Page 631 – Family Council

A Nordic Baby Boom?

Feb 14, 2022John StonestreetFamilyFamily

Several Nordic countries that, for decades, have had among the world’s lowest birthrates experienced a baby boom during the pandemic. In the second half of 2021, Iceland saw an incredible 16.5% more births than usual, and Finland and Norway experienced 7 and 5% more births, respectively. 

Typically, a global crisis results in lower fertility rates. In the U.S., for example, the birthrate dropped by 4%. In China, it was a staggering 15%. For years, Nordic countries have offered generous incentives to increase child births, to little effect, as have other European nations that did not see a similar boom during the pandemic. So, money can’t explain it.

Perhaps for some, the pandemic highlighted what really matters. 

One Icelandic mom of teenagers said: “We would just have conversations about everything and nothing and have fun and laugh. … I think that was the tipping point for me. I realized I wasn’t ready to be done with the mom thing.”

The mom thing—and the dad thing—is a good thing.

Proposal Would Relocate Sexual Material In Jonesboro Library

Feb 11, 2022Jerry CoxFamilyFamily, Jonesboro, Obscenity, Pornography

On Monday the Craighead County Library Board is scheduled to vote on a policy that would move graphic sexual material out of the children’s area at the library.

You may remember last year the library made headlines after a lawsuit revealed that extremely graphic material was on the shelves in the children’s section of the library.

The proposed policy that the library board will consider on Monday says,

“The purpose of this policy is to protect minors from unintentional exposure to sexually graphic/explicit material in the Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library and to assist parents who wish to allow children to browse through books in areas designated for minors by ensuring some areas of the library are free of detailed descriptions of sexual encounters.

“Any material in the library placed in areas that are designated for use particularly by minors shall not contain text describing or images depicting sexually graphic/explicit acts.”

This proposal doesn’t eliminate sexually-explicit material at the library altogether, but it at least moves sexually-explicit material out of the children’s area.

Take Action: Please email the board members of the Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library at board@libraryinjonesboro.org and let them know you support the proposal to move sexually explicit materials out of the children’s area at the library.

For more information on this issue, please check out Safe Library Books for Kids on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/606012047072322.

Uyghur Olympian Lights Torch is China’s “Cynical Move”

Feb 10, 2022John StonestreetChinaChina

As NBC News reported via Twitter, the Chinese Communist Party chose a member of the Uyghur minority to complete the torch relay and deliver the Olympic flame to the opening ceremonies of the winter Olympics.

The Uyghurs are a mostly Muslim ethnic minority in China’s western regions that have been targeted in Chairman Xi Jinping’s nationalistic and totalitarian agenda. Uyghurs are being sent to concentration camps, subjected to systematic rape, forced abortions, and sterilization. By every measure, it’s genocide.

Going into the games, the world already knew that the Uyghurs were being subjected to the same sort of atrocities that defined evil in the last century. The Chinese Communist Party also employs the same sort of propaganda. As CNN’s Jake Tapper put it, it’s “hard to imagine a more cynical move.”

We can’t keep tyrants from being tyrannical, but we can refuse to pretend that what they’re doing is normal. And, we can call on our leaders to do the same. Anything less would be, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it, to live by lies. Something we must never do.