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Married folks account for ever smaller numbers of the American demographic, now at 50.3 percent, contrasting with a high of 72.2 percent in 1960. So, according to the most recent Census Bureau figures, singles are on the cusp of being a majority demographic in America. There are a lot of reasons for this, including fallout from the sexual revolution and the breakdown of family. Of course most single folks are living their lives as best they can, and a large majority of them tell pollsters they want to get married someday. But accompanying the trend is some rhetoric that is hostile to marriage and seems determined to pit singles as a class against marrieds. There is a burgeoning movement, apparently organized by self-appointed social engineers, who claim that any social or tax benefits for marriage are discriminatory against singles. In the end, it all leads to a push to abolish civil marriage. You can read about it in my latest Federalist piece here: “Welcome to Selfie Nation.” The language of same sex marriage has actually laid the groundwork for abolishing civil marriage. If such a move gained traction, it would be a disaster for family autonomy and privacy and a victory for state power. That would have repercussions for all private relationships because civil marriage allows us to legally bind ourselves to family, whereas abolition of marriage would put us in a state of legal isolation from all others. That would have negative repercussions for all other private relationships. Anyway, I think we should think such things through before the deceptive sloganeering hits us. Here’s an excerpt: Abolishing civil marriage would change not only family relationships, but all other relationships across society. This is a far cry from getting the state “out of the marriage business.” It’s more like the state getting you  out of the marriage business. Sure, you and someone else could still get married, at least in your own minds. But you would be completely separate entities as far as the state is concerned. With the death of marriage inevitably comes the death of family. Hence, the most important mediating institution  or buffer zone between encroaching state power and the vulnerable individual—every  individual—would be gone. This means the state would no longer respect: your natural right to refuse testimony against your spouse. How could it? You don’t have a “spouse;” the natural rights of your children to know you, or your right to raise them. After all, there’s really no “legal” family involved without prior state approval; and any inheritance rights. Why should it? None of you are legally “related.”

I’ve made a late-in-the-year resolution to keep up my blog a whole lot better than I have. My apologies — and appreciation — to those who check for new posts. I have a lot of items on my hit parade. So I’ve resolved to post more frequently even if it means more sloppily. So, first off, let me say I understand how easy it is to get discouraged as we witness The Great Unraveling in our society. The breakdown of family accounts for a huge part of this, especially the separation of children from their parents and the layers of confusion adults are heaping on kids for the convenience of said adults. Broken homes create broken children. And so many broken children portend an ever more dysfunctional society. The road ahead seems very dark now, especially as we feel the increasing hostility to the idea that children have rights that override the convenience of so-called grown ups. Let’s face it: we humans are not naturally ethical beings though so many of us truly do like to think so. But if you look around, you’ll see some beams of light emanating from the cracks in all of the social chaos. For example, at the Reagan Library last week the International Children’s Rights Institute had its inaugural conference to discuss the inherent rights of children to be born free — not manufactured as chattel — and their right to know their origins. I for one think it’s past time that adults get a bit out of their comfort zones and start looking at life through the eyes of the child. There is harm when a child is separated and isolated — by design — from any clear answer to that existential question: “Where did I come from?” Please click on the links throughout this post to learn more about the conference and its participants. The Conference theme was “Bonds that Matter.”Alana Newman, founder of Anonymous Us, talked about her experience as a donor-conceived child, and how artificial reproductive technologies de-stabilizes a child’s sense of self. Such children are wounded and puzzled by the way they came into the world — as commodities — and why one or both parents didn’t care to know them. But they’re told to shut up about it since they wouldn’t be here otherwise. (Alana rightly compared the accusation to being a child of rape: yes, I am happy to be alive, but not about the rape.) Jennifer Lahl, president of the Center for Bioethics and Culture talked about the surrogacy industry and how it turns children into chattel as it treats women as cattle. Jennifer Morse of the Ruth Institute discussed the impact of no-fault divorce on the lives of children. And adoption experts Cathy Swett and Claudia Corrigan D’Arcy walked us through the topic of adoption from the eyes of the adoptee, because even in the best of circumstances adoption still forces a child to emotionally “work out” the absence of his or her biological parents. Congratulations to Robert Oscar Lopez who organized and emcee’d an absolutely fantastic conference. Hopefully the first of many!

