Salvation Army Bans Duggar / Quivering Cult’s ‘Retreat’ (Called ‘Get Them Married’) that Promoted Arranged Marriages for Teen Girls – Quivering Advocates Are Anti-Adult Singleness and Anti-Celibacy

Salvation Army Bans Duggar / Quivering Cult’s ‘Retreat’ (Called ‘Get Them Married’) that Promoted Arranged Marriages for Teen Girls – Quivering Advocates Are Anti-Adult Singleness and Anti-Celibacy 

Before I present you with the links to the news reports about this story (which are much farther down the page), I wanted to make some introductory comments in general, and a few specific comments refuting a few points from a pro-Quivering page about celibacy.

In regards to the specific news story I am blogging about today, this Quivering group is completely overlooking Apostle Paul’s comments in (Link): 1 Corinthians 7 that it is better for people to remain single than it is to marry – and Paul does not say that this teaching is in regards only to “a few,” or only a “minority” of people.

The Bible nowhere states that marriage is “a norm,” or that God expects or wants all, or most, people to marry.

It just so happens that in other cultures thousands of years ago, most people did happen to marry – one should not deduce from this cultural situation that God supported it or wanted it to be so. It just was what it was.

If the Bible said that all or most ancient Jews painted their bodies green once a year and balanced weasels on their heads while jumping up and down on a watermelon one week out of a year, one should not assume from this that

• 1. God created that cultural practice and/or that
• 2. God wanted Americans in the year 2016 to practice these things as well.

The Quivering group’s position on marriage, celibacy, and singleness is unbiblical, not to mention disturbing.

According to this article (linked to much farther below), the Quivering group was going to call this event, (where they set up marriages for little girls to marry), “Get Them Married.”

Why not have an event called, per 1 Corinthians 7, “It Is Better To Stay Unmarried”?

Am I opposed to marriage? No.

Is the God of the Bible against marriage? No.

But the Bible does not say that being married is better or more holy for girls, women, or culture, than being single, but a lot of Christian groups, and these wacky Christian cults, insist otherwise.

Christians need to do a better job of recognizing adult singleness and celibacy as legitimate, godly, biblical lifestyles and choices for all persons (and not only meant for a small minority of people who were supposedly “gifted” with it), instead of promoting marriage and natalism as the only legitimate avenues or as ways of fixing culture, the nation, or as pleasing God.

A Woman’s Fertility is Her Own Business, not Everyone Else’s by L. Bates

A Woman’s Fertility is Her Own Business, not Everyone Else’s by L. Bates

I may have blogged on this before. I apologize if this is a repeat. I’m pretty sure I already read this, or something very similar to it, about a month ago, and I may have blogged on this before.

(Link): A Woman’s Fertility is Her Own Business, not Everyone Else’s by L. Bates

Excerpts (I have a few comments to make below this long series of excerpts):

We obsess over fertility as if women are slot machines who simply need to be primed and pumped at the optimal socially acceptable moment for a baby to shoot out like a prize

When Michigan-based writer Emily Bingham took to her Facebook page to vent her frustration at intrusive baby questions, she probably expected a few of her friends to share or “like” her post. Accompanied by an ultrasound photo she had found online, (Link): her post implored:

Before you ask the young married couple that has been together for seemingly forever when they are finally gonna start a family … before you ask the parents of an only-child toddler when a Little Brother or Little Sister will be in the works … before you ask a single thirtysomething if/when s/he plans on having children because, you know, clock’s ticking … just stop.

Please stop.

You don’t know who is struggling with infertility or grieving a miscarriage or dealing with health issues.

You don’t know who is having relationship problems or is under a lot of stress or the timing just isn’t right. You don’t know who is on the fence about having kids or having more kids.

You don’t know who has decided it’s not for them right now, or not for them ever. You don’t know how your seemingly innocent question might cause someone grief, pain, stress or frustration.

But instead of reaching a few dozen of her friends, Bingham’s post went viral, shared by more than 77,000 people and liked by more than 42,000. It’s not surprising that Bingham’s message struck such a chord.

The Childless Millennial

The Childless Millennial

I am normally loathe to publish anything on millennials, because the media never shuts up about them (and Baby Boomers). But, I see shades of this in older generations too.

