Click here to view the embedded video.

For those of you who don’t have the time to watch the entire video—and it does get repetitive—I’m attaching a transcript at the end of this post. First, a bit of commentary.

Several things to note here. First, if my experience is any guide, these teens really do believe that they are persecuted for their beliefs. Second, nearly every single thing in this list has to do with ending government endorsement of Christianity, not with persecution of Christianity. But for many evangelicals and fundamentalists, the removal of Christian privileges appears to them as persecution. But for those of us who stand outside of Christianity, things appear far, far different.

Of course, these teens aren’t shy about their goal—they really do want to make America into a Christian nation, not just in culture but also in government. Now, they’re not calling for a reinstatement of Levitical Law. What they want is a country where teachers lead students in Christian prayers at the beginning of each day, sex education classes teach only abstinence, and modesty and clean language codes are enforced in school. Notice, too, the military rhetoric—I, too, grew up with this talk about being Christ’s army engaged in battle. And then there is the conflation between Christ and America, as though they are the same thing. I mean my goodness, the image they keep returning to is a cross resting on an American flag!

I think to some extent what these teens are experiencing is what I’ve seen called “privilege distress.” They’re convinced that they’re entitled to privilege—entitled to seeing their religion officially endorsed and enforced in the public square, or the very least in the public school—and they’re upset because they’re losing their grasp on that privilege. But what they don’t see is how it feels to be in another group—a group without their traditional privilege. They don’t know what it felt to be a Jewish kid sitting through a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer in the 1950s, or an atheist kid sitting through official prayers at school sports events or graduation ceremonies today. They don’t understand that the removal of their privilege—the removal of things like Bible reading and official Christian prayers—is not about persecuting them but rather about ending discrimination against those who don’t share their same beliefs.

I remember being told growing up that a secular government was actually the endorsement of atheism and secular humanism, and thus discrimination against Christianity. This would be true if secularism meant that addresses written by Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris were read over school intercoms at the beginning of each day, but they’re not. Lack of official prayer is not persecution against Christians any more than bald is a hair color. Lack of official prayer is not discrimination but neutrality. We live in a country with a growing diversity of belief, and it only makes sense that one set of beliefs not be officially endorsed by our government.

As for the discussion of bullying, to be perfectly honest, that’s a bit rich coming from the same religious subculture that opposes efforts to end the bullying of gay and lesbian children. So some people make fun of these kids for being virgins? Believe it or not, people also slut shame girls who are perceived as being too “easy.” Teenagers can be vicious, especially when it comes to others’ sexual choices. That doesn’t make it okay—it’s not—but it’s not religious persecution. And this concern about being called bigots, coming from the same religious subculture that opposes equal rights for LGBTQ individuals, strikes me as missing the point. Finally, I find it highly ironic that concern about being called “goody goods” is followed in the very next sentence with a complaint about other kids telling dirty jokes.

But then, I never intended to go through refuting every point. One thing I want to leave you with—before inviting you to offer your own response to whatever part of the video you’d like—is that many of the ideas I grew up thinking were specific to my own conservative evangelical Christian homeschool subculture, including the idea that the youth must rise up and mount a rebellion against mainstream culture, restoring the nation to its (supposed) Christian foundation, are actually quite common throughout conservative evangelicalism in general.

For those of you without time to watch the entire thing—and it does get repetitive—I want to offer a transcript of the video (with a bit of commentary from blogger Grace of Are Women Human). Commentary to follow.

Christianity is being completely frozen out of America.
Why can’t I pray in school?
Why do I have to check my religion at the door?
Why can’t I write about God in my school papers?
Why do I have to tolerate people cursing my God, but I am not allowed to talk about God and my faith?
Why are they taking God out of my history books?
Why do they teach every other theory in science except creation?
Why am i called names because I believe in marriage the way got designed it?Some even call us hateful. Hypocrites.
Unloving.
Closed-minded.
Bigots.

Why can’t Tim Tebow praise God after making a touchdown without causing a national uproar?
[Reality: Tebow is immensely popular]
The football coach at Ridgeland High School in Georgia was investigated by the school board.
Did he abuse his students?
Is he a terrorist?
He allowed local churches to feed his football team.
[Actually, he forced his players to sit through sermons for team dinners]

*Several of the children gasp and grimace in an exaggerated fashion.*

In public school, I’m called lesbian or gay for not kissing, or for wanting to save myself for marriage.
In public school, dating is an obligation.
In public school, people are rude and disrespectful towards Christians.
Bullying is common.
What we see in our health classes—“sex education”
FOURTH grade and up—
is pornography.
People make fun of me because I don’t believe in abortion.
In public school, people believe Christians are goody goods and boring.
Dirty jokes fill the hallways between classes.
During class
before school
at lunch
after school, on the bus, off the bus.
Get the idea?

Despite modern popular belief, America was founded as a Christian nation.
My grandparents tell me that the church used to be the center of the community
In school prayer and pledge to the flag was welcomed and appreciated No one would dare not to stand place their hand over their heart and recite the pledge.
America was once a force for good.
America was once the hope for the world.
[Question: isn't this, um, supposed to be Jesus? Not America? ]

What happened?
In 1962, the Supreme Court ruled that prayer was unconstitutional in schools.
[false---only school sponsored prayer was ruled unconstitutional]
in 1963, the courts ruled the Bible unconstitutional. [also false]
Saying that if the Ten Commandments were read in schools,
A student might feel inclined to follow them.
Really?
For over 50 years christians have been unwilling to get involved
People who do not love our god
have stolen our country

Jesus said we are salt and light.
Salt and light melt ice.
It is time for a thaw.
President Ronald Reagan [of COURSE] called America a shining light on a hill, a beacon of hope for the world to see.
We are going to let our little American lights shine.
Through the power of Jesus Christ we proclaim today,
We refuse to be frozen out of the public square.
Our voices will be heard.
Let’s reverse it.
Fix it.
We are going to turn it around.
This is a call to our generation.
We are calling on the youth of America to join us.
At Reach America, we are creating a Christ Centered Counter Culture—a C4 community.
A place filled with Christian teens on a mission
to reach America and our friends for Christ.
Christ and our country matter to us.

At Reach America, we are learning to reach our generation.
We are servants, encouragers.
We are learning to hear god’s voice and adjust our lives to his will
God is changing our lives.
We are building life changing relationships.
We are a family.
We are a team.
We are an army.
Christ is our commander.
His will is our charge.
We are impacting our friends, our families, our coomunity, our state, our country.
We are in a war for the hearts and souls of our generation,
and we know it.

Failure is not an option.
We are going to win this war.
If god be for us,
who can be against us
The thaw has begun.

[graphic]

High school Christian teens, join us.
Join us.
Join us at Reach America
in the fight for our generation,
for our future.
In America,
we still hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all men are created equal.
That they are endowed by their creator
with certain unalienable rights.
That among these are life,
liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.

Join the movement at Reach America.

Let’s reach our communities.
Let’s reach our states.
Let’s reach America.

Adults, please pray for us,
support us,
and get involved

Together, looking to Christ as a strength, the thaw will be complete,
and America will be one nation under god. Again.

In an earlier article about abortion, I had stated emphatically that in a culture in which women are considered things for use, the results of such use are likewise considered things to use or to throw away. In other words, when women are regarded as things for sexual use and then as things for disposal afterward, then natural result of this use (the conception of children) are likewise regards as things for disposal. The humanity of women has been ignored and denigrated. The humanity of children has been ignored and denigrated.

. . . I have blogged repeatedly that abortion is dehumanizing and degrading to women. Abortion degrades and dehumanizes both women and their children.

There is nothing at all about abortion in and of itself that degrades or dehumanizes women. As I’ve become more involved with my local Planned Parenthood clinic, one thing that I’ve come to feel very strongly is that the availability of abortion is actually the opposite of degrading or dehumanizing to women—rather, it grants them a choice, options, and control over their lives. I agree with other pro-choice advocates when they argue that it is the idea that women should be forced to continue pregnancies they don’t want or can’t afford to continue that is dehumanizing and degrading. But Kae Am’s entire essay reads like she’s never considered, or even heard, this perspective.

Oh, and on the point of abortion being dehumanizing and degrading to children—there is nothing about the fact that women can choose whether to continue a pregnancy or terminate it that degrades or dehumanizes my daughter Sally, or my son Bobby. What Kae Am is actually referring to when she says “children” is the embryo/fetus. This also obscures the pro-choice goal that every child be a wanted child—there is actually a very good argument to be made that abortion is actually a good thing for children, as it helps ensure that they will be born into families where they are wanted, loved, and cared for. But again, I get the feeling that Kae Am has not heard this perspective, or at the very least has never actually listened to it.

