Category Archives: family

Parental Rights Amendment Introduced

Posted on June 12, 2012 by | Leave a comment

A proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would preserve the longstanding traditional right of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children was introduced last week in the U.S. Congress.

Lead sponsor Trent Franks (R-AZ) was joined by 32 cosponsors in introducing House Joint Resolution 110 in the House. The Senate version, Senate Joint Resolution 42, was led by Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) and had 9 cosponsors at its introduction.

“We must protect the liberty of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children,” DeMint declared. “Unfortunately, parental rights are under attack, and a safeguard like this amendment is necessary. Neither the federal government nor international law should micromanage how parents are able to raise their children. Parents are best equipped to decide how their children are raised and educated, not bureaucrats from Washington and the United Nations.”

Supporters anticipate a congressional hearing on the measure, given lead sponsor Trent Franks’ position as chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, to which the House version will be assigned.

“In my three decades of public service, I have consistently focused on protecting the right of parents to make decisions for their children,” Congressman Franks says. “Put simply, there are really only two options when it comes to who will determine the substance of a child’s education: it will be either a bureaucrat who doesn’t know the child’s name, or a parent who would pour out their last drop of blood for the child.

“I intend to continue that fight in my role as Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee, doing everything in my power to help advance the vital Parental Rights Amendment through Congress. Nothing is more important to America’s future than making sure that the education of the hearts and minds of our children is securely in the purview of the parents who love and understand them most.”

This marks the third straight session of Congress in which the PRA has been introduced, and support for the measure is growing. “The PRA had 141 cosponsors in the House during the last session of Congress, but we expect to see even more support this time around,” says Michael Farris, president of ParentalRights.org, which organizes grassroots efforts for the amendment.

“The Supreme Court has accurately said that parental rights are ‘perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by [the] Court,’ yet those rights now lack sufficient legal protection under the Constitution,” Farris continues. “Thanks to concerned citizens and engaged leaders in Congress, we look forward to correcting that problem through the adoption of this amendment.”

For more information on the proposed amendment, visit ParentalRights.org online.

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Madrid Family Confab Mixes Concern with Hope

Posted on June 8, 2012 by | Leave a comment

By Piero Tozzi, J.D.

(PHOENIX, C-FAM) As pro-life and pro-family leaders from around the world gathered in Madrid over the last weekend in May for the Sixth World Congress of Families, the man of the hour was clearly Bishop Juan Antonio Reig Pla. The Spanish bishop’s plainspoken honesty regarding the destructiveness of homosexual acts in the months leading up to the Congress earned him the enmity of leftwing rights activists and a standing ovation from conference participants.

Homosexual and leftist groups have sought Bishop Reig Pla’s criminal prosecution for a Good Friday homily where he listed a host of sins, including sodomy, that lead to spiritual death.

As such, his case has become Exhibit A in a “clash of rights” pitting traditional “negative” liberties grounded in the natural law – in Reig Pla’s case, freedom of expression and religion – against nebulous, newly-fabricated “rights,” such as those based on “sexual orientation and gender identity” non-discrimination. As the bishop discovered, proponents of such novel “rights” increasingly call upon the State to force dissenters to acquiesce.

A last minute scratch from a panel on religious liberty was Italian parliamentarian Rocco Buttiglione, who in 2004 ran afoul of the emerging “soft totalitarianism” of the Latex Left when his candidacy for the European Commission’s justice post was scuttled due to pressure from European “progressives” who claimed his religious affiliation disqualified him. Replacing him in a pick-up speech was Alliance Defense Fund President Alan Sears, who warned of the intensifying assault on religious liberty evident in the United States.

Several other panels also addressed the clash of rights theme and increasing restrictions placed on civil liberties. Dr. Gudrun Kugler of the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians chaired a seminar on the use of “Hate Speech” and antidiscrimination laws to marginalize believers. Other panels addressed State attempts to limit parents’ rights to act as the primary educators of their children – a right explicitly acknowledged in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Among the signs of hope, however, was the engagement of Russian civil society organizations and Orthodox prelates in the conference, signaling the revival of Christianity in what was once the Soviet heartland. While respect for basic civil liberties in Russia is still somewhat tenuous, as the once-free West slides towards criminalizing religious expression and banishing reference to objectively-grounded moral norms, once-Communist Russia appears to be on a reverse trajectory. At the United Nations in recent years, for example, Russia has put forward a series of “traditional values” resolutions to counter the libertine sexual agenda of Europe and the Obama Administration while calling attention to the folly of population control programs amid demographic implosion.

