DV Journal

A lawsuit filed recently in Philadelphia reads like it was ripped from the headlines about President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary for health and human services nominee, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long warned about America’s unhealthy eating habits.

The suit, filed by Morgan and Morgan on behalf of Bucks County resident Bryce Martinez, holds a long list of prominent American food suppliers responsible for his health conditions. Martinez suffers from fatty liver disease and Type 2 diabetes, and he says Kraft Heinz, General Mills, and Post, among others, are responsible for his poor dietary decisions.

The lawsuit blames the companies for selling “ultra-processed foods (UPF)” that are “chemically modified, combined with additives, and then reassembled using industrial techniques.”

These UPFs “are alien to human experience” and “have come to dominate the American food environment and the American diet,” the suit claims. Compared to less processed foods, UPF are addictive and linked to many diseases.

“The story of ultra-processed foods is an egregious example of companies’ prioritizing profits over the health and safety of the people who buy their products,” said Morgan and Morgan partner Mike Morgan. “The consequences of these companies’ alleged actions have allegedly harmed thousands of children and families. Executives at the defendant companies have allegedly known for at least a quarter-century that ultra-processed foods would contribute to illnesses in children, but these companies allegedly ignored the public health risks in pursuit of profits.”

Attorney Renee Rocha said, “The defendants allegedly maximized their profits at the expense of the health of American children. These companies allegedly use the tobacco industry’s playbook to target children, especially Black and Hispanic children, with integrated marketing tie-ins with cartoons, toys and games, along with social media advertising. Our goal is to hold these companies responsible for their alleged efforts to make ultra-processed foods as addictive as possible and get them into the hands of children.”

Since the consumption of UPFs has risen since the 1980s, there’s been “an explosion in obesity, diabetes, and other life-changing chronic illnesses,” the suit said.  Diseases formerly found in “elderly alcoholics” like Type II Diabetes and Fatty Liver Disease are now found in children, the suit said.

The suit accuses Big Tobacco of taking over the food industry and using its “cigarette playbook” to deploy “the same kind of brain research on sensory perceptions, physiological psychology and chemical senses that were used to increase the addictiveness of cigarettes.”

The food and beverage industry disputes those allegations.

“Food safety and protecting the integrity of the food supply is priority number one for food and beverage manufacturers. Companies adhere to the rigorous evidence-based safety standards established by the FDA to deliver safe, affordable and convenient products that consumers depend on every day. Americans deserve facts based on sound science in order to make the best choices for their health,” said Sarah Gallo, senior vice president of product policy for the Consumer Brands Association.

“There is currently no agreed-upon scientific definition of ultra-processed foods. Attempting to classify foods as unhealthy simply because they are processed or demonizing food by ignoring its full nutrient content misleads consumers and exacerbates health disparities. We fully support providing consumers the dignity of choice when making decisions about healthy dietary patterns, and the makers of America’s household brands are continuously innovating to meet the health and lifestyle needs of their customers,” she said.

According to the lawsuit, however, consumers only think they have choices when they shop. In fact, they are victims of a conspiracy among sugary snack makers.

“In April 1999, the CEOs of America’s largest UPF companies attended a secret meeting in Minneapolis to discuss the devastating public health consequences of UPF and their conduct. At that meeting, a Kraft executive told the other CEOs in attendance that obesity was reaching epidemic proportions, especially among children, who were at a higher risk of developing chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and cancer.’ This same executive informed the others that their companies were collectively driving this, costing the U.S. upwards of $100 billion a year, and inflicting a toll on public health rivaling that of tobacco,” the suit said.

Martinez “is one of many casualties,” the suit said. He “frequently and chronically ingested their UPF, which caused him to contract Type 2 Diabetes and Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease at the age of 16,” the suit said. And he continues to suffer from these diseases.

Consuming UPF has been linked to increases in various cancers, cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular disease, irritable bowel disease, chronic kidney disease, Crohn’s disease, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, metabolic syndrome, Type 2 Diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, depression , anxiety and frailty, according to the suit.

Ivy League credentialed, six-figure experts at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have discovered that parenthood is stressful.

Stop the presses! As The Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman is wont to say, “What would we do without experts?”

The NIH could have saved taxpayers gobs of their hard-earned dollars by asking the parents of any 2-year-old if parenting is stressful.

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend among progressives’ efforts to address putative societal problems.

First, these “solutions” pander to the basest instincts of humankind: selfish, self-centered, self-seeking, undisciplined, tribal. Parenthood stressful? Don’t have children.

Second, the sum total of these proposals either harms the purported beneficiaries or make matters worse, which in turn precipitates cries for additional misguided fixes. Concepts like self-discipline, character building, self sacrifice, accountability, perseverance, hard work are rarely mentioned.

