2nd Vote #AnywhereButTARGET Campaign Website Back up After Being Shut Down for ‘Diversity’ and to Stop ‘Hate’

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A conservative corporate watchdog group’s effort to galvanize conservatives against Target’s restroom and changing-room policies was shut down on Thanksgiving Day by the server company hosting its website, because the campaign allegedly violated the company’s effort to “create an inclusive workplace” respectful of “diversity.”

In an e-mail, Leadpages Director of Operations Doug Storbeck ordered 2nd Vote to take down its #AnywhereButTARGET website. According to Storbeck, “at Leadpages, we strive to create an inclusive workplace that upholds the dignity of all people. We value, respect, and celebrate everyone’s individualities and honor their unique strengths from all different walks of life.”

2nd Vote’s campaign encouraged conservatives to shop #AnywhereButTARGET because of the company’s policy that allows males who identify as females to use the restroom and changing room of their choice. Conservatives have boycotted the retail giant, though Target executives said in August that a stock drop and an investment in single-sex restrooms was unrelated to the backlash.

Storbeck continued:

We believe that embracing diversity of thought and perspective encourages collaboration that leads to product innovation, diverse products and a successful business. Staying true to our core values is something we take very seriously and we feel this is reinforced in our Terms of Service. Specifically, and according to our Acceptable Use and Conduct policy (to which you have agreed), we prohibit any content which: “(g) is hateful or discriminatory based on race, color, sex, religion, nationality, ethnic or national origin, marital status, disability, sexual orientation or age or is otherwise objectionable, as reasonably determined by Ave. 81;”

For the reasons stated above, I am respectfully requesting that you to take down your #AnywhereButTarget landing page upon receipt of this notice, but no later than 8:00am CST on Thursday November 24, 2016.

Storbeck’s LinkedIn page says that he lives in the Minneapolis area, which is also where Target’s headquarters are located. The Stream was unable to determine whether this played a role in Leadpages’ decision.

The Campaign

Earlier this week, 2nd Vote Communications Director Robert Kuykendall told The Stream that his organization believes “Target is carrying the water for the liberal LGBT agenda that wants to undermine religious liberty protections for business owners, people of faith, and religious institutions.”

“We want conservatives to know that they have alternative choices for their Christmas shopping and to use the power of their shopping dollars to show Target that they don’t want to those dollars used to fund a radical political agenda,” Kuykendall added.

In an e-mail announcing the elimination of their #AnywhereButTARGET landing page, 2nd Vote Executive Director Lance Wray said, “Liberals who constantly tout tolerance and inclusion go out of their way to shut down ideas they disagree with. To say our campaign is about inequality, intolerance, hate, discrimination or devaluing anyone is flat wrong, it’s about common sense and safety. But, some of the truest hate and intolerance we’ve seen has come from the liberal responses to our campaign.”

Kuykendall told The Stream that he suspects Leadpages realized the campaign was having an effect on Target,

Leadpages must have sensed our campaign was gaining momentum, so they resorted to the typical liberal bully tactics of shutting down and censoring ideas they don’t agree with and calling them “hateful” or “discriminatory.” Apparently, Leadpages wanted to use the cover of Thanksgiving Day, thinking they could quietly make #AnywhereButTARGET disappear.

Kuykendall explained that the campaign “has reached over 3 million conservatives through several platforms. We’ve even added our Christmas Shopping Guide to the campaign, giving these conservatives better choices on where to spend their Christmas shopping dollars.”

Backlash Beginning

Less than 12 hours after Leadpages eliminated the #AnywhereButTARGET campaign page, LOGOS Identity Clothing’s Ryan O’Neil announced in an e-mail to Storbeck that he intended to boycott the company if it backed Target. O’Neil said that Storbeck and Leadpages’ executive team had “inserted your company into identity politics, and I can’t support a company like yours that doesn’t respect freedom of speech and expression.” O’Neil said that he is a “recent…user” who had been “considering upgrading my account.”

