ACLU attorney John Knight who represents the gender-dysphoric boy in the lawsuit against District 211 has issued this statement about the agreement reached between the district and the Office for Civil Rights (OCR)—a clarification that should deeply trouble District 211 community members:

We also remain disturbed by the inaccurate, misleading and fundamentally troubling language used by the District, even as they adopt this agreement. For example, the District said last night that transgender students who are provided access to locker rooms consistent with their gender identity “will utilize a private changing station when changing clothes or showering” and will not be allowed unrestricted access to the locker room. This is not what the agreement with OCR provides. The agreement specifically says that “based on Student A’s representation that she will change in private changing stations in the girls’ locker rooms, the District agrees to provide Student A access to locker room facilities designated for female students at school.” Nowhere does the agreement require Student A to use a private area to dress and such a requirement would be blatantly discriminatory. [emphasis added]

According to the ACLU of Illinois, the Office for Civil Rights “clearly stated that our client, like all students, does not have to use a privacy curtain. She may choose to do so, but she is not required to use the privacy curtain under the settlement.”

To my non-attorney eyes, it appears that Knight and the OCR are correct. This is what the agreement actually states:

For the duration of Student A’s enrollment in the District:

1. based on Student A’s representation that she will change in private changing stations in the girls’ locker rooms, the District agrees to provide Student A access to locker room facilities designated for female students at school and to take steps to protect the privacy of its students by installing and maintaining sufficient privacy curtains (private changing stations) within the girls’ locker rooms to accommodate Student A and any students who wish to be assured of privacy while changing;

There is no requirement that the boy use the private changing stations.

Moreover, again according to the ACLU of Illinois, the OCR claims the agreement between District 211 and the OCR “applies to all students, not just our client,” which directly contradicts what the district is claiming in its Frequently Asked Questions:

Will this Resolution Agreement require specific locker room access for all transgender students in District 211?

No. The Resolution Agreement pertains to one student in District 211 — the student who filed the original complaint with the Office for Civil Rights.

Will this Resolution Agreement require specific locker room access for transgender students in all school districts throughout the state and nation?

No. The Resolution Agreement pertains to one student in District 211 and does not extend to other students in District 211 or to other school districts.

District 211 taxpayers should be troubled by either the incompetent lack of understanding by district leaders or their deception.

In another frequently asked question, the district admits that the school which the gender-dysphoric boy attends will not be identified and that no parents will be notified if a gender-dysphoric student will be using a locker room with their sons or daughters.

Hard science-denier John Knight also made this ludicrous and ironic statement:

[T]he District continues to demonstrate a wanton ignorance of the science of gender by persisting in drawing a false distinction between transgender persons’ gender and anatomy. Let me be clear. My client is a girl – full stop.

The District’s refusal to accept transgender students as girls and boys is extremely harmful for all students, but especially those who are transgender. We had hoped the District would embrace this moment as an opportunity to educate itself and its community about what it means to be transgender. Unfortunately, that has not happened.

Precisely what “science” proves that there exists no distinction between gender-dysphoric persons’ “gender and anatomy”? If there were no distinction between their “gender” and anatomy, then gender-dysphoric persons would not be lopping off breasts and penises, shaving down Adam’s apples, adding fake breasts, and taking puberty-blockers and dangerous cross-sex hormones.

Clearly there is a distinction between the gender-dysphoric boy’s anatomy/biology and his “gender” (i.e., his desire about his anatomy/biology). His objective, scientifically verifiable anatomy (and barring the presence of an intersex condition, his DNA) is male. He desires to be female. That, Mr. Knight, is a distinction.

No one is obligated to accept the a-scientific proposition that the descriptor “girl” refers to a psychological condition rather than a biological condition. Mr. Knight’s client is a boy—full stop.

Support the work of IFI

Did you hear?  IFI has been given a challenge match of $55,000. So, between now and the end of the year, you can help us raise $110,000!  Please consider making an end-of-year donation to help us stand strong!

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 88848
Carol Stream, Illinois 60188

(Gifts to IFI are tax-deductible.)

Thousands of parents in District 211, the largest high school district in Illinois, should be outraged. And anyone who rightly fears the ravenous appetite of the slavering dumb beast we call the federal government should be equally outraged. The beast’s minions in the laughingly called Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which is a gangrenous section of the cancerous federal Department of Education, has concluded its 2-year investigation of District 211’s actions with regard to a male student who wishes he were a girl. Through its minion the OCR, the Fed-Beast (FEAST), lusting after the bodies and brains of children, has concluded that District 211 has violated federal law.

The very troubled boy—and he is a boy—at the center of this phantasmagorical tale wishes to remain anonymous, so hereafter he will be referred to as “Lola.” Lola has been seeking unrestricted access to the girls’ locker room—yes, you heard that right. Lola—an actual, factual boy, complete, one presumes, with the requisite anatomical parts—wants unrestricted access to the girls’ locker room, which would, of course, include the shower.

Plot summary

What District 211 has already agreed to:

In acts of contortionist-worthy back-bending and misguided charity, the district has agreed to have all school records identify gender-dysphoric students by their new names, identify them as the sex they are not, and refer to them by opposite-sex pronouns (which is to say that the district is lying on school records). In addition, gender-rejecting students are allowed to use opposite-sex bathrooms and are allowed to play on opposite-sex sports teams.

But that’s not all, folks, oh no, that’s not all. According to the Chicago Tribune, the district has also “installed four privacy curtains in unused areas of the locker room and another one around the shower.” This means a boy may, if he wishes, walk through the locker room to the shower area, where presumably girls are showering, to use these private changing areas.

But, even that leaves the beast, its minions, and its allies slavering for more.

What beast-ally John Knight demands:

John Knight, Lola’s ACLU-attorney and FEAST’s ally, vehemently opposes the district’s excessive accommodation of Lola, bleating that requiring Lola to use private dressing areas is unacceptable:

It’s not voluntary, it’s mandatory for her [sic]….It’s one thing to say to all the girls, ‘You can choose if you want some extra privacy,’ but it’s another thing to say, ‘You, and you alone, must use them.’ That sends a pretty strong signal to her [sic] that she’s [sic] not accepted and the district does not see her [sic] as girl.

Word to Knight, neither the “the district” nor any student has a moral obligation to “see her [sic] as a girl,” because he isn’t a girl.

What the beast-minion OCR has decided:

Student A has not only received an unequal opportunity to benefit from the District’s educational program, but has also experienced an ongoing sense of isolation and ostracism throughout her high school enrollment at the school….All students deserve the opportunity to participate equally in school programs and activities—this is a basic civil right….Unfortunately, Township High School District 211 is not following the law because the district continues to deny a female student the right to use the girls’ locker room.

So, now it’s a civil right for boys to use girls’ restrooms, changing areas, and showers.

By “law” the OCR is referring to Title IX, the federal law that prohibits discrimination based on “sex,” which the unelected minions in the OCR have unilaterally decided includes “gender identity” and “gender expression.” When the law was written, “sex” meant objective biological sex, and the law has not changed. The school policy changes that the beast-minion OCR is demanding would require that if gender-rejecting humans with male DNA and penises want to change clothes and shower with girls, they must be allowed to do so—and girls must comply or change in private areas. Not wanting to shower with boys is now seen as an act of bigotry and hatred.

What bothers Lola:

According to the Chicago Tribune, “the student, who plays for the school on a girls’ sports team, said she [sic] broke down in tears after her [sic] coaches reprimanded her [sic] for using the locker room to change. The coach told her [sic] some students felt uncomfortable dressing in front of her [sic].”

Think about what that means. It means Lola—a boy—is offended that girls don’t want to change clothes in front of him. Lola is essentially demanding that everyone accept his delusion that he is in reality a girl.

What Superintendent Daniel Cates rightly and courageously said about this arrogant and preposterous decision:

“The policy that OCR seeks to impose on District 211  is a serious overreach with precedent-setting implications….The students in our schools are teenagers, not adults, and one’s gender is not the same as one’s anatomy….Boys and girls are in separate locker rooms—where there are open changing areas and open shower facilities—for a reason.”

