The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recently announced that indoor gas stoves emitted harmful pollution. Several studies claim that the use of gas can cause respiratory illness. The CPSC is considering restrictions on gas stoves, including possible bans in new residential construction. But attacks on gas stoves are based on questionable science and are largely driven by concerns not related to health.

The CPSC has reportedly been considering actions on gas stoves since October. Richard Trumpka, Jr., a CPSC commissioner, stated “This is a hidden hazard. Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” Two recent studies figure prominently in agency concerns. The first, published in January last year by Eric Lebel and others, found that gas stoves and ovens emit hazardous levels of methane and nitrogen dioxide (NO₂). The second, published in December last year by Talor Gruenwald and others, estimated that 12.7 percent of childhood asthma cases in the US were due to gas stove use.

Nitrous oxide (NO) is produced at combustion temperatures above 1,600^oC by breaking down nitrogen molecules in air. Modern stove burner flames reach temperatures above 1,600^oC, producing NO. The nitrous oxide then combines with oxygen to form nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant. But the amount of NO₂ generated by stoves is very small, only parts per billion (ppb) levels.

The Lebel study measured nitrogen dioxide levels of 100 ppb in kitchens, but this was after sealing the room in plastic—an unrealistic artificial condition. Other studies find NO₂ levels to be as high as 34 ppb after several hours of stove and oven use. This level is below the 53 ppb limit of the National Ambient Air Quality Standard of the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA states that, for NO₂ levels below 50 ppb, “No health impacts are expected for air quality in this range.” Most studies do not find hazardous levels of NO₂ from stove use.

Nevertheless, the Gruenwald study claims that nitrogen dioxide from gas stoves is linked to asthma in children. It used statistical analysis to find an association between stoves and childhood asthma in the U.S. But the study itself states that it reviewed 27 other studies connected to gas stoves and none reported “associations between gas stove use and childhood asthma.” In addition, the Centers for Disease Control reports that asthma attacks and asthma hospitalizations for US children have been declining since 2001, while U.S. natural gas consumption rose 38 percent over the same period.

Could it be that health concerns about gas stoves are a proxy for a larger issue? For more than a decade, environmentalists have promoted “electrification” of homes. Historically, the term “electrification” meant extending the electrical grid to rural areas and homes without electricity. But the renewable energy movement redefined electrification to mean electrify everything. As they see it, electrification of homes means replacement of gas stoves, furnaces, water heaters, and even propane grills with electric appliances. They say this is needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and solve the problem of human-caused climate change.

Talor Gruenwald, the lead author of the study on childhood asthma in the U.S., is employed by the Rocky Mountain Institute, which also funded the study. For three decades, the institute has been working on programs to counter global warming. Eric Lebel is a researcher at Stanford University, with articles on methane emissions from oil and gas wells, gas water heaters, and gas stoves. His goal appears to be to counter global warming through electrification of homes by claiming harmful health effects from gas appliances.

Netherlands and the United Kingdom now urge their residents to replace gas appliances with electric appliances and heat pumps as part of programs to reach net-zero emissions. These policies were adopted even though 92 percent of homes in Netherlands use gas heat and 78 percent of homes in the U.K. use gas. The Netherlands aims to disconnect gas lines from eight million homes by 2050.

An electrification battle rages in the United States. Cities in seven states—California, Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington—have established bans on gas appliances in new construction. But in opposition, 19 other states recently enacted laws preventing local governments from banning natural gas and propane, or “impairing a consumer’s ability to choose a utility service.” Another four states have proposed legislation that would prohibit bans by local governments.

Residents pay significantly more in utility bills with electric appliances. For example, in 2020 the average price of residential natural gas in California was $13.64 per million British Thermal Units (BTU). For a new 95-percent-efficiency natural-gas furnace or water heater, this translates to a cost of just over $14 per million Btu. California’s 2020 residential electricity price was 20.51 cents per kWh, or a cost of $60.11 per million Btu. California residents can pay over four times as much to operate electric stoves, water heaters, or electric baseboard heat, compared to gas appliances.

Banning gas stoves will raise homeowner costs and reduce choices, without a tangible improvement in health.

This article was originally published in Washington Examiner.

