The suicide of a Greek pharmacist has triggered reaction around the world, and has focused attention on the economic crisis in Greece and the European Union.  However, it appears that many will take the wrong lesson from it.  There will be calls for increased taxes and spending to “protect” citizens from such an end.  That would be most foolish. 

Dimitris Christoulas’ suicide in Athens this past Wednesday was both tragic and portentous, as many nations, including the United States, are following Greece down the same pathway toward insolvency.  Mr. Christoulas sadly believed himself to be between a rock and a hard place and decided it was quite literally impossible to survive in a dignified fashion.  He declared that he would not lower himself to pick food out of the garbage. 

While there are many lessons which may be drawn from his tragic situation and choice, it seems that one all of us ought to learn is that it is dangerous to become dependent upon politicians to provide one’s daily sustenance and dignity.  It is an understatement of the highest order to say that politicians and governments are notoriously unreliable to meet such obligations.  Those of us in Illinois and especially Chicago ought to need no further instruction in such things.  If you are at all attuned to events in this state,  you are aware that numerous pension funds are grossly underfunded.  Why?  Because politicians spent the money elsewhere.  Why are Medicare and Medicaid underfunded?  Because politicians spent the money on other things.  Why is Social Security going under?  Because politicians opened the “lock-box” and spent the money on other things.  Do you get the picture?  If you are a teacher or police officer, are there rumblings about the security of your retirement?  Enough said. 

It is imperative that we understand how these things came about, and what we as individual citizens must do to protect ourselves.  It is a first truth that government is incapable of protecting our personal needs.  No one else has nearly as much interest in our futures and our children’s futures as we do.  Politicians, many of whom may be very well intentioned, will not and cannot have the same interest and concern for us as we do.  And politicians know they can buy power and influence with the wealth they confiscate from us as taxes.  Do not be fooled, that will never change. 

There will be those who will call for higher taxes.  Demands for the wealthy to “pay their fair share” will multiply.  But we must come to terms with reality: There simply is not enough money to cover the promises our politicians have made.  If you confiscate all the wealth of the rich it is not enough.  And then, having done that, what will you do next year?  If you double the taxes on the rich, it will not come close to covering these obligations.  There is simply no painless way out of the mess these elected officials have created.  

If you gave your child five dollars for school lunch, but found he was daily spending it on candy, would you keep giving him the five dollars?  If you gave your teen $20 for admission to an activity but found he spent it on drugs, would you give him another $20?  If your neighbor, in a crisis, asked you for $400 to keep him from losing his house, but you discovered he gambled it away in Las Vegas, would you give him $500 next month?  Why, after years of watching our elected officials misspend and waste multiplied billions of dollars, would you even consider reelecting officials who are demanding increased taxes from us?  They have proven repeatedly that they are incapable of wisely using our tax dollars!  

It is also important that we, as voters, accept our responsibility in this.  The blame for the economic debacle we find ourselves in does not lie solely at the feet of elected officials, but equally at the feet of many Chicago and Cook County voters.  Any objective observer of Chicago land political affairs would have to ask the obvious question: Why are these corrupt and inept officials returned to office year after year and decade after decade?  The answer of course is simple.  Multitudes of voters have made themselves dependent upon these corrupt politicians for their jobs.  The voter’s livelihood depends upon keeping certain politicians in office.  And, so we all suffer, and down the road many here may face the same horrendous dilemma Mr. Christoulas faced.   

So, what’s to be done?  First and foremost, we must take responsibility for our own lives and those of our families.  We must seek to rebuild the only institution that has through the centuries proven itself able to care for individuals, and that is the natural family.  We must resist every effort to undermine it. 

Second, we must invest in our own and our children’s futures.  There is no room for apathy and laziness here.  The current events in Europe, especially in Greece should be sufficient to convince us of the necessity of taking personal control of things such as our retirements.  There must be no misunderstanding in this.  When the government money runs out, you simply cannot create it from thin air.  Do not think that the government printing more money can fix this.  The inflation such printing creates robs from everyone, especially the poor.  If you really care for those who are most vulnerable, you cannot condone a government inflating its way out of insolvency. 

When the Huns invaded other nations, they would on occasion find themselves in need of nourishment.  If other sources failed, they would drink the blood of their powerful war horses;  However, this could only be done in moderation or they would undermine their war effort.  Even those great horses could only survive so much blood-letting.  We must understand that taxing the wealthy also has limits.  Just as a powerful horse could be crippled by over-bleeding it, so, an economy will be damaged by over-taxation.  

In the end, envy of the rich, and seeking to hurt those who create wealth by their entrepreneurial spirit will come back to haunt all of us.  It is far wiser to take responsibility for our own well-being, learn the habits of hard work, thrift, frugality and integrity, and depend far less upon the promises and platitudes of those who seek our votes. 

As President Ronald Reagan noted, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” are still rather frightening words.

By Eric Metaxas, BreakPoint

In 2010, the US crossed a significant threshold: for the first time in our history, married couples no longer form the majority of American households.

This decline in marriage was an important subject of discussion at our recent “Breaking the Spiral of Silence” conference, and a close look at the numbers tells us why.

In 1950, married couples made up 78 percent of all households. In 2010, they made up only 48 percent of American households. That’s a nearly forty percent decline!

The decline is even starker when it comes to married couples with kids: these comprise only 20 percent of households in America, less than half of their share in 1950.

Even more disturbing is the way that marriage is becoming a kind of class marker. As Charles Murray pointed in his new book, Coming Apart, better-educated and more affluent Americans are significantly more likely to get married and significantly less likely to have children out-of-wedlock than their working-class counterparts.

One Brookings Institution scholar summed up the changes by saying, “the days of Ozzie and Harriet have faded into the past.” But the impact goes far beyond 1950s sitcoms. The flight from marriage has real-world consequences.

