‘Every Parent’s Nightmare’ - The New York Times

",,,[T]he issue is not adult prostitution or sex among consenting adults: “That’s totally removed from what we’re focusing on here, which is children sold to be raped.”

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We as a society derided the Roman Catholic Church as an accessory to child sexual abuse, and we lambasted Penn State for similar offenses.

Yet we as a society are complicit or passive in a similar way, by allowing a popular website called Backpage.com to be used to arrange child rape. Consider what happened to a girl I’ll call Natalie, who was trafficked into the sex industry in Seattle at age 15.

“It was every parent’s nightmare,” Natalie’s mother, Nacole, told me. “It can happen to any parent. Fifteen-year-olds don’t make the best choices. I dropped her off at school in the morning, I was expecting to pick her up after track practice in the afternoon, and then I didn’t see her for 108 days.” The girl ran off to a bus station, was found by a pimp, and within days was being sold for sex on Backpage.

Backpage has classified ads for everything from antiques to boats, but it makes its money on escort ads. It has about 80 percent of the U.S. market for online sex ads in America, mostly for consenting adults but many also for women who are forcibly trafficked or for underage girls. Children in at least 47 states have been sold on Backpage, by one aid group’s count.
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The girl was eventually rescued by the police, but by then she had been beaten and threatened by her pimp and endured innumerable rapes. “She’s forever changed,” her mom said. “Her siblings are forever changed. Today she struggles with life.”

If there were a major American website openly selling heroin or anthrax, there would be an outcry. Yet we Americans tolerate a site like Backpage.com that is regularly used to peddle children. We avert our eyes, and the topic tends not to come up in polite society.

“I had no idea how much juvenile trafficking goes on until my family became a victim of it,” Nacole said.

Thousands of children are trafficked for sex each year in the United States, but there are no solid numbers. What is clear is only that it’s a big problem that gets minimal attention; it’s essentially never mentioned in the current political campaign.

‘Every Parent’s Nightmare’ - The New York Times

There is a method to my madness,,

How 2014's Elections Will Influence 2016's Voting Rights

This sad state of affairs after the recent election highlights well a point I was making here. Our votes do count and have future ramifications:

Parties are very susceptible to being taken over by ideologues because lower party offices have no appeal to the vast majority of our citizenry. Many precincts are represented by no one. If you decide all of a sudden because it's your Christian duty to become a precinct representative, you only need a few votes to get elected. Increasingly, they have the key say so on who will be a delegate at the national convention, and who will write the party platform and nominate the presidential candidate,,,

In the presidential election year of 2016, it looks unlikely that those problems will subside — especially if Congress fails to restore the Voting Rights Act. The two states that had the closest vote tallies in the last presidential election — Florida and Ohio — will go into the presidential election year with Republicans controlling the offices of governor and secretary of state and holding majorities in their state legislatures.

In Florida, Republican Gov. Rick Scott, who won reelection yesterday, will be able to appoint a secretary of state and will enjoy the support of a veto-proof Republican majority in the state House.

In Ohio, controversial Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted won reelection on Tuesday, along with Gov. John Kasich. They’ll be able to work with a strengthened GOP majority in the state legislature.

In North Carolina, where a Republican legislature and governor have cracked down on voting rights, the GOP held onto its majority. Republican secretary of state candidates in the swing states of Colorado, Iowa and Nevada also won elections yesterday.

Two influential elections for voting rights also took place in states unlikely to be presidential swing states. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a national ringleader for advocates of restrictive voting laws, won reelection. In Arizona, which has been working with Kansas to defend their states' respective tough voting requirements, Republican candidate Michele Reagan also won her contest.

End Times Radio Host: Obama Will Kill More Than Mao, Stalin And Pol Pot

The interview drifted into a conversation about Israel’s role in the Last Days, with the commentators warning that President Obama’s foreign policy will lead to a war against Israel.

Wiles asked: “Steve, do you believe that Barack Obama is a potential mass murderer on the scale of Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot?”

“Yes,” Quayle said. “I think he will supersede them all.”

Bryan Fischer Suggests Native Americans Were Justifiably Removed From Their Land

Fischer recounted the Biblical tale of the Amorites, a group that had “lapsed into superstition and paganism and idolatry and sexual immorality and savagery” until they were vanquished by the Israelites. He then paraphrased God as saying, “I’m going to be patient with the Amorite people for 400 years, and if they continue to sin at the rate they’re sinning, every time they sin they’re putting a little more slop in the slop bucket, and if they keep doing that the slop bucket’s going to get full, and I’m going to have to empty out that slop bucket.”

Fischer then used the story to justify the violent expulsion of Native American people from their territory at the hands of white settlers. “This may even be a part of American history, when we think about the moral right for the nation and the peoples that God brought into this land to exercise sovereign control over the land,” he said. “Part of that equation may have to do with the immorality of those nations that were exercising sovereign control over this land at the time.”

Scott Lively Defeats Baal With Massachusetts 'Victory'

Anti-gay activist Scott Lively managed to capture more than 19,000 votes in his race to become governor of Massachusetts, which, he wrote on his website yesterday, represents a “HUGE VICTORY” in that those 19,000 voters “have not bowed their knee to Baal.”

Boasting in the third person that “he (by conservative accounts) handily won the two major debates in which he appeared” and “refused to engage in negative campaigning (except to criticize the other candidates for pandering, and for supporting abortion and sodomy),” Lively reported that he was changing his party registration back to Republican and would henceforth dedicate himself to helping “the Christian conservatives take the GOP back from the RINOs.”

“I will likely run for another office in 2016 as part of this effort,” he added.