President Joe Biden, employing the cover of compassion to forgive billions of student debt in return for the votes of the grateful tens of thousands who squandered their college years pursuing worthless degrees, is but one example of liberals’ pandering to the all-too-human wish to get something for nothing.

Student loan forgiveness is one blatant example. There are other less obvious ploys.

Many in the woke community now proclaim obesity as beautiful. Check-out the many television commercials featuring rotund spokespersons for this product or that. Cheerleader squads now include a requisite DEI quota.

Abandoning science for fashion, the American Medical Association has classified Body Mass Index (BMI), a measure for diagnosing obesity, as racist.

For members of the fat acceptance movement “Fat Pride” is the preferred nomenclature.

Those losing the battle of the bulge no longer overindulge. As Flip Wilson used to say, the devil —- in the guise of the environment, too few recreational facilities, fast food, manipulative marketing by food conglomerates, and increased portion sizes —- makes them do it.

Archaic concepts like self-discipline and free will are passé. If obesity isn’t my fault, I may as well enjoy it. Actress Kate Winslet is proud of her belly rolls.  Good for Kate. Unfortunately, her exuberance doesn’t change the inconvenient fact that obesity kills.

The drive to legalize marijuana barely needs mentioning. Ask any drug addict how they wound up on the streets and the majority will pinpoint marijuana as their gateway drug.  Legalization removes the criminal guardrails and social stigma associated with drug use.

Consequently, drugs become more available and more attractive. A steppingstone toward full legalization are medical marijuana cards with their disability diagnoses and attendant benefits.

Abortion, of course, is the elephant in the room. Hillary Clinton, aided and abetted by the Supreme Court’s discovery of a right to privacy in the penumbra of the Constitution, rode the bromide “safe, legal, and rare” to legalization.

Rare? Safe?

According to the Pew Research Center, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported a yearly national total of 625,978 abortions in the District of Columbia and 46 states in 2021, up from 597,355 in those states and D.C. in 2020. The corresponding figure for 2019 was 607,720.

Readers can ask themselves whether these statistics harmed the fabric of America and its people or made them better.

The common thread in progressives’ agendas is the license to do as we wish, consequences be damned. But the irrefutable fact is that all actions have consequences. The only question is, who pays?

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There’s no denying these are tough times for the U.S. Postal Service. Thanks to email and bills being delivered and paid online, stamp sales are way down while operating expenses are way up, resulting in billions of dollars of debt.

In the early 20th century, the Postal Department was looking for ways to expand its services. And what it came up with — or, at least, how folks used it — will surprise you.

First, the back story.

The Continental Congress created the U.S. Post Office in 1775 (with Ben Franklin as the first postmaster general). In 1792, it became the Cabinet-level Post Office Department. For the next 121 years, it did a credible job of delivering mail — you know, the whole “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night …” bit.

During that time, the Postal Department focused on delivering letters. Newspapers (it cost a penny to send one within 100 miles and 1.5 cents beyond that) were also carried. Starting in 1845, local papers were sent for free. Then, in 1852, magazines got the same sweetheart penny rate newspapers enjoyed.

That was essentially it: letters, magazines and newspapers. If you wanted to send a parcel, you had to send it via a shipping company. Adams Express was the FedEx and UPS of the 19th century. Wells Fargo was another major carrier.

Americans benefited from reading all those publications they could now receive at home, but the Postal Department didn’t. Sending printed material at rock-bottom rates was taking a big bite out of its bottom line.

In 1913, Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock came up with an idea to offset that expense. He thought his department should have a piece of the package delivery action.

Hitchcock was an innovative executive. He pioneered airmail service, made mail fraud prosecution a priority, and even started “Operation Santa Claus,” where postal workers replied to children’s letters to jolly old Saint Nick.

Parcel service began January 1, 1913. Though the idea was forward-thinking, Hitchcock leaped before he looked. While the Postal Department had set rates for package delivery, its bureaucrats immediately ran into an unintended consequence.

They didn’t specify what items could and couldn’t be sent by Parcel Post.

Americans used the new service with gusto. Farmers mailed live bees. College students mailed their laundry home to their mothers. (That much hasn’t changed in the last century.)

And in several cases, some families even sent their children by mail. No, really, they did.

The first known case was reported in Ohio. Just weeks into Parcel Post’s availability, Jesse and Mathilda Beagle mailed their 8-month-old son James to his grandmother a few miles away. Fortunately for the Beagles, James weighed in just under the 11-pound weight limit. The postage cost them 15 cents, about $4.76 today. The couple took out $50 in insurance, just in case.

Baby James arrived safe and sound. It was such a novelty that it inspired human interest newspaper stories, which in turn led to other tots “going postal.”

The most celebrated incident occurred on Feb. 19, 1914, when 4-year-old Charlotte Mary Pierstorff was “mailed” nearly 75 miles to her grandparents in Grangeville, Idaho. The trip became so famous that it was turned into the children’s book “Mailing Mary” by Michael O. Tunnell.

