I didn’t need a new federally funded research program to figure out that little boys think differently than little girls. Simply raising a few of each is all it takes to quickly see this in action.

If you tell a little girl that her mommy has a baby in her tummy, most will believe it without question, and some will even give a quick tummy kiss to the baby hiding within.

It was never as easy to explain the whole baby in the tummy thing to my boys when they were little. One particular child all but called me a liar and a thief.

I was sitting on the couch with my then two-year-old little boy, Tommy. He was nestled under my arm snuggling in as I was trying to lure him into a nap, when he shot up with wide eyes and pointing at my large, round tummy he exclaimed, “Ball! My ball!”

“How cute” I thought. “No sweetheart, that’s not a ball that’s a baby.” You could almost see the thought process as it flashed across his chubby little face. His big blue eyes wide with excitement quickly narrowed to a scowl as he crawled onto my large lap, stuck his nose up to mine and proclaimed loudly, “BALL! Mommy eat my ball!”

He didn’t need a large vocabulary for me to fully understand what he was thinking. His logical little male brain had weighed the evidence before him, the facts were clear: His ball has been missing for over a week. Mom has been eating everything in sight. You can practically see it… right there. Logical conclusion, “Mommy eat my ball!”

It took months to regain my creditability with that boy.

Perhaps it’s because children have not fully developed their reasoning abilities that they tend to see things in black and white, and gray seems to be very suspicious to them.

More and often, what was once black and white has blended into almost unrecognizable shades of gray. The newest shade of gray on the horizon comes in the form of an economic stimulus plan– Hundreds of millions of dollars are slated for contraceptives.

John Boehner, the House Republican leader, told Fox News: “Regardless of where anyone stands on taxpayer funding for contraceptives and the abortion industry, there is no doubt that this once little-known provision in the congressional Democrats’ spending plan has nothing to do with stimulating the economy and creating more American jobs.”

Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, makes no apologies for the provision; claiming instead, that we “have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.”

Let me get this straight. The contraceptives are distributed to low income families without health insurance. The state’s budget is helped because the states can’t afford to take care of more children in their systems.

So then shouldn’t the state just take some kind of “control” to stop proliferating programs they can’t afford to fund? Or do they plan on requiring all women on public aid to use the contraceptives, to stimulate the state’s economy?

The abundance of illegitimate children the states are burdened with trying to provide for are not the “consequences of the downturn in our economy,” they are the consequences of the downturn in our morality. Let’s help those who need it. But let’s not normalize, legitimatize, and promote poverty.

Under the bright lights of public scrutiny, the provision was pulled in the end. Nevertheless, there is a blurring of the lines between family planning and social economics that has emerged as a dangerous and slippery slope. If you believe that the government has the responsibility to provide healthcare and a multitude of other services to families. Then, of course too many children would be a burden on the government and, ultimately, the tax payers. Socialist countries have always had to deal with these kinds of problems.

We need to be very careful of a government who, like my little boy, can’t see past the outer shape and circumstances and understand that there is a human life inside; nor comprehend that life is not sustained by an umbilical cord attached to a political party.

If you thought our corporate profiteers couldn’t sink any lower than Abercrombie does in using soft-core porn images to lure teens, you’re not imaginative enough. For some twisted reason, the retail clothing chain American Apparel, which sells clothing and accessories that appeal to teens and young adults, also sells in their stores an explicit Dutch homosexual magazine entitled Butt, which sells for a mere $8.95 per issue.

But we shouldn’t worry our provincial, unenlightened, prudish heads because the considerate staff at American Apparel stash their porn in discreet corners of their stores, which are located in chi-chi shopping districts around the country.

And why are they selling this magazine? It can’t possibly generate much profit. No, something far darker and more sinister must motivate them-something we must just keep “tolerating.”

This is the rancid fruit of a depraved culture. It demonstrates what happens when capitalism becomes unmoored from morality; when people who have eyes to see and ears to hear shut their eyes, cover their ears, and slink away in pusillanimous silence.

But it doesn’t matter whether they are keeping this homosexual porn behind the counter. It only matters that they are selling it. If they sell homosexual porn, and we buy their products, we are complicit in the subsidization of homosexual porn, the corruption of our youth, and the degradation of our culture.

American Apparel’s own website is enough to bring a blush to the cheek of anyone whose moral conscience has not been burned to a crisp:americanapparel.net

Who really cares about the next generation? Certainly not the contemptible corporate culture-destroyers at American Apparel.

