Ruth Institute Blog

The Family Research Council has caught up with the Ruth Institute. I shouldn’t gloat, but the big DC-Beltway Think Tank has just discovered the Presumption of Paternity. Out here in San Diego, as far from the Beltway as you can get and still be in the Continental US, we have been saying this stuff, literally, for years:

Same-sex “marriage” is not just an attack on a traditional social institution–it’s an attack on the order of nature itself. That was made clear again this week when an Iowa court ruled that a child whose mother was a lesbian “married” to a woman and whose father was an anonymous sperm donor should have both female “spouses” listed on the child’s birth certificate. The ruling was based on a legal principle called “the presumption of paternity,” which historically has stated that when a child is born to a married woman, her husband is presumed to be the father of that child. In other words, the law “presumed” what was almost always true. But in the wake of the Iowa Supreme Court’s legalization of same-sex “marriage” in 2009, Judge Eliza Ovrom has twisted the “presumption of paternity” into a “presumption of parentage.” So what was once a presumption of something that was nearly always biologically Read more…

Passports in the UK will no longer list Mother and Father on a child’s passport.  Only Parent 1 and Parent 2 will be listed.

Documents seen by the Daily Mail suggest the change was made as a result of lobbying by the gay rights group Stonewall. The Home Office Diversity Strategy’ states: ‘IPS [the Identity and Passport Service] is working with Stonewall in response to an issue about having to name a “mother” and “father” on the passport  application form.’

Stonewall has gotten the government to impose Parent 1 and Parent 2 on the passports, in the oh-so-reasonable attempt to spare people embarrassment at the border.  I want you to think about changing the birth certificates to have Parent 1 and Parent 2.  This would mean that the government would take no notice at all of which person has a biological connection with the child. Not mother and second parent. Nor mother or co-parent.  Just Parent 1 and Parent 2. Biology is out of the equation. We couldn’t have the biological mother being “privileged” over her “partner,” now could we?

This is where the decoupling of sex and reproduction from marriage has led us. No more natural parents, only legal parents. Years ago, the idea was, “every child a wanted child.”  Now we’ve come to the point where “Every child an adopted child,” whether you gave birth to the baby or not.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2044491/PC-passport-Goodbye-mother-father-Now-Parent-1-2-appear-form.html#ixzz1fiCgXrPV

by Sheila Liaugminas

In the public schools, parents are losing more rights with more frequency these days.

The California school system has been in the news a lot in recent months for its change in curriculum to make it not only gay-friendly, but featured. Read more…

by Carolyn Moynihan

There was an uproar in New Zealand recently about sex education when a father told the NZ Herald he had pulled his son out of sex education because the teacher had told his class that anal and oral sex were alternatives to intercourse and that it was okay to play with a girl’s private parts as long as she consented. The boy was only 12. His class was also told to lie on the floor and imagine that the whole word way gay. Other parents came up with their own horror stories. Read more…

by Bob Kellogg

Beginning next spring, fifth-, eighth-, and tenth-grade students in the DC schools will take a 50-question sexual education standardized test. But Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council (FRC) says that is raising some concerns. Read more…

Back in July, the California legislature passed SB 48.  It mandates that all public schools must include positive discussions of the sexual orientations of transgender, bisexual, and gay Americans when teaching their contributions to history.  This includes rewriting text books and using supplemental discussion materials. Read more…

A couple of months ago, Ari had posted about a San Francisco ballot initiative that would have banned male circumcision in that city.

Now, a Superior Court judge has ruled that the measure be removed from the ballot, saying that the state, not cities, has the right to regulate medical procedures.  She also found that ban would violate the free exercise of religion: Read more…

by Sal Gaglio, Jr.

In an era of expanding globalization and international governance, many Americans have espoused serious concerns about various treaties which could be ratified in the near future.  A prime example is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).    Read more…

The Declaration on the Authority of Parents and Guardians in the Education of their Children is a statement drafted by the Catholic Civil Rights League (Canada) and offered to all people of good will who accept the principles it affirms. It does not depend upon particular religious beliefs. Read more…

Note: This post was researched and written by Mr. Austin Muck, second year law student  at SMU, and legal intern for the summer at the Ruth Institute.  Dr J  

