Hermenuetics

Iranian Christian Women Freed from Evin Prison

Coming on the heels of the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (Nov. 8), Christian religious-freedom groups celebrated a victory yesterday in Iran. Marzieh Amirizadeh Esmaeilabad, 30, and Maryam Rustampoor, 27 — two Iranian converts to Christianity — were freed after being imprisoned for 259 days.

Authorities raided the women’s apartment, which contained "Christian literature," on March 5. The women were charged with anti-state activity, spreading Christianity, and apostasy (deserting one’s faith), and were placed in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.

In Iran, apostasy alone is punishable by execution or life in prison. The country has been placed on several watch lists of places that repress religious freedom. Recently, Iran has come under fire for jailing believers following raids on churches and homes belonging to Christians.

While in custody, reports came that the two women endured “intense interrogations which have reportedly included sleep deprivation and other psychological pressure.” In the past, Evin in particular has been accused of denying its inmates basic rights, and both women suffered from poor health that went untreated. Iranian-American scholar Haleh Esfandiari just released a memoir about her hellish eight-month stay in Evin following a routine visit in 2006 with her elderly mother.

Additionally, the women were heavily pressured to reclaim Islam. Back in August, a judge urged them to renounce Christianity. When Esmaeilabad and Rustampoor would not do so, they were sent back to jail “to think about it.” According to BosNewsLife, at one point in the hearing, one of the women said God had spoken to them through the Holy Spirit:

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:40 AM | Comments (1)

Carrie Prejean's Book Urges Women to Stand Up for Beliefs

In her book, Still Standing: The Untold Story of My Fight Against Gossip, Hate, and Political Attacks, former Miss California Carrie Prejean describes herself as “a sacrificial Christian thrown to the vicious and cruel media lions to be torn apart.” Prejean, a competitor and semi-finalist in the Miss USA 2009 pageant, became the center of media controversy this spring when she responded to a pageant question that she believes “marriage should be between a man and a woman,” not between same-sex couples.

Media treatment of the ensuing controversy — which raged on between Prejean, pageant officials, celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, and pageant owner Donald Trump — revealed more incriminating details, such as Prejean's half-naked photographs and pageant-funded breast implant surgery. Prejean’s avowed Christianity also prompted questions about the effectiveness of pageant preachers and Christian women's involvement in the questionable beauty pageant scene.

In the book, Prejean skirts some of the major issues that circulated in media gossip — including her relationship with Michael Phelps, the photographs, her breast implants, and heated comments in her parents’ divorce records — by acknowledging but quickly dismissing them.

Regarding the breast implant surgery, she writes, “It was a choice I had to make, and I made it; and as with all my choices, I’m prepared to stick by it.” It is an interesting answer, considering the book was inspired by another choice she had to make on stage. The book is more about Prejean’s right to make her own choices than an argument that she made the right ones.

The closest she comes to expressing regret is her admission that she did not always listen to the right people. She admits to putting herself “in a position to be exploited” when she signed on to the Miss California pageant, which is also the closest she comes to repudiating her involvement in the pageant scene. “For me, pageants had always been about competition and using that sash and tiara for good,” she wrote. “Now I saw the whole pageant as a sham, glittering and fake. Many of the people I had worked with and the girls I competed with were wonderful. But we were trapped in a system run by petty egos, shallow values, and a sort of venomous incompetence.”

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 10:38 AM | Comments (36)

A Quest to Question Mainstream Media

Many people who know me as an author and women's ministry speaker are often curious about why I started a film company. They seem to assume there is a split focus there. Perhaps there is, but because I see media in a more holistic way, one of the reasons I started Citygate Films was to influence the diet, so to speak, of what is being consumed in mainstream media. I also have a heavy concern that the "screen generation" is being fed more harmful images and narratives than uplifting ones.

For example, this is how my day has gone so far. I checked the news, and saw stories about a 15-year-old girl who was brutally gang-raped by anywhere between 7 to 10 men outside of a high school while at least a dozen others stood by and watched it without interfering, and a sadist who allegedly raped, murdered, and stowed the bodies of at least 10 women in his home. Those are just the stories in CNN's headlines — the tip of the iceberg nationally. There are numerous local stories about child sex abuse and murder that don't even make the national news.

Next, I checked my Twitter feed, which carried news of many nonprofit organizations (Christian and mainstream) that are working to improve the conditions of women and girls around the world. High on their list of concerns is sex trafficking and enslaved prostitutes.

I then started work by listening to a media panel about "transmedia" efforts — telling a single story across a variety of media platforms. One of the panelists spoke without shame of working with a clothing company that sponsored an interactive game about a stripper. The gamer controls the stripper's actions, which this media expert cheerfully said allowed the player to either make the stripper engage "in the most depraved actions" or "save her." It's an odd sponsorship, given the fact that the sponsor's clothes aren't seen very often. (The clothing company wasn't mentioned in this panel, but I wish it had been so that I would not patronize their stores or product.)

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 2:47 PM | Comments (8)

Planned Parenthood Puts Restraining Order on Former Director

Planned Parenthood has found itself in a legal battle with a former director who said she had a change of heart after watching an ultrasound for an abortion and quit the organization .

KBTX of Bryan/College Station, Texas, reports that Abby Johnson worked for Planned Parenthood for eight years, and two years as director, but joined forces with the Coalition For Life earlier this month, praying with volunteers outside the clinic.

Johnson said she was told to bring in more women who wanted abortions, something the Episcopalian churchgoer recently became convicted about. "I feel so pure in heart [since leaving]. I don't have this guilt, I don't have this burden on me anymore that's how I know this conversion was a spiritual conversion."

Planned Parenthood filed a temporary restraining order October 30 to prevent Johnson from disclosing information about the organization.

Johnson told Fox News that she became disillusioned after she felt pressure to increase profits by performing more abortions, which cost patients between $505 and $695.

"Every meeting that we had was, 'We don't have enough money, we don't have enough money — we've got to keep these abortions coming,' " Johnson said. "It's a very lucrative business and that's why they want to increase numbers."

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 9:31 AM | Comments (13)

Wheaton Students Advocate for Woman President

Out of the 111 members schools of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), six are led by female presidents. Some current and former Wheaton College students are hoping their alma mater becomes the seventh, once president Duane Litfin retires in mid-2010.

An “Open Letter to the Presidential Selection Committee” — penned by ’05 male graduate Ariah Fine and posted online Friday, October 23 — “strongly encourage[s] the committee to search diligently for a female or minority candidate to be in the final pool of candidates.” Circulated primarily on Facebook, the letter calls on the committee to uphold its stated commitment to hire someone who will “champion ethnic, economic, and gender diversity.”

As of November 2, the letter has garnered 351 signatures, and was sent to the committee right before the application deadline of November 1. Fine said he received confirmation that the committee had received this letter and a similar one he sent this spring, but hasn't heard from any of the committee members.

The letter claims that the number of white male presidents leading CCCU schools is much higher than those leading secular U.S. colleges, citing the statistic that only 2 percent of CCCU schools are led by females, compared with 21.1 percent of secular schools. Fine said he found these statistics from a 2005 Christian Higher Ed article summary available online, and makes this screenshot available.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:50 AM | Comments (20)

Reforming a Girls' Reformatory

In August, Beloit Juvenile Correctional Facility in northern Kansas closed its doors. Heather Hollingsworth’s coverage for the Associated Press highlights the triumphs and downfalls of one of the country’s longest-running girls’ reformatories.

Beloit was started in 1888 by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), which ran it for a year or two before handing it over to the state. A separate reformatory for juveniles was still a relatively new concept; up until the mid-19th century, children and adult were jailed in the same facility.

Beloit's WCTU had good intentions to shape “incorrigible” youth into morally upright women. Like other reformatories, girls at Beloit worked in the gardens or at nearby farms and took care of the institute’s animals.

“But with the high-minded ideals of the reformers, there was a dark side as well,” explained Ned Loughran, executive director of the Council for Juvenile Correctional Administrators in Braintree, Massachusetts. “These kids were an eyesore for the upper classes of society. The solution wasn’t to change the conditions they were growing up in, the poverty and lack of parental supervision. The view was to get them out of sight. Then people forgot they were there, and abuses crept into the system.”

One of Beloit’s worst times took place between 1935 and 1936 under superintendent Lula Coyner. With a growing belief in eugenics, Coyner forced 62 girls, nearly half of Beloit’s inhabitants, to be sterilized. The girls had to go to the police to stop Coyner, who was planning for more residents to have their fallopian tubes removed. Under other superintendents, girls had been physically and emotionally abused in other ways.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:04 AM | Comments (2)

Penny Pinching as a Christian Virtue?

Recently, my child who was home-schooled for six years attended a conference called Gathering Around the Un-hewn Stone. I make note of his educational history because I feel responsible for inspiring alternative ideas that catalyzed more alternatives than I imagined when he was 8.

The event opened with a lecture, "The Ecological Endgame of Industrial Civilization as a Crisis of/for Faith," which was purported to be about the moral bankruptcy of progress as an article of faith in modernity and, by default, of Christianity for the past 300 years. Resistance involves learning how to brain tan a deer, forage for food, and live out “attachment parenting” — a phenomenon about which my son has no need of instruction, given that he clung to me like a monkey when he was a boy.

In her book, In CHEAP We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue, journalist Lauren Weber espouses similar values, which, like rank materialism, are as old and American as Manifest Destiny. Last week Atlantic economics blogger Megan McArdle reviewed Weber’s book for The New York Times, and compared it unfavorably with the work of financial adviser Dave Ramsey, whom she describes as a “popular evangelical guru.”

Weber grew up without much heat in her home and surprised herself by following in her father’s frugal footsteps. McArdle takes issue with Weber’s idealization of fiscal asceticism, but not with Ramsey’s "save now, worry less later" approach. She says Weber’s idea of thrift as a moral virtue is problematic because it unduly worships parsimony. And McArdle rightly notes that if dumpster-diving “freegans” weren’t living off the largesse of their guilty neighbors, they’d have to get jobs like everybody else. The same could be said of Gathering Around the Un-hewn Stone attendees reveling in a buffet of supermarket overstock, but not of trash eaters around the world who have no other choice.

