DriveThru – Get What You Need

Spring is in the air and there are two great stories to celebrate.

NPR did a great piece about Colbert Williams.  At the age of 16, his teacher became his guardian and Williams himself became a father.  It’s a story that continues to give because Williams also has become a foster parent to three other boys.  It’s a quietly inspiring story of sacrificial fatherhood.

On becoming a father, Williams said,

I guess as a 16-year-old who came from a situation where there wasn’t a father, you know, my confidence level was probably as low as it possibly could get because I realized that I was going to be responsible for some person.  So I was scared.”

Focus on the Family is also celebrating the part we played in helping to place half of Colorado’s children eligible for adoption in forever families.  When our Wait No More adoption initiave began in 2008, there were nearly 800 kids eligible for adoption.  And now, only 365 children remain in foster care, waiting for adoptive homes.  Kelly Rosati, senior director of the ministry’s Sanctity of Human Life division, told the Denver Post,

We’re not giving up or stopping until every waiting child in Colorado has the family it deserves.

Another Post interview gives Christians insight into the hearts of the children waiting for a home of their own:

Tiffany Beal, now a 20-year-old college senior in Colorado Springs, was in foster care for about three years before her adoption at age 11. She urges people to go out on a limb and adopt — because it’s the best thing they can do for a child.

“The most amazing part of being adopted was that no matter what, I always had a home. I had someone to call Mom and Dad,” Beal said. “Even at 3, my little brother knew he wasn’t home in foster care. He kept asking me, ‘When are we going to go home?’ “

It’s why we’re here.

Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_14516591#ixzz0hK2S2Fa7

The U.K. Federal Commission for Children and Youth (FCCY) discovered that 12- to 14-year-old boys are having sex without condoms. The solution? 

The “Hotshot,” a small condom specifically designed to fit 12-year-old boys. Because handing out Jr. Condoms to Junior at school will fix the slightly more-than-concerning problem of pre-teen boys having sex, right?

The U.K. Telegraph reports that Family Planning groups along with the Swiss Aids Federation, lobbied to have the smaller condom produced. No surprise here. International Planned Parenthood wants to “help” children as young as 10.

Even Joe Leprechaun doesn’t have to eat Bangers and Mash to know that throwing condoms – even little condoms – to lads and lassies will not fix the U.K.’s core behavioral problem of kids having sex with kids.

Sex should never be promoted as an acceptable activity for children, little condom or not. Government and schools should not be teaching to the lowest standard, unless they hope to “achieve” the lowest standard.

Isn’t it due time the FCCY and other government entities to raise the standard, rather than listen to “Family Planning” groups, whose very existence depends on children having sex with children and propagating dire, desperate circumstances?

What children need is more parental communication - including instruction about sex – and more school advocacy for higher sexual standards and a touch (perhaps a load) more discretion from the media. What they don’t need is a smaller condom.

See Focus President Jim Daly’s blog on this subject.

We know times are bad when state legislatures want to milk citizens dry through expanded gambling. 

But more gambling for state revenues, especially in today’s climate, is a bad hand. A sucker bet. Fool’s gold.

The Gambling Cash Cow is running dry, but states are slow to learn. As of early March, Maryland alone had 26 new gambling bills introduced just since 2010.

The Gambling Empire takes dollars and exports pennies and addiction. This makes gambling a bad neighbor, and gambling also fails the cost-benefit test.

In a recent Parade Magazine article, Robert Ward of the Rockefeller Institute of Government concluded, “Gambling has grown because it is less unpopular than other steps, like broad-based tax increases … Plugging the hole this way just pushes the problem down the road.”

The Rockefeller Institute published a grim forecast on the Luck Cartel’s future. Nearly 30 states, all banking on more gambling to save the day, must have missed the report, however, alongside multiple headlines describing gambling’s persistent decline.

According to the Nevada Gaming Abstract 2009, the new generation of Nevada tourists is drinking more than they are gambling. Nightclubs and alcohol are in, gambling is out.

Are you frustrated by your state officials banking the budget on more gambling? Want to make a difference today?

Educate your elected officials by sending them the Rockefeller report.   Print off a double-sided (8.5×14), color fact-filled flyer. Send these items to your state officials and urge them to put the Gambling Cow out to pasture. She’s going dry!

In 2007, seven Christians were arrested for praying at a gay pride event in a public park in Elmira, New York. The event was open to the public, and the seven found a grassy spot near the stage to kneel or lay down to pray and read their Bibles.

Apparently afraid that the LGBT crowd might react in a hostile manner, the Elmira police arrested all seven of the Christians and charged them with disorderly conduct. Three copped a plea; four stood trial and were convicted. Of those four, three had their convictions overturned on appeal, and the fourth, Julian Raven, is appealing to New York’s highest court with the help of the Alliance Defense Fund. Mr. Raven’s conviction was not overturned in the lower court proceeding because he alone of the seven had been warned by a police officer not to go into the park (a violation of Raven’s rights, by the way).

