It’s astonishing that America’s first freedom—the most fundamental of all constitutionally protected rights—is threatened by cross-dressers and others in bondage to disorders related to sexuality. That which has made America great—a beacon of light to oppressed peoples around the world—is being dismantled by those devoted to sexual libertinism. The manifold deleterious effects of the rejection of biblical truth from the public square is transforming America into a place unfit for children, families, or a free and flourishing people. While political “leaders,” including GOP “leaders” cower in their corners if men in dresses look at them cross-eyed, those men in dresses gobble up the rights of Christians. Yum yum, eat ‘em up.

The newest salvo from a man in a dress comes from “Reverend” “Kalie” Hargrove, a man who now pretends to be a woman and who filed a Title IX complaint with the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Justice (DOJ) claiming that Lincoln Christian University in Lincoln, Illinois violated his Civil Rights under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

Mr. Hargrove was a student at Lincoln Christian University when he made the free choice to begin cross-dressing and pretending to be a woman. As a result, the Christian university told him he had to withdraw from classes or face discipline. Mr. Hargrove then filed his complaint.

Hargrove is being represented by the Religious Exemption Accountability Project (REAP), whose sole raison d’être is to sue Christian colleges and universities that receive federal funds in order to force them to abandon their biblical convictions in deference to those who worship sexual sin and who demand that all Christians do likewise.

Ain’t gonna happen. The wheat and chaff will be separated and the chaff burned up. The lukewarm church will be vomited out. And REAP will one day reap the whirlwind that it is sowing.

Here’s REAP’s tricksy bit of legal sophistry:

In August 2021, the University discriminated against Kalie Hargrove (Student A) on the basis of sex (gender identity) by directing her [sic] either to withdraw from classes or face discipline because she [sic] publicly identified as transgender.

REAP and Hargrove are citing Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 as the basis for their complaint. Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex. Title IX says nothing about “gender” or “gender identity”—which as sexual anarchists continually proclaim are entirely different from sex. In reality, the socially constructed, screwball idea of an “identity” based on subjective feelings about one’s sex wasn’t even on the cultural horizon when Title IX was written and passed.

As Ben Shapiro, Ryan T. Anderson, and others predicted, the boneheaded decision written by Supreme Court Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch in the Title VII case Bostock v. Clayton County made inevitable a conflict between Title IX and Title VII. Gorsuch decided that if employers don’t treat men who pretend to be women exactly as they treat women, then they’re guilty of discrimination based on sex. As legal scholars predicted and leftists knew, Bostock paved the way for legal attacks on both women’s sports and Christian schools that treat people differently in some contexts based on sex differences.

As I wrote in 2020 following Gorsuch’s janky decision,

The crux of the argument goes something like this: If a company that allows a woman who gets breast implants and wears lipstick, stilettos, and dresses to work fires a man who gets breast implants and wears lipstick, stilettos, and dresses to work, the company has discriminated against him based on his sex and, therefore, violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Ironically, Lincoln Christian University was founded by Earl C. Hargrove. So, a Hargrove heretic seeks to impose his socially constructed heretical theology, which is misshapen by his sinful desires, on a university founded by a Hargrove Christian.

“LGB” and “T” activists are using receipt of federal funds as a ruse to force Christian schools to deny the Word of God on matters related to sexuality and marriage. Don’t be deceived. They will next come after Christian schools that don’t receive federal funds. If wolves in sheep’s clothing can’t infiltrate Christian schools (and churches) and transmogrify their theological orthodoxy into heresy, they will use the courts to silence them.

Slowly incrementally leftists have been engaged in a long battle to eradicate all public recognition of sex differences. The ideological weapons central to this battle include the heterosexual revolution fomented by the perverse Alfred Kinsey and Hugh Hefner, feminism, the homosexual revolution, and “trans”-cultism. Since this battle is at its core a spiritual battle, it also entails eradicating the church’s freedom to preach and teach. Leftists believe that identity defined by biblical orthodoxy must be subordinated to identity defined by disordered sexual appetites.

