FamilyFoundationBlog.com

We’re not in the habit of promoting certain television programs, but it is worth noting one airing tonight on ABC at 8:00 Eastern. It’s the A Charlie Brown Christmas special (see it online, here). 

Last week, you may recall, President Barack Obama unceremoniously bumped the show from its original air date with the pomp of his West Point Afghanistan speech. ABC imediately re-scheduled.

The lackluster speech and indecisive policy added only slightly less to the public’s displeasure of him than did the canceling of the special. That’s because, despite what the media portrays and tried to convey, Americans still love traditional values and cultural institutions that portray and communicate them. It may be campy to some, who see it as a relic of a simpleton time, but countless millions, no matter how many times it has aired, sit down, many with their own children, and watch this most meaningful of shows. Especially in this era when even the innocence of cartoons has been debased and corrupted, not to mention that the word ”Christmas” practically is shunned, A Charlie Brown Christmas  means a lot to most (see Ralph Couey’s tribute in the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat).

In other words, people instinctively don’t need modern culture’s twist on what they inherently know is right, just and good. No amount of modernism (or “post-modern” culture), however sophisticated it positions itself in an attempt to make the public feel inadequate for not “progressing,” can substitute for everlasting truth, or redefine what is wholesome. It is as ever present as the life sprung forth in Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tree. For the Truth is out there. In this case, it’s in this memorable scene:

Enduring values and the true meaning of Christmas continue to resonate in the truth that comes from innocence in this memorable television moment. In its simplicity, its message is more powerful than the one conveyed by modern culture.

Last week former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee spoke at our Annual Gala. Now the host of one of cable television’s most popular shows, Huckabee, he recorded a message for our sister organization TFF Action about Tuesday’s election. He stresses the importance of pro-family, traditional values and the importance of participating in the democratic process. We hope you take a minute to listen to it and share it with as many people as possible.

A Message From Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee About Tuesday’s Election.

The entire country is focused on the Commonwealth of Virginia this election season. Other than New Jersey, we are the only state holding statewide elections, which includes the campaigns for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and all 100 seats in the House of Delegates. Accordingly, The Family Foundation needs ongoing assistance in distributing General Assembly Report Cards and other voter education materials to help educate pro-family citizens around the commonwealth regarding the principles each candidate represents.

If you are a middle school, high school or college student needing to fulfill any community service requirements for graduation or any adult who would enjoy assisting us in our mission on a weekly, bi-monthly or monthly basis — we need your help, especially until November! The Family Foundation headquarters is located across from the capitol in downtown Richmond. Parking is located only a few blocks from our office building.

Responsibilities and duties include:

» Data Entry (basic computer skills)

» Mailings (production and stuffing)

» Distributing Report Cards and other items to churches

» Database Management (basic computer skills)

» Making phone calls

Potential candidates include students in sixth grade through college, home-educated families, stay-at-home mothers and fathers, and retirees. If interested in volunteering your valued talent in order to advance the cause of traditional values in the commonwealth, then please contact Marie Edwards at marie@familyfoundation.org or at (804) 343-0010.

Non-profit and non-partisan, The Family Foundation of Virginia is the commonwealth’s oldest and most influential family public policy organization. Our mission is to strengthen the family through accurate research and education, prompting civic activism and affecting public policy outcomes. The Family Foundation is proud to be associated with Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family and its network of nearly forty independent state policy councils.

Welcome to our new design theme! We hope you enjoy the new, neat and dynamic look of our blog, and hope it is easier for you to use and navigate. We have some small things to iron out, but the new design and layout are a huge improvement over our original theme. From the beginning, we never claimed to be tech wizards who could keep up with all the latest bells and whistles. But we did promise, and have delivered, some of the best commentary and insight on issues, policy and politics facing Virginia. Now, this new theme, as well as our update to the latest WordPress version, will allow us to add more components and enable more functions and tools to make your online experience with us pleasant, exciting and second to none.

We hope it will entice you to visit more often, draw even more readers (please spread the word!), activate a larger community, and that it will allow us to make this blog a more complete and thorough one-stop resource for all of your Virginia political and policy information. So, look for more improvements and features in the future. In the meantime, feel free to let us know what you like or don’t like about the new site, and what features you’d like for us to incorporate.