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 10:45 AM | Comments (9)

Signs of Faith in Sarah Palin's Book?

Sarah Palin may not be writing a second autobiography for Christian audiences as previously reported, but perhaps her evangelical co-author will persuade her to include more details about her faith.

Shortly after she was nominated as John McCain's vice presidential candidate, media outlets seemed to dig for details about her Pentecostal background. But the focus on Palin's faith appeared to fade after the election as she became a grandmother, battled with her daughter's ex-fiancee, and resigned from her Alaska office.

Palin's 400-page memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, is due out from HarperCollins and Zondervan November 17. (Coincidentally, it's the same day Zondervan releases Rick Warren's The Hope You Need. Warren became the target of criticism after he was chosen to lead the benediction at President Obama's inauguration.)
Going Rogue's product description suggests that Palin will write about "the importance of faith and family," but is still fairly vague. She chose to work on her book with Lynn Vincent, co-author of Same Kind of Different As Me (which is becoming a movie starring Samuel L. Jackson), and a former writer for World magazine.

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 12:19 PM | Comments (25)

Stranded in Manila, A Mother Prays

Twin typhoons Ketsana and Parma pummeled the Philippines and surrounding regions last week, taking more than 250 lives in Metro Manila and bringing the worst floods in 40 years to the capital. When Ketsana struck, Normi Son — an evangelical who works for a Montessori school downtown — found herself separated from her two children, ages 8 and 14. Below is her first-hand account of the floods that threatened to split her family in two.

At about 11 a.m. in my office at Cainta City, Metro Manila, I received a text message from my nephew: “Aunt, you won’t believe [this], but the river behind our house overflowed and the streets are now submerged into 2-meter-deep floodwater. Our neighbor’s fence has collapsed and their house is flooded. A landslide had occurred blocking the only road that would lead us to safety. Do not attempt to come. The roads are impassable.”

I phoned home to find out how my children were. They told me the river was still rising and that the walls behind our house could crumble anytime. My home was built on a piece of land 6 meters from Antipolo River. I felt numb at the thought of my children being stranded at home by themselves. I went to a corner and poured out my heart to God. “Please stop the rain now.” I kept uttering these words throughout the day, but the rain grew heavier. I wondered if God was listening.

Meanwhile, a member of my staff said that her husband had to swim to escape their submerged house. She said that flooding had started around our office. I looked out the window and saw dirty water rising up. Within a few minutes, it turned into a brown river raging in every direction; it engulfed plants, vehicles, bungalow houses, and small trees.

More complications hit us as the day wore on. The electricity was cut off by noon. Everyone on staff failed trying to go home by foot. I spent the entire afternoon with three of them, helping about 50 children and adults who had arrived at our office building. By nightfall, I completely lost contact with my children.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 3:29 PM | Comments (3)

'Homeless Chic' and the Homeless

One million children in the U.S. currently face homelessness, and one of the fastest growing segments among the homeless is families with children. Despite these alarming statistics, it’s the fashion industry’s fixation with "homeless chic" that has sparked the most public debate as of late.

W. magazine's September issue featured a spread called “Paper Bag Princess.” It depicted models on dingy streets wearing high-end shopping bags fashioned as clothes. Italian Vogue's September cover showed two models in tattered layers with dirty faces, hobo sticks in tow. Indeed, Details magazine heralds the arrival of the “poorgeoisie” in “How Looking Poor Is the New Status Symbol.” Steve Kandell writes:

Just because the cultural moment is dominated by bloodlust for the heads of AIG executives doesn’t mean public sentiment has turned against the accumulation of material possessions — it’s just that the material in question is likely to be double-brushed flannel. And that’s the advantage guys who look like Devendra Banhart have over guys who look like Patrick Bateman: The poorgeois are in cultural camouflage, blending in perfectly with a landscape full of genuine privation. The fact that their accoutrements may cost more than many suits is their secret pride.

This isn’t the first time homeless chic entered the fashion lexicon. In spring 2000, designer John Galliano created a stir when his newspaper-clad models took to the runway carrying empty bottles of liquor, tin cups dangling from their backs.

But some industry insiders have found more sensitive ways to approach the new reality of so many. Alongside shots of socialites, fashion editors, and the affluent in cities around the globe, street style photographer Scott Schuman featured a striking photo of a homeless man on his popular blog, The Sartorialist. While his shots don’t usually include commentary, he provided three paragraphs defending what he knew would be a controversial photo. He says:

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:57 AM | Comments (6)

U.K. Christian Says Yes to Abstinence, No to Gardasil

Simone Davis, a 17-year-old British immigrant and devout Christian, will be denied U.S. citizenship unless she agrees to a new immigration requirement that she be vaccinated with Gardasil, a compound that targets human papillomavirus (HPV), which can cause cervical cancer and genital warts.

Davis, who was adopted by her paternal grandmother in Port St. Joe, Florida, applied to Citizenship and Immigration Services for an exemption on moral and religious grounds, saying she is not sexually active and does not plan to be in the near future. Her exemption application was denied. Davis’s citizenship quest has been funded thus far by church groups, but her grandmother, Jean Davis, says she cannot afford an appeal. Other opponents say the requirement places an unfair financial burden on women because a three-shot series of Gardasil costs between $300-$1,400.

Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Chris Rhatigan told ABC News, "The decision to include HPV as a required vaccine was made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] . . . The objection to a waiver would have to be to all vaccines, not just Gardasil." But the requirement differs from other vaccines in that it is the only one that targets a virus spread through sexual contact. The other 13 target highly contagious diseases.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:12 AM | Comments (41)

The President's Speech and Parental Rights

Children in many U.S. schools yesterday heard President Obama exhort the values of hard work and personal responsibility in his back-to-school address. Reformed pastor John Piper of Bethlehem Baptist Church praised the speech as “a wonderful gift of common grace from God to the students of our land.” Before the speech, many parents had protested the way it was framed — the Department of Education had given schools a “menu of classroom activities” that suggested students write about “how they could help the President” — rather than its content. Many parents demanded that their school districts provide alternatives to watching the speech or that they not show it at all. School districts were forced to respond with less than two weeks’ notice to the Education Department’s announcement.

Meanwhile, in Quebec, a court struggle recently broke out over a new, mandatory “Ethics and Religious Culture” course that will replace three separate religion courses for all students. Some Christian parents protested it as a violation of their right to choose their children’s religious education, but Quebec’s Superior Court ruled August 31 that the class does not violate the right to “freedom of conscience and religion” in the Canadian Charter of Rights. Here's how one law professor at the Université de Sherbrooke defended the ruling:

What parents were demanding was the right to ignorance, the right to protect their children from being exposed to the existence of other religions. . . . This right to ignorance is certainly not protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Freedom of religion does not protect the right not to know what is going on in our universe.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:10 AM | Comments (26)

In Their Own Words: Laura Ling and Euna Lee

Much has been written about Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two American journalists captured this March, imprisoned for five months in North Korea, and released on August 6. But on Wednesday, for the first time, their story was told in their own words.

Lee and Ling’s story has unfolded over the past few months, and I have watched with interest, both because they are journalists and because they are women. I have tried to see myself in their situation in order to understand what they went through. But I have to admit, it is difficult to imagine myself hiking at sunrise across the border from China into North Korea, living in a third-world prison — or flying on a jet with Bill Clinton. It is even hard to imagine how they felt, behind the scenes, when they taped the “thank you” video posted the week after their return, much less during the ordeal in prison.

Instead, as I followed the story, I kept coming back to unanswered questions: Who are these women? What motivates them? And how did they survive?

Their statement didn’t do much to answer these questions, but this sentence at least provides a clue: “One of us, Euna, is a devout Christian whose faith infused her interest in the story.” Slowly, a new mental picture forms that is based on our shared faith.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:21 AM | Comments (3)

What the TNIV Means for Evangelical Women

As a blog centered on women, it seems only right for Her.meneutics to respond to Zondervan and Biblica’s major announcement that their gender-inclusive language Bible, NIVi (released only in Britain) was a mistake, and that they would no longer publish the controversial Today's New International Version (TNIV).

“Quite frankly, some of the criticism [of the NIVi] was justified, and we need to be brutally honest about the mistakes that were made,” said Keith Danby, CEO of Biblica, which owns the copyright to the NIV. “We fell short of the trust that was placed in us. We failed to make the case for revisions and we made some important errors in the way we brought the translation to publication. . . .”

Zondervan president Moe (Maureen) Girkins lamented that the TNIV “divided the evangelical Christian community,” and said the Michigan-based publishing house would begin phasing out TNIV-related products. “We’re trying to do this right and be as transparent as possible.”

Meanwhile, the Committee on Bible Translation has begun working on NIV 2011, which chairman Doug Moo said will reflect scholarly developments from the last quarter-century. He said the committee is undecided on how much gender-inclusive language the new NIV will include, and that it welcomes input at NIVBible2011.com.

As someone admittedly new to the debate surrounding TNIV — which some evangelical leaders believe abandons Scripture’s integrity in favor of political correctness — I had trouble finding much controversy in Tuesday’s announcement. The publishers focused not on the inherent errors of gender-inclusive translations but on the way they had introduced such a translation to the public. And they seem aimed more at producing a Bible that’s both accurate and accessible than condemning Bible readers who appreciate the TNIV’s use of humankind, men and women, et al. where the text is not gender-specific.

No matter, said Eugene Cho, a Seattle pastor writing for Sojourners' blog. Cho linked the disappearance of the TNIV to the “schizophrenic” landscape of evangelicalism, saying the TNIV was “immensely refreshing and encouraging” given “the increasing rise of the macho, masculine, and ultimate fighting Jesus presentation.” (My gratitude, though, for Cho’s link to Christianity Today’s April 2008 article “A Jesus for Real Men.”)

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:17 AM | Comments (28)

Half the Sky: A Must-Read Book

This past weekend, The New York Times Sunday Magazine devoted its entire issue to "Why Women's Rights Are the Cause of Our Time." Some very sober and powerful reading there — and not what you might think upon encountering a magazine with a title like that. In fact, these are real, global, and serious issues that should have the attention and ministry of Christians everywhere. More on that in a moment.