Michael Peroutka: I'm Not A Neo-Confederate, 'If Anything, I Want To Be Just A True Confederate'

“It’s interesting how they create these terms and we don’t even know what they mean,” Bushman said. “Look, a Confederate, if you want to talk about ‘southern pride’ so to speak, or whatever, would be that you’re against the federal government and the violation of states’ rights, if you understand kind of the idea behind it. But a neo-Confederate? That would be kind of like you’re a fake Confederate or a wannabe Confederate.”

“If anything, I want to be just a true Confederate,” Peroutka replied.

He added that it is just a “code word” that’s “meant to stir up hatred against us.” Groups like Right Wing Watch, Peroutka added, think “Michael Peroutka’s a threat because he believes what Jefferson and Adams and Washington believed.”

National Organization for Marriage Defeats Every Republican It Targeted Who Embraced Same-Sex 'Marriage'; Group will Target Sen. Rob Portman for defeat in 2016

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) claimed victory in their efforts to defeat three prominent Republican candidates for the US House and US Senate, and announced they will set their sights on defeating Sen. Rob Portman for reelection in 2016, or if he decides to run for president. Through their Super PAC, the NOM Victory Fund, the nation's largest organization supporting natural marriage opposed the election of Republican US House candidates Carl DeMaio (CA52) and Richard Tisei (MA6) as well as Republican US Senate candidate Monica Wehby of Oregon. Tisei and Wehby were defeated on Election Day while DeMaio conceded defeat yesterday.

"I hope that our success in defeating these three Republican candidates sends a message to the Republican leadership in Washington that the GOP faithful demands candidates who are committed to defending marriage, which is a critical element of the Republican platform," said Brian Brown, NOM's president. "Together with our success with independent expenditure and grassroots campaigns to help elect pro-marriage Republicans like Thom Tillis, Tom Cotton, Joni Ernst and Ben Sasse, we've proven that speaking out in support of traditional marriage is a winning issue for Republican candidates."

Gary Cass: 'Homosexuality Mocks God, Confuses Our Children, Corrupts Our Culture' And Damns The Soul

Gary Cass sent out a fundraising email to supporters of his Christian Anti-Defamation Commission today seeking donations so that his organization can continues its fight against the "tyrannical state" which seeks to "force us to comply with unjust laws that promote an anti-Christian agenda."

In particular, Cass warned that "homosexuals are demanding rights that don't exist at the expense of our legitimate, God-given rights" and so he desperately needs donations to fight back against the idea that people are born gay because it "mocks God, confuses our children, corrupts our culture and damns the souls of those who refuse to forsake their sin and follow Christ":

Why Would People Hate A Chaplain?' Gordon Klingenschmitt Cannot Understand The Controversy Surrounding His Election

Appearing on the "Bible News Radio" program on Monday, newly elected Republican legislator Gordon Klingenschmitt voiced his confusion as to why his election to a seat in the Colorado House of Representatives has generated so much controversy and criticism, wondering "why would people hate a chaplain?"

Klingenschmitt, who has a long and well-documented history of saying an endless stream of truly insane things, seemed utterly mystified as to why his becoming an elected representative would be of concern to anyone.

"I'm just a guy who believes the Bible," he said. "I love Jesus. I love people. I'm a man of faith and compassion."

Phil Burress: Nondiscrimination Laws Let 'A Mentally Disturbed Person' 'Be Around Women And Girls'

Phil Burress, head Citizens for Community Values, the Ohio affiliate of the Family Research Council, told Religious Right activist Molly Smith this week that a proposal to expand Cleveland’s nondiscrimination ordinance to include protections for transgender people would allow “mentally disturbed” people to “be around women and girls in a women’s restroom.”

“A transgender person is a mental disorder,” Burress insisted, adding “it would take someone who has a mental disorder that would want to walk into a women’s bathroom in the first place.”

Anti-Gay Activists Attack Rob Portman's Son's 'Disorder' and 'Abhorrent Lifestyle' | Right Wing Watch

And it didn't take long for the fundies to get their panties in a wad,,,and again there is that wonderful phrase "moral relativism" being thrown about,,,

Perhaps [the senator’s] love for his son has deceived him in not being able to differentiate between loving his son and helping his son to do the right thing, versus changing his entire worldview and his view of the natural institution of legitimate marriage in order to accommodate his son's abhorrent lifestyle,” says Barber.

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I’ve heard some wacky excuses by politicians for changing their minds on some of the most important moral issues facing American, but Ohio Sen. Rob Portman’s rationale for flip-flopping on same-sex marriage takes the proverbial wedding cake.

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It’s not that I can’t empathize with the position his son has put him in. Every parent hopes never to face a rebellious child. But Portman has decided not to call this rebellion. Whether it was pressure from his wife or some kind of ultimatum by his son, Portman now issues editorial statements that ring with “gay marriage” advocacy. What a slam on Ohio families!

Anti-Gay Activists Attack Rob Portman's Son's 'Disorder' and 'Abhorrent Lifestyle' | Right Wing Watch

GOP senator reverses gay-marriage stance after son comes out | The Ticket - Yahoo! News

As much as I applaud  Sen. Portman, the cynic in me "knows" damn well had his son not come out this change of heart towards gay marriage never would have occurred,,,

"It allowed me to think of this issue from a new perspective, and that's of a Dad who loves his son a lot and wants him to have the same opportunities that his brother and sister would have—to have a relationship like Jane and I have had for over 26 years," Portman said.

GOP senator reverses gay-marriage stance after son comes out | The Ticket - Yahoo! News