Conclusion

It’s not tax rates or immigration policy or ISIS that most gravely injures and weakens America. It’s the bloodthirsty devouring of the hearts, minds, and bodies of our children; the dismantling of marriage and family; and the erosion of the First Amendment. Deception and depravity are consuming our children, often by nibbles that barely register and at other times by huge chunks. The father of lies conceals his deceit under a cloak of compassion. Christians should not be so easily deceived or so easily cowed.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone,
“it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
~Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll~

Boldly standing for the truth.  Is truth a priority for you?

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is ramping up its campaign to use the courts to force all Catholic hospitals to provide abortions and sterilizations.

The strategy is clear: Use the anecdotal exception to destroy the general rule.

In the current scenarios, the ACLU is representing women who claim they need to be sterilized because of alleged threats to their health posed by future unwanted pregnancies, or they need to have access to abortion in case they have complications.

The women could utilize the services of another hospital. But instead, they are suing to force Catholic hospitals to perform the sterilizations or abortions.

The targets are the Ethical and Religious Directives for Health Care Services of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the First Amendment’s religious freedom guarantee.

On September 23, the ACLU of Michigan sent a demand letter to Genesys Hospital run by Ascension Health in Grand Blanc, Michigan, on behalf of a pregnant woman with a life-threatening brain tumor. The hospital denied her request for a tubal ligation at the time of her scheduled cesarean section delivery in October.

The ACLU says her doctors advised her to have the tubal ligation at the time of her C-section because another pregnancy would exacerbate risks posed by her tumor, as would another surgery after the delivery.

“Catholic bishops are not licensed medical professionals and have no place dictating how doctors practice medicine, especially when it violates federal law,” wrote ACLU of Michigan Staff Attorney Brooke A. Tucker, referring to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (1986), which requires hospitals that accept Medicare and Medicaid to provide emergency care to anyone who needs it.

The ACLU and its state affiliate also filed a federal lawsuit on Oct. 1 against Michigan-based Trinity Health Corporation, which operates more than 80 hospitals around the country. The suit contends that the hospitals’ refusal to perform abortions puts women with troubled pregnancies at risk.

“This case has no merit,” Trinity said in a statement to ModernHealthCare.com. “The Ethical and Religious Directives are entirely consistent with high-quality healthcare, and our clinicians continue to provide superb care throughout the communities we serve.”

Catholic doctors treat mother and baby as two patients, not just one. This means preserving two lives in the course of treatment.

“What (the ACLU) is trying to do is force Catholic hospitals to relax their rules,” Health care law expert and Samford University professor emeritus Leonard Nelson told ModernHealthCare. “They would like Catholic hospitals to not have any particular religious orientation, especially when it comes to abortions.”

As Catholic health corporations, Genesys and Trinity are bound by Directive 53 of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which states:

“Direct sterilization of either men or women, whether permanent or temporary, is not permitted in a Catholic health care institution. Procedures that induce sterility are permitted when their direct effect is the cure or alleviation of a present and serious pathology and a simpler treatment is not available.”

And here’s Directive 70: “Catholic health care organizations are not permitted to engage in immediate material cooperation in actions that are intrinsically immoral, such as abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and direct sterilization.”

In August, the ACLU threatened to sue Mercy Medical Center, a facility run by the Sisters of Mercy and part of Dignity Health, which operates 40 hospitals – 22 of which are Catholic – in California, Nevada and Arizona, according to CNSNews.

Rachel Miller, a 32-year-old attorney, was rebuffed by hospital officials after she asked them to sterilize her following a planned live birth. She said that going to another hospital 160 miles away for the procedure was a hardship. After the ACLU threat, hospital officials agreed to perform the operation.

Hard cases make bad law, and the ACLU is very obviously going out of its way to destroy the unique, religious character of Catholic hospitals.

This article was originally posted at Townhall.com.

