John C. Wright's Blog, page 141

Army Chaplains Gagged & Occupiers Throwing Condoms on Catholic Schoolgirls

Two stories, passed along without comment. Draw your own conclusions.

First story, quoted in full:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/290147/army-silenced-chaplains-last-sunday-kathryn-jean-lopez

Army Silenced Chaplains Last Sunday

By Kathryn Jean Lopez

February 3, 2012 4:58 P.M.

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In Catholic churches across the country, parishioners were read letters from the pulpit this weekend from bishops in their diocese about the mandate from the Department of Health and Human Services giving Catholics a year before they'll be required to start violating their consciences on insurance coverage for contraception, sterilization, and abortifacient drugs. But not in the Army.

A statement released this afternoon — which happens to be the 67th anniversary of the sinking of the USS Dorchester, on which four chaplains lost their lives – from the Archdiocese for Military Services explains:

On Thursday, January 26, Archbishop Broglio emailed a pastoral letter to Catholic military chaplains with instructions that it be read from the pulpit at Sunday Masses the following weekend in all military chapels. The letter calls on Catholics to resist the policy initiative, recently affirmed by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, for federally mandated health insurance covering sterilization, abortifacients and contraception, because it represents a violation of the freedom of religion recognized by the U.S. Constitution.

The Army's Office of the Chief of Chaplains subsequently sent an email to senior chaplains advising them that the Archbishop's letter was not coordinated with that office and asked that it not be read from the pulpit. The Chief's office directed that the letter was to be mentioned in the Mass announcements and distributed in printed form in the back of the chapel.

Archbishop Broglio and the Archdiocese stand firm in the belief, based on legal precedent, that such a directive from the Army constituted a violation of his Constitutionally-protected right of free speech and the free exercise of religion, as well as those same rights of all military chaplains and their congregants.

Following a discussion between Archbishop Broglio and the Secretary of the Army, The Honorable John McHugh, it was agreed that it was a mistake to stop the reading of the Archbishop's letter. Additionally, the line: "We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law" was removed by Archbishop Broglio at the suggestion of Secretary McHugh over the concern that it could potentially be misunderstood as a call to civil disobedience.

The AMS did not receive any objections to the reading of Archbishop Broglio's statement from the other branches of service.

So not only were chaplains told not to read the letter, but an Obama administration official edited a pastoral letter . . . with church buy-in?

Didn't people flee across an ocean-sized pond to be free of this kind of thing?

UPDATE: Army spokesman confirms "the Army asked that the letter not be read from the pulpit."

Second Story, quoted in part:

http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/occupiers-dump-condoms-on-catholic-school-girls.html

By Todd Starnes

A group of Occupy Wall Street protesters disrupted a Right to Life rally and threw condoms on Catholic school girls inside the Rhode Island state capitol building.

Barth Bracy, executive director of Rhode Island Right to Life, said their rally had to be cut short after the Occupiers began screaming and refused to allow a Catholic priest to deliver a prayer.

"This is their idea of civil speech but we believe it's an outrage," Bracy told Fox News & Commentary "They started heckling, chanting and blowing whistles. They shouted down a priest."

Last week's rally was held inside the rotunda of the state capitol in Providence. Bracy said the Occupiers, along with some pro-choice demonstrators, infiltrated the crowd of some 150 pro-lifers. He said the pro-life crowd was made up of senior citizens, mothers with young children, Cub Scouts, and school kids.

Bracy said one of the most egregious incidents occurred when an Occupier climbed to the third floor balcony and dumped a box of condoms on girls from a Catholic school.

"What kind of individual throw condoms at Catholic school girls," Bracy asked.

Bracy said capitol police were outnumbered and overwhelmed by the protesters. At one point they even attacked State. Rep. Doreen Costa.

"This was one of the most disturbing sights I've ever seen," Costa told Fox News & Commentary. "It was horrendous. "

Costa said a female Occupier hit her on the head with a sign

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

The Unearned

From the invaluable Bill Whittle

My comment: I have always wondered why, once they know their game is up, the Political Correctionists continue to pretend that they have some sort of moral high ground, intellectual or moral superiority to the rest of us.

Only slowly has the realization dawned on me that perhaps they cannot help it. They simply cannot stop, long after they know their efforts at pretense are in vain.

There is no point in asking of them. When confronted, they simply lie, and pretend their motives are compassion, or a concern for integrity, or some other jabberwocky.

But they keep doing it. Long after they know that neither they nor we think of them as anything other than mentally slow and morally corrupt loudmouths, they continue hanging around the Church windows of decent people and educated people heckling and strutting, as if asking some hypothetical audience for the moral superiority they cannot earn.

Why continue the charade?

Well, for that matter, why does the devil in Hell continue a war he knows he must lose? Pride makes men do stupid things.

And these poor souls are trapped in a mental prison, a web of word-fetishes, a set of beliefs that forbid them from recognizing the truth about the world, about themselves, on one topic after another, and most of all forbid them from recognizing what their beliefs are or where their beliefs come from.

The various levels of the disease of the soul in them have reached various levels: at first it is merely a revolt against tradition, which is something all lovers of progress see at least some merit in, or against conformity, which all independent thinkers admire.

Then it is a revolt against religious tyranny, then against religious itself, then against reason, then against virtue and honor, then against sanity and life.

The corruption is first of the conscience, then of the rational faculty, then of the passions, finally of the appetites.

They cannot break out of the mental trap. What tool would they use? Reason, the tool we have to distinguish logical from illogical, is after all the first thing they have thrown away. Judgment and instinct and a sense of decency is the tool we use to distinguish decent from indecent. This is corrupted in them, set to a reverse setting, so that they exult in what should shame them, and are ashamed of what should exult them. A subset of this decency is aesthetic judgment, which distinguishes ugly from beautiful: look at a modern art museum to see the corruption of such judgment. Finally, their emotions and appetites are perverted, so that what ever is normal repels them and whatever is grotesque attracts them. To them the highest and most noble calling in life is to destroy life, particularly that most precious life, at the womb, when the child is weak and helpless, and at old age, when grandma is getting to be a burden.

They cannot arrest their addiction to unearned moral superiority because any revivification of their consciences would convert them even if it did not destroy them.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Brave New World or That Hideous Strength?

Compare and contrast. Which of these is science fiction?

