Free Republic

"For the first time in its history, Western civilization is confronted with the need to define the meaning of the terms 'marriage' and 'family.'" So states author Andreas J. Kostenberger who, with the assistance of David W. Jones has written God, Marriage, and Family: Rebuilding the Biblical Foundation. This sense of crisis and the need for definition sets the stage for this book and its central thesis--that the only way out of our present cultural confusion is a return to a biblical vision of marriage and family. As Kostenberger observes, "What until now has been considered a 'normal' family, made...

Every day, the presidential candidates face probing questions about their plans and policies from the reporters who travel almost everywhere with them. On the weekends, they're grilled by the moderators of the Sunday talk shows. So it must have been a real change of pace for Barack Obama when he sat down in Butte, Mont., over the Fourth of July weekend with “Access Hollywood.” Yes, the syndicated gossip show that normally brings you the latest in the tabloid-friendly lives of Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears is presenting an interview with the Democrats' nominee-in-waiting and his wife, Michelle, along with their...

A party is being held at the grave of a 7/7 bomber in what is being described as an insult to the 52 London commuters murdered three years ago today. The family of Shehzad Tanweer and 400 guests will "celebrate his life" and "remember him as a martyr" at a village in Pakistan today. Tanweer, 22, Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, Hasib Hussain, 18, and 19-year-old Jermaine Lindsay also died when they detonated rucksack bombs on three crowded Tube trains and a No30 bus. Tanweer's uncle, 42-year-old property developer Tahir Pervez, is organising the celebration in which verses of the Koran...

Bachelorhood And Its Discontents by Christopher Orlet (July 2008) Leibniz never married. He had considered it at the age of fifty; but the person he had in mind asked for time to reflect. This gave Leibniz time to reflect, too, and so he never married. — Bernard Fontenelle In a 1994 New Yorker piece commenting on a report that the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser had strangled his wife to death, the pseudoprofound literary critic George Steiner pondered why it should have taken the Marxist philosopher so long to do the old biddy in. “Perhaps philosophers should strangle their wives,” wrote...

The little rabbit in this video is apparently looking for its father. This video is humorous but true for today, many are confused or wondering whom their father is so please pray for this worldwide confusion and sexual promiscuousness. The Bible says, confusion is of the evil one (Devil).

This video is an animation of a deer and rabbit. The rabbit meet the deer in the wild and expresses its thoughts. The voices of this video are, o7jimmy and grandson.

"When you're told that it will be impossible to have your partner's children, it feels like a bereavement. True, it's only the death of a fantasy – the fantasy that you and the love of your life might be able to produce a human being who's an endearing amalgamation of both your imperfections – but by the time you find out, you'll often have been trying for at least a year to make that fantasy flesh, and its loss feels substantial. So the decision to search for a sperm or egg donor is a difficult and emotional one from the...

RIVERTON — Tie dye, tee-pees, and cries for free love and world peace. If it sounds like an image of the 1960s, residents near Pinedale may believe they've traveled back in time next week when a large band of "hippies" hold their annual gathering at a national forest near Pinedale. Federal officials began arriving in Riverton earlier this month to prepare for the arrival of the group, which calls itself the Rainbow Family of Living Light. Anywhere between several hundred to a few thousand members of the group are expected, and their arrival has already drawn the ire of some...

"The removal of anonymity from sperm and egg donors has provoked a crisis in fertility treatment that is denying couples the chance to try for a baby. Infertility therapy with donated sperm has collapsed to the lowest levels since records began, according to the first official figures, seen by The Times, since the Government banned anonymous donation in 2005. The number of women treated with donated sperm fell by about 20 per cent, from 2,727 in 2005 to 2,107 in 2006, the first full year after the change. The number of donor insemination treatment cycles fell by 30 per cent...

Seven ninth-graders at Pascack Valley High School have been suspended for the rest of the school year for distributing racy photos of middle school girls via cell phones and school-issued laptops. A student who saw the photos on a laptop tipped off a teacher, and the administration alerted Hillsdale police last week, district Superintendent Benedict Tantillo III said today. More than 20 girls who are now in ninth grade were in the photos, the superintendent said. Some pictures appeared to have been taken two or three years ago, and some of the subjects moved to private high school instead of...

By order of its state Supreme Court, California began legally marrying same-sex couples this week. The first to be wed in San Francisco were Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, pioneering gay-rights activists who have been a couple for more than 50 years. More ceremonies will follow, at least until November, when gay marriage will go before California's voters. They should choose to keep it. To understand why, imagine your life without marriage. Meaning, not merely your life if you didn't happen to get married. What I am asking you to imagine is life without even the possibility of marriage. Re-enter...

