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The value of a comfortably untidy house

The value of a comfortably untidy house

Susan Arico

The kids and I drove to Alabama this week to visit family and friends. I was the sole driver (and adult) in the car for those 1500 round-trip miles … It was a lot of audio books, pretty much continual snacking, and — let's be honest — more DVD-watching than my crew normally gets in a month. Gotta pull out the big guns for a venture like this. But the trip was so worth it. And we fared pretty well overall.

Among the CDs we listened to was "Ramona's World," one of the half dozen or so Beverly Cleary books that my youngest two kids keep pretty much on continual repeat in their room. I must say, Ramona can be a pretty entertaining kid to follow, even for an adult (and even lo these many years after my first encountering her.)  This exchange between 9-year-old Ramona and her mom struck me as I listened to it:

Sexual identity vs. (Islamic) conscience
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Sexual identity vs. (Islamic) conscience

Adam J. MacLeod

In my last post I commented on an attempt by the Justice Department to conceal the pro-sexual-identity message of vandals who put graffiti on an Islamic center. Others have speculated that the Department's motivations were political. I speculated that the motives were more straight-forwardly grounded in a principled commitment to sexual identity rights. And I suggested that those rights are inherently hostile not only to the conscience rights of Christians and Jews but also Muslims and all other persons who perceive the unique and intrinsic value of natural marriage.

Without speculating on the motivations of pro-sexual-identity activists, one can perceive the inherent hostility of their activism simply in the nature of the rights asserted by the activists, and by contrasting those assertions with the liberties claimed by people of conscience.

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