The law requires schools to provide parents with any and all information related to their child’s well-being, to protect students who may be in harm’s way at home, and to knock it off with the sex talk until at least the fourth grade.

“Queer” activist and Florida student Zander Moricz implored CNN’s audience on Friday to immediately take it upon themselves to read the new parental rights law that has caused so much heartburn among leftists. I can only guess that he’s banking on nobody actually doing it because he went on to mischaracterize all seven pages of the thing (with of course no pushback from the anchor).
“If you haven’t read the bill, go read it right now,” he said, “because the language of the legislation makes it so obvious that despite the title, this has nothing to do with empowering parents. This is about de-empowering and harming queer children.”
Let’s call his bluff!
The full text of the law can be read here in the same amount of time it takes to say “gender dysphoria,” but here are just a few key lines on what it directs public schools to do:

“…adopt procedures for notifying a student’s parent if there is a change in the student’s services or monitoring related to the student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being and the school’s ability to provide a safe and supportive learning environment for the student.”
“…not prohibit parents from accessing any of their student’s education and health records created, maintained, or used by the school district.”
“…encourage a student to discuss issues relating to his or her well-being with his or her parent or to facilitate discussion of the issue with the parent.”
“…notify parents of each healthcare service offered at their student’s school and the option to withhold consent or decline any specific service.”

In essence, the language affirms a parent’s right to control and be fully informed about the health and development of his or her child. That means if a school plans to give out hormone replacement drugs, they’re going to need parental consent (a radical concept, I know).

As one commentator concluded recently, “While Marxism has failed spectacularly in politics, it has succeeded spectacularly in culture.” The senseless arrogance expressed by Bishop’s regime forty years ago is replicated today by the Pentagon’s CRT-DEI-touting leadership. Apparently, U.S. defense leaders believe no crushing of military members’ civil liberties can be committed in the name of liberating the so-called oppressed. Mandated diversity trainings, preferred pronouns and discouraged terms, and experimental drugs (formerly “vaccines”) are but three examples – lowering morale/cohesion and combat readiness and reducing the ranks in a military assessed by the respected Heritage Foundation as “weak.”

In 1974, the British granted independence within the Commonwealth to the tiny eastern Caribbean Island of Grenada, known as the Isle of Spice (especially for its nutmeg). Under Prime Minister Eric Gairy, an increasingly repressive police force and an extralegal private militia checked Grenadians’ civil unrest in the lush tropical “paradise” that it was for the tourists who provided revenues to Gairy’s coffers. To most islanders, however, Gairy ran “a hateful little dictatorship.”
In 1979, a small group of intellectuals pulled off a nearly bloodless coup, toppling a regime described as “a populist/black power revolutionary movement gone wrong.” Anthony P. Maingot wrote in Caribbean Review that the New Jewel (Joint Endeavor for Welfare, Education, and Liberation) Movement, “schooled in various revolutionary tracts and rhetoric, quickly shed their vague romantic . . . program of a people’s democracy and turned to an attitude of: we love the people and know what is best for them and so must guide their affairs” [emphasis added].
It was precisely the arrogant, self-congratulatory attitude of the “Anointed” described by brilliant and prodigious Professor Thomas Sowell – who once considered himself a Marxist.
Opinions varied on the nature and intentions of the People’s Revolutionary Government, whose leader, Maurice Bishop, became the new prime minister. One writer called Bishop’s brand of socialism, “documentary radicalism.” With good reason, others viewed the movement – self-described as Leninist and using the term “Politburo” – as more than rhetorical in nature. (Maurice named his son Vladimir Lenin Bishop; tragically, he died as a teenager in a Toronto nightclub.) In any case, the Bishop regime caught the attention of both the Carter (1977-1981) and Reagan administrations. The Cold War’s East-West rivalry guaranteed Washington’s concern, especially in view of Fidel Castro’s socialist Cuba and the similar threat to regional stability coming from Nicaragua.
Under Bishop’s regime, British military officer and historian Mark Adkin wrote, “Any sign of ‘imperialist’ characteristics in a person weighed heavily against him.” In some cases, the result was what Grenadians called “heavy manners,” a term that included imprisonment, torture, or even death. While, admittedly, Bishop managed to improve health care, housing, and literacy for many Grenadians, during the doctrinaire regime’s four-and-a-half-year rule roughly 1 percent of the populace was detained for political transgressions.   

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The Valley of Vision – Various authors, edited by Arthur Bennett. This has long been one of my favourites.  This is a collection of prayers from Puritans and Puritan-minded folks.  Prayers are here from Thomas Watson, John Bunyan, Charles Spurgeon and many others.  My only complaint about this volume is that it doesn’t tell you where the prayers are from or who wrote which prayers.  

Over the years, I’ve received many requests from people looking for devotional literature. The one person wants a book of devotions for retired couples. The other wants a book for engaged couples. Still another is looking for something for their teenager. I used to search high and low for things I could recommend for these niche needs. No longer.
Now I recommend that people just start with reading the Bible prayerfully.  Why is it that everyone feels they need someone to make the Bible relevant for them?  It’s almost as if we’ve returned to the stereotype of the medieval church:  everyone talks about the Bible but no one reads it for themselves.  The Bible seems to have become a mysterious book which someone else has to interpret and apply for us.
Not to Replace Scripture but Supplement
That said, there is a place for devotional literature.  There is a place for authors to share their meditations on sacred Scripture.  There is a place for us to learn from our forebears how to pray and think Christianly.  Yet these things ought never to replace our going directly to the source for ourselves.  They should be supplementary.
Moreover, I wish we could lose this idea of niche devotionals — the devotional for the unemployed single mother, the devotional for the engaged couple, etc., etc.  This trend is reflective of the narcissism of our day:  everyone needs something crafted exactly for their personal, individual needs.  Whatever happened to the Catholic Church?  Whatever happened to the communion of saints?  Whatever happened to being able to think and apply general truths to your individual needs?
Types of Devotionals
There are different types of devotionals.  There’s your traditional devotional which has a reading for each day of the year.  Usually each day has a Bible passage to read, often just a verse or two.  Most of the time the author expounds and applies that Bible passage, although there are now some devotionals which might rarely or not at all involve a reading from the Scriptures.
There are also devotional books developed out of sermons.  These books go into depth with one or more Scripture passages.  The purpose is not primarily intellectual, but spiritual and transformative.  The Puritans and other older writers are well-known for this type of literature.
Finally, there are devotional books composed of prayers.  You can read through these in a meditative fashion and then use them as the starting point for your own prayers.  You can also pray them for yourself as they’re written.  A deeper and richer prayer life can be gained by listening in to other saints’ communication with our God.
Cautions with Devotionals
Besides the niche concern, I see three other prevalent issues with devotional books.  The first is one I hinted at above:  devotions disconnected from the Bible.  Beware of devotional books which are just presenting an author’s ideas.  Those ideas may be based on the Bible and consistent with the Bible, but the less explicit that becomes the greater the risk of not being able to discern truth from error.
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