Today we give thanks to God for the wisdom and courage of U.S Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito,  Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett for holding that the “Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey are overruled; [and] the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”

The syllabus (i.e., summary) in Dobbs v. the Jackson Women’s Health Organization outlines the major arguments addressed by the majority:

• Without any grounding in the constitutional text, history, or precedent, Roe imposed on the entire country a detailed set of rules for pregnancy divided into trimesters much like those that one might expect to find in a statute or regulation.

• Until the latter part of the 20th century, there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. No state constitutional provision had recognized such a right. Until a few years before Roe, no federal or state court had recognized such a right. Nor had any scholarly treatise. Indeed, abortion had long been a crime in every single State.

• Attempts to justify abortion through appeals to a broader right to autonomy and to define one’s “concept of existence” prove too much. … Those criteria, at a high level of generality, could license fundamental rights to illicit drug use, prostitution, and the like. What sharply distinguishes the abortion right from the rights recognized in the cases on which Roe and Casey rely is something that both those decisions acknowledged: Abortion is different because it destroys what Roe termed “potential life” and what the law challenged in this case calls an “unborn human being.” None of the other decisions cited by Roe and Casey involved the critical moral question posed by abortion.

• [T]he Court cannot allow its decisions to be affected by such extraneous concerns [i.e., stare decisis/precedent]. A precedent of this Court is subject to the usual principles of stare decisis under which adherence to precedent is the norm but not an inexorable command. If the rule were otherwise, erroneous decisions like Plessy would still be the law.

Writing for the Court, Justice Alito made mincemeat of the lousy arguments proffered in Roe and Casey, but the political invertebrate Chief Justice John Roberts did what he does best. He tried to swim smack dab down the middle of this roaring river. Hard to do without a spine. The political Roberts voted with the majority but refused to overturn Roe and Casey despite numerous leftist legal scholars acknowledging for decades that Roe lacked any grounding in the U.S. Constitution.

Justice Thomas again renewed his quest to revisit “substantive due process” jurisprudence, which he argues “has harmed our country in many ways,” and, therefore, “we should eliminate it from our jurisprudence at the earliest opportunity.” He shares this view with Justices Antonin Scalia and Hugo Black as well as Robert Bork and many other legal scholars.

Thomas has long argued that because of the “erroneous” nature of substantive due process jurisprudence, “in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”

Those cases addressed, respectively, the purported constitutional right to access contraception, the purported constitutional right to engage in homosexual sodomy, and the purported constitutional right of two people of the same sex to marry.

To be clear, Thomas’ argument regarding substantive due process jurisprudence has nothing to do with his moral view of contraception, sodomy, or marriage. Rather, he is making an argument about the constitutional basis—or lack thereof—of substantive due process doctrine, which Justice Antonin Scalia too criticized:

The entire practice of using the Due Process Clause to add judicially favored rights to the limitations upon democracy set forth in the Bill of Rights (usually under the rubric of so-called “substantive due process”) is in my view judicial usurpation.

Justice Hugo Black was similarly critical of substantive due process doctrine in Griswold:

[T]here is no provision of the Constitution which either expressly or impliedly vests power in this Court to sit as a supervisory agency over acts of duly constituted legislative bodies and set aside their laws because of the Court’s belief that the legislative policies adopted are unreasonable, unwise, arbitrary, capricious or irrational. The adoption of such a loose, flexible, uncontrolled standard for holding laws unconstitutional, if ever it is finally achieved, will amount to a great unconstitutional shift of power to the courts which I believe and am constrained to say will be bad for the courts and worse for the country. Subjecting federal and state laws to such an unrestrained and unrestrainable judicial control as to the wisdom of legislative enactments would, I fear, jeopardize the separation of governmental powers that the Framers set up and at the same time threaten to take away much of the power of States to govern themselves which the Constitution plainly intended them to have.

Leftists mock Thomas for his substantive critique of substantive due process mischief. They do so because they fear losing the power of the Court to act as a supreme law-making body. Well, they did fear that while they controlled the Court.

But Thomas’ critique is not a fringe critique, and he may have at least one ally on the Court: Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Now, the arduous work of changing hearts and minds that have been corrupted by nearly fifty years of leftist propaganda becomes even more urgent.

We need to donate more money to crisis pregnancy centers, both to help mothers who are considering abortion and to repair damage from domestic terrorists like Jane’s Revenge that promises violence to organizations that seek to protect children in their mothers’ wombs.

We need to pour money into creative, compelling public service/social media campaigns and the arts in order to elicit support for protecting preborn babies.

We need to elect wise, courageous state leaders who stand boldly for the sanctity of lives that pro-abortion activists deem unworthy of life.

We need to pass fiscal and social policies that end—rather than create—poverty, and we need to create a culture that doesn’t think a solution to poverty is baby sacrifice.

And we need to educate our children in places that teach that humans in their mothers’ wombs are sacred and that neither their developmental status, nor their convenience for others, nor their imperfections grant to their mothers the moral right to have them killed.

And we need to pray ceaselessly for the least of these. We must pray that incipient human lives are able to survive the dangerous waters of their mothers’ wombs.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/The-Nightmare-of-Roe-Ends.mp3

January 22, 1973 – This is a horrible date that we should all know — the day the horrific decision, Roe v. Wade, was issued and announced. Almost 50 years later and over 63 million lives taken, this drastic decision could finally be overturned.

On May 2, 2022 Politico obtained a leaked draft written by Justice Samuel Alito that contained the majority opinion that would overturn both Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992).

We anticipate that the leaked draft indicating the decision will not change and that very soon we will hear the final decision announced.

Here are some matters for prayer both now and after the decision is made:

1] Let us pray especially for Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. We pray for their physical protection. We pray that all the adversity that they have faced will encourage them to stand more and more with truth against death and deceit.

2] We should pray that Chief Justice John Roberts will stand for the truth. We should also pray for the repentance of those expected to stand against this decision – Justices Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor.

3] After the draft decision was leaked there were a number of cases where churches and pro-life pregnancy centers were attacked. Andy Ngô reported at least 15 cases where either churches or pro-life centers were targeted.

We should pray especially against the efforts of a radical, violent group called Jane’s Revenge that has carried out attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers with impunity. On June 15, they released a statement in which they stated the following:

“We have demonstrated in the past month how easy and fun it is to attack. We are versatile, we are mercurial, and we answer to no one but ourselves,” and then they stated their threats.

“We promised to take increasingly drastic measures against oppressive infrastructures. Rest assured that we will, and those measures may not come in the form of something so easily cleaned up as fire and graffiti. Sometimes you will see what we do, and you will know that it is us.

“Sometimes you will think you merely are unlucky, because you cannot see the ways which we interfere in your affairs. But your pointless attempts to control others, and make life more difficult, will not be met passively. Eventually your insurance companies and your financial backers will realize you are a bad investment.”

Jane’s Revenge claims to be responsible for sixteen different attacks.

We know very well that much of our justice system and many elected officials have not taken these attacks seriously. Pray for our government. Pray for your local pregnancy centers. (And perhaps you could help in other ways.) This is a serious time of spiritual warfare spilling over into threats and violence.

4] We pray that many states will take quick action to outlaw legal abortions or at a minimum seek to curtail abortions.

What about states like Illinois that have seen a 25 percent increase in abortions ? We must prayerfully consider how much work remains. We pray and work to see laws changed as well as hearts changed.

5] We pray that the Lord will have mercy on a nation that has been so blessed and yet has so rebelled against God’s truth. One of the most frightening things to consider is what we deserve.

Here are some additional prayer bullet points to petition our God, Yahweh-Nissi, through the name of Jesus in the days ahead:

Thank God

• Praise and thank God for religious and civil liberty that we still enjoy today in the United States. Pray that parents and grandparents teach their children and grandchildren what an amazing gift God has given us in self-government. Pray that future generations would not take these freedoms for granted. May we utilize these freedoms for the spread of the Gospel and for His glory and honor.

• While more and more of our neighbors are choosing to live secular lives, we thank God for Jesus Christ, the Light of the world.

• Thank God for the exceptionalism of our nation.

• Thank God for His countless blessings in our lives, in our families, communities and nation. Thank Him for the trials and challenges that draw us closer to Him. Thank God for the patience, strength and faith to wait out the storm.

• PRAY for revival.

Please Pray

• FOR THOSE IN AUTHORITY: For the next several weeks, please pray for the political leaders listed below. Of course, this includes praying for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and those who serve in their administration.
  • U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico)
  • U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas)
  • U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois)
  • U.S. Representative Veronica Escobar (D-Texas)
  • U.S. Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio)
  • State Senator Meg Loughran Cappel (D-Plainfield)
  • State Senator Chapin Rose (R-Champaign)
  • State Representative Janet Yang Rohr (D-Naperville)
  • State Representative Dan Ugaste (R-St. Charles)
  • YOUR local County Board Members

Pray for the Sanctity of Life:

• PRC’s: Lift up all pregnancy resource centers and those diligently reaching out to vulnerable mothers who feel as if abortion is their only option. Please pray for God’s hand of protection on those who work at these ministries, and that any planned attacks would be thwarted.

• ABORTION: Scripture teaches us that the image of God dwells equally in ALL people [Gen. 9:6], yet far too many in our culture believe that killing pre-born human beings is a legitimate choice. Many so-called “progressives” advocate for this under the banner of “Reproductive Rights” for women. Yet these narratives deny God’s truth about the sanctity of life and when it begins. Moreover, we know that God hates the shedding of innocent blood. (Proverbs 6:16-19)  God forgive us!

