Here’s a very sad story that I hope will help us all to think about making better decisions that respect the needs of children. (H/T Mary)
Excerpt:
As soon as they pulled into the church lot, Davion changed his mind.
”Miss! Hey, Miss!” he called to his caseworker, who was driving. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
In the back seat, he hugged the Bible someone had given him at the foster home. “You’re going to be great,” Connie Going said.
Outside St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church, she straightened his tie. Like his too-big black suit, the white tie had been donated. It zipped up around the neck, which helped. No one had ever taught Davion, 15, how to tie one.
”Are you ready?” Going asked. Hanging his head, he followed her into the sanctuary.
This had been his idea. He’d heard something about God helping people who help themselves. So here he was, on a Sunday in September, surrounded by strangers, taking his future into his own sweaty hands.
Davion Navar Henry Only loves all of his names. He has memorized the meaning of each one: beloved, brown, ruler of the home, the one and only.
But he has never had a home or felt beloved. His name is the last thing his parents gave him.
He was born while his mom was in jail. He can’t count all of the places he has lived.
In June, Davion sat at a library computer, unfolded his birth certificate and, for the first time, searched for his mother’s name. Up came her mug shot: 6-foot-1, 270 pounds — tall, big and dark, like him. Petty theft, cocaine.
Next he saw the obituary: La-Dwina Ilene “Big Dust” McCloud, 55, of Clearwater, died June 5, 2013. Just a few weeks before.
In church, Davion scanned the crowd. More than 300 people packed the pews. Men in bright suits, grandmoms in sequined hats, moms hugging toddlers on their laps. Everyone seemed to have a family except him.
In church, Davion scanned the crowd. More than 300 people packed the pews. Men in bright suits, grandmoms in sequined hats, moms hugging toddlers on their laps. Everyone seemed to have a family except him.
Davion sat beside Going, his caseworker from Eckerd, and struggled to follow the sermon: something about a letter Paul wrote. “He was in prison,” said the Rev. Brian Brown. “Awaiting an uncertain future … ”
Sometimes Davion felt like that, holed up at Eckerd’s Carlton Manor residential group home with 12 teenage boys, all with problems. All those rules, cameras recording everything.
Davion wants to play football, but there’s no one to drive him to practice. He wants to use the bathroom without having to ask someone to unlock the door.
More than anything, he wants someone to tell him he matters. To understand when he begs to leave the light on.
”You may be in a dark place,” said the preacher. “But look for the joyful moments when you can praise God.”
Picking at his fingers, Davion wondered what to say. And whether anyone would hear him.
It’s the saddest thing in the world for a child to not grow up with the two people who chose to engage in activities that would make him. Yet we as a society seem to be hell-bent on celebrating behaviors that cause children to be without their mothers or fathers. Or both. We push for policies that make it easier for people to have babies out of wedlock (because we are paying them to do it). We educate children to believe that premarital sex is OK, that hooking up is OK, that moral relativism is OK, that cohabitation is OK, that no fault divorce is OK, and now… that gay marriage is OK. But this isn’t what children need.
We have to look at these situations with motherless/fatherless children and decide that what we promote has some effect on this. It doesn’t happen by accident. Many of the things we support that make us feel “compassionate” are actually causing these problems. The solution is to start pushing for chastity, marriage and parenting. We need to shame behaviors and policies that deprive children of the safety and security that they obviously need. We need to name and shame the forces that cause these problems – secularism, feminism, socialism, relativism, and so on.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
I wouldn’t go so far as to say gay marriage is part of the problem when it comes to parentless children – many gay couples do become parents and have adoption as their only option.
That aside, this story is truly heartbreaking. I wonder what type of follow up will be done though and if we will ever find out if this boy found parents to call his own.
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A gay couple with children is robbing those children of either a mother or a father. In fact, gay marriage implicitly claims that mothers and fathers are interchangeable and that children don’t need both – just one or the other. This mindset corrupts society and leads to more children lacking mothers and/or fathers as society doesn’t even strive for the ideal family any more since it has rejected the idea that there even is an ideal family.
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There isn’t such thing as an ideal family. Children with heterosexual parents don’t have any advantages over children being raised by homosexual parents. Heterosexual parents aren’t going to be better parents than homosexual parents just because they are straight. It surprises me you would think that. Also, if a child is parent less, I am sure they would appreciate any couple coming forward for adoption. A family is a family, it doesn’t matter the parents’ sexual preference. There is no proof that children raised by homosexual parents are disadvantaged. You may want to rethink your “logic”.