Which shows more clearly a devotion to that death-cult into which modern thinking has descended, now that we have all, out of courtesy and political correctness, lost all respect for religion, for reason, for honor, for reality?

http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-chat/2836721/posts

NORWICH, U.K., January 23, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In remarks that critics have said are disturbingly reminiscent of Aldous Huxley's famous dystopian novel "Brave New World," a UK ethicist [sic] has argued that since pregnancy causes "natural inequality" between the sexes, women must be liberated from the "burdens and risks of pregnancy" through the use of "ectogenesis", or artificial wombs.

"Pregnancy is a condition that causes pain and suffering, and that affects only women. The fact that men do not have to go through pregnancy to have a genetically related child, whereas women do, is a natural inequality," writes Dr. Anna Smajdor in an article that recently appeared in the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics.

In her Defense of Ectogenesis, published online December, 2011, Smajdor construes pregnancy as a "medical problem, along with other conditions that cause pain and suffering." Smajdor is Lecturer in Ethics at the School of Medicine, Health Policy and Practice in the University of East Anglia.

"If there were a disease that caused symptoms and risks similar to those caused by pregnancy, I contend that it would be regarded as being fairly serious, and that we would have good reasons to try to insure against it," argues Smajdor, who lumps pregnancy along with "diseases" that continue for many months, such as the measles.

For Smajdor, currently "men reap all the benefits of women's gestation, while women bear the risks and burdens."

Accordingly, in Smajdor's worldview, "women are disadvantaged as a group through brute luck, because men can reproduce without undergoing the risks of pregnancy."

In other words, to be a woman, for Smajdor, simply means to become biologically more like a man. To do this, a woman's innate and natural potential to procreate, nurture, and bear a new human life must be stripped away and handed over to science and technology. Only when all human beings do not bear children will a genuine equality be more closely approached, she proposes.

"Perhaps not all the dis-benefits of being a woman are attributable to childbearing," acknowledges Smajdor, "but alleviating these burdens would surely help."

In Huxley's "Brave New World" reproduction is taken over entirely by the World State where children are created, "decanted" and raised in "hatcheries" and "conditioning centres."

For Smajdor, the issue is simply a matter of sex equality: "Either we view women as baby carriers who must subjugate their other interests to the well-being of their children or we acknowledge that our social values and level of medical expertise are no longer compatible with 'natural' reproduction," she concludes.

 

"Who is called Sulva? What road does she walk? Why is the womb barren on one side? Where are the cold marriages?"

Ransom replied, "Sulva is she whom mortals call the Moon. She walks in the lowest sphere. The rim of the world that was wasted goes through her. Half of her orb is turned towards us and shares our curse. Her other half looks to Deep Heaven; happy would he be who could cross that frontier and see the fields on her further side. On this side, the womb is barren and the marriages cold. There dwell an accursed people, full of pride and lust. There when a young man takes a maiden in marriage, they do not lie together, but each lies with a cunningly fashioned image of the other, made to move and to be warm by devilish arts, for real flesh will not please them, they are so dainty (delicati) in their dreams of lust. Their real children they fabricate by vile arts in a secret place."

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Caesar Commands the Jews Eat Pork, Quakers Join Army, Amish Get i-Pods, Christians Burn Incense

To all Roman Catholics who voted for Mr Barack Obama: SUUUCKERS! 

To all men of good will, Roman Catholic or no, who believe that the Constitution (or simple common sense) is more important than the odd mixture of self-righteous death-cult and feckless national orgy the sexual revolution ushered into being, and which somehow became the core political stance of the Left in the modern day, allow me to urge you to go sign this petition: http://www.stophhs.com/

The petition reads:

President Obama, in your speech at Notre Dame and elsewhere, you promised that you would provide conscience exemptions for those whose faith forbade their participation in evil.

You have broken that promise by forcing our Church to provide insurance coverage for sterilization, contraception, and various abortifacient drugs. These are practices that for 2,000 years we have taught are intrinsically evil.

You disagree. We understand. But you refuse to respect our right to live out our faith. You have decided to use the coercive power of the state to force your fellow citizens to commit what they believe are evil acts. You have asked the impossible. We cannot be good Americans by being bad Christians.

Turn from your intolerance. Leave in place the conscience exemptions that have served us well since 1973 (42 USC 300a-7 (d)). Vacate the proposed HHS mandate.

If you are not familiar with the case, here is an article.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/289647/religious-liberty-and-civil-society-yuval-levin

Religious institutions are basically going to be fined for holding views regarding contraception, sterilization, and abortion that are different from the Obama administration's views. For instance, Notre Dame University, which employs more than 5,000 people, is going to be given the choice of either expressly violating its religious convictions or paying a $10 million fine to the federal government. It's bad enough that any employer with a moral objection has to spend his money this way, but it is especially egregious to compel religious institutions to do so…

As many have noted around here, the fact of the administration's willingness to do this sheds light on its hostility to (or at the very least its contempt for) religious liberty. But it's not quite that simple. This incident (and especially the nature of the exemption that the administration was willing to grant, which is essentially an exemption for actual houses of worship but not for other religiously-affiliated institutions) also sheds light on a very deeply rooted problem in our tradition of religious liberty itself—a problem that should cause those of us inclined to seek recourse in "conscience protection" and religious exemptions to pause and think.

The English common law tradition of religious toleration, which we inherited, has always had a problem with religious institutions that are not houses of worship—i.e. that are geared to ends other than the practice of religion itself. To (vastly) oversimplify for a moment, that tradition began (in the 16th century, and in some respects even earlier) with the aim of protecting Protestant dissenters and Jews but (very intentionally) not protecting Catholics. And the way it took shape over the centuries in an effort to sustain that distinction was by drawing a line between individual religious practice (in which the government could not interfere) and an institutional religious presence (which was given far less protection). Because Catholicism is a uniquely institutional religion—with large numbers of massive institutions for providing social services, educating children and adults, and the like, all of which are more or less parts of a single hierarchy—this meant Catholics were simply not granted the same protection as others.

[...]

In this sense, what is at issue in the controversy over the administration's rule is not just the question of religious liberty but the question of non-governmental institutions in a free society. Does civil society consist of a set of institutions that help the government achieve its purposes as it defines them when their doing so might be more efficient or convenient than the state's doing so itself, or does civil society consist of an assortment of efforts by citizens to band together in pursuit of mutual aims and goods as they understand them? Is it an extension of the state or of the community? In this arena, as in a great many others, the administration is clearly determined to see civil society as merely an extension of the state, and to clear out civil society—clearing out the mediating layers between the individual and the state—when it seems to stand in the way of achieving the president's agenda. The idea is to leave as few non-individual players as possible in the private sphere, and to turn those few that are left into agents of the government.

