THREE'S ALLOWED: West Hollywood makes polyamory official



West Hollywood has found a new job for local government: keeping track of who's sleeping with whom.

On November 2, the City Council approved an ordinance allowing romantic groups of three or more adults to register their relationships with City Hall. The new arrangement comes complete with official declarations, termination procedures, and a six-month waiting period before someone can register a new relationship after terminating an old one. Romance may be complicated, but leave it to California progressives to make it bureaucratic.

Imagine the legal bills when four ex-partners, three breakups, and one shared lease end up in court at the same time.

The ordinance, which takes effect December 2, doesn't legalize group marriage or create state-recognized domestic partnerships. Instead, it establishes a municipal registry for relationships involving at least three adults, extending certain housing protections and visitation rights. More importantly, the city explicitly describes the measure as a first step toward expanding recognition and benefits at the state and federal levels.

Bedroom blitz

Marriage used to mean a serious, lifelong commitment between two people, carrying duties that extended well beyond someone's personal fulfillment and a shared lease. California progressives now view that traditional two-person model as little more than an arbitrary speed bump in need of a thorough flattening.

These are the same cultural crusaders who spent decades telling traditionalists to stop imposing their morality on the public. Yet they refuse to leave long-standing institutions alone, insisting on redefining the exact social foundations they once claimed shouldn't have any fixed meaning at all.

West Hollywood has been laying the groundwork for some time. In March, the City Council approved a separate ordinance prohibiting discrimination based on family or relationship structure, including polyamorous arrangements. Now it has moved from protecting unconventional relationships against discrimination to giving them formal civic recognition.

Naturally, the adults get their headline-grabbing victory while the children are left to navigate the potential collateral damage. Media coverage celebrates grown-ups seeking public approval for their polyamorous setups, yet pays considerably less attention to the children growing up inside them.

What happens to parenting, discipline, and daily stability when several adults occupy parental roles, particularly if partners come and go? A child may develop a close attachment to an adult who has no legal parental responsibility and can leave the arrangement without the obligations that accompany divorce.

It's not you; it's us

West Hollywood's ordinance doesn't rewrite state custody laws. Indeed, the city's own legal analysis acknowledges that multi-partner relationships lack many of the parental rights, child-support obligations, and property protections associated with marriage. Local politicians are eager to recognize the adult relationship while leaving these considerably more complicated questions for someone else to resolve.

Though it's difficult to have sympathy for many city staffers, spare a thought for the poor soul stuck managing the paperwork for this administrative circus. Under the new rules, all partners must sign a declaration, provide identification, and agree to notify City Hall when the relationship changes. Anyone wishing to end the arrangement must file a termination statement and certify that the other partners have been notified.

Better yet, anyone who has registered a multi-partner relationship must wait six months after a termination statement is filed before registering another one.

Even in the brave new world of officially sanctioned romantic flexibility, apparently there's a bureaucratic cooling-off period.

The city anticipates negligible administrative costs and plans to charge registration fees. But West Hollywood didn't merely pass a far-left, non-binding resolution to feel good about itself. It established a formal registry, complete with declarations, amendments, termination forms, and certified copies. City Hall now has a whole new category of relationships to administer.

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A Maryland man and his three girlfriends, 2016. Nikki Kahn/Washington Post/Getty Images

Throuple goals

For generations, traditional families served a clear social purpose: raising the next generation and keeping communities grounded. Today's progressive policy treats every domestic setup as an interchangeable lifestyle preference. A healthy society can certainly tolerate unconventional, even outlandish, living arrangements without pretending that all are equal or that all help build a stable society.

West Hollywood wants to give official standing to domestic setups that may not survive past January. Polyamory is marketed by some of its enthusiasts as an evolved, modern form of intimacy that can overcome old-fashioned jealousy. Yet adding more people to a relationship also multiplies the opportunities for insecurity, petty resentment, and financial squabbles. City Hall can hand out all the official certificates it wants, but no government seal can force three, four, or five different people to agree on who takes out the trash or cleans up after the explosive Pomeranian.