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You didn’t offer any evidence for your views in that comment. Those are probably just opinions you picked up from TV, movies, video games and music lyrics.
But a much better way to decide what is true is with studies. I have lots of studies to support my views.
Here are FOUR of them.
Fathers matter:
https://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2010/08/15/new-study-shows-how-fathers-reduce-stress-in-children/
Mothers matter:
https://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2013/08/02/new-study-breastfeeding-is-slightly-better-for-childrens-intelligence/
Gay parents do less well for kids than heterosexual parents:
https://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/do-children-of-gay-parents-perform-as-well-as-those-of-heterosexual-parents/
Gay unions are less good for kids than married parents:
https://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2013/10/08/new-study-children-of-same-sex-couples-do-less-well-than-those-of-married-couples/
FOUR studies is better than NO studies.
I think when you are forming views about social issues, you should go with what resesarch says, not with what your friends, etc. say. They don’t know.
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I took a look at the sources you posted and I have to commend you for trying but many of those anti-gay studies have been discredited. Take a look at this study: [Link to SPLC hate group web site deleted by WK]
Also, what do you propose happens then to a parentless child? Would you rather them remain parentless than be adopted by a pair of homosexual parents? Oh and, by the way, you’re friend’s post didn’t offer any ‘evidence’ either. Instead, she made a ridiculous claim that this boy’s situation is due to gay parents being able to adopt children.
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That link goes to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a known hate site which is similar to white supremacist sites and anti-Semitic sites. You should also know that the SPLC has inspired gay activists to commit HATE CRIMES which were prosecuted as acts of DOMESTIC TERRORISM. That was not a study, like the ones I linked to. My links were to published academic studies. Your link was to a hate site. SPLC is similar to the KKK or Westboro cult that pickets funerals.
Read:
https://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2013/02/07/man-who-attempted-mass-shooting-at-family-research-council-pleads-guilty/
Please do not link to hate sites on my blog, as I do not want to be charged for publishing speech that will cause acts of domestic terrorism.
I will be deleting the link now before the FBI and DHS find it. Be careful what web sites you read.
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Oh wow, someone is paranoid. Wouldn’t you consider then the studies you posted to be hate crime inducing? Hate crimes have been committed against homosexuals and largely because of studies like the ones you’ve linked to previously.
Also, you can’t be charged for publishing a link that may or may not cause something else to happen. That’s terrifying that you think you can be. I apologize that you don’t understand what free speech means. And, the FBI and DHS don’t care about your blog. They have much more important things to be worrying about.
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No my studies were real studies published in peer-reviewed journals. What you did was link to a site that was linked to domestic terrorism. A convicted domestic terrorist used that site as part of his hate crime.
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Well the only hate crime we know about is the one committed by your side against our side. If you are talking about the Matthew Shepard incident you should understand that he was killed by his bisexual lover to get money for meth. And that’s not me saying that that’s the Advocate , the largest gay newspaper in the nation:
https://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2013/09/15/pro-gay-web-site-the-advocate-tells-real-story-of-the-matthew-sheppard-murder/
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The more you try to defend your point of view, the more our logic becomes scattered and mismatched.
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“There isn’t such a thing as an ideal family.” Definition of ideal: “a standard of perfection or excellence.” You are correct in saying that there are no perfect families, but, of course, there are excellent families. The fact that perfection does not exist does not mean that a standard for perfection does not exist. I could quote the Bible here, but I will assume that does not interest you.
I will also assume that the fact that a standard exists implies that a moral standard Bearer exists (and that He may have something to add on this subject) may not interest you as well. So, here is why I am against gay marriage: it is a celebration of an inherently destructive lifestyle (see, e.g. the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and search on “homosexual”), and I do not believe that the state or church should sanction celebrations of destructive lifestyles. I think that is bad for society as a whole, because the law is a VERY powerful teacher. (see, e.g., a comparison of the number of abortions in the U.S. prior to and after Roe v. Wade)
From there, it is an easy step to say why I am against gay couples adopting: I do not believe that children should be placed for adoption in the homes of those engaging in an inherently destructive or unhealthy lifestyle – any more than I think that children should be placed for adoption into the homes of drug addicts, bank robbers, etc. It is bad enough that they are sometimes born into such families.
