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He's a city cop by day - but by night, Detective Jack Mook is working on his toughest case yet. Mook, a Gulf War veteran who also teaches boxing to Pittsburgh-area kids, fostered two of his young students after learning they were living in abusive conditions with a foster family. And now after two years, Mook and the boys, 11-year-old Jessee and his 15-year-old brother Josh, have finally become a legal family - after Mook adopted them in September. It means the bachelor, 45, is now adapting to a new routine of homework and healthy meals.

There is a point where decision on contentious, difficult issues is unavoidable. With respect to homosexual conduct, the American Evangelical church has reached that point. There is no ignoring the determination of the gay and lesbian activists to insist upon complete social and legal normalization of homosexual conduct; from the adoption of children by same-sex couples to the judicial recognition of same-sex unions as marriages every bit as complete as those enjoyed by heterosexual couples. Thus, Christians cannot avoid the need to decide which side they are on. The Supreme Court's decision earlier this month to allow current judicial rulings...

As if we didn’t know it before, today we learned why the Secret Synod was conducted in secret, with the faithful not being permitted to see the texts of the participants’ addresses or even to know which bishop or cardinal was advancing which position. The Secret Synod was conducted in secret because evil advances in shadows. Many others, and not just traditionalists, have already expressed outrage over the disastrous “Relatio post disceptationem,” which appeared on the Vatican website today, October 13. This is the anniversary of Pope Leo’s vision of Satan’s attack on the Church (leading to his composition of...

Hundreds of adoptive parents in New York City who've sent their children to live elsewhere continue to get monthly government subsidies of up to $1,700 per child. They can continue receiving the checks until the child turns 21 years old.They gave up on their “hard-to-place" adopted kids — but not on the government check intended for the discarded kids’ care. Hundreds of adoptive parents across the five boroughs who've sent their children to live elsewhere are continuing to pull in monthly checks of up to $1,700 per child while the city, state and feds look the other way, the Daily...

Published on American ThinkerBy Enza Ferreri You may often see articles in the media claiming that "research has shown" that children of same-sex couples are thriving, in fact are physically and psychologically doing just as well as, or even better than, children of couples who are - let me use this currently underused word - normal. Are these works reliable? In July such a study, carried out in Australia, was much trumpeted by that pillar of "progressive" thinking, The Washington Post, under the headline "Children of same-sex couples are happier and healthier than peers, research shows". Researcher Simon Crouch...

You may often see articles in the media claiming that "research has shown" that children of same-sex couples are thriving, in fact are physically and psychologically doing just as well as, or even better than, children of couples who are -- let me use this currently underused word -- normal. Are these works reliable? In July such a study, carried out in Australia, was much trumpeted by that pillar of "progressive" thinking, the Washington Post, under the headline "Children of same-sex couples are happier and healthier than peers, research shows". Researcher Simon Crouch and his team at the University of...

Two lawmakers July 30 introduced a measure they say is needed to protect faith-based agencies that provide adoption and foster care services from discrimination based on their religious beliefs. U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyoming, and U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pennsylvania, introduced companion bills titled the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act of 2014. “This bill is about fairness and inclusion. It is about ensuring that everyone who wants to help provide foster or adoptive care to children is able to have a seat at the table,” Kelly said in a statement. “Faith-based charities and organizations do an amazing job of administering...

Children of same-sex parents enjoy better levels of health and wellbeing than their peers from traditional family units, new Australian research suggests. In what they described as the largest study of its type in the world, University of Melbourne researchers surveyed 315 same-sex parents and 500 children about their physical health and social wellbeing. Lead researcher Doctor Simon Crouch said children raised by same-sex partners scored an average of 6 per cent higher than the general population on measures of general health and family cohesion. "That's really a measure that looks at how well families get along, and it seems...

The orphaned Florida teen whose impassioned plea for a family to 'love him forever' prompted an outpouring of sympathy from around the country has been removed from his foster home following a physical altercation with another child and the father. After 16 years of floundering in foster care, after taking the pulpit at a St. Petersburg church last September asking someone - anyone - to adopt him, after his story was shared around the world and 10,000 people offered to help or take him home, Davion Only moved to Ohio in March to live with the parents who had promised...

Almost 800 babies and children were buried in a mass grave in Ireland near a home for unmarried mothers run by nuns, according to new research Wednesday which throws more light on the Irish Catholic Church's troubled past. Death records suggest 796 children, from newborns to eight-year-olds, were deposited in a grave near a Catholic-run home for unmarried mothers during the 35 years it operated from 1925 to 1961. Historian Catherine Corless, who made the discovery, says her study of death records for the St Mary's home in Tuam in County Galway suggests that a former septic tank near the...

