Parenting is tough. Aside from having to keep little people (often with sizeable attitudes) alive, parents are also entrusted with the responsibility of training their child in the way he (or she) should go – so that they love the Lord and live it out.

That last one is difficult and can easily fall by the wayside. So whether you’re a new parent who’s struggling, or a confident experienced parent, this sermon by Dr. Rob Reinow from Visionary Family Ministries is a must-see.

Focusing on Deuteronomy 6:5-9, he shares how God created and designed discipleship to take place inside the home and the when and how for parents to instruct their children.

It’s incredibly helpful for parents from any walk of life – give it a watch and share it with parents and grandparents in your circle!

Nothing opens your mind to new worlds and new possibilities better than a book. Stories can communicate ideas, themes, and lessons considerably better than a lecture does. Children love to act out the stories of their favorite characters, adopting their mannerisms and wishing to be them. You probably can think of a book that has impacted you deeply and maybe even encouraged you to change your behavior in some manner.

Stories are incredibly powerful, sometimes bringing about great change in a culture.

Throughout history, various groups and organizations have banned books for a myriad of reasons: they were deemed inappropriate or immoral, the ideas proliferated were considered dangerous or heretical, or a tyrant thought they would stir up unrest and opposition to his rule.

Book banning is not a good thing. Because of the innate sinfulness of humanity, banning one book opens the door for unjust people or groups to ban anything they choose.

Lately, so-called book banning has been forefront in the news; a story complicated by the narrative the media is spinning. In 2020, when everything shut down due to Covid, public schooling moved to Zoom, and parents could see what their children were being taught and the material they were assigned, including the books their kids were reading.

At some point during all of this, it was discovered that there are books in elementary through high school libraries that are highly pornographic. This is not an exaggeration. If you don’t believe me, watch this video posted by a concerned mother  (WARNING: graphic content).

Understandably, parents began forming groups to advocate for having more of a say in what their children are learning in public schools and began rightly contesting books such as Gender Queer, All Boys aren’t Blue, and Lawn Boy, reading them out loud at school board meetings, requesting that schools remove them from their libraries, and asking that they provide age-appropriate reading material only.

Now the media is attacking parents and parental rights groups like Moms for Liberty. The story is being framed to make it look like these parents are trying to ban books because they are bigots who don’t want their children exposed to “diverse” ideas. They’re comparing concerned parents to Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984 (which is ironic, since in 1984 it was Big Brother that was providing people with porn).

Without coming right out and saying it, they’re purporting that schools should have these books in their libraries precisely because parents don’t want their kids to read them. The idea seems to be, “What if those poor kids feel uncomfortable with who they are and need a place to express themselves and learn about every aspect of the LGBTQIA agenda without the involvement of their mean, strict parents?”

Not only is this a twisted spin on the facts, but it is a downright lie. Banning a book means that the book is banned. It’s illegal to buy, sell, read, or own, and anyone caught with it would face punishment. That isn’t what these parents are requesting. Asking that a book be removed from a school library because of inappropriate content doesn’t vilify the parent.

Similarly, we wouldn’t blame a parent for taking a phone away from their child who is doing things he or she isn’t supposed to with it. Children aren’t allowed to go to tattoo parlors or tanning salons, and we rate movies based on the content because there are things children (and people in general) should not see.

Requesting only age-appropriate content in public schools doesn’t constitute a ban.

Much of the reasoning behind the media’s spin of the story is because most, if not all, of the contested books are LGBTQIA+ related. Our culture is obsessed with self– personal autonomy, total unrestricted freedom, and the pursuit of making oneself happy. It’s a worldview that says, “Anything goes, but if you get in the way of my anything, you need to go.”

But freedom in this world isn’t unlimited. Free societies still have laws and legal consequences for breaking them because people do bad things. If those things were allowed to continue without repercussions, society would collapse. Insisting on having the freedom to gratify the desires of the flesh ends up in slavery to death and eternal destruction.

The backbone of true freedom is Biblical morality.

Some things absolutely should be illegal. In reality, the LGBTQIA+ movement has to do with a grotesque focus on sex. It’s openly targeting children, who, be they seven or seventeen, ought to be guarded against, not exposed to pornography. Adults shouldn’t be filling their minds with it either.