[...]

This approach is especially noxious and pernicious when it is directed at religiously affiliated institutions—both because they deserve special standing and because they do some of the hardest and most needful work of charity and care in our society. We should use every available means to protect those institutions from this mortal danger, and that certainly includes resorting to the language of conscience and exemption. But as we do so, we should not forget that we are dealing with an instance of a larger and deeper danger, and we should do what we can to combat that danger in its own terms. It is perhaps the gravest threat to freedom in American life today.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Ambitious Dreams, Pragmatic Means for Reaching Mars

Imagine being a science fiction writer circa 1940 or 1950, and selling to John W Campbell Jr your fictional visions of a future that all right thinking people scoffed at. Then, starting with Kennedy, the Space Race culminates in the Moonshot. The Eagle has landed, and the footprints of Man mark the impossible airless sands of Luna. And then … decades of NASA Bureaucracy, preventable rocket disasters, cost overruns, falling skylabs, astronaut deaths, a dearth of public interest, and no urgent military interest drains the blood the space program, until President Obama calls an end to the major NASA programs.

And fantasy outsells your science fiction project. Young fans think X-Wing fighters make banked turns in space, engines roaring and lasers clearly visible, and that the Force will give the Chosen One mystic powers, rather than – as in the heroes of your day – scientific learning, skullwork and elbow grease.

To such a writer and dreamer the disappointment that 2001 came and went without the Discovery being sent to Jupiter or Saturn was sharp indeed, because he had believed in the dream of space colonization almost from the outset, and had seen it begin with a Moon landing, and end with a whimper. We should have had permanent space stations by now, a Moon base, a manned expedition to Mars.

It comes as a pleasant shock of hope each time someone else speaks out for the dream. This is an article from Robert Zubrin proposing a clever and clear idea to promote a manned Mars mission (excepts below the cut):

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/289775/mars-prize-robert-zubrin

Starting immediately, 10 percent of NASA's budget would be put aside yearly to accumulate a prize fund. There would be at least two prizes: a $5 billion prize to develop and demonstrate a heavy-lift booster capable of lifting at least 100 tons to low Earth orbit, and a $10 billion prize for the first human mission to Mars…

So to start with, NASA would save a good deal of money by having a heavy-lift booster developed for $5 billion, less than a third of the $18 billion it currently plans to spend over the next six years on its Space Launch System …

This is a novel approach to human space exploration … has a number of remarkable advantages.

… In the first place, this approach renders cost overruns impossible. … Success or failure with this approach depends solely upon the ingenuity of the American people and the workings of the free-enterprise system, not upon political wrangling.

… posting multibillion-dollar prizes for breakthrough accomplishments in space would call into being not only a private space race, but a new kind of aerospace industry, one based on minimum-cost production methods. The existing aerospace industry does not work that way. Rather, the major aerospace companies contract with the government to do a job on a "cost plus" basis, which means that whatever it costs them to do the job, they charge the government a certain percentage more, usually 8 to 12 percent. Therefore, the more it costs the major aerospace companies to do a job for the government, the more money they make. For this reason, their staffs are top-heavy with layer after layer of management bureaucrats, whose sole function is to add to company overhead.

Of course, since the government needs proof that the expenses claimed by the aerospace companies are actually being incurred, vast numbers of accounting personnel are also employed, to keep track of how many labor hours are spent on each and every separate contract.

…  [The aerospace company] would have no incentive to run costs up. .. Furthermore,  their actual base costs would be lower, since their accounting and documentation burden would be much less onerous.

No doubt there would be many people who would be skeptical that a manned Mars mission could be flown for $5 billion — but that wouldn't matter. If the Mars Prize bill were passed, the only thing that would matter was whether a few investors thought it could. Those interested in making the attempt wouldn't need to convince a sustained majority in Congress that a humans-to-Mars program could be done cheaply; they would only have to convince a Paul Allen or an Elon Musk.

The level of acceptable risk would also be much higher than is currently the case. Both of these are crucial: The private sector is often vastly more innovative than the government because a consensus is not necessary to start something new, and it is willing to dare the risks required.

But if nobody takes up the challenge, what then? In that case the whole exercise would have cost the taxpayers absolutely nothing.

— Dr. Robert Zubrin is president of Pioneer Astronautics and of the Mars Society. His book, The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must , was recently updated and republished by The Free Press.

Onward to Mars!

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

That Will Show Us!

Mark Shea here mentions this odd, ugly, and irresistibly funny disaster:

It seems that a bishop gave a homily at the shrine in Knock in which he reportedly said that godless culture was attacking the Church.

Result: a brain-dead "humanist" decided this was "hate speech" and, you guessed it, attacked the Church by trying to get the bishop brought up on charges.

The being post-Christian Ireland, all this is being treated with great seriousness and nobody is laughing. Prayers for the good bishop and his irony-impaired antagonist would be appreciated.

My comment: One of the articles of faith of modern secular humanism (or whatever its is calling itself these days) is that it has no articles of faith, but instead promotes beliefs that are merely scientific conclusions of objectively verifiable truths. Another article of faith is that Christianity is not the special and particular target of their enmity, and Catholicism even more particularly. Another article of faith is that they are purely rational and enlightened, motivated by pure altruism, and that their foes are purely irrational yet ignorant, motivated by pure hatred and bigotry. Therefore, by definition, whenever worldly men insult or attack the Church, the Church is always the party in the wrong, always the aggressor, always benighted and evil. You don't want the Spanish Inquisition back, do you?

The Enlightened (or whatever) grow quite irate when you ask them to justify any of their articles of faith. It requires an elaborate mental effort on their part to hide from themselves the fact that they can neither justify their faith with reason, nor admit that they take their faith on faith.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Christopher Stasheff, the Soothsayer in Spite of Himself

In a recent post on the Essential Authors of SF, more than one reader asks why I did not include Christopher Stasheff on the list of authors who, if one has not read, one cannot boast oneself a well read SF fan.

My answer is that I artificially limited myself to fifty authors, lest the list grow beyond all bounds, and I that listed authors by their influence in the field. In my judgment Mr Stasheff did not exert any more influence on the field than, say, Sterling E Lanier or Jack L Chalker or Lyndon Hardy. All these men are fine writers, and put out a workmanlike product, but I would not rank them in the highest echelon of writers who, if you have not read at least once, you cannot call yourself a true SF fan.

