Joe Carter

Chuck Donovan chronicles the pro-life trend in state legislatures : While official Washington occupies itself with soaring deficits, health care costs and the status of the war on terror, state lawmakers have been busy passing law after law challenging one or more core holdings of the high . . . . Continue Reading »

If you think you dodged the eschatological bullet last week, think again. To paraphrase William Gibson, judgment day is already here”it’s just not very evenly distributed. At least that’s the latest word from radio evangelist and advocate of the imminent eschaton Harold Camping. In a radio broadcast on Monday, Camping explained that the world is still ending, it’s just been delayed a few months. … Continue Reading »

Politicians continue to keep sex scandals in the news. But according to sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox , infidelity is not the norm among married men in America: Although the institution of marriage in the United States has fallen on hard times in recent years—for instance, the marriage rate . . . . Continue Reading »

G K Chesterton was a man of colossal intellect and wit, says Robert Douglas-Fairhurst , but his work also reveals a child-like innocence: GK Chesterton was one of the giants of early 20th-century literature. If that description makes him sound less like a human being than a fairy-tale creature, . . . . Continue Reading »

Turn off the SportsCenter and listen up fellows, I’m about to tell you key to being happier : Send your wife to church and the ballpark while you head to a ballet and the latest Monet exhibit. Men who enjoy taking in the ballet or browsing art museums are more likely to be happy with their . . . . Continue Reading »

(Note: This is fifth and final entry in a series on the suicides of three detainees at Guantanamo Bay in 2006. The other entries are listed at the bottom of this post.) For over a year I’ve written about Harper’s Magazine and their “Guantanamo Murders” conspiracy , most . . . . Continue Reading »

In today’s second On the Square feature, Matthew Hennessey explains what’s wrong with Texas’ new law requiring women seeking an abortion to view a sonogram image: Unfortunately, however, the Texas law reinforces what I consider a morally repellent notion—that pregnant women . . . . Continue Reading »

Are children born to and raised by lesbians more likely to engage in same-sex sexual activity? Law professor Eugene Volokh reports on an interesting study that address that question: There’s long been something of a debate about this question, and I thought I’d note an interesting and . . . . Continue Reading »

[Note: In keeping with an annual tradition here on First Thoughts, I’m reposting this speech for recent graduates.] While it could be argued that youth is wasted on the young, it is indisputable that commencement addresses are wasted on young graduates. Sitting in a stuffy auditorium waiting to . . . . Continue Reading »

In today’s On the Square, David Mills reflects on how false prophets hurt families : It is not easy for children to be Christians and to have dogmatically and morally rigorous parents, even when their parents are perfectly normal mainstream Christians, because that normal expression of the . . . . Continue Reading »