Stories have the power to change minds, for good or for evil. Requesting that a school provide only age-appropriate material is a good thing, and very different from book banning.

Here are just two of the countless unbearable stories of sorrow and regret that the mainstream press doesn’t want to tell. Here are just two of the many nightmarish stories that “gender therapists,” cosmetic surgeons, urologists, endocrinologists, pharmaceutical companies, and vocal coaches who profit from the confusion of children don’t want you to hear. Here are the accounts of bone-deep anguish from young people who feel betrayed by adults who facilitated the chemical and surgical ravaging of their once whole and healthy bodies:

I’m 16 and my body is ruined. I destroyed every piece of me that made me a female, or at least, the parts that made me look and feel like one. I was on testosterone for a year and a half so my voice is fucked, my boobs are gone, I’m very hairy. … Just don’t really see the point in living if it’s gonna be like this. I can’t believe that everyone in my life failed me so hard. How are we letting insecure 14 year old girls make the decision to mutilate and ruin their bodies. I’m angry. I’m angry at this sick agenda. I’m angry at the sick people who think you have any other choice but to accept what you were given at birth. I’m angry that these sick people are pushing their sick agendas on sick, insecure, damaged, naive, gullible, children. Children don’t know what they want. Neither do the rest of these “trans” people. I’m sorry but you can’t change who you are. All it will do is send you into madness. Unfortunately, I’ve had to learn that lesson the hard way. I don’t “feel” like a girl or a boy. I just am. I’m just me. I wish someone could’ve told me that I was beautiful just the way I was. I was so beautiful. Now I am ruined. I was a singer. I had a delicate, soft voice. Now it’s harsh, like a teenage boy’s. All of these regrets, all of these memories, the pictures on my phone that I can’t stop staring at, staying up all night crying, listening to recordings of my old voice, realizing how if someone had just paid attention to me, maybe I wouldn’t be in this situation. I’m furious, and there’s nothing I can do except warn other young girls not to make the same mistake that I did. But I wouldn’t have listened either. I wanted that escape. I wanted to be a man so bad. Being a girl brought me nothing but tragedy. I was beaten and molested as a child. I felt weak. I wanted to be strong. I didn’t want to be another object for men to use. I wanted to be seen as a person. Well, now I’m a freak.

---

Two years ago, I was a healthy, beautiful girl heading toward high school graduation. But after taking testosterone for a year, I turned into an overweight, pre-diabetic nightmare of a transgender man. …

I’m one of many young women that have been failed by the medical system. I was diagnosed with gender dysphoria, a mental-health condition. I was treated with mega-doses of powerful testosterone that ravaged my body, caused me to gain 50 pounds, and put me at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and teenage menopause.

I’m not putting all the blame on the mental health people or the doctors. These are regretful choices I made as a teenager. But I trusted the doctor’s advice. They were the experts, who was I not to listen to them?

But telling an 18-year-old girl that mega-doses of testosterone would fix her mental health problems? They didn’t even talk to me about other treatment options! No doctor or therapist suggested I give myself time to grow up, or wait and see what happens with counseling sessions – no doctor or therapist told most young people outgrow their feelings of wanting to be the opposite sex.

The only advice I got was to take mega-doses of testosterone.

I did this to myself for almost a year. Meanwhile, my mom was crying daily about why I was doing this to myself, all the while blaming herself.

Finally, one day, my grandfather sat me down to talk about it. With tears in his eyes, he asked me to stop.

That was a saving grace. I would have let this treatment kill me before admitting I’d screwed up. His intervention saved my life.

Today, I continue to deal with the permanent side effects of messing up my body.

I’m not a political person. I’m just a young person that needed help from doctors, and unfortunately got caught up in this medical scandal.

More and more young people are being deceived every day, being told that the solution to their insecurity and identity problems is to get a sex change. The problem is, a person’s sex can’t really be changed. You can take hormones and have cosmetic surgeries, but that doesn’t really change your sex, or solve your problems. I wish I knew that when I was younger.

