State Representative Peter Breen (R-Lombard) recently introduced HB 2689, also known as the Internet Screening in Public Libraries Act. This common sense legislation would help protect children and families from obscene and illegal material on the Internet and prevent public libraries from becoming sexually hostile work environments.

Sexually graphic websites — including child-pornography — would no longer be found at your local public library. Internet filtering technology would help clean up communities and protect children, families, and library personnel from being exposed to these harmful and illegal materials.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to your state representative to ask him/her to support or even co-sponsor HB 2689.

You can also contact your state representative by calling the Capitol switchboard at (217) 782-2000.

Background

The legislation is patterned after the federal Child Internet Protection Act (CIPA) that requires filters in exchange for federal E-rate funds. CIPA was found to be Constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003. Because installing filters frees up federal funds available for libraries, there is little, if any, cost to install them — which means that in many cases installing filters is financially beneficial to libraries.

This legislation is another step in the ongoing battle to protect children from illegal pornography and Internet predators. The current policy of allowing libraries the choice to offer this material to their patrons not only violates the federal obscenity law but also endangers our children and the community. While some legislators have opposed this bill because it places a “mandate” on libraries, this mandate is critical.

The radically liberal American Library Association (ALA) and its state affiliate, the Illinois Library Association (ILA) will bring great pressure to bear in opposition to this bill, claiming that this is a free speech issue, and that filtering the Internet amounts to censorship.  However, nothing in the First Amendment requires any publicly funded institution to provide illegal material, including child pornography. Furthermore, filters don’t remove the content, they just block access on taxpayer funded computers.

Public libraries should not be in the business of distributing materials that are harmful to minors and illegal for adults. Obscenity and child pornography are not protected forms of speech under the First Amendment. Filtering the Internet in public libraries isn’t about the First Amendment; it’s about protecting our children and the taxpayers!

The U.S. Supreme Court has recognized the fact that the government (which includes public libraries) has a “compelling interest” in protecting children from sexually explicit materials.

In Ginsburg v. New York, the U.S. Supreme Court stated that “parents who have this primary responsibility for children’s well-being are entitled to the support of laws designed to aid discharge of that responsibility.” In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court has uniformly ruled that governmental regulations may also act to facilitate parental control over children’s access to sexually explicit material.

Pornography is not protected by the First Amendment, but in fact violates the human rights of every man and woman — and especially our children. Taxpayers do not want pornography in their neighborhood libraries.

This vote will be a vote for the future safety of our children.

Click HERE TO SUPPORT Illinois Family Institute.

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The release of the Fifty Shades of Grey movie is a more important and lamentable event than many Christians may realize. What the movie represents is nothing less than the evolution of pornography in an age increasingly distant from a biblical vision of sexuality and human dignity.

One of the hallmarks of the Christian worldview is an affirmation of the unity of the transcendentals — the good, the beautiful, and the true. Christianity affirms — and demands — that the good, the beautiful, and the true are actually one, unified in their source. The source of what is good, beautiful, and true is none other than God himself, who alone is infinitely good, beautiful, and true. Our very knowledge of beauty, goodness, and truth are due to God’s gifts of revelation and creation. He defines the good, the true, and the beautiful by his being, and they are unified in him.

This means that Christians believe the radical truth that nothing good can be ugly, that nothing untrue can be beautiful, and that everything beautiful and true is also good.

To attempt a separation of the good, the true, and the beautiful is, by Christian understanding, both impossible and self-defeating. Furthermore, the attempt to separate them is sinful — an act of defiance.

For this reason the Christian worldview insists that the face of a child with Down syndrome is infinitely more beautiful than an airbrushed model on the cover of a fashion magazine. The model may be pretty, but every human being is beautiful, simply by virtue of being made in the image of God. That grounding of human dignity points to the fact of our creation by a loving and merciful God, who made us in his image, and revealed this truth in our very existence and in our capacity to know him. He revealed this truth explicitly in Holy Scripture, and this means that every single human being, at every stage of development, possesses full human dignity.

The corruption of the gift of sex is, more than often realized, an assault upon that human dignity that is the Creator’s gift. The attempt to declare beauty at the expense of goodness and truth is at the heart of the problem of pornography. Now, we live in a society fast losing even a sense of shame about its pornographic obsessions.

The explosive sales of the Fifty Shades book series alerted many Christians to the fact of female-oriented pornography. While far more attention had been devoted to the visual nature of most male-oriented pornography, the Fifty Shades phenomenon underlined the public mainstreaming of pornography that would find a primary audience among women — narrative pornography in book form.

While many had noted the attraction of so-called “romance novels” to many women, the arrival of the Fifty Shades series announced that the culture at large was ready to shift to what can only be described as explicitly pornographic. Furthermore, the plot line of the series, now quite well known in the larger society, is devoted to forms of sexuality that had historically been defined as perverse and abusive.

The lost sense of shame is not only documented in the unprecedented sales of the series in book form, but also by the mainstream celebration of the movie.

A culture that is determined to reduce all sexual morality to the issue of adult consent is now ready to eat popcorn while watching the corruption of the gift of sex and, in effect, granting approval to the vision of sexuality that is the film’s very essence.

This next stage in the evolution of pornography combines, in an unprecedented way, male-oriented visual pornography with female-oriented narrative pornography. The movie is being marketed on Valentine’s Day as an adventure for couples — something offered to both men and women.

That something is a lie. The late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan spoke of our tendency to “define deviancy down.” That is one of the marks of our age. The Fifty Shades movie will not be legally defined as obscenity or pornography. In our age, almost nothing is. But biblically speaking, there can be no question about the fact that the Fifty Shades phenomenon is explicitly pornographic — defined in the New Testament by the Greek word porneia — which refers directly to any illicit sexual impulse or act. Pornography, whatever its form, is intended to produce that wrongful sexual impulse.