Not surprisingly, the impacts are felt most keenly by children. Less marriage means more insecurity for children. As W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia told the New York Times, “kids are much more likely to be exposed to instability, complex family relations and poverty.”

The difference that marriage, or more precisely, the lack of it, can make in a child’s life is startling: boys reared without their fathers are two-thirds more likely to end up in prison; 35 percent of adolescent girls whose fathers left before the age of six become pregnant out of-wedlock, compared to just 5 percent of girls whose fathers did not leave before that age.

When you add the undeniable link between childhood poverty and family structure, you have to wonder how Americans can be so casual about the future of marriage

Actually, you don’t have to wonder: it’s a function of how they understand marriage. The vast majority of Americans, including most Christians, see marriage as an expression of an already-existing “relationship.” It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that people are increasingly finding other ways of expressing their relationship. It also shouldn’t surprise us that people have trouble understanding why marriage should be limited to one man and one woman.

That’s why making the case for marriage begins with asking the question “what is marriage for?” As Christians, we know that it is for the permanent joining of man and woman for the purpose of mutual love and support and the raising of children; that it exists within the context of the family of faith, the Church, and that it is a symbol of the union of Christ and his Church. In other words, marriage is much more than just a “relationship.”

And it’s time we Christians admit we haven’t always lived in ways that reflect the purpose and meaning of marriage. Because, while television has changed a great deal since the 1950s, the need for strong marriages has not.

“Christians divorce at roughly the same rate as the world!” It’s one of the most quoted stats by Christian leaders today. And it’s perhaps one of the most inaccurate.

Based on the best data available, the divorce rate among Christians is significantly lower than the general population.

Here’s the truth….

Many people who seriously practice a traditional religious faith — be it Christian or other — have a divorce rate markedly lower than the general population.

The factor making the most difference is religious commitment and practice. Couples who regularly practice any combination of serious religious behaviors and attitudes — attend church nearly every week, read their Bibles and spiritual materials regularly; pray privately and together; generally take their faith seriously, living not as perfect disciples, but serious disciples — enjoy significantly lower divorce rates than mere church members, the general public and unbelievers.

Professor Bradley Wright, a sociologist at the University of Connecticut, explains from his analysis of people who identify as Christians but rarely attend church, that 60 percent of these have been divorced. Of those who attend church regularly, 38 percent have been divorced.^[1]

Other data from additional sociologists of family and religion suggest a significant marital stability divide between those who take their faith seriously and those who do not.

W. Bradford Wilcox, a leading sociologist at the University of Virginia and director of the National Marriage Project, finds from his own analysis that “active conservative Protestants” who regularly attend church are 35 percent less likely to divorce compared to those who have no affiliation. Nominally attending conservative Protestants are 20 percent more likely to divorce, compared to secular Americans.^[2]

Professor Scott Stanley from the University of Denver, working with an absolute all-star team of leading sociologists on the Oklahoma Marriage Study, explains that couples with a vibrant religious faith had more and higher levels of the qualities couples need to avoid divorce:

“Whether young or old, male or female, low-income or not, those who said that they were more religious reported higher average levels of commitment to their partners, higher levels of marital satisfaction, less thinking and talking about divorce and lower levels of negative interaction. These patterns held true when controlling for such important variables as income, education, and age at first marriage.”

These positive factors translated into actual lowered risk of divorce among active believers.

“Those who say they are more religious are less likely, not more, to have already experienced divorce. Likewise, those who report more frequent attendance at religious services were significantly less likely to have been divorced.”^[3]

The Take-Away

The divorce rates of Christian believers are not identical to the general population — not even close. Being a committed, faithful believer makes a measurable difference in marriage.

Saying you believe something or merely belonging to a church, unsurprisingly, does little for marriage. But the more you are involved in the actual practice of your faith in real ways — through submitting yourself to a serious body of believers, learning regularly from Scripture, being in communion with God though prayer individually and with your spouse and children, and having friends and family around you who challenge you to take you marriage’s seriously — the greater difference this makes in strengthening both the quality and longevity of our marriages. Faith does matter and the leading sociologists of family and religion tell us so.

———————————— 

¹ Bradley R.E. Wright, “Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites …and Other Lies You’ve Been Told,” (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2010), p. 133.

² W. Bradford Wilcox and Elizabeth Williamson, “The Cultural Contradictions of Mainline Family Ideology and Practice,” in American Religions and the Family, edited by Don S. Browning and David A. Clairmont (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007) p. 50.

³ C.A. Johnson, S. M. Stanley, N.D. Glenn, P.A. Amato, S.L. Nock, H.J. Markman and M .R. Dion “Marriage in Oklahoma: 2001 Baseline Statewide Survey on Marriage and Divorce” (Oklahoma City, OK: Oklahoma Department of Human Services 2002) p. 25, 26.

Glenn Stanton, Focus on the Family’s Director of Family Formation Studies, published an article in National Review Online recently entitled, “Marriage, Class and Social Justice.” Stanton points to statistics indicating that marriage rates in the U.S. have divided along class lines.

Overall, marriage rates have remained steady and even increased slightly among highly educated, top-earning Americans. Meanwhile, the rates have plummeted among middle and lower-class Americans. “All other factors being equal,” Stanton writes, “the never married generally experience a reduction in wealth of 75-percent compared to their continuously married peers.” Stanton also argues that marriage has become a social justice issue.

“Our attention to the well-being of marriage among the various strata of society is not about mere traditionalism or empty moralism,” he writes. “Marriage is unarguably a central social-justice issue, a love-of-neighbor issue. No one can contend to help the poor and ignore this truth.”

Click HERE to read the National Review Online article.

Illinois Supreme Court accepts brief filed by ADF, allied attorneys in defense of parental notification law

Parents matter when their minor children seek abortions, according to the arguments of the Alliance Defense Fund and ADF-allied attorneys with the Chicago firm of Mauck & Baker in a brief filed with the Illinois Supreme Court.

