I received two responses after writing here the other day, "I wish that on those occasions when I remember to pray, 'Please, God, let me be chaste,' a nasty voice in my head wouldn't remind me that the last word of my prayer is a homonym." One was from a woman who wrote, "Me too.". The other was from a male friend who suggested I ask God to "sustain my chastity."

The problem with that solution is that it implies I'm already chaste. I'm not.

If you want to get technical about it, in my quest to refrain from physical contact with a man outside of a relationship, I haven't kissed a man intentionally on the lips in "x" months, haven't spent the night with one in "x+y" months, and haven't led one to home plate in "x+y+z" months. Put all those numbers together and they add up to the age of a dog that is past its Purina Puppy Chow stage. But it doesn't make me chaste.

The object of chastity is not to refrain from sex. It's to refrain from thinking and doing things that damage the dignity of the mind and body of one's self and others.

That doesn't sound like something that should offend people, does it? But it offends some people very much.

One of the main accusations leveled at those who value chastity is that they are afraid of sex. That they're afraid, in fact, that they might like it.

That logic completely misses the point. Of course casual sex—and by that I include thoughts of sex—is scary, because it's tempting. What's to be afraid of if it's not tempting? I count calories, but I'm not particularly scared that I'll gain weight from eating a plateful of lard, because I have no temptation to do so. But bring out a plateful of oven-fresh Toll House cookies and I'll beg you to remove the temptation.

But casual sex is not like calories. You can lose weight, but you can't lose memories. And you can't get back what casual sex takes from you.

The great lie of the sexual revolution is that having casual sex increases one's chances of emotional fulfillment. I attempted to believe that for several years. The only way to believe it is to detach, to see one's sexual partner as an object to act or be acted upon—not a human being.

This kind of detachment is most necessary when one is in a dating world where commitment is nonexistent and the fear of separation underlies all contact. Yet it exists as well in sex between partners who "respect" each other—even more so, in fact. The concept of passionate friendship requires two people to agree that they are not going to be in a real relationship but will take advantage of the opportunity to respectfully use one another's body.

I had a number of pseudo-relationships like that, where there was no real commitment to building something greater. I won't say how often the decision to keep it noncommital was mine and how often it was the other person's. But either way, to have that additional layer of emotional closeness with a partner, and yet not have a genuine commitment with him, was in some ways more painful than just using someone for the night.

The other accusation leveled at chastity proponents is the opposite of the first—that sex has no attraction for them.

That is the criticism of people who wish to justify their own unchaste behavior. Speaking for myself, and knowing how I was before I had faith, I know that any ability at all that I have to resist temptation comes from God, not me. In fact, I never feel God's presence more clearly than when temptation is strongest and I resist it.

The reason I feel God's presence in resisting temptation is that the sense of frustration and loneliness that I feel upon passing up an opportunity for physical closeness makes me cry. And I know Jesus cries with me.

The Lord knows that chastity is not an easy choice. Paul showed such understanding when he advised unmarried women, that if they could not remain chaste, they should marry, "for it is better to marry than to burn." He clearly wasn't referring to burning in hell—he meant intense emotional pain. The word he used for "burn" appears only one other time in his epistles, in 2 Corinthians 11, where he writes of his anguish for the suffering members of the church: "Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is offended, and I burn not?"

No, people who work at chastity aren't bored with sex, and they don't think it's unimportant. On the contrary, they think sex is one of the most wondrous, most beautiful, and most blessed aspects of God's creation. Which is why it pains them to see it turned into something that debases people and is itself debased.

I can't say that striving to keep my mind and body chaste has made me measurably happier. In some ways, I'm trading some obsessions for others, missing out on certain kinds of loneliness or mental preoccupations and gaining others. I'd like to think that I'm gradually learning self-control and growing closer in my walk with God—at least, I don't feel I'm further from Him—but my opinion on this is not reliable.

What I do know is that, more so than at any other point in my life, I am learning who I am. I'm learning to see myself as being valuable in and of myself, and not only in relation to my social circle. My life is richer. Strangely enough, when I look in the mirror, I actually feel prettier—much prettier—than I did when I was only thinking in terms of whom I wanted to attract. Instead of being the most obvious romantic reject, I've become the best-kept secret.

I think these things, and then I'm tempted to fantasize about whom I'd like to impress. Nuh-uh. Please, God, let me be chaste...and ignore that homonym.
1:35 AM  |

Monday, June 28, 2004

Mark Shea of Catholic and Enjoying It! wrote me with some kind words about a headline I wrote (you can see me holding it up in a photo on my main page) and told about a gem of his own:

My proudest headline moment on my blog was when I linked to a story about a Disneyland-style fun park in East Germany that harked back to the glories of the Stalin era (an actual news story).

My headline: "Who's the wielder of the club of that's made for you and me?"

7:37 PM  |

UPDATED—Homosexual "Marriage":
Something Borrowed, Something Glue

The gay-pride parades held over the weekend on the anniversary of the Stonewall riots showed just how dishonest the homosexual-marriage movement has become.

