Good Morning!
Earlier this summer, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch tweeted:
“The national fever on abortion can break only when this Court returns abortion policy to the States – where agreement is more common, compromise is more possible, and disagreement can be resolved at the ballot box.”
We begin with a look at the Magnolia State’s AG:
1. The woman who could bring down Roe v. Wade
From The Washington Post:
With this Supreme Court case, Fitch said in a television interview, God has presented women with an opportunity. “You have the option in life to really achieve your dreams and goals,” she said, addressing the women of America. “And you can have those beautiful children as well.”
In the eyes of the attorney general, a pregnant woman’s decision is simple, said longtime friend and colleague Laura Jackson.
In the small town of Holly Springs, Miss., everyone knew the Fitch family. Fitch’s father, Bill, made his money in consumer finance in Memphis, before returning to Mississippi to start a small consumer lending business and revive the family farm, an 8,000-acre property on the outskirts of town. Fitch and her sister spent childhood weekends there, riding horses and hunting quail.
Fitch followed the traditional Mississippi path into politics, said Hayes Dent, who ran Fitch’s first campaign for state treasurer in 2011. She went to the University of Mississippi and joined a sorority, he said, then used that network to launch her career as a lawyer and politician. When Fitch decided to make her first run for office in 2011, Dent drove out to Holly Springs, of his own accord, to ask Bill to fund the campaign.
By that point, Bill had turned the farm – known as the Galena Plantation – into one of the country’s premier quail hunting destinations, a favorite retreat of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Visitors had the option to stay in the original home of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, which Bill transported 40 miles and, according to the Fitch Farms website, restored “to its former glory.”
Fitch has always relied on her community for help, she said, especially after her divorce. When her kids were young, she benefited from a tightknit network of six other moms, who would swoop in for school drop-offs and football practice pickups when she couldn’t leave her desk. Fitch believes those are the kinds of supports every mother needs.
“I always tell people as young people you should make as many friends along the way because you reap the greatest rewards when you do that,” Fitch said.
- Better dead than adopted, argues New York Times opinion writer
From the Washington Examiner:
Adoption presents a major problem for militant “pro-choicers.”
It’s an attractive and life-affirming alternative to killing a child in utero, one which offers to make good on the “rare” in the promise of “safe, legal, and rare.”
So, naturally, some on the pro-abortion side of the fence have turned their sights on adoption, going so far as to argue it’s not only problematic, but possibly even worse than death. Abortion is apparently too important a sacrament to be supplanted by any reasonable, or less lethal, alternative.
The New York Times this week published an opinion article titled “I Was Adopted. I Know the Trauma It Can Inflict.” Its author, Democratic strategist Elizabeth Spiers, argues adoption is not just more “dangerous” and “potentially traumatic” than abortion, but “infinitely” so.
- Chicago Public Schools Eliminating All Sex-Specific Restrooms. Because ‘Equity.’
From The Daily Citizen:
In Chicago, things known to mankind (I forgot, that word can get one cancelled these days) since the beginning of time are now outdated. To say that there is a real difference between boys and girls is now exclusionary.
The Chicago Public Schools District (CPS) is eliminating all sex-specific restrooms and updating the signage on every school bathroom in the district to make it clear that everyone is welcome in every bathroom.
No more separate restrooms for boys and girls.
Because “equity.”
According to a CPS video posted to Twitter, signs for the new “woke” restrooms read:
- “All Gender Restroom. This is a single-stall restroom. All gender identities and expressions are welcome here.”
- “Men’s+: This restroom has both urinals and stalls. All who feel comfortable are welcome to use this restroom.”
- “Women’s+: This restroom has stalls. All who feel comfortable are welcome to use this restroom.”
Camie Pratt, Chief Title IX Officer for CPS said the district is “taking steps to create more inclusive and supportive schools.”
