61 Frames Per Second by John Constantine Today in Hooksexup's videogame blog: The sweaty, muscle-bound beefcakes of Ai Cho Aniki take on Xiu Xiu in today's Alternate Soundtrack and we get ready for the comforting adventure of Fable 2.
The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Weeds gets the weird, disappointing, pointless season finale we all feared. Plus: McCain camp labels Tina Fey's Sarah Palin impression "sexist", proving they don't really know what it means.
Dating Confessions by You "Brutal honesty can leave you awake all night. At least the fantasy gives you pleasant dreams."
Scanner by Emily Farris Today on Hooksexup's culture blog: What's your Sarah Palin baby name?
Bristol, with her baby bump and her approaching wedding, is the new pinup girl for conservatives: She's safely and solidly en route to traditional, '50s-style wedlock, allowing her parents, her pastor, and Christians everywhere to breathe a sigh of relief that she was locked onto this track early by pregnancy, before the modern world could influence her any more than it already has.
The marriage component of this scenario is critical to social conservatives: carrying a pregnancy to term and marrying the father is noble, but carrying a pregnancy to term and then pulling a Murphy Brown, while better than having an abortion, is far more unsavory. Conservatives even showered some love upon sixteen-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears — more so than your average People reader did — when she announced her pregnancy and, almost as quickly, her engagement (still pending).
Getting kids married has always been the end goal. Even abstinence-only education is just a means to an end, a way to get horny young 'uns hitched before they get a chance to spend their twenties cavorting with perverts, homos and liberals. "The delay of marriage has caused any number of ills in the larger society, and in the church," writes Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. "Honesty compels us to admit that this is indeed tied to levels of sexual promiscuity and frustration, even as it means that many persons are now marrying well into their adult years, missing the opportunity of growing together as a young couple, and putting parenthood potentially at risk."
"The delay of marriage has caused any number of ills in the larger society," writes the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
The Bible itself says that if you can't control your desires, it's better to marry than to burn with passion. What's more, recent research by evangelical pollster George Barna found a "troubling" "moral pattern" among adults under twenty-five, whose "choices made even the Baby Boomers — never regarded as a paragon of traditional morality — look like moral pillars in comparison." Specifically: The younger generation is "more than twice as likely as all other adults to engage in behaviors considered morally inappropriate by traditional standards," including engaging in non-marital sex: thirty-eight percent today vs. four percent of Boomers. (For the record, I call bullshit on that "four percent" stat.)
"We are witnessing the development and acceptance of a new moral code in America," writes Barna. "The U.S. has created a moral system based on convenience, feelings and selfishness . . . It is not likely that America will return to a more traditional moral code until the nation experiences significant pain from its moral choices." That is, pain as exemplified by the tribulations of the oh-so-relatable Palin grandparents-to-be, whose daughter — despite their best efforts (and like those gals in the '50s) — succumbed, if temporarily. But now, Bristol appears, ready to "do the right thing," to reaffirm that moral code with her embrace of the early-marriage paradigm, even if the two little pink lines came just a bit earlier.
As an added bonus, statistically speaking, her wedding won't be her last time in a church. Evangelical leaders have made much of sociological studies suggesting the future of the church depends on people getting married younger. As Professor W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia has argued, the fate of the nation's Christian congregations will "rise and fall with the fortunes of the intact, married family." Wilcox cites Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow's research revealing that decreases in marriage and childbearing among young adults are "by far the strongest predictors" of declines in church attendance. Wuthnow even argues that if marriage and childbearing rates were not dropping so far, so fast, American churches would now have 6.3 million more young adult congregants. And evangelicals, by definition, are on a mission to expand the flock.