(Link): The Childless Millennial

• A new report finds that today’s twentysomethings have a lower birthrate than any previous generation.
• ….It’s no wonder Millennial audiences relate to the show so well: Today’s twentysomething women have been slower to have children than any previous generation.
• ….In a new report, the Urban Institute think tank writes that in 2012, there were only 948 births per 1,000 women in their 20s, “by far the slowest pace of any generation of young women in U.S. history.” In 2007, the rate was 1,118 births per 1,000.
• The decline in births was largest among Hispanic women, at 26 percent, followed by black women, at 14 percent, and an 11 percent drop for white women.
• The researchers put forward a few theories for the decrease.
• One is the Great Recession, which might have hit pause on pregnancy plans because babies are, among other things, expensive. Past studies have estimated that the recession led to a 2.4 percent decrease in the fertility rate, or about 426,850 live births. The recession also slowed the trickle of immigrants to the U.S., and immigrants tend to have more children.
• … For white women, though, the story was very different: “81 percent of the decrease in fertility is attributable to declining marriage rates.” (Granted, white women were less likely to be single mothers to begin with.) All the single ladies of countless Internet essays are, indeed, staying unhitched—and they’re not having kids as a result.
• …The report authors say they don’t know whether Millennial women will eventually catch up in childbearing like women who lived through past recessions did.Overall, the report paints a positive picture for women of color and a neutral one for white women. On one hand, women might be enjoying living carefree and childless into their 30s.

Why Women Aren’t Having Children – from The Atlantic

Why Women Aren’t Having Children – from The Atlantic

(Link): Why Women Aren’t Having Children – from The Atlantic

Excerpts:

• As detailed in essays by 16 different writers, both male and female: because they don’t want to, and because not wanting to is perfectly reasonable
• by Sophie Gilbert
• Pope Francis is widely believed to be a cool Pope—a huggable, Upworthyish, meme-ready, self-deprecating leader for a new generation of worshippers. “He has described himself as a sinner,” writes Archbishop Desmond Tutu in Pope Francis’ entry on Time’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world,  “and his nonjudgmental views on … issues such as sexual orientation and divorce have brought hope to millions of Roman Catholics around the world.”
• But there’s one issue that can make even Cool Pope Francis himself sound a little, well, judgy. “A society with a greedy generation, that doesn’t want to surround itself with children, that considers them above all worrisome, a weight, a risk, is a depressed society,” the pontiff told an audience in St. Peter’s Square earlier this year. “The choice not to have children is selfish. Life rejuvenates and acquires energy when it multiplies: It is enriched, not impoverished.”
• Ignore the irony of a man who’s celibate by choice delivering a lecture on the sacred duty of procreating, and focus instead on his use of the word “selfish.” This particular descriptor is both the word most commonly associated with people who decide not to have children, and part of the title of a new collection of essays, Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed, by 16 different writers (both female and male) who fall into exactly that category.
• While the association appears to be so deeply embedded in the collective psyche that it’d take dynamite to shift it, if the book reveals anything, it’s that there’s an awful lot more to not wanting children than the impulse to put oneself first.

Some Atheists Are Just As Ignorant About Adult Singleness and Celibacy as Progressive Christians, Secular Feminists, and Protestant Evangelical or Conservative Christians

Some Atheists Are Just As Ignorant About Adult Singleness and Celibacy as Progressive Christians, Secular Feminists, and Protestant Evangelical or Conservative Christians

I don’t normally discuss atheism a lot on my blog, though I do sometimes write posts about my quasi-agnostic status, but I couldn’t help but notice this phenomenon.

My time on Twitter has taught me that some atheists – especially the ones with an irrational hatred of all things theist, especially Christianity – are just as stupid, prejudiced, or narrow-minded about adult singleness and celibacy and adult virginity, as are many Protestant Evangelical Christians, and other types of Christians.

Liberal, progressive, and feminist Christians are also biased against adult celibates and celibacy itself, as are secular, left wing feminists.

I normally don’t usually go looking for fights with total strangers on Twitter.

A few days ago, I was looking for Tweets with the hash tag “single” or “celibate.” You never know if you do what may turn up – you may come across some links to some good articles that way.

In the midst of skimming the tweets with the “celibate” hash tag, I saw two tweets that were very dismissive of celibacy, by two different people, one apparently an atheist, and I think the other guy was an atheist as well.

I was polite in my replies to their Tweets. I was not rude. I didn’t insult either one.

I heard back from both guys.

One guy was definitely an atheist, and I’m not sure about the second guy – though I think he was atheist too, or maybe agnostic.

The second guy wasn’t so bad. He was cordial, so there wasn’t much back and forth with him.

However, first atheist guy, with the handle @atheistic_1, either tagged his buddies in the exchange, or of their own volition, they started to chip in.

