According to Plato the two most important questions for society is who will teach the children and what is taught to them. That was true 2,500 years ago and it is still true today. Sadly, today there simply is no agreement on who teaches the children and nothing but confusion and wildly different positions on what should be taught.

Therein lies the greatest threat to children in our modern age.

Children are inundated from all sides with conflicting messages. Some say that America is the greatest country to ever exist, while others assert that America has never been great. The United States always rushes aid to areas anywhere in the world that suffers any kind of disaster. Yet we remain reviled by many for greed, corruption and overuse of natural resources. We fought a civil war to free the slaves, leaving hundreds of thousands dead and many more than that disabled. Yet there are a significant number of people who claim we remain a systemically racist nation. Some believe and teach that we should be sexually abstinent until marriage, while others encourage sexual experimentation whenever and with whomever you want, at any age.

In many of our schools it is the dark view of America that is being taught to students. Since 2003 the percentage of Americans who report they are extremely proud of our country fell from 70% to 38% today. For those 18 to 34 years old it’s fallen to 25%. Increasingly, our schools are indoctrinating children with negative messages about our history, about our form of government, about the state of our environment, about racial and sexual injustices. Children are simultaneously becoming hooked on a host of social media platforms which have been designed, intentionally, to be addictive. Much of what we learn about current events is learned through ideologically skewed and biased social media.

Entertainment—television, movies, music, video games—likewise has become a vehicle for promoting a progressive ideology. Even formerly family friendly Disney has become fully woke, promoting race and sex-based agendas. The left leaning tilt of corporate entertainment is now being mimicked by the rest of the corporate world under the guise of ESG (environmental, social, governance).

Government at all levels has adopted one of two polar opposite approaches, progressive vs. populist. The progressives aim for more centralized government control, more socialist policies. The populists favor smaller government, more personal control and more free market polices.

Children do not understand these differences. Not even high school students have brains that are developed sufficiently to effectively sort through the key factors necessary even to understand the differences. The brain continues to grow until about age 25, when the frontal lobe, the center of reason, becomes fully developed. Until then, children tend to be governed by their feelings and are highly vulnerable to suggestion and to manipulation by adults.

Parents today largely are disengaged from their children’s education, involvement with their children’s friends, even with their extra-curricular school activities—other than acting as cab drivers. This leaves the education and influence of their children mostly in the hands of other people. Many parents do not even know what their children are learning in school, other than in very general terms. They may pay no attention to what they are watching on television, what movies they go to, who their friends are or anything about their friends or their friends’ families. Nor do they often have any idea how their children are using the smart phone they gave them or the computers and laptops they use. On average, those between 8 and 28 spend 44.5 hours a week on their digital devices, according to the Center for Parenting Education.

Remember, all during these 44.8 hours per week, as well as in school, or hanging our with their friends, children are being bathed in conflicting information. Conflicting information they are mentally incapable of resolving other than by relying on those who are most influential in their lives. Too often the most influential are peers or teachers whose values and perspectives may not align with those of the parents. Frequently, children remain confused, depressed and anxious as a result of the conflict and chaos that reigns in most elements of our culture.

It is unhealthy for children to live in this state of confusion. Children need clarity, certainty, stability. Our society is increasingly becoming hostile to childhood. In 2020, 12% of children 3 to 17 years old “had reported as having ever experienced anxiety or depression, up from 9% in 2016.” It’s no wonder. Children increasingly are being taught that it’s not even certain they are boys or girls. Instead, the educational trend now is to teach children that doctors guess what sex they are based on how they look at birth. It is up to the child, they say, to determine as they grow older what sex they really are.

One of the lesser-known experiments by Ivan Pavlov involved dogs distinguishing between a circle and an oval. The dog would be rewarded if it pointed to a circle, but punished if it pointed at an oval. The experiment involved gradually changing the oval to look more and more like a circle to see how the dogs reacted. At some point the dogs became confused. Some dogs refused to choose, but others became agitated and anxious, spinning around in circles, barking and yelping. This is what we are doing to our children.

Parents need to retake control of what their children are being taught. We can no longer depend on proxies to do our job.

The most important job of a parent is to provide a stable, safe and secure home. A big part of that is for parents to be actively engaged in what their children are being taught at school, involved in their children’s activities, fully knowledgeable about their children’s friends and their families, and actively involved in supervising their children’s online life. If parents do these things, many of the dangers children face in our culture become somewhat insignificant.

It is especially important to help their children differentiate between right and wrong, between true and false, between good touch and bad touch, between safe people and unsafe people. They need to know the difference between good guys and bad guys. And don’t neglect describing what the wolves look like.

