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