Going to see Fifty Shades of Grey, or reading the book series, is an exercise in pornographic intent and effect. It is also an act of defiance against the goodness of the gift of sex as granted to humanity by God. Furthermore, the series is an assault upon the dignity of every human being.

The loss of shame in modern society is championed as a sign of cultural progress in many circles and as a step forward in mental health by many therapists. More than anything else, however, it points to the depth of the confusion that inevitably accompanies the corruption of God’s gifts.

Christianity celebrates the unity of the good, the beautiful, and the true in God himself. In obedience, we must seek to unify the true and the beautiful and the good in our hearts and minds — and in our bodies.

Words from the Book of Common Prayer‘s service of Holy Matrimony will serve us well here. Christians know that the good, the true, and the beautiful are always and evermore united. What God has joined together, let no one tear asunder.

This article was originally posted at the AlbertMohler.com website.

Written By National Center on Sexual Exploitation

National Center on Sexual Exploitation and Morality in Media (MIM) announce the 2015 Dirty Dozen List, a compilation of leading contributors to sexual exploitation in America. The 2015 Dirty Dozen List highlights offenders with an explanation of how each contributes to sexual exploitation. The list offers actions that the public can take to persuade the Dirty Dozen to change policies and practices.

“The Dirty Dozen List has led to sweeping policy changes for past targets, including Google, Verizon, and Department of Defense.” said Dawn Hawkins, executive director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation and MIM. “Despite the incontrovertible evidence of harm, many companies and organizations still choose to engage in sexual exploitation to make a profit or push an agenda,” Hawkins said.

Among others, the latest List includes Backpage.com, which garners 80 percent of all prostitution advertising dollars, CKE Restaurants for its sexualized hamburger commercials and print ads for its Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s chains, and Fifty Shades of Grey for its glamorization of sexual violence. American Apparel is on the list, as they deserve to be, because of their ads depicting young women engaged in sexual acts. While we have indications that they are ready to change, pornographic ads are still posted on the company’s website.

Topping the list is the Department of Justice, which continues to disregard federal laws prohibiting distribution of hardcore pornography. “Hardcore pornography is fueling the demand for trafficked women and children and for child sexual abuse. To not uphold federal obscenity laws is to ignore what has now become a public health crisis in our nation,” said Hawkins.

For more information on this campaign, visit: http://www.DirtyDozenList.com

The full, updated list includes:

U.S. Department of Justice – The DOJ refuses to enforce existing federal obscenity laws against pornography despite the fact that these laws have been upheld by U.S. Courts and previously enforced. Pornography is a public health crisis and DOJ must not be on the side of pornographers.

Verizon – Verizon profits from sexual exploitation by pushing it into homes through multiple ways, including pay-per-view movies on their FIOS TV, as an Internet Service Provider and as a wireless carrier. They’ve even defended child themed porn as a benefit to their consumers. It’s time Verizon had a change in policy.

Fifty Shades of Grey– This bestselling series and film glamorize and legitimate violence against women through sexual violence, abuse of power, female inequality, and coercion. Help us inform mainstream pop culture and news outlets that are promoting the material and the abusive lifestyle it promotes.

Backpage.com – Backpage.com is the leading U.S. website for prostitution advertising, generating nearly 80 percent of all the online prostitution advertising revenue. Law enforcement officials say trafficked children and women are sold on Backpage daily and the site is even actively opposing laws that make it a felony to advertise sexual services of children.

Hilton Hotels – This top hotel chain provides hardcore pornography movie choices with themes that include: children, incest, rape, sexual slavery, and extreme violence. Other popular hotels, such as Marriott and Omni, refuse to profit from this exploitation.

American Library Association – For years, ALA has encouraged public libraries to keep all computers unfiltered and to allow patrons, including children, access to pornography. As a result, child sexual abuse, sexual assault, exhibitionism, stalking and other lewd behavior takes place in libraries across the country.

American Apparel – American Apparel’s advertising strategy is to normalize the objectification of women. To sell products, the company regularly features nude or provocatively posed young girls with an emphasis on women’s breasts and buttocks.

Sex Week – University campuses are overwhelmed with reports of sexual violence, yet many of these schools welcome so-called “sex week” celebrations where pornography, violent sexual practices and the hook-up culture are promoted as harmless fun.

Facebook – In recent years, Facebook has taken measures to curb exploitation, but they have a long way to go as the world’s most popular social networking site. It has become a top place to trade pornography and child pornography, as well as a place of prostitution and sex trafficking.

CKE Restaurants – Owner of over 3,300 Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s locations, CKE Restaurants utilizes sexual suggestions and explicit images of the female body in commercials and print ads to sell hamburgers.

YouTube – Google has worked to curb exploitation in other tools they offer yet they still allow hundreds of hours of porn videos to be uploaded to YouTube each day. Google does little to enforce their policies prohibiting such content and the SafeSearch feature is far from reliable.

Cosmopolitan Magazine – The staple of the supermarket checkout line is a porn magazine. Cosmo glamorizes things like public, anal or violent sex in nearly all of their issues. It’s time that Cosmo be sold to adults only and have the cover wrapped like all other porn mags in retail shops.

Orignally published at EndSexualExploitation.com.

 The Truth Project

First Annual IFI Worldview Conference
featuring Dr. Del Tackett
April 10-11, 2015

CLICK HERE for Details

Last fall, Enough is Enough launched the national Porn Free Wi-Fi campaign to convince the two companies to voluntarily remove pornography and child porn from their Wi-Fi services. Donna Rice Hughes, who heads Enough is Enough, says the campaign has drawn a lot of support.

“As of December of this past year, right around Christmas time, we hit 25,000 online petition signatures,” she tells OneNewsNow. “The petition urges both of these companies to extend their friendly Wi-Fi policies – which they have already been implementing in the United Kingdom and in Australia – to the United States.”

The question arises as to whether there have been many instances of people accessing porn in view of other customers in the stores.

