» read more]]> Save the Date for: Our Third RUC Benefit Banquet

Registration: Register online Or call 740-965-2046

Featured Speaker: Pam Tebow

Where: Thursday, April 19th, 2012 Villa Milano, 1630 Schrock Road, Columbus, Ohio 43229 

Listen to the Radio Spot: 30 Second Radio Spot

Download the Flier (PDF): RUC Conference Flier 2012

Why: You might be asking what do Relationships Under Construction and Pam Tebow have in common? The answer is integrity! Both talk about relationships with integrity, being true to yourself and standing for truth! Come hear Pam Tebow at the Relationships Under Construction Benefit Banquet 6:30 PM on April 19th, 2012 at Villa Milano, 1630 Schrock Road, Columbus, Ohio. Register at RelationshipsUnderConstruction.com or call 740-965-2046. Come and bring your friends. (No autograph requests permitted)

Relationships Under Construction: Mission: Teaching Youth the Blueprint for Strong Future Families.

Banquet Theme: Turning the hearts of future fathers and mothers to their children.

Seating begins at 6:00 PM; Dinner & Program 6:30 PM – 8:45 PM
Please RSVP by April 12th, 2012
Dinner is complimentary.
Adults only please, seating is limited.
An opportunity to make a financial gift will be extended.

» read more]]> The 2011 Nigerian Teacher conference starts Monday, May 9th-13th.
Download a PDF of the schedule here.

» read more]]> Save the Date for:
PLANS FOR A FUTURE
Our Second Annual Fundraising Banquet

Registration:
Register online
Or call 740-965-2046

Featured Speaker: Dr. Kevin Leman

Where:
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Villa Milano, 1630 Schrock Road, Columbus, Ohio 43229

Seating begins at 6:00 PM; Dinner & Program 6:30 PM – 8:45 PM
Please RSVP by March 22, 2011
Dinner is complimentary.
Adults only please, seating is limited.
An opportunity to make a financial gift
will be extended.

» read more]]> Download the December 2010 newsletter from Relationships Under Construction.

» read more]]>

Governor Mike Huckabee speaks about Relationships Under Construction and acknowledges Catherine Wood a true champion, not for what she's against, but of what she's for. Catherine received an "American Hero" award on September 12, 2010 at Genoa Church in Sunbury, OH during its  "God Bless America Weekend" event.

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Catherine Wood, founder of Relationships Under Construction, receives an "American Hero" award on September 12, 2010 at Genoa Church in Sunbury, OH. Pastor Frank Carl presented Catherine with the award. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and Congressman Bob McEwen were guest speakers at Genoa's "God Bless America Weekend" event.

» read more]]> By Laura Clark

Laura Clark is a freelance writer based in Front Royal, Virginia.

Wendy Shalit, daughter of film critic Gene Shalit, exploded onto the book scene in 1999 with what was considered by conservatives and liberals alike to be a ground-breaking work on the modern sexual scene:   A Return to Modesty.  Even the name, unlike Female Chauvinist Pigs; Unhooked; Pornified boldly states the solution instead of the problem.  But Shalit herself is from a fairly liberal family:  a strong family, where she learned self respect, but a family which expected her to experiment sexually before she was married.  Nevertheless, Wendy’s Mom had a lot of common sense and confidence.  When the “parental notification notice” was sent home to the parents of Wendy’s fourth grade class stating that the children were going to be taught, among other things, about masturbation, the Shalits wanted none of it.  Mrs. Shalit took her out, even after being asked by the teacher, Mrs. Nelson, if she wanted Wendy “whispering” in the locker room.  Mrs. Shalit decided that both whispering and using her own judgment in teaching Wendy about sex were preferable to a bold frontal classroom presentation on a very delicate mysterious human issue.   Since when anyway did sex education classes stop kids who knew about it from whispering about sex?  Mrs. Nelson, the sex-ed teacher, must have forgotten what it was like to be a kid:  kids whisper about everything.  Did she miss the point that the class would likely give them something else to whisper about?  As Wendy points out elsewhere in her book, it is the people who are often the most comfortable talking about sex who are also the most naïve concerning its power or even other simple basics of human nature.  In fact, it could be argued that the more “open” one is on the subject, the less observant one becomes of what sex is and how it affects us.  So Wendy went to the library, and the other children sat in class.