West Hollywood has been here before. In 1985, it established a domestic partnership registry that helped give same-sex couples a form of official recognition decades before nationwide marriage equality. City officials now see the multi-partner registry as another pioneering step in that tradition.

The city's own staff report acknowledges significant complications in extending benefits and legal protections to multi-partner relationships. Its proposed solution is to establish recognition now and hope that state lawmakers, employers, insurers, and other institutions eventually follow.

When these multi-person arrangements break down, the questions become more difficult. Who remains responsible for a shared lease? What happens to jointly purchased property? What obligations, if any, should former partners have toward children they helped raise? West Hollywood's registry leaves most of these questions unresolved. Standard divorces between two people already drag on for years and empty bank accounts faster than a North Korean hacker. Imagine the legal bills when four ex-partners, three breakups, and one shared lease end up in court at the same time.

Lawyers may eventually have a field day. But anyone concerned about America's future should be shedding a tear. Because unlike Vegas, what happens in California rarely stays in California.

A good neighbor, a snowblower, and the case for big families



I have a neighbor, a good neighbor. He’s the best neighbor I’ve ever had, to be quite honest. He has a snowblower and I don’t. So because he is such a good neighbor, he comes by our place every time he’s out there evicting the snow from his driveway and does the same to ours.

I try to beat him out there in the morning with a snow shovel in hand when it’s coming down hard, but I never can. I’ve been able to get my boots on a few times, but as soon as I am about to walk out the door, I see him and his gas-powered machine clearing our driveway with modern ease.

Life is too quiet, and so much of the living happened in the past. Maybe there just isn't enough life.

In good Midwestern fashion, I plead with him every winter and tell him that he doesn’t have to do it, but he insists that he wants to. I’ve told his wife that he doesn’t have to as well, and she tells me that I need to let him. So I have to believe them and I have to let him.

Staying busy

I always end up talking with our neighbors more than my wife does. I don’t know if it’s because I’m outside more or if I am more receptive to conversation, but wherever we have lived, the neighbors always end up talking with me. They tell me all sorts of stuff. Some personal stuff, some neighborhood stuff, some stuff about kids and grandkids, and all the kinds of stuff neighbors might talk about.

My nice neighbor told me he was a single father to three young kids. His first wife — their mother — left, and he ended up with full custody. That’s a strange thing to happen, but it happens, I guess. He told me he just got used to staying busy and cleaning a lot during those years. And so he still does that same thing. He’s outside cleaning and cutting and snowblowing all the time. So I let him snowblow our driveway.

His kids have kids too. One just had his fifth. Both he and his wife are busy helping with grandkids these days. He dictated a convoluted schedule to me the other day. They pick them up for school, or maybe it was soccer or something. I don’t know or don’t remember. Whatever it is, they end up helping out a lot right now.

Kids welcome

He asks about our kids whenever I see him. He knows them pretty well too. They are outside a lot, and whenever they see him raking or mowing or taking something out to the trash, they run over and talk to him. They also climb up in the trees and peep into his back yard and look through the cracks in the fence despite us telling them not to be such creeps.

He doesn’t judge our terrible yard of balding grass and tons of toys, and he doesn’t get ticked off at our crazy kids. He says he remembers that well.

We are expecting our fourth in January. He asked me if we are done after that or if we just let whatever happens happen. I told him the latter. He said he grew up in a family of six kids, intimating that he understands bigger families.

We got to talking about birth rates and how people don’t have those kinds of big families any more. We are the only big family on the street. Yes, in America of 2026, a family with three kids is considered a big one, believe it or not. We talked about how fun it is being part of a bigger family, sharing a room as a kid, and all that kind of stuff.

He’s a nice neighbor because he’s a nice guy. And he is a nice guy because that’s who he is. Though I wonder if he is nicer because he has kids and grandkids. He’s not crotchety or grumpy. He isn’t calling the cops on our kids yelling and screaming in the back yard because they are having a good time outside rather than sitting indoors on an iPad.

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Heritage Images/Getty Images

Full of life

All of it makes me think about the less obvious impacts families have on our social fabric. Of course, families mean more people in the future, but I wonder about the other things that come with having lots of families around.