Leadpages did not respond to The Stream’s effort to clarify the company’s policy. The #AnywhereButTARGET campaign is directed at the company’s gender identity policy, which is not listed in Storbeck’s listing of company non-discrimination policies. Likewise, neither Storbeck nor Leadpages’ public relations manager responded to Wray’s accusation that the company’s actions consist of hypocrisy on the issue of diversity. (For more from the author of “2nd Vote #AnywhereButTARGET Campaign Website Back up After Being Shut Down for ‘Diversity’ and to Stop ‘Hate'” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

What Happens When False Gods Fail: The Christian Response to Political Idolatry

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The scene being played out by followers of Hillary Clinton across the country has been a spectacle of fury and despair such that calm, reasoned folks can only shake their heads in wonder. You really can’t make this stuff up.

Rioters have taken to the streets to destroy vehicles and property, set fires, block freeways, burn President-elect Donald Trump in effigy, raise signs calling for Melania Trump to be raped, and in general behaved like thugs having a colossal, violent temper tantrum.

College students have had cry-ins, asked to be excused from classes and tests, been provided with therapy dogs, Play-doh, crayons and coloring books, warm beverages to calm and comfort them in their fear, and in general have behaved like crybabies who should be grounded and made to do menial labor until they can grow up.

But this paean of homage takes the cake:

We don’t have to wait until she dies to act. Hillary Clinton’s name belongs on ships, and airports, and tattoos. She deserves straight-up hagiographies and a sold-out Broadway show called RODHAM … Maybe she is more than a president. Maybe she is an idea, a world-historical heroine, light itself. The presidency is too small for her.

This is probably the single best (and most unbelievable) encapsulation I’ve seen of the idol worship of Hillary Clinton and by extension, the progressive Left. No ordinary mortal, Hillary, but a transcendent figure whose power and mission reaches beyond any political office; a female Messiah who is “light itself.”

You really can’t make this stuff up. (Ms. Heffernan would be wise to recall what happened to the last creature named “Light.”)

This irrational, slobbering idol worship illustrates in vivid color what happens when people misplace their deepest desire for the love of God, and pursue instead the gods of their choosing. The result is despair, anger, incoherence and total collapse when those gods fail, as they always will.

Hillary the Great lost the election she was supposed to have been handed as her due, merely because she is Hillary. The mighty Queen failed to ascend to the throne as her loyal servants had been promised she would. The golden calf turned out to be mere metal after all, and people are coming unhinged.

Jesus Christ: The Only Light, the Only Hope

What’s the Christian response to this? Let’s start at the beginning.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:1-5

Neither Hillary Clinton, nor Barack Obama, nor Donald Trump, nor any other politician or world leader, celebrity, pastor, Pope, nor any man on earth is “light itself.” That power belongs only to Jesus Christ.

“I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” John 8:12

Woe to us if we make saviors of those fashioned in our image. It’s all too easy to get swept up in the emotional current, and dance when our chosen hero wins the day, or wail and moan if he or she goes down in defeat. As if omnipotent power were held in mortal hands, and the earth turns at our command.

We will always falter when we put our trust in princes. “Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no help. When his breath departs he returns to his earth; on that very day his plans perish.” Psalm 146:3-4

“Some boast of chariots, and some of horses; but we boast of the name of the Lord our God. They will collapse and fall; but we shall rise and stand upright.” Psalm 20:7-8

If we rise as a nation or if we fall; if we know blessing or ruin, it will be for only one reason: we have either returned to the Lord with humble hearts, or we have forsaken Him and worshiped our idols. That is the message our culture needs to hear, whether it’s a welcome message or not.

True Peace is Found in The One True God

This is the Christian response: “Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or as his counselor has instructed him? Whom did he consult for his enlightenment, and who taught him the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding? Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales … All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.” Isaiah 40: 13-15,17

It is Almighty, Omnipotent God who holds our every breath in His hands. He alone is worthy of our worship.