Wendy started to notice something odd about those children.  The little girls would come out of that class, trying to mind their own business, and the little boys would chase them down saying endearing things like:  “Are you masturbating yet?  It’s natural, you know.”  And, “You may be a treasure, but you ain’t got no chest.”  Wendy witnessed little girls in tears (as I almost was in reading her account) telling these boys:  “Mrs. Nelson says that if you tease us about what we learned in class, then you haven’t learned the principle of respect.”  Then Wendy noticed another odd thing:  when a boy started to tease her about what had transpired in class, she could stop him dead in his tracks by simply stating that she hadn’t been there.  She describes them as being “almost apologetic.”  Wendy was getting more respect from the boys just because she wasn’t in the class.  What was going on here?  The boys’ reaction was actually very predictable, but also mysterious.  Somehow, sitting in the class with those little girls, listening to the litany of sexual information, those little boys’ natural reserves had been torn down; they no longer saw the girls as apart from such information:  the boys neatly incorporated the girls right into it; they sexualized them.  When they found out that Wendy was not in the class, their guard went right back up, even to the point that they were “almost apologetic.”  Wendy’s story, insightful and honest, is an amazing encapsulation of how sex education classes all across the country break down the natural boundaries of respect between boys and girls.

What Shalit observed and experienced is one argument against the proposal, made by Levy, Stepp, and Paul, that better and more sex education is part of the solution in refining respect between the sexes.  Mrs. Nelson had told the boys and girls to respect one another:  she had made the point that they were treasures.  Cutting right down archetypal stereotypical lines, the girls got the respect part, but the boys didn’t.  Mrs. Nelson, the sex-ed teacher, was treading where angels fear to:  she was breaking down the boundary of reserve that is natural between the sexes, which is governed not by (at least before the age of eighteen) intellectual constructs such as “respect” and “treasure” (worthy as these concepts are) but by subtle boundaries taught in families and enforced at schools:  separate girls’ and boys’ bathrooms; girls keeping their knees together; boys getting in lots of trouble for sneaking in the girls’ bathroom even if it is empty, etc. etc.  In the end, all the “whys” and “wherefores” of how boys and girls are different and how they should relate to one another cannot be “taught” like Math, Reading, Grammar, Science.  That they can is the lie of sex-education.  Math, Reading, Grammar, History, and Science are taught to be mastered, conquered, and understood.  Sex cannot be taught that way.   Sex is meant to be and stay fairly mysterious, because it is mysterious.  Sex education tries to eradicate that mystery.  The result is that boys and girls get the idea that sex is something they can “work with” just like they would any other subject.  They find out, sometimes after much pain, that sex is very different from learning another subject:  it emotionally affects them in a way that Math never could.   The reality of sex is so profound, emotional, and life-altering that it simply does not “fit” into a classroom setting far from Mom and Dad.  Shalit’s story is one story which proves this, but there are many others.
     
Wendy Shalit’s A Return to Modesty confidently plows through the most important of the questions Levy, Stepp, and Paul raise.  Shalit too noticed and analyzed the peculiar phenomenon that Levy did (six years later) of women attempting to make themselves as raunchy and unfazed in sexual areas as men.  Shalit listened to the Howard Stern show, where women could not begin to feel comfortable and compete with Stern’s vulgarity:  and they were often porn stars and prostitutes!  But the real question is not why they couldn’t compete:  the real question is why did they feel the need to?  What is it about our society that demands this of women?  It seems so, it is . . . anti-woman.  The behavior of Stern, and other men like him, was what men a century ago couldn’t dream of indulging in ( assuming some men would want to)  and still be considered worthy of a woman’s (or a decent man’s) attention.  Now these guys have highly rated radio shows!  Why is turning that situation around pro-woman?  (Is it even pro-man?)  Why is it pro-woman for women to prove to men and other women that they can be just as “dirty” as the guys?  As Wendy Shalilt documents, the overwhelming majority of women naturally value their sexual inner core in a manner that is profoundly different from the way men value theirs.  Why are we trying to change that, and then being dishonest enough to say we are changing it out of concern for women?  Levy wrote about these same incongruities years after Shalit did, but she noticed them from a decidedly more feminist point of view than Shalit.  Thus Levy displays astute powers of observation, and an ability to draw some objective conclusions from her observations.