WARNING: In this article about a gender-dysphoric boy’s pursuit of unfettered access to the girls’ locker room in an Illinois high school, I will be using the male pronoun because pronouns correspond to and denote objective biological sex. Politically-correct readers may want to stop reading now.

~~~

Eighteen months ago a high school student in Palatine-Schaumburg District 211 who wishes he were a girl and his parents filed a complaint with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to force the district to treat him in all contexts as if he were objectively female. The OCR—an intrusive, dictatorial, de facto bastion of “LGBTQ” activism—has ordered the district to allow this boy full, unrestricted access to the girls’ locker rooms “for changing during physical education classes and after-school activities.” The district is rightly refusing to comply, which will likely result in expensive litigation and the potential loss of millions of dollars of federal funds.

Superintendent Daniel Cates, other school officials, and school board members offered a compromise solution that would have given “the transgender student use of the locker room but asked that the student change and shower in private.” The OCR rejected this overly generous compromise as “inadequate and discriminatory.”

In a district newsletter released on Monday, Cates explained that the “goal of the District in this matter is to protect the privacy rights of all students when changing clothes or showering before or after physical education and after-school activities.” This boy—and he is and always will be male—is demanding to be allowed unrestricted freedom to change clothes and shower with girls.

Already the school has made pernicious concessions to “progressive” ideologues and their chuckleheaded notions about the meaning of physical embodiment. On school forms, gender-dysphoric students in District 211 may identify themselves as the sex they wish they were. They may play on opposite sex sports teams. And even more outrageous, they may use opposite-sex restrooms since “there are private stalls available.”

None of this, however, is enough for the gender-rejecting boy, his parents, the OCR, or “LGBTQ” activists. They need every cultural signifier that affirms that objective biological sex is immutable and profoundly meaningful to be eradicated, and they will use the implacable force of the federal government to achieve that end.

John Knight of the ACLU Illinois’ LGBT program claims that in refusing to comply, District 211 is “knowingly breaking the law.” Well, the purported lawfulness of the order is in question.

In 2014, the OCR unilaterally reinterpreted Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972—federal civil rights legislation that addressed sexual discrimination, not gender dysphoria—and then commanded that all school districts comply with their fanciful reinterpretation. Here is an excerpt from their imperious proclamation to schools:

The Department’s Title IX regulations permit schools to provide sex-segregated restrooms, locker rooms, shower facilities, housing, athletic teams, and single-sex classes under certain circumstances. When a school elects to separate or treat students differently on the basis of sex in those situations, a school generally must treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity.

The OCR imposed their radical reinterpretation on schools without the actual law ever changing. A court case (G. G. v. Gloucester County Public Schools) is currently pending in which the Department of Justice is attempting to change the law in accordance with the OCR’s desires, but as of now, there exists no federal or state law that requires Illinois schools to allow students of one sex to use restrooms or locker rooms designated for opposite-sex students.

Knight also makes the comical claim that by prohibiting a high school boy from showering with his female classmates, the school is telling him that he “can’t be with her [sic] friends at school, but has to be regulated [sic] to a separate place to dress. That’s just a horrible thing to do.” I kid you not. An attorney actually said that.

Those who support “transgender” bathroom and locker room policies should answer these questions:

• If gender-confused teens should not have to use restrooms and locker rooms with those whose “gender identity” they don’t share, then why should other teens have to use restrooms and locker rooms with those whose objective biological sex they don’t share?

• If there are two distinct phenomenon, biological sex (constituted by objective DNA/anatomy) and “gender identity” (constituted by subjective feelings), why should locker rooms and restrooms be separated according to “gender identity” rather than objective biological sex? What justification is there for subordinating objective biological sex to “gender identity”?

• Supporters of “transgender” school policies argue that they’re needed in order to be “inclusive” of gender-confused students. To be intellectually consistent then, wouldn’t supporters of the policy have to agree that those who are not comfortable sharing a bathroom or locker room with someone of the opposite sex because of their beliefs about sexual differentiation, modesty, and privacy would be “excluded” if the school refuses to honor their beliefs, feelings, values, and identity—which, by the way, has a basis in objective reality?

Symbolic and teaching effect of school policy

Many community members who do not like either the policy sought by this student or the existing policy regarding sports participation and restroom use may dismiss it as unimportant since there are so few gender-dysphoric students. But if it’s unimportant, why does the Left care so much about it? They care about it in part because of its symbolic effect. The Left knows that passing this policy necessarily means the school has formally embraced the Left’s unproven, non-factual beliefs about sex and gender.

Here are some of the ideas that “transgender” policies teach all students:

• These policies teach that the subjective feelings of teens who wish they had been born the opposite sex trump objective biological and anatomical reality.

• Such policies falsely teach that what gender-confused teens feel is their true sex is, indeed, their true sex. Such policies teach students that “gender” has no inherent connection to DNA and its manifestation in biology and anatomy but, rather, that it is determined by subjective feelings. They also teach that everyone must accept their unproven belief that “gender identity” is more objectively real and more important than objective biological and anatomical reality.

• Supporters of these kinds of policies argue that the majority should not be allowed to deny the rights of the minority, but such a statement presumes that gender-confused students have a right to use the restrooms and locker rooms designated for those of the opposite sex. And it ignores the rights of those who don’t want to be compelled to use facilities intended for private acts in the presence of those of the opposite sex. Boys have no right to use girls’ restrooms, and girls have no right to use boys’ restrooms.

• Policies that allow students to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms ignore the proper, healthy, and normal feelings of students who do not feel comfortable sharing locker rooms and restrooms with those of the opposite sex. Boys, who should leave a bathroom if a girl enters, and girls who should leave a bathroom if a boy enters would be taught either implicitly or explicitly that those natural and good feelings are wrong. They would be taught that their natural and good feelings of modesty are exclusionary, lacking in compassion, ignorant, and biased.

• Conversely, such policies falsely teach students that in order to be kind, compassionate, and inclusive of those who experience gender dysphoria, they have to affirm those peers’ feelings and ideas. In reality, neither love, nor compassion, nor wisdom, nor inclusivity requires affirmation and accommodation of every feeling, belief, or behavioral choice of every student in a school. And they certainly don’t require students to affirm confusion as soundness or lies as truth. Real love as well as commitments to morality, objective reality, and public order put limits on what individuals and schools should affirm and accommodate. And real love depends first on knowing what is true.

• Such policies teach students that cross-dressing (as well as hormone-doping and elective amputations of healthy body parts) is morally acceptable and good.

The proponents of tolerance and diversity demand nothing less than total ideological surrender and compulsory compliance with policies that reflect their doctrinaire assumptions. Taxpayers in District 211 should protest with boldness and tenacity not just this decision but the policy changes that already exist in District 211. Sympathy for this boy’s confusion should not lead community members to affirm destructive policies that embody lies. If Americans don’t oppose such stupid, harmful, tyrannical policies, such policies will come to all government schools, undermining truth, parental rights, children’s rights, and teachers’ rights.

Please support IFI as we fight for liberty and
work to advance the truth in the public square!

Tie her tubes, or we’ll sue you for sex discrimination, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) told a Catholic-affiliated hospital in California.

So after first declining to do so, Mercy Medical Center in Redding has now slated a tubal ligation for a woman after her scheduled C-section to deliver a baby in late September.

The ACLU’s demand is cut from the same cloth as the Obama Administration’s order under Obamacare to the Little Sisters of the Poor to violate their beliefs and provide contraceptives and abortifacients or pay crushing fines. That case is still in litigation.

The latest manifestation of the Left’s war on the First Amendment’s religious liberty guarantee began when Rachel Miller, a 32-year-old attorney, was rebuffed by hospital officials after she asked them to sterilize her following a planned live birth. In an Aug. 17 letter, the ACLU threatened to sue Mercy Medical Center, a facility run by the Sisters of Mercy and part of Dignity Health, which operates 40 hospitals — 22 of which are Catholic — in California, Nevada and Arizona, according to CNSNews.

Directive 53 of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops states:

“Direct sterilization of either men or women, whether permanent or temporary, is not permitted in a Catholic health care institution. Procedures that induce sterility are permitted when their direct effect is the cure or alleviation of a present and serious pathology and a simpler treatment is not available.”

Directive 70 states:

“Catholic health care organizations are not permitted to engage in immediate material cooperation in actions that are intrinsically immoral, such as abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and direct sterilization.”

Tough, said the ACLU, which regards all of the above as routine medical care, even though the procedures involve either taking an unborn child’s life, deliberately killing patients, helping them kill themselves, or rendering people sterile.

