Gay Censorship Turned Back in Rhode Island

From Accuracy in Academia:

Rhode Island is a small state with a big censorship problem. Last week, high school junior Liz Bierendy was putting the finishing touches on a sketch for the hallway mural when an assistant principal stopped her. The design was too controversial, he insisted, because it included the picture of a married man and woman. According to the school officials, the image was offensive because it “may not represent the life experiences of many of the students at Pilgrim High School.” Liz’s idea was to show the life journey of a young boy to adulthood, ending with the scene of a husband, wife, and son with wedding rings over their heads. After the complaint of a single student, administrators ordered a custodian to paint over the offending section of Liz’s mural until she could find “alternative ways” to show the progression to adulthood.

The 17-year-old artist was as surprised as anyone by the school’s overreaction. “I hope I didn’t offend anyone,” she told local reporters. “I didn’t want to make anyone mad.” On the contrary, most parents are speaking out in Bierendy’s defense. “Political correctness is ruining America,” said one father. Even the local newscasters shook their heads and asked, “What isn’t offensive these days?”

Of course, the irony is that modern art has been the license for dung on the Virgin Mary, ants crawling on Jesus’s face, defecating nativities, Barbies dismembered in blenders—and traditional marriage is what shocks some people? Even more outrageous, those “alternative” unions the principal recommended aren’t even legal in Rhode Island! Liz’s representation of marriage was completely aligned with state law, which is what makes this incident so alarming. If this kind of viewpoint discrimination is tolerated now—in states that don’t even recognize homosexual relationships—imagine the censorship of an entire nation with same-sex “marriage!”

People wonder how the homosexual agenda could possibly affect them? Well, this is a perfect illustration. Americans are free to “love” whom they choose, but the freedom of religion, of expression, and speech cannot coexist in a culture that forces the public affirmation of homosexuality. Something has to give—and all too often, that something is traditional values. Fortunately for Liz, Superintendent Peter Horoschak felt enough blowback from the local community to step in. He overruled the school’s administrators and said it was time to let Bierendy “finish her vision.”

See more on the Huffington Post, where (oddly for a liberal outlet) the comments overwhelmingly support the mural.

Evangelical Protestant Men As Husbands and Fathers

This is not a new study, but since we haven’t seen it before, probably a lot of our readers haven’t either. From the website of the University of Virginia:

Even though they favor a traditional, patriarchal family structure, Evangelical Protestant men make some of the best husbands and fathers, according to a recent study by W. Bradford Wilcox, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia.

“Theirs is a very soft patriarchy,” Wilcox writes in his new book, “Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands,” recently released in time for Father’s Day.

In his comparative study of American husbands and fathers — which focuses on mainline Protestants, Evangelical Protestants and religiously unaffiliated families Wilcox asks the question: How does religion influence the family attitudes and practices of married men with children?

To seek the answer, he examines data gathered by two well-regarded, national social surveys, the General Social Survey (1990-98), and the National Survey of Families and Households (1987-88 and 1992-94). His book addresses a neglected field – that of religious influences on social life, according to the University of Chicago Press, which brought out the book as part of its Morality and Society Series, edited by Alan Wolfe.

Wilcox’s findings include:

• Evangelical Protestant family men who frequently attend church have the highest rates of involvement in one-on-one activities and youth activities of any major religious group in the United States;
• Churchgoing Evangelical Protestant family men are more likely than any other major religious or secular group to know where their children are at all times;
• Evangelical Protestant wives whose husbands attend church regularly report the highest levels of happiness with their husbands’ love and affection of any major religious or secular group in the study;
• Evangelical Protestant wives whose husbands attend church regularly reported the lowest levels of domestic violence of any major religious or secular group studied;
• Mainline Protestant family men who attend church regularly are also more involved and affectionate with their children than religiously unaffiliated men.

So does this study, in effect, dis Catholic men?

In reality Catholics are a very diverse group, including a lot of men who are only nominally Catholic and pretty secular. But Catholic men who take their religion seriously and try to live by the faith have to be pretty much like churchgoing Evangelical Protestant family men.

Liberals are always espousing this or that policy “for the children.” But their concern for the children never goes beyond wanting more and more government programs which rival or preempt the family, and are run (quite typically) by secular bureaucrats. A real concern “for the children” would involve support for the kinds of families that Christian men are part of.