The lead feature was an excerpt from the forthcoming book by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn,a former Times correspondent who now works in finance and philanthropy. Here's a summary of the book, titled Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide — one that includes an honest fact about abortion that I was stunned to read in a mainstream publication. This is a good indicator of the journalistic veracity of this book's research:

Traditionally, the status of women was seen as a “soft” issue — worthy but marginal. We initially reflected that view ourselves in our work as journalists. We preferred to focus instead on the “serious” international issues, like trade disputes or arms proliferation. Our awakening came in China.

After we married in 1988, we moved to Beijing to be correspondents for The New York Times. Seven months later we found ourselves standing on the edge of Tiananmen Square watching troops fire their automatic weapons at pro-democracy protesters. The massacre claimed between 400 and 800 lives and transfixed the world; wrenching images of the killings appeared constantly on the front page and on television screens.

Yet the following year we came across an obscure but meticulous demographic study that outlined a human rights violation that had claimed tens of thousands more lives. This study found that 39,000 baby girls died annually in China because parents didn’t give them the same medical care and attention that boys received — and that was just in the first year of life. A result is that as many infant girls died unnecessarily every week in China as protesters died at Tiananmen Square. Those Chinese girls never received a column inch of news coverage, and we began to wonder if our journalistic priorities were skewed.

A similar pattern emerged in other countries. In India, a “bride burning” takes place approximately once every two hours, to punish a woman for an inadequate dowry or to eliminate her so a man can remarry — but these rarely constitute news. When a prominent dissident was arrested in China, we would write a front-page article; when 100,000 girls were kidnapped and trafficked into brothels, we didn’t even consider it news.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:35 AM | Comments (6)

Teaching an Old Dogfighter New Tricks

I was home in Philadelphia last Thursday when the news broke that my beloved Eagles had signed Michael Vick to a two-year contract. This came just four months after his release from prison on charges related to dogfighting. Local reactions were immediate and impassioned; people picketed the Eagles’ offices, called for boycotts on team sponsors, and returned their season tickets, which some estimate to have between a 400- and 4,000-year wait. “Hide Your Beagle, Vick’s an Eagle” was a popular rallying cry on the nightly news.

But others lined up at sporting goods stores to see if they could get one of the first Vick jerseys printed on Eagles green, nearly salivating as they described the new life Vick might breathe into the offensive strategy. While Philly fans are known for their passionate, vocal responses — both positive and negative — to their teams, it seems like since Thursday, even people outside Philadelphia and even the sports world have had something to say about it.

The big question is whether Michael Vick should ever be allowed to play football again, especially in the nation’s premier league. He’s had his chance, and he messed up. Big time.

But this is a story about second chances. Michael Vick wants one. The Eagles are giving him one. Will we extend him the same courtesy? How do we decide who deserves a second chance, and what form that might take?

This all hits close to home for Eagles head coach Andy Reid, who took time off two years ago when his two sons were arrested for drug charges. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports on Reid’s introduction of the newest Eagle at a press conference, which was uncharacteristically personal in tone:

“I'm a believer that as long as people go through the right process, they deserve a second chance. Michael has done that. . . . He has some great people in his corner, and he has proven that he's on the right track." Reid also admitted that his personal life influenced his strong feelings about Vick, referring to the arrests of his two sons . . . "I've seen people that are close to me who have had second chances that have taken advantage of those. . . . It's very important that people give them an opportunity to change, so we're doing that with Michael. The other side of that is we're getting one of the best football players in the league.”

Even Donovan McNabb, whose security as the Eagles’ starting quarterback is threatened by a new superstar QB who has held the position with another team, has vocally supported Vick’s return to the Eagles. He writes on his blog that he brought the idea to Reid first, advocating for his friend and future rival, because he believes the situation will give Vick the best support to move on and practice the lifestyle changes he says he wants. “I want to see him continue to grow as a person, spend time with his family and re-establish himself as a leader on and off the field,” McNabb writes. “Due to the nature of what happened and the attention it has received, it may not always be easy for him but he seems up for the challenge. Fortunately, with a tremendous individual like Tony Dungy in his corner, he will have the support he needs.”

Dungy, the former Indianapolis Colts coach and a committed Christian, sat by Vick’s side at his first Eagles press conference. Since retiring in January, Dungy has worked with imprisoned young men as part of his Christian outreach program. Of Dungy’s visits to Vick’s cell, the Los Angeles Times reports:

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:53 AM | Comments (10)

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, 1921-2009

I saw Eunice Kennedy Shriver once, in December of 1963. I was standing at the back of St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, D.C., waiting for a Mass in honor of her brother, John F. Kennedy, to begin. Most of the Kennedy family was seated in front when Mrs. Shriver arrived. She rushed past, so close I could have reached out and patted her full-length fur coat.

She was tall, with disheveled brown hair and hastily applied red lipstick. Her face was lined with grief. I saw other Kennedys that day, but Mrs. Shriver is the only one I remember — a 42-year-old, very pregnant force of nature, a woman in pain who knew exactly where she was going. That brief image keeps flashing across my mental screen as I read tributes to one of America’s truly great women, who died Tuesday at the age of 88.

A woman in an era when wealthy women did not work and almost no women went into politics, she may have achieved even more than her more famous brothers. Carla Baranauckas for The New York Times:

“When the full judgment of the Kennedy legacy is made — including J.F.K.’s Peace Corps and Alliance for Progress, Robert Kennedy’s passion for civil rights and Ted Kennedy’s efforts on health care, workplace reform and refugees — the changes wrought by Eunice Shriver may well be seen as the most consequential,” U.S. News & World Report said in its cover story of Nov. 15, 1993.

A child of privilege with personal connections to pomp and power, she worked tirelessly on behalf of the marginalized. J. Y. Smith for The Washington Post:

Her first job was with the State Department in Washington, where she was part of a program to help former prisoners of war become acclimated to civilian life. . . .

In 1947 and 1948, she was executive secretary of the Justice Department's National Conference on the Prevention and Control of Juvenile Delinquency. Having gained control of a $1 million trust fund at 21, she accepted a salary of $1 a year.

In 1950, she became a social worker at the federal penitentiary for women in Alderson, W.Va. In 1951, she moved to Chicago and worked at the House of the Good Shepherd, a youth shelter, and with the city's juvenile court system.

A prominent Democrat who disagreed with her party’s increasingly pro-choice stance, she stood up for the unborn and protested the abortion-rights agenda. The Susan B. Anthony List:

Eunice Kennedy Shriver was an early supporter of the Susan B. Anthony List and its mission to advance, mobilize and represent pro-life women in the political process. She and her husband, Sargent Shriver, also lent their time and talents to the efforts and activities of Democrats for Life of America and Feminists for Life.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:10 AM | Comments (9)

Deciphering the Pennsylvania Gym Shooting

It seems from his blog that George Sodini had a longstanding anger toward women. The isolated 48-year-old took a gun to a Pittsburgh-area gym last week and opened fire during a fitness class. Three women were killed and nine were injured before Sodini killed himself.

ABC News posted Sodini’s online journal, in which he writes about his hatred for his mother and brother, his frustration of “never having spent a weekend with a woman,” and executing a “plan” as early as November 2008.

“Thirty million is my rough guesstimate of how many desirable single women there are. A man needs a woman for confidence. He gets a boost on the job, career, with other men, and everywhere else when he knows inside he has someone to spend the night with and who is also a friend,” he said. “This type of life I see is a closed world with me specifically and totally excluded.”

Sodini also made a list of people and places that angered him. First on the list was the church he attended sporadically for 13 years, Tetelestai Church in Oakmont, Pennsylvania.

“Religion is a waste,” Sodini wrote on his blog of Alan “Rick” Knapp, pastor of Tetelestai, a nondenominational church focused on group Bible studies. “But this guy [Knapp] teaches (and convinced me) you can commit mass murder then still go to heaven.”

Continue reading "Deciphering the Pennsylvania Gym Shooting" »

Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:00 AM | Comments (21)

Beauty Pageant for Landmine Victims Scrapped

The Cambodian government last week banned the Miss Landmine beauty pageant, slated for Friday in the capital city of Phnom Penh.

Government officials initially supported the contest but changed their view, saying the contest would damage “the dignity and honor of people with disabilities." Besides the view that beauty pageants inherently objectify their participants, many people believe Miss Landmine mocks the disabled. (The contest logo is a one-legged female outline sporting a crown with a danger sign in the background.) In Miss Landmine Angola 2008, women took turns walking and posing on the catwalk, many of them supported by crutches.

Norwegian film director Morten Traavik launched Miss Landmine after a 2003 visit to the country of Angola in southern Africa. Civil war had recently concluded, and many landmines remained in the ground, causing injuries. When some children asked him to judge their own beauty pageant held in an alley, Traavik combined the idea of a pageant with raising awareness and support for landmine victims — or survivors, as the Miss Landmine manifesto prefers to call them.

UNICEF ranks Cambodia as the third most landmined country in the world. An estimated 4 to 6 million landmines remain in the ground 30 years after the military conflict between Cambodia’s former Communist regime, Khmer Rouge, and Vietnam. According to the Halo Trust, Cambodia is home to an estimated 25,000 amputees.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:42 AM | Comments (2)

Pants-Wearing Woman Challenges Sudan's Decency Law

French president Nicolas Sarkozy has thrown in support for a Sudanese woman who faces 40 lashes for wearing pants in public, a display the Sudanese government says violates its Shari'ah-based laws on public decency.

"We will continue to work with [Lubna Hussein] to help in her struggle, which is the struggle of all women," Sarkozy wrote in a letter Thursday. Hussein, a journalist in her 30s working for the United Nations, was among 13 women, some of them Christians, arrested at a Khartoum restaurant July 3 for wearing pants.

