Matthew J. Franck

Thanks to the “First Links” below, I see that Ross Douthat answered some of the critics of his ” More Babies, Please ” column before I got around to writing about it yesterday . But it would be really instructive to read Sarah Sentilles’ ” Do Not Have Sex with . . . . Continue Reading »

The naive reader of the U.S. Constitution might see the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (“nor shall any State … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”), and presume that these words are themselves to be applied equally to all persons, whatever their circumstances. If the modern Supreme Court is to be followed as our authoritative guide, however, that presumption would be incorrect. There are, one might say, three different equal protection clauses. And the group to which one belongs will determine which of them is put to use… . Continue Reading »

The other day Ross Douthat of the New York Times wrote a column entitled ” More Babies, Please ,” remarking on the news that America’s birthrate has gone into decline since the beginning of the “Great Recession.” It was full of his characteristic thoughtfulness . . . . Continue Reading »

I will be dating myself in this post, I’m sure, and I’ll also be poaching on the territory of rock ‘n’ roll expert Carl Scott over at Postmodern Conservative .  But like a lot of people, I guess, I find that while my musical taste has not stood entirely still with the . . . . Continue Reading »

In the spring of 1858, after an epic fight in the U.S. Congress, Kansas was denied entry into the Union as a new state. (It was eventually admitted in January 1861.) It’s a complicated story, unknown to most Americans today. But for some reason I have thought of this episode several times . . . . Continue Reading »

If you are a regular reader of Public Discourse (and if you’re not, you should be!), you will already have seen my two latest contributions there. Yesterday, in ” Mark Regnerus and the Storm Over the New Family Structures Study ,” I described the furor that erupted back in . . . . Continue Reading »

I have, as my title indicates, a perspective somewhat different from the one James Rogers offers today in his On the Square article, ” Why Christians Should Oppose Factions .” My disagreement with Rogers may not be as large as the contrast between our titles, because I think that buried . . . . Continue Reading »

After about 30 years of teaching college students, I’ve learned a lot of the tricks for prompting discussion among students—not that I have always been successful. One is to argue vigorously that two like cases are unlike, or that two unlike cases are alike, and see if the students rise . . . . Continue Reading »

Last week, at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., the Associate Provost for Diversity and Inclusion, Dr. Angela McCaskill, was placed on administrative leave  after it came to light that she had signed a petition at her church to put Question 6 on the ballot in her home state of . . . . Continue Reading »

When did the New Yorker become a magazine written by and for people who are deeply ignorant but imagine they are terribly bright? I can remember, as a boy in the 1970s, reading the magazine occasionally and thinking it was very clever. Yes, I mostly admired the cartoons, and yes, I was, well, just . . . . Continue Reading »