Trump Administration Throws Out School Lunch Rules Left Over From Obama Era

Complaining about school lunches is a time-honored tradition. From Adam Sandler’s ode to the lunch lady to ponderings about the odd rectangular slices of cafeteria pizza from my youth, lunchroom food has been a source of both grumbling and laughter. During the Obama Administration, the problem got worse, however.

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 codified into law standards that were championed by First Lady Michelle Obama. The law set new standards for school lunches as well as vending machines that mandated higher nutrition as well as smaller portion sizes. The resulting bland, half-empty trays led my son to complain, “The food at school is bad and there isn’t enough of it.”

One area where the Trump Administration has been reliable is in rolling back onerous Obama era bureaucratic rulemaking. Easing federal oversight of local school lunches is no exception. Last year, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced an interim rule that relaxed the Obama guidelines. Now Perdue has unveiled the new permanent rules.

The Obama rules are a good example of well-intentioned federal rulemaking run amok. No one is against healthy food for students, but the federal one-size-fits-all approach can cause as many problems as it resolves. In a case of the Law of Unintended Consequences, school lunches became more nutritious, but they also wasted food because kids weren’t eating them. The federal guidelines didn’t recognize regional and cultural differences across the country. The law’s requirement for whole grains was difficult to meet while cooking foods such as pasta, tortillas, biscuits, and grits in a way that was palatable to children. Likewise, the Obama law permitted only nonfat flavored milk or 1 percent white milk and required every student to buy at least one serving of a fruit or vegetable “even if they toss the produce into the garbage” noted the New Haven Register at the time.

When I ate lunch at school with my children, I would see many parents bringing outside pizzas, sub sandwiches or chicken nuggets to their children. My kids and many other packed lunches from home that were not subject to the requirements of the federal nanny state. When I purchased school food and ate it with my kids, I found it very bland and unexciting. The staff told me that their cooking options were very limited because the federal mandate which also required reductions in sodium and other ingredients.

Now some sanity and local control are being restored to school lunches. Secretary Perdue said in a statement, “If kids are not eating what is being served, they are not benefiting, and food is being wasted.”

Under the new rules, only half of the grains served must be whole grain, allowing schools to use more appetizing flours when necessary. Students will also be able to drink low-fat chocolate milk instead of the fat-free milk that the government had required.

The fundamental problem with the situation is the fallacy that only the federal government can ensure that schoolchildren get healthy lunches. Contrary to the belief of some Americans, it isn’t necessary for the feds to micromanage what every child in America eats for lunch. State and local education and nutrition officials also have working brains and the best interests of the children at heart. School cafeterias were not dishing out poison to schoolchildren before Michelle Obama intervened.

The world won’t end with the Trump Administration’s new school lunch guidelines. Schoolchildren won’t starve and they won’t suddenly become morbidly obese. There is the chance that they might enjoy their lunch more, get a full belly and go back to class satiated and ready to learn, rather than still hungry because most of their lunch went straight from the tray to the trash can. 

Originally published on The Resurgent

Should the US Deport a 4-Year-Old?

When it comes to immigration, many Americans say that immigrants should just follow the legal process and come in the front door. Several recent cases of productive-yet-illegal immigrants, many with American family members, being deported have been met with the response that they should have become legalized while they were here to avoid deportation. Increasingly, however, there are cases in which people try to follow the legal process, but are stymied by the system. The case of four-year-old Angela Becerra is one such case that illustrates just how broken the American immigration system is.

Angela is the adopted daughter of two American citizen parents. Colorado’s Fox 31 reports that Marco and Amy Becerra adopted Angela when they were residents of Peru in 2014. Marco has dual American and Peruvian citizenship while four-year-old Angela is a citizen of Peru.

Angela was born on May 23, 2014 and was abandoned at birth. “She was 11 days old when she was brought to the orphanage,” her adoptive mother said. Angela’s biological mother “was treated like a dog. She was chained to the table and sex-trafficked. That’s the reality. No running water. No electricity. Very little food.”

Amy said that the Becerras were asked by a woman at the orphanage to foster baby Angela. “She literally placed this little 5-pound baby in our hands and said do you think you guys can take care of her?”

The Becerras agreed and ultimately adopted Angela legally. In 2017, the couple decided to return to the US, in part so that Angela could grow up as an American and benefit from education in American schools. The family now lives in Aurora, Colorado where Amy accepted a job with the State of Colorado and Marco works for the federal government.