Ten of the women were flogged and fined the next day, but Hussein and two others decided to go to trial to challenge the law, in place since 1989, when President Omar al-Bashir seized power and instated a strict interpretation of Shari'ah. U.S. and international agencies have consistently ranked Sudan's government as one of the worst human rights violators, particularly for its complicity in the ethnic cleansing in Darfur since 2003 and for its failure to uphold religious freedom.

After a protest on Tuesday outside a Khartoum courthouse where police fired tear gas at a crowd of about 100, Hussein told Associated Press she is "not afraid of flogging. ... It's about changing the law," which she believes violates both Sudanese and Islamic law.

"If the [rulers] claim this is based on Islamic Shari'ah [law], can anyone show me a verse in the Qur'an or in the prophet's teachings that speak of flogging women because of their dress code?"

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:10 AM | Comments (2)

Florida's Other Marriage Amendment

The key to a lower divorce rate and healthier marriages starts before the vows are taken, according to advocates for mandatory premarital counseling.

Many states, including Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Maryland, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Arizona, have laws in place that provide economic incentives for couples who attend a specified number of hours of marriage education. Citing research proving the success of premarital counseling in reducing long-term divorce rates, some organizations are pushing for legislation that provides even more reasons for couples to attend premarital education.

In Florida, the Marriage Preparation Act proposes to raise the price of a marriage license by a $100 fee that can be waived if the couple attends eight hours of premarital counseling. It also raises the number of required hours from four to eight and promotes a premarital inventory test as part of the education. The act, which increases the statute already in place, is supported by the Christian Coalition of Palm Beach County and the Florida Family Policy Council, both Christian organizations that promote pro-life and traditional marriage legislation in the state.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:23 AM | Comments (10)

China Eases One-Child Policy in Shanghai

Reports began emerging late last week that while China is not lifting its one-child policy - heavily criticized for leading to forced abortions - it is considering amending it based on the needs of Shanghai, which hosts a rapidly aging population and weakening workforce.

Shanghai's Population and Family Planning Commission has begun sending out officials and volunteers to pass out leaflets and offer emotional and financial counseling to families who might be willing to have a second child. More births would help even out the age proportion and bolster the city's economy. And younger people will be needed: Shanghai is home to more than 3 million people over 60, about one-fifth of its population. In 2020, those over 60 are predicted to make up one-third.

At the start of Communist rule in 1949, China's government encouraged population growth and even banned birth control. But the population outgrew the food supply, causing over 30 million deaths from starvation by 1962. The government instated the one-child policy in 1979, and for 30 years has kept a tight rein on the country's population (the world's largest) of 1.3 billion people by monitoring pregnancies, sometimes forcing parents to terminate them.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 10:41 AM | Comments (3)

Corrupt Clergy and Forgiveness

In New Jersey this week, the news is corruption. Forty-four people, including three mayors, a state assemblyman, and five rabbis, have been arrested on various charges, including bribery and organ brokering. Shocking, even for New Jersey, many say. Ho hum, others sigh. For victims, the news is as fresh as an unexpected slap in the face. Imagine being the guy or girl who finds out that a rabbi was going to pocket $150,000 on the sale of your kidney. Imagine being one of those who learns he already has.

As Christians, we're fond of moral equivalence statements designed to inspire us to forgiveness. "There by the grace of God go I" is one. "The ground is level at the foot of the Cross" is another. I hate moral equivalence arguments. They impede the ability of victims to truly forgive. In this case, it is not the same thing for an impoverished father to sell a kidney to feed his family as it is for a member of the clergy to buy it for $10,000 while charging a desperate patient's family $160,000. One behavior, unchecked, may lead to another, but we empathize with the desperation and rightly deride the exploitation.

Still, corruption threatens its victims' souls nearly as much as its perpetrators'. The path of least resistance is to give in to bitterness and self-absorption, especially when expressions of anger at the injury or injustice draw condemnation from friend and foe alike. When our fellow believers hold up as models the Amish who immediately "forgave" the deranged Nickel Mines killer, for example, victims struggling with anger feel doubly violated. As one journalist discovered, even for the Amish, forgiveness is a complicated process.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:51 AM | Comments (6)

Jimmy Carter Speaks Up on Women

Former President Jimmy Carter recently penned dramatic columns for The Guardian and The Age, leading some people to believe that he's leaving the Southern Baptist Convention for the first time.

So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention's leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be "subservient" to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service. This was in conflict with my belief - confirmed in the holy scriptures - that we are all equal in the eyes of God.

But Carter actually made the decision to leave the SBC back in 2000, even though he did not have an official role in the 16-million-member denomination.

In his Guardian op-ed, titled "The words of God do not justify cruelty to women," the former President condemns gender inequality among all religions:

The truth is that male religious leaders have had - and still have - an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world.

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 11:53 PM | Comments (9)

Of God and Galaxies

Forty years ago Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to set foot on the moon, with an estimated 500 million people watching them via live broadcast below on planet Earth. I was not among those watching - I hadn't been born yet - and there hasn't been a single man-on-the-moon live broadcast in my lifetime. Eugene Cernan was the last man to visit the moon, in 1972.

Aldrin, Cernan, and five other astronauts met in Washington, D.C. yesterday to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the moon walk. During a press conference they were at times critical of the state of our nation's space program, urging future generations to surpass their accomplishments, but they also acknowledged the significant expense involved in space exploration. In a discussion on the merits of travel to Mars, David Scott, commander of the Apollo 15 mission, said, "We have to find a reason to go to Mars that will continue the funding."

Is pure exploration reason enough? I look up at the moon at night and it seems almost impossible to me that people have walked its far-off surface. (Of course, there are those who still say it never happened, that the whole moon landing was staged, a hoax.) I get chills listening to Armstrong's recorded voice, some 238,855 miles away, actually experiencing what countless generations had only dreamed about. I can't imagine looking at our planet from the vantage point of space.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:45 AM | Comments (5)

Where Does Francis Collins Stand on Stem-Cell Research?

President Obama announced last Wednesday his pick of Francis Collins, former director of the Human Genome Project and an evangelical Christian, to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the government's biomedical research wing. While a couple news reports have highlighted onlookers' hesitation over Collins's faith, few have examined Collins's views on embryonic stem-cell research, for which President Obama lifted by executive order a ban on federal funding this March.

So what exactly are Collins's views on the ethics of embryonic stem-cell research and when life begins? Below are some comments he has made on the matter in the last few years. See what you can parse out:

In a 2006 interview with Steve Paulson of Salon:
Paulson: Geneticists are sometimes accused of "playing God," especially when it comes to genetic engineering. And there are various thorny bioethical issues. What's your position on stem cell research?

Collins: Stem cells have been discussed for 10 years, and yet I fear that much of that discussion has been more heat than light. First of all, I believe that the product of a sperm and an egg, which is the first cell that goes on to develop a human being, deserves considerable moral consequences. This is an entity that ultimately becomes a human. So I would be opposed to the idea of creating embryos by mixing sperm and eggs together and then experimenting on the outcome of that, purely to understand research questions.

On the other hand, there are hundreds of thousands of such embryos in freezers at in vitro fertilization clinics. In the process of in vitro fertilization, you almost invariably end up with more embryos than you can reimplant safely. The plausibility of those ever being reimplanted in the future - more than a few of them - is extremely low. Is it more ethical to leave them in those freezers forever or throw them away? Or is it more ethical to come up with some sort of use for those embryos that could help people? I think that's not been widely discussed.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:10 AM | Comments (7)

Conservative Women Respond to Sotomayor

Conservatives will likely paint Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as an activist judge at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, which are set to begin Monday.

Those who oppose her nomination may focus on her remark about a "wise Latina" who would "hopefully" make better decisions because of her life experiences than a white male judge who had not shared them.

A CNN/Opinion Research poll reports that 47 percent say she should be confirmed, 40 said she should not, while 13 percent were unsure. Previous judges carried higher numbers: John Roberts (60/26), Samuel Alito (54/30), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (53/14), Clarence Thomas (52/17). She received the highest rating from the American Bar Association, and even an endorsement from former Clinton special prosecutor Ken Starr.

During Sotomayor's time as a judge, she's never ruled directly on anything related to Roe v. Wade. But Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein and Benjamin Cardin, both of whom are pro-choice, said they spoke with Sotomayor about Roe and were encouraged by her answers. Republican Senator Jim DeMint asked Sotomayor during a private meeting whether she believed an unborn child had any rights. According to the release, she said she "had never thought about it."

Pro-life groups are most concerned about Sotomayor's involvement with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, which filed at least six briefs related to abortion.

Several conservative women groups released statements earlier this week outlining their concerns about Sotomayor:

Charmaine Yoest, President and CEO of Americans United for Life

Her record of activism in support of a radical pro-abortion agenda is clear and documented. This is a judge with a record significantly worse than Judge Souter's. We are asking the Senate Judiciary Committee to seriously consider the consequences of confirming a Supreme Court justice whose radical record shows she would rule against all common-sense legal protections for the unborn, including parental notification, informed consent and bans on partial-birth abortion.

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 11:32 AM | Comments (11)

Sarah Palin: Andrew Sullivan's Punching Bag

No writer that I've read in the past 11 months has been more - dare I say - hysterically critical of Sarah Palin than The Atlantic's uber-blogger Andrew Sullivan. Eight months after the election, he is still harping on the failure of traditional media to investigate the parentage and birth of her son Trig.

With Palin's resignation as Governor of Alaska coming days after a scathing profile appeared in Vanity Fair, Sullivan is in fighting form. Yesterday, in one blog post alone, he called her a delusional liar, "the biggest farce in American politics in living memory" and a "hood ornament of a candidate." Palin may have been the wrong person for the job of Vice President, but she's nobody's hood ornament.

Nothing Sullivan has written about Palin has been more hypocritical than his condemnation of what he alleges is her exploitation of Trig and Bristol as props for the pro-life cause. Forget the fact that it was first-wave feminists and not religious conservatives whose motto was "the personal is political," Sullivan himself drags out his family to argue for gay marriage all the time and applauds others for doing the same. Not only that, but in the wake of George Tiller's murder, he posted anonymous reader e-mail after anonymous reader e-mail detailing unsubstantiated late-term abortion stories - thereby suggesting that perhaps even these gruesome acts should be legal.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 5:33 PM | Comments (28)

Trashing Sarah Palin's Faith, Family, and Femininity

It's hard not to draw comparisons between Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton. Both high-profile women are deeply beloved and passionately detested on both sides of the aisle. In fact, Christianity Today magazine came to both of their defenses during their most heated moments in the media spotlight. But Palin has faced particular scrutiny for her faith, thanks to her Pentecostal background.