Wendy Shalit was one of the very first to identify the poisonous “hook-up” culture on college campuses, eight years before Laura Stepp did.  She analyzes with verve and humor and sadness all of the lengths to which girls will go to engage in these heartless encounters and still keep their self respect, and she asks, again why, if young women are happy with the quality of these “hook-up” encounters, which are not in the context of commitment, are they making so much effort to put them into a better framework, namely a more feminine framework?  And why, if women are so liberated by the sexual revolution, do they feel the need to apologize for attempting to do this?  She recounts all the lousy, condescending responses the popular women’s magazines dole out to the young women who write to them wondering why they are so unhappy.  Again and again, these women are told:  do not have expectations; be happy; be free; be independent; and above all, do not have expectations.  The magazines get a lot of these questions, and they keep giving the same answers, ignoring the obvious underlying frustration, even heart-break, these women are expressing in their letters.  But, as Shalit also points out, women are not supposed to get broken hearts any more.

Yes, Shalit also takes on pornography.  Here, she is closer to Paul’s position that censorship is a bad thing, but in the pages she devotes to the subject her scope is broader, mainly because she is not nearly as concerned about making sure that nobody would dream of equating what is merely erotic art with pornography.  Often, she knows, there is no difference between the two.  Unlike Paul, Wendy Shalit would consider the idea of “masturbating” using “pretty pictures” as stimulation to be a very repulsive act.  My guess is Paul does too, deep inside, but she is not willing to express that kind of disgust.  Wendy Shalit is.

What sets Wendy Shalit apart from almost all of her counterparts is that she is completely fearless in taking on all of the underlying assumptions of the sexual revolution.  She goes where her tremendous powers of observation and logic lead her:  even if she has to challenge her own previously held assumptions, which she does many times.  She was raised, after all, as a liberal.  In fact, she still is a liberal in many ways.  She attributes some of her self-awareness to the fact that she missed what Levy, Stepp, and Paul prescribe: sex education.  Wendy Shalit produced a new book this year, 2007, Girls Gone Mild.  She documents many hopeful trends which indicate that women, while they are grateful for the opportunity to be doctors, lawyers, or whatever, want to be just as respected for the decision to stay home and raise a family if that’s what they want to do.  There are increasing signs that this is becoming, once again, a respected option for women, along with being modest and even remaining a virgin until married.  Another important trend Shalit noted is the increasing desire many modern girls have for clothes that are beautiful but do not leave them exposed.  Many of the girls in the book report that being a “bad girl” just isn’t all it’s been cracked up to be.  They want to try being “good girls” for a change.  When they try it, they find they are happier.    Girls Gone Mild is a well written, welcome work.  For sheer spunk, it does not compare to A Return to Modesty, nor does it attempt to.  The phenomena it documents indicate an encouraging sea-change in the culture.

Conclusion

In reading these five books, I am struck by how much women search for integrity and respect, from themselves and from their potential lovers.  Women have accepted raunch, for example, in part because they figure if they can join the men in their derision of women who are completely sexually available, then they will be better able to put some distance between themselves and the degradation those women experience.  Thus they may be able to maintain their own sense of self respect and maybe even the men’s respect too.  Levy documents women’s attempt to do this in her work. It is a self-serving attitude (what indeed of the women who are scorned by all?) but an understandable one.  In accepting the hook-up culture which Stepp researched, women display that they would rather give only a part of themselves rather than their whole self if the men are really unwilling to commit, as so many men have shown themselves to be.  It’s much easier if the man leaves quickly rather than lingeringly if he’s not going to be around for long anyway.  Gone are the days when women are willing to lower themselves to begging men, along with Diana Ross, not to leave them in the “warmth of the night” but in the “cold morning light.”  When women realized the leaving was inevitable, they accepted a system by which they would not be as hurt.  But then something else happened:  by accommodating themselves to relationships that were increasingly less emotionally meaningful, women began asking themselves a question which Diana Ross and company, raised with older and higher expectations, were understandably not as likely to get to:  why are we doing this?  Sometimes things have to get really bad before people will take the trouble to search for a lasting solution.  Paul’s book, which clearly condemns pornography, is also part of the new honesty with which women are starting to confront old issues.

