Free Republic

Richard Dawkins: Children need to be ‘protected’ from religion ‘You have to write off those people’ who put the Bible ahead of science, author says Children need to be “protected” from religious indoctrination in schools, biologist and atheist campaigner Richard Dawkins has said, backing a campaign by Atheist Ireland to overhaul our education system.Speaking to The Irish Times in advance of a public talk at Trinity College Dublin on Tuesday evening, Prof Dawkins said: “There is a balancing act and you have to balance the rights of parents and the rights of children and I think the balance has swung...

Using a Loudon County case as a backdrop, the Tennessee Supreme Court on Friday upheld for the first time a parent’s right to choose faith over medicine — even if a child dies as a result. “This is a case of first impression,” Justice Gary R. Wade wrote in the court’s decision upholding the constitutionality of Tennessee’s Spiritual Treatment Exemption Act.

From science to scientism in the Obama era  | An excerpt from the newly updated edition of John G. West’s Darwin Day in America Just how far some [Obama] administration officials were willing to take the idea that science should override ethical concerns became apparent with the disclosure of a multiyear experiment funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) involving more than 1,300 premature infants. As part of the experiment, premature infants were randomly assigned to receive higher or lower levels of oxygen. Those receiving lower levels of oxygen were more likely to die, while those receiving higher levels of...

Democrats were gleeful when Republicans Chris Christie and Rand Paul got tangled this week in the debate over the Disneyland measles outbreak, until similar words from the pasts of President Obama and 2016 front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton came out. Mr. Christie walked back his recent comments calling for “balance” and a role for “parental choice” on childhood vaccines, saying in a Monday statement that “with a disease like measles, there’s no question kids should be vaccinated.” But the Democratic posturing as the party of science was short-lived. Several websites promptly dug up a comment from Mr. Obama during the 2008...

A critic of mandatory child vaccinations made no apologies for her views in an appearance on Newsmax TV Tuesday, and said that public anger over the Disneyland measles outbreak should be directed at pharmaceutical companies and the federal government, not people like her. "What's happening is people are freaking out about measles outbreaks," Louise Kuo Habakus said ina combative interview with "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner. "They're pointing the finger at unvaccinated children and non-vaccinated families, when really what needs to happen is people need to be pointing the finger at industry and at Congress." Habakus, co-founder of a group called...

Have you ever run across couples who want to tell you “we’re pregnant”? It’s part of the gender neutrality, everyone is the same, there is no difference between men and women, nonsense.

K Kaufmann wrote a book called The Abortion Resource Handbook, which is meant to guide women through their abortion decisions. It is aimed specifically toward women considering abortion. To put it mildly, the book takes a pro-choice position. In one passage, the author encourages teens not to tell their parents: However sad or angry you feel right now, keep in mind that not involving a parent is often a sign of maturity – that you are able to make and take responsibility for your own decisions. Keeping the pregnancy and abortion a secret may even turn out to be a...

(FOX19) - A Change.org petition asking to ban transgender conversion therapy following Leelah Alcorn's death has received more than 233,000 signatures in two days. The Transgender Human Rights Institute posted the petition on Dec. 31 asking President Barack Obama and the leadership of the House and Senate to begin the process of banning transgender conversion therapy throughout the nation. "'Conversion therapies' have been documented to cause great harms and in this case, Leelah's death. Therapists that engage in the attempt to brainwash or reverse any child's gender identity are seriously unethical and legislation is needed to end such practices immediately,"...

FULL TITLE: Christian parents accused of 'cruelty' in their 17-year-old transgender daughter's suicide note REFUSE to accept her female identity - but insist they loved 'him' The mother of a transgender teen who killed herself over the holiday season is speaking out, and making it clear she did not and does not approve of what she believes was her daughter's choice to be transgender. Carla Alcorn of Kings Mills, Ohio said in an interview that she and her husband did not 'support' their daughter Leelah Alcorn, while also refusing to acknowledge her daughter's sex, using male pronouns and referring to...

Students at one northern California high school are learning more than just the birds and the bees. Along with local area groups, some parents are irate that their children’s sex ed class at Acalanes High School in Lafayette is being taught by employees of Planned Parenthood without their prior knowledge. They are also fuming over the methods and materials being used, including a checklist that asks students if they are “ready for sex” and another worksheet that describes how to give and obtain consent, as well as a diagram that uses a "genderbread" person for lessons in gender identity. “[Parents]...