Voice the view that marriage should remain a bond between one man and one woman, and homosexual-marriage apologists like Andrew Sullivan will go, "I'm rubber, you're glue" and throw Britney Spears up in your face. How dare heterosexuals claim that they are capable of preserving the institution, they say, when celebrities think nothing of having blink-and-you'll-miss-'em marriages in Sin City?

Well, if you want to see what a world of legalized homosexual marriage would be like, just look at the photos of the weekend's parades—all of which were themed around the celebration of homosexual marriage.

You'll see thousands of Britney Spears. And I'm not referring to the artificial chest matter.

A newspaper account puts it mildly: "There were marching bands, politicians including Mayor Bloomberg and, as always, plenty of men wearing G-strings and towering heels."

The parade photos show millions of yahoos celebrating not love, but sex. In the middle of all the public nudity, surgically and hormonically altered bodies, and other grotesquerie are floats bearing "married" couples. One is left wondering, where does marriage fit into this at all?

Certainly, a homosexual couple is under no societal pressure to get married in order to show their love. They might want to marry in order to raise kids, but there's nothing in the nature of these public celebrations of sodomy and mutual masturbation to suggest that the sybarites taking part in these parades could ever be trusted around children.

In fact, judging solely on the basis of the paradegoers' behavior, it would seem that the only reason why homosexuals want marriage rights is the most cynical one possible—financial benefits.

I don't really believe that all homosexuals are as superficial, sex-obsessed, and exhibitionistic as those who put themselves on display at parades—no more than I believe all heterosexuals dress or act like Britney. And I admit that even if gay-pride paradegoers all dressed in Brooks Brothers suits and Ann Taylor dresses, I would still oppose homosexual marriage. (Maybe even more so.) But there's one thing I would grant the paradegoers, if they took away the blatant displays of perversion from their gatherings.

I would grant them my respect.

I would believe that they were serious in their desire to uphold the institution of marriage, and that they had no hidden agenda.

But in the face of the paradegoers' farcical displays, the rubber/glue insults from gay-marriage proponents seem more than a little Krazy.

UPDATE: Mark Shea quoted from this entry on his own blog, leading to a heated discussion in his comments section. Makes for interesting reading if you have time, as it wanders off into talk about the origins of Christmas and Mardi Gras.
1:08 AM  |

Sunday, June 27, 2004

I wish that on those occasions when I remember to pray, "Please, God, let me be chaste," a nasty voice in my head wouldn't remind me that the last word of my prayer is a homonym.
3:08 PM  |

The Truth in Small Things, Part 22:
The Fellowship of the "Ring"

I was riding the PATH train last night, reading my library copy of C.S. Lewis's God in the Dock, when I had that strange and rare sensation of discovering I was crying.

Usually, one doesn't discover one's own tears. One feels them coming on, and probably makes a futile effort to stop them. But this time I was unconscious of them until I felt them on my face.

It's also a little unusual to cry while reading Lewis. I know I blubber while reading the emotional scenes at the end of the Narnia books—like that part in The Magician's Nephew where Digory dreams of seeing "Mother well again"—but Lewis's theological works usually go for the brain, not the gut.

What set me off was a passage where he recalled playing with blocks as a child. The thought of such simple toys suddenly brought back a memory from 25 years ago, something I'd never analyzed seriously until now.

I was 10 years old, living in Galveston, Texas. Those were the lost years. I was a precocious New Yorker fighting my way through chicken-fried schools that made me play dodgeball and watch "The Little Rascals" when all I wanted was to spend my life in the library. Needless to say, I was not very popular.

One day, my mother, a psychologist who was then working with autistic children, had to go to a meeting with parents right after picking me up from school. I went with her to the meeting place at a school, and she left me in a playroom for an hour or so while she did her work.

With me in the playroom was a delicate little blonde girl a couple of years younger than me, to whom I was instructed to be nice. I needed the admonishment, because I already had a famous hatred of children. My mother claims that when I was some absurdly young age, I derided my peers as "nonverbal."

This girl was nonverbal, all right. She was autistic, and, my mother told me afterwards, emotionally disturbed as well. She didn't talk.

I was used to being around developmentally disabled children. Since I was ostracized at school, practically the only peers who were nice to me were the special-ed kids. On top of that, my do-gooder mom was always trying to teach me tolerance by showing me how to be sensitive to people who had problems. So, being reluctantly left alone with this strange silent girl, I resigned myself to my fate and tried to play with her.

I talked to the girl as I would to one could speak, offering her dolls and other things from the playroom's stores and inviting her to play along with me. She took the toys and pretty much went off in her own world with them. I played alongside her and pretended that we were playing together even though we weren't, keeping up my end of the friendly chatter just because she was there and I was bored. And I wondered what was taking my mother so long.

After an hour or so, I got this weird idea to play telephone.

I don't know what came over me. Maybe I was trying to trick the girl into talking. Or maybe I just felt like doing something creative and figured that even if she were silent, she might at least enjoy pretending someone was phoning her.

I remember giving her a toy phone. I don't remember if I had one myself or if I just mimed a phone at my ear. I do remember picking up the toy receiver or my clenched hand and saying, "Ring? Ring?"

