Sigh, however, it’s not like I could resist, after all:
I’m a 27-year old man and who’s been dating a 23 year-old woman over the past month-and-a-half.
Been there done that, got the scars. You don’t want to get there. (See above.) Next:
We hit it off in the beginning and were going on dates multiple times a week. She really is a great gal and we get along great for the most part. There’s chemistry and unbroken gazes when speaking.
Reminds me of probably the nicest, most charming and most welcoming woman I ever met, years ago. As you can guess, she was pro-what-passes-for-choice.
She seems to be an otherwise strongly-believing Christian woman (I make caveats for the non-Catholics because I have not met any truly devout Catholic women), but her stance on abortion is a weird one. She says she would never have an abortion and that she thinks that all abortions are absolutely terrible, but that even in light of that, she doesn’t feel like it’s anybody’s place to tell a woman what she can do with her body.
Obviously, ‘her body’ is the womb, but not what’s inside. And the argument is so obviously false on so many other levels that it’s in fact quite moronic. For starters, let’s consider that nobody is suggesting we should do any of the following:
– decriminalize any other crimes that involve the perp’s own body in an intimate way
– decriminalize any other crimes a woman could commit
So not only does the argument rely on exceptionalism (women more special than a generic human being of unspecified sex), it also makes a one-of-a-kind exception…
… that is, at the end of the day, simply a convenient justification to allow someone to have what she wants and allow oneself to look the other way. It holds no more value than **** people come up with post-hoc to justify bad things they’ve already done. In this case the matter is already decided, on convenience and not morality grounds, and the liberals are only looking for a post-hoc justification to ease their consciences (such as there still remain).
She also believes that this is a sticking point for equality and women’s liberation.
Women’s equality is great, but it doesn’t justify murder.
Women’s so called liberation is mostly exaggerated, though a worthy cause for whatever minority part of it actually holds water (probably more in Protestant countries than Catholic, as they used to be quite serious about the
femina coverta thing), but it’s still not more important than a
life. In other words, it doesn’t justify murder.
We don’t justify the killing of adults just because it would clear the way for our ideological cause (or make a statement, or prevent such a statement from not being made).
But I just don’t know how you can hold to completely morally contradicting positions—“abortion is horrible, but women should be allowed to legally and freely choose.”
Easy. It’s enough to be a relativist or be so attached to liberal idea(l)s that not even innocent life matters in comparison. And the liberal left are not exactly famous for intellectual rigour, not even the highest-decorated intellectuals among them.
And then there’s the matter of sexuality. She says that she’s completely fine waiting for marriage if that’s what the other person wants, but that waiting is not something she’d stick to if the “time felt right” and her s/o initiated.
Well, sir, you’ve simply ended up dating a secular Christian who you’ve become particularly fond of (and for good reason I’m sure, nothing to be ashamed of) and who it would be extremely painful to let go of (and for good reason I’m sure, nothing to be ashamed of), so it’s now you yourself being tempted to embrace relativism in order to keep her just like she has been tempted to embrace relativism in order to be able to keep her liberal ideas.
But you can’t keep what’s not yours to begin with, nor can you do what’s best for a person by giving the impression of not rejecting ideas that are absolutely unacceptable and a peril to that person’s soul. What if she was not free to marry, for example? However much you’d be tempted to agree to merely civil ‘marriage’, the
right thing to do would still be split it.
Mind you, I’m not saying splitting up with her actually is the right thing to do here, but there’s a strong chance that it is — at least in the romantic sense, not in the sense of alienating her altogether and losing the chance to give her the witness of faith that could help her journey. But God > woman, moral law > our desires, helping a woman > courting a woman. You’ve got your priorities right, don’t you?
Don’t need to tell me it’s not easy. I don’t need to be reminded.
I know the kind of man that I am. I am very sexually-minded. And as much faith as I have in the power of God to lift me, I’m not confident I would wait if I knew my s/o was willing to have sex before marriage. To this extent I’ve more recently sought women who were very much about waiting for marriage because I feel like together, we can accomplish that if that’s both our conviction.
It’s only commendable to know your limitations and take them into account. There’s more courage and merit in that than in pretending and becoming foolishly careless.
Can’t make this simpler.