A new study from the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project analyses some of the ingredients that go into lasting, high-quality marriages. By starting with a sample of over 1000 people who were in a relationship but unmarried and tracking them (418 of the individuals got married), the study’s authors were able to analyse how...
The latest UK figures on sperm donation reveal that the “top 500” donors have fathered 6,200 children between them, with 15 of these having more than 20 each. The figures illustrate a simple truth – legalising sperm donation is not a good idea, even if you ban anonymous donation. Let’s review the arguments against sperm...
OK, this is a good one: a letter from the National Union of Journalists expressing concern about a possibly disastrous development in broadcast journalism. That development? Broadcasters might have to be balanced about everything. The NUJ’s complaint was occasioned by the decision of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) to uphold a complaint about an item on the Derek...
Over at Patheos, I blog about the obligations both sides of the abortion debate have in the current case of the young migrant woman and her prematurely born child: So I ask you, if you are pro-choice: write everything you write on this issue like it was a letter to this child. If you can,...
A poll published in The Sunday Times last week shows how rapidly Ireland has changed on a raft of moral questions. The exact degree of change is open to debate because different polling questions get different answers, but there has undoubtedly been a big shift in a lot of moral attitudes. The poll finds that...
Terry Mattingly at GetReligion writes about the way in which the media is missing the truly vast scale of the religious persecution currently taking place in the Middle East. Several times a year, a major national or international story simply takes over the news. The bigger the story, the more likely — in my experience...
Over at The Public Discourse, Mark Regnerus reports some of the findings from a forthcoming study, Relationships in America. Regernus was interested in finding out what Christians who support same-sex marriage believed about other issues of sexual morality – and what makes his study interesting is that he measured the attitudes of churchgoing Christians, rather...
One of the myths about marriage most badly in need of busting is the idea that cohabiting before marriage makes you less likely to divorce – a sort of “try before you buy” effect. This sounds quite sensible on the face of it. Then you look at the evidence and realise that the reality is...
Does a child simply need loving parents (or just one loving parent) or is it a good thing to have a father as well as a mother? What seems to be particularly in doubt in certain circles these days is the need for a father. Well, some of us do indeed argue that every child...
The case of Gammy, a baby born through surrogacy who was abandoned by his genetic parents after they discovered he had Down Syndrome, (and is now being raised by his surrogate (birth) mother, a Thai woman named Pattaramon Chanbua) is uniquely tragic. The apparent callousness of the parents taking Gammy’s twin sister but not him,...