Participants credited the Spanish hosts for successfully staging the Congress, singling out ringmaster Ignacio Arsuaga for particular praise in keeping multiple concurrent events running on schedule. Local and national Spanish government officials also welcomed the gathering, and pro-family Spanish politicians such as European Parliamentarian Jaime Mayor Oreja were key participants.

Current Spanish policy under Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy contrasts starkly with that of his predecessor, Socialist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Zapatero’s government aggressively “worked to subvert the natural family,” in the words of the Declaration issued at the conclusion of the Congress.

The next World Congress of Families will be held in Sydney, Australia, in May 2013.

Piero Tozzi is a Senior Fellow at the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), whose article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-FAM, a New York and Washington DC-based research institute (http://www.c-fam.org/). This article appears with permission.

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Governor Kasich Stands for Health Care for Women and Their Unborn Children

Posted on June 7, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Governor John Kasich approved a new policy Tuesday that will grant pregnant women in need earlier access to Medicaid, making it easier to receive prenatal care. A faster route to coverage will now be offered to women for whom a lack of prenatal care could threaten the life of her unborn child.

“Governor Kasich has consistently displayed his dedication to expectant mothers and their unborn children and this is an extension of that commitment to life,” said Mike Gonidakis, President of Ohio Right to Life. “This is a great display of how the state can provide health care options to women and empower them to become strong mothers of healthy babies.”

Under current policy, women who are likely to be eligible for Medicaid can receive services for 60 days while they wait for their Medicaid application to be processed, but the request often takes the majority of that time to be approved, leaving the mother without adequate support.

Governor Kasich’s new policy will eliminate the requirement for pregnant women and children to apply at the county job and family services office and allow them to instead receive approval directly through their health care provider. Children’s hospitals, federally qualified health centers, community action agencies and other
providers will now be able to address the needs of expectant mothers more quickly.

Ohio Right to Life commends Governor John Kasich for his unwavering support of mothers and children, and supports him in his effort to defend life.

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Posted in family, health care, news, Ohio, politics

Opposing the CRC from Within

Posted on May 3, 2012 by | Leave a comment

By Michael Ramey

Every so often we get the question: If the Convention on the Rights of the Child is as dangerous as we warn, where are the complaints from those who have already signed on to it? What do those who have lived with it for the last 20 years have to say?

On November 24, 2011, more than 120 non-profit organizations from the Russian Federation and Ukraine gathered in St. Petersburg to adopt a joint statement answering that very question.

The result is the St. Petersburg Resolution on the Anti-Family Trends in the United Nations, on the Unacceptable Actions of the United Nations Human Rights Treaty Monitoring Bodies, and on the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on a Communications Procedure. As you could no doubt surmise from the title, they share a lot of our concerns.

The St. Petersburg Resolution contains 16 articles declaring the conviction of the signatories that the United Nations and its treaty-monitoring bodies routinely overstep the mission and authority granted to them by those documents. The committees which oversee the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) are specifically called out.

Article 9 is especially relevant to our own cause and concerns. In it, these internal witnesses “insist that states should respect the unique role and position that natural (biological) parents have in the lives of their children. Any interpretations of any provision under the international or national law should reflect the natural presumption that natural parents usually act in good faith and in the best interests of their children…. We are strongly concerned over the existing unfounded and hazardous interpretation of Article 3 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, regarding the government as having authority to control and supervise the life of any family and the decisions of any parent under the pretext of providing ‘the best interests of the child’.”