The Season of Giving’s first gift to us is Advent itself. Advent provides a timely respite from our political noise and discontent. We are dust before the Lord, and all the universe is a speck in His hand, and yet, we are beloved to Him. He wrapped His glory in our human flesh, and then spilled His own blood to pay our ransom. Dust was bought back at an incalculable price.

Take advantage of the silence and expectation of Advent, the hope we are called to dwell on. If we raise our minds for a moment to something— Someone — higher; if we will be quiet for once, then perhaps peace will come to us. (For more from the author of “What Happens When False Gods Fail: The Christian Response to Political Idolatry” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

This Thanksgiving, Thank God for Little Things — Even the Fact That You Can Breathe

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Have you ever thanked God that you can breathe? I have. Lots of times. No, I haven’t been water-boarded — not yet anyway. Last March, I came down with a nasty case of pneumonia, mostly in my left lung. I’d had it before, and thought I knew the ropes: three weeks of hack, cough, spit, sleep, repeat. And powerful antibiotics.

A trip to Urgent Care confirmed the diagnosis, but unlike my earlier experience, the antibiotics didn’t make any difference. My symptoms got worse. The ribs on my left side started to hurt like crazy. I thought that maybe I’d fractured my ribs from all the coughing. Another trip to Urgent Care and another chest x-ray ruled that out, so I tried another antibiotic.

Still, nothing. I kept getting worse. After almost a week of this, I couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs without stopping every few steps. Then, I could hardly walk at all without losing my breath. Finally, I started to hear choir music, which no one else could hear.

For my wife Ginny, this was one symptom too many. She dragged me to the emergency room, where a doctor ordered a CAT scan and discovered something much worse than pneumonia. I had pleural effusion (I’d never heard of it either), in which sticky, fibrous fluid fills the chest cavity outside the lung, causing the lung to stick to your insides. That’s not supposed to happen.

Thus began a two-month ordeal, including two-weeks in the hospital, ICU, surgery and ten hours under general anesthesia, a harrowing thirty-minute ordeal after surgery when I thought I was suffocating, more needles than my grandmother kept in her pin cushion, three, centimeter-thick tubes sticking out of my left side and draining blood and clear fluid into clear plastic containers, and heavy opiates that took more time to quit than I’d spent in the hospital. And a Foley catheter.

Each one of us is about three minutes from death every moment of our lives. One misplaced piece of popcorn shrimp or an allergic reaction that seals up your throat and you’re dead before the ambulance arrives. Yet few of us ever to stop and thank God that we can breathe. I do, but only because I know so acutely what it’s like not to be able to, and because I’m reminded it of it every time I yawn and feel residual pain in my left side. Nothing too bad. Just enough to remember.

In our fallen human state, gratitude doesn’t come naturally. Unless we have near-death experiences that remind us of our fragility, we’re more inclined to ingratitude. Sure, most of us have bouts of thankfulness. when something great happens — we graduate from college, get married, get a new house or a big raise. But these are rare events, not nearly common enough to turn gratitude into an automatic habit that can eventually become a virtue.

I’m glad that, as a country, we set aside a day to thank God for His manifold blessings to us. But habits don’t form with one celebration a year. We all need repetition. I need it, and you need it too. The details aren’t complicated. We must bring our blessings to mind, consider the alternatives, and focus on the blessings rather than the alternatives. Unfortunately, our fallenness discourages such mindfulness.

Here’s one suggestion that doesn’t require a deadly disease: make a list of the ordinary things you should be grateful for — health, freedom, shelter, family, friends, pets, breathing — stick it on the side of your computer screen, and thank God every day for these blessings that would otherwise recede into the background.

If you thank God for the small things every day, gratitude will eventually become not merely something you do on special occasions, but a filter that colors every moment of your life. (For more from the author of “This Thanksgiving, Thank God for Little Things — Even the Fact That You Can Breathe” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

New Study: Most Americans Still Thank God for Blessings on Thanksgiving

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On Thanksgiving day, most Americans will give thanks to God — but not for the things you may think.

When George Washington proclaimed the holiday in 1789, he set the day aside for “public thanksgiving and prayer,” to “the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.” Years later, Abraham Lincoln formally established the holiday, and Congress made it a national holiday in 1941.