“In December, there was an incident in a local Starbucks where a convicted sex offender went into a Starbucks, got on the Wi-Fi services provided by Starbucks and was caught downloading child pornography, which is a federal offense,” she says.

In that particular case, the offender was arrested, but others viewing porn in stores nationwide are typically not punished.

Now there is another big push for signatures on the petition. Enough is Enough plans to contact both companies within the next few weeks, present the petitions and request that they filter out porn on their Wi-Fi networks.

This article was originally posted at the OneNewNow.com website.

Written By Lara Updike

A paper published last month in the scientific journal Archives of Sexual Behavior adds significant data to the growing body of research on pornography. The paper, titled “Pornography and the Male Sexual Script: An Analysis of Consumption and Sexual Relations” is based on a survey of 487 American college men aged 18-29.

The survey found that use of pornography correlates with decreased enjoyment of sex with a real partner. The younger the men were first exposed to pornography, the higher their current use of pornography, and those who reported high use of pornography were more likely to rely on pornography to achieve and maintain sexual excitement.

Researchers Chyng Sun, Ana Bridges, Jennifer Johnson and Matt Ezzell explain in their abstract: “The more a user watches a particular media script, the more embedded those codes of behavior become in their worldview and the more likely they are to use those scripts to act upon real life experiences. We argue pornography creates a sexual script that then guides sexual experiences.”

With the rise of the Internet and mobile devices, pornography can be accessed almost everywhere, all the time, and thus pornography use has skyrocketed. In a 2008 study titled “Generation XXX,” researchers recruited 813 university students from six U.S. college campuses to complete online questionnaires regarding their attitude toward and use of pornography.

Their study found that two thirds of young men and half of young women agree that viewing pornography is acceptable. Nine out of ten young men and almost one third of young women reported using pornography.

In an interview with Pornharms.com, sociologist and therapist Dr. Jill Manning reported that a frequent question from the teenagers she works with is, “What’s the big deal about pornography?” These young people, she reports, are surprised when she tells them what research has shown about pornography use; they often express dismay that no one has warned them about its dangers.

Speaking before a U.S. Senate Sub-committee in 2005, Dr. Manning offered testimony about the effects of pornography that were “not rooted in anecdotal accounts or personal views, but rather in findings from studies in peer-reviewed research journals.”

She listed seventeen trends associated with pornography use, including “increased marital distress, and risk of separation and divorce,” “increased appetite for more graphic types of pornography and sexual activity associated with abusive, illegal or unsafe practices,” and “devaluation of monogamy, marriage and child rearing.”

Not enough people are talking about pornography. Fortunately, there are more and more individuals and organizations working to address this public health crisis. A wealth of information and addiction recovery resources is available online and can be found with a simple Google search. It’s imperative that we become educated about this issue, inform our neighbors and arm the rising generation with the tools to avoid pornography’s trap.

Originally published at Family Policy Institute of Washington

It is easier than ever before to buy and sell women and children for sex thanks to the Internet. Pimps have realized that they can remain anonymous, make lots more money and offer more extreme and deviant sexual behaviors if they just move their “business” from the street corner to the Internet.

Popular companies like Backpage, Craigslist, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are making millions of dollars by allowing users to buy and sell women and children and to trade pornographic pictures on their sites. There is mounting public outcry demanding that these companies accept social and civic responsibility to change their ways and help curb sexual exploitation. (See more on these efforts here with the Dirty Dozen List)

However, these companies are hiding behind a law that has been completely misinterpreted by our high courts – the Communications Decency Act. Congress intended that this law help protect children from exposure to Internet pornography.

The act included a defense, Section 230, for Internet providers, protecting them from liability for material posted to their sites by 3rd parties. Thus, if illegal pornography or other material is posted to a site by someone not associated with the site operator, the site was to be held blameless.

Section 230 was well intentioned, but when the substantive portions of the CDA were held unconstitutional, the 230 defense was left standing and has been used by companies like Backpage, which holds its site out as a place to advertise illegal conduct such as sex trafficking of women and children.

Congress never intended this result, yet some courts have ruled that the 230 defense provides, in effect, blanket website immunity for all material posted by 3rd parties on the sites. It is estimated that Backpage alone makes approximately $3 million per month on ads for prostituted and trafficked women and children.

Originally Published at PornHarms.com.

TAKE ACTION: Contact Senators Kirk and Durbin, and your U.S. Representative, and demand them to change this law.

Written By Dan Kleinman

The Illinois Attorney General has launched investigations of the Orland Park Public Library, Orland Park, IL, for its censorship of–yours truly.  That’s right, me.  Twice, no less, in “OMA Request for Review – 2014 PAC 29489” and in “OMA Request for Review – 2014 PAC 29540.”  Hat tip to Megan Fox for making me aware of this:

• “Two More Letters Opening Investigations Into the Wrongdoings of the OPPL-BoT; This One is Really Interesting Because It Involves the Library From Prohibiting Dan Kleinman From Speaking,” by Megan Fox, Fans of Megan Fox, 9 June 2014:

Two more letters opening investigations into the wrongdoings of the OPPL Board of Trustees This one is really interesting because it involves the Library from prohibiting Dan Kleinman from speaking.  The ALA lists Dan Kleinman as their number 1 enemy because he is the nation’s leading expert on the lies the ALA tells the public!  The OMA does not prohibit people from speaking via video-conference, but the OPPL-BoT passed unreasonable restrictions specifically to silence Kleinman!  Keep in mind that the OPPL-BoT regular teleconferences in to conduct their meetings.  Why not just let Dan Kleinman have 5 minutes?  What’s the big deal?  It’s 5 minutes!  This board can’t listen to someone well-educated on the subject for 5 measly minutes?