The ACLU noted that, ‘”getting one’s tubes tied,’ is the contraception method of choice for more than 30 percent of U.S. married women of reproductive age.”

Well, it’s one thing to voluntarily undergo it, as many do, but it is quite another to force others to perform it regardless of their beliefs. Given a deadline to respond by Aug. 24 or face a lawsuit, the hospital reversed its decision. In a brief statement, the hospital did not explain the about-face, other than to note, “tubal ligations are not performed in Catholic hospitals except on a case-by-case basis where a formal review by a committee of physicians and others gives permission to perform the procedure.”

The turnabout came even though the ACLU acknowledged that, “Miller’s insurance company had offered to cover her delivery at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, which would allow her to obtain the tubal ligation, but that hospital is more than 160 miles away.”

In a triumphant press release, the ACLU made it clear that this is only a small part of a larger campaign to break faith-based institutions to secular values.

“The reality remains that there is a clear conflict between the best interests of patients and the directives of the Catholic hospital system,” said Elizabeth Gill, senior attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. “Religious institutions that provide services to the general public should not be allowed to hold religion as an excuse to discriminate or deny important health care.”

The ACLU has also sued hospitals in Michigan and Washington State over their refusal to perform abortions, and has sued the federal Department of Health and Human Services to obtain documents that it claims show that Catholic relief agencies will not provide abortions or referrals to abortionists for unaccompanied immigrant children crossing America’s southern border.

On June 15, a federal district court dismissed the Michigan case as an unwarranted intrusion into religious doctrine. The ACLU has appealed.

In Washington State, in the face of an ACLU threat, the Skagit County Hospital District decided not to partner with a Catholic health provider. Later, the ACLU sued the district anyway on behalf of a woman who takes an acne drug that might cause birth defects and who wanted the option of abortion if she were to become pregnant.

This is the brave new world brought to us by social engineers who are turning the medical profession into an arm of the Left’s progressive agenda.

Don’t be surprised if the ACLU’s next move is to try to force the Sisters of Mercy to facilitate sex-change surgeries.

This article was originally posted at Townhall.com

Even before the U.S. Supreme Court announced the previously unknown constitutional “right” to impose same-sex “marriage” on all 50 states, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was readying its next volley.

For two decades, the ACLU has cited the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) as a defense of religious liberty in various worthy and some not-so-worthy cases. No more.

The ACLU has decided that the unalienable right to religious freedom embodied in the First Amendment must give way to newly coined claims by newly empowered groups.

In a Washington Post column, ACLU Deputy Director Louise Melling called on Congress to make RFRA essentially toothless. Of course, that’s not the way she put. Here’s her signature sentence:

“It’s time for Congress to amend the RFRA so that it cannot be used as a defense for discrimination. Religious freedom will be undermined only if we continue to tolerate and enable abuses in its name.”

As with the proverbial village in Vietnam, we apparently have to destroy religious freedom in order to save it. As a prime example of “abuses,” Ms. Melling cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year in favor of Hobby Lobby’s refusal to provide employees coverage for abortifacients, which she described misleadingly as “contraception.” She warned that this sort of liberty could proliferate:

“Religiously affiliated nonprofit organizations such as universities are taking the argument further,” she wrote. “They invoke the RFRA to argue not only that they should not have to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives, but also that they should not even have to notify the government that they refuse to do so.”

Can’t have that. The ACLU seems more concerned than ever that conservative religious people might retain some rights of conscience in the face of ever-increasing demands. Its website sports a “Using Religion to Discriminate” page that bemoans all sorts of religious freedom claims.

New York Times columnist Mark Oppenheimer, writing in TIME, cuts right to the chase. In his June 28 piece, “Now’s the Time to End Tax Exemptions for Religious Institutions,” he argues that,

“Rather than try to rescue tax-exempt status for organizations that dissent from settled public policy on matters of race or sexuality, we need to take a more radical step. It’s time to abolish, or greatly diminish, their tax-exempt statuses.”

Like many on the Left, Mr. Oppenheimer sees religious tax exemptions not as a recognition that the state has no authority over churches and church property, which belong to another kingdom entirely, but as a favor (“subsidizing”) that the state has extended. Viewed that way, it’s not a stretch to have the government assert taxing power over ecclesiastical property.

As for “settled public policy,” he means that the Court’s ruling is final, something that the Left never accepts when they lose. For example, the ACLU and others stepped up their legal attacks on the Boy Scouts after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000 upheld the group’s right to enforce their moral standards. Whenever the pendulum swings left, we’re told the law is “settled.” If it swings right, well, that’s just a provocation to do more.

In the coming days, conservative religious business owners, academic institutions and any individual who will not genuflect to the Left’s version of reality will face subtle and outright discrimination. The furor in Indiana over the legislature’s enactment of a state RFRA last March was only a taste of the kind of hysteria that the Left and its media enablers will gin up over any resistance to the latest demands.

Not missing a beat, atheist activist Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has uncorked yet another call for the Pentagon to weed out conservative Christians. In a Daily Kos posting, he wrote that chaplains who teach biblical marriage:

“don’t belong in the military. … At this stage, the only honorable thing that these losers can do is to fold up their uniforms, turn in their papers, and get the hell out of the American military chaplaincy. If they are unwilling or too cowardly to do so, then the Department of Defense must expeditiously cleanse itself of the intolerant filth that insists on lingering in the ranks of our armed forces.”

Given that this is what passes for tolerance, it’s not surprising that the ACLU and others on the Left want to render meaningless the free exercise of religion guarantee of the First Amendment and any federal and state laws that fortify religious liberty.

Deploying the language of inevitability, such as “being on the wrong side of history,” they seek to persuade the vast majority of Americans that resistance is futile.

Are they right? The answer will depend on a vigorous, renewed fight for liberty in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

This article was originally published at Townhall.com.

Written by Anna Paprocki, AUL Staff Counsel

Sunday’s Chicago Tribune article, “State bill seeks to mandate disclosure,” is terribly misleading.  It implies SB 1564* merely requires a healthcare provider to disclose that she has a conscientious objection, that the bill is simply about not having patients be “blind-sided” that a Catholic hospital/provider doesn’t perform abortions, elective sterilizations, etc. The bill does not require mere transparency about objections, but creates new obligations for healthcare providers, including pregnancy resource centers that offer women alternatives to abortion, to promote and participate in conscience-violating activities. Sponsored by State Sen. Daniel Biss (D-Skokie), the bill promotes the coercive anti-conscience agenda of his abortion-industry backers, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU.

Pregnancy resource centers that offer “health care” such as ultrasounds, and perhaps even pregnancy testing, would be required under the bill to violate their core mission by discussing “benefits” of abortion and providing information on where to obtain abortions.

The article heavily quotes OSF ethicist Erica Laethem for irrelevant points. While Ms. Laethem explains that providers in her healthcare system do not have a moral objection to discussing any “topic” with patients, the bill is not about permitting doctors to talk about what they don’t object to, or providing information to what they don’t object to. It literally does the opposite. It creates duties on all healthcare providers regardless of his or her conscientious objection.

There is a fundamental difference between Ms. Laethem’s role in advising those in her healthcare practice about her view on complicity and a government-imposed mandate that all healthcare providers must, regardless of sincerely held moral convictions, promote and participate in conscience-violating services.

Notably, federal law does not share Ms. Laethem’s view that there is an appreciable “distinction” between a technical referral and effectively facilitating one that makes mandating the latter acceptable. Federal law prohibits discrimination against those who object to referral, in the technical sense, and also when she “refuses to make arrangements for” referral.

By violating federal law, SB 1564 could jeopardize Illinois’ federal financial assistance, including reimbursements through federal Medicaid, Medicare, and other federal health programs.

SB 1564 is detrimental to both healthcare providers and patients in Illinois.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to your Illinois state senator to ask him/her to please uphold religious freedom and conscience rights for medical personnel in Illinois.  Ask them to reject SB 1564.

*SB 1564 is co-sponsored by State Senators Julie A. Morrison (D-Deerfield), Toi W. Hutchinson (D-Chicago Heights), Linda Holmes (D-Chicago), Kimberly A. Lightford (D-Chicago), Michael Noland(D-Elgin), Heather A. Steans (D-Chicago), William Delgado (D-Chicago), Iris Y. Martinez (D-Chicago), Jacqueline Collins (D-Chicago), and Emil Jones III (D-Chicago).

If you have school age children, contact your administration as soon as possible to ask this specific question: Will you be permitting students to refuse to speak in class on the Day of Silence? If the administration either answers “Yes” or dodges the question, please call your child or children out of school on the Day of Silence. Every absence costs districts money, and money talks.

