Must-Read Monday, Week of 5 May 2014

Throughout the course of the week, I'll curate a list of links for y'all to read (if you want! No pressure!), because I wander all over the internets and I may have found something you haven't seen.

Please, please share your must-reads in the comments!

Just two three this week, because I have been busy. And tired. Oh my gosh, so tired!

• Google: have to use it for everything, because all the options are awful. But their motto, "Don't Be Evil," is basically just a joke these days: "Pro-Abortion Group Gets Google To Take Down 'Deceptive' Crisis Pregnancy Ads."

• And the always impressive Kevin D. Williamson explains the evocative term "evangelical atheist," with respect to the recent Supreme Court ruling allowing for public prayer at civic meetings: Room to Pray.

• I won't link to the original, because ew. I will not participate in clicks for such trash. So instead, a synopsis of the Cosmopolitan article "Why I Filmed My Abortion" at National Review Online: Yahoo! I Had an Abortion! Pray for her.

Must-Read Monday, Week of 28 April 2014

Throughout the course of the week, I'll curate a list of links for y'all to read (if you want! No pressure!), because I wander all over the internets and I may have found something you haven't seen.

Please, please share your must-reads in the comments!

• I thought this was interesting: dueling posts, hours apart, about the compatibility of the terms "pro-life" and "feminist." First came this one, "Christian women: feminism is not your friend," by Matt Walsh, which argues that "pro-life" and "feminist" are mutually exclusive; and then this one (not in reply to Walsh, just by coincidence), "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About NWF," from New Wave Feminists, which purports to explain that one can be both. [For the record, I come down on Matt Walsh's side. I believe that feminism has outlived its very limited usefulness. We have the vote, the wage-gap is the stuff of myth, and mostly what feminism has wrought is abortion-on-demand at any gestational age and for any reason (including, perversely, sex-selection abortion, which almost exclusively targets baby girls).]

• And! Several days later, a response from the New Wave Feminists to Matt Walsh! [It's not going to convince him he's wrong, as it doesn't convince me. Walsh was not claiming that all is right in the world for women, but that the label "feminist" has been irrevocably poisoned.]

• A large group of gay-marriage advocates published an open letter, "Freedom to Marry, Freedom to Dissent: Why We Must Have Both," over at RealClearPolitics to call for civility in the debate. While I obviously dissent against gay marriage (fundamentally, it is at best as a contradiction in terms), I appreciate the intellectual honesty of the letter; its authors acknowledge that they cannot "wish away the objections of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faith traditions, or browbeat them into submission," and further remind their more bloody-minded allies that if uniformity of thought could be imposed on a society, they would have gotten nowhere themselves.

• If the phrase, "Lord, please don't let me become a spiritual fruitchucker" doesn't motivate you to read this article on Catholic Answers, nothing will: Everyone's A Critic.

• What To Expect If Your Baby Has Down Syndrome: Annie of The House That Jade Built writes a beautiful ode to her Down syndrome daughter, Ollie, and her impact on her entire family. 

• Can irony actually cause a head to explode? This article on the Daily Caller, "Good grief: Now, it's pea personhood!" discusses the fact that Switzerland has laws pertaining to the "dignity" of plants. Nowhere does its author point out that Switzerland is the home of euthanasia tourism, but I think it's fair to say that we live in the world gone mad when it is legal to assist someone with their suicide, and illegal to "decapitate" a wildflower.

• Amy Otto writes in the Federalist: "How I Made My Peace With Princess Culture." She agrees with my assessment of Barbies (which boils down to: silly body, still just a doll) and argues that trying to shelter little girls from the Disney Princesses could conceivably result in more Lena Dunhams, the star of HBO's Girls, which is a truly insufferable mess and in which Dunham is unattractively naked. A lot.

Must-Read Monday, Week of 21 April 2014

This is going to be a regular feature here on the blog. Throughout the course of the week, I'll curate a list of links for y'all to read (if you want! No pressure!), because I wander all over the internets and I may have found something you haven't seen.

Please, please share your must-reads in the comments!

• Contraception after Conception? - Donna Harrison, a board-certified OB/Gyn and executive director and director of research and public policy for the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (whew! Busy lady!), stops by over at National Review Online (NRO) presents a comprehensive analysis of birth control methods and their effects, pointing out which methods are actually abortifacients.

• Yale Pro-Life Group Voted Out of 'Social Justice' League - According to a student who wrote an op-ed in the school newspaper, "a group that denies reproductive rights cannot have a claim to an organization that promotes social justice," and the league agreed. At least that student didn't call it "women's health," right? [This one leaves me torn. "Social justice" is one of those terms that makes my skin crawl because it almost always means big-government progressivism; there's substantial confusion between the secular and religious-left definition of social justice and the Catholic one (for reasons that I could write a graduate-thesis-length series of posts on, but in this case as evidenced by the pro-life club's ouster). So I think that the pro-life group doesn't actually belong in Yale's "Social Justice League," but on the other hand, membership means meeting spaces and access to funds.]

• Jesus Had a Wife, and I've Met Her - Fr. Stephen Grunow explains why everyone you've seen sharing this story about the Coptic document citing Jesus' wife ("proof" that Jesus was married) are wrong again.

• Release the Socks of War - The reliably entertaining Jonah Goldberg at NRO will make you laugh and cry about the state of our foreign policy with respect to Ukraine.

• Dan Joseph of the Media Research Center (MRC) interviews protestors outside the National Rifle Association in my neighborhood: Fairfax, VA. You can bet the protestors make a lot of sense.

• Wanna cry real tears because you're so moved? A runner at the Boston Marathon this morning fell at mile 26, unable to finish the final 0.2 miles. Four of his fellow runners, heedless of their own finishing times, picked him up and carried him across the finish line. I am ACTUALLY CRYING. (Maybe I'm pregnant, hah!)

And because I thought you might be able to use a giggle:

• Michael Bloomberg: 'I Have Earned My Place in Heaven' - "I am telling you if there is a God, when I get to heaven I'm not stopping to be interviewed. I am heading straight in. I have earned my place in heaven. It's not even close." If there's a God, he's no match for Nanny Bloomberg, nosirree.

P.S. Dan Joseph is kinda famous and one of my Twitter followers. You should be too! Find me here.