The other guys were @JeffMunroe51 and a @lobsterchin.

I don’t remember the JeffM guy being too obnoxious, and he tried to bow out of the discussion after awhile.

The lobsterchin guy began acting like a jackass, and I banned him after a few tweets.

First off, these jokers assumed I was a man. I had to correct them on that.

These atheists who were tweeting me, particularly the “atheistic_1” guy, do not understand biblical views on celibacy or singleness or natalism any more than most Christians do.

As a matter of fact, the atheist and his Twitter buddies sounded remarkably like the ignorant conservative, Reformed, Baptist, fundamentalist, and evangelical Christians whose writings about celibacy, virginity, and singleness I have been regularly criticizing and correcting on this blog the last few years.

Why Do We Still Have To Justify The Choice To Be Child-free? by H. Freeman

Why do we still have to justify the choice to be child-free? by H. Freeman

(Link): Why do we still have to justify the choice to be child-free? by H. Freeman

Excerpts.

April 8, 2015

The film While We’re Young is just the latest round in a culture war over parenting. And whatever your choice, it’s probably defined by fear of regret

They’re emotionally and physically exhausting, they’re hugely expensive and, after prison, they are the biggest curtailment of your personal freedom: objectively, it makes next to no sense to have children.

Sure, the instinctive drive to perpetuate the human species, blah-di-blah, but since it feels like the only conversation I’ve had with friends for the past three years has been how they can’t get their kids into any of the oversubscribed local primary schools, I think we’ve got that one covered.

None of it will come as news to the growing number of people in the developing world who, having decided that parenthood looks less like the triumphant arrival of the (Link): Simba cub and more like bored weekends at Legoland with a toddler having a tantrum, are opting out.

In the US  (Link): 18% of women now reach their mid-40s without having a child, an increase of 80% from four decades ago.

Last year the Office for National Statistics recorded the (Link): biggest drop in live births in 40 years.

A child-free life (a far preferable term than child-less), either by choice or circumstance, is increasingly, if not the norm, then not exactly the abnorm either.

The Global Flight From the Family – from the WSJ

The Global Flight From the Family

This is from the WSJ. You might have to log in to read the whole thing. I visited their page three different times. The first two times, I was told to subscribe if I wanted to read it, on the third visit, I was granted full access.

As a celibate, middle aged, never married lady who never had kids, I don’t care if marriage rates are falling and people are refraining from having kids. This is another one of those panicked, hand-wringing editorials about how people are not marrying or having kids.

As Melanie Notkin pointed out on Twitter in regards to this WSJ editorial, not all people are deliberately choosing to delay marriage or avoid it altogether – there is a huge number of women who want to marry and have no idea why they’ve never been married.

Such women did not plan on being single and childless into their 30s and older, but there they are – and yet, they get blamed for it, by commentators who assume they intentionally avoided marriage and motherhood, for selfish reasons, or to worship career, or whatever.

These types of editorials almost never mention the scores of women who had planned and hoped on marrying (and/or having children), but it did not pan out for them because they never met a suitable partner.

(Link): The Global Flight From the Family 

Excerpts

• Much the same has been taking place around East and Southeast Asia for at least a generation. From South Korea to Singapore, China is rimmed by countries where marriage is being postponed or, increasingly, forgone; where networks of extended kin are withering due to extreme sub-replacement fertility; and where childlessness is on the rise.
• Nowadays about one-sixth of Japanese women in their mid-40s are still single, and about 30% of all women that age are childless. Twenty years hence, by Mr. Kaneko’s projections, 38% of all Japanese women in their mid-40s would be childless, and an even higher share—just over 50%—would never have grandchildren.
• To be sure, unlike Europe and the U.S., Japan still severely stigmatizes childbearing outside marriage. Childlessness, on the other hand, is socially acceptable.
• Japanese women are availing themselves of these new choices. Given recent trajectories, demographers Miho Iwasawa and Ryuichi Kaneko project that a Japanese woman born in 1990 stands less than even odds of getting married and staying married to age 50.
• Contemporary Japanese women have lifestyle options that were unthinkable for their grandmothers, including divorce, separation, cohabitation and remaining single.
• Lest one suspect that there is something about this phenomenon that is culturally specific to Western countries, we have Japan, whose fabled “Asian family values” are now largely a thing of the past.
• But it is not primarily driven by the graying of European society, at least thus far: Over twice as many Danes under 65 are living alone as those over 65.
• The rise of the one-person home coincides with population aging.