(That particular case wasn’t as cold-hearted as it may sound. Train tickets weren’t cheap in those days, and the family apparently economized by shipping the child by Parcel Post. A relative worked as a railway mail service clerk and accompanied her on her journey.)

It didn’t take long for the Post Office’s big brass to realize the practice could lead to serious trouble. Major newspapers reported on June 13, 1913, that Hitchcock put the kibosh on sending kids via mail. (Though in little Mary’s case the following year and in several others, it appears mailmen turned a blind eye to the decree and let little ones pass through the mail anyway.)

Though the practice didn’t last long, it is a colorful footnote to the Postal Service’s fabled past — the one brief shining moment when C.O.D. could have stood for Child On Delivery.

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Regarding kids and their phones, I find myself asking, “Can we put the genie back in the bottle?” Of course, the answer is no.

But here I was, at a Bar Mitzvah, and I noticed a boy, 12 years old, riding my 3-year-old granddaughter’s tricycle in the corridor. This was obviously a bad idea on many levels. The tricycle could break. He should be attending the service. And if he wanted to kill time, why ride a toddler’s tricycle? I asked him this question, and he replied, “They took my phone away. I’m bored.”

Upon glancing through a window, I noticed a football on the ground. I suggested he throw some leather and pointed to the football. He shot back, “I don’t like throwing footballs. I just want my phone.” 

At least he agreed to no longer ride the tricycle.

This brief episode had me wondering whether kids have lost their ability to play without technology. Also, what role did the cellphone and the larger landscape of social media play in shaping our children’s interactions with their physical world?

In investigating how this Pandora’s box opened, I learned the following: In the late 1970s, computer hobbyists became enthralled with a brave new promise of technology. Using homemade computers and dial-up modems, they began to form communities and share information. Energy and big dreams emerged.

CompuServe observed the excitement and, in 1979, responded with time-sharing services. Paying by the minute, customers could access weather, news and other information online. Even better, they could “chat” online in real-time.

The advent of chatting laid the groundwork for a less innocent online era. Using CompuServe, messaging became popular. Enter AOL, which made dial-up computing easy and introduced breakthrough Instant Messenger (IM). It also offered a better interface and a flat-fee model. AOL’s dominance culminated in 1998 when it acquired CompuServe.

By the early 2000s, kids were using IM and creating “buddy lists.” A new social order emerged, and parents were left in the dark. I floated a book proposal to educate parents on IM language and assorted behaviors. Publishers thought “IM Savvy” was a silly idea. It felt like much ado about nothing, and children were supposed to learn our language.

Soon, MySpace entered the market and added pop culture — music and video — from around the globe. Social media was now in full bloom, and “influencers” were thriving. MySpace eventually lost to Facebook, which entered the market in 2004. Facebook perfected friending with better software and no pop-up ads.

Social media’s more ominous underbelly began to unfold with each successive company. In 2011, Snapchat emerged with the new twist of disappearing messages and no paper trail.

Snapchat’s transience induced users to keep clicking, raising addiction risks. In 2016, TikTok entered with short, catchy videos and a new meaning to the word “viral.”

Consider this. By 2022, TikTok had more than 3 billion downloads and more than 1 billion active users monthly. But the most haunting statistic? Sixty-seven percent of U.S. teens 13 to 17 use TikTok.

Particularly disconcerting, TikTok hypes challenges bound for viral stardom. These have included the well-meaning ALS ice-bucket challenge and harmful challenges such as the “blackout,” where kids choke themselves, and the “skull-breaker,” where kids jump in a way that puts one kid at risk.

The unintended consequences of the social media genie have long been recognized. Reduced attention spans, anxiety, depression, diminished social skills, and physical risks from participating in dangerous challenges are among the concerns making the news many times over.

Ironically, Justin Rosenstein, who invented Facebook’s “like” button, deleted the app, as he explained to the Independent, because he felt it was too addictive.

We all have wondered whether there is anything we can do to change social media into a more positive force. We could emulate Seinfeld and pretend social media is all about nothing, but we know too much. We’ve witnessed the effect of kids tethered to their phones. We have 12-year-old boys riding tricycles out of boredom.

We could cheer the fact that TikTok will likely be banned in the United States. Still, nature abhors a vacuum, and there will be a replacement technology.

Maybe that’s our opportunity.

We can become influencers and demand TikTok’s successor be “kid-safe.” We know the genie is not going back, but maybe we can shape the bottle to contain its effect.

Here is to hoping.

Football anyone?

A federal district judge in California has enjoined the state’s Age-Appropriate Design Code Act (AADCA). Putatively to protect children from online harms, this sweeping 2022 law imposes a potpourri of duties and restrictions on websites’ collection and handling of children’s data. It further incentivizes websites to verify each user’s age — a gross privacy violation. However, these provisions and others likely violate the First Amendment, Judge Beth Labson Freeman ruled.

