VOTER GUIDES: NextGen America

Posted on October 30, 2018 by


NextGen America is Liberal Democrat advocacy organization founded by Tom Steyer. This group has the endorsement of Planned Parenthood Action Fund (see here). Here is how NextGen America describes itself.

NextGen America acts politically to prevent climate disaster, promote prosperity, and protect the fundamental rights of every American.

Since our founding as NextGen Climate in 2013, we’ve worked to fight climate change by advancing the transition to a clean energy economy. We’ve supported candidates who support climate action. We’ve fought to halt the Keystone XL pipeline and registered more than a million voters nationwide.

Now, the same values that drive our work on climate are under unprecedented attack from all directions. We’re proud to step up the fight for immigrant rights, affordable health care, prosperity, and equality. (from here)

Get ready for Election Day on Tuesday, November 6th is NextGen America‘s voter information page. Clicking on Voter Guides → takes you to a page where you can enter your address and find out what is on your ballot. In addition, there is a bit of information with respect to where the candidates stand with respect to NextGen America‘s political agenda.

Note: We link to other websites to provide our visitors an additional perspective. We do not endorse other websites and/or candidates.

To see voter information from other organizations, see VOTER GUIDES AND CONGRESSIONAL SCORECARDS.

Posted in 2018 Election, Citizen Responsibilities, Voter Guide | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

WHY THOSE QUESTIONS ON THE PWMFA VOTER GUIDE? — PART 6

Posted on October 28, 2018 by

Here is the fourth question we will include in our voter guide for the following election, Chairman, Prince William County School Board, At Large. This election is scheduled for November 6, 2018 (see 2018 ELECTIONS.

Do you support or oppose using only abstinence-based sex education curricula?

Why this question? Unless parents assume the primary role in the education of their children, other people will teach them their values, and the public schools are almost the ideal place to attempt implementing such instruction.

What will a search on “sex education” abstinence only turn up? About 549,000 results (0.40 seconds). There is a lot of interest in this subject, and most of the top hits are from pro-choice advocacy and news media organizations opposed to abstinence only sex education. Consider the top five.

At least two of these organizations receive government funds, Planned Parenthood and NPR. Considering the fact they receive government funding, their advocacy role is at least inappropriate. NPR, of course, can claim to just be covering a story, but why is our government funding news reports? We trust our politicians to be unbiased?

Is abstinence only sex education effective? Frankly, the effectiveness of abstinence only sex education a red herring.  Consider what is lost in “scientific” studies of the effectiveness of abstinence only sex education. We have an unrealistic expectation. We expect politician-run, secularized schools to instruct our children to refrain from sex until they are married? Seriously?

Why do people believe that we should reserve sexual activity for married relationships? There are some commonsense health reasons for refraining from unmarried sex, but the primary reasons are religious. However, because of our fallen state — the fact we are inherently sinful creatures — Christians know that without the help of the Holy Spirit we will not wait until we are married to have sex. So the real of objective abstinence only sex education is to keep civil servants — teachers — from teaching our children that it is okay to have sex BEFORE they are married.

Since Donald Trump won the White House, abstinence only sex education is making a comeback.  Here are several articles.

Much of the news media is, unfortunately, unhappy with the change, but consider that last article. Marketwatch is an investment magazine.  What is that article doing in their Personal Finance section? When it is just going to offend many of their readers, why would an investment magazine want to take on that issue? What has made sex education, the instruction of other people’s children in sex, such a holy cause?

How should Christians respond to the uproar from the advocates of comprehensive sex education? Here are several points of view.

What are Virginia’s policies on abstinence only sex education? The Virginia Department of Education refers to sex education as Family Life Education (FLE). Virginia does not have abstinence only sex education. Abstinence is, however, part of the program.

Virginia’s standards for family life education provide a comprehensive, sequential K-12 curriculum. They include age-appropriate instruction in family living and community relationships, abstinence education, the value of postponing sexual activity, the benefits of adoption as a positive choice in the event of an unwanted pregnancy, human sexuality and human reproduction. Instruction is designed to promote parental involvement, foster positive self concepts and provide mechanisms for coping with peer pressure and the stresses of modern living according to the students’ developmental stages and abilities. Parents have the right to review the complete family life curricula, including all supplemental materials used in any family life education program. (from here)

Prince William County Schools has a page devoted to Family Life Education. Parents should study what the program includes and decide whether they wish to opt out. The FLE Guidelines describe the opt out procedures.

Here are the previous posts in this series:

Posted in 2018 Election, Citizen Responsibilities, Voter Guide | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

VOTER GUIDES: Family Policy Alliance

Posted on October 25, 2018 by

Here is some of what the Family Policy Alliance says about itself.

