...All propaganda invites snark and parody, and the story of Julia is ripe for it. She’s an everywoman only by the standards of the liberal upper middle class: She works as a Web designer, has her first child in her early 30s (the average first-time American mother is in her mid-20s), and spends her golden years as a “volunteer at a community garden.” (It will not surprise you to learn that the cartoon Julia looks Caucasian.)

What’s more, she seems to have no meaningful relationships apart from her bond with the Obama White House: no friends or siblings or extended family, no husband (“Julia decides to have a child,” is all the slide show says), a son who disappears once school starts and parents who only matter because Obamacare grants her the privilege of staying on their health care plan until she’s 26. This lends the whole production a curiously patriarchal quality, with Obama as a beneficent Daddy Warbucks and Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan co-starring as the wicked uncles threatening to steal Julia’s inheritance.

Labels: Barack Obama, culture, out-of-wedlock births, Ross Douthat, single parenting

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Caught cocooning in public: Here’s what the NYT‘s story on its latest poll told readers:

In recent weeks, there has been much debate over the government’s role in guaranteeing insurance coverage for contraception, including for those who work for religious organizations. The poll found that women were split as to whether health insurance plans should cover the costs of birth control and whether employers with religious objections should be able to opt out. [E.A.]

If the Times says women were “split,” you know that must mean they were actually narrowly against the NYT‘s preferred position. Sure enough, when asked, “Should health insurance plans for all employees have to cover the full cost of birth control for female employees or should employers be able to opt out for moral or religious reasons?” women favored opting out by a 46-44 margin. The margin increased to a decisive 53-38 for “religiously affiliated employers, such as a hospital or university.”

That’s among women. Unbeknownst to those who read only the Times‘ main story, the poll asked the same question to men. They were not split. Men favored opting out by a 20 point margin (57 vs. 37), except when a “religiously affiliated employer” was involved, in which case the margin increased to 25 points. Combining men and women, a substantial majority (51-40) favors allowing an opt-out–increasing to 57-36 where religiously-affiliated institutions are involved.

Labels: Barack Obama, contraception, culture, religious liberty, women

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Recently I received a phone call from my non-Christian (as far as I know) philosopher friend Neil Manson who, because he has an active and fair mind, had been exercised over what seemed to him the high FQ (Fishiness Quotient) of the statistical meme presently going around to the effect that "98% of Catholic women use birth control." Or something. Maybe "98% of Catholic women have used birth control." The former is obviously ludicrous, as it would seem to include elderly Catholic women, of whom it seems plausible that there are more than 2% among Catholics. Anyway, Neil wanted to know if I had read anything debunking the statistic.

Well, I had to admit that I hadn't. This is mostly because the relevance of the claim to the HHS's mandate is, to put it mildly, obscure. If a large percentage of Jainists are chowing down on hamburgers on the side, it hardly follows that an expressly Jainist charitable organization should be forced by the federal government to fund a plan that buys free hamburgers for its employees. If a bunch of Quakers turn out to have gun licenses, employees of an expressly Quaker organization are not therefore entitled to have their fees paid to a shooting range or their ammo. provided at no cost through an employer plan. There is this commonsense notion that organizations that are explicitly identified as religious are allowed to uphold the actual doctrinal and behavioral standards of their respective religious bodies. Whether the rank and file membership of that religious body follow those standards in daily life should be irrelevant.

Still, it has proven rather interesting to look into the statistical claim.

Here's how it works. The study is here [pdf]. The relevant tables are Figure 3 on p. 6 and the second Supplementary Table on p. 8. The survey was limited to women between 15-44. Ah, well, that explains how we weren't including the elderly, but it also means that the silly "percent of all Catholic women" thing should be chucked out right from the beginning. More strikingly, as Neil pointed out to me after looking up the study, it excluded any women who were a) not sexually active, where that is defined as having had sexual intercourse in the past three months (there go all the nuns), b) postpartum, c) pregnant, or d) trying to get pregnant! In other words, the study was specifically designed (as the prose discussion on p. 8 makes explicit, in bold print) to include only women for whom a pregnancy would be unintended and who are "at risk" of becoming pregnant. Whether or not it included women who considered themselves neither trying nor not trying to get pregnant (there are some such women in the world) is unclear. It's also unclear whether it included women who have had their reproductive organs removed because of some medical problem. Presumably the study was intended to exclude women in both of these categories, as neither would count as a woman "at risk of an unintended pregnancy."

