"Don't Date This Guy!"

Before I begin with my sense of this article by Jon Lapook about Lisa Grunwald's book, I want to congratulate the miraculous mothers of sons who work hard at learning as much as they can about the paths of boys in this age. 


Fewer and fewer males are graduating high school, and even fewer are entering college.  Our sons...thus our future... are in deep trouble for a plethora of reasons.  I salute, with the most profound respect, the mothers who learn about this, and who work with parenting skills which address their needs as young men, and light a fire under some of their sons' educators.


  In my view, being a parent is an ultimate calling.  We, as parents, are forming the putty of the ultimate sculpture.  Today, that calling is fraught with questions..so many really good parents are a little "insecure" about the job they are doing.  To me, that "insecurity", is actually an anxiety about seeking "wisdom", and is about the parent wanting to fulfill that calling as best as humanly possible.  Seeing this in my clients is deeply moving for me.  So, on Mother's Day, I salute those moms with my deepest respect.


This is a review, more specifically, about the "mothering" (from biological parents, foster parents, and the system at large) which is creating such a difficult path for many of our young men.


If you are familiar with the dismal statistics about males in foster homes and group homes, this book is sadly relevant.  I could write many thoughts, pages, chapters...about the asexual, warmth-depriving patterns of their biological mothers, and those same frequent patterns of foster mothers who "house children for profit". About them, and the lives their sons touch, this article and book are most pertinent.  The rising rates of foster/group home housing, combined with the youth's own family-(mother)-of-origin creates an overabundance of young men who are charming initially, and perhaps even cloaked in respectability....but who are narcissistic, abundantly entitled, self-centered, philandering and unable to make any sense of healthy connection and human intimacy.

Given that a scant 2% do not end up incarcerated, homeless, antisocial, or dead is a grim reflection of the serious flaws in all of the alleged supportive systems.  Likewise, it is a statement about mothering of sons. 

There are a very few puers who have understood the system, thus gotten an education, and/or dodged serious criminal charges. They might even  be superficially and materially functional, or even deemed "successful" in society.  


However they are, almost across the board, misogynistic, emotional and spiritual train wrecks who literally prey upon people who attempt to be genuinely empathic with them.  Their inability to bond, and to have any empathy, creates toxic relationships which are legion.  Their propensity to victimize others is, for them,  like a spectator sport. At best, they inspire a sense of detached compassion...but only for a very short while.  The caveats about even "glancing by" the lives of  men with that profile....are too numerous to ponder.

Whether he is a  Lawrence Taylor, a Michael Vick, a Tiger Woods, an Elliot Spitzer, a George Hugueley,  or more likely a common, boringly predictable,  everyday "Joe" in our lives. And for all the pages of such exploitative males detailed on DDHG (Don't Date Him Girl!), a website devoted to exposing the evils of such men so that others may not be victimized....we need to inform our young women today of this profile.  


To do anything less is simply irresponsible, since the percentage of this type of male (fatally wounded, drug-addicted, misogynistic) grows by the day. The chances of our daughters, and grand daughters, allowing themselves to be sucked into that initial aura is now about 67% nationally in universities alone. Getting it yet?  That's two of three males before age 22!

La Pook's column about this new novel, is spot-on.  It is a loud call to mothers and fathers to discuss the lack of values and character, and the essential cruelty embedded in these puers (eternal boys), who obsessively seek attention in any way they can. Since the psychological "core" of their psyche is shame-based, very little that they do is based on any mature emotion and/or hidden agenda.....no matter how they may appear.

Just as critical is the call to women who have survived and processed their own involvement with men as these...to enlighten their sisters on how to recognize, and avoid, them.

Lastly, the website of Sam Vaknin, an "out-of the-closet", self-professed, malignant narcissist who, ironically, contributes much to this world through his very complete descriptions of this profile...and increases our awareness of the increasingly growing developmental trend of this type of individual.  Merely watching cable news...becomes more and more grim as we observe this condition in many of our "headliners".

Dr. Jon LaPook

Medical correspondent for the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric

Posted: May 6, 2010 01:38 PM

The guy is Henry House, the title character of my friend Lisa Grunwald's latest novel, The Irresistible Henry House, and in addition to the fact that he's fictional, he's not a good bet. Henry knows how to please women -- how to talk to them, react to them, how and when to touch them.

The problem is that he is -- or at any rate seems to be -- utterly incapable of making a true connection with any of them.