Welcome to Family Policy Alliance. You may know us by our previous names, CitizenLink and Focus on the Family Action. We’re still a public policy partner of Focus on the Family. As a Christ-centered organization, our vision is a nation where God is honored, religious freedom flourishes, families thrive and life is cherished.

Our mission is to advance biblical citizenship, equip and elect statesmen, promote policy and serve an effective alliance, all committed to a common vision. (from here)

Check out the Family Policy Alliance‘s National Voter Guide. Either enter your address or a candidate’s name.

Note: We link to other websites to provide our visitors an additional perspective. We do not endorse other websites and/or candidates.

To see voter information from other organizations, see VOTER GUIDES AND CONGRESSIONAL SCORECARDS.

Posted in 2018 Election, Citizen Responsibilities, Voter Guide | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

WHY THOSE QUESTIONS ON THE PWMFA VOTER GUIDE? — PART 5

Posted on October 23, 2018 by

Here is the fifth question we will include in our voter guide for the following election, Chairman, Prince William County School Board, At Large. This election is scheduled for November 6, 2018 (see 2018 ELECTIONS.

Do you support or oppose teaching that “sex is assigned at birth” in Family Life Education classes?

Why this question? Well, the public schools in Fairfax County, one of our neighbors, have decided to replace the phrase “biological sex” with the expression “sex is assigned at birth”. Here are some news reports.

What sounds like a trivial change is actually quite ideological. Not so long ago the vast majority believed that we received our sex at conception, that each person’s sex was biologically determined. Now we have people preaching the notion that “gender” is a choice, and these people have succeeded in altering the Family Life Education curriculum in Fairfax County Schools.

What exactly do the advocates for gender choice believe? Sexual Orientation and Gender (plannedparenthood.org) offers an explanation. Here are some of the definitions they use.

It’s common for people to confuse sex, gender, and gender identity.  But they’re actually all different things.

  • Sex is a label — male or female — that you’re assigned by a doctor at birth based on the genitals you’re born with and the chromosomes you have. It goes on your birth certificate.
  • Gender is much more complex: It’s a social and legal status, and set of expectations from society, about behaviors, characteristics, and thoughts. Each culture has standards about the way that people should behave based on their gender. This is also generally male or female. But instead of being about body parts, it’s more about how you’re expected to act, because of your sex.
  • Gender identity is how you feel inside and how you express your gender through clothing, behavior, and personal appearance. It’s a feeling that begins very early in life.

(from here)

Transgender Ideology Is Riddled With Contradictions. Here Are the Big Ones. (heritage.org) offers an opposing view, one opposing transgender activists.

They say there are no meaningful differences between man and woman, yet they rely on rigid sex stereotypes to argue that “gender identity” is real, while human embodiment is not. They claim that truth is whatever a person says it is, yet they believe there’s a real self to be discovered inside that person.

They promote a radical expressive individualism in which people are free to do whatever they want and define the truth however they wish, yet they try ruthlessly to enforce acceptance of transgender ideology.

It’s hard to see how these contradictory positions can be combined. If you pull too hard on any one thread of transgender ideology, the whole tapestry comes unraveled. But here are some questions we can pose:

If gender is a social construct, how can gender identity be innate and immutable? How can one’s identity with respect to a social construct be determined by biology in the womb? How can one’s identity be unchangeable (immutable) with respect to an ever-changing social construct? And if gender identity is innate, how can it be “fluid”?

The challenge for activists is to offer a plausible definition of gender and gender identity that is independent of bodily sex. (from here)

Because their arguments are so self-contradictory, the author, Ryan T. Anderson, Ph.D., doesn’t think the arguments of the transgender activists make sense.

Here are the previous posts in this series:

Posted in Citizen Responsibilities, Voter Guide | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

WHY THOSE QUESTIONS ON THE PWMFA VOTER GUIDE? — PART 4

Posted on October 23, 2018 by

Organizations and committees complicate life, but we cannot do without them. Without a consensus, there are times we cannot get anything done. To achieve a consensus, we have dropped a couple of questions from our voter guide and added one. Therefore, we have dropped the questions described in these two posts:

There is nothing wrong with the questions, and we encourage citizens, especially parents to become informed on the issues they raise. However, our organization, the PWMFA, decided it would be more profitable to squarely focus on its core concerns.

As the result of dropping questions five and six, question seven, described in WHY THOSE QUESTIONS ON THE PWMFA VOTER GUIDE? — PART 1, is now question six. The new question will become question five.

Here are the previous posts in this series:

Posted in 2018 Election, Citizen Responsibilities, Voter Guide | Tagged , | Leave a comment