Tag Illinois Review | Hannah Ihms

August 8, 2012 by Hannah

A Threat Isn’t a Guarantee

The following article was originally published by Illinois Review.

“[T]o the organizer, compromise is a key and beautiful word… If you start with nothing, demand 100 per cent, then compromise for 30 per cent, you’re 30 per cent ahead.” That’s Saul Alinsky’s advice in Rules for Radicals.

Unfortunately for Leftists, sometimes when you start with nothing and demand everything, you end up with nothing. That’s what happened when the student chapter of the ACLU and other organizations tried to kick Chick-fil-A off of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus.

The first public sign that something was afoot was two articles published on February 10, 2011 in the Daily Illini, the dominant campus newspaper. In one article, a student opinion columnist roasted Chick-fil-A as a whole because a Pennsylvania Chick-fil-A franchise donated chicken to the Pennsylvania Family Institute: “I’m not a fan of sleeping with the enemy (or feeding the enemy), and that’s what Chick-fil-A virtually did. Just because you’re not Hitler doesn’t make it OK to supply ammo to the Germans.” She went on to call for a boycott and the removal of the campus Chick-fil-A: “We sometimes forget it, but our voice is pretty strong, and if we protest hard enough, we have the power to get certain food chains we find displeasing out of the Union.”

The second article showed a small metal crucifix embedded in a Chick-fil-A sandwich and stated, “University students may be biting into more than they can chew.” It gave no details on the infamous Philadelphia exchange, simply saying, “Chick-fil-A, an original Southern restaurant and fast food chain, has been openly criticized for its transparent Christian values and conservative religious ideals.” The leap in logic was that Christian values suppressed LGBT rights, though this was never explicitly stated. Two students quoted in the article not only supported a boycott of the campus Chick-fil-A, but called for it to be banned.

A week later action on the issue was reported in a third article, which featured a photo of the campus Chick-fil-A’s “Closed on Sundays” sign. Representatives from the student ACLU chapter and OUTlaw (a campus organization formed by LGBT law students) had written a letter against Chick-fil-A to the University President and Interim Chancellor. Interestingly, two students invited to comment on the developments did not lend personal support for Chick-fil-A, but affirmed a business’s right to do what it pleased: “The University isn’t forcing us to buy Chick-fil-A. They aren’t forcing us to eat Chick-fil-A.” A member of Building Bridges, a religious LGBT group said, “I don’t think that it is necessary to try and go close it down as some of the universities have tried to do and some movements on campus are doing,”

Thus, while campus activists pulled off the gloves, they didn’t necessarily have the support of the bulk of campus.

Four days later the Daily Illini editorial board weighed in, saying “Many companies make political and social donations, and if your convictions lead you to take your business away from a company – including Chick-fil-A – that is completely within your rights. But banishing the restaurant from campus based on its adherence to religious convictions would be true discrimination.”

While the students quoted by Daily Illini articles were either dead-set on removing Chick-fil-A from campus, or viewed Chick-fil-A as entitled to distasteful actions, a steady current of pro-Chick-fil-A sentiment ran through the campus news outlet’s comments section. The newspaper did not print any pro-Chick-fil-A Letters-to-the-Editor (though not for lack of trying), but at least in the comments sections students could share their thoughts, such as: “Since when is having ‘traditional Christian values’ a crime?” and “Don’t you believe in diversity of viewpoint and belief?” Two Facebook pages cropped up in support of the campus Chick-fil-A.

Beyond drumming up support among registered student organizations and writing letters to campus administrators, the next key step was to pass an anti-Chick-fil-A resolution in the student-run Illinois Student Senate. This organization has elected representatives of each college in the University. While its resolutions are not formally binding, they offer significant weight for campus activists who can use the ISS’s decision to advance their goals.

When the vote was moved back a week, the president of the campus ACLU wrote in to the campus newspaper. He affirmed Chick-fil-A’s right to donate where it wanted, but called students to protest it by boycotting and taking action to remove Chick-fil-A from campus. He said, “This is not an attenuated, symbolic movement by GLBT groups. This is about taking a pragmatic look at the causes of anti-gay oppression and attempting to directly address those causes. This is saying that we are against University space being used to facilitate the filtering of funds from students to groups that wish harm upon members of our campus community.”