These young people who have stopped identifying as the sex they are not are called “detransitioners,” and there are many of them. With broken families, abuse, trauma, absence of faith, and inculcation with perverse ideologies on sexuality and “identity,” the world is creating deep wounds in children, providing distorted lenses through which these wounded children misinterpret their experiences, and offering wicked solutions for which wounded children in desperation grasp.

As the number of “trans”-identifying children and teens explodes—particularly among adolescent girls, we will hear more and more of these stories. Already there are thousands of young adults detransitioning and telling their stories. How many more do you need to hear before you speak up? Are you going to be one of those countless adults who stand silently by as children’s bodies are mutilated because you’re too cowardly to stand against the forces of ignorance and evil? Are you going to just go about your daily business, risking nothing even as 13-year-old girls have their healthy breasts amputated? Does your silence bring glory to God? Do you not love these children as yourself?

Will you protest drag queen story events for preschoolers when your local library hosts one?

Will you tell your children’s teachers that under no circumstance are your children to be exposed to any classroom discussions, activities, presentations, or resources that address cross-sex identification (or homosexuality)?

Will you tell your government school administration that your children may not share locker rooms or restrooms with opposite-sex students?

Will you ask your pediatrician for his or her view of chemical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors and change doctors if he or she affirms such destructive nonsense?

If you live in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, or Texas where bills have been proposed or will soon be proposed banning chemical and surgical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors, will you vigorously and publicly support those critical bills? Will you ask your lawmakers to sign on as co-sponsors of those bills?

If you live in Illinois, where the first such bill in the nation was introduced almost a year ago by one of Illinois’ finest lawmakers, State Representative Tom Morrison, will you vigorously and publicly support both his bill and him? Will you contact your state representative and ask him or her to sign on as a co-sponsor of the bill?

If your really care about children, you will do all of the above.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/trans-nightmares_mixdown.mp3

Subscribe to the IFI YouTube channel
and never miss a video report or special program!

In an exhibition gallery, somewhere …

Welcome to our display of demographic failures! Here you will see amazing things, from both near and far. Behind this first curtain we have … Japan! It’s a nice place but the locals don’t seem to like it much. You see, their families aren’t having many children. As their birth rate is only at two-thirds of the needed replacement rate, experts see Japan’s population dropping by a third within 50 years.[i] Even now, parts of the Japanese countryside have been abandoned, left to return to the wild.[ii]

Moving to our second curtain we see … Europe and Russia. Birth rates in the whole region are alarmingly low. In Spain, with 1.2 children per woman, and Italy, with 1.4 children per woman,[iii] the decline is dramatic. Their populations are expected to go down by a fourth in 50 years. Researchers say that there is hope of easing their population woes through immigration.[iv] However, immigration can have unwelcome side effects.

Coming to our third curtain we have … a mirror? Yes, the United States also has a population problem. Our national birth rate is down to 1.8 children per woman.[v] As with Europe, immigration is hiding the decline.

The developed world, including the United States, has a shortage of children.

A Problem of Too Few Children

The birth rate of American families has been declining since the 1970s. Recently it decreased below the population replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman (slightly more than 2.0 to account for childhood deaths).[vi] A four decade decline is a trend, not an accident. Perhaps these causes have combined to make it so.

• Economic pressures on families push both parents into the work force. A two income household once was a novelty, gaining an additional income for a bearable cost in daytime child care. But the marketplace has since adjusted to these extra workers. Now it is hard to make ends meet without both incomes. But child care costs discourage having additional children.

• Young adults are less likely to marry until they finish their college years and establish themselves in their jobs. Having college debts to pay off, couples put off starting a family. Compared to people who can get a decent job right out of high school, married college graduates lose up to ten years of fertility. These older parents are less likely to have a large family.

• Propaganda by zero population growth advocates has made large families unfashionable. The disasters that these people were afraid of never came to pass, but their mindset is still with us.

• Perhaps young adults don’t value marriage and don’t need, or want, children. If they can have casual sex, then why bother with the cost, restrictions, and relationships of marriage? Or perhaps these people don’t believe that there is a future worth living for. Ours wouldn’t be the first age where someone said “this isn’t a good time to have children.”

For these reasons and others, the United States, like many countries, has a problem with declining birthrate. As this continues it has varied and surprising effects.