When women are things for sexual use to dispose afterward, then natural result of this use are likewise things for disposal. Recently, the news has reported that three women—Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus—had been abducted by Ariel Castro.

Prosecutors said Thursday they may seek the death penalty against Ariel Castro, the man accused of imprisoning three women at his home for a decade, as police charged that he impregnated one of his captives at least five times and then starved her and punched her in the belly until she miscarried.

Castro now faces murder charges for the deaths of the unborn. And here is where the humanity of women connects to the humanity of children.

Castro regarded neither women nor children as humans. When they became pregnant, he forced abortions upon them for more sex. What he had done is indeed abortion. Abortion is the termination of an unwanted fetus. And this shows how abortion dehumanizes both women and children.

This makes no sense at all. Kae Am is, I believe, trying to suggest that regarding women as not human and regarding abortion as morally acceptable go hand in hand, and her argument to that affect is to hold up one man who both kidnapped, raped, starved, and tortured women, beating them until they had miscarriages. And then she does it again:

The Kermit Gosnell trial is another prime example of how abortion dehumanizes women and children.

After the abortion, Shayquana Abrams testified, she was so ill and in such pain that her aunt took her to a hospital. Abrams said she was diagnosed with a “grapefruit-sized abscess” on her side and a blood clot in the vein near her heart

And the feet of her aborted baby were severed for Gosnell to use as decorations. Gosnell decorated his dwelling with the feet of several aborted babies. Gosnell gave his women pain medication that never worked, and whenever the women protested or squirmed, he slapped and punched their legs.

Castro and Gosnell both regarded women as less than human and performed abortions, Kae Am tells us, and that means abortion is inherently dehumanizing and degrading to women. I’m sorry, in what universe does that actually follow? What about the vast, vast majority of those who provide abortions who do believe in the humanity of women, and who provide abortions in large part because they believe in women’s humanity? The abortions Gosnell performed were degrading to women, but it does not follow that all abortions are degrading to women or that abortions are inherently degrading to women. Similarly, it was, yes, very degrading for the women whom Castro starved and beat until they miscarried, and even dehumanizing, but in what world does it make sense to compare miscarriages induced by beatings with abortions woman freely choose exercising their own agency?

Castro faces murder charges for the forced abortions of the children conceived by rape, but if these women had went to an abortionist to eliminate children of rape, there would never be any murder charges because the children would instead be considered non-living non-human entities or burdens for removal and disposal. I say this to reveal the hypocrisy and how our culture has a subjective double-standard over women and children as if they are human in some instances and non-human in other instances. Either women and children are human, or they’re not; the answer should never be “human in some situations; non-human in other situations.”

I don’t know what charges Castro is up on, but if he’s being charged with murder I suspect it’s more out of a desire to impose the death penalty on him than anything else (Do I think he should be charged for starving and beating the women? Yes. Do I think he should be charged with murder for it? No.). Castro’s beating the women until they suffered miscarriages was a crime, but it was a crime for a different reason than Kae Am seems to realize. These beatings were not a crime against the embryo or fetus, they were a crime against the women. Forced miscarriages or abortions, however they are performed or induced, are always wrong—they violate a woman’s bodily autonomy just as much as does forced pregnancy. I would guess that Kae Am’s inability to see that pro-choice individuals’ opposition to forced abortions (or in this case miscarriages induced by beatings) is not hypocrisy (actually, it’s rather the opposite) is at least in part based on the lack of emphasis placed on consent in many parts of Christianity.

Pro-abortion advocates tend to focus on abortion in cases of rape as if the abortion itself would make the world a better place for women. What about stopping rapes and preventing rape altogether? So far, I have not heard any discussion from that side about how to do this. Eliminating rape is never a topic that comes up among the pro-abortion advocates. Abortion in those cases does nothing to make society better for women because the injustice against them has still been committed. A society that embraces and welcomes the human dignity of women would never have rape. Instead, our culture considers that atrocity along with bondage and sadomasochism entertaining through pop culture.

. . . what.

This is why I seriously doubt that Kae Am has ever gotten to know or actually listened to anyone who is pro-choice. Eliminating rape is never a topic that comes up among those who are pr0-choice? What? WHAT?!? This is not just a misrepresentation, it’s an outright falsehood. It is pro-choice women, in actual fact, who are the most vocal in efforts to prevent rape. Has Kae Am never heard of Slut Walk? This idea that pro-choice women’s solution to rape is “well, let’s just make sure rape victims have access to abortion” is ludicrous to the extreme.

That said, Kae Am is right that a society that embraces and welcomes the human dignity of women would never have rape (or at least, rape would occur at a far lower level). Where she’s wrong is that a society that embraces and welcomes the human dignity of women would also be a society with accessible abortion services.

Abortion is the result of a misogynistic culture and of misogynistic acts. In a culture that truly valued the humanity of women, there would never be any need for abortion.

No. No no no. First, Kae Am has not actually demonstrated that abortion is the result of a misogynistic culture or misogynistic acts. Her only evidence—indeed, her only argument—is that Gosnell and Castro were both misogynistic and performed abortions or induced miscarriages. Let’s make an analogy. Let’s imagine that there is an anti-Semitic painter. Does that mean that all painters are anti-Semitic? No.

Second, I get the feeling that Kae Am hasn’t heard of Beatriz, the El Salvadoran woman suffering severe pregnancy complications who will die as a result of her country’s ban on abortion. No matter how much a culture values the humanity of women, there will always be a need for abortion—and of course, I would argue that abortion access actually flows from that very valuing of women’s humanity. However, there is one point in which Kae Am is correct here. In a culture that truly valued women’s humanity, women would have ready access to the most effective forms of birth control and would also have access to things like paid maternity leave and pregnancy-friendly work policies, and these things would indeed bring the need for abortion down. One would hope that Kae Am is also in favor of these policies.

Here, we see abortion as the result of Ariel Castro’s misogyny, and the misogyny is shown evidenced in the case of abortionist Kermit Gosnell.

Let’s embellish the analogy I gave above, and imagine that our anti-Semitic painter paints anti-Semitic paintings. Would we therefore conclude that all paintings are anti-Semitic, or that painting itself is inherently anti-Semitic? No. Now look, I’ve heard the example that abortion is dehumanizing made a lot more effectively than this before, it’s just that Kae Am isn’t doing it. She isn’t saying that abortion denies biology and women’s maternal nature, and is thus anti-woman. She’s saying that some misogynist men performed or induced abortion . . . therefore abortion is misogynist. And I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t follow.

Throughout this country and other western countries with legalized abortions, men enjoy sexual relations until the woman becomes pregnant; then, they offer money for the abortion because the prospect of responsibility for the reproductive act is a burden upon them and because all they really wanted was the sex.

Here’s what’s confusing here. Kae Am acts like this is the fault of pro-choice proponents, seemingly not realizing that the most ardently pro-choice individuals are also generally the most ardently feminist, and thus the most ardently opposed to the idea that women are simply objects to be enjoyed for sex. Those who are the most pro-choice are also those who are the most vocally arguing that women need to be viewed as people, not as sex objects or as playthings, but as fully equal and fully worthwhile people. Kae Am might write a thought provoking piece by arguing that abortion somehow sabotages feminists’ efforts to bring about a world where women are viewed as fully and equally people (I don’t see the mechanism for that, but that piece definitely has the potential to be more interesting), but that’s not what she’s doing. Instead, she writes like she’s never actually met or spoken with anyone who is pro-choice, and has no clue what they actually believe or what the perfect world they envision looks like.

I have blogged repeatedly about how our hypersexualized abortion-obsessed culture neither acknowledges nor appreciates the true humanity of women. I wrote how Jessica Winter asserted that women need birth control and sex in to be regarded as humans. I have also written about how abortion is used to eliminate large numbers of the unwanted female population “gendercide“; that women do not appreciate their own bodies when they have an abortion. Planned Parenthood has campaigned against a law aimed to prevent gendercide in this country. I have posted about how young girls throughout western cultures are pressured into performing sexually . Boys coerce, manipulate, and essentially force themselves upon girls. An epidemic of teen girl suicides occurs when they succumb to pressure to send explicit pictures of themselves and then commit suicide when those pictures become sexual fare for a general audience.