His views, though passionately expressed, did not reflect the views of the campus as a whole. Ultimately, after heated debate, the Illinois Student Senate voted against the resolution.

Interestingly, the failure didn’t even get a headline: the decision was buried in the middle of another article. It deserves a headline, however. It shows what can happen when political activists put political correctness above others’ rights. They can be defeated.

This is important to remember as we consider what’s happening with Chick-fil-A now. As Mayor Emanuel and Alderman Moreno try to set aside Chick-fil-A-free zones, Equality Illinois has set its sights even higher. The largest LGBT organization in Illinois has called for all 19 Illinois Chick-fil-As to be removed.

For students who will be on campuses with Chick-fil-A this fall, prepare now. Bring up the issue with your campus representatives. Get involved in your campus newspaper, or start your own. Your circulation may not rival the established campus outlets, but you can give a place for people to openly voice their views. Start a petition showing your support of Chick-fil-A. Talk to your friends, so they know what’s happening. And keep in mind that even the Illinois ACLU supported the Chick-fil-A CEO’s freedom of speech!

There will be mixed feelings about Chick-fil-A. And there must be freedom to criticize or applaud this company accordingly. For now, that freedom is alive and well at the University of Illinois. Just this summer, one student publicly expressed his displeasure with the campus restaurant, and others started a Boycott Chick-fil-A UIUC Facebook page, but others made a special effort to show their support there on Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day and support a Keep Chick-fil-A at UIUC Facebook page.

If activists try to close down your Chick-fil-A, remember that the Left is making it up as they go along, and wanting something isn’t the same as getting it. A threat carries no guarantee of inevitability.

August 7, 2012 by Hannah

At Death’s Door

The following article was originally published by Illinois Review.

There’s something more convincing than statistics, and that’s pain.

As I stood outside an abortion clinic this summer, I caught just a glimpse of the crushing pain—physical, spiritual, and emotional—that abortion inflicts on all it touches. I saw that there’s times when statistics just insulate me from what I don’t want to see, and inure me to the thought that trends pile up one life at a time.

The building itself was a hideous block building with a tiny parking lot. The waiting room must have extremely cramped, because even though the sun was beating down, family members would check in their sweethearts, wives, sisters, mothers, or friends, then stand in the parking lot, drive away to return later, or wander around aimlessly.

I had no undercover camera to see what was happening inside, but the horror of these moments was reflected in the faces of those enduring it outside.

One man paced around, puffing on a cigarette a few times, then feverishly stamping it out. Another man wept uncontrollably. One of the prolife counselors asked him what was wrong. He said that his girlfriend was inside having an abortion, but he had wanted to keep the baby. He never even got to meet his child.

At that very moment, I’m sure there were delivery wards full of people of the exact same age, socioeconomic class, and ethnic background, just as distracted and distraught. But at least they could talk to one another about the baby’s name, rearrange the baby clothes for the umpteenth time, or speculate on whether she’d have her mom or daddy’s eyes.

What did the people here have to talk about?

Their wife or girlfriend would come out in pain, and there would be no precious bundle. There would be no congratulations, cards, or baby bows. Just pain. And shame.

A prolife counselor greeted each person coming up to the clinic, and told them about a free ultrasound and other resources for their child. His gentleness sometimes elicited a response, and one woman, after checking her sister into the clinic, came back to talk.

She wanted to know if we had any advice on sterilization. She said she knew her sister would never talk to us, but she needed help: this was her eighth abortion. A tall, spare woman, she nervously crossed and recrossed the street several times, always clutching her purse to her arm. Finally she asked us if we knew where she could get a drink. When the procedure was finally done, she pulled her car into the clinic’s narrow lot and helped wheel her sister down toward the car. When the wheelchair was as close as possible, she helped her sister stand and move into the front seat. The woman was visibly in pain; she walked deliberately, seemed drugged or extremely tired, and slumped into the front seat.

Not everyone had the support of their family. One beautiful African-American woman, probably in her late teens and dressed to the hilt, was escorted in by a forty-something white guy in a stylish jacket. The next day a man who looked strikingly similar was back with a different girl. I wondered what questions, if any, the front desk asked those who checked in patients.