Anyone tired of “masking up” to enter an airport or get on a flight? There may be an end in sight largely thanks to U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY).  Although the air travel mask mandate was set to end on March 18, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) extended the mandate until April 18. But the extension begs the question, “Will it really end then?” Now Paul and others have taken real action to end the mandates once and for all.

The first promising step is S.J.Res 37. This resolution, introduced by Paul this past February, passed in the U.S. Senate recently by a vote of 57-40. Better yet, it represents bi-partisan support with eight Democrat senators voting in support of the resolution: Michael Bennet (D-CO), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Jon Tester (D-MT). In typical fashion, U.S. Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) was the only Republican to vote against the bill.

Still, this measure, which expresses disapproval of the CDC’s mask mandate, faces significant challenges in the days ahead if it is to become law. The amount of votes it received are not enough to override President Biden’s veto threat. Moreover, proponents must garner enough support to overcome U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s reluctance to let the member of the House vote on it. But should the resolution fail to pass through its trip to becoming law, all hope is not lost.

Members of Congress, 17 to be exact, have filed a suit against the CDC which would end the federal mask requirement for passengers both on commercial flights and in airports. First names on the suit are, once again, U.S. Senator Rand Paul as well as U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), both of whom filed the suit in their home state of Kentucky. Other GOP House members: Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Paul Gosar (D-AZ), Dan Bishop (R-NC), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Andrew Clyde (R-GA), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Warren Davidson (R-OH), Bob Good (R-VA), Brian Mast (R-FL), Bill Posey (R-FL) and Matt Rosendale (R-MT).

One of the best implications of this suit is its potential to end the government and, especially, unelected bureaucrats’ overreach in making declarations — calling them mandates, but treating them as law. According to Rosendale, those practices are nothing more than part and parcel of

“the fear mongering narrative of COVID-19. The CDC has forced Americans to wear masks on commercial flights for two years without legal standing. A mandate is not law, and Congress never passed legislation codifying the CDC’s mask wearing demands.”

And there is science to back up the ending of the air-travel mask requirement: COVID-19 transmission on airplanes is unlikely due to the ventilation systems. These systems not only mix outdoor air with recycled air via HEPA filters, but they limit air flow between rows – a key reason behind the lack of connection between outbreaks and commercial air travel. According to an article in The Journal of the American Medical Association,

“The risk of contracting COVID-19 during air travel is low. Despite substantial numbers of travelers, the number of suspected and confirmed cases of in-flight COVID-19 transmission between passengers around the world appears small.”

Confirming this view is Sebastian Hoehl, a researcher at the Institute for Medical Virology at Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany. “An airplane cabin is probably one of the most secure conditions you can be in,” he noted.

Given the above information, it is clearly time to end the unwarranted and unscientific policy of mandating masks in airports and airplanes especially since the mandates have ended in virtually all other public places. If you’d like to be sure they do. . . .

Take ACTION: Please click HERE to contact your U.S. Representative and let him/her know how you feel about this. Also, please click HERE to let U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi know she should allow a vote on the measure.

U.S. Senator Paul seems to truly be the hero in this fight for “following the science” and for ending government overreach. Early last week, he introduced a pertinent amendment, a “separation of powers” so to speak, that would eliminate Dr. Anthony Fauci’s position as the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and replace it with three separate positions effectively limiting its power.

“We’ve learned a lot over the past two years, but one lesson in particular is that no one person should be deemed “dictator-in-chief.” No one person should have unilateral authority to make decisions for millions of Americans,” said Dr. Paul, a physician. “To ensure that ineffective, unscientific lockdowns and mandates are never foisted on the American people ever again, I’ve  introduced this amendment . . .This will create accountability and oversight into a taxpayer-funded position that has largely abused its power, and has been responsible for many failures and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

For more information, click HERE.

Change does not happen overnight, but bit by bit. And that slow steady change, inch by inch, ushers in new norms which might have been deemed wholly abhorrent if introduced overnight.

Gradual change sears and scars the conscience until the shocking is no longer shocking, but tolerated and barely noticed.

Our culture began it’s slouch toward Gomorrah decades ago: our corporate conscience severed from the tether of biblical mores year by year.

Good people in America have been living good and godly lives, raising their children, paying their taxes, going to church and contributing to their towns and communities. Too many Americans, blissfully ignorant of the radical, evil changes taking place, now face unfathomable perversity where they live.