Although advocated to address the discrete issue of children’s online safety, the AADCA (if permitted to take effect) would essentially reshape the internet for all users. And it would threaten not just online privacy but free speech. “Self-censorship is (the AADCA’s) self-professed aim,” alleges NetChoice, a trade group representing tech companies, which brought the case.

The astoundingly broad AADCA regulates businesses (as defined by California statute) that host websites that are “likely to be accessed by children.” Legal minors are, of course, likely to access almost every type of website. The law provides websites two paths to avoid liability: extend to all users the law’s protections for children — which California self-admittedly designed to limit children’s access to certain content — or verify every user’s age.

Both options would likely chill speech. Applying speech-limiting children’s safety provisions to adults would “impermissibly ‘reduce the adult population … to reading only what is fit for children,’” Freeman reasoned. Alternatively, many websites implementing universal age verification would likely exclude children altogether to avoid further compliance costs. The judge writes that “the provision here would serve to chill a ‘substantially excessive’ amount of protected speech to the extent that content providers wish to reach children but choose not.”

Although she acknowledged the state’s interest in protecting children from online harm, Freeman correctly assessed that much of the AADCA likely cannot meet a moderately demanding level of scrutiny. California failed repeatedly to show that the law’s provisions would meaningfully protect children from online harms; in some instances, Freeman found that the law would, in fact, harm children and other users.

For example, the AADCA’s promotion of age verification impinges on all users’ privacy — directly contravening the law’s stated aims. To identify underage users reliably, websites must collect from all users either age-confirming documentation — e.g., a government-issued identification card — or biometric data such as a facial scan. (Some websites may outsource this to third parties.) “The … age estimation provision appears not only unlikely to materially alleviate the harm of insufficient data and privacy protections for children but actually likely to exacerbate the problem by inducing covered businesses to require consumers, including children, to divulge additional personal information,” Freeman wrote.

Likewise, provisions limiting websites from making certain targeted suggestions to minors fail to discriminate between protected and non-protected speech and would likely reduce young people’s access to beneficial content.

The law requires websites to document and report how their data practices could harm children and to create harm-mitigation strategies. It does not, however, require websites to act on those strategies. The reporting requirements “provide ‘only ineffective or remote support for the government’s purpose’ and do not ‘directly advance’ the government’s substantial interest,” Freeman concluded. Much else in the law fits this legally head-scratching mold.

Too many legislators in both major parties, although rightfully concerned for children’s safety, support astoundingly sweeping (and often unconstitutional)  regulatory schemes for the digital world. As with the AADCA, such proposals (when scrutinized) generally have little chance of achieving their objectives — at least not without also inflicting intolerable economic damage or constitutional violations. Over the past quarter century, courts have accordingly struck down several such laws.

More prudent policymakers would remember that noble intentions guarantee no good policy outcomes and that economic tradeoffs and constitutional norms apply as much in the digital world as in the physical one.

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“Spare the rod, spoil the child” may not actually be in the Bible, but it was on the mind of Delaware Valley state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams (D-Delaware/Philadelphia) during a recent podcast interview with DVJournal.

The topic was crime- specifically the rise in violent crime- and as he often does, Williams pointed out that both sides offer incomplete solutions. Defunding the police isn’t a serious approach, he argued, but at the same time, the police aren’t perfect. He pointed to the death of 8-year-old Fanta Bility, unintentionally shot by Sharon Hill police officers, as an example of law enforcement’s need for better training and smarter strategy.

But there is one home-grown remedy, he told DVJournal, that he believes can help prevent crime before it occurs.

A spanking.

“With all due respect, I believe in corporal punishment,” said Williams. “Now, I don’t believe in beating to bleeding and breaking bones and abusing, but spanking somebody in the butt when Johnny’s acting a fool at a public place, and you want to say ‘time out.’ I don’t think it necessarily works,” said Williams.

He also called for parents to be held accountable for their children’s behavior.

“I mean, children driving those three-wheeler vehicles down the street around City Hall at midnight, I don’t know who thinks the police officer should be fixing that, right? That’s a parent problem. So, for me, fundamentally, a lot of stuff goes back to the parents, period.”

Inna Leiter, Psy.D., director of the Center for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in Media, told DVJournal she believes spanking is counterproductive.

“Consistency with punishment is super important, and having firm boundaries. Having consistency with your kids is important, and being able to follow through on consequences. Hitting your kids, spanking, corporal punishment, that serves as a model for aggression and leads kids to be more aggressive,” said Leiter, a clinical psychologist specializing in pediatric behavioral problems.

While “being too lenient is not effective,” she said, neither is “hitting kids.” Parents need to make sure there are consequences, but those consequences should not include spanking.

“The gold standard in behavioral treatment doesn’t include any kind of corporal punishment for kids,” she said.