Labels: Barack Obama, Catholic Church, contraception, health care, religion, sex, women

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The Obama Administration’s fight against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage as between one man and one woman, will undermine marriage and create a serious breach of Church-State relations, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote in a September 20 letter to President Barack Obama,

The Administration’s assault on DOMA, Archbishop Dolan said, will “precipitate a national conflict between Church and State of enormous proportions and to the detriment of both institutions.”

The letter with its accompanying analysis of the Administration’s threats to marriage can be found at http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/marriage-and-family/marriage/promotion-and-defense-of-marriage/upload/dolan-to-obama-doma-letter-sept-20-2011.pdf

Archbishop Dolan especially objected to the Justice Department’s legal arguments that equate those in favor of DOMA to racists. It is “particularly upsetting,” he said, when the Administration attributes to those who support DOMA “a motivation rooted in prejudice and bias.It is especially wrong and unfair to equate opposition to redefining marriage with either intentional or willfully ignorant racial discrimination, as your Administration insists on doing,” he said.

He underscored the Church’s position recognizing “the immeasurable personal dignity and equal worth of all individuals, including those with same-sex attraction” and said “we reject all hatred and unjust treatment against any person.”

Labels: Barack Obama, Catholic Church, DOMA, gay marriage, religion, religious liberty

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President Obama believes that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and will no longer defend the 15-year-old law in federal court, the Justice Department announced today.

The decision, which stunned and delighted gay rights activists, means that the administration will withdraw its defense of ongoing suits in two federal appeals circuits and will leave it to Congress to defend the law against those challenges. It will remain a party to the lawsuits. The law itself remains in effect.

DOMA, signed by President Clinton in 1995, allows states not to recognize same-sex marriages preformed in other states and provides a federal definition for “marriage” that exempts same-sex couples.

Attorney General Eric Holder said that Obama had decided to subject classifications based on sexual orientation to a “more heightened standard of scrutiny.” That means that the federal government no longer believes that there is a “rational basis” for discriminating against gays.

“After careful consideration, including a review of my recommendation, the President has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny,” Holder said in a statement.”

He said that Obama also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, which defines “spouse” as an member of the opposite sex, “fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional. Given that conclusion, the President has instructed the Department not to defend the statute in such cases. I fully concur with the President’s determination.” ...

The announcement today does nothing to the law directly. That would take an act of Congress or a final finding by the judicial branch, probably the Supreme Court. But it changes the vector of the legal cases considerably. Privately, the administration believes that five justices of the Court, including Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote, would find parts of most of DOMA invalid if the federal government withdrew its arguments that the law was unconstitutional.

Labels: Barack Obama, DOMA, gay marriage

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In what is becoming a Father's Day ritual for the Obama administration, the president on Monday will bring together children, famous dads and nonprofit groups that promote fatherhood to highlight the importance of fathers.

The center of President Obama's day-long celebration will be a speech at the ARC, an arts and recreation campus in Southeast Washington, where he is set to announce the creation of the President's Fatherhood and Mentoring Initiative. It will build on a theme that has been central to his family policy and a core part of the White House's Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. ...

Last year, more than 24 million children did not live with their biological fathers, census figures show. Among low-income children, the figure is two out of three.

Obama will also ask Congress to move on his $500 million budget request for a Fatherhood, Marriage and Families Innovation Fund, which would give grants to nonprofits that support fathers and families, including job training programs and economic incentives for dads. The tightened focus on fathers and parental responsibility marks a steady shift from the George W. Bush administration's concentration on traditional marriage, said Chuck Donovan, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a former executive vice president at the Family Research Council. ...