Also, if your school will be permitting students to refuse to speak in class, politely insist that an email be sent to every family informing them of the following: 1. The Day of Silence will be taking place in classes on April 17, 2. Students will be permitted to refuse to speak during instructional time, 3.  The Day of Silence is organized and promoted by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

Parents have a right to know.

The Day of Silence is the queen of all the numerous homosexuality-affirming activities that take place in public schools. It started in one university and then like a cancer metastasized to thousands of high schools, and then into middle schools. Before long it will take place in elementary schools. Leftists know that it’s easier to indoctrinate 16-year-olds than 36-year-olds and easier still to indoctrinate 6-year-olds.

GLSEN promotes the Day of Silence as an “anti-bullying” effort. If it were solely about eradicating bullying, everyone—liberals and conservatives alike—would support it. But it’s not.

The Day of Silence exploits government schools, captive audiences, and anti-bullying sentiment to advance the Left’s social, moral, and political beliefs and goals. GLSEN seeks to advance the belief that all public expressions of moral disapproval of homosexual activity are bullying.

GLSEN urges students to refuse to speak all day, including during academic classes, which is disruptive to instructional time. Administrators permit students to refuse to speak in class, and teachers feel compelled to create lesson plans to accommodate student-refusal to speak. Teachers feel that if they don’t accommodate student-refusal to speak, they will be seen as supporting the bullying of self-identified homosexual students.

The little unspoken secret is that many teachers on both sides of the political aisle hate the Day of Silence because of the distraction and disruption it creates. Unfortunately, they’re afraid to say that to their administrations because GLSEN and its ideological acolytes proclaim that opposition to the Day of Silence necessarily means endorsement of bullying. The truth is one can both oppose bullying and oppose the Day of Silence.

The homosexuality-affirming legal organizations Lambda Legal and the ACLU have both stated that students have no legal right to refuse to speak in class, so school administrations have every right to require students to participate verbally in class. And teachers have every right to require students to answer questions, give oral presentations or speeches, or participate in debates or discussions.

A coalition of pro-family organizations is once again urging parents to keep their children home from school on the Day of Silence if their school administrations will be allowing students to politicize instructional time by refusing to speak. This is the only organized national effort to oppose any pro-homosexual activity or event in public schools.

Each year through the Day of Silence Walkout, parents of freshmen learn about the Day of Silence. And remarkably, there are parents of sophomores, juniors, and seniors who learn for the first time that the Day of Silence takes place in their children’s schools. This lack of awareness happens because school administrations do not notify parents about the Day of Silence.

The absence of conservative influence within the culture on issues related to homosexuality is to some extent the fault of conservatives. Ignorance, fear, and an astounding lack of perseverance on the parts of conservatives have turned our cultural institutions—including public education—into the playground of “progressives.” Our passivity has enabled homosexual activists and their ideological allies to become social, political, and pedagogical bullies. Evidence of that is everywhere, including in schools on the GLSEN’s annual April school event, the Day of Silence.

We must demonstrate the boldness and perseverance of the Left if we hope to stop the relentless appropriation of public education for the promotion of homosexuality.

Matt Barber, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, BarbWire

Dr. Michael Brown, Director, Coalition of Conscience

Brian Camenker, President, MassResistance

Linda Harvey, Founder and President, Mission America

Laurie Higgins, Cultural Analyst, Illinois Family Institute

Peter LaBarbera, President, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality

Diane Gramley, President, American Family Association of Pennsylvania

Matt Staver, President, Liberty Counsel

Debra Smith, Founder, Informing Christians

Tom Rasmussen, Executive Director, Montana Family Foundation

Pastor Scott Lively, President, Abiding Truth Ministries

Penny Nance, President, CWA

Debbie Leininger, State Director, CWA of Illinois

Beverly Uhlmer Roberts, State Director, CWA of Texas South

Linda Wall, VA Mass Resistance

Nolan Clayton, Faith and Freedom Family Ministries

Pastor Christopher Clegg, Operation Save America

It’s not enough for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to use its legal clout to halt graduation invocations or prayers before high school football games.

In Florida, the ACLU insists that even a secular school concert in a building that is used for religious services is beyond the pale. As is often the case, a single “atheist” parent complained, and that was enough for the ACLU to threaten legal action over the possibility of attendees catching religion “cooties.”

Of course, the ACLU did not phrase it as such, nor did they liken the church to a leper colony. But they got their way – sort of.

Rather than fight the legal assault, officials at Barron Collier High School near Naples, Florida at first called off their fifth annual fall concert at Moorings Presbyterian Church. As outraged students who had practiced for weeks for the event objected, school officials fashioned a deal. They would move the fall concert to another district high school and then have a second concert at the church in December.

Students were not thrilled, and they let school officials know it. Only about a third of the chorale’s members performed at the other school on Nov. 20, even though absentees were warned they would be given an F and it would count for one-sixteenth of their final grade.

“It was kind of like, ‘take one for the team,’ ” senior Claire Welsh told the Naples Daily News after the performance:

“She was crying right up to the start of the show, which saw only about 60 of the 175 choirs students take part. ‘It’s my senior year and I’ve been doing this for four years. This is a really sad start to my final year of choir.’

“Parents were told if the concert went off Thursday at Gulf Coast, the December concert would be back at Moorings, which parents and students argue has better acoustics.”

The ACLU had contended that because Moorings Presbyterian Church is regularly used for religious services, the atheist parent rightly found the concert location objectionable, even though the event contains no religious content.

Liberty Counsel, a pro-family, constitutional legal group, offered the school pro bono legal representation to fight the ACLU, urging district officials not to cave in to its “campaign of intimidation and misinformation,” according to OneNewsNow.com.

“The courts have held the use of religious property by a school district to be constitutional if there is a clear secular purpose for the use, the use does not endorse or discourage religion, and the ‘reasonable observer’ would not conclude that the school district endorses religion,” Liberty Counsel asserted. “The clear secular purpose to use the Presbyterian church auditorium is for sufficient room to hold the crowd and appropriate acoustics. … The students know that they are simply using a building.”

In an Oct. 30 letter issued to Collier County Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Kamela Patton, Liberty Counsel attorney Horatio G. Mihet assured district officials that holding the concert would not put the district in legal jeopardy:

“The ACLU’s legal position and threats are baseless and constitutionally infirm. Collier County Schools does not violate any student’s constitutional rights by simply using or even leasing a church building for the performance of concert music by the High School Chorus. Courts have been crystal clear on this point:

“‘Plausible secular reasons…exist for performing school choir concerts in churches and other venues associated with religious institutions. Such venues often are acoustically superior to high school auditoriums or gymnasiums, yet still provide adequate seating capacity. Moreover, by performing in such venues, an instructor can showcase his choir to the general public in an atmosphere conducive to the performance of serious choral music.’” Bauchman for Bauchman v. W. High Sch., 132 F.3d 542, 554 (10th Cir. 1997).

“Thus, if a church can permanently lease a building for operation of a school without violating the Establishment Clause, then surely two hours in a large, air conditioned, acoustically ideal room is perfectly acceptable,” Mihet wrote.

It would have been nice if school officials had bucked the ACLU’s bullying and gone ahead with the fall concert at the church, which they had done the previous four years.

But at least an anemic version of the show went on, with the promise of another, and lots of students who got an ‘F’ showed that they know something very important: that freedom is not free.

This article was originally posted at the TownHall.com website.

As the American people prepare to vote on marijuana ballot measures in three states and the District of Columbia, measures which would make the mind-altering substance more freely available, more bad news keeps coming for the well-funded pothead lobby.

In a major terrorism-related case, a participant in the cover-up of the Boston Marathon bombing conspiracy, Robel Phillipos, claimed the drug had so many bad effects on his brain that he lied to federal agents.

The key question, however, is whether the major media will ever start reporting on the substantial evidence linking “cannabis” and mental illness, violence and terrorism.

The “reefer madness” defense for Phillipos, a close friend and associate of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaev, would be laughable were it not for the fact that the Boston bombings killed three people and injured hundreds. Martin Richard, the eight-year-old boy killed in the bombing, had been photographed holding a sign that said, “No more hurting people. Peace.”

The pothead defense clearly didn’t work out the way his radical left lawyers had planned; Phillipos has now been found guilty by a jury of lying to the FBI, “despite his claim that he was too high to remember what he had done,” as The Atlantic magazine described the unusual defense.

The son of an Ethiopian immigrant, Phillipos knew that two other Tsarnaev friends removed a backpack containing evidence of the terrorist crime from his college dorm room at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. But he lied about it to federal agents.

