By Micah Clark
How Far Have We Fallen? Use the Presidency as a Measure
When Adult Video News, the trade publication for the porn industry, endorsed the re-election of President Bill Clinton, the Clinton/Gore team immediately did all they could to hide it and distance their campaign from the endorsement.
Most people would assume that the office of the President couldn’t fall any farther below the sordid days we all endured during the impeachment of President Clinton. Recent news has us wondering if the Office of the President still has a long way to go to reclaim the moral high ground it deserves and America so desperately needs.
Last night, President Barack Obama went out of his way in a West Coast campaign speech to specifically thank a homosexual porn producer, some call a gay-porn kingpin, for his significant support of his re-election campaign.
America is clearly in a moral free-fall at all levels. Sadly, even the dignity of the Office of President is taking a tumble.AFA-IN is Still Stirring Things Up
It is interesting for me to observe the reactions AFA of Indiana generates with this weekly email, media interviews, articles and other aspects of our work. The anger we cause and yes, the “intolerance” against us really is very different from my own soft-spoken, introverted personality. I’ve jokingly told my wife many times, to never Google my name, she might wonder what kind of evil ax murderer she married fourteen years ago.
Yesterday, our office manager handed me one of our July donor letters that a donor had taken and written a profanity-laced rant over due to the religious nature of my letter. It gets pretty rough sometimes when even those on our side snipe at us.
(By the way, if there is anything I am growing more committed to, it is that I need to remember that politics falls far below our nation’s spiritual condition. I am convicted that it is wrong for me, in my position at AFA-IN, to “hide my light under a basket” by only addressing the political or sociological research aspects of the issues of the day. I am more often now recalling Thomas Jefferson’s words, which we have not yet removed from his Washington, DC, monument, stating, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.” This being the case, I must point people to Him when I can, if I truly love my country.)
Not all the opposition and anger we cause, even among our allies once in a while, is a bad thing. Sometimes, it is a reflection that we hit the mark when we know that what we said was true, consistent with our values, and done so in a responsible way. Such is the case of last week’s email.
We really stirred things up within the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, and the State House with our reporting of the business advocate’s consideration of weighing in against the Marriage Protection Amendment in the 2013 or 2014 legislature. While their answer was not definitive, and still terse, the Chamber repeatedly told me that they are “neutral on the issue” of homosexual marriage.
It is still worth contacting the State Chamber in regard to this issue, as you can be assured that a few outspoken liberal business leaders will continue to push the myth that being pro-homosexual is good business.
In regard to this weird notion that being pro-homosexual or pro same-sex marriage is good for business there is even more data out there. Last week, I listed numerous studies showing that the best states for job growth are those with (or cities in) Marriage Protection Amendments.
Dr. Bradford Wilcox of the National Marriage Project has found another benefit that traditional marriage has for the business community. He reports:
“Married men work about 160 hours more compared to their similarly credentialed peers after they transition into marriage in that first year of married life. Men who get married and stay married tend to be better workers. They work harder, they work longer hours, they think more strategically, and as a consequence, they tend to earn more money.”
Dr. Jennifer Morse of the Ruth Institute agrees, adding, “The family is absolutely necessary for the market to function. The substitutes to the family are expensive and ineffective, and taxpayers end up paying the price.”
The Heritage Foundation has also found that married men earn, on average, $8,000 more per year than their unmarried counterparts who are living with women, and that the yearly household income for married couples is $12,500 higher than for couples simply living together. Additionally, married couples are a whopping 700 percent more likely to own a home than are unmarried couples, and are also more likely to own stock and bonds. Married couples are also significantly more likely to have savings accounts and much less likely to default on home loans.
( Incidentally, there is an interesting report listing 162 research based benefits of marriage to society, businesses, men, women, children, schools, etc. listed here: http://www.frc.org/
The Chamber of Commerce, in spite of their anger with us for calling out their appearance of promoting same-sex marriage (via a talkative employee and a Chamber document called Indiana Vision 2025), has scores of reasons to support traditional marriage. They should consider the economic benefits of married men and women rather than shooting at this messenger. The mayor of Indianapolis also has plenty of similar reasons to veto Prop # 213 which sets up taxpayer funded marital benefits for domestic partners of city employees.
