Entanglement between evangelical churches and adoption industry

I've been hoping someone would look into this story for ages, ever since my fundie brother adopted two kids over 15 years ago and spoke of it as something many people in his acquaintance were doing. I knew somebody had to be making money. Finally there's a book:

The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption
by Kathryn Joyce

Publication Date: April 23, 2013
Adoption has long been enmeshed in the politics of abortion. But as award-winning journalist Kathryn Joyce makes clear in The Child Catchers, adoption has lately become entangled in the conservative Christian agenda. To tens of millions of evangelicals, adoption has become a new front in the culture wars: a test of "pro-life" bonafides, a way to reinvent compassionate conservatism on the global stage, and a means to fulfill the “Great Commission” mandate that Christians evangelize the nations. Influential leaders fervently promote a new "orphan theology," urging followers to adopt en masse, with little thought for the families these "orphans" may actually have. Christian adoption activists have added moral weight to a multi-billion dollar adoption industry intent on increasing the "supply" of adoptable children, both at home and overseas.

The Child Catchers is a shocking exposé of what the adoption industry has become and how it got there, told through deep investigative reporting and the heartbreaking stories of individuals who found that their own, and their children's, well-being was ultimately irrelevant in a market driven by profit and now, pulpit command.

Kathryn Joyce is a journalist based in New York City whose work has appeared in the Nation, Mother Jones, Slate, the Atlantic, and other publications. A 2011 recipient of the Knight Luce Fellowship for Reporting on Global Religion, she has also been awarded residencies and fellowship support by the Nation Institute Investigative Fund, the MacDowell Colony, the Bellagio Center, and the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. She is the author of Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement and associate editor at Religion Dispatches.

41-year-old teacher snags teen; I don't know what to think

Last month a 41-year-old male high school teacher in Modesto, a depressed central California city, quit his job and left his family to move in with an 18-year-old girl who had been his student. The couple, pictured above, announced their relationship publicly this week with excruciating appearances on television.

For some reason I'm having a hard time getting my mind around this story. To give some context: I have been a high school teacher. I never was attracted to one of my students and never had any kind of inappropriate relationship with any of them, but I can relate at least to the extent of having been a high school teacher. Second thing: I've also been a pornographer. And situations like this are pretty much in the porn sweet spot.

So you might have thought I'd experience some kind of thrill when I saw this, but instead I reacted like any decent person would have: "Oh no. Oh you poor fools."

Then the second-guessing began. I thought: Well, okay, she's of age. No crime here; only stupidity. She'll probably recover from this mistake, especially if they don't have kids. He never will, but he's an adult and should be prepared to suffer the consequences of his actions.

But then I thought: But wait, isn't he simply doing what millions of men have fantasized doing? He's not unlike Roger Sterling on "Mad Men," who dumped his respectable middle-aged wife to marry his gorgeous 20-year-old secretary, despite his best friend telling him he was acting like a fool. This lumpish fellow has none of the suavité of Roger Sterling, and probably none of the money, but whatever he has he'll have less of it once his soon-to-be ex-wife gets through with him. And that's as it should be.

The point is: Isn't this monumental dope simply doing what the culture tells him to do, namely follow his dream, pursue his passion, and all the other self-actualization advice people have been force-fed for the last forty years? And especially in this case! He's only accepting the invitation, or mandate, he's bombarded with every hour of every day -- the one which goes Young nubile female sexuality is the greatest thing in the world, and possessing it should be your goal in life.

No, we turn around and mock and condemn him for actually achieving this goal. Because that's America. We use sex to sell everything, and then when someone actually takes these messages to their logical conclusion, they are deemed utter scum.

A tiny part of me -- a part which exists perhaps in others (perhaps more in some people) -- wanted to say "Dude, you go! You turned your life upside down for some American trim! Today you are the envy of every man who's ever fantasized about it, thought about it, tried disastrously and failed to do it. You actually did it. Rock on." But that part in me really is tiny. Mostly I just shake my head and feel a little sick.

But the second-guessing continues. What kind of non-conformist am I anyway? Shouldn't I stand with this man, perhaps not because he has managed to obtain every man's fantasy for an American teenager, but because by tearing apart his whole life for something he's passionate about, he has somehow struck a blow against conformity, in favor of Gauguin-like self-actualization and bohemia?

I guess it just doesn't read that way to me. It reads like the opening scene of Act II of a tragedy. By the end of Act II their relationship is over. In Act III he's alone, hounded by authorities, can't get another job and rebuild his life, and winds up either killing himself or, at best, in the gutter.

