Having worked for a member of Congress in Washington, D.C., and for state legislators here in Illinois, I can vouch for the fact that most elected officials care about what you think. No, really, they do. Even when they go against what is the clear majority opinion, they at least are aware of the potential consequences of their actions.

While they often do things we’d rather they not do, if a large number of their constituents voice a particular opinion on an issue, office holders ignore it at their own peril and are more likely to take the right action.

Those you elect need to regularly hear from you via letter, email, or phone call. And when obvious pressure is being put on them by interest groups to go against the will of the people, they especially need to hear from you. It doesn’t matter if they’re a lowly state representative or the leader of the free world.

President Donald Trump needs to hear from the pro-family community on three immediate concerns:

1. So-called “transgendered” individuals should not be allowed to serve in the U.S. military.

2. Chai Feldblum, who believes that the LGBT agenda is more important than our God-given and constitutionally protected religious liberty, should not be re-nominated to serve on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

3. Planned Parenthood should be defunded immediately.

Regarding #1, federal courts are attempting to block the president from fulfilling his constitutional duty of being the Commander in Chief of our nation’s armed forces. President Trump is within his power to ignore the court, since the judicial branch has not been granted authority over how the military is to be run. Unfortunately, Trump has chosen to allow the matter to proceed through the courts.

Because of that, openly “transgendered” people (men pretending to be women, or women pretending to be men) are enlisting. President Trump needs to hear from the pro-family community today. The military does not exist for social policy experimentation. And those suffering from gender dysphoria, a recognized mental illness, should not be allowed to serve. (Read more HERE.)

News reports are that President Trump has renominated Chai Feldblum, #2 on our list above, to serve another five-year term as a commissioner on the EEOC. This is not a small mistake by the president, and he needs to hear from you and be encouraged to withdraw the nomination immediately.

The Daily Caller has reported that Feldblum has “regularly advocated for the supremacy of LGBT rights over religious liberty,” and has endorsed polygamy and defended infringing religious liberty to advance the LGBT agenda.

Feldblum’s extremist views have been thoroughly demonstrated over many years, even to the extent of stating that she was “not sure whether marriage is a normatively good institution.” (Read more HERE.)

Regarding #3, when Republicans took the reins of both the U.S. Congress and the White House last year, Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading killer of unborn babies, should have stopped receiving federal dollars to carry on its evil business. Instead, in one of the GOP’s biggest failures so far during the Trump years, approximately $500 million of the hard-earned tax dollars of Americans continues to fund Planned Parenthood’s abortion mills. (Read more HERE.)

One old expression in politics is that in order for some politicians to see the light, they have to feel the heat. Pro-family conservatives need to regularly turn up the temperature on their elected officials, and this includes the person working out of the Oval Office.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send an email to the Trump administration or call the White House comment line at (202) 456-1111 and politely but firmly express your view that President Donald Trump 1) should not allow “trans”-identifying people to serve in the military, 2) should withdraw the nomination of Chai Feldblum, who is so far out of the mainstream that she should not be serving at the EEOC, and that 3) should lead the charge to defund the organization responsible for the largest number of deaths every year in America: Planned Parenthood. They should not receive another dollar from taxpayers.

IFI Worldview Conference May 5th

We have rescheduled our annual Worldview Conference featuring well-know apologist John Stonestreet for Saturday, May 5th at Medinah Baptist Church. Mr. Stonestreet is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “Making Sense of Your World” and his newest offer: “A Practical Guide to Culture.”

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture.

Click HERE to learn more or to register!

Thomas Banks worked for Ford in Michigan for more than three years as a product engineer. But one day he received an email, left a message in the comments section, and two weeks later – in August 2014 – was fired after being told he had violated Ford’s anti-harassment policy. Liberty Institute has filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) – and their investigation could lead to a lawsuit in federal court.

OneNewsNow asked Liberty Institute attorney Cleve Doty the nature of the article on which Banks commented.

“It was about the basically LGBT organization at Ford,” Doty responds, “and Mr. Banks had published a comment that said [in effect] Look, we should care about automobiles, not about this. This may be offensive to Christians and others in the workplace. Why don’t we focus on cars – [that was] the essence of his comment.”

