In this vlog, Svetlana explains how much she loves Melissa Harris-Perry's recent statements about "collective parenting," and Anna Maria offers her some reason. 

by Levi Fox

Without the family, society is a tree without roots. Without family, morality is dead. It is God’s most basic, vital institution within humanity. The family was created for a specific purpose—to nurture, love, protect, and instill character, values, and discernment in their children.

Most psychologists, when analyzing their patient with a mental health issue, will begin by unveiling their relationship with their parents. More often than not, their disability, their struggle is in direct result towards a marred history with their parents.

The growing trend in our society follows a very backward view of family. It is acceptable to have children out of wedlock. If you find yourself pregnant and you would rather not have to deal with that ‘burden’—easy solution: abort the child. Divorce is as simple as 1-2-3.

Here’s the problem. The family is collapsing. Look around. What are the growing trends?

• This year marks the first time in U.S. history in which more babies are born out of wedlock than in  marriage.
• More than half of births to American women younger than 30 are outside marriage.
• Fifty years ago, a third of American marriages were sparked by a pregnancy. In the mid-1990s, a third of Americans were born outside marriage.
• Now, it is 41 percent and 53 percent for children born to women under 30.
• 79% percent of African-Americans are born out of wedlock.
• 51% of Hispanics are born out of wedlock.
• 29% of Whites are born out of wedlock.
  

No big deal, right?

Not if these factors were in direct result with one of America’s greatest looming problems: poverty.

According to the U.S. Census, the poverty rate for single parents with children in the United States in 2009 was 37.1 percent. The rate for married couples with children was 6.8 percent. Being raised in a married family reduced a child’s probability of living in poverty by about 82 percent.

"Marriage has become a luxury good," Frank Furstenberg, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania.
Marriage is the cure for poverty, not welfare. Marriage excels one’s ability to succeed. Welfare places you in bonds. Marriage teaches you responsibility. Welfare breads dependence.

Looking back, I couldn’t have asked for a better family. Two parents who loved each other, wanted the best for their family, and did all they could to show their affection for one another. But trust me; it was not all fun in my household. Discipline was tough. They taught me how to work. My dad was one to give me a shovel and tell me to dig a hole, usually without help. Often times, I got irritated and frustrated. It was not easy. It certainly was not fun. I wasn’t handed success. I wasn’t promised pleasure. I had to earn it.

But today, I have all the respect and gratitude for the way I was raised. I have been taught right from wrong. Character has been tested. Failure has often dominated. But as result, I am now ready to face a world of opportunity, by taking on the grips of success through personal responsibility and integrity.

You see, the importance of family is the development of character. A healthy family teaches responsibility, ethics, morality, integrity, love, and selflessness. Without these attributes, a society bleeds from the inside out.

The decline of the family will inevitably result in the end of our republic.

We can build our US military to untouchable levels, but if we remain ignorant towards the societal threat of a failing family, this nation will destroy itself.

by Anna Maria Hoffman

On November 20, 1989, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted and opened for signature the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), a treaty designed to give “equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family.” While the underlying purpose of the treaty might sound humanitarian and just, it contains articles that give “administrative or legislative bodies” the authority to supersede parents in serving the best interests of their children (Article 3), empower government bureaucrats to dictate the standards and roles parents should have in raising their children (Article 5), and enable children to voice their opinion “in any judicial and administrative proceedings” against their parents with support from the government (Article 12). The treaty thus diminishes parental rights by enabling government bureaucrats to step in and govern a child’s well-being.

So far, 194 countries belonging to the United Nations have ratified the treaty. To this day, only two U.N. members have not ratified the treaty—the United States and Somalia. In 1995, President Bill Clinton signed the treaty, but the U.S. Senate refused to ratify it. When asked about his thoughts on the treaty in 2009, President Obama said, “It’s embarrassing to find ourselves in the company of Somalia, a lawless land. I will review this and other treaties and ensure that the United States resumes its global leadership in Human Rights.”

However, the United States has ratified two optional protocols that were adopted by the General Assembly on May 25, 2000. The former protocol, the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, proclaims that countries cannot conscript children under the age of 18 and cannot force them to engage directly in war hostilities, while the latter protocol, the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, prohibits countries from selling children and profiting off of child prostitution and pornography.

Although the United States has not ratified it, the Convention on the Rights of the Child is completely relevant to our nation today, as we witness the enactment of new laws that bear striking resemblance to this treaty. These laws, which are classified as “customary international laws,” contain language lifted from the Convention on the Rights of the Child and can easily be passed through a state legislature or applied by a federal court.

Because these types of laws are unwritten and based on customs practiced around the world, the provisions of the CRC have easily become incorporated into such laws. For example, the Supreme Court case Roper v. Simmons (2005), which decreed that children below the age of 18 cannot receive the death penalty, implemented one of the articles of the CRC regarding “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” Thus, this case demonstrates the power that the Court has in applying customary international law to cases in the United States.

Moreover, two laws that passed in my state California last year demonstrate how language found in customary international law and the CRC is being adopted in legislation here in the United States. AB 499, an act that amended Section 6926 of the Family Code, allows children under the age of 12 to receive Gardasil vaccinations without parental consent. SB 48, the not-so FAIR Act, forces children as young as 5 years old to learn “gay history” and thereby prevents parents from having a say in their child’s education. 

The organization parentalrights.org has been adamantly working to raise awareness about the CRC. On their website, they feature a docudrama they made last year called “Overruled: Government Invasion of Your Parental Rights”, which discusses three cases that show how customary international laws are thwarting parental rights here in America. Towards the end of the film, parentalrights.org concludes that America needs to pass a Parental Rights Amendment to ensure that parents, not government bureaucrats, have the liberty to raise their children as they see fit and that international treaties do not usurp such rights.

