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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Always tolerant, liberty-loving, diversity-desiring “progressives” are fuming about a Texas bill that would prevent child welfare services providers, foster families, and adoptive families from being penalized for their faith. While Leftists claim the intent of the bill, titled “The Freedom to Serve Children Act,” is to discriminate against non-Christians, homosexuals, and unmarried couples in child placement, it’s really about stopping discrimination against Christians for exercising their First Amendment rights.

Leftists who view the shifting sands of social science as their sacred texts for determining virtue and parental wisdom hold in contempt those who look instead to Scripture for guidance. Moreover, “progressives” are either ignorant, delusional, or deceitful when it comes to both the content and reliability of their sacred texts, including social science research that compares children raised by heterosexual parents to those raised by homosexual parents.

Heidi Stevens, who writes the “Balancing Act” column in the Chicago Tribune, which focuses on “work-life balance, relationships and parenting from a feminist perspective” provides a perfect exemplar of such “progressives.” Stevens issued a full-throated unequivocal condemnation of the Texas law that if passed would allow Christian foster care and adoption agencies to refuse to place babies and children in non-Christian homes and homes headed by homosexuals.

And what was her justification for this condemnation?

With startling certainty, absolutist Stevens proclaims that “the science is clear: Children raised by same-sex parents fare just as well as children raised by opposite-sex parents.” To prove that the science is clear, Stevens pointed to a review of studies conducted by Columbia Law School researchers that found that 75 of the 79 studies–that they selected–some dating back over 30 years, “concluded that kids whose parents are gay face no disadvantages.” According to the researchers Stevens cites, “‘Taken together, this research forms an overwhelming scholarly consensus, based on over three decades of peer-reviewed research, that having a gay or lesbian parent does not harm children.’”

Whoa, Nelly.

Based on analysis provided by Leftist researchers at Leftist Columbia Law School, Leftist Stevens proclaims that social science—as distinct from hard science—proves conclusively that no harm comes to children raised by homosexuals.

In addition to her absolute certainty based on woefully unstable social science that being deprived of either a mother or father has no effect on children, Stevens fails to define “harm.” For example, one of the studies cited found that “those [young adults] who had grown up in a lesbian family were more likely to consider the possibility of having lesbian or gay relationships, and to actually do so” than those who grew up with a mother and a father. Whether the increased likelihood of experimenting with homoerotic activity constitutes harm depends on one’s definition of harm.  Stevens seems to arrogate to herself the right to define harm for everyone.

So, let’s spend a moment looking at the one study that Stevens specifically singles out for the conclusiveness of its conclusions: the “US National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study: Psychological Adjustment of 17-Year-Old Adolescents”  (NLLFS) published in 2010 in the journal Pediatrics.

Stevens wrote that the study “found that children raised by two lesbian mothers actually scored higher by social and academic measures than kids raised by opposite-sex parents. And they scored significantly lower in social problems, rule-breaking and aggressive behaviors.”

Curiously, Stevens omitted even a cursory description of the study, so here’s a bit about the study that may help illuminate whether Steven’s absolute confidence in the current state of research is warranted [emphases added]:

Between 1986 and 1992, 154 prospective lesbian mothers volunteered for a study that was designed to follow planned lesbian families from the index children’s conception until they reached adulthood. Data for the current report were gathered through… interviews and Child Behavior Checklists that were completed by their mothers at corresponding times.

According to their mothers’ reports, the 17-year-old daughters and sons of lesbian mothers were rated significantly higher in social, school/academic, and total competence and significantly lower in social problems, rule-breaking, aggressive, and externalizing problem behavior than their age-matched counterparts in Achenbach’s normative sample of American youth.

…

Between 1986 and 1992, prospective lesbian mothers…were recruited via announcements that were distributed at lesbian events, in women’s bookstores, and in lesbian newspapers throughout the metropolitan areas of Boston, Washington, DC, and San Francisco.

The study’s own authors point to several study limitations that undermine Stevens’ claim that the research is conclusive:

1.)  It was a non-random sample.

2.)  “[S]ome…participants expressed fears that legislation could be enacted to rescind the parenting rights of lesbian mothers.” In other words, participants may be motivated to skew their answers out of fear they may lose their children.

3.)  “[T]he data did not include the Achenbach Youth Self Report or Teacher’s Report Form. A more comprehensive assessment would have included reports from all 3 sources.”

4.)  The study participants and the representatives from the “normative” group “are neither matched nor controlled for race/ethnicity or region of residence.”

If Stevens had bothered to read some of the comments following the study, she may have been surprised to learn that this study isn’t quite as conclusive as she assumes. Or perhaps she did read the comments, but for political reasons, chose to ignore the inconvenient ones. Here are two comments from physicians:

“The conclusions…that children of lesbian mothers demonstrate superior psychological adjustment compared to children of traditional families, even when the parents separate before the children are fully grown, are, on their face, a bit fantastic. Is the implication, that fathers are an undesirable component of the family, to be taken at face value? Such a conclusion, notwithstanding the caveats acknowledged by the authors in their discussion, begs for a better study with randomly selected subjects, objective measurement and followup, and appropriate control groups” (Robert P. Sundel, Pediatric Rheumatologist).

“I must take issue with the interpretation and conclusions of the authors as well as the decision by Pediatrics to publish the article. The study conclusions were based solely on the parental responses to the Child Behavior Checklist. Parents who complete CBCL’s on their own children for a study that could potentially report negative findings on the outcomes of children raised in lesbian homes have a clear, self-serving bias. The fact that the study chose not to include the self reported CBCL or the teacher CBCL is mentioned, but it begs the point? Why? Were the results contradictory? On the surface it appears that the study authors are only reporting data that supports a specific, predetermined view-point. I will not be referencing this article or results as valid until ALL of the data is made public for review” (Daniel Trementozzi, Pediatrician).

This study included an alarming statistic that Stevens didn’t mention: By 2009 when the study concluded, 56 percent of the lesbian couples were no longer together. While the study didn’t include divorce statistics for the traditional families, research shows that in 2009 the divorce rate in the United States was  somewhere between 3.5 percent – 16.9 percent. The average age of the lesbians at the conclusion of the NLLF study was 52. The divorce statistic for women ages 50-59 in 2009 was 41.1 percent. It appears that lesbian relationships are really, really  unstable.

Whenever studies emerge that undermine the sacred tenets of the homosexuality-affirming ideology, Leftists point to the organizations that funded the research to cast doubt on undesirable conclusions. So, who funded this particular study that Stevens finds as unassailable as evidence that Earth is round?  Here’s who:

1.)  The Gill Foundation: Tim Gill is the infamous multi-millionaire founder of QuarkXPress and homosexual activist who pours money into state legislative races around the country to transform state legislatures into pro-homosexual political machines.

