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When Jacob Lemay invites you into his bedroom, he wants to give the full tour. He'll show you his books, the planets and stars on the wall, his bunk bed and the stuffed animals he's lined up all in a row. "This one is Chase, and that one is Zizzy," he says in the voice of a confident five-year-old. "And that one is Biscuit, and that one is Zarzo, and that one is Cheety, and that one is Snowflake, and that one is Fuzz." Jacob is a happy, healthy, well-adjusted pre-schooler. He has two sisters — one older and one...

Last week Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., introduced a bill in Congress asking states to ban sexual orientation conversion therapy, often abbreviated as CT, for minors. California is one of two states that have prohibited licensed professionals from offering the practice, which includes efforts to change not only sexual orientation but also gender identity. While the congressional bill is only a resolution—it encourages states to bar the practice rather than proposing the heavier lift of a federal ban—the idea that CT is dangerous and should be banned is gaining momentum ... What do we actually know about the practice of CT...

Agenda 21 A recent story in the media about 2 children aged 10 and 6 being taken into protective custody by over-zealous officials has introduced a phrase I expect we’ll be hearing a lot more of in coming years - Free Range Children. The children were allowed to play unsupervised in a nearby park, and busybodies called authorities who took the children into custody without notifying the parents. This was a “second offense” as the parents let the children walk home from their nearby school. Basically the kids were given a modicum of freedom to encourage responsibility and independence. I...

One of music artist John Mayer's signature songs is “Daughters,” a sweet and simple tribute to the importance of parents' influence on their little girls. Here's the refrain: “So fathers, be good to your daughters, Daughters will love like you do. Girls become lovers who turn into mothers, So mothers, be good to your daughters too.” But when John Mayer isn't crooning about your beautiful daughters, he's looking at naked pictures of them, sometimes hundreds at a time before he gets out of bed in the morning. In fact, he often prefers that to an actual human being, according to...

Almost one in 10 Americans has a history of impulsive and angry behavior and ready access to guns, new research indicates. The serious mental health issues that would legally prevent someone from purchasing a gun -- such as involuntary commitment to a psychiatric ward for schizophrenia or bipolar disorder -- only account for about 4 percent of U.S. gun violence, noted study author Jeffrey Swanson. "There is a potentially much larger group of individuals in our society who struggle with pathological impulsive and destructive anger that would not normally turn up as serious mental illness on a background check," said...

In the days since audio was extracted from the black box recorder of crashed Germanwings flight 4U9525 suggesting that copilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately downed the plane, investigators and journalists have rushed to find an explanation for his actions. Initially, many hypothesized about the possibility of an extremist religious or ideological motive. In his apparently lacking significant religious or ideological commitments, Lubitz is speculated to have been mentally unstable. A concealed health issue has been offered as a clue. Thousands of words pile up in dozens of news sources to make up for Lubitz’s silence in the cockpit. The pounding...

The American Psychological Association (APA) and the American Sociological Association (ASA) submitted friend of the Court briefs in the Windsor case. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled portions of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional. If the Windsor Court majority relied on those briefs, it was reliant on snake oil, not science. The APA and the ASA should be the guardians of good science. Instead, they have joined the ranks of the pink panzers of political correctness. Most studies we have seen that claim that children raised by same-sex parents suffer no disadvantages are so seriously flawed that in...

Are smartphones making our children mentally ill?Leading child psychotherapist Julie Lynn Evans believes easy and constant access to the internet is harming youngsterstelegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/11486167/Are-smartphones-making-our-children-mentally-ill.html

Heather Barwick, who was raised by her mother and her mother's lesbian partner, wrote in an essay this week that same-sex "marriage" is not the same as normal marriage between a man and a woman, that the traditional family is best, and that while growing up she "ached every day for a dad." Heather Barwick, who was raised by her mother and her mother's lesbian partner, says "gay marriage" not only redefines marriage but also parenting and that "as a little girl, I so desperately wanted a daddy." (Photo: The Federalist.) Barwick, who is 31 now, married, and has four...

A South Carolina woman’s new essay about being raised by her lesbian mom contains a surprising revelation: she opposes marriage equality. “Gay community, I am your daughter. My mom raised me with her same-sex partner back in the ’80s and ’90s,” writes Heather Barwick, a 31-year-old mother of four, in The Federalist. “I’m writing to you because I’m letting myself out of the closet: I don’t support gay marriage. But it might not be for the reasons that you think. It’s not because you’re gay. I love you, so much. It’s because of the nature of the same-sex relationship itself.”