- Male Swimmer – Who Identifies as Female – Competes for University of Pennsylvania’s Women’s Swim Team
From The Daily Citizen:
SwimSwam, a news website that covers swimming, diving, water polo and synchronized swimming, recently ran this headline: “Princeton Sweeps Ivy Tri Meet; Penn’s Lia Thomas Sets New Program Records.”
The article hyped the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s swim team victory in the 400 free relay, then said,
The victory in the 400 free relay put an exclamation point on a big day for Thomas, as she won three events, set a pair of program records and posted the top time in the NCAA in two events. Thomas touched fist [sic] in the 200 free at 1:43.47. It was the fastest mark in the NCAA in the event this season and a new program best. She also finished first in the 500 free with a program record time of 4:35.06. She won the 500 free by over 12 seconds and her mark was the fastest in the NCAA this year. Thomas also added a victory in the 100 free (49.42).
What SwimSwam failed to point out was that Thomas was born male and had competed for the U Penn Quakers men’s swimming team for three years, from 2017 to 2020. Born Will Thomas, the athlete identifies as a woman and heads up “Penn Non-Cis.”
His response, when he received the honor in January of 2018, was simple and self-deprecating: “I want to thank all those who’ve said such kind words about me. They’re probably not true, but they were nice.”
5. Number of U.S. households with married couple and children falls to record low
From Bloomberg News:
The number of U.S. homes with a married couple and kids fell to a record low, according to new government data, as the pandemic further delayed weddings and more adults don’t plan to have kids at all. The share of the U.S.’s 130 million households headed by married parents with children under age 18 fell to 17.8% in 2021 from 18.6% last year, according to the Census Bureau. That’s down from more than 40% in 1970.
By absolute numbers, there are just 23.1 million homes with nuclear families, the fewest since 1959, the data show.
The pandemic delayed many marriages over the past two years, adding six months to a woman’s age at first marriage — the most since 1987 — to now 28.6 years. In the 1950s and ‘60s, women typically married at 20.4 years of age and 22.8 years for men.
RELATED:
What premarital sex has to do with divorce — and other takeaways from marriage research
From the Deseret News:
In “Re-Examining the Link Between Premarital Sex and Divorce,” they used measures of adolescent beliefs and values, parental communication with children about sex, and approximate number of premarital sexual partners, among other data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. For years, that study followed students who were in seventh through 12th grade when they first provided information. A fair amount of data was collected from their parents, too.
Smith and Wolfinger call the relationship between premarital sex and divorce “highly significant and robust.”
They found the highest link to divorce among those with six or more premarital partners, then next highest among those with one or two premarital partners. Having three to five partners was far less linked to divorce, which puzzled them.
- Chicago Pastor Tests His faith as He Returns to Roof for 100 Days to End Violence
From Fox News:
Ten years ago, Pastor Corey Brooks tested his faith when he crossed the street from his New Beginnings Church and climbed onto the roof of a violence-plagued motel in the middle of a brutal Chicago winter. The pastor had become tired of the murders, drugs and prostitution that took place daily at the motel, which sat two blocks away from an elementary school. The pastor also had become tired of the deadly inaction from the city’s desensitized leaders; not even the Chicago Sun-Times’ ranking the pastor’s Woodlawn neighborhood as the most deadly was enough to stir them. So the pastor remained on the roof for 94 days through blizzards until he raised enough to purchase and demolish the motel. His faith paid off.
Today, the pastor finds himself testing his faith once again. When he came down from the motel, he thought it would only be a matter of time before he raised the funds to build a community center that would serve as “the shining city on the hill” for his deprived community. However, when the limelight left, so did the people with means. That is why this past month the pastor found himself ordering four cargo containers to be delivered to the site of the former motel (where the community center will be built one day). After he helped his church hand out 5,000 turkeys and fixings to families, the pastor once again took to the “roof” built on top of the massive containers. He will remain there for 100 nights with only a tent to keep the cold at bay.
This time, the pastor won’t be alone. He reached out to CEOs throughout the city and the nation, challenging them to join him for a night on the roof. He told me he hoped such an effort would educate some of America’s top minds about his community and help raise funds.