In this section, Kae Am is mixing things that don’t belong together, and I don’t think she realizes she’s doing it. Those who assert that women need access to birth control so that they can control their reproduction and choose when to become pregnant and bear children are generally the exact same people who are against a culture that allows boys to coerce, manipulate, and “essentially force themselves upon girls,” and are generally the same people who are working to change our slut-shaming culture so that a sexually explicit picture on social media won’t be seen as a reason to commit suicide. (Also, I’ve written before about how the actual solution to “gendercide” is, well, more feminism.) But the idea that believing women should have access to birth control fits in the same misogynistic boat as the pressure on young girls to perform sexually—and the idea that slut shaming somehow goes hand in hand with belief in the importance of abortion access—is mind boggling.

This is the exact type westernized culture that champions free access to abortion: the exact culture in which women call themselves “sluts” as a means of liberation when they campaigned for free abortion.

But what is a slut that women pride themselves on being? When I looked up “Rock the Slut vote,” I came across advertisements for porn in addition to the campaign website. Sluts are terms used to describe women who have indiscriminate sex with lots of men. The victims of sexting were often called sluts prior to their suicides. I once saw a man who had a sticker on his wallet: “get some sluts.” Is this sexually empowering or sexually degrading?

Um. Okay then. It seems Kae Am has heard of Slut Walk, she’s just completely missed the point. Let me see if I can spell it out for her: Slut Walk and Rock the Slut Vote are about decreasing the stigma attached to being sexually active and at the same time placing an emphasis on women’s agency in choosing when and with whom to have sex. They’re explicitly anti-rape and adamantly against any attempt to control women’s sexuality. They’re about viewing women as people, as fully equal human beings, which is exactly what Kae Am claims she herself believes in. But given the way Kae Am defines sluts—”women who have indiscriminate sex with lots of men”—I get the feeling that she herself engages in slut-shaming rather than working against it. At the very least, she’s extremely uneducated on the topic—the fact that she can point out that victims of sexting commit suicide after being called sluts while seemingly being unaware that this is exactly the sort of thing Slut Walks and Rock the Slut Vote are working against reveals that she doesn’t actually know what she’s talking about here.

The point of this article is to explain again how abortion degrades and dehumanizes both women and their children. Forced abortions in the case of Ariel Castro; legal abortions in the case of Kermit Gosnell; a stronger demand for abortion by the people who either ignore or praise the sexual objectification of women. Sometimes, the most extreme examples such as Ariel Castro and Kermit Gosnell explain the social problem the most clearly, but that this dehumanization of women is a problem pervasive throughout any culture that cherishes abortion.

If that is the point of the article—to explain how abortion dehumanizes and degrades both women and their children—Kae Am has failed in making her case. Instead, she has revealed how little man anti-abortion activists actually know about feminists, pro-choice individuals, and their goals and arguments. But then, when I opposed abortion and was active in the pro-life movement, I, too, was ignorant of these things. I didn’t know anyone who was pro-choice, and I only learned about pro-choice arguments and goals through the filter of the pro-life speakers, literature, and groups I engaged in.

The idea that a dehumanization of women and an embrace of abortion of necessity go hand in hand both nonsense and something that Kae Am doesn’t actually back up or support in her post. How would Kae Am explain countries in the Western world where women have the greatest degree of freedom and equality and ready access to abortion? And how would she explain countries where abortion is illegal or highly restricted and women’s rights and ability to make their own decisions are also severely limited? It is true that a society with access to abortion is not automatically a society where women are treated as equals, but it is also true that the two issues frequently go hand in hand in a way Kae Am seems ignorant of—as women work to be viewed as people and as equals, they often advocate for abortion access as one stepping stone in that greater journey.

Oh, and also? Sometimes the extreme examples show us nothing. Sometimes the extreme examples are only outliers.

Forward Thinking is a values development project created in collaboration with Dan Fincke of Camels with Hammers. Dan is introducing our next prompt today (head on over to see it!), but in this post I will pull together some of the responses to this month’s prompt: “What is the purpose of public education?” In addition to reading these bloggers’ responses, if this topic interests you make sure to head over to the original post and read the discussion in the comments.

First we have some thoughts from The Ex-Preacher’s Kid:

I recently finished a book that has altered my perception about the purpose of education. E.D. Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy: What every American needs to knowbrought up some very interesting points, even if the book was published nearly three decades ago.

. . .

The purpose of public education should not be merely to crank out individuals with good test scores. Hirsch provides ample evidence and a persuasive argument that schools should provide students with a shared knowledge because life is a collection of interaction with other people, not just a series of individual achievements.

To the extent that there are themes common to these responses, the idea that the purpose of public education goes far, far beyond good test scores is definitely one of them. Eudaimonaic Laughter formulates a list of six purposes, going on to describe each in depth:

To talk about the purpose of public education is to imply that public education has only one purpose – and that is to oversimplify matters drastically.  Major purposes of public education include in no particular order:

• Teaching basic skills
• Allowing people to reach their potential
• Social Mobility and Cohesion
• Relieving pressure on parents
• Base Economics
• Prevention of Child Abuse

Becoming Android echoes a number of these purposes, including helping people reach their potential, giving a helping hand to parents, and promoting a positive economic foundation, breaking things down into the interests of the child, the parent, and society:

If you don’t have an adequate education you will not be able to find a job, or at least not one that’s interesting and has any chance of going anywhere; so if you want to do interesting things at work, and have enough money to do interesting things with your free time, some kind of education is essential.

. . .

It is in a parent’s interest to educate their child; a parent should want the best for their child, and the best cannot be had without an education. If you want your children to decide what they want to do in life, and to achieve their potential, then spending some time teaching them what life has to offer, and developing their skills and knowledge, is fairly vital.

. . .

If you have any belief in equality of opportunity, a good, free, compulsory school system is the foundation stone of equality.

Becoming Android points to the importance of helping people achieve and promoting equality of opportunity, but also points directly to the economic goals behind public education—preparing people to find jobs. Lana of Wide Open Ground, though, finds this focus concerning:

I so often hear parents tell their kids, “you need to get an education” followed by “so you can grow up and get a job.” I find that ridiculous; we should teach kids to learn for the sake of learning.

. . .

We need to ask, “what should be the purpose of public education?”

From an economic standpoint, education is about preparing people for a job market. Its part of self-survival, but it’s also for the good of the people. People need jobs. Yet I do believe that public schools should first and foremost be about personal development and intellectual growth. It should be about a love of learning, and stimulating the brain through high arts. It should be about social growth, and  extracurricular activities, including sports. And it should teach students to think (something America is lacking in).

. . .

In the end, I see the purpose of education as three-fold. First, echoing Arnold, it’s about the development of the human soul. Second, it’s about equalizing the rich and poor. And finally, it’s about creating a society of human beings able to think and build a healthy government.

Like Lana, Rachel Marcy of Ripening Reason emphasizes that public education should serve as an equalizer to help promote equality:

The social contract can’t function without a baseline of education. An educated society is a just and productive society. Public education, in theory, provides equal access for everyone. Of course, public education in the United States is actually very unequal. The quality of school districts vary substantially, mostly because wealthy districts have better-funded schools. However, I don’t look at the problems with our public schools and think the concept of public education has failed; I think the proper response is to reinvest and make the system better.

Public education has a twofold purpose: for the individual, it provides the foundation for a productive life; for society, it produces informed citizens. I want to live in a society where everyone has access to a good education, and can benefit from it, regardless of socioeconomic status. I want this because I think education is a human right, but also because I want to live in a republic with an educated populace, for the safeguard of order and liberty.

Editor B of Celebration of Gaia also appears to agree with Lana’s perspective, emphasizing the importance of teaching people to learn rather than just teaching them what to know. Once again, we see the idea that public education is about more than just test scores:

No one is born with the knowledge or wisdom needed for full participation in life on earth. Education is a process by which humans acquire learning and develop as individuals as well as members of a community.

William Butler Yeats said that education is “not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” The pail symbolizes a pervasive view of education, which Yeats challenged, the notion that learners are empty vessels to be filled up with content matter. Fire symbolizes a transformative process whereby the learner is inspired to understand why learning is important, motivated and empowered to become a self-directed learner.

Yeats was mostly right, though perhaps he overstated his case. Education can legitimately claim both symbols. We still need the pail; there is a time for learning content, even for rote memorization. But the fire is clearly superior. Once the fire is ignited, the learner may well be able to fill her own pail.

Once again, if this topic interests you make sure to head over to the original post and read the discussion in the comment. I think the general consensus here is that public education should be about teaching content, teaching children how to learn, providing an equalizer that enables people to fulfill their potential, fulfilling the nation’s economic needs, and creating a common society bound by shared knowledge and shared experiences. Perhaps another interesting question for the future would be, if you could completely redesign the public education system, and had unlimited funds with which to do so, how would you redesign it?

