Todd Peperkorn is a pastor I know, and I have the highest respect for him. His church in Wisconsin is used as a polling place. On election day, he put up this message on the church sign:

Election officials made him take down the message. Rev. Peperkorn is a two-kingdoms kind of guy, but he thought a moral witness to an issue not on the ballot was appropriate. Morality, remember, does indeed reply to the Kingdom of the Lefthand. Contrary to popular assumption, morality is not the same as religion, which, for Christians has to do primarily with the Gospel. But the Law does apply to God’s reign in the world and to the civil order. Anyway, here is part of what Rev. Peperkorn said about his sign:

We are given an opportunity to confess the faith in the midst of an unbelieving world. We can do so in a way that is not bitter or vitriolic. But is it moral for a Church to agree to be used for what is a good, left-hand kingdom purpose (polling station) if it then limits the ability of that same church to be a prophetic voice in the world?

I am supportive of our government and its system. I’m not sure about the wisdom of churches as polling stations, because it may limit the ability of the church to be church in the world.

What do you think? Was the city clerk right or wrong? Should churches agree to be polling stations, if they are told they cannot say certain things?

Victor Davis Hanson urges that conservatives NOT do to the new liberal regime what the liberals did when the conservatives were in power:

It seems to me that conservatives have a golden opportunity to offer criticism and advice in a manner that many liberals did not during the last eight years. By that I mean I hope there are no conservative versions of the Nicholson Baker Knopf-published ‘novel’ Checkpoint, the creepy documentary by Gerald Range, the attempt to name a sewer plant after an American President, or the celebrity outbursts that we have witnessed with the tired refrain of Hitler/Nazi Bush—that all have cheapened political discourse. When I hear a partisan insider like Paul Begala urging at the 11th hour that we now rally around lame-duck Bush in his last few days, I detect a sense of apprehension that no Democrats would wish conservatives to treat Obama as they did Bush for eight years.

In the future, criticism should be offered in unified pro-American tones, rather than anti-Obama screeds. When disagreements arise, they should be couched in a sense of regret rather than ebullition. There should be no conservative counterparts of Bill Maher, Michael Moore, or Al Franken.

Andrew Ian Dodge raises an issue that I have been concerned about. Now that Barack Obama, whom even comedians venerate, has been elected president,what will happen to political comedy?

In another scientific study of what would seem perfectly obvious, researchers have found a strong link between how much sex teenagers watch on TV and their likelihood of premarital pregnancy. From Sexual content on TV is linked to teen pregnancy:

The teens who watched the most sexual content on TV (the 90th percentile) were twice as likely to have become pregnant or caused a pregnancy compared to the teens who watched the least amount of sexual content on TV (the 10th percentile). Adolescents who lived in a two-parent household had a lower probability of pregnancy while African Americans and adolescents with behavior problems were more likely to be involved in a pregnancy.

Parents should consider limiting their teen’s exposure to sexual content on TV, said the study’s lead author, Anita Chandra, a behavioral scientist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. Television producers should consider more realistic depictions of the consequences of sex in their scripts, she says, noting that there is little content on the consequences of unprotected sex. About 1 million adolescents become pregnant each year in the United States.

“Adolescents receive a considerable amount of information about sex through television and that programming typically does not highlight the risks and responsibilities of sex,” said Chandra, in a news release. “Our findings suggest that television may play a significant role in the high rates of teenage pregnancy in the United States.”