World Affairs

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Fraternity Leave

A recent visit I made to the beautiful country of Germany revealed some interesting, and in some cases, alarming trends. Germany has a population
of about 80 million compressed into an area the approximate size of Oregon. Many who live in urban apartments there rent or lease garden plots on the outskirts of the city, and Germans in general seem more serious about their gardening than most Americans, apparently depending more upon them for their sustenance. That much shows little connection with what I noticed next while waiting to board a Rhine River ferry. A flock of young German men between ages, say 25 and 45, were also awaiting the ferry, laughing boisterously and drinking beer together at 9 am, not in itself unusual in their culture. But additionally I was told that more and more German men have been putting off marriage and family (a tendency also seen among young American men) to be able to enjoy such fraternization more frequently to the frustration of the young women. A subsequent declining birthrate caused the government to encourage employers to offer pregnant women up to 3 years of maternity leave with the guarantee that they could then return to their same job positions. The result has been such that the birth rate is climbing again as hoped, so much so that it is sometimes difficult to find room in German preschools and kindergartens.

The most unsettling observation I made though was how pornograhic images have wormed their way into acceptance and favor in mainstream German media (as they have in much of Europe undoubtedly.) Imagery that would clearly be rejected from mainstream media in the U.S. as being blatantly pornographic, (even with our steadily lowering moral standard) is regarded as normal fare there. It is worth remembering that Christianity came to the European continent long before it reached the New World and thus has had more time to unravel and decay there, and decay it has. At that rate the proverbial frog in the gradually heating water tank may wind up fried on the far side of the pond a little sooner than on this side of the pond, if the Lord tarries.

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