Kids make noise. They leave toys everywhere. They climb trees and look through cracks in fences. Grandkids need rides to school and soccer practice. Somebody else's driveway needs snowblowing. When there are a lot of people around, the world is busier and noisier. It's messier and more chaotic. It's more full of life.

Maybe part of the grand ennui that seems to be coursing through our culture is due to the fact that there aren't enough families around. Life is too quiet, and so much of the living happened in the past. Maybe there just isn't enough life.

Or maybe it's that being around more life makes you more alive yourself. There are more people to talk to, more people needing things from you, more reasons to get out of the house and do something.

My neighbor certainly doesn't seem to mind. Every time it snows, he finishes his driveway and comes over to do mine.

Boomers: The last generation of family men?



This fall, when our senior softball season ended, a league-wide email went out, announcing the beginning of winter bowling league.

It seems the softball guys like to have these extracurricular activities available year-round.

Last summer, on my softball team, I heard a guy tell the coach he would miss the next week’s game because 'I gotta drive my missus to her cancer treatments.'

The reason seems to be: They have families. And they’re committed to their families. They are good family men.

Which means they also get bored with their families. They get tired of their wives, and their kids, and their relatives. They can’t putter around in their tool sheds forever; they need to spend some time with their boys.

So they form sports leagues: softball, bowling, whatever. Or they join fraternal organizations: the Knights of Columbus, the Elks Lodge.

In short, they need to get out of the house. And they need to do it regularly, for the health and sanity of themselves and their loved ones.

The last of the old guard

The guys in my softball league range in age from 60 to 85. They are Boomers. These men might be the last generation that consciously organize their lives in this way.

The generations that followed have a different solution to getting bored with your wife and needing some space. They call it “divorce.” Or “conscious uncoupling.” After which, they “co-parent.” Or they never get married in the first place.

Society and popular culture have discouraged Gen X and Millennials from taking their wedding vows too seriously. Being married today is almost considered a temporary arrangement. Hence the idea of “starter marriages.”

Everyone likes to criticize the Boomers, for their self-centeredness and lack of sympathy for the hardships of the generations that came after.

But one thing Boomers got right is they know how to create families and maintain them.

Serious business

The Boomer generation took marriage seriously. They entered into it early, while still young and malleable — and when being part of a family was still fresh in their experience.

They married people who shared their basic values, who lived where they lived, who went to the same schools and churches.

When they had children, their parents, friends, and relatives helped raise them.

And they went all in. Your wife wasn’t just your sexual partner for a few years. She was your flesh and blood. She was the cornerstone of your life.

Acts of love

Last summer, on my softball team, I heard a guy tell the coach he would miss the next week’s game because “I gotta drive my missus to her cancer treatments.”

Probably someone else could drive her. A friend. An adult child. But he would do it himself — of course he would — because he was the husband and she was the wife.

I’m guessing this is how they have lived their whole lives. It wasn’t a question of loyalty. That was decided decades ago. This was a matter of who is the person who is closest to you. Who has been with you through everything else and will stay with you to the end.

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Nowadays, a typical excuse to escape such commitment is: “We grew apart.” But there’s no such thing in a real family.

Sure, people change. Sometimes they change a lot. But fundamental relationships don’t change. Do you grow apart from your parents? From your siblings? From your dog?

How much do you have to change so that your cousin is no longer your cousin?

It sounds reasonable that you could grow apart from your third wife if she wants to study Thai massage in New Mexico.

But you don’t “grow apart” from real family. You’re stuck with them. Your wife is your wife. She’s not your girlfriend.

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Harold M. Lambert/Getty Images

Gen X and beyond

I feel like my age group was the beginning of the end of this way of thinking.

Ours was the first generation of no-fault divorce. Of older guys dumping their wives for women 20 years younger. Of women getting sick of picking up their husband’s socks and opting for a trendy condo, a corporate job, and the chance to meet someone new. Like they see women do on TV.

Where’s the sign-up sheet?

I’m not a big bowling guy. But I might sign up for winter bowling league. Because I like being around these Boomer guys. I look up to them. I admire their concepts of commitment and duty.

