DriveThru – Get What You Need

The House Energy and Commerce Committee (EnCom) was ground zero last night for the battle to keep abortion funding out of any government healthcare plan and to protect the conscience rights of medical professionals who don’t want to perform abortions.  Here’s a press release summary from the ranking member of EnCom, Rep. Joe Barton.

Or you can just read this: 

• VICTORY: Reps. Bart Stupak and Joe Pitts successfully offered an amendment to protect the conscience rights of pro-life health care entities. Thank you to those who called your lawmakers on this issue!  We’ll watch closely to see if the House and Senate versions keep this conscience protection provision in their final version of the bill.

• PHONY PRO-LIFE AMENDMENT: Our pro-abortion friend Rep. Lois Capps (D-California) offered a phony “compromise” amendment that passed 30-28.  The amendment requires taxpayer subsidies to flow to plans that include abortion, but creates an accounting scheme designed to give the impression that public funds will not subsidize abortion.

• REP. BART GORDON, a.k.a. “The Flip-Flopper”: The truly pro-life amendment to prevent mandated abortion coverage in the essential benefits package was offered by Reps. Pitts and Stupak, and initially passed by a vote of 31-27.  Great news! But then infamous committee chairman Rep. Henry Waxman (D-California) used a procedural maneuver to call for a re-vote later in the evening.  The amendment then failed 29-30 on the re-vote, thanks to Rep. Bart Gordon of Tennessee’s 6th district  who switched his vote from yea to nay.  And by “thanks” I mean–no thanks.

EnCom is still going strong (watch here if you’re willing)  and we’re waiting for at least one more amendment from Reps. Stupak and Pitts that will attempt to exclude abortion funding from the House healthcare bill.

If you haven’t already called your lawmaker on the abortion/healthcare issue, you can find your representative and senators here.  And Focus on the Family has some helpful information for you on our healthcare page.

From the land of Wallace and Gromit, comes U.K. journalist and environmentalist, George Manbiot. In his recent Guardian article, Manbiot punts at bringing clarity and proper interpretation to the recent CDC report on U.S. teen pregnancies – something even the CDC itself does not attempt to do. (View CDC report)

Get your knickers on and let’s toddle down School Lane, shall we lads? First lesson, class: “To engage comprehensively with reality is to succumb to despair. Without denial there is no hope.” Well, at least that’s Manbiot’s take on life. Wallace, Gromit and I are a bit more optimistic. But, wait, there’s more …

“American conservatism could be described as a movement of denialogues …ideology … disavowing physical realities [like] … evolution, climate change, foreign affairs and fiscal policy.”  If it weren’t for Manbiot, I might have kept my head in the sand, denying these realities. Us conservatives are such denialogues, especially about the environment, evolution and casual sex. Manbiot calls it, “collective denial,” all caused by – you guessed it – Bad Bush and his ilk. His “bad” is “big,” just like Texas. Blame Bush!

Manbiot goes on to unfold the mystery of “what and who’s to blame” for the “stalling” of condom use and the increase in teen pregnancies near the end of the Bush years. It reads almost like a script from Planned Parenthood, but I’ll remain in conservative denial.

Researchers at the CDC never attempt to explain the causes, but Manbiot, Planned Parenthood, and other “casual-sex” proponents possess that special insight to explain exactly what the CDC results mean. Whew, I could hardly stand the suspense!

Wallace and Gromit, hold onto your britches. Manbiot explains the mystery behind the CDC report. “[N]ine of the 10 states with the highest increase in teenage births voted Republican … Among them are the Christian conservative heartlands … places in which Bush’s abstinence campaigns were most enthusiastically promoted.” Yes, Blame Bush. He “engineered a new standard of mendacity and manipulation,” by holding to a national standard that teens should wait until marriage before having sex. How medieval can you get? Really! After all, sex is safe today – just use a condom and worry not!

It’s not like “casual-sex” or “safe-sex” proponents are lobbying Congress to push their agenda, because their industry depends on proliferating free-sex and aborting subsequent “accidents”.