2.)  The Lesbian Health Fund of the Gay Lesbian Medical Association

3.)  Horizons Foundation: A San Francisco grant-making organization whose motto is “Fueling the LGBTQ Movement.”

4.)  Roy Scrivner Fund of the American Psychological Foundation (which is a grant-making foundation associated with the American Psychological Association). To be eligible for a grant from this fund, one must “Demonstrate commitment to LGBT family issues” and provide a “description of” the “proposed work’s…expected outcomes.” This grant is named in honor of Roy Scrivner, a homosexual activist and the founder of “the APA division of Family Psychology’s Committee on Lesbian and Gay Family Issues.”

5.)  Special thanks were offered to Dr. Ellen Perrin, an activist in support of all things homosexual whom I mentioned in a recent article on the AAP; UCLA’s Williams Institute, an “LGBT” advocacy think tank; lesbian professor Esther Rothblum; and lesbian researcher Heidi Peyser who is raising twin sons with her partner. Peyser “holds a degree in LGBTQQ psychology, and has been a reviewer for the Journal of Lesbian Studies.”

Stevens dismisses research indicating that children raised by homosexuals suffer negative consequences and seems untroubled by the fact that some of the studies she cavalierly dismisses have fewer methodological flaws than studies she and her ideological compeers at Columbia Law School favor. As one would expect, Leftists critique research whose conclusions they don’t like with a vigor and rigor they don’t apply to research whose conclusions they do like.

For those who care about diversity and critical thinking, click here, here , here and here for more information.

Stevens, presumably a defender of diversity, is offended that theologically orthodox Christian foster care and adoption agencies might want to place children with families that affirm theological orthodoxy and that don’t affirm homoerotic behavior—behavior that is clearly condemned in both the Old and New Testaments:

As for the non-Christian part of the bill: We could take a look around the world, where Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and atheists have been successfully raising children for centuries. We could take a look around our country, where the same is true…. Christians don’t have a monopoly on kindness, understanding, commitment or unconditional love — all things children need from their parents. Neither do heterosexuals.

The problem with Stevens’ claim is that no one argues that Christians or heterosexuals “have a monopoly on kindness, understanding, commitment or unconditional love” or that homosexuals, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews or atheists are incapable of loving children. This is a quintessential straw man argument.

What theologically orthodox Christian child care organizations believe is that proper parenting requires more. Here again, we first need to define “successful.” Just as Stevens may believe that the successful raising of children includes more than just teaching them about kindness, understanding, commitment, or unconditional love, so too do many Christians (and Jews and Muslims). Many Christians believe that the successful raising of children includes teaching them about Jesus and teaching them moral virtues including virtues that pertain to sexuality.

Parents from the aforementioned groups will likely not raise up children in the way they should go with regard to faith in Christ as the only way to salvation and eternal life. And homosexuals will surely not teach children that homoerotic activity jeopardizes eternal life. Does it shock Stevens or anyone else that people who follow a faith tradition believe in its precepts?

Christians believe that great harm—indeed, the greatest harm imaginable—comes to those who do not accept the substitutionary work of Christ on the cross. Those in homosexual relationships will not teach children about the need of all to repent of sins articulated in Scripture.

Stevens believes that “there’s a problem with accepting state funding while discriminating against members of the public.” There is no problem with some child placement agencies helping children (and the state) by placing children in good homes. If Leftists really cared about the needs and welfare of children, they would not force organizations like Catholic Charities to stop serving children. How does increasing the burden on other agencies and making fewer homes available for children serve the needs of already suffering children? Once again, Leftists put the desires of homosexual adults above the needs of children.

The more serious constitutional issue pertains to the violation of First Amendment religious Free Exercise protections that Leftists pursue with an unholy passion. Denying state monies to only theologically orthodox Christian child placement organizations would be unconstitutional in that it would represent favoring either non-religious organizations over religious or favoring some religious organizations (e.g., “progressive” Christian organizations) over others. All child placement agencies “discriminate.” That is, they make distinctions about what criteria best serve the needs and rights of children. “Progressives” want the unilateral right to determine what those criteria are.

Stevens quotes from a 2013 statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) that says—and I paraphrase—while the number of parents is important (i.e., the magic number 2), parental sexual differentiation is not. Maybe Stevens could write a column “libsplaining” why either mothers or fathers are dispensable but having two parents is important.

Because AAP leaders are water carriers for “progressivism,” AAP statements have no credibility on matters homosexual and “trans.” As I wrote in April, fewer than two dozen AAP members create and vote on policy, and the vast majority of members see policy statements for the first time when the public sees them via press releases.

Stevens concludes with this amusing Deep Thought: “Children deserve devotion, not dogma.” Once more for the road, some definitions:

Dogma: A principle, belief, or statement of idea or opinion, esp. one authoritatively considered to be absolute truth.

Dogmatism: Unfounded positiveness in matters of opinion; arrogant assertion of opinions as truth.

Stevens looks to Columbia Law School researchers as the authoritative arbiters of truth. Others look to the Bible.

Children deserve devotion to Scripture, not “progressive” dogmatism.

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-and, please-

Written by Walter E. Williams

In 1798, Thomas Malthus wrote “An Essay on the Principle of Population.” He predicted that mankind’s birthrate would outstrip our ability to grow food and would lead to mass starvation.

Malthus’ wrong predictions did not deter Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich from making a similar prediction.

In his 1968 best-seller, “The Population Bomb,” which has sold more than 2 million copies, Ehrlich warned: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”

This hoax resulted in billions of dollars being spent to fight overpopulation.

According to the standard understanding of the term, human overpopulation occurs when the ecological footprint of a human population in a specific geographical location exceeds the carrying capacity of the place occupied by that group.

Let’s look at one aspect of that description—namely, population density.

Let’s put you, the reader, to a test. See whether you can tell which country is richer and which is poorer just by knowing two countries’ population density.

North Korea’s population density is 518 people per square mile, whereas South Korea’s is more than double that, at 1,261 people per square mile.

Hong Kong’s population density is 16,444, whereas Somalia’s is 36.

Congo has 75 people per square mile, whereas Singapore has 18,513.

Looking at the gross domestic products of these countries, one would have to be a lunatic to believe that smaller population density leads to greater riches.

Here are some gross domestic product data expressed in millions of U.S. dollars: North Korea ($17,396), South Korea ($1,411,246), Hong Kong ($320,668), Somalia ($5,707), Congo ($41,615), and Singapore ($296,967).

The overpopulation hoax has led to horrible population control programs. The United Nations Population Fund has helped governments deny women the right to choose the number and spacing of their children.

Overpopulation concerns led China to enact a brutal one-child policy. Forced sterilization is a method of population control in some countries. Nearly a quarter-million Peruvian women were sterilized.