What are the goods that were, are, or will be that Americans today give thanks for? Americans are most thankful for family (88 percent), while being thankful for wealth falls to the very bottom of the list (32 percent), reports a new study by LifeWay Research.

The items ranked in order from most thankful to least thankful were family, health, personal freedom, friends, memories, safety and security, opportunities, fun experiences, achievements and wealth. The ranking order did not come as a surprise to Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research. “The blessings that matter most are the ones money can’t buy,” he said.

The study showed that nearly two-thirds of Americans give thanks to God on Thanksgiving. This group included 83 percent of African Americans, 80 percent of Christians and 72 percent of Southerners. Evangelicals are the most likely to thank God, at 94 percent. “They aren’t the only ones thanking God, however,” LifeWay reported. “Close to half of adherents of other religions (46 percent) and more than a quarter of the nonreligious (28 percent) say the same.”

Not everyone thanks God, the study found. Although 63 percent say that they gave thanks to God, 57 percent claim to give thanks to family. Thirty-one percent thank friends, eight percent thank themselves and four percent thank fate.

Although this past year has seen a vitriolic and stressful election season and Americans have been discouraged, McConnell said “they still find a lot to be thankful for.” (For more from the author of “New Study: Most Americans Still Thank God for Blessings on Thanksgiving” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Think Common Core Is Bad? New Standards Crank the Creep-Factor up to Eleven

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The battle over who will direct the hearts and minds of children is intensifying. Within the dangerous labyrinth of Common Core standards, testing, and data-mining is the even more concerning ramp-up of Social Emotional Learning (SEL). Parents and teachers who believe in genuine education rather than pseudo-psychological evaluation are facing off against bipartisan big government and its affiliated corporations and foundations.

This summer, the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) announced it had chosen eight states to collaborate on creating K-12 SEL standards. All K-12 students would be measured on five “noncognitive” factors: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making, which includes ethical decision-making. As we’ve written, the result is that overworked, untrained teachers essentially become psychotherapists to their classrooms of patients. Other problems we’ve warned about include the subjectivity of the standards and assessments, indoctrination, danger to freedom of conscience, data-mining, and inadequate security of this sensitive data that resides for eternity in longitudinal databases.

Less than two months later, two CASEL states (Tennessee and Georgia) have already withdrawn from the initiative. Parents have begun to realize the dangers of SEL and to challenge their schools’ robotic march toward psychological manipulation of children. Interestingly, CASEL has removed the list of other states involved (California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Washington) from its altered website about the project. Either it’s embarrassed at losing 25% of its cohort or is trying to hide from further parental opposition, or both.

Undeterred, CASEL presses forward. The group joined the liberal Aspen Institute’s new National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development, led by CASEL board member Linda Darling-Hammond (the radical education professor whom terrorist Bill Ayers recommended to be Obama’s Secretary of Education). This commission is funded by the same gallery of rogues — including the ubiquitous Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — that have funded the pro-Common Core, pro-progressive education schemes of recent history.

The American Institutes for Research (AIR), publisher of many state Common Core tests and key SEL proponent, is also represented on the commission. AIR is also heavily involved in promoting the controversial LGBT agenda.

Parents should know about the agendas of CASEL and some of these important partnerships involved in the SEL effort.

CASEL has a definite ideological tilt. It’s funded partly by the federal government’s Institute for Education Sciences — the same agency that wants to assess mindsets in the National Assessment of Educational Progress and to have social emotional research become a federal mandate — and partly by a range of liberal foundations. These foundations bemoan the effect of climate change on “health and equity” (Robert Wood Johnson); push Buddhist “mindfulness” techniques (1440); and seek to use SEL to promote social-justice theories and transenderism (NoVo).