It’s not like “safe-sex” programs could ever fail or actually promote sex among teens, especially not in the U.K, where the “casual-sex” program has been tried and tested. (Oops, it failed!)

It’s not like Title X “Family Planning” (Planned Parenthood, NARAL, et al) programs had twice as much money and more time to be extremely effective, while Bush initiated his old-fashioned ideals of waiting-until-marriage-for-sex. (See funding chart)

And it’s not like there’s sufficient evidence that those archaic save-sex-for-marriage efforts really work, right?

And teen pregnancy, abortions, viral genital warts and HIV-AIDS are all “safe” when a condom is used, right?

Manbiot recommends that America’s conservative-religious-Bush-denialogues support casual-sex-with-condoms programs that supposedly work so well with teens. (See PowerPoint)

Thus concludes another tale of conservative denial with Wallace, Gromit and Manbiot.

Yours truly,
The Denialogue

Harvey Milk – the “first openly gay man to be elected to public office in a major city of the United States” – has received a lot of attention recently. First there was the successful Sean Penn bio-pic, Milk, then there were the proposals to proclaim a “Harvey Milk Day” in California and now the White House has announced that he will be awarded a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom.

To learn more about Harvey Milk, I’ve been reading Randy Shilts’ biography, The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk. So far, I’m amazed at how obtuse Shilts is in his portrayal of Milk’s induction into homosexuality.

Shilts describes Milk as an 11-year-old, engaging in sexual activity with grown men. He also writes about the early lives of several of Milk’s partners. Sadly, some of them suffered childhood sexual abuse, too. Except that Shilts never calls it that. Instead, he calls what happens to these boys “discovering sexuality.” 

Shilts informs us that one of Milk’s partners, when he was only nine years old, is introduced to gay sex with grown men at a local theater. There, he learns to prostitute himself for quarters.  But Shilts calls it “an introduction to gay life.” Another boy was only 16 when he moved in with the 33-year old Milk. Try teaching all this to a class of fifth graders on the proposed “Harvey Milk Day.”

Milk and his many partners could be poster boys for an analysis produced by authors from the Centers for Disease Control that shows the widespread degree to which men who have sex with men were sexually abused as children.

A number of serious outcomes are associated with childhood sexual abuse of boys, including: sexual compulsivity, sexual identity confusion, shame, guilt, struggles with masculinity, anger, rage, fear, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual promiscuity, depression and increased risk of partner abuse. 

Milk and his sexual partners lead tumultuous, broken lives – rife with many of these problems.  The inappropriate sexual activity introduced to them as children is unaddressed and unhealed, and so it festers on in their adult lives. 

But I doubt that any of this will get even a mention in all the press over President Obama awarding Milk the Medal of Freedom.

See also: Citizenlink Commentary: Got Milk?

For help with childhood sexual abuse, sexual addiction or unwanted same-sex attractions, see: http://listen.family.org/miscdaily/A000000115.cfm; www.pureintimacy.org; or www.lovewonout.com.

Much has been made in the media over the Obama administration’s latest education-reform initiative—“Race to the Top.”

At least $4 billion has been set aside for Race to the Top states who, among other things, agree to work toward adopting “common, internationally-benchmarked K-12 standards,” develop expansive data systems that track children’s academic performance, allow more charter schools, and support performance-based rewards for teachers. Some of those items are concerning. Some might be beneficial.

But what is most revealing is what the administration left off the list—school choice initiatives like the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program.

Shortly after the election, President Obama touted promises to “use only one test when deciding what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars: It’s not whether an idea is liberal or conservative, but whether it works.” 

But his administration is ignoring evidence of what works right in his own backyard. For five years, impoverished students in the D.C. area competed for federally funded Opportunity Scholarships that allowed them to escape failing public schools and attend private schools of their choice. A study by the Education Department recently found that students who used the scholarships were nearly four months ahead of their public school peers in reading. The majority of families who’ve received the scholarships are African American and Hispanic.