Honoring Thy FathersBRADFORD WILCOXFor millions of children across the U.S., this Sunday will not be a cause for celebration. Because of dramatic increases in divorce and nonmarital childbearing, about 28% of our nation's children -- more than 20 million kids -- now live in a household without their father, up from 10 million kids (14%) in 1970, according to a recent Census Bureau report. Moreover, because most of these boys and girls see their dads infrequently (once a month or less), Father's Day will offer cold comfort to many of these children.Our nation's epidemic of fatherlessness is just the most...

Walter Dean Myers, a best-selling author of books for teenagers, sometimes visits juvenile detention centers in his home state of New Jersey to hold writing workshops and listen for stories about the lives of young Americans. One day, in a juvenile facility near his home in Jersey City, a 15-year-old black boy pulled him aside for a whispered question: Why did he write in "Somewhere in the Darkness" about a boy not meeting his father because the father was in jail? Mr. Myers, a 70-year-old black man, did not answer. He waited. And sure enough, the boy, eyes down, mumbled...

For millions of children across the U.S., this Sunday will not be a cause for celebration. Because of dramatic increases in divorce and nonmarital childbearing, about 28% of our nation's children -- more than 20 million kids -- now live in a household without their father, up from 10 million kids (14%) in 1970, according to a recent Census Bureau report. Moreover, because most of these boys and girls see their dads infrequently (once a month or less), Father's Day will offer cold comfort to many of these children. Our nation's epidemic of fatherlessness is just the most salient indicator...

During my 1960s boyhood, Father's Day was an awkward occasion. It required my brothers and me to express love to a man who considered such talk girlish, and who knew we feared more than liked him. Only for the sake of Mom did Dad and his five boys put on a Father's Day act. But after the death of my father last month, I understand that those fake-feeling gestures back then had conveyed a lot of truth, and that the expression of love between a father and his boys can be -- maybe should be -- at times difficult.

The vague wording of Section 18 of the Sexual Orientation Regulations of the new Equality Act may enable the Society to confound the contentious rules by simply amending its constitution to refer directly to "married heterosexual couples" rather than its current reference to "couples who wish to adopt." Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor said he was in full agreement with the decision to challenge the new government policies. "I fully support the decision of the trustees in their endeavours to continue the valuable work of the Society," the Cardinal said. As LifeSiteNews.com reported last week, other Catholic adoption agencies in Britain have either...

Cleavers to Lohans: The Downhill Slide of the American TV Family It used to be kids in TV families who caused the problems and the parents who solved them. In the brave new world of reality television, parents are the problem. June 2, 2008 - by Katherine Berry There was a time in American television when parents and children alike would gather in front of the TV to watch Leave it to Beaver or even The Cosby Show, programs that affirmed the importance of the family structure and reminded us that loving parents can guide their children through even the...

Now that Hillary Clinton has at last formally withdrawn from the race for the White House, the eyes of America and the world will focus on Barack Obama and his Republican rival Senator John McCain. While Obama will surely press his credentials as the embodiment of the American dream – a handsome, charismatic young black man who was raised on food stamps by a single mother and who represents his country’s future – McCain will present himself as a selfless, principled war hero whose campaign represents not so much a battle for the presidency of the United States, but a...

Chelsea Clinton (L) and former US President Bill Clinton watch as US Democratic presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) speaks at the National Building Museum in Washington June 7, 2008. Clinton endorsed presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) to be the Democratic U.S. presidential candidate on Saturday and suspended her own White House bid less than a week after the Illinois senator secured enough support to win the nomination. Clinton's endorsement of Obama in a speech at the National Building Museum marked the beginning of efforts to reunite the Democratic Party after a long and divisive campaign battle...

Inside the left's war against the family...and specifically fathers Eric Svane of the terrifically popular blog No Pasaran has done yeoman's service in exploring this topic. Here is a synopsis of his latest on the subject:Witch Hunts in Contemporary America: Is the United States Turning Into a Fascist Country? "Destroy the family, and you destroy society" —Lenin Like many conservatives, Erik Svane has been more of the optimistic type, thinking that lovers of liberty were winning the battle of ideas against the statists, or at least doing a pretty good job of holding their own. He found it therefore "highly...