It’s past time to wake up and do something.

Consider the word of the Apostle Paul to the Romans (emphasis mine):

¹⁸ The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, ¹⁹ since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

²¹ For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.²² Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

²⁴ Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.²⁵ They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

²⁶ Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. ²⁷ In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

²⁸ Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. ²⁹They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; ³¹ they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. (Romans 1:18-31)

Indeed, we are living in a Romans 1 world.

And a huge, publicly funded purveyor of “every kind of wickedness,” Planned Parenthood, is not content to murder over 300,000 preborn babies each and every year. The evil organization has now partnered with another radical group, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) — a virulently pro-homosexual organization, to force “comprehensive sex education” on every public school in every state.

In 2015 hints were given that this perverse program was in the works:

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation announced plans this month to launch a coordinated campaign to bring LGBTQ-inclusive sex education to queer youth across the country. These efforts are likely to include digital resources for LGBTQ youth, LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum plans, and efforts to kick start renewed national conversations on the value of sex education that reflects the needs of all young people.

The program called “Get Real” has been in the development for years, long before 2015.

Over fifty years ago, in 1964, the medical director for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Dr. Mary Calderone, founded the “Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States” (SIECUS). Whenever you see or hear the name SIECUS beware.

What were the goals of SIECUS?

Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education — Kindergarten — 12th Grade

• It provides accurate information about human sexuality, including growth and development, anatomy, physiology, human reproduction, pregnancy, childbirth, parenthood, family life, sexual orientation, gender identity, sexual response, masturbation, contraception, abortion, sexual abuse, HIV/AIDS, and other sexually transmitted infections.

• It helps young people develop healthy attitudes, values, and insights about human sexuality by exploring their community’s attitudes, their family’s values, and their own critical thinking skills so that they can understand their obligations and responsibilities to their families and society.

• It helps young people develop communication, decision-making, assertiveness, and peer-refusal skills so they are prepared to create reciprocal, caring, non-coercive, and mutually satisfying intimacies and relationships when they are adults.

• It encourages young people to make responsible choices about sexual relationships by practicing abstinence, postponing sexual intercourse, resisting unwanted and early sexual intercourse, and using contraception and safer sex when they do become sexually active

Let’s think on that for a moment and let it sink in. “Doctor” Calderone endeavored to force sex ed on children, beginning in Kindergarten, which included information about masturbation, contraception, abortion, sexual abuse, HIV/AIDS. And you can be sure, with her relationship to Planned Parenthood, should the perverted sex indoctrination lead to pregnancy, abortion would be offered up as an “innocuous” remedy.

Now, over half a century later, Planned Parenthood’s brainchild, “Get Real” is in the schools. This “comprehensive sex education” course includes all manner of breath-taking activities.

Megan Fox writes at PJ Media:

Sex education in public schools has gone off the deep end. Gone are the days of handing out birth control and practicing putting condoms on bananas. These days your kid is more likely to come away from school with more sexually deviant knowledge than single gay dudes in New York City, thanks to Planned Parenthood’s comprehensive sex ed program that has somehow made it into public school curriculums. These programs teach dangerous and violent practices like BDSM, asphyxiation, gender-bending, anal sex, and let’s not forget “rimming,” which can saddle your kid with nasty parasitic infections.

That descriptive paragraph should stun the sensibilities of any parent, any adult, with a modicum of integrity and sound conscience. But there’s more.

Live Action, the pro-life organization founded by Lila Rose, captured video of a Planned Parenthood worker advising a fifteen year old girl on where to find good information on experimenting with sex in every perverted permutation, including (prepare yourself to be shocked) “bondage/sadomasochism, including gagging, whipping, defecation, emulating pornography, and going to sex stores to ‘get educated.’ ”

The Human Rights Campaign, if your are unfamiliar, claims to be the “largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer civil rights organization, HRC envisions a world where LGBTQ people are ensured of their basic equal rights, and can be open, honest and safe at home, at work and in the community.”

Reality check: every American is “created equal and endowed by their Creator with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The HRC goal is NOT the equality we share as created beings, but rather endorsement of any and all sexual perversions as normal. To that end, the HRC intends to indoctrinate children from the age of 5 with information that, in previous decades, would have been considered unthinkable.