In short, there is a mountain of data proving that strong marriages are essential to a strong vibrant economy. Where marriage is devalued and in decline, businesses, schools and the economy suffer which are the very things the State Chamber of Commerce works daily to improve.
Aurora, Colorado, Shooting Reopens Gun Control Debate
As anyone could have predicted, there has been a lot of talk about gun control and how we might have prevented the mass murder that occurred inside that Aurora Colorado movie theater.
You can probably guess my thoughts with this personal observation. Colorado is a concealed carry permit state. Yet, the movie theater in Aurora was a posted “gun free” zone that prohibited guns inside, including those of legal permit holders. Many commentators and talk show hosts are wondering if the carnage might have been less had that been different. Rather, than this “what if” look back, I’d simply like for someone to ask the theater owner if he would be willing to post signs in front of his home advertising it as a gun free zone. He may have once thought his theaters were safer with those signs. Would he, or anyone else, feel safer if such signs were in their home’s front yard?
Gun control is not an AFA of Indiana issue. People can disagree with me, and my personal opinion. However, we should remember that before 1968 anyone could purchase a handgun, rifle or shotgun through the mail by simply sending a check or money order to a company. Hundreds of thousands of WW2 military arms such as British Webley service revolvers and German semi-automatic Lugers were sold across America for less than $25 via the US mail.
For decades children wore cap guns and cowboy hats, and carried BB guns through small towns everywhere in America. Boy’s Life magazine was littered with ads for Daisy BB guns and Remington .22 rifles. “Shoot em up” westerns were all the rage in movies and TV from the 1930’s well into the 1960’s. Some public schools even had shooting ranges in their basements.
Today, there are over 10,000 local, state and federal firearms laws on the books in the US. To be lawful, gun owners have to be extremely careful not to run afoul of these laws. There is a rampant fear of guns in today’s culture. Even the sight of a pocketknife, let alone a cap gun, water gun or BB gun will send a school into instant lockdown mode with police swarming it within minutes.
I am not saying there should not be any gun laws. Yet, what really matters is not what is in a person’s hand, it is what is in his heart.
Our country is sick morally, spiritually and culturally. The attention from the Aurora shooting should focus not on the unhinged shooters’ weapons. It should cause us to do some soul searching about a culture that is in a moral free-fall and seeming to so easily feed the deranged, who then act out things they see in an effort to be famous.
By the way, now that I may have led you down a different path which could skew our results, we do have a new poll on the Aurora shooting and gun laws on our web site: www.afain.net
Understanding Chick Fil-A and the Marriage Debate
Two years ago, AFA of Indiana ran several billboards attempting to remind people of what marriage really is, and why. It had a picture of a mom, dad and baby that said, “Marriage, Unique by Design.” I had originally wanted it to say, “Respecting Marriage: It’s not Bigotry, It’s Biology” but I chose the other softer approach.
Sometimes, I wonder if the other wording might have been better. I am really wondering this after seeing this funny, yet simple truth in a cartoon about the attacks on Chick Fil-A for their support of traditional values and marriage. I thought you’d enjoy my sharing this today.
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MIcah – I lost the significance of your blotting out the "o" on PORN. Perhaps you can explain. Shortening "pornography" to "porno" or "porn" is totally acceptable in polite conversations, Porn is not among George Carlin's Seven Forbidden Words..
Love the cartoon!
gad a lot of web filters over zealously block any site that contains the word no matter what the reason for using it is. I guess the reasoning behind it is that any site that uses the term will contain xxx pictures, think "net nanny".
So a few elected Liberal lunatics want to stop Chick-Fil-A from opening businesses in their districts, big deal. There's plenty of business to be had elsewhere.
The only thing those rubes are accomplishing is denying their constituents jobs, meals, and the right to make their own decisions regarding whether or not to patronize a Chick-Fil-A restaurant, which is an arrogant presumptuousness that no neighborhood should have foisted upon them by their "representatives". On top of it all they're denying themselves the one thing most dear to themselves, the almighty tax revenues generated by the business. And we all know how Democrats LOVE those sweet yet savory tax dollars, it's their heroin.
Liberals will never learn that when they shoot off their mouth's they inevitably shoot themselves in the feet.