Tuesday the high court accepted the friend-of-the-court brief filed on behalf of the Christian Medical and Dental Associations, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the Catholic Medical Association in defense of an Illinois law that requires parents to be notified if their minor child seeks an abortion.

Illinois Family Institute is proudly co-sponsoring Mauck & Baker’s efforts.

“Parents matter in abortion decisions,” said ADF Senior Counsel Steven H. Aden. “If abortionists truly cared about young girls, they wouldn’t be pushing to make sure parents stay in the dark while a clinic takes advantage of their daughters’ bodies and desperate situation–not to mention the life of the child in the womb.”

The brief argues that “parental involvement laws protect young women and their physicians, ensuring that full informed consent is given and a proper medical standard of care is met.”

Mauck & Baker, LLC, is lead counsel for the medical groups filing the brief. Richard Baker, Amy Parish, and Noel Sterett are three of nearly 2,100 attorneys in the ADF alliance.

American Civil Liberties Union attorneys representing an abortion clinic and an abortionist filed the lawsuit The Hope Clinic for Women v. Adams in an attempt to tear down the Illinois Parental Notice Act. A federal district court found the law constitutional in October 2010 and dismissed the ACLU’s case, which is now on appeal.

“A young child’s well being is worth much more than an abortionist’s bottom line,” Sterett said. “This law balances the needs of desperate young girls with the rights of the parents who care most about them. The Illinois Supreme Court should allow this protective law to go into effect and reject the arguments of those who want to shut parents out of their children’s critical health decisions.”

ADF is a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith. Launched in 1994, ADF employs a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family. 

According to a popular 2010 movie, the children of anonymous sperm donors are often successful at tracking down their donor dad(s), and in the end, to use the movie’s title, “The Kids Are Alright.” The AnonymousUs.org website, which features the real life stories of “voluntary and involuntary participants in these [reproductive] technologies,” paints a very different picture.

In 2010, Elizabeth Marquardt and a team of family scholars produced a deeply disturbing 140 page report entitled, “My Daddy’s Name is Donor: A New Study of Young Adults Conceived through Sperm Donation.” According to the report, “on average, young adults conceived through sperm donation are hurting more, are more confused, and feel more isolated from their families. They fare worse than their peers raised by biological parents on important outcomes such as depression, delinquency and substance abuse. Nearly two-thirds agree, ‘My sperm donor is half of who I am.’ . . . More than half say that when they see someone who resembles them they wonder if they are related. Almost as many say they have feared being attracted to or having sexual relations with someone to whom they are unknowingly related.”

Most of this would come as quite a surprise to viewers of “The Kids Are Alright,” a drama-comedy which told the story of two children conceived by artificial insemination and raised by their lesbian mothers. USA Today gave the movie high marks, saying that it “approaches perfection.” The reviewer called it “probing, poignant and, above all, highly entertaining,” without suggesting for a moment that there was anything controversial about two lesbians deciding to have kids through (anonymous) artificial insemination, thereby choosing to deprive children of a father.

But what’s the big deal? Everybody’s doing it these days, right? Just ask Elton John and his partner, who decided to bring a little boy into the world at the expense of him being raised by his biological mom. After all, what’s the big deal about having a mom and a dad?

This poem, entitled “Uncertainty is Killing Me,” just one of many on the AnonymousUs website, gives us the child’s perspective. Do we dare to stop, read, and listen?

Who are you?

Will I pass you in the street?

Will you hold the door for me and smile as I walk into a gas station during my travels?

Will you look at me and wonder if I belong to you?

You have the pleasure of knowing I could be here.

For nineteen years, I was denied of knowing you even existed.

What was MY grandmother, YOUR mother like?

What about MY grandfather, YOUR father?

Why do you get to selfishly keep them all to yourself?
Who are you to deny me half of my family tree–

Branches rich and strong with stories I may never be told?

Who are you to give away my heritage, knowing it will be replaced with something false?
Do I have brothers and sisters with my dark hair, my deep brown eyes?

Will I be attracted to a familiar stranger in my classes?

Will I fall in love with him and kiss him passionately in an act of accidental incest?
Have you told your wife?

Have you told your partner?

What about your children?

Have you told your brothers and sisters about their mysterious niece?
Are you dead?

Will you ever read this?

Have you dismissed it as something in your past that you did to make ends meet?
Did they pay you to give me away?

What did you spend the money on?

Did you buy a sparkly necklace for your ex-girlfriend?

Did you buy books?

(The bank you went to would have paid you half of my College Algebra book for the donation that included me).

Did you buy a candy bar at a gas station?

Was I worth it?
Do you miss me?

Do you ever think of me?

Do I even cross your mind?

Does the uncertainty drive you crazy?

Was it worth it?
Do you wonder when my birthday is?

What color gown I wore to my graduation?

Would you be proud to know I was the Valedictorian of my senior class?

Would you support that I am Christian?

Would you even want me in your life?

I want you in mine.

I will accept anything about you, if I could just get the privilege of knowing who you are, of knowing who my family is.

Actor Mark Ruffalo, who played the sperm donor in The Kids Are Alright, appears to have no idea that such pain exists, saying of those who stand for natural, organic (= male-female) marriage that, “It’s the last dying, kicking, screaming, caged animal response to a world that is changing, a world that’s leaving a lot of those old, bigoted, un-accepting views behind. It’s over. Those against it are very tricky and they’re using really dark ways to promote their ideas.”

Perhaps Ruffalo can tell the author of “Uncertainty is Killing Me” that the sentiments expressed there are “very tricky” and “really dark,” part of a “last dying, kicking, screaming, caged animal response to a world that is changing”?

It was Dietrich Bonhoeffer who said, “The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children.” What kind of world are we leaving to our children?