Our government, through the U.N. Population Fund, is involved in “population moderation” programs around the world, including in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, the Philippines, Thailand, Egypt, Turkey, Ethiopia, and Colombia.

The entire premise behind population control is based on the faulty logic that humans are not valuable resources.

The fact of business is that humans are what the late Julian L. Simon called the ultimate resource.

That fact becomes apparent by pondering this question: Why is it that Gen. George Washington did not have cellphones to communicate with his troops and rocket launchers to sink British ships anchored in New York Harbor?

Surely, all of the physical resources—such as aluminum alloys, copper, iron ore, and chemical propellants—necessary to build cellphones and rocket launchers were around during Washington’s time. In fact, they were around at the time of the caveman.

There is only one answer for why cellphones, rocket launchers, and millions of other things are around today but were not around yesteryear.

The growth in human knowledge, human ingenuity, job specialization, and trade led to industrialization, which, coupled with personal liberty and private property rights, made it possible.

Human beings are valuable resources, and the more we have of them the better.

The greatest threat to mankind’s prosperity is government, not population growth. For example, Zimbabwe was agriculturally rich but, with government interference, was reduced to the brink of mass starvation.

Any country faced with massive government interference can be brought to starvation. Blaming poverty on overpopulation not only lets governments off the hook but also encourages the enactment of harmful, inhumane policies.

Today’s poverty has little to do with overpopulation. The most commonly held characteristics of non-poor countries are greater personal liberty, private property rights, the rule of law, and an economic system closer to capitalism than to communism.

That’s the recipe for prosperity.

This article was originally posted at DailySignal.com

The Left, drifting further and further into unreality, insists on denying that conservative Christians are being persecuted in America despite unequivocal evidence to the contrary. But I guess if they’re able to deny that persons with congenital penises are male, anything is possible.

Leftists, so busy celebrating the emperor’s new gown, may not have noticed that a Catholic family smack dab in the heartland of America is being persecuted for their belief that marriage has a nature that the state cannot change.

Steven and Bridget Tennes, both military veterans and Catholic parents of five children who own the Country Mill Orchard and Cider Mill in Charlotte, Michigan, are suing the city of East Lansing, Michigan for banning them from selling fruit at a farmers’ market where they have had a booth for the past six years. The city banned Country Mill because the owners will not rent out their cider mill for same-sex “weddings.”

The Tennes’ do sell their products to homosexuals and employ homosexuals, so Leftists cannot argue that they refuse to serve homosexuals or that their refusal to host faux-weddings grows out of hatred for homosexuals.

East Lansing claims that in order for vendors to sell their wares in its farmers’ market, they must abide by East Lansing’s non-discrimination ordinance even if their businesses are not located in East Lansing. Vendors from areas that respect the constitutionally protected right of people of theologically orthodox faith to run their businesses in accordance with their faith are not welcome at the East Lansing farmers’ market.

The issue is not whether business owners should be able to discriminate—that is, make distinctions—when it comes to the type of events they will serve or products they will make. All businesses do that.

The issue is on which criteria is it permissible for business owners to base their decisions.  Many would argue that business owners should be able to take into account the content of the event for which their services are solicited. Business owners should not be able to refuse to serve an event because of non-behavioral attributes of potential customers. They should, however, be able to refuse to serve events that celebrate behavior they view as immoral.

The controversy started in 2014 when lesbian Caitlyn (Martin) Ortis inquired about having her same-sex faux-wedding at Country Mill and was turned down by Steve Tennes. Ortis then took to social media posting this, “‘When choosing a cider mill to go to, please remember that The Country Mill… refused to let Liane and I have our wedding there because of how we identify. Please support a local cider mill that does not discriminate against LGBTQIA+ folks or any folks for that matter,’”

My suggestion to East Lansingans (East Lansingians?) is to boycott this farmers’ market, which discriminates based on religion, a clear violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution.

Despite homosexual New York Times writer Frank Bruni’s claim that people of faith must restrict their free exercise of religion to “pews, homes and hearts,” the Constitution guarantees the right to freely exercise one’s religion—no qualifications, no geographic limitations. That’s why Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. felt free to urge moderate white Christians to take their sorry arses off their pews and into the public square to fight for just laws. And so there’s no confusion about what constitutes a just law, Dr. King told us in “Letter from Birmingham Jail”: “A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.”

The Tennes family rightly believes that marriage has an immutable, intrinsic nature that no tinkering of man can change. In other words, marriage is something. It has an ontology. Man does not create marriage out of whole cloth. Societies recognize and regulate a specific type of relationship that exists and we call “marriage.” Marriage is the union of one man and one woman. No law can change that reality. The law can no more change what marriage is than a new birth certificate can change the sex of Bruce Jenner.

The Bible is clear that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Biblically illiterate Leftists often claim that since Christians eat shellfish or wear clothing of mixed fabrics—both proscribed in the Old Testament—they should have no problem serving homosexual anti-weddings. These biblically illiterate Leftists don’t understand that the Old Testament contains three types of codes or laws, two types of which (i.e., holiness codes and civil codes) do not apply since Jesus appeared on the historical scene. The universal moral code, however, appertains still.

Theologically orthodox Christians understand and value marriage as a public institution that affects the public good in profound ways, but it is not the word “marriage” that magically confers public meaning and value on a relationship. It is the nature of an intrinsically marital union that renders it valuable as a public good.

For Christians, marriage is a picture of Christ and his church. Christ is the bridegroom and his bride is the church. The marital partners are of different natures. To suggest that marriage can be composed of two partners of the same sex means there is no difference in nature or role between Christ and his church. This constitutes a heresy of the first order. For the government  to command that Christians serve in any way a ceremony that embodies such an abominable heresy is profoundly troubling and should not be tolerated.

As Jesus tells us in Scripture, marriage is a sexually differentiated union composed of one man and one woman, and as Paul tells us, homosexual activity separates man from God eternally. Atheists and cafeteria Christians are free to reject the tenets of theologically orthodox Christianity, but they are not free to prohibit theologically orthodox Christian Americans from freely exercising their religion. Atheists and cafeteria Christians are not free to force theologically orthodox Christian Americans to provide products and services for a ceremony that the God they serve abhors even as he loves those who debase themselves through homoerotic activity and mock-marriage.

The Left understands the political importance of incrementalism. They chip away at truth like a sculptor at a piece of marble. And while they chip away bit by bit, creating their ugly post-modern travesties, cowardly conservatives rationalize their capitulation by saying, “It’s just a small change.”

Well, look where conservative capitulation to incremental change has landed us with regard to all matters “trans.” We’re on the cusp of a sexual revolution unheard of in the history of man: the planned obsolescence of the public recognition and accommodation of sex differences everywhere.

“Progressives” and cowardly conservatives should be ashamed to hear these words from Steve Tennes:

My wife Bridget and I volunteered to serve our country in the military to protect freedom, and that is why we feel we have to fight for freedom now, whether it’s Muslims’, Jews’, or Christians’ right to believe and live out those beliefs.

