OK Senate Bills 472 & 308

I never really thought I'd be one to get into a fight like this, but apparently, I am. There are two new bills to be proposed in the OK senate on Monday, February 2. I first saw this story here. It intrigued me as I felt our home schooling rights were being stepped on a little bit. So I started doing a little research.

First, I found this. I felt a little better considering the Chairman of the Senate Educational Committee, State Senator John Ford said,

“Our home school community is a vital asset to this state. The way home schooling parents currently educate their children is a process that has worked fine, and I feel it is important for them to have the freedom in determining what will best serve their children’s needs.”

So, he, at least, is opposed to these two bills.

Upon further research, I discovered the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) was in action on these two bills. See here for Bill 472 and here for Bill 308.

So, where do I come in on all this? We home school our children. My wife has prayed about it since we started having children, and we pray about it before every school year. We didn't home school Bobo or Bear until we moved to Altus. We have absolutely nothing against Altus schools, we just felt the Lord was telling us it was time to teach our children at home. Again, we pray about it before every school year, because we don't want to be disobedient to God. We will put them in the public school system as soon as God doesn't want us to home school anymore. This is the Lord's will for our life in this season, so we do it.

We believe it is a parent's right and God-given duty to teach his or her child(ren). See Proverbs 22:6 and Ephesians 6:4 among others. The fact that society has created public (and even private) school systems to teach children en mass, does not change this truth. In fact, it endangers it. Read Matthew 18:6, 7 and 14. Does a worldly school system not put a stumbling block in front of our children?

Both of my parents were school teachers. My mother-in-law still is. They taught/teach with integrity and respect to the children, their parents, and God. I have nothing against the teachers. They are doing their job. We, as parents, are doing ours. If the government feels the need to control that, then we are headed for a sad day indeed. I encourage you to pray about this issue and then act as God would direct you. Read up on it yourself, and make up your own mind. Don't just take my word for it. Be encouraged.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Inmates Running the Asylum

Apparently they are over in England. Check this out this story.

Note: if you click the above link, it will take you to the article on the UK website, The Sun. I felt that in order to stay within legal boundaries, I needed to link back to it. However, there are a lot of "distractions" on the site, so I've copied the story below, too.

Judge throws out robbery case: Victim is too HONEST
By JOHN COLES
Published: 14 Jan 2009

A DRIVING instructor robbed by savages as she gave a lesson was branded too GOOD a witness by a judge — who THREW OUT the case against a yob she identified. Beaten-up Denise Dawson, 36 — whose nose was broken by a gang that
surrounded her car — was hailed by Judge Jamie Tabor QC as “honest, utterly
decent and brave.”

But amazingly he ruled that her evidence against a lout she picked out in an ID parade was so compelling it would unfairly sway the jury. He awarded the mum of two £250 for her courage — but let accused robber Liam Perks, 20, walk free. Judge Tabor declared: “The jury may lend more weight to her evidence than her facts allow. You cannot be sure she got it right.”

He added bizarrely: “Had this been the Archbishop of Canterbury’s son, would I have allowed (the trial) to go on? The answer is no.”

Horrified Denise said afterwards: “I felt sick. What more can I do? I positively identified someone from a video ID parade and was prepared to risk everything in
going to court. But it’s still not enough.”

Denise, of Westbury-on-Trym, Bristol, was practising hill starts with Jodie Dickinson, 26, when the thugs swooped.

One yob smashed her Ford Focus’s rear window with a brick and grabbed her laptop and £80 cash.

Denise told Bristol Crown Court others punched her in the face and stole her mobile.

Prosecutor Ed Burgess said Denise told cops at the ID parade: “It’s No7. I know that face. It made my stomach go over.”

The jury heard Perks, of Henbury, Bristol, is awaiting sentence for conspiracy to burgle.

Last year Judge Tabor, 57, handed a suspended sentence to a wife who gave her cheating husband rat poison.

The dad of three also freed a pervert choirmaster, saying his 11-year-old victim
seemed to “enjoy” being abused.

The Crown Prosecution Service defended the latest ruling — saying it too felt there was insufficient evidence against Perks.

But Labour MP Dan Norris said: “It’s bonkers. The message to
criminals is if it’s your word against theirs, no matter how trustworthy they
are you are likely to get away with it.”
j.coles@the-sun.co.uk

At least the people who left comments seem to be in their right mind. I can just imagine "Honest Abe's" testimony being thrown out at John Wilkes Booth's trial. (I know that Lincoln died and Booth was later shot, I'm just sayin'.)