I can think of quite a few other reasons contraception could be, at the very least, a contributing factor to marital dissolution, though I don’t have the studies to back me up. For instance, consider that the weight of contraception falls unfairly on women. Men have to wear a free condom. Women have to suppress their menstrual cycles with hundred-dollar pills. There is one contraceptive device for men, and it comes without health risks. There is no end to the contraceptive devices we’ve developed for women, no drop of ingenuity wasted on developing the plethora of caps, sponges, pills, IUDs, patches, rings, and female condoms that have become “a woman’s responsibility.” This gender inequality inherent to contraception would be bad enough even if most female contraceptives didn’t include health risks (like decreased sex drive. (4)(5)(6)(Not exactly a key to an easy marriage.)) So no, it’s not ridiculous to think contraception could be linked to a greater risk for divorce.

How does a couple using a birth control method like the pill or an IUD, which are taken by or inserted in women, lead to a higher risk of divorce? Even if we’re honestly concerned about the health risks artificial contraception poses to women (which are, by the way, far, far, far lower than the health risks of pregnancy), how does that lead to a greater risk of divorce? I’m seriously not seeing the mechanism here, and I’m not trying to be dense. I think the argument must be that women would end up resenting their husbands because they face health risks while their husbands don’t, but I think that’s something people like Marc must imagine happens, because I’ve never felt it and I’ve never seen it.

But if Marc really is worried about the burden of contraception falling on the woman, why is he pushing Natural Family Planning? Is he unaware of how much more work NFP is for a woman, or that the vast majority—vast, vast majority—of the effort of NFP falls on the woman? I have used NFP. I used it for the first four years of my marriage, actually. And in the end, I concluded that using NFP is like making your birth control into a hobby. That is how all-consuming it is. So I honestly don’t buy that Marc is actually concerned about the fact that the burden of contraception falls primarily on the woman. If he were, he would actually be advocating for male forms of contraception, or for making contraception even more effortless for women (spreading awareness of the effectiveness of IUDs, for instance) rather than advocating for NFP.

This whole thing about how contraception being designed for women being some sort of “gender inequality,” or that contraception somehow oppresses women is something Marc does this a lot. He frequently tries to turn feminist rhetoric back on itself, and it never works out well. In the past, for instance, Marc has tried to warn women about the health dangers of contraception, as though women don’t hear the litany of possible side effects from doctors and yet choose to take the pill anyway. It’s like Marc thinks we’re children who need hand holding, not big girls who know that contraception has health risks and yet choose to take it anyway for some reason Marc can’t comprehend (Hint: We like being able to have sex and not get pregnant—shocking, I know!).

I don’t see Marc running around warning women not to get pregnant because of all the health risks associated with pregnancy, or talking about what a problem it is that the burden of procreation falls on the woman and not on the man. The health risks of pregnancy are far higher than the health risks of contraception, but plenty of women run those risks anyway. It’s not that they don’t know the risks, it’s that they choose to face them anyway because they have decided the end result is worth it. And it’s the same with contraception. Similarly, with regards to Marc’s concern about the burden of contraception falling on the woman, would someone please remind Marc that all of the effort of pregnancy is on the woman? And pregnancy is not easy. Nor is labor. Is Marc concerned about the fact that all of that work falls on the woman, and about the “gender inequality” that represents? I highly, highly doubt it.

Now let me address Marc’s claim that (artificial) contraception lowers women’s sex drives (which, by the way, can be a side effect of some hormonal birth controls but is not always, and is not for every woman). What Marc seems oblivious to is that some women might be just fine with a lower sex drive if that’s the price they have to pay to choose when and if to become pregnant (once again, Marc’s paternalism comes into play as he assumes that women are children who are unaware of the trade-offs they may make when using birth control). He also seems oblivious to the fact that the risk of pregnancy might actually inhibit some women’s sex drives—or that having small children taking up time, attention, and energy might lower a woman’s sex drive.

I’ve written before about how, when I used NFP (and I used it for four full years), my fear of messing it up and getting pregnant severely inhibited my sex life and my enjoyment of sex. One way I could tell how strong this effect was that each time I got pregnant (both were planned) those first few months of pregnancy were an amazing haze of sexual bliss. All of a sudden my husband and I could have sex and enjoy it, without the constant worrying about pregnancy. The difference was incredibly, incredibly huge and undeniable. I’ve since gotten an IUD, and it’s the same sort of thing—I now don’t have to constantly worry about pregnancy, or to scan my chart over and over trying to decide whether to risk it or wait another day. And that’s mindblowingly amazing. (And for the record, my IUD has not caused me a single health problem.) And I’m not the only one who has had these experiences, either.

Look, if Marc is honestly concerned about the health risks of female contraception, and the relative dearth of male contraceptive methods, I am all for him starting a campaign for female contraceptives that have fewer health risks, and for greater variety in male contraceptives. These are both things I’m in favor of, too. But then, I suppose I shouldn’t have added that “too” there, because I seriously doubt Marc is actually in favor of either of these things. He’s a Catholic who totally embraces the Church’s ban on (artificial) contraception, so when he pulls out the bits about (artificial) contraception having health risks or about how there’s only contraception for women, he’s not doing that because he actually wants to fix those problems. He’s doing it because he wants to throw out (artificial) contraception altogether. And I suppose that’s why his twisting of feminist rhetoric makes me rather angry.

Here is how Marc talks about Natural Family Planning:

From Libby Anne:

“For one thing, the idea that contraception is rooted in selfishness as opposed to generosity is wrong. One reason people plan their pregnancies today is so that they can give the children they choose to have more attention and care.”

She’s right. That people “plan their pregnancies” is hardly selfish. But “planning a pregnancy” is not the same thing as using contraception. Catholic women are free to plan their pregnancies, and through the use of effective methods of organic family planning, they do so with 98.2% typical-use effectiveness using the Sympto-Thermal method (1) or 96.8-98.0% typical-use effectiveness using the Creighton Model (2)(3) (to do a little name-dropping up in this blergh). Planning the time of a pregnancy is entirely fitting with the gift of marriage.

(I’m not getting into the numbers of the studies he cites here except to say that they have methodological problems. One study, for instance, explicitly discounted essentially every couple who got pregnant while using the method, assuming that they did so on purpose because they broke the rules of the method and had sex when they weren’t supposed to. That’s simply not how effectiveness statistics work. But again, that’s neither here nor there and not the purpose of this post.)

Here’s how Marc talks about other forms of contraception:

From Libby Anne:

Additionally, there is literally no reason that contraception would give flower to divorce.

I can think of a pretty simple reason why an increase in contraception would lead to an increase in divorce. It is a well-discussed fact that childless couples are more likely to divorce than couples with children, and, according to the study “Marital Dissolution: Divorce, Separation, Annulment and Widowhood,“ published in the Handbook of Marriage and the Family, “The likelihood of a divorce decreases as the number of children in a family increases.” I am reminded of a study of Qatari women showing precisely the same phenomenon: “For every child in a family, the likelihood that couple will divorce goes down.”

Given that contraception is an effort not have children, it’s a smidgebit optimistic to trumpet the impossibility of a link between contraception and divorce.

So let me get this straight. Catholic couples following the Church’s prohibition on birth control can still use Natural Family Planning to plan when and if to have children. But contraception (as opposed to couples following Natural Family Planning) causes higher divorce rates because it allows couples to plan when and if to have children, and couples with fewer children have higher divorce rates. In what universe does this make any sense?

Look, if you think that not having kids causes higher divorce rates, then say that! But don’t say that NFP allows you to control when and if to have kids just as much as artificial contraception does—nay, more—and then claim that artificial contraception (and not NFP) leads to higher divorce rates because couples who use it to choose to have fewer or no kids have higher divorce rates. Because that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

(To be honest, one of the things that led to my becoming disillusioned with the Catholic Church was a similar sort of double standard. Contraception left the marital act without procreative value, and was therefore morally wrong, but it was totally fine and morally good to use Natural Family Planning to render the marital act non-procreative.)

Marc needs to explain how contraception leads to higher risk of divorce by allowing couples to choose to have fewer children, while Natural Family Planning, which he claims allows couples to do the same thing, does not.

A Guest Post by Tracey

So, most of the cat is out of the bag; Elsie nearly dies before the book wraps up. The last piece of the story involves Elsie’s extreme reluctance to do anything of a secular nature on the sabbath. Her only acceptable Sunday diversions are reading the bible and The Pilgrim’s Progress (a religious allegory). So, of course, when Horace asks Elsie to read him secular story on Sunday, she refuses, saying its against God’s law. Remember that Elsie has already run into problems with this, such as the time she would not play a secular song on the sabbath in the first book. Anyway, this time Horace works himself into extreme sickness, then after his recovery he punishes her until she is so distraught she falls into illness—all because he has this bizarre desire to see her submit to him in all things, no matter how small.