And the next thing I remember is her picking up her phone, as natural as can be: "Hello?"

I was stunned, but managed to say something. And she just started chattering away, in her sweet little-girl voice. Her speech sounded perfectly normal; anyone hearing her at that moment would have thought she was an ordinary kid.

Once she got started talking, the girl pretty much went back in her own world; we didn't really have a conversation so much as she talked at me. But she did give that initial response, and she seemed to really enjoy the "game." My mother was shocked when I told her about it.

This was what flooded back to me on the train, and I cried thinking about that little girl who was so hard to reach. And yet, even though she had problems, she was easy to reach if one knew the right way.

I think that must be what it's like for God, trying to reach us.

God is communicating with us all the time. Just as that little girl understood speech even though she wouldn't speak, we perceive God's presence but the gap between us and Him is so wide that we can't or won't respond. Yet His speech is not in vain, for it gives us knowledge and understanding of Him that equips us to answer Him when the time comes.

And He doesn't give up. Through Jesus and the Holy Spirit, God comes down to us on a level that we can understand. I think of that girl again—how she was so unreachable through ordinary conversation, and yet, once I "phoned" her, the floodgates were open. That's what God does. We don't perceive Him when He's at our gate, so He has made himself small enough that we can see Him. He has made himself human.

The hard part for me, as for that girl, is to go from micro back to macro—to have that sense of trust that is necessary for "the called." To see God not only in the sense of my personal salvation, but also as Lord and Sovereign. To realize that there is never a time when He is absent or not in control. And to understand that, once He's made the call, the lines of communication are always open—even if I rarely hear his "ring."

2:37 AM  |

Michael Moore Is So Gay

For some bizarre reason, The Dawn Patrol is the No. 1 Google search result for "Michael+Moore+homosexual." I discovered this while checking my site's stats to see how people found this page. You can see which Dawn Patrol entries sparked that result here.
2:26 AM  |

Saturday, June 26, 2004

I wrote the banner headline in today's paper about Britney Spears' engagement: LOVE IS BLONDE.
2:11 PM  |

More photos from Wednesday's party:

Eureka! Matthew Berke has discovered that than which nothing greater can be conceived.

I was so happy to see Matt. For someone whom I've probably seen less than ten times—and nine of those on train rides taken over three years ago—he has had an enormous influence on my life.

One day in the fall of 2000, on a crowded train to visit my folks in the 'burbs, I was showing off my '60s-pop knowledge to other commuters when Matt leaned over from the other side of the seats. I think he'd overheard me say something about Tommy James & The Shondells and was curious.

At that time, I was a new Christian, but a closeted one—working as the managing editor of the Jewish Book Council's magazine. Matthew, by contrast, was an uncloseted Jew working at a prestigious religion magazine, First Things, whose editor was a Catholic priest. On top of that, he was researching a book-length study of Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.

As far as I was concerned, occupations didn't get any cooler than that.

From then on, I'd look for Matt on the train, which I would take every Friday. After a few rides, I got up the nerve to ask him for his help. I told him that longed for companionship of like-minded people—people who shared my moral and political views, if not my faith—and asked if he knew of any social groups that might fill the bill.

He recommended the Fabiani Society, a group sponsored by the Manhattan Institute and named after Mark Fabiani, the Clinton aide who coined the term "vast right-wing conspiracy." Every month, they held (and still hold) a meeting with a speaker and a cocktail hour, attracting the largest crowd of conservatives that one will find in New York.

Shortly after Matt made the recommendation—and generously connected me with a friend of his who could introduce me around a Fabiani meeting—he left First Things and I didn't see him on the train anymore. But I started going to Fabiani meetings and my world opened up.

At first, I was shy and uncomfortable, feeling like an outsider. But gradually I started meeting people, and also learning from them what were the reference points of conservative culture—the writers, Web sites, magazines, and so on. When I eventually got a job at a place where I really wanted to be—a daily newspaper—I felt like I understood political issues better and could relate with journalists and editors on their level. My confidence was and is far greater than it was before—back when, thrust in front of a pundit, I was all, "homina homina homina."

My friend J.R. Taylor wouldn't have his picture taken with me or anyone, but he did get behind the camera. He'd complained about my Mouseketeer-in-the-headlights expression on the top photo on Gaits of Eden, saying that I should put up a photo where I'm not smiling. So I invited him to snap a shot of me going for the waifish-wallflower look. I'm not sold on it, but if you, dear reader, like it and let me know, then I may put it up on the Gaits.

The grin returns as I enjoy getting the squeeze from fellow copy editor Ken Wheaton, a proud Cajun whose blog is called As I Please. Ken and I agree on a lot of things and I enjoy much of his blog's witty commentary—though I have to diverge with him on one item that he lists among his interests at the top of his Web page: "making the baby Jesus cry."

And here I am with the fabulous Karol Sheinen of the deservedly popular blog Spot On. I love her dedication and her spark. She's determined to make the youth of America realize that conservatism is hip, and I know if anyone can do it, she can.