Again, we are living in a Romans 1 world.

Further, after decades of saturation with more comprehensive and more repugnant “sex ed” programs, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported in 2017 that sexually transmitted diseases were at an all time high.

So from the advent of Planned Parenthood (founded by infamous eugenicist and racist, Margaret Sanger) and the inception of SIECUS, to the collaboration of sexual deviance advocate organization, HRC, “comprehensive sex ed” has come a long, long way and is intended to taint America’s children and herd them on a broad path to individual and societal destruction.

Parents across the nation are awakening, the result being the #SexEdSitOut movement, with kids being pulled out of public school on Monday, April 23.

Take ACTION:  There is also a correlated “Declaration” to sign which says, in part:

We, as concerned parents and community members, are sick of the sexualization of our children! We say NO to graphic, gender-bending, promiscuity-promoting sex education for our kids.

. . .

We will not stand for our tax money being used to promote sexual liberation, deviance, and gender confusion to our precious kids. In protest, we stand together with those parents pulling their children out of public school on April 23rd for the sex ed sit out.

But conservatives and Christians across this nation must do more that sit out one day: parents and others must demand that public money, taxpayer money, not be used for such abhorrent instruction in the government schools.

Each family must decide to take a stand to protect their children, even if that means ultimately removing students from public schools permanently.

As for Planned Parenthood, HRC and SIECUS?

Luke warns, “It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.”

Three 1,600 pound millstones coming up.

Worldview Conference May 5th

Worldview has never been so important than it is today!  The contemporary culture is shaping the next generation’s understanding of faith far more than their faith is shaping their understanding of culture. The annual IFI Worldview Conference is a phenomenal opportunity to reverse that trend. This year we are featuring well-know apologist John Stonestreet on Saturday, May 5th at Medinah Baptist Church. Mr. Stonestreet is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “Making Sense of Your World” and his newest offer: “A Practical Guide to Culture.”

Click HERE to learn more or to register!

There is an excellent article from John Stonestreet, the president of the Colson Center for Worldview, detailing a surprisingly honest article in the liberal publication, The Huffington Post.    Stonestreet comments on a homosexual male who wrote an article expressing his despair in his lifestyle and explaining that so many “gay” men in his community share this despair.   The cultural, legal and political affirmation of homosexuality in America is not filling the emptiness many feel or reducing the many risks of their lifestyle.

Stonestreet writes in An Unspoken Epidemic: The Silent Suffering of Gay Men:

“For years,” he begins, “I’ve noticed the divergence between my straight friends and my gay friends. While one half of my social circle has disappeared into relationships, kids and suburbs, the other has struggled through isolation and anxiety, hard drugs and risky (behavior).”

Through story after story and mountains of statistics, Hobbes then documents a consistent and chilling trend among those who share his lifestyle. “Gay men everywhere, at every age,” he writes, are two-to-ten-times more likely than heterosexual men to commit suicide.

And that’s just the beginning. Homosexual males also suffer from higher rates of cardiovascular disease, cancer, allergies, asthma, and a whole host of behavior-related infections and dysfunctions. They’re twice as likely to experience major depressive episodes, report having fewer close friends, and abuse drugs at an alarming rate.

In fact, living in so-called “gay neighborhoods” is a predictor of more frequent, risky behaviors and methamphetamine use. And, Hobbes adds, the community itself is brutal and degrading to its members. Smart-phone hookup apps drive a culture of exploitation and casual encounters that one young man he interviewed said made him feel like “a piece of meat.”

We often hear these disastrous statistics and stories attributed to homophobia, bullying, and shame. Having been treated horribly since childhood, men like this author—the oft-repeated myth goes—are forced to live a lie. They’re depressed because they’ve been oppressed and repressed.

But here’s the problem with the bullying hypothesis. In countries like the Netherlands and Sweden where same-sex “marriage” has been the law of the land for years, gay men remain three times more susceptible to mood disorders and three- to ten-times more likely to engage in “suicidal self-harm.”

What Stonestreet points to in regard to the high risks of homosexuality are not unknowns in the “gay” community.  While they are often overlooked in school curriculum, news reports, and pop culture, the dangers of homosexuality are documented in mainstream sources, including those supportive of homosexual advocacy.

