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At the ceremony yesterday to mark the 231st anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's religious freedom statute, Fredericksburg Mayor Tom Tomzak asked the faith community to help with an issue he's been speaking publicly about for the past year.
"We have to turn this faucet off that is spewing children into high-risk environments," Tomzak said. "I challenge the faith-based community today to be sensitive to the needs of suffering women and children outside your flocks."
At the ceremony on Washington Avenue, Tom- zak repeated a message he's delivered in City Hall, in meetings with local social services and criminal-justice leaders and to city officials from around the state.
He wants to find a way to prevent teenagers from having babies, and to prevent babies from growing up in homes without a responsible adult to guide their development. It's a government issue, Tomzak says, because young children who aren't prepared for public schools and older children who break the law all cost taxpayers money.
He said consultants project that the Rappahannock Regional Jail will have to be expanded by 2019 to hold 2,100 inmates, more than double current capacity.
"These inmates are in our schools right now, they're in our nurseries," he said. "It's all preventable."
The question is, what do you do to keep kids on the right track?
Tomzak thinks a lot of the blame lies with the young men who are fathering the children of teenage or otherwise unprepared mothers.
"We are going to have to get the message out that all men are going to have to be responsible for their actions. If they do not want the responsibility of fatherhood, do not father children. Period," he said. "We can't write an ordinance for that in the city."
At a ceremony meant to honor the words that keep believers in America free to worship as they please, Tomzak called on Councilman Hashmel Turner to give two prayers. Turner, a Baptist minister, has not given the opening prayer at City Council meetings for years.
The American Civil Liberties Union threatened him with a lawsuit if he continued to invoke Jesus Christ in his prayers, and Turner later sued the city, claiming that its policy of allowing only nonsectarian prayers before meetings violates his rights.
Turner lost his case in federal district court. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has not yet decided whether to hear his appeal.
Yesterday, Turner prayed for better male role models, asking the faith community "to embrace a community and start with the males, and teach them in a way that they will be productive citizens."