• Please pray for God’s forgiveness for our culture’s wickedness and complicity in the destruction of human life. Though God commands, “You Shall Not Murder,” we have instead legalized it and subsidized it with our tax dollars, and have failed to treat all human life as sacred to the Lord. We deserve God’s judgment, but please cry out to God for his MERCY on our state and nation. We are without excuse, yet call upon our loving God to cause the fear of the Lord to fall upon our state and nation so that we would no longer turn a blind eye to our sin or our nation’s sin.

• Pray for a softening of hearts and minds. May God give us opportunities to minister to those who are hurting and may our conversations be filled with His grace and love.

• THE CHURCH:  The Christian Church must step up to teach and defend God’s truth regarding the sanctity of life. We will see an increase in abortion trafficking into our state, as people come to abortion facilities in Illinois. The opportunities to be salt and light at prayer vigils, as sidewalk counselors, as friends and neighbors will certainly increase. Pray that we recognize these opportunities and ask God to work through you to help would be mothers and fathers avoid the sin of abortion. Because of our trust and hope in Jesus, we can boldly approach the throne and beg Him to have mercy upon us and use us to save lives and souls.

Pray for Families:

• PARENTS: Pray that God will give us wisdom and the strength to raise godly children. Help us see the challenges we face as opportunities to train our children toward right thinking and right actions. May God help us to focus on teaching our children the Christian faith, to love the Word of God and to seek to do Thy will. Help us to disciple our children.

• GRANDPARENTS: That God would use grandparents to fearlessly proclaim the Word of God regarding sin and God’s love. Pray for their role in the training of their grandchildren and wisdom on how to instill a Biblical worldview.

• FAMILIES AS SALT AND LIGHT: Pray that God would help your family to be faithful in family worship, foster sweet unity and cooperation, and then use your family to spread the truth and light of the Gospel.

I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him,
bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered;
and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they
are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will aske
what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified...
~Jesus Christ (John 15:5-8)

The Illinois Family Institute is issuing this public statement to urge Governor J.B. Pritzker and Attorney General Kwame Raoul to prepare to ensure the safety of churches and pro-life pregnancy resource centers (PRCs) in Illinois.

David E. Smith, the executive director of the statewide pro-life, pro-family organization, notes that vandalism, arson, threats of violence, and interruption of church services have been escalating since the leak of Justice Samuel Alito‘s draft opinion on abortion.

“We cannot afford to ignore the threats of violence and harassment to achieve political ends,” said Smith. “It is wise to anticipate more violent reactions from fringe pro-abortion activists if and when the U.S. Supreme Court hands down its decision in the Dobbs case.”

The arrest of a California man who was reportedly armed with a gun and knife near Justice Brett Kavanaugh‘s house in Maryland is alarming. Federal law enforcement officials have charged him with attempted murder.

Recently, both CompassCare Pregnancy Services in Buffalo, New York and the headquarters for Wisconsin Family Action were firebombed. In Asheville, North Carolina, a business that provides counseling for pregnant women was vandalized. Earlier this week, in New York City, pro-life advocates participating in a monthly event called “Witness for Life” were mobbed.

Mr. Smith points out that while abortion facilities in Chicago have bubble zones to protect the safety of abortion workers and clients, no such protection exists for pregnancy care centers and churches. During this turbulent time, the state of Illinois must give them equal protection under the law.

“Governor Pritzker and Attorney General Raoul should make it clear that violence and intimidation will not be tolerated in Illinois,” urges Smith. “Moreover, law enforcement agencies across the state must be put on high alert, visibly present in their patrols in an effort to dissuade violence.”

IFI implores Governor Pritzker and Attorney General Raoul to speak out in advance of the ruling to urge peace and calm.

We call every elected official in Illinois, no matter their view on the Dobbs decision, to speak out in opposition to any response that includes violence and intimidation.

Mr. Smith contends that any attack on a church or pregnancy care center should be considered an anti-religious hate crime and the perpetrators should be charged accordingly.

Following the unprecedented leak of the entire U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion on the controversial abortion case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, morally and emotionally unhinged, pro-human slaughter women and their collaborators became apoplectic. Next, U.S. Senate leftists terrified at the possibility that diverse citizens in diverse states will pass diverse laws to protect prenatal humans began clamoring for the elimination of the filibuster, so they—Senate leftists—can codify human slaughter in federal law. So much for diversity and federalism.

The self-identifying Catholic Joe Biden said, “If the Court does overturn Roe, it will fall on our nation’s elected officials at all levels of government to protect a woman’s right to choose [to have her offspring offed]. And it will fall on voters to elect pro-choice [i.e., pro-human slaughter] officials this November.” And yet, Biden is unwilling to wait to see who voters choose or what state levels of government will do. Leftists like Biden don’t care what the great unwashed masses want. Nor do they care what the Constitution says. Leftists want to impose their will, ideology, and desires by any unethical and unconstitutional means they can dream up.

Biden is justified in fearing that states may pass laws to protect incipient lives. In contrast to the leftist claim that most Americans support Roe v. Wade, recent Rasmussen polling shows that most Americans would like to see it overturned:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 48% of Likely U.S. Voters would approve of a Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade …. Forty-five percent (45%) would disapprove of overturning Roe v. Wade ….

…

In his draft opinion, Justice Alito declared that the Roe v. Wade decision “was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.” Forty-seven percent (47%) of voters agree with Justice Alito’s statement…. Forty-six percent (46%) disagree with Alito.

Biden and his U.S. Senate co-conspirators want to rob citizens and states of the right to decide whether humans in the womb can be killed by more powerful humans (i.e., oppressors). According to the website “Equal Access to Abortion Everywhere,” the federal law Biden frantically seeks to pass before Dobbs is decided and before Americans can exercise their right to govern themselves would,

eliminate all existing state restrictions including “six-week bans, 20-week bans, mandatory ultrasounds … counseling, waiting periods, and requirements that providers obtain admitting privileges at local hospitals.

Abortion without restrictions would be legal in every state throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy for any or no reason if the Women’s Health Protection Act is passed.

In attempting to rationalize the censorship of conservative ideas, “diversity”- and “tolerance”-loving leftists have claimed society has no obligation to tolerate conservative speech on topics related to sexuality because such speech may lead to violence. This raises a thorny question for leftists: Should society tolerate bloodthirsty banshees shrieking in the streets about their right to destroy the bodies of their offspring and threatening the lives of those who oppose human slaughter? Might such banshee speech lead to violence?

U.S. Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, John Roberts, and Neil Gorsuch have had their homes and lives targeted.

Lacie Wooten-Holway, an unneighborly neighbor of Brett Kavanaugh revealed his home address and organized a protest in front of his home, declaring that “We’re about to get doomsday … so I’m not going to be civil to that man at all.”

A Molotov cocktail set ablaze the office of a conservative public policy organization in Wisconsin and graffitied it with the threat, “If abortions aren’t safe, then neither are you.” Sounds like a threat of violence to me.

A Catholic church in Fort Collins, Colorado was spraypainted with the words “My body my choice” and the symbol for anarchism.

Three churches in Texas were vandalized.

In an interview with Salon magazine, an anonymous representative of the anti-life group Ruth Sent Us said “that some members of the network have privately discussed not just disrupting Mass but burning the Eucharist.” Might that lead to violence?

Clearly banshee speech may lead to violence, and yet as of this writing, neither the Biden administration nor the DOJ has condemned the doxing of six U.S. Supreme Court Justices, the illegal efforts to influence the decision of these justices, the torching of conservative non-profit organizations, or the protests in front of Supreme Court Justices private homes.

Instead (and as usual), Biden finds this a good time to blame the “Maga crowd”:

What are the next things that are going to be attacked? Because this Maga crowd is really the most extreme political organization that exists in American history.

This is about a lot more than abortion… What happens if you have a state change the law, saying that children who are LGBTQ can’t be in classrooms with other children? Is that legit?

Biden’s claim is either a bizarre non sequitur or a wildly fallacious slippery slope argument with no causal or logical link between a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of the Dobbs case and an absurd hypothetical state law banning “LGBTQ” students from the classroom.

Is the “Maga crowd” an organization? Who’s in it? Everyone who voted for Trump? Are all the Americans who voted for Trump members of a political organization more extreme than BLM, Antifa, the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, Black Panthers, or eco-terrorist organizations?

Perhaps the cognitively impaired Biden isn’t aware that many liberal legal scholars who support abortion argue that nowhere in the text or history of the Constitution can a right to abortion be found, and hence, Roe v. Wade was an atrocious decision.

U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) made an equally bizarre statement:

This is 50 years of rights in a leaked opinion where Justice Alito is literally not just taking us back to the 1950s, he’s taking us back to 1850s. He actually cites the fact that abortion was criminalized back when the 14th Amendment was adopted.

If Klobuchar thinks 49 years imparts immunity from being overturned to a lousy U.S. Supreme Court decision, then she must still be enraged about the de facto overturning of Plessy v. Ferguson, which stood legally unmolested for 58 years.

Klobuchar’s disdain for Alito “taking us back to the 1850s” is perplexing. One would expect a member of the U.S. Senate to have deep respect for much that was written in the 1800s and even the 1700s.

California Governor Gavin Newsom tripped all over leftist “logic” when talking about the draft opinion:

If men could get pregnant, this wouldn’t even be a conversation.

