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News

Christian ads promoting Biblical moral standards pulled after complaints

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This story is from Life Site News.

Excerpt:

The Christian group “Bus Stop Bible Studies” has voluntarily removed one of the forty ads it is currently running on Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) buses and streetcars because the transit authority received some complaints about one of the “Life Questions” posed for consideration by riders.

The ad in question asks “Does God care if I’m gay?” and directs the reader to the Bus Stop Bible Studies website to find the answer, which said, in part, “We know from passages throughout Scripture that God hates homosexual acts BUT no more than any other sinful act. Some individuals seem to place homosexual acts in a special class – God does not. Sin is sin.

“Homosexual activity is no better or worse than heterosexuals engaging in sexual activity outside of marriage. The Bible refers to these people as fornicators.”

This answer has since been removed from the website and replaced by a comment from the Bus Stop Bible Studies founder David Harrison saying, “It has become apparent that, while one is free to ask the question, `Does God care if I’m gay?’ one is not so free to answer the question from a Biblical perspective.

[…]Harrison told the National Post that he supported last year’s controversial Atheist Bus Ad campaign, which had said, “There’s probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” posted on TTC vehicles, saying they were an expression of freedom of speech.

With regard to the restrictions now imposed on his campaign he observed, “The prevailing attitude at the time is you’re free to say anything that I’m in agreement with, which is not real dialogue. In a supposedly liberal society, ‘liberal’ has become a one-word oxymoron.”

Actually, this is a pretty moderate answer. Aren’t Christians even allowed to embrace a Biblical position on morality in public anymore? I know that Toronto isn’t Calgary, or even Ottawa, but this is ridiculous.

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Do public school teachers want to give children a quality education?

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The Miami Herald reports on a new bill designed to improve education quality. (H/T Weekly Standard via ECM)

Excerpt:

The proposed law, which passed the House of Representatives 64-55 and the Senate 21-17, would base half a teacher’s evaluation on progress that students make on tests, most of which have not yet been developed. If the students improve, educators could earn more money.

The current system rewards teachers based on years of experience, advanced degrees and extra certification.

Got that? So the bill would make it law for teachers to be paid based on their performance, (at least a little), just the way that you buy things from Amazon.com and Wal-Mart in the private sector. If you don’t like what you’re getting, then why should be forced to pay more for it?

Well, here’s what the unionized public school teachers did:

Miami-Dade schools are open Monday and parents are told their kids should come to class as usual, despite hundreds of teachers planning to call in sick to protest controversial legislation that would overhaul teacher pay and tenure.

At John A. Ferguson Senior High School in West Kendall Monday morning, the teacher parking lots weren’t as full as usual.

“There’s nobody at school,” said 17-year-old Stephanie Barrios. “Everyone’s being relocated to the cafeteria and gym.”

She said a two-page handout listed the number of absent teachers on Monday — about 180 out of 600, Stephanie estimated.

Unionized public school teachers are not actually grown-ups. They are in a state of arrested development, hoping to put off the demands of adulthood by throwing tantrums whenever anyone threatens to take away their over-paid, underperformed jobs. There should not even be a federal department of education, in my view, and teachers should not be allowed to unionize. Why should parents be forced to pay for a low-quality education, which is really nothing more than coercive indoctrination of children by the secular left? Private school teachers are hard workers – they get paid based on the quality of what they produce.

This article is a fine, fine piece by Mary Katherine Ham, and I highly recommend that you click through and read the whole thing. I wish I had written it myself, since school choice is a big concern of mine. It should be a concern for all parents. We need to be pushing for more homeschooling protection and more school voucher programs.

UPDATE: I’ve received an e-mail from a hard-worker public school teacher who wanted me to say that not all teachers are happy with what the unions do, and that some public school teachers do work hard in spite of the anti-child, anti-parent stance of the teacher’s unions. Some teachers work extremely hard on their kids, teaching them well and volunteering for sports and field trips. But the union won’t allow them to be paid more. Some teachers have to work in very difficult environments like Compton, CA, dealing with children who are very challenging. In those cases, the hard-working teacher may part of the solution for a child looking for a better life.

Wouldn’t it be great if those good teachers didn’t have to join unions and could be paid what they are really worth? But the unions says no way.

Must-see videos on education policy

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British boy becomes first in the world to have stem cell transplant

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Science Daily explains what the scientists did.

Excerpt:

Dr Mark Lowdell, Director of Cellular Therapy at Royal Free Hospital and a senior lecturer at UCL Medical School, received the donor trachea from Italy and some bone marrow from the patient at the beginning of surgery.

They stripped cells from a donated trachea, used it to replace the entire length of the damaged airway, and then used the child’s own bone marrow stem cells to seal the airway in the body.

He and his colleagues prepared two different types of stem cells from the bone marrow together with some growth signalling chemicals and returned them to GOSH with the donor trachea.

Professor Paolo Macchiarini, from Careggi University Hospital, who is an Honorary Consultant at GOSH and Honorary Professor at UCL, applied the cells and the growth factors to the trachea in the operating theatre.

Martin Elliot, Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at UCL and Director of the Tracheal Service at GOSH, led the operation to repair the damaged aorta and implant the new trachea.

The application of this technology — which has never been used on a child before — should reduce greatly the risk of rejection of the new trachea, as the child’s stem cells will not generate any immune response.

Now, it seems to me that the pro-abortion lobby is always asking for laws and subsidies to push for more and more embryonic stem-cell research. And no wonder, since they want to protect their profitable abortion business from public disapproval. But where are the real cures coming from? It seems to me that adult stem cell research is leading to all the significant medical breakthroughs. (Here’s another one from Science Daily, for example)

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