A young family with a father, mother, and boy about seven years old came up. The father and son checked in the mother, then left. I wondered what you told your son about something like this. If Mom was going to bring a new baby home, you’d need to prepare your son over a course of months so he could get ready for a new baby sister or brother. He might think about which toys to share, and ask all the questions about where they were going to sleep, and if he’d get to hold him or not. With something like an abortion, I figured the parents just said it was a routine doctor’s appointment. How do you tell your son he had a sibling you decided he would never meet?

One threesome that came up to the clinic was a mother, a daughter, and the daughter’s boyfriend. The girl was silent, but the mother and boyfriend were either extremely cheerful or doing their best to act as if they were. They smiled, laughed—and deliberately avoided eye contact with any of us there on the prolife side. I’ve heard so many women talk about how much they’d love to have grandchildren. Some are desperate enough to start talking about their kids’ pets as grandkids. What would it be like to talk yourself out of grandkids?

The women who breezed by the quickest were well-dressed, on their way to or from work, and evidently just picking up birth control. Those in PJs and flip-flops were there for an abortion, and often entered more slowly. But how many women in the loose-fitting clothes and sandals had originally visited in slacks and high heels?

The only other time I had been to a clinic was when I was a child, and the women looked so much older than me. It was easier to distance myself from what was happening then. These were old people doing things I couldn’t fathom. Now, some of the women I was saw were my age, and most were younger. I saw a girl who could have been ten years younger than me, coming in with her mom. I began to realize that whether I acknowledged it or not, this was my world. The people coming in and out were Americans overlapping with me in space and time. I could have been one of them, leaving behind a medical record and my first, or eighth, child.

Abortion has ingrained itself so thoroughly in our culture that abusive boyfriends and supposedly loving mothers often pressure young women into the same decision. I saw only a single time point in a drama that had started long before. We have got to get engaged so much earlier in this process, so a child’s life doesn’t come down to keeping or rejecting a certain card on a certain day. We’ve got to build a culture where abortion is unthinkable. Where parents decide to be the stewards of their children’s education. Where a girl doesn’t rely on a twerp telling her she’s hot because her dad’s told her he loves her. Where a twenty-something proudly wears a “Virginity Rocks” t-shirt. Where God’s definition of marriage is celebrated.

There is this blessing in the midst of the pain: the further our culture erodes, the more distinct the options become.

August 2, 2012 by Hannah

Regressive Progressivism

Freedom can be inconvenient. It can demand things of us we’d rather not give, and demand us to think when we’d rather coast. But it’s better than the alternative.

Noah Webster defined a slave as:

“1. A person who is wholly subject to the will of another; one who has no will of his own, but whose person and services are wholly under the control of another…

“2. One who has lost the power of resistance; or one who surrenders himself to any power whatever; as a slave to passion, to lust, to ambition…”

If we refuse to think, others will do our thinking for us. If we cede our right to conscience, the battle is over. Without the ability to personally decide and act upon what we believe to be right and true, we will be utterly defenseless. What’s “right,” or “politically correct,” will then be what those who rule us determine it to be. This is the logical result of relativism: alternate realities must reconcile somehow, and force is the simple, direct method.

All this is nothing new. The current administration’s slogan may be “Forward,” but it’s leading us down a path rejected centuries ago. Collectivism? State-induced infanticide? That’s so 5th century. Progressives are regressing.

Of course there’s the argument that new civilizations need new methods. But we Americans already vetted and rejected these long ago.

It’s ironic that President Obama would deliver his “You Didn’t Build That” speech in Virginia, because this is where we already put collectivism on trial. It didn’t go so well. The Jamestown colony nearly starved. As Jamestown Secretary Raphe Hamor wrote in a letter in 1614:

“[F]ormerly, when our people were fedde out of the common store and laboured jointly in the manuring of the ground, and planting corne, glad was that man that could slippe from his labour, nay the most honest of them in a generall businesse, would not take so much faithfull and true paines, in a weeke, as now he will doe in a day, neither cared they for the increase, presuming that howsoever their harvest prospered, the generall store must maintain them, by which meanes we reaped not so much corne from the labours of 30 men, as three men have done for themselves…”

If a colonist was assured a share in the reapings, why should he break his back bringing it in? The trouble was, not enough food was brought in. Killing the profit motive killed the profit.

