A statue of William Penn, the English Quaker credited with the founding of the Province of Pennsylvania, will remain in Philadelphia’s Welcome Park after all, a victory for common sense and a reminder of the positive power and influence of grassroots activism.

The whole fiasco began when National Park Service officials announced plans to renovate the area, bowing to pressure from indigenous representatives requesting an “expanded interpretation of the Native American history of Philadelphia.”

Welcome Park dates to 1982, the 300th anniversary of Penn’s historic founding of the territory. That land was actually given to the Penn family from King Charles II to settle a debt.

City officials have long recognized the significance of the actual plot in question on which the suddenly controversial statue has been standing for forty years. As leader of the colony, William Penn lived and worked on that spot, both writing the laws for the territory and “Charter of Privileges” which codified religious freedom for the area residents.

To be sure, William Penn was a stout and unapologetic believer in Jesus Christ. He once famously declared, “No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.”

Which is why progressives in the area were eager to remove his statue and try and erase any memory of what was behind the area’s founding. Initial plans from the Park Service suggested the renovations, including the removal of the Penn statue, would result in “a more welcoming, accurate, and inclusive experience for visitors.”

Chinese women aren’t having enough children to stave-off population decline, the Wall Street Journal reports, hinting at fatal flaws in the nation’s strategy to increase births.

Background
China has been trying to increase its dangerously low birthrate since 2016, after eliminating its infamous one-child policy prohibiting families from having multiple kids.

More than 15 government departments worked together to create fertility incentives in 2022, launching what the Daily Citizen previously deemed “the largest and most comprehensive effort to boost national fertility” ever undertaken.

But it’s not working. In fact, annual Chinese births declined a whopping 49% after the government started encouraging families to have kids. Fewer than 10 million Chinese babies were born in 2022 — the lowest number on record and more than nine million fewer than in 2016.

The Problem
The Bible tells us God intimately creates all humans in His image, making each one inherently valuable and worthy of protection.

Parenthood should be encouraged because it allows people to participate in the creation of these precious image-bearers, and in God’s larger plan to populate the Earth.

It’s also true that children are necessary for a country to survive and thrive. To that end, China wants to increase births to stave off the economic and social consequences of population decline — but not because it recognizes the inherent value of every life.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed an “emergency” executive order on January 5, banning transgender medical surgeries for minors in the Buckeye State, after vetoing the Saving Ohio Adolescents from Experimentation Act (SAFE Act) last week.

The order (Executive Order 2024-01D) bans transgender surgeries for anyone under the age of 18 at any hospital or ambulatory surgical facility in Ohio.

This is good news. However, the governor vetoed the SAFE Act — which would have done far more to protect children from transgender medical interventions — just one week earlier.

The Act would have prohibited physicians from prescribing puberty blocking drugs and opposite sex hormones for minors; it also would have protected girls and women’s sports by mandating that each school designate separate teams for men and women.

Gov. DeWine’s executive order takes neither of these crucial actions.

The governor vetoed the SAFE Act even though the Ohio Senate overwhelming approved HB 68 in a 24-8 vote on December 13, 2023.

The Ohio House of Representatives subsequently passed the bill on the same day by a wide margin in a 62-27 vote.

After Gov. DeWine signed the executive order, nonprofit legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) criticized the governor’s decision.

Perhaps one of the more frustrating and dangerous aspects of our spiraling culture is the certainty with which obvious lies are believed and promoted to the great detriment of so many.

Case in point:

It’s an undisputable fact there are only two genders. We know this because God declares it in the Bible (“male and female He created them” Gen. 1:27) but also because science and biology are unequivocal. Males have both an X and Y chromosome. Females have two X chromosomes.

It’s true there are extremely rare examples of anatomical or chromosomal abnormalities, but it’s the exception.

Yet try telling that to the radical sexual revolutionaries who advocate and champion gender mutilation surgeries. They claim the trauma of sexual confusion can be cured by drugs and doctors.

They believe this so strongly they demand schools be allowed to keep the tragic confusion suffered by some children (and even treatment plans) from their parents. Their “solution” only makes a bad problem even worse.

Same-sex marriage radicals and revolutionaries told us expanding the definition of marriage wouldn’t impact heterosexual marriage and families.

If that were truly the case, why are Christian couples now being told they need to violate their deeply held religious beliefs if they welcome into their home a child in the foster care system who is sexually confused?