That’s both embarrassingly cliché and politically un-woke. Surely, the good leftist Newsom has heard the news from the world of pseudo-science: Men can get pregnant. Or maybe he has heard the news, but he’s caught in the sticky, tangled web of ideological mayhem that leftists have woven to deceive.

For decades, unhinged women committed to child sacrifice have tried to claim that humans in the womb were just clumps of cells or tumor-like masses. When that nonsensical claim failed, they admitted that, sure, the product of conception between two humans is a human but it’s not fully developed, or it’s imperfect, or it will suffer, or it’s parasitic, or it’s father is a criminal, or it’s mother is poor, or it’s mother doesn’t want it, or it’s mother is not ready to care for it. If those arguments were applied consistently to all humans, we would have a murderous society unsafe for every human.

So, then came the next lie: Morally unhinged women proclaimed that sure, womb-dwellers are human, but they’re not persons. But why, inquiring minds wanted to know, are these humans with human DNA, many of whose human body parts are sold to scientists to find cures for human diseases, not persons?

Philosopher Francis Beckwith offers a definition of personhood that abortion cheerleaders will definitely not like:

[W]hat is crucial morally is the being of a person, not his or her functioning. A human person does not come into existence when human function arises, but rather, a human person is an entity who has the natural inherent capacity to give rise to human functions, whether or not those functions are ever attained. And since the unborn human being has this natural inherent capacity from the moment it comes into existence, she is a person as long as she exists.

…

A human person who lacks the ability to think rationally (either because she is too young or she suffers from a disability) is still a human person because of her nature. Consequently, it makes sense to speak of a human being’s lack if and only if she is an actual person.

Questions of personhood and unalienable rights are metaphysical questions on which there will never be agreement. Rational, reasonable, compassionate people argue that if we can’t agree on something as momentous as when life begins or when a human becomes a person deserving of the right not to be murdered, the prudent and ethical response would be to err on the side of not killing humans that may, indeed, be persons.

But liberals are not concerned about the injustice of killing human fetuses. Liberal concerns are directed toward the self.

Nathanael Blake, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, illuminates the self-serving political philosophy of the secular left:

The liberal project seeks to provide, to the extent possible, freedom from unchosen constraints, duties, and loyalties in life.

This is why liberalism naturally favors a broad welfare state. The purpose of this welfare state is both to protect those who are dependent, and to protect those who do not want to be depended on.

Thus, liberalism professionalizes care from childhood to old age. The animating vision is a society in which everyone is taken care of, but no one has a private obligation to care for anyone else; no one has to sacrifice ambition, career, or personal freedom to care for children or parents or a sick relative.

But this liberal ideal is unrealizable with children, especially those in utero. …

This is why liberals are complaining about “forced birth” — they really are horrified at the idea of an unchosen obligation to care for another person. … Liberalism cannot tolerate that sort of involuntary duty, and so it requires the opt-out of abortion on demand.

Thus, a political philosophy that begins by claiming to protect the weak and dependent, and to liberate us from the unfairness of the givenness of life, ends by asserting an absolute right to take the lives of the weak and dependent — precisely because they are dependent.

Human life developing in the womb can offer nothing but need; to respond to that need with violence is to assail human dependence in its purest form. This bloodshed lays bare how liberalism has become a revolt against our humanity.

It’s also a revolt against God, which explains why leftists who want the freedom to sacrifice their children target Christianity. Jesus teaches us to deny ourselves and take up our crosses daily. He teaches that “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” He teaches that God is the Author of life who creates the inmost being of children in their mothers’ wombs. And he teaches that every life unjustly snuffed out by fallen humans was fearfully and wonderfully made by God.

Take ACTION: Sponsored by left-wing U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal [D-CT], the Women’s Health Protection Act (S. 4132) would nullify any existing state pro-life laws protecting the life of the unborn, if signed into law. Both U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth are co-sponsors of this radical bill which would also force doctors and healthcare workers to violate their consciences. Click HERE to let them know that this legislation is absolutely unacceptable and offensive to you. Urge them to protect innocent pre-born human life.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Schemes-of-Fallen-Humans-to-Destroy-Life.mp3

Read more:

Fact Sheet by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

Democrats’ National Abortion Bill Replaces Word ‘Woman’ With ‘Person’ (The Daily Signal)

Written by Frederick W. Claybrook, Jr. 

The significance of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case cannot be overstated. Pro-life citizens across the nation were praying fervently for the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court as they heard oral arguments Wednesday morning.

The law at the center of this case is Mississippi’s late-term abortion ban for pre-born babies 15 weeks gestation and older. Many experts believe that the Court may overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, at least in part, returning the issue of abortion back to the states.

Oral arguments went much as one would expect. Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and, to a lesser extent, Elena Kagan, all made clear that they thought stare decisis should rule the day because otherwise it would look like the Court caved to public opinion. There was also some talk about reliance interests built up over 50 years.

Chief Justice John Roberts cast doubt on how a viability rule makes sense in light of the interests supposed to be furthered for women, i.e., making her own decisions and her circumstances. He pointed out more than once that the only issue they granted cert on was whether to continue to adhere to the viability rule and whether a 15-week line could pass constitutional muster, so he might be angling for a middle ground of striking down the viability rule but not totally discarding the undue burden standard of Casey.

Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett didn’t seem to be following suit, though. Instead, Kavanaugh pointed out that in some of what are now considered the Court’s most important decisions, the Court overruled prior precedent. He seemed to stake out a position that the Court should be “scrupulously neutral” on this issue and leave it to state and federal legislatures. He said that the interests of the mother wanting to abort and of the fetus in living were irreconcilable, which makes this matter so hard and counsels for the Court to stay out of it.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Barrett raised some interesting questions about the purported interests of women on which Roe and Casey based their decisions. Barrett pressed on why laws that allow women to hand over their infants shortly after delivery, thereby terminating all parental responsibilities, do not eliminate talk in the decisions about women controlling their lives.

Thomas pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Court had upheld a state prosecution for abuse of a pregnant mother for ingesting controlled substances and harming her child. He never got a straight answer to why, if the state could do that if the ingestion was post-viability, it could not also do it if it was pre-viability or whether the Roe/Casey viability line would call for a different result because, if a woman can kill her child pre-viability, why can’t she abuse it.

Near the end of the clinic’s counsel’s argument, she said the common law provided a right to abort early in the pregnancy at the time the U.S. Constitution was adopted. The U.S. Solicitor General in her argument made a similar statement. Justice Samuel Alito jumped on appellee’s counsel, saying that the American Historical Association’s brief admitted that many states prohibited abortion at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, so how could it be considered a fundamental right. He didn’t mention Joseph Dellapenna’s brief, which obliterates these claims about the common law allowing abortion, but it seemed as if Alito was up on the common-law issue. (It is shameful, though, that counsel continue to spout these “myths,” also known as lies, about the common law.)

No direct questions were asked about whether an unborn child is covered by the due process and equal protection guarantees for “any person,” but Mississippi’s counsel, especially in his rebuttal, spoke of the many lives killed on account of Roe and Casey, although his overriding argument was that the matter should be left to the states.

The audio recording of the arguments is available HERE, and the transcript is available HERE.

We recently read a great little sermon illustration in which a young boy asked his father, “Dad, I was watching a TV show about marine biologists. Why do scuba-divers jump backwards into the water?” His father wittily responded, “Because if they jumped forward, they’d still be in the boat!”

Scuba divers jump out of boats to investigate marine life in the coastal waters and oceans of the world. It is a way of visiting another ecosystem on our vast planet. Whether it is sunken wreckage, lost treasure or coral reefs, I can see how these diving excursions are great ways to escape the stresses of daily life.

Yet today, there are many people in our culture, in our families and even in our churches who might be tempted to jump out of the boat when things get stressful, depressing or uncomfortable. Those of us who still live in Illinois understand the added frustration of wicked and foolish political leadership. The temptation to move out of this state and into “calmer, peaceful waters” is very real.

Yet we should consider what Scripture has to say about escaping trials and tribulation. Right before He was arrested, Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane. He prayed John 17:14:

“I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.”  

Jesus could have easily prayed that God would deliver us out of the troubled waters of our world, but He didn’t. He prayed that we would remain in the world and that we would be protected from the evil one. Why didn’t He pray for our complete rescue? His prayer continues in John 17:18:

“As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”

Our Lord and Savior, the Son of God, prayed that we would remain so we could be on mission in this world for the advancement of the Kingdom of God.

Yes, our state and our culture is in trouble. But these troubles are a reminder that we are called to be salt and light to a dying world.  David Jeremiah once said, “Today is the day to be a light shining in a dark world, fueled by the joy of the Lord.” May we be that salt and light to a dark and decaying world, all to the glory of God.

PRAYER ALERT

We cannot stress the urgency of your fervent prayers this week as our state lawmakers return to the Capitol for the second half of the Veto Session. There are a number of bad proposals pending in Springfield. Prayer and action are vitally important.

Appeal to God for His Help

• Praise God that many pro-life activists and pastors are headed to Springfield to speak out against the efforts to repeal the Parental Notice of Abortion Act and the repeal of the Health Care Right of Conscience Act. Please pray that these activists would be seen and heard by lawmakers. Pray that their presence and dialogue would help them understand the importance of parental rights and conscience rights. (Read more HERE.)

• Pray that our state lawmakers would understand the wisdom in keeping qualified (or limited), immunity for police officers in Illinois. Pray that the anti-police agenda to dismantle, dishearten and make defenseless would fall short.