As Mr. Hamor further explained:

“Sir Thomas Dale hath taken a new course, throughout the whole Colony, by which meanes, the generall store… shall not be charged with any thing: and this it is, he hath allotted to every man in the Colony, three English Acres of cleere Corne ground, which every man is to mature and tend, being in the nature of Farmers… and they are not called unto any service or labor belonging to the Colony, more then one moneth in the yeere, which shall neither be in seede time, or in Harvest, for which, doeing no other duty to the Colony, they are yearly to pay into the store two barrells and a halfe of Corne: there to be reserved to keep new men… thereby the lives of many shall not onely be preserved, but also themselves kept in strength and heart, able to performe such businesses, as shall be imposed upon them: and thus shall also the former charge be well saved, and yet more businesse effected.”

When a wise Jamestown governor abolished collectivism and put each colonist in charge of his own life, the colony thrived. Over two hundred years later, the Founders encouraged personal ingenuity, for example by placing Article 1, Section 8 in the Constitution. It gives Congress the power “[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

Instead of creating bloated agencies such as the National Endowment of the Arts or the National Science Foundation which redistribute funds bled from the productive private sector, the Founders created an environment where an individual could protect and benefit from his own ideas.

But, of course, that required that an individual himself be protected. “Intention to abort” was first grounds for conviction in Maryland in 1652, and Virginia classified abortion as murder in 1710. The Declaration of Independence affirms each American’s “right to life,” and throughout American history this was increasingly interpreted as encompassing unborn children. By 1965, abortion was illegal in all 50 states. Roe v. Wade turned the clock backward. We regressed from what we already knew.

In May, 1857 the American Medical Association appointed a Committee on Criminal Abortion. It investigated the causes of criminal abortion and ways to reduce them, presenting three major findings about “this general demoralization”:

“The first of these causes is a widespread popular ignorance of the true character of the crime — a belief, even among mothers themselves, that the foetus is not alive till after the period of quickening.

“The second of the agents alluded to is the fact that the profession themselves are frequently supposed careless of foetal life…

“The third reason of the frightful extent of this crime is found in the grave defects of our laws, both common and statute, as regards the independent and actual existence of the child before birth, as a living being. These errors, which are sufficient in most instances to prevent conviction, are based, and only based, upon mistaken and exploded medical dogmas. With strange inconsistency, the law fully acknowledges the foetus in utero and its inherent rights, for civil purposes; while personally and as criminally affected, it fails to recognize it, and to its life as yet denies all protection.”

After hearing these findings, the Association adopted resolutions “against such unwarrantable destruction of human life.” This remained the official position of the Association until 1970.

How far we’ve fallen. Redistribution is so widespread it’s become commonplace, and on August 1, 2012, the Health and Human Services’s mandate that all insurance companies cover sterilizations, abortifacients, birth control, and abortion took effect.

George Washington’s words ring true today:

“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own… The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission.”

in History / Law 0 comments

July 24, 2012 by Hannah

The Root of Law

The following article was originally published by Illinois Review.

When a small band of American colonists took on the world superpower of their day, they didn’t speak from a position of military superiority. They also didn’t cite a Rasmussen poll or make an emotional appeal. They presented the facts: King George III’s actions assaulted God’s laws.

Their actions weren’t based on a moral majority; they were based on a moral authority. This appeal to a higher law is not to be underestimated. The Founders were deeply motivated by a Judeo-Christian worldview which showed that the unchanging God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was the definition of all that was good, and that He had revealed absolute truth by embedding it in each person’s soul, and providing a written, unchanging account of His Word. The Founders freely acknowledged the role that Judeo-Christianity played in the framing of this new nation’s laws. As John Adams said, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” James Wilson, U.S. Supreme Court Justice and signer of the Constitution, said, “Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is divine… Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other.”

According to Judeo-Christianity, each person has inherent worth because he is created in God’s image. But because man is fallen, he is not perfectible in this life. God is the ultimate authority, and no man is “above the law.” Anyone’s actions can be weighed against the ideal that God provided. The Founders established a system where all laws were compared to the Constitution, and, ultimately, to the absolute law of God. Americans could pursue a “more perfect” union by studying the ideal God provided for their nature and human systems and work to more closely approach the ideal. The Founders’ understanding of this and their first-hand experience with a tyrant allowed them to build a system that affirmed personal freedom and provided a limited government with separated powers. They gave us something they had not inherited from the Crown: a Constitution.

