Children

Who Wants Children?

34th child abandoned under Neb.’s safe-haven law

A 5-year-old boy has been dropped off at an Omaha, Neb., hospital only a day before the state Legislature begins a meeting to change the state’s safe-haven law.

[…]

Nebraska’s safe-haven law was intended to protect unwanted newborns from being abandoned, but unlike similar laws in other states, Nebraska’s doesn’t include an age limit.

The Legislature opens a rare special session Friday afternoon to change the law and add an age limit.

As of Friday, 34 children have been abandoned under the law. Five have been from out of state.

Free birth control.

Easy abortions.

Safe dumping.

Abuse. Neglect. Unkindness.

Yup. Who wants children?

“Without natural affection,” the Bible says.

Worse Than DUI

Texting while driving “more dangerous than drugs or alcohol”

Texting behind the wheel is more dangerous than driving while under the influence of alcohol or cannabis, researchers said Thursday.

Research carried out on young drivers (aged 17-24) using a simulator found that reaction time slowed by 35% when they were writing or reading text messages while driving. In comparison, reaction time deteriorated by 21% for those under the influence of cannabis, and by 12% at the legal alcohol limit.

I’m no teenager (and only two of our five flesh-and-blood children are still teenagers), but I better remember this the next time texting while driving seems so urgent. 😯

The Poster

That’s the title of Andrée Seu’s latest piece over at WorldMagBlog:

There is an area in my house that, if you had a handheld radioactivity detector for spiritual intensity, would start ticking wildly as you approached. It is my daughter’s bedroom, and ground zero is a poster on her wall.

One day I had decided to go through all six rooms and dedicate them to God, asking Him to remove any defilement. (This is either madness or the creativity of the Holy Spirit.) I was inspired in part by shame over a wooden key rack in the kitchen that reads, “As for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” It has been a lie.

As I lifted my head from a prostrate position, I spotted the poster, a darkly beautiful woodland scene that seems to call to ancient legends and distant flute sounds, and whose colors and mood blend seamlessly into the forest décor of the bedroom. One hardly notices at first the two mythical female faces locked in a kiss, and then, if you look closer still, a trickle of blood leaking from the corner of their mouths.

You really ought to read the rest of it (the above excerpt is more than half of the entire article).

As a husband and father, I am challenged by her thoughts.

What music do I allow in my home?

What literature?

What radio stations?

What Web sites?

What language?

What “stuff”?

And why or why not?

And how shall I teach about it?

Many questions; few answers. 🙁

Taking on the Network

The Good Ole Boys network, that is:

Jaime Nared, the 12-year-old Beaverton-area basketball sensation who was banned from a boys team in spring, earned a big win Thursday afternoon after a lawyer threatened to take her case to another kind of court.

She’s still banned from any boys’ team.

But she’s been allowed on the new coed team.

After all, no court of law and no suer and no lawyer and no threats can change this reality: A boys’ team is comprised of boys only.

Or to frame it up another way, if one or more girls are part of a team that includes boys, it is not a boys’ team.

A Limit to Religious Freedom

Christian group blamed for mumps outbreak

Conservative Christians who refuse vaccinations have been linked to an outbreak of mumps in British Columbia. The controversy has raised ethical issues, and sparked debate over the limits of religious rights.

Douglas Todd, religion writer for The Vancouver Sun, has covered the story extensively.

Todd cited medical ethicists who questioned the Christian group’s position. Alister Browne, director of ethics and law at the University of British Columbia medical school, said, “I don’t think this issue is a small matter.” He added that the ethical importance of a society protecting the health of children and others against infectious disease must be weighed against a person’s right to religious freedom, and the level of risk to others when immunizations are refused.

Michael McDonald, a professor in the Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics at the University of British Columbia, went further. He argued that adults in the Chilliwack community may be ethically required to accept vaccinations to protect their children and members of the larger society, since the health and safety of others — particularly children — is a justified “limit to religious freedom.”

Do you agree?

And another less PC question: If these were Muslims, would Mr. McDonald say the same thing?

I’m sure you don’t know the answer to the second question. But surely you know the answer to the first.

Grief in Mexico

I know this is nothing new for this part of Mexico, but still….

Death in Chiapas

When the 11-year-old daughter of Antonio Gomez became ill of a stomach ailment, her father decided that it was due to witchcraft committed by his evangelical neighbor.

Gomez, of the Jolitontic community of Chalchihuitan municipality in Chiapas state, gathered seven friends to kill the family of the supposed culprit. After midnight on August 23, they allegedly killed three adults – the parents and their eldest son – and wounded six children with machetes.

Mariano Lopez Perez, public prosecutor of Indian Justice, reportedly said neighbors regarded the father in the attacked family, Pedro Gomez Diaz, as “an evangelical who prayed a great deal.” The neighbors reportedly denied that the family believed in or practiced any kind of witchcraft as far as they knew.

According to Tuxtla Gutierrez-based Cuarto Poder newspaper in Chiapas, all eight of the men who participated in the massacre of three Indians in Jolitontic are now in jail in San Cristobal de las Casas, awaiting justice.

The attackers burst into the hut of the family to kill first the eldest son, Rene, 32. They then slashed the mother, Marcela Hernandez Giron Gomez, and the father, Gomez Diaz.

Before he died Gomez Diaz’s cries alerted the rest of the family, but the murderers managed to seriously wound six other children: Esteban, 4; Ernesto, 6; Anita, 7; Maria, 14; Petrona, 16; and Martin, 18. They were all taken to the public health hospital of San Cristobal de las Casas.
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Above all, love God!