When my two-year-old daughter was throwing a fit, I took hold of her and looked her in the eyes, saying, “You WILL talk to Mommy nicely.”
With no hesitation, she got three inches from my face, tilted her head to the side and said
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by Carolyn Moynihan
US Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich was accused by ex-wife number two last week of wanting, at one stage, an “open marriage” in order to accommodate an affair he was having with present wife (number three). The New York Times has rounded up some experts to discuss the merits of such arangements. Brad Wilcox of the National Marriage Project, who can be relied on for common sense and objectivity, says: Read more…
My two-year-old son was singing, or rather, belting out, the Alleluia in his best voice. The only problem was that he replaced the word “Alleluia” with…
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by Carolyn Moynihan
It’s difficult today to say anything in favour of the intact, married family without putting somebody’s nose out of joint. Last week it was a blogger at the LBGT site ThinkProgress who took umbrage at a comment by Focus on the Family’s Glenn Stanton. I’ll let Mr Stanton tell you how from his post on NRO’s Home Front blog: Read more…
By Michael Worley, First year law student at J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University, and a 2011 graduate of the Ruth Institute It Takes a Family to Raise a Village program.
It is common knowledge that TV reports don’t tell the whole story. Frequently a group of 75 undecided voters gather to share their responses immediately after a debate. Such people provide instant commentary that the theorists of network TV may not be able to perceive. However, these groups tend not to be predictive of overall election results. Random polling via phone calls shows us much clearer results. Read more…
by Shannon Roberts
Past Eugenics and sterilisation programs in the United States are coming back to bite them, with North Carolina currently the first State to address compensation for victims.
According to the North Carolina Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation, at one time 31 states in the United States had government-run eugenics programs. In North Carolina alone, close to 8,000 men, women, and children, largely poor, black, disabled or uneducated, were forcibly sterilized from 1929 to 1974. The programs were aimed at creating a better society by eliminating those considered undesirable. Read more…
by William West
Film censors are allowing teens to access much more explicit content and few parents seem to care
A time traveller from the 20th Century would very likely be shocked by how standards have plummeted in the film industry in a little over a decade – particularly with movies aimed at the teen market. Even parents from the swinging ’60s and ’70s would have thought twice about the explicit films now routinely sanctioned by censors for viewing by teenagers. Read more…
Random chance? Prank of the fitness gods? Yes, I know I’m getting big, but seeing this on my fridge is just spooky.
See it to believe it.
This is one of our continuing series of posts on identifying the rhetorical tactics of the opponents of marriage. This strategy of mischaracterizing your opponents’ statements is extremely common, and takes several different forms. Today we are going to deal with just one: being outraged over a statement you attribute to your opponent, but which he did not in fact make!
An example of this from Think Progress crossed my desk yesterday. Here is the breathless statement from left-wing LGBT blogman, Zach Ford, attacking Focus on the Family (FOTF):
But though FOTF is clearly trying to use this as evidence against same-sex marriage, the study did not prove anything “against” same-sex parents. The study in question (PDF here) did not, in fact, address same-sex parenting whatsoever, but instead compared children raised by married heterosexual parents to children raised by a single mother. It is one of many “fatherless” studies that conservative groups use to conflate not having a father/having one mother with having two mothers.
Mercy! Those nefarious right-wingers! Transforming a study that has nothing to do with same sex parents into an attack on gay parents! Read more…
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…
When my daughter was about four, I was telling her that while we were in church everyone needs to be extra quiet. When we are, Jesus can talk to us in our hearts. And if we are quiet, we can hear Him. She said, “Okay, Mommy,” and about a minute later she said, “Oh Mommy, I hear him.” I said, “Really? What is He saying?”
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By W. Bradford Wilcox
Now Available as an E-Book!
Scholarly evidence continues to point to the enormous benefits of marriage to couples, children, and the society. Released by a group of eighteen family scholars, the latest edition of Why Marriage Matters offers important new findings from the social sciences on the state of marriage in the United States, including why recent increases in cohabitation and family instability pose a risk to children. Read more…
December 13th, 2011
Betsy
by Carolyn Moynihan
In the last post on the new State of Our Unions (SOU) report from the National Marriage Project we read that “the benefits of generosity were particularly pronounced among couples with children”. Parents who were very generous with each other were more likely to be very happy as well. But there’s more. Generosity in having children is also part of the happiness equation. Read more…
Dr. Michael L. Brown
Caution: Contains descriptions that some may find offensive.
As outrageous as it is to hear about the new sex-ed curriculum for New York City schools, beginning with middle schools, there are some school districts for which the program does not start early enough. And so, in June 2010, the Provincetown, Massachusetts, school board voted unanimously to begin distributing condoms to elementary school children upon the student’s request, beginning in first grade and without parental knowledge or consent. (What possible use could a 6-year-old have for a condom?) Read more…

Anyone who cares about the future of our society should read this book. Children are among those most affected by same-sex marriage. This book discusses the impact same-sex marriage has on the culture and gives you real answers to the central questions surrounding this important issue. Read more…
by Patrick B. Craine
TORONTO, Ontario, December 1st, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – All of Ontario’s Catholic and public schools will be required to set up gay-straight alliances if students request them, Ontario’s education minister said Thursday as Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government unveiled its new bill to crack down on homosexual bullying. Read more…
Christine Armario – Associated Press
MIAMI - The number of students attending charter schools has soared to more than 2 million as states pass laws lifting caps and encouraging their expansion.
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools released new figures Wednesday showing a 13 percent growth in enrollment. That’s the equivalent of about 200,000 students. More than 500 new charter schools opened for the 2011-12 school year. Read more…
by Carolyn Moynihan
Canada comes out as the least inhibited country when it comes to sex education, an international survey shows. But even there, the majority of adults think that the job belongs first and foremost to parents.
Two-thirds of Canadians (69 per cent) and Britons (67 per cent) as well as four-in-five Americans (81 per cent) believe the parents or guardians should be primarily responsible for teaching sex education to children and teens. Read more…
Up front in choir performances at church, my sons have done it all as 5-6 year olds: yawning, wiggling, picking their nose, not participating, mouthing the words in an exaggerated manner. One particularly wiggly demonstration led me to feel more embarrassed than usual until a older man behind me said,…
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November 25th, 2011
Betsy
by Carolyn Moynihan
A leading British headmistress is worried that it is not just today’s schoolchildren who lack values and good standards of behaviour but also their parents. Dr Helen Wright, president of the Girls’ Schools Association (GSA), does not blame the parents because she believes they themselves were failed by the education system at a young age. In a speech Dr Wright said: Read more…