Abortion

• Pray for the members of the U.S. Supreme Court as they will be hearing arguments regarding significant abortion regulations in Mississippi and Texas. Pray that God would touch the hearts of the nine Justices on the Court. Pray too, as the debate rages, that eyes and ears would be opened to the abortion industry’s murderous barbaric practices.

• Please pray for the last week of this year’s 40 Days for Life campaign, which ends on Saturday, Oct. 30. Pray that many prayer warriors would take advantage of this opportunity to be a silent witness against the murderous practice of “choice.” Pray that workers at these abortuaries would have a change of heart about their work and leave.

• Pray that every leader in our nation would come to realize that these are real human babies in the womb who deserve protection.

• Pray that the agenda of Satan and his wicked disciples to kill pre-born babies in the womb and encourage immoral sexual activities to innocent young children in government schools would be exposed and stopped.

Public School Exit

• Please continue to pray for our Rescuing Our Children initiative to encourage an exodus from government indoctrination centers. Rev. Ceasar LeFlore, our field director for this project, is meeting with pastors throughout the City of Chicago and suburbs and has been getting favorable responses.

• Pray for Illinois Family Institute and our annual banquet which is scheduled for Friday evening. Pray that the event would be a success, and that our keynote speaker, Dr. Erwin Lutzer, would encourage and challenge us to live up to the high calling of our faith in Christ Jesus.

For Those in Authority

For the next several weeks, please pray for the political leaders listed below. Pray that they would seek God’s wisdom when they make decisions that affect the people they work for. Pray that God would turn their hearts to Himself. (Proverbs 21:1)

Of course, this includes praying for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, JB Pritzker and Julia Stratton and those who serve in these administrations. Pray also for our two U.S. Senators, Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth.

Please pray for the nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court: John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

In addition, please pray for the following officials:

• • U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal Bennet (D-Connecticut)
  • U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (R-Missouri)
  • U.S. Representative Bobby Rush (D-Illinois)
  • U.S. Representative Peter Aguilar (D-California)
  • U.S. Representative Rick Allen (R-Georgia)
  • State Senator Scott Bennett (D-Champaign)
  • State Senator Terri Bryant (R-Murphysboro)
  • State Representative Lakesia Collins (D-Chicago)
  • State Representative Dan Caulkins (R-Decatur)
  • YOUR local City/Village/Township Officials

A nationwide group of state legislators and attorneys have crafted an amicus (friend of the court) legal brief in support of the State of Mississippi in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, seeking to overturn the unlawful Roe v. Wade decision.

The Mississippi law being challenged, with a few exceptions, prohibits abortions within the State, including even the first 15 weeks of pregnancy, when modern medicine is still incapable of supporting life outside the womb.

The U.S. Supreme Court, on May 17^th, granted a hearing on the following question raised by Dobbs: “Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.”

Of course, we know the truth that no prohibitions on elective abortion are unconstitutional. [1]

This brief contains three great strengths:

• It represents the group who has truly suffered the greatest harm: the States and the People, whose right to justly govern, reserved to them in the 10^th Amendment, has been taken by the Federal Government’s egregious Roe v. Wade decision,

• It represents the opinion of a statistical majority of U.S. citizens and legislators, and

• It affords legislators in the political minority in their own States, such as Illinois, a voice equal to, or possibly greater than, all legislators throughout the nation.

Republican lawmakers in Illinois are severely outnumbered (a “super-minority”) in both the Illinois House (45/118) and Illinois Senate (18/59), and are therefore typically unable to advance (or stop) meaningful (or harmful) legislation.  As friends of the Court, they can now have the same voice as all other legislators.

There are currently 7,383 [2] state legislators in the United States, duly elected by a majority of 168.31 million U.S. voters [3], of whom 3,977 (or 54%) are members of the pro-life, Republican Party, and have been invited to join the brief.

What did Roe really do?  It announced a new right, which removed Legislators’ (and thereby, the People’s) ability to protect unwanted humans from being murdered.

As stated in the brief, “State legislatures exist to protect the health and welfare of their States’ respective citizens.  This includes the creation of standards and regulations that protect the most vulnerable in society.  However, as demonstrated by the Fifth Circuit’s decision below, flawed precedent [4] interferes with this constitutionally delegated duty.”

“Substantive Due Process”: The Court’s Tool of Federal Tyranny Against the States.

Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. ~Judges 17:6

Substantive Due Process is the underlying legal concept used in Roe and others to justify the Court’s remaking of the U.S. Constitution to its own liking.

This logically inconsistent concept was invented in law school textbooks in the 1930s and not embraced by the U.S. Supreme Court prior to 1952 [5].

Of course, ordinary citizens and their children, possessing even the most basic grasp of logic, understand by the redundant term “procedural due process,” (Show me a “process” that isn’t “procedural,” and I’ll show you a bridge that is for sale.) that “substantive due process” is merely a cleverly-worded legal oxymoron which enables judges to justify making the law themselves (i.e., Positive Law, or law made by custom or convention, which can be changed as desired by those in power).

Substantive Due Process, as demonstrated by cases such as Roe, opens a wide door for an unelected committee of nine Ivy League lawyers to selectively remove virtually any topic from the political process (i.e., the States and the People) that it, in its great moral wisdom, sees fit.

From the beginning, the Rule of Law in the United States has been “Natural Law,” or existing law that applies consistently to everyone; certain unalienable rights, endowed to all mankind by their Creator (i.e., Jehovah of the Bible).

The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord;
He turns it wherever He will. ~Proverbs 21:1

Please pray fervently that God would:

1. Continue to strengthen the resolve of the two Justices (Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito) who have unwaveringly upheld their oath to support and defend the Constitutional Rule of Law,

2. Give great courage to four Justices (Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and John Roberts) to understand that it is their duty to finally overturn this unlawful decision, and

3. Forcibly turn the hearts of the three Justices (Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor) whose previous positions have contributed to the tyrannous legalized murder of tens of millions.

Footnotes

[1]In the 105 years between the ratification of the 14^th Amendment in 1868 and Roe’s 1973 judicial fiat that it was unconstitutional, 46 states prohibited abortion, either entirely or with exceptions.  Illinois passed the 2^nd such law in 1833.  During the 1866-1868 legislative sessions, several states passed criminal abortion laws while the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was circulating among them.  No one doubted the constitutionality of doing so. “That resolves these cases. When it comes to determining the meaning of a vague constitutional provision—such as ‘due process of law’ or ‘equal protection of the laws’—it is unquestionable that the People who ratified that provision did not understand it to prohibit a practice that remained both universal and uncontroversial in the years after ratification. We have no basis for striking down a practice that is not expressly prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment’s text, and that bears the endorsement of a long tradition of open, widespread, and unchallenged use dating back to the Amendment’s ratification.” – Antonin Scalia, dissenting from Obergefell v. Hodges (2015, creating a right to same-sex “marriage”).

[2]https://www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/partisan-composition.aspx

[3]https://www.statista.com/statistics/273743/number-of-registered-voters-in-the-united-states/

[4]I.e., Roe v. Wade.

[5]https://humandefense.com/criminal-abortion-before-the-fourteenth-amendment/

Written by Liberty McArtor

Proponents of court-packing argue that adding more judges to our nation’s judiciary is the magical solution to urgent problems, and even paint the picture that doing so is an act of goodwill. But far from being a necessity, court-packing is a brazen power-grab by one political party to fix the number of U.S. Supreme Court justices or federal judges to get the political results they want.

And when we look at the history of court-packing across the world, there’s no way around it: Court-packing is a dangerous scheme with severe implications that would erase freedom and rights for future generations and destroy America’s constitutional order.

To equip you—and all Americans—in exposing the lie and the radical plan to overthrow America’s court system, here are four common (or rather, bogus) court-packing claims debunked with facts and logic.

1. Myth: The Supreme Court has been stolen.

Fact: The U.S. Supreme Court currently has nine highly qualified, legitimately appointed and confirmed justices. The far Left just doesn’t like some of them.

The reason court-packing advocates say the U.S. Supreme Court was “stolen” is because they disagree with the political party and the president who appointed the latest three justices (Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett). For instance, they claimed that Justice Barrett’s confirmation happened too quickly. But as First Liberty President and CEO Kelly Shackelford has noted, justices have been confirmed in the same fashion nearly thirty (30) times. In fact, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom Justice Barrett replaced, was confirmed in a similar time frame.

Ironically, stealing the U.S. Supreme Court is exactly what would happen if the coup attempt to add two, four or even six more justices were to succeed.

2. Myth: Court-packing has popular support.

Fact: Court-packing is widely unpopular—and historically has been within both parties. 

Polls conducted in the last few years show the majority of Americans oppose court-packing.

• In 2020, a New York Times-Siena College poll found that fifty-eight percent (58%) of likely voters opposed packing the U.S. Supreme Court.
  
• In 2019, Rasmussen polls found that only twenty-seven percent (27%) of Americans favor packing the U.S> Supreme Court with additional justices.

What’s more, opposition to court-packing is prevalent across the political spectrum.

Here are some quotes from several politicians and prominent figures on both sides of the political aisle, starting with the current president:

• President Joe Biden (D):

In 1983: “President Roosevelt clearly had the right to send to the United States Senate and the United States Congress a proposal to pack the court. … But it was a bonehead idea. It was a terrible, terrible mistake to make.”

In 2020: “I’m not a fan of court packing.”

• Ted Cruz (R-TX)

In 2020: “Packing the Court means one very specific thing: expanding the number of justices to achieve a political outcome. It is wrong. It is an abuse of power.”

