The Social Conservative Review: April 11, 2013

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Dear Friends:

In recent days, major media outlets have been highlighting politicians who, while once supportive of marriage as it always has been known, now support same-sex "marriage." They are doing so in much the same enthusiastic way as the sports pages keep a tally of basketball teams during "March Madness."

Well, Christian teaching has never been a popularity contest. Rather, it has been about affirming, applying, and standing upon what the Bible teaches. That includes marriage, designed by God as the union of one man and one woman, for life, a teaching confirmed by Jesus Himself (Mark 10:7-8).

My distinguished colleague Ken Blackwell, who has served in many leading public roles including U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission, a few days ago wrote a counterintuitive and very persuasive op-ed titled, "The illiberalism of assailing traditional marriage." Take a few minutes to read Ken's piece and learn why redefining marriage will hurt families and children in profound ways.

Basketball is one thing, but let's not bring "madness" to marriage. Instead, let's do all we can to make sure that the intact, stable family - headed by a husband and a wife - becomes once again the treasured norm for all Americans.

Sincerely,

Rob Schwarzwalder
Senior Vice-President
Family Research Council

P.S. Be sure to join FRC on April 24 to hear Bob Fu, one of the world's leading opponents of religious persecution, speak about "Freedom and Christianity in China." If you can't be with us in D.C., be sure to register, at no cost, and watch online.

Educational Freedom and Reform
Homeschooling

• "School to Homeschool Family: Obtain Approval or Accreditation or Else!," Home School Legal Defense Association
• "Over 73,000 Signers Support German Homeschooling Parents in Danger of Deportation," The Christian Post
• "A legal battle for freedom of homeschooling," Technician Online
• "On The Effects of Homeschooling: A Bet," Library of Economics and Liberty
• "Schooling Dangerously," First Things
• "Homeschooled Kids, Now Grown, Blog Against the Past," The Daily Beast

Legislation and Policy Proposals

• "Disparities Found in N.Y.C.'s System for Matching Students to Schools," Education Week
• "Combating the 'Culture of Can't'," Education Next
• "In the knowledge economy, it's knowledge that matters," Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• "Scaling turnaround: A district-improvement approach," American Enterprise Institute
• ""Good Thing I'm Not a History Major"," The Public Discourse
• "Let's Set a National Standard for Our Students--a Really Low One," The Atlantic
• "School Choice as Social Justice," The Catholic Thing

College Debt

• "Digging Deeper Into Student Loan Debt," The Huffington Post
• "College 'screening' to lower student debt," New York Post
• "One Idahoan's debt woes mirror challenges faced by many college graduates," The Idaho Statesman

Government Reform
Regulation

• "Grow the Economy through Small Businesses," The American
• "Former Obama Regulator on the Future of Government," The Wall Street Journal
• "Texas: Big, Hot, Cheap and Right in the New York Times!," The Acton Institute

Waste/Fraud/Abuse

• "Obama Administration Drops $21k on Rebounding Machines," United Liberty
• "Taxpayers paid $1.3B to cover bad business loans," Dayton Daily News

Health Care
Abstinence

• "Hooking Up on Campus: The Job of Sex," Religion Today
• "Should sex-ed lessons focus on more than abstinence?," The Arizona Republic

Health care reform: Political and Legislative efforts

• "Obamacare and the Concession on Its Higher Costs," Values and Capitalism
• "13 State Attorneys General Want Broader Exemptions for Obamacare Mandate," Newsmax
• "Federal Grant Funding is Key to Medicaid Reform in Texas," Ethics and Public Policy Center
• "21^st Century Health Care Options for the States," The Galen Institute
• "Some Small Businesses Opt for the Health-Care Penalty," The Wall Street Journal
• "Blue States Spend More on Health Care While Reds Save," Via Meadia
• "A Wise and Workable Strategy for Replacing Obamacare," National Review Online

Homosexuality

• "Gay Rites," Claremont Review of Books
• "The Bible and homosexuality," WORLD Magazine
• "Army Email Labels Christian Ministries as "Domestic Hate Groups"," Fox News
• "Wendell Berry's Marriage Reversal," First Things
• "Thoughts on Same-Sex Marriage, Part III: The Issue Is Civil, Not Religious," The Center for Vision and Values
• "PolitiFact's Pants on Fire," Turtle Bay and Beyond
• "What You Should Know About 'LGBTQ'," The Gospel Coalition

Human Life and Bioethics
Abortion

• "Johns Hopkins's and Planned Parenthood's troubling extremism," The Washington Post
• "Abortion: The Personal is Political," Juicy Ecumenism
• "Planned Parenthood's defense of infanticide," American Enterprise Institute
• "Party Like It's 1984," The Wall Street Journal
• "Is the Tide on Abortion Changing?," Religion Today
• "Advocates Combat Abortion's "Stigma" With Stealth Training," C-FAM
• "New Orders, Old Fallacies," The Catholic Thing
• "Does Plan B Cause Abortion?," Christianity Today
• "Generation That Aborted Will Be Euthanized," Turtle Bay and Beyond
• "Gosnell employee: baby 'jumped' when I snipped its neck during an 'abortion'," LifeSiteNews.com
• "Alabama Tightens Abortion Restrictions," The Federalist Society
• "North Dakota Citizens to Vote on Defining Personhood in State Constitution," Liberty Counsel

Bioethics and Biotechnology

• ""In vitro eugenics" is coming, predicts Australian bioethicist," BioEdge
• "Bioethics Panel Urges Caution in Testing MCMs on Children," Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News

Euthanasia and End of Life Issues

• "Suicide Shouldn't Be Easy to Accomplish," National Review Online
• "Shocking 4,620% Increase in Belgium Euthanasia Cases Since Legalization," LifeNews.com
• "The End Is Clear," Touchstone Magazine

Stem Cell Research
To read about the latest advances in ethical adult stem cell research, keep up with leading-edge reports from FRC's Dr. David Prentice, click here.

