Culture
Clips - March
28, 2006
Making Babies in Berlin
You can't walk through Prenzlauerberg
and Mitte, two regentrified neighborhoods in what was formerly
East Berlin, without bumping into a baby carriage. When I walk
with my 2-year-old twin granddaughters, bundled up against a German
winter that is still hard on the land, many women stop to chat.
Nearly all are in their late 30s.
A new survey finds that Germany has the lowest birthrate in the
European Union, but you wouldn't know it here. However, these
women are running against the trend. Last year, Germany suffered
the steepest declines of births in 15 years, a drop of 4 percent
or 30,000 births, from 2004. The Berlin daily Die Welt ran the
news under the headline: "Baby Shock: "'We Germans are
Dying Out.'"
Germany is not alone as a prosperous
country with births falling far below replacement levels, but
it has its own reasons. High unemployment creates insecurity,
and many professionals don't want the responsibility of balancing
work and family. Germans tend to stay in college longer than students
in other countries, and young people get used to a carefree life
paid for by Germans with jobs. Germans call a university the nation's
most effective form of contraception.
Before the decade of the '90s, almost
60 percent of German women between the ages of 25 and 29 had had
a baby. That figure is closer to 30 percent today. The birth dearth
has relentless implications; 100,000 more Germans die than are
born every year. Pessimists estimate that the current population
of 82 million could fall to 50 million by 2050, giving new meaning
to the phrase "Old Europe."
Suzanne Fields
Townhall
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/suzannefields
/2006/03/27/191335.html
--
Religious Freedom at Stake in
Gay-Adoption Fracas
The controversy over gay adoptions
in Massachusetts is an issue that can be framed two ways. In the
conventional liberal narrative, this is a simple issue of bias:
The Catholic Church must not be allowed to deny gay couples the
right to adopt children. The other frame, generally absent from
discussions so far, raises this question: Under what conditions
can the state force churches and religious agencies to violate
their own principles?
This question has come up again and
again, as pressure on churches to accept dominant, secular norms
has increased. This pressure includes laws requiring Catholic
institutions to provide contraceptive services and "morning
after" pills to female employees, attempts to force religious
hospitals to do abortions and provide abortion training, and the
use of anti-racketeering laws to punish right-to-life demonstrators.
Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese
of Boston, after 103 years of working for adoptions, will retire
from those services this June rather than accept the state's mandate.
Gov. Mitt Romney, a Mormon, has proposed a religious exemption
for the church, pointing out that many other agencies approve
adoptions by gay couples. The Boston Globe, as ardently anti-Catholic
as ever, sternly reminded him that he is a "governor, not
a bishop," which he probably already knew…
Maybe the Catholic Church's position
on adoptions will change. Maybe it won't. But why not consider
a conscience exemption? No one is required to use a Catholic agency.
Gay couples are not being denied a chance to adopt, merely a chance
to adopt through a particular church.
Much of the reporting on the issue
has featured stories of children who might be denied a home if
gay applicants are rejected. But that is focusing on a pebble
and not noticing the boulder nearby.
John Leo
Townhall
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/johnleo
/2006/03/26/191330.html
--
V for Vapid and Vile
The new movie "V for Vendetta"
qualifies as only mediocre entertainment, but offers a brilliant
illustration of today's warped leftist mindset. .
The film unequivocally glorifies a terrorist bomber and portrays
his ultimate triumph with the cataclysmic destruction of the Houses
of Parliament in London.
The Wachowski brothers, who previously made the "Matrix"
films, feel such hatred for the film's fictional government —
described as both conservative and Christian, persecuting Muslims
and gays — that they treat V's anti-government mayhem as heroic.
"Blowing up a building can change the world," V proudly
declares, while his police adversary discovers that previous terrorist
outrages were actually staged by the government in order to seize
more power.
Regarding this irresponsible, poisonously pro-terrorist fantasy,
USA TODAY fatuously declares that "Vendetta examines the
balance between national security and personal freedom" —
as if its comic book romanticization of leftist lunacy constituted
serious intellectual inquiry.
Michael Medved
Jewish World Review
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/medved1.asp
--
Sacrificing Saad on the Altar
of Political Cowardice
Even the best of men can take just
so much. No nominee should expect that "his side" is
going to hang him up as a political piñata and stand by while
partisan hacks flail away at him. But that's what happened to
Judge Henry Saad.
Yesterday, the White House announced that the President had received
a letter March 22 from Saad announcing the withdrawal of his nomination
to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. After patiently
waiting nearly four and a half years since his nomination November
8, 2001, Saad was left twisting in the purgatorial wind of the
Senate Judiciary Committee.
Every American who wants good judges on the federal bench should
be distressed and angered at Republicans and Democrats who failed
to stand up to the worst kind of political grudges and hatchetry.
They have failed Judge Saad and us.
Why did they let this good judge get away?
Republican leadership in the Senate
and White House barely whimpered a defense of Saad. It was becoming
clearer with each passing, do-nothing day that "his side"
wasn't going to stand up.
Jan LaRue
Human Events
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=13498