“This old-school mentality does the opposite,” she said. “Hitting your kids will increase their aggressiveness in the short term.”

Williams said parents need to administer correction via a child’s backside when necessary, but parents also need the community to get their backs.

“Parenting needs to be supported much more significantly than it is,” said Williams. Parents should teach their kids the fundamentals, including respect.

“Let me be clear: when you’re 14, and no one told you that not every police officer is an enemy, but you look at them as such, guess what? You’re going to act accordingly,” said Williams.

“A lot of recklessness that I see today would never have happened in my neighborhood,” said Williams. He grew up in a predominately African American community with “working class folks who had some issues with the police officers, but they knew that, generally speaking, you respected the authority in place.

“Children going to school and acting up, and the teacher is the enemy, and the parent comes up to the teacher and says, ‘You did something to my child.’ When I went to school, If I did something, I was guilty as charged,” Williams said.

The American Academy of Pediatrics also opposes spanking.

“Corporal punishment – or the use of spanking as a disciplinary tool –increases aggression in young children in the long run and is ineffective in teaching a child responsibility and self-control. In fact, new evidence suggests that it may cause harm to the child by affecting normal brain development. Other methods that teach children right from wrong are safer and more effective,” the AAP said in a statement.

Dr. Marion Mass, a Bucks County pediatrician, does not favor spanking but agrees with Williams that children need discipline and guidance and that parents need to step up to provide it. She listed some incidents.

“Somehow, we have gotten to a point where some are letting kids run the show,” Mass said.

“Kids are destructive in the most horrific of ways. Look at the case of slain police officer Fitzgerald at Temple.” Allegedly “gunned down by an 18-year-old carjacking with his younger brother.”

“Remember when 13 and 15-year-old girls carjacked and were responsible for the death of an Uber driver? It’s gone on for a long time,” she said. “In 1994, 10 and 11-year-old boys wouldn’t take ‘no ‘for an answer, and they dropped 5-year-old Eric Morse 14 stories to his death because he refused to steal candy for them.”

Mass added, “It’s in the schools. We saw a 6-year-old bring a gun to school intending to hurt his teacher in Virginia, and more and more teachers are reporting violence. In 2019, there was $1.3 million in damage done to a Central Bucks school. It looked as though it were arson and implications that a juvenile was responsible.”

And “the historic Perkasie covered bridge that was burned down by six young college students in 2004. Those young men tried to set an unsuccessful fire and came back later with a gas can,” said Mass.

“The Perkasie fire of 1988 caused $9 million in damage and destroyed buildings erected in the 1800s. How? Two 12-year-old boys were playing with a lighter, started a fire, then walked away. I think a fire truck melted,” Mass added.

The Rev. Dr. Jerome Coleman, pastor of Salem Baptist Church in Abington, also sees a lack of discipline as a problem and agrees with Williams that spanking is an effective remedy.

“I do agree that the problem with youth today is that parents are not disciplining their children. I don’t think discipline means that you have to spank your children. Discipline comes in many forms, like timeout, taking away cell phone privileges, withholding video games, not giving an allowance, sitting down and talking with your children, etc.,” he said.

“However, I’m not against spanking. What I am against is abuse. There is no factual data to support that spanking a child leads to an abusive child. We have made the mistake of raising our children off of theories and hypotheses, often by people who have never had children,” said Coleman.

“Many parents feel handcuffed by a government who they feel is undermining their authority and gives the benefit of the doubt to children instead of parents,” said Coleman. “A child can receive a spanking, and that child can accuse the parent of abuse, and the parent immediately comes under suspicion. I was in a meeting where a parent said she felt threatened by her teenage son, and the police said there was nothing they could do. But if a child makes the same accusation…”

“The core of why children appear to be so violent, angry, and depressed starts at home and the failure of parents to discipline their children. Discipline is not a curse word. It’s teaching children to obey rules and obey those in authority. It’s correcting misbehavior to improve moral character and ethics so that children can be positive, productive citizens and contribute positively to their families, communities, and society. It’s “training a child up in the way that they should go” (Proverbs 22:6). The National Institutes of Health still says that parents have the greatest influence on their children,” said Coleman.

“When you look at our children’s behavior currently, you can clearly see that at the core, it is a lack of discipline at home,” Coleman added.

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The National Institutes of Health extensively studied father absenteeism and its effects on children. It found compelling evidence that a father’s absence negatively affects children’s social-emotional development, increases adolescents’ risky behaviors, negatively affects educational attainment, and affects mental health, which often persist throughout life.

Since 2020, violence among children has increased across the nation. In the U.S., homicides committed by juveniles acting alone rose 30 percent from just a year earlier. Crimes committed by multiple youths increased by 66 percent. The number of killings committed by children under 14 was the highest in two decades. The number of juveniles killing other juveniles was the highest it has been in more than two decades. While there are certainly several factors for the previous statistics, part of the problem lies with the absence of fathers in the lives of children.