On Sunday, meanwhile, Obama made what appears to be the first presidential Father's Day statement that mentions "two fathers."

"Nurturing families come in many forms, and children may be raised by a father and mother, a single father, two fathers, a stepfather, a grandfather, or caring guardian," he said.

Labels: Barack Obama, culture, Fathers, gay parenting, poverty

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...Buoyed by $1.9 billion in government funding since 1997 ($1.5 billion of that federal money), abstinence-only education grew from a niche market to a booming industry, with hundreds of curriculums for teachers to choose from. But if the 2000s were abstinence's boom years, the next decade may well be its bust. With Obama's budget for 2010 dropping all abstinence-until-marriage funds from the federal budget, past grantees are left uncertain. Congress could restore funding; the Senate Finance Committee voted to do so, 12–11, last month. But the measure must still pass the full Congress, where chances are slim. So abstinence-only groups are left hoping private donors will step forward to at least partially fill the gap. "The open question is whether these organizations will continue to thrive when federal funding is no longer available," says Alesha Doan, author of The Politics of Virginity: Abstinence in Sex Education (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008). "What is the underlying support in society for this?"

Abstinence education came of age in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It began with the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, which dedicated an annual $50 million in Title V abstinence-education grants. The money had to be spent on programs that teach "abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage as the expected standard for all school-age children." When George W. Bush took office he created a new program: Community Based Abstinence Education, or CBAE, grants. While only states could take the Title V funds, CBAE grants went directly to community groups, including faith-based organizations. During the Bush administration, funding for abstinence education more than doubled, from $80 million in 2001 to $200 million in 2007, according to figures from the Congressional Budget Office.

In the beginning, the public-health community was open to the programs. The United States did, after all, have the highest teen pregnancy rate in the developed world. "There was open-mindedness then, that it might work" says John Santelli, of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. "Everyone is willing to give new ideas a trial period." By 1999, one study estimated a third of American students were receiving an abstinence-only education. But as funding grew, so did a body of research showing that abstinence didn't change the sexual behaviors of students; pregnancy and STD rates did not go down, the age of initial sexual activity did not go up. "Each evaluation came along ... and each showed it didn't work," says Santelli. The articles appeared in peer-reviewed journals, many in the Journal of Adolescent Health, and in government-commissioned reviews. In 2007, a federally funded study of four abstinence programs found its students no more likely to abstain than those in a comprehensive program. At the same time, comprehensive programs that discuss contraceptives and their use received better, although by no means perfect, marks. Researcher Doug Kirby's 2008 review of 48 studies of comprehensive curriculums found that two-thirds either reduced frequency of sex or number of sexual partners. By time Obama cut Title V abstinence-education funds from his budget, 25 states had already begun rejecting the money, 16 because they didn't agree ideologically or weren't seeing results, the others for administrative reasons.

Labels: abstinence, Barack Obama, culture, sex education

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In response to an inquiry from The Advocate, the White House sent the following statement regarding President Barack Obama’s position on same-sex relationship recognition voter referenda in Maine and Washington.

“The President has long opposed divisive and discriminatory efforts to deny rights and benefits to same-sex couples, and as he said at the Human Rights Campaign dinner, he believes ‘strongly in stopping laws designed to take rights away.’ Also at the dinner, he said he supports, ‘ensuring that committed gay couples have the same rights and responsibilities afforded to any married couple in this country.’" ...

President Obama supports civil unions over full marriage equality for same-sex couples, but he has increasingly walked a fine line on the issue now that six states have legalized same-sex marriage. The president has also said that he believes states should have the right to determine the question of marriage, and as such he supports full repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing legal same-sex marriages. His administration, however, continues to defend the law in the courts.

Labels: Barack Obama, gay marriage, Maine

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At first glance, the forum didn’t seem to belong among the weighty discussions of the day, which included surviving the recession, increasing minority businesses, caring for homeless veterans, and decreasing deaths from cancer.

But examining the state of Black marriages and families was as integral to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 39th Annual Legislative Conference as the other workshops, said its sponsor, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton.

