Are we permitted to say, "Amen. May it rest in peace. " ?

The Christians you see live in a society obsessed with sex.

Yes, :) and as to the second command to love one's neighbor... Love involves helping others. Sometimes we help them to overcome weaknesses and resist temptations. As our society becomes more and more sexually permissive, people are more likely to be deeply hurt. Sexual sin deeply wounds people. Just about every mature human being is inclined towards some type of sexual sin, one way or the other. It might be just a lustful glance as a guy in a kilt, or it might be pornography or adultery or it may be the subject of this thread. In any case, I don't think we help each other when we make it easier for people to fall into temptation and to act on all their sexual urges. Many Christians don't just sit there in judgment of everyone for this or that sin like many seem people on this thread. We want to build a more loving society. We want to fulfill that second command to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. And if I were tempted towards these particular sins, I would not find it loving to have society all around me telling me it's okay. Some of the people most hurt by society;s sexual permissiveness are the people who find it far harder to resist temptations once society says something is okay.

My high school aged children started this school year by viewing and discussing a dvd from "The Great Courses" on study skills. The speaker was a junior high teacher. http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/how-to-become-a-superstar-student-2nd-edition.html I've tried materials like workbooks in the past to teach study skills, and would recommend starting with something like a workbook or written review. Study skills are sometime worth exploring several times throughout a child's educational career, and at some point I recommend looking at that course I linked above.

Congratulations! We have twins with singletons born within a couple years on both sides of the twins. We survived by using something termed "survival mode." Standards fall, and it's okay. We got through it. I actually started homeschooling when my twins were one years old--and I found homeschooling far easier! If you doubt that, just imagine how easy it would be to feed them all in the morning after having been up several times throughout the night, assemble lunches, gather all supplies into backpacks, pack up two babies and a toddler into a car seat, (including in the winter with heavy coats, etc.) and after all that chaos, stay home all alone with three very little people. Then in the evenings after you are utterly exhausted, the school children return home and you must feed snacks to the hungry, tired school children, help them with homework (that may seem utterly pointless and/or confusing to even bright college graduates with even an adequate amount of sleep), fix dinner feed everyone and try to clean up, possible before heading off to some sports practice, all while juggling the needs of the baby twins and the toddler. That was the routine five days a week, followed by two days of a different routine on weekends. Babies and toddlers thrive on routine, and mine didn't seem to comprehend the 5 days alone with mom most of the day, 2 days of brothers and dad with mom. Homeschooling changed that crazy rhythm and brought sanity back to our world!

Okay, now I'm tearing up. I miss my mommy.

Yes. Yes, it has gotten worse since adding sponsored pins.

(((hugs))) I'm sorry for your loss.

Medium. Gone are the days when I carried a big purse instead of a diaper bad. And a small purse looks disproportionate to my body now.

Who gets to decide this issue, you ask? Apparently, just 5 Supreme Court judges, whose 5-4 decision contradicted prior Supreme Court cases in related matters and the laws passed by the people in several states.

:hurray: (I was hoping you'd choose homeschooling! It's more fun we when can all hang out being anti-social together.)

If you haven't gone through menopause, then you're not too old. ;)

A shade that matches her skin tone.

I was editing my previous reply as you were quoting me. The essential body parts are there, whether they work or not. The Bible (and real life experience)have show us examples of old married couples who were thought to be infertile having a child in their old age.

I'll answer this here as it relates back to the larger question asked in the thread title. :) "Be fruitful and multiply" doesn't imply that all forms of reproduction are acceptable; it is about the relationship between husband and wife resulting a child that they produce together. The story of Abraham and Sarah illustrates that seemingly infertile couples might not be infertile forever. Turning to Hagar made their situation messier. When we accept someone in marriage, the vows traditionally say "in sickness and in health"--and the health of our fertility and reproductive parts is part of the deal. We believe we can legitimately seek treatment to restore health, so some methods of infertility treatments are acceptable, but others cross a line by involving a third party in very intimate ways. Relating this back to our thread, when a man and woman marry, they won't typically know the status of their fertility until they try to have a child. They have the essential body parts that are needed to create a child, (and those parts may or may not work.) But the biological fact is that we know two men can't make a baby together without involving a woman. We know that two women know that they can't make a baby together without involving a man. While they may be individually fertile, thee relationships in their very nature are infertile. That is one reason why some believe that "marriage" between two people of the same sex is simply a physical impossibility.

