Last month the US Justice Department took a look at violent crimes committed against “youth”—defined as Americans from 12 to 17 years of age.  Most of the study’s findings centered on the rise and fall of violent crime rates and numbers from 1994 through 2010.  (Click HERE for the study.)
 
Perhaps even more interesting was the finding that youth were 380 percent more likely to become the victim of a serious violent crime if the teen lived in a home where the head of the household was unmarried than if he or she lived with his married parents. In 2010, 7.4 out of every 1,000 youth living with married parents became the victims of a serious violent crime. That year 27.8 out of every 1,000 living with an unmarried householder became the victims of a serious violent crime.

Dr. Pat Fagan, director of FRC’s Marriage and Religion Research Institute, has written that “at the heart of the explosion of crime in America is the loss of the capacity of fathers and mothers to be responsible in caring for the children they bring into the world. This loss of love and guidance at the intimate levels of marriage and family has broad social consequences for children and for the wider community.” Married moms and dads mean safer homes for kids. Dr. Fagan made this argument nearly 20 years ago; I’m glad the federal government is finally catching up.

On Friday afternoon, the Illinois State Senate Executive Committee heard testimony on Senator Heather Steans‘ “Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act” (HB 4963).  With nine Democrats and 6 Republicans on this committee, the bill easily passed out of the committee by a vote of 8 to 5.  

The hearing included emotionally manipulative testimonies from a self-identifying lesbian mom and a PFLAG parent, two liberal clergy members, and Laura E. Berk,  Professor of Psychology at Illinois State University.  Testifying in favor of natural marriage include Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Paprocki, Rev. Bob Vanden Bosch and Ralph Rivera on behalf of Illinois Family Institute.

Background

The homosexual lobby, which includes Equality Illinois and the Civil Rights Agenda, are working overtime in an attempt to secure support of 60 state representatives for their marriage redefinition bill. Other politicians and groups assisting in passing the measure include Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Governor Patrick Quinn, Lt. Governor Shelia Simon, Illinois GOP Chairman Pat Brady, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Stonewall Democrats, and Illinois Log Cabin Republicans.

For the past four General Assembly sessions (8 years), a constitutional amendment to define marriage as one man and one woman has been introduced. And each year, Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) has refused to move it to a committee to be debated and voted on. If this amendment were to come before the entire General Assembly, we are confident that it would receive the two-thirds vote needed to pass. And once passed by the General Assembly, it would be placed on a ballot referendum in the next state wide election forIllinois voters to decide.

We cannot afford to ignore this situation! Illinois citizens can send a strong message by calling, emailing and/or visiting your state lawmakers in support of natural marriage.

Take ACTION:  If you haven’t yet sent an email or a fax to your state lawmakers, please do it now!  Click HERE to let them know what you think.

Please forward this article to your family and friends in Illinois.

Written by David E. Smith and Laurie Higgins

Our state lawmakers are returning to Springfield this week and are expected to debate the controversial proposal to redefine marriage, a change that would prove destructive to children, family, society, and religious liberty in Illinois.

Proponents of marriage re-definition are pulling out all the stops to get what they want during the lame duck session of the General Assembly (January 2-9). Despite the national budget crisis and the looming “fiscal cliff,” they have even pulled President Barack Obama into the debate hoping that his recent statements in favor of same-sex “marriage” will sway a few votes in Springfield.  You may remember that Obama’s views on marriage “evolved” just seven months ago. It is worth noting that President Obama has also issued multiple Mother’s Day and Father’s Day proclamations in which he extolled the critical value of both mothers and fathers in the lives of children, something denied by the legalization of same-sex “marriage.”

It is vital that your voices be heard by your state senators and representatives even if you believe they already support the historical definition of natural marriage. They are hearing from our opponents. They need to hear from you.

The silence and complacency demonstrated by far too many Illinoisans on issues related to homosexuality and children, including marriage, should be shocking. The tragedy is that it’s not. While the Left pushes their unholy agenda with tenacity and religious fervor, conservatives say and do virtually nothing out of fear and a woefully misguided notion of compassion. It’s long past time for conservatives to be as bold and tenacious in defense of marriage as the other side is in destroying it. Please take a few minutes today or tomorrow to send a message to Springfield:

Take ACTION:  1. Click HERE to email your state lawmakers today, urging them to uphold natural marriage and not to cave to the politically correct and culturally destructive groups that are intent on altering society’s definition and understanding of marriage. 

2. Pray that God would give wisdom to our state lawmakers.  Pray that God would convict the hearts of our lawmakers.  Pray that God would give courage to our lawmakers to do the right thing in the face of tremendous pressure to do otherwise. Pray that God would have mercy on the families of Illinois.

3. Write a Letter to the Editor of your local daily and weekly paper and their websites. These need to be written and submitted without delay from all corners of Illinois. Messages should be concise, no more than 150-250 words, but shorter is better. For help locating the contact information for a publication in your area, click HERE.

4. Ask your pastor to share this bulletin insert with the congregation. 

5. Share this message with family, friends and on social media.  Forward this email to like-minded contacts.  Ask them to also send emails and make calls.

Here are some talking points that may be helpful in crafting letters or talking to friends:

• Make the letter personal about you, your family, your children or someone important in your life who have been negatively affected by homosexuality.
• Those who identify as homosexual have the freedom to make lifetime commitments to whomever they wish. They have no right to redefine the institution of marriage for everyone else.
• Governments recognize the sexually complementary institution of marriage in order to protect the inherent rights and needs of children, which assures the continued health and stability of the country.
• Children have an inherent, inviolate right to know and be raised whenever possible by their biological parents, a right that is further undermined by homosexual marriage.
• If the government severs marriage from gender, sexual complementarity and procreative potential, there is no rational reason to prohibit plural marriage or incestuous marriage.
• Although subjective feelings of love are important to those choosing to marry, they are irrelevant to the government’s reasons for being involved in recognizing, regulating and promoting marriage.  The government is involved in marriage centrally to protect the rights and needs of children by securing the connection of children to their biological parents.
• Despite assurances of religious protections, people of faith will lose religious rights if same-sex “marriage” is legalized.
• The freedom to decide what our children and grandchildren are taught in schools will come under attack. Proponents of the normalization of homosexuality will vigorously push for even elementary school children to be taught about homosexuality via the topic of “diverse family structures” and “family diversity.”
• Despite what “progressives” say, legal prohibitions of same-sex “marriage” are not equivalent to bans on interracial marriage. First, homosexuality is not analogous to race.  Second, bans on interracial marriage introduced a criteria that was not essential to marriage: race. One’s race has nothing to do with the central defining feature of marriage: procreative potential. 
• Society does not create marriage; society merely recognizes a type of relationship that exists and predates the state.