Janna Darnelle’s husband told her he was leaving her for a man. But that wasn’t the end of it. The judge awarded primary custody of the children to her ex-husband. He made more money and Janna was a lowly housewife. Read about it in Janna’s Public Discourse essay — for which she was pilloried by never-to-be-satisfied LGBT forces (more on that later) — by clicking here: “Breaking the Silence: Redefining Marriage Hurts Women Like Me — and Our Children.” The piece ran last month, but I want to be sure to include it as a post because it illustrates so clearly the forces in society that seek to separate and isolate us. Activist judges are increasingly becoming the arbiters of all personal relationships. Claiming gayness in America today serves as a trump card among many or most sitting judges. Janna explains: My husband wanted primary custody of our children. His entire case can be summed up in one sentence: “I am gay, and I deserve my rights.” It worked: the judge gave him practically everything he wanted. At one point, he even told my husband, “If you had asked for more, I would have given it to you.” This shouldn't surprise any of us though.  Separating children from their mothers has become an art form today, condoned by social engineers in academia, in the media, in Hollywood, as well as from the bench.  Here's more from Janna: My husband had left us for his gay lover. They make more money than I do. There are two of them and only one of me. Even so, the judge believed that they were the victims. No matter what I said or did, I didn’t have a chance of saving our children from being bounced around like so many pieces of luggage. As for the ceremony at which Janna's ex "re-married:" ". . . my children were forced—against my will and theirs—to participate. . . local news stations and papers were there to document the first gay weddings officiated in our state.  USA Today  did a photo journal shoot on my ex and his partner, my children, and even the grandparents. I was not notified that this was taking place, nor was I given a voice to object to our children being used as props to promote same-sex marriage in the media. This is the ugly underbelly of "redefining" marriage:  just like divorce, it's all about separation.  Let's not forget that.  Separation and isolation.  The whole point of it is to separate men from women, children from mothers, and children from fathers.  And, in a very real way, redefining marriage is part and parcel of the no-fault divorce culture that shoves children away from stable childhoods.  A child's sole purpose in this new scheme is to accommodate the "happiness," or the "authentic living" or the whims of certain adults who rule over them. Because in this paradigm nobody else matters.  In this picture we see how the child's discarded mother becomes a non-person in the eyes of the state.

My last post was about Janna Darnelle’s Public Discourse piece describing how her husband left her for a man and how a judge made sure the ex husband got primary custody of the children. The judge’s decision was indicative of a growing prejudice among sitting judges in favor of the LGBT agenda. But my main point was that the net effect of redefining marriage can be summed up in one word: separation. It absolutely requires that children be forcibly separated from at least one parent. It cannot be otherwise. In this case, that parent was the mother. After Janna spoke out about her heartbreaking experience, she was attacked by trolls of the LGBT lobby. She used a pseudonym and she never identified her ex-husband by name. But her ex-husband made a point of exposing Janna on an LGBT blog so that their attack machine could harass Janna, call her an “unfit mother,” and contact her employer to accuse her of “anti-LGBT bigotry.” And when Rivka Edelman came to Janna’s defense, she too was attacked by bloggers of the LGBT lobby. You can read Rivka’s Public Discourse piece here: “Ruthless Misogyny: Janna Darnelle’s Story and Extreme LGBT Activism.” Some excerpts here: The publication of Janna Darnelle’s story led to a spate of blog posts full of vitriol, calling her “ a pitiful creature ,” accusing her of mental instability, and questioning her very existence. With the help of her husband’s comments, Scott Rose set off to dig up and publicize as much personal information as possible about Darnelle, such as high school graduation and real estate records. Rose has harassed Darnelle with threatening messages. He has even contacted Darnelle’s employer . . . In writing this piece, I know that I risk being labeled a bigot. Like Janna Darnelle, I will probably have to endure a whole host of misogynistic terms. I’ll be called crazy, unhinged, laughable, bitter, fat, old, and ugly. In other words, I am just a woman who dares to say rich privileged white men do not have the right to women’s bodies and body parts. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, Rivka's prediction proved true.  We should all be grateful that she was willing to step up to the plate to call out the Stalinist LGBT tactics, knowing the risks. In the end, this should clarify for us that free speech is a use-it-or-lose-it proposition.  The breakdown of civil society is so thorough today that we have to expect to be attacked when standing up for the truth or for any friend who speaks the truth.  It can only get worse if we don't resist.  We have no choice but to fight on, reach out to others, and keep talking!

