I remember the Girl Scouts being flakey way back in the early 1970s, long before their formal association with Planned Parenthood and their penchant for showing girls sex brochures.

Even as a Brownie I had my doubts. When I was told to look in a mirror on the floor, recite some chant, and step over the mirror, it seemed so meaningless, and even a bit wrong. If I had had the vocabulary, I would have called it pagan. It may be some small proof that the Truth is indeed written on every human heart that a tiny un-churched girl of seven could smell a rat.

And now the Girl Scouts want to admit boys who dress as girls. (See here.) It may be their undoing.

When the Colorado troop leader initially disallowed the boy’s admittance on the grounds that he had “boy parts” — she was later overruled by the Girl Scout top brass — his mother and grandmother were outraged, saying such talk “devastated” the seven-year old and made him cry. (They refer to him as “him.”)

“I really got upset because my grandson is himself,” said the grandmother. “We’ve all accepted Bobby as he is, and for this lady to talk to him that way, it was just awful. This lady shouldn’t be working with kids.”

The Girl Scouts of Colorado responded to it all with lefty platitudes that it is “an inclusive organization” and supports “transgender children.” And in a statement, it said, “If a child identifies as a girl and the child’s family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout.”

Ah, how welcoming and inclusive of them. No thought what it might do to the boy himself, or to the girls in the troop who really are girls.

Author and educator Dr. Judith Reisman, who never minces words, said this policy amounts to “child sexual abuse, the violation of children’s genetic reality.”

Dr. Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist and Fox News medical expert, said, “On the face of it, it seems to be expecting far too much psychologically of young girls to ignore the anatomy of a boy and act as though he is a girl. . . . The girls are just developing comfort with their own bodies, after all.”

Dr. Ablow added, “We’re conducting social, cultural, sexual experiments on the fly, using our own kids as guinea pigs, without the necessary research to guide us.”

I think it’s safe to say that most parents did not enlist their young daughters in Girl Scouts to be part of any cultural sexual experiment. And if the Girl Scouts persist, they will lose families in droves, and they will also lose money. They’ve already lost respect.

And one final thought: No mention is made anywhere of the boy’s father, and his utter absence from news stories strikes me as a classic “elephant in the room,” or in this case, not in the room. Dare I state the obvious, unspoken truth? This poor little boy desperately needs a father.

— Cathy Ruse is a senior legal fellow at the Family Research Council.

Roland Martin writes about the mandated sex-ed program in New York City schools on CNN.com: “There are few things more annoying than listening to ignorant, whiny parents complain about a school district teaching their children about sex.”

New York City government is into its second week of clearly being on the defensive about this graphic, inappropriate overreach, thanks in large part to the work of the NYC Parents’ Choice Coalition. (Feeling the pressure, the City has been forced to say it will redact some of the most explicit descriptions.) 

Insisting on an apology from Martin, Michael Benjamin, executive director of the NYC Parents’ Choice Coalition, former New York State assemblyman (a D.) responds to Martin:

“How dare Martin call parents ‘whiny and ignorant’ for having an opinion on what’s best for their children. We aren’t looking to prevent a single city parent from enrolling his or her children in the mandated program; all we are asking is for an alternative for families who find the planned program culturally hurtful or offensive.”

Much more on the NYC attack on innocence with Greg Pfundstein from the Chiaroscuro Foundation; from our recent interview:

LOPEZ: Miriam Grossman’s recent report on New York public schools’ mandated sex-ed program suggests that it’s no help, but a muddled mess. Conversations about sex ed or the dreaded “abstinence” word are rarely constructive. How can that change? How can New Yorkers lead the way?