How many younger men ever think about their “duty”? The word barely exists in their vocabulary.

And I include myself in this group. I’m a Gen Xer, and society told me that marriage was a trap, a hindrance, a burden I would be foolish to take on. A family would prevent me from following my dreams. And I believed it.

I’m not proud of that. But I can at least spend some time in the company of men who took the more selfless path and eventually reaped the rewards.

When it’s my turn for my late-life medical treatments, I’ll probably be taking an Uber. And I won’t be the only one.

The $997 'sovereign baby' scheme that could leave your children fighting to prove they exist



Rebellion against the administrative state used to entail packing up, moving to a log cabin in Montana, and trying your best to survive off the land. Now all it takes is a Venmo account and decent internet.

As Wired recently reported, Kristin LaHargoue, a Utah-based influencer who goes by “Minister Veda,” caters to a hyper-specific, delusional niche: convincing people that it is patriotic not to register their children with the government. On Instagram (@veda.revival), she posts videos of her family traveling internationally without birth certificates or Social Security numbers for her children. In her view, registering a baby with the government is an unforgivable surrender of parental freedom.

The great escape from the administrative state still requires the administrative state to stamp your little blue book.

Her business model is simple: commodified chaos. For $997, LaHargoue offers personal coaching on how to obtain a passport for an unregistered child, including guidance for dealing with Department of State officials. If that's too pricey, another option is available. For $497, she sells a downloadable bundle to navigate the bureaucratic minefield.

The problem, of course, is that the parents aren't the only ones who must live with the consequences.

Off the record

Wired highlighted the real-world fallout through the story of Sarah Ashley Townsend. Raised by a sovereign-minded mother without a birth certificate or Social Security number, Townsend spent her childhood largely isolated from ordinary society. At 16, she repeatedly struggled to get a driver's license. In her early 20s, she discovered that supposedly having her documents straightened out had not solved the problem. When she gave birth to her own son, officials couldn't establish her birth records, and his birth certificate had to be amended twice.

Townsend was 22, newly postpartum, and running around Maryland collecting notarized documents just to get her son the paperwork her own mother had denied her.

This sovereign baby concept isn't new. Its roots trace back to William Potter Gale, a former Army lieutenant colonel who founded Posse Comitatus in Southern California around 1970. Gale preached distrust of the federal government, insisting that county sheriffs were the highest lawful authority and that Washington had vastly exceeded its constitutional powers. His followers rejected federal taxation and claimed the right to resist authorities they considered illegitimate.

Posse Comitatus helped inspire later sovereign-citizen groups, whose members developed increasingly inventive theories about secret government contracts, fictitious legal identities, and the supposed power of declaring oneself exempt from ordinary laws. Some issued bogus liens against judges and public officials, attempting to weaponize paperwork against the very institutions they rejected. Others refused to recognize courts, taxes, or government authority, sometimes with violent consequences.

The underlying fantasy remained remarkably consistent. Reality was supposedly negotiable, provided one knew the right words and possessed enough contempt for the rules everyone else had to follow.

Monetizing paranoia

Today's influencers have traded backwater meetups and photocopied manifestos for selfies in front of Barcelona's Sagrada Família. Take Minister Dionne, who peddles a $555 "Status Correction" package. Or Marisse Vista, whose $7,777 "Sovereign Conception Program" promises such delights as ancestral clearing and womb activation. Yes, it's absurd, but it perfectly captures the current zeitgeist, with online chancers monetizing paranoia.

Now, to be clear, I am no fan of the paperwork police, and I am all for parents being free to make the best decisions for their children. But the claim that birth certificates make newborns government assets relies on the long-discredited straw man legal theory. According to this fantasy, a birth certificate creates a separate legal identity that the government uses as collateral for its debts. By declaring themselves separate from this fictitious identity, believers supposedly escape government authority. Courts have repeatedly rejected the theory, yet influencers continue peddling it as gospel.

They claim to be selling rebellion. What they're really selling is a bureaucratic nightmare.

