This Week‘s Featured Article

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Developing Countries Thwart Sexual Left at UN Negotiation.

In the UN social policy committee this week, traditional countries blocked an effort to undermine parents’ ability to monitor and restrict children’s access to information about homosexuality, transgender issues, and abortion.

Mexico was forced to remove any mention of a report of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child from a resolution on bullying. Delegations from traditional countries complained that the report promoted a right of children to access information about sexuality, including homosexuality and transgender issues, without parental consent.

“We strongly disagree with the suggestions in the work of certain UN entities that children should have unrestricted access to certain types of information related to reproduction and sexuality,” said the delegate of Nigeria after the resolution on bullying was adopted on Tuesday. “Such assertions have no basis in international law or international consensus,” he emphasized.

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Marriage/Family

A way forward for public policy and marriage in the US.

With legalized same-sex marriage and historically low marriage and fertility rates, the United States has accelerated its own descent into this state of affairs. For the first time in our nation’s history, older people are projected to outnumber children by the year 2030. In the face of decline, however, we are witnessing a “marriage movement” and pockets of reasoned resistance. The great task for America in our generation is to energize a return to and renewal of traditional marriage. We need to transmit a stronger, healthier, and more supportive marriage culture to the next generation, so that each year more children are raised by their own mother and father united by a loving marriage, so that they can grow up to have thriving marriages themselves.

Our task is a daunting one. Creating such a marriage culture is not a job for the government. Families, religious communities, and civic institutions must point the way. Read more

1,168 Parents Report Their Kids Encountered Sexually Explicit Content In School, According to Survey.

Ultimately, 1,195 people took this survey, a pretty good sample size. Of that total, 1,168 reported their children had encountered sexually explicit materials in school. That’s 98 percent of respondents reporting their kids encountered sexually explicit materials at school.

Of course, survey participants were self-selecting, so that likely affected the results. Still, 1,168 is a lot of sexually explicit encounters in schools — and these are the encounters parents know about. It’s certain there are many more that parents don’t know about. Read more

UNFPA uses deceptive numbers to promote UN-style family planning.

UNFPA often equates “unmet need” to lack of access to contraceptives. This is misleading, as only about 5% of women with a so-called “need” say they lack access. “Unmet need” also does not reflect actual demand. Indeed, one of its leading concerns among women who reject UN-style family planning are the health risks and side effects of such contraceptive methods. Other women cite religious opposition.

In its new analysis, UNFPA looks at family planning and maternal health together, arguing that their effects are “synergistic.” They claim that investing $79 billion in both will result in a benefit of $660 billion.

However, most maternal and child deaths occur in the developing world, and greater investments are needed to make birth safer. Redirecting funds toward contraceptives would not accomplish this. Read more

Parenting/Parental Rights

Trends in Sexual Activity Among Religious Teens.

Sadly, my analysis of the NSFG does not show that religious motivations are driving any of the decline in teenage sexual activity, overall or within any religious group. First, for both young men and women across the faith groups examined here, the percentages of never-married teens attending church weekly or more have been lower, the same, or not significantly higher since 2006-10.14 The percentages saying that religion is “very important” to their daily lives was significantly higher15 in the latest NSFG release only for Catholic young men. If declines in sexual activity were tied to increases in religious commitment overall, then we should see increases in religious commitment across the board. We do not. Read more

Mother of Underage Teen Sues Pornhub for Allegedly Posting Videos of Man Molesting 12-Year-Old Son.

An Alabama mother is suing the parent company of Pornhub — the world’s largest distributor of pornography — after footage of her 12-year-old son being sexually assaulted amassed hundreds of thousands of views on the site.

“Make no mistake — this lawsuit does not concern the voluntary act of consensual sex between adults, with the distribution occurring through their consent,” the lawsuit alleges, according to AL.com. “The victims depicted in these images were obviously children.” Read more

Calls for a ‘one-child policy’ in India are misguided at best, and dangerous at worst.

The idea the country should adopt something like China’s former “one-child policy” has been moving from the fringe to the political mainstream.

But the notion that India should emulate China’s past population policies is misguided at best, and dangerous at worst.

Both countries are struggling with the legacy of harsh population policies, and stricter population controls in India could have disastrous consequences for women and minority communities. Read more

Sanctity of Life

Suicide rates higher in countries that legalized euthanasia, assisted suicide.