I grew up with a father whose alcoholism overwhelmed him by the time I was 12. My mother, sister, brother, and I fled the house after a particularly violent outburst from him, where he punched me in the face and left my nose bleeding. We went to live with my grandmother from that day forward. The trauma of the physical violence in our home, and later, my uncle’s betrayal of my trust in him, left me distrusting other older men who tried to mentor or become father-like figures to me. It is a distrust I have been overcoming all my life, reminding myself not to assume nefarious motives when an older man’s behavior or words remind me of my father’s or my uncles’ words and behaviors. My father was in and out of our lives from that day forward. It left me angry with him because I felt he had betrayed his family.

“Fathers, don’t stir up anger in your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). “Stir up anger” means to provoke, to irritate, to exasperate. Here is a summary of the California Department of Education’s page on the mindset of children ages 9-14:

“I may be eager to become an adult. But remember, I am still a child, so don’t expect me to act like an adult. I still need adult help. One day, I am as responsible and cooperative as an adult: the next day I’m more like a six-year-old. I think more like an adult, but there’s no simple answer. I like to talk about issues in the adult world. I like to think for myself, and though I often feel confused, my opinions are important to me, and I want others to respect them. But I still need reasonable rules set by adults.”

The English poet Samuel Coleridge talked with a man who did not believe children should be given any biblical or religious instruction. That man claimed a child’s mind should not be prejudiced in any direction, and when he became older, he should be permitted to choose for himself. Coleridge said nothing, but after a while, he asked the man if he would like to see his garden.

The man said he would, and Coleridge took him into the garden, where only weeds were growing. The man looked at Coleridge in surprise and said, “Why this is not a garden! There is nothing but weeds here!” “Well,” answered Coleridge, “I did not wish to infringe upon the liberty of the garden; I did not want to ‘prejudiced it in any direction,’ I just gave the garden permission to express itself in any way it saw fit, and here is the result.”

Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go.” Fathers play a crucial role in children’s lives that others cannot fill. Studies show that when fathers are present and when they are affectionate and supportive, it positively affects a child’s mental, behavioral, and social development. Girls model their relationships with others and often look for husbands based on their father’s character. Boys model themselves after their father’s character and tend to be the husbands their fathers modeled.

I was determined to be the father who did not stir his children to anger. A father who would be present, supportive, affectionate, and loving to my own two girls. But also a loving and supportive husband to my wife, in part so that my girls could see what marriage is supposed to look like.

My father passed away nearly 20 years ago. I am grateful we were able to have a heart-to-heart talk a few years before he died. I learned that his mother was an alcoholic and that her father was an alcoholic. My dad’s father was in and out of his life. My father continued that tragic legacy. I am grateful that I am the one who broke it! It hurt my heart to hear my father’s story, and it made it easier for me to forgive him. I had the opportunity to take him to a Dodgers game (his favorite team), and I was the preacher when my father walked down the aisle and gave his life to Jesus Christ.

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A panel of activists on Saturday warned against the growing trend of transgender-style medical procedures being performed on minors in the U.S.—a forum that was so controversial that event planners originally did not reveal its location to attendees until just 48 hours before it occurred.

At the event, sponsored by the conservative group No Left Turn in Education, speaker Chloe Cole, 18, told of starting the medical “transition” from a girl to a boy at 13 and of having her breasts removed at 15, only to realize at 16 that she had made a mistake.

Cole, who in recent months has appeared at multiple events and protests around the country sharing her story, told attendees that she started “transitioning” in public around age 12, wearing boys’ clothing and cutting her hair short.

At 13, doctors put her on puberty blockers and testosterone. At 15, she said she had the mastectomy procedure. A year later she realized she was a in fact a girl and wanted to “de-transition.”

Cole recently sued the doctors and hospitals that treated her. She still has problems from the treatment, including skin grafts on her chest that haven’t healed properly, she said. Her growth has also been stunted.

Forensic nurse Tammy Hartlaub also spoke to the group about the dangers of transgender surgery and medications given to children to attempt to switch them from one sex to another.

She noted the brain’s frontal lobe, which controls judgment, is the last part to mature when people are in their 20s. And the drugs used to block puberty “have significant side effects in adults.”

As to their long-term effects on children and teenagers: “We don’t know,” Hartlaub said. “There is no research.”

Elana Fishbein, Ph.D. founder of No Left Turn in Education

About 100 people came to the event.

The forum itself almost did not happen. Its location was kept a secret until just two days before it was scheduled. During a radio interview on the Dom Giordano Show on Friday, it was revealed it would be held at the Sheraton Great Valley in Frazer. The hotel reportedly began getting threatening phone calls. By 5 p.m. the event was canceled.