So it’s no surprise that support for the program is widespread and cuts across party lines: A recent poll showed that more than seven out of 10 registered voters in D.C. support the program. And this June, several D.C. City Council members sent a letter to Education Secretary Arne Duncan urging him to let the program continue.

“We believe we simply cannot turn our backs on these families because doing so will deny their children the quality education they deserve. Indeed, last month, at a rally…several thousand families urged us to keep their children’s futures in mind and to support the continuation of this popular school choice program,” said the letter.

But the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress have ignored those pleas and are allowing the program to expire. Contrary to what was promised, the administration is putting politics ahead of kids.

One interesting sidelight to Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee business meeting at which the nomination of Judge Sotomayor was passed on to the full Senate: a handful of Democrats and Republicans called for reform to the hearing process so nominees would be more forthcoming.

Sen. Kohl  (D – WI) observed:

“…But for many years we have seen a familiar pattern from nominees – Democratic and Republican alike – who have learned that the path of least resistance is to limit their responses and cautiously cloak them in generalities.”

Kohl hastened to add that, of course, he wasn’t talking about Sotomayor’s testimony. (Wink)

Russ Feingold (D – WI), who likewise prefaced his comments by assuring everyone in the room that he also wasn’t talking about Sotomayor, said this:

“ I’ve said before that I do not understand why the only person who cannot express an opinion on virtually anything the Supreme Court has done in recent years is the person from whom the American public most needs to hear.”

Despite Kohl and Feingold’s unintentionally humorous evasion, it was obvious that Sotomayor displayed the time-honored skill of offering answers we’ve come to know and love over the last couple decades (“I’m sorry Senator, but that’s an issue that very possibly might come before the Supreme Court, and I can’t pre-judge how I might rule in that case, blah, blah..”). I’m not faulting her for doing the same thing every other nominee does. But Kohl and Feingold are fretting over a world that they and their Democratic friends helped create when Bob Bork was nominated for the Supreme Court by President Reagan. Funny they didn’t mention that.

The Senate Judiciary ought to reform the easy things it can control, like how long it takes for an appellate court judge nominee to get a hearing, then a vote. The full Senate could abolish the filibuster of judges and guarantee them the up-or-down vote that “advice and consent” implies. But to hope for a different Supreme Court nomination process would entail keeping the likes of Senators Leahy, Schumer, Feingold et al away from all reporters’ microphones for the duration, which ain’t gonna happen.

At least until after we solve that sticky world peace problem.

The First Amendment Center reports that the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a man’s conviction for selling bestiality videos (U.S. v. Adams). Loren Jay Adams tried to argue that the trial jury didn’t watch the videos in their entirety and that similar materials were present in the community because they could be found online. The Court wasn’t persuaded and ruled against him, citing several Supreme Court rulings.

As interesting as this case  is the curious language employed by the news report’s author. First Amendment scholar David Hudson began his brief with this curious line:

“…obscenity prosecutions targeting extremely explicit sexual material, far from being relics of the past, still occur.” (italics added)

Hudson voices a common belief among Americans that obscenity law is dead. We believe this because First Amendment attorneys, news programs, and the porn industry tell us so. Yet, obscenity prosecutions are relics in the way grandma’s silver set is. Shine them up and they’re good as new. Their value never changed, just their use.  Countless Americans tired of pornography’s relentless assault are waiting for the government to bring out the silver and use it again. Obscenity laws are constitutionally sound, efficacious and can do much to clean up a pornified culture.

Word came not too long ago that today the House Energy and Commerce Committee will resume consideration of the House healthcare bill, H.R. 3200 (America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009).

Who cares?

You should.

This is one of the last chances that pro-life lawmakers will have to exclude abortion funding from this massive freight train of a government healthcare proposal.  You can read more about Focus on the Family’s concerns with the bill on our healthcare page.

We’ll be watching with anticipation to see how EnCom members vote on these pro-life amendments–which will likely be offered by Members like Joe Pitts, Roy Blunt and others.

Stay tuned.