Having said that, let me mention a personal reason why I admire the work of Christopher Stasheff. He has a special place in my heart for exactly one scene in THE WARLOCK UNLOCKED. I remember this scene for a reason that will seem absurd to most of you.

It was the only scene that ever told me the facts of life without lying to me about it.

It is a scene where a priest comes across a nymph by the water side.

Thanks to the miracle of the Internet (thanks, Al Gore!) I can print it word for word:

'Well met by moonlight, handsome stranger."

She rose up out of the water, dark hair shimmering over her shoulders to cloak her breasts—and that was all that did. Her eyes were large, and slanted; her nose was small, but her mouth was wide, with full, red lips, and her skin was very pale. "How fortunate am I," she purred, "that hath found a gentleman to company me." She waded toward him, up out of the water. As she rose, watercress draped itself about her hips in a token tribute of modesty. Father Al managed to wrench his gaze back to her face, feeling the responses in his body that reminded him that priests are human, too. He swallowed thickly, turned his lips inward to wet them, and muttered. "Greetings, Lady of the Waters."

"No lady I," she murmured, "but a wanton, eager to do the bidding of a mortal man." She twined her arms about his neck and pressed up against him.

It ran counter to every demand his body screamed, but Father Al pulled her arms loose, gently but firmly, and pressed her hands together in front of his chest, forcing her body away from his. She stared at him in surprise. "How now! Do not deny that thou dost want me!"

"I do," Father Al admitted, "but 'twould be wrongful." He glanced down at her fingers, and noticed the tiny, vestigial webs between them.

"Wrongful, because thou art a mortal, and I a nymph?" She laughed, revealing small, perfect, very white teeth. "Come, now! It hath been often done, and always to the man's delight!"

Delight, yes—but Father Al remembered some old tales, of how a water-maid's seduction had led to death—or, failing that, to a steadily-worsening despair that had surely torn apart the mortal lover's soul. He clung to the memory to give him strength, and explained, "It must not be—and the fact that I am human and you are not has little enough to do with it; for see you, lass, if thou dost give out favors of thy body where thou art lusted for, but are not loved, thou dost break thine own integrity."

"Integrity?" She smiled, amused. " 'Tis a word for mortals, not for faery folk."

"Not so," Father Al said sternly, "for the word means 'wholeness,' the wholeness of thy soul."

She laughed, a dazzling cascade of sound. "Surely thou dost jest! The faery folk have no immortal souls!"

"Personalities, then." Father Al was miffed at himself for having forgotten. "Identity. The sum and total of thyself, that which makes thee different, unique, special—not quite like any other water-nymph that ever was."

She lost her smile. "I think thou dost not jest."

"Indeed, I do not. Thy identity, lass, thy true self, hidden away and known only to thyself, is what thou really art. 'Tis founded on those few principles that thou dost truly and most deeply believe in—those beliefs which, when manners and graces and fashions of behaving are all stripped away, do still remain, at the bottom and foundation of thy self."

"Why, then," she smiled, "I am a wanton; for in my deepest self, my chiefest principle is pleasure sexual." And she tried to twine her arms about his neck again.

Well, Father Al had heard that one before, and not just from aquatic women, either. He held her hands firmly, and held her gaze, looking deeply into her eyes. " 'Tis an excuse, I trow, and will not serve. Some male hath wronged thee deeply, when thou wast young and tender. Thou didst open thy heart to him, letting him taste thy secret self, and didst therefore open, too, thy body, for it seemed fully natural that the one should follow the other."

She stared at him, shocked, then suddenly twisted, trying to yank herself free. "I'll not hear thee more!"

"Assuredly, thou wilt," he said sternly, holding her wrists fast, "for this young swain, when he had had his fill of thee, tore himself away, and tore a part of thy secret self with him. Then went he on his merry way, whistling, and sneering at thee—and thou wast lost in sorrow and in pain, for he had ripped away a part of thine inner self that never could be brought and mended back."

"Mortal," she fairly shrieked, "art thou crazed? I am a nymph!"

Father Al had heard that one before, too. "It matters not. There was never a thinking creature made to tear her secret self to bits, and toss the pieces out to passers-by; thus thou wouldst slowly shred thy secret self away, till nought was left, and thou didst not truly exist—only a walking shell would then be left. And this doth happen whenever thou dost open thy body to one who loves thee not, and whom thou dost not love. That breaks the wholeness of thy secret self, for we are made in such a wise that our inner selves and bodies are joined as one, and when the one doth open, the other should. So if thou dost open thy body while keeping thy secret self enclosed, thou dost break the wholeness of thy self."

"A thousand times have I so done," she sneered, "yet I am whole within!"

"Nay, thou'it not. Each time, a tiny piece of thee hast gone, though thou didst strive to know it not."

"Nay, not so—for 'tis my nature to give my body and retain my self untouched! I am a nymph!"

"This is a thin excuse that thou didst first concoct, when first thy secret self was torn. Thou then didst say, 'It matters not; I am untouched. This is my nature, to give of my body and not of my soul; mine only true desire is pleasure.' And to prove it to thyself, thou didst seek to couple with every male that happened by—yet each time, thou wast more torn, and didst need to prove it more—so thou didst seek out more to pleasure thee, quite frantically—though in thy depths, thou knew it pleasured thee not at all. For in truth, 'twas only an excuse."

"And what of thee?" she demanded angrily. "Why dost thou rant thus at me? Why dost thou make me stay to listen, when I would turn away? Is not this thine own excuse, for the hot lust that doth throb within thee at the sight of me?"

Touché, Father Al thought. "It is indeed. Yet hath mine excuse done harm to thee? Or me?"

She frowned prettily, searching his eyes. "Nay…none to me. Yet I think that it doth harm to thee—for what is natural to thyself would be to grapple me, and couple here in wildness and in frenzy."

'Thou dost read me shrewdly," Father Al admitted. "Yet though 'tis 'natural,' lass, it is not right—for thereby would a part of me be ripped away, even as a part of thee would." He sighed. "It is a male conceit that a woman's self may be rended by a one-night's coupling, while the man's is not—but 'tis only a conceit. We, too, are made all of one piece, body and soul so shrewdly welded together that we cannot give of the one without giving of the other. And we, too, can be rended by a first coupling with a one who loves us not, and may seek to deny that hurt by seeking to lie with every maid we may. Thus is the legend born of prowess male, and many a young man's soul is rended by the promiscuity that comes of thus attempting to prove himself a legend"—which is to say, a ghost. But if young men would speak the truth, they would own that there is little enough pleasure in it—for loveless coupling, at the moment when pleasure should transform itself to ecstasy, truly turns itself to ashes, and the taste of gall."

