Dawn Stefanowicz explains her experience being raised by a gay parent

*** WARNING: This post is definitely for grown-ups only! ***

I was listening to a Dr. J podcast on “Why Marriage Matters”, and I heard about a woman named Dawn Stefanowicz, who was raised by her gay father in Toronto.

So, I looked around and found this interview with Dawn posted on MercatorNet. This is mature subject matter.

Intro:

Gay marriage and gay adoption are being fiercely debated in a number of countries. Usually these issues are framed as a human rights issue. But whose rights? Patrick Meagher, MercatorNet’s contributing editor in Canada, recently interviewed a woman who was raised by a homosexual father. She feels that her rights as a child were completely ignored.

Dawn Stefanowicz (www.DawnStefanowicz.com) grew up in Toronto. Now in her 40s, she has written a book, Out From Under: Getting Clear of the Wreckage of a Sexually Disordered Home, to be released later this year. Stefanowicz has now been married for 22 years, is raising a family, and also works as an accountant. She has also testified about same-sex marriage in Washington and Ottawa.

Sample:

MercatorNet: How did you feel about what was going on around you?

Stefanowicz: You become used to it and desensitised. I was told at eight years old not to talk about this but I knew that something was wrong. I was not thinking “this is right or wrong” but I was disturbed by what I was experiencing. I was unhappy, fearful, anxious and confused. I was not allowed to tell my father that his lifestyle upset me. You can be four-years-old and questioning, “Where is Daddy?” You sense women are not valued. You think Daddy doesn’t have time for you or Daddy is too busy to play a game with you. All this is hard because as a child this is the only experience you have.

MercatorNet: How did this affect your relationship with others?

Stefanowicz: I had a hard time concentrating in school on day-to-day subjects and with peers. I felt insecure. I was already stressed out by an early age. I’m now in my 40s. You’re looking at life-long issues. There is a lot of prolonged and unresolved grief in this kind of home environment and with what you witness in the subcultures.

It took me until I was into my 20s and 30s, after making major life choices, to begin to realise how being raised in this environment had affected me. Unfortunately, it was not until my father, his sexual partners and my mother had died, that I was free to speak publicly about my experiences.

And:

MercatorNet: Why do so few children speak out?

Stefanowicz: You’re terrified. Absolutely terrified. Children who open up these family secrets are dependent on parents for everything. You carry the burden that you have to keep secrets. You learn to put on an image publicly of the happy family that is not reality. With same-sex legislation, children are further silenced. They believe there is no safe adult they can go to.

Have you ever considered what effect it has on a child that they have to grow up without their mother or their father? Is that good for them? Is that something that we should be promoting so that there is more of it? It’s a sad thing to tell adults that they cannot do whatever they want, but it’s a sadder thing to harm children just so that adults can do whatever they want. We need to choose to be careful not to harm children by making poor decisions.

Related posts

• Mark Regnerus’s research vindicated by University of Texas at Austin
• Growing up with two lesbian mothers: a child’s perspective
• Mark Regnerus and the progressive war against science
• More social scientists stepping forward to defend Regnerus study
• Do children of gay parents perform as well as those of heterosexual parents?
• Are gay relationships typically stable and monogamous?
• The American Psychological Association (APA) on lesbian and gay parenting
• Do children raised by gays and lesbians do as well as those of married parents?
• New study finds that children do best in traditional mother-father families
• Obama openly supports gay marriage: 48 hours after top gay donors cut off funding
• Democrat introduces bill to defund adoption agencies that favor married couples
• A secular case against same-sex marriage

Filed under: Commentary, Activist, AIDS, Amendment, Battery, Child, Children, Commitment, Dawn Stefanowicz, Definition, Domestic, Duration, Equal, Equivalent, Female, Fidelity, Gay, GLBT, GLBTQ, Health, Healthy, HIV, Home, Household, Institution, Intact, Intimate, Last, LGBT, LGBTQ, Male, Marriage, Monogamous, Monogamy, Number, Out From Under, Parenting, Partner, Percent, Promiscuity, Raising, Rate, Relationship, Risk, Same-sex, Stability, Stable, STD, Suicide, Violence

Man who attempted mass shooting at Family Research Council pleads guilty

The Daily Caller reports.

Excerpt:

The man accused of opening fire and shooting a security guard at the conservative Family Research Council headquarters last August plead guilty to three charges in a D.C. federal court Wednesday.

Floyd Lee Corkins, II of Herndon, Virginia entered guilty pleas to a federal weapons charge as well as a local terrorism charge and a charge of assault with intent to kill, according to news reports.