Banks’ specific comments, as outlined in the complaint, were as follows:

“For this Ford Motor should be thoroughly ashamed. Endorsing and promoting sodomy is of benefit to no one. This topic is disruptive to the workplace and is an assault on Christians and morality, as well as antithetical to our design and our survival. Immoral sexual conduct should not be a topic for an automotive manufacturer to endorse or promote. And yes – this is historic – but not in a good way. Never in the history of mankind has a culture survived that promotes sodomy. Heterosexual behavior creates life – homosexual behavior leads to death.”

“Absolutely. Diversity and inclusion means that we’re able to have people in the workplace work together and don’t necessarily have to agree but we can all get along,” replies Doty. “And Mr. Banks gets along individually with folks. But here, he was told immediately [he was] fired based upon a single comment.”

Liberty’s director of litigation adds that if Ford is permitted to get away with firing Banks over the comment, “we fear that every person of faith will be punished for talking about his or her faith in the workplace.”

This article was originally posted on the OneNewsNow.com website.

In a stunning public admission during a debate on the future of marriage in Illinois, the chief sponsor of SB 10, the proposed bill to legalize same-sex “marriage,” homosexual State Representative Greg Harris (D-Chicago) acknowledged that the bill does not provide religious liberty or conscience protections for individual Christian business owners. Further, it was clear that both he and homosexual Chicago Alderman Deb Mell (a former state representative and co-sponsor of of SB 10) oppose any such protections.

In the unfortunately titled “Marriage Equality” debate, sponsored by the Chicago Tribune, moderator Bruce Dold asked Harris about the absence of conscience protections in the bill:

Dold: The bill specifically protects churches, but it does not have any language about individual conscience…. Would the bill not have a better chance if it had an individual conscience protection in it?

Harris: [D]ecades ago when the Human Rights Act was passed, it said, we the people of Illinois have decided not to allow discrimination based on race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, veteran’s status in housing, employment, or public accommodations. The question of should we treat all of our citizens equally in all of those three areas has been answered. But also there are exemptions for religious institutions in the Human Rights Act. There’s also the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and specific language in this bill…that explicitly protects freedom of religion for those churches and denominations which do not want to consecrate same-sex marriages.”

Harris publicly admitted that this bill protects the religious liberty of only religious institutions, churches, and denominations—not individuals. It was clear that Harris has no desire or intent to include such protections.

That said, the inclusion of such protections would not make this a good bill. It would simply make it a less terrible bill.

Harris tried to claim that SB 10 poses no threat to religious liberty, but was challenged by both Robert Gilligan, Executive Director of the Catholic Conference of Illinois, and Peter Breen, Vice President and Senior Counsel with the Thomas More Society, who talked about the Illinois bed and breakfast owner who is being sued for his refusal to rent out his facility for a same-sex civil union ceremony  (read more HERE).

Mell, who earlier had claimed that warnings about future religious persecution were dishonest “scare tactics,” responded “But [the bed and breakfast] is a business that does business in the state of Illinois, and in Illinois, we don’t allow discrimination.” While claiming that warnings about loss of religious liberty were deceptive and false “scare tactics,” she vigorously defended this religious discrimination. She apparently didn’t notice her own contradiction.

Neither she nor Harris seemed to notice that while they obsess about Illinois’ prohibition of discrimination based on “sexual orientation,” they pay no attention to its prohibition of religious discrimination. They don’t care if the bed and breakfast owner is discriminated against because of his religious beliefs.

Former Georgetown University law professor and current EEOC Commissioner, lesbian activist Chai Feldblum has written that when same-sex marriage is legalized, conservative people of faith will lose religious rights. She argues that it’s a zero-sum game in which a gain in sexual rights for homosexuals will mean a loss of religious rights for conservative people of faith, which she finds justifiable. She, Mell, and Harris share the view that the sexual “rights” of homosexuals trump religious rights.

Harris cited the Illinois Human Rights Act as his justification for not protecting the rights of people of faith to refuse to use their labor and goods in the service of an event that violates their deeply held religious beliefs. Well, the Illinois Human Rights Act also prohibits discrimination based on religion; hence the conflict of which Chai Feldblum spoke. Harris finds discriminating based on religion tolerable and justifiable but not discrimination based on sexual predilection.

