Good Policies, Violence Prone Group? – American Family Association of Indiana
Light at the End of the Tunnel
The legislature is reaching another marker as the committee hearing deadline nears early next week. Next, bills will need to pass the amendment and final vote deadline.
After that, the legislature enters a weird stage known as conference committees where the House and Senate negotiate back and forth over many bills. During this stage, a lot of changes can happen, and it requires a close eye on legislation to know what a final version of a bill might look like.
I want to mention a few bills that are moving through the process. House Bill 1569 states that the Department of Corrections may not pay for transgender surgeries and procedures for prison inmates. The bill passed the Senate along party lines (38-9) and is headed to the Governor. I had hoped that the bill would have been amended to also say that prisoners must be housed according to their biological sex. That was a missed opportunity on an otherwise good bill.
Senate Bill 350 passed the House yesterday (68-29). In practice, it essentially protects the free speech rights of pastors and counselors by prohibiting a local unit of government from dictating what a counselor can or cannot say (for example, on human sexuality issues) to a client who voluntarily chose to seek their opinions. The bill will head to the Governor’s desk soon.
An important bill in the Senate could use your support. House Bill 1608 protects children in Pre-K-3rd from instruction on human sexuality and other sexual topics. You can call 317-232-9400 to ask your Senator to support HB 1608.
SB 480 May Save Lives
The Heritage Foundation has a study about transgenders and suicide, something we hear a lot about with issues like Senate Bill 480. The oft-repeated claim in the media is that transgender drugs and surgeries help people with gender confusion. They claim bills like ours (and a dozen other states that protect minors from such procedures) are harmful.
However, the study finds that states with liberal policies allowing the exclusion of parents in children’s decisions involving puberty-blocking drugs and transgender surgeries have much higher suicide rates.
It notes: “By 2020, there are about 1.6 more suicides per 100,000 people ages 12 to 23 in states that have a policy allowing minors to access health care without parental consent than in states without such a policy. The average state suicide rate in this age group between 1999 and 2020 was 11.1, making an additional 1.6 suicides per 100,000 an increase of 14 percent in the suicide rate.”
There is research showing that gender masking drugs and surgeries do not eliminate the mental health problems of the gender confused, and after the euphoria wears off, suicide risks remain extremely high for decades after the procedures and ongoing medical “treatments.”
You can read about this here:
https://www.heritage.org/gender/report/puberty-blockers-cross-sex-hormones-and-youth-suicide
A Serious Problem in America
One of the issues I wish that the Indiana legislature had addressed this session is the un-American junk being taught in many public schools and universities. Call it Critical Race Theory, woke-ism, or extreme liberalism, the undermining of our patriotic values by presenting America as the source of evil in the world, as an unjust society, or as a racist nation, is blatantly false, but it is still poisonous to our national identity. False teachings are harmful, particularly to youth who do not yet know the world, its history, and how uniquely blessed we are by virtue of our citizenship as Americans.
A new poll from the Wall Street Journal shows such teachings over the past few decades are taking their toll on the American psyche. Respondents were asked about the importance of patriotism, religious faith, and having children (which reveals one’s view of the future and the land in which we live being a good place for kids to grow).
The poll found that only 39% of Americans say their religious faith is very important to them, and just 38% say patriotism is very important. This is a huge decline. The first time the poll asked this in 1998, 62% of Americans said religion was very important to them, and 70% said patriotism was very important. The importance of having children fell from 59% in 1998 to 30% today.
One item did increase from 1998 going from 31% then to 43% today. That was the importance of having money.
High Probability for Violence?
A study out of Canada last year has become relevant following the recent shooting at the Christian School in Nashville, TN. The study, titled: “Meaning in Life, Future Orientation and Support for Violent Radicalization Among Canadian College Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” explored the extent to which different groups were open to violent radicalization (VR).
The study explained its purpose. “Within a positive youth development framework, the present study investigates the associations of a positive future orientation, presence of and search for meaning in life, and support for violent radicalization (VR) in a diverse sample of Canadian college students.”
The research involved 3,100 participants between the ages of 16 and 25 from 18 different colleges in Quebec, Canada. The study found that transgender youth were the group with the highest risk for supporting violence. It said:
“Transgender and gender-diverse youth emerge as the group at the highest risk of support for VR. This is in line with results of a recent survey conducted during the pandemic that highlighted high levels of support for VR as well as psychological distress among gender minorities.”
Those who identified as transgender or “gender-diverse” accounted for 2.5% of the study participants.
In Their Own Words:
“But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” – Luke 24: 1-7