Please don’t be deceived by the Left’s lie that homosexuals have the right to unilaterally jettison the central defining feature of marriage (i.e. sexual complementarity), or their lie that jettisoning sexual complementarity will not affect heterosexual marriage, or that redefining marriage will not harm children, or that being allowed to marry will make homosexual relationships more stable or sexually faithful.

There is no more significant legislative battle than the one over marriage. We must send a message to our legislators that some societal conventions and institutions embody timeless, immutable, objective truths. Sexually complementary marriage is one such institution, and it is the essential building block of every healthy society. We must  do everything within our power to protect and preserve it. Thank you!

Please forward this article to your family and friends in Illinois.

Written by Kathleen Parker

As politicians compete to prove who loves the middle class more, they’re missing the elephant and the donkey in the room.

The middle class needs not just tax breaks and jobs but also marriage.

This is the finding of a new University of Virginia and Institute for American Values report, “The State of Our Unions,” which tracks the decline of marriage among the nearly 60 percent of Americans who have high school but not college educations. This has far-reaching repercussions that are not only societal but economic as well. By one estimate cited in the report, which was written by five family scholars, the cost to taxpayers when stable families fail to form is about $112 billion annually — or more than $1 trillion per decade.

Obviously, marriage or the lack thereof isn’t the only cause of our deficit spending, but neither is it irrelevant. Consider that in the 1980s, only 13 percent of children were born outside of marriage among moderately educated mothers. By the end of this century’s first decade, the number had risen to 44 percent.

That we seem unfazed by these numbers suggests a lack of attention to the reasons marriage matters in the first place. It isn’t so that wedding planners can bilk daydreamers out of $50 billion a year or so that bridezillas can have reality TV shows. Marriage matters because children do best when raised in a stable environment with two committed parents, exceptions notwithstanding.

For whatever reasons — a fear of appearing judgmental or hypocritical, perhaps — no one makes a peep. Many of us, after all, have divorced. But this fact doesn’t mean that marriage is no longer important or that children’s needs have changed. Furthermore, this report isn’t concerned with the well-educated, who are typically better equipped to cope with dysfunction, financial or otherwise.

What happens to the other 60 percent? And what happens to a society upon whose beneficence the offspring of these broken or never-formed families ultimately may depend? Why isn’t anyone talking about this?

In the past, dramatic family changes have prompted calls to national action. The Moynihan Report of 1965 focused attention on the alarming rise of African American children born out of wedlock. In the 1990s, rising divorce rates and single motherhood spawned a fatherhood movement and welfare reform. Recently, same-sex marriage has dominated our interests.

The hollowing out of marriage in middle America cries out for similarly impassioned action. As lead author Elizabeth Marquardt writes in the report:

“Marriage is not merely a private arrangement; it is also a complex social institution. Marriage fosters small cooperative unions — also known as stable families — that enable children to thrive, shore up communities, and help family members to succeed during good times and to weather the bad times. Researchers are finding that the disappearance of marriage in Middle America is tracking with the disappearance of the middle class in the same communities, a change that strikes at the very heart of the American Dream.”

Our current debate about the fiscal cliff and entitlement spending can’t be separated from the breakdown of marriage. In the absence of stable families, economic and societal need increases. And while most good-hearted souls wish to help those in distress, we are essentially plugging holes in leaky boats. Shouldn’t we build better boats?

The report’s scholars suggest doing this with a series of federal and state proposals. One is to change the tax and welfare system, which frequently imposes financial penalties — up to 20 percent of family income — on low-income couples who choose to marry.

Another suggestion is to triple the child tax credit for children under age 3, which would have the added benefit of encouraging married people to have more children — much needed in the longer term to support the nation’s elderly.

These are but two of many, which can be viewed online at stateofourunions­.org, along with an urgent plea that President Obama include some of these thoughts in his State of the Union address next month. It insults no one to encourage couples to marry before having children, thus making a public as well as private commitment to love and care for them.

Perhaps most important, to ignore the marriage deficit among America’s middle class is essentially to be complicit in perpetuating a society of winners and losers. Those born to married, well-educated parents are more likely to prosper, while those born to fragmented families are more likely to repeat the patterns of their parents.

Therein is a national tragedy worthy of our attention.

(Re-posted from the Washington Post website.)

Thus says the LORD:  “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.”[Jeremiah 31:15]

It has happened again. This time tragedy came to Connecticut, where a lone gunman entered two classrooms at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown and opened fire, killing at least twenty children and six adults, before turning his weapons of death upon himself. The young victims, still to be officially identified, ranged in age from five to ten years. The murderer was himself young, reported to be twenty years old. According to press reports, he murdered his mother, a teacher at Sandy Hook, in her home before the rampage at the school.

Apparently, matricide preceded mass murder. Some of the children were in kindergarten, not even able to tie their own shoes. The word kindergarten comes from the German, meaning a garden for children. Sandy Hook Elementary School was no garden today. It was a place of murder, mayhem, and undisguised evil.

The calculated and premeditated nature of this crime, combined with the horror of at least twenty murdered children, makes the news almost unspeakable and unbearable. The grief of parents and loved ones in Newtown is beyond words. Yet, even in the face of such a tragedy, Christians must speak. We will have to speak in public about this evil, and we will have to speak in private about this horrible crime. How should Christians think and pray in the aftermath of such a colossal crime?