Children need to be raised with clearly understood values, preferably Christian values. If parents do not have a clear understanding of a biblical worldview (less than 10% of Christians do) then they need to educate themselves to pass it along to their children. The Bible identifies three kinds of people: the wise person, the foolish person and the evil person. There are no other kinds. Learn how to identify them, and teach your children to do so as well.

Predators, whether sexual predators or other kinds of predators, tend to target lonely children whose parents are not engaged or whose parents are easily fooled. They capitalize on the confusion of children in order to emotionally manipulate and exploit them. Children whose parents have not provided emotional stability or are uninvolved in the child’s life, are prime targets.

Don’t let your child become one.

God ordered the world to work a certain way. He created us male and female (Genesis 1:27). He told us that marriage is between a man and a woman (Mark 10:6-7). People are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). We are to take dominion over the earth (Genesis 1:28),and worship the Creator over the creature (Romans 1:25). Operating the way God created the world to work results in a happy, healthy fruitful society.

Trying to redefine any of these things or force the world to work a different way results in brokenness, hurt, shame and guilt, and often makes those watching it feel gross, because, well, it’s unnatural. Trying to work under philosophies God didn’t design doesn’t work. The term ‘woke’ is often used to encapsulate that philosophy, and wokeness doesn’t work.

A great example of this is Disney. This entertainment giant started with family-friendly movies and videos. Walt Disney wanted a place the whole family could enjoy and experience together. It was genius. Disney became huge, and turned into multiple theme parks, hundreds of movies and T.V. shows, and billions of dollars worth of merchandise.  They catered to families, often families of young children, and people loved them. Almost every home in America has something Disney related, and the question, “Have you been to Disney?” is a frequent one.

But many Americans got a bit of shock this year, when they woke up to the realization that Disney has gone woke, and probably has been for a while (which is true, though there are debates on how long Disney has been on this path).  The alarm was sounded by Disney’s controversy over Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Law (which does a myriad of things, among them protecting children in the youngest grades from being taught sexual material). Disney kowtowed to pressure and fought pretty hard against it (which I talked about and you can watch here). Moreover, leaked videos from a company staff meeting showed that employees were actively working to push LGBTQIA+ material in as much of their entertainment as possible (one employee even bragging about how welcoming the company was to her “not so secret gay agenda”).

Parents were infuriated and showed Disney they didn’t want their children indoctrinated by canceling Disney plus and choosing to vacation somewhere else. But Disney didn’t listen. They included a lesbian kiss in their latest Toy Story movie (which didn’t do well), and a gay romance in their newest animated family movie (which has absolutely bombed at the box office, and has them on track to lose over $100 million).

Disney’s hard and fast left push has hurt them. Parents who have no desire for their children to be indoctrinated and people who just don’t want to watch that have boycotted Disney. Disney’s stock has fallen about 40 percent in the last year. More recently they company instituted job cuts, a hiring freeze, and in a startling move,  fired Bob Chapeck and rehired Bob Iger as CEO. Time will tell if he chooses to continue pushing the agenda (either openly or by moving it underground) or heeding the signs.

Wokeness doesn’t work. Deviating from God’s design for the world is costly in the most significant way – spreading sin. I’m going to close this article by quoting Romans 1 (verses 18 – 19, 20b, 22 – 27 and 32, though it’s beneficial to read the whole thing), because it  has a lot to say about this:

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.… So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him…. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error….

…Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.”

The contexts and materials “progressives” use to warp the hearts and minds of children on sexuality are far too numerous to list. The pro-homo/pro-sex-impersonation propaganda campaigns in government schools, publicly funded libraries, and children’s programming are both bold and ubiquitous. The sexually disordered among us no longer feel the need to hide their intentions to lure children into their deceptive world. Today they can get jobs in elementary schools, public library children’s departments, and the colorful cartoon universes that thrive on Amazon, Netflix, Disney, and Cartoon Network from which they light up the viral world and darken children’s worlds.

By now virtually everyone has heard about the recent viral sensation, an episode of the cartoon show Muppet Babies in which the children’s classic Cinderella is retold as a “trans”-cultist fantasy for preschoolers. Baby Gonzo is depicted as a cross-dresser wannabe who longs to go the ball dressed as a princess. After a heartstrings-pulling scene in which a pitiable baby Gonzo sadly shares that he won’t wear the princess gown of his dreams because he doesn’t want to “upset anyone,” his “fairy ratfather” grants his wish to attend the ball in a princess gown. At the ball where he identifies as his drag persona Gonzorella, Gonzo is unrecognizable to his friends. After the ball when his friends discover he was Gonzorella and ask why he didn’t tell them, he says—pitiably again—that he didn’t want to upset them. Duly chastised, baby Piggy, apologizes and repents of her prior belief that princess gowns are for girls.