So, fellow conservatives, IFI pleads again for you to find those dusty spines in the attic where you’ve stored them with other unused cultural artifacts. Or if you’ve been walking around all Gumby-like with bendy spines, stiffen them up. Take some calcium supplements.  Then do what I’ve done: Cook up some thick skin in your basement laboratory to slip over your spanking new spines and DO SOMETHING!

• Become educated so you know how to debate these issues.
• Encourage your spineless, thin-skinned church leaders to preach and teach boldly on marriage, homosexuality, and “trans” issues—all of which are biblical issues.
• Find a new church if your church leaders are embracing homosexuality-affirming heresy.
• Teach your children well.
• Write letters to editors.
• Post your views on social media.
• Discuss these issues with friends, family, and colleagues.
• Contact your lawmakers to urge them to vote rightly on issues related to homosexuality and gender confusion.
• Hold your lawmakers accountable for bad votes.
• Don’t use opposite-sex pronouns when referring to biological-sex rejecting persons—and that means you, public school teachers.
• Become a precinct committeeman.
• Run for office.

Did I miss anything?

Listen to this as a podcast HERE.

Illinois is making national news again, and again for destructive public policy.

In an act of stunningly brazen wickedness, foolishness, and hubris, the Illinois Department of Children & Family Services (DCFS) has made radical revisions to policies regarding children who experience homoerotic attraction and/or gender dysphoria.

The DCFS, controlled—like every other government agency in Illinois—by ignorant “progressives,” has declared war on children and potential foster and adoptive families by changing rules to make affirmation of children’s homoerotic attraction and/or sexual confusion an absolute condition for employment, fostering or adopting, volunteering, or contracting with the DCFS.

Last night, DCFS director George Sheldon–Rauner’s pick in 2015–resigned, becoming the 8th director or acting director to leave the DCFS in the past five years. Sheldon leaves while still a subject of an ethics investigation and while the DCFS faces sustained and intensifying criticism for actions that have resulted in incomprehensible suffering for and even deaths of children under their care. In the midst of this turmoil, DCFS bureaucrats see fit to make radical rules changes that will further harm children.

If you can stomach it, read Appendix K of the DCFS procedures document titled “Support and Well-Being of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) Children and Youth.” It promotes every doctrinaire and arguable assumption of the far Left’s sacred sexuality ideology and even includes a Leftist lexicon for use in their indoctrination efforts.

Appendix K includes the following:

1.)  A statement of purpose which mandates that everyone who works directly or indirectly with or for the DCFS—including all staff, volunteers, potential foster or adoptive families, and private agencies that contract with the DCFS—must affirm the homoerotic desires and/or biological sex-rejection of children under the care of DCFS (and I use the word “care” loosely).

2.)  Directives on how the DCFS will impose Leftist beliefs about homoeroticism and biological sex-rejection,  including through “mandatory training in LGBTQ competency. Specifically, LGBTQ training will be part of the retraining Child Welfare license, will be included as part of PRIDE training, and will be included in DCFS core training. DCFS and POS staff must complete additional, mandatory standalone LGBTQ training at least once per year. Agencies must include LGBTQ training in their training of volunteers. Annual training in LGBTQ competent care is required for all child welfare providers; whether or not they believe they have care for [sic] or currently care for any LGBTQ child/youth.”

3.)  Dictionary of Leftist sacred sexuality Newspeak, including the terms asexuality, bisexual, cisgender, coming out, culturally competent, gay, gender expansive, gender expression, gender identity, lesbian, LGBTQ, “preferred gender pronoun (PGP),” queer, “sex assigned at birth,” and transgender.

4.)  A directive on child placement which emphasizes in boldface that “In no instance should LGBTQ children/youth be placed with a non-affirming caregiver who is opposed to sexual orientations that differ from the caregiver’s own. Nor should LGBTQ children and youth be placed with caregivers who are unwilling/unable to support children and youth whose gender identity or gender expression differs from traditional expectation.”

5.)  A directive for caregivers on “choice of clothes, make-up, hairstyle, friends, and activities within appropriate boundaries (e.g., if a caregiver permits a cisgender heterosexual child/youth to date at a certain age, the caregiver may not prohibit a gay or transgender child/youth from dating). The child/youth’s chosen name and preferred gender pronoun (including gender-neutral pronouns such as “they” or “ze/hir”) must be respected.”

6.)  Advice regarding school restroom and locker room usage: “[T]ransgender students have the right to use the gendered school facilities (e.g., restrooms and locker rooms) that correspond to the student’s gender identity. Caseworkers and caregivers should assist children/youth in obtaining their school’s permission to use these facilities.” To help caregivers force schools to allow gender-dysphoric students into opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms, the DCFS refers them to two of Illinois’ most vigorous promoters of sexual deviance: the ACLU and Illinois Safe Schools Alliance.

7.) A directive on body searches that states that “If a DCFS child/youth is to be body searched, cross-gender searches of transgender youth are prohibited. The child/youth most be searched by someone of the same gender as the child/youth’s gender identity unless the child/youth requests otherwise.” To clarify, this means that if a girl who identifies as a boy must be body-searched, the search must be conducted by a man—unless she objects because, you know, she’s actually a girl.

These changes are rationalized by the DCFS as serving the welfare of self-identified “LGBTQ” children. In the view of DCFS, these children cannot flourish unless their homoerotic desires or rejection of their sex is affirmed. In the view of DCFS, safety requires non-judgmentalism—well, except for their judgmentalism that permeates these changes and which, like arsenic in a cup of tea, is undetectable and lethal.

This is a government experiment based on Leftist theories being performed on children who can neither understand what is being done to them nor offer informed consent. And we taxpayers are footing the bill for an experiment that harms children.

The DCFS evidently doesn’t see the irony in its command that “Staff may not impose personal, organizational or religious beliefs on LGBTQ children, youth and families, and in no way should personal beliefs impact the way individual needs of children/youth or families are met.”

The entirety of the DCFS changes constitutes the imposition of arguable, leftist “personal and organizational beliefs” on children, youth, and families that will “impact the way the individual needs of children and youth are met.” The fact that the DCFS is imposing a set of beliefs through policy is revealed in its absurd, reality-denying reference to a “child/youth’s sex assigned at birth.” That is Leftist language. No child is “assigned” a sex at birth. The objective sex of children is identified at birth, and that sex can never change.

There is no research proving that children are best served by having gender dysphoria affirmed. The best research to date suggests that if gender dysphoria is not affirmed in young children, it diminishes over time. Do the omniscient powers that be at the DCFS believe it’s better for children to endure castration or double mastectomies, a lifetime of cross-sex hormone-doping with its unknown health risks, and social struggles than to accept their immutable sex? And do these government bureaucrats know with absolute certainty that when children experience a mismatch between their bodies and their subjective, internal sense of being male or female that the error rests with their healthy bodies?

