Marriage & Family: May 2006 Archives

If any of our readers happen to be family lawyers in the state of Arizona, would you take a moment to look into a family that needs help?

Nancy Sandrock is a practicing midwife and mother of twelve in Maricopa County. Seven of her children live at home, but they were removed by the Arizona CPS recently in connection with a complaint against her 18-year-old son.

Our blog neighbor Alicia the midwife (May archive) has visited the family in the past and knows the mother well, so she's been posting about the case.

What they need most now is legal help to stop apparently abusive state social workers from bulldozing their family.

Is gay sex necessary?

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The L.A. Times tells us that "Sex is essential, kids aren't," in an editorial by David P. Barash, professor of psychology at the University of Washington. It seems that the psychiatric profession, or at least this guy, embraces the idea of free will wholeheatedly:

And evolutionary biologists (including me) are asked, "How can this be?" If reproduction is perhaps the fundamental imperative of natural selection, of our genetic heritage, isn't it curious — indeed, counterintuitive — that people choose, and in such large numbers, to refrain from participating in life's most pressing event?

The answer is that intentional childlessness is indeed curious — but in no way surprising. It is also illuminating, because it sheds light on what is perhaps the most notable hallmark of the human species: the ability to say no — not just to a bad idea, an illegal order or a wayward pet but to our own genes.

When it comes to human behavior, there are actually very few genetic dictates. Our hearts insist on beating, our lungs breathing, our kidneys filtering and so forth, but these internal-organ functions are hardly "behavior" in a meaningful sense. As for more complex activities, evolution whispers within us. It does not shout orders.

People are inclined to eat when hungry, sleep when tired and have sex when aroused. But in most cases, we remain capable of declining, endowed as we are with that old bugaboo, free will....

Ignore (if you can) the smug, facile cheerleading for the culture of death, and the blithe disregard for what German depopulation will mean for the world's future. (Hint: no beer, no pork sausages.) Isn't this the perfect argument against those who argue that homosexual behavior is pre-programmed into certain people? Even if it is, David P. Barash, professor of psychology at the University of Washington, says that homosexuals don't have to obey it.

Taking this a bit further, we often hear that teenagers "are going to have sex anyway" so we might as well equip them with condoms and pills to protect against the consequences. But if David P. Barash is right -- and I think he may be -- young, unmarried people don't have to get it on! It's just an urge, and they can say "no" to it!

Wait...you say the professor might not agree? But those are the clear implications, aren't they?

What? Who?

On life and living in communion with the Catholic Church.

Richard Chonak

John Schultz


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This page is an archive of entries in the Marriage & Family category from May 2006.

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