A Christmas break

Merry Christmas to any who might venture into this blog! I myself am taking a bit of a break to spend time with my family. I need to compete well against the dazzle of toys, commercials and shopping malls, so my kids might retain a clearer picture of what Christmas is about. :-)

Fathers jailed for opting children out of sex education

This is just so wrong

At least eight Russo-German families in Salzkotten, Germany, have suffered heavy fines and now their fathers have been sentenced to prison, because they have refused to send their elementary school-age children to mandatory sexual education classes.
...
In one case, the Jugendamt, accompanied by 15 heavily armed police, forcibly seized 15 year-old Melissa Busekros in the dead of night from her family in 2007 against her will. However, legal intervention ensured that Busekros was legally permitted to return to her family upon turning 16.

Marriage: What is Marriage?

Couldn't resist that quotable from "The Princess Bride" -- although it was actually pronounced 'mawidge' in the movie, but.. never mind. For to the answer, comedian Chuch Nice had something interesting to say about it, particularly the aspect of fidelity in marriage. He refers to infidelity as a lack of character. On the other hand, Jenny Block from Newsweek wrote something else in "The Case Against Monogamy". Perhaps without realizing it, what she writes contradicts what she was actually writing about. The lesson she seems to derive from experience and the Tiger Woods affair is that one should simply have open marriages, i.e., no fidelity required:

Frankly, I'm surprised anyone's surprised. Woods's entire life is based on winning; on having, doing, and being more. So why on earth would anyone think "settling down" was even in his vocabulary?

But marriage is about settling down -- committed faithfully to one's spouse. So perhaps one should not marry unless committed to what it entails, including fidelity. Not that one cannot fall, but there should be an absolute intention not to.

Celebrity or not, cheating is human nature.

This is what makes marriage special: it goes beyond human nature. Don't we still celebrate heroism today, of those who go beyond what is typical and expected, beyond the mundane, for love, honor, or justice? What's more, fidelity in marriage calls for the supernatural, something that calls for our natural instinct towards romantic ideals of faithfulness, but pushing it through to heroic and supernatural fruition.
Of course, people can fail these ideals -- who doesn't? But here is more evidence of the supernatural: have human beings not also exhibited, from time to time, conversion and forgiveness?