Monthly Archives: May 2013

News

Good news! Liberty University offers scholarship to persecuted Eagle Scout

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This is such a heart-warming story that I had to post it!

Fox News reports.

A North Carolina Eagle Scout who was arrested and faces expulsion for accidentally leaving a shotgun in his pickup truck in the school parking lot has been offered a scholarship to attend Liberty University.

Cole Withrow was just a few weeks from graduating with honors from Princeton High School when he was arrested on Monday and slapped with a felony weapons charge. Withrow had been skeet shooting with friends a day before and had only noticed he had left his shotgun in his truck as he reached to grab his book bag.

When he realized his mistake, he went to the front office and called his mother. An administrator overheard the conversation and called police.

Withrow’s story has generated national attention. Hundreds of people have joined a Facebook community to show their support. And many local parents are upset over what many believe is a case of a young man getting severely punished for trying to do the right thing.

“You teach your kids if you’re in trouble or if you see you’ve done something wrong, go ahead and admit it,” family friend Kimberly Boykin said. “Be a man and it’ll be fixed. In this case, that’s what he did and he’s being punished for it. That’s not the lesson we need to teach our kids.”

Jerry Falwell, Jr., the chancellor of Liberty University, had been traveling through North Carolina and saw a local television news account of Withrow’s ordeal. He also noticed that the 18-year-old was wearing a “Liberty University” t-shirt.

Falwell told Fox News that he made a few calls and discovered that Withrow’s sister is a Liberty graduate.

“I was really impressed with what a meek and humble Christian kid he is,” Falwell said. “I thought he would be a perfect fit at Liberty.”

So the chancellor made the 18-year-old an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“I told him that we would give him whatever scholarships he needed to attend Liberty University,” he said.

Falwell said the university is willing to do whatever it takes to make sure the teenager gets a college education.

“The anti-gun zealots seem to be vilifying him for making an honest mistake,” he told Fox News. “We want to reward him for trying to do the right thing.”

And that means even helping the young man finish his last few weeks of high school. Falwell said they offered to let him finish his high school work through their online academy.

Wow! Isn’t that a great way to show the public school tyrants a better way? Be sure and share / tweet this story if you liked it, because it really shows how Christians can step up and do the right thing when the secular left is too brainwashed by political correctness make a right judgment.

Videos

What is marriage? Ryan T. Anderson debates Alastair Gamble at Arizona State University

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Details:

A debate about what marriage is, hosted by the Federalist Society at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, featuring Ryan T. Anderson and Alastair Gamble.

The debate took place at the law school at Arizona State University.

The speakers:

Ryan T. Anderson researches and writes about marriage and religious liberty as the William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and a Free Society at The Heritage Foundation. He also focuses on justice and moral principles in economic thought, health care and education, and has expertise in bioethics and natural law theory.

Anderson’s recent work focuses on the moral and constitutional questions surrounding same-sex “marriage.” He is the co-author with Princeton’s Robert P. George and Sherif Girgis of “What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense” (Encounter Books, December 2012). The three also co-wrote the article “What is Marriage?” in the winter 2011 issue of Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.

Anderson received his bachelor of arts degree from Princeton University, graduating Phi Beta Kappa andmagna cum laude. He is a doctoral candidate in political philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, where he received his master’s degree.

Alastair Gamble is an attorney in the firm’s Litigation group and focuses his practice on Labor and Employment at both the trial and appellate level.

From 2008 – 2012, Mr. Gamble practiced in Los Angeles, California, where he focused on Labor and Employment and Securities litigation. Before that, he served as a law clerk to Hon. Andrew Hurwitz of the Arizona Supreme Court and as a judicial extern to Hon. Michael Daly Hawkins of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Mr. Gamble holds the J.D., Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University and the B.A., History, Emory University, 2000.

The video is 70 minutes:

The format is 15 minute opening speeches, 5 minute rebuttals, then Q&A.

News

ESPN newscaster punished for not affirming the goodness of homosexuality

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Here’s a popular post at the American Spectator.

Excerpt:

As homosexuals come out of the closet, Christians go into it. “Authenticity” is highly prized in society today, provided that what one feels falls safely within the dictates of political correctness. Sports analyst Chris Broussard stepped briefly outside of the Christian closet on Monday and paid the price for it.

“Personally I don’t believe that you can live an openly homosexual lifestyle or an openly premarital sex [lifestyle] between heterosexuals. If you’re openly living that type of lifestyle, the Bible says you know them by their fruits, it says that’s a sin,” Broussard said on ESPN. “If you’re openly living in unrepentant sin, whatever it may be, not just homosexuality, adultery, fornication, premarital sex between heterosexuals, whatever it may be. I think that’s walking in open rebellion to God and to Jesus Christ.”

ESPN, not long thereafter, apologized for permitting these remarks to disrupt Monday’s canonization: “We regret that a respectful discussion of personal viewpoints became a distraction from today’s news. ESPN is fully committed to diversity and welcomes Jason Collins’ announcement.”

Naturally, a Soviet-style clarification was in order from the guilty party, and Broussard supplied it via Twitter by Monday night: “Today on [ESPN], as part of a larger, wide-ranging discussion on today’s news, I offered my personal opinion as it relates to Christianity, a point of view that I have expressed publicly before. I realize that some people disagree with my opinion and I accept and respect that. As has been the case in the past, my beliefs have not and will not impact my ability to report on the NBA. I believe Jason Collins displayed bravery with his announcement today and I have no objection to him or anyone else playing in the NBA.”

Broussard did a good job of expressing his opposition to marriage, but any kind of restrictions on sex are no longer welcome in a society that thinks that there are no moral rules when it comes to sex. Obviously, he could have  a better job of expressing his opposition with some evidence, but I don’t see why he should be censored and forced to apologize.

One other funny thing about the gay NBA player story. He had a girlfriend for 8 years and was going to marry her in 2009. He called it off. She found out that he was gay just a few days before the big announcement was made to the public. I wonder how this sort of thing squares with the popular myth that gay people are born gay?