The beginning of the article in the New York Times says it all: “It used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal.” More than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage. The fastest growth in the last 20 years has occurred among white women in their 20s who have some college education but no four-year degree. This data comes from Child Trends, a Washington research group that analyzed government data.

The article points out that “the economic and social rewards of marriage” are going towards those with college educations, a group that still has largely resisted the trend towards out-of-wedlock births. Remarkably, the New York Times — “the newspaper of record” — recognizes that marriage provides “economic and social rewards,” a fact that is consistently lacking the mainstream media.

They go as far as to say that children are suffering from the trend, facing elevated risks of falling into poverty, failing in school and suffering emotional and behavioral problems. Another key fact is that almost “all of the rise in non-marital births has occurred among couples living together.” The social stigma of cohabiting before marriage fell first, and now the stigma of out-of-wedlock births has followed.  In the United States, a cohabitation relationship is more than twice as likely to dissolve than a marriage.

The bottom line: God’s institution of marriage — a father and a mother — not the government, is the ideal environment to raise the next generation of healthy and productive members of society.  Moreover, upholding and encouraging natural marriage is the best way to guard against the ever expanding role of, and need for, the nanny state.

Are you ready to take your family’s economy to the next level? Is your family ready to start a family business, but you just don’t know where to start?  Join Generations with Vision in Wheaton for the third annual Family Economics Conference on March 8-10, 2012. www.FamilyEconomics2012.com

This exciting event features a line-up of speakers who will equip your family’s economy for long-term success, including Kevin Swanson, Doug Phillips, Erik Weir, RC Sproul Jr., Steve and Teri Maxwell,  Alex and Cassie Michael aka “The Thrifty Couple,” Dave Tucker, and many more.  In addition, you’ll be encouraged by the practical wisdom in our 7+ Q&A panels, where you will have the opportunity to interact with successful, proven businessmen on a variety of topics ranging from managing money to raising young entrepreneurs.  Check out our Online Schedule for more information.

Just a sample of the topics to be addressed are:

·  Preserving Family Freedoms in the Face of Socialism

·  Raising Sons to Provide

·  Starting a Business – The First 100 Days

·  Household Budget Management

·  Marketing a Family Business

·  Household Chores and Time Management

·  Nobody Owes You a Job!  A Challenge for Young Men

·  A Special Proverbs 31 Track for Ladies

·  …and much more!

Also included in the price of registration is a family pass to the 2012 Annual Liberty Day Celebration on Saturday night after the conference (value of $59). You’ll enjoy a dynamic professional re-enactment of the 2^nd Virginia convention and Patrick Henry’s legendary “Give Me Liberty Speech!” along with many other festivities.  Family registration is only $279/family or $99/individual.

Go to FamilyEconomics2012.com for more information or Click HERE to register now!

Click HERE to download a PDF flyer for this event.

A new study released by Boston University’s School of Public Health warns that teen group sex is on the rise. Researchers found as many as 1 in 13 teenage girls surveyed admitted to participating in group sex. Emily Rothman, an associate professor of community health sciences at BU Health Medical Center, conducted the study by polling 328 teenage girls at community of school health clinics in the Boston area. The majority of the girls reported being pressured, threatened, coerced or forced to participate in the group sex, and the average age was 15.6 years old.

Researchers believe there is a connection between easy access to online pornography and multiple sex partners. With the proliferation of porn on the internet and the latest trend among teenagers who sex-text, or what’s commonly referred to as “sexting” (sending nude pictures of themselves to friends over their smart phones), analysts say group sex incentives have become readily accessible to a growing number of teens willing to experiment.

According to the research, subjects who viewed porn in the past month were about five times as likely as those who had steered clear from the X-rated videos to have group sex.

This astonishing study should be just one more reason why it is so critical that parents be actively engaged in their teenager’s life, most especially their access to the Internet. Every type of pornography is easily found on the Internet today and the average age of exposure is 11 years old. Pornography may start from curiosity or even accidental exposure, but it can quickly become an addiction, and as this study shows, lead to dangerous sexual activity.

A great way to help IFI protect the time-honored values such as the sanctity of life, natural marriage and religious liberty is to become an IFI Sustaining Partner. By pledging $10, $25, $50 or $100 a month (or whatever you can afford) to IFI, you will be ensuring that our work and ministry stays strong so that we can staunchly defend and strengthen your values in the Land of Lincoln.

Click HERE to make that pledge.

Thank you!

I love Christmas. But I hate plastic. When our children were very young, it seemed as though we would amass an enormous amount of plastic at Christmas. The Christmas aftermath was usually marked by a sea of broken plastic pieces with “Made in China” stamped in blue, the last of which usually ended up in the sandbox or under a lawn mower that following spring.

One year I noticed something I considered not short of phenomenal- we had three toys that had survived from the Christmas before. I decided I wanted to know more about how this Christmas miracle had happened.

I traced these particular toys to a last minute shopping effort that had led me to a specialty toy store with more high-end imported items like wooden doll houses and science and building toys. It so happened that they had had a half-price sale, so I bought two dolls that were normally $65.00 each. My mother was aghast at the prospect of my spending that much money on more plastic. After all, the life span of a doll is short in a home with five girls and one mischievous big brother.

Low and behold, the dolls not only survived the following spring, they grew to the stature of treasured, and today are well on their way to becoming family heirlooms as the next generation has begun to emerge.

Those dolls, along with having small children in my home for the best part of 30 years, have taught me a few Christmas lessons about the gifts we buy for our children and grand children.

Rule number 1. Children are easily overwhelmed by a lot of toys. More is not better- it is confusing. A few well-thought-out gifts are priceless, regardless of the price tag.

When children experience the thrill of opening a large amount of presents, it becomes the thrill- not the present. When one gift after another is opened, the thrill continues only until the inevitable abrupt stop. The child looks around for more, hoping the feeling is not really over.