The Washington Post reports that, according to the plea agreement Corkins signed, he told FBI agents on the day of the shooting that he “intended to kill as many people as possible” and planned to “smother Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their faces.”

Investigators found additional magazines and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches in his backpack on the day of the shooting.

Following the guilty plea the FRC issued a statement placing a large portion of the blame for the shooting at the feet of the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center, which had listed FRC as a hate group. FRC noted that prosecutors discovered Corkins identified his targets on the SPLC’s website.

“The day after Floyd Corkins came into the FRC headquarter and opened fire wounding one of our team members, I stated that while Corkins was responsible for the shooting, he had been given a license to perpetrate this act of violence by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center which has systematically and recklessly labeled every organization with which they disagree as a ‘hate group,’” FRC president Tony Perkins said in a statement, which went on to demand that SPLC stop attacking organizations that have a different opinion on gay rights.

The shooting happened shortly after Chick-fil-A made headlines over the company president’s disagreement with gay marriage.

This reminds me of the story from earlier in the week where another shooter was shot at white people after being indoctrinated in racist dogma at a liberal college. It seems like there are a lot of leftists using guns to shoot at people who disagree with them. Why does anyone think that people on the left are tolerant?

Related posts

• Gunman says he was acting on anti-white views that he learned in college
• Floyd Lee Corkins II is a left-winger, admired atheist philosopher Nietzche
• Even after Family Research Council shooting, leftists continue “hate” rhetoric
• The mainstream media’s biased coverage of the Family Research Council shooting
• Southern Poverty Law Center called the Family Research Council “hate group”
• Human Rights Campaign calls the Family Research Council “hate group”
• Family Research Council shooting suspect volunteered at gay community center
• White House and left-wing media take hours to comment on FRC shooting
• Shooting at Family Research Council being investigated as domestic terrorism
• Zeitgeist conspiracy movie had profound impact on Jared Loughner
• Atheist who shot Gabrielle Giffords read Communist Manifesto, liked flag burning
• Suicidal Florida school board gunman was a progressive atheist
• Eco-terrorist who shot up Discovery Channel building is a Darwinist
• Harvard-educated evolutionist arrested for multiple-victim school shooting
• The link between Darwinism, nihilism and public school shootings
• Democrats attacking campaign offices with guns and explosives
• Pro-abortion thugs arrested at McGill University pro-life event
• Pro-abortion shooter murders two people
• Pro-lifer dodges SUV driven by pro-abortionist

Filed under: News, Anti-Christian, Bigotry, Democrat, Fascism, Floyd Corkins, Floyd Corkins II, Floyd Lee Corkins, Floyd Lee Corkins II, Gay Activism, Gay Agenda, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Hate Crime, Hate Speech, Hatred, Human Rights Campaign, Incite, Incitement, Left, Leftist, Liberal, Same-Sex Marriage, Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC, Vandalism, Violence

Gunman says he was acting on anti-white views that he learned in college

The Daily Caller reports.

Excerpt:

The man who murdered one woman and paralyzed another during a 2011 Atlanta shooting spree testified at his trial last week that he was motivated by beliefs he had acquired about white people when he was an anthropology major at the University of West Georgia.

Nkosi Thandiwe, 23, argued that the bizarre political views he encountered — and accepted — in college led to a mental state that should have been grounds for a defense of temporary insanity, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

“I was trying to prove a point that Europeans had colonized the world, and as a result of that, we see a lot of evil today,” Thandiwe testified. “In terms of slavery, it was something that needed to be answered for. I was trying to spread the message of making white people mend.”

Thandiwe explained in court that he had attended an event designed to address concerns about racial inequality the night before the shooting spree. He became furious when he saw two white people there.

“I was upset,” Thandiwe said. “I was still upset Friday. I took the gun to work because I was still upset from Thursday night.”

Maybe we should have a ban on guns – a ban applicable only to Democrats. Guns don’t kill people, Democrats kill people.

Dennis Prager’s latest column looks at a college student was brainwashed to have obviously false views on war and foreign policy. Be careful what you study in college – it’s better to stick with math, science, technology and engineering – especially during a socialism-induced recession. Stick with things that can be measured and tested to insulate yourself from leftist speculations. You want to get a degree in something useful, not in leftist dogma.