PFUNDSTEIN: Five years ago this conversation was really tough, because there was very little evidence that abstinence education works, mostly because such programs were very new. Now there are a good number of published studies showing abstinence-centered education working, often better than so-called “comprehensive” sex ed. Here again I think there is an opportunity for data to settle the question. Why don’t we let the two approaches duke it out over time on a level playing field? Many parents find the content of the city’s recommended curricula very offensive (take a look at nycparentschoice.org for a few tidbits), so why not let schools offer an abstinence-centered, evidence-based program as an alternative? Over time we can track the kids in each program and figure out which one works better. I think this would be a very scientific approach. We aren’t asking the city to stop teaching condom-based sex ed in schools; we are just asking them to allow an alternative. If they would track the effects of the different programs, they would be doing everyone a great service. Unfortunately this is another matter of religious orthodoxy on the left. But a certain prominent politician not long ago talked about restoring science to its rightful place in public policy. The science here says there is no reason to exclude abstinence-centered curricula as an option if parents prefer; despite the talking points, it works.

LOPEZ: On this issue, you recently wrote about protecting children’s innocence. Is that just way too quaint for a place like New York City in times like 2011? Fine, try to drive this mess out of public schools, but what about outside the classroom? You drive in from upstate or New Jersey and see the Hustler Club. And that’s tame. Take a walk with a kid in SoHo and good luck . . . 

PFUNDSTEIN: The innocence of children is a simple fact, and one so obvious as to be almost universally acknowledged. Almost no one who doesn’t work for Planned Parenthood thinks it is appropriate to talk to first graders about sex in school, and even they make ovations to the notion that the sex ed they want in first grade should be age-appropriate. (Lest you think I am making a joke, consider that on the morning of our press conference in August, the day we released Dr. Grossman’s report, El Diario published side-by-side op-eds from the president of Planned Parenthood of NYC and the state policy director of the National Abstinence Education Foundation, Ann Marie Mosack, on the New York City sex-ed mandate. The PPNYC president lauded the new mandate as far as it went, but said it wasn’t enough: We need to teach kids about sex in first grade on up, she said. That any sensible person thinks she is crazy proves my point about the innocence of children.) This is why we think sexual abuse of children is the worst of all crimes and perversions and why we are careful what our kids watch on TV. Even Hollywood stars like Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore recognize the innocence of children with their “Real Men Don’t Buy Girls” campaign.

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Of course, there are many influences in our culture that militate against the innocence of children that many rightly lament. We can only do our best to help our children navigate those influences. But to have a person who is an authority figure in the life of our children, a teacher, tell them that, at 13, no one can decide when is the right time to have sex but themselves is substantially more deleterious than any invasive television advertisement.

Consider a recent article in Essence magazine, “Our Teens’ Secret Sex Lives.” In it, young African American girls discuss with researchers how frequently and intensely they are pressured to engage in sexual activity by their equally young boy peers: “The friends [two 13-year-old girls] say sometimes the boys at their middle school — who for the most part live in comfortable homes with professional parents — confront girls with graphic sexual requests and rumors designed to embarrass.” Imagine a young girl is trying to protect herself from such advances. Do you think it will help her case that Ms. Smith just told them in “health” class that only they can decide when they are ready to have sex, and that if she is afraid she may have gotten pregnant because she didn’t use any protection she can head down to the local clinic for some emergency contraception any time in the next few days, all without her parents knowing about it? Seems to me those are a few more arrows in the impulsive and obnoxious little boy’s quiver. Imagine, on the other hand, that Ms. Smith just told them in no uncertain terms that abstinence is the only sure way to avoid pregnancy and disease and that it is the choice most likely to keep them on track toward their goals. Isn’t that an arrow in the girl’s quiver?

Whose side are we on? Parents are on the side of their children’s success, and the vast majority of them think that includes abstaining from sex at least until they are adults. While Mayor Bloomberg may think he knows better, I don’t see how that gives him the right to work against the wishes of parents who are the primary educators of their children. Parents’ rights need to be defended, and children’s innocence needs to be defended. And all you libertarian readers who are reflexively opposed to this position because you think sexual morality is anti-libertarian, just remember that this is statism at its worst. I find nothing more annoying than a libertarian who opposes the rights of parents to make decisions for their own children.