• The population isn’t just shrinking, it is aging. This means more old people receiving Social Security benefits, Medicare, and publically financed pensions, but supported by a shrinking pool of young adults. There is no guarantee that the decreasing numbers of youth will continue to agree to fund the increasing burden of supporting the elderly.

• A declining, aging workforce won’t be able to do the things it can do now. Tasks that require youthful vigor, or intense physical exertion, will become more expensive due to lack of workers.[vii]

• A declining population won’t affect everywhere equally, or at the same moment. Some cities or farm regions will suddenly become unsustainable. It might be that there aren’t enough people left to justify maintaining streets or utilities. Such areas quickly become vacant.[viii]

• A nation with a shrinking population isn’t likely to be vigorous. Its mindset is on self-preservation, minimizing risk, and not fixing wrongs.

Can Immigration Fix Things?

Some advocate immigration as a fix for a nation’s declining population.[ix] An influx of new blood could simultaneously increase population and raise the birthrate. Problem solved, right?

This solution might create its own problems. The hoped-for immigrants would likely be coming from another culture. How will they assimilate into the culture of their new home?

• If they assimilate somewhat, but keep a strong birthrate, then soon their strong relative numbers will help fix the birthrate issue. Their traditions meld with the native culture, as has occurred many times in the past.

• If they assimilate to become just like the natives then they, too, would be afflicted with our child-deficient mindset. We’ll still have that declining national birthrate.

• If they don’t assimilate then they effectively take over, seeing themselves as colonists. After all, the future belongs to those who show up for it.[x]

There’s no guarantee that immigration will fix the ills of a country with a declining birthrate.

Back to the Bible

The United States has a declining birthrate. What does the Bible say about birthrates?

First, we’re told to “be fruitful and multiply.”[xi] We’ve already done a fair job at multiplying. This commandment can also be construed to read “don’t go and die off.”

Second, we’re to be stewards of the Earth.[xii] That can easily be restated as keeping the Earth in good shape for living in, both for us and our successors. The two commandments are complementary.

How are we doing with this stewardship? Have we hit peak population? Are we living on the last resources of the planet?

We’re definitely in good shape.

• There is plenty of food to eat. America has so much corn that we burn it in our cars (ethanol). At need we could take this food to feed the hungry. Across the world there is enough to eat except when people live in wastelands (deserts, perhaps like the Sudan), where men make war, and where men deliberately mismanage things (like Zimbabwe or Venezuela).

• There is plenty of oil and gas for heat, electricity, and transportation. New technologies have revealed centuries of reserves of these resources.

• There is plenty of land to live on. When rich, productive farmland is turned into suburban subdivisions it illustrates that we have ridiculous amounts of room to grow into.

There are enough resources for the population we have and for the future.

Third, God wants us to think of the future, the long haul. He’s promised to meet our needs.[xiii] We’re told that when the Master returns he expects us to be doing the tasks he gave us.[xiv]

Fourth, children are a blessing.[xv] Raising them provides a purpose for life and direction for organizing a society. They’re also part of God’s supplying for our needs in old age.[xvi]

Fifth, children are an expression of hope for the future. Creating a family is commitment to care for them and to shape the world for their benefit. You prepare and teach them to go and do the same with their own children. As a society you plan on staying around for a long time.[xvii] You believe in God to provide for you and yours.

From this we conclude that God doesn’t want our nation to go “out of business” for lack of children. Having children is an act of faith in God’s provision, and his reward for our being faithful to Him.

Conclusion

Developed industrial nations seem to be historically nearsighted. Their peoples are too busy, perhaps too selfish to bother replacing themselves. People without children have a limited stake in the future.

Christians shouldn’t have that mindset. A godly family is a form of evangelism. Having more children in an ungodly society is a means of conquering it.[xviii] Your children are a stake in Americas’ future, your own future, and a comfort for your old age. How large a legacy do you wish to create?