Yeah! I thought it was possible for reasonable people to share some common ground on this matter. :) I can assure you that my viewpoints and position on this are consistent. I greatly sympathize with couples who are unable to have children. And like you, I've miscarried more than once. I certainly understand the motivation to be a parent. You say that you aren't opposed to things like ART but that you just want to see them done ethically. Therein lies the larger question--what makes anything ethical? How do we decide what's ethical and what's not? You and I both agree that women and children should be treated with dignity, not as commodities to be rented, bought and sold. We both want to see laws that promote human dignity. You think we only overlap a tiny but, but I believe we have a great deal of common ground. We simple differ on our understanding of what laws and ethical guidelines best promotes human dignity and the protection for women and children.

Praying for wisdom for you and your daughter as you make this decision.

With all due respect, I'm not here to debate surrogacy laws. I wanted to answer the original poster's question. I'm concerned that some men will exploit women, (particularly poor women--sometimes in other countries where our laws any laws we'd pass to limit surrogacy might not even apply). I'm concerned that these practices will increase if their unions are given legal recognition.

Among other reasons, I am concerned about the potential exploitation of women and children. When two men decide they want to have a baby and they require a third (or fourth) party who have ovaries and a uterus. In these situations, poor women are often exploited and children are effectively "sold". I believe women who provide men with children should be seen by those men as partners and wives, not egg donors and incubators. I believe that men have obligations to the mothers of their children that go far beyond what it found in surrogacy contracts.

(religious content) Oh E-- At church this morning I kept thinking about this thread during our Bible readings for today. Your son's aphasia and his singing lessons--just look at the part of the reading I highlighted! Thus says the LORD: Say to those whose hearts are frightened: Be strong, fear not! Here is your God, he comes with vindication; with divine recompense he comes to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will sing. Streams will burst forth in the desert, and rivers in the steppe. The burning sands will become pools, and the thirsty ground, springs of water. That was from Isaiah 35. Then there was the Gospel reading from Mark: Again Jesus left the district of Tyre and went by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, into the district of the Decapolis. And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment and begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him off by himself away from the crowd. He put his finger into the man’s ears and, spitting, touched his tongue; then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him, “Ephphatha!â€â€” that is, “Be opened!†— And immediately the man’s ears were opened, his speech impediment was removed, and he spoke plainly. He ordered them not to tell anyone. But the more he ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it. They were exceedingly astonished and they said, “He has done all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.†I don't normally preach religion here, but since this is a thread about Good News and a little boy's signing lessons, these seemed highly fitting. I hope some of you find these words encouraging. :)

Since this thread is continuing to go on and the moderator has deemed it to be non-political, I'll now write what I wanted to write several days ago... Just because you would and many others would quit a job over something that requires you to do something that violates your faith shouldn't mean that this clerk must quit. She apparently doesn't want to resign. People just want her to quietly go away. They want florists and bakers and pizza pie makers to just quietly go away and shut down their doors if they won't accept this new definition of marriage and participate in them. People holding to the traditional definition of marriages are facing fines and job loss--and now jail for refusing to participate in something that violates their religious beliefs. I don't have the courage to do what she's doing. I probably wouldn't do it either, but that doesn't mean that she shouldn't be doing it. That used to be the beauty of religious liberty and freedom.

They made a decision 5-4, so clearly not all of what you consider the "best legal minds of our era" agree with you. And not all are activist--only some. That puts people with conservative leanings at a disadvantage in the 'culture war" because conservative justices don't just re-interpret the meaning of the words used by our founders and the people who passed amendments to the constitution to wipe out laws they don't like and to re-write laws to make them say whatever it is they want them to say. The Defense of Marriage Act passed under Bill Clinton. The Supreme Court knocked DOMA down under the guise that states can define marriage however they want. Fast forward---the court knocks down state's rights to defined marriage as the state's want. This recent decision was inconsistent with their prior decision, including prior decisions by the Supreme Court.

nm

It's about politics. She's an elected official. Calling on elected officials to resign relates to politics.

nm