1. Here’s to you Mr. Seeker-Sensitive Mega Church Pastor Guy! I’m not against mega churches, but I thought this was hilarious.
2. Planned Parenthood and other supporters of “comprehensive sex education” are now using the latest CDC study that shows that 26% of high school-aged girls have a sexually transmitted infection (STI). The president of the Planned Parenthood Federation in America, Cecile Richards is quoted in the New York Times saying:
(The) new findings “emphasize the need for real comprehensive sex education.”
“The national policy of promoting abstinence-only programs is a $1.5 billion failure,” Ms. Richards said, “and teenage girls are paying the real price.”
Joe Carter challenges this assertion because there is absolutely no evidence that condoms which Planned Parenthood promotes as protection from STIs does anything to prevent a variety of STIs in women.
One study that they choose to ignore is the 2000 federal report by the National Institutes of Health on the Scientific Evidence on Condom Effectiveness for Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) Prevention. On their webpage PP says, “Condoms are effective because they block contact with body fluids that cause pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection.” But this is clearly rebutted by the report. The researchers found the published epidemiology literature to be inadequate to answer the question. (p. 2)
That’s right. While we have Planned Parenthood and sex educators claiming that condoms can “offer effective protection against most serious sexually transmitted infections” the report finds there’s no scientific basis for that claim.
What the evidence does show is that men and women who always use a condom can reduce their risk of being infected with HIV and men can limit their exposure to gonorrhea. When it comes to gonorrhea in women, chlamydial infection, trichomoniasis, genital herpes, syphilis, and chancroid, the evidence is inconclusive. (p. 3) And there is no evidence at all that condoms can prevent the transmission of the HPV infection.
In other words, there is no evidence that condoms are effective in preventing the spread of the infections that plague these teenage girls. Yet we’ll continue carry out the “condom conspiracy”, lying to our nation’s youth about the efficacy of “safe sex.”
3. Ten Reasons I Don’t Read Your Blog
4. Tim Jones on the right of parents to homeschool their children.
A California state appellate court judge has said “Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children.”.
We don’t need it, you idiot. We have a natural right to home school our children. We hold this truth to be self-evident. the Constitution, and specifically the Bill of Rights is not anything like an exhaustive list of the rights of individuals, but is meant as a modest hedge against oppressive government encroachment like the nonsense you are trying to pull. You can’t expect the founding fathers to list everything that people have a right to do.
5. Michelle McGinty points out that having John McCain as the GOP nominee may be a good thing since there seems to be more McCainocrats than Obamacans.
6. Wesley J. Smith in Pushing Infantcide warns that our society is growing more tolerant of infanticide because in legalizing abortion and accepting the philosophy behind it we’ve sacrificed the fundamental principle of human life having intrinsic value.
Support for infanticide is becoming positively trendy. Where once support for killing babies born with birth defects was a fringe belief, it became respectable—even mainstream—after doctors from Groningen University Medical Center in the Netherlands admitted in 2004 that they euthanized dying and profoundly disabled babies under the terms of what has come to be called the “Groningen Protocol.”
The Protocol permits doctors to lethally inject three categories of sick or disabled newborn infants:
This means that not only are dying babies lethally injected, but also babies with serious disabilities who do not need intensive care.
HT: Melinda @ Stand to Reason
7. Anne Morse on the new trend of canine weddings.
Chuck (Colson) talked the other day about the aggressive efforts by animal rights activists to blur the distinction between humans and animals. He describes a “wedding” between a canine groom (who sports a formal black tux) and a doggie bride, who wears a gorgeous white silk gown and veil designed by Vera Wang. (Okay, I made up the part about Vera Wang.)
Incredibly, there are even wedding coordinators who specialize in pet “weddings,” which make a mockery of the sacred meaning of marriage.
One thing driving this kind of nonsense is, I believe, the phenomenon P.D. James discusses in her novel that I mentioned recently, The Children of Men. When people are unable to have children, cats and dogs and dolls become their de facto offspring. I believe a big part of the trend of treating pets like children may have to do with a lack in people’s lives of other humans to love, and be loved by. (This article offers support for this notion.) I speak from experience: As soon as our sons left for college, our miniature dachshund became our “baby.”
8. John Mark Reynolds thinks that John McCain should ignore old media and go new media.
9. Barack Obama on Gay Marriage
I will tell you that I don’t believe in gay marriage, but I do think that people who are gay and lesbian should be treated with dignity and respect and that the state should not discriminate against them. So, I believe in civil unions that allow a same-sex couple to visit each other in a hospital or transfer property to each other. I don’t think it should be called marriage, but I think that it is a legal right that they should have that is recognized by the state. If people find that controversial then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans. That’s my view.