Over the course of six chapters Horace takes away all of Elsie’s freedoms including her correspondence with Miss Rose (remember the Christian friend she met in the beginning of book 1?), her travel privileges, even her Mammy, and then he threatens to sent her away to boarding school. He finally even leaves the house so as not to accidentally cave in and give her any sense of victory whatsoever. He promises to relent only when Elsie agrees to give up her obsession with placing God first, which she’s never gonna do.

Hilariously, the detail that sends Elsie over the edge into actual sickness is the mention of being sent to a Catholic boarding school. Elsie freaks out, saying, “They will try to make me go to mass and pray to the Virgin, and when I refuse they will put me in a dungeon and torture me!” Aunt Adelaide and even the author herself do very little to dispel the reader’s bad image of Catholicism, calling the religion “superstition”. I was raised a Catholic and this part just made me laugh.

The morning after the “Catholic scare,” Elsie is found feverish and weak, causing some family members to worry for her very life. And they are correct. She declines so far that she is actually pronounced dead at one point, until they figure out her heart still beats, barely. This crisis produces the long expected change of heart Horace needed. He decides to no longer make Elsie obey when it goes against her conscience. Great. She still has to unquestioningly obey all the other times of course.

The rest of the book is basically about how inseparable Horace and Elsie are now that they are both true Christians. Oh, did I mention Horace had a mini-conversion from whatever lackadaisical Christian he was originally? This book makes it clear there are right kinds of Christians and wrong kinds. Presbyterians get all the good adjectives, so they are obviously right. Catholics get bad adjectives, so they are wrong. The book does very little to elaborate on why this is so.

One thing that really got to me during the reading of this book was how assured the storyteller is of the themes she embeds in the story. I mean, I know I’m not sinning by reading, say, Memoirs of a Geisha on a Sunday. But to Elsie? There would be no question of the worldly, even carnal nature of my chosen entertainment. I doubt she’d approve of it for even a weekday, let alone a sabbath. Her certainty (and by extension the author’s certainty) makes me highly uncomfortable. I’m starting to realize how much I truly value honest discussion and the ability to think about things and change one’s mind. This story seems to actively encourage the opposite of that. I actually felt like I was upside-down reading some of this. It was so absolutely convinced of itself that I wondered if I’d fallen into a different reality. I literally took a break from reading for two days at one point. It was just so disheartening.

I thought the story had a lot of problems from the nitpicky (author has no sense of subtlety) to larger issues such as Elsie’s extreme emotional attachment to Horace. I had a hard time with the idea of the “true father” the books seem to endorse. There’s really nothing magical about a child having its parents’ DNA that should automatically make that child and parent “right” for one another. But Elsie seems to think there is. Otherwise why would she put so much stock in the affections of a man she knows so very little? And speaking of misplaced affection, what is Travilla’s character really after anyway? Throughout the books he repeatedly tells Elsie he wishes her to live with him. Somehow I doubt he’s really talking about adopting Elsie. I can’t think the author, with all her “true father” nonsense, is a big adoption fan. I think he’s hitting on her. This is another spoiler actually; Travilla and Elsie wind up married in a later book. That’s all kinds of weird.

Another thing about this book I’ve been kicking around inside my head is the author’s definition of love. At the beginning of book one, Elsie keeps going back to the refrain, “If only Papa would love me!” She seems to think Horace only loves her whenever he is pleased with her. I don’t treat the idea of love like that. I maintain that I still have love for a child or adult with whom I happen to be angry. To me love speaks to something deeper than pleasure, encompassing the fact that I would put myself on the line for a person I love, regardless of my current surface emotion. The books are treating love as if it is a trivial emotion akin to liking something. When Elsie thinks Papa doesn’t love her, she’s really experiencing times Papa doesn’t seem to like her. I wonder if the definition if love has changed or if humans just have trouble grasping its meaning, each of us using a different definition. The author’s definition strikes me as somewhat shallow.

Which brings me to the author. I said I’d mention what little I know about her, so here goes. Her name is Martha Finley. She was herself Presbyterian born in 1828 and lived through the Civil War. She lived in a variety of places during her life: Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. She was a teacher and also a writer, penning things for the Presbyterian Publishing Board. She wrote Elsie Dinsmore just around the time of the Civil War—it was published in 1867. The books (a single manuscript divided in two) was so well liked she was able to write many more books about Elsie (28 total) and other similar stories. She was still writing stories until within a few years of her death in 1909.

No one seems to have information about what Finley was like herself. I mean we can guess some of it based on what she was writing, but it’s not like we have interviews or a back flap description for Ms. Finley. I’ll give her this—her writing is something compelling. Some of the over-emotional scenes are weirdly fascinating. I found myself hooked, waiting to see what ridiculous thing Horace would do next and what Elsie would cry over in this chapter.

In conclusion, I’m really not a fan of these books. They make me very determined to pay attention to my (future) kids’ reading habits. I’m thinking I don’t want to teach them to avoid certain books—I want to instead teach them to think about why a books gets written, so they can feel free to disagree with the author. We could play this game after every book and talk about the story, even when they are little. It will totally be a fun bonding activity.

Before I go, I will leave you with this amusing thing I discovered. I think it’s possible Elsie is a nudist. Remember that Mammy is constantly having to dress her? She MUST be shedding clothes. And if that’s not enough evidence for you, on page 20 of Elsie’s Holidays at Roselands I found the following exchange:

“What are you going to wear to Isabel Carleton’s party tonight, Elsie?” asked Lucy at the dinner table.

“Nothing,” replied Elsie, with an arch smile.

In actuality, Horace isn’t letting Elsie attend the party—another punishment for another small offense—but that’s good because the other guests will all have dresses!

A Guest Post by Tracey

This is the point in the book(s) where the chapters all start running together. This time I will summarize the events from chapter 8 of book one through chapter 3 of book two, spoil the ending, touch on some themes, and compare Elsie to other books.

Picking up where we left off, Elsie and Papa (Horace) are all sweetness and shiny-happy. Horace has no major beefs with his obedient little daughter, although he does keep her on a pretty tight leash. Elsie still cries at the drop of a hat, sometimes when she’s sad, sometimes happy, and sometimes when she thinks about Jesus. There are two minor incidents which almost land Elsie in hot water; first she refuses to tell a secular story on a Sunday. Luckily her dad thinks storytelling shouldn’t be forcibly extracted regardless of subject matter. Then she refuses to play a secular song on the piano on a Sunday. As punishment, Horace forces Elsie to sit at the piano until she is so tired she faints, striking her head. Horace is so shocked at Elsie’s injury he lets the matter drop.

Christmas goes by and there are some minor punishments for fairly ridiculous infractions, but things are mostly smooth and a Merry Christmas is had by all. By now we are into book two. There is a rather interesting commotion in chapter 3. Arthur really seems like he may be a sociopath. He continues to show himself hopelessly deficient in empathy. Elsie refuses to loan him money which he needs to pay a gambling debt. (He’s a little young for this cliche isn’t he?) To get revenge Arthur pushes her down a hill, then tries to make out like Elsie slipped. He is found out, and sent away to boarding school.

It was somewhere in these chapters that I started becoming seriously annoyed with the author. She is the one writing all these weird demands into Horace’s character, but in the end she makes sure he always has a point. He was right to keep Elsie from Rattlesnake Meadow. He is right to control her food intake by forbidding butter and coffee. He is right to proofread all her personal correspondence. He is right to emotionally monopolize her. In chapter 1 of the second book he tells her he wants “not a single thought or feeling concealed from me.” This is all written as if it is normal and positive, rather than odd and manipulative.

This was also the point at which I began to see the books as one long, boring sermon. The author manages to work in a ridiculous number of bible verses and concepts—often at the expense of the story. As an adult reader I can follow the neat little trail of breadcrumbs the author left us to follow if we want to be good Christians. We must love Jesus and follow him at all cost, bringing our burden for him to make lighter with his blood. And always remember what reprehensible sinners we are; this is an absolute must. You sinned, tell it to Jesus, and his blood will save you. Repeat. Total downer if you ask me. And probably the most times the word “blood” has appeared in a book for children.

Now I’d like to compare the Elsie story to some others that I actually read and liked. Early on in my reading I felt compelled to revisit the story of Sara Crewe, sometimes called A Little Princess. Sara is also presented as a long suffering child with no one to love her. Her father sends her to a posh boarding school for an education. He then dies, leaving her penniless and forced to become the house servant. Sara is like Elsie’s polar opposite however. She has retorts to match the volume of her mistreatment and isn’t afraid to sling them. Where Elsie’s good deeds are trivial and fall on those the least likely to need or appreciate them (see Arthur and the sailboat incident), Sara has a record of feeding the wholly destitute, even when she herself is hungry. Sara has a strong inclination towards justice. And justice is just not one of Elsie’s priorities.