“I’m not having a forum on the kinds of things that as a policy wonk you might expect me to have,” the Washington, D.C. Democrat told the overflow crowd gathered for a discussion titled “Single Women, Unmarried Men – What Has Happened to Marriage in the Black Community.” “[But] the kind of policies I’m dealing with in Congress... are at least significantly tied to what is happening to the African-American family.”

Having a substantive conversation on the matter has been difficult, the longtime lawmaker said.

“Ever since the Moynihan Report, people didn’t want to talk about single-parent households,” Norton said. “That’s because, first of all, the Moynihan Report didn’t come out of us. And it came out just after the civil rights bills had passed and it made people angry because White America hadn’t taken responsibility for its huge part of what had torn the African-American community apart. So nobody wanted to hear it.”

The Moynihan Report, officially called, “The Negro Family: The Case For National Action” was a paper published in 1965 by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who would go on to become a U.S. senator.

“At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family,” Moynihan said in the report.

According to Moynihan, an increasing number of single-mother, welfare-dependent homes and the matriarchal design of Black families diminished the male’s authority, one sign of a crumbling family structure. He predicted that “so long as this situation persists, the cycle of poverty and disadvantage will continue to repeat itself.”

Despite criticism of the report as racist and unfounded, Norton said Moynihan was “prescient.”

Rates of incarceration, drug use and trade, high school dropouts, teenage pregnancy, poor health outcomes and other social ills have increased, it seems, with the breakdown of Black families.

Statistics show that in 2008 only 34 percent of Black children lived in homes with two married parents and 3.7 million Black children live in single-mother homes with mothers who have never been married, more than any other demographic.

“If you think the Black nation can survive whole if only Black women are raising their children, I want you to show me how ,” Norton said. ...

The proliferation of incarcerated and unemployed Black men are among the reasons for the paucity of partners. ...

District resident Alphonso Coles said young people have to be counseled and prepared for marriage and parenthood. “Crucial conversations are needed before sex, before marriage and after marriage,” he said.

Girls must be trained to assess their partners wisely and to look beyond the outer trappings of wealth, beauty and possessions in choosing a mate.

“Is he kind to you, does he make you smile—those are far better questions,” Perrault said, adding that like first lady Michelle Obama, women must be willing to nurture the potential in their partner. “Ten years this woman was the [main] breadwinner…I was touched by Michelle’s ability to look at his [Barack’s] trajectory rather than his current circumstances.”

Labels: Barack Obama, culture, DC, Marriage, men, motherhood, poverty, race

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In an official proclamation this afternoon, President Obama declared today Family Day 2009.

What is significant is the way he defined "family."

The president gave a nod to the gay community when he praised all families, "whether children are raised by two parents, a single parent, grandparents, a same-sex couple, or a guardian." (Emphasis ours.)

His shout-out to same-sex couples is sure to draw heat from some social conservatives. Interestingly, it has been met with some hostility from gay rights activists too.

Labels: Barack Obama, culture, gay parenting

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The fight over healthcare took the most interesting turn last week. President Obama briefly switched from wonkish frippery about bending cost curves to speaking of faith. Reaching out to progressive faith leaders in two massive conference calls, Obama insisted that God was on his side. Expanding healthcare fulfills a "core moral and ethical obligation that we look out for one another ... that I am my brother's keeper, my sister's keeper." ...

Of all the silly arguments that have been passed off as deeply profound in American politics, the notion that politicians can't "impose" their personal morality on others has to top the list.

Labels: Barack Obama, culture, religion

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The government does not contend that there are legitimate government interests in "creating a legal structure that promotes the raising of children by both of their biological parents" or that the government's interest in "responsible procreation" justifies Congress's decision to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Since DOMA was enacted, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Medical Association, and the Child Welfare League of America have issued policies opposing restrictions on lesbian and gay parenting because they concluded, based on numerous studies, that children raised by gay and lesbian parents are as likely to be well-adjusted as children raised by heterosexual parents.

Labels: Barack Obama, DOMA, government interest in marriage

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