A sincere thank you, as always, for your constant visits, comments, feedback and participation here. It has made us, with thousands of unique visitors each month, one of Virginia’s most read political blogs, and we are very grateful for that as together we work to restore to the commonwealth its founding vision of traditional values through old-fashioned grassroots activism as well as modern-era information technology.

The Family Foundation and Pastors For Family Values will join the Alliance Defense Fund Tuesday, August 4, to produce an outstanding event for pastors and church leaders. Even if you are a pastor who has already attended a Winning Matters 2009 briefing, or plan to attend one, we promise this is one you will regret not attending.

This special pastors briefing will take place at the Fredericksburg Expo and Convention Center from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. In the morning, ADF will educate pastors on their legal rights and discuss their willingness to defend those rights — ADF is one of the nation’s premier legal advocates for religious liberty rights.

In the afternoon, two outstanding speakers will address attendees: Pastor Jonathan Falwell of Thomas Road Baptist Church, who opened the House of Representatives today with prayer (see video below), and Bishop Harry Jackson of Hope Christian Church (see video here). These two prominent leaders will encourage and motivate you.

Pastors also will learn about opportunities to partner with us in Winning Matters 2009 — an effort to assist Virginia churches in registering their congregations to vote, educating people of faith on important public policy issues, and encouraging them to vote in Virginia’s statewide elections on November 3rd, an election that will send a message one way or another to the entire country. If you are not a pastor, please forward this link with your own personal message encouraging your church leaders to attend.

Although Pastors For Family Values is a year round association dedicated to much more than “political” involvement, we believe that appropriate occasions call us to take a more active role in making sure our voices are heard about our stance on traditional and Biblical values. This event will be informative and timely, with many resources for pastors to use in their efforts to encourage and equip their communities and churches to champion traditional values.

A Special Presentation for Pastors

Tuesday, August 4

Fredericksburg Expo and Convention Center

2371 Carl D. Silver Parkway

9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Speakers: Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr., of Hope Christian Church

Pastor Jonathan Falwell of Thomas Road Baptist Church

This event, including lunch, is free to pastors. To RSVP, or for more information, call 804-343-0010 or e-mail info@tffaction.org.

Pastor Jonathan Falwell, seemingly an unlikely choice, opens today’s session of the U.S. House of Representatives with prayer “in Jesus’ name,” something Virginia state police chaplains are not allowed to do. 

Yesterday was one of the busiest summer days ever at The Family Foundation, but an incredible one at that, and one worth having. If all days were as busy as yesterday . . . .

It began when our church outreach, Pastors For Family Values, hosted a pastors breakfast in Richmond, one of a series we’ve hosted around the state. Close to 60 pastors attended. Bishop Harry Jackson, Pastor of Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Md., delivered the keynote address. Bishop Jackson is the author of Personal Faith, Public Policy, as well as The Truth in Black and White.

Bishop Jackson challenged pastors to make a difference as few can. As a result, pastors took thousands of General Assembly Report Cards, requested voter guides to distribute to their congregations in October, were given kits to effectively run voter registration drives, and most every pastor committed to preaching a sermon on civic responsibility.

Much of the rest of the day was devoted to strategizing with more than 10 influential national and state organizations on how to educate and mobilize voters to turn out on election day this November. Making sure that pro-family organizations are unified and working together will be key to success, and it was instructive to hear everyone’s plans. The assembled groups then interviewed several candidates for the House of Delegates so we could get to know them better and learn their positions on the issues pro-family, traditional values voters care about.

There was more, still. In the evening we hosted a special reception for supporters of Winning Matters ‘09. More than 100 people jammed into the home of our board chairman and were treated to brief remarks from special guest, former attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell. {Note to IRS: Senator Creigh Deeds (D-25, Bath), the other candidate, was invited but refused citing scheduling conflicts}. Senator and candidate for attorney general Ken Cuccinelli (R-37, Fairfax) also joined the overflow crowd. There was a sensory feel of high voltage excitement and energy, as if attendees wanted to get right to work. It is very clear that pro-family voters understand that to pass pro-life and pro-family legislation, Winning Matters in November.

Most amazingly, we are more than 75 percent of the way toward our goal of raising $150,000 for Winning Matters! Through what has already been raised, field staff have been on the ground for more than a month.

If you have yet to give toward Winning Matters, you can so by calling Vice President of Advancement, Dan Thompson, at 804-343-0010. Because every donation is tripled through a special matching grant, your gift is tripled in value.