I also revisited The Secret Garden. It stars a girl named Mary Lennox who is pampered and coddled as a British child in India. Her parents die and she is sent to England to live with an aunt. Mary is presented less pathetically than either Elsie or Sarah Crewe. Mary has a couple of friends and her main problem is boredom. The striking thing to me is that Mary arrives in England still very spoiled, and expecting to be given a servant who will dress her, because she’s never actually dressed herself. Regarding Elsie Dinsmore, dressing Elsie seems to be one of Mammy’s primary duties. The girl is sometimes dressed two and three times a day. Does she peel all her clothes off constantly or what? And I’ve been wondering for a while now if Elsie is even capable of putting on clothes.

My final comparison story will be Wuthering Heights. Wuthering Heights is a story of love and love withheld and its twisted repercussions. Heathcliff and Catherine (unrelated by blood) grow up together, and over the years fall in love. Catherine makes a careless statement at a critical moment, causing Heathcliff to doubt her love and flee for several years. When he returns she has married another. The rest of the book is about how they torture one another over this love they can never really express. The culmination of Catherine’s life involves an illness that is worsened (if not outright created) by a hysterical fit she has over Heathcliff and the desire for his love. Here’s the part where I spoil the ending of Elsie Dinsmore; she also works herself into illness over possibly losing her Papa’s love. The only difference here is that while Catherine dies, Elsie merely hovers at death’s doorstep. This seems a rather common theme in older novels: death from heartbreak and excitation. I get the distinct feeling that the type of sobbing and gasping happening in the Elsie story are on par with those in Wuthering Heights. And that’s disturbing, because Elsie and Horace are NOT lovers. They shouldn’t both be in such hysterics over one another. It’s creepy and unnatural—even more so given the shortness of their knowing one another.

I am forced to wonder again who this author is and where she gets her information on normal human behavior. Was her life as a child this dramatic and father-obsessed? Or is she merely overplaying the allegory of our desire as Christians to obtain the Father’s love? We really don’t know. In the next post I will give what little information I have regarding the author, follow the second book to its conclusion, and make some final remarks.

A Guest Post by Tracey

My name is Tracey and I write a blog describing my religious journey through local churches. In my blog surfing I became interested in the Elsie Dinsmore series, so I borrowed books 1 and 2 from the library. Functionally, I found them more like one long story than two, so I read them in succession. I would like to present an adult, outside (non-homeschooled non-evangelical) perspective on these first two books. The books I have read are, as far as I can tell, the original versions. They are called Elsie Dinsmore and Elsie’s Holidays at Roselands.

Let’s begin with a chapter by chapter look at the first part of book 1.

Chapter 1—Introducing Elsie

In chapter one we meet Elsie. She is a timid little thing with fragile emotions who seems really very put upon indeed. The other five kids in the house AND their private tutor torment Elsie constantly. Actually Elsie is the daughter of an elder brother to this sibling group. Her classmates are her aunts and uncles. Elsie’s mom (also named Elsie) and dad (Horace) getting married caused a big scandal for Horace’s family, because they wed so young. And something about Elsie Sr. having the wrong kind of wealth; it comes from trade. To deter the new marriage from blossoming, grandpa Dinsmore (Horace’s dad) sent his 17 year old married boy to the North and then to Europe. Eight years later he’s still there. Meanwhile, Elsie Sr. gave birth to Elsie Jr., then died of a broken heart a week later. So Elsie’s been stuck with the Dinsmore clan ever since with only her dear Mammy (her slave nurse) to raise and love her.

In this chapter we also meet Arthur, Elsie’s chief tormentor. And we meet Rose Allison, a family friend from the North that we learn is Christian just like Elsie! They talk about God and Jesus for awhile and the chapter ends on a happy note. I found it striking that the character I was drawn to most was the justice-loving Lora, the only one of the siblings that doesn’t treat Elsie like trash. I really don’t relate to Elsie, she’s such a little mouse.

Chapter 2—”jes de same as if I was white”

In chapter 2 we get to meet Mammy, and immediately a few questions spring to mind:

1. If Mammy raised Elsie why don’t they sound the same when they talk? This story is set in the South, sometime before the Civil War. The slaves wait on the family’s every need but are referred to as “servants,” and are given adjectives like sable, dark, dusky, Negro. And they all talk in heavily accented English. So why doesn’t Elsie have this accent?
2. How does Mammy understand so much about Christianity? She is called “entirely uneducated” yet she has memorized all kinds of bible verses and articles of faith such that she can remind Elsie just what Jesus asks of her at any given time.
3. If this woman really raised Elsie, why doesn’t Elsie view her as a mother? And while we’re on the subject of parents, why is Elsie so attached to her absent father? As someone interested in adoption, I may one day parent a child who is not biologically of my body nor perhaps of my race. The constant obsession with biological parenthood in this book drives me mad. Mammy is Elsie’s mother if anyone is. And Horace doesn’t deserve to be called her father.
4. Why is this book in my local library? The racism in here is very bothersome. Mammy talks about her love for Jesus because “He loves me jes de same as if I was white . . .” While technically true that Jesus loves black people just as much as white people, there’s no reason to frame it this way . . . unless you believe black people are less deserving of love. It sounds like the author does.

The other important thing that happens in chapter 2 is an incident with Arthur. He asks (demands) Elsie to loan him money to buy a splendid little toy ship he wants. Elsie says she’s going to think about it and he calls her stingy. Then she buys it for him outright. In return he stops teasing her. For a while. So I guess the price of kindness is a sailboat.

Chapter 3—Papa and Travilla

This chapter introduces Elsie’s dad who finally returns home from Europe and Mr. Travilla, a friend of his since boyhood. On their very first meeting Elsie chokes, finding herself unable to run up to her father and just give him a hug. Her father remarks how terrified she seems and she flees the scene sobbing. Get used to this folks because this is how their dynamic persists for a long while yet. Also get used to the sobbing. Elsie cries for maybe 80% of the time.

Mr. Travilla is an interesting character who immediately takes a liking to Elsie. It is in this chapter that he first suggests he wants her as his own daughter. I know those of you who have read the entire series will find this particularly strange given their adult relationship later.

Chapter 4—More awkward interactions

Elsie and her father continue in this newly established pattern of him disapproving of nearly everything she does and of her responding with tears and attempts to not be “naughty”. It is noticeable that not only is Elsie in agony over having displeased her papa, she is in agony that by doing so she is being wicked, which displeases Jesus. Never mind that Papa’s orders are arbitrary, closed to questions and sometimes given after the event.

The whole rattlesnake incident pisses me off too. Horace tells Elsie never to go into this large meadow on their grounds.

“Why, Papa?” Elsie asks.

“Because I forbid it,” he responds.

Okay, there’s a giant rattlesnake down in the meadow. Elsie is eight and she’s old enough to understand what that means. Heck, telling her would probably help her remember the warning better, so she wouldn’t get into trouble. But Horace has to control Elsie in every way so he forbids the questioning of any command, and then punishes Elsie when she forgets and goes in the meadow. Then the author holds up the finding subsequent and killing of that snake as proof Horace was right to keep his daughter in the dark. After all, he was only doing it for her protection. I find myself wondering who this author was and why she was writing.

The other thing about this chapter is the weirdest scene in the book so far: Papa takes Elsie on a visit to Mr. Travilla’s house. After dinner Travilla finds Elsie reading in the library. He tells her to put away her book, but Elsie just wants to finish the book before Papa takes her home. Travilla responds, “He is not to take you away. I have made a bargain with him to let me keep you . . . call me papa in the future.” This freaks Elsie out immensely and she runs crying to her dad. At this point, if it were me I’d run too, but not to the dad who I barely know. It’s obvious this is some weird joke that only Travilla is in on, and no one else found funny. What possesses Travilla to do this? No idea. I did not know what to make of this part. I assume it’s just more “biological father = true father” crap.

Chapter 5—The Watch

This chapter mostly focuses on another incident with Arthur in which a watch belonging to grandpa Dinsmore is found broken. They hold a short trial/interrogation in a room of the house and evidence is given and witnesses questioned. Arthur, cast as the villain, is of course to blame. Elsie is the key witness and fears Arthur will plot revenge. Papa happens to be on Elsie’s side at the moment, so he tells her, “Don’t be frightened daughter. I will protect you.” All well and good until . . .