The words of our Declaration and Constitution were not intended to molder behind glass; they were intended to be read and understood by every American citizen. They can stand up to detailed legal scrutiny, but they can also be grasped by someone who wants to understand the Founders’ original intent. Interpreting the Constitution isn’t a privilege reserved for nine men in black robes; it’s something each of us should do. How else can the policeman, soldier, judge, or President’s oath to uphold the Constitution have any meaning? How can any of us obey a law we don’t understand?

The genius of the Founders’ system is evident, even as we see it crumbling through misuse. A person did not have to be a Jew or a Christian to survive and thrive in America, but he did need to respect the principles that governed the nation’s founding: principles such as the equality of all people before the law, the right to own private property, and the requirement for multiple witnesses to testify in criminal proceedings.

Law was not arbitrary, but purposeful. Laws could be found to be good or bad based on how they compared to the highest law of the land, and the Law of God. Even after many of our leaders ceased to be personally guided by Judeo-Christianity, a latent memory of this worldview maintained the original design of our nation.

All that is changing. Clay and iron are being mixed, and the amalgam is brittle. Various worldviews overlap to a point, but some of their core properties are completely incompatible. One must gain the ascendancy. A battle of worldviews is taking place in America, and it’s unclear which will dominate. Six of the major players are Biblical Judeo-Christianity, Secular Humanism (“liberalism”), Marxism-Leninism (“Leftism”), Cosmic Humanism (“New Age”), Postmodernism, and Islam.

All offer very different approaches to ethics, history, law, theology, and other aspects of a worldview. If Judeo-Christianity offers a bounded sandbox for statecraft, Marxism-Leninism stokes animosities between sandcarriers and sandcrafters, Islam demands a pre-fab home, and Postmodernism questions the existence of sand. Since many of the worldviews deny the very existence of God, they lift up man to the throne of absolute judgment. They see truth not as a fixed ideal, but as an evolving mass, which the more ambitious seek to shape. All have different answers to the question “What is the basic nature of man?” which is why they differ so completely on questions such as the ethics of taxation and redistribution, union lobbies, abortion, and homosexuality. Many worldviews do not see the Constitution as a guide to understand ultimate reality or a protective barrier that applies the truth discovered in a triumph over tyranny, but shackles on human development.

Several key battlegrounds between the worldviews are the education, culture, and politics. The trend in these institutions is not for a person to critically evaluate ideas on their merits, but to find the consensus and conform to it. Our educational system could be a location for the free interchange of ideas, but more often it radically transforms a person’s worldview by making full use of authority structures. The process that began inside the classroom can continue outside, if a person does not critically evaluate the messages of worldviews blazing to them through films, celebrities, and the news feed. Finally, as Sharia Law’s codified dhimmitude so eloquently demonstrates, a person does not have to convert to be manipulated and subjugated. A worldview can dominate others by occupying positions of power, even if its adherents are in the minority. Because the laws of our nation reflect our lawmakers, as the elected officials go, so goes the nation.

If we are to reclaim our nation, we must do what our Founders did. We must compare our laws and our leaders to the ultimate standard, draw our own conclusions, and take action. This country is too precious to surrender.

in Ethics / History / Politics 0 comments

June 28, 2012 by Hannah

Kinzinger Plans to Fight Government Takeover of Health Care

The following article was originally published by Illinois Review.

Shortly after the Supreme Court released its decision on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Representative Adam Kinzinger (IL-11) weighed in on the ruling making a formal statement and then answered questions from Washington DC via a phone press conference call. Mr. Kinzinger further explained his thoughts on Obamacare to reporters from various media agencies:

Wanda Rohl this morning said, “The government already makes people buy auto insurance. The government already makes people do other things, and we are already paying for the uninsured anyway, so she’d rather have everybody covered. Could you respond to that?”

