NEW COMMANDMENT

After a solid week of 14-hour days I finally had some free time this weekend and since I was pretty much braindead after the week of hell at the office I watched a fair amount of television.

I caught a wonderful episode of '17 and Counting' which is the latest reality show about that crazy-ass slice of Americana, the Dugger family. 17 Kids and another on the way, the wife, in all of her 'Little House on the Prairie' dress glory, has been pregnant since 1990. The episode revolved around their newly engaged 18 year old son. Now that he is engaged, to a pure and equally boring girl that he met at a home-school conference, he is allowed to hold hands. Kissing apparently is to be saved until marriage.

Tonight on TLC was another show called 'Purity Balls' (might as well call it 'Blue Balls') where this same theme came up again. They interviewed a young girl who said that "the bible forbids it" and "it is in the 10 commandments" when asked about why she is saving her first kiss for marriage.

It may be enjoyable to poke fun at the Duggers, but I'm convinced there is currently a large and very organized conspiracy ongoing to make the Evangelical flavor of Christianity a majority in this country so they can seize political power and erode our rights and freedoms via their own special brand of censorship and facism.

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that you are not supposed to kiss until you are married. It also doesn't anywhere forbid sex before marriage. No matter how you translate it, the 7th Commandment 'Thow shalt not commit adultery' is referring to married people engaging in sex outside the marriage. Lets not open up the can of worms involved in the traditional Hebrew word for Virgin.

After watching these two shows I'm convinced we have forgotten one of the most important of God's Commandments, specifically:

"Thow shalt not be a Dumb-Ass"

I'm all for protecting the innocence of my two little girls, but I'll do that by teaching them about the biology and science behind procreation and making sure they are educated properly and full of enough self-confidence to make safe choices and not be pressured into doing anything they don't want to do.

That being said, with my 7-year old now using the computer on her own I decided to install some parental control software. It was a bitter pill to swallow since being a fan of the EFF I have some pretty strong opinions about this type of software and the fact it blocks quite a bit of perfectly harmless content (Greenpeace webpage for example). I'll just tweak it manually over time. Right now she has access to CBC Kids, Nick Jr, Webkinz World, and a couple other child-friendly sites full of Flash games and other such diversions. No YouTube, no chatting, etc.