We Affirm the Sinfulness of Sin, and the Full Reality of Human Evil

First, we must recognize that this tragedy is just as evil, horrible, and ugly as it appears. Christianity does not deny the reality and power of evil, but instead calls evil by its necessary names — murder, massacre, killing, homicide, slaughter. The closer we look at this tragedy, the more it will appear unfathomable and more grotesque than the human imagination can take in.

What else can we say about the murder of children and their teachers? How can we understand the evil of killing little children one by one, forcing them to watch their little friends die and realizing that they were to be next? How can we bear this?

Resisting our instinct toward a coping mechanism, we cannot accept the inevitable claims that this young murderer is to be understood as merely sick. His heinous acts will be dismissed and minimized by some as the result of psychiatric or psychological causation, or mitigated by cultural, economic, political, or emotional factors. His crimes were sick beyond words, and he was undoubtedly unbalanced, but he pulled off a cold, calculated, and premeditated crime, monstrous in its design and accomplishment.

Christians know that this is the result of sin and the horrifying effects of The Fall. Every answer for this evil must affirm the reality and power of sin. The sinfulness of sin is never more clearly revealed than when we look into the heart of a crime like this and see the hatred toward God that precedes the murderous hatred he poured out on his little victims.

The twentieth century forced us to see the ovens of the Nazi death camps, the killing fields of Cambodia, the inhumanity of the Soviet gulags, and the failure of the world to stop such atrocities before they happened. We cannot talk of our times without reference to Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin, Pol Pot and Charles Manson, Idi Amin and Ted Bundy. More recently, we see evil in the impassive faces of Osama bin Laden and Anders Behring Brevik. We will now add yet another name to the roll call of mass murderers. His will not be the last.

The prophet Jeremiah knew the wickedness and deceit of the sinful human heart and asked the right question — who can understand it?

Beyond this, the Christian must affirm the grace of moral restraint, knowing that the real question is not why some isolated persons commit such crimes, but why such massacres are not more common. We must be thankful for the restraint of the law, operating on the human conscience. Such a crime serves to warn us that putting a curve in the law will inevitably produce a curve in the conscience. We must be thankful for the restraining grace of God that limits human evil and, rightly understood, keeps us all from killing each other.

Christians call evil what it is, never deny its horror and power, and remain ever thankful that evil will not have its full sway, or the last word.

We Affirm the Cross of Christ as the Only Adequate Remedy for Evil

There is one and only one reason that evil does not have the last word, and that is the fact that evil, sin, death, and the devil were defeated at the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. There they were defeated conclusively, comprehensively, and publicly.

On the cross, Christ bore our sins, dying in our place, offering himself freely as the perfect sacrifice for sin. The devil delighted in Christ’s agony and death on the cross, realizing too late that Christ’s substitutionary atonement spelled the devil’s own defeat and utter destruction.

Christ’s victory over sin, evil, and death was declared by the Father in raising Jesus from the dead. The resurrection of Christ is the ground of our hope and the assurance of the final and total victory of Christ over all powers, principalities, and perpetrators.

A tragedy like this cannot be answered with superficial and sentimental Christian emotivism, nor with glib dismissals of the enormity and transience of this crime. Such a tragedy calls for the most Gospel-centered Christian thinking, for the substance of biblical theology, and the solace that only the full wealth of Christian conviction can provide.

In the face of such horror, we are driven again and again to the cross and resurrection of Christ, knowing that the reconciling power of God in Christ is the only adequate answer to such a depraved and diabolical power.

We Acknowledge the Necessity of Justice, Knowing that Perfect Justice Awaits the Day of the Lord

Charles Manson sits in a California prison, even now — decades after his murderous crimes were committed. Ted Bundy was executed by the State of Florida for multiple murders, but escaped both conviction and punishment for others he is suspected of having committed. Anders Behring Brevik shot and killed scores of young people in Norway, but he was sentenced to less than thirty years in prison. Adolf Hitler took his own life, robbing human courts of their justice, and Vladimir Lenin died of natural causes.

The young murderer in Connecticut took his own life after murdering almost thirty people, most of them children. He will never face a human court, never have to face a human accuser, never stand convicted of his crimes, and never know the justice of a human sentence.

But, even as human society was robbed of the satisfaction of that justice, it would never be enough. Even if executed for his crimes, he could die only once. Even if sentenced to scores of life sentences to prison, he could forfeit only one human lifespan.

Human justice is necessary, but it is woefully incomplete. No human court can hand down an adequate sentence for such a crime, and no human judge can restore life to those who were murdered.

Crimes such as these remind us that we just yearn for the total satisfaction that will come only on the Day of the Lord, when all flesh will be judged by the only Judge who will rule with perfect righteousness and justice. On that day, the only escape will be refuge in Christ, for those who knew and confessed him as Savior and Lord. On that day, those who are in Christ will know the promise that full justice and restoration will mean that every eye is dry and tears are nevermore.

We Grieve with Those Who Grieve

For now, even as we yearn for the Day of the Lord, we grieve with those who grieve. We sit with them and pray for them and acknowledge that their loss is truly unspeakable and that their tears are unspeakably true. We pray and look for openings for grace and the hope of the gospel. We do our best to speak words of truth, love, grace, and comfort.

What of the eternal destiny of these sweet children? There is no specific text of Scripture that gives us a clear and direct answer. We must affirm with the Bible that we are conceived in sin and, as sons and daughters of Adam, will face eternal damnation unless we are found in Christ. So many of these little victims died before reaching any real knowledge of their own sinfulness and need for Christ. They, like those who die in infancy and those who suffer severe mental incapacitation, never really have the opportunity to know their need as sinners and the provision of Christ as Savior.

They are in a categorically different position than that of the person of adult consciousness who never responds in faith to the message of the Gospel. In the book of Deuteronomy, God tells the adults among the Children of Israel that, due to their sin and rebellion, they would not enter the land of promise. But the Lord then said this:

“And as for your little ones, who you said would become a prey, and your children, who today have no knowledge of good or evil, they shall go in there. And to them I will give it, and they shall possess it.” [Deuteronomy 1:39]

Many, if not all, of the little children who died in Newtown were so young that they certainly would be included among those who, like the little Israelites, “have no knowledge of good or evil.” God is sovereign, and he was not surprised that these little ones died so soon. There is biblical precedent for believing that the Lord made provision for them in the atonement accomplished by Christ, and that they are safe with Jesus.