Endnotes:

[i] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/02/26/its-official-japans-population-is-drastically-shrinking/

[ii] http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-japan-population-snap-story.html

[iii] https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/italian-birth-rate-continues-to-sink-and-drag-down-italian-life-satisfactio

[iv] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1117826/

[v] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/02/24/is-u-s-fertility-at-an-all-time-low-it-depends/

[vi] http://www.prb.org/Publications/Datasheets/2014/2014-world-population-data-sheet/us-fertility-decline-factsheet.aspx

[vii] http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/issue-6/after-the-baby-bust

[viii] See second endnote

[ix] http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/migration/migration.htm

[x] http://www.steynonline.com/6320/alone-again-naturally

[xi] Genesis 1:28

[xii] Genesis 1:28, 2:15

[xiii] Matthew 6:25-33

[xiv] Matthew 24:45-47

[xv] Psalm 127:3-5

[xvi] Exodus 20:12, Mark 7:9-13, 1 Timothy 5:8

[xvii] Jeremiah 29:6

[xviii] Exodus 1:7-10,20

In response to the passage of Illinois’ same-sex “marriage” law, Francis Cardinal George wrote a letter that appeared in church bulletins in which he said that “there will be consequences for the Church and society that will become clearer as the law is used to sue for discrimination …It will contribute over the long run to the further dissolution of marriage and family life, which are the bedrock of any society.” 

In preparation for today’s column on same-sex  “marriage,” Mr. Zorn emailed me this question: “What if any practical, difference will this make to those of us who are happily married mothers and fathers? I can’t think of any, but given the animation of groups like yours I thought you surely can.”

Here is my response:

Hi Eric,

With all due respect, the question, “How will the legalization of same-sex ‘marriage’ affect any particular existing marriage” is a silly question. Of course, the legalization of same-sex marriage will not affect my marriage. Similarly, the legalization of plural marriages or marriages between close blood relatives would not affect my marriage.

Some of us have concerns about the radical redefinition of marriage that go beyond the personal and parochial. We’re concerned about the rights of all children, the rights of parents five, ten, or twenty years in the future. And we’re concerned about religious liberty for our children and our children’s children. What “animates” us—to use your term—is far greater than our immediate self-interests.

But jettisoning the central constituent feature of marriage will affect society’s understanding of marriage. It will affect how and what public education teaches about marriage (and homosexuality). It will affect children, in that the redefinition of marriage necessarily and implicitly denies that children have a right to a mother and father.

Obama has issued multiple Mother’s and Father’s Day proclamations in which he asserts that mothers and fathers are essential to the lives of their children, and then he incoherently endorses a form of marriage that embodies the fanciful assumptions that mothers or fathers are interchangeable or irrelevant.

Predictions can be based on research—and by research, I assume you mean sociological research—but they  can also be based on reason. One of the problems with not just “progressives” but many on both the Left and Right is their failure to think philosophically. We don’t take the time to think through the logical outworkings of an idea (as opposed to a fallacious slippery slope).

For example, those who argue that marriage has a nature but that nature does not include sexual complementarity and further that marriage is centrally or solely constituted by intense romantic feelings have to offer reasons why plural unions should not be legal. In fact, they need to justify with reasons why marriage should be limited to only those in romantic relationships.  Why should government-sanctioned marriage recognize only romantic unions as marriages? What is the relevance to the common good of inherently sterile romantic/erotic unions? If marriage has no inherent connection to reproductive potential and it’s constituted solely by love, then there is no more reason for the government to be involved in it than there is in the government being involved in recognizing other types of non-reproductive loving relationships. There is a logical outworking of the idea that marriage has nothing to do with reproductive potential and is only constituted by love.

Predictions about the future of marriage, family life, and religious liberty can be based both on sociological research and logical thought. So, for example, there are decades of studies that show that children fare best when raised in an intact family with a mother and father. The Left likes to say that the sex of caretakers is wholly irrelevant and that all that matters is the number of parents, but that’s an assumption based on virtually nothing. Why is the number two essential to marriage while sexual complementarity is not?

It’s frustrating to see the poor research the Left trots out in support of, for example, homosexual parenting or the etiology of same-sex attraction, while they trash much larger better constructed studies that arrive at conclusions that don’t suit their political ends. No social science research is flawless, but the studies that homosexual activists and their many friends in the media extol are by and large much worse than the studies that contradict their biases.