This Atlantic discussion highlights why The Book of Man is a gift to our culture this fall. For both men and women. What is a man? What makes a man? What feeds him? Why would we/do we admire him? 

There are still a few of us around who remember the counter-cultural phrase that originated from Canadian educator and scholar Marshall McLuhan but was popularized by writer and psychologist Timothy Leary: “turn on, tune in, drop out.” The idea behind the slogan was to get the flower children and just about everyone else caught up in the turbulent 1960’s to move away from conventional society, detach from the world, and get re-connected to themselves. Leary ran with the saying to promote his own agenda. He claimed the best way to “turn on, tune in, and drop out” was through the use of hallucinogenic or psychedelic drugs.

Acid trips aside, in today’s media-saturated culture, where the over-sexualization and objectification of women and girls is off the charts, and where women are given all types of conflicting messages about who they are supposed to be in the 21st century, the idea of turning on to something besides Toddlers & Tiaras, The Real Housewives of Orange County, Twitter, and Facebook — and getting away from or tuning out the media at least temporarily — would be a good idea. It really is time for women to get back to basics and realize their true dignity as human beings created in the image and likeness of God.

Let’s look at some of the messages women are receiving recently. Thank goodness NBC’s The Playboy Club was cancelled after three episodes. But just the fact that a major broadcast network believed a TV series developed around, as the Parents TV Council described, “a pornographic brand that denigrates and sexualizes women,” was a good idea for prime-time television is disturbing. Given the strides women have made in the last few decades, one would think the media moguls could do a lot better; but apparently that old Virginia Slims “you’ve come a long way baby” advertisement was all wrong.

The popular reality-TV genre is another area of media unkind to women and in particular to young girls. A new study by the Girl Scouts of America, “Real to Me: Girls and Reality TV,” found that not only are the reality-TV shows popular with young female viewers, but these same viewers have a hard time discerning fact from fiction. Of the 1,100 girls surveyed for the GSA report, 50 percent said the shows are “mainly real and unscripted” when just the opposite is true. If that isn’t bad enough, those questioned also have come to accept the antics regularly portrayed on the programs such as fighting and gossiping as part of normal behavior

Even those women considered to be part of the group known as “the beautiful people” aren’t quite beautiful enough. Take for example the stunning dancers on the ABC hit show, Dancing with the Stars. Two of the program’s professional performers, Lacey Schwimmer and Cheryl Burke, two women probably in better shape than most people on the planet given what they do for a living, have been publicly ridiculed by the paparazzi for being “too fat” to be dancers. Why? Because they are not a size “0” or a size “2” and instead are more muscular and shapely than most women who walk the red carpet and look like they are in dire need of a sandwich. Go figure.

Given all that is thrown at women 24/7 in today’s culture, it’s time for us to have an extreme media makeover. Let’s start turning to more of the positive sources in life such as family, friends, and faith — and start dropping out and tuning out all the noise.  Less time in front of the TV and laptop and more time in prayer and fellowship would do wonders for our relationships and our self image.

— Teresa Tomeo is author of the new book Extreme Makeover: Women Transformed by Christ Not Confirmed to the Culture. 

 Jennifer Marshall:

 If you take “The Girl Project,” add “The War Against Boys,” and mix in some sexual revolution (“Dan Quayle Was Right,” after all, per The Atlantic’s April ‘93 cover story), is it any surprise you’re left with “All the Single Ladies“?

Our feminist forebears were frustrated by barriers to fulfilling work. Today we’re frustrated by obstacles to lasting love-and some seem to be the result of the feminist movement itself.

For too long, the dominant framework of male-female relations has been that storied battle between the sexes. Antagonism expressed in power struggle, rather than the pursuit of mutually respecting interdependence, is the default perspective.