Disappointment is unavoidable. The child wants more, and the parents are disgusted at the lack of appreciation on the child’s part.

Parents and grandparents alike easily fall prey to two kinds of indulgence that overwhelms children. Parents who feel they can’t afford a lot of expensive toys will too often buy a lot of toys to give a child that thrill of opening gifts.

We bought into this early on, as did our friends and family who bought gifts for our children. I soon found that when the pizzazz of the ribbon and paper are gone, the bits and pieces of dime-store stuff would thrill their heart for hours…Just a few hours to be exact. Then the tear-filled child would inevitably bring to me a broken present in hopes I could perform a super glue resurrection.

Parents and grandparents who have the means to buy more expensive toys can also fall into creating more emotional confusion for children by buying a large amount of gifts. Children do have a saturation point. Younger children will flit from one thing to another out of excitement or feeling overwhelmed.

One of the unfortunate side affects of this type of indulgence is that the child is robbed of loving a special toy.

This is particularly true of little girls, who are given so many dolls that they learn more neglectful habits rather than the joy of falling in love with a baby, even if it’s only a baby doll.

Older children who are given too much often lose their sense of value. That’s not hard to understand really, just simple economics. When there is a large supply, or overstock, the value of the item goes down. Another toy added to a pile in a box, is JUST another toy on the pile.

I know one such boy who grew into a teenager and was given a brand new truck. While driving it through a cornfield, someone remarked, “You are going to tear up your truck.” His reply, “Cool, that means I get a new one.”

Gifts are a wonderful expression of love, even sacrifice, for the people you love. But if we want to give meaningful gifts for our children to treasure, we have to look past the frenzy of the moment and think about how the gift will affect the child emotionally.

Perhaps the most important question we have to ask this Christmas is who are we buying this gift for? Am I buying this gift because it will make me feel good to buy it? Or am I buying this gift to add a new dimension to this precious child’s life.

When we take time to really consider the gifts we buy, the child we are buying it for, and the impact it will have, we keep Christmas about the heart- not about the money spent.

Meet the academics who try to redefine pedophilia as “intergenerational intimacy.”

The anger and disgust that most of us experienced when we learned of the allegations of sexual abuse of boys in the sports programs at Penn State and Syracuse University suggest that our cultural norms about the sexual abuse of minors are intact. Yet it was only a decade ago that a parallel movement had begun on some college campuses to redefine pedophilia as the more innocuous “intergenerational sexual intimacy.”

The publication of Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex promised readers a “radical, refreshing, and long overdue reassessment of how we think and act about children’s and teens’ sexuality.” The book was published by University of Minnesota Press in 2003 (with a foreword by Joycelyn Elders, who had been the U.S. Surgeon General in the Clinton administration), after which the author, Judith Levine, posted an interview on the university’s website decrying the fact that “there are people pushing a conservative religious agenda that would deny minors access to sexual expression,” and adding that “we do have to protect children from real dangers … but that doesn’t mean protecting some fantasy of their sexual innocence.”

This redefinition of childhood innocence as “fantasy” is key to the defining down of the deviance of pedophilia that permeated college campuses and beyond. Drawing upon the language of postmodern theory, those working to redefine pedophilia are first redefining childhood by claiming that “childhood” is not a biological given. Rather, it is socially constructed — an historically produced social object. Such deconstruction has resulted from the efforts of a powerful advocacy community supported by university — affiliated scholars and a large number of writers, researchers, and publishers who were willing to question what most of us view as taboo behavior.

Postmodern theorists are primarily interested in writing that evokes the fragmentary nature of experience and the complexity of language. One of the most cited sources for this is the book Male Intergenerational Intimacy: Historical, Socio-Psychological and Legal Perspectives. This collection of writings by scholars, mostly European but some with U.S. university affiliations, provides a powerful argument for what they now call “intergenerational intimacy.” Ken Plummer, one of the contributors, writes that “we can no longer assume that childhood is a time of innocence simply because of the chronological age of the child.” In fact, “a child of seven may have built an elaborate set of sexual understandings and codes which would baffle many adults.”

Claiming to draw upon the theoretical work of the social historians, the socialist-feminists, the Foucauldians, and the constructionist sociologists, Plummer promised to build a “new and fruitful approach to sexuality and children.” Within this perspective there is no assumption of linear sexual development and no real childhood, only an externally imposed definition.

Decrying “essentialist views of sexuality,” these writers attempt to remove the essentialist barriers of childhood. This opens the door for the postmodern pedophile to see such behavior as part of the politics of transgression. No longer deviants, they are simply postmodern “border crossers.”

In 1990, the Journal of Homosexuality published a double issue devoted to adult-child sex titled “Inter-generational Intimacy.” David Thorstad, former president of New York’s Gay Activists Alliance and a founding member of the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), writes that “boy love occurs in every neighborhood today.” The movement continues but has gone underground since NAMBLA found itself embroiled in a $200 million wrongful death and civil rights lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Boston. The suit claims that the writings on NAMBLA’s website caused NAMBLA member Charles Jaynes to torture, rape, and murder a 10-year-old Boston boy.

Not so long ago, the postmodern pedophiles had help in defining down their deviance from the American Psychological Association. In 1998, the association published an article in its Psychological Bulletin that concluded that child sexual abuse does not cause harm. The authors recommended that pedophilia should instead be given a value-neutral term like “adult child sex.” NAMBLA quickly posted the “good news” on its website, stating that “the current war on boy-lovers has no basis in science.”

It appears that a number of postmodern pedophiles have taken the advice to heart. For a while, we lived in a culture in which man-boy sex was not only tolerated, it was celebrated. And while the furor over the allegations at Penn State and Syracuse reveals that male pedophilia remains contested terrain for most, women-girl sex, because of the power of the women’s movement, scarcely registers on the cultural radar screen.

