I and others have been shouting from our virtual rooftops for over a decade that there is no greater threat to First Amendment protections than that posed by the subversive “LGBTQ” movement. Can conservatives not yet see the end of the short pier toward which GOP leaders have long been pushing them? Really?

(Im)moderate Republicans, Libertarian-leaning Republicans, Republicans with dollar signs rather than Scripture reflected in their myopic eyes have been pushing conservatives toward the end of the short pier, hoping that either spines will crumble or conservatives will tumble into the dark waters. Supremacist Court Justice/lawmaker Neil-the-Usurper-Gorsuch just gave conservatives a huge shove toward the watery abyss.

U.S. Senator Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) is “fine” with Gorsuch’s Law—or as some euphemistically call it, a “Supreme Court decision.” U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said he’s “not disappointed by Gorsuch’s decision:”

“It’s the law of the land. And it probably makes uniform what a lot of states have already done. And probably negates Congress’s necessity for acting.”

No siree, can’t have Congress legislating, especially on controversial issues. “Let unelected Supreme Court justices make law. They’re accountable to no one,” say our cowardly lawmakers.

Conservatives get all giddy with chills running up their legs when homosexuals like Guy Benson, Dave Rubin, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Brandon Straka express Republican-ish views. “Oh gosh, the cool kids like us, they really like us!”

Meanwhile, those smart, articulate, good-looking homosexuals seek to change the Republican Party from within—like a cancer or a Guinea worm (am I allowed to call it the Guinea worm any longer?). We welcome camels into the tent at our peril.

We shouldn’t forget U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) who supported the radical redefinition of marriage to include intrinsically non-marital homoerotic unions. Did Portman defend his betrayal of the Republican Party and biblical truth with rational arguments? Nope. He said because his son is homosexual, he now supports anti-marriage. If there’s a conflict between faith and sexual license, sexual license has got to win—says Portman. Let’s hope Portman doesn’t have any polyamorous kids.

And then there’s U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) who, along with his father, pushed for and passed a Florida law that legalized adoption by homosexuals without even a piddly carve-out for faith-based adoption agencies. In other words, Gaetz does not recognize that children have an inherent right to be raised by a mother and a father. Either mothers or fathers are expendable in the foolish view of Gaetz.

When Gaetz was on The View, he defended cross-sex passers serving in the military: “We shouldn’t be banning anybody based on who they are or who they love. That’s not the kind of Republican I am.” That’s leftist rhetoric that serves leftist social, moral, and political ends.

The ways socially and morally ignorant Republicans seek to transform the party are ways that pertain to our most cherished and fundamental freedoms. The result will be government schools unfit for children, loss of parental rights, loss of religious freedom, loss of speech rights, loss of association rights, loss of private spaces, loss of Christian colleges’ accreditation status, and the destruction of women’s sports.

Here’s an idea: How about those with conservative fiscal, environmental, and foreign policy views but liberal views on social policy join the Democratic Party and try to change it from within on fiscal, environmental, and foreign policy rather than  remain in the Republican Party and seek to change its position on sexual matters.

Some “socially liberal” Republicans who don’t really respect Scripture abuse Scripture to shame conservatives, saying “Well, Jesus spent time with sinners.” True enough, he did, and we should emulate what he said when spending time with sinners (which, btw, means all humans).

When with sinners, Jesus called them to repent and follow him. He didn’t affirm their sin. I can’t recall a single Bible story in which Jesus said kudos to a sinner for his sin. I suppose it’s possible that God affirmed someone’s homoeroticism before he burned them up at Sodom and Gomorrah—nah.

To love others with Christ’s love is to model his interactions with the lost. He called them to repent and follow him. There is no evidence that he went around praising those who spread lies about sexuality and marriage as Benson and Portman do.

I hope people can hear the frustration in my virtual voice as I say, what the heck is wrong with Christians who have been rationalizing their cowardly silence and capitulation for decades? Those with eyes to see have been writing for decades that First Amendment protections for Christians are slowly eroding, and just now with Gorsuch’s intellectually and constitutionally indefensible act of lawmaking, Christians are fretting about their potential loss of rights.