In the long, dreary annals of judicial idiocy, perhaps the stupidest words ever uttered by a black-robed booby were contained in the recent California Supreme Court decision mandating homosexual marriage. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Ronald M. George declared: “In light of these circumstances, we conclude that retention of the traditional definition of marriage (a man and a woman) does not constitute a state interest sufficiently compelling, under the strict scrutiny equal protection standard, to justify withholding that status from same-sex couples.” Curiously, George is saying the government of California lacks any compelling interest in maintaining the integrity of...

This video is of a red shoulder hawk singing its song and perched on an upper limb, while being watched by a family with binoculars, the hawk gives his view.

A mother has said she has no regrets about reporting her sons to the police after learning they had brutally attacked a man on a night out. Carol Saldinack, 51, of Norfolk, said she was so ashamed of their behaviour she could barely look them in the eye. She said if she had kept quiet that would have made her as guilty as them. Luke Newman, 27, and Oliver Clark, 24, were jailed for two years for their part in the attack on Marc Parkinson, which left him blind in one eye. 'Piece of meat' Police praised their mother for...

The California Supreme Court's historic declaration that same-sex couples can marry will be tested in November when voters face a measure that would enact a constitutional ban on such marriages – and two new polls indicate that it will be a close one. The court set aside a 2000 ballot measure that barred recognition of same-sex marriages but, the new polls indicate, voters have been moving the other way. A Los Angeles Times poll of registered voters, taken on May 20-21, a few days after the Supreme Court decision, found that 51 percent disapproved of the Supreme Court's decree, while...

WARSAW, May 26, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - On the eve of Mother's Day, Polish citizens, together with a variety of international guests, took part in the third annual March for Life and Family. Several thousand marched through the streets of Warsaw in a joyful affirmation of Judeo-Christian values. Participants called for recognition of the traditional family and fundamental human right to life for everyone from conception to natural death. Slawomir Olejniczak, co-organizer of the March for Life and Family, reflected on the wave of the culture of death that has swept over Europe and the need to “return to family values”:...

Advocates for same-sex marriage should feel embarrassed by current efforts to recycle the three most discredited ideas of the “Free Love” Revolution of the 1960’s. Most Americans look back at the radical notions of that rebellious and drug-soaked era with skepticism and discomfort, if not outright regret. The sweeping changes in intimate relationships may have provoked excitement some forty years ago, but those alterations produced so many painful costs in terms of shattered families, degraded culture and proliferation of sexually transmitted diseases that even the most enthusiastic revolutionaries have come to reconsider the advisability of encouraging copulation without consequences or...

They say we are tired of culture wars. Tell that to the California Supreme Court, which didn't sound tired at all when it lobbed a big, fat hand grenade into the marriage debate. Ideas have consequences. And the California court endorsed two big, brand-new, very bad ideas. The first idea is that the internationally recognized human right to marry includes same-sex marriage. In U.S. constitutional law, fundamental human rights are those deeply rooted in our traditions. Not even in Massachussetts or in New Jersey could the courts quite stomach the idea that same-sex marriage is deeply rooted in those traditions....

WIESBADEN, Germany, May 20, 2008 – Hundreds of troops deployed from Europe will be able to see their children’s high school graduation ceremonies via live webcasts, Department of Defense Dependents Schools Europe officials announced. DoDDS Europe, U.S. Army Europe and U.S. Army 5th Signal Command have combined assets, talents and technologies to enable the live webcasts. The effort will allow at least 18 graduation ceremonies to be viewed by an estimated 211 deployed parents in Iraq, Afghanistan and other locations around the world. The first graduation ceremony will be webcast June 5; 10 graduation ceremonies will take place simultaneously on...

A couple of stories in the San Francisco Chronicle caught our attention yesterday.1. Suspensions point to trouble in schools California public school educators suspended students more than 332,000 times for violence or drugs last year - a jump of nearly 16,000 from the prior year.... 2. Study contradicts myth of how teens avoid intercourse Please see article link for text... Thank you, Bill Clinton, for normalizing the casual version of that behavior. Thank you to the political/social left for creating the self-fulfilling prophesy of teen sex. (Like the wife who says to her husband, on his way out the door...

Americans seem mesmerized by the word "change." And, by golly, they sure got it last week from the California Supreme Court. It is difficult to imagine a single social change greater than redefining marriage from opposite sex to include members of the same sex. Nothing imaginable -- leftward or rightward -- would constitute as radical a change in the way society is structured as this redefining of marriage for the first time in history: Not another Prohibition, not government taking over all health care, not changing all public education to private schools, not America leaving the United Nations, not rescinding...

