Share the good news of marriage with your friends by forwarding this newsletter to them!

Action Item: Support our 2011 ITAF students! Keep in mind that the Ruth Institute is endeavoring to fully fund all of these students' attendance to ITAF, including the international students!! Please make your most generous contribution to the Ruth Institute today.

Talking Point: Life and Marriage are the right side of history.

3.5% Dr. J and Todd Wilken meet on Issues, Etc. to discuss the difference between perception and reality--as it pertains to the perceived percentage of people who are homosexual. (Click the POD icon.)

Subscribe to the complete Ruth Institute podcasts with iTunes!

Lutheran Public Radio: Dr. J is usually on live on Tuesdays from 2-2:15 p.m. Pacific Time (Click the link to listen live or find a station near you.)

July 28-31--Point Loma, CA. "It Takes a Family" Conference 2011.

August 28 & 31--"Promoting Marriage on Campus," an interview with Dr. J being aired on EWTN's show, “Faith & Culture.” Click here for air times and viewing information.

Miss an issue of the newsletter? Check out the archives here.

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!"

as we keep you up to date on marriage and offer FUN tips for life-long married love!!! (Click the icon above.)

• To prevent mailbox filters from deleting mailings from The Ruth Institute, add jmorse@ruthinstitute.org to your address book

People tell me things.

As you know, I travel a lot. And give speeches about marriage, sex, family and other personal stuff. People come up to me after my talks and tell me things. Private things. Appalling things. And almost always very sad things. For instance:

* I met a college professor who loved my book Love and Economics. He was moved by my account of how children need permanence and stability from their parents. When I first met him, he had been married for 13 year, and that was longer than anyone on either side of his family. His mother is about to get married for the fourth time. He told me how he now feels in uncharted waters as the longest-married person in his family.

* I met another forty-something college professor whose father was a transvestite. The father began hormone treatments for sex reassignment surgery, but changed his mind before irretrievably changing his sex. The professor told me how disconcerting it was for him, as a 7th grade boy, to see his father in women’s clothing.

* I met a college woman whose father has been divorced multiple times and is about to marry a woman who is about her age. “I’ve never heard anyone say how hard divorce is for children,” she said, choking back the tears.

“The kids will be fine.” That is the constant refrain of Sex Radicals, past and present. Do they ever bother to actually ask the kids? I don’t believe they do. Your generous support allows me to meet students like these. Can you please help us with a gift today?

At the Ruth Institute, we take these young people and their experiences seriously. That is what draws many of our most fervent student leaders to us. When we bring students from around the world to our summer leadership conference, It Takes a Family to Raise a Village, I can count on some of the students being among these Walking Wounded, the collateral damage of the Sexual Revolution.

But it isn’t just the wounded who are attracted to the Ruth Institute and our mission.

Many of our young adult and student leaders are products of devout homes and devoted parents. These young people know what they believe. They just don’t always know why they believe it, and how to express themselves.

That is where the Ruth Institute comes in. Our lectures, podcasts, and newsletter all help give our followers of all ages the intellectual ammunition and moral clarity they need to defend the family. And now, our third annual summer conference, It Takes a Family to Raise a Village, will bring another top-notch group of student leaders to San Diego for a long weekend of information and inspiration.

This is the most exciting ITAF class we’ve had in our three years. Among this year’s accepted students:

* Two law students from the University of Minnesota
* An Evangelical student at Princeton Theological Seminary
* A Harvard graduate student in social sciences, studying women in Asia
* A seminarian studying to be a Catholic priest
* International students from Argentina and Spain
* Students from Brigham Young University
* A former US Air Force member, with a master’s degree from MIT

These young adults are eager to learn and ready to make a difference on their campuses, and in the wider world. Won’t you help us help them? Please make your most generous contribution today.

Your friend,

Dr. J

by Maggie Gallagher, founder of the National Organization for Marriage

Some say that no one will oppose gay marriage a few decades from now. They used to say the same about abortion.

When I was, well, a few years younger than Tim Muldoon is today, the message of despair now directed at marriage was directed at the pro-life movement. All the powerful elites favored abortion. Media coverage of anyone who was pro-life was dreadful. All the wives of Republican power-brokers favored abortion rights. If you said you opposed abortion, people would shout, "You are calling my sister a murderer!" They informed me that by the time I turned 50, the pro-life movement would be dead because young people were so pro-choice.

I'm 50 now, and yet the pro-life sentiment is surging as today's young people are more pro-life than their elders.

How did that happen?

There are many ways to answer that question, and what I offer here is more of a missing piece-the role of politics in cultural change-than a comprehensive theory.

This is a part of what I saw happen in the last thirty years:

Keep reading.

Comment on this article

Support Ruth