Ummm… I’m currently studying Sermon on the Mount for an upcoming sermon series. What exactly does it have to do with same sex marriage? Perhaps he means the golden rule or Jesus’ warning against judging? And if that is the case, is really being against same-sex marriage being judgmental? I don’t think so, and I don’t believe Jesus is addressing this issue. Let’s not put words in our Savior’s mouth. Also, what exactly makes Romans 1 obscure? Bad theology alert.
HT: A-Team
10. I found a new blog focused on the persecuted church – The Enduring Church highlights those who are being persecuted worldwide because of their faith in Jesus Christ. Check it out.
11. Chuck Colson’s St. Patrick’s Day BreakPoint Commentary is about the Creational Theology of the Celts. Very interesting, we can thank God for their contribution to Christian history as they played a part in preserving the Church in Western Europe. You can download the audio version of his commentary here (right click and choose “save target as”).
12. Sharon Lindbloom writes “With a Sincere Heart” at the Mormon Coffee Blog responding to the Moroni 10:4 challenge.
“And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost,” (Moroni 10:4).
I was talking with a Mormon elder the other day. He challenged me to read the Book of Mormon (I have) and put the Moroni 10:4 promise into practice. Elder A. had just commented on the importance of LDS missionaries making an effort to understand, from a non-member’s perspective, what they tell investigators; therefore, I tried to explain a problem I have, as a non-Mormon, with the Moroni 10:4 challenge.
“Elder, this doesn’t seem like a valid test for me to use and here’s why. The Book of Mormon promises that if I ask God (while meeting certain criterion) whether the book is true, He will tell me it is true by the power of the Holy Ghost. But in order for me to believe the promise, I must already believe that the Book of Mormon is true. Because, if I don’t already believe the Book of Mormon is true, why would I exercise the promise given in Moroni 10:4? Why would I trust something that I don’t yet know or believe is true?”
Elder A. said, “You don’t need to believe the promise; you just need to do it.”
I explained that the book I do believe — the Bible — does not tell me to discover truth in the way the Book of Mormon suggests.
13. Richard John Neuhaus reviews Austin Dacey’s The Secular Conscience over at First Things: The Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life.
14. Here is a good reason (among several) why the “morning after pill” shouldn’t be an over-the-counter drug.
OREM — A 19-year-old Orem man was arrested Tuesday for investigation in the rape of a 13-year-old female, a first-degree felony.
The two initially met at a roller-skating rink and kept in touch on the phone and the Internet, according to a 4th District Court affidavit. On March 3 they went skate-boarding with friends, and later that night the girl received a text, asking her to sneak out of the house and meet the man, according to the affidavit.
After she met the man, he allegedly took her to his apartment and tried to have sex with her. The girl told him no and pushed him, but the man removed her clothes and forced her to have sex, according to the affidavit.
“The next day, the child said that the suspect gave her a morning-after pill,” police said.
The girl’s mother apparently found out about the incident and reported it to officers, who gathered evidence and interviewed the girl Tuesday.
The man was identified, and when he was brought in for questioning “eventually he admitted to having sex with the child, but stated it was consensual,” police said. A 13-year-old is unable to consent, according to Utah state law.
Police booked the man into the Utah County Jail.
HT: Pro-Life Blogs
15. My friend Ben Polhemus discusses how greed has impacted our culture. Great stuff.
16. A great reminder of why knocking Saddam Hussien from power was a good thing for the people of Iraq. HT: Foxfier
17. All American Blogger on Congress’ pork barrel spending and the increased taxes that will likely result.
18. Obama and Clinton vote against helping pregnant women, McCain is in favor.
Pro-abortion Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton joined a majority of the Senate Thursday night in rejecting an amendment that would offer financial support to poor pregnant women and their unborn children. Their votes contrasted with likely GOP presidential nominee John McCain.
The two candidates voted against a measure by Sen. Wayne Allard of Colorado that would have included pregnant women and their unborn children in the SCHIP program.
Pro-life groups strongly supported the amendment because it would help women who may otherwise have an abortion because of financial worries about affording a baby.
The vote provided another clear contrast between Obama and Clinton, who support unlimited abortions funded with taxpayer dollars, and McCain, who opposes abortion and has called for reversing Roe v. Wade.
Obama and Clinton voted with the majority of the Senate 52-46 in rejecting the bid to help pregnant women while McCain supported the Allard amendment.
19. Dan Kimball on St. Patrick the missionary, looking at his style of evangelism by summarizing lessons that he learned from The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity Can Reach the West… Again by George G. Hunter III.
20. Please somebody tell me that this website is a lame attempt at a joke. It made me want to turn my stomach that somebody would try to market products this way. If this is a joke certainly somebody is spending a lot of money on this website which could certainly go to better use. I’m appalled.
HT: Mark Riddle
Caffeinated Thoughts 