"I think," she said slowly, "that thou dost speak from hurt that thou hast known."

He smiled ruefully. "All young men commit the same mistakes; all step upon the brush that covers o'er the pitfall, no matter how loudly their seniors blare the warnings in their ears. I was once young; and I was not always of the Cloth."

Her eyes widened in horror. She leaped back, looking him up and down in one quick glance, and pressed her hands to her mouth. "Thou art a monk!"

This is from what seems to be a pirate site: http://readr.ru/christopher-stasheff-the-warlock-unlocked.html?page=64#ixzz1lEoiW9iu

This is the first and only scene I ever read in any book in my youth — and I read a myriad of books, sometimes two a day — which told me the truth about sex.

To understand why this scene impressed itself so deeply in my memory (I recalled the basic outline of the conversation four decades later) let me first reveal an unsightly personal bitterness and anger against another author, namely, Robert Heinlein.

Heinlein told me that anything any two or more people of either sex and their dog did in the privacy of their own bedroom, or on the rooftop in view of the neighbor's kids, was licit, and that the only illicit act in the universe was to express disapproval of the customs of others.

To disapprove of indecent customs was the only sin. Heinlein used the example of cannibalism in STRANGER IN A STRANGE land by doing a 'Dan Quayle' the one man decent enough to object to it — that is, he does not discuss the issue, the author merely has the decent man portrayed as a fool and bigot. Heinlein also used the example of an orgy with another man's wife and daughters in GLORY ROAD and polygamy in THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS. In each case, the topic was not discussed, merely Danquayled (if I may coin the term) by having the characters on the side of decency be either innocent fools or stubborn fools. The point was made again in SPACE CADET by showing the contrast between human and Venusian customs, and again in BETWEEN PLANETS and again in PODKAYNE OF MARS.

In no case was the cost of obedience to the customs of strangers mentioned: no heroine was asked to honor the Bedouin custom of veiling women, for example. "When in Rome, do as the Romans" was the whole of the law, but no character is ever shown bowing to the Pope in Rome, which is what Romans do.

Heinlein is not the only one. Ayn Rand, along similar lines, told me and taught me that whatever two people wish to do in the privacy of their bedroom is licit, provided only that each is the manifestation of the highest values of the other, and that their heroic love is true. Marriage is treated as an inconvenience: John Galt not only poaches Dagny from Reardon (and from Frisco D'Anconia), he has the gall to tell him that it is rational for him to like it.

And I believed them.

These authors, and countless others, preached this gospel of self-indulgence to me, and I believed them. Of course, my youthful heat and innate selfishness made me want to believe them, and so I do not blame them for my gullibility. That fault is mine.

But I do blame them for lying to a child. That fault is theirs.

So Christopher Stasheff stands out in my memory as the one man in a world of liars who was kind enough to tell the child the truth. He is, whether he meant to be or not, a soothsayer.

Many, many years would pass, and I would be a father with children, before I realized how I had been lied to. During all those years, that one scene by Stasheff clung in my memory, shockingly nonconformist, bizarre in how unusual it was.

The scene was so startling to me because the monk character promoting chastity is not the Nehemiah Scudder type monstrosity nor the Foster type huckster that all other men of the cloth were portrayed to be in all other books and stories (with the lonely exceptions of Friar Tuck and Aramis the Musketeer). It was also the first time I had ever heard anyone, anywhere, utter any argument of any kind in favor of chastity. The argument against chastity which I heard repeated ad nauseam  was nothing but ad hominem – namely, the unsupported assertion that the motive of those who promoted chastity was either fear of sex or lust to oppress women.

To me, the scene was as startling as INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE must have seemed when it first appeared. The writer was daring enough to portray the dark monster of a thousand tales of nightmare, i.e. a priest, as a good guy. How odd. How original.

Ironically, I did not know the end of the story.

A reader with the vinous name of Dionysus writes:

I doubt I'd have read much science fiction without the influence of Stasheff. He goes way back to–1969–and has continued to be popular into the 21st century. What is more, I think that his popularity helped to put Harold Shea back on the map for many later readers. Also, he is one of the few writers I can think of that openly includes Catholic characters in the far future. He's also a literate author who brings the Medieval and Renaissance periods alive in a way far superior to the likes of Anderson, Miller, Herbert, and in some ways, even Wolfe. These latter authors give us the Middle Ages and Renaissance as we moderns see those ages (IMO influenced a great deal by Howard and Burroughs); however, Stasheff presents them like the educated of the Middle Ages (especially late-Middle Ages) and the Renaissance would have understood them. That's important because science fiction can find its origins in those ages. However, I will not labor the argument. I just figured that if Alan Moore is on there, Stasheff should certainly be.

I would say Mike Flynn in Eifelheim pulls off the act of presenting the Middle Ages as an educated medieval would have seen them.

Naturally, as a Roman Catholic myself, I should promote any works that portray the Church in a good light, and throw business toward my follow RC author, and, as a guy who works daily on a computer, I should pray to St. Vidicon of Cathode. (He was martyred in AD 2020 when he was electrocuted in order to keep the Vatican broadcast equipment working so that Pope Clement could send his message to the world.)

Also, had I known that Stasheff collaborated with L Sprague de Camp on the later Harold Shea books, he might have made my list of top fifty essential authors: but, alas, he is not more highly ranked in SF history than de Camp himself, not to mention Murray Leinster or Peirs Anthony or Orson Scott Card or Stanislaw Lem or James Blish or Andre Norton or Bertram Chandler or Brian Aldiss or Harry Harrison or Frederik Pohl or Spider Robinson or George RR Martin (whose excellent SF is overlooked now due to the success of his fantasy) or Somtow Sucharitkul or James White or Connie Willis.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

The Fifty Essential Authors of Science Fiction

A reader unwisely asked me to list what I consider the essential authors of science fiction. My only qualification to answer is that I am an enormous fan of the genre, and by 'enormous' I mean, of course, obese.