Chai Feldblum who is a lesbian, former Georgetown University Law professor, and current member of the EEOC, has written—that is to say, predicted—that when same-sex marriage is legalized conservative people of faith will lose religious rights She argues that this is a zero-sum game in which a gain for homosexuals means a loss for conservative people of faith (“Moral Conflict and Liberty: Gay Rights and Religion”). In her prediction, she used as an illustration, Christian bed and breakfast owners who will suffer a loss of religious liberty for their refusal to rent their facilities out to homosexuals, an issue we’re seeing right here in Illinois.

It seems reasonable to predict that encoding in law the idea that marriage has no inherent connection to sexual complementarity or reproductive potential will increase the practice of homosexuals creating children to be intentionally motherless and fatherless. It seems reasonable/logical to predict that some years from now, these children will feel the kind of sorrow and resentment at being denied their birthrights that adults who were products of anonymous sperm or egg donations now feel. We are commodifying children, and that is fraught with tragic cultural implications. Read what Alana Newman says in her article, “What Are the Rights of Donor-Conceived People?”

Here’s a NY Times article on free speech case that provides evidence for the claim that the legalization of same-sex “marriage” will affect society negatively–well, that is if you value free speech.

I know that you believe religious discrimination is justifiable and permissible once someone enters the marketplace, but there are two important distinctions that must be addressed: First, providing services to homosexuals is different from providing services for a same-sex union ceremony. It is an inconvenient truth for “progressives” that the elderly baker in WA who is being sued by the state because she wouldn’t provide a cake for a homosexual “wedding” had sold baked goods to the homosexual man who had sought her services for his “wedding.” She didn’t refuse to serve a homosexual. She refused to use her goods and gifts in celebration of something that violates her religious convictions.  

Second, it is profoundly foolish ever to have included “sexual orientation” or “gender identity” in anti-discrimination policies and laws. “Sexual orientation” is merely a rhetorical invention of the Left created to render equivalent homosexuality and heterosexuality, which are not equivalent. The idea that homosexuality and heterosexuality are flipsides of the sexuality coin is an assumption that homosexuals and their ideological allies hold. That assumption is not a fact. 

Heterosexuality has an objective biological/anatomical component, which homosexuality does not. Homosexuality (unlike race) is constituted solely by subjective feelings and volitional (sexual) acts. Are “progressives” willing to add all other conditions similarly constituted to the list of protected categories?

In addition, since homosexuality (unlike race) is constituted by feelings, desires, and volitional acts, it is perfectly legitimate to assess morally.

There is zero evidence that same-sex attraction is genetically determined, and even homosexual researchers say there never will be a gene for a complex behavior like sexual attraction. But let’s hypothesize that there may be some biochemical influences in some cases for the development of same-sex attraction. Is it your argument that any behavior that is driven by an impulse or desire that is shaped to some degree by biochemistry is necessarily moral? That strikes me as a very dangerous proposition, but that’s precisely the assumption that inheres the Left’s central argument. 

Here are some other predictions based on logic:

• Once marriage is severed from any inherent connection to reproductive potential, once the revisionist view of marriage as a private relationship constituted solely by the deep feelings of those seeking to marry, it becomes meaningless as a public institution. Eventually even heterosexual investment in it will decrease as Scandinavian countries have found. Read some of the work of Stanley Kurtz on this topic.

   

• As fewer heterosexuals choose to marry and increased numbers of children are raised by single mothers or lesbians, greater numbers of children will grow up fatherless, which will increase the myriad and tragic harms that result from being deprived of fathers (click HERE  and HERE  for more information). 

   

• The law will support and propagate the radical, destructive, and fallacious idea that children have no inherent right to know and be raised by their biological parents. 

   

• The law will support and propagate the radical, destructive, and fallacious idea that mothers and fathers are interchangeable and that mothers or fathers are expendable.  Increasing numbers of children will be deliberately deprived of either a mother or father, which will harm children in incalculable and numerous ways.

   

• Public schools —including elementary schools—will expose children to non-objective homosexuality-affirming beliefs about homosexuality. 

   

• Public schools will censor all competing (i.e., conservative) views of homosexuality.

   

• Children will be taught that traditional beliefs about what marriage is are hateful, bigoted, and ignorant.

   

• Parents of children in public schools will lose the right to be the sole determiner of what their children learn about homosexuality and when they learn it. 