1:08 AM  |

Friday, June 25, 2004

Some headlines are too sick for even a tabloid newspaper, and I have just written one of them.

The story itself was at once tragic and disgusting. A middle-aged woman died after throwing herself from the balcony of her aunt's apartment. Her aunt, a legally blind woman in a wheelchair, happens to be a famous voyeuristic photographer in the Robert Mapplethorpe vein, whose work has appeared in Playboy and Penthouse.

When the aunt heard her niece had killed herself, she grabbed her press ID, got her wheelchair into the elevator, and rushed down to the scene—with her camera. She proceeded to photograph her niece's body. And she wasn't doing it to help the investigation—just as a matter of routine, because she photographs what happens to her every day of her life.

Very sad.

So it was in a fit of horror and disgust that I wrote the headline that the copy chief rejected: PHOTO FINISH.
8:13 PM  |

Pronoun Trouble

A friend writes:

This Village Voice article is just begging to be commented on in the blogosphere: "Transmale Nation: Remaking manhood in the genderqueer generation."

It just shows that "tolerance" was really a canard for "embrace and acceptance," just as it was for gays in general way back when. The first few movies that came out about gender changes were all about hateful crimes toward transgendered people—"Boys Don't Cry" and the like. But now it has morphed into, unless you think we are completely normal with our mix-n-match body parts, you must be a bigot.

Isn't it also hypocritical for this same community that shuns people who are even the slightest bit out of physical shape (see all of the other ads in the Voice for buff bodies and laser treatments for everything and the like), but to insist that a very looks-oriented culture accept people who have voluntarily made themselves into, well, freaks?

I wonder if it is the porn culture that exploded over the Internet over the past 10 years that has contributed to this incessant desire for something new to shock. Is anyone at all titillated by the regular human body anymore?

One thing that I find interesting about the Voice piece is the description of the transgendered woman who considers herself a gay man. I've read about this phenomenon before, and can't find any biological basis for it.

The idea that a woman would have her breasts removed so that she could have sex with a man as though she were herself a man, cannot be identified within the bounds of healthy human psychology. The definition not only of gender but of mental health itself has to be twisted beyond recognition to accommodate a person like that.

Such a sad perversion does not strike me as any different, fundamentally, than a woman desiring to have sex—or a lifelong sexual relationship—with another woman. Rather, it's homosexuality taken to its logical extreme.

At the root of homosexuality is a desire to avoid true human intimacy. The Voice article, showing just how far people will go to avoid such intimacy—to the point of changing not the object of their desire, but their own gender in relation to that object—is a stark reminder of the crisis we and our children face when society allows such behavior to be the norm.
4:29 PM  |

It's a 'Syn' to Smell a Lie

Eric Siegmund of The Fire Ant Gazette has a fascinating entry on synesthesia—the phenomenon by which some people's senses are merged so they smell words or hear colors. Read the comments too.
1:12 PM  |

Bring On the Bunk

A young man last night caught me reading C.S. Lewis in public ('cause I'm that kind of girl, living on the edge), and he was eager to speak to me about Christianity.

He told me he'd come from a non-Christian background—his father was an atheist, his mother a Jehovah's Witness. He accepted Jesus in college, after dabbling in Islam and Hinduism. But for the past five months, he hadn't gone to church. Something had shaken his faith.

What was it? The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown.

I found this interesting because there's been a lot of talk in Christian circles about how much influence thaat novel has had on people who might otherwise be Christian. Some believe the church should vigorously refute the book's heresies; others, like blogger Eric Siegmund, have said that to do so would only legitimize what is really just a passing fad.

I know a number of people who have read The Da Vinci Code, but they're all secular Jews. So I'm embarrased to say that, listening to this earnest young man last night, I had to restrain a surge of pride: me, the first Christian on my block to meet someone who's actually suffered a theological breakdown because of that bestseller.

That's a really horrible thought, and I apologize for it. As I felt it, I immediately regretted it and did my best to atone by listening to the young man explain why the novel shook his faith. I went into full apologetics mode—aided greatly by knowledge gained from reading Christianity Today's counterattacks on it—and the words that came to me felt right. But I had this strange feeling...

I kept thinking, as the man told me about how the book had seemed true to him, that I had recently read something heretical that seemed true to me too. I remembered that I was disturbed by reading it, because I knew it was wrong, but there was something insidious about it. As I read it, I felt like I couldn't refute it as well as I'd like. It used exceedingly subtle language, arguing its case by referring to absolutes against which I felt I couldn't argue.

When I got home and went online, I hit upon a Web site and in a flash I realized it was the one that had bedeviled me. It's the blog at GLAAD's homosexual-marriage site, idoin30seconds.org. (The site's name comes from GLAAD's contest for amateur homosexual-marriage TV commercials—far be it from GLAAD to make a double-entendre about buggery.)

The bloggers at idoin30seconds.org, attempt, in the manner of Andrew Sullivan, to convince heterosexuals of the validity of homosexual marriage by using mushy emotional arguments. It's all about love. Why can't two people who love each other express their love by marrying?