By the way, choosing not to participate in a same-sex “wedding” does not reflect discrimination against persons. It reflects discriminating among types of events. The elderly florist who is being sued by the state of Washington for her refusal to provide flowers for a same-sex “wedding” did not discriminate against a person. She made a judgment about an event. She had previously sold flowers to one of the homosexual partners. She served all people regardless of their sexual predilections, beliefs, sexual activities, or relationships. She just wouldn’t participate in an event that she (rightly) believes the God she serves abhors. She takes seriously Jesus’ command to “Render unto Caeser what is Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”

Prior to the debate, I had a conversation with one of the event planners in which I predicted Harris would refuse to answer the critical question regarding why marriage should remain a union of just two people. Dold twice asked, if marriage is a right, why should it be limited to two people? Twice Harris obstinately refused to answer.

It was an embarrassingly obvious and intellectually dishonest dodge. Harris tried to use the language of the current bill to deflect the question saying in essence that the bill’s language says nothing about plural unions. This is the same embarrassing dodge ACLU spokesman Ed Yohnka used in a program on which both he and I were guests. Three times I asked him why marriage should be limited to two people, as he claimed it should be. Three times he awkwardly refused to answer.

It doesn’t take much intellectual wattage to understand that once the ideas that marriage is just about love and has nothing to do with sexual complementarity or reproductive potential are embedded in law, there remains no reason to restrict marriage to two people. The legalization of plural unions becomes not merely possible but inevitable.

Harris also said, “All families should be created equal,” to which I would have asked, “Even polyamorous families?”

And he said marriage law should “expand to reflect the reality of society,” to which I would have said, “But there exist polyamorous families in society.”

A few additional thoughts on the debate:

1. “Progressive” language police: At one point Mell attempted to compel Breen to use the term she wanted him to use for her partner (whom she “married” in Iowa). She attempted to compel him to use the term “wife.” She correctly insisted that “terminology is important.” But the law is not the ultimate arbiter of truth and reality. Compelling Breen to use the term “wife” would rob him of the right to use the term he wanted to use and believes reflects truth and reality. Conservatives have the ethical right and obligation to use the language they believe reflects truth and reality. Conceding terminology to the Left, as conservatives too often do, is not smart, not truthful, not helpful, and not compassionate.
   
   In reality, a wife is the spouse of a man (and each partner must actually be the sex they claim to be). No one is ethically obligated to participate rhetorically in any fiction the government has foolishly decided to join.

2. Media bias and the “equality” chimera: The importance of terminology is the reason I described the title of the debate, “Marriage Equality” as unfortunate. “Marriage Equality” embodies and reflects assent to “progressive” assumptions. Conservatives recognize that the notion of “equality” in this context is strategically effective non-sense.  Treating different things differently does not reflect unjust, unequal treatment. Equality demands we treat like things alike. When homosexual men and women say they are attracted only to persons of their same sex, they are acknowledging that men and women are fundamentally and significantly different. As such, a union composed of two people of the same sex is fundamentally and significantly different from a union of two people of opposite sexes. Society has no reason to treat them as if they are the same.
   
   
3. The connection between marriage and children: Both Mell and Harris talked about children deserving, in Mell’s words, “the label” of marriage. Inconsistencies abound. While homosexuals claim that marriage has no inherent connection to reproductive potential, they use arguments about children as justifications for the legal recognition of same-sex unions as marriage. This points to the fact that homosexuals are pursuing the acquisition of children, which necessarily means that in their view, children have no inherent, unalienable right to be raised by their biological parents. Homosexual couples are creating children who will be wholly unconnected to either their biological mother or father or both. In addition, they are creating intentionally motherless or fatherless children, which means homosexuals believe children have neither a right to be raised by both their mother and father, nor a right to be raised by a mother and father.
   
   The issue of children naturally and inevitably arises because marriage is centrally about the next generation. If marriage weren’t centrally about the procreation of children, if children weren’t procreated via sexual unions, there would be no such thing as marriage. The government has no more vested interest in recognizing inherentlysterile homosexual relationships as marriages than it does in recognizing platonic friendships as marriages. The government simply has no vested public interest in recognizing or affirming loving, inherently non-reproductive relationships. If it does, Harris and Mell need to explain what it is. And remember, they cannot include children in their answer, because the Left says marriage has no inherent connection to children (and by extension, their rights).
   
   If the government is compelled to recognize as marriage any loving relationship that involves the raising of children, then, for example, a grandmother and aunt who are raising the children of their deceased daughter/sister, should be permitted to marry.