While President Barack Obama asks the nation if we will accept the “cruelty of ripping children from their parents arms” it’s blatantly apparent to parents like Michelle that he isn’t talking about sick children like hers. Agents of the state with calculated, callus, impunity take their children. On the morning that plunged Michelle and Isaiah into their current nightmare, Michelle scurried around her room at the Ronald McDonald House talking to Isaiah, and getting ready to see him. “Hurry,” he pleaded, and so she did. Before she could board the transport shuttle to the hospital another call came in: a...

A recent report from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) says that laws against abortion, sex work, drugs, and same-sex relationships impinge upon the freedoms and potential of young people. In the report, which was heavily criticized by C-FAM and the Population Research Institute's Steven Mosher, UNFPA also says that young people worldwide -- including minors -- should have unrestricted freedom to engage in contraceptive sexual intercourse and abortion without parental involvement. "Emergency contraception is something that adolescents particularly need because they use relatively ineffective methods," the report states. "Another systematic literature review by Denno et al. (2012) shows that...

SIP Development Process   In January 2013, the System Improvement Planning process was initiated.   Internal meetings were conducted with all levels of staff to review the Peer Review (PR) and County Self Assessment (CSA).   Information and outcomes for inclusion in the SIP were identified. Lead responsibilities were assigned.    In addition, smaller groups of external stakeholders were consulted regarding specific strategies and actions in which they had indicated an interest and/or where there was a need for buy in and partnership.    This occurred at the numerous meetings that were already scheduled with stakeholders and issues pertinent to the plan were...

Why Does HSLDA Oppose the Treaty? Promoting equal rights and protections for disabled persons around the world sounds like a great idea. But let’s take a closer look at what the treaty actually says and how it would impact the United States. Here are some of our most serious concerns. The CRPD could threaten homeschooling rights and parental rights. It would surrender parents and caregivers’ decision-making ability on behalf of their disabled children to unelected and unaccountable UN bureaucrats. The CRPD would override existing state laws, seriously damaging states’ rights. The CRPD would surrender our nation’s sovereignty to unelected bureaucrats....

The movement demanding legal recognition for same-sex marriage has made a radical and profoundly uncharitable assumption. It is this: Adult homosexuals need and have a greater right to same-sex marriage than babies have to their mothers. You cannot simultaneously claim babies have a right to their mothers and two men have a right to marry each other. Nor, of course, can you simultaneously claim babies have right to their fathers and two women have a right to marry each other. Notably, advocates of same-sex marriage do not argue that babies have a either a right or a need for a...

ST. CHARLES, MO, May 8, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Parents in Missouri are outraged at school district officials for allowing an e-book with images of people engaging in sexual intercourse in school libraries. Francis Howell School District is facing a backlash for placing "It's Perfectly Normal," a book that includes images of naked people, intercourse, and other pornographic material, in its libraries. One parent told a local reporter that most parents "were shocked" when he "showed this to" them, and that "their next reaction was outrage."

An Indiana-based energy distribution group that operates in Ohio has informed the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) that the company will not hire homeschool graduates, a situation that may not only reflect discrimination, but also the possibility that, with a nationalized set of standards such as Common Core, homeschoolers could be shown the door when they apply for jobs in the future.

Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are not “state standards.” They are nationalized, state-run standards so that every student in a given grade, in every state will be learning the same thing at the same time. Promoters of the Standards, Achieve, Inc., Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and National Governors Organization (NGO) would like you to believe that the Standards had input from people in every state. The reality is that they were developed by a 24-member team, with David Coleman, from Student Achievement Partners (SAP), considered to be the chief architect of CCSS. (He is now head of...

Athens-Clarke County police said they arrested a man on Tuesday for assaulting a teen who he caught showering with his stepdaughter. Police charged Clinton Antonio Ward, 49, with battery, and first- and third-degree cruelty to children for the assault at the man’s home on Creekstone Drive. Ward’s arrest came after his own 911 call to report that teens were in his apartment, according to police. When officers arrived they spoke with Ward’s 16-year-old stepdaughter, who said Ward was not home when she and her boyfriend, also 16, went into the shower, police said.

One week after the Texas Medical Board dismissed a complaint against the infamous Houston abortionist Douglas Karpen due to “insufficient evidence,” Karpen committed a wildly botched abortion on Melanie Mendoza. The event occurred a year ago, but new legal documents have come to light revealing new facts about the case. Thanks in part to the testimony of three of his former employees to Operation Rescue last year, America finally came to see Douglas Karpen as the “Texas Gosnell” that he is. Karpen is accused of routinely murdering babies born alive after his unsuccessful abortions, often very large babies whose abortions...