Burnt Orange Report

Please consult your instruction manuals

By Jim Dallas

The Houston Press has an article on courtship. Courtship, as opposed to dating. Courtship, as in, her dad is the boss.

Not that I'm about to emulate Little House On The Prairie, as one of the interviewed courtship families does. But at the very least, some tacit parental approval just seems absolutely essential to any kind of serious relationship. And it just seems that the older I get, the more "anything goes" seems to be the new rule of romance. And I find that irksome.

I can certainly identify with these sentiments:

Some courtship followers, like 34-year-old Eric Blievernicht, lead moderator of courtshipconnection.net, choose to opt out of dating and into a courtship approach. "I had always struggled with the concept of dating -- there didn't seem to be any rules or guidelines," he says. "I'm an engineer. I like rules and systems."

On the other hand, I think there's a real problem here along the blurry line between social and serious relationships. Why should a young adult, as one girl had to, consult her father before seeing a movie? As such, I give a hearty "hear hear" to the voices of sweet moderation:

Jeramy Clark, a youth pastor in San Diego and author of the Harris-rebuttal I Gave Dating a Chance: A Biblical Perspective to Balance the Extremes, says that rejecting dating altogether is "chucking out the baby with the bath water." He believes in dating -- a modest, Christian approach to dating -- and says he's seen two types of potential dangers with courtship.

One is that parental control can turn into a chokehold, driving courtship-bound children in the opposite direction. He notes one example of a closely guarded girl who veered toward extreme rebellion: hooking up, shacking up and getting knocked up by a boyfriend. The other extreme, he says, finds some girls involved with courtship deciding not to talk to guys at all anymore.

I think there's two underlying values in this courtship thing. The first is one I can endorse: that relationships ought to be taken seriously. The second is one is essentially extreme patriarchy, to the point where I think just about everybody, even most squares, is a little queasy.

At any rate, if I find that I am enamored with a young lass who's committed to this courtship idea, I'll respect that. Provided of course that her old man doesn't run my Kerry-voting, peacenik, rap-listening, baby-killing-tolerant, gay-loving, non-fundamentalist, non-church-attending rear end out the door with his twelve gauge first (not to play on stereotypes, of course, but I will take at face value the claim in the article that most adherents are socially conservative Bible literalists).

In other news, Metro Transit is gonna let us pack while riding the bus:

A showdown about the right to carry concealed handguns on Metro trains and buses appears headed for a peaceful ending today.

Metro board members are expected to vote this afternoon to repeal the restriction, which has been in effect since 1995 after the Legislature voted to allow licensed owners to carry concealed handguns in most public places.

State Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, who wrote the legislation as a state senator, has been a vocal critic of bans such as those adopted by Metro and many other government entities in Texas in response to the "right-to-carry" law.

He, the Texas State Rifle Association and four licensed Harris County gun owners sued Metro in 2003, seeking to overturn the ban. Now that Metro is dropping its policy, he said, he plans to challenge similar restrictions in other cities, probably starting with Austin's Capital Metro.

"They implemented these when there was collective hysteria from detractors, who said there would be blood in the streets and shootouts at every four-way stop," Patterson said. "None of that proved true."

Dallas DART already allows concealed weapons.

I'm sure that we can all agree that this is a great victory for freedom in America; lest any tyrants have a break-down or car accident and need to take the bus, patriots will stand ready to secure the liberties of their fellow mass-transit passengers.