I have made my views on the Planned Parenthood/Susan G. Komen controversy known, and so have many of you readers. One thing I think most of us can agree on: if this means nobody has to wear those stupid pink ribbons anymore, then it cannot have been all bad.

Can I tell you how much I hate the ribbon thing? I hated it when the AIDS red ribbon fashion started, and I’ve hated every one since then. The whole Conspicuous Compassion thing. If you weren’t wearing a ribbon, did that mean you were insensitive to AIDS sufferers, to those with breast cancer, to [fill in the blank] sufferers? While I have, or hope I have, compassion for those who suffer from all sorts of maladies, I don’t get the appeal of Moralistic Therapeutic Bunting — that is, ribbons that make you feel that you’ve done something to fight a disease, and allow you to preen moralistically in front of people whose lack of beribbonment perhaps indicates that they aren’t as enlightened as you are, but which ultimately means nothing. I have never worn a Conspicuous Compassion ribbon for any cause, and I never will, simply because it strikes me as a vulgar and emotionally manipulative practice.

Writer is a non-believing woman dating a devout Christian man. Excerpt:

When I first told my friends I was dating an actual Christian, they were all uppity about it: “Well, you have to respect someone’s religious views.” But when I mentioned he was abstaining from bedroom business for devout reasons, all of a sudden he was a total weirdo in their eyes (I’m patting myself on the back right now for being so open-minded). At first, it was a refreshing — almost romantic! — change from the norm, which usually involves the guy trying to seal that deal as soon as possible. But slowly, a feeling of insecurity started creeping over me:

Do I have a double chin?

Is he gay?

Am I really dating a 40-year-old virgin?

I know this all sounds rather hopeless, but the thing is, I love him. We can talk for hours about anything. He is funny and kind. He speaks better French than I do and lets me win at Scrabble. He is a great kisser, a great conversationalist — he even writes me poems. He watched Twilight with me sans complaint and gets what I see in Edward. He is communicative and sensitive (ladies, isn’t this what we want?) and treats me like I’m something sacred. He would be a loving, patient father and says he will work hard for the rest of his life so that I can live like a princess.

Some days, when we ignore the elephant in the room, I think, wow, this is it. But then, somehow, his Christianity will snake back into our relationship, resulting in heated, teary discussions about how we’d raise children. He wants to take them to church every Sunday to “help them understand the love of God.” I tell him I don’t want our children to be brainwashed and if he takes them to church one Sunday, he has to take them to a mosque the next weekend, and then to a temple, etc. — to expose them to all the world’s religions so they can decide for themselves what they believe in, if anything at all.

Sometimes it just feels like we’re on different plains of existence. [Note: ‘Plains’? Don’t they do copy editing at the Atlantic before posting this stuff? — RD]

Don’t do it, girl. Don’t marry this guy. Religion is a deal-breaker. I don’t doubt that you both love each other, but this is not going to be happy for both of you. When you talk in this essay about arguing over how to raise the kids, that right there is the biggest signal to you that this is a risky, risky business. Break it off now. You’ll break two hearts in so doing, but you’ll save both of you (and possibly children) even worse heartbreak down the road. If he were a casual Christian, that might be one thing. But he isn’t, and you aren’t interested in converting.

(That’s my advice to her. What would you advise, and why?)

Horror show:

The jobs to be lost concern 60,000 employers and 100,000 employees in the sector, ESEE expects. Given the data for a 6.2 percent fall in household consumption in 2011 and the Eurostat forecast for a further decline by 4.3 percent this year, ESEE warns that soon Greece will be in a condition of absolute poverty.

 

With 60,000 enterprises having shut down since the start of the crisis to date, their number is set to double by the end of this year, ESEE estimates.

Sixty thousand Greek shops are expected close this year because of the crisis. Think of it. And: “soon Greece will be in a condition of absolute poverty.”

Andrew Stuttaford, citing the Financial Times, quotes Greek political leaders warning that the country faces social unrest of the sort Europe hasn’t seen in decades.

In one of the threads here the other day, a reader posted a quote from the theologian Stanley Hauerwas, who said something like: “‘Make up your own mind’ is the stupidest advice you can give to a college student. As a college student, you don’t have a mind worth making up. You have to learn how to think.” Hauerwas said it more eloquently, but that, as I recall, was the gist of his message. Thought is like a craft: you have to submit to certain disciplines in order to produce thoughts worth thinking.