When “sexual orientation” and then “gender identity” were added to anti-discrimination policies and laws; when public schools started attacking conservative beliefs as “homophobia” through “anti-bullying” programs; when public school teachers started presenting pro-homosexuality novels, articles, essays, and movies to other people’s children; when SCOTUS jettisoned sexual differentiation as a constituent feature of legal “marriage”; when schools sexually integrated bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports; when foster care and adoption agencies lost the right to place children with only heterosexual couples; when schools started firing Christians for refusing to refer to boys as girls or vice versa, Christians largely said nothing. Now courts are starting to remove children from homes if their parents don’t affirm “trans”-cultic practices. And today, when the word “sex” is essentially redefined in the Civil Rights Act by six hubristic SCOTUS justices, what will Christians do?

Do Christians ever ask themselves what kind of culture and what kind of oppression their silence, their capitulation, their spinelessness over the past 10, 20, or 30 years is bequeathing to their children? What will it take for Christians to wake up and do something? When their children can’t send their kids even to private schools free of cross-dressers anymore, will they say something? When the state takes their own grandchildren away from their parents, will they say something? When their daughter or granddaughter has a double-mastectomy at age 13, will they say something? Please, tell me, what will it take for Christians to be part of the solution?

Oh wait, I know when they’ll start pulling their weight. They’ll start right after we get almighty tax policy just right.

Long before the Gorsuch decision, the erasure of public recognition of sex differences was made inevitable by the ignorant decisions made all over the country to add the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to “anti-discrimination” policies and laws. These inclusions in laws and policies—including in school policies—were aided and abetted by the silence of conservatives, and with those inclusions there now remains no way to maintain any sex-segregated spaces for anyone.

If, for example, a university allows a confused biological man called “Sue” to use the women’s locker room, there remains no rational or legal way to prohibit a normal biological man called “Bob” from using it as well. The university can’t say, “Bob may not use it, because he’s a biological man.” First, they’ve already allowed another biological man—i.e., “Sue”—to use it, and second, such a prohibition would constitute discrimination based on sex. And the university couldn’t say “Bob may not use the women’s locker room, because he’s not ‘transgender.'” Such a prohibition would constitute discrimination based on “gender identity.”

The intellectual and legal groundwork has been laid and fertilized for the eradication of all public recognition of sexual differentiation everywhere for everyone, which means no private spaces anywhere for anyone. And in those private spaces, children are likely to see biological men with gravity-defying breasts and the usual male apparatus (yes, they do that). Spend a moment ruminating on that disturbing image, for that is where conservative fear of being labeled “hater” has led us.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Self-Identifying-Republicans-Are-Destroying-Liberty.mp3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good job feminist supporters of the “trans” cult.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listen to this article read by Laurie: 

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

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The Trump Administration has rolled back a number of federal rules instituted by the Obama Administration and has instituted others, including these amazing pro-family policy victories:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) began enforcing the new rule, which “prohibits the use of Title X funds to perform, promote, refer for, or support abortion as a method of family planning.” As a result, nearly 900 abortion clinics have lost taxpayer funding. This is a great first step toward the goal of completely defunding abortion businesses (like Planned Parenthood) of our tax dollars.

HHS has also rescinded Obama administration guidance that prevented states from taking actions against providers that may be necessary to prevent Medicaid funds from going to fund abortion.

HHS has created a Conscience and Religious Freedom Division for the purpose of protecting the fundamental and unalienable rights of conscience and religious liberty for physicians and other medical professionals.

HHS has also proposed defining sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and identified at birth. In addition, agency staff—including those at the Centers for Disease Control—have been instructed to stop using the word “transgender” in official reports.

The U.S. Department of Defense has banned persons suffering from gender dysphoria from serving in the military.

The U.S. State Department is refusing visas for same-sex partners of some diplomats and U.N. workers if they are not “married.”

The U.S. Departments of Education and Justice eliminated Obama Administration “guidance” that told government schools to treat “trans”-identifying students as if they were the sex they are not.

The U.S. National Institute of Food and Agriculture rescinded guidance for 4-H programs, removing a policy specifically welcoming LGBTQ children in the program, which led to the firing of an official who protested.

The U.S. Department of Education refuses to respond to civil complaints filed by “trans”-identifying students, including those who were barred from using opposite-sex bathrooms.

The U.S. Department of Justice rolled back Obama-era LGBT interpretations of the Civil Rights Act that gave special rights to “trans”-identifying and “non-binary” workers from employment discrimination and ceased enforcing non-discrimination protections.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons rolled back an Obama-era policy that housed “trans”-identifying prisoners with opposite-sex prisoners.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has proposed a rule to permit homeless shelters to house “trans”-identifying and/or cross-dressing homeless persons in shelters based on their biological sex.