Rachel Weeping for Her Children

The prophet Jeremiah’s reference to Rachel and her lost children is heart-breaking. “Thus says the LORD:  ‘A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.’” Like Rachel, many parents, grandparents, and loved ones are weeping inconsolably even now, refusing to be comforted for their children, because they are no more.

This tragedy is compounded in emotional force by the fact that it comes in such close proximity to Christmas, but let us never forget that there was the mass murder of children in the Christmas story as well. King Herod’s murderous decree that all baby boys under two years of age should be killed prompted Matthew to cite this very verse from Jeremiah. Rachel again was weeping for her children.

But this is not where either Jeremiah or Matthew leaves us. By God’s mercy, there is hope and the promise of full restoration in Christ.

The Lord continued to speak through Jeremiah:

Thus says the LORD: “Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears, for there is a reward for your work, declares the LORD, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope for your future, declares the LORD, and your children shall come back to their own country.”
[Jeremiah 31:16-17]

God, not the murderer, has the last word. For those in Christ, there is the promise of full restoration. Even in the face of such unmitigated horror, there is hope.“There is hope for your future, declares the Lord, and your children shall come back to your own country.”

If you’re wondering what the election results mean for the biblical definition of marriage, you’re not alone.

For the first time in history, American voters expressed their approval of same-sex “marriage.”  Until Election Day 2012, Americans in 32 states have voted to protect marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

But this year, voters in Maine, Maryland, and Washington all voted in favor of redefining marriage.  And voters in Minnesota rejected a constitutional amendment that would protect marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

These election results are being touted as a dramatic turning point in American history.  Our opponents claim that full-fledged acceptance of same-sex “marriage” by all of America is inevitable.

Additionally, the U.S. Supreme Court will soon announce whether it will hear cases involving both the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Prop 8. These are two of the most significant legal battles in our fight to protect marriage in America.

In light of these developments, many Christians are wondering if the struggle to preserve marriage is worth it.  “What’s the use?” they ask.  If you’re wondering why this battle is still important, here are 5 reasons why marriage still matters – and why it matters to you:

1. Marriage as defined by God has not changed.  Ideologies come and go.  Cultural customs can – and do – change.  Societies can decline and descend into depravity.  As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia reminded us, “Societies can rot as well as ripen.”   But God’s Truth and God’s standard remain unchanged.
   
   
2. If same-sex “marriage” is legalized, the religious freedom of your church and your pastor will be threatened.  We have seen this in other countries that are further down the road to redefining marriage.  In Sweden, a pastor was convicted of a crime for simply preaching what the Bible says about homosexual behavior.

   In Canada, a pastor wrote a letter to the newspaper editor expressing his biblical views about homosexual behavior.  He was fined $5,000 and ordered to remain silent on the topic.  Alliance Defending Freedom has successfully helped these pastors fight these charges. We are already facing battles like this in the U.S. and you can count on them becoming more frequent.

3. Your freedom to decide what your children and grandchildren are taught in schools will come under attack.  Those pushing the homosexual agenda will be in a much stronger position to influence what children are taught in public schools about sexuality and family structure.  They can use their new-found power to expose students to propaganda designed to promote sexual sin to children at earlier and earlier ages, when they are most impressionable.
   
   
4. Redefining marriage opens the door to many other alternatives.  Once a society rejects God’s standard for marriage and looks to the wisdom of man instead, all bets are off.  Without a true basis for morality, there is really nothing to stop a society from legitimizing all sorts of other relationships, including group “marriages.”

   When Canada redefined marriage in 2005, what followed was a fight to legalize polygamy.  Valiant efforts by Alliance Defending Freedom Allied Attorneys and others convinced the Supreme Court of British Columbia to not permit polygamy, but new efforts are underway within the United States to legalize plural marriages.

5. Redefining marriage will hinder the spread of the Gospel.  This is especially true when it comes to ministering to those caught in the snare of sexual sin.  When the government implicitly endorses behaviors that can ultimately lead to a person’s eternal destruction, it is an easy step to prohibit proclaiming the biblical Truth about marriage by labeling it “hate speech.” How tragic! Once a society descends to this depth, evil is labeled good, and good is labeled evil.

   Those who oppose the biblical definition of marriage and sexual sin do not just want the government’s endorsement of homosexual behavior.  As evidenced by numerous lawsuits we’re defending, many want to use the full force of the state to silence, and even punish, anyone who has convictions to the contrary.

Alliance Defending Freedom will continue the ongoing battle to preserve marriage as the union of one man and one woman.  Please pray that God showers His mercy on our nation and that His Spirit leads us to repentance.

______________________________________

Learn more about how Alliance Defending Freedom is protecting marriage and your religious liberty. 

Illinois state lawmakers return to Springfield today for the first day of the lame duck Veto Session. 

Among the many pieces of legislation the legislature might take up is HB 30, which would legalize “medical” marijuana. 

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to email your state representative now and urge him/her to vote “NO” on HB 30. 

Facts about HB 30: 

• If passed, HB 30 would allow the creation of 59 “medical” marijuana stores throughout the state of Illinois – one for each state senate district. 

• If passed, HB 30 would conflict with federal and Illinois zero tolerance drug laws. 

• HB 30 allows for a qualified patient to get 2½ ounces of marijuana every 14 days (183 joints, 13 per day). Even the most experienced marijuana drug user smokes on average three to four joints a day, which would leave roughly 135 joints, or around 1.8 ounces. The patient could sell the 1.8 ounces of marijuana for $250 to $550. Diversion of medical marijuana would be a problem for schools and teachers. 

• HB 30 would permit a qualified medical marijuana patient to drive a school bus or a car 6 hours after consumption. Research shows that a single marijuana joint with a moderate level of THC can impair a person’s ability to drive for more than 24 hours. (Leirer et al, 1991) Marijuana impairs cognitive and psychomotor performance. It can slow reaction time, impair motor coordination, limit short-term memory, and make it difficult to concentrate and perform complex tasks. 