Moreover, parentalrights.org has also been involved in legislative action on state and federal levels to prevent the CRC from being imposed in the United States. They are encouraging Americans to get involved with their state's legislature to protect parental rights in their state and call on Congress to propose a Parental Rights Amendment for states to ratify and add to the U.S. Constitution.  Also, they have gotten 13 U.S. Senators and 85 U.S. House of Representatives to cosponsor legislation in the Senate  and House that supports a Parental Rights Amendment. Recently, on October 16th, Representative Trent Franks became the 85th U.S. House of Representatives cosponsor. 

The Weather Underground Manifesto, written in the 1960’s, proclaimed that the family unit needed to be destroyed in order to transform America into a socialist haven. Seeing that their dream is still alive and progressing towards realization, it is more important than ever to protect parental rights in America. Unless we want to become a nation like Sweden which allows government officials to take homeschooled children away from their parents, our generation must protect parental rights so we may secure a safe future for our own children.

by Sarah Landeene

At a time when our country and culture are in such disarray, support of the family institution is more crucial than ever.

 Pro-family and parental rights groups across the nation are challenging a recent bill signed into law by California's governor, Jerry Brown, which will prohibit parents from seeking conversion therapy treatment for children who are dealing with homosexual attraction.

California State Senator Ted Lieu, who sponsored the bill, went so far as to compare conversion therapy, and any related form of counseling, to harmful substances such as tobacco and alcohol. Lieu went on to claim that “reparative therapy hurts children, so this bill allows us to stop parents from hurting their children.”

This bill has been challenged by multiple groups who believe this is a prime example of government overstepping its bounds by claiming to know what is better for a child than that child's own parents. Not only is this bill a threat to parental rights, but it also undermines the freedom of speech of minors by forcing them to blindly accept these feelings without having the option to seek counseling to reverse unwanted same-sex attraction.

Parents are the primary influence in a child's life.  There are no two people more qualified to teach and exemplify love, true friendship, and healthy sexuality to their children than a mother and father.  

This bill is especially troubling as many children deal with questions of sexual orientation and gender confusion as a result of sexual abuse. Lawmakers are assuming that everyone who questions attraction to the same sex does so as a result of their DNA. Forcing children to accept a homosexual lifestyle only victimizes them further and increases confusion.

At the beginning stages of puberty, it is normal for children to be curious about sexuality, which sometimes results in questioning one’s sexual orientation. This legislation is presumptuous to automatically label a curious adolescent as "gay" or "transgender."

In addition to threatening parental rights, and freedom of speech, this bill is a brazen opposition to religious liberty. Churches will be prohibited from condemning homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle. School counselors and private Christian schools will be forced to go against their religious convictions by only being allowed to offer advice that affirms homosexuality.

As various family and religious advocacy groups attempt to overturn the law in federal court, it is my prayer that judges affirm the relationship between parent and child. This relationship is central to a child's upbringing and overall well-being.

Ned Dolejsi, director of the California Catholic Conference emphasized the importance of parental choice: “Parents have the best interests of their children in mind, and if they determine that particular types of therapies or interventions are needed, that's certainly their right, and this law doesn't respect that.”

Giving government the power to instruct parents on how to raise their children interferes with society’s most foundational institution—the family unit.

Fathers and mothers know how to serve their child better than any bureaucrat stuck behind a mahogany desk, in the marble halls of the legislative system. Why? Parents know their child’s names. They know their child’s needs, wants, and all the special qualities that make him who he is. Strong families are essential to a healthy culture, and this begins with preserving the rights of parents to determine what is best for their own child.

by Anna Maria Hoffman 

This month, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has joined Florida’s Broward School District and the Equality Forum in celebrating LGBT History Month, which is dedicated to profiling 31 famous LGBT icons in 31 days. Using the LGBT History Month website for their “educational” celebration, LAUSD is seeking to instill “tolerant” and “diverse” values in its students. Some of the icons that LAUSD students will be learning about this month include LOGO’s famous drag queen RuPaul, lesbian fiction author Ann Bannon, and “Gay Pioneer” Reverend Robert Wood.  

In Equality Forum’s LGBT History Month email, Dr. Judy Chiasson, who serves as the Coordinator of Human Relations, Diversity and Equity for LAUSD, said that “schools have an obligation to present the diversity of our communities. There are many different types of families; we want all of our families to be recognized in our schools.” Besides deviating from rudimentary curricula, LAUSD is essentially indoctrinating children, starting in kindergarten, with school lessons that revolve around “alternative families”—fabricated family units that have proven to be unhealthy for child development.

But LAUSD’s decision to partake in this politically charged event comes to no surprise, since SB 48, the FAIR Education Act, passed last year in Sacramento. This very law incorporates LGBT activists into history courses at California’s public schools. Now, children in these schools have no way out of avoiding yet another dose of politically correct “education” that strays away from what is academically important.

Better yet, ACLU of Southern California has decided to get in on the “family-friendly” fun by collaborating with LAUSD on October 25th to screen “On These Shoulders We Stand,” an LGBT documentary that profiles the historical roots of gay activism and life in Los Angeles. It seems that LAUSD truly has their child-centered educational priorities in order.

LAUSD, America’s second largest school district, is notorious for its low graduation rate, having 23 of California’s worst schools, and performing poorly on key state tests. It is sad to see this school district once again shifting its focus away from academics and championing politically motivated, unFAIR education. Instead of being force-fed “LGBT history” and propaganda that attacks the family unit, LAUSD’s children should be learning real rudimentary academics that would give them the basic skills they need to succeed in life. For these children, school should not be the place where they are forcibly taught to accept “families” that simply defy what is naturally human.