For the last eight years we’ve been living with a bunch of children who don’t seem to know the first thing about family, respect for authority, or some of the simplest manners.

I have to confess, this confounds me to exasperation at times. I wasn’t raised like that. Granted, I was a belligerent kid at times. My mother often accused me of being a “smart-aleck” and yes, I was punished for it on a regular basis; eventually, even I got the message. (Though, it does still tend to seep out at times.)

Today, however, being a smart-aleck is considered a fine art. Hollywood has fine-tuned sarcasm, fed one-liners to the youngest child actors, and managed to make it sound cool coming from a grandma.

Even being the life long smart-aleck that I am, neither I nor the majority of my generation (baby boomers) were really hateful– at least not to complete strangers in public, or to those in authority. Civility and considerateness was always expected, especially from and towards those in authority.

In the 1950s and 1960s, teachers considered chewing gum in class and running in the hallways among their biggest problems; today it’s drugs, violence, and teen pregnancy. Likewise, the average smart-aleck of the fifties has now degenerated to a filthy mouth with no respect for authority.

Parents are constantly being portrayed as buffoons and the family as anything you want it to be. Not to mention children throwing tantrums outside of the privacy of home, airing dirty laundry at the neighbors, and portraying home to the world like it’s the worst place on earth when things don’t go their way.

Abraham Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand…” And while our civil war has been fought over the last eight years on the battlefields of ideology with weapons that obliterate public image and personal reputations, there have been many casualties.

A call for civility is now in the air. The children have decided it’s important to play nice.

MSNBC host and journalist Chris Matthews told Joe Scarborough on “Morning Joe” that it was his job to make this new presidency work, saying “…you know what? I want to do everything I can to make this thing work, this new presidency work… it is my job. My job is to help this country…because this country needs a successful presidency.”

You know what? We needed a successful presidency after the worst attack on our homeland in generations. We needed a successful presidency after the airline industry came to a standstill. We needed a successful presidency after Katrina. We needed a successful presidency when our sons and daughters answered the call to lay down their lives for us. We needed a successful presidency when our stock market bottomed out, and the housing market crashed. We have ALWAYS needed a successful presidency. But those things didn’t seem to matter…until now. Even winning a war didn’t matter.

Or is that they did matter, but hating the president was more important, and his failure was needed to secure the desired change.

Lincoln also said, “Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.”

He was right. We have watched the media, late night comics, and SNL shape public opinion over the last eight years. And all the Chris Matthews of the media will do everything they can to insist that public sentiment is where it “should” be for his success.

But, we are turning into a county that looks more like a large dysfunctional family with many spoiled children lining up with their hands out asking for money they didn’t earn. Most children are only happy when they get their way. It will be interesting to see how long they are content, and whose success is the most important.

As a new president steps into the oval office and the old one steps into the history books, one will have to ride the relentless tide of public opinion, while the other watches the dust begin to settle. Eventually both will be stripped of their shield of rhetoric, and their triumphs and failures will be laid bare on the pages of history for coming generations to judge.

By Charlie Butts and Marty Cooper –OneNewsNow

Two California homosexuals have won a federal lawsuit, allowing both their names to be on their adopted son’s Louisiana birth certificate.

According to Chron.com, the state of Louisiana initially refused the request because homosexual adoption and same-sex “marriage” are illegal in that state. Oren Adar and Mickey Ray Smith then filed a lawsuit, which stated that leaving their names off the birth certificate “singles out unmarried same-sex couples and their adoptive children for the improper use of making them unequal to every one else.”

Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel and dean of Liberty University’s law school, comments.

“What, essentially, you see happening are these other states, through the back door so to speak, bringing in same-sex unions through these other kinds of methods. It’s not generally a direct, head-on, frontal assault with regards to same-sex marriage,” he notes. “But the fact is, if a sister state is required to recognize same-sex adoption, even though it doesn’t recognize it within the state, that is essentially a component that is a significant, central aspect of marriage.”

According to Staver, that lays the legal ground for future lawsuits to mandate recognition of homosexual marriage on other states.

However, difficulties continue to arise in cases of unmarried same-sex couples who wish to adopt. Some registrars do not believe a man’s name should be on the birth certificate space labeled “Mother” or a woman’s name listed as “Father.” The lawyer for Adar and Smith contends some states have “resolve[d] the problem” by changing the form to read “Parent 1” and “Parent 2” instead.

Staver says the federal Defense of Marriage Act needs to be amended to so that no state is forced to accept homosexual adoption that is legal in a sister state.

by Serena Gordon, HealthDay Reporter –WashingtonPost.com

More than half of teens who use the social networking site MySpace have posted information about sexual behavior, substance abuse or violence, new research shows.