A strong majority, 63 percent, of Americans now say that same-sex couples should have a legal right to adopt a child, according to a new Gallup poll. About one in three, 35 percent, are opposed. The result is the opposite of 1992, when Gallup first polled the question. Sixty-three percent said homosexual couples should not be legally permitted to adopt in that year. In 1998, that number declined to 57 percent. In 2003 and 2007, Americans were about equally divided on the question. The recent poll was the first time Gallup showed a clear majority supportive of giving same-sex couples...

Writer and poet Maya Angelou died this morning, according to a family statement. She was found by her caregiver and was reportedly been in poor health and had canceled recent scheduled appearances.Harold Augenbraum, from the National Book Foundation, said that Angelou’s “legacy is one that all writers and readers across the world can admire and aspire to.”But while most people are aware of her professional work, they don’t know Angelou’s personal background as well.Angelou had one son Guy, whose birth was described in her first autobiography, one grandson, and two great-grandchildren. She became pregnant as a teenager and could have...

FULL TITLE: Catholic family branded 'bigoted' by social workers for not wanting their children to be adopted by gay couple A Catholic family were labelled bigots by social workers after they complained about the adoption of their children by a gay couple. The parents, of Slovak Roma origin, protested after they discovered that their two youngest boys, aged four and one, were not going to be adopted by the Roman Catholic family they had asked for. They claimed the gay adoption would humiliate the children and deprive them of their Roma heritage and Catholic faith, and said the decision amounted...

"The biological family of a little girl taken from her foster parents and returned to her jailbird father have branded her adoptive mom and dad, ‘selfish’ for fighting to get her back and vowed never to give her up again. Sonya, aged nine, had been in the care of Kim and David Hodgin, from Dickson, Tennessee for more than seven years, but she was recently handed over to ex-con John McCaul in Omaha, Nebraska. The Hodgin family have released a heart-breaking phone conversation, revealing Sonya’s desperate pleas, begging to be reunited with them."

Raised by a Lutheran pastor and his wife, Ruth Lee never wanted to learn the identity of her birth parents. She had a happy childhood and never doubted the love showered upon her by her adoptive parents and three brothers. Blessed with five children herself — one more successful than the next, including NASA astronaut Mark Lee and West Point grad and Army Lt. Col. Brian Lee — her life was too full, too busy to think about her unknown past. But then, at age 77, she was plagued by a series of health issues. Her children begged her to...

Alabama State Representative Alvin Holmes (D-Montgomery) resumed his accusations that 99 percent of White people are racists. Previously he had asserted that “even so-called pro-life whites would want their daughters to have abortions if they were impregnated by Black men.” His latest claim is that “white people are intolerant of Black children and would never adopt a Black child.” Holmes even went so far as to offer $100,000 “to anyone who could show him a whole bunch of whites that have adopted Blacks in Alabama.” When dozens of white parents who have adopted Black children showed up to disprove his...

Mixed-race families from across Alabama rallied outside the state capitol recently to demand $100,000 in cash — or at least an apology — from a state representative. Earlier this month, Alvin Holmes, who has represented the Montgomery-area 78th District for 39 years, bet a substantial purse on his claim that Alabama whites were incapable of tolerating black children. “I will bring you $100,000 cash tomorrow if you show me a whole bunch of whites that adopted blacks in Alabama,” Holmes said. “I will go down there and mortgage my house and get it in cash in $20 bills and...

MONTGOMERY, AL, April 10, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – More than 100 people rallied at the Alabama State House in Montgomery yesterday afternoon to disprove a Democrat's controversial remarks that whites do not adopt black children and prefer to see interracial babies aborted. In March, state Rep. Alvin Holmes, D-Montgomery, said during a debate over a fetal heartbeat bill that “99 percent of the whites who are sitting in here now, if their daughter got pregnant by a black man, they are going to make their daughter have an abortion. They ain't gonna let her have the baby.” In the same March...

A woman abandoned as a newborn 27 years ago in an Allentown, Pennsylvania, fast-food restaurant bathroom has been reunited with her birth mother after a social media blitz, local media reported on Wednesday. Katheryn Deprill, left in the Burger King bathroom only hours after she was born, met her birth mother on Monday in a lawyer’s office, she told WFMZ television in an interview. Deprill said her birth mother, who she did not identify, recounted getting pregnant after being raped while on a trip abroad and giving birth in her childhood bedroom at the age of 17. Her parents did...

<p>SALINAS, Calif. –  Three starving children -- including one who was chained to the floor to prevent her from getting food -- were found last month in the squalid home of a Northern California couple, authorities said.</p> <p>All three -- two boys and a girl -- were taken into protective custody, and one was hospitalized, Monterey County Sheriff Scott Miller said Friday.</p>