• Joe Manchin (D-WV)

In 2020: “I want to allay those fears, I want to rest those fears for you right now because when they talk about whether it be packing the courts, or ending the filibuster, I will not vote to do that.”

• Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

In 2020: “I can’t think of a more destabilizing event for America than changing the number of [justices] on the Supreme Court every election cycle, because it becomes a winner take all for the Court.”

• Jon Ossoff (D-GA):

In 2020: “We shouldn’t expand the Supreme Court just because a justice may be confirmed with whom we disagree on policy.”

• Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933 – 2020):

In 2019: “If anything would make the court look partisan…it would be that—one side saying, ‘When we’re in power, we’re going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to.’”

The truth is both parties have long opposed court-packing, and the sudden flip by a select group of elites on the Democratic side on this issue exposes this scheme for what it really is: a barefaced power grab.

3. Myth: Court-packing is a routine procedure.

Fact: Changes to the size of the U.S. Supreme Court are very rare in America’s history, and the few partisan attempts at court-packing have been failures.

Congress has changed the number of U.S. Supreme Court justices only a total of seven times in American history. The radical Left distorts this fact to make you think court-packing is normal. But in nearly 250 years and 120 Congresses, the seven prior changes (many of them due to workloads and the addition of states to the Republic) do not offer a justification for packing the Court today. On the contrary, the seven changes show how rare court-packing is in America. What’s more, the number of U.S. Supreme Court justices hasn’t changed at all since 1869—that’s over 150 years!

4. Myth: Court-packing will save democracy.

Fact: Court packing will crush civil liberties by making the U.S. Supreme Court a partisan tool of whoever holds power.  

Using a baseball metaphor, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts once said of a judge’s role, “It’s my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.”

What would happen if several partisan justices were added to the U.S. Supreme Court—justices who were instructed to “pitch” and “bat” for the team that appointed them? The U.S. Supreme Court would become an extension of the party currently in power. The fundamental principle of the “separation of powers” would be destroyed.

If more and more partisan judges are added to courts every election cycle, those in the minority—people who don’t agree with the current ruling party—would have their freedom squashed under the weight of a rigged judiciary. Civil liberties like religious freedom would have no stable protection.

Far from saving the principles of our democratic republic, court-packing would lead to the demolition of constitutional rights—just like it happened in other nations, such as Venezuela and Argentina.

This article was originally published at FirstLiberty.org.

Warning: Reader Discretion is Advised

Leftists do not seek only to destroy, divide, cancel, and erase. They seek also to re-fashion a brave new world. A look at two recent cultural events reveals the kind of world with which leftists hope to replace cancelled America.

The most recent was Sunday’s Super Bowl during which a vulgar man/boy who calls himself the Weekend performed his song “Earn It” which is a paean to sadomasochism written for the softcore porn movie Fifty Shades of Grey which was based on the twisted softcore porn bodice ripper Fifty Shades of Grey. In the name of “equity,” leftists want to get women as addicted to porn as men are.

An official video of “Earn It” available on YouTube for every man, woman, and child to view consists of the man/boy Weekend, leering creepily at half a dozen women wearing only pasties and thongs with big black Xs on their buttocks who gyrate sexually while carrying the accouterments of sadomasochism. Google, which cancels conservative ideas and which owns YouTube, finds nothing troubling at all about providing a platform for a softcore porn video that objectifies and exploits women—i.e., adult female humans.

Sanctimonious leftists continually preach sermons about which ideas must be cancelled because they’re destructive and immoral. Apparently, those leftists think the Weekend is wholly undeserving of cancellation, because he never says anything destructive or immoral.

Unlike the destructive act of saying men can’t become women or saying the union of two people of the same sex can never be a marriage, porn and sadomasochism never hurt women, children, or families—or so leftists claim. Here’s a brief excerpt from one of the Weekend’s “songs” that, presumably, leftists think is healthy and good for America:

I think I’ve finally fell in love now

Her name is Tammy, she got hella bitches

She let me f*ck ’em while my ni**as film it …

…

Girl go ’head and show me how you go down

And I feel my whole body peakin’

And I’m f*ckin’ anybody with they legs wide

Got me higher than a ni**ga from the West Side

If anyone affirms sexual deviance, and the abuse, exploitation, and objectification of women, the left will definitely not cancel them. Instead, sexual libertines will be given the most colossal platforms leftists can find. And leftist ideological tyrants make sure those platforms are ones that children can access.

The second cultural event took place just two days before the Super Bowl when LA Times and Wired Magazine writer Virginia Heffernan wrote a condescending column in which she argues that even acts of unselfish generosity on the parts of Trump voters require nothing more than a begrudging smidge of appreciation. She defends her bitter intolerance as a legitimate response for the indefensible sin of voting for Trump:

The Trumpites next door to our pandemic getaway, who seem as devoted to the ex-president as you can get without being Q fans, just plowed our driveway without being asked and did a great job.

How am I going to resist demands for unity in the face of this act of aggressive niceness?

Of course, on some level, I realize I owe them thanks—and, man, it really looks like the guy back-dragged the driveway like a pro—but how much thanks?

Heffernan’s answer is suggested in her question. She plans to respond minimally:

[w]ith a wave and a thanks, a minimal start on building back trust. I’m not ready to knock on the door with a covered dish yet.

I also can’t give my neighbors absolution; it’s not mine to give. Free driveway work, as nice as it is, is just not the same currency as justice and truth. To pretend it is would be to lie, and they probably aren’t looking for absolution anyway.

But I can offer a standing invitation to make amends. Not with a snowplow but by recognizing the truth about the Trump administration and, more important, by working for justice for all those whom the administration harmed. Only when we work shoulder to shoulder to repair the damage of the last four years will we even begin to dig out of this storm.

Absolution? What arrogant audacity to imply 74 million Americans need absolution for voting their consciences; for voting to try to protect their children’s economic futures; for voting to protect the jobs of those in the energy sector; for voting to preserve energy independence; for voting to secure our borders in the same way other countries secure their borders; for voting to protect our children from indoctrination with leftist sexuality beliefs and Critical Race Theory;  for voting to protect our children from having to undress in the presence of peers of the opposite sex; for voting to protect the First and Second Amendments; and for voting to protect the lives of humans in the womb.

In the grimy hands and bendy minds of oily leftists, justice and truth are slippery concepts. Many Trump voters think, for example, that men can’t be women, and that falsifying birth certificates or referring to “Caitlyn” Jenner by female pronouns are acts of lying. And many Trump voters believe allowing biological men—also known as men—to compete in women’s sports is manifestly—or womanifestly—unjust.

Heffernan is right on one point, though. Absolution isn’t hers to give, and Trump voters owe her nothing. If attempts to “make amends” and to work for “justice”—as defined by leftists—are “unity” prerequisites, then there will be no unity in America. But we already knew that.

After comparing Trump voters to Hezbollah, Louis Farrakhan, and Nazi collaborator Philippe Pétain, Heffernan said this:

What do we do about the Trumpites around us? … Americans are expected to forgive and forget before we’ve even stitched up our wounds. Or gotten our vaccines against the pandemic that former President Trump utterly failed to mitigate.

My neighbors supported a man who showed near-murderous contempt for the majority of Americans.

Are the 74 million Trump voters expected to forgive and forget the leftists who showed near murderous contempt for all the Americans who lived in terror as their cities and businesses were burned and looted, and police officers spit at and beaten?

Are Trump voters expected to forgive and forget before they’ve even stitched their lives back together?

Are Trump voters expected to forgive and forget the shabby way President Trump and Melania Trump were treated by the bigoted, partisan press since the moment President Trump was elected?

Are Trump voters expected to forgive and forget the millions of tax dollars spent on the Russian collusion hoax and two impeachment trials—including the one that Chief Justice John Roberts refuses to preside over?

Are Trump voters expected to forgive and forget the way Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh was treated by Democrats?

Are Trump voters expected to forgive and forget the way the press covered for the corrupt Joe Biden during his invisible campaign?

Are Trump voters expected to forgive and forget that leftists have given Trump little to no credit for Operation Warp Speed?

Apparently, leftists have little understanding that Trump voters view the beliefs of leftists—particularly on matters pertaining to sexuality and marriage—as evil and destructive as leftists view conservative beliefs.

Leftists that control Big Tech, big business, our professional medical and mental health organizations, public schools, secondary schools, the mainstream press, and the “arts,” do not support diversity of ideas. They do not value tolerance for beliefs they hate. They do not love liberty for deplorables, ugly folks, and theologically orthodox Christians.

And despite all their prior opposition to “imposing morality,” leftists are now firmly committed to imposing their morality—including on other people’s children using taxpayer money.

The beauty of America used to be that, recognizing the diversity of ideas and beliefs, Americans were committed to allowing the free flow of ideas and robust debate. The notion that a ruling class could declare that their presuppositions would enjoy unencumbered public expression and that all dissenting views would be banned was unthinkable.

It was this freedom that made America a refuge for oppressed people around the world, and as leftists deracinate this freedom, America becomes an oppressive place to live for millions of Americans. Increasingly, the only freedom valued by those who rule America is the freedom for unrestrained sexual deviance to destroy hearts, minds, bodies, souls, families, churches, and the First Amendment.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

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Well, they dusted off those colorful “Handmaid’s Tale” outfits that were so visible at Brett Kavanaugh’s U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 2018.