Neither 2014 PAC 29489 nor 29540 name me, but both are about blocking someone from teleconferencing at public meetings, in this case the monthly library board of trustees meetings.  I was the only one who asked to speak at two meetings; was signed up on the list of speakers; was ready, willing, and able to teleconference, but was not allowed to speak.  I was the only one the library board specifically wrote policy about to silence me–at its criminal meeting in violation of law during a state holiday, as the Illinois Attorney General has recently determined.

To explain this matter further, see my own Request for Review made to the Illinois Attorney General on this very issue of the library repeatedly blocking me in violation of the law.  I spell out the law that blocks porn from all Illinois libraries, and that is likely exactly why I have been repeatedly blocked and why the censorship continues.  These are elected public officials blocking me in violation of the law, so this is censorship:

• “Library Censorship to Defend Child Porn; Another Request for Review Filed With the Illinois Attorney General,” by Dan Kleinman, SafeLibraries, 28 May 2014

Originally posted at SafeLibraries.blogspot.com

Written by Sean Fitzpatrick

The headmaster of the all-boys boarding school I attended when I was a teenager was always wary of admitting students to the academy that had been exposed to pornography. Among his reasons for this was that boys who had carnal knowledge—even on the level that pornography affords—very often found it an impediment in the process of their education. Now I am the headmaster of that same boarding school, and I am increasingly convinced of the reasoning behind my old headmaster’s reticence over such applicants.

Pornography is a destroyer of innocence, and the innocence proper to certain years of a boy’s life is an important factor in his education—especially if that education is informed by the classical pedagogies of wonder, imagination, and delight. Furthermore, I am increasingly convinced that I am facing a crisis that my headmaster did not face. While he had to consider the possibility that a boy may have viewed pornography, I have to consider the probability that every boy has viewed pornography. The only thing about our respective positions that are the same touching this matter is the grave obstacle of pornography in masculine education.

Pornography has come a long way in recent decades. There is a telling scene in a Woody Allen film from the 1970’s where he peruses and purchases pornography at a corner store, forced to face the humiliations of a tactless checkout clerk and unsympathetic customer scrutiny. Those days are over. No more top-shelf magazines. No more public purchases. No more physical evidence. All is anonymous, instantaneous, and easy. The long way porn has come in recent decades has been straight down the information superhighway. Today we have the Internet, and to many, the Internet is for porn.

There is no doubt that, since the dawn of the online era, porn has become wildly and incalculably more available and more mainstream. It is now a standard, systemic temptation: a pervasive fact of people’s lives, especially young people’s lives—and most especially young men’s lives. Though reports abound analyzing what percentage of the web is devoted to smut, or what the addictive properties of online porn are, or what it is doing to relationships, or how it is affecting bodies and brains, one thing is certain without scientific data or social studies: Internet pornography is damaging the lives and minds of possibly every single boy in this country, impeding his ability to be drawn to virtue and wisdom—in other words, impeding his education.

To suppose that boys in general, even boys from good families, are not exposed to pornography in some form or another is naïve. In our day, the presence of porn is a given, being widespread, strategic, and insidious. Porn is inescapable because it is immediately accessible. It is always just a click away, and hence it is everywhere. That is the reality that must be faced before it can be fought, and prudence demands that parents and educators presume the effects of pornography in the boys of today. Whether boys seek porn out or not, nowadays it is unimaginable that most boys—if not all boys—have not encountered pornography and have not been assaulted by its lies.

As a lie, pornography is inimical to the truth and therefore an enemy of authentic education. The reason pornography hinders a boy’s ability to accept and enjoy education is because pornography creates a barrier to wonder by numbing the sense of wonder. Without wonder, education is a crippled thing at best. Socrates taught that wonder is the beginning of wisdom, the very occasion of education, and pornography wounds the ability to wonder through the voyeuristic, shameless stripping of one of the most sacred sources of wonder.

It creates desensitization to beauty, robbing boys of their innocence through the elimination of the mysteries of the heart, severely impairing their ability to be awed or find pleasure in the beautiful. Jaded spirits are not very susceptible to formation. Cynicism quickly develops as a defense. Boys are finally lost to apathy in a world that fails to titillate. The fantasy, or blasphemy, of reality results in a loss of desire for reality, which is the foundation of any education. This latter principle of teaching through exposure to reality is a particularly powerful tool in educating young men, as boys tend to be highly sensory and active, and the experience of the world and its mysteries is an arena for wonder. Pornography eradicates mystery, and without mystery, boys will lose their ability to wonder, and in a large part, their ability to become wise—which is the work of education.

Of course, pornography targets boys and men with specific force given their specific weakness for visual sexual stimulus; but beyond this, porn preys on the male impulse to exercise control. This is a natural masculine virtue, but one that can be perverted into vice. Pornography creates a false world of male supremacy, distorting the balance of truth—of activity and passivity—that education introduces and fosters. Men also have a predisposition to protect women, but pornography introduces a violation of women, like a species of rape, that breaks down a boy’s sense of an essential identity of manhood. These perversions of self-knowledge are a tremendous inhibitor of knowledge of outside things. Boys learn well through the context of first-hand experience, and if that experience is warped, so too will it warp the things it measures. What is more, the overdeveloped sense of mastery and manipulation that porn creates can cause boys to shut off instinctively when drawn to receive truths that are solid and supreme. Reality is not something that can be enslaved like a fantasy, and hence reality is often rejected once a taste develops for pornographic illusion.

Through exposure to the anti-masculine paradigm and anti-feminine propaganda that is the chief poison of pornography, chimera and culpability are softening our boys. As my old headmaster said, “You can’t sculpt Jello.” Boys have always struggled with motivation and attention, and pornography is a propagator of these problems by coaxing boys into a hazy dream world where they, and only they, are in charge. School calls boys out of themselves. Porn drags them within—and after time employs chains to keep them there, locked in within themselves and locked out from the world they are called to know as men of strength and sensitivity.