The New York Times's Ross Douthat does a nice job outlining Palin's enemies:

Here are lessons of the Sarah Palin experience, for any aspiring politician who shares her background and her sex. Your children will go through the tabloid wringer. Your religion will be mocked and misrepresented. Your political record will be distorted, to better parody your family and your faith. (And no, gentle reader, Palin did not insist on abstinence-only sex education, slash funds for special-needs children or inject creationism into public schools.)

Male commentators will attack you for parading your children. Female commentators will attack you for not staying home with them. You'll be sneered at for how you talk and how many colleges you attended. You'll endure gibes about your "slutty" looks and your "white trash concupiscence," while a prominent female academic declares that your "greatest hypocrisy" is the "pretense" that you're a woman. And eight months after the election, the professionals who pressed you into the service of a gimmicky, dreary, idea-free campaign will still be blaming you for their defeat.

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 12:37 AM | Comments (29)

Liberty University and the Liberty to Dissent

Last month, Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, revoked its official recognition of the student Democratic group on campus, saying that the Democratic Party platform conflicted with the university's Christian principles.

Following purported complaints from trustees, parents, and (perhaps most significantly) donors, Student Affairs Vice President Mark Hine sent an e-mail to Brian Diaz, president of the College Democrats, saying that the university was "unable to lend support to a club whose parent organization stands against the moral principles held by Liberty University."

"By using Liberty University and Democrat in the name," Hine wrote, "the two are associated and the goals of both run in opposite directions." The e-mail concluded,

We are removing the club from the Liberty website and you will need to cease using Liberty University's name, including any logo, seal or mark of Liberty University. They are not to be used in any of your publications, electronic or internet, including but not limited to, any website, Facebook, Twitter or any other such publication.

Censorship, some said. But others noted that conservative student groups have been targeted in this way for years. Commenters on news sites and blogs pointed out that Liberty is a private university and as such retains the right to bar certain student groups from official recognition, while others countered that it's a private university, yes, but one that receives federal funding.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:51 AM | Comments (15)

Supreme Court Rules Girl's Strip Search Unconstitutional

In a case that Her.meneutics covered this April, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled late last week that Arizona middle school officials violated the Constitution when they strip-searched a 13-year-old girl suspected of having over-the-counter pain medication.

Savana Redding's parents sued Safford Middle School in 2003 after an administrative assistant and nurse, both women, had Redding remove her undergarments and expose her breasts and pelvic area to see if she was hiding Ibuprofen, which she was not.

Savana’s subjective expectation of privacy against such a search is inherent in her account of it as embarrassing, frightening, and humiliating. The reasonableness of her expectation (required by the Fourth Amendment standard) is indicated by the consistent experiences of other young people similarly searched, whose adolescent vulnerability intensifies the patent intrusiveness of the exposure. . . .

Changing for gym is getting ready for play; exposing for a search is responding to an accusation reserved for suspected wrongdoers and fairly understood as so degrading that a number of communities have decided that strip searches in schools are never reasonable and have banned them no matter what the facts may be.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 2:31 PM | Comments (0)

Fighting Injustice through Art

Two recent films have played unexpected roles in raising awareness of political and religious practices in Iran that trap many women in cycles of oppression and violence.

Time magazine TV critic James Poniewozik recently blogged about Persepolis, a 2007 animated film based on a series of graphic novels by Marjane Satrapi about her childhood during the Iranian Revolution. Poniewozik noted that Satrapi provided a powerful representation of life in Iran at a significant moment for women’s rights.

Then, this past weekend, The Stoning of Soraya M. debuted on 27 screens in the United States, earning $117,000. Based on a book by Iranian-French journalist Freidoune Sahebjam, the film tells the story of an Iranian woman stoned to death after being falsely accused of infidelity soon after the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Writer-director Cyrus Nowrasteh and actress Shohreh Aghdashloo are both Iranian.

Soraya M. is a story of injustice arising from religious and political systems in need of change, and has drawn comparisons to the story of Neda Agha-Soltan, the 26-year-old woman whose death in a Tehran demonstration over Iran’s disputed elections was captured in a video shared worldwide.

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 2:59 PM | Comments (2)

Am I My Sister's Keeper?

My Sister's Keeper, director Nick Cassavetes' (The Notebook) new weeper film starring Cameron Diaz and Abigail Breslin, releases today.

Fans of the original 2004 Jodi Picoult novel may be expecting a cinematic exploration of the ethical ramifications of PIDG (pre-implantation genetic diagnosis), the medical practice of engineering and selecting embryos for specific medical reasons.

After all, in both the novel and the movie, the drama centers on a cancer-stricken teenager and the younger sister who was engineered in a test tube to be an ideal donor of blood and bone marrow. (USA Today's Cathy Lynn Grossman, a fan of the novel, offers a succinct summary of the issue and its implications on her Faith and Reason blog.)

Although the film is faithful to the book in a number of ways, a significantly altered ending and a shift in emphasis make PIDG more of a plot point than a central theme. Intriguingly, a different, but closely related issue, bubbles up in its place.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:06 AM | Comments (3)

Stand By Your Unfaithful Politician Husband?

Just in the last week, two Christian politicians admitted to having affairs, but their wives were noticeably absent from the press conferences.

Yesterday, Governor of South Carolina Mark Sanford admitted that he had an affair with a Argentinean woman, and last week, Nevada Senator John Ensign confessed to having an affair with a staff member of his campaign. Sanford has previously called the evangelical Seacoast Church his home church, and Ensign was active with Promise Keepers.

Politico outlines how most politicians' wives have stood by their mournful husbands in recent years:

The traditional rule book for adultery damage control always recommends something like this: cheating candidate confesses, sheds a tear if he can (and it has always been a he), and then pleads for mercy with a pained, tight-lipped wife standing mutely by his side. That’s how Suzanne Craig handled it when her husband, then Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig, admitted that he plead guilty to disorderly conduct after he was arrested for lewd behavior in a men's bathroom stall. Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter came clean about his involvement in a Washington, D.C. prostitution ring with his wife, Wendy Baldwin Vitter, standing next to him. And a shellshocked Silda Wall Spitzer, stood next to her husband, then-New York Governor Elliot Spitzer, after he was caught on a federal wire-tap soliciting a high-priced prostitute.

In both Ensign's and Sanford's case, the wives issued statements about their husband's affair, indicating their support despite their absence from the public spotlight.

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 9:06 AM | Comments (16)

Neda: More Than Her Death

An e-mail sent to me from a friend in Iran was posted on the Facebook wall of German chancellor Angela Merkel after I tweeted a link to the e-mail, which I had, with permission, posted on my blog. Got that?

The following day, Merkel (or more likely her subordinate) posted a statement of support for the Iranians protesting the disputed election results that threaten to keep Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power, and the police's crackdown on their protests. Obviously Merkel was responding to world events and not to a single e-mail. But really, who could have envisioned this?

The image that swiftly leapt time zones and that has thus far come to symbolize the protesters' cause in Iran is that of 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan, a beautiful young woman whose death was videotaped and uploaded to Facebook by an expatriate friend of the video-taper residing in the Netherlands.

The video is heartbreaking and graphic. I don't want to see it again. On Twitter yesterday morning, someone questioned the morality of using it as an icon. I wanted to tweet back: It is obscene. We don't even know her name. What must her mother feel?

But there is a paradox when a loved one dies. We want the whole world to stop and take notice - and we simultaneously want it to leave us alone. I wondered what this woman's family would want, and what their culture prescribes.

On Monday the Los Angeles Times shed a bit of light on this aspect of the story: "To those who knew and loved Agha-Soltan," it reported, "she was far more than an icon. She was a daughter, sister and friend, a music and travel lover, a beautiful young woman in the prime of her life. ‘She was a person full of joy,' said her music teacher and close friend Hamid Panahi . . . ‘She was a beam of light.' "

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:00 AM | Comments (6)

First Dalit Woman Elected to India Parliament

Earlier this month India elected the first Dalit woman ever as Speaker for its House of Parliament.

Meira Kumar, 64, was elected unanimously as the first woman Speaker of Lok Sabha in the lower house of Parliament, where she will preside over 543 elected members. There are 58 women in the House. India's current president, Pratibha Devisingh Patil, is also a woman.

Kumar is the third Dalit to be elected to a position in the Indian government; in 2007, K. G. Balakrishnan was elected Chief Justice, and Raman Kocheril Narayanan served from 1997 to 2002 as India's first Dalit president.

The Dalits ("untouchables") make up the lowest rung of India's five-caste system. According to the Dalit Freedom Network, a Christian advocacy group, they are considered sub-human and are often mistreated and abused, despite India's constitutional guarantee of certain rights and freedoms to all citizens. Dalits compose 25 percent of India's population, and 75 percent of Indian Christians are from the Dalit class.

Evangelical leader K. P. Yohannan, president of Gospel for Asia, released a statement praising Kumar's appointment because, as a Dalit woman, Kumar represents the most ill-treated group of people in the world.

"Now the most despised people in the most abused people group have a voice in one of the world's largest government bodies - the Indian Parliament," Yohannan said. "She is already a great political force, yet it is still amazing that a Dalit woman was elected to this powerful position. Now she holds great power, so when the issues involving human rights or the downtrodden people groups come up, she will be the one to decide if the issue will be heard."

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:56 AM | Comments (1)

Women's Groups Lash Out at Letterman in Palin's Defense

Several women's groups have joined Sarah Palin's fight with David Letterman over his joke that Palin's daughter got "knocked up" by Alex Rodriguez during their recent trip to New York.

