This week's cool podcast:

Marriage: Love & Life in the Divine Plan (Click the POD icon.) The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issues a pastoral letter on the source of marriage and its value to non-religious society. View the entire letter here in PDF format.

Twin City subscribers: Tune in to Channel 19 to get more from Dr. J's "Why Same Sex Marriage Effects Everyone" talk series.

Same Sex Marriage is Not Good for Children
Wed. Dec. 2, 9-10 am
Thu. Dec. 3, 9-10 pm

Same Sex marriage Causes Gender Confusion
Wed. Dec. 16, 9-10 am
Thu. Dec. 17, 9-10 pm

Religion's Secret Weapon
Wed. Dec. 30, 9-10 am
Thu. Dec. 31, 9-10 pm

Where else to find Dr. J:

The weekend of January 23-24, the Ruth Youth will be going to the West Coast Walk for Life in Oakland and in San Francisco. Call us right away to join in this fun and worthwhile pro-life activity.

February 2, 2010: Stanford

February 7-14 is National Marriage Week. What can your church or school do to promote healthier happier marriages during this week?

February 8, noon, King’s College in Manhattan. Dr. Morse will be interviewed by Marvin Olasky.

February 9, noon, Columbia University Law School, Dr. J debates same sex marriage.

March 5-6, Ruth Institute co-sponsored conference and essay contest, BYU Law School and Stand for the Family.

April 16-17, events in Dallas

April 24, Worldview conference in Northern California, exact location TBA.

May 3, Teleconference with Chuck Colson’s Centurions.

Do you need advice on how to improve your marriage or relationship, or on how to find the right person for you? Expert Dr. J is here for you. Click here to ask your question, which may be featured anonymously in this newsletter for the benefit of all.

Read past questions and answers here.

Need help with your marriage? You can also check out Dr. J's "101 Tips for a Happier Marriage!"

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A Message from Ruth Institute President, Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse

For college students, December is a time of alternately panic and relief. They are finishing term papers, studying for exams, and making plans for a deeply deserved Christmas break. But while our students are winding down for the semester, we at the Ruth Institute are as busy as ever. December is a time for looking back over the year with gratitude, taking stock of our accomplishments, and planning for a wonderful new year with all of you who love and cherish the institution of marriage.

Looking back over this semester, Executive Director Jamie Gruber and I are profoundly grateful for the high caliber of students we have had the privilege of supporting. These student graduates of our It Takes a Family conference from August have shown fantastic initiative in promoting natural marriage. Students from the University of North Carolina, Brigham Young University, Rice, Notre Dame, the University of Arkansas and many other schools have organized new clubs, started pro-marriage blogs, written helpful articles, sponsored pro-life events, assisted at the Values Voters Summit and participated in anti-pornography programs.

We are very proud of these dynamic young people. You, as friends of the Ruth Institute, can be as well. We simply could not support these student initiatives without your help. Please consider helping us with a financial gift.

We are also grateful for the opportunities to share our expertise with our friends in pro-marriage networks. Jamie and I both brought the Ruth Institute message to events at Princeton University. We both attended the National Summit on Marriage, Parenting and Families at Hampton University, with Jamie featured as a speaker. We both signed the Hampton Proclamation. (You can sign it too, here.) This historic event took place in the shade of the Emancipation Oak, the first place in the South where the slaves heard the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. And in all of our travels, we have met many wonderful people like you, who value and respect the institution of marriage. Your continuing support makes our travels possible.

Looking forward to the next semester, we have many exciting events already scheduled. Look over the list of upcoming events in the sidebar to the left. If we are coming to your area, mark your calendar and join us. Even better, call or e-mail us (jgruber@ruthinstitute.org) right away to see if we can add your school or organization to our travels. Don’t delay: our calendars are filling up quickly!

We remain profoundly grateful for the support and encouragement we receive from all of you. We know that we could not help these students without your help. When you make your end of the year charitable giving decisions, we hope you will consider the Ruth Institute.

Sincerely,

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse (a.k.a. Dr. J)

Spin cycle: the lesbian parenting story that wasn’t

by Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.

How an event about building character in children became headline advocacy for gays.

A headline squawking “Lesbian parents better at raising children” flew around the English-speaking world last week, having been released by The Times of London. No doubt this thrilled the gay lobby, while alarming traditionalists of all parties. But the real story here is not about lesbians. The real story is the media’s severe case of Gay Infatuation Syndrome: anything that makes gays look good is newsworthy. This seriously misleading headline should caution readers to make a habit of looking behind the headlines. There may be, as in this case, nothing there.

The first indication of a mismatch between the headline and the story is that it cites no new study or research showing that lesbian parents are “better”. Here is the part of the report on which the headline is based: 

"Speaking at the launch at the think tank Demos of a report on the influence of character on life, Scott said: 'Lesbians make better parents than a man and a woman.'

"His arguments are supported by experts who have found, over years of research, that children brought up by female couples are more aspirational and more confident in championing social justice. They show no more tendencies towards homosexuality than the offspring of heterosexual parents."

Whoa! Hold on here. Since when is being "aspirational" and "confident in championing social justice" the high-water mark of good parenting? But I digress. The story cites neither specific "experts" nor any of the research supposedly produced over many years. There is no new research, just a recycling of the same old stuff. There is, quite literally, nothing there.

The expert quoted is Dr. Stephen Scott, director of research at the National Academy for Parenting Practitioners. I didn’t know what a “parenting practitioner” was or why anyone should need an academy for it, so I looked it up. It turns out that the NAPP was established by an agency of the British government:

"The National Academy for Parenting Practitioners was set up in 2007 by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) to provide the parenting workforce with objective evidence-based support in order to improve the services offered to parents in England."

The parenting workforce? Have we really lost the ability to see the point of personal relationships and kinship? Do we have to redefine the care that parents naturally give their children as a special sector of the labor market, bolstering it with “objective evidence”?

Read the rest of this article from Mercatornet.com here.