Free Republic

John Perry Ryan was sentenced today to 7 ½ years in jail for spreading pornographic images of children online. District Court Judge William Sessions said of the crimes, “”Truly heinous… It’s one of the most egregious child pornography cases I’ve ever seen… The descriptions in chat rooms are just abhorrent, just beyond belief.” But his advocates see it differently. Ryan, a former gay rights activist, received a strong show of support from officials in Provincetown, MA, his former home. His backers included a former Superintendent of Schools, a former town director of Public Health and Human Services, and a former...

It seems that a celebrated Provincetown resident is going to jail for child pornography. And P-Town residents are up in arms about it. John Perry Ryan is scheduled to be sentenced in Braintree, VT, on Monday on three counts of transporting child pornography. In June of last year he plea bargained six counts down to three, while admitting guilt to emailing a variety of explicit child porn photos to several people... And yet. Letters of support for Ryan are pouring in from Provincetown: According to his supporters, he is “…a person who has dedicated his adult life to improving 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...