   

• Laws currently presume that the spouse of a woman who has given birth is the father. When homosexuals are allowed to marry that presumption becomes irrational. The government will become ever more entangled in issues related to legal parentage. Economist Jennifer Roback Morse has written extensively about this effect.

   

• For many homosexual couples, particularly male couples, sexual monogamy isn’t part of marital fidelity—not even in theory. Their ideas about what marriage is will permeate the culture. Homosexuals like Andrew Sullivan and the morally vacant Dan Savage have explicitly stated that heterosexual couples should learn from homosexual couples about the value of non-non-monogamy.

Years ago we were fed another deceit about marriage. We were told that no-fault divorce would be good for marriages and good for children. It has been disastrous for both. As Richard Weaver wrote, “Ideas have consequences.”

On what basis does the Left predict that severing marriage from sexual complementarity and reproductive potential will have no deleterious effects on marriage, children, or religious freedom?

Those who don’t believe that radical ideas shape culture over time in profound ways don’t read enough history or philosophy.

One final comment: The Left continually spews the ugly and destructive lie that everyone who believes homosexual acts are immoral hates homosexuals. Not only is that false, it’s pernicious, especially when told to children or teens. It destroys any possibility for relationships and dialogue between people of good will who disagree on what leads to human flourishing. Most of us who live in a diverse world are fully capable of enjoying the company of, admiring the good qualities of, and loving those who hold beliefs or make life choices with which we disagree. Most of us do it every day.

 Click HERE to make a tax-deductible donation to support IFI.

Robert Lopez is married, a father, and an English professor who was raised by two lesbians.  His is a critically important new voice in the battle raging around issues related to homosexuality, including the redefinition of marriage and the needs and rights of children.

In his most recent article, he offers several critical insights on children being raised by homosexuals. He states the unvarnished truth that raising children in deliberately motherless or fatherless homosexual families constitutes a form of child abuse. Exacerbating that abuse is the societal climate in which influential social structures have conspired to render it socially and emotionally impossible for children to express truthfully how they feel about their homosexual family structures unless what they have to say is unequivocally positive:

Even the most heroic mother in the world can’t father. So to intentionally deprive any child of her mother or father, except in cases like divorce for grave reasons or the death of a parent, is itself a form of abuse… Every child has a mother and father, and when that figure is missing, there is a narrative that is experienced as pain, loss, and at times shame…Whereas single parenting and divorce have always been understood as a breakdown of the married mom and dad ideal, same-sex parenting is now being elevated as normal.

…

“Normalization” demands a kind of silence from multiple parties in a child’s life. The child’s lost biological parent(s) must keep a distance or disappear to allow two gay adults to play the role of parent. Extended family must avoid asking intrusive questions and shouldn’t show any disapproval through facial expressions or gestures, schools and community associations have to downplay their celebrations of fatherhood or motherhood (even canceling Father’s Day and Mother’s Day in favor of “Parenting Day”). The media have to engage in a massive propaganda campaign, complete with Disney productions featuring lesbian mothers to stifle any objections or worries. Nobody must challenge the gay parents’ claim that all is being done for love.

Does the silence of so many surrounding parties reverse the sense of loss? No. The child still feels the loss, but learns to remain silent about it because her loss has become a taboo, a site of repression, rather than a site for healing and reconstruction. The abuse comes full circle.

…

In a recent heart-to-heart talk with Dawn Stefanowicz, a Canadian woman who was raised by her gay father, she and I lamented that many children of same-sex couples will never speak openly about how unfair it was to be denied a mother or father.

Dawn’s experience resembles mine: most kids of gay parents we know are struggling with sexual identity issues, recovering from emotional abuse, fighting drug addictions, or are so wounded by their childhood that they lack the stability to go public and face the onslaught from an increasingly totalitarian gay lobby, which refuses to admit that there’s anything wrong.

Lopez describes what all conservative activists already know: The homosexual community and its ideological allies have become a tyrannical, oppressive, poisonous cultural force that compels conformity and compounds the suffering of children intentionally denied mothers or fathers:

Pro-[same sex marriage] people say gays have been unfairly stereotyped as child abusers, so any discussion of gay child abusers is adding to their oppression. Anti-[same sex marriage] commentators generally don’t want the added fuss of showing up on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of homophobes.