Every society has taboos and stigmas. Every society has shared public values and principles that shape culturally approved behaviors and conventions. Societies embed those values and principles in our laws, policies, civic practices, court decisions, classrooms, arts, and entertainment. These institutional incarnations of shared values and principles implicitly and explicitly teach what society believes is right or wrong, good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. Currently, those who hold conservative sexual ethics are stigmatized, shamed, excluded, and bullied.

Further, there are no societies in which individual freedom in all areas of life is absolute and without limit. A society is not a collection of atomized individuals united by nothing other than shared geography. Rather, societies are group projects in which diverse peoples are united by ideas, principles, and values. The question before us is which ideas, values, and principles will we uphold and teach. If leftists continue to dominate all cultural institutions, we will enslave future generations to leftist ideas and values that are shaped by disordered sexual appetites, instead of freeing future generations by providing sexual boundaries consonant with reality.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Trans_LCC.mp3

Written by Rick Claybrook, Esq.

The U.S. Supreme Court fall term begins this month, and, as of now, it does not appear to be as action-packed for religious liberty as this past term. However, at least one important case is in the hopper, and several are in the pipeline.  And, of course, all is overshadowed by the presumed replacement of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

The case in the hopper is Fulton v. Philadelphia, dealing with whether Philadelphia can stop contracting with Catholic Social Services to perform foster care services because CSS refuses to place children with same-sex couples due to its religious beliefs. The case presents many interesting angles: practical, philosophical, personal.

a.) It is set to be argued on November 4.  Will Judge Barrett be confirmed by then?  If not, and there is a 4-4 split, will it be reargued?

b.) One issue presented is whether Employment Division v. Smith, Justice Scalia’s most notorious decision among many religious freedom advocates, should be overruled. Will Judge Barrett, a self-described Scalia acolyte, be inclined to overrule Smith?

c.) Of course, as we argued in our Fulton amicus merits brief, it is also quite possible to decide in favor of CSS without overruling Smith by taking the path of “hybrid” rights, i.e., that more fundamental rights are at stake than just free exercise.

d.) The city in its briefs before the Supreme Court has also shifted the focus of its defense, now principally arguing that there is much less religious freedom when the government is handing out contracts for a function for which it has primary responsibility.

A few petitions filed last term seem to have been held awaiting what the Court does with Smith in Fulton (if anything).  Foremost among them is Arlene’s Flowers (19-333), which involves a Christian florist who refused to provide floral arrangements for a same-sex “marriage” ceremony. This case has already been “gvr’d” (granted, vacated, and remanded) once for reconsideration in light of Masterpiece Cakeshop, and we argued in our amicus brief in support of the petition that, by requiring the florist to contribute to the ceremony on pain of penalty, she was being unconstitutionally compelled to speak and assemble in a ceremony to which she had religious objection.

Tensions between SOGI discrimination laws and religious freedom are also at play in several other cases in the pipeline. The petition in Patients for Privacy v. Barr (20-62) raises whether a school’s forced inclusion of opposite-sex identifying (“trans”) students in locker rooms violates other children’s bodily privacy rights and associated parental rights. Several lower courts have recently applied Bostock’s reading of sex to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” in Title VII (employment) to Title IX (school sports). This issue was specifically reserved by Justice Neil Gorsuch in his Bostock majority opinion, and it would give an interesting read on a freshly minted Justice Barrett.

Several cases are in the pipeline that could raise whether one of Justice Ginsburg’s most notorious decisions, Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, should be reconsidered and overruled. That 5-4 decision held that an “all comers” policy at a public university could trump a religious organization’s restrictions on its leadership. Putting to one side that there really is no such thing as a consistently enforced “all comers” policy at any public university (which almost all have fraternities and sororities, for example), the decision has received substantial criticism for violating the association/assembly rights protected by the First Amendment.  A Justice Barrett could provide the vote to overrule this precedent.

Another case that has been to the Court before and may shortly be back is Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, which involves a Washington state high school firing a football coach because he refused to stop kneeling at the center of the field with head bowed, by himself, after football games. The Court refused to consider the case in a preliminary injunction context, with a concurring opinion expressing sympathy for the coach but saying that the record needed to be further developed. He has now lost again, on a full record, at the Ninth Circuit. If en banc consideration is not granted, it will almost undoubtedly be the subject of another petition at the Court. If granted, it may provide a first opportunity for a Justice Barrett to indicate her reading of the scope of the Establishment Clause and its interplay with the Free Exercise Clause.