Additionally, Article 13 expresses our shared concern over the tendency of the CRC committee to interpret the treaty “in ways that create new state obligations or that alter the substance of the treaties.” The resolution cites as a clear example the committee’s assertion of an all-out ban on all corporal punishment, even in the home – in contravention of the CRC itself as interpreted under the rules of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. In response, the Resolution states, “we regard those actions and interpretations of UN treaty monitoring bodies as unacceptable and undermining the genuine basics of international law.”

Unfortunately for the people of Russia and Ukraine, the St. Petersburg Resolution is not binding in any way. For them, it is an instrument by which to urge their governments not to ratify the new Optional Protocol on a Communications Procedure, which would grant even more authority to the rogue Committee on the Rights of the Child.

For us, the resolution provides testimony from within the nations of the CRC which we will share with Congress and the Senate. This testimony makes clear, from those who have lived under the CRC, that it is not something we would want to adopt here in the United States.

Michael Ramey is Director of Communications & Research at Parental Rights. For more information about Parental Rights, visit www.parentalrights.org.

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American Catholic Bishops Inconsistent On Liberty and Marriage

Posted on April 19, 2012 by | Leave a comment

By Bai Macfarlane

The US Bishops on April 12 issued a call to action to defend religious liberty and urge the laity to work to protect the First Freedom of the Bill of Rights – religious freedom.

In the USCCB’s press release, the first concern listed that prompted their call is the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate forcing all employers, including religious organizations, to provide and pay for coverage of employees’ contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs even when they have moral objections to them.

The Bishops don’t want the Church to be forced to pay for services or provide services to their employees that the Church knows are immoral. But sadly, the U.S. Bishops have been silent when tens of thousands of Catholic parents have been forced to pay for services and provide ‘care’ for their own children when the parents knew the services were immoral.

Every time a Catholic parent is the defendant in a no-fault divorce, and the civil court orders that parent to forcibly stop having daily access to his or her children, that parent is being forced to give ‘care’ to their own children that the parent knows is immoral. Every time the government forces that parent to pay financial support for a second separate household in which that parent is not even allowed to live, the government is ordering the parent to follow unjust laws.

By natural law, canon law (and one could even argue that by constitutional law), anyone with a Catholic marriage has the rights and obligations that both spouses agreed to accept when they married. When anyone marries in the Rite of Catholic marriage, they agree to follow the laws of Christ and His Church. Both spouses have the right and obligation to maintain a common household with their spouse and children unless there is a fault-based reason for separation of spouses (canon 1151-1155).

Neither can file for a divorce without the permission of their bishop and they cannot seek divorce orders contrary to divine law (canon 1692). But unjust laws inflict immoral separations on Catholic families every day whenever one of the spouses, for any reasons whatsoever, feels like reneging on their marital promises and files for no-fault divorce. The government’s divorce courts will coerce and force separation and divorce decrees, contrary to divine law, on the innocent spouse and children.

If the USCCB is going to be consistent with their call to action to defend our religious liberty, they will raise a unified voice against no-fault divorce practices, which are blatantly unjust. After all, the Bishops said, “It is a sobering thing to contemplate our government enacting an unjust law. An unjust law cannot be obeyed.”

This article was originally published in Spero New’s Religion Forum, April 12, 2012. Bai Macfarlane is founder of Mary’s Advocates.

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Spring Has Sprung” Healthy Families 5K Run/Walk, March 17th in Xenia

Posted on March 15, 2012 by | Leave a comment

The Greene County Healthy Lifestyles Coalition is holding the 3rd annual “Spring Has Sprung” Healthy Families 5K Run/Walk on Saturday, March 17 at the Greene County Combined Health District in Xenia. This event will benefit the Greene County Healthy Lifestyles Coalition, part of the Greene County Combined Health District, whose mission is to provide and promote healthier lifestyle choices in Greene County. This event is designed to encourage healthy lifestyles in Greene County and bring families of all fitness levels together for a fun event, even for those who have never participated in a 5K event before. And this year, as the race is on St. Patrick’s Day, participants are encouraged to “go green” and celebrate in style from head to toe!