Even before Amy Coney Barrett’s hearing on Monday before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, the Democrats were being cheered on by permanently angry women (and maybe some men) dressed in red cloaks with white duckbills extending from their hoods.

This is the uniform of the oppressed women in Hulu’s serialization of Margaret Atwood’s dystopic, anti-Christian novel. If you thought atheist crusader Philip Pullman’s thinly disguised depiction of church authorities as evil in “The Golden Compass” book and movie were bad, Ms. Atwood runs circles around him.  In her 1985 book and TV series, the polygamous men cite Bible verses and treat the women as sex slaves.

Braving the rain on Monday, the demonstrators held signs festooned with messages such as a giant NO! in rainbow colors over “Trump/Pence Must Go!”

This time around in the U.S. Senate star chamber, the Democrats who pretend to honor religious liberty while assailing nominees’ faith think they have a smoking gun. The word “handmaid.”

Mrs. Barrett and her husband have long been members of an ecumenical charismatic Christian group begun in 1971 called People of Praise, based in South Bend, Indiana, home to Notre Dame University and its law school, from which she graduated summa cum laude and taught constitutional law.

Women leaders in the group, including Mrs. Barrett, previously held the title of “handmaid,” which is derived from Jesus’s mother Mary’s own description of herself in Luke 1:38 as “the handmaid of the Lord.”

The group dropped that title in favor of “women’s leader” because “the meaning of this title has shifted dramatically in our culture in recent years,” a spokesman said.

Mrs. Barrett, 48, now serves on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, to which she was nominated by President Donald J. Trump in 2017.  At that time, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California said at a hearing that Mrs. Barrett’s religious beliefs worried her because “the dogma lives loudly within you.”

Wow. Talk about open religious bigotry. But it’s OK because the senator is a Democrat, and they get to do this sort of thing. It’s not as if the media would have a problem with it.

Here’s a front-page headline from last Wednesday’s Washington Post:

Barrett long active with insular Christian group: Community preached subservience for women, former members say.

Ah, those “former members.” You can always dig up a dissident or two to make the point you want, unless you’re reporting on Black Lives Matter or the Democratic National Committee, which are pretty much the same thing.

As for People of Praise, here’s more from their own media statement provided to Heavy.com:

A majority of People of Praise members are Catholic, and yet the People of Praise is not a Catholic group. We aim to be a witness to the unity Jesus desires for all his followers. Our membership includes not only Catholics but Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists, Pentecostals and nondenominational Christians. What we share is a common baptism, a commitment to love one another and our teachings, which we hold in common.

Freedom of conscience is a key to our diversity. People of Praise members are always free to follow their consciences, as formed by the light of reason, experience and the teachings of their churches.

As the Apostle Paul instructs, and many biblically sound churches teach, men are to be the spiritual leaders in the church and in their own households and they are to love their wives as they love themselves. This is considered scandalous by our cultural commissars.

In Ephesians 5:25, Paul writes: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for her.” That means laying down your life if necessary.  It’s why when things go bump in the night, the guy should be the one who goes downstairs with the baseball bat or the Sig Sauer.

Democrats are terrified of the attractive and articulate Mrs. Barrett, a mother of seven, just as they were threatened by Clarence Thomas, who destroyed their narrative that blacks belong on the leftist plantation.

Mrs. Barrett has impeccable credentials that the U.S. Senate already examined when she was nominated for the appeals seat.  At that time, the “handmaid” reference didn’t get traction, since the TV version of “The Handmaid’s Tale” only debuted in April of that year.

In the meantime, we’ve seen U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) take a page from Bernie Sanders and grill Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo in 2018 about sex and marriage, strongly implying that his traditional Christian views are a form of bigotry. Booker likes to make much of his own Christian faith, which apparently is free of the burden of having to abide by crystal clear biblical principles regarding sex.

Also hewing to “smarter than God” theology is Kamala Harris, who has embraced all things LGBTQ, plus taxpayer-funded abortion and Marxist economics. On December 5, 2019, Harris asked Brian Buescher, President Trump’s nominee for district court in Nebraska, “Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to choose when you joined the organization?” And, “Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed marriage equality when you joined the organization?”

During Monday’s hearing, Mrs. Barrett had to face the likes of Booker, Feinstein and Harris, plus the troupe of “Handmaid” harridans.

After the process is over and Associate Justice Barrett is sworn in, the “ladies” can make further use of their costumes.

After all, Halloween is right around the corner.

This article was originally published at Townhall.com. Follow Robert Knight on is a His website is robertHknight.com.

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: 

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Written by Peter Heck

How he managed to say it without choking on his own tongue I will never know. As President Trump began to dress down the hostile press that was attempting to use his Monday White House briefing to smear him as negligent, CNN cut away immediately to anchor John King who managed to prattle out these words without even a sniff of irony:

“To play a propaganda video at taxpayer expense in the White House briefing room is a new — you can insert your favorite word here – in this administration.”

For anyone at CNN to feign objection over “propaganda” is as convincing a testimony you will ever see to the staggering lack of self-awareness capable by seemingly coherent human beings.

This is, after all, the network of Jake Tapper, who just days ago allowed socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to repeat without correction the now widely debunked rumor that President Trump called coronavirus a hoax. Tapper actually defended his own silence saying that while he knew it was a lie, he let it slide by because President Trump lies about other things. Seriously:

I guess that’s the problem with a politician who lies so often; while I agree that Democrats are mischaracterizing what he said, what he did say was also false so it’s tough to justify taking the time for a fact check when it’s not taking a stand defining the truth.

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 22, 2020

Tapper also allowed Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi to accuse Trump of “fiddling” without ever holding her to account for “fiddling” herself when she single-handedly delayed the coronavirus relief bill for a week.

This is the network of Brian Stelter who anchors a program unironically called “Reliable Sources,” and utilizes that platform to peddle misinformation on behalf of the Democrat Party:

I RT’ed a former LA Times reporter who had tweeted pics that mistakenly ran on the ABC local news broadcast. When I found out the story was erroneous, I deleted the tweet. Gosh, Brian, why does your tweet omit the MSM error that started it? Or does CNN only exist to attack GOP? https://t.co/ehvPHPMrGh

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) April 13, 2020

It is also Stelter who turned disgraced lawyer and convicted felon Michael Avenatti into a mainstay on his program in order to attack Trump, and even encouraged the Stormy Daniels attorney to think about running for president himself. With Avenatti in jail now, Stelter fills his time regularly attempting “gotcha” moments with President Trump that end just about as well. Like this:

Admin officials "say the White House has made a deliberate political calculation that it will better serve Trump’s interest to put the onus on governors — rather than the federal government — to figure out how to move ahead."

Let that quote sink in… https://t.co/v2QVZBXslD

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) April 11, 2020

Yes, let it. Because there’s a name for the concept articulated in that quote, of course. It’s called “federalism,” the central pillar around which our constitutional order and system is constructed. Let the fact that CNN’s chief media corresponded didn’t realize that sink in for a minute.

Besides, it isn’t too difficult to figure out what Stelter and company would be saying if Trump had seized power and claimed emergency authority to dictate nationalized policies to “move ahead.”

This is the network of Don Lemon, an activist masquerading as a newsman who is so sharply partisan that long-time journos cringe at the damage he continues to do not only to CNN’s credibility, but the industry itself.

This is the network that breathlessly covered every potential angle of every perceived accusation against U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings, yet now remains the only major news organization that has not even mentioned the credible allegations of sexual misconduct leveled against presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden by one of his former employees.

This is the network that at the very same press briefing that John King couldn’t bear to air another second of, allowed a staffer manning the chyron machine to post these on-screen Democrat talking points with the apparent blessing of both editors and producers:

I’m almost impressed with how hard the CNN chyron writers of my former network effort to get their revulsion for Pres Trump just right!

I don’t miss it… pic.twitter.com/FLQr2Nwz8a

— Steve Cortes (@CortesSteve) April 14, 2020

Incredible. As in, lacking in all credibility.

After recently surviving a bout with COVID-19, CNN host Christopher Cuomo made some startling remarks, indicating that he was re-evaluating his career at the network. Among other things, Cuomo called out CNN for trafficking in “ridiculous things.”

He not wrong in that assessment, even though I’d choose a different, more precise term for what this low-rated televised rumor mill peddles: propaganda.

This article was originally published at Disrn.com.

Written by Trevor Thomas

If death—anyone’s death—brings you joy, you should intently re-examine your worldview. Even the just execution of a mass murderer—which I support in every case—should not bring anyone joy. As a Christian, I often find myself opposed—spiritually, politically, and otherwise—to those outside of my faith. However, I take no joy in anyone’s death, especially those outside of my faith. Christianity teaches that “each one of us will give an account of himself to God.” Any death that results in eternal separation from God is always particularly tragic.

However, for those who have put their faith in the things of this world, who are determined to rule their own world, death usually has no such significance. Thus, for such people, like the death of an “inconvenient” child, the death of an enemy is often something to celebrate. The most recent case in point is the death of the wealthy philanthropist David Koch. After Mr. Koch died, many on the left again found themselves in a celebratory mood. We shouldn’t be surprised that those who engage in or promote the evil “shout-your-abortion!” movement would celebrate the death of a political enemy.

Nor should we be surprised that the hate-filled American left would promise political—and perhaps other forms of—apocalypse if President Trump gets the opportunity to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with someone who will actually follow the U.S. Constitution. Liberals dancing with joy over the death of Mr. Koch were soon brought back to earth with the same-day news that Justice Ginsburg underwent a fresh round of treatment for a cancerous tumor on her pancreas.