Ignorant wokesters with metaphysical delusions and bent sexual drives have tossed away those unnecessary trench coats of invisibility. They know that preschool is the ideal age to manipulate the emotions of children on complex issues—the nature and implications of which preschoolers can’t possibly understand—and wokesters know they can do their manipulating openly.

Tragically, Muppet Babies was not the first or only animator’s foray into children’s propaganda. Another such effort is Steven’s Universe on the Cartoon Network created by the well-known non-binary, bisexual Rebecca Sugar. The Peabody award-winning series works tenaciously to blur the distinctions between male and female and to normalize homosexuality.

NPR reported that “Rebecca Sugar is one of the many animators who’ve been pushing—successfully—for more overt queer representation in cartoons.”

The increase in the amount of “queer” representation is staggering:

A new database from Insider confirms more than 250 LGBTQ+ characters in children’s cartoons dating back to 1983. And if you look at the data from 2010 through 2020—especially in the latter five years—the representation of overtly queer characters skyrockets. …

They say what makes shows during this decade so special is that it’s not just a handful of tokenized, possibly gay characters living in a straight world. The baseline narratives of these shows have LGBTQ lives at the center of them.

Abbey White, reporter for the Inside database, waxes enthusiastic about “queer” propaganda for children:

“I think about Danger & Eggs, I think about She-Ra, Steven Universe [and] just how overtly queer these cartoons are. … That’s really exciting to see people queering their entire narratives in ways that I think reach not just children but a broader audience.”

Sexually perverse, age-inappropriate content on Disney and Netflix makes a huge cultural splash, while even more subversive content hides in plain sight in libraries creates barely a ripple.

Libraries in public elementary, middle, and high schools are brimming with books that affirm leftist views of homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation, including some that would have been deemed obscene and pornographic before those terms were rendered obsolete by moral anarchists. An Internet search for Young Adult (YA) “LGBT” fiction—which is intended for children ages 12-18—yields countless lists of recommended books.

One influential proponent of YA “LGBT” fiction is 48-year-old homosexual author of several YA novels that affirm homosexuality, David Levithan, who serves as the senior editor of Scholastic, the well-known children’s book publisher.

A 2015 article about Levithan, who claims he’s been “out” since nursery school and has a homosexual uncle, confirms the role of YA fiction in transforming culture:

The rising popularity of YA novels has also increased their power as educational tools.

Ironically, in this article, Levithan writes this about librarians and teachers:

You’re not a librarian to keep books out of the hands of children. … [T]here are clearly many [teachers] who bring their own bias to work when they are not supposed to.

Is Levithan asserting that there are no “progressive” teachers who bring their bias against theologically orthodox Christian views to work? Is he claiming that librarians would happily include books about teens who resist their homoerotic feelings or about adults who have chosen to leave homosexual lives—assuming any such books could get through the bigoted, intolerant censors in publishing companies and book review organizations?

While “progressives” argue that all identities should be represented in library collections, they really mean all identities they deem morally justifiable. Stories about teens or adults who subordinate erotic predilections to religious convictions in publicly funded libraries? No way. Stories about homoeroticism, cross-sex impersonation, kink, and polyamory? Absolutely.

CAUTION: Pornographic cartoons of two women from Kobabe’s memoir.

Maia Kobabe, author of Gender Queer: A Memoir, which is carried in high school libraries, tells her peculiar tale of her journey to her “identity” as a genderqueer, asexual woman with a lesbian aunt and a sister who dates a woman who pretends to be a man.

The far-left American Library Association awarded Kobabe an Alex Award for her “graphic” memoir. Her memoir is graphic in both senses of the word. It’s a sexually explicit, 240-page comic book. Kobabe, who uses the “Spivak” pronouns ey/eir/em, also teaches art workshops to middle school children, mostly, she says, “AFAB” girls, which means “assigned female at birth.” Kobabe evidently doesn’t know that children aren’t assigned either a sex or “gender identity” at birth. That’s not a thing obstetricians do. Obstetricians identify the objective sex of babies at birth, a characteristic that never changes.

Judging from the flood of propaganda polluting culture, it appears oppressive “progressives” take far more seriously Aristotle’s oft-quoted statement, “Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man” than do conservatives.  And this flood of propaganda aimed like Cupid’s arrow at the hearts of children—and, therefore, the heart of civilization—will not soon be stemmed.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Warping-Childrens-Hearts-and-Minds.mp3

It took quick thinking on the part of “Jesus” to keep the action going.