…

For many kids of same-sex couples…we only count when we make gay people look good.

Otherwise, we must shut up….Same-sex parenting has been efficient at traumatizing the inhabitants of its dark side, rendering them frightened and mute, so nobody will ever know about it.

The existence of a venomous LGBT lobby capable of all-out emotional warfare against anybody who doubts same-sex parenting is of course a great help to the cause.

Lopez urges right-minded thinkers to stop tying ourselves in knots about strategy:

After a year of being in this game, I have grown wary of strategy. I don’t have a silver bullet tactic for suddenly making low-information Americans aware that all the same-sex parenting propaganda—and more broadly our growing acceptance of non-traditional parenting—is really a cover for systematic abuse. My hunch, however, is that it might be time simply to drop all the masks, put away our strategies, and just state the uncensored truth.

If you think child abuse is wrong, then say so.

And still most Christians—and shockingly their leaders—say relatively little. Ever anxious that the non-believing world in its relentless misuse of Scripture will excoriate them for judging (rightly), speck-looking, or stone-casting, Christians opt instead to become complicit in child abuse.

I recently met with an Illinois congressman who surprised me with his humility and honesty. He admitted that the one issue that he is unable to discuss with facility is homosexuality, which actually encompasses multiple policy issues including same-sex “marriage,” homosexual adoption, comprehensive sex ed, “hate” crimes legislation, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), and the Student Non-Discrimination Act (SNDA).

Many Christians want to know what they can do to try to stop the homosexuality-normalizing freight train.

First, we need the humility and honesty to acknowledge we don’t know how to discuss issues related to homosexuality with facility.

Second, we need to get educated. Our young Christians are becoming more affirming of homosexuality, not because the arc of the moral universe is bending toward justice, but because they are unwitting victims of cultural indoctrination, intimidation, and demagoguery. Go to your pastors and priests imploring them to teach the adults, high school students, and middle school students in your church about issues related to homosexuality. The church needs to step in and help its members understand and refute the utterly specious arguments used to normalize homosexuality, which if accepted will erode religious liberty, speech rights, parental rights, and children’s rights and will expand the role of government in the lives of families. If you cannot discuss with facility the following issues, you will by default become complicit in our cultural degradation:

1. What is marriage? Does it have any inherent features or do we create it out of whole cloth?
2. Why is the government involved in marriage?
3. Is the government involved in marriage to affirm love or to provide benefits to unions because of their love?
4. Why is marriage limited to two people?
5. Why shouldn’t platonic friends, two brothers, or five people of assorted genders be permitted to marry?
6. Do children have an inherent right to be raised by a mother and father?
7. How would the legalization of same-sex “marriage” affect society?
8. Is the legal prohibition of same-sex “marriage” analogous or equivalent to bans on interracial marriage?
9. Does the prohibition of same-sex “marriage” violate the separation of church and state?
10. Does the Constitution prohibit citizens from having their religious beliefs shape their political decisions?

Third, we need to be prepared to suffer for Christ and his kingdom.

Fourth and finally, we need to participate in the public dialogue on issues related to homosexuality even when it’s profoundly uncomfortable and may lead to personal or professional repercussions. We need to speak the truth without compromise, awkwardness, or self-consciousness.

Help Protect the Family Now!
Click HERE to support IFI via our secure online server. 

The average child today spends 53 hours a week in front of a screen. Have you ever wondered if media and technology have enslaved our generation? Could the greatest leap in technological advancement also have become the biggest setback in keeping us from the things that matter most in life? Has the world of screens, phones and all that comes with them become a technical utopia or a virtual prison? Is social experience more significant or shallow? Is technology all of these things or none of them?

These are the questions a remarkable new documentary called Captivated asks. The DVD looks at how communication through texting, facebook, email and other helps might actually be hurting how we communicate and interact with others.

It is impossible for most of us to completely cut off technology and this movie doesn’t say that we should. Technology has many blessings and advantages previous generations could only imagine, but with these changes come challenges too. If this interests you, take a look at the trailer about this movie here:  http://www.captivatedthemovie.com/