Page 1373 – Family Council

FRC: Understanding Windsor

Apr 1, 2014JerryMarriageDefense of Marriage ACt, DOMA, Marriage, Same-Sex Marriage

Still don’t understand all the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 United States v. Windsor decision? You aren’t alone.

Fortunately, Family Research Council has put together a brief report outlining the Windsor ruling–which struck part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The report points out:

“Dissenting justices criticized the majority for its attack upon the motives behind the law. Chief Justice Roberts said that the facts are ‘hardly enough to support a conclusion that the ‘principal purpose’ of the 342 Representatives and 85 Senators who voted for it, and the President [Bill Clinton] who signed it, was a bare desire to harm’ … Justice Scalia likewise … explained that to defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to condemn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions.”

The report also addresses looming questions for state and federal agencies in the wake of the ruling.

You can read the entire report here.

Giving Our Kids a Worldview Boost

Mar 31, 2014JerryWorldviewChuck Colson, Worldview

The late Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship and the Chuck Colson Center, spoke back in 2011 about the widening age-range of adolescence. What was once a developmental period spanning the teenage years now lasts through a person’s late 20’s.

Chuck Colson recommends teens and young adults need a worldview boost to propel them toward full-fledged adulthood. Listen below.

[audio:http://www.breakpoint.org/images/content/breakpoint/audio/2014/033114_BP.mp3|artists=Chuck Colson & John Stonestreet|titles=Giving Our Kids a Worldview Boost]

Click here to visit Breakpoint.org.

Groundbreaking Study on Social Mobility in America

Mar 27, 2014JerryEconomicsEconomics, Economy

Social mobility is a hot topic right now, with many claiming it is harder today for a person to rise from poverty than in years past. A study on upward mobility released earlier this year, however, challenges that claim.

Heritage Foundation writes,

“[A] groundbreaking new study of upward mobility by renowned Harvard economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues confirm that, ‘children entering the labor market today have the same chances of moving up in the income distribution relative to their parents as children born in the 1970s.'”

The implications of this study are that, contrary to the popular narrative pushed by some, upward mobility in America today is not all that different from upward mobility thirty or forty years ago. The rates have, largely, remained stable.

Heritage Foundation notes, however, that just because mobility rates have remained stable for the past few decades, that does not necessarily mean they are good. On improving upward mobility in America, Heritage writes:

“If there’s one clear trend that’s emerging from the study of mobility, we know that good schools, stable family environments, a culture of saving, and strong civic and social institutions are all strongly associated with better individual and community outcomes. Income inequality? Not so much.”