The radio station employee who accidentally gave the location on the air called the Rev. William Devlin of Widows and Orphans to see if he might know another meeting venue. Devlin contacted Pastor William Covelens of New Life Community Church in the village of Huntingdon Valley, who said was willing to host the panel discussion.

Stressing the growing spread of transgender ideology throughout the country, No Left Turn founder Elana Fishbein noted there are now at least 100 clinics nationwide that perform transgender surgery.

“In the last five years, there’s been a dramatic increase in the number of minors who report some distress about their sex and the perception of their gender,” said Fishbein. “For minors between ages 6 and 17 between 2017 and 2020, there was an annual increase of 20 percent. Between 2020 and 2021, there was an 80 percent increase.”

“This is a substantial increase,” she said. “This is not just minor.”

At the event on Saturday, speaker Sara Higdon warned against transgender activists who seek to target children for ideological exploitation.

“They simply believe there is no such thing as absolute truth,” said Higdon, a spokesperson for the group Trans Against Groomers. Higdon was born a male but now identifies as a woman.

Higdon indicated that there are considerable social justice incentives for men to begin identifying as women. “What way can an oppressor maybe become part of an oppressed class? They can transition,” said Higdon.

“And there are (upper-middle-class White) parents who think if they have a trans child they can say, ‘Look what a good parent I am.’

“And there’s a lot of eugenics at play,” Higdon added. “You are sterilizing an entire group of people. …They want to make your kids wards of the state. You can’t usher in Marxism without kids being wards of the state.”

Multiple school districts in Pennsylvania, including many in the Delaware Valley, are teaching the educational doctrine known as “Queer Theory,” deploying curriculum on gender for students as young as kindergarten.

Some districts, including the Great Valley School District, also tell teachers to hide from parents any information related to their children’s claims about transgender identities.

Though Higdon claims to have discovered an internal transgender identity at a young age, the speaker nevertheless criticized and dismissed major popular assertions about gender ideology at it applies to children.

“No child is born in the wrong body,” Higdon said, “It’s not the body that’s wrong. It’s the mind that’s wrong. My gender dysphoria went all the way to adulthood. At the age of 28, I had to tell somebody.”

Cole said that doctors “failed to address the fact that I might have had underlying issues” connected to identifying as a woman.

Cole said she “wasn’t forced into transition by my parents,” as critics often accuse some parents of doing. They took her to a therapist, she said, who allegedly told her parents that she would commit suicide if she wasn’t allowed to begin identifying as a boy. “[It] wasn’t true,” she said.

Cole said social media also played a large role in transmitting transgender ideology to her at a young age, particularly after she got her first mobile phone that allowed her unrestricted access to the Internet.

“I felt I would be better off as a boy,” she said.

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This article first appeared in Broad + Liberty.

Not only are Covid-19 mask mandates unnecessary for children, but they can be quite harmful, according to the research of scientists and medical professionals who are part of a volunteer coalition  continuing their call for policy changes in elementary and secondary schools.

“Urgency of Normal” was founded in January 2022 in response to growing concerns about the impact Covid-19 policies on the mental and physical health of school age children. Most recently, the group has called for ending mask mandates as a rejoinder to the reintroduction of the policies in various school districts across the country. The Philadelphia and Camden, New Jersey school districts, for instance, announced in December that they would require students to wear masks after returning from winter break this January. Both school districts are expected to lift the mandates this week. Paterson, New Jersey, lifted its mask mandate on Tuesday, January 17

“Children need to see faces and mouths to learn how to speak, and how to develop and regulate their emotions,” Natalya Murakhver, a New York City mother, and co-founder of Restore Childhood, a nationwide child advocacy group, said in an interview. “There’s evidence for increased speech delay for children who have been masked at school.”

Urgency of Normal’s toolkit and advocacy has challenged the findings of well-established agencies like Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics, in addition to local government agencies.

“The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends masking children who cannot even speak yet,” Murakhver said. “They have even claimed masking doesn’t impact speech delays, but the evidence is not on their side. Previously they communicated how important it is for children to see caregivers’ faces, but over the course of the pandemic, they scrubbed this from their website.”

Broad + Liberty contacted the Academy and asked for comment on its masking policy, but the Academy had not responded at the time this report went to press.

“I would like to see an end to all mandates, including Covid-19 vaccine mandates, as they apply to children,” Murakhver said. “Children and college students should also be able to participate in all school and extracurricular activities regardless of whether they have gotten the vaccination or any of the boosters.”

She continued:

“The real risks to children come not from Covid, but from the Covid response in blue areas of this country that have embraced so quickly and unscientifically,” she said. “It will take years to unravel all of these policies and their impacts, but children don’t have years because you have only one first grade and one high school graduation. These are precious moments that are finite.”

On January 6 of this year, the volunteer group issued a press release reaffirming its evidence-based opposition to school mask mandates. Their original “advocacy toolkit” was released in January 2022 and was entitled “Children, COVID and the Urgency of Normal.” The toolkit includes data for parents, students, teachers, and administrators, and is regularly updated.