The irony is that the passport procedure itself is perfectly legitimate. The State Department allows applicants without conventional birth certificates to establish citizenship through secondary evidence, including baptismal records, early school records, family Bible entries, and affidavits. This exists for people who genuinely lack ordinary birth records, not as some secret sovereign-citizen loophole.

LaHargoue and her peers frame opting out of government records as grand independence, but it is pure hypocrisy. These influencers reject the obligations of a functioning society while demanding its perks and protection abroad. Having declined to obtain the usual documents, they must then assemble alternative paperwork and persuade the very government they supposedly reject to issue a passport.

The great escape from the administrative state still requires the administrative state to stamp your little blue book.

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Print Collector/Getty Images

Sovereign headache

As Wired reported, one woman who purchased LaHargoue's instructional material eventually obtained a passport for her infant without a birth certificate. She submitted baptismal records, a family Bible, an affidavit, and a newspaper birth announcement. After considerable back-and-forth, the State Department approved the application.

In other words, parents are paying hundreds of dollars to navigate an elaborate government procedure made necessary by their refusal to follow a much simpler one.

A New York family lawyer told Wired he has seen an increase in parents attempting to reject or undo their children's official identification documents, while a law enforcement consultant described motorists refusing to show identification because they insist they are merely "traveling" rather than driving. Healthy skepticism is one thing. Pursuing a fantasy of total independence that only creates problems for you and your loved ones is another. Freedom is fantastic and necessary, but it doesn't mean freedom from consequences.

When a boy or girl grows up and runs into trouble opening a bank account, getting a driver's license, signing a lease, enrolling in college, or finding a job, the opportunist who cashed that fat check is long gone. The parent may get a fleeting rush of anti-establishment heroism; the child, however, is left with an endless headache, forced to spend years proving to the clipboard class that he is who he says he is — and that he actually exists.

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What is culture? Look around your dinner table.



What is culture?

That is a big question. It trips up a lot of people. Often, we tend to think of high culture when attempting to answer. Art, literature, and the stuff of the academy are what comes to mind. Yes, of course, that is culture and very important culture. But it is not all of culture. There is also folk culture and the ways of your people. That sounds hokey or old-fashioned in our day and age, but it doesn’t need to be, and that is not how it’s meant, at least not in this case.

The cake you make because your grandmother used to make it was everyday culture for her, just like the way you and your son go fishing every Friday afternoon.

Folk culture can mean a lot of things, but in the most general sense it is taken to mean the ways of the common people. The things they eat, the things they do, the things they believe, the way they speak, the way they marry, the way they die, the things they are afraid of, the things they valorize, and anything else that isn’t so much taught or studied.

Family matters

At the most basic level, your culture is what you consider to be normal.

That is a very simple definition that is easy to understand, and it is applicable at just about every level. The definition applies equally to rich and poor, big countries and small ones, the hinterland and the metropolis. It applies to even smaller units like families. Certainly, a family’s culture is related to its broader people’s culture, but it is also distinct. Each family is different, and each family has its own culture.

This is important to consider, because when we think of culture as only being high and academic, we separate ourselves from our own folk culture. We turn ourselves into spectators or passive observers rather than active participants. We downgrade ourselves and think of ourselves as “culture-less,” when in fact, every single person on earth, by virtue of having grown up somewhere with some family, has a culture — that which they consider to be normal.

Rooted in routine

When you wake up in the morning, how do you greet your wife? How do you say good morning to your kids? What do you do after that? What is the routine you have kept up for the past 20 years? What is the prayer you say before you sit down for breakfast? What kind of clothes do you wear?

How about the way you talk to the people you work with? Do you open the door for women? Do you insist that someone you just met should go first, just to be polite? What do you say and what don’t you say? What do you think is nice and what do you think is rude?

At home, what do you do for dinner? What does your wife make? Or perhaps what do you make? Do you eat together? Do you pray before? What is the rhythm of the meal? Do you sit and talk afterward? Do you have coffee or dessert? Or is that only on the weekends?

Afterward, do you read a book or watch television? Do you work some more, or are you done for the night? Do you listen to music? If so, what kind? Do you have a drink, or do you abstain? When do you go to bed? And when do you wake up and start it all over again?

