Those Endorsing the Replacement of the Traditional Family Show Little Concern for the Fate of Children

July 26 2021

Increasingly the news media, along with televised entertainment, have been paying attention to experimental romantic and familial arrangements: polyamory, “throuples,” communes, and the like. Naomi Schaefer Riley, focusing on two recent magazine articles on the subject, notes a glaring omission:

In the thousands of words expended by Andrew Solomon in his piece on polyamory, not one is about the well-being of the children raised in these environments. . . . [H]e never feels the need to ask one child about living with a rotating case of unrelated adults or look at the research on the greater risks to kids living in these unusual arrangements.

At the Embassy, [a] communal-living building in San Francisco, we learn that this arrangement has actually led some people to give up on their actual families. Take Seth Frey, who “used to live in a house with a wife and a child. He decided that he preferred community and separated from his wife, but his son has not yet spent time with him at the Embassy.” Then [the author of the article] offers this aside: “The current members haven’t reached a consensus about kids.”

Are these authors really suggesting that we should consider such communities as viable future living arrangements for Americans when they can’t decide what they even think about children? What kind of future is this?

It is most certainly one that is geared toward the whims of single young adults. . . . Indeed, what the residents adore about communal living is exactly what may harm kids; . . . the reason that the residents of these communities like them is exactly the reason they are not suitable for children. But in the communities of the future, it seems, children are an afterthought.

Read more at Institute for Family Studies

More about: American society, Children, Family, Sexual ethics

Leaking Israeli Attack Plans Is a Tool of U.S. Policy

April 21 2025

Last week, the New York Times reported, based on unnamed sources within the Trump administration, that the president had asked Israel not to carry out a planned strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. That is, somebody deliberately gave this information to the press, which later tried to confirm it by speaking with other officials. Amit Segal writes that, “according to figures in Israel’s security establishment,” this is “the most serious leak in Israel’s history.” He explains:

As Israel is reportedly planning what may well be one of its most consequential military operations ever, the New York Times lays out for the Iranians what Israel will target, when it will carry out the operation, and how. That’s not just any other leak.

Seth Mandel looks into the leaker’s logic:

The primary purpose of the [Times] article is not as a record of internal deliberations but as an instrument of policy itself. Namely, to obstruct future U.S. and Israeli foreign policy by divulging enough details of Israel’s plans in order to protect Iran’s nuclear sites. The idea is to force Israeli planners back to the drawing board, thus delaying a possible future strike on Iran until Iranian air defenses have been rebuilt.

The leak is the point. It’s a tactical play, more or less, to help Iran torpedo American action.

The leaker, Mandel explains—and the Times itself implies—is likely aligned with the faction in the administration that wants to see the U.S. retreat from the world stage and from its alliance with Israel, a faction that includes Vice-President J.D. Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and the president’s own chief of staff Susie Wiles.

Yet it’s also possible, if less likely, that the plans were leaked in support of administration policy rather than out of factional infighting. Eliezer Marom argues that the leak was “part of the negotiations and serves to clarify to the Iranians that there is a real attack plan that Trump stopped at the last moment to conduct negotiations.”

Read more at Commentary

More about: Donald Trump, Iran nuclear program, U.S.-Israel relationship