Quite obviously, these changes preclude people of theologically orthodox Christian faith from fostering or adopting children who experience same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria. Denying people of theologically orthodox faith the opportunity to foster or adopt these children constitutes the antithesis of a commitment to diversity and puts the lie to DCFS’s claim to care about the needs of children. The number of available foster and adoptive families for these children who are in desperate need of love, guidance, and wisdom, will decrease. Children will be deprived of truly good families, families with mothers and fathers who can distinguish truth from falsehood. Through these changes, the DCFS has proven that the desires of adults supersede the needs of suffering children.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to contact Governor Rauner, your state senator, and state representative to express your opposition to the outrageous revisions made by the DCFS, which impose a far left-wing sexuality ideology under the cover of a purported effort to help children. In reality, these revisions harm children and families who would otherwise be willing and able to foster and adopt children who struggle with issues related to sexuality.

Listen to this as a podcast HERE.

Recent articles by Laurie Higgins:

Birth Certificates and the Cultural Extinction of Biological Sex

Questions About Restrooms and Locker Rooms Leftists Must Answer

“Trans”-Cultism and Sex-Selection Abortions

Dove Ad Features Real Dad Pretending to Be Real Mom

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The famous, specialty ice cream company, Ben and Jerry’s, has unintentionally given us further evidence that same-sex “marriage” is not marriage. How so?

The ice cream experts, who have long been known for participating in left-wing activism, went one step farther [last] week. As a headline in the Daily Mail announced, “Ben & Jerry’s BAN customers from ordering two scoops of the same ice cream until Australia legalizes gay marriage.”

That’s right. If you want two scoops of New York Super Fudge Chocolate on your ice cream cone, you can’t have it. You’ll have to settle for just one scoop or mix in another flavor.

This is Ben and Jerry’s way of sending a message: “we believe that love comes in all flavors.”

The company explained on its website: “Imagine heading down to your local Scoop Shop to order your favorite two scoops of Cookie Dough in a waffle cone,” the company wrote.

“But you find out you are not allowed… you’d be furious!

“This doesn’t even begin to compare to how furious you would be if you were told you were not allowed to marry the person you love.”

“So, we are banning two scoops of the same flavour and encouraging our fans to contact their MPs to tell them that the time has come- make same sex marriage legal! Love comes in all flavors!”

You might say, “Well, this sounds somewhat stupid, but how does it prove that same-sex marriage is not marriage?”

I’ll explain in a moment, but first, Ben and Jerry’s should realize they are heading down a slippery slope.

Will they ban three-scoop cones of any flavor until Australia legalizes throuples? Love comes in many colors, right? Will they ban one scoop of one flavor plus two scoops of another flavor until Australia legalizes polygamy? Hey, love is love, right? And if I have the right to marry the one I love, how about the ones I love? Why not?

The absurdities go on and on.

As my assistant Dylan asked after reading the Daily Mail article, “And perhaps there’s a current loophole (and bigotry) to their current position. What if some chocolate ice cream identifies as vanilla? (I mean, who are they to be so primitive as to label all chocolate ice cream chocolate just because that’s what society has done through the ages.) Can you then go ahead and get a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of trans-flavored (chocolate to vanilla) ice cream?”

In all seriousness, I understand that Ben and Jerry’s is not comparing human beings to scoops of ice cream. The company is making a point and showing solidarity. They believe they are standing up for justice and equality. I get all that.

Still, the nature of their protest is self-refuting, demonstrating the point that same-sex “marriage” is not marriage at all.

This article was originally posted at Townhall.com

Two years after the “temporary” income tax expired, rapacious Springfield lawmakers are once again working toward raising our taxes, supposedly in order to solve the state’s fiscal problems. This time they want to raise the state’s income tax from 3.75 percent to 4.95 percent, raise the corporate tax from 5.25 percent to 7 percent and expand the state’s sales tax to include certain services.

In a partisan line vote, Illinois Senate Democrats passed these ridiculous proposals in SB 9 on Tuesday afternoon by a vote of 32-26.  Most of these lawmakers honestly believe that taking more money from citizens is the solution to the problem they created, instead of living within our means (which is $32+ billion annually).

SB 9 now moves on to the Illinois House.

Yet State Senator Dan McConchie (R-Hawthorn Woods) recently gave a Facebook Live video presentation about the state budget that showed exactly how simple the problem is, as well as how simple the solution is.

The temptation for many is to make this matter of elementary math — addition and subtraction — resemble the complex study of particle physics. Actually, one of the best parallels used to explain the state budget is to compare it to a family budget. If you continue to spend more than you take in you are in for trouble.

As Sen. McConchie points out early on in his presentation, Illinois has set a new U.S. record by not having a state budget for 23 months. While 90 percent of the spending is still happening, the rate of spending is unchecked to the point where the state is falling further into debt at the rate of $15 million dollars a day.

Here’s a simple question: how can 118 state representatives, 59 state senators, a governor and his administration still continue to spend more than we can afford — to the tune of $15 million dollars a day?

According to Sen. McConchie, expected revenues for the fiscal year will be about $32 billion dollars, while expected expenditures will be about $38 billion. Basic math applied: that means the debt burden carried by Illinois families will increase by $6 billion dollars in just one year.

If that isn’t enough, our elected leaders have managed to accumulate $14.3 billion dollars in unpaid bills according to the Illinois Policy Institute.

For those interested in an overview of revenues and spending, Sen. McConchie used a few charts to lay out the details.

As you can see here, 51% of state revenues come via the income tax, 22% sales taxes, 12% Medicaid match by the federal government, and then a mix of other sources such as utility and cigarette taxes.

Sen. McConchie then showed where the money is being spent: 29% health care and family services, Medicaid, etc., 27% K-12 schools, 12% Department of Human Services, 8% higher ed, 5% Department of Corrections, and the other 19% is spread around other state agencies.

Sen. McConchie explained that negotiations continue in Springfield, but unfortunately they began with a discussion about raising taxes, not cutting spending. Sen. McConchie noted that the budget proposal presented by him and Sen. Kyle McCarter (R-Lebanon) focused on showing how the state could live within its means by cutting spending. Their “Taxpayers Bargain” budget does not contain any tax increases.

Also on the table is a massive expansion of gambling, which the Illinois Family Institute has shown to be a boondoggle every time it takes place.

Sen. McConchie did say that there are some good things happening, such as local government consolidation, procurement reform, and workers compensation reform.

Again, it is simple, just like basic math. The problem is a lack of leadership and courage to take on what is, at its core, a political problem:

The forces arrayed in support of spending are organized and well-funded and as a result, they practically own (through campaign contributions) most members of the General Assembly. Illinoisans calling for spending cuts are out-gunned despite the fact that they are not outnumbered. There are far more families and businesses suffering under an already heavy tax burden than there are beneficiaries of tax dollars.