All these things are so small and mundane that you probably don’t even think of them as anything other than your daily routine. And they are that, of course, but they are also little points of culture. It is these mundane things — and 10,000 other ones — that add up to what we know as life.

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Glen Asakawa/Getty Images

Home truths

Often, we don’t realize how potent these little points are until we leave home at 18. We move away from mom and dad and meet other people with other ways, and we realize the obvious fact that everyone doesn’t eat the same things on the holidays, wake up at the same time, eat dinner the same way, have the same manners, or live the same way. It is often in close contact with others that we fully realize who we really are, who we aren’t, and what little things make us that way.

The reason all this talk of mundane routine and family culture matters is because we very easily forget how important these little things are. We focus all our efforts on high, hard-to-reach culture and forget that it is the everyday moments that come to shape the world our children consider normal.

The cake you make because your grandmother used to make it was everyday culture for her, just like the way you and your son go fishing every Friday afternoon or the way you all have dinner together every Sunday evening no matter what.

These traditions may seem too ordinary to be worth thinking about. But the things your children grow up considering normal are the very things they may one day pass along to their own children. That is how culture survives, and it is something every family takes part in, whether they realize it or not.

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Father sexually abuses teen girl while flying with his wife and 4 kids — victim captures 'appalling act' on video



A Massachusetts father has been convicted of repeatedly sexually abusing a teen girl aboard a JetBlue flight — while he was on the plane with his wife and four kids, according to federal prosecutors.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts announced in a statement that 48-year-old Jonathan Alan Lefman, following a three-day jury trial, was convicted Oct. 16 of one count of abusive sexual contact within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States.

'The defendant repeatedly sexually abused a minor who was simply trying to travel safely aboard a commercial flight.'

The charge is punishable by up to two years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, and five years to life of supervised release.

On Aug. 30, 2024, Lefman was a passenger aboard a JetBlue flight — along with his wife and four children — that was flying from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Boston, Massachusetts.

The arrest affidavit says Lefman was sitting next to his 16-year-old son and directly behind the 17-year-old victim during the time of misconduct.

"On multiple occasions during the flight and while on the ground waiting to deplane in Boston, Lefman engaged in abusive sexual contact with the minor victim," the statement said.

"Specifically, Lefman worked his hand in between the area between the back and bottom of the seat directly in front of him, where the minor victim was seated, and touched the minor victim's buttocks without her permission," the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts stated.

The victim said she saw "Lefman's reflection leaning between the seats in the seatback monitor in front of her" when he attempted to touch her on one occasion, authorities said.

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Video screenshots showing Jonathan Lefman reaching between the seats of a JetBlue flight.Image source: U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts

The victim told investigators that "a man touched me without my permission," the affidavit stated.

The affidavit added that Lefman also touched the backs of the victim's feet with his feet, under the seat.

"At first I thought he was stretching because we all get tired," the victim said. But later she "started to realize that he was really touching" her and "kept moving forward and side to side" to avoid being touched, according to the affidavit.

The statement read, "On the last occasion when he touched or attempted to touch her buttocks, the minor victim was able to use her cellphone camera to take a video of Lefman’s fingers protruding between the back and bottom of the minor victim’s seat."

Authorities said the teenager took a video of Lefman exiting the aircraft.

An adult female family member of the victim, who was sitting in a different row of the airplane, confronted Lefman after the flight and reported his conduct to a JetBlue supervisor, according to the statement.

The female family member told authorities that Lefman apologized and claimed he was only stretching, the affidavit said.

The victim's family member also told Lefman's wife that "she should be concerned about the man’s behavior as she has children," according to the affidavit.

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FBI Special Agent Jason D. Costello wrote in the arrest affidavit that Lefman "did knowingly engage in unwanted sexual contact with 'Minor A' by intentionally touching, through the clothing, the buttocks of Minor A with intent to abuse, humiliate, harass, degrade Minor A or arouse or gratify his own sexual desire."

Lefman was arrested and charged in February 2025 and indicted by a federal grand jury in March 2025.