Though pure fiction, Henry is based on pure fact: from the 1920s until the end of the 1960s, college home economic classes around the country borrowed infants from orphanages to be used as "practice babies." I kid you not.

Grunwald reels you in with the book's tantalizing first line: "By the time Henry House was four months old, a copy of his picture was being carried in the pocketbooks of seven different women, each of whom called him her son."

We see Henry change his behavior to please whichever mother he happens to be with at the moment. By the time he is a man, his superpower is to make women become infatuated with him. But he is totally unavailable.

The novel begins in the middle of the 20th century, a time when science seemed to offer a solution to so many of society's problems. If science could be applied to technology and population growth and behavior, then why not to childrearing? Well, for one thing, the attempt to train half a dozen or so "practice mothers" at a time flew directly in the face of "attachment theory," being developed by psychiatrist Dr. John Bowlby, psychologist Mary Ainsworth, psychologist Harry Harlow, and others.

Attachment disorder -- the result of the failure of an infant to form a strong bond in the first year or two of life -- results in a host of childhood and adult problems, many of which Henry struggles in the novel to overcome.

For this week's CBS Doc Dot Com, I spoke to Grunwald about her exquisitely researched and written novel. We talked with psychiatrist Dr. William Fisher about attachment disorder, and we touched on other cockamamie parenting strategies, including the advice of psychologist John Watson in 1928: "Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit on your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say good night. Shake hands with them in the morning."

As a parent of two teenage boys, I can tell you with one hundred percent certainty that I am one hundred percent uncertain about how best to raise a child. However, I'm pretty sure that being a dependable, consistent source of love is key. And that Lisa Grunwald has created a delicious, intriguing, "how not to" book.

Ten Ways Christians Tend to Fail at Being Christian

John Shore

Trying God's patience since   1958

Posted: May 7, 2010 01:43 AM

Speaking as someone who, well, had the conversion experience 14 years ago that I recounted in "I, a Rabid Anti-Christian, Very Suddenly Convert," we Christians too often fail in these ten ways:

1) Too much money. "Wealthy Christian" should be an oxymoron. In Luke 12:33, Jesus says, "Sell your possessions and give to the poor." In Matthew 19:21, he says, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor." In Matthew 6:24, he says, "You cannot serve God and Money." Christians are generally pretty huge on cleaving to the word of God. I just don't see how those particular words could be clearer. (For more on this, see my post "Christians: No Fair Heeding Paul on Gays But Not Jesus on Wealth.")

2) Too confident God thinks we're all that and a leather-bound gift Bible. I'd like to humbly suggest that we spend a little more time wondering how we displease God and a little less time being confident that we do. (See my post "Certainty in Christ: A Blessing and a Curse.")

3) Too quick to believe that we know what God really means by what he says in the Bible. The Bible is an extremely complex, multi-leveled work. We're sometimes too quick to assume that we grasp its every meaning. Take this passage, for instance, from Luke 8: 9-10: "His disciples asked him [Jesus] what this parable [of the sower] meant. He said, 'The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, "though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand."'" Huh? And that's Jesus "explaining" what is generally regarded as one of his most readily understood parables! Are we really all that confident that we always know exactly what Jesus meant by everything he said? Wouldn't we do well to sometimes admit that the words attributed to God manifested on earth are just a tad, well, Greek to us? (See my post "The Bible's Two Big Problems.")

4) Too action-oriented. We Christians could stand to spend less time acting in the name of God, and more time reflecting on the (ever subtle) majesty of God. We need more passivity, and less activity. More meditation, less machination. More reflection, less correction. More contemplation, less administration. More prayers, less airs. More mysticism, less ... um ... cretinism. (See my post "Doing Christianity vs. Being Christian.")

5) Too invasive of others generally. It is my personal, humble opinion that anyone seeking to mix church and state has failed to understand the nature and role of either. Being founded upon the principle that all men are created equal and deserving of equal protection under the law is what makes the American system of democracy such a gift to mankind. Attempting to mix the inherently exclusionary imperatives of a particular religion into the resolutely inclusive system of the American constitutional form of government is to work against everything that America stands for. Religion is a personal, subjective affair for the individual; politics and public policy is an impersonal, objective affair for everyone. (See my post "Does the Holy Spirit Vote Republican?")

