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Standards? What standards?

In 2015, the Supreme Court overlooked its prior decision and by a 5-4 vote declared the 14th Amendment requires every state to grant same-sex marriages identical recognition to those of opposite sex couples. At the time I asked if the Court believed two people of the same sex could marry each other, would the same amendment allow for any or all other relationships according to how people viewed themselves? Are there no limits and if there are, according to what standard? A relationship that has existed since biblical times (“A man shall leave his mother and father and hold fast to ...

Where there aren’t fathers, birth rates collapse

Where are the babies? Social conservatives keep asking what’s happened as the U.S. fertility rate crashes to its lowest level ever. But the answer should be another question: Where are the fathers? And by fathers, we do not mean men who merely spread their seed and then take off, but men who hang around and provide moral and financial support to their children. The common but wrong answer is that it has simply become too expensive to raise children: If you just bring down the prices of things then family life will become more attractive to young couples. This is the affordability ...

An assault on the republic

In a scene in Robert Bolt's famous play "A Man for All Seasons," about the treason trial of St. Thomas More, More argues with the attorney general of Wales about the law. The attorney general says he'd cut down all the laws in England to get to the Devil. More reminds him that the laws were written to protect us from those who'd cut them down, because, More asks, when the Devil turns round and seeks you, where would you hide, the laws having been flattened? Answer: nowhere. The recent statement of President Donald Trump in an interview with The New York Times that on the international ...

It’s time to revive ‘good trouble’ to battle fascist thugs in power

Last Monday we honored the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. Trump has removed MLK Jr.’s birthday from the National Park Service’s fee-free days and substituted his own birthday of June 14 as a fee-free day. I write this more in sorrow than in anger. All told, I feel profound sorrow for America. Sorrow for the people of Minneapolis who are enduring this Trump-made hell. Sorrow for Renee Good’s three children and wife. I also feel sorrow for Greenlanders and Venezuelans and others around the world fearing what the sociopath in the Oval Office may do next. Sorrow for everyone ...

Ohio flu season going strong; protect yourself

If it seems as though illness has been more prevalent in your school, church, office and other circles this winter, you’re not imagining things. According to Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, this year’s flu season has seen a stronger beginning than is typical. “You know, the typical pattern is that we see a relatively modest dip around the holidays, and then we see our major peak in mid-February,” he said, according to a report by WDTN-TV. “What our data is showing us is that already, this year’s flu is having numbers that are consistently well above ...

Cut the fraud, not child care

Groundwork Ohio is among the organizations that has signed on to a letter from child care groups across the country, asking the federal Administration for Children and Families to continue funding the Child Care Development Block Grant and other resources. Though a federal judge has temporarily blocked a funding freeze to Minnesota, California, Colorado, Illinois and New York, there are still worries other states will have to defend their own child care systems and oversight. According to a report by the Ohio Capital Journal, the letter says fraud “at any level is unacceptable and ...