• "Adhesive force differences enable separation of stem cells to advance therapies," Phys.org
• "Vatican gets behind adult stem cell research," Religion News Service
• "Non-Embryonic Stem Cells: The Dawning of a New Era of Hope," Speigel

Human Trafficking

• "Human Trafficking in India; My Family's Personal Encounter," The Christian Post
• "Polaris Project Launches Global Human Trafficking Hotline Network," The Polaris Project
• "Google helps bring hotline to human-trafficking battle," USA Today

Marriage and Family
Adoption

• "Open adoption fosters relationships that benefit child," The Register-Guard
• "Fatigue, Unmet Expectations Tied to Post-Adoption Blues," Psych Central

Family Economics

• "Poverty is Broken Relationships," Values and Capitalism
• "Buying Off Discontent: The Economic Wreckage of Disability Benefits in America," The Acton Institute
• "Is The Image of God An Engine of Economic Progress?," Institute for Faith, Work & Economics
• "Who Lost the American Worker?," National Review Online
• "The Dismal Future for Workers With Few Skills-Becker," Becker-Posner Blog

Family Structure

• "If Knot Now, When? The Impact of Delayed Marriage Among Twenty-somethings," The Public Discourse
• "Why Do Economists Urge College But Not Marriage?," The Acton Institute
• "Sexuality more like religion than race," USA Today
• "The M.R.S. and the Ph.D.," New York Times
• "Thank Goodness Kids Do Belong to Their Parents," The Atlantic
• "Believing in a Better Modesty Movement," Her.meneutics
• "Cohabitation's Transaction Costs," First Things

Media
Pornography

• "Twitter's Vine App: Innocent Social Sharing or Free Porn Market?," PornHarms
• "Egypt moves to block access to pornography," The Los Angeles Times
• "How porn is misshaping teenagers' view of sex," The Iona Institute

Internet

• "How to cope with cyber-bullying," MercatorNet
• "Teen Commits Suicide After Photo of Alleged Rape Goes Viral," Mashable

Religion and Public Policy
Religious Liberty

• "Marriage, Religious Liberty, and the Ban Myth," The Public Discourse
• "Supreme Court Asked to Weigh in on Religious Group's Right to Live Communally," The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
• "HHS contraceptive mandate threatens more than religious freedom," MercatorNet
• "The Ongoing Fight for Schoolchildren's Religious Freedom," Alliance Defending Freedom
• "Thomas More Society Renews Effort to Intervene to Appeal Federal Ruling Striking Down Missouri Law for Contraceptive-Free Insurance Coverage," Thomas More Society

Religion in America
Check out Dr. Kenyn Cureton's feature on Watchmen Pastors called "The Lost Episodes," featuring how religion has had an impact on our Founding Fathers.

• "Demographics & American Religion," The American Conservative
• "Albert Mohler on Leadership, Stewardship, and the Sovereignty of God," The Acton Institute
• "Biggest Reason for Declining Church Attendance: Children's Sports?," Religion Today
• "When a Loved One Takes His Life," Patheos.com
• "The Bible vs. the Heart," National Review Online
• "The Bible According to the History Channel," The Gospel Coalition

Secularism

• "The Secularist's New Clothes," Values and Capitalism
• "British Christians fed up with 'coarse, sneering' mockery of Christianity," LifeSiteNews.com
• "Faith and Depression," First Things
• "What the New Atheists Ignore," The American Spectator

International
Israel

• "With Gas, Israel Should Wean Itself off Foreign Aid," Commentary Magazine
• "Persistent anti-Judaism," The Jerusalem Post

International Economy and Family

• "Irrepressible Moscow," City Journal
• "The West's two big mistakes in the Arab world," MercatorNet

Religious Persecution

• "Responding to Jonathan Merritt on Christian Persecution," Juicy Ecumenism
• "Globe Trot: Attacks continue on Coptic Christians in Cairo," WORLD Magazine
• "The U.S. and the Murders at the Cathedral," Commentary Magazine

The Courts
Constitutional Issues

• "Finding hope beyond the media and the Supreme Court," WORLD Magazine
• "Experts Say Contraception Mandate Likely to Head to Supreme Court," FedSocBlog
• "Originalism and the Colorblind Constitution," The Library of Law and Liberty

Other News of Note

• "How Do We Measure 'Progressives?'," The Christian Post
• "King of Fearmongers," The Weekly Standard
• "How Not to Defend the Liberal Arts," The American Conservative
• "Peacemaking: A Gospel Necessity," The Gospel Coalition

Book reviews

• "Review: The Man Born To Be King," The Examined Life
• "A Bully's Pulpit," Claremont Review of Books
• "New Abraham Kuyper Volume: 'Rooted and Grounded'," The Acton Institute
• "An American Decline?," The Public Discourse