Which brings us back to our views of marriage. Is marriage an ideal because the majority, the powerful or forces such as evolution or economics made it so? Or is marriage an ideal because it is rooted, timelessly, in the universal nature of man and woman?

Many marriage-minded women struggle with the unexpected in-between of today’s prolonged singleness. That includes Bolick: “If I stopped seeing my present life as provisional,” she writes, “perhaps I’d be a little … happier.” (The ellipsis is hers.)

Bolick seems to have resolved her sense of being betwixt-and-between by demoting marriage. In other words, if experience doesn’t match up to the ideal, toss out the ideal. But must we abandon our unique esteem and deep desire for marriage to find fulfillment today without it?

We need to restore cultural respect for the marriage ideal. In the meantime, the marriage aspiration is alive and well.

Far from giving up on marriage, the single ladies - a la Beyonce – are looking for a man to “put a ring on it.”

 

 Mona Charen responded to the Bolick piece here Friday.

Kay Hymowitz responds to The Atlantic cover story:

 Bolick rightfully observes that with women making up 57% of college grads, some of them faced with the prospect of marrying down may well choose not to marry at all.

But that still leaves us with the question as to why at this point women who can actually afford to raise children on their own almost always avoid doing so, while the women who have almost nothing in the bank are going it alone. 

In the not so distant past, college educated women were often destined for spinsterhood; today they are more likely to marry. That’s the opposite of what one might expect.

The answer to the question of why women who can afford to raise children on their own but decide not to, reveals the limitation of arguments like Bolicks; focused on the economics of marriage, they ignore the institution’s deep connection to childbearing. 

Educated women are still the marrying kind because they know intuitively what research concludes: children are more likely to succeed in school, go to college, and get good jobs if they grow up with their two married parents. Prepping your kids for a competitive knowledge economy is a time-consuming, devotional task; no wonder it works better with a steady, focused twosome.

“Alternative family arrangements” that can do that job anywhere near as well? Good luck.

Here’s my four-year-old. We tricked her into believing her princess stick-thing is also a magic wand.

Lindsay Lohan brought her little sister with her to her full-frontal nudity shoot for Playboy.

Lohan’s mother said the shoot “went well.”

As this news broke, Lohan’s father was imitating Spider-Man while evading the police.

If you buy your kids this for Halloween . . .

. . . and they annoy you all night with the really loud sound effects, it’s a real hoot when you turn the tables on ‘em and use the lightsaber as an alarm clock. The sounds, bright light, and ability to whack your kid on the head from a distance make it the perfect tool for the job.

“Wake up children! I am your father!”

And the NYC Department of Education will defend this how? N.Y. Daily News:

When you gotta go, you gotta go, but it’s not that easy for the 634 students at a downtown Brooklyn high school.

For the past month a single toilet inside the nurse’s office at Science Skills Center High School was the only one open, forcing students to endure bladder-busting waits whenever nature called.

The school wasn’t at a loss for loos, though. Administrators kept four other fully operable bathrooms locked up to prevent kids from misbehaving and getting violent in them, according to staff and students.

Only after the Daily News inquired Wednesday about the lack of latrines did administrators open two other bathrooms.

Kianna Cole, 16, an 11th-grader from Mill Basin, said having to use the filthy toilet in the nurse’s office was worse than getting a month’s detention.

“It was awful – and not just the smell or the line. It was the pee all over the place and the terrible plumbing,” Kianna said.

Flush with rage, she started a petition last week calling for more commodes at the Flatbush Ave. school. Kianna got more than 200 student signatures, but didn’t have a chance to deliver the petition before her school opened more cans.

The rest here.

Chris, great post about the ridiculously escalating cost of a college education.