- ‘Sorcery’ Most Popular Search for 2021 on Bible Gateway? The Answer Is One Word and It’s Not ‘Witchcraft’
From CBN News:
The content manager of the Bible Gateway, an online search engine for the entire Bible, has revealed users searched for the words “sorceries” and “sorcery” in the Scriptures more than any other term in 2021.
Jonathan Petersen recently wrote in Gateway’s blog the reason behind the statistic might be the “most intriguing” of all.
Searches for the two words increased on the Gateway by 193% from last year.
As CBN News has reported throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, witchcraft, sorcery, the use of spells and tarot cards have become even more popular among young people, especially among Gen Z and Millennials. But Petersen points to another reason. The increased interest in the Greek word “pharmakeia.”
- We’ve No Less Days to Sing God’s Praise, But New Worship Songs Only Last a Few Years
From Christianity Today:
Worship songs don’t last as long as they used to. The average lifespan of a widely sung worship song is about a third of what it was 30 years ago, according to a study that will be published in the magazineWorship Leader in January.
For the study, Mike Tapper, a religion professor at Southern Wesleyan University, brought together two data analysts and two worship ministers to look at decades of records from Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI). The licensing organization provides copyright coverage for about 160,000 churches in North America and receives rotating reports on the worship music that is sung in those churches, tracking about 10,000 congregations at a time.
Looking at the top songs at those churches from 1988 to 2020, the researchers were able to identify a common life cycle for popular worship music, Tapper told CT. A song typically appears on the charts, rises, peaks, and then fades away as worship teams drop it from their Sunday morning set lists.
But the average arc of a worship song’s popularity has dramatically shortened, from 10 to 12 years to a mere 3 or 4. The researchers don’t know why.
- Former Senator, Republican Presidential Candidate Bob Dole Dies At 98
From the Daily Wire:
Former Kansas senator and Republican presidential candidate Robert Joseph Dole passed away early Sunday morning at the age of 98.
According to a statement released by the Elizabeth Dole Foundation, the World War II veteran and longtime politician passed in his sleep.
“It is with heavy hearts we announce that Senator Robert Joseph Dole died early this morning in his sleep. At his death, at age 98, he had served the United States of America faithfully for 79 years. More information coming soon,” the Foundation shared in a tweet.
Dole served as top Republican in the Senate for some 11 years — a feat beaten only by current Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — and is one of only eight senators in history to have received a Congressional Gold Medal.
10. 56 Years Later, Religiously Themed Christmas Postage Stamps Still Stick and Deliver the Reason for the Season
From The Daily Citizen:
Step up to any United States Post Office counter or log onto its official government-sponsored website, and anyone in the market for “Christmas”-themed postage stamps has three options:
- “A visit from St. Nick”
- “Otters in Snow”
- “Our Lady of Guapulo” – an 18th-century Peruvian painting of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus.
That a Christmas stamp is available featuring a depiction of the religious roots of the holiday seems almost obvious – but for two points of consideration:
First, Christmas-themed postage stamps, let alone “religious”-themed ones, are actually relatively new, only dating back to 1962.
Second, given the cultural revolution many of us have been living through at the hands of secular zealots determined to rid society of any and all references to faith – it’s somewhat remarkable that a government-sponsored religious stamp has survived the recent attacks on faith.
The availability of a government-issued “religious” Christmas stamp should give us hope that all is not lost in today’s increasingly mixed-up culture. Only blinded ideologues and radicals somehow see such stamps as the government’s endorsement of a particular faith. After all, the Postal Service also sells stamps acknowledging the celebrations of Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Diwali and EID.
It would be good for Christians who mail Christmas cards to request and purchase “Madonna and Child” stamps. Make a statement and provide a witness to the true reason for the season. Christmas isn’t about Santa Claus or snow-covered mammals – it’s the greatest story ever told about the greatest man who ever lived.