• One third (33%) of all drivers in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) for which there were known drug test results were positive for one or more drug. Marijuana was the most frequently identified drug, accounting for 28% of drug positive drivers. (NHTSA 2010) 

• Each year, two-thirds of new marijuana users are under the age of 18. One in six of these adolescents will go on to develop marijuana use or dependence. (SAMSHA, 2010; Hall and Degenhardt, 2009) 

• Teens that start smoking marijuana regularly (20 times a month) before age 18 and are dependent show an average IQ decline of 8 points by age 38. (Persistent Cannabis User Show Neuropsychological Decline from Childhood to Midlife, Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study) 

• Colorado experienced an explosion in their medical marijuana industry and students were able to easily access marijuana from the increased number of registered users. Since 2009, public school suspensions for drug violations increased 45 percent, expulsions for drug violations increased 35 percent, and referrals to law enforcement increased 17 percent. 

Time is short. Please call your legislator now and urge him or her to oppose HB 30.  It will only take a minute, so please take action now. Then share this alert with your friends and family in Illinois so that they, too, can ask their representatives to stand against anti-family policies like HB 30. 

Thank you!

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You can also send a gift to P.O. Box 88848, Carol Stream, IL  60188.

At our 20th Anniversary Fall Banquet, Illinois Family Institute presented a Covenant Keepers Hall of Fame’s Longest Married Couple Award to Bud and Clara Cawthon of Pittsfield, Illinois. The couple celebrated their 75th anniversary of marriage in April 2012. Although the couple could not attend the banquet, a video of the couple was shown and can currently be seen HERE.

Other Covenant Keepers Hall of Fame inductees include:

There is a reason why conjugal unions have been distinguished from all others since antiquity.

Written by  Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson and Robert P. George

The U.S. Supreme Court decides next week whether to hear challenges to laws defining marriage as the conjugal union of a man and a woman. It does so after two different electoral outcomes. In May, North Carolinians voted to amend their state constitution to protect the conjugal definition of marriage, a definition that 41 states retain. But on Nov. 6, voters in Maine, Maryland and Washington state endorsed a revisionist view of marriage as the union of any two adults.

How should the Supreme Court decide? How should voters?

We can’t move one inch toward an answer simply by appealing to equality. Every marriage policy draws lines, leaving out some types of relationships. Equality forbids arbitrary line-drawing. But we cannot know which lines are arbitrary without answering two questions: What is marriage, and why does it matter for policy?

The conjugal and revisionist views are two rival answers; neither is morally neutral. Each is supported by some religious and secular worldviews but rejected by others. Nothing in the Constitution bans or favors either. The Supreme Court therefore has no basis to impose either view of marriage. So voters must decide: Which view is right?

As we argue in our book What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense, marriage is a uniquely comprehensive union. It involves a union of hearts and minds; but also—and distinctively—a bodily union made possible by sexual-reproductive complementarity. Hence marriage is inherently extended and enriched by procreation and family life and objectively calls for similarly all-encompassing commitment, permanent and exclusive.

In short, marriage unites a man and woman holistically—emotionally and bodily, in acts of conjugal love and in the children such love brings forth—for the whole of life.

These insights require no particular theology. Ancient thinkers untouched by Judaism or Christianity—including Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Musonius Rufus, Xenophanes and Plutarch—also distinguished conjugal unions from all others. Nor did animus against any group produce this conclusion, which arose everywhere quite apart from debates about same-sex unions. The conjugal view best fits our social practices and judgments about what marriage is.

After all, if two men can marry, or two women, then what sets marriage apart from other bonds must be emotional intensity or priority. But nothing about emotional union requires it to be permanent. Or limited to two. Or sexual, much less sexually exclusive. Or inherently oriented to family life and shaped by its demands. Yet as most people see, bonds that lack these features aren’t marriages.

Far from being “slippery slope” predictions, these points show that the revisionist view gets marriage wrong: It conflates marriage and companionship, an obviously broader category. That conflation has consequences. Marriage law shapes behavior by promoting a vision of what marriage is and requires. Redefinition will deepen the social distortion of marriage—and consequent harms—begun by policies such as “no-fault” divorce. As marital norms make less sense, adherence to them erodes.

Conservative scaremongering? No. Same-sex marriage activist Victoria Brownworth, like other candid revisionists, says that redefinition “almost certainly will weaken the institution of marriage,” and she welcomes that result.

Yet weakening marital norms will hurt children and spouses, especially the poorest. Rewriting the parenting ideal will also undermine in our mores and practice the special value of biological mothers and fathers. By marking support for the conjugal view as bigotry, it will curb freedoms of religion and conscience. Redefinition will do all this in the name of a basic error about what marriage is.

Some bonds remain unrecognized, and some people unmarried, under any marriage policy. If simply sharing a home creates certain needs, we can and should meet them outside civil marriage.

Moreover, if we reject the revisionist’s bare equation of marriage with companionship—and the equation of marriage licenses with all-purpose personal approval—we’ll see that conjugal marriage laws deprive no one of companionship or its joys, and mark no one as less worthy of fulfillment. (Indeed, using marriage law to express social inclusion might further marginalize whoever remains single.)

True compassion means extending authentic community to everyone, especially the marginalized, while using marriage law for the social goal that it serves best: to ensure that children know the committed love of the mother and father whose union brought them into being. Indeed, only that goal justifies regulating such intimate bonds in the first place.

Just as compassion for those attracted to the same sex doesn’t require redefining marriage, neither does preserving the conjugal view mean blaming them for its erosion. What separated the various goods that conjugal marriage joins—sex, commitment, family life—was a sexual revolution among opposite-sex partners, with harmful rises in extramarital sex and nonmarital childbearing, pornography and easy divorce.

Only when sex and marriage were seen mainly as means to emotional satisfaction and expression did a more thorough and explicit redefinition of marriage become thinkable—for the first time in human history. The current debate just confronts us with the choice to entrench these trends—or to begin reversing them.