How might CASEL use SEL to advance its partners’ agendas in areas such as healthcare, climate regulation, and sexual politics? This Cleveland eighth-grade standard referenced on the CASEL website creates gender confusion by asking students to “[i]dentify what you like about yourself, including things that might be considered atypical for your gender.” Sample lessons offered by a CASEL partner called Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility teach students the perils of climate change and fracking and encourage students to “take action toward transgender equity.” Thus does CASEL’s SEL accomplish its partners’ desires to change the world.

The criteria for SEL are so subjective that ideologues can twist them into almost anything. Suppose SEL curricula and guidelines adopted the argument of some psychiatrists that “extreme racism” and “extreme homophobia” should be classified as mental disorders. Could students then be “diagnosed” for those disorders, and perhaps treated with dangerous antipsychotics, as California prisoners have been? Already children have been screened without consent and forcibly treated with these drugs as a result of school-related mental-health programs. How far will this go?

At the very least, parents might object if SEL is used to turn their children into worker bees for the global economy. Former Michigan Governor John Engler, now chairman of the Business Roundtable (BRT), co-chairs the National SEL Commission. BRT has long promoted Common Core, SEL skills development, and treating children as widgets in the labor-supply chain. In fact, BRT’s education and workforce committee chairman was Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, who called American students “defective products” if not taught by Common Core, and whose corporation is a major funder of the data-mining, including SEL data, of the Data Quality Campaign. (We’ve provided an abundance of evidence of the coordinated effort by these business, government, and foundation entities to assess, record, and analyze personal characteristics of children.) When Hillary Clinton and Marc Tucker’s Goals 2000 and School-to-Work first made SEL part of the federal education lexicon for workforce-development, BRT was cheering them on.

SEL is the embodiment of what government schools should not be doing to children. Parents and other citizens must stand against this tyranny of the mind by vigorously opposing these programs, refusing to elect leaders that support them, and demanding that legislators defund them. (For more from the author of “Think Common Core Is Bad? New Standards Crank the Creep-Factor up to Eleven” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Conservative Group Launches Boycott of Target Over Bathroom Policies

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A conservative watchdog group has started a campaign to boycott Target over its bathroom policies.

In April, Target announced that customers and employees at its locations would be allowed to “use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity.”

At the time, the American Family Association launched a petition to boycott the company for the policy, which garnered over 1 million signatures.

Now, watchdog group 2ndVote has launched the #AnywhereButTARGET hashtag and website to encourage customers to do their Christmas shopping elsewhere.

The stated purpose of the boycott is to “make Target understand that there are consequences for supporting a radical movement that is determined to redefine marriage, gender, and, ultimately, the First Amendment.”

According to the group’s press release:

2ndVote is calling on conservative consumers to engage the country’s second-largest retailer on its company-wide policy that allows and encourages individuals to choose restroom and changing room facilities based on gender identity rather than biological sex. Immediate pushback from conservatives forced Target to spend $20 million to add gender neutral bathrooms to its stores shortly after announcing the policy earlier this year.

Following the American Family Association boycott, Target announced it would spend $20 million to install private, unisex restrooms in its stores.

“When a company as large and well-known as Target chooses to insert itself directly into such a radical movement that seeks to ultimately destroy religious liberty and completely goes against our conservative values, it’s our role as an organization to give conservatives a way to communicate directly with the company,” 2ndVote Executive Director Lance Wray said in a statement.

According to its website, 2ndVote is a group that seeks to “expose the corporate influence on major policy decisions and turn the tide on the attacks on conservative values and principles.”

Boycotts of companies for the political views of their owners has become a trend in recent years, with supporters of same-sex marriage boycotting Chick–fil–A in 2012, and supporters of mandatory contraception coverage boycotting Hobby Lobby in 2014. (For more from the author of “Conservative Group Launches Boycott of Target Over Bathroom Policies” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Scientists Claim the Children of Gay Couples Turn out Better

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It was inevitable that someone would claim that children raised by adults who have or who act on same-sex attraction would be better off than children raised by normal adults, or by parents.

And so it has come to pass in the peer-reviewed paper “Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity: No Differences? Meta-Analytic Comparisons of Psychological Adjustment in Children of Gay Fathers and Heterosexual Parents” by Benjamin Graham Miller, Stephanie Kors, and Jenny Macfie in the journal Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity.