“The Vagina Monologues,” for example, is still part of the standard dramatic repertory in student productions on college campuses –including Penn State and Syracuse. The original play explores a young girl’s “coming of age,” beginning with a 13-year-old girl enjoying a sexual liaison with a 24-year-old woman. Later published versions of the play changed the age of the young girl from 13 to 16 years old, and the play continues to be performed. Last year’s February production at Syracuse was enhanced by inviting an “all-faculty” cast to perform the play on campus.

While the anger over the recent sex abuse allegations would suggest that the deviant label will remain for pedophilia, the reality remains that powerful advocates with access to university presses will continue their semantic and ideological campaign to define down this form of deviance.

Anne Hendershott is Distinguished Visiting Professor at The King’s College, New York, NY. She is the author of The Politics of Deviance (Encounter Books).

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Evil men don’t understand the importance of justice,
but those who follow the Lord are much concerned about it.
~Proverbs 28:5

The legalization of “medical” marijuana is certainly a complicated issue. I am against legislation that would sanction the use of this drug for a number of reasons. I do not want to sound as though I have a lack of compassion regarding the use of cannabis in the treatment of cancer, glaucoma and other diseases. For example, there are physicians who claim medical marijuana reduces the side effects of radiation and chemotherapy in cancer patients.

Though I am not an expert on pharmaceuticals, I know there are drugs which contain THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol), the active ingredient in marijuana, which are available to patients by prescription. However, California–which has legalized medicinal marijuana–should be seen as an example of how the drug, when legalized, is being misused.

The legalization of medical marijuana has been a disaster in cities like San Francisco,where entire blocks are now shopping centers for marijuana. Many individuals sell their “medical” marijuana to young people in order to purchase harder drugs for themselves and to sell to others.

My personal experience is that marijuana is a gateway drug. Ninty percent of the people I knew who went on to use heavier drugs began their drug usage with marijuana. It’s not easy sharing one’s personal history, but I believe the things we experience in life, both negative and positive, should be used as guideposts.

For a number of years in my youth, I had a substance abuse problem. I also eventually counseled young people on the dangers of drug addiction from a personal perspective. Almost in unison, every individual who has had a substance abuse problem or counseled those suffering from drug addiction, agree that marijuana is a gateway drug.

This is not to say that every individual who smokes marijuana is doomed to become a meth head, crack cocaine or heroin addict. But, there is one absolute that no one can deny if medicinal marijuana is legalized–more young people and, for that matter adults, will experiment with the drug because it will become more readily accessible. Alcoholism is a prime example which proves my point. Alcohol is legal. Subsequently, there are more alcoholics in America than there are drug addicts. Already the use of marijuana by young people is at the highest levels in our nation’s history. In addition, the use of methamphetamines has become a scourge on our land.

At one time, drug addiction was a problem which mostly affected those in the inner city. Today, the use of illegal narcotics has spread through out the country, no matter socio-economic strata or geography. In the past, one had to be wealthy to feed a drug habit. This is why the introduction of crack cocaine in the 1980’s with its relatively low cost led to an explosion of its use. Cocaine used to be called the “rich man’s drug.” At one time, it was even considered chic to use the drug.

Some say smoking marijuana is far less harmful than the physiological effects of alcohol. There are organizations, like NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), which are openly advocating for the legalization of marijuana. Indeed, this group sees the legalization of medical marijuana as a mere stepping stone to achieve their ultimate goal.

However, let me get back to the psychology regarding the disease of drug addiction. And please take note that I do believe drug addiction and alcoholism are diseases, but they are self-inflicted diseases which result from disastrous choices made in life.

The first drug I ever used was marijuana. When I learned I didn’t drop dead after smoking a joint, I lost my fear regarding experimentation with other drugs. And I can unequivocally say a vast majority of my former friends who became addicted to drugs like cocaine and heroin took their first step down the path of destruction because of that seemingly innocent first experience with marijuana. If you noticed, I said former friends because most of these individuals are now dead. Drug addiction sapped their human potential and ultimately destroyed their spirits, minds and finally their bodies. Not every one of these people died from a drug overdose, but I can safely say their demise was in some way related to their addictions. Many of these people were raised in good, middle-class suburban families, but they had the misfortune of growing up in a time when the dangers of drugs were misrepresented in the culture of the 1960’s and 70’s.

There will be those who will scoff at what I’m saying here. They will call me an alarmist and “someone who knows not of what he speaks.” But I truly wish I never had to go through what I experienced in life. Sometimes I feel guilty because I blame the friend who offered me that first “toke” off a marijuana cigarette. The individual who turned me on to marijuana was a good person, and I know if he had any idea of what was to come for me by sharing his marijuana with me, he would have never started me down a path filled with regret, remorse and sorrow.

There will also be those who will say young people are more informed these days regarding the dangers of drug addiction. There are also individuals with good intentions who truly believe the legalization of medicinal marijuana is something that is compassionate.

I’ll leave the decision over whether or not the legalization of medical marijuana is a good thing, but there will be consequences which cannot be denied or underestimated. All I can do is share my story which is also the experience of millions of other Americans. Nearly every family in America has been touched in some way by substance abuse–whether it be themselves, a family member or a good friend.

Fifteen states have already legalized medical marijuana. Eight more states will soon decide whether they will follow suit–either by ballot measures or by legislative means. Illinois’ General Assembly will probably vote on the issue of legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes within weeks. I personally urge every Illinois legislator to vote “NO” on this issue. The related consequences by making an illegal drug more accessible is simply too high a price to pay–in many ways.

If tradition is not a good reason to limit marriage to a man and a woman, it is also not a good reason to limit it to only two people.

Earlier this year, I was part of a Constitution Day panel discussion on same-sex marriage at Rutgers University. With seven panelists in a 90-minute program (four in favor of same-sex marriage and three opposed), we were each given just a few minutes for opening statements. I decided to make ten short observations, each of which could prompt more discussion afterward. Below are eight of those observations. (I omit two of them that were narrowly focused on the title given to our forum.)