"It's worse than poor taste; it reflects ugliness in him. He would never say something like that about a liberal woman," president of Concerned Women for America Wendy Wright said in a statement. "But rather than deal with issues and ideas, he denigrates her as a human being."

The Alaska governor characterized Letterman's jokes as a reference to "statutory rape" since the only child with her at the game was her 14-year-old daughter, Willow. Letterman said the following night that the joke was in "poor taste," but he says he was joking about 18-year-old Bristol Palin, not Willow.

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 11:35 AM | Comments (19)

Journalists Slammed for Covering N. Korean Women's Hell

On Monday, journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor in a North Korean prison. This morning, Blaine Harden in The Washington Post shares the probable reason: they were researching an article on the plight of women who, fleeing famine and poverty in North Korea, crossed the border into China. (You may have to create an account to read the Post article, but the account is free and takes only a minute to set up.)

Many of these refugee women ended up "being sold like livestock in China," according to one refugee who was sold in marriage to three men, sent back to North Korea, permanently maimed from a police beating, and then sent to a labor camp that she characterized as "hell on earth."

Actually, says a South Korean human-rights researcher, most of the women are much better off in China than they were in North Korea. If they stay with the men who buy them, they are given adequate food and housing. However, they and most of their children have no legal status. Without residency papers, the women can be deported at any moment - back to North Korea, where they will be treated as criminals. Their undocumented children, who will remain with their Chinese fathers, may not be able to go to school.

Tina Lambert, advocacy director of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a U.K.-based human-rights group, called upon North Korea to "rescind this unjust sentence and to grant Laura Ling and Euna Lee's immediate release. . . . We urge the United Nations to boldly condemn and extensively investigate these concerns at all levels of its system, including the Security Council, as a matter of utmost importance."

Google "Christianity and women's rights" and you'll find plenty of evidence for the church's relative shortcomings in this area. But note that North Korea and China are both officially atheistic countries. When I get impatient with the church's slowness in treating women and men equally, I'll remind myself of that.

Meanwhile, let's all pray for Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee.

Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 10:26 AM | Comments (1)

Sonia Sotomayor: 'I Feel Your Pain'

Women: Imagine you've been having problems with pre-menstrual depression or unpleasant menopausal symptoms. Men: Imagine you're having problems that are probably prostate-related, or maybe you're having trouble getting it up. All else being equal (though of course it never is), would you rather see a male or a female physician?

Empathy matters. That's why I'm not worried about the line from Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's 2001 lecture, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Yes, she needs to explain what she did and did not mean - and I'm sure she'll be given the opportunity to do so. Chances are, she did not mean that she would toss objective law out the window whenever a Latina woman walked into the courtroom. After all, in 1997 Sotomayor told Senator Jeff Sessions, "I do not believe we should bend the Constitution under any circumstance. It says what it says. We should do honor to it."

And I'm guessing Sotomayor didn't mean she thinks that, all things being equal, Anglo-Saxon men make inferior judges. In the 2001 lecture, in fact, she said she believes "that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable."

The point is, all things are never equal, and with a diversified set of justices, unconscious prejudices - whether on the part of white males, Latina females, black males, Jewish females, or anyone else - inevitably are held up to the light.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:03 AM | Comments (25)

Introducing Julia Duin

I'm very grateful to have been asked to join the list of contributors to Her.meneutics. I work as a full-time religion reporter, but I also veer off into related topics, such as a piece I did for Mother's Day on women who decide not to abort their handicapped children.

I got the idea for that article the way I get ideas for most of my columns and news articles: I get around, I talk with people, I experience things. I was hearing from various pro-life women about genetics counselors from hell who, once they learn you are pregnant with a deformed child, are on you in two seconds to abort. Which is why many such women were patronizing Catholic hospitals and clinics, where they knew they would not be pressured to get rid of their child. I looked into the matter and found a pile of websites and sources - many of them from women who chose to bear such children - geared to support difficult pregnancies. One thing I like to do in my work is highlight a group or point of view that doesn't often get mentioned in the media, so I embarked on learning what it's like to bear a child, only to have him or her die that same day.

The parents in my story all said they were so glad to have continued their pregnancies, because at least they had photos of these children to carry with them forever. With an abortion, there are no photos.

I had encountered parents of such children back in the mid-1990s during the partial-birth abortion debates on Capitol Hill. I met parents who had been told they needed a horrific third-term abortion, only to learn that their child's health was not terminal. One couple hoisted a boy about 10 months old who had some of his organs outside his body when he was born. Yes, his tummy looked like a train track, but medics managed to reinsert his organs, and he was a healthy child. That's when I realized that genetics counselors often tell parents to abort such boys.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 1:52 PM | Comments (1)

Arts Funding Slashed in Economic Crunch

In a bleak economy, budget cuts are a necessity - but from the arts? Even aside from a philosophical belief that art benefits a society and its citizens, such drastic cuts will inevitably mean massive layoffs for those who work in the arts sector if the House passes the bill.

Zero is a shock-value word, and I did indeed feel shock as I read reports of the Senate's decision. I don't want to see my state's arts and culture budgets slashed. Yet in a state where 16.8 percent of all children live below the poverty level - a number that climbs to nearly one-third of children in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and in several rural counties - I have to question if money spent on the arts is the best allocation of resources.

Muslih-uddin Sadi, a 13th-century Persian poet, said that if all he owned was two loaves of bread, he would sell one loaf and buy hyacinths to feed his soul. I love hyacinths, and I love the idea of feeding my soul, but I can't help wonder if Muslih-uddin Sadi was very hungry when he wrote that - or if, indeed, he had ever been very hungry.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:41 AM | Comments (3)

How Would a Woman Change the Supreme Court?

This spring may mark another race - besides last weekend's Preakness Stakes - that finds a female crossing the finish line in first place.

Since Associate Justice David Souter announced May 1 that he would be retiring from the Supreme Court, pundits and Court watchers have predicted President Obama will nominate a woman to fill the seat. If appointed, a female justice would be only the third to serve. President Reagan nominated the first female Justice to the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O'Connor, in 1981. President Clinton nominated the second, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in 1993. Thus, from 1993-2006 two women served on the Court, until Justice O'Connor resigned and her seat was filled by Justice Samuel Alito.

Political scientists observe that Presidents are reluctant to reverse the precedent of appointing religious, cultural, and racial minority-group members once the initial barrier is broken. Roger Taney's 1835 appointment to the Court created a minimum threshold of one "Catholic seat" on the Court. (There are currently five.) Louis Brandeis's 1916 appointment similarly created a "Jewish seat" that was kept until Abe Fortas resigned in 1969. And in perhaps the most striking case of a President preserving the seat, President George H. W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to fill the seat vacated by Justice Thurgood Marshall, appointed in 1967, maintaining an "African American seat." The Thomas appointment resulted in a dramatic change in both the political ideology and judicial philosophy of the person holding that seat.

Given this, restoring two women members to the high court seems in keeping with past presidential practice. According to recent American Bar Association data, women now compose about half of U.S. law school students, 30.1 percent of practicing attorneys, and about a quarter of judges on the lower federal courts. Current top prospects for the nomination include Judge Sonia Sotomayor, federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; Diane P. Wood, federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit; Elena Kagan, currently the U.S. Solicitor General, the federal government's top lawyer; and Janet Napolitano, current Secretary of Homeland Security and former governor of Arizona. Other maybes include Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, and Leah Ward Sears, Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court. Of the top four contenders, publically available data suggest that at least two are Christians, and one is Jewish.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:00 AM | Comments (13)

Obama: A Friend to Pro-Lifers?

In 1993, when Christine Todd Whitman was the Republican candidate for the governor of New Jersey, her views on abortion were muted at best. I recall being cautiously optimistic as I voted for my state's first and only female governor. By the time she ran for a second term, it was clear she had little use for us pro-lifers. In 2005, Whitman published a book called It's My Party Too and became an outspoken critic of "social fundamentalists."

I haven't read Whitman's book, but my guess is that she came to her convictions about "social fundamentalists" after losing significant battles as governor. In 1997, Whitman vetoed a ban on partial-birth abortion that was overturned by the state legislature. Then in 1999, avoiding another potential veto, she signed a parental notification bill into law. Pro-lifers, it would seem, could celebrate significant legal victories under an abortion rights governor. Not so. Both laws are permanently enjoined by court order. We won the political battle and nothing changed.

In 2008, Barack Obama ran on a platform of change. Change in tone, change in rhetoric, change in focus. When I was considering my vote, I wasn't terribly bothered by his "above my pay grade" response to Rick Warren's Saddleback Forum question about when a fetus is entitled to human rights. People of good faith disagree about when en-soulment happens. I understood his answer to be a nod to this reality. What did bother me, however, was a response he gave to an abortion question in western Pennsylvania a few months earlier. "Look," he said, "I got two daughters - 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby." That is an astounding statement from the child of a teen mother. It is also one I take to have sprung from a place of deep personal pain.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:39 AM | Comments (25)

Obama's Kinder, Gentler Culture War

I didn't see this one coming. K. and I had been talking about her sex life. We had arranged to meet before a sexual abstinence event at a church in Michigan. I was there interviewing young people for a book project on evangelical abstinence campaigns, and K. travels the country with an organization that promotes waiting for sex until marriage. K. is an attractive, gregarious young woman in her early 20s, but her easy laugh belied her deeper pain.

I had asked her about her previous dating relationships and what led her to commit to abstinence. What began as a tale of sexual escapades quickly devolved into a heartbreaking story of abortion. As can often be the case in the complex tangle of life, she wanted the baby, but at the same time she didn't. Her much-older boyfriend had left the cash for the procedure on the dresser. She bled for quite a bit afterward, and through her tears told me that she had found a fragment that looked like a small hand on the floor of her bathroom. It had happened a few years ago, but the pain was still fresh. She had been eleven weeks pregnant at the time. My eyes filled with tears, threatening to shatter my objective researcher posture, as I tried to nonchalantly continue taking notes. I instinctively touched my belly - I was eleven weeks pregnant myself.

