Free Republic

DENVER — Starting Jan. 1, getting shark fins, caffeinated beer, cough syrup or a tan is going to be tougher than it was in 2011. The National Conference of State Legislatures issued Monday its annual list of laws set to take effect in 2012, and there was nothing but bad news for connoisseurs of shark-fin soup. Oregon and California passed laws prohibiting the sale, trade, or distribution of the fins, which are considered a delicacy in China. California also became the first state in the nation to require a prescription for obtaining any drug containing dextromethorphan, an ingredient found in...

LOS ANGELES. -- As one group attempts to use California public schools as laboratories to assist children in "coming out" with their nontraditional sexual orientation, another urges parents to come out from these schools and educate their children with their values at home or in private schools. Last Sunday, a group called "Exodus Mandate" (www.exodusmandate.org) began placing literature in scores of Southern California church lobbies, urging parents to take charge of their children's education and oppose attempts by activists and politicians to shape young people's worldview in a way that runs counter to what many taxpaying parents believe and teach...

The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) has been busy for 10 years ... creating gay student groups at hundreds of high schools and passing laws or regulations that limit or eliminate harassment aimed at homosexuals....The organization has also used part of its $4.3 million budget to promote a reading list for students as young as those in kindergarten.... At the high school level, some of this indoctrination might be excused on the grounds that students are old enough to make personal choices and maybe some of them can define terms like "sexuality" and "gender." No such excuse can...

In the early 1990s during my infectious disease training program, I asked a homosexual HIV-infected patient if he told his sexual partners of his HIV infection. The patient solemnly told me "that it was a risky world." In a recent study more than 75 percent of HIV-positive individuals did not tell casual sex partners their HIV status. I have come to understand it is indeed a very risky world. As a physician, I warn of health risks. I believe Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) should do the same.

The sex educators in Montgomery County, Md., have devised a film for 10th-graders that features a young lady putting a condom on a cucumber. You do wonder, when you read about these things, why they stop there. After all, if the assumption is kids are too stupid to know how to unroll a condom unless it is demonstrated for them, why would they be smart enough to know it goes on a penis and not on a vegetable? But guess what? They are indeed worried about that. Wendy Shalit, in a City Journal piece in 1998 described a New York...