On the other hand, as G.K. Chesterton once famously observed, even a bad shot is dignified when he accepts a duel. Having disqualified myself to answer, let us first, as befits a philosopher, examine the question before attempting to answer.

Let us first say what the question is not. I was not asked my personal favorites: those should be obvious enough from my own writing, which steals shamelessly from, er, I mean, pays homage to writers who shaped my imagination: A.E. van Vogt, Olaf Stapledon, Poul Anderson, Keith Laumer, Roger Zelazny, Jack Vance, H.P. Lovecraft, William Hope Hodgson, Cordwainer Smith, Ayn Rand, E.E. 'Doc' Smith, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis. If you read what I write, you can tell who I like. If you do not read what I write, then why are you reading this essay? There are also authors I admire, but I cannot steal from them because I lack the skill to copy them: Gene Wolfe and J.R.R. Tolkien.

The question is also not about the historical impact of the books discussed. It is not a list of award winners. It is a list of books which I think every devoted science fiction reader should read in order to understand where his favorites fit into the grand scheme of things.

It is embarrassing to wax enthusiastic over some science fictional idea, such as that all the life around us may be an illusion as in the film THE MATRIX, only to discover the idea has been done better earlier (as in the film DARK CITY) and is indeed a tried and true, if not shopworn, trope of the genre, as old as NIGHT OF DELUSIONS by Keith Laumer, THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH by Philip K. Dick, 'They' by Robert Heinlein, WOLRD OF NULL-A by A.E. van Vogt, or even ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS by Lewis Carroll.

Contrariwise, it is fascinating to see where certain tales are specific answers to other tales from earlier in the genre, even a rebuttal. The metaphor I propose is that all science fiction books that rise above mere space adventure yarns are attempting to take part in a generations-long conversation about the basic ideas that define the genre. Unlike spoken conversation, the Long Talk takes place at book length, or at least short story length.

What makes a book 'essential reading'? On the surface, the answer is easy enough: a book is essential reading if all the Cool Kids who read and discuss the genre have read and are discussing it. You need to know what the Cool Kids are talking about to participate in the Long Talk.

Digging deeper, what makes a book something the Cool Kids talk about?  While there are occasional statistical anomalies where a book is praised and discussed for some reason unrelated to the book's quality, for the most part the books that everyone talks about are talked about because they are great. Even if they are bad literature, they contain great ideas.

I will try to be objective, that is, to give due credit to books I dislike or even despise, in order correctly to portray their place in the genre. But, because I am listing essential books, and not great books, I will pay more (perhaps undue) attention to their predominance in the conversation of ideas I here call the 'Long Talk.'

What is the Long Talk about?

Science Fiction is the mythology of the scientific age. It is the attempt to wrestle with (or play with) the revolution in human thought that accompanied the scientific revolution.

In science fiction, man is not the exile of paradise seeking to regain his lost immortality, a creature little lower than the angels but the lord of creation. Instead he is the son of pond scum which evolved from ape-man to cave-man, and shall soon — if our nerve fails not — evolve from space-man to superman.

In science fiction, Man is simultaneously the microscopic inhabitant of a tiny world whirling about an insignificant star in a minor arm of a galaxy lost among myriads, and the destined race that will one day rule the sevagram. (And if you don't catch that reference, there are books on this list you should read.) And yet science fiction cautions that if we do not mend our ways, the far future will not hold Men Like Gods in their shining towers and laboratories who control the secret energies of the cosmos and practice nudism and vegetarianism; instead by the year 802701 AD man will have devolved into pretty and hapless Eloi and troglodyte cannibal Morlocks.  (And if you don't catch that reference, start at the beginning of this list.)

History turned a corner during the scientific revolution. Our perceptions of past and future changed as did our notion of man and his place in the cosmos. The old image of the universe was shattered. Once the common man was aware that technological change had changed how his lived his life differently from his forefathers, then adventure stories speculating about how differently his posterity would live became sellable. Curiosity about conditions in the new universe prompted speculations and dreams, from wild flights of fancy to sober considerations of what the future held.

There are those who, for perhaps perfectly laudable reasons, want to claim continuity between science fiction and the imaginative epics of former ages, quoting the flights to the moon by Lucian of Samosata, Dante, Cyrano de Bergerac and Ariosto as ancestors to the more sober moon-shots by literature's first men in the moon: Hans Pfaall, Impey Barbicane, Professor Cavor, Richard Seaton, Kurt Newton, Leslie LeCroix. Nonetheless, spiritual journeys or voyages by hippogriff-back do not take place in the modern, scientific view of the universe. Science fiction cannot be older than the science which inspired it.

I artificially limit myself to 50 authors, and I exclude works set in worlds like Middle-Earth, Narnia, Earthsea, Prydain.

So, first on any list of essential SF reading we must list those who created the genre

FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley. Listed because it is not just a first, but the first. The principle preoccupation of science fiction is the central theme of this antique work: namely, the role of Man in the scientific conception of the universe.
FLATLAND by A Square (Edwin Abbott)
TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA by Jules Verne. Scientific speculation so solid that it later came to pass. Likewise, FROM EARTH TO MOON. Likewise, MASTER OF THE WORLD.
THE WAR OF THE WORLDS by H.G. Wells. Invented the trope of alien invasion; solid speculation about the nature of Darwinian evolution. Likewise, THE TIME MACHINE. Likewise, THE ISLAND OF DR MOREAU. Likewise, THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON.
'The Machine Stops' by E.M. Forster. An brief and ironic rebuke to Wells.

Verne and Wells are the inventors of Hard SF and Soft SF respectively. Verne invented the trope of describing his fictional machines in sufficient detail to convince the reader they were real. Ironically, the much less realistic Wells (Antigravity metal and time machines are fantasy compared to submarines and aircraft) the fact that he used fantasy science to make telling commentaries on the human question keeps him more readable than Verne.

VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS by David Lindsay. This inclusion on this list is problematical, since this obscure work had little effect on the genre. Nonetheless, it is the single most sustain act of imaginative excess I have ever read, and the first attempt to use science fictional tropes to address philosophical, metaphysical, and religious questions.
LAST AND FIRST MEN by Olaf Stapledon. First literary attempt to plot the course of future history from the present (1930) through the rise and fall of eighteen distinct evolutions of mankind into new races until some two thousand million years hence. The sheer ambition of the conceit is enough to call it essential reading. Likewise, STARMAKER.
"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Jorge Luis Borges. Included here to provoke an argument on what constitutes science fiction.
NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR by George Orwell. Perhaps the most sobering dark satire of all time; so sobering some critics do not realize it is a satire.
A BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley

While the literary giants were treating SF with serious ideas, pulp magazines in America were burgeoning. Those who would stuff our more embarrassing ancestors into the closet when guests call are doing the genre a disservice.

