California's Marriage Protection Act is Good Public Policy

Fifteen-year-old Joshua Roberts "pleaded guilty to assault with a deadly weapon" causing great bodily injury during an unprovoked assault on Levi Snyder outside a local movie theater according to Redding's Record Searchlight for April 17. Snyder was rendered comatose as a result of the attack.

And this story is yet another reason for all California citizens of good will to support the California Marriage Protection Act. This California initiative constitutional amendment would put into the California Constitution California's current marriage statute: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." This step has become necessary because these 14 words have been challenged in the California courts by homosexual activists and the California Supreme Court is set to decide the fate of man-woman marriage during the current session.

We males being barbarians by nature, civilizing each new generation of boys and young men is the basic task of society and fathers are crucial to this task. So when I saw Joshua Roberts's photo in the newspaper I thought, "Dollars to doughnuts he doesn't live with his father." And a local resident who claimed to know the boy confirmed my assumption. Whether this is true of Roberts or not, I believe it is true that the best single predictor for a boy's dropping out of school, getting into drugs or getting into trouble with the law is his not living in a household with his natural father.

And marriage is the social institution that helps men to remain with their children. But in countries such as Sweden and Denmark where same-sex marriages are legal, marriage is said to have tanked. That is, neither gays nor straights are bothering to get married. Thus, same-sex marriage seems to subvert traditional marriage by dishonoring it in the eyes of many people. In the United States where the majority of the population still believes that homosexual acts are sinful, the negative effect on marriage rates could be even more pronounced than in Scandanavia.

So your personal safety as you lock up your bike at the local Movies 10 depends on marriage and the support it affords teenagers and young men by helping keep dad in their homes. This argument has helped hesitant petition signers get up the nerve to do what they ought to do and sign the Marriage Protection Act petition. It works kind of like Garrison Keillor's Powder Milk Biscuits.

McCain Affirms Prolife as the Republican Position

Family Research Council published today the following interview segment:

At a student forum moderated by MSNBC's Chris Matthews, the Republican nominee reiterated the importance of the party's pro-life platform:

Matthews: ...Would you put a person on the ticket with you, like the former governor of this state who is very popular, Tom Ridge, even though he may disagree on the issue of Roe v. Wade and abortion rights?... McCain: I don't know if it would stop him, but it would be difficult... Matthews: Why that one issue? Why is that one litmus test issue? McCain: I'm not saying that it would be necessarily, but I am saying... the respect and cherishing of the right of the unborn is one of the fundamental principles of my party. And it's a... deeply held belief of mine.

'Nuff said, David

Long Time No See

I've been working day and night (an exaggeration, of course) what with my circulation of California Initiative Petitions and gathering the firewood from the California Department of Forestry's thinning of the brush and trees of the undeveloped chaparral just east of my house in the approach zone for the nearby light aircraft field on the west side of Redding.

First, I'd like to mention a couple of positives for John McCain's candidacy for President. He was not on my long or short list of candidates, but then there were problems for me with the entire pack. But McCain is a candidate who has taken a bold and clear stand against torture as an instrument in the war against the Islamofascists. He stated the obvious reality that controlled drowning, euphemistically called "water boarding," is torture, something that the U. S. Attorney General has not been able to bring himself to do, probably because of legal implications of the CIA's having used it.

In addition, I expect that McCain will try to find some reasonable and humane solution to the problem of America's eagerly using and sometimes exploiting Mexican immigrant labor in agriculture, industry and domestic service while not giving them any legal status. From a Biblical perspective, we must treat with care these aliens that we have invited by our willingness to pay them for their labor lest we violate the principle set forth in Yahweh's command to Israel about the aliens among them. He said, "Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt" (Ex. 22:21, cf. Ex. 23:9; Lev. 24:22; Deut. 24:17). And Deuteronomy 27:19 pronounces a curse on anyone who withholds justice from the alien.

On the other hand, McCain, at a minimum, must accommodate us prolifers by maintaining the Bush Administration's ban on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research. This move is essential to the success of his candidacy and can hardly hurt him given the recent scientific breakthroughs that have made pluripotent stem cells available by ethical means.

To ensure that I have offended someone, I'll conclude with a comment I posted elsewhere:
Reverend Wright was right when he said that the United States got what it was asking for on 9/11, that is, if he meant a small taste of God's judgment for our national sins such as our putting money before God and legally aborting 50,000,000 of our offspring, black, white, brown and red.