Amy started her job in 2017 with the understanding that Marco and Angela would soon join her in Colorado, but Angela’s immigration application kept hitting roadblocks. The US does not normally grant tourist visas for anyone with a current immigration application so it was 13 months before the little girl was allowed to join her mother in Colorado for the first time in March 2018 when she was finally allowed to enter the US on a tourist visa that expires on August 31. No deportation proceedings are currently underway, but after Angela’s visa expires she will be at risk for deportation.

The Becerras continued to follow the legal process, but now, less than a month before Angela’s tourist visa expires, the little girl’s immigration application has been denied. The problem seems to be that Angela’s adoption was formalized in Peru, not the United States.

“I don’t know what it takes to reopen a case. Once it’s closed, it’s closed,” Amy said.

The law does provide for an appeal, but it is unlikely that the process can be completed before the end of August. At the end of the month, when Angela’s tourist visa expires, she will be subject to deportation even though she has no family or home to return to in Peru.

“We’re both citizens. My husband and I have a full legal binding adoption completed and we have a birth certificate that lists no other parent,” Amy Becerra said. “It’s inconceivable that a child of two citizen parents would have to live out their life as an undocumented alien in this country.”

“I’ve followed the path they’ve given me, and it’s such a dysfunctional, uncoordinated system,” Amy said.

The Becerras have contacted immigration attorneys, but at this point are uncertain why Angela’s application was denied. A letter explaining the decision should be received from the government in the next few weeks, but by then Angela may be an illegal immigrant despite the family’s best efforts to follow the law.

The family has also contacted their congressman, Republican Mike Coffman, for help. Coffman’s office is working with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Denver to cut through red tape and try to find a speedy resolution to Angela’s case.

“I mean this is beyond belief,” Rep. Coffman told Fox 31. “I believe we have a broken immigration system, and this is a symptom of that broken immigration system.”

The case is an illustration how even immigrants who attempt to follow the law can find it difficult or impossible to become legal citizens. The Byzantine immigration bureaucracy is fraught with pitfalls and delays that can cause even the most well-intentioned immigrants to be denied legal status and end up being deported.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Pediatrician: Transgender Treatments Are 'Child Abuse'

The movement to normalize transgender medical treatments for children has seemingly come out of nowhere. In the course of a few short years, cases of gender-confused children, some in kindergarten, seeking medical treatment to alter their sexual characteristics have become commonplace. Today, at least one pediatrician is speaking out to call the practice “child abuse.”

In an op-ed for the Daily Signal, Dr. Michelle Cretella writes that the treatments advocated by many in the “transgender affirming movement” can cause severe damage to children and “constitute nothing less than institutionalized child abuse.”

“Today’s institutions that promote transition affirmation,” Cretella says, “are pushing children to impersonate the opposite sex, sending many of them down the path of puberty blockers, sterilization, the removal of healthy body parts, and untold psychological damage.”

Michelle Cretella is no stranger to controversy and criticism from the left. A graduate of the University of Connecticut School of Medicine in 1994, she practiced pediatric medicine for 15 years before becoming president of the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) in 2015, a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center labels “an anti-LGBT hate group.”

Cretella attacks the sacred cows of the gay rights movement with science and logic. She points out that scientific studies of identical twins prove that gay and transgender identities are not a product of genetics since in 72 percent of cases of a transgender twin, the other twin’s sexual orientation is different. If sexual orientation were purely genetic, correlation would be 100 percent in identical twins.

She also points out that gender identity is very malleable in young children. Cretella cites the American Psychological Association’s Handbook of Sexuality and Psychology which acknowledges that 75 to 95 percent of children eventually come to accept their biological gender. In most cases, puberty is the cure for a confused gender identity.

Unfortunately, a new trend is preventing many sufferers of gender dysphoria, the new medical term for the problem, from going through puberty. A treatment that is becoming more common is the prescription of puberty blockers. Cretella writes that there have been no studies that prove these drugs are safe for the treatment of gender dysphoria. She writes that a new study of the treatments shows “evidence for decreased bone mineralization, meaning an increased risk of bone fractures as young adults, potential increased risk of obesity and testicular cancer in boys, and an unknown impact upon psychological and cognitive development.”