The makers of “The Chosen” were filming a scene about the wedding in Cana. The critically acclaimed series about the life of Christ was in the midst of an all-night shoot in Weatherford, Texas, near Dallas. Everyone was tired, especially the young ones.

“They only had our children and one other family,” said Neal Harmon, CEO of VidAngel Studios, which distributes “The Chosen.”

“We tried to acclimate the kids to stay up all night, with moderate success.  We have a daughter who’s 5 and she’s the one who looks most Israeli. But by one or two in the morning, she was done. She started complaining to her mom, and said, ‘we have to go home.’ Then the casting director said it was time for the scene with Jesus and the young children.” The girl refused to budge.

“Jonathan [Roumie], who plays Jesus, came over and started joking with her, and without her knowing it, he got her to follow him to the table, where they began playing a game. The cameras were rolling. And they got it.

“You know, if Jesus Himself had been on the set, I believe He would have handled it like that.”

The scene is in Episode Five of “The Chosen,” which is making history as the most successful crowd-funded series of all time, viewed more than 60 million times worldwide. They are already planning six more seasons.

VidAngel, which distributes “The Chosen,” raised more than $10 million to produce Season One, and, by the end of September, had generated about $9 million to go toward Season Two, according to Mr. Harmon.

Debuting in November 2019, following a pilot in 2017, “The Chosen’s” first season had eight episodes, which can be screened at the series’ website and by downloading “The Chosen” app on Apple or Android.

Created by evangelical Christian filmmaker Dallas Jenkins, son of “Left Behind” co-author Jerry Jenkins, “The Chosen” has gripping stories and superb acting.  At the 2020 Christian Film & Television Commission’s MOVIEGUIDE awards, “The Chosen” finished in the top three in television for the Epiphany Prize.  Mr. Roumie won the television Grace Award for his portrayal of Jesus in “The Chosen: Episode 8: I Am He.”

Mr. Jenkins, 45, is an independent filmmaker who broke into the field 20 years ago with “Hometown Legend.” He has directed and produced more than a dozen feature and short films for Universal, Lionsgate, Pure Flix, Hallmark Channel and Amazon.

It’s a minor miracle that “The Chosen’s” first episodes, shot in Texas, so closely resemble the Holy Land.

The second season may look even more authentic. Shooting began in early October near Provo, Utah, on a Jerusalem set built and owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  Mr. Harmon, who is a member of the church, and works with Catholics, Protestants and Messianic Jews on the project, said that people who have been to the real Holy Land “feel like they’re in Israel when they’re on the set.”

Launched in 2013, VidAngel took over a niche that other companies such as Clean Flicks and Clean Films had filled – offering families “cleaned up” versions of Hollywood productions. That is, until Hollywood lawsuits in 2006 drove them out of business.

VidAngel gave viewers the ability to skip and mute scenes in movies and TV shows available for streaming.  As before, Hollywood was not amused, even though it helped them reach a huge, underserved audience. Disney, LucasFilm, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., Turner Entertainment, New Line Productions and MVL Film Finance sued VidAngel in 2016.

A federal judge in Los Angeles awarded the studios $62.4 million for copyright violation. VidAngel settled in September, agreeing not to “decrypt, copy, stream or distribute content of Disney, Warner Brothers, and their affiliates without permission from the Studios,” drop an appeal and pay as much as $9.9 million over 14 years.

It was actually the best thing to happen to the upstart company, said Mr. Harmon.  “We’ve had to build a system outside the system,” he told me during a telephone interview.  “It’s a beachhead for transforming entertainment for the rest of us.”

VidAngel also produces “Dry Bar Comedy,” which allows people to “vote” for their favorite comedians according to audience share and what they skip.  If the comedians stay family friendly, they get bonuses. Begun in 2017 in an old bar in Provo, Utah, that Neal and his brother Jeff Harmon leased, the series has registered more than 2 billion views, Neal said.

This past week, the company unveiled a pilot for “The Tuttle Twins,” based on books by Connor Boyack that teach kids about personal responsibility, free markets, and government.

The clean entertainment genre is rapidly expanding. Food and home improvement channels are spiking. MeTV offers classic old TV shows. UP TV and Hallmark steadily produce quality G-rated fare, although Hallmark’s insertion of “gay” themes this year may test the loyalty of its non-PC audience.  Pure Flix, founded in 2005, produces Christian-themed movies like “God’s Not Dead,” “Woodlawn,” and “Unplanned,” and has a well-stocked streaming service.