I hope it turns out better than that; I hope he loses 50 pounds and becomes the surfing champion he's always wanted to be, while the girl ("Jordan Powers," a name right out of a Young Adult novel) goes on to law school and a six-figure job. Somehow I have the feeling that's not in the cards.

A friend reviews my novel How They Scored

My friend Lisa B wrote a very nice review of HOW THEY SCORED. An excerpt:

After the men gather, the plot picks up steam and their interactions increase, with Pritchard quietly portraying a shifting dance of male alliance and competition. Their picaresque sex tales start to cast a subtler light on their characters. The story of the Serbian fashion model ends poignantly. A tale of a threesome takes an unexpected turn, with the storyteller unable to perform, feeling both sentimental about an old girlfriend and ambivalent about the suddenly aggressive behavior of his current one. In short, the scorekeeping of these men becomes less about tallying up sexual conquests and more about assessing their own strengths and weaknesses -- and the elusiveness of their desires.

Wow, thanks Lisa!

New story: 'The Truth Hurts'

A few years ago a contact in the erotic writing ... um, it's not really a community, it's not a club, I'm not sure what to call it... Let me start over. An acquaintance of mine, a young woman who was a sex columnist for some time and also an editor of anthologies of erotic stories, sent me a call for submissions. She was doing an anthology of spanking stories, would I like to send something in? Sure, okay; I thought it was a somewhat limiting topic, but I did write a story that I had fun with, and sent it off to her.

She rejected it, saying the mere suggestion of incest made it verboten. Keep in mind no such behavior occurs in the story itself or offstage between the characters (unlike some of the stories already published in my books). The story I sent had just a whiff of intergenerational sexual energy. That was too much for her.

Time passed, and another acquaintance asked me if I had any stories. I sent her a couple and she bought the spanking story the first editor had rejected. And it's for an online publication, and it just went up. So here you go: "The Truth Hurts." (Caution, story contains explicit descriptions of sex.)

Woman will now be able to wipe her own ass

I love stories like this that demonstrate not all the freaks live in San Francisco. Some of them live in the depraved midlands, like... Salt Lake City.

A woman with fingernails each over two feet in length is in the news because she lost them when she was seriously injured in a car crash. This is one case in which the picture taken before the accident is undoubtedly the more horrifying.

Cris took one look at it and said, "Who wiped her butt for her?"

How to go from Olympic hero to douchebag in a week

How do you go from Olympic stud to total douchebag in a week? Wear all your gold medals so that it looks like you have on a really bad belly dancer's costume, and top it off with a face that was never meant to be viewed dry.

I mean, everybody knows the guy looked good wet and naked, right? Why mess with success? Why not run a picture of him exulting in a just-clenched victory? Everybody knows he won the fucking medals.

I guess it's that, having won 8 medals, you never actually get to wear them except on your big SI cover shot. So if you have to have him wear the fucking things, then why not over a shirt of some kind? He's not going swimming in them, so why take his picture in swimming trunks?

Didn't anybody at the shoot say, "Uh, wait a minute. He looks like a freaking douchebag like this. Wardrobe? Can we get a shirt on him?"

technorati: Michael Phelps, Olympics, douchebags

John Edwards: 'I am a straight American'

Over the years, along with the rest of the country, I've marveled over the tendency of celebrities to fuck around. When their miserable attempts at having a secret sex life were revealed, I wrote about Bill Clinton, Ted Haggard, and others. Now John Edwards joins them.

This Marueen Dowd column, though rather drawn out, pretty much sums it up:

For some reason, super-strivers have a need to sell what is secretly weakest about themselves, as if they yearn for unmasking. Edwards's decency and concern for the weak in society -- except for his own wife. Bill Clinton's intellect and love of community -- except for his stupidity and destructiveness about Monica. Bush the Younger's jocular, I'm-in-charge self-confidence -- except for turning over his presidency, as no president ever has, to his Veep. Eliot Spitzer's crusade for truth, justice and the American way -- except at home.

This urge, as DowD identifies it, has long been satisfied by famous, powerful men by seeing prostitutes, especially dominatrices. But as Spitzer and the FBI demonstrated, you can't even fuck a prostitute in private these days without getting accidentally caught up in some racketeering investigation.

Clearly the only solution is that pursued by Rudolph Giuliani: Fuck someone else and act like you don't care who knows it.

technorati: John Edwards, adultery

Definitely not me

Added to the list of the Mark Pritchards I'm not is this father of triplets, one of which was carried by his wife's sister. Since I was born in St. Louis, I suppose it's remotely possible that this Pritchard family is somehow related to me, but not that I know of.

Funny, though, I've always loved the name Darla -- it's just so down-home. I've tried to use it in several different stories, none published. The triplets' mother is not the only Darla Pritchard, though, it seems.