It's understandable why homosexual apologists play up the love angle, because it's the most powerful argument they have. I've known loving gay couples who were committed to one another for years. Certainly their love is real, so if one compares them to straight couples, it becomes hard to defend why they should not be allowed to marry.

Ah, but they're not straight couples. And therein lies the fundamental difference.

It was today's idoin30seconds.org blog entry that gave me a solid conviction of what is wrong with their and Sullivan's argument—and how such homosexual-marriage proponents make their cases only by constantly contradicting themselves.

In that entry, "What—and Who—Is Marriage For?", Scott Lewis repeats what he himself admits are familiar homosexual-marriage arguments that marriage is not primarily for the sake of having children. This conveniently ignores society's interest in promoting marriage as the basis of the family unit—an important purpose regardless of whether or not every couple has children.

Lewis then pulls out the big guns, doing that slay-'em-with-love thing:

But at its core, the purpose of marriage is best summed up by the vow taken by those who enter into it: To have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish as long as we both shall live.

Read that again. The marriage vow is about creating stable, lasting, loving adult relationships. It's about commitment and love and cherishing and affection and mutual support and fidelity and caretaking.

And that, my friends, is where I woke up out of my misty haze and realized just what manipulative, calculating bluffers these homosexual-marriage apologists are.

They say that they're only asking for the legal rights of marriage, not for marriage in the time-honored sense of a union honored both by society and by God. And then they turn around and argue that they really do want their marriages to be recognized as something right, part of the natural order of things.

The words "to have and to hold," around which Lewis bases his argument, come from the traditional Christian wedding service. That service usually includes a reading from Ephesians 5, culminating in these familiar words: "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh."

I believe that there are many strong arguments against homosexual marriage that are not biblically based. But when the supporters of such a radical redefinition of marriage try to defend themselves by citing Christian tradition, they do both themselves and the defenders of true marriage an injustice. "To have and to hold" means that a man and a woman are to have and hold one another, so they shall be one flesh. Two men or two women can't be one flesh. They can't be one flesh any more than they can cause, through their union of bodies, a new flesh—a new life—to come into the world.
1:55 AM  |

Thursday, June 24, 2004

They've Leased That Lovin' Felon

The Associated Press says a prominent pro-Democratic Party group is sending sex offenders and other offenders door-to-door to register voters.
6:01 PM  |

Capitalism With Strings Attached

Going through my rock-journalism archives, I found an article I wrote for Mojo that they never used, on legendary L.A. session guitarist Mike Deasy. Among other achievements, Deasy was part of Phil Spector's "Wrecking Crew," played on the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, and backed Elvis Presley on his '68 comeback special. I plan to put the article online, but in the meantime, here's something that jumped out at me, on how, during the psychedelic era, the guitarist found a new niche as one of L.A.'s hottest sitar players:

When he was hired to play sitar, he would charge double his usual rate. But he gave added value: "I would take a goatskin rug and burn incense."

1:00 PM  |

Hooray for the Bulldog

Last night,* I was telling a friend about one of the things I love about my job as a newspaper copy editor and headline writer: I don't have to take my work home with me. Not only that, I can't.

"The paper's like God's mercies," I explained—"new every morning."

*Photos from the lovely evening should appear here on Saturday, after I get my camera back from a pal.
4:03 AM  |

Pretoria's Secret

South Africa's Gay and Lesbian Alliance, which calls itself the "lesbigay political voice" of the country, is banning "cross-dressers and transvestites" from its membership. (Why transvestites don't fall under the umbrella label of cross-dresser, I can't tell you, other than that the word sounds more pervy.)

"To cross dress or change one's sex is not seen as a qualifying factor to be regarded as part of the lesbigay orientation," it said in a statement.

"Men dressing as women or women dressing as men harm the image of the lesbigay community beyond doubt."

Lesbigays were "average people" with only a single identifying aspect, namely same-sex orientation.

"We believe that the majority of South Africans will welcome our decision to clean our party ranks of cross-dressers and transvestites."

"Lesbigays" are "average people." Just like in Mayberry. Isn't that amazing. Kick out the obviously unnatural people from a gay and lesbian group, and no one will notice that the entire lifestyle is unnatural.

3:31 AM  |

Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick says that pro-abortion politicians should not be denied Holy Communion unless "efforts at dialogue, persuasion and conversion have been fully exhausted."

If all efforts fail with John Kerry, here's a Sunday Mass in the nation's capital that'll take Senator Flapjack with open arms.
3:00 AM  |

Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Veep Thrills

Charles at Dustbury.com has a funny and authentic quote about Dick Cheney's self-image.
11:56 AM  |

B.J. and the Bare

The house "Bridget Jones" at the newspaper where I work just quit writing her dating column after three and a half years, having taken a new assignment. Her farewell piece was outwardly triumphant, but her regular readers must have found it somewhat sad. I'm sure many of them were rooting for her to end her run by finding a boyfriend—not by finding a gossip gig in the Hamptons.

