Preserve Innocence

The mission of the Preserve Innocence Project is to promote policies and actions that protect children. As a people and as a nation, our most important task is to provide our children with an environment in which they can act and grow as children—allowing them to enjoy the pleasures, fruits, and discoveries of childhood. If we fail at that task, the eyes of all people will witness us as a failed city upon a hill.

Sadly, our children live in a hostile environment. They grow up in a society saturated with promiscuity, pornography and violence. They hear and see these messages through television, radio, movies, video games, print, toys, apparel and internet content. They deal with them on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, government also plays a central role in propagating these messages. It affects our children through schools, textbooks, libraries, job programs, health initiatives, and other public policies. These policies often drive a wedge between parents and their children, thereby adversely affecting one of the foundations of American society.

Government must take special care when its actions affect the family’s sovereignty. Parents have a rightful role as the primary and principal shepherd of their children’s spiritual, educational, civic, and social formation. They have a responsibility to keep evil at the gate, to regulate the influences within their home and to promote the dignity of the communities in which their children live. Likewise, children have a right to receive instruction from, and bond with, their parents. Government must defer to parents when treading in these areas.

Preserve Innocence works on these issues, including government action that:

1. Demeans the rightful role of parents, including by interfering with their children’s spiritual, educational, civic, and social formation
2. Interferes with the right of children to bond with their parents
3. Degrades individual rights
4. Denigrates family
5. Promotes promiscuity
6. Infringes on religious liberty