As for VidAngel, “We’re finished trying to make money for the very few Hollywood studios like Disney who abhor that we’re skipping objectionable parts of their shows and sue us for it,” Mr. Harmon said. “If they’re not willing to cooperate, we have no choice but to replace them.”

It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.

This article was originally published at Townhall.com.

Imagine if families could enjoy a movie together without the fear of being bombarded with nudity, crude language, or excessive gore. Up until recently, families could do just that. That is, until Disney and its Hollywood cohorts wielded their dark magical legal powers.

VidAngel enabled families to stream a huge array of mainstream movies and tv shows from the internet into their homes. But unlike other streaming services, the service allowed customers to filter out potentially offensive material like vulgar language, gore, drug use, and sexual content. VidAngel would bleep out any words or simply skip over scenes that were selected by the user to be filtered out.

Though it did not improve the overall cinematic production of movies (a filtered version of Batman vs. Superman was still painful to sit through), VidAngel, in many ways, made family movie nights safe again.

But in December 2016, Disney, LucasFilm, Warner Bros. and 20th Century FOX sued VidAngel, arguing the movie streaming and filtering subscription service violated copyright law.

The District Court granted the plaintiff’s preliminary injunction, forcing VidAngel to shut down the video streaming service while the litigation is underway.

VidAngel has appealed the injunction and the two sides will present oral arguments before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on June 8 in Pasadena, California.

What the appellate court decides is not the end of the matter, but will determine whether VidAngel can continue to stream content until the lawsuit is over. The decision on the injunction will come down in the upcoming months. The ultimate fate of VidAngel will not be known for quite some time.

Hollywood has long disdained the filtering of offensive content and the major studios religiously sue any filtering service they can. VidAngel and other services have offered to pay for licensing rights but are continuously refused.

To circumvent Hollywood’s refusal to license videos, VidAngel purchased massive amounts of physical DVD’s from retail stores. The customers then would purchase the movie from VidAngel, stream and watch the movie and then sell it back after they are done watching. VidAngel claims to only sell and buy back the same number of movies in proportion to the number of physical DVDs it has in its warehouse. Thus, VidAngel argues it is not breaking copyright and licensing law because the customers actually own copies of the films being filtered.

Yes, it’s confusing.

This video provides clarity about the business model and the lawsuit, described by Studio C’s Matt Meese.

Until the lawsuit is settled, families can use review sites such as PluggedIn.com and CommonSenseMedia.org to see in advance what offensive content is  in their movies, TV shows, video games, music, and even books.

Take ACTION:  Please pray that the Family Movie Act is upheld and that VidAngel’s family-friendly streaming business can resume.

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If you didn’t know who Dan Savage is, it’s probably a good thing. But right now we need you to familiarize yourselves with one of the cruelest, most vile political activists in America.

Why? Because ABC and Disney is airing a sitcom Dan Savage developed loosely based on his life.

A perusal of Dan Savage’s work reveals a career built on advocating violence — even murder — and spewing hatred against people of faith.

Savage has spared no one with whom he disagrees from his vitriolic hate speech. We have examples, but be warned, they are extremely graphic and offensive.

Watch this short Family Research Council video montage of Savage, and you’ll see just how despicable his actions are.

Despite his extremism, vulgarity, and unabashed encouragement of dangerous sexual practices, ABC’s newest sitcom with Savage as its executive producer is now airing on Tuesday evenings at 7:30 p.m. CT.

“The Real O’Neals” mocks Christianity and insults Catholicism. AFA recognizes this show ridicules people of faith, and Christians across America are offended by it.

It is almost impossible to describe the depth of depravity found in the sitcom “The Real O’Neals.” It is impossible to list them all, so here are a few scene descriptions from the show:

• Jesus appears where only the gay son can see and talk to Him, and He is annoyed by the mom’s strict guidelines for her family.
• The daughter steals money she is supposedly raising for charity.
• The daughter “attempts to prove” that there is no God in a science fair project.
• A statue of Mary is kept above the O’Neal’s toilet to remind the boys to put the seat down.
• The first jab at Jesus comes only 52 seconds into the first episode.
• The mother encourages her 16-year-old gay son to “try s-x” with a girl. (A dash ‘-‘ is used to bypass internet filters.)
• Vulgar language (ex. V-gina).
• The mom makes pancakes shaped like the face of Jesus to guilt trip her anorexic son into eating.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to sen an email to Lauren Thompson to let Simply Orange (Coca-Cola) know how disappointed you are to learn that they are spending corporate dollars to promote its products in association with the program “The Real O’Neals.”

You can also call them at: (800) 871-2653 to complain how they are using its advertising dollars to support anti-Christian bigotry and promoting animosity toward people of faith.