For example, the federal government’s Centers for Disease Control, which devotes numerous web pages to the particular health disparities connected with homosexual behaviors, notes “LGBT people smoke cigarettes at rates that are nearly 70% higher than the general population.”   They also note that alcohol abuse is much higher among LGBT lifestyles than the general population.

A 2016 study published by the American Medical Association’s Internal Medicine publication observed, compared to heterosexuals:

• Gay men were more likely to report severe psychological distress, heavy drinking and moderate smoking.

• Bisexual men were more likely to report severe psychological distress, heavy drinking and heavy smoking.

• Lesbian women were more likely to report moderate psychological distress, poor or fair health, multiple chronic conditions, heavy drinking and heavy smoking.

• Bisexual women were more likely to report multiple chronic conditions, severe psychological distress, heavy drinking and moderate smoking.

Homosexual activists and many of those reporting on the disproportionately high behavioral risks are quick to dismiss the disparities as a result of cultural opposition to homosexuality or a lack of legal status goals in America.

Yet, the same disparities appear in liberal societies that embrace every sexual desire under the sun and have almost no religious cultural influences.  Mortality rates, drug abuse, disease and suicide still pose dramatically higher risks for the LGBT lifestyle in different cultures around the world. For example, a study in Denmark conducted twelve years after same-sex marriage was legalized found:

“ . . . the age-adjusted suicide rate for same sex RDP [registered domestic partners] men was eight times the rate for men in heterosexual marriages, and nearly twice the rate for men who had never married.”

This info just barely scratches the surface of medical and psychological data. It is hardly a picture of health and happiness.

A few weeks ago, junior high students in Plymouth, Indiana, were subjected to political indoctrination lessons in, of all places, health class. The video and lesson instructed kids how to “come out” as homosexual and how to support homosexuality individually, organizationally and politically without any mention of the medical risks that lifestyle includes.    This type of rallying for gay activism is rampant in schools, movies, music, and pop culture.

Teachers, principles, parents and grandparents would do well to read the Stonestreet article before embracing homosexuality as just another lifestyle choice or political cause HERE.

It is undeniably true to say that never before in U.S. history has homosexuality been more acceptable, celebrated and promoted than it is today.   Although almost never mentioned, this change is having a negative impact upon many American’s physical health.  What we are seeing now may only be the tip of the iceberg as more and more young people are taught that homosexuality is a perfectly normal alternative lifestyle choice.

For example, a new report from the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) finds that disease among homosexuals is at a level not seen in 35 years before the scare of AIDS.    “We’re concerned about our high levels of syphilis among men who have sex with men – really we’re back to the level of disease – burden of disease – in gay men that we were seeing before HIV in this country,” said Gail Bolan, director of the CDC’s Division of STD Prevention at an event on Capitol Hill to lobby for more federal funds.

While rates among both men and women have risen, syphilis is a disease that disproportionately impacts men, who make up 90 percent  of the cases.   However, homosexual men now account for 83 percent of all the syphilis cases in America.   Homosexuals make up just 3 percent of the U.S. population.  The CDC also finds that half of men who have sex with men (MSM) who are infected with syphilis also have HIV.

The newest fad in American culture is faring even worse.  A report out last week from the CDC citing a systematic review of various studies concludes that 28 percent of all transgender women have HIV.  (A “transgender woman” is a biological male who identifies as a female, like Caitlyn Jenner.)      The health risks are even higher among black transgendered.  The CDC found that “56 percent of black/African American transgender women had positive HIV test results.”

While this message won’t appear in the movies, or pop culture, the CDC recommends that homosexuals get tested for HIV, syphilis, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, chlamydia and gonorrhea every year.   It is doubtful that any article about Bruce Jenner, or any school cowering to the Obama Administration’s push for genderless school bathrooms, has noted that people involved in transgender behavior now have the highest rate of newly identified HIV infections among any group according to the CDC.

Although it should be obvious, Christian pro-family activists take absolutely no joy in stories like this.  We care about all people. We believe that there is a much better way of life.  We believe that many times the most loving and compassionate thing one can do is to warn, “danger ahead . . . please don’t go there.”  This is much like a “no swimming” sign at a gravel pit, a “bridge out ahead” road sign or efforts to keep drugs and alcohol away from children.