Despite our political, legal, and moral differences, I admire Justice Ginsburg for her strength and determination to do her job. As another recently noted, she has survived pancreatic cancer twice, lung cancer once, and colon cancer once. And she’s 86 years old. Many Americans—no matter their political stripes—would be very interested in getting the names of her oncologists.

In an interesting bit of irony probably lost on Justice Ginsburg and her like-minded ideologues, if the U.S. had Medicare-for-all, or some other version of single-payer healthcare—a dream of the American left—almost certainly Mrs. Ginsburg would’ve long ago departed this world. Thank God for the U.S. medical industry, right libs? (The U.S. has the world’s best cancer survival rates.)

In their foolish efforts to create “heaven on earth”—Utopia—modern liberals have often relied on the courts to give them what they could not otherwise gain by actually winning elections and passing legislation. Of course, this is why the left in the mainstream media—I repeat myself—and the U.S. Senate engaged in media malpractice and political treachery in their evil efforts to derail the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.

Many have implied that if President Trump has the opportunity to name Ginsburg’s replacement, the battle that would erupt would make the Kavanaugh confirmation look like the Mayberry City Council debate on whether to hold a Founder’s Day parade. This shouldn’t be the case—because, as long as U.S. Senate Republicans have his back, there is simply nothing Democrats can do to stop President Trump from nominating and having confirmed any judge he wishes.

However, today’s Democrat Party is as far from rational as they are from moral—which is totally unsurprising as those two extremes often go hand-in-hand. Even more so than the vengeful tweets over a dead philanthropist or the angry threats over a potential U.S. Supreme Court vacancy, few things illustrate this as well as the gender debate the modern left insists we have.

After (frequently) pointing out—and being far from alone—that the stupid, evil notion of “gender fluidity” most harms females—including young girls—I keep thinking that the left will soon abandon this wickedness. Silly me. I forget how blindly stupid those corrupted by evil can be.

Recently the GOP candidate in Louisiana’s governor’s race, Ralph Abraham, made headlines—headlines!—because he ran a 30 second ad that included the phrase “as a doctor, I can assure you, there are only two genders.” They were so aghast at MSNBC that host Chris Jansing declared that Abraham’s comments were “incendiary.” According to Newsbusters, Jansing’s guest—because, of course, the left must have their “experts” explain to us why there are not only two genders—went even further and said that to declare that there are only two genders is now “despicable” and “un-American.”

In other words, a statement that, just a few years ago, the vast majority of us would’ve considered so obvious that it was patronizing is now “incendiary” and “despicable.” Orwell was indeed a prophet.

Thus, it should come as little surprise that those who can’t tell the difference between who is a male and who is a female would choose to fight crime with euphemisms, still believes that “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!” really happened, still thinks that man-made climate change is a real problem with a political solution, believes that widespread institutional racism still exists in America, and would conclude that “Seattle Has Figured Out How to End the War on Drugs.”

The latter bit of editorial “brilliance” was recently proffered by The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristoff. I guess Kristoff missed the fact that Seattle is Dying largely because of rampant drug abuse (and because, of course, “liberalism is killing it”). If he truly didn’t know this before, he does now because many of the 1300+ comments following his piece told him as much. Many of the comments were from Seattle residents.

SKM from Seattle wrote,

I live here and you don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about. Downtown Seattle is a classic example of when inmates run the asylum. Downtown Seattle frequently feels like “Night of the Living Dead.” Quality of life issues here are outright dismissed, all in an effort to help drug addicted zombies that walk our streets. Sleeping in doorways, public defecation/urination, shooting up right in the open, blatant drug dealing w/ out any fear of incrimination, verbal abuse, etc. I can more easily get a summons for jaywalking here than dealing Fentanyl.

Another Seattle resident, “robofaust,” added,

As a 26 year resident of Seattle (and a x2 time voter for Ralph Nader and Obama), I couldn’t disagree more. This city is littered with homeless drug addicts. Seattle’s choice to “decriminalize homelessness” is just another term for enabling the self-destruction of thousands of people…

Every few days I come across people who are passed out, or worse yet, who are actively shooting up, at the foot of my home. Petty crime is rampant, and it is no longer possible to get the police to respond to a stolen bicycle or smashed car windows…

The city’s drug addicts live in a parallel subculture that is disconnected from the lives of the locals who tolerate it in the name of social virtue. This subculture is a law unto itself, and is rife with predators who prey on the weak with violence, theft, and sexual abuse…

There will be political reckoning in the city for this, sooner or later. Mr. Kristof’s analysis is deeply flawed.

In not just Seattle, but all over America, liberals have become “a law unto themselves.” Thus, the nastiness in Seattle is only the tip of the iceberg. Liberals think that Seattle is doing a good job with criminal drug users, that there are more than two genders, that marriage is whatever we define it to be, that killing the unborn is merely a “choice,” and so on, because the left in America long ago abandoned the idea that some things are settled for all time.

I certainly hope there is soon a political reckoning. There will certainly be a spiritual one.

This article was originally published at TrevorGrantThomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America

Written by Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon 

In a blog post titled “‘Fairness For All’: Smart Politics, Or A Sellout?” (Dec. 13), Rod Dreher, senior editor at The American Conservative,  reports a defense of the recent decision by the boards of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) and the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) to support “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” “federal antidiscrimination law in exchange for religious liberty guarantees written into the same law.” The defense was made by “a prominent conservative Evangelical political strategist who works at both the national and state levels” and whom Dreher calls “Smith.” Rod himself professes to be unsure about the whole subject; an uncertainty that appears to be fueled by his usual belief that voting Republican changes nothing.

The substance of the defense is essentially born of naïve utilitarianism, overlaid with a veneer of high rhetoric about standing up for the “rights” of LGBTQ persons. In effect: We are losing the battle over human sexuality in the culture so, while we still can, let’s cut a deal with proponents of all things “gay” and “transgender” that gives us something in return. They will (allegedly) recognize our good will and then become favorably disposed to protect our “religious liberties” in both the short- and long-term.

The problem with the argument is that it amounts to a policy of appeasement with sexual extremists who advocate (from our perspective) a grossly immoral sexual policy and have never exhibited a “we’ll stop here approach” before. It is an appeasement that requires us to sacrifice our basic principles to get some statutory assurance that can easily be retracted by legislative vote after a full-court indoctrination surge, predicated on the new law, overwhelms remaining resistance. In addition, it is an appeasement that provides only the narrowest of exemptions for religious institutions while throwing under the bus the vast majority of Christians who work and live outside those institutions.

It requires us to sign our own persecution warrant by conceding on a federal level that homosexual practice, “gay marriage,” and sexual mutilation surgery are (as Houghton College President Shirley Mullen, who sits on the boards of both evangelical organizations argued in a position paper) “basic human rights.” Elevating these high acts of sexual immorality to the status of “human rights” in turn slanders reasoned moral arguments against such acts as virulent prejudice akin to racist views.

It gives jurists and legislators the ammunition they need to dismiss any remaining Evangelical resistance to a program of coerced indoctrination and enforcement as inconsistent residual bigotry rather than an instance of rational moral conviction. As Lydia McGrew has pointed out,

[T]his could sabotage any attempt to get an even clearer baker/florist, etc., religious liberty ruling from the Supreme Court in a subsequent case…. A *federal* law enshrining “public accommodations’ non-discrimination rules for sexual orientation could be just what would influence someone like Kavanaugh and possibly others to reverse course rather than going more clearly in the direction of the Masterpiece [Cake] ruling.

Once Evangelical “elites” support special “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” legislation they have conceded (whether they know it or not) that a man having sex with another man and a man subjecting himself to voluntary castration and adopting a female persona are honorable life decisions deserving full government promotion and support.

When the Czechs were compelled to give up the Sudetenland in the Munich Agreement of 1938 in exchange for a contractual assurance of German respect for their sovereignty, they gave up the most defensible and defended part of the country, relying solely on the “good will” of someone who had shown absolutely no previous interest in respecting territorial boundaries. LGBTQ advocates won’t be rounding us up in concentration camps to be gassed, to be sure. Yet they will continue to press for the elimination of every last vestige of “homophobia” and “transphobia” in society by every and any legislative and judicial means. By their own rhetoric they will still regard as hateful ignorant bigots on the level of the Klu Klux Klan, all the more given new federal “anti-discrimination” legislation from which we now seek immoral exemption.

Evangelicals who think otherwise are foolish in the extreme, giving our enemies the club with which to beat us and then taking them at their word that (for the moment) they won’t beat us with it. Then why give them the club in the first place?

According to Smith, “pluralism is about accommodating deep difference” and that requires Evangelicals to “accommodate sexual minorities” and to acknowledge the latter’s “rights.” It is evident already in Smith’s own language that he has given up the store. He has appropriated language of “minorities” and “rights” previously associated with the cause for African American civil rights and applied it to the “LGBTQ” agenda. By definition, then, any resistance to that agenda is “heterosexist” and “cis-sexist.”

Race is about an intrinsically benign, non-behavioral, and immutable facet of human existence. Don’t confuse rhetoric rightly used to support the cause of racial justice with rhetoric that promotes desires (however innate) to do things at fundamental odds with one’s biological design. Contrary to what Smith claims, it is not part of the “common good” to provide special rights for such behavior that will invariably lead to severe state indoctrination and attenuation of both freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion (whatever exemptions we are briefly granted in the law by LGBTQ powers for our detestable prejudices). Smith says that “gay people have a right to be wrong.” They already have that right. What they want is the right to compel others to do things that violate conscience.