That is also simple math: Illinois is losing population and businesses to other states because of its high tax burden.

Therefore, solving that political problem mentioned above is merely a matter of educating and activating enough of the taxpayers so their voices are heard above the din of the tax-eaters.

Bruce Rauner, who began campaigning for governor in 2013, has had four years to use his considerable wealth to do just that: educate and activate. His failure to do so is easily explained through the old but true statement: you can’t solve a problem with the same people who helped create it. Until Governor Rauner stops listening to the wrong people and starts listening to the right people, don’t expect to see any change. For the next year and a half we’ll just see the equivalent of more duct tape commercials paid for by a guy who likes to wear a gimmicky shirt as U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) has done for years.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to tell your state senator and representative to stop expanding Illinois government “revenues” on the backs of hard working citizens and families.  Instead of raising taxes, Illinois leaders must cut wasteful spending and roll back the regulations and taxes that stand in the way of real, long term growth.

Ask your state lawmakers to vote against any legislative proposal that would increase any tax burden for Illinois citizens.

The Illinois Family Institute applauds Illinois Senator Dan McConchie’s work to help inform Illinoisans about the fundamentals of our state budget crisis.

We’ll close with a third graph from Sen. McConchie showing that Illinois’ spending problems are nothing new. As bad as this looks, it gets even worse. The above numbers don’t include the pension liabilities created by government employee unions through excessively generous and unrealistic employee contracts. That, too, is a simple problem that can be fixed. But not without leadership and courage.

Here is Senator McConchie’s Video Update:

Making Illinois a place where people want to do business and can afford to raise a family will do more for the bottom line than increasing the tax burden on Illinois citizens.

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The legal recognition of homoerotic unions as marriages goes by many names. Professor Anthony Esolen calls it “pseudogamy,” and Pastor Doug Wilson calls it “same-sex mirage.” Whatever you call it, don’t call it marriage because it ain’t.

Before same-sex faux-marriage was inflicted on the nation by five black-robed miscreants, cultural regressives insisted the legal recognition of intrinsically non-marital unions as marriages would affect no one, no way, no how. Everyone with an ounce of commonsense and a dollop of intelligence knew that was yet another lie. Once society formally ceases to recognize that marriage is something by jettisoning the central, most enduring constituent feature of marriage, it ceases to be anything. Or rather, it becomes an amorphous malleable blob that can be squished into any meaningless semi-form spiritualists, libertines, and narcissists can create.

And so, we now have “self-marriages.” Oprah, goddess and CEO of the self-love cult, must be in—er, well, somewhere warm and cozy.

For those who have been too busy serving the needs of others to have read about self-marriage, it is the newest anti-marriage fad. It entails all the trappings of a wedding without the central ingredient that gives marriage its salt, light, and beauty: a sexually complementary couple. Self-marriage is an oxymoronic, moronic ontological cipher.

Self-weddings include all the accouterments of real weddings: invitations, wedding attire, rings, vows, bouquets, floral arrangements, food, and celebrations—that is self-celebrations. I can only guess what happens on the wedding night.

Rather than committing oneself sacrificially to another who is “other,” celebrants commit themselves to idolatrous self-service and self-celebration. Whereas true marriage has both personal and public meaning, self-marriage has neither.

Erika Anderson is a 2^nd-time bride. This time ‘round, she married herself. Cosmopolitan Magazine describes Anderson’s special day:

On the rooftop of her Brooklyn apartment building this past spring, Erika Anderson put on a vintage-style white wedding dress, stood before a circle of her closest friends, and committed herself — to herself.

“I choose you today,” she said. Later she tossed the bouquet to friends and downed two shots of whiskey, one for herself and one for herself. She had planned the event for weeks, sending invitations, finding the perfect dress, writing her vows, buying rosé and fresh baguettes and fruit tarts from a French bakery. For the decor: an array of shot glasses emblazoned with the words “You and Me.” In each one, a red rose.

“It wasn’t an easy decision,” she’d noted on the wedding invitations. “I had cold feet for 35 years. But then I decided it was time to settle down. To get myself a whole damn apartment. To celebrate birthday #36 by wearing an engagement ring and saying: YES TO ME. I even made a registry, because this is America.”

Anderson was married before but divorced when she was 30 because she and her husband “grew apart” after college. I wonder what will happen if she and herself have a similarly tenuous commitment to their marriage vows.

For those brides and their beloveds who can’t manage together to plan their wedding, there are websites to help. One such website is Self-Marriage Ceremonies where self-lovers can sign up to receive premarital counseling in the form of pre-recorded inspirational messages, questionnaires, and vow-writing guidance all for a mere $200.

For those who need additional guidance, Self-Marriage Ceremonies’ founder Dominique Youkhehpaz is available for private sessions at the discounted rate of $50 per 2-hour session (usually $75).

Youkhehpaz started her business in 2011 during Burning Man, an annual event that bills itself as dedicated to “community, art self-expression, and self-reliance.” I think they forgot “self-love.”

Burning Man’s motto is “a culture of possibility. A network of dreamers and doers.” Someone should tell dreamer Youkhehpaz that it’s actually not possible to marry oneself.

It’s fitting that Self-Marriage Ceremonies got its start at Burning Man. While Burning Man was the brainchild of Larry Evans and was initially held in San Francisco, it was moved to its current location in in Black Rock Desert in Nevada by John Law, who conceived of it as “Dadaist temporary autonomous zone.” Dadaism was a post WWI rebellious, irreverent art movement that rejected aesthetically pleasing imagery, convention, logic, and reason. Instead, Dadaist artists valued “nonsense, irrationality, and anti-bourgeois protest.”

Though the self-marriage movement is utterly nonsensical and irrational, a visit to the I Married Me website would make Dadaists and Jack Handy cringe. Here are some of the deep thoughts Marcel Duchamp and Jack Handy would find:

• You Should Totally Marry Yourself
• Choose Love
• Hell Yeah I’m Awesome
• To Honor Myself Is To Understand And Acknowledge That I Am Worthy
• You Are A Reason to Celebrate

Self-lovers can get the entire self-wedding kit and caboodle for the amazing bargain-basement price of $230! Imagine that. All it costs to celebrate your solemn commitment to and celebration of yourself is 230 smackers. Forget those starving children in Sudan. You’ll be contributing so much more to the world if you spend $230 (plus the cost of the actual ceremony and reception) if you marry yourself.

Dada artist Francis Picabia offered this description of Dadaism: “DADA…smells of nothing, it is nothing, nothing, nothing.”

The same could be said of self-marriage.