That debate certainly isn’t about legalizing (or criminalizing) anything. In all 50 states, two men or women may have a wedding and share a life. Their employers and religious communities may recognize their unions. At issue here is whether government will effectively coerce other actors in the public square to do the same.

Also at issue is government expansion. Marital norms serve children, spouses, and hence our whole economy, especially the poor. Family breakdown thrusts the state into roles for which it is ill-suited: provider and discipliner to the orphaned and neglected, and arbiter of custody and paternity disputes.

For all these reasons, conservatives would be ill-advised to abandon support for conjugal marriage even if it hadn’t won more support than Mitt Romney in every state where marriage was on the ballot.

They certainly shouldn’t be duped into surrender by the circular argument that they’ve already lost. The ash-heap of history is filled with “inevitabilities.” Conservatives—triumphant against once-unstoppable social tides like Marxism—should know this best. “History” has no mind. The future isn’t fixed. It’s chosen. The Supreme Court should let the people choose; and we should choose marriage, conjugal marriage.

__________________________________________________________________________

Mr. Girgis is a Yale law student and doctoral student in philosophy at Princeton. Mr. Anderson is a fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Mr. George is professor of jurisprudence at Princeton and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. Their book, “What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense,” will be published in December by Encounter Books.

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) released the results of a nationwide survey conducted on Election Day of actual voters. The poll was conducted by Kellyanne Conway’s highly regarded firm, ‘the polling company, inc.’ This latest survey shows that fully 60 percent of voters believe marriage is one man and one woman, which is consistent with the 57 percent result they found in September.
 
NOM points out that despite narrowly losing in four liberal states last week after being heavily outspent 8-1 by homosexual activists, the pro-marriage position still out-performed the Republican ticket by an average of 6.6 points in those states. The facts show that it is wrong to contend that preserving marriage as the union of a man and a woman is still anything but a winning issue in America. 

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, with his finger ever on the pulse of “progressives”—I mean, Chicagoans—has discerned that two of the top three problems facing the city are the absence of casinos and legalized “same-sex marriage.”

The city’s failing schools, gang activity, murder rate, debt, unemployment, poverty, family breakdown, child abuse, and drug use pale in significance when compared to the absence of casinos. Perhaps Mayor Emanuel sees casinos as the solution to all those problems.

One of his top priorities is bringing casinos to the city, casinos that will disproportionately harm those of lesser incomes because they have less financial padding to sustain the ineluctable losses on which predatory casinos rely.

Judging from his letter to the Chicago Sun Times, his de facto top priority is same-sex marriage, which will further erode the institution of marriage, the erosion of which has already disproportionately harmed the black community.

But why should these inconvenient truths bother Emanuel when he’s got fat cat casino-backers and wealthy homosexuals in his corner.

Emanuel in a display of “progressive” ignorance and uncharacteristic mushiness claimed that “gays and lesbians are still denied one essential freedom: the right to make a lifelong commitment to the person they love.” Say what?

Every unmarried person of major age is free to marry as long as he or she is seeking to marry one person of the opposite sex who is not closely related by blood. Homosexuals are not denied the right to marry. They choose not to participate in this sexually complementary institution.

Homosexuals are simply not permitted to unilaterally jettison the central defining feature of legally sanctioned marriage: sexual complementarity.

Similarly, polyamorists may not unilaterally jettison the requirement regarding numbers of partners, and those in love with their siblings or parents may not unilaterally jettison the requirement pertaining to close blood kinship.

Moreover, homosexuals are not denied the right to make a lifelong commitment. Homosexuals may, indeed, love, have sex with, set up households with, and commit for life to any person they wish.

Mayor Emanuel seems to have adopted the view that marriage is an institution centrally or solely concerned with the loving feelings of those involved. But if that’s the case, if marriage is solely about love and has no intrinsic connection to procreation, then why does the government limit it to two people? And if marriage is solely about love, why not permit two loving brothers to marry?

If marriage were centrally or solely about the recognition of love, there would be no reason for the government to be involved. The government has no vested interest in “recognizing” subjective feelings. The government has a vested interest in the objective connection of sexually complementary coupling to procreation.

The government is in the marriage business because a two-person, sexually complementary union is how children are produced, and the government has a vested interest in recognizing, regulating, and promoting the type of relationship that can produce children—whether or not any particular couple has children.

In describing Chicago’s diversity, Mayor Emanuel paired race and “sexual orientation” revealing that he’s also bought into the intellectually vacuous comparison of race to homosexuality, which is the flawed analogy upon which the entire homosexuality-affirming house of cards is built. Whereas race is 100 percent heritable, in all cases immutable, and has no behavioral implications whatsoever, homosexuality is constituted by subjective feelings, volitional sexual acts that are legitimate objects of moral assessment, and is not 100 percent heritable.

Despite exploiting the language of the civil rights movement by trumpeting his defense of “equality,” Emanuel is not advocating for equality. He’s advocating for the unilateral redefinition of marriage by homosexuals to serve their desires.

Emanuel, envisioning himself as the Martin Luther King Jr. of the homosexual movement, proclaims “Marriage equality is the next step in our nation’s march forward. Illinois must lead the way.” Emanuel would do well to remember these words of Martin Luther King Jr.:

“How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law….An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.”

Illinois has certainly proved itself capable of leading the way, leading the way to fiscal insolvency, educational malpractice, and incomprehensible murder rates. Why not lead the way to the destruction of real marriage by pretend marriage.

I had other plans for today until I read the Chicago Tribune editorial that ebulliently celebrates the rejection in four states of the central defining feature of marriage—sexual complementarity.

In a display of astonishing hubris, the Trib editorial board has prognosticated—without evidence, I might add—that “letting same-sex couples marry does no harm to the civil institution of marriage, but promotes family stability, rewards loving commitment, and safeguards the interest of children” (Apparently in the Trib’s view, the interests of children don’t include having a mother and a father).

Further, the Trib asserts that the “public understands” all this. The Tribune editorial board arrogantly and paternalistically claims to know that the entire American public believes what the editorial board believes about “same-sex marriage.”