I thought of that just now when reading David Brooks’s latest. Brooks is talking about how so much contemporary protest and activism is ineffectual because it’s based entirely on emoting. He brings up that red-hot viral video (18 million+ views) from Jefferson Bethke, the young Evangelical who explains why he loves Jesus but hates religion, and points out something I bet you didn’t know about it: when someone more knowledgeable about Christianity explained all that Bethke got wrong about historical and Biblical Christianity in that video, the Bethke politely folded, and repudiated his video claims. He didn’t stop to figure out if he knew what he was talking about before he made that video. (I won’t say Moralistic Therapeutic Deism! I won’t!)

Brooks says there’s a lesson here for us all:

For generations people have been told: Think for yourself; come up with your own independent worldview. Unless your name is Nietzsche, that’s probably a bad idea. Very few people have the genius or time to come up with a comprehensive and rigorous worldview.

If you go out there armed only with your own observations and sentiments, you will surely find yourself on very weak ground. You’ll lack the arguments, convictions and the coherent view of reality that you’ll need when challenged by a self-confident opposition. This is more or less what happened to Jefferson Bethke.

The paradox of reform movements is that, if you want to defy authority, you probably shouldn’t think entirely for yourself. You should attach yourself to a counter-tradition and school of thought that has been developed over the centuries and that seems true.

If there are traditions of thought that have stood the test of time, or that once made sense to a lot of people, maybe there’s something in it worth thinking about. Maybe those ideas can shed new light on contemporary challenges.

“Liberal blacklist” — that’s John Podhoretz’s term for what’s happening to the Susan G. Komen Foundation in the wake of its decision to withdraw funding from Planned Parenthood. Why? Washington Post health reporter Sarah Kliff tweets that the Yale School of Public Health is considering withdrawing its invitation to Komen founder Nancy Brinker to give its commencement address. Nothing this woman has done for women’s health in the 30 years she’s run the breast cancer charity matters anymore to these people; it’s all about abortion to them.

Similarly with the American Association of University Women, which, according to the WaPo:

The Washington-based American Association of University Women said it would no longer list Komen among the community service opportunities available to the 600 college women who attend the AAUW’s annual leadership conference in June. The headquarters office will no longer sponsor Washington teams in the Komen-sponsored Race for the Cure and expects its branches to follow suit, said Lisa Maatz, AAUW’s director of public policy and government relations.

You get that, right? It is not “community service” to AAUW to volunteer for Komen and help raise money to fight breast cancer.

The liberal blacklist. Of course I support anybody’s right to withhold money or approval from any organization for any reason. But let’s just be clear what’s going on here. Komen broke ranks, and for the cultural left, that cannot be understood, forgiven, or overlooked; Komen must be ruined. Nothing Komen or Nancy Brinker has ever done for women in 30 years matters to these people. This is war.

UPDATE: You know, the more I think about it, the more I realize this is a clarifying moment. Think of it! Three decades of service to women fighting breast cancer, and having raised and distributed hundreds of millions of dollars nearly $2 billion towards that goal, means absolutely nothing to these people now trying to destroy Komen. They could have denounced Komen’s decision, but in light of all Komen has done, and still does for women, turned their ire on the Republicans, the Religious Right, and so forth. But no, Komen broke ranks, and it must be dealt with harshly. And the sympathetic mainstream media is helping them do the job. All this reminds one of exactly what we’re dealing with here: what John Paul II called the culture of death. It is helpful to be reminded which side you’re on.

I can’t get onto Komen’s main site now — perhaps its server is jammed — but I found its local Baton Rouge site, and made a $100 donation just now. Never done that before. Like I said, a clarifying moment. [UPDATE: I’ve withdrawn the gift in light of Komen’s reversal.]

UPDATE.2:Rachael Larrimore at Slate:

Did you know that the Komen foundation gave to Planned Parenthood for only two years before withdrawing? James Taranto of the Journal gets it right:

Planned Parenthood’s bitter campaign against Komen–aided by left-liberal activists and media–is analogous to a protection racket: Nice charity you’ve got there. It’d be a shame if anything happened to it. The message to other Planned Parenthood donors is that if they don’t play nice and keep coughing up the cash, they’ll get the Komen treatment.

There’s one crucial difference, however. In a real-life protection racket, the victim never pays voluntarily. The threat is present from the get-go. By contrast, Komen presumably was not under any duress when it made its grants–and it could have avoided all this nasty publicity by never dealing with Planned Parenthood in the first place.

Thus smart prospective donors–especially ones that are apolitical, like Komen–are getting the message that supporting Planned Parenthood is a trap. Give once, and you will give again–or else you will pay.