Last week a singles’ rights activist wrote up what she claimed was a critique of my recent Federalist article called Welcome to Selfie Nation. My piece was an exploration of various social trends, particularly some recent attempts to cultivate hostility towards married people for being “privileged.” Most significantly, Bella DePaulo, author of the book Singlism and a blogger for Psychology Today essentially confirmed in her response what I’ve been saying for quite some time: that same sex marriage isn’t really about marriage, but is being used as a vehicle to abolish marriage. A coterie of singles’ rights advocates are arguing that state recognition of marriage discriminates against singles. And they hope to use the precedent of same sex marriage to abolish marriage. But DePaulo never addressed my most basic points: 1. That the decline of marriage “plays right into the hands of central planners who have always been keen on getting rid of marriage altogether.” 2. That putting every human being in legal isolation — which is exactly what abolishing civil marriage would do – can only diminish freedom of association for every child, woman, and man. Once the state no longer recognizes your spouse or child or parent or siblings, etc. except at its pleasure, your personal relationships will inevitably come under greater regulation and bureaucratic control. Rather than confront these concerns, DePaulo pulled out of thin air the bemusing nonsense that I am “afraid of single people.” She also claimed I place blame on single people for “breaking down family bonds and community ties and contributing to a sense of alienation and division and distrust.” Are you kidding me? Who believes single people are even capable of doing such things? Unless maybe you believe they’re some sort of monolithic force. That idea — so untrue — would never occur to me. Maybe it has more to do with DePaulo’s own outlook, but it sure isn’t mine. I was talking about a shift in society that breeds isolation in people, reflected in the General Social Survey. It’s a cycle driven by complex forces that we can’t pin on any one group of people. Distrust breeds isolation. Isolation breeds distrust. Separation from intimate ties breeds distrust. Distrust discourages the formation of intimate ties. On Pious Baloney A fun touch in DePaulo’s post on my article is her (subconscious?) reference to a famous line by Newt Gingrich. By which I mean she labels as “pious bologna” [sic] my connection of children with marriage. But I’ll raise DePaulo ten Newts on that. Whether we grown-ups like it or not, the only legitimate reason for any state interest in marriage is that the state’s citizens come from a particular organic union that produces them. Now the problem here for DePaulo and so many others, is that they have a perspective on children that insists on separating them from the people who sire and bear them. Look, I get it. Indeed, a lot of unmarried people have kids and a lot of married people don’t. And different family configurations abound. And I understand that there are cases of dysfunction. But that’s irrelevant to the point that state recognition of marriage can’t really exist for the benefit of adults. It exists for the benefit of all the children in a society, whether or not their parents can or do get married, and whether or not married people have children, and no matter how many or how few children there are. So it’s the union that produces citizens in which the state should be interested. And it doesn’t matter whether that union takes place traditionally or in a petri dish or even at all. I know that’s a hard thing for us grown-ups to wrap our heads around these days. I do understand, believe me, that it doesn’t feel easy. But it’s just one of those buried truths that have a way of outing themselves rather unpleasantly when ignored. You can take it or leave it, but it’s still true whether we like it or not. If there are concerns about inequities, people of goodwill should find a way to address the inequities without endowing a centralized bureaucracy with the power to impose legal isolation on every single one of us, and particularly on children. Families are the Roots of Community Below are a few claims DePaulo uses to support her belief that marriage should be abolished, and by logical extension, why she believes each and every person should be legally single: Married people are “insular” and don’t contribute much to community Married people don’t call their parents or siblings as often as singles do Singles do more things “in the community” than marrieds do:  “They participate more in civil groups and public events, they take more art and music classes.” Singles, not marrieds, keep cities lively and dynamic Singles, she says, visit sick and infirm people more than married people in Britain do DePaulo doesn’t cite sources on the above.  She’s suggesting, I guess, that singles are in some form, morally superior because, for example, they call Mom and Dad more than married people.  This is silliness.  Just arguing on her terms, I’d venture a guess that married couples are far more involved in community schools.  I don’t know how many members of legislatures and county councils and people who work for non-profits are married versus single.  But I’d be willing to bet it’s quite a majority of marrieds, even today.   And, no, married people are not morally superior for this participation. Intimacy, not Separation, is What Breeds Trust But I do find one of DePaulo’s observations of particular interest.  She writes that “getting married changes people in ways that make them more insular.”  