Registration and check-in will begin at 7:30 a.m. at the Greene County Combined Health District in Xenia with the pet- and stroller-friendly run/walk beginning at 9:00 a.m. The course features a flat terrain in and around the Xenia area beginning and ending at GCCHD beside Greene Memorial Hospital. A special race for little ones, ages 5 and younger, will feature a 1 lap race around GCCHD beginning at 8:30 a.m. After the 5K, healthy refreshments will be provided and participants can visit with the various sponsors of the event.

Schools and businesses are encouraged to participate. The school or business with the most race participants will win a plaque. Schools, businesses or individuals registering a team of 10 or more may be eligible to receive a discount on race fees. Interested groups should call Laurie at 937-374-5669 for more information.

Medals will be awarded to the top 3 male/female in each of 12 age categories and a grand prize will be awarded for the top male/female overall.

The cost for the 5K is just $15.00 per person prior to March 9, which includes an event t-shirt. After March 9, the cost is $20.00 per person. You can register online at www.active.com or visit www.gcchd.org to print, complete and mail in or drop off your registration with your payment to the Greene County Combined Health District located at 360 Wilson Drive in Xenia.

Current confirmed partners for this event include WHIO-TV 7, Greene County Parks & Trails, WSU Mini University, Classic Country Radio WBZI, Farmers Insurance, Trophy Sports, Juice Plus, Cardiologists of Greene County LLC, Old Fort Banking, Lofino’s, KeySports, The Greene County Dailies, and XWARN.

For questions or further information about the 5K, please contact Laurie Fox, Development Coordinator, at 937-374-5669 or by email at lfox@gcchd.org.

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Ron Paul, Biblical Values and American Values, Parts 1 & 2

Posted on March 4, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Once part 1 is finished, nine embedded screens will appear. Click on the top left screen to start part 2.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qKQ1xXobJc&w=560&h=420]

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Ron Paul, Biblical Values and American Values, Parts 1 & 2

Posted on March 4, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Once part 1 is finished, nine embedded screens will appear. Click on the top left screen to start part 2.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qKQ1xXobJc&w=560&h=420]

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Political Leaders Protect Marriage and Children from Homosexual/Transsexual Demands

Posted on February 21, 2012 by | Leave a comment

By Wendy Wright

(New York – C-FAM) Resistance to the United States’ new foreign policy priority is emerging around the world for the same reasons it has been rejected within the U.S. Political leaders are holding the line against homosexual/transsexual demands when it comes to marriage and teaching children about homosexual/transsexual activity.

Leaders from the United Nations, UK and European Union have joined the U.S. in exerting pressure on countries to promote the homosexual agenda. Rather than advocating for human rights to encompass people identifying as homosexual, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s slogan of “gay rights are human rights” attempts to transform special preferences for homosexual persons into human rights.

Recently, France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy reiterated his opposition to homosexual marriage because it opens “the door to adoption.” France’s highest court has ruled that a marriage between two men was unlawful.

“In troubled times, when our society needs to keep its bearings, I don’t think that it is necessary to blur the image of this essential institution that is marriage,” Sarkozy told a newspaper. While there may be good parents who are homosexual, “they do not lead me to think that it is necessary to inscribe in law a new definition of family.”

In Russia, St. Petersburg became the latest city to pass legislation protecting schoolchildren by barring public actions that promote homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, transgenderism and pedophilia to minors.

Vitaly Milonov, who initiated the measure, explained, “The bill doesn’t touch upon the human rights of the LGBT community. It deals purely with the direct propaganda among minors. Such propaganda is banned on the federal level and we as a regional body are only imposing sanctions. We are only talking about propaganda as this information about sexual deviations affects our children.”

Orthodox Christian leaders asked lawmakers to bar the dissemination of “gay propaganda” among minors explaining, “We do not collect signatures in order to [harm] them. If they want to be like this, let them live.” A regional governor said the ban would “serve for the good of public morals.”

The bill describes homosexual/transsexual propaganda as “able to harm the health, moral and spiritual development of minors, including [forming] misconceptions about the social equivalence of traditional and nontraditional marriage. ” Also illegal are actions or information that would normalize “intimate relationships between adults and minors.”