His attorney, Susan Church, and her co-counsel, Derege Demissie, had argued that “he smoked marijuana about a half-dozen times that day, and was simply unable to reconstruct his actions during a series of high-pressure interviews with federal agents,” The Boston Globe reported. The Globe said legal analysts were divided over whether the “I forget because of marijuana” defense would work.

Well, it didn’t.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s office, between April 19, 2013 and April 26, 2013, federal investigators interviewed Phillipos five times about the bombing and during each of those interviews Phillipos lied. He blamed marijuana for all of these memory “lapses.”

U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz said, “In the wake of one of the most significant events in this city’s modern history—an event which left two young women and a child dead, and many more injured —thousands of ordinary citizens assisted law enforcement in identifying and locating the perpetrators.” However, she said that Phillipos did just the opposite. “He lied to agents when he could have helped. He concealed when he could have assisted,” she said.

He faces eight years in prison for each of the two counts of lying, three years of supervised release, and a fine of $250,000 for each charge.

Incredibly, former governor of Massachusetts and 1988 Democratic nominee for president Michael Dukakis testified on his behalf and said he and his wife had taken him to the 2004 Democratic National Convention as a “special guest.” Dukakis said, “We watched him grow up.”

Based on the defense of his crimes offered by his lawyers, it appears that he grew up into a zombie willing to lie about his knowledge of the worst terrorist incident in Boston history because marijuana clouded his memory.

This provocative legal theory came, not surprisingly, from the far-left. His attorney Susan Church previously served as co-chair of the Massachusetts Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, and regularly conducts “know your rights” seminars at community centers and various immigrant advocacy groups.

Her bio neglects to point out that the National Lawyers Guild was once identified as a Communist Party front. Her co-counsel, Derege Demissie, is a member of the board of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.

Church focuses on “immigration law and criminal defense,” and “advocates for immigrants with criminal convictions facing deportation and immigrants seeking immigration benefits in the United States.” She received the “Detention Panel Attorney of the Year” award from the Political Asylum Immigrant Representation project.

Leave it to the ACLU and the far-left National Lawyers Guild to offer marijuana as a defense for lying about terrorism.

The “high out of his mind” defense, though ultimately unsuccessful, does add to the questions about marijuana’s role in the crime, since Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaev was a heavy marijuana user and dealer. His older brother, killed in a shoot-out, was implicated in a triple murder involving marijuana being thrown on three dead bodies whose throats were slit.

To add to the intrigue, a sister of the Boston Marathon bombers who goes by the name of Bella Tsarnaeva is also facing a marijuana charge.

The Bergen County, New Jersey, Record reported that Tsarnaeva was arrested after police responded to her home on a domestic violence report and found marijuana. The paper said both Tsarnaeva and her boyfriend, Ahmad Khalil, were indicted on April 10 for possession of marijuana with intent to distribute.

The number of people associated with the bombers and/or the conspiracy has led to speculation that it grew out of a marijuana smuggling operation, possibly with foreign ties. The Tsarnaev brothers were born in the former Soviet Union.

It has long been known that terrorist groups operating in drug-producing regions of the world such as Afghanistan, Colombia and Peru, have been heavily involved in the drug trade.

Despite Phillipos’ failure to blame pot for his lies, Reuters news agency noted that his lawyers called one expert, Dr. Alan Wartenberg, who said that marijuana can “impair memory” and “impair executive functions,” as well as judgment and other brain functions. Wartenberg said younger men’s brains are “more prone to cognitive impairment from marijuana” than those in older men.

Many studies back up the testimony. One study from Northwestern University found that teenagers who were heavy marijuana users had “abnormal changes in their brain structures related to working memory and performed poorly on memory tasks.”

But while the drug can have an extremely negative effect on the brain, the idea that smoking marijuana on a constant basis gets you off the hook for lying about crimes of terrorism has now been rejected by a jury.

Still, how many more “stoners” will be produced if the marijuana ballot measures pass on November 4? The stakes are so high that the Brookings Institution is calling them the “Marijuana Midterms.”

The dope lobby is heavily funded, with much of the money coming from groups associated with billionaires George Soros and Peter Lewis. Other funds are supplied by the marijuana business, which generates repeat customers dependent on the weed.

One analysis shows that in Oregon, the marijuana lobby is spending $2 million on a prime-time TV ad campaign, while opponents have raised a mere $168,000. In Alaska, dopers have raised $867,000 while opponents have only raised $97,000.

In states like California, Washington and Colorado, where marijuana has been legalized, experts are now warning about edible marijuana products disguised as candies, cookies and brownies falling into the hands of kids. The Washington Poison Center warns that, of the reported cases of pediatric marijuana exposures in Washington State, 27 percent were cases involving children from one to three years old.

While drugging kids with marijuana appears to be on the rise, the media seem to be treating these cases as harmless pranks.

The dope lobby, meanwhile, is extremely upset over my previous column examining a connection between high-profile cases of Islamic terrorism and violence and marijuana addiction. One critic called my column “offensive,” saying, “I hope that all TWB readers contact him and let them know what they think of his reefer madness.”

TWB stands for “The Weed Blog,” devoted to all things marijuana-related. It features “marijuana books,” cannabis recipes, and even “grower tips.” It is typical of the consuming passion for the drug that characterizes heavy users.

The editors and administrators are identified by the names “Johnny Green” and “Jay Smoker,” which are obviously pseudonyms for marijuana users and activists. They are determined to portray marijuana addiction in the best possible light.

This is typical of the marijuana mentality that gripped the Boston bombers and their collaborators, until one of them, Phillipos, got caught by the feds and lied. Then he decided he had to blame pot for his mental problems in order to avoid prison.

This article was originally posted at the Accuracy in Media website.

For an organization that frequently goads government into advancing an atheistic viewpoint on everyone within reach, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) talks a good game about how wrong it is for some people to “impose their beliefs on others.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June in favor of Hobby Lobby and another Christian-owned company that refused to comply with Obamacare’s abortifacient mandate has sent the leftwing legal group into ongoing apoplexy:

“While religious freedom gives us all the right to make personal decisions about how to practice religion,” the ACLU states, “it doesn’t give institutions or individuals the right to impose their beliefs on others.”

Really? Doesn’t requiring the Christian owners of Hobby Lobby or Conestoga Wood Products to cut their conscience to fit the ACLU’s atheism constitute a situation where the ACLU itself is trying to use the law to “impose their beliefs on others?”

According to the ACLU’s reading of the First Amendment, it’s okay to have “freedom of worship,” which means keeping religious stuff strictly in your head or behind church doors. But God help you if you try to live it out in the real world, where the ACLU prowls for “victims.”

On the bright side, the ACLU is doing us all a favor by keeping track of its many religious freedom challenges to the oppressive Obamacare contraceptive mandate across the nation.

“To date, 101 cases have been filed challenging the rule as an infringement on religious liberty,” the ACLU states on its website. “Eighty-nine of these cases are currently pending: 41 cases brought by nonprofit organizations, 45 cases brought by for-profit companies, and 3 cases brought by both nonprofit and for-profit plaintiffs.”

The devil’s law firm and other atheistic groups are also actively attacking religious freedom by contending that religiously-affiliated schools cannot require employees to live by religious standards.

In 2012, in the Hosanna-Tabor case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the government cannot interfere with religious groups’ faith-based employment qualifications. But the lawsuits keep coming.

In 2013, San Diego Christian College dismissed an employee, Teri James, who had become pregnant out of wedlock. She retained feminist camera hog attorney Gloria Allred and sued the university, even though Ms. James had signed a covenant as a condition of employment agreeing not to engage in certain behaviors, including premarital sex. But what’s a promise or a contract worth?

“Women out there should not have to worry about losing their income and independence just because they are carrying a child,” Ms. James said in a statement.

Independence? She means that the school has a duty to support her in the manner in which she is accustomed even if she breaks their rules. The ACLU summed up the situation this way:

“There are cases … of religious schools firing employees who are unmarried and pregnant, for example, in the name of religion.”

Well, yes. A Christian school should have the right to employ people who abide by Christian values, such as keeping sex within marriage. What’s the point of having an expressly Christian organization if the people within it openly defy its values?

Would the ACLU be comfortable hiring someone who opposes abortion on demand or same-sex “marriage?” How about an anti-porn advocate?

In Missouri, the American Humanist Association is threatening to sue because one recruit was made uncomfortable when he spotted some donated Gideon Bibles on a shelf at a National Guard intake center in St. Louis. Maybe the recruit would benefit from a stint in a country not yet influenced by Christianity’s unique respect for individual rights.

The ACLU is the point of the spear, legally speaking, of a larger Leftist campaign to fundamentally transform America into a place where fornication of any kind under the sun trumps all other human rights. It’s the only freedom we’ll have left after they establish government-enforced diversity re-education to stamp out anything resembling traditional religious values.

Achieving diversity used to mean ending discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or other immutable characteristics. Now it means dividing people into groups based on grievances and then constantly inflaming those sore points. Google the “war on women” for more details.