Whatever solutions women will act on in this new day, rest assured, men will go right along.  That’s always what many men do when a significant number of women lay out the same expectations.  Which leads me to my final point:  we really are a sisterhood (as the feminists recognized).  If women, as a group, begin insisting that men respect them as whole persons, men will do just that.  If it means women have to start wearing less revealing clothes, many more women are now willing to make that “trade off.”  Modesty is one of the things that “doesn’t have to threaten us anymore”, [it never did, but for the sake of argument . . .] unlike systematized laughing at other women (think The Man Show) which should threaten any woman ever who cherishes her sex.  The producers, female and male, of The Man Show are the ones who don’t get it.  If women, as a group, as the astounding cultural force they have always been, begin to have high expectations of themselves and the men in their lives, they will almost certainly start to wonder how they could have ever settled for so little. We already know what happens when women take off their clothes, not for the one man of their choice who has proved and committed himself to her, but for anyone.  We already know what happens when women no longer expect men to be good:  they won’t be.  Women become unhappy, and so do men.  Isn’t it time to get back to what has always worked for everyone?

» read more]]> By Laura Clark

Laura Clark is a freelance writer based in Front Royal, Virginia.

Unhooked, by Laura Sessions Stepp, is her attempt to get a handle on the “hook-up” culture on college campuses.  As in Female Chauvinist Pigs, we encounter the sad dreariness of the sexual revolution.  Stepp, like Levy, actually seems fairly comfortable with where the revolution began, just not where it is ending.  It is ending with practically anonymous hook-ups between boys and girls on college campuses all across the nation.  A “hook-up” can mean anything from a kiss to sex: the technical “one size fits all” nature of the term implies that sexual encounters are uniform in meaning (meaningless?) and even boring (does “hook-up” sound exciting—or does it sound like something we do with our clothes when unpacking?).  More to the point, no girl really wants to be thought of as a “hook-up.”  Guys do not even really like it.  This “not liking it” (especially on the part of girls) is in part what Stepp documents again and again in her book.  Yet she also documents an odd willingness on many young people’s part to live with it:  a resignation she find strange. 

Stepp, much more than Levy, offers some concrete solutions to the problem.  Perhaps she feels confident in doing this because she is older than Levy, a Mom, and was raised in a considerably more conservative time. She recommends not “hooking-up.”  She encourages young people to seek “intimacy” in their relationships, to approach their relationships thoughtfully, and in terms of their long term goals.  She makes the cultural responsibility connection:  “If individuals consider hooking up only in terms of what it does for them, nothing will change,” Stepp says.  She admonishes, “You’re in this together.”  Going further than Levy, but like her too, Stepp seems to tie good sex up with becoming a more rounded, better person. “[Sex] can reinforce our best qualities:  our playfulness [is this one of our best qualities?], generosity, sense of responsibility, and trustworthiness.”   And yes, like Levy, she espouses the ubiquitous solution of better sex education.  So is there a problem with Stepp’s approach?

Stepp offers more concrete solutions than Levy, but she still sees no ultimate meaning to sexual relationships beyond “loving” intimacy.  Premarital sex is not problematic for her, as long as it is done in a committed, loving relationship.  She implies that these kinds of relationships are at least, in part, a preparation for eventual life-long ones.  She overlooks the fact that without the commitment of marriage it’s hard to see how sex can make anyone more “generous”, “responsible”, or “trustworthy.”   She seems to forget that her premises are close to the ones with which the sexual revolution began:  marriage is unnecessary, but make sure to be loving!  Be committed (if possible), at least for a while! She does not observe that without recognizing a meaning in sex beyond (good starting points that they are) commitment and intimacy we will end up with what we have today:  anonymous hook-ups.  “Commitment” leads to the question:  how committed?  “Intimacy” leads to the question:  intimate in what context?  Intimate to the point that I can be hurt because I’m not with you forever?  An uncomfortable fact about sex that will not go away is that it does not take to half measures.  Honest answers to these questions have in part led to the hook-up culture:  people would rather hook-up than give their whole selves and get hurt.  If they get hurt hooking up (which they undoubtedly do), at least, they can reason, they only gave part of themselves.  Let’s move on to the next book.