While these non-marriages are intended to exalt the self, in reality engaging in such empty, nonsensical  rituals that mock true marriage reflect the irrational and self-abasing nature of our anti-culture.

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This may sound like the start of a joke among a group of guys, but it is not.  Contrary to the message of feminism and pop culture, which implies that smarter women are the career executives or full time working single women, new research is finding that there is such a thing as a “mommy brain” and it is a positive thing.  Motherhood does more than make a woman tired.

Here is the technical essence of this study, which comes from the Netherlands, and found that pregnancy markedly changes the brain of a woman for the better. It notes:

Women who became pregnant between the scanning sessions showed neural changes so distinct that a computer could distinguish between pregnant and nonpregnant women based on their brain scans alone. The heightened estrogen and progesterone hormones of pregnancy trimmed back some “gray matter”—the cell branches that connect neurons to each other—which has the effect of sharpening, not diminishing, mental capacities. The neural pathways that remain are streamlined and strengthened in the process.

It isn’t so much that becoming a mom makes women smarter as if they can set aside books and still boost their IQ.  It is that pregnancy appears to reshape the brain boosting productivity which in turn makes moms more prepared and sharper for the challenges that motherhood brings.

Some research seems to indicate that this sharpness can translate into economic gains as well.  A study in Quartz called “The Ultimate Efficiency Hack: Have Kids” noted that mothers outperformed childless women in almost every single performance metric the researchers used.   That report also notes that fathers are more efficient in the workplace for most (not all) of their career than childless men.”

There is often a lot of talk about taxes during the month of April.  This year there is also some discussion of how the new Trump Administration might seek to change tax policies.

One of the too often overlooked groups carrying a disproportionately heavy tax burden in America today are married couples.  A new study from the Pew Research Center notes that even though marriage has been declining over the past 40 years in the United States, married couples still pay a lop-sided share of income taxes.

The share of married Americans has declined from 69 percent in 1970 to just 50 percent in 2014. During this time the percentage of income taxes paid by married Americans fell only six points.  During the same time period, the share of tax returns filed by married couples declined even more, from 60 percent of all federal returns in 1970 to only 38 percent in 2014.

While there is inequality in our tax system, and our tax policies should not punish something as critical to a healthy society as marriage, there is also a good reason for the disparity not often recognized in our culture.  The economics of marriage are tied to higher levels of income (and education). Therefore marrieds are more likely to pay income taxes than their single counterparts.

As professor of sociology Bradford Wilcox notes:

“Because marriage is associated with income pooling, more savings, and better economies of scale, marriage is also linked to more prosperity, net of men and women’s other background characteristics. Married families are also less likely to experience income insecurity and poverty. All these factors help explain why the married tend to pay more in taxes than the unmarried, and why married families are less likely to depend on the government for financial support.”

With all the well-documented social and economic benefits of marriage and children raised by a married mom and dad, government policies should avoid discouraging couples from marrying by excessively burdening married families with taxes.

While many researchers agree that stability is important for children, some do not think marriage is a critical factor in family stability.  Many parents must have bought into this fallacy too as more and more are choosing cohabitation over marriage.

Another study, this one from The Brookings Institute finds that there is no substitute for a married mom and dad.   U.S. children born to cohabiting parents are twice as likely to see their parents split apart than are children born to a married mother and father.

While the American numbers seem indisputable, (the twice as likely to break up statistic has been found in several other studies), some argue that cohabitation in Europe is just as stable as marriage.    The Brookings researchers ran the numbers for 16 countries in Europe and found that European kids born to cohabiting couples were at a similar risk to American children of cohabiting couples.  By the time they turn 12, European kids were 90 percent more likely to experience the splitting apart of their cohabiting parents.    In France children are 66% more likely to see parents break up if they are cohabiting rather than married.  In Norway the break up risk was 88 percent higher for cohabiting over married homes.

Written by Josephy T. Salerno

This is an excellent short video explaining the source and nature of Cultural Marxist movements like political correctness, modern feminism, pansexualism, multiculturalism, “whiteness studies,” etc.  For an in-depth critique of the thinkers whose writings shaped Cultural Marxism, see Fools, Frauds and Firebrands:  Thinkers of the New Left by the eminent British philosopher Roger Scruton.  Scruton brilliantly exposes the pretensions, obscurities, and inanities of Sartre, Foucault, Galbraith, Marcuse, Lukacs, Habermas, Adorno, Rawls, Dworkin and others of their ilk. The book is not just a philosophical tract but a work in critical political economy and contains one of the most penetrating discussions of the Marxist labor theory of value that I have ever read.

The founder and president of Family Talk says he is “shocked” by the declining values held by the generation of young American adult voters (18 to 34-year-olds) – Millennials who have been promoting the immoral agenda they have learned over years and decades past … one that works to erode the Christian faith of today’s youth, according to a WND report.

When recently speaking with Exodus Mandate Director E. Ray Moore, Dobson discussed the topic of homeschooling, which was just a trace movement in the tens of thousands back in the 1970s when he founded Focus on the Family. But now, the homeschool movement has grown to more than 2 million children – with some estimates, such as one given by the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) indicating that the number could be as high as 4 million.

Answering God’s calling

The evangelical Christian leader told Moore – whose organization’s mission is to motivate Christian parents to homeschool their children or enroll them in church-run Christian schools – that he realized the biblical call for parents to teach from home after he began his Christian ministry as a teacher and psychologist a few decades ago.

“When he was introduced to the idea – that the biblical mandate for parents to ‘train up a child in the way he should go’ was no more or less than a call for Christian parents to instruct their own children – or have them in church schools that would teach morality – it immediately struck a chord,” WND’s Bob Unruh reported.

Dobson stressed that this bit of wisdom for parents from Proverbs 22:6 lit a new flame in him for homeschooling.

“It was like putting a match to gasoline [for me],” the conservative activist told Moore in a recent series of Family Talk broadcasts. “I got it. I saw it.”

In their conversation, Moore indicated that Dobson was partially responsible for the uptick in homeschooling that began in the 1980s.

Millennial mayhem

Since then, Dobson says schools have gotten much worse in indoctrinating children in a godless, anti-Christian agenda disguised in progressive curricula found in public education.

Those children who have been subjected to Leftist propaganda in schools in decades past are today’s Millennials – the group of voters that Moore says would have put 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in the White House … if it were not for older generations tipping the ballot scales for her Republican rival, Donald Trump.

Moore pointed to research conducted by Dan Smith of the Nehemiah Institute to make his case, which indicated that Clinton would have received 504 Electoral College votes to Trump’s 23 if only Millennials voted last November – meaning the president would have won just five states.

Dobson found it hard to believe the extreme Leftist bent of today’s Millennials, as demonstrated in the 2016 election.

“That shocked me,” the influential Christian shared, taking into consideration Clinton’s numerous scandals and extremist platform on abortion and LGBT.