I think what DePaulo perceives as “insular” is probably just a by-product of intimacy. Intimacy requires time and a certain degree of exclusivity and privacy in relationship. Committed relationships usually require intense work and a great degree of self-sacrifice that’s not going to be handily visible in the public sphere.  Nevertheless, that kind of interpersonal work with family members pays huge dividends for society because it tends to build empathy. What this means, though, is that contributions to the community by marrieds – with or without children – are going to have deep roots and perhaps might not be as apparent to people like DePaulo who look to have everybody engaged on the surface, primarily in public places.   Not so much in private places which seem “insulated” from the larger community.  It seems that DePaulo doesn’t view the nurturing of one’s own children as something that counts in this scheme of things.  Nor perhaps would running a scout troop, or volunteering at your child’s school or with their sports teams, or through a church.  And certainly not the hard work of ironing out a committed relationship with or without children in the home. If the only kinds of community activities that “count” in DePaulo’s eyes are at specific places identified as “community” – whether they be parks and recreation, theater groups, environmental groups, and so on – well, then, perhaps singles do those things more because that’s where the people are?  Or perhaps because practically every young adult today has “mandatory community service hours” to put in as requirement for high school graduation?   Regardless, DePaulo’s view speaks volumes about her stunted view of community and who contributes to it. Abolishing Marriage Would Abolish Community   I think we all understand in our gut that intimacy breeds trust.  Without trust – which has been declining over the past several decades – people become alienated and true community dies. You can have lots of people out there doing lots of activities, busy as bees at the hive.  But if there are no bonds of family intimacy which serve as the unseen ground water that irrigates the community – or what goes on unseen inside the hive of community by both marrieds and singles -- then you don’t really have a community.  What you have left is a shell of a hive with the bees buzzing about outside of it.  Yes, you can see them better that way.  But without the hidden core – consisting of families, consisting of both marrieds and singles – each of us ultimately has no place to go. Let’s abolish the Big Lie that abolishing civil marriage would “get the state out of the marriage business.”  It would do the exact opposite, which is why statists love the idea so much.  I leave you with this excerpt from my Federalist piece: All of the machinery of this bait-and-switch operation  is well in motion to abolish civil marriage, and with it family autonomy. So our national conversation on marriage ought to cut right to the chase. Ultimately, the real question is not about who  can get married, but whether or not we may live in a society that recognizes marriage and family. Abolishing civil marriage is a dangerous proposition that imposes legal isolation on everybody, making us all strangers to one another in the eyes of the state.

I hate flying, but I love to read on planes. Aside from other stuff in my bag, including my old smallish laptop, I generally only have one book with me — the paper kind — selected for its light weight and the length of time it spent languishing on a shelf, unread. This last trip it was The End of Christendom. Not really a book, but a very slim volume of two lectures by the acclaimed British journalist and Christian apologist Malcolm Muggeridge. It’s a gem through and through. But I was particularly intrigued by this little passage he wrote about words: Perhaps the most beautiful of words, the subject of that marvelous thirteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Corinthians, is the word "love."  Just think of how that word has been polluted and corrupted so that one scarcely dares to use it.  Similarly with words like "freedom" and "liberation"  The truth is that if we lose the meaning of words, it is far more serious in practice than losing our wealth or our power.  Without our words, we are helpless and defenseless; their misuse is our undoing." The Transgender Project is Exhibit A in today's War on Language and the misuse of words.  You're probably familiar with the "Purple Penguin" Project in which teachers in Nebraska have been instructed to refrain from referring to children as boys and girls or male and female.  There's an accompanying diagram of "The Genderbread Person." The agenda is huge and -- make no mistake -- it redefines the humanity of us all, and it's now aimed directly at children. Indeed, it is a war on words that goes right for the jugular:  your identity. In the process of destabilizing each person's sense of self, the transgender project serves to isolate and separate each and every one of us because it in effect turns each and every one of us into disembodied beings in law.  Your sex is not something identified at birth, but, according to gender identity non-discrimination laws, it is "assigned at birth."  The wording here is meant to apply universally.  It's not really about the transgender demographic.  It's primarily about everybody else. What this does, of course, is wipe out the distinction between male and female. Legally.  The implications for human relationships and human identity and human dignity here are vast and depressing.   Losing the meaning of words means losing our ability to think -- and communicate. And especially the meaning of words that identify us as human.   In the end, it's an assault on all human relationships and imposes separation and loneliness on everyone.  It's pretty much what cults do.  But that's for another post.