» read more]]> By Laura Clark

Laura Clark is a freelance writer based in Front Royal, Virginia.

Ariel Levy is not a conservative.  She identifies strongly with a fairly standard “Feminism”:  at least a Feminism which empowers women to do as they choose, and be treated equally with men.  Levy correctly sees, however, that women having equal footing with men in society should not mean the same thing as women having to practically become men.  Levy argues in her book, Female Chauvinist Pigs, that many women are becoming like the worst of men in how they treat other women.  She makes the case fairly well that there are a good many female chauvinist pigs running around.

There are the women who are involved in filming the “Girls Gone Wild” videos, where girls (some under-aged) are offered hats, tee-shirts, etc. if they will expose themselves to the camera.  One woman photographer of “GGW”, when asked if she would be in a video, says, “No way!”    In a photograph shoot, which Levy actually witnessed, a rather  threatening crowd of forty or so people gathered around two girls (on the beach in Florida) urging them to “take it off”  until one reluctantly pulled down the bottom half of her bikini and her friend began spanking her. The guys sunning next to them had wanted the free hats being offered.  (Levy does not say if the girls were offered anything).  One of the young men sunning (who stood to win a free hat) had so much confidence in the girls’ desire to objectify themselves that he yelled:  “You know you want to!”  But in reading the story you realize that they really didn’t want to, and that they even may have been a little frightened.  According to Levy, the crowd had increased to about seventy people before the first girl decided to “give in.”  And there doesn’t seem to have been anyone present (the outmoded gentleman, a mother, a father?) who could even try to help the girls “make their own decision.”  So much for female empowerment in the twenty-first century.   

Levy seriously questions whether these women, the ones who appear in GGW, actually do respect themselves.  When she followed up with some of them, weeks later, she finds that they are upset and even uncomprehending of their actions in GGW.  Apparently, very often, even for the modern “liberated” woman, her self respect is inexplicably tied up with not revealing herself, rather than the reverse.  Some radical feminists, recognizing that women feel this way, shrill on and on that it is still the patriarchy which causes their discomfort.  But this doesn’t make sense anymore. The current sexual mores do not encourage girls to think these kinds of actions are wrong.  Instead, the girls seem to have some kind of inner barometer at work indicating that something is not right, and that barometer is working against all odds.  Are the people who are promoting GGW and the like respectful of this inner sense girls possess?   Most of them do not seem to care whether it exists or not, or they would deny (as many feminists do) its existence.

“It doesn’t have to threaten us anymore.” This is what one of The Man Show’s women producers had to say to Levy who wanted her to explain how the content of a show (that does nothing but make fun of women and present them as male sex objects) is good.  Later, a male producer of the show would tell Levy that The Man Show’s thirty-eight percent female viewership reflects the fact that thirty-eight percent of women in general have a sense of humor.  Levy tells the reader that when she heard this, she laughed, not because she thinks The Man Show is funny, but because she wanted to be considered one of those women.  No one wants to be accused of not having a sense of humor.  I found her honesty endearing.  Unstated by the producer, but implied by Levy however, is that the laugh is on women.  Also unstated but implied by Levy is that women now have to laugh at other women who put or find themselves in awkward sexual situations or be considered “prudes”, “uncomfortable with our sexuality,” “bad sports,” “humorless”. . .    In other words, if we do not laugh, we are really boring, or worse, sexually conflicted ourselves.    A good question to ask is:  according to whom?