The studies found that the rates of self-inflicted suicides increased alongside the number of physician-assisted suicide deaths. The study found that women were the most likely to die by self-inflicted suicide in jurisdictions that have permitted euthanasia and assisted suicide.

“Assisted suicide advocacy is, literally, suicide advocacy, even if promoters deploy deflecting euphemisms such as, ‘aid in dying,’” Wesley J. Smith, chair and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism, said in a statement to The Christian Post. “A society can’t be pro-some suicides and then be surprised that some suicidal people outside the permitted categories think it includes them.” Read more

God-Given Rights Should Not Be Left to a Vote.

Sadly, abortion is not the only example of a time when the collective conscience of the American people has been beaten into submission. There was another point in American history when the question of personhood of a human being was put to a vote. Read more

WHY ALL MEN SHOULD BE AGAINST ABORTION.

Many men feel they should stay out of the abortion debate. Leave it to women. Yet their voice matters and is wanted for many reasons.

Men that do stand against abortion seem to do so only politically, often with little understanding of the difficult factors that lead people to seek an abortion. Thankfully, there are not only sound reasons men should be against abortion, but also loving, positive, and practical ways to do so as well. Read more

Religion

Anti-conversion therapy laws: an ideological weapon to challenge religious beliefs in Australia.

So-called conversion therapy prohibition legislation now challenges religious freedom in Australia. It combines misplaced reliance on research, vague definitions, contested queer theory ideology and a clear targeting of Christianity and has produced objectively terrible laws. Read more

Marriage Bill Declares War on American Parents and Individual Religious Freedom.

“For the solemnization or celebration of a marriage” — What this phrase means is that outside of an actual wedding ceremony, the freedom of every American will be cut off at the knees, including Bible-believing adoption agencies, women’s shelters, ministries, religious schools, and charities. “It’s merely a pastors protection act,” FRC Senior Director of Government Affairs Quena Gonzalez warns, “and it is intentionally obfuscating. Solemnization happens at the altar, and only people and institutions directly involved in that event are safe. Everything before and after is unprotected.” Read more

Over 32K sign petition urging Biden to reinstate Nigeria on religious freedom violators list.

In recent years, tens of thousands of Nigerians have been killed and over 2 million displaced by Islamic terrorist violence in northeast Nigeria, coinciding with the rise of groups like Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province. In the farming-rich Middle Belt states, Christian rights groups contend that predominantly-Christian farming communities are regularly attacked by radicals from predominantly Muslim herding communities.

The Nigerian government and other human rights watchdogs contend the violence in the Middle Belt is part of decades-old farmer-herder clashes and that “competing claims to land and other resources are at its core.” Read more

Sexuality

Court Rules Biden can’t redefine Title IX to include LGBT mandate.

In a decision released Friday, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas, Amarillo Division, ruled that “Title IX operates in binary terms — male and female — when it references ‘on the basis of sex.’”

“If ‘on the basis of sex’ included ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity,’ as Defendants envision, Title IX and its regulations would be nonsensical,” Kacsmaryk ruled. “Title IX expressly allows sex distinctions and sometimes even requires them to promote equal opportunity.”

“Defendants’ reinterpretation of Title IX through the Notification imperils the very opportunities for women Title IX was designed to promote and protect — categorically forcing biological women to compete against biological men.” Read more

New Data Emerges Of 1,100+ Adolescent ‘Gender Affirming’ Mastectomies.

A new study of nationwide hospital databases found that at least 1,130 adolescents between 2016 and 2019 received “gender-affirming” chest surgeries in the U.S.

The study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, saw a 389% increase in adolescents (ages 12-17) obtaining chest surgeries from 2016 to 2019. An overwhelming majority (1,114) of the adolescents seeking this surgery were female (98.6%), and just 16 were male (1.4%). Read more

Detransitioner announces lawsuit against hospital for ‘experimental’ transgender hormone therapy and surgery.

The letter stated that the hospital and medical group “performed, supervised, and/or advised transgender hormone therapy and surgical intervention for Chloe Cole when she was between 13-17 years old, which constitutes breach of the standard of care.”

Cole’s intent-to-sue letter argued that her case “clearly mandated a wait and see approach,” but that medical professionals instead chose to “treat Chloe with drugs/hormones and surgery that caused permanent damage and mutilation” and that this treatment “represents gross-negligence and intentional fraudulent concealment.” Read more