The good news, according to a second study from the same research group, is that a simple intervention — in this case, an-e-mail from a physician — made some of the teens change their risky behaviors.

“I was surprised, at least to some extent, at how clearly teens were discussing behaviors that we struggle to get out of them,” said Dr. Megan Moreno, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Once we started getting the findings, we wondered, why are they doing this?” Moreno said. “Do they not get it? And, if they don’t understand that this is public, can we send them a cautionary message to let them know just how public their information really is?” Moreno was working at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Research Institute at the time the studies were done.

“We need to devise ways to teach teens and their parents to use the Internet responsibly,” study senior author Dr. Dimitri Christakis, director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, said in a statement.

Results from the two studies appear in the January issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

More than 90 percent of teens in the United States have access to the Internet, according to background information from the studies. About half of all teens who use the Internet also use social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook. MySpace boasts more than 200 million profiles, according to the studies, and about one-quarter of those belong to teens under 18.

Moreno and her colleagues randomly selected 500 MySpace profiles from people who reported their age as 18. They collected the information during the summer of 2007.

They found that 54 percent of the profiles contained information on risky behaviors, with 24 percent referencing sexual behaviors, 41 percent referring to substance abuse and 14 percent posting violent information.

Factors associated with a decreased risk of posting risky behaviors included displaying religious involvement or involvement with sports or hobbies.

For the second study, the researchers randomly selected 190 profiles of people between 18 and 20 who displayed risky behaviors, such as sexual information. Half were sent an e-mail from a physician that pointed out that the physician had noticed risky behavior on their profile and suggested changing the displayed information. The e-mail message also provided information on where to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases.

Almost 14 percent of those who got the e-mail deleted references to sexual behavior, compared with 5 percent of the others.

“This was a creative and unique way to reach kids,” said Kimberly Mitchell, the author of an accompanying editorial in the same issue of the journal and a research professor at the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

Mitchell advised parents not to try to forbid their children from using these sites altogether. “It’s important for parents to understand how important these social networking sites are to kids,” she said. “They’re here to stay, and they’re not all evil. There can be some really positive aspects to these sites. But adolescents aren’t necessarily thinking 10 years ahead, when employers or college administrators may look at these sites. Teens live in the here and now, so parents need to talk to kids about the longer-term impacts and help them think through some of the repercussions.”

Moreno suggested that parents ask teens to show them their MySpace or Facebook pages. “Teens will definitely balk, but they balk at lots of things, like curfews,” she said. “Some parents feel it’s a violation of privacy, like reading a diary, but it’s out there, it’s public.”

Parents should use this information as a conversation starter, Moreno suggested.

More information

The government has more advice on staying safe on social networking sites.

SOURCES: Megan A. Moreno, M.D., M.S.Ed., M.P.H., assistant professor, pediatrics, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Kimberly Mitchell, Ph.D., research professor, Crimes Against Children Research Center, Family Research Lab, University of New Hampshire, Durham, N.H.; January 2009,Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine; Jan. 5, 2009, news release, Seattle Children’s Research Institute

First-Time Research Reveals Staggering Annual Taxpayer Costs for Divorce and Unwed Childbearing. Costs Taxpayers at Least $112 Billion a Year

In first-ever research, a new report quantifies a minimum $112 billion annual taxpayer cost from high rates of divorce and unmarried childbearing. It identifies national, state, and local costs which account for more than $1 trillion in the last decade. This landmark scholarly study, entitled “The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unwed Childbearing: First-Ever Estimates for the Nation and All 50 States,” was released on April 15th at the National Press Club by four renown policy and research groups — Institute for American Values, Georgia Family Council,Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, and Families Northwest.

“This study documents for the first time, that divorce and unwed childbearing-besides being bad for children-are also costing taxpayers a ton of money,” said David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values. “Even a small improvement in the health of marriage in America would result in enormous savings to taxpayers,” he continued. “For example, a 1 percent reduction in rates of family fragmentation would save taxpayers $1.1 billion.”

Statewide figures for all 50 states are included in this national report. There is a huge percentage of female-headed households living in poverty-61.5 percent of the 1.3 million total households in poverty in Illinois, for example. Research indicates as the cautious assumption that if those female-headed households were to become married, 60 percent of them would be lifted out of poverty. This means that total poverty in Illinois would be reduced by 36.9 percent. This could lead to an annual savings for Illinois of $1,949,000,000.