Forty years ago, aghast at the Roe Vs. Wade decision, James Patrick McFadden founded a journal called The Human Life Review. It’s a dynamic publication with writers from a wide array of backgrounds: physicians, lawyers, stay-at-home moms, philosophers, journalists, academics, retirees, and many others from all walks of life. Today Jim McFadden’s daughter, Maria McFadden Maffucci is editor. Click here to read my interview with her, published today at The Federalist. You’ve probably all noticed how abortion is becoming increasingly celebrated by forces in the culture who are so invested in it. Planned Parenthood is pushing a campaign for women to put their “abortion stories” in a happy light. The New York Times Magazine recently ran a story about abortion “doulas” or hand-holders for women getting abortions, basically to serve as accomplices for the procedure. (After that, of course, they’re out of the picture. The post-abortion women often turn to pro-life folks to help them heal emotionally and spiritually from the trauma.) There was a summer box office flop called “Obvious Child” that attempted to be a comedy that featured the abortion of the main character. Lately, there’s been no shortage of in-your-face “abortion is good” propaganda. The intent is for women to ingest it, buy it, and live with it so that Planned Parenthood can go about it’s multi-billion dollar abortion industry. The above are just a very few items discussed in my interview with Maria. The Human Life Review deals with all issues related to human life and dignity, including assisted suicide, euthanasia, and eugenics. And the dark truth is that we are headed towards a future in which eugenics is more blatantly promoted and practiced. Here’s just one small excerpt that gives you an idea of how Jim McFadden expected it all to play out. As Obamacare pushes a culture of death on us all, we can see how Jim McFadden was prescient indeed: Stella:  Is there any particular human life issue that you see as the biggest threat facing human dignity in the coming years? Maria:  I would just say the biggest threat is what’s happening at end of life or with sudden disabling and not having life support offered. Obamacare and incentives for saving money are reaching a boiling point. How are you going to feel safe? My father was prescient about that, that a doctor would become either a “quality of life” doctor or a “sanctity-of-life” doctor. And there are going to be fewer and fewer sanctity-of-life doctors. If you are a sanctity-of-life doctor, who is going to back you up, hospital-wise, medicine-wise, insurance-wise?Please take a look at the interview. And also check out The Human Life Review online by clicking here.  You may want to consider subscribing because there's no other publication like it.  As a subscriber for over 25 years I can personally assure you of that.  You can follow Human Life Review on Twitter too! Please take a look at the interview.And also check out The Human Life Review online by clicking here. You may want to consider subscribing because there’s no other publication like it. As a subscriber for over 25 years I can personally assure you of that. You can follow Human Life Review on Twitter too!

Okay, I’m scrambling again to keep up with this blog. When I travel, I generally get behind in stuff. But I do plan to do a couple of new things in the future. One is to keep a booklist. I’ll try to keep the “reviews” short. I recently read Sheila Jeffrey’s book Gender Hurts. It’s a fascinating radical feminist take on the whole gender identity thing. I find myself agreeing with a lot of it, but parting ways with her on certain predictable points. But there’s definitely a lot of overlap in terms of understanding where the whole gender thing is headed. More on that later. All of the books I’d like to introduce deal in some way or another with how we try to make sense of relationships and how we deal with the effects of social isolation. I have another essay up on the Federalist (submitted quite a while back but just published the other day, so please excuse if it seems a bit stale) which was an extended response to Bella DePaulo’s criticism of my take on the whole idea of “Singles’ Rights.” I also published a somewhat lengthy blog post on that a couple of weeks ago. She believes in abolishing civil marriage because she says it discriminates against single people. I believe that abolishing marriage is tantamount to abolishing all hope for a civil society. And the effects of that would be disastrous for everybody. Once the state doesn’t have to recognize marriage, each and every citizen becomes isolated and atomized in the eyes of the state. Family autonomy and privacy dissolve in this scheme. This is not a good thing. You can read the article here: “Why Singles Rights and Same Sex Marriage Will Abolish All Marriage.” Oh, my goodness. I just now noticed that that article of mine has 593 comments. Yikes, that’s a lot! Well, I’ll deal with that later. I generally can’t get too caught up in conments — and as you can tell, I don’t use them on my own blog. But I will definitely have to scan those soon — there are so many — and maybe even write up a post about them. Usually when there’s that many, though, it means a few people are arguing back and forth amongst themselves. (Of course I do expect to take some hits.) I’ll find another way to post more often. Some book review posts. More posts on the issue of social conformity and the effects of PC/propaganda. Loneliness and alienation is another important topic for these times. And whatever else comes my way. Thanks for reading!