1. The ultimate question about the recognition of same-sex marriage is for the whole society to decide, not for judges on putatively “constitutional” grounds. It is a “constitutional” question in quite another sense-that is, it is a constitutive question, about an institution and a relationship that is pre-political, foundational of society itself, and even more basic than our constitutions or political institutions. Therefore the question should always be referred to the people themselves at the polls-and not decided by their legislators, let alone by judges.

2. In deciding the basic question, people should ask themselves, what is marriage? For it is a thing with a nature, and a purpose. Marriage has always been understood, throughout human history, as a comprehensive union of a man and a woman, grounded in their complementary natures-a couple of the kind that is capable of generating offspring, and being father and mother to them. The law of marriage has always fostered and protected this singular kind of relationship that is capable of natural parentage, and the only relationship fully capable of parentage of any kind, if “fathering” and “mothering” are understood as distinctive contributions. Were it not for the fact that the sexual union of men and women regularly produces children, marriage would not exist at all. Its existence and its character are in accord with the nature of that union.

3. Same-sex marriage advocates have so far been unable to give an answer to the question “What is marriage?” that does not result in the complete collapse of all shape and form to the institution. That is to say, if men can marry men, and women marry women, we no longer know what the institution is, or what it is for, or what its boundaries are, or who is to be ruled in and who is to be ruled out as eligible to participate in it. Polygamy is back; polyamory is in; even incestuous relations are impossible to condemn. This is not a slippery-slope argument. It is the observation of an explosion bursting a levee with a wall of water behind it.

4. Such a change to the institution of marriage does indeed affect everyone. Our society has already done great damage to the institution of marriage thanks to easy divorce; thanks to abortion, contraception, and a widespread moral relativism about relations between the sexes; and thanks to social policies that make fatherhood optional when children come along. Marriage needs shoring up, not a “redefinition” that is actually a destruction.

5. Some advocates of same-sex marriage are “marriage abolitionists,” who see the ultimate goal as a legal order that has no category called “marriage,” and same-sex marriage as a way station on that road. They at least know where they are going. But it is not a destination we should seek. Marriage between men and women makes families, and it is right and proper for the law to foster and protect it.

6. A common argument in favor of same-sex marriage is that laws against it are just like the old Jim Crow laws against interracial marriage. In 1967, the Supreme Court struck down such laws, calling the right to marry a “fundamental freedom.” But those laws interfered with marriage by introducing an irrelevant ingredient-race-as though it were a necessary one. That is, those laws used state power to redefine marriage, a natural institution, for artificial purposes. Now, it is the advocates of same-sex marriage who wish to use state power to redefine marriage, to make the word mean something new and thus change its nature, by removing its central ingredient, the coming together of a man and a woman to make a family.

7. That 1967 decision of the Supreme Court was universally accepted, practically without a peep of protest, because every decent person would have been ashamed to argue that blacks and whites cannot marry. No denunciations of the decision came from any pulpits. It will not be so if same-sex marriage is nationalized by the Supreme Court. It will be Roe v. Wade all over again. Every growing, thriving, and theologically flourishing religious community in America today is part of the movement to defend the historic understanding of marriage, and they won’t be surrendering their principles. Their theologies may differ, but they share a common moral reasoning about the nature of marriage. And the defense of marriage can hardly be called an “establishment of religion” when it is agreed to by evangelical Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox Christians, and Mormons, Muslims, and Orthodox Jews alike.

8. These diverse believers also share a quite reasonable fear that in a country that has adopted same-sex marriage, their religious liberty is threatened. For believing what their traditions have always believed, they will be condemned as bigots, and subject to discriminations and pressures. Religious dissenters from the new dispensation, in many tens of millions, will be second-class citizens, and will be chased out of many professions and avenues of business if they will not abandon what their faiths teach them about marriage. Their hospitals, schools, and charitable organizations will be pressured to drop their religious scruples, and to silence their moral witness.

So, I concluded, the destruction of marriage as an institution, its replacement by we-know-not-what, and a mortal blow struck at the religious freedom that our country has always prized, are prices too high to pay for this revolution in the law of marriage. The American people know this, and that’s why they’ve gone to the polls and defended marriage every time they’ve been asked. We should keep asking them, I said.

One of the other speakers on the program was Hayley Gorenberg, an attorney with Lambda Legal, which actively litigates on behalf of same-sex marriage. Ms. Gorenberg spoke before I did, and in her prepared remarks said the following about the alleged injustice of “walling people out of central rights”:

The first [same-sex] marriage cases, if you look them up in law school textbooks, they’re short, they are settled in a matter of a couple of sentences, and you have judges saying things like “well, I looked in the dictionary, and this is what it said marriage was.” We’ve moved a long way from then. We have further to go. . . .

In terms of what the government may say about whether gay people can have their full rights, there is a core, very-easy-to-understand question about who’s getting hurt here and is anybody getting hurt, by giving people their equality. And the fact is, that nobody else’s marriage is going to be hurt or has been hurt by gay people having their equal rights to protect their families as others want to be protected, to protect their children as others want to protect their children. Tradition is not enough to sustain discrimination. Never has been, never should be, under the Constitution. It wasn’t enough to sustain discrimination in marriage based on race, it wasn’t enough to sustain discrimination in marriage that said women should be property, even though all of these things were traditional. Tradition falls when we truly engage with these factors and ask ourselves the question.

In the Q & A that followed prepared remarks by the seven speakers, I reiterated my third point above, that when marriage is destroyed and rebuilt in order to accommodate same-sex couples, there is no principled basis on which to limit marriage to couples. Particularly if the change comes about in courts of law, which prize consistent reasoning by analogy, the precedent of same-sex marriage will mandate, by parity of reasoning, the legalization of polygamy, polyandry, and polyamory.