The U.S. and the UK criticized the bill when it was introduced last November. The Russian response was to increase the fines to ten times higher than before the U.S and the U.K. intervened. A Russian Foreign Ministry Commissioner defended the legislation, noting that it is designed to protect children.

Homosexual/transsexual activists plan to complain to the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Human Rights Watch Europe called the bill a “blatant attack on freedom of expression.”

Last week the ECHR convicted four people in Sweden of “hate speech” for distributing literature prodding high school students to question homosexual/transsexual propaganda taught in schools. The Court said the leaflets were offensive to homosexuals and thus not protected by the freedom of expression guaranteed in the European Convention of Human Rights.

A bill in Tennessee would limit instruction in elementary or middle school to “age-appropriate natural human reproduction science.” The sponsor explained, “homosexuals don’t naturally reproduce.”

Wendy Wright is Interim Executive Director of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, a New York and Washington DC-based research institute. Her article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-FAM and is republished here with permission.

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WHO’s Report Is It Anyway?

Posted on February 14, 2012 by | Leave a comment

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.

(NEW YORK, C-FAM) In recent weeks a new paper asserting that all nations should liberalize abortion laws has been characterized by the news media as an authoritative study by the World Health Organization (WHO), but the paper’s fine print says it’s not a WHO report. Why the mismatch?

The report found that “unsafe” abortion has increased in recent years despite the fact that abortions overall are declining. It concluded that in order to make abortion “safe” and to reduce worldwide maternal deaths, restrictive abortion laws should be rescinded.

Media coverage served mainly to disseminate rather than critique the report, which was published in the British medical journal Lancet. The Lancet also characterized it as a WHO study, a joint project with the Guttmacher Institute, which is the research arm of Planned Parenthood, an abortion advocacy organization.

Notably absent from news coverage of the story is that that the WHO has distanced itself both from the views contained in this study and the views of previous studies by the same authors. Two of the authors, including one WHO staff member, collaborated previously on a paper asserting abortion is a human right.

Just over a month ago, a top WHO official asked that the signers of the San Jose Articles remove a footnote in the Articles stating that the WHO had said, “[a]ccess to safe, legal abortion is a fundamental right of women, irrespective of where they live.” (The San Jose Articles is an expert statement on the status of the unborn child in international law.) The quote appeared in a WHO paper, published on the WHO website, and referring all inquiries about its findings to WHO. Yet the official asserted that due to a disclaimer in the paper’s fine print, the Articles could not accurately say that WHO embraced the view. Organizers of the San Jose Articles removed the note.

The new study carries the same disclaimer, which states, “The authors alone are responsible for the views expressed in this paper and they do not necessarily represent the decisions, policy, or views of their institutions or those of funding agencies.”

Experts have sharply criticized the most recent report’s methodology, including the lack of data regarding abortion, a reliance on arbitrarily inflated abortion statistics, the conflating of spontaneous abortions (miscarriages) and planned or induced abortions, and the use of quasi-legal terms to define its dependent variable, “safe” abortion.

Such fundamental flaws would have made the paper warrant far less credence than it received. Arguably, it was the WHO imprimatur that caused many to overlook the errors in the rush to publicize it.

This raises the question: what is the position of WHO if it does not endorse the statement that abortion is a human right? And what is the position of WHO regarding whether all nations must liberalize abortion laws, the conclusion of this most recent paper?

If WHO’s position is neutral, why doesn’t this paper say so? The absence of such a statement leaves readers and reporters with the impression that the unambiguous declaration on abortion is the position of the organization that is disseminating the study.

Friday Fax asked WHO to answer these questions but the organization did not comment.

It is reasonable to conclude that WHO officials are trying to have it both ways: to endorse the controversial research but allow the organization to disclaim views when pressed.

Scientists have noted that WHO’s policy making role is in conflict with its research role in the area of reproductive health. They have urged WHO colleagues to abandon the political side of their work. The existence of a disclaimer in this latest, highly controversial and badly flawed paper, makes this recommendation all the more cogent – and urgent.

Susan Yoshihara is Senior Vice President for Research at the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute. Her article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-FAM and is republished here with permission.

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