Although I’m not sure how the government can make this situation better, I do know that individual families — and students — can make better decisions about handling this cost. There’s a great book by Zac Bissonnette called Debt-Free U: How I Paid for an Outstanding College Education Without Loans, Scholarships, or Mooching Off My Parents, which Adam Daniels of the Huffington Post called “Debt Sexy:”

“I think there’s a problem in thinking that college has to be the best four years of your life,” Bissonnette said. “Well, if the best four years of your life puts you in so much debt that you can’t pursue the career that you want, you can’t have a family, you can’t buy a house, then that’s the worst four years of your life.”

Okay, so he’s got your attention. Don’t hold it against him that he’s a senior at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst majoring in art history. Somebody has to study art history, after all.

So why listen to him?

He’s living proof that you can get a good college education without going into years of debt — creating those “golden handcuffs” many of you are bound with as you trudge to the office to pay off those student loans. He argues that the diploma eventually hanging on your kid’s wall might potentially sabotage their entire financial futures.

Another reason to listen to this 22-year-old is that he’s also a personal finance expert (at Daily Finance) who’s researched this subject for years. (Yes, even in high school. Investment expert Andrew Tobias described him as “Doogie Howser meets the boys of Facebook.”) Although the book is written in a fun, conversational tone, he also includes hard data that’ll help you make better decisions about your kids’ futures by debunking certain myths:

1.  “Student loans are NOT a necessary evil. Ordinary middle class families can- and must-find ways to avoid them, even without scholarships.”

2.  “College “rankings” are useless-designed to sell magazines and generate hype. If you trust one of the major guides when picking a college, you face a potential financial disaster.”

3. “The elite graduate programs accept lots of people with non-elite bachelors degrees. So do America’s most selective employers. The name on a diploma ultimately won’t help your child have a more successful career or earn more money.”

He says parents shouldn’t take out student loans to pay for their children’s college, but goes further to say students shouldn’t either. In fact, it’s one of the worst things a student can do. Why does he make this claim, when two thirds of college students today have borrowed to get there? He writes:

“A 1998 Nellie Mae study found that 38 percent of student loan borrowers reported that their debt had prevented them from pursuing grad school. With the bachelor’s degree opening far fewer doors than it once did, graduate school will be a necessity for an increasing percentage of students: save your borrowing capacity for grad school.

“Also according to that Nellie Mae survey, “In 1997, 40 percent of borrowers said that their debt had caused them to delay buying a home. . . .  22 percent said that their student loans had caused them to delay having children.” And remember: That was in 1998, when students were borrowing far less to pay for college than they are now.

“A 2007 study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that “debt causes graduates to choose substantially higher-salary jobs and reduces the probability that students choose low-paid ‘public interest” jobs.’

“And remember: Those are outcomes related to the sacrifices borrowers must make when they do make their loan payments. Borrowers who fail to make their payments can have their financial lives literally permanently ruined by the consequences of default.”

So what’s a parent to do? His book’s main theme is that “if you pick an affordable school, live within your means and work during college, college without loans, financial aid or parents looting home equity or retirement accounts is within reach.”

Don’t believe him? He broke down the calculations at Daily Finance in an article called “Yes, College Without Loans is Possible.”

However, this plan is not for the weak-willed as it requires diligence, short-term sacrifice, and tight budgeting.  Is this the type of discipline the OWS folks have, Chris? I don’t know. But, Bissonnette encourages students that the long-term goal — of graduating debt free — is worth it, even if the journey is tough. “Whether this plan will work for your family depends on your character: Are you willing to buck the culture of self-indulgent consumerism and short-sightedness and put your child’s best interest ahead of your desire to see them go to a fancy college and impress the neighbors? If you will make that commitment now, I promise you one thing: Debt-free graduates have much better lives.”

Doug Schoen, the former pollster for Pres. Bill Clinton, recently published some important research on the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters (OWSers) now sitting in Manhattan’s Zucotti Park. While he found that the OWSers are mostly radically liberal, and aligning with this group would be politically destructive, there is one issue that some of the protesters stand on that conservatives should agree with. That issue is the cost of education.

