A lot can change in one week.

For Auburn’s Alex McPherson, Saturday was a day to remember as the Fort Payne, Alabama, native kicked a school-tying six field goals in the team’s 33-24 win over Arkansas.

Just seven days earlier, the Tigers lost to Missouri in double overtime — a defeat that included three missed field goals by Alex, who is usually highly accurate.

Moments after that loss, Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy took issue with McPherson’s habit of pointing to Heaven after each kick.

“This bothers me,” Portnoy wrote. “You shouldn’t be allowed to pretend you hit a Fg when you missed your 19th chip shot of the game.”

What the internet sports guru didn’t seem to know was that McPherson had spent months last year dealing with major medical problems — including the removal of his large intestine. He was throwing up every day for two months. Initially diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, Alex lost 55 pounds before doctors took action to save his life. He was down to 110 pounds.

As a result of the surgery in December of 2024, he was outfitted with a colostomy bag, which was deliberately placed on his left side to not interfere with his kicking leg.

“My small intestine sticks out of my stomach,” Alex revealed. “The whole entire time I was going through this, I thought, ‘I’m getting better so I can play football.’”

The fight to defend parental rights and the innocence of children is one of the defining cultural battles of our generation. Colorado’s Lee family deserves our deepest gratitude and respect for standing up — not just for their own family — but for parents and children across the nation.

As reported by the Daily Citizen, Erin and Jonathan Lee appealed their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, alleging that Colorado school district policies and practices on “gender identity” intentionally excluded them as parents from critical decisions involving their daughter. They charge such policies violate their constitutional rights as parents to control the upbringing and care of their children.

Recently, the Supreme Court decided not to take up the Lee family’s case. In a short statement, Justice Samuel Alito made it clear that this wasn’t because the issue isn’t important. Instead, the Court felt this particular case wasn’t the right one for them to rule on at this time.

Justice Alito also pointed out that the case raises very serious questions about parental rights.

“The troubling — and tragic — allegations in this case underscore the ‘great and growing national importance’ of the question that these parent petitioners present.”

In other words, this isn’t the end of the fight. In fact, momentum seems to be growing.

The Lee family’s courage and determination have paved the way for future legal battles on this issue. Defending the innocence of our children and our role as parents is always a cause worth defending. Thank you, Lee family.

On November 7, the U.S. Supreme Court’s nine justices will consider taking up a case that provides the Court with an opportunity to revisit Obergefell v. Hodges. In that 2015 decision, the Court decreed the U.S. Constitution requires states to recognize and license marriages between two people of the same sex.

At the time Obergefell was decided, most states had enacted laws defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman. The Court, however, decided by the narrowest of margins that the 14th Amendment contained a right to same-sex marriage, despite no one seeing it there before; and despite an unbroken 135-year history of all states only recognizing natural marriage after the amendment’s ratification.

The decision represented one of the most stunning acts of judicial hubris in American history; five unelected justices claimed the ability to redefine marriage for more than 300 million Americans.

The Court’s Decision

In Obergefell, the Court published a 5-4 decision holding that,

“The Fourteenth Amendment requires a State to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-State.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy authored the Court’s majority opinion, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan.

Marriage is built on the lifelong union of a man and a woman. So, when sociologists ask “Who is more likely to be married, men or women?” the answer seems obvious. Both, right?

The truth more complex than it initially seems. Men and women have different likelihoods of being married and at different life stages.

This is a topic the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) has brought much needed understanding to; young men are indeed less likely to be married than young women.

But curiously, they note that “while men are more likely than women to be ‘never married,’ they are also more likely to be currently married.”

IFS explains these seemingly conflicting facts are not paradoxical, but rather “reflect differences in the timing of marriage, divorce, remarriage, and mortality between the sexes.”

Most of the confusion on this topic is when looking at the data for young adults; young men do marry less than young women. “Among U.S. adults ages 25-34, approximately 42% of women are married compared with only 35% of men in 2023 – a gap of about 7 percentage points.”

Marriage rates for all U.S. adult men and women, however, is completely reversed.

IFS states, “Among all U.S. adults in 2023, approximately 49% of women were currently married compared to 53% of men.” Other family scholars report the same sex-distinct trends.

Women in the United States, like in most countries, marry at younger ages compared to males.