Stories like K.'s often get lost in the vitriolic rhetoric surrounding abortion. President Obama's abortion rhetoric in his commencement address at the University of Notre Dame yesterday is a small step in the right direction. "How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?" Obama asked the graduates. But what about individuals like K. who are implicated by the rhetoric without holding strong convictions of their own?

President Obama's appearance at Notre Dame has sparked controversy and protests in recent weeks, but not as much as one might expect from an ostensibly pro-life Catholic institution. A recent poll from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life suggests that Catholics are little different from the rest of the population: For both groups, about half had not even heard of the Notre Dame controversy. Perhaps a sign of battle fatigue in the decades-old culture wars?

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:59 AM | Comments (5)

Stuff, the Sleeper Hit

A year and a half ago, Annie Leonard released The Story of Stuff, a 20-minute video about the dangers of over-consumption. It "has become a sleeper hit in classrooms across the nation," Leslie Kaufman wrote in Sunday's New York Times: "So far, six million people have viewed the film at its site, StoryofStuff.com, and millions more have seen it on YouTube. More than 7,000 schools, churches, and others have ordered a DVD version, and hundreds of teachers have written Ms. Leonard to say they have assigned students to view it on the Web."

Critics object to Kaufman's negative portrayal of big business, along with inaccuracies and oversimplification. Even if you agree with Leonard's main point - that we buy far too much, and that this is bad for us, for others, and for the earth - you may find the video unnecessarily confrontational.

Like it or not, chances are your kids (friends, relatives, coworkers) are going to watch this video, and it may come soon to a church near you. Stick with it, even if the first three minutes appall you. Leonard raises issues that Christians are already discussing (see, for example, the discussion of fair trade at the Ten Thousand Villages website) and that we need to talk more about with our kids. For example:

-- Let's assume that some businesses do operate for the benefit of humankind and the earth. How do these businesses care for the environment? What are their policies on work hours? Wages? Health benefits? Child labor? The products they make? The way they market their products?
-- Can a business care for the environment and its employees and still make a profit?
-- How much of my identity is related to things I buy? Which of my purchases have made me happier? Am I happier today because of anything I bought last year?

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 4:24 PM | Comments (9)

Donald Trump Says Miss California Can Keep the Crown

If you haven't had enough of Miss California yet, she's still reigning in the news today. Donald Trump, owner of the Miss USA pageant, says Carrie Prejean can keep her crown, even after more racy photos were released online this morning.

A gossip site has posted more pictures of Prejean, some of which are topless. Trump called many of the pictures "lovely."

"We have determined that the pictures taken are fine," he said. "Some were very beautiful, some were risque, but, again, we're in the 21st century. . . . In many cases they were actually lovely pictures."

Trump and Prejean reminded the press at a news conference today that both she and President Obama oppose same-sex marriage. Several conservative Christian groups have praised Carrie Prejean for saying during the pageant that she is against same-sex marriage.

But Ben Smith writes that at the press conference, Carrie Prejean put some distance between herself and the movement, saying she stood by her beliefs but didn't plan to make a career of them.

"I am not working for the National Organization for Marriage. I spent about an hour with them," she said. Politico posted a short video from the news conference:

In an ad for USA Today, Focus on the Family asks "What would you sacrifice for your beliefs?"

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 10:56 AM | Comments (18)

Women Benefit from Health-Care Overhaul

In an attempt to stave off a major federal overhaul of the $2.5 trillion health-care industry, health-insurance companies agreed yesterday to stop insuring women at higher premium rates than they do men.

Karen Ignagni, president of the trade group America's Health Insurance Plans, testified before the Senate Finance Committee that she doesn't think gender should factor into rates for individual policies. Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) likewise introduced a bill that would prevent health insurance companies from considering sex in setting policy premiums.

"The disparity between women and men in the individual insurance market is just plain wrong, and it has to change," said Sen. Kerry, whose proposed bill also bars insurers from denying or limiting coverage based on a woman's "pregnancy status or delivery method." "With Mother's Day around the corner," he said, "there's no better gift to American women than discrimination-free, affordable and accessible insurance that meets their health needs."

Two-thirds of women in the U.S. ages 18 to 64 are medically insured through their employers, and so are already protected by federal and state laws that bar employer plans from setting premium rates based on gender, race, or poor health. It's the 5.7 million women, often self-employed, who buy insurance in the individual market that are most vulnerable for being charged at rates higher than men for similar policies.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:56 AM | Comments (9)

Glow-in-the-Dark Bark

My two-year-old has a pair of pajamas that glow in the dark. He loves them, and asks to wear them almost every night. And I say yes - as long as they're clean. But what do I say when he asks me for a glow-in-the-dark puppy?

Scientists at Seoul National University in South Korea recently announced the successful cloning of the world's first transgenic dog. "Transgenic," meaning that the dog, dubbed Ruppy (a combination of "ruby" and "puppy"), carries a gene from another species - in this case a red-fluorescing protein taken from a sea anemone. Headed by Byeong-Chun Lee, who made headlines in 2005 with Snuppy, the world's first cloned dog, the team of scientists injected cloned canine cells with the fluorescent gene in order to create Ruppy and four other glowing beagles. Ruppy doesn't actually glow in the dark, but she does fluoresce an eerie-looking red under UV light (see right).

I've seen fluorescing anemones at aquariums, waving in the water, their delicate fronds emitting a soft light alongside plaques explaining the gene they carry that makes them glow. And I can't help thinking about these creatures - hidden in the ocean for ages before being discovered by humans - glowing for perhaps no reason other than the glory of their Creator.

Now we have not only seen the fluorescing sea anemone, we have isolated what makes it glow, harvested the gene, and successfully implanted it into a mammal. We've made ourselves a glowing dog, though I doubt my son will be getting his glow-in-the-dark puppy any time soon - only 1.7 percent of the cloned embryos from which Ruppy hails developed to full term.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:41 AM | Comments (7)

Nutrition for Nascent Human Life

This is going to sound odd, but I have fond memories of receiving WIC benefits as a young mother. For about two years, I gratefully took advantage of both Medicaid and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC). Perhaps because I was working in a health food store at the time, I liked the idea that WIC only covered nutritious foods like milk, peanut butter, and the soy formula my highly allergic toddler needed for his Cheerios. It also didn't carry with it the stigma of the Medicaid card. Unlike some medical professionals, grocery store cashiers didn't seem to begrudge my benefits.

In its annual report, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reveals that it spent $60.7 billion on food assistance programs in 2008, an 11 percent increase from 2007 and the eighth consecutive record-breaking increase. WIC was the fastest growing program of the year, even though it only accounted for a tenth of the outlay.

WIC ensures basic nutrition for nascent human life. It's a program pro-lifers can heartily support. I would even say we have a moral obligation to support it. With an appallingly high infant mortality rate, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention links to maternal poverty, the United States is shamefully derelict in the health of its youngest members.

In a recent Atlantic post, Marion Nestle, professor of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University, wondered "what it means that half of U.S. infants are born into families so poor that they are eligible for WIC benefits." I can't answer that question because I wasn't poor, I was just eligible. I worked, lived with my parents, and later repaid my debt many times over through taxes and a public school mentorship to teen mothers. Three vital elements were at work in overcoming my situation. First was the support of my middle class family. Second was my own sense of responsibility for my circumstances. Third was government assistance. (Marriage eliminated this element.) Thus, I'm in no position to begrudge people their benefits.

Nonetheless, I've been struggling with one of the Capitol Hill Day action items I received at the Mobilization to End Poverty event sponsored by Sojourners and World Vision last week.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:43 AM | Comments (5)

Miss CA Becomes Ad Spokeswoman for Traditional Marriage

Carrie Prejean, who received hearty praise from conservative Christian groups for her statement on same-sex marriage in the Miss USA beauty pageant, is appearing in a TV ad for the National Organization for Marriage, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit led by Maggie Gallagher and Princeton University professor Robert George.

Prejean went on the Today show Thursday to defend her decision. "You know what, Matt, I never thought in a million years that this would be happening right now. I was attacked for giving my own opinion on stage at a Miss USA contest. I'm gonna do whatever it takes, Matt, to protect marriage. It's something that's very dear to my heart."

The Senates in both New Hampshire and Maine passed bills this week that would legalize same-sex marriage if the respective House of Representatives approves them. The New England states would become the fifth and sixth in the country to legalize gay marriage.

Meanwhile, two Miss USA pageant directors told celebrity gossip show Access Hollywood Wednesday that Prejean received breast implants - paid for by the Miss California Organization - six weeks before the Miss USA contest. Shanna Moekler, co-director of the organization, said in the interview, "Breast implants in pageants is not a rarity. It's definitely not taboo. It's very common. Breast implants today among young women today is very common."

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:17 AM | Comments (18)

Elizabeth Lev Defends Mom's Decision to Turn Down Notre Dame

Politics Daily contributor Elizabeth Lev fired a smart defense this morning of Mary Ann Glendon's refusal to accept Notre Dame's Laetare Medal and to speak alongside President Obama at the school's May 17 commencement ceremony. Glendon sent a letter Monday saying she could not accept the medal because of Notre Dame's decision to give an honorary degree to someone whose pro-choice policies sharply contradict Catholic teaching. Lev, based in Rome, summarizes Glendon's consistent life ethic nicely:

Professor Glendon was to have been honored for not only for her scholarship, but for her second career, her pro-bono work - ranging from the civil rights movement of the 1960s to the great civil rights issues of the present day - namely, the defense of human life from conception to natural death. Her concerns range from the aging and dying population to the unborn to the well-being and dignity of every life, regardless of race, religion, or economic status. Her outstanding work in this field has earned her the respect of the most brilliant minds of the international community, regardless of whether they agree with her position. So again, to see her merely as "strongly anti-abortion" instead of as a tireless defender of the dignity of life, is to reveal not only a lack of understanding of the subject's work, but also the writer's real interest in this question.

The person labeling Glendon "strongly anti-abortion" was Lev's Politics Daily colleague Kaitlynn Riely, whose Monday column criticized Glendon for not being more diplomatic and "engaging someone of an opposing view . . . [Glendon's] diplomatic style seems to be less suited for U.S.-Vatican relations and more for U.S.-Cuba relations," Riely quipped.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 3:14 PM | Comments (3)

Going Undercover to Expose Planned Parenthood

The Los Angeles Times recently profiled a college student who videotapes counseling sessions at Planned Parenthood clinics to expose potential wrongdoings.