RedState had an interesting post linking the OWSers to a discussion of the skyrocketing cost of college tuition and its impact on young adults. (Stephanie Gutmman also commented on this in NRO’s the Corner.) Stories had run indicating that some OWSers were protesting the burden of student loans. Given Schoen’s interview results, this might have been a story line made out of whole cloth to make the protesters more sympathetic when, in fact, they were just a bunch of Marxist twenty-somethings.

Whatever they believe, the RedState item was willing to recognize some legitimacy their dissatisfaction. The underlying problem is real, and the Family Research Council has expressed its concern with the existence of the higher-education racket. From 1982 to 2007 the Consumer Price Index rose 108 percent, but the cost of a four-year college education increased 439 percent during that period. That is an increase of around 6.75 percent annually.

The cost explosion was caused by bloat in an education system that has no effective self-correcting mechanism as long as the government pumps more and more money into student loans. Increasing loan amounts may seem to have been the merciful thing to do, but we should all see by now that loans are really more like the chains Jacob Marley carried when he met Ebenezer Scrooge. Debt is tolerable in modest amounts, but the quantities now on the table will make family formation and home buying very difficult for the young.

American education is defective at the primary and secondary levels, but higher education is also deeply in need of reform as the debt explosion reveals. Federal loans have played a key part here, and the feds may need to reduce federal-loan availability to schools that cannot control costs relative to those that do.

High schools need to teach students and their parents educational economics. We may have eliminated “Home Ec” as a class, but “Ed Econ” should be required in the ninth or tenth grade for those heading to college. Lesson One should be: Consider cheaper alternatives like state schools, community colleges, and online courses whenever possible.  

The future may lie with online schools that are willing to compete with brick-and-mortar colleges on price. However, these new institutions will have to be nurtured to survive the onslaught from the educational-industrial-governmental complex. Amazon.com vs. Borders was good for consumers. A similar competitive revolution is needed in higher education, and we have the technology to do it. Think of those great college courses you can buy from the Teaching Company on DVD, CD, or downloads. I can’t imagine any reason that much of college couldn’t be taught similarly. The cost savings would be enormous, but new institutions will be needed to conduct the revolution.

Finally, things have gotten so bad that an astute politician could garner great support from young voters merely by recognizing that this problem exists and by proposing moving education in the direction just described. It is time for a national conversation to begin on this topic, and 2012 is conveniently just around the corner.

— Chris Gacek is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council.

And after little Azra was safe, her mother and grandmother were rescued, too. Full story here.

Via the National Enquirer, so it must be true:

First lady MICHLLE OBAMA fuming as PAULA DEEN dishes on her unhealthy eating habits despite new book “American  Grown” PR blitz!

MICHELLE OBAMA is now furious with Southern cooking queen PAULA DEEN for crowing that the first lady, a healthy-eat­ing advocate who’s waging a war against childhood obesity, pigs out on fatten­ing foods.

While plugging her new book, “Paula Deen’s Southern Cooking Bible,” the feisty TV chef took a pot shot at Michelle for gorging herself on greasy french fries, fatty hot chicken wings and sug­ary deep-fried Snickers bars!

“Michelle’s spitting mad,” a source told The ENQUIRER.

“She thinks Paula is trying to smear her and her family just as the 2012 presidential election race swings into gear.”

The rest here.

In my philosophy class at NYU, I used to passionately argue against the feminists that Barbie dolls are acceptably hyper-feminine in the same way that G.I. Joe action figures are hyper-masculine. 

But 15 years — and three kids — later, I have to admit: I was being cantankerous because I never wanted to side with feminists. This realization about those old classroom arguments came to me last week when we received a new Barbie catalog in the mail.

I flipped through it with my twelve-year-old daughter Camille whom I thought might be interested in the cool, smartly dressed dolls. Although I thought Barbies were fine, I always bought her the “Only Hearts Club” dolls which are softly bendable and have girl-shaped bodies, kind faces, and modest-yet-hip clothing.