Harried family forgets tot in Vancouver airport Air Canada staff took care of boy while father flew back from Winnipeg The Associated Press updated 9:54 a.m. CT, Wed., May. 14, 2008 VANCOUVER, British Columbia - An immigrant family left a 23-month-old boy in the Vancouver airport and learned he was missing only when contacted during the next leg of the trip. Jun Parreno, the boy's father, told The Vancouver Sun the mix-up occurred Monday as he, his wife and two grandparents of the child, J.M., were scrambling between their arrival in Canada and a connecting flight to Winnipeg on Air...

VIENNA, May 14, 2008 (AFP) - An Austrian man has confessed to hacking his wife, daughter, parents and father-in-law to death with an axe, leaving the bodies strewn at locations throughout the country, police said Wednesday. The bodies of the 39-year-old man's family were discovered in Vienna, Linz and Ansfelden after he turned himself in to the police in the early hours of Wednesday, Vienna police said in a statement. His 42-year-old wife and his seven-year-old daughter were found in their flat in the well-to-do area of Hietzing in the Austrian capital, where the man was believed to have killed...

"THIS," as mentioned in the title, is having my wife's mom move in with us. My father-in-law passed away last summer and my mother-in-law has been pretty much down hill since. Since I'm not one to get too deep into personal issues, the long and short of it is she'll be moving in with us by the end of summer. Well, truth be told, I trust the opinions (generally) of a large group of fellow conservatives. What I need help with, by way of suggestions, is the best way to dispose of her current possessions. My wife and I have...

Leo McKinstry says the current craze for genealogy reflects an unhealthy combination of snobbery and inverse snobbery, and is a poor replacement for national history When I visited the National Archives at Kew last week the place was full of them, scurrying about with their plastic wallets in hand, a look of eager concentration on their faces. It was impossible to escape their busy presence as they whispered noisily to relatives or whooped over the discovery of some new piece of information. These were the followers of one of Britain’s fastest-growing craze, the mania for researching family history. Studying bloodlines...

NOTE FROM A FOSTER MOTHERA FReeper mom who doesn't have time to post, has shared her experience with me and graciously given me permission to post her thoughts. Here is the first note from her:"Here’s my deal. I am totally transfixed on this polygamous cult issue but don’t have the time or inclination to actively participate on the board. It must have something to do with my six kids, one of whom is disabled. I am a foster mom BTW so I’m sorta torked out of shape about all the shoddy accusations against foster parents. I know that for...

NEW YORK — Divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing cost U.S. taxpayers more than $112 billion a year, according to a study commissioned by four groups advocating more government action to bolster marriages. Sponsors say the study is the first of its kind and hope it will prompt lawmakers to invest more money in programs aimed at strengthening marriages. Two experts not connected to the study said such programs are of dubious merit and suggested that other investments — notably job creation — would be more effective in aiding all types of needy families. There have been previous attempts to calculate the...

Divorce and unwed childbearing cost taxpayers at least $112 billion each year or more than $1 trillion over the last decade. This estimate from the Institute for American Values is, as the authors suggest, likely to be an underestimate. This staggering but plausible tally of the economic costs of family dissolution follows what we have long known about the social costs. All our major social ills -- poverty, violent crime, substance abuse, truancy and more -- are more closely linked to family breakdown and single-parent homes than to any other factor. A poor black child from an intact home is...

4/24/2008 - RANDOLPH AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AFPN) -- Staff Sgt. Matthew Slaydon lay motionless on a dusty road in Iraq, his body riddled with shrapnel after an improvised explosive device exploded about 2 feet from his face. His left arm hung by a couple of tendons and his face was unrecognizable. His friends worked frantically to save him from an early grave. Sergeant Slaydon, an explosive ordnance disposal technician from the 56th Civil Engineer Squadron at Luke Air Force Base, Ariz., was critically injured Oct. 24, 2007, while serving to protect convoy routes in Iraq. The explosion left him...

It’s long been known that family break-up inflicts massive social costs on communities and children. But what about the burden it imposes on the American taxpayer? It’s a proven fact that family dissolution places children at greater risk of poverty, mental and physical illness, juvenile delinquency, abuse, substance abuse, and educational failure. A few years ago Wade Horn, former director of the federal Administration for Children and Families, revealed, “My agency spends $46 billion per year operating 65 different social programs. If one goes down the list of these programs… the need for each is either created or exacerbated...