It is indeed an exciting and busy time at The Family Foundation. Thank you for being a part of our team! The next few months are going to be crucial to ensuring voters who share our values are identified, informed and mobilized. Yesterday proved that, together, we are going to make that happen.

In May, we noticed that none other than Right Wing Watch, the blog of the well known national liberal organization People For The American Way, had commented about us. In fact, it was concerned about the launch of our “Winning Matters” program, which engages pastors to lead their congregations into full participation into the public square.

We noted at the time that we must be doing something right if such a large, national organization and RWW were keeping their eyes on us, a lil’ ol’ state policy organization. So, imagine how we feel now that they’ve mentioned us again (see here), this time ridiculing Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr., for speaking at some of our pastors events around the commonwealth. Wearing this online red badge of courage, we thought we’d report on something they really could chew on.

People For The American Way and other liberal, secular progressives believe, given recent election trends, that the death of Christianity in America is near — or at least we’ve been minimized to the point of a curious, but irrelevant, nuisance. It’s apparent to the collective liberal institutional genius (media, academia, public education, special interest groups, unions, etc.), that many Americans finally are enlightened, no longer hold the traditional values that are the result of one’s faith in God, and that the country has reached the Rubiconof a mother state with no looking back (the flipping of conservative Virginia their prize possession).

Those of us who still dare live in the Stone Age are so few in number that we can be essentially forgotten by society and left to dwell in our caves. Finally the progressives can officially progress . . .  

But maybe not. In Roanoke last week, we hosted a pastors event in connection with the Winning Matters 2009 Campaign. Approximately 40 pastors from around the region filled the room and were encouraged, equipped and empowered to continue influencing their congregations and communities on traditional values issues. (For information on other pastor events around Virginia, click here.)

Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University’s School of Law, reminded them of their personal and congregational rights to speak freely on the issues of the day. Rick Scarborough, of Vision America, challenged them to speak truth to their communities and leaders, as he has done for many years with great success. Family Foundation staff offered practical steps to make their churches more effective voices, including:

» Preaching a citizenship sermon;
» Holding a voter registration drive;
» Distributing General Assembly Report Cards; and
» Distributing voter guides.

Each pastor there decided to stand up and be counted for the cause of Biblical values. They certainly didn’t look dead in their passion to make a difference. Besides, even if they were, secular progressives forget that we serve a God who raises the dead. That alone, should give Right Wing Watch plenty to blog about.

We always have volunteer opportunities and, for homeschool families, we have a great one helping us run our booth at the HEAV Homeschool Convention, from Thursday, June 11 through Saturday, June 13. 

The HEAV Convention booth hours are as follows:

5:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 11

9:30 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. on Friday, June 12

9:30 a.m. – 6:30 p.m. on Saturday June 13 

Responsibilities and duties of volunteers:                                                               

• Distributing General Assembly Report Cards.
• Assist in non-partisan Voter Registration.
• Obtain contact information from homeschool families.
• We request a two-hour (or longer) shift.

If you are interested in volunteering your valued talent in order to advance the cause of traditional values in the Commonwealth, then please take a moment to e-mail Vanessa Strait vanessa.strait@tffaction.org or call her at (804) 343-0010.

This year’s statewide elections (for governor lieutennant governor, attorney general and House of Delegates) will receive unprecedented national media attention. The Family Foundation is committed to its long-standing (since 1985) non-partisan leadership role of shaping critical public policy debates to help Virginia citizens, lawmakers and business leaders better understand and apply to law the principles of life, marriage, parental authority, constitutional government and religious liberty. Throughout the summer and fall we will have other volunteer opportunities for citizens who believe in standing firm for traditional values. Stay tuned.

One of the responsibilities we at The Family Foundation take very seriously is challenging the misinformation, distortions, or outright lies propagated by those opposed to traditional values, particularly as spread through the Mainstream Media, which shapes so much of popular culture and thought. It’s one of the reasons we started this blog and other social networking sites — to provide the truth. (Our YouTube channel, for example, provides uncut video of lawmakers in committee, where you can judge for yourself their attitude toward common sense, pro-traditional values, limited government legislation.)

Two examples of misrepresentation in the media have occurred over the last two weeks. One was the murder of Kansas abortionist George Tiller. Our own president, Victoria Cobb, was interviewed about it last week on the popular Richmond’s Morning News with Jimmy Barrett (hear it here) on WRVA-AM. In the interview, she dispelled the notion repeated by abortion extremists and some pundits that the murderer of George Tiller is representative of the pro-life movement in America.

