The state legislature has approved a state ballot proposal that will allow Tennessee voters to run back a pro-abortion ruling by the state Supreme Court that prevents lawmakers from putting in place any pro-life laws to limit abortion.
The amendment is necessary because the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled 4-1 in 2000 that the state constitution allows unlimited abortions. It is necessary, pro-life advocates say, to be able to pass laws to limit and reduce abortions. The ruling claimed the Tennessee Constitution contains a fundamental abortion right even broader than Roe v. Wade or the federal constitution and it resulted in the striking down of numerous pro-life Tennessee laws that were helping women and limiting abortions.
The Tennessee state House voted today 76-18 vote for the state ballot proposal sponsored by Republican Rep. Debra Maggart of Hendersonville. The text of SJR 127 returns authority for abortion regulation to the people of Tennessee and their state legislators and reads as follows: “Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion. The people retain the right through their elected state representatives and state senators to enact, amend, or repeal statutes regarding abortion, including, but not limited to, circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest or when necessary to save the life of the mother.”
Proposed amendments in Tennessee must be passed by two consecutive general assemblies, the second time by a two-thirds supermajority. with today’s vote, SJR 127 will now be placed on the ballot for approval by Tennesseans during the next gubernatorial election in 2014.
The bill was passed the first time in 2009 by a margin of 77-21. Tennessee must have a REALLY liberal Supreme Court, because the legislators are good. Then again, they passed TennCare and that was just socialized medicine.
Did their youth pastors drop the ball on preparing them adequately to withstand the attacks on their faith they would experience when they went off to college? Yes. But the buck stops with Dad. I failed and I admit I’m embarrassed because, of all people, the children of an apologist should know the evidence.
Let’s take a moment and look at the situation in which our children find themselves. This will help us to see why it’s important to equip them with both evidences and answers to the difficult questions. University campuses are growing increasingly hostile toward evangelical students. A 2007 report by two Jewish researchers found a strong bias against evangelical students at secular universities.[1] More than 1,200 faculty members from 712 colleges and universities were interviewed pertaining to their feelings toward various religious followers. The results were alarming. Three percent of American faculty members admitted having negative or unfavorable feelings toward Jews while 33 percent admitted having them toward Muslims. But 53 percent admitted having negative or unfavorable feelings toward evangelical Christians. The researchers concluded, “Conservative Christians have for some time been concerned about their children’s campus environment. These data certainly legitimize their concerns.”
But it didn’t stop there. To their shock, these Jewish researches likewise discovered that a significant number of American faculty members want Muslims to play a greater role in the American political process while wanting evangelicals to stay out of it. But why? After all, generally speaking, most Muslims are pro-life, against homosexual marriage and women’s rights, at least as they are enjoyed by American women. To me, this suggests we are in much more than a cultural war between political conservatives and liberals. It goes beyond secularism and the religious. On many of our college campuses, it is a war against evangelical Christianity.
I personally have had numerous students from all over North America inform me that professors, on the first day of class, said their objective was to rid Christian students of their faith by the end of the semester. That’s right. The professor openly stated in class that his or her objective was to rid Christian students of their faith within the next hundred days. Can you imagine what would happen if those same professors had instead asked how many of his or her students were Muslims … or Jews? They would have been labeled “Islamaphobe” or “anti-Semite” and would soon have joined a number of others in the job market. But faculty members often get a pass if they’re a “Christophobe.”
I’ve been fussing a lot lately about making good decisions about sex before marriage, and the importance of children growing up with two biological parents. But another thing to prepare for is what happens when your children get into the schools. If you just abandon them to be influenced by their peers, by the culture, and by liberal educators, then you can’t expect your children to have an accurate worldview. Very rarely will you find that their peers, their pop culture influences, and their educators, have any sort of knowledge about what the Christian worldview really says, what the evidence is for it, and what the defenses are to arguments and evidence against it. You have to take the initiative to know this stuff. And if you aren’t married yet, then you need to be picking someone who has looked into the arguments and evidence for the Christian worldview. Economics, social science, education, marriage, parenting are all important things to study, but people already know a lot about that just by being aware of politics and such. That stuff is on the bottom shelf – apologetics is on the top shelf. You have to reach up high to get it – not everyone has it. And you can’t outsource it, either. You have to know it yourself.