For good measure, anyone resisting this onslaught is said to be “obsessed” with it, as if the activists demanding a wholesale moral meltdown are, by contrast, only casually involved.

In his classic, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis’s professorial devil instructs his demon nephew that in order to make it easier to steal souls, “All extremes except extreme devotion to [God] are to be encouraged. Not always, of course, but at this period.

“Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep. Other ages, of which the present is one, are unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them.”

For decades, the ACLU has been reading the devil’s mail and acting accordingly.

They’ve learned only too well how to “impose their beliefs on others.”

This article was originally posted at the TownHall.com website.

The Illinois General Assembly overwhelmingly agreed this spring that it should be illegal for any minor 17 years or younger to use a tanning bed in Illinois, even if their parents approve. Why? Tanning beds can overexpose sensitive skin to harmful ultraviolent rays and increase the likelihood of melanoma—a deadly form of cancer.

The state isn’t shy about protecting minors from other potentially-harmful activities. Minors under the age of 18 are banned from purchasing tobacco products. They need parental permission to be tattooed or pierced. And in Illinois, no one under the age of 21 can legally purchase alcoholic beverages.

But when it comes to sexual health, so-called “reproduction rights” advocates have successfully organized and pressured Illinois lawmakers to uphold children’s privacy over parental rights and responsibilities. Indeed, Illinois law allows minors age 12 and above to seek counseling and medical treatment without parental notice or permission, if the 12 year old thinks he or she may have been exposed to a sexually-transmitted disease. And that so-called “treatment” now allows medical personnel to give HPV and Hepatitis B shots, without parents knowing.

The same activists vehemently disagree with Illinois’ newly-implemented parental notification law. Within days of the Illinois State Supreme Court forcing into effect an 18-year-old state law requiring medical personnel to notify parents of underage girls of their abortion intentions 48 hours prior, pro-abortion forces set into motion a counter offensive to undermine parents and repeal the law.

The StopPNA.org campaign, organized by the Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health and the ACLU, is urging calls to state lawmakers and is meeting to discuss moving forward legislation that would repeal Illinois’ parental notification law.

The group argues that parental involvement in their minor daughters’ reproductive health care is intrusive and obstructive. Contemplate this anti-parent statement on their website:

“Due to the stigma and shame of abortion, along with troubling parental/home/abusive circumstances suffered by at least a third of youth, it is imperative that young people have unfettered access to abortion. We need to ensure that young people access safe procedures performed by medical providers.”

Up until August 15, Illinois was the only state in the Midwest not requiring parental notification (However, the U.S. Supreme Court required states to provide a judicial bypass to all underage girls). Among the shrinking number of states without parental notification, Montana is now the nearest to the west, and New York the nearest to the east. 

At this point, 37 state legislatures have recognized that notifying parents before a minor accesses abortion is simply common sense. Who, besides the child, deals more with the consequences of medical treatment gone awry? Who knows more about a 12-year-old child’s medical history? And who is more entitled to know if a crime has been committed against their underage daughters?

The National Abortion Federation reports that 70 percent of girls 13 years old and younger who have had sex say that sex was forced on them. Sexual acts with children 17 and under are felonies in Illinois, whether the perpetrators are adults or minors.

What sexually-assaulted 12-year-old facing pregnancy and considering abortion would fully comprehend the potential legal and physical complications without a trusted family member or concerned adult counseling them? Abortion clinics are not known for being protective of their clients’ welfare. On several occasions, citizen journalists have documented Planned Parenthood staff counseling minors how to avoid reporting sexual assaults.

In contrast, imagine what would happen if a tanning bed operator offered backroom tans to kids.

Abortions on minors are not rare. In 2009, 251 girls under the age of 14 and 2,734 15- to 17- year olds underwent surgical abortions in Illinois. The numbers remained fairly consistent in 2010 and dropped slightly to 2544 underage abortions in 2011. Estimates are that 67,928 documented underage abortions have occurred in Illinois since 1995, when the law was signed but challenged and paused by pro-abortion activists.

It remains to be seen whether the law will prevent abortions, but abortion clinic owners are likely to have growing concerns about diminishing profits now that they must contact a parent of an underage girl 48 hours before she is scheduled to have an abortion

In the meantime, rest assured parents, whether you approve or not, your kids will not be getting artificial tans in Illinois, because they are outright banned.

Three Important Upcoming Events:

–> October 10th — A & M Partnership’s Banquet with Dr. Erwin Lutzer in Palatine
(Click HERE for more info)

–> October 12th — Iron Sharpens Iron Conference for Women in Moline
(Click HERE for more info) 

–> October 23rd — IFI’s Defend Marriage Lobby Day in Springfield
(Click HERE for more info)

Multiple media sources are cheerfully reporting that supporters of marriage-redefinition may try to pass their same-sex “marriage” bill during the lame duck session of the General Assembly next month (January 3-9).

State Representative Greg Harris (D-Chicago), who identifies as homosexual and is the chief sponsor of this anti-family legislation, used the lame duck session in 2010 to ram through a same-sex “civil unions” bill.  It passed by razor-thin margins in part because many proponents of civil unions dishonestly promised lawmakers that the legalization of “civil unions” was all they wanted. 

The ethically-challenged ACLU lobbied heavily for civil unions in 2010, but then in 2012 filed a lawsuit in Cook County on behalf of homosexual activists, complaining that the very civil union law they lobbied to create is unconstitutional.

The liberal activists who pushed for civil unions, including Representative Harris and State Senator David Koehler (D-Peoria), also promised their colleagues that religious liberty and freedom of conscience would not be affected by the passage of “civil unions.”  We have seen how empty those promises were. 

One month after the act was signed into law, homosexual activists went after the Christian owner of a bed and breakfast in Paxton, Illinois.  The owner, Jim Walder, wanted to operate his business for the glory of the Lord.  Not wanting to violate his conscience, Mr. Walder refused to rent his bed and breakfast to a homosexual couple for their civil union ceremony and reception.  (Read more HERE.)

Then in July of 2011, because Catholic Charities would not violate its religious convictions by placing needy children in the homes of homosexual “civil union” partners, the state of Illinois forced Catholic Charities out of adoption and foster care work, thereby affecting the lives of 2,500 innocent children.

The promises of homosexual activists turned out to be utter deceits, as were the religious liberty “guarantees” that were built into the civil union bill, ironically titled “The Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act.” 

Perhaps thinking Illinoisans can be duped again, Representative Harris has named his marriage-redefinition bill the “Religious Freedom and Marriage Act.”

Take ACTION: Click HERE to email your state lawmakers today, urging them to uphold natural marriage and to support a state constitutional amendment by allowing Illinois voters to permanently define this foundational societal institution.  Be assured, your calls and emails are important!  Legislators take very seriously the letters and the numbers of calls they receive — particularly letters that are written by their constituents (as opposed to pre-written form letters.)

We can stop this destructive policy from moving forward, but we must take up the fight again and be willing to make our voices heard.  And this time, we need every conservative in Illinois to make his and her voice heard. We need you to respond to every action alert we send out as the Left moves forward with this and other pernicious legislation.

Click HERE to support the work and ministry of IFI.

It’s nigh unto impossible to stop teachers from showing films with egregiously obscene language and depictions of sodomy, masturbation, and pedophilic fantasies in public schools, but when the gender/sexuality deconstructionists—aka “progressives”—want father-daughter dances gone, in the blink of a blinkered eye, they’re gone. When “progressives” in Cranston, Rhode Island said jump, school administrators said how high.

The administration of a school district in Cranston, Rhode Island, just a stone’s throw from the high school sued by the atheist teen over a banner on which was written a prayer that made her feel “unwanted,” was recently reprimanded for hosting its longstanding annual father-daughter dance because it supposedly violates the city’s anti-discrimination policy which prohibits discrimination based on gender in all school activities.

Although, the dance took place, the district apologized for this grievous offense to the sensibilities of sexuality anarchists.

Discrimination or Stereotyping: What’s the problem?

Even though the school agreed to offer an equivalent activity for boys (i.e., a mother-son baseball game), the gender deconstructionists at the ACLU were not satisfied. They sent a letter to the school which stated in part:

A dance for girls and a baseball game for boys, particularly in light of the stereotypes they embody, are not, we submit, ‘reasonably comparable’ activities….To the contrary; the stereotypes at their core undermine the goal of school anti-discrimination laws.

So, the goal of school anti-discrimination laws is to eradicate stereotypes? By stereotypes, the ACLU means any recognition that there are differences between boys and girls. I wonder what these stereotype-haters think of Will and Grace and Modern Family, which make their bread and butter by recognizing, promoting, and celebrating stereotypes of homosexuals. And since when is stereotype-eradication the proper role of any law?