United States Attorney Leah B. Foley said in a statement:

The defendant repeatedly sexually abused a minor who was simply trying to travel safely aboard a commercial flight. No one should have to fear being sexually assaulted, whether in the air or on the ground. Today’s verdict holds the defendant accountable for his disturbing conduct and sends a clear message that those who prey on vulnerable passengers will face justice.

Ted E. Docks, special agent in charge of the FBI, Boston Division, added:

This verdict delivers justice for a young teen who showed remarkable courage following an appalling act. No one should ever be subjected to such harmful and predatory conduct— least of all in a confined, public space where she was entitled to feel safe. The FBI is fully committed to protecting children and ensuring those who exploit or abuse them, like Mr. Lefman, are brought to justice.

Lefman is scheduled for sentencing on Jan. 12, 2027.

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The knuckleball taught a father when to step back



October baseball brings every pitch into sharper focus. A ball that catches the corner of the plate can decide a season. For Brian Gaffney and his three sons, however, baseball’s most unpredictable pitch became the occasion for a different lesson: How much should a father push, and when should he let his boys find their own way?

Gaffney recounts the experience in “School of Hard Knucks: My Three Sons and Baseball’s Wildest Pitch.” He sets out to help Joe, Emmett, and Ben master the knuckleball, a pitch that demands almost no spin and can flutter in any direction. Even seasoned professionals struggle to control it. In a backyard with three eager boys, the possibilities for frustration are considerable.

A boy struggling with the knuckleball may learn persistence. His father may learn to listen. They may both discover that a failed experiment can lead to a worthwhile afternoon.

What begins as a family experiment becomes an education in baseball and parenting. The boys practice, adjust their grips, and keep trying to command a ball determined to do as it pleases. Gaffney has to confront something equally stubborn: his own desire to see his sons succeed.

Parents know that temptation. We want to spare our children disappointment, help them clear every obstacle, and give them opportunities we never had. Good intentions can make a game feel like a job. The child who once begged to play may begin worrying more about satisfying a parent than enjoying the sport.

Gaffney recognizes that risk in himself. His pursuit of the knuckleball is ambitious, and his sons’ progress becomes something he cares about intensely. But a father cannot take every pitch for his child. He has to decide when instruction helps, when encouragement is enough, and when to get out of the way.

Baseball offers plenty of chances to practice those distinctions. Even the best hitters make outs far more often than they reach base. A bad inning does not prevent a player from contributing in the next one. A young athlete learns to recover, to trust teammates, and to return to the field after falling short. Parents get lessons of their own from the bleachers.

Along the way, Gaffney draws on the experience of knuckleball specialists, including Phil Niekro, Charlie Hough, and R.A. Dickey. Their unusual craft gives the book its baseball appeal. A pitch that survives on patience and feel, rather than sheer velocity, rewards players willing to keep experimenting after a conventional approach fails.

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Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The greater reward, though, is the time Gaffney spends with his sons. Families can fill a calendar with practices, games, and travel while overlooking the pleasure of simply being together. A catch in the back yard or a ride home after a loss may outlast the memory of the final score. Children grow older, and the seasons that seemed endless eventually stop coming.

For Christian parents, the story also raises a question of stewardship. Children are entrusted to us with gifts, limitations, and ambitions of their own. Our responsibility includes teaching discipline and right conduct, but it also requires humility. A son’s worth cannot rise and fall with his batting average, and a parent’s pride should never become the price of affection.

A boy struggling with the knuckleball may learn persistence. His father may learn to listen. They may both discover that a failed experiment can lead to a worthwhile afternoon. Neither needs a trophy to show for it.

As the major league postseason unfolds, young fans are already imagining the spring when they will take the field again. Their parents will buy gloves, drive to practice, and cheer from the stands. If “School of Hard Knucks” reminds those parents of anything, it is that the most important thing they can give their children is not a perfect swing or a winning season. It is their time, their encouragement, and the assurance that their love does not depend on the scoreboard.

When October’s last out arrives, the championships will belong to a few teams. The hours spent playing catch will belong to the families who made time for them. Those are victories no scoreboard can record.