Chapter 6—Nope you are naughty

Elsie somehow does wrong again and her father shuts her out again. This time it’s because she loosed a hummingbird he had trapped under glass (hello, it could die in minutes in there) thinking it was Arthur’s doing. She is punished for not being able to read Horace’s mind. Also, who collects hummingbirds?

Chapter 7—Bread and water

Elsie still hasn’t learned divination or how to be a stepford child. She fails a single lesson at school and Horace makes her have bread and water for dinner. You know, it’s really getting remarkable how much of this book is dramatic dialogue. So much “Oh Papa!” and “You cry too much” and “I am terribly naughty.” Stop writing the whines and can we please get back to some story already?

Chapter 8—The workbook incident

So this whole business with the school workbook is something of a turning point in the story. Elsie manages to write cleanly and legibly for a month in her school workbook. She can’t wait to have Papa see that she isn’t naughty after all! Unbeknownst to her, Arthur has found the workbook and surreptitiously stained and written in it to make it appear messy. The work is so sloppy, (and Horace is such a maniac) that Horace decides to really punish Elsie. He drags her by the arm into his room and picks up a horsewhip. Just then Lora rushes in, just in time to save Elsie from a beating she didn’t deserve! Lora says that Elsie’s workbook is always neat and she wouldn’t lie about not knowing the scribbles were there. Horace immediately believes Lora (for some reason) where he did not believe Elsie a moment ago. He calls Elsie “My darling, my own precious child!” and apparently he’s pretty upset that he almost beat her half to death for no reason.

He begins to treat Elsie with tooth-decaying affection, spending most of his spare time with her. He lavishes epithets of love on her and scolds anyone who mistreats her. So of course this means Arthur gets what’s coming to him about the notebook. Now that Elsie is in her father’s good graces, what could go wrong?

To be continued . . .

Tracey blogs at The Church Project.

Debi has previously said that God creates men with armor and women without, so that mean can use their reason to stand against Satan’s temptations and make sound decisions while women use their feelings to tenderly care for their children and keep the home. Women, Debi says, are to stand behind the armor of their men, and thus be protected. The reason Eve at the apple, Debi says, is that she stepped out from Adam’s armor and was thus vulnerable. Some of you readers raised a question: If this is so, why did Adam also eat the apple? Why didn’t his armor protect him and keep him from doing so? In this section, Debi answers that question.

God had instructed Adam, and Adam had instructed Eve. Adam clearly understood that Satan’s promise of spiritual enlightenment was a diabolical lie against God. The natural armor God had given Adam granted him enough understanding to doubt the Devil and resist his lies. But Adam’s armor had one small weak spot.

I bet you all know what’s coming next.

He was not ruled by his feelings except where it concerned his woman.

Yep. We get to blame Adam’s sin on eve. Surprise surprise.

Adam’s soul was exposed and vulnerable to the woman he loved. He wanted her happy, even if it meant disobeying God and going against his natural understanding of truth. He was willing to set aside reason for his woman. Even’s influence over Adam changed the course of history.

All the evil in the world is a result of women’s innate influence over men, apparently. As I read this, I kept asking myself where I’d heard this before. And then I realized. The idea that when men are around women, their natural reason disappears—the idea that women need to cover up and not show skin because otherwise men won’t be able to restrain themselves. This idea that women are men’s downfall is pervasive in this subculture. Indeed, I sometimes wonder if the patriarchal insistence on controlling women stems from some sort of deep fear of women’s supposed power over men.

We need to be aware of the power we have to seduce our husbands into following us into disregarding the clear, objective works of God. Adam, the first man, Samson, the strongest man, Solomon, the wisest man, and even David, the man listed as being after God’s own heart, were all brought down by the woman they loved. When a man loves a woman and wants to make her happy, he will often acquiesce in spiritual matters because of the affection he holds for her in his heart. Your husband may set aside reason and good judgement if you pressure him and let him feel your displeasure and unhappiness.

Wait. Wait. Adam ate the fruit after Eve simply offered it to him, no seduction involved. Delilah was indeed a seductress and did indeed portray Samson, but that was central to her character as a person, not something that stemmed from her identity as a woman. Solomon married 700 wives and took 300 concubine, cementing alliances right and left. This is women’s fault how? Solomon choose to marry those women, they didn’t come dance naked in front of him demanding a marriage certificate. I’m seriously not seeing this as an example of women seducing their husbands. Finally, all Bathsheba did was take a bath on her roof. David is the one who was looking at her and he is the one who summoned her and he is the one who had Uriah killed. Apparently women seduce men by, like, existing—which ties pretty well into my previous paragraph.

Do you know what I’m seeing here? I’m seeing an inability to assign any form of personal responsibility to men. And once again, I was wondering where I’d seen this before and then I remembered. There’s this idea within fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism that if a man cheats on his wife, it’s probably partially or even totally his wife’s fault. In fact, sometimes this is so extreme that everything—and I do mean everything—is blamed on the wife. The husband is failing in business? His wife must not be supporting him. The husband isn’t being a good spiritual leader? His wife must be tearing him down at home. The husband leaves his wife and children? His wife must have been a nag. And this isn’t done the other way around. If a wife is a nag, no one says her husband must be so slow to do household repairs that her only recourse is to nag him. When are held personally responsible; men get off the hook.

In a man’s heart, the place a woman holds will lead him into great strength or great weakness, depending on the woman and the man. It is there that men rise to great glory with their women, or they are dragged into shame and disgrace by them, or worse yet, are left unused by God.

Here we go again.

Remember the crazy lady who drove her family to financial ruin because she felt led of God to move and change her husband’s business? Her husband KNEW it would not work, but he could not stand against her constant pleading and her spiritual intensity.

So the husband knew that the financial plan the wife was urging him to follow would end up being an utter failure, but he followed it anyway and it’s all his wife’s fault because he couldn’t help it? I mean, really?

Let’s imagine for a moment that there are two investment bankers, partners in business. Their names are Judy and Bob. Judy pushes for a daring business plan that Bob knows for certain—and it’s not just a hunch—can only end in failure, utter ruin, and the lost of all of their clients funds. But Judy just keeps pushing, so Bob finally just gives in and all of the money is lost. Who would we blame for losing the clients’ funds? I’m thinking that we would put the blame on both of them, but perhaps especially Bob since Bob knew that the actions he took would result in losing all of his clients funds while Judy honestly thought it would work out. But Debi doesn’t see things that way. In Debi’s world, Bob would be absolved of all blame because Judy had boobs, which clearly made it so that Bob couldn’t do anything but give in. A man cannot, apparently, stand up under a woman’s constant nagging. Because, boobs. Or something.

Look, if a wife is advising her husband to follow an unwise financial plan and won’t listen to the facts or look at the data or consider that she might be wrong about it, that’s obviously wrong. But that does not absolve her husband from any responsibility for choosing, of his own volition, to heed her urging and follow her bad financial plan. We are all responsible for our own actions, including men, yes, even when women are present and involved. Once again I’m hearkening back to the idea that women need to dress modestly because men just can’t help themselves.

Men are still allowing women to take the spiritual lead, and women are confidently leading just as Eve did. They believe they are doing what is good for the family. It is not an act of carnal lust. It is a religious act driven by rebellion. Women are simply deceived.

This whole time Debi has been granting women agency while removing it from men, but now she appears to take that agency away from women too—women are simply deceived when they step out as spiritual leaders, but they honestly think that what they are doing is right and good. So, apparently, it goes like this: Satan deceives woman, woman is weak spot in man’s armor, bringing man down as well. This sounds to me like a colossally bad setup. Why would you, if you were God, create women without armor and thus fully susceptible to temptation and deception, and create men such that anything concerning women is a weak spot in their armor? Who thought that was a good idea?

This is why God has so carefully taught us ladies to observe and maintain our roles as help meets. It is why we must implicitly trust God’s judgement as to our duties, regardless of how we “feel.”

Note, once again, the gaslighting and poisoning of the well going on here. Debi is telling women, for the millionth time, that they must not pay any mind to how they “feel.” Instead, they have to just trust what God has said in his Word (aka what Debi has said in her book). This strikes me as similar to telling the manager of a nuclear power plant to ignore the readers that tell things like the different chambers heat or pressure levels and instead to always keep the switches locked a certain way, because that’s what is illustrated on the front of the manual. Temperature readings? Come on! The front of the manual clearly shows the switches positioned just so! Ignore those silly temperature readings. Somehow, I don’t see that ending well.