If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. – "A Nation At Risk" (1983) Let us limp down memory lane to mark this week's melancholy 25th anniversary of a national commission's report that galvanized Americans to vow to do better. Today the nation still ignores what had been learned before 1983. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once puckishly said that data indicated that the leading determinant of the quality of public schools, measured by standardized tests, was the schools' proximity to...

For more than five decades, self-proclaimed experts and so-called sexual reformers, beginning with Alfred Kinsey, have worked to advance the belief that there are no public consequences to private sexual behavior. And Americans, for the most part, have bought into this notion, proving what Lenin said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth!” Historically, most states in the U.S. had legal prohibitions against adultery, often called “crimes against marriage,” which were designed to protect marriage by punishing those who jeopardized the family by seeking sexual satisfaction beyond their spouse. Virtually every advanced civilization has had some form of prohibition...

With knowledge of the “great plan of happiness,�1 we have the opportunity and also the responsibility to help restore faith in the family. In many ways our commission is comparable to those who work in the field of medicine and scientific research. Using established laws they determine how suffering can be alleviated and the quality of life improved. In the realm of religious belief, men and women of faith, using proven principles,2 can help to heal a grieving heart, restoring hope and assurance to the troubled mind. The scientist’s success has been achieved by complying with what are often referred...

This is a video using the voices of my grandson, granddaughter and myself singing Soulija Boy, also this is an animated video of a rare Colombian Parakeets called, Perija.

The genius of the American experiment is the clear line our Constitution draws between public and private lives. The government should be limited in its power and reach, especially when it comes to raising our families. As the old saying goes, a man’s home is his castle. That’s why it is so surprising to learn that a group of family advocates feels differently. Some so-called social conservatives, like Tony Perkins, actually think that the federal government needs to get more involved in our family life. In recent weeks, Perkins, the top man at the Family Research Council, a large political...

"When it comes to avoiding a ban for speeding, the courts hear every excuse in the book. But yesterday one motorist offered what must be a unique reason why he should keep his licence. Mohammed Anwar said a ban would make it difficult to commute between his two wives and fulfil his matrimonial duties. His lawyer told a Scottish court the Muslim restaurant owner has one wife in Motherwell and another in Glasgow - he is allowed up to four under his religion - and sleeps with them on alternate nights. He also needed his driving licence to run his...

This video is of a family watching a red-shoulder hawk and the voices are from o7jimmy, wife and grandson. The hawk sound is of a red-shoulder hawk.

Breakdown of family 'to blame for all society's ills' Murad Ahmed A senior judge will deliver an outspoken attack on the Government today, declaring that “all of society’s social ills” can be traced to breakdown of the family. Mr Justice Coleridge, a Family Division judge, will give warning of an epidemic of family failures, claiming that children born into broken homes are turning increasingly to drink, drugs and crime. He will argue that the collapse of the family is as potent a threat to the country as terrorism, crime, drugs or binge drinking. In his speech to family lawyers, the...

4/4/2008 - SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) -- Rylan Todd was born weighing 8 pounds and 5 ounces at 11:01 p.m. March 25, and his parents watched him being born at a hospital near Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D. The only thing different about this birth was that the father, Staff Sgt. Nicholas Todd, watched the birth via Web cam from thousands of miles away while supporting the war on terrorism at an air base in Southwest Asia. Sergeant Todd, deployed to the 379th Expeditionary Maintenance Operations Squadron from his home station at Ellsworth AFB, was informed of his upcoming deployment when...

CAMP TAJI, Iraq, April 4, 2008 – Throughout their military careers, Army Staff Sgt. Shane Hansen and his brother, Army Sgt. 1st Class Zane Hansen, have always been on opposite sides of the world. Army Staff Sgt. Shane Hansen (left), a section sergeant in Company D, 3rd Battalion, 158th Aviation Regiment, poses for a picture with his older brother, Army Sgt. 1st Class Zane Hansen, a platoon sergeant in Troop T, 4th Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, at Camp Taji, Iraq. Photo by Sgt. Brandon Little, USA   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Over the years, as they...

Calif., native 1st Lt. Casey Zimmerman of Company C, 3rdBattalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, hands out footballs at a school in Mullah Fayad March 27. All the items were donated by the family and community of Sgt. Nathan Barnes, who served in the area and was killed in Rushdi Mullah July 17. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Tony M. Lindback, 3rd BCT, 101st Abn. Div. PATROL BASE YUSIFIYAH — Whoever said violence begets more violence never met the family of Sgt. Nathan Barnes.American Fork, Utah, native Sgt. Nathan Barnes, a Soldier with 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat...