Childhood and children

Twin Ethics…

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

When I read this story in the New York Times, I checked to see what I had posted in the past regarding twin ethics and was shocked that I could find only two essays on the topic. After all, twins deliberately impersonating each other for their own benefit has been a theme from ancient Greek comedies and Shakespeare right through to “The Jackson Twins” comic strip, “The Parent Trap,” and “The Patty Duke Show.”

There was a “Columbo” episode where twins used their ability to impersonate each other to pull off the “perfect murder,” which naturally Columbo solved anyway. But just because twins switching identities can be clever, funny, effective, or cute doesn’t make it ethical.

The first of my twin ethics posts involved a twins who impersonated his brother to win $50,000 in a contest. The other one came from Brazil, where twin brothers had used their resemblance to impersonate each other and date as many women as possible, and then defend themselves from allegations they were cheating on girlfriends. These twins were ducking child support one of them owed by refusing to say which one of them had fathered a child (DNA tests proving inconclusive because they their were identical twins)  assuming they would escape having to pay. It didn’t work: a judge ordered that they both had to pay child support and that the names of both men ended up on the girl’s birth certificate.

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So….the Cardinals Couldn’t Find a Pope Who WASN’T Part of the Predator Priest Scandal? [UPDATED!]

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Good to know, don’t you think?

I’m stunned that Robert Prevost, who just became became the American pontiff, had been accused by Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) of failing to act upon allegations of abuse in the U.S. and Peru. The group says that Prevost ignored allegations of sexual abuse by predator priests in Chicago after Augustinian priest Father James Ray was allowed to live at the St. John Stone Friary in Hyde Park despite being removed from ministering to the public over credible evidence that he had sexually abusing children. SNAP says Provost didn’t notify the heads of St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic school, an elementary school half a block from the friary on the grounds that Ray was being “closely monitored.”

You know, like the Church closely monitored all of its priests to make sure they weren’t molesting altar boys.

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Bleeding Heart Test: Who Feels Sorry For These “Good Illegal Immigrants”? (I Don’t.)

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

The New York Post has a tale that is guaranteed to make “Think of the Children!” fans and “They just want a better life!” defenders of illegal immigration swim in a lake of tears like shrunken Alice in “Alice in Wonderland.”

Ximena Arias-Cristobal, 19, was a Dalton State Community College ( in Dalton, Georgia) student driving without a driver’s license when she failed to obey to a “no turn on red” sign. After police pulled her vehicle over, she claimed to have an “international driver’s license” (Nice try, kid!). One thing led to another, and eventually it was determined that she was not a citizen, having been brought here illegally by her Mexican parents when she was four, that they were here illegally too and had been for 15 years.

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Comment of the Day: “Oh Yeah, THIS Will Work Out Well: Minnesota Rules That Women Going Bare-Breasted in Public Isn’t Illegal”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Here is Sarah B.’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Oh Yeah, THIS Will Work Out Well: Minnesota Rules That Women Going Bare-Breasted in Public Isn’t Illegal.” There isn’t a thing I could say as an introduction that would improve on it….

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For most of history, the idea of modesty had nothing to do with the idea that the human body or sex was evil.  The idea was that the penis and vagina, as well as the female breasts (the focus of which is the feeding of babies) were indeed focused on reproduction, life giving, holy, and thus reserved from public consumption.  Avoiding public showmanship of the reserved and holy has been a common theme throughout most cultures, religions, and peoples throughout history.  We have a time, place, and occasion for every action in our lives.  Why do we not urinate/defecate in public?  I don’t want to see you do so, and frankly, nor do I want to see your sexual characteristics.

Though this is not a phrase thought well of on this site, we do need to think of children.  There is measurable harm that occurs to children who are exposed to the sexual before puberty.  Modesty, such as not going around bare breasted, is a protection for the children.  We don’t expose sexual characteristics to protect children’s innocence.  Sure, kids know they have these parts, but for the most part, what is not in sight is not emphasized.  We focus on teaching kids about their private parts and how to avoid excess attention focused on them for their safety.  We don’t want more teen pregnancies, child sexual abuse (which includes inappropriate exposure), or normalizing sexual attraction to minors, especially in the form of pederasty, which focuses on the fully developed sexual characteristics, like breasts, that the judges seem to be suggesting we should allow to be in full display. 

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Yecchh! Pooey! Instant Ethics Train Wreck In Minnesota…

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Nothing but dunces, villains and fools in this tale….

1.Unethical catalyst: In Rochester, Minnesota, a state that has gone certifiably nuts, home of the George Floyd Freakout and a government headed by Knucklehead Tim Walz while voters send anti-Semitic Rep.”Fuck you!”Omar to Congress, a woman named Shiloh Hendrix was at the playground at Soldiers Field Park when she found a young black child looking through her 18-month-old son’s diaper bag. The kid is a nascent thief and needs more attentive parenting.

2. First identifiable unethical adult: Hendrix, who upon discovering the invasion of her personal property called the child a “nigger.” That’s signature significance in 2025—indeed at least since the 19th Century. She’s a low-life racist, a blight on society, and deserves to be shunned and reviled. To Hell with her.

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The Significant Thing About The SCOTUS Oral Argument in Mahmoud v. Taylor Is That The Three Liberal Justices Were Too Biased To Recognize The Obvious…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

…Which is that there are no good reasons at all to expose elementary-school-aged children to LGTBQ literature and propaganda. This is depressing. While the Supreme Court conservative Justices have shown themselves capable of ruling against extreme right-wing agenda items when the law dictates, the Three Progressive Sisters on the Court increasingly seem incapable of anything but lockstep wokism.

