There’s a soft spot in my heart for boys. Not surprising considering that I’m mom to two sons and grandma to four grandsons. This means I’ve been very attentive to the way America treats boys and men. I do not exaggerate. The culture is beating up on our boys.
Dr. James Dobson recognized it years ago. It’s why he wrote Bringing Up Boys before he wrote his book on girls. It’s why Christina Hoff Sommers wrote The War Against Boys. But, the war on boys puts girls at greater risk, too.
“If just one sex wins, both sexes lose.” These words were spoken at a recent event sponsored by the Boys Initiative in Washington. The group believes that we need to start a national conversation aimed at improving the outcomes for American boys and men in school, work, health, and marriage.
“. . . [W]e have a national crisis, a national security issue, a state-of-emergency issue and a nation at risk,” stated Willie Iles, national director of government relations for Boy Scouts of America and board member of the Boys Initiative. “If anybody cannot understand that, as we talk about investments and the return on those investments, which are our boys, then it is very clear we are going in the wrong direction.”
Cheryl Wetzstein, a columnist for The Washington Times, notes startling statistics. “Compared to girls, boys are less educated and more medicated. One in five men of prime working age is not working. Men have a life expectancy five years shorter than women. Male suicide rates start out equal to females, but steadily rise over the lifespan.
America is failing its sons. Is this not shameful?
There is no time to wallow in despair. There is work to be done. It begins with respect and appreciation for boys and girls: equal, but different. Let’s get over the foolishness that boys and girls are the same. Each brings to society something good and necessary. Rather than putting them into competition, let’s help them develop their complementary skills with confidence. Let’s help them communicate and problem-solve, not in sexuality class, but by teaching skills for life and how to relate.
To my gender, specifically, I say: Let’s boycott women’s study classes at the university, stop laughing at “men are idiots” commercials, and walk away from conversations that put boys and men down. As mothers of sons, let’s praise the faithfulness of husbands and, when they are unfaithful or uninvolved, point sons to the Perfect Man, Jesus Christ. Let’s help our sons treat older women as mothers and younger women as sisters, in all purity. Let’s explain why we value brave men who protect us from wolves at the door.
Let’s give our boys (and girls) the far-reaching benefits of marriage, home and family. It is folly for our nation and suicide for our boys to set fire to traditional and real marriage. A male father and female mother model roles vital to their son’s social survival. Together, dads and moms help boys channel natural aggressiveness into someday providing for their own families. For goodness sake, let’s help our boys think and give them work to do.
President Obama has launched a national Fatherhood and Mentoring Initiative. I’ll be honest. Our boys and men — and, therefore, we girls and women, too — would benefit far more from the mentoring of a caring Christian community. A community of older men and women who pass on the wisdom of experience, the practice of self-control, and the promise of identity in Jesus Christ. A community that says, “No thanks” to federal grants or incentives with strings attached.
This momma bear perseveres in defense of America’s sons. I do this best by assisting those who make the greater difference in the lives of boys becoming men. They are the weathered warriors who grip the Sword of Truth. They are the men who learned their lessons well. Who fell on humbled knees, then rose to re-engage. These older men are “sober minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness.” I’ve seen these models of integrity. I’ve heard their speech and witnessed behaviors that cannot be condemned, rather put opponents to shame (Titus 2).
For seasoned and honorable men, I am grateful. Under their tutelage, boys mature in wisdom. Strength. Service.
Ezerwoman's Blog 
Sexual Menu?
Posted in Biblical manhood & womanhood, Commentaries of others, Culture Shifts, Faith & Practice, Life issues, Parenting & Education, Relationships, tagged children, faithfulness, future of marriage, generations, harm, infidelity, Iowa, man, Mercatornet, monogamy, New York, parenting, same-sex marriage, sexual menu, social trends, suffering, woman on July 16, 2011| Leave a Comment »
I disagree. So does Michael Cook, the editor of Mercatornet. In his article of July 11, he asks: “Anything else on the menu?”
He offers three reasons why the legalization of same-sex “marriage” will, indeed, affect our culture. All come from authors featured in the New York Times. First, Michael Cook notes the commentary of Katherine M. Franke, a Columbia University law professor. She confessed that she really didn’t want to marry her long-time lesbian partner anyway. Why lose the flexibility and benefits of living as domestic partners? Cook quotes professor Franke, saying as far as she was concerned, “we think marriage ought to be one choice in a menu of options by which relationships can be recognized and gain security.”
“One choice in a menu of legally supported relationships?” Cook asks. “How long is the menu?”
Cook offers a second reason why legalizing same-sex “marriage” will impact society by highlighting another article in the Times by Ralph Richard Banks. Banks is a professor at Stanford Law School. What comes after gay “marriage”? Banks “puts his money on polygamy and incest” because legal prohibitions on either practice are losing strength. Society forbade them in the past because they were seen as “morally reprehensible;” therefore, society felt “justified in discriminating against them.” I follow Banks’ reasoning. Just as homosexual advocates are working hard to shift our thinking and normalize the behavior God calls a sin, so will advocates of polygamy and incest.
Two more behaviors, Cook notes, are added to the “menu of [sexual] options.”
The third reason why legalized same-sex “marriage” will have a domino affect on the culture is voiced by Dan Savage. The Times describes Savage as “America’s leading sex-advice columnist.” He is syndicated in at least 50 newspapers. Here’s what Cook writes about Savage. “Savage, who claims to be both ‘culturally Catholic’ and gay, thinks that gay couples have a lot to teach heterosexual couples, especially about monogamy. Idealising monogamy destroys families, he contends. Men are simply not made to be monogamous. Until feminism came along, men had mistresses and visited prostitutes. But instead of extending the benefits of the sexual revolution to women, feminism imposed a chastity belt on men. ‘And it’s been a disaster for marriage,’ he says. What we need, in his opinion, is relationships which are open to the occasional fling — as long as partners are open about it.”
Cook continues, “Traditional marriage — well, actually real marriage — is and has always been monogamous and permanent. There have been and always will be failures. But that is the ideal to which couples aspire. They marry ‘for better or worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part’. The expectation is exclusivity in a life-long commitment.”
Cook believes that legalization of same-sex “marriage” will most assuredly “affect the attitudes of young couples who are thinking of marriage a decade from now . . . it will be one of a number of options . . . they will have different expectations . . . marriage will include acceptance of infidelity, will not necessarily involve children, and will probably only last a few years.”
Advocates of same-sex “marriage” in New York say it’s good for marriage. Cook concludes:
“In a way, they’re right. Just as World War II was good for Germany because out of the ashes, corpses and rubble arose a heightened sense of human dignity and a democratic and peaceful government, same-sex marriage will heighten our esteem for real marriage. But in the meantime, the suffering will be great.”
Amen.
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