THE MOON POOL by A Merritt. The transition from 'Lost Race' adventures to true science fiction. Also, THE METAL MONSTER.
A PRINCESS OF MARS by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Invented the Planetary Romance genre. This book is surprisingly mature science fiction, despite its juvenile theme and style. Likewise, GODS OF MARS and WARLORD OF MARS.
SKYLARK OF SPACE by E.E. 'Doc' Smith. Invented the Space Opera, or, at least, the large-scale intergalactic adventure tale. Also, SKYLARK DUQUESNE, including merely for the audacity of its final sequence, when whole galaxies are obliterated. Likewise The Lensman Series by E.E. 'Doc' Smith includes THE GALACTIC PATROL, THE GRAY LENSMAN, SECOND STAGE LENSMAN and CHILDREN OF THE LENS. This is the quintessential Big Budget Space Opera, and the first tale to postulate a peaceful civilization embracing utterly alien species.
'A Martian Odyssey' by Stanley G. Weinbaum. First depiction of aliens who are not really monsters, and not merely humans. (Albeit that honor is disputed with the Lensman series, see above.)
'With Folded Hands' by Jack Williamson. Also see LEGION OF SPACE and LEGION OF TIME. See also 'The Moon Era.'
'The Call of Cthulhu' by H.P. Lovecraft. Also, 'A Whisperer in Darkness' and THE SHADOW OUT OF TIME. Arguably outside the science fiction genre, these weird tales contain a mythic power of cosmic awe and mystery far beyond their meager literary merit.

The Golden Age writers of John W Campbell Jr did work in short stories and novellas which give these shorter work disproportionate influence on the genre. Unlike their pulp predecessors, more scientific verisimilitude was included in these yarns.

'The Black Destroyer' by A.E. van Vogt. This story started the Golden Age. SLAN by A.E. van Vogt. A successful depiction of a superhuman by a human author. Also, WORLD OF NULL-A and PLAYERS OF NULL-A. Likewise, THE WEAPON SHOPS OF ISHER. The right to buy weapons is the right to be free. Now largely forgotten, at one time van Vogt was considered one of the Big Three of SF (the other two being Asimov and Heinlein, see below.)
FOUNDATION by Isaac Asimov, including FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE, and SECOND FOUNDATION. The decline and fall of the galactic empire.Also, CAVES OF STEEL, THE NAKED SUN. First example of science fiction detective stories.
"The Man Who Sold the Moon" by Robert Heinlein. First use of a coherent future history. Also "Requiem" and "Green Hills of Earth" also see ORPHANS OF THE SKY by Robert Heinlein. First use of multi-generation ships. No one can call himself an SF reader who has not read a Heinlein juvenile. Any of them will do, but I suggest HAVE SPACE SUIT WILL TRAVEL, CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY and STARMAN JONES. STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Heinlein. For its time, a daring countercultural satire.  STARSHIP TROOPERS by Robert Heinlein. First military SF.
FOREVER WAR by Joe Haldeman. A counterpoint to the above.
OUT FROM THE SILENT PLANET by C.S. Lewis. This is Lewis's reply to H.G Wells. Also PERELENDRA.
CHILDHOOD'S END by Arthur C Clarke. This is Clarke's reply to Lewis. It also forms the definitive mythic expression of science fiction's central myth. Also, 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY. Also 'Against the Fall of Night' aka CITY AND THE STARS by Arthur C Clarke. Also RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA.
CITY by Clifford Simak. Also WAY STATION
MISSION OF GRAVITY by Hal Clement. Widely regarded as the best 'world building' done in an SF tale.
'The Man Who Counts' by Poul Anderson. A fine Nicholas van Rijn tale. Likewise 'The Queen of Air and Darkness ' Likewise, BRAINWAVE, TAU ZERO or HARVEST OF STARS. You have to read some Poul Anderson to be a SF reader.
THE STARS MY DESTINATION by Alfred Bester. Likewise, THE DEMOLISHED MAN.
DINOSAUR BEACH by Keith Laumer. Few other time travel stories attempt to cover all the aspects of what time travel would entail.
THE BIG TIME by Fritz Leiber. And this is one of the few. I would include CONJURE WIFE or OUR LADY OF DARKNESS on this list, but they are not SF.
'Nightwings' by Robert Silverberg. No short story better captures the eerie sense of immensities of time.
RIVERWORLD by Philip Jose Farmer.
'The Cold Equations' by Tom Godwin. This is included as the crucial short story that put a period to the Campbellian optimist of the Golden Age.

The Silver Age writers concentrated on literary devices rather than big ideas.

'Repent Harlequin Said the Ticktockman' by Harlan Ellison. Not being to my taste, I am not sure why this tale is famous, but it is an essential of the genre.
THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE by Philip K Dick. As above.
LORD OF LIGHT by Roger Zelazny. Myth and SF blended. Also, NINE PRINCES IN AMBER. Technically not SF, but widely influential on all later multiverse style stories.
FAHRENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury. Likewise, THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES and I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC and SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES. Mr Bradbury is lyrical and subtle, and considered one of the ABC's of SF. (The other two being Asimov and Clarke, see above.)
STAND ON ZANZIBAR by John Brunner. The quintessential 'serious' SF book about problems which history has since shown to be non-problems, such as overpopulation.
THE JEWEL IN THE SKULL by Michael Moorcock. He has written more earnest works, some dreadfully so, but a science fiction reader should read up at least one of the Eternal Champion stories. Also, ELRIC OF MELNIBONÉ and THE KNIGHT OF THE SWORDS.
'Flowers for Algernon' by Daniel Keyes. Science fiction so poignant that even muggles read it.
A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ by Walter M. Miller. Future Dark Ages done right.
DUNE by Frank Herbert. A sober version of a Swords and Spaceships story, but with everything from messianic prophecies to anti-computer jihads to meditations on ecology thrown in. Also, first Hugo winner.
'Scanners Live in Vain' by Cordwainer Smith. Likewise, 'The Dead Lady of Clown Town' and 'Alpha Ralpha Boulevard.' These stories established new ground for SF.
LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS by Ursula K LeGuin. Lyrical and profound, this book broke new ground in what might be called anthropological science fiction. Likewise, THE DISPOSSESSED. LeGuin rapidly colonized what Smith had pioneered.
'The Dragon Masters' by Jack Vance. Also 'The Last Castle.' Also THE LANGUAGES OF PAO and EMPHYRIO. See especially THE DYING EARTH.
MOTE IN GOD'S EYE by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. A first contact story the way it should properly be done.
RINGWORLD by Larry Niven. The quintessential 'Big Dumb Object' story. See also 'Neutron Star' as the crucial example of how to do a scientific puzzle tale.