Related posts

• Floyd Lee Corkins II is a left-winger, admired atheist philosopher Nietzche
• Even after Family Research Council shooting, leftists continue “hate” rhetoric
• The mainstream media’s biased coverage of the Family Research Council shooting
• Southern Poverty Law Center called the Family Research Council “hate group”
• Human Rights Campaign calls the Family Research Council “hate group”
• Family Research Council shooting suspect volunteered at gay community center
• White House and left-wing media take hours to comment on FRC shooting
• Shooting at Family Research Council being investigated as domestic terrorism
• Zeitgeist conspiracy movie had profound impact on Jared Loughner
• Suicidal Florida school board gunman was a progressive atheist
• Atheist who shot Gabrielle Giffords read Communist Manifesto, liked flag burning
• Eco-terrorist who shot up Discovery Channel building is a Darwinist
• Harvard-educated evolutionist arrested for multiple-victim school shooting
• The link between Darwinism, nihilism and public school shootings
• Democrats attacking campaign offices with guns and explosives
• Pro-abortion thugs arrested at McGill University pro-life event
• Pro-abortion shooter murders two people
• Pro-lifer dodges SUV driven by pro-abortionist

Filed under: News, Black, Brainwashing, College, Democrat, Democrat Party, Hate Crime, Indoctrinate, Indoctrination, Left, Leftism, Mass Murder, Murder, Racism, Shooter, Shooting, University, Violence, White

Oxford University Press book asks: does religion cause violence?

J.W. Wartick posted a review of a book called “The Myth of Religious Violence”, and written by Dr. William T. Cavanaugh.

Let’s take a look at some of the review.

Here, J.W. quotes from the book:

The story goes that, after the Protestant Reformation divided Christendom along religious lines, Catholics and Protestants began killing each other for holding to different doctrines. The wars of religion… demonstrated to the West the inherent danger of public religion. The solution to the problem lay in the rise of the modern state, in which religious loyalties were marginalized and the state secured a monopoly on the means of violence…

This story is more than just a prominent example of the myth of religious violence. It has a foundational importance for the secular West, because it explains the origin of its way of life and its system of governance. It is a creation myth for modernity (123).

Then writes this:

Following the lines of thinking of Voltaire, John Locke, and others, Cavanaugh argues that the myth of religious violence is perpetuated in order to marginalize that which is considered religious and give rise to the nation-state. According to this myth, “All theological religions are to be tolerated, provided they do not interfere with the obligations of citizens to the state…” (129). The myth is that religion is divisive and that they “fight over doctrines or ‘religious creeds’” so that “the state steps in to make peace” (130).

Cavanaugh shows that this myth is indeed false. The “wars of religion” had any number of motivating factors. The use of this story is not so much to tell a truth as it is a means by which to legitimize the nation-state. He argues towards these conclusions by showing that many “wars of religion” were in fact wars of economy, wars of power structures, and the like. He notes four primary factors for this myth to work: that combatants were motivated by religious difference, that the primary cause of war was religion, that religious causes are analytically separable from political, economic, and social causes at the time of the wars, and that the rise of the modern state was not a cause of the wars (141-142). He then analyzes each of these in turn based upon the historical record and shows that these all fail to account for the actual history of the “wars of religion.” In fact, the opposite is true in each case (142-177).

“We must conclude that the myth of the wars of religion is finally incredible, which is to say, false” (177).

[...]Perhaps the most challenging and paradigm-shifting portion of the book is that which focuses upon the uses of the myth of religious violence. Cavanaugh argues that the myth is so perpetuated because of its usefulness.

Cavanaugh has his BA from the University of Notre Dame, his MA from Cambridge University, and his PhD from Duke University. Do the secularists have anything to stack up against someone with his credentials?

Filed under: Commentary, History, Myth, Religion, Religious Violence, Violence, William T. Cavanaugh

Violent crime rate more than doubled in the four years after the 1997 UK gun ban

Whenever I get into discussions about gun control, I always mention two academic books by John R. Lott and Joyce Lee Malcolm.

• The Lott book was published by the University of Chicago Press (now in its 3rd edition)
• The Malcolm book was published by Harvard University Press

Here is a paper by Dr. Malcolm that summarizes one of the key points of her book.

Excerpt:

Tracing the history of gun control in the United Kingdom since the late 19th century, this article details how the government has arrogated to itself a monopoly on the right to use force. The consequence has been a tremendous increase in violent crime, and harsh punishment for crime victims who dare to fight back. The article is based on the author’s most recent book, Guns and Violence: The English Experience (Harvard University Press, 2002). Joyce Malcom is professor of history at Bentley College, in Waltham, Massachusetts. She is also author of To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an AngloAmerican Right (Harvard University Press, 1994).