Brian posed this question in response to “Marriage redefiners rethink California repeal.”

Would conservative Christians be OK with taking government out of marriage altogether and leaving it a church/synagogue/mosque-based thing, leaving the government to work out a civil union contract between two consenting adults? Why or why not?

******

Thanks for your question, Brian.  It seems to be along the lines of the “civil marriage” legislation which has been introduced in a few states.  The short answer is that Focus on the Family does not support this type of legislation, and some of our rationale follows.

The “civil marriage” argument usually implies that marriage is defined strictly religiously or biblically, but this is not the case–and conservative Christians aren’t the only ones who define marriage as a man and a woman. Marriage scholars often say that marriage is a human institution because it has existed for centuries in a variety of cultures, regardless of the religion commonly practiced or the political system.  And in each culture, the essential ingredients of marriage are the same although weddings and the division of duties between wives and husbands often look very different: marriage is a publicly recognized cooperative and sexual union of male and female who work together to care for the children born to them.

In the United States, what we practice currently is essentially civil marriage. The government does not require a religious ceremony, a blessing from the church or a member of the clergy, or that the couple attend church.  It really just cares that the bride and groom meet certain requirements and turn in a license–and hopefully have children so that the country will continue to thrive.

So called “civil marriage” legislation which has been introduced in some states with the goal of redefining marriage away from its male-female definition.  The words “civil marriage” are just nice words to make social reconstruction sound good.

I believe that the heart of this question is always to care for those who for their own reasons, do not desire one-man, one-woman marriage. But there are so many good things associated with it (social science is decisive in that children thrive when their biological parents are married, and married men and women have better health, etc.) that we the people who make up the government ought to be able to care for unmarried people without redefining marriage–a social institution vital to the personal well-being of the next generation, and to the stability of our nation.

Last week I wrote about a letter asking Attorney General Eric Holder for more federal obscenity law enforcement. Friday, the Department of Justice announced an indictment against a New Jersey-based pornographer, Barry Goldman, for sending allegedly obscene DVDs through the mail. According to 18 U.S.C. § 1461 and § 1467, that’s a big no-no. This investigation has been in the works for several years, but it is still nice to see the current DOJ leadership has allowed it to continue. Big thanks to Brent Ward’s team on the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force which helped pull this off.

In case anyone is offended that Barry was singled out for justice, the indictment lists some of the films in question: “Torture of a Porn Store Girl” and “Defiant Crista Submits.” I haven’t seen the films in question, but given the DOJ’s policy of only targeting the worst of the worst, it is safe to assume these were violent and degrading videos.

In his brutally honest book Getting Off: The End of Masculinity, Robert Jensen asks some crucial questions society must begin to answer, particularly those who would defend pornography’s place in the public square. He writes:

“If pornography is increasingly cruel and degrading, why is it increasingly commonplace instead of more marginalized? In a society that purports to be civilized, wouldn’t we expect most people to reject sexual material that becomes ever more dismissive of the humanity of women? How do we explain the simultaneous appearance of more, and increasingly more intense, ways to humiliate women sexually and the rising popularity of the films that present those activities?”

The sex industry isn’t nearly as playful as The Girls Next Door would have us believe.

The New York Times reports that the AIDS Healthcare Foundation is suing Los Angeles county health officials for failing to require condom use in pornographic films.

While they’re at it, they might want to sue the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) for gross dereliction of duty. The DOSH website informs workers that  employers must:

• Encourage you to report unsafe conditions without fear of reprisal.
• Correct unsafe/unhealthy work conditions or practices as soon as possible.
• See that you comply with safe work practices.

Some might argue that sex with multiple partners simultaneously, placing objects in sensitive body cavities, and being inundated with others’ bodily fluids constitute an unsafe work environment. So, where is DOSH when every scene of every porn film is being shot? Can any aspect of this industry be considered “safe”, with or without a condom?

Pornographers have already scrubbed sexual intimacy of all cognitive, emotional and spiritual meaning. One would think they’d at least take some care with the physical.