The Bronze Age is characterized by a shift from short stories to novels and trilogies, and the influence of media SF on the genre. Thanks to STAR WARS science fiction was hereafter mainstream.

The New Sun books by Gene Wolfe: THE SHADOW OF THE TORTURER, THE SWORD OF THE LICTOR, THE CLAW OF THE CONCILIATOR and THE CITADEL OF THE AUTARCH. Also, URTH OF THE NEW SUN. These are Wolfe's homage to Jack Vance 'Dying Earth' tales. Also 'Fifth Head of Cerberus'.
NEUROMANCER by Walter Gibson. Invented the Cyberpunk genre.
SNOWCRASH by Neal Stephenson. Made Cyberpunk worth reading. See also, THE DIAMOND AGE.
HYPERION by Dan Simmons. Chaucer in space.
THE WATCHMAN by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. So I included a comic book on my list. What are you, a snob?

I limited myself to fifty must-read authors, and no doubt overlooked some giants in the field. But, this being the Internet, I can always sneak more names onto the list here below in days to come.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Shout Out to the Latter Day Saints

If there are any readers, Mormon or otherwise, who fret that serious and sober debate seen in this space in weeks erenow with Mormons over theological questions will dim my high opinion of the LDS Church, I ask you not to fret.

Let me tell you my experience with Mormons.

Once upon a time, my middle son flushed a toy down the toilet, and the toy, with a power far beyond that of ordinary toys, managed not only to clod the pipe running under my front yard, but break the pipe during the attempt to remove it, so that my front tree had to be hewen down as if my the cruel Orcs of Orthanc, and all my yard ripped up and despoiled.

Next, the Home Owners Association sent a legal notice saying we had to restore the lawn to good and proper condition forewith, or face legal penalties. At this point in time my wallet had moths in it, and echoes, but no money. I could not hire a landscaper no do the work myself.

My wife prayed to her God (I was an atheist at the time) and within the same day, two young men, dressed soberly, and with good manners, approached her and said that they were walking the neighborhood looking for good works to do. At first she thought of turning them away, but then realized they were an answer to prayer.

Since they were conservatively and soberly dressed, and spoke politely, and had a shining of grace and good favor about their faces, I knew at once that they were either Agents of the Machine from the movie THE MATRIX or that they were elders from the Church of Latter Day Saints.

I think their names were Elder Younger and Elder Kidd, but let me not be too droll on that point.

The two Mormon boys helped us that weekend with strenuous manual labor and the next and accepting no payment for their good deed. Nor did they lose their good cheer even for an instant.

(By way of jest, I asked my Christian wife if she would consider converting to the Mormon faith because of this event. She looked at me askance, and wonder why, if her God prompted answered her prayers by sending Mormons, why should she switch from hers to theirs?)

So I LOVE the Mormons. I will always be grateful to the Mormons. I respect the Mormons. The Mormons put their time and effort where their mouth is — and actually act like the Christians I know say we should act.

Dear Mormons, any of you reading these words, let me say I am glad your Church had the guts to stand up to the forces of sexual perversion and abomination in the recent elections in California. The Dark Lord who runs this world will have his vengeance on you for that, but God will protect and sustain you through any trouble.

Rome and Salt Lake City are allies in the Culture Wars. We are allies in the war for the souls of man, and souls of the world. No matter how much we disagree on matters of theology, even on crucial matters, the enemy is Satan. I have not lost sight of that fact, and I pray God I do not lose sight of it.

To be sure, the Roman Catholic Church does not regard your beliefs to be orthodox, nor your baptisms to be valid: if I may say it without offense, I do not consider a Mormon to be Christian any more than I consider a Muslim or Jew or Gnostic. The Christ you propose is too alien to orthodox theology to be considered a mere difference of opinion — your Christ is wholly different from mine.

And having said that, let me hasted to add I would that certain public figures who claim to be Catholic were as half as Christian in word and deed as every Mormon I have ever met.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Stats

One of my readers asks for some evidence that the sexual revolution has led to the various social pathologies which mar the modern age.

I hope I can be forgiven for treated the request rather lightheartedly, because I am sure that if that reader merely speaks to his grandmother, he will have a sufficient basis of evidence to make up his mind on the issue.

I hope we can agree, in the abstract, that marriage was instituted for the purpose of preventing the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, for promoting domestic felicity, and for securing the maintenance and education of children. The sexual revolution, by promoting fornication and adultery and divorce, decreases the sanctity and the frequency of marriage, and increases the rate of divorce.

Statistically, the best indicator that a couple will end in divorce is if they begin by cohabiting without marriage.

Statistically again, the best indicator that a spouse will commit adultery is premarital sex. In other words, even if fornication were not blameworthy in and of itself, fornication would still be a warning sign telling prospective mates to look elsewhere for marriage partners.

The relationship between adultery and divorce is plain enough, since this is the prime and classical cause for divorce.

Hence, taken these finding together, we see that the sexual revolution by promoting fornication and cohabitation also promotes adultery and divorce. So far in the argument, I make no claim as to cause and effect: I am merely pointing out that the statistics show a correlation.

Divorce and fornication increases the incidence of single mothers raising children which correlates to the number of children from fatherless homes.

Here are some numbers. Children from fatherless homes, according to federal statistics, are

14 times more likely to commit rape,
32 times more likely to run away from home,
20 times more likely to have behavioral disorders,
five times more likely to commit suicide,
ten times more likely to abuse chemical substances and
20 times more likely to end up in prison.

And without the widespread use of contraception, the sexual revolution, which is the attempt to make fornication a normal and socially accepted practice, founders on the imprudence of risking pregnancy. Contraception by design lowers the moral hazard of pregnancy, and this makes the normalization of fornication possible, which in turn correlates to the rise in the social pathologies listed above.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.