4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.
5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.
7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.
9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
If you want an example of how far teachers will go to indoctrinate your children in university, check out this story from Neil Simpson. His daughter got a homework assignment that was designed to cause her to think that heterosexuality was ABNORMAL. Basically, it was a questionnaire with a lot of ridiculously offensive questions. She was supposed to give it to someone to fill out, so she gave it to her Dad. But her Dad is Neil Simpson – apologetics blogger and super-Dad. He’s posted the questions with his answers, as well as the outcome of the story. It’s worth reading if you want to see a good example of parenting.
It’s hard to imagine Uncle Sam telling Walt Disney where to make movies or McDonald’s how many hamburgers to make, but if you take a look at the case of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) versus Boeing, you’ll see that the federal government is trying to do just that: dictate where and how private industry may do business. And it’s doing so to bolster one of President Barack Obama’s favorite special interests—labor unions.
To catch you up on the story, Boeing Corporation decided to build a new assembly plant in Charleston, South Carolina, in order to produce the 787 Dreamliner. The NLRB (which is responsible investigating unfair labor practices) got wind of the decision and last month filed a complaint against Boeing, alleging that the company decided to build the plant in South Carolina out of retaliation for union strikes at its Washington state facilities. Nevermind that Boeing actually added 2,000 jobs in Washington on this particular project.
South Carolina is a right-to-work state, meaning that Boeing can hire non-union workers. For fans of big labor (like President Obama and his allies), right-to-work states are a threat to unions’ dominance. (It’s worth noting that the NLRB today is composed of four members, three of whom are Obama appointees.)
The NLRB’s intentions, then, could be easily inferred. It is doing all it can to help unions at the expense of right-to-work states, corporations and at the end of the day, American workers. But in this case, we have even more than inference.
This is important. The way to destroy the Democrats as a political party is to go after their funding.And a lot of their funding is taken from union workers, many of whom are social conservatives who don’t agree with Democrat priorities like taxpayer-funding of abortions and legalizing same-sex marriage.
As Oregon teachers and lawmakers continue brainstorming various education reforms, getting rid of mandatory union dues should be at the top of the list.
That’s nothing against the Oregon Education Association. As far as I can tell, OEA has well-meaning, knowledgeable people working for it. And unlike in Washington, where the state-level teachers union was recently riddled with lawsuits over how it spends members’ dues, Oregon teachers who have had unacceptable run-ins with their state-level union either don’t exist or are hard to find.
But no matter how decent a job a union does, a teacher should never be forced to give it money as a condition of his or her employment, especially when unions are known to engage in all sorts of politicking. Just imagine if your employer took a portion of your paycheck each month and spent it furthering causes and issues and candidates with which you disagreed.
As Susan Stacy, a special education teacher in Seaside, said, “I don’t agree with a lot of the policies or pursuits of the NEA or the OEA. And when they support organizations or causes I flat out disagree with, I don’t think I should be forced to support them. Even when it comes to organizations I think are good, it should be my choice to support them.”
Stacy has been teaching in Oregon for 12 years. Before that, she taught for five years in Utah, a state without compulsory unionism. When she was hired here, she was surprised when she received her first paycheck to find a deduction for union dues. She asked her district what it was all about since she wasn’t planning to be a member and then was informed that in Oregon she had to pay dues.
“I was incensed,” she said.
[…]Taxpayers should be against compulsory union dues, too. After all, taxpayers employ teachers, not unions. It’s crazy that the state allows a union to take hundreds of dollars from 47,000-plus educators each year to help further its agenda. While the majority of the union’s work involves collective bargaining, the union regularly opposes charter schools and partakes in legislative battles to eliminate them. It routinely backs Democrats, endorsing just eight Republicans from among 90 state races in 2008.
There is a move to pass a right-to-work law on right now in New Hampshire. This would allow workers to work without being forced to join a union, and to pay union dues.