Perhaps even more disturbing, Cretella points out that there is not a single case in the scientific literature of transgender children choosing to discontinue the puberty blockers. “The only study to date to have followed pre-pubertal children who were socially affirmed and placed on blockers at a young age found that 100 percent of them claimed a transgender identity and chose cross-sex hormones,” says Cretella. Cross-sex hormones are associated with health risks including cardiac disease, high blood pressure, blood clots, strokes, diabetes, and cancers.

“There is an obvious self-fulfilling effect in helping children impersonate the opposite sex both biologically and socially,” writes Cretella. “This is far from benign, since taking puberty blockers at age 12 or younger, followed by cross-sex hormones, sterilizes a child.”

Cretella also debunks the liberal claims that therapies affirming gender identities will result in fewer suicides of transgender children. “Adults who undergo sex reassignment—even in Sweden, which is among the most LGBT-affirming countries—have a suicide rate nearly 20 times greater than that of the general population,” Cretella says.

The fundamental problem is that the transgender politics have outstripped medical studies and laws. The controversy over bathroom policies shows how difficult it can be to enact laws that restrict perceived transgender rights. Restrictions on the ability to administer puberty-blocking drugs to children or even commit children to gender-reassignment surgery would be no different. In the end, it will be the children who suffer.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Studies on families should impact SCOTUS marriage decision

This week the Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether same sex marriage is a protected right under the Constitution. Along with whether the ability to marry anyone you choose is indeed a constitutional right, one of the issues that the justices must consider in answering this question is the question of what is best for children.

As the small number of same-sex families increased, several studies were done on the issue. Proponents of same-sex marriage have claimed that such studies have shown that gay families fare as well or better than heterosexual parents. Breakpoint quotes an American Psychological Association statement that says, “Not a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents.” According to the New Republic, the Ninth Circuit Court’s decision striking down California’s definition of marriage law says, “Children raised by gay or lesbian parents are as likely as children raised by heterosexual parents to be healthy, successful, and well-adjusted. The research supporting this conclusion is accepted beyond serious debate in the field of developmental psychology.” In truth, the evidence so far has been inconclusive, but two recent studies shed doubt on these claims.

Last year a study seemed to confirm what many people already suspected. The New Family Structures Study, published in Social Science Research in July 2012, has one of the largest sample sizes of any study on the subject as well as improved methodology over previous studies. From more than 15,000 people, the author of the study, Mark Regnerus, found 175 people with mothers and 73 people with fathers who were in gay relationships for at least part of their childhood.

One surprising finding from the study was that Georgia has more children living with same-sex couples than any other state. In general, gay families live in the same places heterosexual families do. Gay families are not concentrated in homosexual meccas like San Francisco.

Not so surprising is the fact that gay families tend to be less stable than traditional families. Only two of the 175 children of lesbians reported spending their whole childhood with a single set of parents. None of the children of gay men spent their entire childhood with the same two parents. According to the study, only 57 percent of the children spent more than four months with the same lesbian parents. Only 23 percent had the same parents for three years.

This instability in the family leads to problems for the children. Regnerus said in Slate, “Such respondents were more apt to report being unemployed, less healthy, more depressed, more likely to have cheated on a spouse or partner, smoke more pot, had trouble with the law, and report… more sexual victimization.”

Unsurprisingly, the Regnerus study has sparked criticism. Writing in Slate, William Saletan points out that the study followed children of gay parents before same sex marriage was legal in any U.S. state. Saletan also argues that because they were not part of families with two gay parents who decided to have children, the people from the study “aren’t the products of same-sex households. They’re the products of broken homes.” Of course, it is biologically impossible for same sex couples to have children of their own without medical intervention.

Regnerus’ study is somewhat supported by a new study released earlier this month by Third Way, a self-proclaimed moderate think tank. The study, “Wayward Sons,” supports the idea that boys “seem to suffer” in single parent households without a male role model. While the study does not directly address same-sex marriage, it underscores the fact that there are differences between the genders and that children need positive role models of the same gender. Two mothers or two fathers do not seem to be equivalent to a mother and a father.

As Doug Mainwaring points out in the Public Discourse, “Genderless marriage is not marriage at all. It is something else entirely.” Mainwaring, a gay man who became a father in a heterosexual marriage, says that reason and experience rather than religion and tradition led him to two unexpected conclusions. First, he says, “Creating a family with another man is not completely equal to creating a family with a woman.” Second, he argues that “denying children parents of both genders at home is an objective evil. Kids need and yearn for both.”