And how do they know what the “public understands”? They claim to know that the entire American public agrees with them on the nature and impact of “same-sex marriage” based on the narrow passage of “same-sex marriage” initiatives in four solidly Democratic states.

A larger lens may provide a corrective to the Trib’s perspective. Maine passed the same-sex marriage initiative by 53 percent and Maryland and Washington by 52  percent. In Minnesota, 51  percent of the voters opposed a constitutional amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman. What is interesting is that more voters voted against same-sex marriage than voted for Mitt Romney.

While 41  percent of Maine voters voted for Romney, 48  percent voted against same-sex marriage. In Maryland only 37  percent of voters voted for Romney, while 48  percent voted against same-sex marriage. In Washington 43  percent voted for Romney, while 48  percent voted against same-sex marriage. And in Minnesota, 45  percent voted for Romney, while 48  percent voted against same-sex marriage.

Two recent articles detail the strategies and stratagems used successfully by homosexual activists in Maine  and Minnesota:

• They secured much more funding than opponents of “same-sex marriage” did.
• They had a passionate and tenacious army of foot soldiers.
• They had significantly more support from young people.
• They have switched from intellectual arguments about “equality” and “discrimination” to demagogic appeals to emotion. They focus on feelings and “narrative,” which work in an increasingly non-rational culture (read Neil Postman’s influential book, Amusing Ourselves to Death).

In these four deep blue states, “same-sex marriage” won by slim margins, but the greater support for real marriage than for Romney raises two questions: Is the decision by many Republicans to avoid the social issues a winning strategy? And are there Republicans who simply didn’t vote because they rightly perceived that Romney is not a reliable and committed supporter of the entire Republican platform? During post-election coverage, Stephen Hayes, senior writer for the Weekly Standard, suggested that perhaps Romney’s loss indicates that he didn’t offer a sufficiently different choice to Republican voters.

This is the larger election context, but there’s a larger cultural context still, and that bodes ill for real marriage.

“Progressives” like to promote the deceit that the increasing support for “same-sex marriage” represents the natural, organic evolutionary progress of society from a state of ignorant bias to a state of enlightenment. In so doing, they fail to discuss the fact that academia, the entertainment industry, and the mainstream media have been held fast in the iron ideological grip of intolerant “progressives” for almost half a century. Combine that with the deafening silence of most conservative churches on the issue of homosexuality and surprise, surprise, Americans, particularly young Americans, are adopting “progressive” views on all things homosexual. I would argue that even many conservative adults don’t know how to respond to the specious secular arguments used to normalize homosexuality. And they’re evidently not sufficiently motivated to become informed or involved.

The truth is that the Left cares far more deeply about the destruction of marriage than the Right does about preserving it. We tolerate the intolerable with unjustifiable equanimity. We tolerate censorship in public schools. We tolerate the presentation of false and evil ideas as objective truths to little children in the schools we subsidize. And we tolerate the destruction of marriage.

Democrats and “moderate” Republicans are eager to say that social conservatives are to blame for the election losses. They may be right that conservatives are the proximate cause, in that conservatives didn’t vote in sufficient numbers to elect Republicans (or preserve marriage in four blue states). But perhaps the ultimate reasons for Republican losses were either that the candidates didn’t espouse conservative values (like Robert Dold), or that those candidates who espoused conservative values were flawed in other ways (like Joe Walsh, who is intemperate and often uncivil).

Conservatives cannot be naïve about political strategy, but we must not sacrifice truth on essential issues like marriage and life to the protean theories of political expediency pronounced with certainty by the strategist ‘o’ the day. We must “major in the majors.” Marriage and life are among the non-negotiables that must be defended with confidence, conviction, and intelligence.

There’s much talk about the soul-searching that the Republican Party will be doing in the upcoming months. If it’s going to search for its soul, I would suggest looking for it where they lost it: on the road paved with capitulation leading to the altar of political victory at any cost. 

Written By Kevin DeYoung

Try arguing with left-leaning Christians about homosexuality and within the first five minutes someone will throw divorce and remarriage in your face.  Much to my chagrin, I’ve been embroiled in debates about homosexuality many times, and every time, someone defending homosexual behavior brings up divorce.  “If marriage is so important to you,” the retort will go, “why don’t you ever talk about the sin of divorce?”  The implication being: “You are just picking on homosexuals.  You don’t follow the literal letter of the law any more than we do.  If you did, you would be focusing on divorce, because that’s the bigger issue in our churches.”

Where There’s Smoke…
When it comes to debating homosexuality, divorce is both a smokescreen and a fire.  It is a smokescreen because the two issues–divorce and homosexuality–are far from identical.  For starters, there are no groups in our denominations whose raison d’etre is the celebration of divorce.  People are not advocating new policies in our churches that affirm the goodness of divorce.  Conservatives, in the culture and in the mainline, keep talking about homosexuality because that is the fault line right now.  We’d love to talk (and do) about how to have a healthy marriage.  We’d love to talk (and do) about the glory of the Trinity, but the battle right now (at least one of them) is over homosexuality.  So we cannot be silent on this issue.

Just as importantly, the biblical prohibition against divorce explicitly allows for exceptions; the prohibition against homosexuality does not.  The traditional Protestant position, as stated in the Westminster Confession of Faith for example, maintains that divorce is permissible on grounds of marital infidelity or desertion by an unbelieving spouse.  Granted, the application of these principles is difficult and the question of remarriage after divorce gets even trickier, but almost all Protestants have always held that divorce is sometimes acceptable.  Simply put, homosexuality and divorce are different issues because according to the Bible and Christian tradition the former is always wrong, while the latter is not.

Finally, the “what about divorce?” argument is not a good as it sounds because many of our churches do take divorce seriously.  I realize that many churches don’t (more on that in a minute).  But a lot of the same churches that speak out against homosexuality also speak out against illegitimate divorce.  I’ve said more about homosexuality in the blogosphere because there’s a controversy around the issue in the wider church.  But I’ve said more about divorce in my church because this is the more dangerous issue for us (and most congregations I imagine).  Virtually every single discipline case we’ve encountered as a board of elders has been about divorce.  The majority of pastoral care crises I have been involved in have dealt with failed or failing marriages.  My church, like many others, takes seriously all kinds of sins, including illegitimate divorce.  We don’t always know how to handle every situation, but I can say with a completely clear conscience that we never turn a blind eye to divorce.