Levy is endearing.  Levy is brilliant.  But her book fails to really stir one to action (although it does make one think) because Levy cannot produce any standard for taking action.  Indignation (albeit righteous) is the only stand she can take, because that is the only thing that makes sense given her philosophical outlook.  She rejects the idea that sex has any intrinsic meaning (“Sex is one of the most interesting things we as human beings have to play with. . .” she says near the end).  She asks for a return to “idealism”, which once again is impossible if sex only has the meaning each individual gives it.  Whose ideal?  Then there is the all too predictable call for more sex education (and not, gasp, the abstinence based stuff).  One wonders how Levy thinks we’ve gotten to where we are today.  If someone had tried to get two girls to strip on a populated beach fifty years ago they would have been lucky to escape with all of their teeth.  Today they get a free hat.  We did not have “comprehensive sex education”, which Levy advocates by name, fifty years ago.  With these facts in mind, we can go on to the next book.

» read more]]> By Laura Clark

Laura Clark is a freelance writer based in Front Royal, Virginia.

Pamela Paul opted to put a rather startling picture on her book, Pornified:  a picture of a man and woman, obviously naked, embracing.  Considering Paul’s premise that pornography is bad, and the fact that neither pornography nor the picture on Pornified, is very imaginative, I would have liked to have seen something a whole lot more original and less offensive.  Perhaps, however, the cover’s lack of imagination is part of her point.  Paul does succeed in making a very powerful case against pornography, as she also does in showing how permeated our culture has become with it.  She is sensitive and intelligent in documenting how damaging pornography is to men, women, and children, and the relationships which they have with one another.  She did much valuable research to prove her point.  She questions some of our prevailing assumptions about free speech and freedom of the press.

Paul makes many strong philosophical arguments against pornography and in the final pages of her book she has some biting criticisms for much of the cultural commentary that is in vogue.  In this, she touches on Levy’s theme.  “Terrified of being labeled ‘anti-sex,’ ‘humorless’ or [the wrong kind of] ‘feminist,’ many women have neglected to stand up to pornography,” she writes.  She ferociously takes on the pro-porn feminists:  “Why insist that it is okay for women to exploit other women, but when men do so, it is harm, harassment, or sexual crime?”  Paul asks.  She terms such thinking “hypocrisy.”  Paul is fearless in many of her assessments.

But after wading through page after page of tragedy backed by statistics, we still have many of the same tired conclusions. While pornography is bad, that does not mean that men and women should have a strict moral code about sex.  We must understand, for example, that pornography is not the same thing as “looking at pretty pictures with [and?] masturbating.”  Whew! I am so relieved.  People who confuse the two “have an agenda” or “something to prove” Paul tells us, although she does not specify what.  She assures her readers over and over that it is not only religious people, concerned about what God thinks, who oppose pornography.  Very, very true.  It is clear that Paul considers the thoughts religious folks have on pornography to be little more than knee-jerk reactions. Unappreciated are two things.  The first is that religious thinkers never merely began and ended their arguments with the fact that God doesn’t approve pornography.   They had many of the same thoughts against it that Paul does now, years before she ever considered them.   Second, they predicted that society would one day find itself in the mess that it is today:  the mess that Paul doesn’t like, and who can blame her?  Paul has very obviously not read very much of the Judeo-Christian criticism of pornography, because if she had she would know it makes many of the same disconcerting observations which she does.

Paul states that more sex education would be helpful.  Paul thinks that if people just understand how destructive pornography can be (and sex education would teach them this!) then they will decide not to use it.  This is no doubt true:  some will. But Paul fails, just as Stepp and Levy, to ascribe an underlying nature to sexual relations, a nature which is violated by GGW, hook-ups, and pornography.  Until society acknowledges that the meaning of sex is not what a particular individual thinks it is, we will continue to have a deeply conflicted sexualized society, and also continue to have lots of people who can partially analyze the problem, write well about it, but who still cannot get to the root of what is wrong and, therefore, who also cannot offer true solutions in solving the evils which haunt them.  In the next, and last, section, we will hear from someone who is much more realistic about the nature of the problem, and who also sees some signs for optimism that it is beginning to be partially solved.