During nearly two-and-a-half hours of oral arguments last week regarding the case of a group of Maryland parents who sued Montgomery County (Maryland) to be able to pull their elementary-school-aged children out of instruction that includes LGBTQ themes, a clear majority of the Justices indicated that they had the better argument. That is that the local school board’s refusal to give them an opt-out violates the family’s religious beliefs and therefore their constitutional right to freely exercise their religion.

I find it annoying that the case has to rest on Freedom of Religion at all: why shouldn’t any parents be able to decide that they don’t want their children introduced to these topics before puberty, or exposed to indoctrination on subjects that only parents should handle, within the family?

The parents in the case include Tamer Mahmoud and Enas Barakat, who are Muslim, Melissa and Chris Persak, who are Roman Catholic, and Svitlana and Jeff Roman, who are Ukrainian Orthodox and Roman Catholic. (Having some Scientologists and Evangelical Christians would have been nice…)

In 2023, the Montgomery County School Board in one of the most Democratic counties in the nation was flushed with the Democratic Party’s totalitarian vigor, and announced that it would no longer allow parents to excuse their children from instruction using LGBTQ-themed books. The parents argued in federal court that the board’s refusal to allow them to opt their children out violated their rights under the First Amendment to freely exercise their religion, since it stripped them of their ability to instruct their children on gender and sexuality and to control how and when their children are exposed to these issues. How radical of them!

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“Cornell Just Doesn’t Get That Freedom of Speech Thingy” and Other Observations On a Campus Fiasco

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Read this whole jaw-dropping NYT article (Gift link!) and see if you can find evidence of anyone ethical in the entire story. It’s kind of like “Where’s Waldo?”

1.The headline is “Cornell Cancels Kehlani Performance Over Alleged Antisemitic Statements.” The caption under the photo (above) adds, “Kehlani, a popular R&B singer, is being replaced as the headline act at Cornell University’s annual concert.”

Observation: If she’s a popular performer for her singing ability and presentation, her “alleged Anti-Semitic statements should be irrelevant. This pure cancel culture stuff. Still. How can Cornell teach anybody if its administrators learn nothing?

2. “In a 2024 music video for the song “Next 2 U,” Kehlani danced in a jacket adorned with kaffiyehs as dancers waved Palestinian flags in the background. During the video’s introduction, the phrase “Long Live the Intifada” appeared against a dark background.”

Observation: So what? The event organizers can tell her not to perform that number.

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Of Course Unethical, But What Was This Parent Thinking?

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Most Ethics Alarms posts involve analysis of what I regard as ethical or unethical activity with larger lessons attached regarding society, organizations, institutions and prominent or influential individuals. Now and then I choose an incident where there is no dispute about whether the conduct was unethical, but it was just so unethical that I feel attention must be paid, if only to remind us how depraved and devoid of ethical instincts and values the people around us can be. An esteemed commenter recently complained about such a post.

My motivation for these no-doubters is usually what it is in this case: I want to know how such a thing could happen. What was the miscreant thinking? How could they ever believe that their conduct was acceptable? Where has our society and culture failed to the extent that an incident like this could ever occur?

Teresa Isabel Bernal, 33, was arrested this week for bringing jello shots to her daughter’s fifth grade Christmas party. The party was held on Dec. 20, 2024, at Jones Elementary in Tyler, Texas. Bernal told the Tyler Independent School District police officer that she didn’t know that the cups of jello contained liquor when she bought them, but the evidence indicates otherwise.

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“What’s Going On Here?” Is This Incident Just A Single Teenage Idiot In Love Or Does It Have Larger Cultural Significance?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The time is January 2024. A few minutes after a Carnival Sunrise cruise ship left the port of Miami, Florida for Jamaica, Carnival Cruise Lines received an anonymous email saying: “Hey, I think someone might have a bomb on your sunrise cruise ship.”  This triggered security protocols that involved both the US and Jamaican Coast Guard. More than 1,000 rooms on the ship had to be searched, and were. After a delay of many hours, the ship was ruled safe to sail and continued the cruise.

An investigation eventually traced the email to 19-year-old Joshua Darrell Lowe II of Bailey, Michigan. He confessed to making the false bomb threat, explaining that he was trying to prevent his girlfriend and her family from going on the cruise without him. Though Lowe could have been sentenced to five years in prison, U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney this month sentenced him to only eight months behind bars. The judge was apparently impressed by the teen’s letter to the Judge taking full responsibility for his actions, expressing remorse, and apologizing profusely.

There is no question that such an act is unethical as well as potentially dangerous. I am interested in whether our political and popular culture sends messages to the young, impressionable and stupid that this kind of extreme conduct in the name of love or other passionate feelings is admirable.

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Game and Parallel Universe Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

An inquirer who doesn’t understand a lot—games, fantasy, reality, ethics, childhood—wrote “The Ethicist” (that’s “Prof. Appiah” to his friends) to settle a family dispute. He likes to play Monopoly with his family, but he has removed the card above from the “Community Chest” deck because he believes it is unethical. When that bank makes an error in your favor, you must give the money back, not spend it on Reading Railroad, he explains. The card teaches bad conduct.

Well, Prof. Appiah sagely points out, so does Monopoly, which encourages you to employ cut-throat tactics to drive your friends into bankruptcy. I would add that Risk teaches you to seek to take over the world by military force, Stratego encourages assassination, and poker requires lying. Even Scrabble includes approved cheating: if you can put down a fake word and not get challenged for it, that’s just good gamesmanship.

“The Ethicist” suggests that rather than burning the card, it would suffice to have a brief comment from a parent about how of course real life has different rules than games, and that when you’re not playing Monopoly, giving back the $200 is the ethical and civilized choice.

Personally, as a long-time games-lover, I find it useful to think of games as a fantasy, parallel universes, each with its own laws, rules and tradition, like Bizarro World. What is right in one won’t make sense in another, including the real world. I thought everyone understood that.

I guess not!