I recently delved into Sheila Jeffrey’s’s book Gender Hurts: A Feminist Perspective on Transgenderism. Jeffreys is a professor at the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne in Australia. She identifies as a radical feminist. I certainly don’t. However, as I mentioned in my last post and in my August 27 Federalist piece here, her perspective overlaps with mine when it comes to the phenomenon of “gender identity.” She sees the current obsession with gender identity as harmful. So do I. She views the transitioning of children as a human rights violation. So do I. She recognizes that sex change surgery is a form of genital mutilation. So do She also recognizes that transgender law threatens to dismantle women-only spaces that are critical to helping women feel and be safe. It hurts people within families who must completely discard their close relationships with their spouse, children, siblings or parents in order to accommodate a fantasy that often requires they walk on eggshells. And Jeffreys is dead right that any discussion of the above is being silenced through bullying techniques of an hyper-activist transgender lobby that insists the entire world get with their program, no questions asked. And indeed this lobby is actually dominated by “trans-women” who are primarily heterosexual males “identifying” as lesbians. I am grateful to Jeffreys for publishing Gender Hurts at such a critical time, as we work to untangle this strange web of deception in the culture. She presents many crucial facts about transgenderism, including the regret felt by survivors, those who go back to identifying with their birth sex. In discussing the psychological basis of “gender dysphoria” she refers to the work of Paul McHugh, the psychiatrist who shut down the gender identity clinic at Johns Hopkins University and the British psychiatrist Az Hakeem who has worked hard to make sure that patients are fully informed before they consent to any kind of treatment. I part ways with Jeffreys on her radical feminist/lesbian perspective that basically identifies male misogyny as the root of all oppression of women. (She objects to gender identity because she believes it reinforces harmful stereotypes rather than diminishing them. I see her point there, but it’s not the whole point.) I’ll go out on a limb and say just one thing about “male oppression.” I don’t believe it comes from maleness as much as it comes from being human and looking for acceptance and status. That’s what drives a lot of aggression, male or otherwise. And if there’s a sorting system for dominance, it’s much more pronounced among males themselves than between males and females. Violent alpha males dictate their ill will and their terms onto all other males. In so doing, they can then inflict their violence onto everybody else. That’s why central planning is so lousy. A few aggressive folks at the top, usually men and their female enablers — with few opportunities for anybody else. If you want to see “patriarchy” in action, communism’s your man. The Gloria Steinem wing of feminism basically acquiesces to men who behave badly and it serves the scheme of centralized power. Their basic litmus test is abortion. In essence, I think a big part of the battle is about making sure the right men win, as well as the right women. Which means that all women of goodwill band with all men of goodwill and create a better world for all of humanity. But I’m glad to see Sheila Jeffreys challenging the hackneyed Steinem brand of feminism and the nasty gender politics that come with it, even if I don’t accept the whole framework of Jeffreys’ logic. Gender Hurts, published just this year, is creating a very welcome earthquake in the conversation about transgenderism.