Now that we have cable TV again (well, for us, satellite TV), I’m getting back into the habit of watching nightly network newscasts. For some reason, no doubt a lingering loyalty to the late Peter Jennings, I usually watch ABC. Not after tonight. The network led with the Komen/Planned Parenthood controversy. Take a look at how they handled it. Two Planned Parenthood-sponsored interviews, and one sympathetic to PP’s position. A YouTube clip of Komen’s Nancy Brinker defending her organization. Zero interviews from anyone supporting Komen. Diane Sawyer quoted an e-mail from an unnamed woman accusing Komen of “politicizing women’s health.” Claire Shipman agreed that this episode shows what a big deal “women’s health” is. Nothing about the unborn, or people who think this issue is about the right to life. Where is the balance? Take a look at the caption on ABC’s health blog, identifying a Komen official as “Anti-Abortion Stalwart Karen Handel.” They might as well have called her a woman-hating hag.

This past Sunday, a Messianic Jewish “rabbi” by the name of Ralph Messer went before an Atlanta megachurch congregation and opened a Torah scroll he claims is a 312-year-old artifact rescued from “Auschwitz-Birkendall.”

“On behalf of the Jewish people, the land of Israel, and the God of Israel, I want to make a presentation,” he said. Turns out that this spokesman for world Judaism and Ha-Shem Hisself wrapped “Bishop” Eddie Long, the megachurch’s pastor — now going through a divorce from his second wife in the wake of a sexual harassment lawsuit against him by four male former congregants — and declared that Eddie Long is now a King, chosen by God, raised up above this earth into the heavenly realm.

King Eddie I of Atlanta. Hoo boy Oy. This is crackpottery of the highest order, and boy, is it entertaining. H.L. Mencken, you should have lived to see this. Wil Gafney details all the theological and historical nonsense spouted by Ralph Messer in this phony ritual. Is there anything American religion can’t do? Or won’t do?

(H/T to Ben, the reader who sent it to me as “Dreher bait.” May you find favor in King Eddie’s sight!)

Megan McArdle says she’s pro-choice, but she doesn’t understand the pro-choicer outrage over the Komen foundation’s decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood. She writes: “Since I think this is a very tough issue on which reasonable people can disagree, I can see why the federal government, and private foundations, would decline to fund their operations.”

Here is an interesting political point McArdle raises:

I do wonder what this moment means in terms of the political landscape.  It’s possible that this new VP has single-handedly pushed this organization to discontinue their funding, but someone hired her knowing that she was pro-life, and ultimately it was the board that voted to do this, so presumably it must have some support beyond one former gubernatorial candidate.

This strikes me as significant.  Susan G. Komen is part of the broad constellation of “women’s groups” that tend to hand together on various issues, including (maybe especially) abortion.  Why would they cut ties to a group that in past decades would have been a natural ally?

She goes on to point out that the overall polling numbers on the abortion issue haven’t moved much in the years since Roe v. Wade, but the real movement has taken place within the pro-choice ranks. While most people still support legalized abortion in general, most Americans believe that there ought to be more legal restrictions on abortion than provided for in Roe v. Wade. (Last month’s CBS/NYT poll found that 60 percent of Americans believe abortion ought to be more restricted under law than it is now, though only 23 percent of that number believe it should be outlawed). And most people believe abortion is morally wrong, McArdle points out. This suggests that most Americans don’t want to outlaw it — 74 percent of Americans in the CBS/NYT poll oppose making it illegal — but they want its availability scaled back, and they don’t to be associated with it, either.

It seems to me that the real political significance of the Komen move could be formalizing a shift that’s been underway for years now: the separation of “women’s issues” from abortion rights. The consensus that to support feminist goals for equal pay, equal treatment, and so forth requires also supporting full abortion rights is breaking down. No wonder old-guard feminist elites are freaking out. Feminists for Life, you may be about to have your moment.

Mollie Hemingway at Get Religion, the religion in the news website, is ticked about the politicized naivete evident in press coverage of the Susan G. Komen/Planned Parenthood controversy. Excerpt:

It’s just so interesting to me that when millions of Catholics were read letters from their bishops about the HHS mandate targeting Catholic groups, it took days for a few stories to trickle out. When Susan G. Komen announces that roughly $700,000 in grants will be targeted to groups other than Planned Parenthood next year, it couldn’t be bigger news. There are thousands of stories already written. It says something about what the media prioritizes as well as what it considers sacred. There’s an almost religious fervor at play here. Looking at which stories capture that frenzy and fervor are interesting, no?