Scrolling around...August 16th, 2012

The Divided Academy
Social Science Research editor Jim Wright is fighting to save his professional reputation. Wright is under fire from fellow sociologists and left-wing bloggers for publishing an article in June by sociologist Mark Regnerus, which concluded that children of parents who had engaged in same-sex relationships fared worse than children from intact, heterosexual families...

Obama 'Intellectually Exhausted, Out of Ideas, and Out of Energy'
Mitt Romney finally caught up with the rest of us via a fiery speech in Ohio on Tuesday where he proclaimed three simple truths that frame Barack Obama: "Intellectually exhausted, out of ideas, and out of energy."...

Promoting Sin in the ELCA
“Grace is not your average Lutheran church,” so says the ELCA’s Grace Lutheran Church in a Houston, TX. I say that isn't necessarily so. I believe Grace Lutheran gives us a picture of what many ELCA churches ARE like and what most ELCA churches will be. And it’s time that all the Midwest ELCA churches, rural ELCA churches, head-in-the-sand churches and members everywhere understand what the ELCA has become...

Why the Amish Population Is Exploding
...Much of the growth has to do with the fact that more Amish children are staying with the religion and starting their own high-fertility families. "Some people would claim 90 percent of daughters and sons get baptized Amish and start families," says lead researcher Joseph Donnermeyer, a professor of rural sociology at OSU. He says this number has been increasing steadily since WWII.
The Amish live in small groups of 20 or 30 families known as settlements, and Donnermeyer's team has shown the number of these settlements to be growing quickly. In 1990, there were 179 settlements in the U.S. By 2012, Donnermeyer and his colleagues counted 456, including a handful in Canada...

WaPo Prints 700-Word Article Attacking Paul Ryan's Suit
Self-absorbed New York Times columnist David Brooks is famous for his insipid belief that Barack Obama's pant crease meant that he'd be "a very good president," now it looks as though the Washington Post has decided to join him in sartorial absurdity by dispatching reporter Katherine Boyle to write a 700-word piece pondering the meaning of Paul Ryan's suit size...

Family Research Council Shooter Worked with LGBT Group
The gunman who opened fire and shot a security guard at the Family Research Council’s Washington, D.C. office has now been identified as Floyd Corkins, a volunteer for the last six months at The DC Center for the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender) Community...

Surrogates and Their Discontents
...Consider the commodification of women caused by surrogacy. Gestational surrogacy reduces women to their biological capacities as mere instruments to be used in the manufacturing of a product, comparable to the way we view car factories in Detroit.
At the same time, surrogate-produced children are manufactured as designer babies: Wealthy parents can select their perfect fusion of sperm from an athletic male with the egg of a female who graduated from an Ivy League school with a 4.0 GPA. Indeed, surrogacy is a medium in which couples—or even single men or women—can attempt to create their dream child...

In Harvard essay, young Michelle Obama argued for race-based faculty hiring
During her third and final year at Harvard Law School, first lady Michelle Obama — then named Michelle Robinson — penned an article for the newsletter of Harvard’s Black Law Students Association (BLSA), arguing that Harvard and its students were perpetuating “racist and sexist stereotypes” by not intentionally hiring minority and female law professors on the basis of their sex or skin color...

Study: “In Vitro” Fertilized Children 4x More Likely To Be Born With Malformations
Among the malformations that were detected are heart problems, cleft lips, cleft palates and abnormalities in the esophagus or rectum. These diseases appear once in every 700 births....

Chick-Fil-A and the one day that changed the world
...On Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, millions of people saw that they were not alone. All those ordinary Americans who decided to Eat More Chicken were standing in line for religious freedom, for the institution of marriage, for free speech. They sat in the traffic jams out of respect and gratitude for the Cathy Family for taking a stand...