So the moral of the story seems to be, don't be so convincing in your convictions, because you might not be right and irresponsibly lead others astray.

Barf.

Oh, God, help us to redeem the day!

The Press and Teenage Sex

While I no longer do my show at the radio station, I still go in every weekday morning to take care of the early production needs. Eddie, the AM morning guy, handed me an article he printed from The Wall Street Journal website written by William McGurn. You may have seen some of the following headlines and stories, but I have not. I think this article does a great job of clearing some things up, so I thought I would share it with you.

It seems Janet Elise Rosenbaum of Johns Hopkins University conducted a study called "Patient Teenagers? A Comparison of the Sexual Behavior of Virginity Pledgers and Matched Nonpledgers," and published it in the Jan. 1 edition of Pediatrics. The numbers show little difference between those who pledge and those who don't, and that most do not make it to the wedding night as virgins. Well, the press had a field day. The following are the headline and a few excerpts from McGurn's article (click on the headline for the full article):

"Like a Virgin: The Press Take On Teenage Sex"

"Virginity Pledges Don't Stop Teen Sex," screams CBS News. "Virginity pledges don't mean much," adds CNN. "Study questions virginity pledges," says the Chicago Tribune. "Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds," heralds the Washington Post. "Virginity Pledges Fail to Trump Teen Lust in Look at Older Data," reports Bloomberg. And on it goes.
In other words, teens will be teens, and moms or dads who believe that concepts such as restraint or morality have any application today are living in a dream world. Typical was the lead for the CBS News story: "Teenagers who take virginity pledges are no less sexually active than other teens, according to a new study."
Here's the rub: It just isn't true.

...the only way the study's author...could reach such results was by comparing teens who take a virginity pledge with a very small subset of other teens: those who are just as religious and conservative as the pledge-takers.

The first to notice something lost in the translation was Dr. Bernadine Healy...[who]...pointed out that "virginity pledging teens were considerably more conservative in their overall sexual behaviors than teens in general -- a fact that many media reports have missed cold."
What Dr. Healy was getting at is that the pledge itself is not what distinguishes these kids from most other teenagers. The real difference is their more conservative and religious home and social environment. As she notes, when you compare both groups in this study with teens at large, the behavioral differences are striking. Here are just a few:
- These teens generally have less risky sex, i.e., fewer sexual partners.
- These teens are less likely to have a teenage pregnancy, or to have friends who use drugs.
- These teens have less premarital vaginal sex.
- When these teens lose their virginity
they tend to do so at age 21 -- compared to 17 for the typical American teen.
- And very much overlooked, one out of four of these teens do in fact keep the pledge to remain chaste -- amid much cheap ridicule and just about zero support outside their homes or churches.
Let's put this another way. The real headline from this study is this: "Religious Teens Differ Little in Sexual Behavior Whether or Not They Take a Pledge."

What...parents hope to do is direct these [sexual] desires in a way that recognizes sex as a great gift, which in the right circumstances fosters genuine intimacy between a man and a woman and at its freest offers the possibility of new life.

[However,] these families live in an environment where most everything that is popular -- television, the movies, the Internet -- encourages children to grow up as quickly as possible while adults remain locked in perpetual adolescence.

For these parents, the good news here is that the striking behavioral differences between the average American teen and the two teen groups in this study show that homes and families still exert a powerful influence.

Really, please take the time to read the entire article. There's honestly not a lot more, but it will help to fill in some blanks. Again, I hadn't been exposed to the uproar of media hype following this publication, but it sounds like the liberal media. At the bottom of this article on WSJ.com, it has links to some of the headlined stories. See if you can pick the one that is different:

Related News From the Web
The truth about teens and sex - The Boston Globe JAN 03. 2009 boston.com
Study: Religious Teens More Likely to Abstain from Sex JAN 03. 2009 foxnews.com
Virginity Pledges Don't Work, Study Finds DEC 29. 2008 news.aol.com
Abstinence Pledges Have No Effect On Sexual Behavior DEC 29. 2008 huffingtonpost.com

Ah, you never know what you might find when crossing the Kingdom. Father, help us to redeem this world.

Soli Deo Gloria