…There’s Probably Some Fire
And yet…and yet, many conservative evangelicals have been negligent in dealing with illegitimate divorce and remarriage.  Pastors have not preached on the issue for fear of offending scores of their members.  Elder Boards have not practiced church discipline on those who sin in this area because, well, they don’t practice discipline for much of anything.  Counselors, friends, and small groups have not gotten involved early enough to make a difference in pre-divorce situations.  Christian attorneys have not thought enough about their responsibility in encouraging marital reconciliation. Church leaders have not helped the uneducated to understand God’s teaching about the sanctity of marriage, and we have not helped those already wrongly remarried to experience forgiveness for their past mistakes.

So yes, there is plenty of duplicity to go around.  The evangelical church, in many places, gave up and caved in on divorce and remarriage.  But the remedy to this negligence is not more negligence.  The slow, painful cure is more biblical exposition, more active pastoral care, more faithful use of discipline, more word-saturated counseling, and more prayer–for illegitimate divorce, for homosexuality, and for all the other sins that are more easily condoned than confronted.

Kevin DeYoung is the Senior Pastor at University Reformed Church (RCA) in East Lansing, Michigan, across the street from Michigan State University.

Marijuana is one of the most hotly debated drugs of our time.  According t an important report by Kevin Sabet, PhD, Policy Consultant and Assistant Professor, University of Florida, we can say with some certainty that marijuana use is significantly linked with addiction, heart and lung complications, mental illness, car crashes, IQ loss and poor school outcomes, poor quality of life outcomes and poor job performance.  Please read and print a copy of “Just the Facts:  Marijuana and Health.”   

The upcoming election is very important.  All State Representative and Senate districts will be on the Nov ember ballot.  There will be many opportunities to talk with the current Legislators and their opponents prior to the November 6 election as they are out campaigning and asking for your vote. 

Legislators will be back in Springfield on November 27-30 and December 4-6 for the Veto Session.   Those Legislators who are not running for office and those who lose in the election can still vote until January 9, 2013.  Those “Lame Duck” Legislators are more likely to cast votes on controversial legislation, such as HB 30, which legalizes marijuana as medicine.  The bill could be called for a vote very quickly, so it’s important to talk to the state legislators who represent you and the candidates running against them BEFORE the election.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to contact your state lawmakers to ask them to oppose legalizing “medical” marijuana in the Land of Lincoln. 

Gardasil has been controversial from the beginning. While other vaccines protect against diseases spread by casual contact, Gardasil was developed to protect against a sexually transmitted disease called Human Papilloma Virus or HPV. Merck & Co., the manufacturer, has been very effective at lobbying governments around the world to make the vaccine mandatory for school attendance. Despite the frequent objections of doctors and parents, it has been administered to tens of millions of 11- and 12-year-old young girls around the world.

Now comes the case of a 16-year-old Australian girl who suffered “premature ovarian failure” after receiving Gardasil. Her ovaries have shut down, her eggs have been destroyed, and she will never be able to have children.

Dr. Deirdre Little, the Australian physician who treated the girl, has published a complete account in the British Medical Journal. (BMJ Case Reports 2012; doi:10.1136/bcr-2012-006879) Her report explains that the girl’s menstrual cycles were regular until she received the Gardasil vaccination in the Fall of 2008. By January 2009, her cycle had become irregular. Over the course of the next two years, her menses became increasingly scant and irregular, until by 2011, she had ceased menstruating altogether.

Early menopause is highly unusual. In this case, the girl was in excellent health, and had no family or personal medical history that could explain this premature menopause. Her first effort to obtain medical assistance for her amenorrhoea resulted in the doctor advising her to take oral contraceptives. Had she agreed, such drugs would have masked the problem and most likely the possible cause as well. But she declined.

It should be noted that many young girls are told, as she was, to take oral contraceptives as an antidote to what is called in the medical field, oligomenorrhoea, which means infrequent or very light menstruation. Most probably take their physician’s advice, which means that there may be many more cases of “premature ovarian failure” than we now know, since the contraceptives mask the symptoms.

In the Australian case, after testing the levels of numerous hormones, and the function of various internal organs, the girl was diagnosed by Dr. Little as having “premature ovarian failure”, which is defined as “the presence of menopausal gonadotrophin levels in association with over 3 months of amenorrhoea or oligomenorrhoea before age 40 years.” Further testing confirmed that all of her eggs—every last one—were dead. She was and is totally and irrevocably infertile.

This case was reported to the local vaccine manufacturer in Australia, called the Therapeutic Goods Administration, to find out what they knew about the vaccine’s effect on a woman’s reproductive system. Very little, it turned out. The TGA had records of various tests on rat testes, but no records of the effect of the vaccine on rat ovaries.

It is very rare for a healthy 16-year-old girl to go through menopause. It is also a personal tragedy of the first order, one that will only grow in magnitude as she marries and yearns to start a family.

While Dr. Little could not confirm that Gardasil caused the destruction of the girl’s reproductive system, she was able to rule out all other possible causes. The circumstantial evidence implicating Gardasil is strong.

The world has just celebrated what the U.N. has designated as the “International Day of the Girl Child.” In the resolution announcing this day last December, the General Assembly stated that it “Invites all Member States, relevant organizations of the United Nations system and other international organizations, as well as civil society, to observe the International Day of the Girl Child, and to raise awareness of the situation of girls around the world.” (emphasis added) The resolution talks of empowering women, enabling them to make decisions, supporting them, recognizing their human rights, and ending discrimination.

Tens of millions of young girls have received the Gardasil vaccine since its approval by the FDA six years ago. If even a tiny fraction of them have experienced infertility as a result, then these “girl children” have been denied a very fundamental right, that is, the right to decide how many children they want to have.

In the case of the Australian girl the effect is irreversible. She has lost an integral part of her womanhood, while still but a child. Women deserve better.