Covid 19 has put the Free Exercise Clause to the test in many cases challenging restrictions on in-person religious services.  The decisions so far have been presented in a preliminary injunction context, and the churches have lost, 5-4, with Justice Ginsburg always in the majority, on the issue of whether churches have been treated in a non-discriminatory fashion. Cases will likely be subject to petition soon that are past the preliminary injunction stage and may present other issues. For example, a Romanian Orthodox church just lost in the Seventh Circuit its challenge to Illinois’s 10-person maximum for indoor services, despite its meeting space holding thousands. Is a one-size-fits-all requirement irrational, especially when free exercise rights are involved? And California in many counties has prohibited in-person religious services entirely. Would a confirmed Justice Barrett tip the scales 5-4 in favor of the churches?

Of course, the primary focus on Judge Barrett’s confirmation hearings, whether expressly or implicitly, will be her likely vote on abortion cases. Several cases are in the lower courts that could be the subject of successful petitions during the term, as states have had laws enjoined that, for example, move back the latest gestation date by which abortions can take place and prohibit abortion due to sex or disability. One pending petition (20-93) raises the issue of whether an unborn child is entitled to equal protection, which does not seem likely to be granted.

Until his retirement from his partnership in Crowell & Moring LLP, one of the country’s premier government contracts firms, Rick Claybrook specialized in bid protest and claims litigation. Throughout the 40+ years of his career, Mr. Claybrook has been active in pro bono matters involving religious liberty and life issues. His experiences in this area have been broad and varied, from hearings before a zoning board to defend a small house church to filing multiple amicus briefs in the United States Supreme Court and other state and federal appellate and trial courts. For over a decade, he has been a member of the supervising committee of the Center for Law and Religious Freedom, which is the advocacy arm of the Christian Legal Society. 

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Conservative writer, podcaster, and attorney Ben Shapiro interviews Ryan T. Anderson, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and founder and editor of Public Discourse on the dire implications of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia that has roiled the political waters, including within the Republican Party. They discuss the likely affect of this decision on Title IX, speech mandates, businesses owned by people of faith, and more. To better understand the profoundly troubling nature of this decision, take 12 minutes to watch and listen to this important discussion.

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In a blistering must-see address on the U.S. Senate floor, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), the youngest member of the U.S. Senate, condemned Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia. Writing for the Majority, Gorsuch essentially legislated from the bench, changing duly passed federal law with far-reaching and destructive consequences for all Americans, especially religious Americans.

Hawley argued that religious conservatives have been sold a bill of goods. They have been commanded for years to shut up and the recompense for their dutiful silence would be judges like Antonin Scalia who adhere to the judicial philosophies of textualism and originalism that ensure judges don’t legislate. Hawley sarcastically points out that in Gorsuch, religious conservatives were duped. Hawley said, “it’s time for religious conservatives to stand up and to speak out.”

Please watch the entirety of Hawley’s compelling address and share it widely. (It is only 13 minutes long.)

U.S. Senator Hawley—a Christian and Harvard University and Yale School graduate who worked for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty—is  exactly the kind of leader religious conservatives have been praying for: wise, brilliant, and bold.

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In a shocking U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision, Justice Neil Gorsuch voted with the axis of evil—that is, with Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor. In Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, the axis of evil decided that in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the word “sex” includes “sexual orientation” and “gender identity”—both subjectively constituted conditions. As a result, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination in employment based on “race, color, religion, sex, and national origin,” now prohibits employers from firing employees who self-identify as homosexual or as the sex they are not and never can be.

The crux of the argument goes something like this: If a company that allows a woman who gets breast implants and wears lipstick, stilettos, and dresses to work fires a man who gets breast implants and wears lipstick, stilettos, and dresses to work, the company has discriminated against him based on his sex and, therefore, violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Not only are “trans”-cultists eradicating all public accommodation of real sex differences, but they’re also eradicating every cultural convention that recognizes, honors, and reinforces sex differences. They’re saying that not only are they permitted to reject cultural conventions regarding hairstyles, jewelry, clothing, and makeup, but everyone else must. Further, even biological reality as a signifier of biological sex must be rejected by everyone. So, as the very liberal author of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling, has learned, no one may say that only women menstruate.