I don’t know how many news stories I’ve read where Christian or conservative speakers are shouted down (or worse) by Lefties of all persuasions who show up for that single purpose, and who are never arrested or removed from the premises for actual, you know, disorderly conduct. But let a Christian rile things up by just showing up to silently pray for the people at an event, and the very essence of democracy is threatened.

The growing hostility toward religion in this country by those in government who are sworn to protect our religious freedoms is appalling.

In case you were wondering where homosexual activism in public schools can eventually lead, Maine is giving a pretty good preview right now:

“… a boy who identifies himself as a girl is by law allowed to use girls bathrooms, locker rooms and participate on girls sports teams, or vice versa.”  That’s the summary from Maine’s Bangor Daily News, reporting on school guidelines currently under development by Maine’s Human Rights Commission.

So now we are on the cusp of allowing boys into girls restrooms based on their stated identity choice of the day. It’s hard to imagine an environment more sexually confusing for kids—or fraught with risky situations— than that.

At issue is the Maine Human Rights Commission’s efforts to adopt guidelines for schools on how to deal with gender-confused students. While they are being touted as just “guidelines,” the reality is that schools found in violation of the commission’s policies are more vulnerable to losing a lawsuit.

Meanwhile, according to the Bangor Daily News report,  gay activist groups—in particular, the local Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) chapter—have helped develop these guidelines. (GLSEN is the controversial group founded by “Safe Schools Czar” Kevin Jennings. It is devoted to promoting homosexuality and ”transgender” behavior to kids all the way down to the kindergarten level.)

The Maine School Management Association has raised concerns that the Human Rights Commission is overstepping its bounds by giving schools specific mandates. And then there’s concerns from both secondary schools and colleges about “fairness” issues in sports  and how teams are classified under NCAA guidelines.

This is just some of the chaos we will continue to see if identity politics and homosexual activism are given free rein in our public school systems.

For more about how transgender-activism is affecting schools’ and states’ policies, check out our “Transgender” Madness commentary.

Talk about a misleading headline: “Report: Cohabiting has little effect on couples’ success in marriage.”

USA Today can’t carry all the blame for misleading—the writers repeated what Pamela Smock, University of Michigan sociologist said.  In contrast, the NY Times headline had a better grasp of the real takeaway, “Study Finds Cohabiting Doesn’t Make a Union Last.”

This is the truth.  Studies show that there is a difference in types of cohabiting—the sliding kind and the deciding kind.  The slide: Couples who never talk about marriage and “slide” into a cohabiting situation, usually break up.  The decide: Couples who had already decided to marry and then move in together, are more likely to marry and stay together.

Importantly, cohabitation in the best “decide” situation is only neutral–  research shows no positive effects on marriage, but lots of downsides are possible.  Children especially suffer when their parents share little more than toothbrush space and rental agreement, but adults lose without marriage as well.

Also significantly, marriage is the basis for stable relationships—physically, emotionally and financially.  There are a lot more reasons to encourage marriage than to scapegoat cohabitation.

More than 1 million students don’t finish high school each year—that’s nearly one in three, according to President Obama.

Hmm. How to fix this problem.

Hey …I have an idea. What about actually making the schools accountable to parents? How about letting parents use a portion of their tax dollars to choose the best school, public or private, in their area?

That puts the power in parents’ hands. It’s a market-driven way to spur reform —and best of all, there’s factual proof school choice works.

Oh wait—that idea’s already been axed by the Obama administration.

That’s the problem with big government. It always wants to keep the power in its hands. In fact, when it comes right down to it, it looks like this government would rather support firing teachers, than empowering parents.

This week President Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, stirred the waters by praising a Rhode Island school board that fired all the staff—teachers, principals, counselors, everyone— in a small-town high school that was graduating less than half of its students. The board took this action after the teachers’ union blocked reform efforts minus significant extra pay.

In fact,  President Obama has made the Rhode Island school board the new poster child for his latest education initiative— $900 million worth of federal grants so states can “turnaround” their lowest performing schools. (This follows last year’s $3.5 billion allotment.)

“Turnaround” means they have choices ranging from converting the school to a charter, putting it under new management or, as is happening in Rhode Island, firing and replacing at least half of the staff.

While the effort to rescue kids trapped in failing schools—and buck unions entrenched in the status quo—is extremely heartening, at the same time, a top-down, government-directed strategy remains short-sighted.

Because it still makes the schools primarily accountable to big government—not parents, who are actually closest to the kids and the neighborhood schools they attend, and therefore have the best understanding of what’s really happening on the ground.