Over the past 32 years, the anti-freedom brigade in Congress and their allies in the propaganda media have waged a constant war against Justice Clarence Thomas. Clearly, he stands in the way of their agenda to un-do the Constitution, which is why their smears are all discredited and steeped in pure animus. In this post, I want to offer two resources for understanding what’s going on. The first is the phenomenal documentary “Created Equal: Justice Thomas in his Own Words.” Since the propaganda media won’t allow us to see the real man, I hope you will watch this spellbinding film. Here’s the trailer: Indeed, as Justice Thomas, said, “We knew exactly what was going on: ‘This is the wrong black guy. He has to be destroyed.'” The current Supreme Court is all that stands in the way of the Left’s quest for total control of every branch of government. They find Justice Thomas a threat because he is so honorable and so courageous a defender of the Constitution. And, of course, because he’s black. if people were allowed to see the man as he really is, he would be admired. So it shouldn’t surprise us that the demonization campaign against Justice Thomas has ramped up — along with an assassination attempt on Justice Kavanaugh, and other forms of harassment outside the homes of members of the Court who dare to defend the Constitution. Secondly, there is a new and insidious aspect to the current attacks on Justice Thomas, which I wrote about at American Greatness. In my article titled “Targeting Thomas,” I discuss how the manufactured scandal against Justice Thomas and his family accepting hospitality from long-time friends reflects a growing war on friendship. This has never been an issue before, but as I’ll write in the future, the Mass State is preparing to invade private life as never before. I’ll have more on that later. In the meantime, here’s an excerpt from my American Greatness article: Ultimately, this is a much bigger war than we realize. Demonization of the Thomases is a high-profile battle, but it reflects a deeper conflict—a war against friendship and against independent thought. It is actually a prelude to atomizing all of us, and threatening us with social isolation if we don’t adopt the Left’s anti-thought and dehumanizing agendas.

My husband and I decided to rent a Tesla during our summer travels to the Seattle area and other places in Washington State. We had never driven an electric vehicle before and thought this would be a really good learning experience for us. Tesla SuperCharger Station — MARCO VERCH/FLICKR/CROPPED/CC BY 2.0 Well, a full week test driving a Tesla clarified a whole lot more for us than a 30-minute test drive would have. The worst part of the Tesla experience was the stress of seeing the battery charge go down quickly and needing to find a charging station before being stranded! It’s a well known phenomenon called “range anxiety.” And it’s real. We rented a Model 3 long range (supposedly 300 miles) but we didn’t go much over 150 miles before we felt the need to find a supercharger. Compare that with going nearly 500 miles in our Honda Accord before needing a gas fill-up. Also compare the 40 minutes you’ll spend at a supercharger (for maybe a 60 percent charge) with the five minutes you’d spend at a gas pump. Let’s just say that EVs are a poor choice for road trips. But I can see how a Tesla would be fine for shorter commutes after which you plugged it into a charger in your garage overnight. It’s a fun car to drive. It has great pick-up! And the regenerative braking is an amazing invention that saves battery charge (just not enough charge!) Taking your foot off the accelerator slows the car down so much that you soon learn you don’t even need to brake as you de-accelerate on the approach to a red light. The tinted glass roof is cool too. But I personally would not advise buying or renting an EV today if you need to cover distances. Another big concern is the potential risk related to personal security or just being hassled at charging stations. The superchargers were always unsupervised and often in out of the way places. Here’s one response I got from a blog reader on that issue: Pretty much the worst thing about the Tesla rental experience is the primary selling point for me, the superchargers. I live in California so I’m using the showcase network, the ones in Santa Monica, on the I-5, at LAX, in Orange County, in Simi Valley. There are a lot of problems in the area if you pick a random gas station, but there are limited Superchargers so they all turn into these traps for people hustling for owners of cars worth $100k. So its prostitutes and prostitutes and then some pot dealer walking his dog, and prostitutes, and then a meth dealer with Arizona plates. It’s routine, it’s not occasional. Reader of stellamorabito.net We also didn’t like dependence on a touch screen while driving. And we didn’t feel we got a worthwhile bargain with the charging fees versus gas costs. For more, read my Federalist article, I Rented a Tesla for a Week and am Totally Sold on Gas-Powered Cars. Interestingly, there’s a “Tesla Fan Club” out there that hated my article. On Twitter a lot of the “members” of that fan club acted a bit like Harley-Davidson motorcycle enthusiasts would if you insulted their Sportster. Some claimed it was a “hit job.” One thought that since I wasn’t an “expert” on cars, I had no business writing about cars. And so on. But EVs are supposed to be the transportation wave of the future! As a driver and a consumer and I thought it would be worthwhile to help potential buyers and renters consider what could be in store for them.