Kinzinger: “I think Wanda’s made it clear that she believes that there’s a huge role for basically a full government takeover of healthcare. It’s an area where we fundamentally disagree. State government—and keep in mind it is state—can make people buy car insurance, but they can’t force people to drive. You don’t have to have a license to simply exist as a person. In this case, it looks like the Supreme Court agreed that the Federal government does not have the power to do that. However, again, [Obamacare proponents] went and said, ‘This is actually a tax increase and the Federal government does have a right to tax.’

“So, from that perspective, this is a tax increase on the American people and it is not saying that the federal government has a right to make people buy something simply for existing.”

What is the next step?

Kinzinger: “The reality is, the Supreme Court says the healthcare law can survive today, but I think the healthcare law ends on November 6th when Obama is not reelected. We’re going to vote to repeal this once again. We’ve already voted many, many times to repeal this law, and just because the Supreme Court upheld it today doesn’t make it anymore popular. The American people are still very upset. This is the law that’s going to put us deeper into debt and reduce the quality of healthcare that people are getting, and so we are going to continue to fight to repeal this entire bill.”

What will happen if the Republicans don’t get veto-proof majority control of the Senate in November? Won’t we still have this quagmire?

Kinzinger: “That’s the reality, but the fact is, the American people are pretty upset about this law. It’s just like what you saw back when the law passed initially: there were a lot of Democrat defections because they felt the wrath of the American people. I tell you: a lot of people out here in Washington, D. C. are political folks and they understand what public pressure is. I think that if the Senate is going to stand in the way of a repeal of this very unpopular law, some of these more moderate Democrats or these Democrats in tough districts are going to understand that the American people are not happy and potentially flip. There’s no doubt that today the news of the Supreme Court’s decision was a blow to the efforts to repeal it, but that’s not going to stop us from fully repealing or making attempts to fully repeal this law.”

Is this going to be primarily what the election is about as we head into November? Do you think other issues are going to be droned out now?

KInzinger: “No, I think the election is always about unemployment, about the terrible economy we’re in, the fact that the President, when he was elected, said, ‘If I don’t turn this economy around, it’ll be a one-term proposition.’ I think that’s going to be number one. The American people are hurting. They want jobs. They want a president that actually understands that and tries to lead. Is this going to be one of the top issues? Yes, it will be. Healthcare will now be one of the top issues discussed. The number one issue is still going to be the fact that too many of our neighbors do not have the opportunity to go out and get jobs, and it’s going be a referendum, partially, on the fact that the President has not lead the American people and still refuses to lead on that issue.”

What would the Republicans replace the Obama healthcare bill with?

Kinzinger: “Well, as I mentioned in my statement, there’s a lot of it, including allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines. Portability for health insurance: you shouldn’t have to lose your health insurance when you switch jobs. That actually stems from back in the day when somebody would work for the same corporation for twenty years. Now, if you leave a company, you should be able to take your insurance plan with you. We need tort reforms, so doctors don’t have to spend [money] on unnecessary tests to practice defensively; they can practice the best for that doctor-patient relationship.

“Allowing small businesses to band together with the buying power of big businesses to dilute the pre-existing conditions that may have somebody have to pay way too much money. There’s a lot of potential things that we can do to replace this law. The fact is, we’ve got to bring the cost of healthcare down, and then we’ve got to figure out how to fully cover everybody through lower costs. But you can’t do that with just the government takeover of healthcare like we see here, and with writing a big, blank government check when the government’s out of money.”

in Ethics / Politics 0 comments

June 21, 2012 by Hannah

The Fallout of Lesbian Motherhood

The following article was originally published by Illinois Review.

One children’s book proclaims, “Heather Has Two Mommies,” but an updated edition could read, “Heather Has Two Mommies, an Increased Chance of Depending on Welfare, Being Forced to Have Sex, and Being Less than 100% Heterosexual.”

This is the legacy of lesbian motherhood as shown in the recent study “How Different are the Adult Children of Parents Who Have Same-Sex Relationships?” written by Dr. Mark Regnerus and published in the journal of Social Science Research on June 10.

Dr. Regnerus compiled data from over 3000 American adult children aged 18 to 39 from a variety of households and analyzed 40 major questions. While other studies on heterosexual and homosexual parents have focused on data from children, with parents answering questions, he decided to interview adults because they could speak for themselves.