That’s why I was interested that her response to the catalog consisted of mild indifference and even an eye-roll.  “Look at this one,” she said, pointing to the tattooed punk Barbie that’s supposedly causing a mini-stir among parents. Then, she tossed it in the trash and ran to her room with the American Girl catalog that arrived in the mail on the same day. As she scampered up the stairs, I felt thankful to God for a daughter who prefers the American Girl catalog to a Barbie advertisement.

And I also realized that my old childhood friend, Barbie (with the blue eyeshadow, the Dolly Parton-esque top, and the legs that stretch for miles) really does look like a porn star.

Sorry, old NYU classmates. You were right on this one.

Science: Teen violence linked to heavy soda diet

I, too, have a theory on this, though I’m not a scientist: Bad parents linked to teen violence and heavy soda diet.

Late last month, a court in South Africa approved a surrogacy agreement. This is not uncommon in itself since South Africa has a statute permitting such agreements. This decision is important because it resulted in a published opinion that gives some insight into the way courts may approach these agreements.

The agreement involved a married same-sex couple who had entered into a surrogacy agreement with an undisclosed egg donor to whom they had been introduced by an online egg-donation agency. The court noted that “the intended surrogate mother had a difficult childhood and may not be as privileged as the commissioning parents.”

In assessing the legal validity of the agreement, the court said South Africa recognizes “the right to have a child through a surrogacy arrangement,” and this is consistent with constitutional protection of “the rights of gays and lesbians to form personal relationships of their choice and to marry and to participate in family life.” The court pointed to a significant shift in the understanding of “family” in South Africa, quoting for instance from an earlier court decision: “These days mothering is also part of a man’s being. The concept of mothering is indicative of a function rather than a ‘persona’ and this function is not necessarily situated in the biological mother. It includes the sensitive attachment which flows from the attention devoted from day to day [attention] to the child’s needs of love, physical care, nutrition, comfort, peace, security, encouragement and support. . . . Today the man has the freedom to reveal and live out the mothering feeling.”

The court expressed its understanding of the judicial role in surrogacy arrangement as to “ensure that both the formal and the substantive requirements of the [Surrogacy] Act are complied with.” The only difficulty, to the court, was the question of whether the surrogate had been compensated since South African law does not allow for compensation. The court explains that the couple paid 20,400R per year for health insurance, 6,000R per year for life insurance and 20,000R for “Surrogate’s various expenditures.” The court said it would be better to have more specificity in the accounting of expenses, but it did not think this constituted payment that would invalidate the agreement. The court explained that since these kinds of arrangements come to court with all of the parties in agreement (as opposed to an adversarial proceeding), the court has to rely on the good faith of the parties to the agreement.

Despite these concerns with the unspecified expenses, the court concluded the legal requirements for a valid surrogacy agreement had been complied with and validated this agreement.

From the Washington Post:

Kevin Schombert, a student with Down syndrome, was crowned homecoming king this weekend atUrbana High School in Frederick County.

Schombert is a manager for the school’s basketball team and a huge sports fan.

“Kevin lives, breathes and bleeds Urbana Hawk Blue. Plus, he has a contagious smile!,” said senior Caitie Cyr, on a facebook pageshe created earlier this fall to rally support for his nomination.

“Let our legacy be more than championships, let’s do something that will make us all feel good. NOMINATE KEVIN SCHOMBERT HOMECOMING KING 2011!!!”

Caitie’s mother, Jennelle Cyr, was at the game when Kevin’s name was announced. “By the time his name was read, the entire home side of the stadium was chanting his name.”

And you must remember this.

“I love you,” I heard my husband David say, though he wasn’t talking to me.

“But you don’t even know me,” a female voice responded.

Okay, so maybe hers was a slightly robotic, disembodied voice, but still. It stung.

Read about how David’s new iPhone 4S has made our marriage feel a little crowded.