“Since releasing our toolkit, we’ve seen many of those restrictions disappear and children return to varying degrees of normalcy in school and extracurricular activities,” the January release says. Urgency of Normal also cites evidence substantiating its concerns about mask mandates.

“Limited facial observation due to masking of teachers and peers should not be discounted as harmless, especially in young children and those with special needs,” the release says. “When faces are hidden, a child’s natural learning is compromised. Masking mandates in schools are anticipated to have the largest negative impacts on students learning English as a second language, with learning and/or mental health disorders and students with other special needs.” The release also links back to surveys that indicate masks make the learning process much more arduous for students than it has to be.

In June 2022, Urgency of Normal sent an open letter addressed to Dr Ashish Jha, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, and Dr. Rochelle Walansky, the director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.

“Our nation’s children suffered tremendous learning loss as a result of prolonged school closures and are battling a well-documented mental health crisis, and ongoing Covid-19 testing and isolation periods are causing additional harm,” the letter says. “Time away from school is known to negatively impact students and contribute to long-term school absenteeism, as seen during the 2020-21 school year when attendance rates dropped significantly compared to pre-pandemic years.”

The letter was signed by a wide range of medical professionals and parental organizations who would like the CDC to update its current guidelines to reflect contemporary realities.

Murakhver, the New York parent, views Pennsylvania as an important player in potential policy changes that could work to the advantage of school age children.

“In the blue states like California and New York there’s still an effort to bring back Covid vaccine and mask mandates despite some serious pushback from parents,” she said. “It seems like these bureaucrats and elected officials in blue states want to keep the people in a perpetual state of emergency. That’s why we desperately need independent common-sense public health voices who follow data and question ‘the science,’ without bowing to the political science.”

While Urgency of Normal started with a primary focus on elementary and secondary education, they are now also collaborating with No College Mandates and student groups to support campaigns that highlight the challenges in higher education that stem from Covid policies.

I have a small Halloween Tree on my desk that my mother made over 20 years ago.  I pull it out every October 1, mostly because it reminds me of Lucy, but also because it’s a festive note in an otherwise dour professional office. Tiny goblins, witches, ghosts, and ghouls hang from its branches, and it’s been a useful distraction for little kids who are bored out of their October gourds sitting on their parent’s laps as we discuss immigration options.

Halloween is, after all, about the kids. It’s true that adults have hijacked the holiday with their sexy zombie costumes and their spiked beverages (bobbing for apples can lead to serious bobbing and weaving as parties progress,) the 31st of October will always be a time for childhood wonder.

At least, that’s how I grew up. Today, sadly, there are adults who want to ruin that wonder, and some of them live right here in Lower Merion. The school district recently announced it was canceling the Halloween parade this year, out of concern for those who “don’t celebrate.” They also mentioned that they were worried about the safety of kids. But that’s an old trope that’s been around since I was 5 over a half-century ago and we were told not to bite into that Hershey Bar without first checking for razors.

No, the real reason that Lower Merion has decided to destroy the happiness of countless elementary school children is that they want to promote “inclusivity.” According to an email sent to parents, they were worried about offending students who don’t participate in Halloween because of the dreaded “religious reasons.”

I’m trying to figure out what those might be. There are some Christian sects that seem to believe dressing up as ghosts and witches and begging for candy is akin to some satanic ritual, but they are few and far between. Frankly, there are a lot of things that are much more satanic than cute little kids trotting around politely asking for treats. Politicians canvassing for votes come to mind. So do those Fetterman signs on Delco lawns. But I digress.

Amy Buckman, who used to be with Channel 6 and is now the director of Lower Merion’s school and community relations, insists that there’s nothing nefarious about the move and that the district is truly concerned with the safety of the kids, noting that “just the thought of having an entire school population of young children in a field surrounded by adults that we couldn’t possibly screen was worrisome.” I’m wondering why, after decades, this is the year that they decided to squeeze the last drop of joy out of a treasured holiday, decades after the first missing child appeared on a milk carton. What makes today that much more dangerous for a little tot than yesterday?

The question answers itself. Adults have become overly cautious, overly triggered, and overly concerned with control. They monitor every move of their tots as if they were General Eisenhower and the kids were about to storm the beaches of Normandy. And they want to impose that iron-fisted control on other people’s children as well.

Add in the additional, rather suspicious concern about religious freedom and you know that this is all of a piece to train our kids to be afraid, timid, and apprehensive of offending others in this pristine society of pure tolerance. I find it rather laughable that we have a school district worrying about the religious concerns of some parents even while school districts across the country are punishing people for not using the correct pronouns, even when this violates someone else’s religious beliefs.

Eliminating this holiday parade is much scarier, in my opinion, than anything a child might encounter on a dark and chilly October evening.

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