Bin Laden and marriage - two current events in one post!

I found out about the royal wedding myself, but Jonathan shared the news about Bin Laden's death this morning before I even had my coffee. WOO!

We are delighted. To those who have moral objections about the death penalty: some actions are deserving of death. It's a justice thing. It's not about lashing out in anger or deterrence or closure or various other things it might incidentally do; some crimes are worth dying for. His qualified. I hope he repented, and God will mercifully and justly sort him out. Glad that's not my job.

That being said, the Navy SEALS who did the raid were AWESOME. And I would be totally in favor of an Osama Down Day every May 1st, like a Guy Fawkes day. I'll buy fireworks!

I also think Homeland Security needs to drastically step down airport security, especially if they want to save the airline industry. This demonstrated (like Israel's been doing for years) that the way to prevent terrorism is by good intelligence, not strip-searching four-year-olds. We refuse to fly until they become rational again, and we're not the only ones.

Everybody's been posting their two cents, of course, but I liked this article from Heavenfield. It's a medievalist's take on the importance of proving your enemy's really dead. :-)

As for the wedding, I'm delighted about that too. Heavenfield had another fun post on "peace-weaving" royal marriages. She pointed out that first Prince Charles and now William married British women, strengthening the monarchy's ties to its own people.

Christian websites have all been taking the opportunity to talk about marriage in general. Jonathan pointed me to this post from Touchstone linking an article on David Hume's defense of one-man-one-woman marriage from a rationalist standpoint. He ties it to freedom. Yes, that David Hume.

"David Hume! The guy currently wearing a toga in Edinburgh! Mr. There's-No-Causality himself!" Jonathan

I'm going to take the opportunity to talk about an article I read last week in a Richmond Families magazine. I picked it up expecting storytime schedules, and got three pages on why all tweens need to be vaccinated with Gardasil, the cervical cancer prevention drug. Yes, you read that right. Tweens.

I read the entire article, just in case the author had a good reason. I will assume that their studies are correct and Gardasil really does prevent 85-95% of all cases of the virus/cancer, and further assume that it doesn't have any nasty side effects that surface ten or thirty or fifty years later.

But their assumptions were telling. The only way to know your child's partners are STI-free is if both remain virgins until marriage and 100% monogamous until death. This is said in a "boy are you naive to think that" tone of voice. Teens make poor choices, so parents need to prepare them.

Let's think about that a minute. We have here a risky behavior with numerous health issues. We can spend $360 per person for prior immunizations and untold millions in cleanup costs; or we can change behavior.

Smoking: change behavior! No doctor is shy about ordering you to quit.

Alcoholism: change behavior!

Obesity: change behavior!

Promiscuity: Well, of course your teenager is going to make poor decisions. We couldn't expect them to wait until they're adults, could we? Or wait until marriage? And asking adults to refrain from promiscuity? How ridiculous and backward. Never mind that chastity is 100% effective at preventing all STIs.

Our culture is so weird.

And this post is quite long enough, so I'll leave you with that. Thanks for reading.