She talked about the memories from her column's tenure that stuck out in her mind—various trysts, some pleasant, some not so. It struck me that I had similar memories from my years spent a-whoring—or would, if I hadn't blocked them out.

But I can understand B.J.'s wanting to dwell on her conquests. I could remember mine much better when I was in that mental framework—that is, when I still followed the Cosmo dating rules of "sex first, relationship afterwards (maybe)." Back then, at the times when I felt insecure, I wanted to remember the occasion when I walked into a bar and snagged a guy with five words. When I felt lonely, I wanted to replay the night I spent with a guy who was so gorgeous that I adored his image as though it were a painting.

Like a painting. That was another thing. I had to distance myself from those guys by imagining that every kiss or touch was somehow artful, cinematic. It couldn't be real life&8212;that would have required me to look at them and myself as human beings and take responsibilty for my actions. Likewise, they were all "guys" to me. I couldn't bear to think of any of them as "men." That would be too grown-up.

But I don't replay those memories anymore. For a while, after my newfound faith altered my priority to "relationship first," my mind did return to such images occasionally. But the memories gradually lost their appeal, because they all ended unhappily. Even the warm, fuzzy flings with sensitive guys who respected me ended unhappily. Everything's unhappy that entails placing emotional limits on an act that's designed to be part of a continuum of commitment which lasts for the rest of your life.

Here's a quote: Casual sex with someone who "respects" you is like taking a bath with your clothes on. Awkward barriers prevent you from fully enjoying the experience, and—despite your best efforts to let it wash over you—when it's over, you still feel dirty.

So, anyway, for a while now, I've been sending the newspaper's features editors periodic e-mails with writing samples, in hope they'll let me write the dating column. So far, they've greeted my missives with complete and utter silence. Which is too bad for them, as I know they'd get loads of attention if they gave me a shot, especially since they're trying to make the paper more edgy.

Can you imagine? Every Sunday, I'd have my column about how I didn't have sex that week. What could be more cutting-edge than that? That's so edgy, it's got four sides.
4:21 AM  |

Tuesday, June 22, 2004

OK, sports fans: I copyedited the second-edition story about Yankee pitcher José Contreras' wife and kids escaping from Cuba, and I managed to work in an actual baseball pun. This is amazing, as I'm not a sports person at all (though if I did follow any sport, it would be baseball).

The story is accompanied by a photo of Contreras' wife in a Miami refugee-services daughter. She's hugging her daughter and they look tired but happy. For the photo kicker—the boldface part that starts the caption—I wrote: RELIEF PICTURE.
11:35 PM  |

The Heaven That Was '87

Caren Lissner today calls 1987 "the year pop music went bad." Now, as far as I'm concerned, 1969 is the year pop music went bad. But I have to say that for my generation—which is Caren's as well—she does have a point.

I remember 1987 as the last year that I seriously thought my ideal career would be as an A&R woman. There were two bands I was following who were each gaining notice on the basis of a debut album released the previous year on an independent label: the Smithereens and They Might Be Giants.

Both acts would soon move to a major label and would eventually have Top 40 success, but in 1987, they were on the cutting edge. And they made great pop music—highly commercial and highly creative at the same time. (Yes, the 'Reens borrowed right and left, but usually in such a charming way that it qualified under the time-honored adage, "Great composers steal.") Moreover, neither act was concerned with looking pretty or bizarre; substance triumphed over style.

I can think of a lot of great artists who emerged after 1987—the Rooks, Dave Rave, Frank Bango, Michael Lynch, and Richard X. Heyman, to name a few. But I can't recall another year since then with such hope and excitement—when not one, but two of the best "pop" artists around were on the brink of actually becoming popular.
9:24 PM  |

A Horse Called Richard Harris

Writer Jeff Grimshaw, dropping a line to let me know that he's the reader who sent the Dawn Patrol tip to Best of the Web, points me to the latest installment of his humor column: "MacArthur Park Made Easy". Now, I'd thought Dave Barry had the last word on this, but Grimshaw and his pals fisk the song and come up with some good observations. My favorite, in an analysis of the lyric, "I don't think that I can take it": "The cake has now become a METAPHOR (Literally, Greek for The Author Is On Drugs')."

But perhaps the best "MacArthur Park" tale I've read this week was in Page Six's special Father's Day column, from Richard Harris's son Jared:

When he got angry at me, like if I did something silly like not make my bed, instead of hitting me or even shouting, Dad would just start loudly singing 'MacArthur Park,' which was his big pop hit in the '60s."

Being eight years old and having this muscleman bellowing that you've left the cake out in the rain when it is complete sunshine outside was awesome if somewhat confusing motivation to make sure I never left my bed unmade again. Dad only sang that on clear days, when I was naughty. On rainy days he preferred Sinatra songs, which wasn't nearly as effective.

Grimshaw discovered The Dawn Patrol while searching for Web pages mentioning his friend Paul Proch, who illustrated his three books. (In the small-world department, I learned from Grimshaw's site that his latest work, Wing Ding at Uncle Tug's, received a testimonial [comparing the author to Jean Shepherd] from my downstairs neighbor and friend of 22 years.)