Pornography depicts women as disposable sexual objects, pulling boys away from the idea of permanency. Education, on the other hand, is about the permanent things, the eternal things, and anything that breaks down contact with transcendental realities impedes the work of education. Without the mysteries of beauty and love intact, there are severe impediments to education, where the whole draw is mystery and longing. Pornography, and the accessibility of pornography, cheapens the most hallowed of domains to a young mind and can render any object of beauty a dubious and dirty thing, nothing to take seriously, nothing to respect, and nothing to be in awe of.

Pornography murders wonder and the sense of the sacred, which makes education far more of a challenge than it already is, especially to boys. Boys long for meaning, especially in education, and the damage and desensitization caused by Internet porn puts boys at risk of never finding their way out of the cave of shadows, out of virtual reality, into the world that God made good: a meaningful world filled with the mysteries of beauty where He can be found and give true fulfillment.

Originally Posted at CrisisMagazine.com

Child porn and other illegal content is unfiltered and access is paid for by taxpayers at the Orland Park library. 

Can a Homeschooling, Pregnant Mother 
& Her Colleague Stop it?

Orland Park Public Library Director Mary Weimar, Spokesperson Bridget Bittman, and their board have pushed a radical “unfettered, unfiltered internet” which includes access to the most illegal and deviant internet sites. Read our previous summary here.

Two citizens objected. Here’s what happened next…

Can Orland Park library employees, legal counsel, and board actions allegedly violate, intimidate, or restrict the basic liberties of the two citizen objectors, Megan Fox and Kevin DuJan?

• Held secret meeting: Attorney General Public Access Counselor ruled that the library board violated the Open Meetings Act (OMA) by holding an illegal meeting.  At this meeting, it was decided to continue unfettered internet access with no steps taken to stop child porn and other illegal content. Violation of OMA is a criminal offense
• Arrest tactic fails: during the May board meeting, legal counsel and Spokesperson Bridget Bittman called police and tried to get arrests.  Watch YouTube video.
• “Breach of the Peace” citation: Kevin DuJan was cited for “breach of the peace” by Orland Park police for his meeting “conduct.” Bridget Bittman signed the complaint. Really?
• Gay Slurs: Was DuJan subject to gay slurs by Bridget Bittman and Board Member Diane Jennings? You decide: watch YouTube video of incident.

Additionally:

• While going door-to-door in Orland Park with informational fliers, the activists were stopped by a man perceived to be police- flashing a badge. Now, the activists believe the “badge flasher” isn’t law enforcement, but John Weimar, husband of library Director Mary Weimar and the former prosecutor in… Orland Park!
  Watch Video Part One (2 mins)
  Watch Video Part Two (15 mins)

• Megan Fox, who is eight months pregnant, receives online harassment, hard core porn and “threats” posted to her private Facebook page. Here’s just one: “We want you to commit suicide.”

Is today’s society so corrupt that we will tolerate a government restricting citizen speech, participating in citizen harassment, while providing gateway access to illegal materials- including child porn?

A citizen’s first duty is government oversight… the next Orland Park Public Library Board meeting is on Monday, August 18, 2014 at 6:45PM.

For The Good of Illinois, I’ll see you there.

Adam Andrzejewski, Founder & Chairman of For The Good of Illinois

P.S. And yes… this library wants to hike property taxes from 3.5% to 12%. Director Mary Weimar costs taxpayers over $187,000 annually. See what all Orland library employees cost taxpayers HERE.

De-Pornifying Culture

Looking at culture, it’s tempting to give up in despair. As the dad of little girls, for example, when I see the relentless objectification of women by celebrities such as Miley Cyrus, I’m tempted to think that any attempt in what William Wilberforce called a “reformation of manners” is futile. It seems that instead, in the words of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, we have to “define deviance down.”

But lately, there have been encouraging signs. It’s too soon to call it a “reformation of manners” but a backlash to what one recent author called our cultural vulgarity is already asserting itself—not via the boycotts of angry culture warriors but by some of the unlikeliest cultural allies in politics, the media, and the music industry. For example, several celebrities have spoken out who’ve been repulsed by the shameless pornification of “entertainers” such as Miley Cyrus.

Singer Sinead O’Connor warned her in a direct letter, “Nothing but harm will come in the long run from allowing yourself to be exploited…. It is absolutely NOT … an empowerment of yourself or any other young women, for you to send across the message that you are to be valued … more for your sexual appeal than your obvious talent.”

And Joan Rivers said, “We get it: You’re no longer Hannah Montana … but could you do it with a little more grace?”

Media critics are also experiencing something of a moral gag reflex. Critic Lee Siegel of The Wall Street Journal, no prude himself, wonders how we became so coarse, in the process draining the mystery and pleasure right out of sex.

Feminist writer Naomi Wolf says that pornography is actually killing our desire for sex. Indeed, one study shows that couples may be having 20 percent less sex than they did ten years ago. With all the celebration of sex, I wonder why?

Jonah Goldberg writes, “Today, there’s nothing suggestive about Miley Cyrus. Nobody watching her twerk thinks, ‘I wonder what she’s getting at?’”

And writing for Glamour, a decidedly liberal magazine, television star Rashida Jones calls for a new conversation about the exploitation of Miley Cyrus: “This isn’t showing female sexuality; this is showing what it looks like when women sell sex,” Jones says. “Also, let’s be real. Every woman’s sexuality is different. Can all of us really be into stripper moves?”

And even some politicians are aggressively trying to draw some boundaries, at least overseas. A parliamentarian in Iceland, described as “ultra-liberal” by The Economist, is attempting to outlaw online pornography, believing it contributes to prostitution. British Prime Minister David Cameron hopes to change the default setting on online porn to blocked, unless a household specifically chooses to opt in. Porn in homes is, he says, “corroding childhood.” They’re seeing the consequences of bad ideas about sex in the real world.

Now, many of these new allies have little on which to base their revulsion of the new vulgarity other than their feelings. They know it’s destructive and hurtful to women, children, and families, but they don’t know why. And that’s where Christians can step in with a little gentle teaching about worldview. We might even be surprised at their response.

