top the family’s ability to transmit what is pivotal—character formation, values, virtues, and enduring love—to each new generation.
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Capitulating to Bullies: Brown University and the Transgender Lobby vs. Science
Brown University researcher Lisa Littman has been attacked for publishing results that call into question the politically correct narrative about transgender youth.
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Changing Society’s View on “Hooking Up”
Unmoored from a committed and loving marital relationship, the unchecked sex drive harms both the individual and the society in which he or she lives.
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Common Grace, Natural Law, and the Social Order
Abraham Kuyper’s teachings help us to rightly value the created order. They also help us understand the ways in which the “common grace” of God preserves the social order through the state, the family, and the dignity of individual work.
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Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch: A Natural Law Originalist
We might call Neil Gorsuch a natural law originalist: a jurist who believes that the content, motivation, form, and impact of the Constitution that he’s called upon to uphold and of the laws he must fairly interpret are—for the most part—sound expressions of the account of human good and human dignity to which he subscribes.
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How (and Why) Government Should Invest in Marriage
New research suggests that educational programs can strengthen or even save marriages. Government can and should play an important role in supporting marriage through such programs.
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Camille Paglia’s Sexual “Realism”
In her new book, Camille Paglia continues to set herself apart from mainstream American feminism—and offers sage advice to conservatives inclined to jump on the #MeToo bandwagon.
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Love, Economics, and Cheap Sex
According to sociologist Mark Regnerus, the birth control pill and the rise of internet porn decreased the cost of sexual access so substantially as to affect a fundamental shift from a world in which sex served higher goods to a world in which sex is the higher good.
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C.S. Lewis in a Secular Core: Sex, Love, and That Hideous Strength
For C.S. Lewis, the body and the erotic procreative relationship between men and women are not mere nature, to be manipulated and embellished. They are not mere matter, to be shaped in any way that we please. They are, rather, an indicator of a larger order, something that offers us a clue to that larger order and that has to be understood in the light of it.
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What #MeToo and Hooking Up Teach Us About The Meaning of Sex
Reflecting on the experiences behind #MeToo teaches us that something is deeply broken at the heart of the sexual revolution.
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Thinking Deeply about Christian Love: Same-Sex Attraction, Sin, and Spiritual Friendship
The Spiritual Friendship project is not primarily about sexual desire. Rather, it is an attempt to think deeply about Christian love.
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Learning to Hate our Sin without Hating Ourselves
The current debate about gay Christianity traces back to a centuries-old dispute between Protestants and Catholics about the doctrine of man and the doctrine of sin. Roman Catholics do not regard involuntary desire for sin (concupiscence) to be sinful. Reformed Protestants do.
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The Myth of the “Desistance Myth”
Gender dysphoric children who are treated using a “watchful waiting” approach largely desist, no longer identify as transgender as adults, and accept their bodies as they are. Those who are subjected to medical intervention do not.
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In Defense of Spiritual Friendship and Revoice
The process of sanctification in this life is not necessarily about eradicating fallen desires. Rather, we form Christian character when, relying on God’s grace, we refuse to consent to temptations to sin, either in thought or in deed.
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Scientists Have Unwittingly Revealed that the Obergefell Decision Did Nothing to Diminish Sexual Minority Distress
A new study is being used to make the claim that allowing conscientious objection to same-sex marriage leads to increased rates of mental health problems in sexual minorities. But is that really what the data show?
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Fr. James Martin, Friendship and Dialogue, and the Truth about Human Sexuality
It is not merely that we “reject the sin, but love the sinner,” though we do that; we reject the sin because we love the sinner—radically love him, willing his good for his own sake, affirming the teaching of the Church in all its richness because we recognize that it is liberating and life-affirming.
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Masterpiece, Marriage, and Bigotry: The Court’s Ruling Is More Robust than Many Acknowledge
State officials and judges cannot comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Masterpiece simply by articulating facially neutral reasons for decisions that punish people for acting on the understanding that marriage is a man-woman union.
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What Mothers Cannot Give to Their Sons
For the sake of boys and the families they must eventually lead, we must open our hearts and quit attempting to thrust upon them an unnatural and uninspiring commitment to sexual indifference.
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The Degenderettes: The Transgender Hate Group Taking Aim at Women
The San Francisco Library has allowed a group of misogynist males to take over public space in order to promote violence against women as an art form. To some radical trans activists, “TERFs”— a slur for females who critique gender ideology—deserve to be murdered for denying that someone with a man’s body can really be a woman.
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The War Against Abstinence: Blockers, American Pie, and the Last Great Sexual Taboo
The last great sexual sin of our time is not related to any specific sex act or forbidden partner. The greatest sexual sin of our time is not a sin of commission but of omission: the sin of not doing it at all.
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Does Pornography Feed Sex Tourism?
Prostitution and pornography both teach that sex is merely a monetary transaction, focused on body parts and facilitated by consent.
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The Founders on Lifelong Marriage and the Limits of Reason: Reply to Muñoz
If there is one truth that the entire philosophic tradition—including America’s Founders—may be said to embrace, in spite of all its disagreements, it is this: reason teaches that it is unreasonable to expect people to act by reason alone.
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Learning to Live with Same-Sex Marriage?
The city of Philadelphia is targeting Catholic Social Services for its policy, based on religious beliefs about marriage, of not placing foster children with same-sex couples.
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An Open Letter to Mr. George Clooney on Hate and the Southern Poverty Law Center
Please use your influence as a major donor to persuade the Southern Policy Law Center to amend its embittering and unproductive campaigns to label any political or social issue opponent as a hate group. Although controversial, organizations that fight to protect the unborn and strengthen families are not motivated by hate. Vilifying them only worsens our toxic and polarized political climate.
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Muslims and Christians Should Work Together to Support Family and Human Flourishing
It’s time for Christians to partner with conservative Muslims and others who share traditional views on key social issues. And American Muslims should leave behind their lockstep alliance with the social justice left.