For instance, parents in Chicago—where Arne Duncan first tried out this “turnaround” strategy—have voiced concerns about whether their children actually end up in a better school after the original one is transformed or eliminated. They pointed to a study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research “showing that most students affected by closings were transferred into schools that also were academically weak,” reported a New York Times article.

Why not avoid these entanglements by just putting the power in the parents’ hands in the first place? After all, we know school choice works. But there’s scant evidence that turnarounds work.

And what was that again President Obama said about making “whether it works” the test for his policies?

A great deal of interest has been expressed on the former blog regarding International Planned Parenthood’s (IPPF) Stand and Deliver report.  I’d like to address some of the comments I’ve received all at once, so here you go.

How do I substantiate my claim that “young people” in this report includes 10-year-olds?

On page 10 of the International Planned Parenthood Federation’s (IPPF) Stand and Deliver  report, they use  the term “young people” to refer to those who are between 10 and 24 years of age. So, yes, 10-year-old children are considered eligible for IPPF’s “services” for young people.

Why do I “pick on” (not so) poor Planned Parenthood and other liberal-sex groups?

Because sex without boundaries – even with a condom – is dangerous, not only to children, but also to teens and adults.

Planned Parenthood (PP) promotes casual sex, homosexual sex, outer-course, inner-course and most any other course that “freely expresses sexual pleasure.” It’s unconstrained sex without boundaries. Heaven forbid we should “impose tremendous boundaries” on sex by encouraging abstinence or marriage!

In our view, sexuality is not a public playground to be shared, taken for granted, exploited, exposed and abused multiple times by multiple people. But, to PP and casual-sex groups, sex is just that: a public playground.

Research tells us a child’s brain lacks the ability to make fully rational decisions and discern good from bad. Thus, protective boundaries are particularly important for children and sexual behaviors, unless children are to become victims of sexual predators or fall prey to harmful pornographic and sexual addictions.  

Focus on the Family believes  that sex is a sacred union to be shared between one man and one woman for a lifetime. Yes, we proudly support traditional marriage and great sex within that context.

What about sexually active kids?

These kids need their parents’ attention, love and communication ASAP - alongside a qualified doctor and counselor -  to have some very serious conversations about their current actions and future direction. Schools simply handing children condoms does little to reduce or change risky sexual behaviors; rather, it’s the parents who need to initiate this change in direction.

Am I just “over-reacting” and afraid that children “will learn the names of his/her sexual organs?”

Look for yourself, ”young people” will learn MUCH more, to the extent of being suggestive and provocative. 

Consider the following examples:

• Comprehensive Sex Education Curricula review   (Note the references to explicit materials, lack of medical accuracy and lack of effectiveness.)

And if that doesn’t give you an idea of the kind of crude, explicit content on their website, check out this site designed specifically for teens [Warning: crude, explicit content]:

•  takecaredownthere.org  - (video clips)
• plannedparenthood.org/teen-talk - (Masturbation section)
• plannedparenthood.org/teen-talk/- (phone sex, online porn)
• plannedparenthood.org/health-topics - (abortion)

Still want your kids getting Planned Parenthood’s “safe” sex education? You’re the parent, you decide.

The 3-page order is here.

In a nutshell, Chief Justice Roberts thinks that the petitioners’ (those asking for a stay of the new DC same-sex marriage law) argument “has some force.”

But then he goes on to remark on the uniqueness of DC’s governance. Historically, the Supreme Court has deferred to the courts within DC on matters of local concern. Second, he highlights the unique relationship of DC to Congress, who had the opportunity to stop this new law from going into effect but did not do so.

Finally, he says that this case hasn’t really ended. Although the petitioners’ quest for a ballot referendum (vote to kill the new law)  is now moot, a ballot initiative to restore the traditional definition of marriage will still wend its way through the DC courts on the legal issue of whether the DC Human Rights Code trumps the charter provisions on ballot issues, and the Supreme Court may have an opportunity to get involved at that stage.

We could end up with another California situation with same-sex marriage existing for a time before a return to one-man, one-woman marriage.

The new DC same-sex marriage law takes effect on Wednesday.

My earlier post on this issue is located here.

Florida state legislators want to make a positive change to the state’s “Family Law” handbook given out to couples requesting a marriage license.

According to the Florida Family Policy Council, the handbook currently offers detailed information about ending a marriage, but very little that would help a couple be successful.  The proposed legislation would provide for  marriage and family advocates who would choose resources to add to the handbook that would help couples strengthen their marriage with the goal of long-term success.

Examples of states with marriage-positive handbooks are Alabama, Louisiana and Texas.

It seems a little bit crazy that a “Family Law” handbook given out with marriage licenses would be filled with information for ending the marriage rather than sustaining it, but this is probably a reflection of actual laws.  It takes lot more law and policy to regulate divorce and family dissolution than stable married life.