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I’m curious – what makes you think all gays are destructive? That’s quite the generalization. Have you met every single homosexual to determine he/she is destructive? I’d be impressed if you had but let’s be real – you most likely haven’t. You’re just hankering down on a supposed ‘rule’ in the Bible that says homosexuality is wrong.
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Actually, we’re not using the Bible, we’re appealing to peer-reviewed publications. You are the one who is expressing your opinions or linking opinions on known hate sites.
What WGC is asking you to look at is CDC studies on the health risks to gay men:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/nov/27/young-gays-bisexuals-face-higher-hiv-risk/?page=all
Nothing about the Bible at all, since that has nothing to do with this discussion.
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In addition to Wintery’s evidence, you can make an easy case for an ideal family from logic, biology, and human experience.
It takes a man and a woman to have a child. That’s just biology. Two men or two women can’t reproduce together. So each child has a biological mother and father. These two people – one male, one female – created this child and thus have the responsibility for caring for that child. It makes sense that they would pair up so that both can live with the child in order to fulfill their responsibilities to care for the child.
Nearly every child has an innate desire to know their biological parents. Ask anyone who is adopted or the child of sperm donation. They always wonder who their parents are and want to know them.
Therefore, ideally, the child does know and love these two parents – one male, one female – who created him. Ideally, these two parents do a great job of caring for the child and loving the child. Ideally, these two parents also love each other and model that love for their child so that the child will know what love is and how to have good relationships. Ideally, this relationship between the child’s parents is permanent to provide stability for the child, not only during the growing up years, but later on in life as well. Children of divorce (no matter when the divorce happens – even if it’s when they’re adults) often have considerable emotional trauma. Children whose parents are divorced are prone to behavioral and learning problems as well. Ideally, divorce does not happen and the child grows up in a happy, intact family where he knows and loves his biological parents who love and care for him.
I think everyone can agree that this is ideal. There is an ideal family – the one created by a permanent marriage between a man and woman and that includes their biological children. Not all families fit this pattern (very few do these days), but this is the clear ideal and has been the ideal throughout human history.
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Excellent, Lindsay – thanks!
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And homeschool. If you sacrifice your children at the pagan altar of government-forced liberal brainwashing, then you have nothing to complain about when they grow up unable to think for themselves, leave the church, support government-as-savior, and elect a moral deviant like B.O.
For those Christians who want their kids to be “points of light” in the public school system, are you really willing to sacrifice your child’s mind, relationship with Jesus, and dignity as casualties of spiritual warfare? For those who believe that they are going to undue the 7 hours a day of anti-Christian brainwashing from their teachers and “peers,” please see a psychiatrist, talk to an elder, or at least just admit that you want more trinkets to glorify your lives and don’t have the courage to protect your children’s minds (and, increasingly, bodies) as God has called you to do.
For those who think that public schools do NOT perform anti-Christian brainwashing, may God save you from your delusions. You can let the little ones be “points of light” after you have kept their lights from being turned off completely by 7 hours of indoctrination each day. And, they can be points of light in many other areas where there is still freedom to worship the One True God (and vocalize such worship), unlike in government schools.
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Man, I love this blog. Please never stop blogging. I love your bold, unwavering, resolute, uncompromising, determined approach to defending and promoting the biblical worldview. Keep it up my man and God bless you brother!!!
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I second that.
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Man…that was sad
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I’m a foster mom of 24 yrs, this is such a very,very sad story. My heart goes out to him. I agree with u. Keep in touch.
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Very sad. A while back I read a Karen Kingsbury novel about the foster-care system and adoption in the USA. So many children fall through the cracks. Many have problems and it takes a special kind of person to help them overcome these and fulfil their potential.
Psalm 27:10 – “Even though my father and mother forsake me, yet the Lord will take me up” [adopt me as his child]. The Gospel is about adoption, so we become children of God. God is a Father to the fatherless. Although this isn’t the same as having a loving earthly father, we become whole when we find our identity in and through Christ, not through other people, because people will let us down.
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The root cause is people having sex for fun, and not deliberately forming a stable union for children with their choices.
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As with abortion on demand, children pay the price for parental irresponsibility, although there are cases where other tragic circumstances have resulted in children ending up in the foster-care system, but I reckon these constitute a minority.
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