Read About The Issues
Conscience Protections for Counselors
LGBTQ+ activists want counselors to affirm their patient’s feelings of same-sex attraction or gender-confusion, even if their patients want to overcome these unwanted feelings.
Unfortunately, more than 25 states have implemented some sort of ban on providing talk therapy to help patients diminish unwanted same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria. And even in states where this type of talk therapy is still legal, counselors are still under threat from counselor associations and state licensing boards that threaten to impose professional discipline for violating treatment guidelines.
This needs to change. Counselors should remain free to follow their conscience by affirming and supporting the natural family rather than being forced to support or promote same-sex attraction and gender-confusion.
Protecting Children from Pornography
Public schools and community libraries in more than fifty Idaho communities provide pornographic material to minor children, according to a report released last year by Idaho Family Policy Center.
Social researchers have long known that pornographic material harms developing brains and can contribute to:
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Sexual addictions;
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Violent and perverse sexual desires;
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Negative brain development and functioning;
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Body image disorders;
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Objectification;
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Increased demand for sex trafficking, prostitution, and child pornography; and
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Increased chance of failed relationships and marriages.
Although state law prohibits private citizens and companies from making obscene materials available to children, an exemption in Idaho state law insulates schools and libraries from liability for exposing children to harmful material. This exemption must be eliminated so that parents can trust that their children are safe from pornography while at school or utilizing library services.
Making matters worse, students routinely use school-owned devices that lack content filters to protect them from pornographic materials. This explains why more than 41% of teens report watching porn during school, with many students using school-owned devices to access the pornographic content, according to a recent national survey conducted by Common Sense.
Parental Rights, Schools, and Children's Mental Health
Nearly 6,000 schools nationwide have enacted policies requiring school officials to conceal information from parents when their children begin identifying as the other gender at school, according to Parents Defending Education.
Unfortunately, this trend hasn’t spared Idaho. In Coeur d’Alene, a ten-year-old girl was told she was a boy by school officials, who encouraged her to socially transition and instructed her on how to hide her new lifestyle from her family.
Public schools should focus on educating children in core academic subjects, not encouraging students to explore their “gender identity.” Parents, not school employees, bear the ultimate responsibility for talking with their children about sexuality.
Protecting Preborn Life
At the moment of fertilization, a new living human is created that meets all scientific requirements of life. Every human being is valuable and deserving of rights, regardless of their size, development, age, or whether they are desired by their parents.
Unfortunately, the practice of abortion ends life in the womb by using methods that include:
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Dismemberment;
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Poisoning; or
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Cutting off nutrition to the developing baby.
Through the Defense of Life Act and Heartbeat law, Idaho currently provides legal protections for most preborn children. The law provides exceptions for cases of rape, incest, and when the life of the mother is endangered.
Life of the mother exceptions set a low legal bar using the language “good faith medical judgment,” allowing medical personnel to exercise ample discretion in determining when to terminate a pregnancy in order to protect the life of the mother. Even with this, many in the left-leaning media (which would love to dismantle Idaho’s protection for preborn children) are spinning exaggerated narratives claiming that mothers’ lives are being jeopardized by an inability on the part of physicians to terminate pregnancy early. In light of the latitude given to doctors, the reality that the vast majority of complications present during the last trimester of pregnancy, and the fact that the early delivery and care of a viable baby is NOT abortion, most of these stories are easily shown to be carefully-calculated but shallow scare tactics.
Protections Against Explicit Synthetic Media
With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), computer-generated pornography using the image likenesses of real individuals is on the rise. Alarmingly, 96% of AI-generated deepfake videos are non-consensual pornography.
This glut of AI-generated porn is making sexual predators act in new and horrific ways. For example, artificial intelligence is used to create:
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Pornography featuring computer-generated children that can be perversely sexualized in ways that would be criminal if real children were involved; and
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Pornographic content with the computer-generated image and likeness of real people for exploitation, harassment, or blackmail.
The new frontier of AI-generated porn constitutes a serious violation of human dignity and personal privacy for its victims, adding fire to the flames of an already sexualized culture that threatens basic human decency and public morality.
Governments must act now to curb this growing problem. The technology is developing so fast that the legal system is unequipped to address the issue.
Family visitation protections in hospitals
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, families were denied visitation to their immediate family members who were sick or dying, even if the patient wasn’t infected with any virus.
When this visitation access is denied, patients are stripped of their greatest advocates: their family.
A study showed that denying family hospital visits leads to:
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Depersonalization/dehumanization of patients
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Poor access to patient information
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Poor patient mental health
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Feelings of loneliness, depression, confusion, abandonment, insecurity, and anger
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Increased anxiety, especially during procedures
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Lack of mental stimulation
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Cognitive worsening
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Problems in treatment adherence
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A greater desire of discharge, poor discharge planning, and poor adherence to discharge plans
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Increased volume of calls from family for information
Overall, denying family visitation contributes to worse quality healthcare for patients—and often even leads to patients dying alone. Family members need the assurance that their right to visit loved ones is respected.