The summary generated by the Washington Times is shown below:

There are distinct differences in children raised by heterosexual parents and those raised by lesbian mothers. Not only are children of lesbians more likely to grow up dependent on public assistance, they are also more likely to continue this dependence into adulthood and be under- or unemployed. Even more seriously, such children are more likely to be abused sexually and commit adultery as adults.

Not every child raised by lesbians follows the overall pattern, but when it comes to probabilities, the study concludes that “children appear most apt to succeed well as adults—on multiple counts and across a variety of domains—when they spend their entire childhood with their married mother and father, and especially when the parents remain married to the present day.”

Previous studies have showed either no difference between children raised in homosexual or heterosexual families, or even a benefit to children raised in homosexual families. Dr. Regnerus points out that many earlier studies suffered from small sample sizes and “convenience bias,” with respondents recruited from privileged venues such as lesbian events and women’s bookstores. Dr. Regnerus, by contrast, sampled more people from a wider swathe of the population using a method similar to that of the U.S. Census Bureau.

Organizations such as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) have been quick to take issue with Dr. Regnerus’s study, claiming that his methods were flawed because he did not account for family transitions and that his conclusions disagree with common knowledge.

The common knowledge truly challenged, however, is the carefully crafted image of a committed pair of homosexuals deciding to bring children into their home. Not every homosexual who decides to adopt is in a committed, long-term relationship. Also, there are variations in how a child comes to a homosexual family. Every monogamous homosexual couple is infertile, but can participate in artificial insemination, surrogacy, or adoption if they decide to add children to their home. These methods are becoming more common in younger homosexual families, but many of today’s adult children of homosexual parents were the products of dissolved heterosexual unions.

In a recent Daily Texan article, a lesbian mother criticizing Dr. Regnerus mentions in passing that her children were the product of a heterosexual marriage, that she had multiple lesbian relationships, and has only been in her current lesbian relationship for three years. For her children and others like them, a family transition was how they joined the family and is thus impossible to exclude from the results.

This study’s findings about children raised by lesbian parents is challenging many established notions and demonstrating the importance of moving beyond the results of a few select families to the broad-based results from average families. In the end, the fundamental question is not over Dr. Regnerus’s methodology, but over the rapidity in which lesbian adoption is being accepted. Homosexual parenting is a new social experiment with broad implications ethically, politically, and economically.

Going forward, parents and policy makers should heed Dr. Regnerus’ concluding words of caution: “Insofar as the share of intact, biological mother/father families continues to shrink in the United States, as it has, this portends growing challenges within families, but also heightened dependence on public health organizations, federal and state public assistance, psychotherapeutic resources, substance use programs, and the criminal justice system.”

in Ethics / Politics 0 comments

June 18, 2012 by Hannah

Meet IR Intern Hannah Ihms

The following article was originally published by Illinois Review.

When I read the obituary of the mainstream media, I won’t shed a tear. If you ask me, it’s high time. Even on life-support, huddled in its self-spun shroud of objectivity, the mainstream media is wheezing out lies about those it hates. Those counting on its institutionalized libel are panicking, but I’m excited.They may embalm the mainstream media, Lenin-style, but we conservatives won’t be visiting the casket. We’ve already celebrated the christening of the New Media.

Illinois Review is on this action, and I’m excited to be interning with IR this summer!

Conservatism grounded on Judeo-Christianity stands as a pillar among the intellectual ruins of its alternatives. It offers a framework to build upon, instead of scorched earth to sift through. It also liberates. Instead of teaching us to accept or even celebrate skyrocketing debt, the erosion of the family, and flammable Chevy Volts, conservatism proves that these are cruel parodies of the way things ought to be.

While I’ve been a Republican since I was in utero, it wasn’t until I read Goldwater’s book “The Conscience of a Conservative” that I realized I was a conservative. He put what I knew to be true into words, and started me on a journey to trace the roots of conservatism. Bill Buckley, Jr., Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and the Founders have been invaluable friends along the way.

This all took place while I was in graduate school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I joined the Illini Conservative Union, and was incredibly blessed to find other students intent on upholding the Constitution and standing up for the rights and responsibilities of every person. Through campus activism, we met Leftism head to head, and had fun doing it.

Through this internship with Illinois Review, I’m ready to continue the proud tradition of taking conservative ideas to the streets.

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