When people change their bodies they tend to do so in the hopes of changing their relationships with others. Think about it. In a real sense, elective surgery is not so much about self-perception as it is about our expectations of others who do the perceiving. Body modification is usually based in a wish to be perceived a certain way, in a certain light. And, guess what? It generally doesn’t work out as we might expect. Social affirmation is not going to be unanimous. Simply looking in the mirror can be a major wake up for some as well. Consider just plain old elective cosmetic surgeries. There’s loads of regret for that. A recent poll revealed that a full two-thirds of Britons who had cosmetic surgery regretted it. People in that situation — as well as untold numbers who want their tattoos removed — have plenty of places to go on the internet to look for remedies and support. But what about people who regret sex change surgery? In those tragic cases, there are precious few places to go for help. It’s a politically incorrect topic, one that transgender activists do not want discussed publicly. They police and suppress much of the conversation on sex change regret, and you can read a comprehensive discussion of that in Sheila Jeffreys’ 2014 book Gender Hurts. Reddit censorship of people who wish to discuss de-transitioning is discussed on this blog called Third Way Trans. So you might view my post today as a modest compendium of links from around the internet for those interested in this topic. (I’ll have more to follow.) Walt Heyer, pictured above, has a particularly compassionate outreach to regretters online, which is possibly why he is a target of scorn by transgender activists. Heyer had sex reassignment surgery decades ago, and lived as a woman for many years. He came to regret it so much that he now offers a blog called sexchangeregret.com and transdetransition.com as outreach to others who are struggling and in need of support. He has authored three relevant books: Paper Genders, Gender, Lies and Suicide, and Trading my Sorrows. On youtube you can find some videos — examples here, here, and maybe the last five minutes here — of young and old who go public to talk about their decision to de-transition. An interesting thread through these examples is all are extremely apologetic and tentative in “coming out” as de-transitioners — as though they have to justify and explain their decision or their feelings in ways that don’t set off the fury of transgender activists. Interspersed with those videos are “education” videos, put up by transgender activists who offer their line, which is the claim that regret is rare. You can read about some prominent cases of regret at this link (which ironically was put up by a transgender advocate.) Those cases include the tennis star Rene Richards and the sportswriter Mike Penner. Rene Richards is quoted as saying “If there was a drug that I could have taken that would have reduced the pressure, I would have been better off staying the way I was – a totally intact person.” Mike Penner, a sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times spent a year living as a woman and then completely de-transitioned back. A year later he ended his own life. Another famous case was Charles Kane (born Sam Hashimi), the millionaire property developer in Britain who changed his mind after living as designer “Samantha Kane.” Perhaps one of the most heart-wrenching stories of a female-to male transgender is that of Nancy Verhelst in Belgium, who felt the surgery turned her more into a “monster” than a man. She was so distraught that she opted to have Belgian doctors put her to death. And because of lax euthanasia laws there, they did just that. Regret won’t be going away. Those who change their minds tend to do so quietly. But despite the recent media fawning over the transgender agenda, there have been rogue headlines of regret, especially in Britain. A British man who regrets his surgery very recently claimed that there has not been enough psychiatric counseling of patients and he is now pressing the National Health Service to reverse his surgery. Britain’s youngest patient – much touted in the press for his courage in changing to a female – has also spoken out. Bradley Cooper begged his family for years, then finally got the go ahead to switch at age 17. But after a year of living as a woman he found the whole thing “overwhelming” and cancelled the surgery. Another story appeared on Huffington Post here. Scattered throughout the web are blogs such as Retransition.org or GenderTrender.com with posts such as “I’m a Post-O p MtF who is Back in Therapy to Reverse this Mess and Obtain a Phalloplasty.” Some of the most critical of sex change surgery are those run by radical feminists who see transgenderism basically as a patriarchal scheme, dominated by men who claim to be female but are hyper-aggressive and hyper-masculine in spirit. Those sites include the hard-hitting but light-hearted twanzphobic.wordpress.com and The Dirt from Dirt. Then there’s the resource page on trans-regretters on the British Coalition for Women’s Equality. Radical feminist Julie Bindel writes about it here. Also check: I’m Not Transgender Anymore and M2F2M. The latter includes a long list of blogs on the topic. Even a few voices who are firmly within the transgender community have expressed concern about the hostile reaction of the community to the growing number of regretters in recent years. These include an Australian transgender activist who wrote in March 2014 a report: “Coming Trend within the Trans Community, including Doubts and Regrets:” which describes it as a growing problem for the community and admits that most who de-transition do so “in stealth. But I suspect we are going to see more regretters coming out of the closet in the future. This is not an iceberg that can be drowned.