THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

ELIZABETH | 2006-04-21

Elizabeth is going to get the same treatment, but her added comment about not being asked reminds me of my sweet but sometimes blunt older sister.

Back in the late 50s down South white women were expected to marry and have children. If a woman took a Master's Degree and were doing professional work back then in our benighted section of the country, people would ask you why you weren't married, especially if you were getting close to the ancient and dread three oh (30).

This was an irritation to my sister, though now she would prefer the old days when people were that nosy to nowadays when people feel white women shouldn't HAVE children.

Besides, being a Whitaker, my sister came up with an answer taht shut them up.

When they asked her, "Why aren't you married yet?" she answered,

"Nobody's asked me."

I was sitting in a bar once with my doctor brother. The place was full of drunk college students.

Remember, these guys were all whit and they were college students. My brother wouldn't go toa redneck bar with me.

Suddenly my brother said, "Bob, stop a minute and look around you."

I did so.

Then he said, "Do you realize that some poor woman is going to have settle for every one of these clowns?"

It gave me a whole new sympathy for the female dilemma.

Elizabeth does not associate with the trash. Finding a decent guy, a rare bird in any case, who will actually commit himself is MUCH harder now than it was in 1950s.

I had to go ten thousand miles to find a woman who would marry me.

And now I'm divorced.

I feel sorry for all you younger people.

But I fought to prevent all this from happening to you.

Now, Elizabeth's general comment with reply I have have just given two others:

Like everybody else, Shari is correcting me without referrijng to the general point I was trying to make.

Sigh! OK, let's do the drill:

No, Elizabeth, I am saying that every aspect of Catholicism is for sterility. In fact, parts of Germany and the Netherlands that went Protestant have lost population relative to the ones that stayed Catholic.

Congratulations. You have made a point you could have made if Bob had never been born.

I also said that Protestant churches are as desperate to prove that Jesus never had a sexual thought in his life as Catholics are, but that was ignored.

So we are back to your correction,, which was all you got out of the article.

Which is exactly what the article is about.

There is a conviction in white countries with Christian cultures that a high morality means steility for us. All mention of genetics is evil because of a mind set deep within us.

I was trying to deal with that mindset.

So, Elizabeth, we have concluded that the only point you got out of the article, that the Catholic Church has been treated unfairly, represents unfairness on Bob's part.

Once again, congratulations