God gave us a careful and stern warning as to what women would become in the last days. The prophetic picture of this woman is now in full array. It is the spiritual Jezebel, who is the exact opposite of a help meet, that is the death knell of the most noble institution on the earth—the family.

And this is why I generally distrust any organization that has the word “family” in the title. I’m pretty sure the Family Research Council and the American Family Association mean something very different when they say the word “family” than I mean when I say the word “family”—and I’m pretty sure that’s the case here too. See, in my book, a woman who displays leadership characteristics or takes her place as the spiritual leader of the family does absolutely nothing to threaten “the family.” So clearly, when Debi says “the family” she actually means “the traditional, patriarchal family.”

The next sections deal with Jezebel and then Ruth, Esther, and the Proverbs 31 woman. But for now, I just want to finish this post by emphasizing the extent to which Debi’s writing is anti-man in addition to being anti-woman. Debi doesn’t just erase women’s agency, she erases men’s agency as well. In Debi’s world, men can’t help but acquiesce to women’s doe eyed looks, are “ruled by their feelings” when it comes to women, and literally lose control of their own actions when faced with an attractive and endearing woman. Honestly, to me Debi’s entire book reads like an attempt to ruin relationship by giving such twisted advice that husbands and wives will be rendered incapable of actually sitting down face to face and communicating and unable to discuss issues and make plans like two competent adults.

New Jersey: Charges Dropped, Case Dismissed After HSLDA Intervenes

Home School Legal Defense Association worked closely with a local attorney to prove that charges of educational neglect against a single mom were false.

Still curious, I clicked the link to the full article.

Single mom Vernal Rogers (named changed to protect privacy) removed her son from public school in 2008 after the school did not stop the bullies who were harassing him.

In January of 2013, a DYFS (Division of Youth and Family Services) representative showed up at her door and told Vernal that she was suspected of educational neglect in connection with homeschooling her son. The DYFS worker demanded to see Vernal’s homeschool curriculum.

A member of HSLDA, Vernal quickly called for help. Based upon our guidance, she showed the DYFS worker a copy of the “Frequently Asked Questions” published by the New Jersey Department of Education, but refused to submit her curriculum for inspection. The DYFS worker left unhappy.

DYFS subsequently went to court and asked a judge to order Vernal to submit to the DYFS investigation. HSLDA hired River Vale attorney Grace Meyer to represent the family locally.

Working closely with HSLDA attorneys, Meyer showed the prosecuting attorney the program Vernal was using for her son. It consisted primarily of a well-organized set of interactive online materials in all major subject areas tightly focused on preparing a young person to pass the GED test.

Seeing that the young man was receiving a solid education, the prosecuting attorney dismissed the case without the family ever appearing before the judge. DYFS subsequently notified Vernal that the allegations against her were “unfounded.”

I’m afraid I didn’t take away from this article whatever HSLDA wanted me to take away from it. In fact, I kind of took away the opposite. I’m afraid that my conclusion on reading this story was that HSLDA operates like villain in a superhero movie.

What the DYFS worker wanted to do was verify that Rogers was actually educating her son. That was all. Someone had called in a tip alleging that Rogers was not. All the DYFS worker asked was to see the curriculum Rogers was using in order to verify that she was indeed educating her son. HSLDA knew this. Let me repeat: HSLDA knew that all Rogers had to do to diffuse the situation was to show the DYFS worker her curriculum—and that is exactly what HSLDA advised her not to do.

HSLDA took what should have been a very simple thing and escalated into a full-blown court case, all the way down to the necessity of having to hire a local lawyer to defend Rogers (interestingly, the lawyer HSLDA hired and “worked closely with” here is the same “HSLDA-affiliated” lawyer who is defending John and Carolyn Jackson against charges of horrific child abuse, arguing in the face of the evidence that they’re just a “good, Christian homeschooled family”—the Jacksons were the third example in my “cages” post). This whole time, HSLDA knew what it needed to do to diffuse the situation—simply show the curriculum. And yet, it held off till exactly the right moment, waiting for the case to become something it could use to scare its members with before ending it with the solution it could have used to keep the case from ever going to court in the first place.

You know how in all of those super hero movies, the villains create disasters just so that they can save people from them and come off looking like heroes? That’s honestly what it looks like happened in this case. HSLDA created a court case, knowing the whole time exactly what it needed to do to diffuse the situation (i.e., show the curriculum) but waiting until the right dramatic moment to employ this and bring the case to its close, coming off as the hero. This is reflected in the article’s title: “Charges Dropped, Case Dismissed after HSLDA Intervenes.”

And of course, the article finishes with this:

Protect Your Family

If you or someone you know is not a member of HSLDA, will you consider taking a moment today to join or recommend us? Your support for our work enables us to defend individual families threatened by government officials and protect homeschooling freedom for all.

It’s a marketing ploy. It’s all a marketing ploy. It’s a marketing ploy played over real people’s lives and with real people’s emotions, and that is wrong. It’s like in those movies where the villain spreads a plague all the while in possession of the antidote, waiting for the right moment to release this miracle cure and be hailed as a hero. It’s sick.

So let me give you an alternative story. One homeschool mom, Sharon, recently shared a story of the time she was visited by an employee of the Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) investigating a child abuse complaint, and she explains how the incident went down and how it would have gone down had she followed the advice given by HSLDA.

It was a beautiful spring evening, ten years ago. We’d just finished eating dinner when an older woman knocked on our door and identified herself as an employee of the Department of Child and Family Services. “Were you at Target yesterday?” she asked. “With children?” Well, yes, I was. And someone had filed a complaint against me, turning in my license plate number, accusing me of child abuse.

I remember the panic and the humiliation that swept through me. This very thing – being accused of child abuse, having the official standing on my doorstep questioning me – was one of my parenting nightmares. Guilt or innocence had very little to do with the fear I was feeling in that moment. As I listened to the social worker speak I silently prayed one of my most frequent prayers, used in a variety of circumstances: “Please, Lord, no matter what, help me to tell the truth.”

This turned out to be an easy truth to tell. This was back in the days when I still spanked, but I wasn’t being asked about that. Instead I had been accused of having shaken my baby. I could say with complete conviction that I had never, ever shaken her. “I do spank the other kids sometimes,” I confessed, even though she hadn’t asked, “but I promise you, I’ve never shaken a baby.”

The DCFS worker was not unkind. She asked to question my children without me, and I allowed her to do so. She told me that she would be reporting the case as unfounded, and eventually – after 90 days? My memory is fuzzy – unless I was accused again the case would be closed with no permanent record of the accusation. “Spanking isn’t illegal,” she added. “But do it in the privacy of your own home. Some people are nosy, or they have an axe to grind.”

. . .

If I had been a member of the HSLDA, and if I followed the advice they give to their members, things would have gone differently the evening that the DCFS showed up. I would have immediately assumed a defensive posture with the caseworker, declining to answer her questions until after I’d contacted my HSLDA lawyer. I certainly would have refused her request to interview my children. That honestly didn’t occur to me that day, when the caseworker was at my door. As alarmed as I was, I trusted in God and the truth.

If Sharon had followed HSLDA’s advice, I have a pretty good guess as to what would have happened. This is because I know of a situation almost identical to Sharon’s, except that in this case the family followed HSLDA’s advice. In the Stumbo case a CPS worker responded to a tip that the Stumbo’s two-year-old had been left naked and unattended in the family’s driveway. When the CPS worker asked to interview the children to ensure that everything was okay, HSLDA advised the Stumbos to refuse to grant the CPS worker any access whatsoever to their children. The CPS worker then went to a judge and got a court order to interview the children. The Stumbos appealed this order, goaded on by HSLDA. As a result the case spent literally four years in the courts, almost certainly taking a tole on the family’s emotional well-being. And all this for something that could have been resolved in five minutes had the Stumbos not taken HSLDA’s advice. And this, too, might have happened to Sharon had she also followed HSLDA’s advice.

Be sure to read the rest of Sharon’s post, where she talks about how glad she is that child protective services follows up on tips to ensure children’s safety, and her concerns about HSLDA’s attempts to undermine this system.

What I’m really struck by is how bad HSLDA’s legal advice appears to be for the people actually taking it. HSLDA makes its money off of ostensibly protecting homeschoolers’ right to homeschool, but in practice it rather looks like HSLDA cares more about keeping its members frightened enough to continue renewing their membership than it does about actually giving them good advice. Interestingly, a guide for homeschoolers dealing with CPS investigations composed by a homeschooling group that opposes HSLDA gives basically the exact opposite of the advice HSLDA gives. It appears that, like the villains in superhero movies, HSLDA’s modus operendi is to create disasters to save people from, thus coming off as a hero and ensuring that HSLDA coffers stay full.