6) Too invasive of others personally. We Christians are too often too eager to get up into the faces of others about their personal religious beliefs. If you believe in the reality of hell, then wanting to save non-Christians from going there is a worthy sentiment, of course. But the bottom line is it's absolutely impossible to talk someone who isn't a Christian into becoming one; in fact, more than anything else it's likely to push the non-Christian further from God. I believe we Christians would do very well indeed to spend our time "just" living as Christians, and let God worry about the non-Christians. (See my post "What Non-Christians Want Christians to Hear.")

7) Too quick to abandon logic. When talking to others about our faith, we Christians too often resort to a language and line of reasoning that leaves good ol' fashion logic sitting on the ground behind us, waving a sad good-bye. "It's true because the Bible says it's true" is, for instance, an assertion that can't help but leave the non-Christian unimpressed, since it's so manifestly illogical. "It's true because the Bible says it's true" is no more proof of truth than is, "Apples are the best of the fruits, because I think that's true." Christians need to more readily admit that the religious experience -- no matter how riveting and real it is to the person experiencing it -- remains a subjective phenomenon, and talk about it that way. (See my "Let's Be Real: No One 'Walks' and 'Talks' with Jesus.")

8) Too fixated on homosexuality. Can we Christians stop already with the gay and lesbian fixation? I know many of us understand our stance on the matter to be unassailably Biblical. I know a great many of us are deeply concerned about the "homosexual agenda." I know. We all know. Maybe Christians could just give that issue a rest for a while. It's not like gay and lesbian people are going anywhere. They'll all be there when we get back. Maybe -- for just a week, a day, a month -- we could concern ourselves with something else, and let them be. (See my post "Christians: When It Comes to Homosexuality, Man Up.")

9) Too insular. When I became a Christian, one of the things that most amazed me about Christians is the degree to which they tend to hang out only with other Christians. We should stop doing that. How are we supposed to share Christ's love with non-Christians (which we're forever saying we want to do) when we barely know any non-Christians? Time to widen that social base, I say. (Plus, Christian or not, we still want to throw good, fun parties, don't we? Well, let's face it: The heathen class has all the good music. We might as well invite a few of them to our next party. Maybe they'll bring their CD's!) (See my post, "My Answer to Christians Denouncing R. Crumb's "Genesis Illustrated.")

10) Too uneducated about Christianity. Generally speaking (which of course is the most offensive way to speak about any group of people), Christians tend to embarrass themselves by knowing so little about either the Bible or the history of Christianity. Believing that the Bible is the word of God, for instance, is one thing; knowing nothing about the long process by which men decided which texts would and wouldn't make it into the Bible is another. It's not that all Christians should be full-on theologians or historians. But if you're a Christian who doesn't know the Great Schism from The Great Santini, or the Diet of Worms from ... well, the diet of worms, then you've got some homework to do.

Leviticus Loses: The Inevitability of Equal Rights for Homosexuals

by Rabbi Irwin Kula 

Posted:      April 30, 2010 02:37 PM

This past week in synagogues throughout the world, the weekly portion of Scripture included the following verse from the book of Leviticus: "Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination." This proscription has obviously been the source of heated and often vicious debate over the past decades as homosexuals have courageously come out of the closet and forced our culture to wrestle with its full humanity. My colleague Rabbi Brad Hirschfield posted an important and nuanced post on Huffington Post -- "Is Homosexuality an Abomination? Wrestling with Leviticus 18:22" -- suggesting that because this cultural change in attitude towards homosexuals is very complex, the debate would be far more productive if people hid less behind Scripture and ideology and focused more on why this particular issue is so important to them personally. In Rabbi Hirschfield's words, "compassion for an idea is hard to generate, but compassion for a real person is less so."