From the Abstract:

… The current study applied … meta-analysis to 10 studies … to evaluate child psychological adjustment by parent sexual orientation. …[R]results indicated that children of gay fathers had significantly better outcomes than did children of heterosexual parents in all 3 models of meta-analysis.

The emphasis on “better” was in the original — a word that was noticed in the popular press.

If the results are true, then surely if we want what is best for the nation’s children, they should be placed in the households of men who enjoy non-procreative sex-like activities. (Actual sexual intercourse can only take place between males and females.) Leaving kids to fester with their own parents dooms them to lesser outcomes.

That prescription might to your ears sound absurd, but it does follow if Miller and his co-authors are right. Are they?

The trio used a statistical technique called “meta-analysis,” which I jokingly define as a method to prove a hypothesis “statistically” true which could not be proved to be actually true. Actually, it is a way to glue together results from disparate studies, so that one needn’t be troubled by the hard work of investigating the disparate studies. In other words, it is a controversial technique, often badly applied and in the service of confirmation bias. I suspect that is true here.

Miller et al. gathered 10 studies culled from “a list of over 6,000 citations of published and unpublished studies from 2005 and later based on the search terms same sex, same gender, gay, child, and parent in any combination.”

Somehow — it is a mystery — in their diligent search, the researchers did not turn up the remarkable 2012 study known by all sociologists, “How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study” by Mark Regnerus. That study made national headlines!

Regnerus’s study came to the unwanted conclusion that kids did better when raised by adults who did not have same-sex relationships. Regnerus’s work also showed that the rate of same-sex attraction of kids growing up under same-sex attracted adults was higher than for other kids, a finding which goes against the conventional wisdom that all those who have same-sex attraction are “born that way.” Doubtless, Miller and co-authors will correct the oversight of forgetting Regnerus in their next paper.

Back to the point of cobbling disparate studies together for the purposes of statistical modeling. The (alphabetically) first paper examined by Miller was the 2009 work “An Evaluation of Gay/Lesbian and Heterosexual Adoption” by Paige Averett, Blace Nalavany and Scott Ryan in Adoption Quarterly.

This study asked two groups of kids, 1.5 to 5 years and 6 to 18 years, sets of questions with arbitrary numerical answers about behavior (unfortunately an exceedingly common practice; see Chapter 10 of this book). Averett then reported on the differences in summaries of the numerical answers, and concluded that “child internalizing and externalizing behavior was not contingent upon adoptive parent sexual orientation.” In other words, it didn’t make any difference in outcomes whether kids had gay or non-gay minders.

This seems to be in Miller’s favor. But what is unusual is the nature of the children studied by Averett.

For example, for the 1.5 to 5 years old group of kids, the gay adults who raised them were all white, whereas the normal parents represented a mix of races (close to matching actual racial differences in the USA). The gays were much better educated; nearly 3 out 5 had Masters Degrees. Yet over 70% of normal parents only had high school educations. Not surprisingly, the gays made twice as much money as the normal parents. Only 1 out of 10 adoptions by gays was “transracial,” and it was about 4 out of 10 by normal parents. A little more than 3 out of 10 kids adopted by gays suffered previous abuse, whereas twice as many, some 7 out 10, of kids adopted by normal adults were abused.

And so on for other probative, obviously relevant differences. Conclusion? Averett staked the deck. The statistical measures they derived were therefore meaningless, and thus should not be included in any list of studies, except in a list of papers which show How Not To Do Research. Miller and his co-authors should not have given this study any weight, but they did.

We could go through the other nine papers and make similar criticisms, but it would take too long, and besides, the point about the inadequacy of the meta-analysis wouldn’t change. What’s worse is that we’d miss the real error, which is this: “outcomes,” which is to say the lives of actual human being, cannot be quantified so easily as Miller and the other authors contend.