He then alerted Christians that Leftists are winning over the next young generation of Americans.

“They [have] been propagandized and given a philosophy that – in many cases – is contrary to Scripture and what we believe,” Dobson told Moore.

It is argued that Christians are losing their foothold in society because they have given their youth over to Leftists in the education system who aggressively undermine the teachings of the Bible in the name of “tolerance,” “science,” and so-called “multiculturalism.”

“[I]t’s because, largely, of the anti-Christian influences of public schools, attended by many impressionable and unprepared Christian children for six hours a day, 180 days a year for 12 or 13 formative years,” Unruh noted. “They’re exposed to LGBT teachings, evolution, a revisionist form of American history, Islam and worse.”

Dobson recently blasted Disney and its latest cinematic rendition of Beauty and the Beast for promoting the same LGBT agenda taught in the public schools.

“I know that this isn’t the culturally acceptable thing to say – I know I will be labeled a ‘bigot’ by the true bigots of the mainstream media for believing in the Bible’s definition of marriage – but we are way past cowering under the pressure of LGBTQ advocates,” Dobson proclaimed in a “Culture Watch” warning he issued on his site last month. “As a father, a counselor and a Christian, I will stand by what I believe – for the sake of our families and our children.”

Teaching God’s way

Insisting that Christians cannot discount what the Bible says about instruction, Moore maintains that parents must assume their roles as being primarily responsible for the education of their children.

“There’s a scriptural pattern,” the retired military chaplain, who served as Lt. Col. “The Bible’s clear the Scripture assigns the education of children to the family with assistance from the church – not the government.”

Despite the common contention that many parents make – that they are sending their young children into public schools to be God’s light – Moore has reservations about prematurely sending youngsters into the frontlines to engage in spiritual warfare on public school campuses – where they are extremely outnumbered by the enemy, which has recruited countless godless teachers, administrators and students.

“[V]ery young children are not equipped,” insisted Moore, who also serves as the president of Frontline Ministries.

He went on to urge Christians to take advantage of the break Christians got through the November election – one that has caused the Democrats’ Leftist agenda to lose some momentum.

“If we don’t change the way we do education, we’ll lose the country,” Moore impressed. “I’m 73, and those coming behind us do not agree with their own parents.”

Looking at the progressive tide that swept American education during the Obama administration, Moore says that the battle is still on for the hearts and souls of America’s youth inside the schoolhouse gate.

“We believe you can make a case with data that the main reason the culture and the next generation are turning away from traditional values – from the Gospel, from Christianity – is primarily because of the indoctrination of the public-school system,” Moore expressed.

Christians buying in to a lie …

Moore is concerned that many evangelical parents have gullibly jumped on board with public schools and share the belief that the system is working to educate and develop America’s children for the better good of the nation.

“[State-controlled children’s ‘education’ … is there anything more warmly regarded by the typical American?” he sarcastically pondered in a piece he published on Exodus Mandate last month. “Right outta the Communist Manifesto, yet adored and defended by most professing conservatives in America. Built plainly upon the satanic approach to the pursuit of knowledge, yet adored and defended by most professing Christians in America.”

Moore contended that Christians should be looking in the mirror when pointing the finger of blame for their children following a wayward path in their spiritual walk.

“I know … I know … it’s Common Core! … Nuh-uh. It’s not the Democrats, the liberals, or even Common Core… It’s the Christians,” he insisted. “We are, as always, the greatest enablers of the enemy. We are the most compliant tools in Satan’s quest to mold the minds and worldviews of our own children.”

He explained that Christians are often found defending the schools more than their own faith.

“America seems to be happily plunging itself and its children into the tyranny of Statism – primarily because professing Christians have proudly led the way,” Moore continued. “Rather than lead the culture in repentance and tearing down the enemy stronghold that is the satanic, State-controlled children’s ‘education’ system, it is professing Christians who are among the most vocal and ardent defenders of this child-eating, culture-corrupting abomination.”

The Christian expert on education points out that believers have grown too comfortable with the school system introducing anti-Christian teachings to their children day in and day out in the classroom – doing little to nothing to counteract the attack on their children’s faith by teachers and their curriculum.

“While there’s little left to wonder as to why unbelievers would buy into and strive to prop up the satanic lies at the foundation of the system feeding on the minds and souls of our young, what of the professing Church?” he pondered. “What of professing Christians? Why are we so into the satanic spin on the pursuit of knowledge?”

Moore maintains that Christians have rolled out the red carpet for public schools to undermine their children’s faith without realizing the detrimental spiritual effect such an influence has on students.

“The answers to that question are rooted in understanding that the professing Christian subculture in America has been radically reshaped through many decades of multigenerational rebellion against God – often in the name of patriotism, love, and even Christianity itself,” he added.” This open rebellion has been going on for so long that it is now invisible to the vast majority of professing Christians in America. It is the new normal of American culture because it first became the new normal of the professing Christian American subculture.”

Moore exhorted Christians to acknowledge the enemy and engage in the battle on behalf of their children before the war for their souls is lost. He encourages parents to take the education of their children into their own hands … and under God’s influence.

“We can’t even begin to slay this dragon if we won’t face it head-on,” Moore stressed. “We can’t find the answers if we won’t ask the questions. And we can’t credibly claim to be true disciples of Christ if we will not seriously strive to learn and obey all that He has commanded … including His many detailed pronouncements on the subject of children’s education – it’s all on us.”

He ended by calling Christians to take action and not sit idly by as the enemy works through the Leftist propaganda in the schools to claim their children.

“The minds and souls of our children, grandchildren and generations to come thereafter are hanging in the balance,” Moore concluded. “Now what are we going to do about it?”

This article was originally posted at OneNewsNow.com

The Marriage Foundation out of England recently published a report studying unhappily married adults.   Specifically they looked at 10,000 young marrieds who had newborn babies in 2000 or 2001.   They studied a segment of these new parents based upon the question “how happy are you in your relationship?”   Mothers were also asked if they suspect they are on the verge of separation.

They found 5 percent were unhappy in their relationship soon after the baby was born. Just under a third of these then split up. Of the majority who stayed together, only 7 percent were still unhappy ten years later.  In fact, by the time their child was 11 years old, 68 percent of those unhappy marrieds, now said they were happy in their marriage.

This is not a unique finding. A 2002 study by Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher found that two-thirds of unhappy adults who stayed together were happy five years later. They also found that those who divorced were no happier, on average, than those who stayed together.

In other words, most people who are unhappily married end up happy if they stay with it in their marriage.

The UK study also found:

• Unhappiness is, thankfully, more rare than people imagine. It affects just one in 20 parents with newborns.

• Unhappiness is usually temporary. Staying unhappy is incredibly rare. Just one in every 400 parents in the entire study was unhappy at both time points, soon after their child was born and then again when their child was 11.