She told listeners that, just as the pro-life movement was gaining headway(witness the recent Gallop poll that found a majority of Americans now consider themselves pro-life), pro-life advocates must expend precious time and energy to counter the notion that the murder somehow represents the overwhelming majority of thoughtful, peaceful pro-life Americans.

We know that some abortion extremists and mainstream media organs are using the murder to paint all Americans who seek to protect human life as enablers, morally equivalent to the acused murderer. That kind of rhetoric serves no positive purpose. Instead, it gives opportunities to extremists to label as dangerous law-abiding citizens who legally seek to protect unborn human life. It advances no cause and brings us no closer to resolution in this debate.

The other example was an opinion piece by Lindsay Oliver of the Richmond Reproductive Freedom Project, published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch a few weeks ago. She claimed that, “Although 15 states use their own funds to cover abortions under many circumstances, Virginia is not one of them.” 

This statement is absolutely false and Victoria responded as such in a letter to the editor the Times-Dispatch subsequently printed. In fact, despite legislative efforts by The Family Foundation, other pro-life organizations and thousands of pro-family citizens, Virginia continues to fund abortion — taxpayers even fund elective abortions! As Victoria wrote:

The Federal government subsidizes abortions only when a Medicaid-eligible woman’s life is at risk or in the cases of rape or incest. In Virginia, we fund abortions beyond the Federal requirements. Incredibly, from 2006-2007, Virginia tax dollars have funded 301 elective abortions (149 in fiscal-year 2007, and 152 in fiscal 2006).

Public interest is in favor of ending this funding. The Family Foundation and the Virginia Catholic Conference co-sponsored a Mason-Dixon poll in December 2008, and when asked if they supported Virginia’s policy of using state money to pay for abortions falling outside the categories of rape, incest, and endangering the life of the mother, 46 percent of respondents were opposed to the funding with only 39 percent in support.  Furthermore, a recent Harris poll found that 63 percent of Americans oppose the taxpayer funding of abortion. Combine this with the widely publicized recent Gallup poll showing that 53 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be legal only in certain circumstances, and it’s clear the tide against abortion on demand is growing.

The Family Foundation is honored to serve as a voice for traditional values in the public square. Correcting the lies and distortions of the left is a full time job, but one that we are more than willing to do.

Since 1985, The Family Foundation has been on the forefront of critical public policy debates helping Virginia citizens, lawmakers and business leaders better understand and apply to law the principles of life, marriage, parental authority, constitutional government and religious liberty.

Non-profit and non-partisan, we are the Commonwealth’s oldest and most influential family public policy organization. Our mission is to strengthen the family through accurate research and education, prompting civic activism and affecting public policy outcomes. The Family Foundation of Virginia is proud to be associated with Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family and its network of nearly forty independent state policy councils.

The entire country is focused on Virginia this year. Other than New Jersey, we are the only state that has statewide elections (for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and the entire House of Delegates). We will need ongoing assistance so we can distribute our 2008-09 General Assembly Report Card (to be made public within a couple of weeks) and other materials to help educate Christians and churches around the Commonwealth regarding the principles each candidate represents during this November’s elections. While candidates campaign for votes, we will educate citizens on the principles these numerous  individuals represent.

To pull this off, we need you! We have various needs that can be fulfilled by middle school, high school (homeschoolers welcome!) or college students. These activities are perfect to meet community service requirements for graduation or for adults (such as retirees or stay-at-home-parents) who would enjoy assisting us in our mission. We can use help on a weekly, bi-monthly or monthly basis. Our headquarters is located across from the Capitol Square in downtown Richmond and we there is convenient parking. 

Some of the areas where we can use help include data entry and data base managment (basic computer skills) in office or at home; mailings (production and stuffing); and distributing General Assembly Report Cards and other items to churches. 

If interested in volunteering your valued talent in order to advance the cause of traditional values in the Commonwealth, then please contact Marie Edwards at marie@familyfoundation.org or call her at (804) 343-0010.

During this crucial time in our Commonwealth’s and nation’s history, we believe it is more important than ever to do whatever possible to secure the traditional values we hold dear and precious, while they are under heavy assault. Please consider helping us with what will be a rewarding experience.