4. Appeals to emotion and redefining marriage: Mell’s “arguments” amounted to little more than appeals to emotion: She really loves her partner. She and her partner have been together for nine years. Her partner has stuck with her through difficult times. Therefore, the government should legally recognize their relationship as a marriage.
   
   Say what? If marriage has an inherent nature, it doesn’t change simply because she and her partner wish it were different. Harris and Mell have concluded that because they are not attracted to people of the opposite sex, marriage has nothing inherently to do with sexual complementarity or reproductive potential.
   
   What’s interesting is that they don’t deny marriage has a nature that is inherent and immutable. They believe marriage is inherently and immutably constituted solely by the presence of love between two people. But then they can’t provide a single reason for their stubborn insistence that marriage is an inherently binary institution. Harris and Mell need to provide reasons for jettisoning sexual complementarity from the legal definition of marriage while retaining the less essential requirement regarding number of partners in a marriage. Simply asserting that marriage is a union of two people is not an argument.

5. Catholic Charities and religious discrimination: During the debate, a brief discussion arose about Catholic Charities being forced to drop out of the adoption business following the passage of Illinois’ civil union law—a change that Harris views as serving the “best interests” of children. Neither Harris nor Mell expressed concern about the clear presence of religious discrimination—something which deeply concerned Princeton University law professor Robert George. In a 2011 CNN debate among candidates running in the Republican primary, George asked the following question and in so doing, told congressmen and women what they should do:
   
   

   In Illinois, after passing a civil union bill, the state government decided to exclude certain religiously affiliated foster care and adoption agencies, including Catholic and Protestant agencies, because the agencies, in line with the teachings of their faith, cannot in conscience place children with same-sex partners.

   Now, at least half of Illinois’ foster and adoption funds come from the federal government. Should the federal government be subsidizing states that discriminate against Catholic and other religious adoption agencies? If a state legislature refuses to make funding available on equal terms to those providers who as a matter of conscience will not place children in same-sex homes, should federal legislation come in to protect the freedom of conscience of those religious providers?

There is no more critical legislation pending than SB 10. Despite what some lawmakers and pundits fecklessly claim, this issue is more important than even pension reform. The rights of children, parents, and people of faith are at risk.

Demonstrate that you care more about preserving marriage than the Left does in destroying it. Demonstrate your willingness to endure hardship and even persecution in the service of truth.

Please call your lawmaker, and please try to attend the Defend Marriage Rally in Springfield on Oct. 23. The Left will be marching on Oct. 22. 

Click HERE to make a donation to the Illinois Family Institute.

An Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ruling that gender identity is covered by Title VII’s prohibition against discrimination based on sex is being hailed as a ”sea change’‘ by transgender activist organizations. But an attorney for Liberty Counsel Action notes that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was never intended to cover gender identity and the ruling “basically says that a Bible bookstore owner, for instance, could not turn away a homosexual, cross-dressing man, a man who likes to wear a miniskirt and lipstick….”

You may remember Laurie Higgins’ articles identifying Georgetown law professor Chai Feldblum, a lesbian activist who became President Obama’s appointee to lead the EEOC.  Laurie pointed out that Feldblum sees the battle between “gay rights” and moral opposition to homosexuality as a zero sum game.  One side will win, and the other will lose.   Feldblum is on record saying: 

“Sexual liberty should win in most cases.  There can be a conflict between religious liberty and sexual liberty, but in almost all cases the sexual liberty should win because that’s the only way that the dignity of gay people can be affirmed in any realistic manner.”  And yet when push comes to shove, when religious liberty and sexual liberty conflict, she admits, “I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win.”

Of course, Feldblum is correct.  Religious freedom and special homosexual so-called “rights” cannot co-exist. 

Passage of nondiscrimination legislation – specific to sexual orientation – has been attempted since 1974 in the U.S. Congress. Currently, several bills promoting ENDA are circulating in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives promoting ENDA.  Homosexual activist and U.S. Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) is the chief sponsor in the U.S. House. 

Georgetown University lesbian law professor Chai Feldblum believes that when same-sex is marriage is legalized, which she argues is both necessary and inevitable, conservative people of faith will lose religious rights. This is the same Chai Feldblum who has been nominated to serve on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

Feldblum, speaking at a Becket Fund Symposium in December 2005 stated the following:

[L]et us postulate, for the moment, that in some number of years an overwhelming majority of jurisdictions in this country will have changed their laws so that LGBT people will have full equality in society, including access to civil marriage. Or, indeed, let us postulate that the entire country is governed–as a matter of federal statutory and constitutional law–on the basis of full equality for LGBT people….

