Two Posts I’m Not Going to Write

Last updated on: May 14, 2012 at 9:20 am by Ellen Painter Dollar

Two Posts I’m Not Going to Write 2012-05-14T09:20:25-04:00 Ellen Painter Dollar

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It is a constant bloggerly temptation to feel that I have to weigh in on every news story that either 1) has to do with one of my core topics (parenting, disability, ethics, faith) or 2) I feel strongly about. (This is part of what I was writing about in my post about the “Tyranny of the News Hook,” which was recently reposted on the Redbud Writers Guild blog).

This past week’s temptations have included President Obama’s laudable decision to speak out in support of same-sex marriage rights in light of North Carolina’s vote to ban such marriages via Constitutional amendment, and Time magazine’s shameful decision to run a stupidly provocative cover photo and tagline for an article on modern motherhood and the “attachment parenting” movement.*

Instead of adding my voice to the cacophony of voices concerning both of these news hooks, though, I’m going to just link to other writers who have already said what needs to be said.

Huffington Post writer Lisa Belkin on the Time magazine cover: “No, I am Not Mom Enough”

Blogger Sarah Bessey, writing at A Deeper Story, on “I am an evangelical Christian. And I think same-sex marriage should be legal.”

And finally, blogger Justin Lee (Christian, gay, from North Carolina) weighed in with an excellent post reminding opponents of that state’s Amendment One not to assume that his fellow statespeople who passed it are all evil bigots. Although I was dismayed by the amendment’s passage, I was equally dismayed by all the flippant Facebook posts to the effect of, “What else can you expect from those closed-minded Southern bumpkins?” (My husband is a North Carolinian, and we are always amazed that otherwise enlightened Northerners will readily propagate the silliest, most inaccurate, and offensive stereotypes of Southerners….frequently when my husband is standing right there. And they know he is a Southerner. C’mon people.)

Yes. Yes. And yes.

* I feel a need to clarify why I have such a problem with this magazine cover, because there seems to be some misunderstanding out there. I have no opinion on how long mothers choose to breastfeed. To each her own, I say. My problem with the cover is not that I think it’s awful for a three-year-old to be nursing. But I do think it’s awful for a three-year-old to be nursing on a magazine cover that is clearly designed to provoke and titillate, and worst of all, to do those things by issuing a war cry (“Are you mom enough?”) for a war that pretty much only exists in the minds of journalists and bloggers looking for page views. So Time should be ashamed of this cover, not because it shows a bare breast and a toddler feeding from it, but because it used that breast, the woman to whom it belongs, and that child as objects to promote the damaging fallacy that today’s moms are primarily concerned with proving to each other that our way of mothering is the best way. (And now, of course, Ive just commented on the very thing I said I wouldn’t comment on. Sigh.)

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