2:48 PM  |

Sangers and Mush

Among the members of Planned Parenthood's online family—that is, the members that the organization hasn't killed off with a virtual scissors shoved up the cranium—is the activist-organizing site SaveROE.com.

The name sounds faintly ridiculous. I mean, these days, not even Roe wants to save Roe.

On the site's front page are pro-abortion quotes from the media. This one caught my eye, from the Illinois Journal-Standard:

In response to all the abortion letters: While I myself could never have an abortion, I support the rights of women to choose. Is it murder? That is up to our Creator to decide, but I have one question for those of you who say it is murder, no doubt about it. If it is murder for a woman to have an abortion, how is it not murder for say, a 9-year-old rape victim?

First of all, our Creator's already decided. It's murder. As for the rape-victim question, in three words?

Absolutely it's murder.

The overwhelming majority of pro-lifers would allow for an abortion to occur when it is necessary to save the life of the mother—though, according to the Christian Medical Fellowship, that's only necessary in .013 percent of cases, and, as Dave Munger wrote in American Partisan, maybe even less often than that:

Abortion is never necessary to save the life of the mother. The term 'abortion' refers to an intentional procedure, not a miscarriage. The notion that abortion is sometimes necessary to save the life of the mother is based upon the fact that some therapeutic techniques incidentally kill the fetus. Chemotherapy can also be fatal, but that does not make it euthanasia. The statement "Abortion is sometimes necessary to save the life of the mother, implicitly concedes that a child exists only in reference to "the mother."

But an abortion for a victim of rape creates two victims: the raped girl and the murdered child.

The image of a 9-year-old rape victim forced to endure pregnancy because cruel politicians and judges won't let her kill her unborn child is heartbreaking. That's all the more reason why we have to stand firm. We can't let the manipulative minds of Planned Parenthood turn a violated child in pigtails, holding a doll, into the pro-life movement's Willie Horton.

4:01 AM  |

Many thanks to James Taranto at OpinionJournal Best of the Web and Mark Shea at Catholic and Enjoying It! for their Dawn Patrol mentions yesterday, which resulted in an avalanche of new readers.

One thing that especially made me happy was that two strangers wrote in to compliment me on my headlines. Being myself a longtime fan of great headlines (particularly Taranto's gems), it means a lot to me that some people look for news of my latest headlines on this blog.

Today's paper features a banner headline I wrote for the story about the first-ever privately financed manned rocket flight:

SPACE FOR RENTBut the item of which I'm proudest in today's paper isn't a headline—just a humble "nameline." That's the boldface name and three- or four-word description that goes under a headshot. In this case, the story's about pandas, and the headshot shows one of the cute creatures with a piece of bamboo sticking out of its mouth like a cigar.

So I wrote in the place where the boldface name would normally go: "GIANT PANDA".

And under that, where the brief description would go—

You can see this coming, can't you?

Yup. "Eats shoots & leaves."

Believe it or not, I had to convince my editor on that one. He said,"It's cute, but is it backed up in the story?"

"Yes, right at the bottom, where it says they eat bamboo," I said pleadingly. "Bamboo has shoots and leaves." Then he relented. Whew!
3:23 AM  |

Monday, June 21, 2004

In today's paper, for a story about a young woman's efforts to educate teenage girls about the dangers of breast implants, I wrote this headline:COED: 'CHEST' SAY NOAnd for a feature story on how New Yorkers are eager to rent out their apartments to Republicans during the party convention, I wrote this (if memory serves):Apt. dwellers pu$h for GOP to take over the 'house'
2:32 AM  |

Match Game

The other night, I ran into a woman I know who informed me she was so dissatisfied with the caliber of men she was meeting through her social circle that she had joined a personal-ad Web site.

Unfortunately, she added, the Web site—one of the biggest in the business—had thus far turned out to be a bust. The five responses she'd received in her ad's debut week ranged from the perverted to the inane. But what could she expect? According to a survey on the site, she was compatible with only 4 percent of its members.

Just a lonely little 4 percent. How sad. I gave her the requisite "poor baby" platitudes. It wasn't until I got home that it hit me.

Assuming that the Web site's statistics hold true for real life—which they probably do, given the large sample—and assuming what I learned in fifth-grade math still holds, Personal Ad Gal can theoretically walk into any room containing 25 men and discover one case of mutual boat-floating.

It boggles the mind.

Certainly, 4 percent is a far higher number of potential Mr. Rights than I want or need. In fact, I can't imagine being happy in a world where the odds of a man's being my lifemate were greater than 1 in 1 billion.

In the film "Big Fish," a boy sees a vision of his own death. That knowledge gives him marvelous confidence throughout life. In his moments of greatest fear, he can reassure himself by remembering, "This is not how I go."

Single women are told to view single men with an open mind, as though each one might be The One. I submit that this is counterproductive. When the difference between the right man and the almost-right man is analogous to that between lightning and the lightning bug, and when one faces the daunting task of weeding out 999,999,999 million almost-right ones, the answer is not to keep playing the field.