Lila Rose, a 20-year-old UCLA history major, has led her group Live Action to videotape clinics in Los Angeles, Indianapolis, Bloomington, Tucson, Phoenix, and Memphis. In the following video, she poses as a 13-year-old impregnated by an older man.

"OK," the aide says, "I didn't hear the age. I don't want to know the age. It could be reported as rape. And that's child abuse."

"So if I just say I don't know who the father was, but he's one of the guys at school or something?" asks the girl.

"Right," says the aide.

Robin Abcarian writes that the nurse's aide seen on the tape was fired and a second staffer resigned.

The videos are also making an impact in other states, according to United Press International:

In Tennessee, legislators said Wednesday that they will try to cut off a $721,000 contract with Planned Parenthood, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. The legislators were inspired by a video made by Lila Rose, 20, a student at UCLA who posed as a minor seeking an abortion at a clinic in Memphis. Orange County, Calif., supervisors last month rescinded a $300,000 grant for sex education. A conservative businessman who had met Rose raised objections to the grant.

The UPI story is unclear, however, whether Rose was breaking state laws while she was video taping.

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 10:41 AM | Comments (20)

Lynne Hybels: Beware! Dangerous Women

I'm not a numbers person, but I keep on my desk a list of percentages that shakes me every time I read it. Did you know that
? Seventy percent of the world's extremely poor are women?
? Almost 80 percent of all refugees are women and their kids?
? Every year, as many as 4 million women and children are sold for the sex trade or to work as slaves?

And consider this all-too-common scenario in the developing world. An unfaithful husband infects his wife with HIV. He leaves, and the young mother becomes sick with AIDS. While her sons continue going to school, her daughters stay home to care for the family. When the mother dies, her property is taken over by male relatives, and her children are taken in by some woman - often a grandmother so poor she can't provide necessities for her grandkids. Many such orphaned girls, uneducated and desperate, become prey for sugar daddies who promise food or education in exchange for sex. Many of these girls become infected with HIV, and the cycle continues. This helps explain another sad statistic: that worldwide, 60 percent of those infected with HIV are women.

I have been shocked to discover how many of the world's injustices disproportionately impact women and girls. Is there anything we can do about this? Is there any hope?

Let me answer with a true story. Barb, a young mother in my church, receives a letter from an organization caring for AIDS orphans in Zambia. She reads the letter to her grade-school son and daughter, and the kids decide they want to raise money for the orphans. Barb comes up with the idea of having a used toy sale, and she helps her kids organize it. All the children in the neighborhood drop off their gently used toys in Barb's garage and help put up signs throughout the community. On the appointed day, kids buy each other's toys, parents buy toys, strangers who saw the signs buy toys. By the day's end, the kids have raised $1,300 for orphans. The next year, they have another sale and raise even more.

Here's another story. The women's fellowship at a poor Nigerian church has an active membership of about 175 women, 90 of whom are widows. So the fellowship starts a "widow's bucket" project. Every time a woman prepares the main meal of the day, she measures out what her family would normally use, then removes a handful of the main ingredient, like rice, beans, or corn, and puts it in her widow's bucket. At the end of the month, she has a full bucket of grain to contribute to the widow's committee at church.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 10:46 AM | Comments (5)

FDA Accepts Ruling, Minors to Have Access to Morning-After Pill

The Obama administration further sealed the deal that girls 17 and older will be able to purchase the "morning-after pill" without a prescription.

The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it would accept a federal judge's ruling that lifts the Bush administration's restrictions that limited sales of the pill to women 18 and older. The judge also told the agency to evaluate whether all age restrictions should be lifted.

"The morning after pill," or Plan B, reduces the chance of pregnancy by preventing fertilization or implantation of a fertilized egg.

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 8:30 AM | Comments (11)

Kay Warren: Puppies Aren't People

Recently, Rick was trimming a vine around our patio cover and accidentally dislodged a bird's nest with two blue speckled eggs. He brought it to me to see if I thought our grandkids would like to have it. Instead of experiencing pleasure at seeing a beautifully crafted nest, I was distressed. "Oh, that poor mama bird!," I immediately cried. "She's probably frantically searching for her babies!"

Later that week I babysat my grandkids, who are on a strict gluten- and dairy-free diet, and it's hard to find anything decent to eat. I rummaged through the cupboard for lunch fixings and came across a cereal box featuring a cute gorilla. The back of the box featured the story of endangered East African mountain gorillas, and ended with a plea for "sponsorship of a gorilla."

It reminded me of an experience I had at Christmas. Late one night, I was channel surfing while wrapping presents. I normally skip commercials, but on one station, the lovely sounds of Silent Night began playing, and pictures of abandoned dogs and cats filled the screen. A famous singer, her voice thick with emotion, pleaded with viewers to "sponsor" these helpless, abandoned animals with a monthly donation. I felt tears forming as my emotions reacted to the seeming pleas for help in the big, beautiful eyes of these animals. Our family dog had died not too long ago, and I saw her reflected in the faces of the puppies. They had me.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:42 AM | Comments (123)

Strip-Searched Girl Heads to Supreme Court

Joan Biskupic of USA Today reports:

"I went into the nurse's office and kept following what they asked me to do," Savana, now 19, recalls of the incident six years ago that she says still leaves her shaken and humiliated. "I thought, 'What could I be in trouble for?' "

That morning, another student had been caught with prescription-strength ibuprofen and had told the assistant principal, Kerry Wilson, that she'd gotten the pills from Savana. The nurse and administrative assistant, both women, were alone with Savana in the nurse's office when they asked the girl to take off her shoes and socks, then her shirt and pants. The two women then asked Savana to pull open her bra and panties so they could see whether she was hiding any pills. None was found.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled 6-5 against the Safford school district, concluding, "At minimum, Assistant Principal Wilson [who ordered the strip search] should have conducted additional investigation to corroborate [the] 'tip' before directing Savana into the nurse's office for disrobing." The school district had portrayed itself as being on the frontlines of fighting student drug use, citing a 2006 report from the Office of National Drug Control Policy that said more than 2 million American teens abused prescription drugs the previous year, and that teens ages 12-17 abused prescription drugs more than any other except marijuana.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:51 AM | Comments (12)

Test Tube Ethics

President Obama's March 9 decision to open up federal funding to previously unapproved stem-cell lines has brought the related issue of frozen embryos back into the national conversation. Bob Smietana at The Tennessean recently reported on couples who choose to keep embryos in storage despite increasing pressure to give excess embryos for research purposes. Smietana says an estimated 500,000 embryos are frozen in storage - "leftovers" from in-vitro fertilization. Some are being saved for possible implantation, while some are kept because the donors cannot bear to have them destroyed or given away.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:28 AM | Comments (7)

Christians Urge Obama to Keep Conscience Clause

Among those speaking up are evangelicals who belong to Obama's own faith advisory group: Joel Hunter, pastor of Northland Church in Florida, Melissa Rogers, director of Wake Forest Divinity School's Center for Religion and Public Affairs, and Jim Wallis of Sojourners. According to Michelle Boorstein over at The Washington Post's God in Government blog, these three were part of a group who signed a document calling for the Obama administration to "reaffirm its commitment to decades-old federal laws meant to offer some ?conscience' protections," and to indicate what Obama plans to replace the clause with, if anything. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention and Catholic law professor Doug Kmiec also signed the document.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:29 AM | Comments (3)

Marital Rape Law Reconsidered in Afghanistan

After heavy criticism from Western aid agencies and human-rights watchers, Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai agreed over the weekend to review a new law he had supported last week that legalizes forced sex within marriage and places Taliban-era restrictions on women in the country's Shiite minority.

According to The Times (U.K.), which received a leaked copy of the law last Friday, the law requires women to grant sex to their husbands every fourth night unless they are ill, restricts a woman to the home unless her husband allows her to leave, legalizes child marriage by setting the marriageable age at first menstruation, and grants child custody rights to fathers and grandfathers before mothers.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 9:42 AM | Comments (12)

Your Responses: AIDS in Uganda

The initial success of the ABC (Abstain, Be faithful, use Condoms) program in Uganda was dramatic, with the HIV prevalence rate dropping from 15 percent in 1991 to 5 percent in 2000. (See Avert's lengthy analysis here.) I completely agree with Edward C. Green's statement that "condoms have not worked as a primary intervention in the population-wide epidemics of Africa" (emphasis mine) - the primary approach must be based on abstinence and fidelity, because the epidemic in Africa spreads through a vast web of "ongoing multiple concurrent sex partnerships."

However, I also agree with Green's statement that "all people should have full access to condoms, and condoms should always be a backup strategy for those who will not or cannot remain in a mutually faithful relationship." This indeed is how condoms were used in Uganda in the nineties: "The number of condoms delivered and promoted by international groups rose from 1.5 million in 1992 to nearly 10 million in 1996."

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:06 AM | Comments (72)

Meanwhile, What about the Women and Children?

On March 18, my friend Tim Morgan posted an article on Christianity Today's Liveblog called "Why the Pope Is Right about Condoms and HIV in Africa." "You can't resolve [the AIDS crisis] with the distribution of condoms," the pope told reporters aboard the plane heading to Yaound?. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."

Maybe the pope had to say that. He's a spiritual leader, and it's his job description to hold up the ideal, no matter how difficult it may be to fulfill in real life. Certainly sexual abstinence and fidelity are the best ways to prevent the spread of HIV. But such either-or idealism may be harmful to millions of people whose morality is exactly what the pope prescribes - the faithful wives and innocent children of HIV-infected men.

According to international AIDS charity Avert, in 2007, 22 million people were living with AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Only 37 percent of these were men (defined by the survey as males over the age of 15). Women made up 55 percent of the total, and children the other 8 percent. Another grim statistic: 11.6 million children under the age of 18 had lost one or both parents to AIDS.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 8:32 AM | Comments (12)