“These costs are due to increased taxpayer expenditures for anti-poverty, criminal justice and education programs, and through lower levels of taxes paid by individuals whose adult productivity has been negatively affected by increased childhood poverty caused by family fragmentation,” said principal investigator Ben Scafidi, Ph.D., economics professor at Georgia College & State University.

“Prior research shows that marriage lifts single mothers out of poverty and therefore reduces the need for costly social benefits,” said Scafidi. “This new report shows that public concern about the decline of marriage need not be based only on ‘moral’ concerns, but that reducing high taxpayer costs of family fragmentation is a legitimate concern of government, policymakers and legislators, as well as community reformers and faith communities.”

“This report now provides the basis for a national consensus that strengthening marriage is a legitimate policy concern,” said Blankenhorn. “The report’s numbers represent an extremely cautious estimate, a lower-bound figure, and have been vetted by a group of distinguished scholars and economists who have attached their names as advisors to this report.”

“These numbers represent real people and real suffering,” said Randy Hicks, president of Georgia Family Council. “Both economic and human costs make family fragmentation a legitimate public concern. Historically, Americans have resisted the impulse to surrender to negative and hurtful trends. We fight problems like racism, poverty and domestic violence because we understand that the stakes are high. And while we’ll never eliminate divorce and unwed childbearing entirely, we can certainly be doing more to help marriages and families succeed.”

The Illinois Family Institute is committed to working for strong families and will be pushing legislative reform in Springfield so that marriage is upheld in Illinois law. The laws and culture of the Prairie State cannot afford to ignore the fact that marriage remains the single best way to keep children out of poverty. This study reveals the actual financial toll family fragmentation takes on Illinois taxpayers. Additionally, when researchers find a way to quantify the costs of earned income tax credits, adult education and training, transfer program subsidies and crime rates, the total cost of family fragmentation is likely to be even higher.

This report confirms what we’ve known for many years — that our state benefits greatly from strong, stable marriages and that we’re all paying a high price for broken families.

Feminists in the seventies coined the popular phrase, “I’m going to find myself.” It was extremely useful for breakups, divorces, and rich kids wanting to drop out of college and hitch-hike across Europe.

I say if you really want to find yourself, all you have to do is clean out the attic.

I’ve discovered bits and pieces of our life strung throughout our dark attic and the deepest recesses of our closet. Both of which held secrets I’ve kept for years. From mementos too precious to throw away, (but too homely to hang on the wall), to broken promises; like the Teddy Bear all dressed up in a blue plaid dress with ribbons and bows. I found her all alone amid the neglected mending, not realizing her owner was all grown up; she sat waiting patiently for me to sew her head back on.

Each era brings with it its own trappings and remnants. Sometimes the absence of remnants says something as well.

Several of my children have noticed, and commented, that there are more pictures of some children than others. Of course the questioning child views this as a gross injustice and admissible evidence as indisputable proof that their allegations are true; we loved (insert rival sibling here) more.

A couple of our kids even had one of their sisters convinced that she alone was adopted. Explaining this was the reason we had very few pictures of her as a baby. I’m now told the little rats managed to keep that one going for about three years.

In my defense, I only took pictures when I owned a working camera. Not to mention, some of the missing years are undoubtedly due to the untold numbers of rolls of film that were never developed. (I just found another half dozen rolls in the same cabinet with the bear.)

I have to admit, if you can’t loose enough weight to get into a bathing suit, getting rid of a couple hundred pounds of clutter is the next best thing.

When the children were young, I was more interested in buying someone else’s junk every spring than cleaning up our own. Rummage sales always trumped spring cleaning.

My girlfriend and I had rummage-saleing down to a fine art. I would bring my children to her house dressed in their pajamas at the crack of dawn (trust me, the kids were already up). She made the coffee and muffins and filled the thermos while I lined up the children and dressed them assembly line style.

We all headed for the car. First stop, the grocery store for our treasure map, commonly known as a newspaper. While we were there, we “returned pop bottles” for our spending cash.

She drove while I rode shotgun, tossing homemade muffins over my shoulder into the back seat at the kids. Armed with coffee, coins, and a newspaper, we were off on our weekly bargain hunt.

We hunted brand name clothes we couldn’t afford or too were cheap to buy. These were the days long before God invented outlet malls. The goal was to buy each child clothes to fit, and clothes to grow into.

I consider children’s summer clothing as disposable. They play hard in them all day long, drip popsicles, ice cream and mustard on them. So I prefer to pay no more than a quarter for a tiny shirt with a life span less than a butterfly.