Until lightning strikes, the answer is to keep remembering: "This is not how I go."
1:43 AM  |

Sunday, June 20, 2004

"Al Qaeda Head Justifies Targeting Johnson"

That's not a joke. It's a real Associated Press headline. The copy chief at the paper where I work couldn't believe it when I told him; the words are so ill-chosen. It invites the response: "Johnson Head Justifies Targeting Al Qaeda."
8:38 PM  |

Saturday, June 19, 2004

UPDATED—Raising Odd Girls

Blogger Joe Territo reads my post about the AMA's endorsement of same-sex adoption and writes, "So what?"

I had cited a 2001 study by by sociology professors at the University of Southern California which found that previous studies of children raised by homosexual couples had failed to notice that such children were different from those of heterosexual couples: different in their levels of sexual adventurousness (e.g. daughters of lesbian couples were more likely to act out sexually) and in their gender identification (sons of lesbian couples were less masculine); as well as different in terms of their sexual experience. Such children were also more likely to have had homosexual experiences, even though they may not have identified themselves as homosexual.

These are the things to which Territo writes, "So what?"

I'm not going to attempt to convince someone who takes a different view of homosexuality than I do that children should not grow up in an atmosphere that fosters sexual ambiguity. But in order to have an honest debate about homosexual marriage and child-raising, the least that's required is intellectual honesty. As the USC researchers wrote, "It is difficult to conceive of a credible theory of sexual development that would not expect the adult children of lesbigay parents to display somewhat higher incidence of homoerotic desire, behavior, and identity than children of heterosexual parents."

For a psychiatry delegate to the AMA to state, as he did, that "all the scientific evidence points to no differences among children raised in heterosexual or homosexual families," is dishonesty in the extreme.

UPDATE: Turns out that Territo and I are on the same side of the fence where the AMA is concerned; he's posted an enlightening follow-up with another example of how the association "often is more fixated on making money for doctors than making Americans healthier."
11:31 PM  |

Eugenics at the Times

Last month, I wrote about Nobelist James D. Watson's telling me of his belief that science should make it easy for mothers to abort "imperfect" babies.

If you've read my account of the encounter, which referenced similar Watson quotes in the press, you know that I'm not exaggerating. The co-discoverer of DNA's double helix told me that if he'd had the opportunity, he would have had his own son aborted rather than raise a mentally handicapped child.

Well, I'm sorry to say that the spirit of Dr. Watson thrives in the medical industry, and it may be seen in an article in tomorrow's New York Times: "In New Tests for Fetal Defects, Agonizing Choices for Parents."

Since this is the Times, the "agonizing choices" angle is played for sympathy: Every parent deserves a perfect child. If that requires destroying an imperfect one or two or three, it's a necessary tragedy. Moreover, according to the Times, it's a decision that should be made only by the parents themselves—not fettered by government regulations—and based only on their own interests.

None of this should be any surprise to Times readers. But for me, there was one particularly galling part of this galling story:

Quest Diagnostics, a leading provider of medical tests, said prenatal and genetic mutation tests were one of the fastest-growing parts of its business.

"People are going to the doctor and saying, 'I don't want to have a handicapped child, what can you do for me?'" said Charles Strom, medical director of Quest's genetic testing center.

The Michael Moore fans think that conservatives own big business. Well, let me tell you, I need to get a routine blood test next week, and there is no way that I can do so without putting money into that sc*mbag Charles "what can you do for me" Strom's pocket. Here in the New York City area, as well as much of the rest of the country, Quest is the only game in town for medical tests.

What the Times doesn't tell you is that Strom has a long history of eugenicism that makes James D. Watson look like Jaye P. Morgan. A few years ago, when he was director of medical genetics at the Reproductive Genetics Institute in Chicago, he was one of the first doctors to genetically engineer a baby so that it could donate blood to a diseased sibling. To do that, he grew several embryos and killed the ones that had the hereditary disease. From Family.org:

"We had no ethical concerns whatsoever," Strom said. "They wanted to have a healthy baby; that's what we do."

C. Ben Mitchell, Ph.D., senior fellow at the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, said he sees plenty of ethical problems.

"We ought to treat human beings as ends in themselves and not means to some other kind of end, even if it's a therapeutic end-to help another child," Mitchell said. "The genetic-screening technology raises new issues, because now someone has to make choices about who lives and who dies."

At Quest, Strom's agressive efforts to make it easier for parents to have their imperfect unborn babies diagnosed and killed has earned him coverage in Fast Company, which reported, "Quest has opened three walk-in clinics in Colorado, where curious people can order workups on themselves without a doctor's order. Look ahead, says Strom, and genetic testing could become a routine part of a pharmacy visit."

This guy is like one of those scary Cold War-era "Better Living Through Technology" types, with his sunny vows to give people what they want. He reminds me of Tom Lehrer's characterization of Wernher von Braun:

Don't say that he's hypocritical,
Say rather that he's apolitical.
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.

Search for Strom on the Web and you find that, like Watson, he's a cartoon. In his relentless pursuit of press, he's even used his genetics expertise to help a wacko artist who went on to have scientists create