Upon the passage of The Firearms Act (No. 2) in 1997, British Deputy Home Secretary Alun Michael boasted: “Britain now has some of the toughest gun laws in the world.” The Act was second handgun control measure passed that year, imposed a near-complete ban on private ownership of handguns, capping nearly eighty years of increasing firearms restrictions. Driven by an intense public campaign in the wake of the shooting of schoolchildren in Dunblane, Scotland, Parliament had been so zealous to outlaw all privately owned handguns that it rejected proposals to exempt Britain’s Olympic target-shooting team and handicapped target-shooters from the ban.

And the result of the 1997 gun ban:

The result of the ban has been costly. Thousands of weapons were confiscated at great financial cost to the public. Hundreds of thousands of police hours were devoted to the task. But in the six years since the 1997 handgun ban, crimes with the very weapons banned have more than doubled, and firearm crime has increased markedly. In 2002, for the fourth consecutive year, gun crime in England and Wales rose—by 35 percent for all firearms, and by a whopping 46 percent for the banned handguns. Nearly 10,000 firearms offences were committed.

[...]According to Scotland Yard, in the four years from 1991 to 1995 crimes against the person in England‟s inner cities increased by 91 percent. In the four years from 1997 to 2001 the rate of violent crime more than doubled. The UK murder rate for 2002 was the highest for a century.

I think that peer-reviewed studies – from Harvard University, no less – should be useful to those of us who believe in the right of self-defense for law-abiding people.

I found this interesting article from August 2011 by Dr. Malcolm in the Wall Street Journal, where she catches us up on what it is like to live in the UK under draconian gun control laws.

Excerpt:

As wild gangs of youths burned homes, shops and cars and severely beat anyone who tried to stop them last week, English people tried to defend themselves. Their desperation triggered a 5,000% increase in purchases of baseball bats from Amazon.

This is a sad symbol of the failure of the British approach to crime—with its sympathy for offenders, intolerance of self-defense, and unwillingness to pay for adequate crime control. A people once proud of their peaceful country and unarmed policemen had to resort to clubs to protect life and limb.

Great Britain’s leniency began in the 1950s, with a policy that only under extraordinary circumstances would anyone under 17 be sent to prison. This was meant to rehabilitate young offenders. But the alternative to incarceration has been simply to warn them to behave, maybe require community service, and return them to the streets. There has been justifiable concern about causes of crime such as poverty and unemployment, but little admission that some individuals prefer theft to work and that deterrence must be taken seriously.

Victims of aggression who defend themselves or attempt to protect their property have been shown no such leniency. Burglars who injured themselves breaking into houses have successfully sued homeowners for damages. In February, police in Surrey told gardeners not to put wire mesh on the windows of their garden sheds as burglars might hurt themselves when they break in.

If a homeowner protecting himself and his family injures an intruder beyond what the law considers “reasonable,” he will be prosecuted for assault. Tony Martin, an English farmer, was sentenced to life in prison for killing one burglar and wounding another with a shotgun during the seventh break-in at his rural home in 1999. While his sentence was later reduced to five years, he was refused parole in 2003 because he was judged a danger to burglars.

In 2008, a robber armed with a knife attacked shopkeeper Tony Singh in West Lancashire. During the struggle the intruder was fatally stabbed with his own knife. Although the robber had a long record of violent assault, prosecutors were preparing to charge Mr. Singh with murder until public outrage stopped them.

The UK experience with gun control really shows where the anti-gun people would take us. This is their view – this is what the gun control supporters want. People who refuse to permit and promote responsible gun ownership by law-abiding citizens side with the criminals. They want criminals to be free to threaten, assault and murder law-abiding citizens. That’s the truth of it. I would also say that if a man does not believe in using any and all means necessary to protect his family, and others, by opposing aggression by criminals in his own home, then he is not a man to marry. Ladies, avoid him.

Filed under: Polemics, 1997, Assault Weapon Ban, Ban, Brady Bill, Concealed Carry, Crime, Crime Prevention, Crime Rate, Crime Rates, Debate, Evidence, Firearm, Firearms, Freedom, Gary Kleck, Gun Ban, Gun Control, Guns, Guns Reduce Crime, Handgun, Handgun Ban, Homicide, John Lott, John R. Lott, Law, Legal, Liberty, Multiple Victim Public Shootings, MVPS, Nanny State, NRA, Permit, Police, Rate, Reason, Self-Defense, Shall Issue, Shooting, Statistics, Stephen Halbrooke, Violence, Violent Crime