Most important of all, no scientist can measure the spiritual well-being of any child (or adult), which, in the end, is the only metric that matters. And it is this well-being that, as all history teaches, is imperiled by these fashionable social experiments. (For more from the author of “Scientists Claim the Children of Gay Couples Turn out Better” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Texas Police Officers Respond to Traffic Violations With Turkeys, Not Tickets

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Police officers in Fort Worth, Texas had a surprise for traffic violators last week.

Instead of writing tickets for minor violations such as driving without wearing a seat belt, the officers gave out frozen turkeys.

The turkeys were donated to the police department, Fox 4 News reported Wednesday. Officers decided to continue the cycle of giving by handing out the Thanksgiving dinner staples a week before the holiday. About 25 turkeys were distributed.

“Police tell us it’s one way of showing people that they serve the community in a lot of different ways,” Fil Alvarado reported for Fox 4 News.

Fort Worth officers weren’t the only ones who made the news recently for spreading holiday cheer.

On Sunday, Milwaukee Police Department’s District 5 partnered with students at Messmer Preparatory Catholic School and MATC’s Culinary Arts Program to serve Thanksgiving dinner to area families. Over 400 people were expected to attend, the Journal Sentinel reported.

These acts of kindness by police officers come toward the end of a particularly difficult year for police-community relations. Multiple violent attacks against officers have taken place since the summer months after a series of controversial shootings of black men by police officers.

Over the weekend, at least four police officers were shot in separate incidents in Texas, Missouri and Florida within 24 hours. One of the officers, Detective Benjamin Marconi of San Antonio, Texas, was killed. The other three officers shot Sunday are expected to survive.

Seeking ways to ease police-community tensions has been a near constant topic of public conversation in the wake of such violence. Perhaps Fort Worth police officers found just the “ticket” to help ease some of that tension. (For more from the author of “Texas Police Officers Respond to Traffic Violations With Turkeys, Not Tickets” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Liberal Hypocrisy: Apparently Non-Discrimination Only Applies to Conservatives

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A disgruntled liberal who says “discrimination” is wrong says she’ll discriminate against America’s most prominent immigrant because of her choice of husband:

A fashion designer whose styles have been sported by Michelle Obama is boycotting dressing Melania Trump, saying she encourages “my fellow designers to do the same” when it comes to outfitting the next first lady.

“As one who celebrates and strives for diversity, individual freedom and respect for all lifestyles, I will not participate in dressing or associating in any way with the next First Lady,” Sophie Theallet wrote in a letter this week.

“The rhetoric of racism, sexism, and xenophobia unleashed by her husband’s presidential campaign are incompatible with the shared values we live by,” Theallet wrote about President-elect Donald Trump.

“I encourage my fellow designers to do the same,” she continued.

“I am well aware it is not wise to get involved in politics,” the fashion maven wrote. “That said, as a family-owned company, our bottom line is not just about money. We value our artistic freedom and always humbly seek to contribute to a more humane, conscious and ethical way to create in this world.”

For years, conservatives have been accused of bigotry, hatred and more for not celebrating the issue of the day propagated by liberals. Opposing abortion means we hate women, stopping illegal immigration means we think brown-skinned people are sub-human and upholding the rule of law in cities means we want to keep blacks down (even though America’s largest cities have long been run by Democrats).

The two new causes célèbres have been non-discrimination laws that consist of state-sanctioned attacks on the beliefs of Christians who may not want to participate in, or otherwise endorse, the LGBT agenda. A lawsuit in Washington State based around such a law could cause a 72-year old florist to lose everything she owns because of her beliefs about marriage, and priests in Massachusetts could be jailed for using biologically accurate pronouns.

Will liberals defend Melania Trump from this hypocrisy? After all, they stood up for Hillary Clinton when she enabled her husband’s abuse of women. All Melania did was marry Donald Trump. (For more from the author of “Liberal Hypocrisy: Apparently Non-Discrimination Only Applies to Conservatives” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Texas Committee: High Schoolers Can’t Handle Evidence Against Darwinism

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On Thursday, I testified in Austin, Texas about the latest skirmish over how evolution is taught in Texas public high schools. I want it taught, warts and all. Darwinists want it taught as airbrushed and unquestionable dogma.