Pluralism has its limits. Would Smith apply the same argument to Evangelical hostility against polyamory and adult-consensual incest (these too involve “sexual minorities” and questions about “rights”)? In a pluralist society must we eventually accommodate these “deep differences” too once there is a societal push for such acceptance? How could he possibly argue otherwise given the fact that moral logic predicates opposition to such behavior on a male-female prerequisite for sexual relations and the integrity of a biologically based sexuality, an opposition now surrendered in the public sphere?

Homosexual practice and transgenderism are not “run of the mill” sexual offenses. They are extreme sexual offenses that attack the very foundation of all sexual ethics. The CCCU and NAE want us to promote legislation that honors and protects such behavior and provides the legal reasoning for coercing acceptance in the whole population.

Smith even admits that LGBT activists believe that

Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 dealt a powerful blow to their hopes…. Now they have Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, and Justice Ginsburg aged and frail. LGBT strategists believe that the likelihood of litigating their way to preferred policy outcomes is low under this Court.

Then Smith argues that, despite this perspective, our cause is hopeless because Trump and a Republican-led Congress haven’t done everything in two years. He completely ignores the fact that we haven’t lost federal ground in the sexuality wars and are on the road to strengthening materially our position vis-à-vis the Court without having to surrender our moral convictions in the public sector.

Smith assures us,

I don’t think they’re doing it as a bad-faith stalling tactic.

How ridiculous. Every political example points in the direction that LGBTQ activists will continue their inexorable pursuit of stamping out homophobic and transphobic prejudice (so-called) by all means necessary. These Evangelical appeasers have the “innocent as doves” demeanor down but not the “wise as serpents” part. California moved from outlawing sexual orientation “change therapy” on the part of licensed clinicians for minors to five or six years later making a concerted effort to outlaw it for adults on the part of pastors where an exchange of funds is involved. LGBTQ politicians will push their agenda to the bitter end.

Once we abandon the moral conviction that homosexual and transgender immorality are not “human rights” requiring state promotion, we have no basis for opposing our further persecution. Bigots (in the thinking of LGBTQ activists) are not entitled to exemptions in the long run for a bigotry that harasses “sexual minorities” and induces suicide attempts. LGBTQ activists won’t think us to be any less bigoted because of our surrender. They will simply view us as conviction-less and unprincipled bigots who deserve what is coming to them.

Most galling of all is that Smith even cites the Golden Rule to justify his position:

In Smith’s view, in a pluralistic society like America 2018, ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ is a good rule for religious liberty advocates and gay rights supporters alike.

Jesus didn’t formulate the Golden Rule to provide special legal protections for, and promotion of, immoral behavior. He formulated it to encourage us to act in the best interest of others rather than to engage in vengeful behavior as a response to wrongs committed against one’s self. Since no true Evangelical can possibly believe that self-dishonoring homosexual behavior and attempted erasure of one’s biological sex are positive goods in the best interests of the practitioners, no Evangelical can support the kind of legislation that the CCCU and NAE are now endorsing.

With this kind of reasoning on the part of Smith, it is little wonder that he wants to remain anonymous.

Robert A. J. Gagnon is Professor of New Testament Theology at Houston Baptist University. He has a B.A. degree from Dartmouth College, an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School, and a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. His main fields of interest are Pauline theology and sexual issues in the Bible. He is a member both of the Society of Biblical Literature and of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas [Society of New Testament Studies]. He is the author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001; 520 pgs.); co-author (with Dan O. Via) of Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003; 125 pgs.); and, as a service to the church, provides a large amount of free material on his website dealing with Scripture and homosexuality.

Chasco Middle School in Port Richey, Florida did what many presumptuous and foolish k-12 schools around the country are doing: The administration unilaterally decided to sexually integrate the boys’ locker room with no notification to either the boys or their parents. The boys, and shortly thereafter their parents, learned about it when an objectively female student who seeks to pass as a boy humiliated them when she entered the boys’ locker room while they were in their underwear. The boys immediately left the locker room and sought help from two P.E. teachers—Robert Oppedisano and Stephanie Christensen—who according to Liberty Counsel, “were powerless to respond, because administrators had placed a gag order on them, and told them that they could not answer the boys on these questions.”

To be clear, not even student and parental notification would make this unjust and foolish decision right. Providing no notification just made a lousy decision worse.

Liberty Counsel further outlined the outrageous nature of the Chasco administration’s decision:

Robert also objected to administrators’ order that he continue to walk into and supervise the locker room, despite a girl potentially being nude or undressed in that area. The administrators told him that the girl in question had “every right to use the locker room,” including the right to disrobe in the open locker area, and shower in its open showers, where Robert is required to periodically walk in and supervise. Robert will not knowingly place himself in a position to observe a minor female in the nude or otherwise in a state of undress. Now, Robert has been told by administrators that he will be transferred to another school as discipline for “not doing your job in the locker room.”

Now, as a result of the incoherent “trans” ideology, a male P.E. teacher could be fired for intentionally being in the presence of an undressed objectively female student if she’s satisfied with her biological sex and a male teacher could be fired for refusing to be in the presence of an undressed objectively female student, so long as she is dissatisfied with her biological sex. What if a male teacher is in the presence of a genderfluid objectively female student who, while changing clothes on a day when she’s “identifying” as a boy, suddenly “identifies” as a girl? Yikes.

Some questions for the Chasco Middle School administration:

• Do students have any right not to be seen partially or fully unclothed by students, staff, faculty, or administrators of the opposite sex?

• Should “trans”-identifying coaches be treated as if they were the sex they pretend to be? For example, should the objectively male swim coach who pretends to be a woman be allowed full access to the girls’ locker room? If not, why not?

• Do staff and faculty who believe it is profoundly wrong to see pubescent students of the opposite sex partially or fully unclothed have any rights?

• Why do we have any sex-segregated locker rooms and restrooms in public schools if objective biological sex has no intrinsic connection to feelings of modesty and the desire for and right to privacy when engaged in intimate bodily functions or changing clothes?

Ironically, while violating the physical privacy of children, the Chasco administration is trying to cloak its secret plan to sexually integrate private spaces by appealing to—you guessed it—privacy. But neither privacy policies nor laws prohibit the administration from notifying students and parents that the school has adopted—with no board vote—a new practice of sexually integrating locker rooms and restrooms and that boys and girls can expect that they will be sharing private spaces with persons of the opposite sex. (As an aside, I wonder how female faculty or administrators would feel if they were in their underwear in a women’s faculty locker room when without notification an objectively male colleague walked in.)

The brains behind this “trans”-cultic operation to violate the privacy of and humiliate students is Jackie Jackson-Dean who consulted with every pro-“LGBTQ”-advocacy organization she could find—including the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) government school indoctrination arm, ironically called “Teaching Tolerance.”

The weedy thicket of Dean’s recommendations include encouraging the school to participate in every pro-homosexual/pro-“trans” event sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), encouraging teachers to use incorrect pronouns when referring to students who masquerade as the opposite sex, and publicly praising teachers who affirm pro-“LGBT” orthodoxy (thereby implicitly shaming those who don’t).

Jackson-Dean’s Twitter account reveals she’s a hardcore, far-left pro-homosexual/pro-“trans” activist who loves the SPLC and opposes Brett Kavanaugh.

There’s an odd omission in her rainbow-adorned document. She neglected to mention this which comes right out of a document to which she links:

On the federal side, the Title IX regulations issued by the U.S. Department of Education allow schools to provide separate but comparable bathrooms, locker rooms, and shower facilities on the basis of sex…. While there is no definitive national legal authority on the issue, federal courts in non-school cases have recognized a fundamental right to privacy or acknowledged the legitimacy of safety concerns in cases involving individuals undressing, using the restroom, or showering in an area to which a member of the opposite birth sex has access. Moreover, a federal district court recently asked the question whether a university engages in unlawful discrimination in violation of Title IX or the Constitution when it prohibits a transgender male [i.e., a biological female] student from using restrooms and locker rooms designated for men on campus. The court concluded: “The simple answer is no.”

If adult coaches are required to be in the presence of partially or fully undressed students of the opposite sex who “identify” as “trans,” there remains no rational reason to prohibit adult coaches from being in the presence of partially dressed or fully nude students of the opposite sex who accept their sex. In short, the “trans” ideology has invalidated objective, immutable biological sex and its anatomical manifestation as having any relevance in separating humans in spaces where bodies are exposed.

I’ve tried to warn that the ultimate goal and logical outworking of the “trans” ideology is to eradicate all public recognition and valuation of sex differences. According to the “trans” ideology, all it takes to “identify” as the opposite sex is a declaration. No gender dysphoria diagnosis or experience of gender dysphoria, no surgery, no cross-sex hormone-doping, not even cross-dressing is necessary to identify as the opposite sex. Further, society is obligated to treat “trans”-identifying persons in all ways and in all contexts as the sex they declare they are. Therefore, a girl with intact breasts who identifies as a boy should be free to undress and shower naked with the boys, and a boy with an intact penis and testicles who identifies as a girl should be free to undress and shower with girls. A girl with intact breasts who identifies as a boy should be allowed to swim on the boys’ swim team wearing a boys’ Speedo. Male coaches who enter boys’ locker rooms should treat girls who pretend they’re boys and are changing no differently than boys who are changing.

So, now what would have once been too scandalous to even imagine is being or going to be required.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Chasco.mp3

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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