In the gay-marriage debate, Americans would be wise to focus less on who's right or wrong and more on stated agendas and relevant sociological data.
For example, in July, 2006, the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community published Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision for all our Families and Relationships, often referred to as the Gay Manifesto.
http://www.beyondmarriage.org/full_statement.html and
http://www.beyondmarriage.org
This document's Strategic Vision includes:
"Legal recognition for a wide range of relationships, households and families—regardless of kinship or conjugal status"
"Committed, loving households in which there is more than one conjugal partner"
"Queer couples who decide to jointly create and raise a child with another queer person or couple, in two households"
" . . . to fight to make same-sex marriage just one option on a menu of choices that people have about the way they construct their lives."
Hosts of scientific studies done over the past four decades affirm that the needs of children are best served in families that are founded upon intact, monogamous, heterosexual marriage relationships.
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/healthymarriage/resources/research.html#reaearch
http://center.americanvalues.org/?p=7
This research demonstrates that further breakdown of the traditional family unit as the fundamental cornerstone of our society will likely increase current disturbing social and economic trends. The fact that many marriages fail or are not ideal does not justify expansive social experimentation or an "anything goes" approach.
According to the Manifesto, costs incurred as a result of choosing from the "menu of choices" would be solved by " . . . the expansion of existing legal statuses, social services and benefits to support the needs of all our households." Since research associates high economic and sociological costs with choices made from the Manifesto's "menu of choices," the astronomical price tags resulting from such "social services and benefits" can only be imagined.
Tolerance for adult sexual partners to live as they wish is one thing. Facilitating hazardous and naive strategic visions is quite another. A truly visionary society will initiate and protect laws that best correlate with the healthy upbringing of its children. Voters in AZ, CO, ID, SC, SD, TN and WI will be able to establish such laws on November 7th by voting "yes" to the Marriage Protection Amendments in their respective States.
Why the Fuss Over Same-sex Marriage
Warning: Mother's Role at Risk
Dear Mother’s Minute Reader,
This week, I am changing the format of my column to alert you to the recent approval of CEDAW by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The U.S. has persistently avoided ratification of this international United Nations agreement. However, this proposed treaty will come before the U.S. Senate after the August legislative recess. While purporting to protect women's rights, please be warned of the serious danger CEDAW poses to the rights of men and women as they fulfill their roles as fathers and mothers.
Article 5 of the CEDAW treaty states:
"State parties are obligated to take...measures to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women with a view to achieving the elimination of ...customary and all other practices which are based on...stereotyped roles for men and women."
This wording sounds a shrill alarm to those who favor;
Traditional marriages between a man and a woman
Attempts of any organization or individual to strengthen families by reaching, teaching or honoring mothers and/or fathers in their gender-specific roles
The celebration of Mother’s and Father’s Days
Ratification of CEDAW holds broad implications, not only within the confines of the "land of the free," but throughout the world. A distressing hint of what the CEDAW Committee has in mind is its recent reprimand of a country for the "traditional stereotyping of women in 'the noble role of mother.'"
The sovereign rights of the States would be superceded by CEDAW. Strong warnings are being sounded by
Independent Women's Forum; http://www.iwf.org/news/020725.shtml;
National Institute of Womanhood; www.uniw.org/CEDAWpoints.htm;
Family Research Council; http://www.frc.org/gov/ac02e04.cfm.
If you find this information disturbing, please consider carefully what action you can take as a member of grassroots America to add your voice of concern. Our opportunity to express objection to this sweeping treaty that openly attacks the roles of mothers and fathers in assuring a stable, happy and successful society, is fleeting. The time is now. Phone numbers to reach your U.S. senators are in the book.
Thank you,
Renee Hawkley
*Information for this message was taken from a letter by Marcia Ford, National President, American Mothers, Inc.
Leave No Mother Behind
It would be hard to miss the new literacy initiative, "No Child Left Behind," which will be implemented in an attempt to ensure that every American child will learn to read before the third grade. It’s a great concept, but will it work?
According to the National Children’s Reading Foundation, "One reason why education reforms have failed is that scholastic success or failure can typically be traced back to homes, where students receive critical pre-literacy experience. Some children arrive at school already 1,000 hours behind their classmates in pre-literacy training. Many parents fail to read to their children, fail to provide books for them, fail to model good literacy habits, and fail to provide any direct instruction of letters and their phonetic sounds before their children enter kindergarten. Even with extraordinary efforts (like the "No Child Left Behind" initiative), 75% of the children who enter school significantly behind never catch up."
Current brain development research highlights the fact that a child’s brain is "wired" for success (or failure) in the first three years of life. Formal education misses this basic power curve.
The 2000 Census reports that, in my state (Idaho) alone, 25% of families that have children under five years of age are "Female head of household" families. Of those families, 49% live below the poverty line of approximately $15,000 per year. Unfortunately, other states have similarly dismal statistics. Many, if not most, of these young mothers face horrendous challenges and are not prepared to provide the pre-literacy training that is crucial to their children’s success in school and in life. What if a significant investment of education money and time were devoted to programs that would back up existing research, reinstate the value of a mother’s influence, and empower these important young mothers to do what God has uniquely positioned them to do best?
However wonderful an educational system may become, it cannot replace a mother as her child’s first and best teacher. Leave no mother behind, and no child will be left behind.
What's Happening at Your House?
Barbara Bush was First Lady in 1990 when she addressed the graduates of Wellesley College and made the bold statement, "Your success as a family ... our success as a society ... depends not on what happens at the White House, but on what happens inside your house."
Since then, this quote has taken on a life of its own and has been frequently repeated and published. It can be presumed that millions of Americans "buy in" to the concept Barbara Bush was attempting to convey to the graduates of Wellesley College. However, since 1990, we have witnessed a continuation in the breakdown of the family as the fundamental building block of a free and successful society. Statistics continue to reflect the devastation and loss of human potential resulting from increased violence, crime, divorce, homelessness, drug abuse, pornography, teen pregnancy, and on and on.
If Americans are impressed with the truth that solutions to the multitude of problems faced by our society can best be addressed within the structure of individual families, then why are we facing a continual increase in social problems? This is the country whose ideals brought down Hitler, Communism and the Berlin Wall. This is the country that produced innovators like Abraham Lincoln, Florence Nightingale, Henry Ford and Bill Gates. It wasn’t easy for us to eradicate polio, harness electricity or produce a magnificent system of mass communications. This is the country that identifies problems and then goes about solving them. Then why not now?
I suppose in our present culture, it’s just easier for Americans to transfer responsibility for the health and well-being of the country to the people in the White House than to consider what’s happening in our own houses and accept the challenge to change.
This Is My Country!
This is my country . . .
Where women wear blue jeans or neon purple dresses, depending upon their mood,
Where disadvantaged citizens get the best parking spaces,
Where hungry children eat free lunch at school.
This is my country . . .
Where hatred for others is self-defeating,
Where a flag and a disrespectful bumper sticker are attached to the same car,
Where any citizen can dream and plan and work for a better future.
This is my country . . .
Where wives insist that their husbands take out the garbage . . . now,
Where Jews, Christians, Muslims and atheists eat pizza from the same table,
Where complaining about the government is almost always in fashion.
This is my country . . .
Where the only activity shared by everyone is trying to lose weight,
Where leaders are elected by those they serve,
Where there is never dancing in the streets at the loss of innocent lives.
This is my country . . .
Where joining the military is an issue of patriotism, not one of control,
Where families pray for the safe return of their military members,
Where there is no honor in suicide.
This is my country . . .
Where tons of food for the innocent are dropped on countries that harbor our enemies,
Where prayers are as different as the languages they may be spoken in,
Where God has no favorites.
This is my country . . .
Where freedom is holy and war never will be.
School Prayer Is Back!
For the record, school prayer is back. If you want to know the truth, it was never really gone, because a lot of educators have been practicing it behind closed doors in their coat closets and storage rooms for years. Still, it was refreshing to receive this email from my teacher friend, Trisha Houghton, while at my job as a school librarian:
"All-
Since Bush has called today as a National Day of Prayer, anyone who would like to pray during lunch in my room is welcome to. I know that many of you may go to a church near by, but if you feel that you may not have time, please join me from 12:35-1:00 in Room 19.
Trisha"
Trisha’s email confirms a sentiment that is also making the rounds since September 11th. I hope the author, whose name didn’t accompany the message, won’t mind if I spread the words a little further through my "Mother’s Minute." They are;
"NOW that the President has called us to prayer.....
NOW that Congress has called us to prayer.....
NOW that our Governor has called us to prayer....
NOW that the NYC Mayor has called us to prayer....
NOW that the media and most other branches of our American society have called us to prayer.....
AND NOW that our churches are assembling in special prayer....
Honorable Justices of the Supreme Court, I have only one question.
Would it be OK to pray in our schools........??"
By the way . . . I asked Trisha if I could circulate her email through my "Mother’s Minute" format, and she didn’t’ miss a beat before saying "Yes." This is one gutsy lady, and I have one thing to say to her. You go, girl!!
The Blood Bank Is Full
September 19, 2001
There’s a blood drive going on. Giving blood makes me faint, so a merciful Red Cross says ‘no thanks’ to mine. That makes me feel like a wimp, especially since the lifeblood of strangers, past and present, provides the mortar for my foundation of values and freedoms.
The pages of history confirm that the blood bank of truth and liberty is filled with deposits from innocent human beings. Some of the people who have accounts in this bank are Joan of Arc, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, multitudes of patriots from Lexington to The Persian Gulf, millions of men, women and children who suffered the atrocities of the Holocaust, Jesus and countless others. The countless others now includes a long list of "ordinary" citizens who were caught in an evil web of airplanes and towers and terrors surrounding the events of September 11, 2001.
Most of us are not required to pledge our life’s blood to this blood bank of truth and liberty. Yet, we are encouraged to take out loans and make frequent withdrawals from the interest that accrues from these treasured deposits. Whenever we attend a worship service at the church of our choice, speak out with a voice of dissent, participate openly in a meeting or choose an educational path, we are making withdrawals.
The bank is now full to overflowing with the blood of our beloved countrymen. The stories of their individual heroism in the certain face of death are deeply touching. Our nation is distraught with sadness and mourning. But we must take courage. We are Americans. In God we trust. We pray for the families and friends who are left behind, and we reach out to them in comfort and support. We will go forward. Truth and right will prevail. The precious blood of our innocent citizens can not . . . must not . . . will not be spilled in vain. Let us pledge to demonstrate by our lives and our choices that a system of "liberty and justice for all" can be a reality for everyone who is willing to abide by its guiding principles.
My Day ~ September 11, 2001
Along with being a mom, I’m a librarian at a large middle school in Boise. It was supposed to be a regular day. I got up, woke our daughter, Janette, and read a few pages of scripture . . . took a shower, got ready for work and put some leftover taco soup into a container for my lunch. My husband, Dan, drove us to school and work . . . family prayer in the car on the way. At school, my assistant, Diane, asked if I had heard about the airplane crashes into the World Trade Center. I hadn’t. Soon, our students and staff were receiving regular updates on the gruesome details.
We did our best to keep the students calm. We proceeded with the computerized reading level testing as scheduled in the library and administered the test to about 240 students. We also checked out 264 books to students during the course of the day.
Early in the afternoon, a full lockdown of all students and staff was announced over the intercom due to a suspicious situation that had developed near our school. We quickly herded thirty kids into our lockdown area, turned out the lights, locked the doors and waited for what seemed an interminable amount of time. Actually, the lockdown only lasted for ten or fifteen minutes, but standing in the dark with so many frightened students isn’t what I call fun.
I was beginning to wonder if the day would ever end. It seemed a steady inhale and exhale of trauma.
At last, the final bell rang, and we went through our routine of closing the library. At home, we glued ourselves to the television, like other Americans. Janette went to work, brought home hoagies for supper and went back to school for band practice.
While she was gone, Dan and I reflected on our once-in-a-lifetime trip to New York City last April for the American Mothers Convention, where we admired the World Trade Center from the top of the Empire State Building. Now, they’re gone, along with an undetermined number of innocent people.
The day is finally over, and so is taking our national borders for granted.
I wonder. What will be the cost in blood for Americans to maintain . . . "one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all?"