One man’s junk is another man’s treasure– if you’re rummaging. If you’re spring cleaning, one man’s treasure is his wife’s junk.

This year, I found a whole new twist to the junk slash treasure phenomena. I found myself collecting once loved, but now neglected Teddy Bears, dolls, and make believe costumes– discarded as rubbish. The children’s junk has become my treasures.

Each year brings new milestones in every family; births, deaths, marriages, and coming of age; ours will have stepped through all of these before the year’s end.

My freshly cleaned attic now holds new treasures to be discovered again in a few more decades. Amid the junk and the sea of clutter are remnants of childhood, scraps of memories, and cardboard treasure chests; all telling the story of us.

In Tuesday’s elections, we saw the citizens of seven states vote to pass state constitutional amendments to secure marriage as the union between one man and one woman. Tennessee, Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Virginia, and Wisconsin bring the grand total of states that affirm traditional marriage to 27.

While Illinois voters lost the opportunity to cast a ballot for marriage defense after IFI’s lawsuit challenging the state’s cumbersome referendum law was struck down in federal court, the citizens of Pleasant Plains, Illinois (located about 15 miles northwest of the State Capitol) were given the chance to defend marriage and did so overwhelmingly. After Cartwright Township officials placed a question of whether an amendment protecting marriage as between a man and a woman should be added to the Illinois constitution on their local ballot, 502 citizens voted FOR the measure and 166 against it. 

“There is little doubt in my mind that if a marriage protection measure were put to the voters of Illinois, the referendum would win handily,” said Illinois Family Institute Executive Director David E. Smith. “The sample from Pleasant Plains, the center of the state, is a good indication of that. Why are House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President Emil Jones denying ALL the people of Illinois a chance to vote to protect marriage?” Smith said IFI plans to re-launch IFI’s Protect Marriage Illinoispetition drive in 2007 in an effort to get a referendum on the ballot for the general election in 2008.

“The national election returns provide more evidence that preserving the sanctity of marriage eclipses partisan politics,” said Smith. “Media pundits are quick to point to Tuesday’s election as American’s way of saying they want change. Yet while many incumbents were swept out of office, one thing remained consistent — the mandate for protecting marriage continues.”

Peter LaBarbera, Protect Marriage Illinois Board Member and President of the Naperville-based Americans for Truth, said Wisconsin voters’ 59-41 passage of a Marriage Protection Amendment — which also clearly precludes “civil unions” — has lessons for Illinois.

“Pro-marriage forces were outspent ten to one in blue state Wisconsin, yet the Marriage Protection Amendment there passed in a landslide,” LaBarbera said. “Here in Illinois, gay activist Rick Garcia has paid for some biased polls to cast doubt on the prospects of a Marriage Protection initiative here. But Illinois citizens should not believe those polls. With hard work and a strong grassroots push, Illinois WILL join the list of states providing the maximum protection to marriage. We must do so to prevent judges from usurping the power by radically redefining marriage, as occurred in New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Vermont.”

More than 400,000 citizens signed petitions to bring the marriage referendum to a vote in late 2005 and early 2006. Bills in both the houses of the Illinois General Assembly have not been allowed to advance since 2002.

New bill would allow certain “responsible parties” to circumvent your parental rights.

DuPage–Illinois Family Institute joins the growing chorus of critics of legislation recently introduced by State Rep. John Fritchey (D-Chicago) regarding parents’ right to be notified if their minor child seeks to have an abortion. The legislation, HB HB 5840, is a blatant attempt to stop the Parental Notification Act of 1995 from going into effect.

“There’s no compelling state interest to modify the existing law,” said David E. Smith, Executive Director ofIllinois Family Institute. “This bill serves the interests of the radical abortion industry in Illinois–not girls or the parents who love them. This new, so-called parental notification bill is a slap in the face to concerned parents everywhere.”

The so-called ‘Adolescent Health Care Safety Act’ allows a minor girl who is seeking an abortion to circumvent her parent’s God-given authority by simply notifying any siblings, step-siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles who are 18 years old or older. It would also bestow parental authority to clergy members, social workers, psychologists, nurses, and physicians–i.e., adults with whom the girl’s parents have no relationship.

“HB 5840 should be called the Parents’ Rights Circumvention Act,” said Smith. “This bill gives unwarranted authority to strangers, thus blocking parental involvement in this critically important decision in a girl’s life. Politicians have no business intruding on the parent-child relationship. 

