Free Republic

South Carolina mom Debra Harrell worked at McDonald's. She couldn't afford day care for Regina, her 9-year-old daughter, so she took her to work. But Regina was bored at McDonald's. One day, she asked if she could just play in the neighborhood park instead. "I felt safe there," tells me in my new video, "because I was with my friends and their parents." "She had her cellphone, a pocketbook with money in it," says Debra. "She had everything she needed." Regina was happy. Debra was happy. But one parent asked Regina where her mom was, and then called the police....

Opponents criticized an Iowa bill that would require schools to notify parents before teaching LGBTQ content to children. Lawmakers introduced the Republican-sponsored House File 2201 in January, a bill that would require schools to annually notify parents about any kind of material that discusses gender or sexual orientation. This would then give parents the opportunity to inspect such material and pull their children out of certain classes. The bill is one of 13 pieces of legislation introduced in the Iowa state Legislature that opponents are calling anti-LGBTQ, CNN reported Friday. Republican Iowa state Rep. Jeff Shipley says that the bill...

Seven hundred kids. That’s how many students would have lost their scholarships—and a chance at a better life—if Fifth Third Bank hadn’t come to its senses. Instead, after a week of uncertainty, the company sat down with Florida parents and pastors and decided not to listen to Florida’s cultural bullies. It’s one thing for a company to support LGBT extremism. It’s quite another, the bank agreed, to hurt needy children in the process. Most kids had already left school for the weekend when they got the good news: One of the biggest contributors to the Florida voucher program wasn’t dropping...

The Supreme Court returned Monday for oral arguments after a lengthy holiday break. During the court’s January sitting, the justices will hear arguments in eight cases, including ones dealing with school choice and the “Bridgegate” scandal. The justices already have heard arguments in cases involving the Second Amendment, Obamacare, and whether federal law covers claims of discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. Later in the term, the court will take up cases involving the president’s ability to fire the head of an “independent” agency, regulation of abortion providers, and the dispute over a subpoena for President Donald Trump’s...

Car after car sped past Bayport resident Heidi Olivier on Friday afternoon as she tried to cross Minnesota 95, the city’s busy main street. With 2-year-old son Otto in tow, Olivier first checked traffic in both directions. Then she left Otto in his stroller on the sidewalk and stepped off the curb at Second Avenue with her arms out. After verifying that drivers in both directions had seen her and stopped, she headed back to the sidewalk to collect Otto. “Only one car didn’t stop,” she said, after she made it to the west side of the highway just outside...

Less than a year after having gender surgery, Nathaniel now says, “This whole thing was a bad idea. I am 19 years old, and I feel as though I have ruined my life.” It’s heartbreaking each time I get a letter from someone who underwent gender-change surgery and regrets it, especially someone as young as Nathaniel. With his permission, I’m telling a bit of his story to raise awareness of the young lives being ruined by the rush to surgery, and hoping that hearing the testimony of this young man will influence others on this path to slow down and...

Chelsea Clinton has never grown up. She is America’s Peter Pan. She lives in her own version of Neverland. Chelsea would probably be offended by that comparison—not for the obvious reasons but because Peter Pan is a boy and she believes far too many children’s stories are about boys. After she became a mother, she says she realized “how many kids’ books are centered on male voices — even books about animals are told from the male-animal perspective.” She tackled this pressing societal problem by authoring children’s books, and no doubt she pocketed a healthy pay check for her efforts.

A school board candidate in Northern Virginia may have lost the election, but she’s not giving up the fight to protect children in her district. In a Facebook post, Fairfax County School Board candidate Priscilla DeStefano warned parents in the district that children as young as 6th grade would begin receiving graphic, highly inappropriate surveys on sexual activity, drug use, and more unless they take the time to opt out. https://www.facebook.com/PriscillaForFairfax/photos/a.111043596987758/120923609333090/ “We must be vigilant about what is going on in our schools,” DeStefano wrote. “I may have lost, but the fight is not over!!” “Starting this week, 6th, 8th,...

I live in Fairfax County, Virginia, which has the 10th-largest public school district in the nation, but I never focused on our public schools. My kids go to Catholic schools, and that was the center of our universe. I never focused, that is, until I heard that the Fairfax County School Board voted to let boys into the girls’ bathrooms. The vote was 10-1. Was there only one sane person on the Fairfax County School Board? I had to find out. So I began attending school board meetings. And there I saw moms and dads begging the school board to...

Netflix continually shows an absolute lack of regard for basic decency when it comes to the content they offer subscribers. Perhaps the single greatest offender among Netflix’s offerings is ‘13 Reasons Why,’ their smash hit teen drama laced with suicide, rape, graphic sex scenes, and more. Everything you want your children to be inundated with all in one convenient television series, right? 13RW goes beyond typical sin-glorifying entertainment, however. Centered largely around the suicide of Hannah Baker, one of its main characters, the show has prompted copycat suicides. According to the American Family Association, a young woman, Anna Bright took...