At this point, the evidence of the impact of same sex marriage on children and society at large is inconclusive. If the Supreme Court leaves the matter in the hands of Congress and the states, there will be ample data for future studies on the impact of same sex marriage and parenting. Currently, nine states and the District of Columbia permit marriage between same sex couples, many of whom are undoubtedly raising children. If new data supports the findings of these recent studies that children, especially boys, really do need both a father and a mother, the societal implications of the Supreme Court’s decision could be earthshaking.

Originally published on Examiner.com:

http://www.examiner.com/article/recent-family-studies-may-impact-supreme-court-gay-marriage-decision?cid=db_articles

A Prayer for My Children

My son often wants me to help “get him started going to sleep” by lying down with him. I usually take the opportunity to lie next to him and pray for his, and my baby daughter’s, future. This is my prayer for Ethan and Sarah Beth.

Most importantly, I pray that they will listen and respond to God’s call for repentance and trust in Jesus Christ. My personal belief is that the most important thing that a parent can give to their children is a solid spiritual foundation that will eventually point them towards receiving Christ as their personal Savior. Without safeguarding their souls, all else, health, education, possessions, is ultimately meaningless.

I pray that God will bless their lives and protect them. I pray that they will be happy and healthy and that God will send His angels to protect and watch over them. Growing children face many dangers, both internal and external. I pray that they will be protected from their own curiosity and lack of judgment as well as from more human dangers such as child predators and drug pushers.

I also pray that God will continue to watch over them as they grow up. I pray that He guides their choice of friends. I have realized that friends provide both positive and negative influences. The negative influences are much harder to resist. I pray that Ethan and Sarah will choose friends that will positively impact their lives.

I pray that as they grow, they develop the wisdom to avoid trouble. In cases where they make the wrong choices, I pray that the Lord will discipline them and call them back before they go too far and make choices that cannot be corrected.

I pray that both Ethan and Sarah will intelligent and successful. I pray that they realize that success in life most often comes from hard work and preparation. I pray that their work in school leads them to a career that is stable and financially, as well as emotionally, rewarding.

I pray that they are wise enough to realize that they should work to live and not live to work. I pray that they find a job that they enjoy, but realize that work is simply a means to an end and not an end in itself. Life is meant to be enjoyed. It is important to find a balance between the responsibilities of your job and the responsibilities to those you love.

I also pray that their success is moderated. Unbridled success can breed arrogance and greed. Failure can be valuable because it teaches. As their grandfather recently said, learning to cope when things don’t go your way is one of life’s most important lessons.
I pray that they learn from their failures and are not discouraged by them. I pray that they do not take their accomplishments and possessions for granted.

I pray that they learn both compassion and discernment. I hope that they do not look down on people who have less than they do. I hope that they will use their talents and possession to help these people when possible. I hope that they also learn that some people take advantage of this compassion. I hope that they learn to tell the difference.

I pray that God will pick out future spouses for both Ethan and Sarah. I pray that even now He is preparing Ethan’s wife and Sarah’s husband for their future lives together. I pray that He will give them a match that is literally made in Heaven and they will be as happy with their families as I am with mine. I pray that that one day, not too soon, after they are happily married, that I’ll have grandchildren to spoil.

I pray that when they grow up, they will still live in a country with the same freedoms and opportunities that citizens of the United States have enjoyed in the past. I pray that they will have the freedom to worship God and Jesus openly and without fear. I pray that they will want to worship openly and without fear.

I pray that they will enjoy freedom and speech and thought. I pray that they will still be free to buy a gun if they choose, but will not feel that they need to have one for protection. I pray that they will have the freedom to spend their money and time as they see fit and not have to work long hours to pay onerous taxes.

I pray that my fellow countrymen will not trade away their freedoms for the illusive security offered by government bureaucrats. Many today seem more than willing to make such a bargain. If Ethan and Sarah Beth grow up in a country that is not free, we will have only ourselves to blame. Once surrendered, freedom is hard to regain. As a founding American once said, “Those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither.”

My further prayer is that Ethan and Sarah will grow up in a world at peace. Even though the lights of freedom seem to be winking out around the world, I hope that the United States and other defenders of freedom will stand strong. Standing strong today will hopefully prevent Ethan and Sarah’s generation from having to face the same evils that are in the world today.

I pray that God will give me the wisdom and the strength to be the best parent that I can be. I also offer up a prayer of thanks that God would entrust me with such wonderful children as well as a fantastic (and beautiful) wife.