Recently the Supreme Court of Ohio appropriately decided a case that protected the constitutional right of parents to determine what is in the best interest of their children.  Subsequently, the Columbus Dispatch published an article putting the decision in negative light.  The article left out key facts of the case in order to portray it as an infringement on parental rights of same-sex partners.  In the case, Mullen decided to have baby, a decision supported by her girlfriend Hobbs.  However, the women split two years after Mullen had the baby.  Immediately after the split, Hobbs, with no biological relation, sought partial custody of the child.   Hobbs claimed Mullen relinquished her sole custody, because several documents— that were later revoked—listed Hobbs as the “co-parent in every way” and because Mullen held her out as a parent.  However, Mullen consistently refused to enter into or sign any formal shared-custody agreement when presented with the opportunity to do so.  This is a fact the article fails to mention.  Read more…

by Bill May

AB 499, the bill which permits 12 year old children to give consent, without their parents’ knowledge, for vaccines or other medication to prevent sexually transmitted diseases, was surprisingly pulled from the Senate floor July 7 and referred to the Senate Appropriations Committee. A new hearing has been scheduled for August 15. Read more…

There will be a hearing next Wednesday, June 22, on SB 48–the bill that would require California schools to teach, not merely the accomplishments of historical figures, but their sexual preferences as well.  It would apply to students in kindergarten on up.

If you can’t attend the hearing, call your legislator.

From Bill May: Read more…

I found this news on the Women of Grace website:

LifeSiteNews.com is reporting that a proposed new law in California that recently passed out of Committee will mandate pro-gay indoctrination of all public school students by forcing the curricula to incorporate the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans. Known as SB 48, it was introduced by an openly homosexual state Senator, Mark Leno, and managed to pass the ten-member Education Committee last week by a 6-3 vote. The bill now moves to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where it will be considered in early April.  [Update:  the full California Senate passed the bill on April 14.]

The law, which is supposed to counter discrimination of homosexual youth, contains no opt-out provision for parents or teachers. If passed, it will affect the curriculum for students as early as kindergarten…. Read more…

In an op-ed from the Boston Herald, we learn the following:

Pay attention parents! It’s spring. And before you know it, Massachusetts public schools will begin their yearly sex-ed lessons for kids as young as 5.

Of course, they won’t call it “sex ed.” They’ll call it “health.” But a rose by any other name is still a rose….

Indeed, when specifically asked why the school presents lessons on HIV in the third grade, rather than in middle school, one school administrator made this shocking admission:

“The goal is to reach kids before they absorb their parents’ values. By middle school it’s too late.” (emphasis added)

Read the whole thing.

I haven’t seen many details on the Delaware case I posted the other day.  But one fact is clear: the non-mother in same sex couple did not do a second party adoption. If she had done an adoption, she would have the same parental rights as the woman who went to Kazakhstan to adopt the child in the first place.  With a second party adoption, there would be no case here at all. According to the story, “Delaware does allow such adoptions, and Guest intended to file those papers later.”  

She “intended” to file for adoption, but never did.  We can only speculate as to why.

1. Maybe she just didn’t get around to it, and there was no other reason.

2. Maybe she didn’t really want to.  Maybe she only wanted to after the sexual relationship broke up, and she wanted to be vindictive.  Dissolving sexual relationships can bring out the worst in people.

3. Maybe the adoptive mother decided, all things considered, that she didn’t want to allow her child to be adopted by someone else. 

To those of you who are defending this Delaware law, I have a couple of questions.

1. Does it make any difference to you, which of these reasons accounts for Guest’s failure to file the adoption papers?

2. Does it make any difference to you, whether Guest had a sexual relationship with Smith or not?  And if it does, explain why Guest’s sexual involvement with an adoptive mother should make her automatically a priveleged candidate for adopting her child?

Today CatholicVote.org published an article that covers a lecture Dr J gave in early February. In fact we already have a thread about it. (Pro-Family Speaker Challenges Students) But apparently people are still writing about her talk, it is a presentation well worth revisiting, and the author of the article very succinctly sums up what I consider be one of the greatest dangers – if not the very greatest danger – of same-sex ‘marriage’. (See the second quote box below.) Read more…

Some German parents continue to be jailed for protecting their children’s Christian beliefs.

Five sets of parents in a German town have been punished for refusing to allow their elementary school-aged children to participate in school sex-education programs (see earlier article). “[The children are] being put through an interactive sex-education play which teaches them that if something feels good, then you should do it,” explains Roger Kiska with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). Read more…

This is kind of nuts. I’m glad I live in the U.S.

by Carolyn Moynihan

A German mother is in prison as a result of resisting state measures to force objectionable “sexual education” on her children. Her husband has already served his 43-day sentence. The couple bring the number of Christian parents imprisoned for this reason to 10. Read more…

This incident is just more evidence of Planned Parenthood’s mindset and priorities.

We’re going to try again to get a parental notification act on the ballot.

If we want to hold parents accountable, then we have to accord them authority commensurate with their responsibility. It is completely beyond me anyway why we ever made young girls vulnerable to sexual predators in the first place by making it legal for some supposedly ‘concerned’ adult to take them to an abortionist in secret.

You can view the text of the initiative at this PDF.