“Rep. Fritchey’s bill would allow a young girl raised in a traditional Christian home to get counseling from a clergy member of the Kabbalah or the liberal, ‘pro-choice’ United Church of Christ, and this clergy member could then authorize the child to get an abortion without her parents knowledge or consent,” Smith said. 

In 1995, the Illinois General Assembly approved a bill that requires minor children to notify a parent before receiving an abortion. In the absence of judicial rules for a minor to seek a waiver for the requirements, a federal court enjoined enforcement of the law. Three weeks ago, the Illinois Supreme Court issued a set of rules to support the legislation, allowing it go into effect. 

Citing the 2000 case of Troxel v. Granville, which says that “fit parents are presumed to act in the best interests of their children,” Smith said, “Bypassing parental authority should be allowed only when a parent has been found to be unfit or there has been an actual finding of abuse. 

Smith said that “even a trusted adult does not equal the parents. The legislature should not try to intrude in parent-child relationships without a mandate from the people. 

“The subject is best addressed by the parents, and deserves the input from the person who helped father the unborn child to begin with,” he said. “HB 5840 disrespects the will of Illinois citizens to satisfy the needs of a few fringe special interests who want access to young children for political and economic gain.”

IFI works to uphold marriage and family, life and liberty in the Land of Lincoln.

Illinois Family Institute remains hopeful that the Marriage Protection Referendum will be on the November ballot, as the legal challenge to the state’s initial review of the marriage petitions begins.

A State Board of Elections sample of the pro-marriage petitions has reportedly found that Protect Marriage Illinois reached the level of 91.4 percent of the required number of 283,111 valid signatures–short of the 95 percent required to qualify for the ballot. The SBE has called a phone conference today at 12:30, which can be monitored in the James R. Thompson Center office in Chicago or the Springfield office.

This finding is a momentary setback, but we remain hopeful that citizens will have the opportunity to affirm marriage as between one man and one woman in November. Without divulging our legal plan, there were numerous inconsistencies in the overall process of reviewing our petitions. For example, the review procedures and criteria for valid signatures varied drastically from county to county. Suffice it to say that there are several areas on which we can challenge the SBE’s initial findings.

David E. Smith, who headed up the marriage petition drive, said, “Our opponents are far too quick to claim victory. Just as they prematurely labeled the recent [Chicago] library fire as a ‘hate crime’-it turned out to be set by a mentally unstable homeless woman-they are gloating over our demise, even before we have had a chance to present evidence rebutting the state board’s preliminary findings.”

IFI has retained Michael Lavelle, former chairman of the Illinois Board of Elections and one of the leading election law attorneys in the state, to head its legal effort in defense of the referendum.

Illinois Family Institute defends marriage, family and the sanctity of life in the Land of Lincoln.

News Release, May 8, 2006 

SPRINGFIELD, Illinois–Volunteers from across the state will be in the capital today to hand-deliver 345,199 signatures to the Board of Elections–to place a referendum on the November ballot asking if the General Assembly should amend the Illinois constitution to declare that “marriage between a man and a woman is the only legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State.” 

(The PMI effort collected more than 421,000 signatures in total, but due to the state’s draconian rules regarding collecting notarized signatures, many petitions could not be submitted.)

If it survives a promised challenge by homosexual activists, the Protect Marriage Illinois (PMI) effort will be the first citizen advisory referendum to make it on the Illinois ballot in Illinois in 28 years. A total of 283,111 signatures of registered voters is required to get the referendum on the ballot, but PMI volunteers will deliver tens of thousands more than that. 

The exact number of signatures to be submitted will be revealed after the petitions are delivered at 11:30 a.m. to the Illinois Board of Elections, at 1020 S. Spring St. in Springfield. At 12:30 p.m., the following speakers will be available to the media at the front entrance of the Board of Elections:

• David Smith, PMI Project Director; Senior Policy Analyst, Illinois Family Institute 
• Jack Roeser, Chairman, Family Taxpayers Network 
• Naomi Attaway, PMI Coordinator, African-American Family Association 
• Susan Jordan, Catholic Outreach Coordinator, Protect Marriage Illinois 
• Rev. Joseph McAfee, Central United Community Church, Chicago

Peter LaBarbera, Executive Director of Illinois Family Institute, called the Protect Marriage Illinois campaign “a huge grassroots success that is historic in its proportions. The task of going to the ballot to call on our political leaders to protect traditional marriage has united people from every part of Illinois and from all races and backgrounds: African-American Pentecostals in Chicago, white Catholics in Peoria, evangelicals, Muslims, Republicans, Democrats and Independents. Truly, this is a ‘We the People’ movement.”

(LaBarbera will not be able to attend the PMI event in Springfield due to a personal tragedy in his family.)

Noting that a proposed binding constitutional marriage amendment has languished in Springfield for over two years, PMI Project Director David Smith said: “It’s a shame that we’ve had to resort to an Advisory Referendum to tell our legislators specifically to make protecting marriage a top priority. Nevertheless, it is humbling to see how many people and churches have invested their time, energy and resources to give us this unprecedented grassroots victory.”

Garcia Claims Campaign Will Lead to ‘Harassment’

News Release, April 27, 2006

GLEN ELLYN–Illinois Family Institute today challenged homosexual activist Rick Garcia not to try to stop the Protect Marriage Illinois (PMI) referendum from getting on the ballot, saying, “Since Garcia claims the polls are on his side, why would he block a popular vote?”

Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn today reported that Garcia’s group, Equality Illinois, “is planning to challenge” the PMI petition. Garcia was responding to news that Protect Marriage Illinois will be submitting the required number of signatures (283,111) by May 8 to get a question on the November ballot. The referendum asks voters whether to call on the General Assembly to pass a constitutional amendment declaring “a marriage between a man and a woman is the only legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State.” 

Garcia said, “I’m anticipating three to four months of outrageous, disgusting anti-gay rhetoric and harassment”–to which LaBarbera responded: “What he calls ‘harassment’ most other Illinois citizens say is a healthy debate. What is Garcia afraid of? This is democracy in action.”

Across the country, all 19 states that have attempted pro-marriage referenda have passed them, by an average vote of over 70 percent.

IFI noted the irony of Garcia’s “harassment” claim, “since the most menacing people we’ve encountered are Rick’s friends at the ‘Gay Liberation Network,’ who have engaged in repeated physical and verbal threats against IFI and pro-marriage advocates.”

Garcia continues to tout a 2005 poll–commissioned by his own group–claiming that 67 percent of Illinois voters oppose amending Illinois’ Constitution to protect marriage. Various news outlets including the State Journal Register have reported on the poll without mentioning that it was commissioned by and for a homosexual group.

PMI Project Director David Smith said, “If Garcia really believes that 67 percent of Illinois voters don’t want a Marriage Protection amendment, he should help us circulate our petition in these final days so that the entire state of Illinois can have the opportunity to vote on this important question.”

IFI is a non-partisan, non-profit public policy group devoted to “protecting marriage, family and the sanctity of life in the Land of Lincoln.” IFI, 799 Roosevelt Rd., Suite 3-208, Glen Ellyn, IL 60137; (630)790-8370. 

The benefits of marriage between a man and a woman, and the devastating effects of divorce, continue to be proven by new research. 

A study from the University of Chicago, funded by the National Institute on Aging, concluded that more time spent in a divorced condition led to a higher likelihood of heart or lung disease, cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke and difficulty with mobility. 

People who were married at the time of the study and had never been divorced or widowed had 20 percent fewer chronic conditions. Additional health benefits of marriage include fewer symptoms of depression, greater mobility in middle age, less drinking and smoking and general better health. Divorce, on the other hand, is thought to weaken the immune system, due to increased stress. 

We continue to see evidence that God’s design – lifelong marriage between a man and a woman – is best for us in so many ways. It is clear, married couple’s healthier state springs from the protective, stabilizing effect of marriage as God intended it.

Read More:

Why Marriage Matters for Adults (Focus on the Family)

Healthy, Wealthy, & Wed (University of Chicago Magazine)

Chicago, Ill.–Illinois Family Institute (IFI) and Protect Marriage Illinois (PMI), will protest the AFL-CIOconvention today at Chicago’s Navy Pier — asking rank-and-file attendees if they are aware that union leaders are undercutting the institution of marriage as between one man and one woman.

The AFL-CIO recently passed a resolution condemning the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) and similar state amendments that protect the age-old definition of marriage as one man-one woman. The resolution reflects growing homosexual advocacy at AFL-CIO, including one campaign launched by the union’s homosexual caucus that asks “gay” workers to identify themselves as “Proud Union Queers” (Click HERE to view the AFL-CIO “Pride at Work” web page containing the graphic at right).

IFI and PMI are holding a protest in front of the AFL-CIO on Monday morning, July 25, beginning at 8:30. Protect Marriage Illinois (www.protectmarriageillinois.org) is leading the campaign for a constitutional amendment in Illinois to protect marriage. 

Most AFL-CIO members have no idea the union has become a leading force for mainstreaming homosexuality in the culture. The union’s gay agenda–from bashing the FMA to promoting ‘domestic partnerships,’ and even transsexual ‘rights’–comes at the expense of real labor issues. In fact, it exploits the vast majority of AFL-CIO employees who are pro-marriage and pro-traditional family.

Last month, IFI joined 40 other pro-family organizations from across the country in writing to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, asking him to rescind the union’s pro-homosexual resolution. The letter read in part:

We know that many of those who faithfully support our organizations and ministries are also loyal union members. On behalf of their families, specifically on behalf of their children and future generations of America’s children, we will not stand silently by while national AFL-CIO officials use the hard-earned dues money of America’s working men and women against their will, and at odds with their own deeply-held religious and moral convictions–to advance a political agenda that threatens to undermine the institutions of God-ordained marriage and the family.

The full letter is available online by clicking HERE.

For more information::

American Family Association of Michigan’s website (AFA-Michigan President Gary Glenn has led the effort to expose and confront the AFL-CIO’s “gay” agenda)

Union Workers Against Gay “Marriage” website

Pride at Work website (Pride at Work, “organizing gay, lesbian, bisexual & transgender labor,” is one of the AFL-CIO’s six core constituency groups, as outlined on this AFL-CIO web page.

IFI works to protect marriage, the natural family and the sanctity of life in Illinois. IFI, 799 Roosevelt Rd., Suite 3-208, Glen Ellyn, IL 60137. 

I have gained 572 pounds and lost 500 pounds. Granted, it took 29 years of marriage and giving birth to nine children. For 20 years I referred to myself as the incredible expanding woman; with at least three dress sizes hanging in my closet at any given time.

I have nursed a total of 17 years, changed at least 29,952 diapers (give or take a couple of hundred), and rocked over 5,000 miles of tearful terrain. I just started sleeping through the night five years ago.

For years Mother’s Day was the most depressing day of the year for me, especially when I had six young children at my feet. Every year my children would ask what I wanted for Mothers Day, and every year I would say the same thing, “To wake up to a clean house, and not have to cook.”

They would laugh, and say, “Mom, you always say that. What do you really want?”

But alas, I wake up to a stack of new refrigerator art, and hungry children.

The turning point came when I realized that the reason I had been so depressed was that somewhere in the back of my mind, I wanted the day off from being Mom. I didn’t want to wipe anyone’s anything. I wanted to be taken care of. I wanted someone else to do my housework and meet all the demands that at the time were so draining, both physically and emotionally.

Once I realized my expectations were, well, not only unobtainable, but perhaps a bit silly. I chuckled to myself and made up my mind to change my expectations. That year I bought myself a role of film and spent the entire day taking pictures of my children in the front yard.

I shucked the housework, and just embraced toddler’s smiles, and childish antics. I let them pose for my camera and tumble on the lawn. I laid down in the grass and let the baby crawl all over me, giving my chin toothless wet kisses. Time a busy mother rarely takes.

As the children got older, I realized that giving gifts was becoming important to them. They wanted to be able to give me something that I would treasure, but the unemployment rate for the under ten crowd is very high in this part of the country, so I came up with a plan.

Several days before Mother’s Day I made a cleaning chart. With each chore, I listed an amount that I would pay for that particular job. I paid well to have floors mopped and bathrooms scrubbed. They worked eagerly, and they were paid in one-dollar bills. (It seems like so much more money, and they can do better spending while working with ones.)

The day before Mother’s Day, all of the children were taken to one my favorite stores. Then under the watchful eye of our oldest daughter they would pick out gifts.

I would wake up on Mother’s Day with a clean house, and they would wake up with huge grins in anticipation of giving their mommy something special.

As an older mother, and only five children still at home, its no exercise of will to relax and enjoy my children on Mother’s Day. The demands of babies and toddlers have given way to teenagers. Not wanting to cook has changed to wanting a big cook out in hopes of enticing the adult children to come home for an evening.

Now I love Mother’s Day, because rather than being focused on escaping motherhood, it’s the day I love to set aside to enjoy the children God has blessed me with.

Time has a way of quietly slipping through your fingers. Your children will only be small for such a short time. If that seems impossible, look how fast you grew up.

If I could give every mother of young children a gift for Mothers Day it would be this, to take this one day, to look deep into the face of your child, and let your heart be filled with thankfulness and wonder at a gift so perfect only God can give.

Happy Mother’s Day!