The Trump Administration has interpreted immigration rules specifically so the child of a same-sex couple born abroad via surrogate would be considered “born out of wedlock,” thereby making it more difficult to obtain U.S. citizenship.

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When Loretta Lynch succeeded Eric Holder as U.S. attorney general a year ago, some harbored the tiniest hope that she wouldn’t be quite as radical.

After all, Mr. Holder had done his best to gin up racial resentment, dismiss a clear case of voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party, attack voter photo ID laws, refuse to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, threaten a congressman trying to get to the truth of the Fast and Furious Mexican gun-running scandal, and ignore the Internal Revenue Service’s mob-like persecution of conservative groups.

Mr. Holder also managed to sidestep or slow down any action regarding former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server, or the massive irregularities of the $2 billion Clinton Foundation, the golden cash cow of open graft by the Clintons and their cronies. Meanwhile, Mr. Holder staffed the Justice Department civil rights division with hard-core leftists, as amply documented in J. Christian Adams’ book “Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department.”

The partisan corruption under Mr. Holder was so patently obvious that his departure made some folks cautiously optimistic that Ms. Lynch would put “justice” back into the Justice Department.

No such luck. She’s not only buried that hope but driven a monster truck over it.

In February, for example, Ms. Lynch’s Justice Department sided with radical groups that sued to overturn requirements for proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia and Kansas. The DOJ attorneys’ conduct was so outrageous that it drew a rebuke from a federal judge.

Last Tuesday, the Justice Department revealed that it won’t seek the death penalty for terrorist suspect Abu Khattala if he’s convicted of orchestrating the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012 that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens.

This past week, Ms. Lynch outdid herself, proclaiming that forcing schools and cities to grant transgender males access to girls and women’s restrooms and locker rooms is right up there with the noble claims of the black civil rights movement. Seriously.

So, Ms. Lynch filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against North Carolina and its Republican governor, Pat McCrory. Their offense? Enacting and enforcing a “bathroom” law that requires people to use facilities that match their sex at birth. The state law came in response to the city of Charlotte’s wacky statute opening up all facilities based on feelings rather than objectively defined sex.

Immediately, many corporate America titans like PayPal, General Electric, Pepsi and Dow Chemical joined Hollywood leftist bullies, the NCAA, and even the National Basketball Association in threatening to boycott the state.

Citing the nation’s “founding ideals,” which now apparently include protecting the “right” of certain males to enter women’s restrooms, Ms. Lynch compared their plight to Jim Crow laws and school racial segregation. Anyone opposing the transgender agenda is by her definition a hater and a bigot.

In a spectacular case of reverse logic, she said, “None of us can stand by when a state is in the business of legislating identity and insists that a person pretend to be something they are not.”

Say what? Isn’t it the men who are pretending to be women and vice versa who are forcing the issue?

“If there is no more difference between men and women than there is between blacks and whites — as Ms. Lynch seems to think — then why not eliminate all single-sex restrooms, locker rooms and dressing rooms everywhere?” asks Illinois Family Institute writer Laurie Higgins, an astute critic of cultural trends. “Why not allow all men and all women to use the same restrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms, showers and shelters? After all, blacks and whites do.”

The answer, of course, is that unlike skin color, the differences between male and female, rooted firmly in biology, including DNA, brain and body structure, are profound and meaningful. The distinction between male and female is at the heart of marriage, family life, morality and social order.

For Ms. Lynch to suggest that anyone who recognizes these differences and understands the need for privacy and modesty based on sex is a hateful bigot reveals her own contempt for nature and nature’s God, upon which the legitimacy of our laws rest, as stated in the Declaration of Independence.

Fortunately, Gov. McCrory and the legislature are standing firm, with Mr. McCrory and Republican General Assembly leaders filing countersuits in federal court over Lynch’s “baseless and blatant overreach” and “radical reinterpretation” of the Civil Rights Act.

Pundits who dismiss all this as a silly distraction miss the point. This is about far more than bathroom access. Beneath the economic wars, the left is using this issue as a spear point to test how far the average American can be pushed by government into relinquishing not only our God-given rights but our grasp of reality.

As the nation’s chief law enforcer, Loretta Lynch is putting the weight of the federal government against millions of Americans who just want to maintain some level of decency — and normalcy. God help us.

This article originally published on WashingtonTimes.com.