2,000 in Chicago Demand Libraries Protect Kids from Web Porn     5/29/2002

2,000 in Chicago Demand Libraries Protect Kids from Web Porn
CWA’s Valente, City Pastors Blast Filter Foe American Library Association
By

A Case for Filters

More than 2,000 protesters rallied outside Chicago’s Harold Washington Library on Sunday to demand protections for children from Internet porn. Led by a coalition of black pastors, the group staged the rally after several unproductive meetings with the library board and Library Commissioner Mary Dempsey.

Kathy Valente, Concerned Women for America’s acting Illinois state director, spoke at the event. Valente said that protesters marched around the building after the rally, which featured several speakers. The event received heavy media attention.

Valente told participants that innocent word searches on the Web for anything from Barbie to Bambi, Chevy to Wrestling, could take a child straight to hard-core pornography.

“Pornography is a tool of rapists and child molesters,” Valente said. “Molesters use it to stimulate themselves and teach their young victim what to do. Pornography also promotes the rape myth, that when a woman says no, she really means yes, and she wants to be forced. Law enforcement officials no longer debate this: When there is a sex crime, they know pornography is involved.”

Other CWA families joined Valente at the event.

“This is the best news on the war against Internet pornography we have seen in recent memory,” said CWA Chief Counsel Jan LaRue. “This is so encouraging to see pastors mobilizing and leading this fight.”

LaRue said she hopes pastors in other communities nationwide will take similar action.

The coalition of pastors decided to hold the rally after several unsuccessful meetings with the library board. At the last meeting, Commissioner Dempsey told the group that filtering software would not be installed because it wouldn’t effectively prevent access to all pornography.

“Mrs. Dempsey said to me that filters don’t work,” Bishop Larry Trotter, pastor of Sweet Holy Spirit Baptist Church told The Chicago Tribune. “I don’t understand that. Even if it’s not 100 percent effective, at least it’s a start to save our children.”

Bishop Trotter became concerned about children accessing Internet pornography in the public library about three months ago. At that time a church deacon discovered an 8-year-old-boy viewing pornography on a computer in the Pullman Branch Library.

When the deacon asked the librarian to stop the child, she told him that she was not allowed to interfere.

“This is the stand of the American Library Association (ALA), headquartered in Chicago,” said LaRue. “This trade association has a stranglehold on the philosophy of libraries nationwide. Those libraries should be listening to their patrons, the taxpayers, instead.”

LaRue equates Internet filters with “seat belts and child safety seats. Those aren’t 100 percent effective either, yet we still encourage their use and even pass laws requiring their use.”

COMMON SENSE
Rev. James Meeks, pastor of Salem Baptist Church, agrees that the goal should be to protect children to the best of a community’s ability. “Then get the filter that’s 98 percent effective, get the filter that’s 75 percent effective,” he told the Tribune. “It’s just plain old common sense that we have some kind of filtering system.”

LaRue hopes that these pastors, now mobilized, will take their protests directly to the ALA’s headquarters. “They live within striking distance to the heart of the beast,” she said. “I hope they will use that opportunity to make the point that tax dollars should not be used to provide pornography and illegal obscenity to children.”

ALA’S VIEW OF ‘RIGHTS’
Valente also took aim at the librarians’ powerful national union.

“The American Library Association believes that children have a right to view this disgusting material,” she told the rally. “The Chicago Public Library follows their example. This is wrong. This is irresponsible. And this must be changed.

“We are in the middle of a battle for the hearts and minds of our children. And we are prepared to remain steadfast in our opposition for as long as it takes. Our children and the next generation deserve it!

“We know this battle will not be won unless a coalition like ours comes together,” Valente added. “This coalition is God’s answer to many prayers. We are so grateful

for what God is doing, and thankful you are all here today! Someone once said that in politics nothing moves unless it’s pushed. Well, we’re pushing!”

Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould Dies
Scientist Tried to Explain Absence of Evidence in Fossil Record
By

Harvard professor Stephen Jay Gould, 60, died May 20 in his home in New York City. Dr. Gould, a paleontologist, gained world renown as a spokesman for his theory on evolution called “punctuated equilibrium”(PE). His theory attempted to answer why no fossils have been found that show gradual transition of one species into another, as most proponents of evolution believe.

In 1972, Dr. Gould collaborated with Dr. Niles Eldredge to propose their theory, which hypothecates that a species may remain essentially unchanged over millions of years and then experience a rapid evolutionary metamorphosis into an entirely different species. PE is a close cousin of the “hopeful monster” theory offered in 1940 by the geneticist Richard Goldschmidt, who postulated that one day a dinosaur laid an egg and a bird was hatched.

NO EVIDENCE FOR ‘GRADUALISM’
Most public schools and universities still teach the classic Darwinian concept that one species can evolve into another through a process of incremental changes over great lengths of time. However, Dr. Gould recognized that the fossil record does not support such a “gradualism” theory; in a column in the May 1977 issue of Natural History, he asked rhetorically:

Can we invent a reasonable sequence of intermediate forms, that is, viable, functioning organisms, between ancestors and descendants? Of what possible use are the imperfect incipient stages of useful structures? What good is half a jaw or half a wing?

It is clear that if the Darwinian theory of gradual change were correct — the hypothesis that dinosaurs, for example, evolved into birds over thousands, if not millions of years — the net effect would be to produce a long chain of strange animals that could not function as dinosaurs or birds.

Even though the fossil record shows that new species appeared on the earth abruptly and fully formed, as described in the Biblical book of Genesis, Dr. Gould held to the view that the appearance of new species can be explained by his PE theory. He remained an opponent of teaching any form of “creation science” in the classrooms and considered human evolution merely “a fortuitous cosmic afterthought.”

Dr. Gould’s PE theory has not been broadly accepted among his contemporaries. His colleague at Harvard, biological evolutionist Ernst Mayr, described Gould’s hopeful monster concept as “total rot,” “a lead balloon,” and “a red herring.”

“The absurdity of believing in the simultaneous appearance of numerous ‘hopeful monsters,’ as Goldschmidt has called them, was far more clearly appreciated by Darwin than by some recent evolutionists,” Mayr wrote in his book Evolution and the Diversity of Life.

UNITED AGAINST CREATIONISTS
Even though evolutionists disagree among themselves on the mechanism of evolution — each finding the other’s position ‘absurd’ — and have acknowledged contradictions in the fossil record, they all agree that any form of ‘creation science’ or ‘intelligent design’ has no place in the classroom. Recently, the American Academy for Liberal Education (AALE) denied accreditation to Patrick Henry College — a small Christian college in Northern Virginia — because the school advocates “intelligent design” theory in its biology curriculum.

In denying accreditation, the AALE quoted the Patrick Henry College standard, which asserts that evolution is not a viable theory. AALE concluded, “The portion of the [Patrick Henry College] ‘Statement of Biblical Worldview’ quoted above appears to restrict curriculum content and teaching to a degree that inhibits the acquisition of basic knowledge.”

College president and founder Michael Farris replied, “Patrick Henry College believes that it is important to teach our students about evolution, but we simply teach more. We teach that creation is true, not just as a matter of faith but as a matter of science.” The college will appeal the ruling.

Printer Friendly Version

Recent Articles

Homosexuals Say They’ll Ignore No-Protest Order in Jerusalem

The Top Ten Da Vinci Code Distortions

Baseball’s Latest Scandal: Going After the Church

'A Superhero for Choice'

ACLU Seeks Mandatory Homosexual Sensitivity Training

Virgins Not Allowed!

Christian Activist Marcavage to Appeal Rejection of Lawsuit against Temple University

CWA’s Knight to Speak on Suburban Washington Sex-Ed Curriculum

New Genetics Study Undermines Gay Gene Theory

Apology Not Enough for ABC’s ‘Monday Nude Football’ Skit