Convincing your child that they really are special amongst their peers may risk turning them into a narcissist, with feelings of superiority and self-satisfaction, according to a new study. Narcissistic individuals think they're better than everyone else, live for personal success and expect exceptional treatment, explained the study's authors in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. When narcissists experience failure, they're not pleasant to be around, and can lash out violently. Evaluating 565 Dutch children, ages 7 to 12, for narcissistic tendencies, the investigators questioned the children's parents on how, when and...

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, a wide range of thinkers, both secular and religious, struggled to make sense of the profound evil of war, particularly Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. One such effort, “The Authoritarian Personality” by Theodore Adorno and three co-authors, opened up a whole new field of political psychology—initially a small niche within the broader field of social psychology—which developed fitfully over the years, but became an increasingly robust subject area in 1980s and 90s, fleshing out a number of distinct areas of cognitive processing in which liberals and conservatives differed from one another. Liberal/conservative...

Now that Time Magazine has told us that transgender is the new black, I’m going to say something politically incorrect: Your gender is not whatever you think it is. Put another way, there is no such thing as, “My gender is ‘fill in the blank.’”Unfortunately, Facebook didn’t get the memo, and so, according to AP’s Martha Mendoza, “Facebook users who don't fit any of the 58 gender identity options offered by the social media giant are now being given a rather big 59th option: fill in the blank.” (Yes, I know this sounds crazy, but it’s true.)One year ago, I...

Dear Justice Kennedy,June is nigh, and with it will comes your ruling on the most contentious political issue of our time: marriage.I write because I am one of many children with gay parents who believe we should protect marriage. I believe you were right when, during the Proposition 8 deliberations, you said “the voice of those children [of same-sex parents] is important.” I’d like to explain why I think redefining marriage would actually serve to strip these children of their most fundamental rights.It’s very difficult to speak about this subject, because I love my mom. Most of us children...

(CNSNews.com) – Four adult children of same-sex parents have submitted amicus curiae briefs in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals asking that it oppose the legalization of same-sex “marriage." The Court, in New Orleans, La., heard arguments on Jan. 9 as it considers whether to uphold traditional marriage – defined as being between one man and one woman -- in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. B.N. Klein, Robert Oscar Lopez, Dawn Stefanowicz, and Katy Faust all grew up with homosexual parents. All four argued that redefining marriage to include same-sex couples would harm children by depriving them of a mother or...

Fifty Shades of Grey is about a steamy sexual relationship centered around bondage, dominance, and what fans call “discipline.” That is, the leading man’s “Red Room of Pain” includes physical abuse, whipping, electric cattle prods, hot wax, and other acts of torture. The feminists seeking to tear down traditional society by blaming all men for a mythical “rape culture” are now silent while Hollywood liberals simultaneously work hard to create one. Following a familiar Hollywood pattern of making deviancy and perversion acceptable and attractive to society and “defining deviancy down,” the double-meaning of the word “Grey” includes the leading character...

Restoration of the soul cannot begin without a confrontation with the truth. It is through truth your condition is brought to light. And from this confrontation, a decision must then be made to continue in it, or to change it. When the right decision is made, restoration can then begin. And what does restoration begin with? Trust. What happens to the components of the soul from there will take on a new and dynamic nature, as we will explore on this edition of Making Sense with Rob Case. powered by podcast garden

Dear Mr. Jenner, You probably don’t know who I am and certainly have no obligation to read on. Even so, I pray you will. As the great Olympic champion God gifted you to be, you were an inspiration to me as a boy and endured as such when I grew into adulthood and professional athletics. I hope you will serve to inspire many more generations of young people. As it stands now, however, you instead appear poised to lead them astray. I implore you to reverse course. I am a follower of Christ Jesus. That is to say, though in...

Four adult children of same-sex parents have submitted amicus curiae briefs in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals asking that it oppose the legalization of same-sex “marriage.” The Court, in New Orleans, La., heard arguments on Jan. 9 as it considers whether to uphold traditional marriage—defined as being between one man and one woman—in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. B.N. Klein, Robert Oscar Lopez, Dawn Stefanowicz, and Katy Faust all grew up with homosexual parents. All four argued that redefining marriage to include same-sex couples would harm children by depriving them of a mother or father. …

In the pages of the Times of Trenton on January 20, a psychologist named Ronald J. Coughlin published an op-ed titled “Fundamental Changes Would Better American Society.” Mr. Coughlin is worried about a lot of the right things: alcohol abuse, the divorce rate, childbearing out of wedlock (particularly among teens). But what ideas he has for “fundamental changes”! The idea, for instance, that because science tells us about the maturing brain we ought to raise the drinking age to twenty-five is going to go over big, with an electorate that can vote at eighteen. (Mr. Coughlin may want to...