The culture’s growing acknowledgement of the hurtfulness of porn reveals, in the words of our friend J. Budziszewski, “The task of debate about morality is not so much teaching people what they have no clue about, but bringing to the surface the latent moral knowledge or suppressed moral knowledge that they have already.”

We can explain that our opposition to the pornification of culture is not because we’re afraid of sex, but because we abhor the consequences of its misuse for those created in the image of God. We can confidently tell them that the good gift of sex in marriage brings children, and intimacy, and allows us to learn something of the love of God for his people. The pornification of culture cheapens and obscures this valuable gift.

And that can help explain where all of this gagging has been coming from.

This article was originally posted at the BreakPoint.com website, and the audio broadcast originally aired January 7, 2014.

Watching porn triggers similar brain activity as drug exposure, study says

Researchers at the University of Cambridge’s department of psychiatry discovered that watching pornography triggers brain activity similar to what drug addicts experience when they’re shown drugs.

In the study, the researchers looked at 19 men with compulsive sexual behavior and 19 healthy men. The participants either watched sexually explicit videos or sports while the researchers monitored their brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging.

The imaging showed that three regions of the brain—the ventral striatum, dorsal anterior cingulate and amygdala—were more active in the men with compulsive sexual behavior compared to the healthy participants. Interestingly, these are the same areas stimulated in drug addicts when they’re shown drugs. The ventral striatum helps process reward and motivation and the dorsal anterior cingulate is involved in anticipating rewards and drug cravings. The amygdala processes events and emotions.

After watching the videos, the participants also rated their level of sexual desire and how much they enjoyed the videos. Previous research has shown that at a certain point, drug addicts use their drug of choice because they need it, and not necessarily because they like the feeling. As the researchers expected, the patients with compulsive sexual behavior reported higher levels of desire towards the sexually explicit videos even though they did not necessarily like them more. Their desire was also correlated with higher interactions between the three areas of the brain during the explicit videos than for the sports.

The men with compulsive sexual behavior also reported starting to watch pornography at earlier ages, and they consumed it at a higher rate than the healthy group. The researchers noticed that younger participants—particularly those with compulsive sexual behavior—had greater levels of activity in the ventral striatum after watching pornography. This, the study authors believe, suggests the ventral striatum is involved in the development of compulsive sexual behaviors like it is in drug addiction. Since people’s brains continue developing into their mid-20s, teens often take more risks and are more susceptible to impulsive behavior.

Despite the findings, the investigators still caution against making any conclusive leaps until more research is done. After all, the study sampling was small, and there’s still disagreement over whether sex is really addictive.

“Whilst these findings are interesting, it’s important to note, however, that they could not be used to diagnose the condition. Nor does our research necessarily provide evidence that these individuals are addicted to porn – or that porn is inherently addictive,” lead study author Dr. Valerie Voon, a Wellcome Trust Intermediate Clinical Fellow at Cambridge, said in a statement. “Much more research is required to understand this relationship between compulsive sexual behaviour and drug addiction.”

This article was originally posted at the Time.com website.

Eight months ago we wrote an article about the dangers of unfiltered Internet access in our public libraries, and specifically cited an on-going battle at the Orland Park library.  The situation in Orland Park is now boiling over.  The library board has stubbornly defended its inadequate Internet policy, and by default, continues to allow illegal pornography to be accessed with your tax dollars.

Take ACTION:  The next library board meeting is on Monday, July 21^st at 6:45 P.M at the Orland Public Library (14921 S. Ravinia). We hope to see 30 to 50 local people there. This will send a strong message to the library board that its taxpayers want to prevent access to illegal material that reduces women and children to objects for self gratification.

If you are unable to attend, please call the following Orland Park Library Board Trustees and voice your opposition to their current policy and your desire to have illegal porn blocked from publicly accessible computers.

1. Diane Jennings (708) 349-9798
2. Denis Ryan (708) 349-0008
3. Nancy Wendy Healy (708) 349-6059
4. Dan Drew (708) 383-0194
5. Beth Gierach (708) 479-7632

Adam Andrejewski’s For the Good of Illinois recently reported about the situation:

Can Two Courageous Citizens Stop Access to Unfiltered Porn In the Orland Park Library?
Read summary and timeline here 

A pregnant mother & her colleague who are challenging the porn policy are singled out and attacked for standing for decency:

• Watch how this mother is treated by library General Counsel James Fessler (7:09 start), law partner at Klein Thorpe Jenkins, LTD
• Listen to General Counsel James Fessler and Spokeswoman Bridget Bittman attempt to convince Orland Park Police to unlawfully arrest this mother & her colleague! 

It’s clear that Orland Park public library has only contempt for its citizens and is following a radical agenda, one that’s championed by the ACLU and American Library Association. By allowing unfiltered access to illegal pornography, this elected board of trustees is lowering the community’s standard of decency and potentially creating an environment for illegal activity. Furthermore, Klein Thorpe Jenkins  has already billed close to $160,000 and is on pace for $500,000 in 2014 legal fees to the library district in defense of their pro-porn policy.  

Megan Fox and Kevin DuJan have tried to stop access to illegal porn and child porn in the public library.  But the library aggressively refuses policy change. Here’s what’s been uncovered:

• Specific, detailed allegation of child porn at Orland Park Library
• Sex crimes committed in the library; repeated staff cover up with no police calls
• No library policy prohibition regarding accessing unfiltered porn online
• Lack of enforcement of internet user identification – therefore, convicted sex offenders have anonymous unfiltered access to porn, including child porn, violent porn, etc.
• Daily internet records are expunged when computers are turned off
• Library repeatedly violated the Freedom of Information Act and Open Meetings Act.
• Attorney General issued opinions are ignored.

Megan Fox and Kevin DuJan have stood up against all institutional force. Fox is a mother who witnessed porn being watched in the library and DuJan has helped her in the fight to stop it. Here’s a summary of what they’ve encountered:

• Endured filing of repeated police complaints by library employees and attorney in hopes of silencing them. 
• Suffered attempted arrest tactic by the General Counsel and Spokeswoman plotting with police at a library board meeting in May.
• Prevented from engaging in First Amendment free speech during public comment at library board meetings.

 At the June board meeting, Attorney Maryann Jubar with Citizens Advocacy Center  strongly backed the citizens.  

Take ACTION:  We need you at the next library board meeting on Monday, July 21^st at 6:45 P.M at the Orland Public Library at 14921 S. Ravinia. We would like to have 30 to 50 local people there to send a strong message to the library board that the current Internet public access policy is completely unacceptable and presents a clear and present danger.

Please forward this article to like-minded neighbors in Orland Park.

**Caution: Contains Sensitive Information**

You need some good news, and I want to tell you about two recent victories for decency! 

The war against the sexual exploitation of women and children is definitely a winnable one when people simply take a moment to make their opposition known. 

Illinois Family Institute is proud to be a part of a growing movement of good people like you who are fighting back against hardcore pornography that profits from the sexual exploitation and degradation of women and children. 

Thanks to the leadership of Morality in Media and their web site www.pornharms.com, Google has decided to stop displaying pornographic ads and ads that link to sexually explicit websites.   

This change in policy now makes website owners responsible for policing their own sites even if the questionable content is uploaded by a separate user. If the site owners fail to comply, they lose all of the ad revenue generated by the ads on their website. This forces website owners to be responsible for content on their sites and to self-regulate. 

It gets better! It’s not only hardcore porn that Google’s policy will apply to but also ads that link to web pages with images or videos containing the following:

• Strategically covered nudity
• Sheer or see-through clothing
• Lewd or provocative poses
• Close-ups of breasts, buttocks, or crotches

This change at Google is a major victory! We are definitely at a historic point. The fight against pornography is finally changing direction.

Click HERE to sign the THANK YOU CARD TO GOOGLE 

Verizon’s FIOS TV was offering a wide variety of hardcore porn videos for rent. In addition, they also offered hardcore pornography through their Wireless and Internet services. Through www.pornharms.com, thousands wrote or called Verizon’s Board of Directors to complain especially about the child-themed porn Verizon was featuring. Many (but not all) of these have been removed.

This is a step in the right direction, but there’s still work to do with Verizon. 

Verizon still promotes certain child-sex fantasy videos, some from Hustler’s Barely Legal porn video series designed to appeal to these fantasies. Actresses who look and act younger than their age are selected to appear in Barely Legal pornography. Verizon also offers many genres of porn, including porn with racial themes and violence. 

VERIZON SHOULD BE ASHAMED.   

Yes, our work is cut out for us, but be encouraged by the outcome with Google! 

Take ACTION: Click HERE to contact Verizon and to thank them for taking the first step in the right direction by removing some of the videos that degrade and objectify women and children. But tell them they must do more. Tell them that no amount of money can justify the degradation, abuse and rape that regularly take place in the porn industry. Tell Verizon they should not be in the porn business. Tell them that every day they make this filth available, they are promoting violence and abuse of women and children.

We will keep you updated on the latest efforts to stop the proliferation of sexually explicit material.

I recently attended a summit in Arlington, VA, on the issue of ending sexual exploitation. The information shared by experts was, to say the least, overwhelming. We are in an emergency state. Of utmost importance is the urgent need to protect the innocence of our children from exposure to online pornography.

Pornography has become extremely violent since the days of Playboy. Porn that depicts bondage and rape is viewed in much larger numbers. About 90% of scenes in top-selling porn contain at least one act of physical aggression. Of the 50 top selling porn DVDs, 3,376 acts of aggression were found – that’s an act of aggression every minute and a half.

Unfortunately, it is my intention to shock you and for that I deeply apologize. But it is my firm belief that if parents don’t become alarmed and take active measures to monitor and protect children from the XXX-rated material easily found online, the consequences to their children can be a life-long struggle with a most difficult addition to overcome.

 Please read to the end where hope and solutions are offered. 

Statistics & Research Worthy of Attention:

The average age of first exposure to pornography is 11. However, many children are exposed much earlier.

Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children conservatively estimates there are at least 100,000 US children per year used for the purpose of commercial sex. The fact that this is happening in our country is shameful.

Adolescent exposure is a significant predictor of attitudes of elevated violence and degradation toward women.

“Teen Porn” has increased online 215% over the last 6 years.

The porn industry business strategy is to pull in young boys as future paying customers.

Pornography does not just distort the individual’s view on sexuality, but actually restructures the brain by eroding the prefrontal region which is responsible for willpower.

Research shows the more porn is viewed, the more likely the viewer believes that unnatural sexual activity is common in society – anal sex, group sex, sadomasochism and bestiality. Watching porn desensitizes participants to trivialize rape.

70% of 18-24 year-old men visit porn sites in a typical month. These are our daughters’ potential dates and future husbands.

An analysis of 400 million web searches from 2009 to 2010 concluded that the most popular category of porn searches online, by a very wide margin, is “youth.” When the U.S. Supreme Court defined child porn as only involving actual children, it opened the door wide to websites depicting women dressed to look like little girls or cartoons of children being sexually dominated by older men.

The average age of entry into prostitution in the U.S. is 13-14 years old, not because there are pimps who take them in, but because there are buyers who like them young. Demand drives supply. Each click on a porn site increases the demand.

There’s Help

Children depend on adults to protect them. Protect yourself and your family from pornography. Install filters today! Start conversations with your family! Get help if you’re struggling!

NetNanny.org has filtering solutions for every parent’s need to protect their children and themselves from pornography, online predators, cyberbullying and much more. Thanks to NetNanny, a FREE download is being made available to IFI supporters. CLICK HERE for the FREE download, look under “How Net Nanny Can Help” for instructions.