The tyrannical Supremacist Court of the United States has declared from on its high horse that no employer with over 15 employees may fire an employee who decides to cross-dress at work. For those who remain blissfully unaware, there are efforts afoot to make such a view apply to companies with fewer than 15 employees too.

What if the owner of an independent toy store with three locations in neighboring towns employs 15 people and one of those employees announces he will henceforth “identify” as a woman. Now he cannot be fired—not even if the store where the cross-dressing man works will be destroyed because parents will no longer bring their toddlers and young children to an establishment that will require them to explain perversion to children who are too young to understand it and may be disturbed by it.

Many obstetrician-gynecologists staff their offices with only women—including only women nurses. Now imagine that one of those nurses announces she will be socially, chemically, and surgically “transitioning” and hopes to look like this biological woman one day (yes, this is a woman):

Is it just for doctors to be prohibited from firing her?

In their dissent, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito issued a stinging rebuke of the hubris of the majority opinion:

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination on any of five specified grounds: “race, color, religion, sex, [and] national origin.” … Neither “sexual orientation” nor “gender identity” appears on that list. For the past 45 years, bills have been introduced in Congress to add “sexual orientation” to the list, and in recent years, bills have included “gender identity” as well. But to date, none has passed both Houses. Last year, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would amend Title VII by defining sex discrimination to include both “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” … This bill remains before a House Subcommittee.

Because no such amendment of Title VII has been enacted in accordance with the requirements in the Constitution … Title VII’s prohibition of discrimination because of “sex” still means what it has always  meant. But the Court is not deterred by these constitutional niceties. Usurping the constitutional authority of the other branches, the Court has essentially taken H. R. 5’s provision on employment discrimination and issued it under the guise of statutory interpretation. A more brazen abuse of our authority to interpret statutes is hard to recall.

The Court tries to convince readers that it is merely enforcing the terms of the statute, but that is preposterous. Even as understood today, the concept of discrimination because of “sex” is different from discrimination because of “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.” And in any event, our duty is to interpret statutory terms to “mean what they conveyed to reasonable people at the time they were written.”

Alito and Thomas preview the deleterious effects this decision will have on American life and liberty:

As the briefing in these cases has warned, the position that the Court now adopts will threaten freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and personal privacy and safety. No one should think that the Court’s decision represents an unalloyed victory for individual liberty.

While churches and other religious organizations, including religious schools, will probably be allowed what is called a “ministerial exception”—at least for a time—for those involved in teaching the tenets of their faith, it is unlikely that exemption will apply to those employed in other positions. For example, a private Christian school will be prohibited from firing any math, science, Spanish, or P.E. teacher, secretary, custodian, cafeteria worker, playground supervisor, or crossing guard who decides to identify as the opposite sex, cross-dress, take cross-sex hormones, and surgically disguise his or her sex.

For those churches, Christian schools, and parachurch organizations that reassure themselves that such events are unlikely, just remember what’s happened to Jack Phillips, the Colorado baker who has been relentlessly sued by “LGBT” persons. Sexual subversives are going to specifically target Christian institutions.

Alito and Thomas warn that this pernicious SCOTUS decision will likely be used force the sexual integration of bathrooms, locker rooms, and women’s shelters; to force people to use “gender” obliterators’ “preferred pronouns”; to force employers to cover “costly sex reassignment surgery”; and to force colleges to assign dorm rooms based on the sex students wish they were rather than the sex they are.

This pernicious decision will be used too as a precedent when challenges to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 appear before the U.S. Supreme Court. How could the Court now conclude any way other than that the word “sex” in Title IX includes “gender identity.” When the axis of evil decides that, women’s sports are destroyed, and eventually all women’s records from high school, college, the Olympics, and professional sports will be broken by men.

Good job feminist supporters of the “trans” cult.

In Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s separate dissent, he emphasizes the violation of the separation of powers that the decision represents:

Under the Constitution’s separation of powers, the responsibility to amend Title VII belongs to Congress and the President in the legislative process, not to this Court. … [W]e are judges, not Members of Congress. And in Alexander Hamilton’s words, federal judges exercise “neither Force nor Will, but merely judgment.”… If judges could rewrite laws based on their own policy views, or based on their own assessments of likely future legislative action, the critical distinction between legislative authority and judicial authority that undergirds the Constitution’s separation of powers would collapse, thereby threatening the impartial rule of law and individual liberty. …

Both common parlance and common legal usage treat sex discrimination and sexual orientation discrimination as two distinct categories of discrimination—back in 1964 and still today. As to common parlance, few in 1964 (or today) would describe a firing because of sexual orientation as a firing because of sex. As commonly understood, sexual orientation discrimination is distinct from, and not a form of, sex discrimination. The majority opinion acknowledges the common understanding, noting that the plaintiffs here probably did not tell their friends that they were fired because of their sex. That observation is clearly correct. In common parlance, Bostock and Zarda were fired because they were gay, not because they were men. …

Who likes this SCOTUS decision? The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), that’s who. GLSEN’s raison d’être, is to use schools to normalize sexual deviance, which, of course, means eradicating theologically orthodox views on sexuality. GLSEN tweeted,

[T]oday’s landmark SCOTUS ruling will help to protect the many LGBTQ educators in K-12 schools who have faced harassment or job loss for simply being who they are. It also underscores the need for Congress to pass the Equality Act.

“Who they are” is a convenient bit of Newspeak to conceal what “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” really are. According to cultural regressives, “sexual orientation” is constituted by subjective, internal romantic and erotic feelings and volitional erotic acts. “Gender identity” is constituted by subjective, internal feelings about one’s maleness and/or femaleness or lack thereof. Now that SCOTUS includes conditions constituted—not by any objective criteria—but by subjective sexual feelings, all that remains is for sexual anarchists allied with other anarchists to expand the definition of “sexual orientation” and the job of sexual wokesters will be done. #CultureDestroyed.

So, in the service of “inclusivity,” they will work like the Devil and for the Devil to include polyamory, Genetic Sexual Attraction (i.e., consensual, adult incest), Minor Attraction (i.e., pedophilia, hebephilia, and ephebophilia), infantilism, zoophilia (i.e., bestiality), and every other sexual philia in the list of sexual orientations.

Then once that is accomplished, laws will protect celebrants of sexual disorder from being fired and schools will teacher kindergartners that love is love. Poly “love” will be called good. “Love” between two adult brothers will be deemed equivalent to interracial love. And teaching that “love” between humans and animals is wrong will be condemned as ignorant bigotry based on the hateful ideology of speciesism.

By the way, those naively depending on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to protect their religious liberty can forget about it. The Equality Act, which eventually will pass, explicitly guts RFRA.

This SCOTUS decision is not a victory for the country or for freedom. It’s another tragic defeat for the constitutional separation of powers, self-government, morality, truth, speech rights, and religious liberty. Conservative Christians, you’ve been warned—again.

Listen to this article read by Laurie: 

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Shocking-SCOTUS-Decision-Shockingly-Written-by-Gorsuch.mp3

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In a shocking U.S. Supreme Court decision, Justice Neil Gorsuch voted with the axis of evil—that is, with Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor. In Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, the axis of evil decided that in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the word “sex” includes “sexual orientation” and “gender identity”—both subjectively constituted conditions. As a result, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination in employment based on “race, color, religion, sex, and national origin”—all objective conditions—now prohibits employers from firing employees who self-identify as homosexual or as the sex they are not and never can be.

The crux of the argument goes something like this: If a company that allows a woman who gets breast implants, and wears lipstick, stilettos, and dresses to work fires a man who gets breast implants and wears lipstick, stilettos, and dresses to work, the company has discriminated against him based on his sex and, therefore, violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Not only are “trans”-cultists eradicating all public accommodation of real sex differences, but they’re also eradicating every cultural convention that recognizes, honors, and reinforces sex differences. They’re saying that not only are they permitted to reject cultural conventions regarding hairstyles, jewelry, clothing, and makeup, but everyone else must as well. Further, even biological reality as a signifier of biological sex must be rejected by everyone. So, as the very liberal author of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling, has learned, no one may say that only women menstruate.

Read more…