The Price of Broken Families

This is alarming. I've read about the younger generation starting a revival of marriage and moral values. We are being attacked by the unholy alliance constantly, we must stand strong against the enemy. The release of the movie Xpelled - no intelligence allowed should be a good start.

This comment is related to this: http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=WA08D45

My frustration lies with groups claiming to represent the interests of Christianity and family while simultaneously dispensing misinformation to support their cause. If the truth doesn't help your cause you need to reevaluate your position.

The UIGEA was not passed because it was "overwhelmingly popular", but rather because it was nested in must pass Port Security legislation. This is common knowledge.

In my family we call this lying by omission and our children are taught that it is wrong.

Although a similar bill passed the House easily, the UIGEA was never independently voted on. You can point to this statement and accuse me of splitting hairs but given the controversy surrounding the passing of this bill it is clear to me that the omission is intentional, dishonest and intended to overstate the popularity of what is widely regarded as a poorly written misguided law.

FRC wants to do what the banks don't? Really? I am certain you mean that FRC wants the BANKS to do what they do not. FRC has no more desire to fund the enforcement of vaguely written US legislation than anybody else does, so unless your planning on kicking up the money to lift the burden from the banks you ought to be a little less judgmental of their position.

The unfortunate individuals with gambling problems deserve a law that affects their problem. The UIGEA specifically provides EXEMPTIONS for lotteries, horse racing, and fantasy sports!! How does this help? It is clear that this law is not intended to prevent problem gambling and representing it as such is disingenuous.

I urge FRC to support H.R. 5767. Giving banks the power of determining the legality of transactions and blocking transactions IS a threat to our freedom.

Please research this before blindly jumping on board just because it appears at face value to be the moral side of the issue. Doing the wrong thing in the name of morality has been the thorn in the side of faith based groups all too often, and in my opinion undermines our credibility and our desire to share our beliefs . Christianity should avoid hypocrisy like the plague, and the UIGEA is riddled with hypocrisy.

I will be impressed if this post makes your website, and thoroughly unimpressed if it doesn't!

More info for the readers:

Washington, DC—House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) and senior Financial Services Committee member Ron Paul (R-TX) have introduced legislation to prohibit the federal government from issuing regulations called for in the called for in the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. The legislation, H.R. 5767, will forbid the Secretary of the Treasury and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from proposing, prescribing, or implementing any regulation that requires the financial services industry to identify and block internet gambling transactions.

“These regulations are impossible to implement without placing a significant burden on the payments system and financial institutions, and while I do disagree with the underlying objective of the Act, I believe that even those who agree with it ought to be concerned about the regulations’ impact,” said Rep. Frank.

“The ban on Internet gambling infringes upon two freedoms that are important to many Americans: the ability to do with their money as they see fit, and the freedom from government interference with the Internet. The regulations and underlying bill also force financial institutions to act as law enforcement officers. This is another pernicious trend that has accelerated in the aftermath of the Patriot Act, the deputization of private businesses to perform intrusive enforcement and surveillance functions that the federal government is unwilling to perform on its own,” said Rep. Paul.

Specifically, at issue is the fact that the regulations, like the underlying legislation, fail to define the term “unlawful internet gambling,” leaving it to each financial institution to reconcile conflicting state and federal laws, court decisions and inconsistent Department of Justice interpretation, when determining whether to process a transaction. Furthermore, some of the information needed to make this determination would likely be unavailable to banks, either because customers or financial institutions in foreign jurisdictions are unwilling or unable to provide it. At the hearing, the regulators themselves admitted that there are substantial problems in crafting regulations to implement the UIGEA that does not have a substantial adverse effect on the efficiency of the nation’s payment system.

Chairman Frank and Congressman Paul opposed the UIGEA, and the two have been working on legislation, H.R. 2046 that would license and regulate online gaming. However, it was clear at the hearing that the regulations are unworkable for the financial services industry, and this bill would, therefore prohibit their implementation.

On Wednesday, April 2, the DIMP Subcommittee held a hearing “Proposed UIGEA Regulations: Burden Without Benefit?” to examine the regulations issued last year by the Federal Reserve and Treasury on the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which garnered more than 200 comment letters.

I agree, divorce and unwed parenthood undoubtedly DO exact a huge financial toll on society. We ought to be encouraging and supporting marriage.

Oh wait, I forgot: We're NOT to aupposed to encourage and support marriage for GAY couples, at last according to the Family Research Council and the other anti-Gay organizations. No, obviously it preferable to relegate Gay Americans to the societal fringe, to lives of loneliness and promiscuity, rather than encouraging monogamy and commitment, RIGHT?

I’m reminded of a time when an extremely conservative Republican named Ben Waldman was running for Congress here in West Virginia. Politically Mr. Waldman occupied roughly the same part of the political spectrum as Alan Keyes. As part of his campaign strategy he would purchase hour-long blocks of time at local radio stations around the state and host his own miniature talk shows to get his message out and respond to questions.

So I took the bait and called his program. I explained that while I found myself becoming gradually more conservative as I grew older, I still found it troubling how candidates like himself constantly expressed such disdain for ALL Gay people. I said, "It’s almost as though you were incapable of drawing a moral and ethical distinction between two Gay men who are in a longtime monogamous relationship and another single Gay man who is promiscuous."

He responded, "SURE I can! One’s bad and other is worse!"

And for ME, that just doesn’t seem like a very good value judgment.

Michael Leaser and the rest of the folks at FRC just aren't stating their case in any remotely logical way. They tell us that Straight couples get to date, get engaged, get married, and build lives together in the context of monogamy and commitment, and that this is a GOOD THING ... but for Gay couples to do exactly the same is somehow a BAD THING.

44 pages. I suspect that very few of those people who discuss this read more than the abstract. Attention spans went out of fashion a few years ago. I would have liked to see the FRC give a bit more information - for example, where is this half-trillion cost for broken families coming from? Which departments are stuck with the bill? Given the organisation responsible for this paper is in open opposition to divorse on religious grounds, I am inclined to treat it with great skepticism.

Just reading through parts I have already found causes for concern - much of the half-trillion is indirect, bases on their estimated claims of the impact that marriages have on crime rates. Most worryingly, some of the calculations are based on the assumption that divorce causes poverty, rather than vice versa - the IAV appears to be suggesting that if fewer people divorced, there would be fewer people in poverty to spend food stamps and social security money on. A similar fallacy is performed with unwed birth and crime, drug abuse, education difficulties, etc - there is an assumption made that if people marry then their risk of these is much reduced, when a more likely explanation for the statistical correlation they observe is that those people at risk of the above are less likely to marry.

I could read the whole paper, but even if I did I would still be unable to conclusively analyse it without also inspecting the various references. I have seen enough to be distrustful, and find it dissapointing (Though not unexpected) that the FRC has been so uncritical in reducing its difficult to interpret and unreliable conclusion to a single number which they then repeat with apparent certinty.