Assume for the moment that these beliefs ultimately translate into the passage of laws that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and that provide same-sex couples the same societal supports currently available to opposite-sex couples, including access to civil marriage….[G]ranting this justified liberty and equality to gay people will likely put a burden on those religious people who believe acting on one’s same-sex sexual orientation is a sin and who may feel they are aiding and abetting sin if they rent an apartment to a gay couple, allow a gay couple to eat at their restaurant, or provide health benefits to a same-sex spouse….

Let me be very clear…in almost all the situations…I believe the burden on religious people that will be caused by granting gay people full equality will be justified….

That is because I believe granting liberty to gay people advances a compelling government interest, that such an interest cannot be adequately advanced if “pockets of resistance” to a societal statement of equality are permitted to flourish, and hence that a law that permits no individual exceptions based on religious beliefs will be the least restrictive means of achieving the goal of liberty for gay people…

Not surprisingly, following her nomination to the EEOC, Feldblum requested that her name be removed from the subversive document she signed in 2006 entitled “Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision for All Our Families and Relationships,” which begins with this troubling statement:

We, the undersigned–lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and allied activists, scholars, educators, writers, artists, lawyers, journalists, and community organizers– seek to offer friends and colleagues everywhere a new vision for securing governmental and private institutional recognition of diverse kinds of partnerships, households, kinship relationships and families. In so doing, we hope to move beyond the narrow confines of marriage politics as they exist in the United States today.

We seek access to a flexible set of economic benefits and options regardless of sexual orientation, race, gender/gender identity, class, or citizenship status.

The “Beyond Marriage” authors seek to have “Committed, loving households in which there is more than one conjugal partner” as well as “Queer couples who decide to jointly create and raise a child with another queer person or couple, in two households” be recognized as families and accorded all the benefits of traditional marriages.

Click HERE to watch a short and important video that exposes the radical nature of Feldblum’s vision for America, American jurisprudence, and religious liberty.

And here are the titles of just three of Feldblum’s scholarly articles:

• “Moral Conflict and Liberty: Gay Rights and Religion” 
• “The Right to Define One’s Own Concept of Existence: What Lawrence Can Mean for Intersex and Transgender People” 
• “Gay is Good: The Moral Case for Marriage Equality and More” in which she asserts that “even if gay couples succeed in ‘getting marriage,’ the gay rights movement may have missed a critical opportunity — a chance to make a positive moral case for gay sex and gay couples. In other words, it will have missed the opportunity to argue that ‘gay is good,'” and that “changing the public’s perception of the morality of gay sex and of changing one’s gender may ultimately be necessary to achieve true equality for LGBT people.”

One of the authors of “Beyond Same-Sex Marriage,” Nancy Polikoff, another lesbian law professor, is pleased as punch that her radical compatriot Feldblum is being considered for the EEOC. Polikoff, who teaches about sexuality and the law at American University, has written voluminously on the issue of families headed by homosexuals. Through her many feckless assertions about families, Polikoff provides clear evidence that intelligence is often wholly disconnected from wisdom. 

Here are just a few of her statements from an article entitled “The Deliberate Construction of Families Without Fathers: Is it an Option for Lesbian and Heterosexual Mothers?“

“I start this paper with the premise that it is no tragedy, either on a national scale or in an individual family, for children to be raised without fathers.”

“Contrary to the ideology that simultaneously glorifies fathers and vilifies mothers, I want women to have the option to form families in which their children have no fathers.”

“Planned lesbian families exemplify the construction of parenthood as a process distinct from biology…”

“I envision…a method of liberating women and children from the control of men and of recognizing the legitimacy of deliberate childrearing without fathers…”

If conservatives continue to self-censor, if we refuse to courageously and publicly counter the relentless, pervasive, deafening cultural messages that affirm homosexual acts as moral, we will lose speech rights, religious liberty, and we will see the destruction of marriage and the natural family. 

On Thursday, Dec. 10, 2009, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions approved Feldblum for the EEOC, which sends her nomination to the full Senate for a vote. Please contact both Senators Durbin and Burris to express your vehement opposition to her confirmation.

Take ACTION: Contact Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate to ask them to oppose the nomination of this radical activist.

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