"I dare you... Hold up the textbook in front of the camera and show them a picture of what 10-year-olds are going to be asked to see." That was Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers's (R) challenge to reporters, when they asked him about his fierce response to the radical Left's sex ed. He pointed to a book, called It's Perfectly Normal, that isn't normal at all -- unless you're one of those rare individuals who think teaching anal sex to five-year-olds is a good idea. Arizona State Superintendent Kathy Hoffman's (D), Twitter profile shows a picture of the new officeholder...

Public schools are reopening for business across America, meaning it's time to get back to reading, writing, arithmetic ... and revolution. As usual in matters such as these, California is leading the way. On the first day of classes at Denair Middle School near Modesto, science teacher Luis Davila Alvarado handed out a worksheet from a transgender advocacy group titled "The Gender Unicorn" asking students about their "gender identity," "gender expression" and their sexual and emotional attractions. These are children. And yet the teacher did not ask permission to hand the worksheet out. Most parents were outraged. The school estimated...

**SNIP** In a recent study in Nature Climate Change, Danielle Lawson, a postdoctoral student at NC State University, and her colleagues found that putting middle-school children in a class about climate change could influence their parent’s views on the subject. The effects were the strongest on conservative fathers—significant because conservative white men have been previously shown to have the lowest levels of climate concern. Lawson called this a case of "intergenerational learning," or the transfer of behavior and knowledge from children to parents. She thinks their study was successful partially because ideology and political identity have become so conflated with...

July 26 2019 Memorial of Saints Joachim and Anne, Parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary Reading 1 Ex 20:1-17 In those days: God delivered all these commandments: "I, the LORD, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. You shall not have other gods besides me. You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; you shall not bow down before them or worship them. For I, the LORD, your God, am...

I am perennially asked whether I do or do not “believe” in autism. I suspect that on most occasions, it’s a test. Nonetheless, it’s a fair question that usually takes this form: “I know you don’t believe in ADHD; but do you believe in autism?” To be clear, it would be absurd of me to deny that there are children – plenty of them, relatively speaking – who frequently exhibit behaviors associated with the bogus diagnosis of ADHD (attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder). Those kids are problematic, for sure. But no one has ever proven that they “have” something. Childhood behavior disorders...

In New York City public schools, students can choose their classes, their sports, and their genders! Starting this fall, Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza is making the Big Apple an even bigger news story by radically changing the city's policy on registered names, dress codes, bathrooms, locker rooms, and athletics. He says this is his way of celebrating Pride month. But "proud" is the last word most parents would use to describe the news. In this new Wild West of gender identity, Carranza is giving the green light to everything from unofficial name changes to unisex school uniforms. "Schools are safe...

Our defeat was all but inevitable, yet the transgender activists still showed up in matching shirts and waved multicolored flags. Their speakers outnumbered ours 4 to 1, but they still hissed and muttered ugly names at our side while we spoke. We had gathered for the Arlington County School Board’s meeting on June 18. For four months, the Arlington Parent Coalition had worked tirelessly to get our liberal school board and administrators to reconsider or delay the implementation of policies that would expand accommodations for transgender-identified students. Those policies were passed four years ago during the summer, when nobody was...

NEW YORK, July 5 (C-Fam) Are divorce, cohabitation, same sex marriage, out of wedlock birth and adolescent sex good for women? The latest report from UN Women considers them “a positive reflection of women’s empowerment.” UN Women calls family life “an ambivalent space for women and girls.” “Families can have a darker side: they can be places of violence and discrimination, spaces where women and girls are often denied the resources they need, where they sometimes eat least and last and where their voices are stifled and their autonomy is denied,” the report says, concluding, “As such, the recognition of...

Borderline Personality Disorder and Snowflake America In psychology, there’s a term called “borderline personality disorder”. Borderline personalities see themselves as victims, even though they’re not victims. Usually, they blame everything on their parents. Interestingly, in their failure to launch, they typically remain at home with their parents into their 20s, 30s and even beyond. This helplessness and failure reinforces their unhealthy narrative that their parents are to blame for everything. And yet: If their parents are so evil, aren’t they the last people they would wish to live with? Wouldn’t they make it the central purpose of their lives to...

A few weeks ago an Indiana mother wrote a letter to the Notre Dame University school newspaper, asking women not to wear leggings to Catholic mass. After sitting behind a group of girls in church with her four sons she wrote: I was ashamed for the young women at Mass. I thought of all the other men around and behind us who couldn’t help but see their behinds. My sons know better than to ogle a woman’s body — certainly when I’m around (and hopefully, also when I’m not). They didn’t stare, and they didn’t comment afterwards. But you couldn’t...