Following this repetition of my argument, Gorenberg responded as follows:

With regard to the slippery slope, that’s the burgeoning [sic] of the dam, or you know, whatever it might be, if we draw out our metaphors about what it would mean to let same-sex couples marry, should they choose to, these rankings of incest and polygamy and where does it stop?-well, where it stops is when you actually look at the governmental definition of marriage, you know, as it’s laid out.

It is a binary institution, okay, it’s a two-person institution, which means that our marriage laws are drawn up to talk about all kinds of substitute decision-making, custodial choice, that kind of thing, so that if, for instance, there’s a couple that are married, and one of them dies, who gets custody of the children? Generally, you know, it’s the other person in the marriage. If there is somebody who dies intestate, and they don’t have a will, what happens? You know, you look to the other person in the marriage. If somebody’s incapacitated and decision-making needs to happen in the hospital, you look to the spouse. If there were seventeen spouses, that would be entirely unclear. That’s not how our marriage laws are drawn up. They’re drawn up, it’s a binary institution. Something else like polygamy is something else. So when we’re talking about something like entrance into marriage on an equal footing, we’re talking about entry into a binary institution, and a whole raft of laws that feed into marriage recognize that that is the case.

The attentive reader will already have noticed Gorenberg’s self-contradiction. Alas, time ran out in our brief program at Rutgers before I could regain the floor and point it out to her.

She had begun, in her prepared remarks, by calling on a standard of “rights” that cannot be defeated by appeals to “tradition.” And she had mocked judges who, in the early decisions on the case for same-sex marriage, had simply turned to a dictionary definition of marriage.

Yet, in her response to my point about plural marriages, Gorenberg herself turned immediately to tradition and to received definitions. Marriage just is a “binary institution,” she asserted, and changing that fact would entail all sorts of inconveniences. (The historic existence of polygamy in many places is proof that these inconveniences are not insurmountable, but this did not slow her down.)

Why mere tradition was now owed such automatic allegiance, she did not pause to explain. Now the prospect of altering a “whole raft of laws” associated with marriage filled her with horror and incredulity. She seemed quite oblivious of the fact that she was making my argument for me. Where was her concern about changing all the details and complexities of a forest of family law planted thick with assumptions about husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, always of opposite sexes?

In her nimble way, having shed the drag-chute of principled consistency, Hayley Gorenberg demonstrated the great strength of the movement for same-sex marriage. She did not have anything to offer in answer to the questions “What is marriage? What is it for? What are its boundaries? Whom should it include?” She does not need answers to such questions. All she needs is an argument for the moment, for the cause, for the victory she wants right now. If her argument is all sound and fury, signifying nothing, that is not her concern. The cause is self-justifying.

With the institution of marriage and the future of the family on the line, the rest of us don’t have that luxury. And perhaps the race will not go to the nimble, but to the slow and steady.

Matthew J. Franck is Director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution at the Witherspoon Institute.

Longtime U.S. Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) announced on Monday that he would retire after his current term expires in January 2013, leaving an important Massachusetts district open for next year’s election. Several individuals from both the Republican and Democratic parties have expressed interest in the seat.

Frank’s district was redrawn this year after Massachusetts lost a congressional seat following the 2010 census, and he would have to had run in towns and cities where his name had never been on the ballot before. He is also the “co-author of the cumbersome Dodd-Frank bill and the prime mover behind the destruction of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” writes the Washington Times. Frank marks the 17th House Democrat to announce he will not seek re-election, compared with only 6 Republicans, giving credence to the opinion that he does not want to continue to be in the minority party.

Since his election in 1980, Barney Frank has always been one of the most liberal members of the U.S. House of Representatives, championing abortion, as well the homosexual agenda. He was the first person elected to Congress to voluntarily self-identify as a homosexual in 1987, and was formally reprimanded in 1990 for allegations of political impropriety relating to his association with a male prostitute.

In the U.S. House, he was a lead opponent to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and was a vocal advocate for repealing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that prohibited homosexuals from serving openly in the military. He also worked hard to help defeat the Marriage Amendment in Massachusetts in 2007, and has been an outspoken supporter of legalizing Internet gambling.

In a significant victory for pro-marriage forces, the California Supreme Court ruled this week that the sponsors of Proposition 8 have standing to defend the referendum in court when state officials refuse to do so.

Propositition 8 was a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in California. Voters adopted it in November 2008 by a 52 percent majority in a referendum vote, in a direct response to the California Supreme Court’s ruling that homosexual partners had a right to same-sex “marriage.”

After further court challenges, a federal trial judge in San Francisco overturned Proposition 8 on August 4, 2010, saying the constitutional amendment was unconstitutional. When the measure was appealed higher, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which presides over California asked the California Supreme Court to clarify whether the groups defending Proposition 8 had standing, or legal authorization, to do so. On Thursday morning the answer came: yes.

Ordinarily the task of defending state laws falls to state officials: the California governor and attorney general would be responsible to defend laws passed in their state from legal challenges. But California’s officials refused to do so, and the groups that sponsored the amendment in the first place stepped in to pick up the slack. This decision was about whether they were allowed to do so.

In an era when the people in the states, who are overwhelmingly pro-marriage, are repeatedly ignored by courts eager to coerce progressive visions into law, this development from California is immensely encouraging. And not only so for proponents of marriage — it ought to come as welcome news for all who love our republican tradition of law, decency, and order. The activism displayed by today’s courts is a disgrace to democracy, and is only aided and abetted by the abdication of state officials who claim a personal exemption from defending laws and principles their states have adopted through the legislative process.

As this case proceeds through the court system, possibly ending up before the United States Supreme Court, the California ruling will have implications for other states across the country. It provides a way of access for the people to defend their values in court even if their state officials refuse to do so. This, and not the judicial activism we have seen over the past decades, is a true defense of equality and the rule of law.

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