It strikes me that the way human rights issues have played out since the beginning of modernity -- which, not surprisingly, coincides with the separation of church and state -- should give us all reason to take a deep breath. There is a sort of humbling inevitability to the process of inclusion and to where we place ourselves along the continuum of human rights debate. One of the many ways to characterize the modern experience is the ongoing expansion of human rights and the increasing inclusion of marginal populations. The modern political and social dynamic in both general society and within religious communities has been the same: Marginal classes of people are brought inside legal frameworks and given equal rights. Whether recognizing the full humanity of Jews, African Americans, other ethnic and religious groups, women, the physically challenged, and now homosexuals, the process has been the same. First, a small group within the marginal group realizes they are in fact oppressed, that in profoundly unjust ways they are not treated as full human beings equal before the law. This small group begins to "cry" out for freedom. The initial reaction within the marginal group is usually fear of rocking the boat while the reaction of the dominant class is dismissive if not often brutal. But injustice once realized and freedom once tasted, even if only in one's heart and mind, is very hard to put back into a box, and so a process begins within the marginal class, educating its own people to see their plight and organizing increasing numbers of people ready to fight for inclusion and fairness. At some point very small numbers of people from the dominant class begin to see the light and realize that fellow human beings just like them have been denied equal rights simply because they are different. If the modern period is of any evidence, once this movement perceived as one of human rights begins -- though it may entail great struggle, sacrifice, and bitterness -- it inexorably results in the marginal population being given the same legal rights as the majority population. So America of 2010 is far more inclusive than America of 1810; classes of people denied equal rights and barely seen as human in 1810 have gained their rights by 2010.

It turns out that once the thirst for freedom is felt, the only question is pacing, and this is true in the general society as well as within religious communities, who all go through the same fighting process. Sadly, though, religious communities, even the liberals in those communities, tend to be on a time lag relative to the larger secular body politic. Depending on our psycho-spiritual and psychosocial predispositions and the values of the groups to which we feel most connected, we individually and collectively pace ourselves in one of three ways. Some of us, the traditionalists, hold on for dear life and oppose any change; others, the human rights activists, make great sacrifices to bring about change; and still others, the rest of us, are in the middle, slowly brought along to see the humanity of the Other. These three paces are of course all relative to each other, so as inclusion and equal rights expand, passions intensify.

For some, usually those most denied their rights, change understandably moves too slowly, whereas for others it moves too quickly, and for most of us it sometimes moves too quickly and sometimes too slowly. Of course, whatever our pace, we dress up our positions in either religious language or the secular language of grand principles like justice, fairness, and equality, as if it is not precisely the content of those principles that we are debating. At some point, as people meet each other and realize that the Other is a human being whose difference is nothing to fear, a critical mass, usually a healthy minority and not yet the majority, pushes through the change, which drives the remnant of traditionalists crazy. So traditionalists do have much to "fear" as their variety of arguments against inclusion -- the same arguments that they have brought on every human rights issue (e.g., it is not natural, it will lead to moral corruption, it is sinful, it is against god's will, it will undo the family, it will destroy the fabric of society, etc.) -- will increasingly ring hollow to more and more people. They may be able to slow things down, but they cannot stop these changes no matter what the Bible says. Thank God.

Given that we all know how (if not exactly when) this story of equal rights and full inclusion for homosexuals is going to end, the really interesting question is who we are in this drama. Where do we position ourselves and why? After all, we position ourselves where we do because it works for us, giving us just the right psychic gratification -- whether from our anger, self-righteousness, righteous indignation, or aloofness, and whether we are leaders or followers or stand above critics. Social, cultural, and moral change is hard, and in my experience, when I get a bit too angry at the pace of someone else's capacity for "moral development," or when I get a bit too self-righteous about how morally developed I am relative to those "homophobes," it is because I am actually unconsciously disappointed in my own efforts in working to make this a more just society.

Gays and lesbians (and bisexuals and transsexuals) are going to gain every single right that heterosexuals have: the right to visit their lovers, partners, or spouses in a hospital; the right to share in pensions, health insurance, and inheritance benefits; the right to marry; and the right to adopt. This is just how it is when people begin to see the Other as fully human, and it will even be so in the vast majority of religious communities -- after all, who would have thought that the majority of the most religiously traditional communities would allow inter-racial marriage?

Knowing all this ought not keep social justice activists (sorry, Glenn Beck) from doggedly pursuing equal rights for homosexuals. But it ought to make us feel just a bit less anxious and therefore a bit less angry with traditionalists. Knowing that as long as we continue to fight for the recognition of the humanity of the Other, such recognition will ultimately be won, we might even be a little less triumphant as we win.

Anyway, at some point in the next decades, the vast majority of us will see this as the obvious moral position; will see those views of a previous era as less morally and ethically evolved; and we will feel appropriately embarrassed, if not ashamed, of those days. Given this, it behooves us to remember that the only difference between human rights activists and traditionalists, relatively speaking to the centuries of injustice finally being ameliorated, is having realized something just a bit earlier -- something that the god of Leviticus should have learned from the god of Genesis -- that all human beings are created equal in the divine image.