Odds and Ends

“Odds & Ends” are the letters covering some important topics that do not necessarily require a whole letter.

THE KYLE RITTENHOUSE COURT CASE

Kyle Rittenhouse was charged with murder relating to the events that took place in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in the summer of 2020 when Kyle was 17 years old. He was put on trial, and the jury found him “not guilty” on all charges.

I agreed with one commentator who summed it up, “The verdict reveals both the flimsiness of the case against Rittenhouse, the ineptness of the prosecution during the trial and the courage of the jurors in the face of enormous pressure and clear attempts to intimidate them” (slickgunsnews.com).

There were, as to be expected, reactions by some people to the verdict. However, the videos taken that night clearly showed that Kyle was attacked and feared for his life. In addition to this, there is another aspect of the case that included the place of mainstream media in it all.

I heard well-known professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, from Havard University, a liberal democrat, who predicted the “not guilty” verdict and declared it was the worst media coverage in the last 50 years.

Miranda Devine of the New York Post penned an article entitled: “10 Heinous Lies about Kyle Rittenhouse Debunked.” The central media narrative was that Kyle Rittenhouse was a white supremacist whose mother drove him across state lines with an AR-15 to shoot Black Lives Matter protesters. All these were lies. For example, there was no evidence that he was a white supremacist. Devin outlines all ten lies that the media kept repeating.

Also, President Joe Biden, when he was a candidate for President, described Kyle as a white supremacist and used images of him in campaign videos. Technically, since Joe Biden was simply a citizen at the time, he could be sued for civil defamation (nypost.com).

The significant point in all this is the corruption of the mainstream media. No wonder people can no longer trust the mainstream media to report the truth.

WASHINGTON POST MAKES CORRECTIONS

The Washington Post, one of America’s major newspapers, “corrected previous reporting that relied on the discredited Steele dossier that accused former President Donald Trump of an extensive conspiracy with the Russians” (foxnews.com).

Everything that the mainstream media wrote about President Trump and the Russians has been revealed to be totally false. Once again, this points out the bias of the mainstream media. So, be careful about what you read and what you believe to be true.

TRANSGENDER PRISON POLICIES

“The Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act was signed into law in September 2020 and went into effect on January 1, 2021. The law requires CDCR to house prisoners in men’s or women’s correctional facilities “based on the individual’s preference. Hundreds of men have applied for transfers to women’s prisons, and dozens have already been transferred. These transfers have resulted in intimidation, sexual harassment, physical assaults, and sexual assaults committed by the men against female inmates” (dailycitizen.focusonthefamily.org).

As John Stonestreet wrote on Breakpoint, “Imagine attempting to argue for this law 20 years ago. Imagine trying to convince anyone that biological males, specifically males who’d already demonstrated a willingness to break the law, should be incarcerated with women. Even if abuse of all sorts wasn’t a real problem for America’s prison population, this would be a bad idea” (breakpoint.org).

PASTORS AREN’T ALRIGHT

An article in Christianity Today reported this on the state of pastors today. “Pastoral burnout has worsened during the pandemic. A Barna Group survey released today found that 38 percent of pastors are seriously considering leaving full-time ministry, up from 29 percent in January.

‘The change that has been accelerating in the last 18 months has left a lot of pastors with their heads spinning and their hearts spinning as well,’ said Joe Jensen, Barna’s vice president of church engagement.

‘All the chaos, all the pressure, the magnifying glass of social media, the pandemic, the politics, the hyperdigital context, it makes sense that you have a lot of pastors saying, ‘Is this really what I signed up for? Is this what I was called into?'” (ChristianityToday.com).

CHILDREN OF DIVORCED PARENTS

Some thoughts on this from the Colson Center: “In various forms and in various expressions, the perpetual myth repeated in each chapter of the sexual revolution (as each new extreme becomes a norm in our culture) is this phrase: The kids will be fine. It all started with no-fault divorce. That first version of the kids will be fine went something like this: ‘Kids will be better off with happy parents that aren’t married than with unhappy parents that stay married.’

Last week, my friend Katie Faust tweeted the following: ‘The safest place statistically on record for children is in the home of their married biological mother and father’…

…Below is an edited transcript of Katy Faust speaking on children of divorce on the recent What Would You Say?

In headlines about a celebrity divorce or in conversations with friends in struggling marriages, we often hear that it will be better for kids if their unhappy parents get a divorce. But is that really true?
No. Here are three reasons why.

Number one is that kids don’t just ‘get over’ divorce. We often talk about divorce like it’s a cold. Bothersome, but the kids will get over it. Divorce affects children’s bodies, minds, and hearts for a very long time. For many kids, divorce kicks off a lifetime of loss and transition. Instability is often a feature of a child’s life after a divorce. One study found that nearly half of children with divorced parents had not seen their father in the past year.

Number two: For kids, two homes are not better than one. According to one long-term study of children of parents who lived in two different homes, these children (on average) obtained less education, experienced more unemployment, were more likely to be divorced themselves, faced a greater occurrence of negative life events, and engaged in riskier behavior than their peers raised in intact homes. Researcher Elizabeth Marquardt discovered these kids were not just living in two different homes — nearly half developed two different personalities. Each home offered different versions of the truth, required keeping different secrets, and operated under two different sets of rules.

Number three: If couples persevere, unhappy marriages often become happy marriages. In the past, marriage was considered a permanent union unless one party was deemed at fault because of something like adultery, abuse, or abandonment…” (colsoncenter.libsyn.com).

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