The state school board meeting was called to consider initial steps to streamline the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). Streamlining is fine, in principle. The problem is that some of the proposed changes to the evolution section water down four passages that call on students to learn about, analyze and evaluate some of the growing evidential challenges to modern evolutionary theory.

So, for instance, what are we to make of the sudden appearance of new species and fundamentally new body plans in the fossil record? Neo-Darwinism says these animal forms evolved very gradually as part of the evolutionary tree of life, but the pattern in the geological column paints a different picture. Shouldn’t biology students be able to exercise their critical thinking skills by wrestling with this conundrum? The majority on the biology committee weren’t keen on that idea. They struck the sudden appearance language from the TEKS and argued that high school students aren’t mature enough to hear about it and ask intelligent questions. Not “developmentally appropriate,” the committee report said.

And, besides, said Karyn Ard, the chair of the biology curriculum review committee, there’s not enough time to cover it during the school year. There’s too much other material they have to cover. Ditto the growing mystery surrounding the origin of the first life.

Since I substitute taught in the Austin Independent School District for a year before I started graduate school, I could sympathize with Ard when she emphasized the wide disparity in student ability and the challenge teachers face to cover all the assigned material adequately. At the same time, the very real effect of the committee’s streamlining is to get rid of just those areas that best expose kids to the growing evidential challenges facing evolution, while leaving behind all kinds of pro-Darwinian propaganda woven into the fabric of the leading high school biology textbooks.

Covering for Darwin

Significantly, the pro-Darwin Texas Freedom Network (TFN) has had it in for these four hot-button passages ever since the passages made their way into the TEKS a few years ago. So it’s no surprise that TFN is celebrating the proposed deletions.

Ard told the board that the biology committee’s motives were focused squarely on streamlining, that she wasn’t even aware of the TFN until recently, and that their proposed deletions were not in any way politically motivated. My first reaction was: Really? The committee just happened to water down precisely the four passages the pro-Darwin TFN named as public enemy number 1, and the committee includes a vocal Darwin defender, Ron Wetherington, but somehow it was never the committee’s intent to put a giant thumb on the scale for Darwin?

Wetherington himself testified a bit later and made it abundantly obvious that he’s had it in for these four passages since they first made it into the TEKS. Some able cross-examination from conservative state school board member Marty Rowley (Amarillo) further underscored this fact.

In all fairness, Ard may indeed have been largely unaware of what was at stake, or at least had little interest in or knowledge about the origins controversy and was merely happy not to have to cover it during a biology course jam packed with other material. She insisted that when Wetherington debated evolution with molecular biologist Ray Bohlin and Baylor University chemistry professor Charles Garner during their curriculum revision meetings, she and several of the other committee members were at sea, unable to follow the discussion.

OK, but that brings me to the second thought I had on hearing Ard’s plea of non-political motives: Intent is secondary. The primary issue is effect. And the effect of watering down these four sections of the TEKS would be to give biology teachers who want to teach the scientific controversy over modern evolutionary theory less cover than they have now.

And here’s why that’s a problem. The national Darwin lobby is in the habit of targeting and persecuting teachers and professors who dare call into question Darwinian dogma. The Discovery Institute, where I now work, has come to the aid of many teachers and professors who have been targeted by militant Darwinists intent on suppressing the evidence against modern evolutionary theory. That pattern of attack and suppression is why Texas biology teachers with the courage to teach the controversy can use all the cover that the state board of education and the TEKS can give them.

More hearings are set for early next year, and a final meeting and decision in April. It’s in Texas’ best interest that at least eight members of the board (a majority) find the clarity and courage to do the right thing by voting to preserve these key passages in the current standards, standards that free biology teachers to safely teach students to critically scrutinize evolutionary theory, warts and all. (For more from the author of “Texas Committee: High Schoolers Can’t Handle Evidence Against Darwinism” please click HERE)

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