2015 | Week of July 27 – #1108

Forget the war on women. We’ve got an all-out war on children going on in this country. May I suggest if you’re a parent, you had better be aware of the war in general and in the various fronts it has. No one will stand up for your children like you can. No one can protect your children like you will.

It’s impossible to go into all the fronts of this war on children in this short commentary.  But we can at least explore a couple. First, the war on children and the battle involving origins. Children are introduced to evolution from the most innocent of ages—supposedly family-friendly movies, cartoons, and tv shows repeatedly drop in millions and billions of years and dinosaurs and cave men with no compunction. Later, public school textbooks solidify the idea in science—and really in every other class, making sure children believe they are just animals, subject to their emotions, passions and hormones. Teachers and other authority figures mock and deride the idea of a Creator God responsible not just for the universe but for mankind. Too often their child-like faith is made to seem unscientific, unreasonable and unpopular. Impressionable children readily buy the lie and begin to live and think accordingly.

This origins battle in the war on children leads naturally to the battle regarding purity. Everywhere children turn today, they face assaults on their personal purity and innocence. The sexual revolution of the 60s blazed the way for the sexual autonomy and anarchy of today and that means exposure to sexualized images and talk to younger and younger children.

While no Wisconsin school district is required to offer sex ed programs, they all do—and even pretty conservative districts feel compelled to start sex ed with the 5 year-old kindergarten and maybe even in the optional 4-year-old kindergarten programs. By the time they are in middle school, children have typically been introduced—or soon will be—to homosexuality, contraception, and a host of other topics I won’t mention on air. They’re told homosexuality and any other sexual activity outside of marriage is normal and natural—after all, they’re just animals subject to hormones, passion and emotion. They’ve been subjected to surveys that make them wonder if they’re normal if they are still pure. Too often they are expected to read in so-called literature classes novels that make illicit sexual relations among teens or young adults seem right and fun—and of course but so notably without consequences.

Add to what goes on in the schools, the raw exposure to sex—almost always outside of marriage—in every form of entertainment possible—tv, internet, music, movies,  you name it. Researchers tell us that the average age of first exposure to pornography is now, unbelievably, nine. Children are obviously being targeted. Blame the internet. Blame whatever you’d like, but that’s the reality. That’s the assault on children.

Another battle in the war on children is the effort to alienate parents and children.  When the FDA approved in 2003 the euphemistically named “morning-after pill” for over-the-counter distribution for, in the words of the FDA, “all women of reproductive potential,” essentially parents were cut out from being involved in a potentially dangerous decision of their teen girls. Minor girls can now, no questions asked, walk into a Walgreens and get a potent drug that, to make matters worse, could also very easily be abortion-inducing. Perhaps they were raped. Perhaps they were forced or intimidated by an older man to go get the drug—just in case.  News this last week was touting a drop in teen pregnancies—but an alarming increase in teen girls taking the morning-after pill—generally without parental input or even knowledge.

Federal and state law prohibits the medical field from sharing information with parents related to treatments or even prescriptions related to pregnancy or general so-called “family-planning” for minor children.

Entertainment often makes parents look like unnecessary, incompetent, meddling fools and the covert message is what your parents don’t know won’t hurt you or them.

We haven’t touched drugs or alcohol—and the pressure on children to be involved with both is huge. The war on children. It’s vicious. It’s unrelenting. It’s real. The best defense children have are involved, caring, loving, devoted, aware parents who are dedicated to teaching, nurturing, and disciplining their children, instilling in them biblical truths and building into them as many safeguards as possible. Parents—your children are targeted. Will you be their defense?

This is Julaine Appling for Wisconsin Family Council reminding you the prophet Hosea said, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”