Talk “with” kids instead of just “to” kids about online dangers. For role-play and conversations ideas CLICK HERE,  HERE, and HERE.

PureHope.net/parenting is a four-part teaching series provides parents the tools to model a lifestyle of purity while protecting and equipping their children to make godly choices in today’s sexualized and technology-driven culture.

Good Pictures Bad Pictures is a book written by Kristen A. Jenson, MA, and Gail Poyner, Ph.D. It features a powerful 5-step plan to inoculate your child against the epidemic of pornography. It is also available at Amazon.com.

InternetSafety101.org  Many parents and grandparents don’t have a clue that the kids in their lives can accidentally be exposed to extreme hardcore pornography through their smart phones, tablets and computers. Sexual predators actively seek out kids to sexually exploit via technology. Half of today’s youth are experiencing cyberbullying. Started by Enough Is Enough, Internet Safety 101’s goal is to educate, empower, and equip parents with the basic safety rules and software tools they need to know to protect their children online. Click Here for an overview. 

SALifeLine.org  Protecting Families from the Harmful Effects of Pornography is a free manual for families, religious and community leaders. It provides individuals, couples and families hope for recovery from sexual addiction. Protecting Families Manual – Free Download. 

Stand with Illinois Family Institute! 

The Bible is the “word of truth.” It’s mankind’s user manual. It’s the blueprint, even in suffering, for a joyful and fulfilled existence in this life, and an incomprehensibly glorious eternity in the next. The total truths and precepts inherent within the Judeo-Christian scriptures are both timeless and universally applicable to all people and peoples across the globe, be they Christian, Jew or pagan.

Obviously, neither pornography nor pornography use, in the modern sense, was around during ancient biblical times. Still, since all time is biblical time, and since the Bible transcends time and space, God, in His boundless love and wisdom, has given us specific truths that directly apply to the use and abuse of modern pornography in all its ugly forms.

Studies indicate that at least 70 percent of American men and 30 percent of American women regularly view online pornography. The numbers aren’t much better among Christians with a 2011 ChristiaNet survey finding that 50 percent of Christian men and 20 percent of Christian women regularly use porn.

The following is in no way a comprehensive analysis of the devastating medical, mental, spiritual and societal pitfalls associated with porn use. Neither is it a complete examination of what the Holy Scriptures have to say on the subject. Still, here are six specific truths, from the word of truth, about pornography use:

1) Pornography use is always wrong.

Like adultery, fornication, homosexuality, incest, bestiality and other forms of sexual immorality, the use of pornography, too, is sin.

1 Thessalonians 5:22 admonishes us to “abstain from every form of evil.” As we will further develop in the subsequent “porn truths” below, porn use is evil. “Do not desire her beauty in your heart, nor let her capture you with her eyelids” (Proverbs 6:25).

“Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality …” (Galatians 5:19).

When you use pornography, you engage “the deeds of the flesh” and grieve the Holy Spirit. “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30).

2) Married? Pornography use is adultery. Not married? Pornography use is fornication.

“[B]ut I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28).

Husbands, I realize that you tell yourself, “I’d never cheat on my wife.”

Using pornography?

You already have.

You also don’t have much sense.

“The one who commits adultery with a woman is lacking sense; He who would destroy himself does it. Wounds and disgrace he will find, and his reproach will not be blotted out” (Proverbs 6:32-33).

Using porn? Knock it off, repent and ask God’s forgiveness. You’re destroying yourself and your marriage.

“Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge” (Hebrews 13:4).

Hear that, single guys? If you’re using porn, you’re committing fornication. You’re sinning against God, your future wife and God’s precious daughters featured in the images after which you lust.

Again, knock it off, repent and ask God’s forgiveness. Then save yourself, from now on, for your wife. That’s what your Creator both expects and demands.

3) Pornography use leads to death.

“But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death” (James 1:14-15).

People often say that pornography use is a “victimless crime.” Nonsense. Both the subjects of pornography, the men, women and children featured in it and objectified through it, as well as those who consume it, are hurt by pornography.

Pornography use is a cancerous epidemic in America. It’s destroying lives, souls, children, marriages and families.

It’s also destroying our culture.

Porn use leads to death – spiritual, emotional, marital, familial and societal death.

4) Pornography use is demonic.

“For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world” (1 John 2:16).

Porn use typifies all of this and more. Porn is “of the world.”

Scripture calls Satan the “prince of the world” and the “father of lies.”

Pornography, which is “from the world,” is the wicked, destructive, deceptive and deadly brainchild of the “prince of the world.”

“Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them; for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret” (Ephesians 5:11-12).

5) You must flee pornography.

“Flee [sexual] immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body” (1 Corinthians 6:18).

Flee pornography while you still can. You will be discovered. Many falsely believe that porn use is a personal, harmless form of entertainment. They think that what they do, they do in secret. Nothing is done in secret. More often than not, your loved ones will discover you. As scripture warns: “[Y]ou may be sure that your sin will find you out.”

Either way, God knows.

6) You can be free from pornography use.

“No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

The way of escape is available in and through the person of Jesus Christ, His holy word, the Holy Spirit and the full armor of God:

Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Ephesians 6:13-18).

Try this: Every time you’re tempted to return to your computer for porn, pick up a Bible instead. Or go to BibleGateway.com.

Begin reading.

“How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Your word. With all my heart I have sought You; Do not let me wander from Your commandments” (Psalms 119:9-10).

I second the Apostle Peter’s plea: “Dear friends, I urge you … to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11).

Even if you feel you cannot stop using pornography under your own power, you can stop under the power of the Holy Spirit. Ask Jesus – keep asking Jesus – and He will help you.

If you screw up, then stop, ask His forgiveness and then ask Him again for help.

Because a soul is a terrible thing to waste.