This pernicious interpretation of anti-discrimination law points to the difference between legitimate and illegitimate discrimination. One meaning of discrimination is good. When we make judgments between right and wrong, we discriminate legitimately. When we make distinctions, that is to say, discriminate, between things that are by nature different, we discriminate legitimately. When we recognize, participate in, or promote types of activities or relationships in which gender or gender differences play a role, we are discriminating legitimately.

We ought not impose gender distinctions where they are irrelevant, but that doesn’t mean that society—including public schools—are prohibited from offering activities that recognize gender distinctions. It is ethically legitimate to have women’s book clubs, men’s golf outings, separate bathrooms for men and women, sexually complementary marriage, and father-daughter dances.

I guess the Rhode Island school could have provided a mother-son dance as the reasonably comparable activity for boys, which would have solved the problem of stereotyping. Or better yet, they could have offered a father-son dance, which would have really blown gender stereotypes to smithereens. But why is it inherently better to prohibit all formal recognition that there are differences between males and females than to occasionally recognize that most boys and most girls generally fit within these recognizable gender categories. What sense does it make for homosexual men to say they prefer men over women if there are no gender differences? With regard to dances, generally speaking, more young girls like to get gussied up and go to dances than do  young boys.

Anti-discrimination laws were never intended to obliterate public recognition of gender differences. Or at least the public was never told that the obliteration of all public recognition of gender differences was the ultimate goal of these laws.

Homosexuality and Gender Confusion Affirmed in Public Schools

Perhaps, however, it wasn’t the promotion of the evil stereotype that girls tend to like dances more than boys do that has the ACLU so incensed. Perhaps the ACLU’s concern is that those who are being raised by single or homosexual parents or who suffer from gender confusion will “feel bad” if there is any activity offered that doesn’t jibe with their circumstances. After all, it is their feelings and beliefs that now control public schools.

Public schools are pressured to accept as true the fanciful and subversive notion that one’s real gender is determined by one’s internal thoughts and desires. And public schools are pressured to affirm all family structures as equivalent in order not to make students who have only one parent or who are being raised by homosexuals “feel bad.”

This, of course, means public schools are not neutral on the issue of gender confusion, divorce, or families headed by homosexuals. Pretending that little boys are in reality little girls is not a neutral position. Affirming family structures that have only one parent or in which children are raised by homosexuals as equivalent to the traditional family structure in which there is a mother and father is a non-neutral position.

Suffering in Motherless or Fatherless Families

It is tragic that some children don’t have mothers or fathers. The reasons are many ranging from death to divorce and abandonment to the selfish desires of men and women who intentionally create motherless or fatherless children. But the unfortunate circumstances of some children should not preclude society from providing opportunities to celebrate the types of relationships that emerge from sexual differentiation.     

The Rhode Island story raises a number of questions:

• How can a society promote that which is good if it must continually defer to the feelings of those who either voluntarily make bad choices or who are victims of the bad choices of others?
• May society affirm the value of parents working to keep their family intact if doing so makes children whose parents divorce feel bad?
• Is the sadness of fatherless children caused by messages that affirm good things like the relationship between fathers and daughters? Or is the sadness caused by the absence of fathers?
• Does it help these children to conceal all celebrations of the good of father-daughter relationships?  

The fact that a student feels bad when exposed to an idea or activity does not mean that the idea should censored, or that the activity should be prohibited, or that either is wrong. Sometimes our sad (or guilty) feelings are good things. Sometimes they result from recognition that our own ideas and choices or the ideas and choices of people we love are not good. Sometimes our sorrow results from the absence of something good and desirable.

What is the origin of the opposition of gender deconstructionists to gender-related activities? Are they centrally concerned about the sadness children feel because their life circumstances are different from those of their peers? It could be that the ACLU believes that schools shouldn’t play any part—no matter how incidental, remote, or ancillary—in making kids feel bad because of differences in their life circumstances. If that’s the case, then schools must do away with honors nights because some kids can’t garner honors. And swim teams shouldn’t invite parents down on deck on senior night because some children don’t have parents. And health classes shouldn’t teach about the health risks of obesity because some kids have obese parents.

Or is their central concern their desire to eradicate any recognition of the objective status of gender differences and the critical role gender differences play in human flourishing? It could be that gender deconstructionists want to obliterate the objective truth that objective gender exists and that gender differences play an essential role in procreation and socialization. They may want to replace those truths with their radical, unproven beliefs that gender has no objectively discernible reality and plays no essential role in any activity or social experience.

If that’s the case and they win the cultural day, we’re in for a world of hurt. If we think schools are hurting children by holding an after-school, father-daughter dance, imagine a world where little girls and boys are taught that objectively discernible gender doesn’t exist and where all activities that recognize and celebrate gender differences are prohibited.

Father-daughter dances are not merely enjoyable activities for fathers and daughters (or grandpas and granddaughters, uncles and nieces, older brothers and little sisters). They also teach girls how men should treat women. In a small way, they help girls know the experience of being honored and cherished. And maybe in some small way that will help girls later in life reject those men who don’t honor and cherish them—or those who abuse them.

Public schools have no ethical obligation to affirm the non-objective belief that gender is constituted by feelings or thoughts, or that anatomy and DNA are wholly unrelated to gender. Public schools have no ethical obligation to affirm the peculiar assumptions of those who believe that gender has no objectively discernible and profoundly meaningful reality.

Public schools have no ethical obligation to try to alleviate all suffering, including the suffering that results from the poor choices of adults. Schools can’t lessen the pain that results from missing fathers or mothers. Schools can, however, make it more difficult for children to see the real source of their pain. Schools can also stand in the way of children growing up to aspire to something better. When schools teach implicitly and explicitly that fatherless or motherless families are just as beneficial for the rearing of children as stable families with one mother and one father who are married for life, they make it less likely that children will aspire to such family structures when they grow up. 

Stand With Us

Your support of our work and ministry is always much needed and greatly appreciated. Your promotion of our emails on Facebook, Twitter, your own email network, and prayer for financial support is a huge part of our success in being a strong voice for the pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-family message here in the Land of Lincoln.  Please consider standing with us.

Click here to support Illinois Family Action (IFA). Contributions to IFA are not tax-deductible but give us the most flexibility in engaging critical legislative and political issues.

Click here to support Illinois Family Institute (IFI). Contributions to IFI are tax-deductible and support our educational efforts only.

You can also send a gift to P.O. Box 88848, Carol Stream, IL  60188.

This week, a bipartisan group of 11 members of the Illinois General Assembly filed an amicus curiae brief defending the constitutionality of Illinois law defining marriage as the union of a husband and a wife. Led by Senator Kirk Dillard (R-Westmont) and Senator Bill Haine (D-Alton), the legislators’ brief supports a motion to dismiss the ACLU and Lambda Legal lawsuits filed by Thomas More Society attorneys, on behalf of downstate county clerks who were allowed into the case to defend the law.

“We welcome the bipartisan support for Illinois’ marriage law offered by this respected group of legislators,” said Peter Breen, executive director and legal counsel for the Thomas More Society. “They rightly point out that under our constitutional system, the issue of how the government treats domestic relationships is reserved to the General Assembly.”

The legislators assert that the judicial branch should not rewrite the state’s marriage laws, stating that “to do so would be to place the court in a position of acting as a super-legislature, nullifying laws it does not like. That is not our proper role in a democratic society.” They also claim that such action would, “Dramatically interfere with the constitutional guarantee of separation of powers by which the general assembly is empowered to make public policy….”

The legislators also cite several sociological arguments stating that “… the marriage structure that helps children the most is a family headed by two biological parents ….” The legislators also supported the religious liberty concerns raised by the amicus brief of the Catholic Conference of Illinois, also filed this week, indicating that “of great concern to us is hostility that may be shown to Illinois’ religious minorities” who oppose same-sex marriage.

The amicus curiae brief is available HERE.

The proposed amici curiae, Senator Kirk Dillard, Senator William Haine, Senator Matt Murphy (R-Palatine), Senator Darrin LaHood (R-Peoria), Senator Bill Brady (R-Bloomington), Representative David Reis (R-Olney), Representative Joseph Lyons (D-Chicago), Representative Michael Connelly (R-Naperville), Representative Richard Morthland (R-Moline), Representative Patti Bellock (R-Westmont), and Representative Paul Evans (R-Highland), all of the Illinois General Assembly, are represented by retired Cook County Chancery Court Judge, Robert V. Boharic.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to contact your state representatives and state senators, urging them to support HJR 95 and its call for an amendment to the Illinois Constitution that clearly defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman.