Month: May 2008

Adrift Down the Tubes

Three news items for you to chew on.

Most Americans Say Divorce is Morally Acceptable

A record 70 percent of Americans believe divorce is morally acceptable, according to Gallup’s 2008 Values and Beliefs survey. That’s an 11-point increase from seven years ago.

[…]

Of the poll’s 16 ethical issues rated for moral acceptability, divorce topped the list, followed by gambling, embryonic stem-cell research, homosexuality and abortion. Extramarital affairs — often a cause of divorce — are at the bottom of the list, with just 7 percent of Americans finding them morally acceptable.

By what moral law and standard do my fellow Americans make this judgment? (At 70%, that includes a lot of real — as well as nominal — Christians. Wow!)

And why does that moral law and standard make extramarital affairs so unacceptable?

OK, here’s the second story:

Boston Doctor Offers Sex Change Treatment to Kids

Dr. Norman Spack, a pediatric specialist at the hospital, has launched a clinic for transgendered kids — boys who feel like girls, girls who want to be boys — and he’s opening his doors to patients as young as 7.

So Doc Spack is catching lots of flak. I wonder if it’s coming from any in the 70% mentioned above. And why.

Now from the Mail Online (UK), the third story:

Fathers aren’t needed say MPs: Commons decides IVF babies can do without a male role model

Fathers were last night effectively declared an irrelevance in modern Britain.

The requirement for fertility doctors to consider a child’s need for a male role model before giving women IVF treatment was scrapped by MPs.

In a free vote, they swept away the rule despite impassioned pleas that the Government plan would “drive another nail into the coffin of the traditional family”.

Labour rebels said it would send entirely the wrong signal to society as Britain faces a crisis in responsible parenting. The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, had warned it would remove the father from the heart of the family.

Will They Get the Children Back?

History Says Sect Moms Will Get Back Kids

At a series of hearings beginning today, Texas child protection workers are expected to tell a judge that members of a West Texas polygamous sect must renounce an alleged decades-long practice of marrying underage girls to older men if they want to regain custody of their children.

The hearings — individual status meetings for all 464 children in state custody — are the latest step in what is believed to be the largest child protection case in U.S. history, a sprawling process that already has cost millions of dollars and promises to continue into next year.

Texas officials will present a series of steps that Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints parents will have to follow in order for their children to be returned, including proving they can provide a home free from potential child abusers and demonstrating the ability to protect children from abuse.

“You can’t be in bigamist marriages, and the other thing you can’t do is marry off young teenagers to very old men,” said Scott McCown, a former Texas district court judge.

“If they are not willing to give that up, the state’s position is going to be that the children are never going to go home. That’s going to be state’s non-negotiable bottom line,” McCown said.

But this is not first time the sect’s practices have been challenged by state authorities, and it was unclear what the long-term impact will be on the polygamous group, which has been raided by authorities in several states four times over the last 75 years.

Though Arizona arrested dozens of men and took hundreds of children into custody in 1953, that raid appeared to have little effect on the group’s beliefs or practices, leading some to question whether the results will be any different in Texas.

“I think it will be a repeat of history,” said Martha Bradley, a University of Utah professor and author of “Kidnapped From That Land,” a study of the now-infamous 1953 raid on the town known then as Short Creek.

Within two years of the raid, all sect members were back in Short Creek.

Attention, Broadband Users!

Broadband Users’ Activities To Be Monitored

Charter Communications, the fourth largest Internet Service Providers in the United States, has reportedly begun telling some of its 2.7 million broadband users that they’ll be monitoring every web site they visit to help web advertisers deliver targeted ads.

Charter offers an opt-out option.

Take it.

And tell them they should really be going the opt-in route instead.

If your broadband provider is not Charter, better find out if your provider is following or thinking of implementing the Charter model.

Thinking the Web is a private place really does require the willing suspension of disbelief.

May 18

1642 — Montreal is founded by French colonists.

1652 — Rhode Island passes the first law in North America making slavery illegal.

1765 — Fire destroys a large part of Montreal.

1896 — The Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson, endorses “separate but equal” racial segregation.

1917 — The Selective Service Act of 1917 is passed, giving the President the power of conscription.

1927 — A schoolhouse in Bath, Michigan is blown up with explosives planted by local farmer (and disgruntled school board member) Andrew Kehoe, who then sets off a dynamite-laden automobile. The attacks killed 38 children and six adults, including Kehoe, who earlier had killed his wife.

1948 — It’s been four days since Israel once again became an independent nation.

1954 — Yesterday, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the United States Supreme Court unanimously overturned earlier rulings going back to Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, by declaring that state laws that established separate public schools for black and white students denied black children equal educational opportunities — “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

1974 — India detonates its first nuclear weapon becoming the sixth nation to do so.

1980 — Mount St. Helens erupts in Washington State, killing 57 people and causing $3 billion in damage.

Mount St. Helens erupting on May 18, 1980

1992 — The Archivist of the United States officially announces the 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — almost 203 years after it was initially submitted!

2008 — Hopewell Mennonite Church ordains a new bishop — for the first time in 25 years or so.

Private
Above all, love God!