Americans who care about liberty, equality, justice, safety, and economic prosperity should not vote for any Democrat in upcoming elections, including the 2024 presidential election.

A Democrat-controlled presidency and U.S. Congress (as well as state legislatures) will further empower the arrogant, ignorant, divisive, tyrannical cancel culture that has taken root in every major cultural institution in America. Academia, the mainstream press, Big Tech, corporate America, Hollywood, and professional medical and mental health organizations collude to censor the dissemination of ideas leftists hate and oppress those who disseminate them. The power these institutions already enjoy and employ to destroy speech rights, religious liberty, and careers is not enough to satiate the unquenchable thirst for power of leftists.

Leftists consumed by rage and bloodlust after the leaking of the U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion on Dobbs, will continue their push to pack the U.S. Supreme Court with leftists in order to ensure that the Court becomes the supreme lawmaking body in America. The U.S. Supreme Court, which was intended by America’s founders to be the weakest branch of government, is intended by leftists to become the most powerful.

A Democrat administration with a Democrat-held Congress will continue the economic carnage Biden has begun, destroying our economy through increased business regulation, increased taxes, and the destruction of the oil industry, which in turn decimates the lives and retirement income of Americans.

Assaults on religious liberty and speech rights will intensify, especially via the deceitfully named “Equality Act,” which has nothing to do with equality and everything to do with forcing compliance with policies that the homosexual community and “trans” cult want.

Democrats will continue to fight for federal funding of abortion and for a federal law protecting a non-existent moral or constitutional right of women to kill their offspring.

“Trans” cultism will continue its march through shelters, prisons, bathrooms, and locker rooms where women and girls will be forced to do private things in the presence of men and boys. Let’s remember that with Democrats in charge, male coaches who masquerade as women will be allowed in girls’ locker rooms. Democrats, ignorant of the meaning of “woman,” will continue to insult and erase women by referring to them as “birthing persons.”

Leftists will continue to try to confiscate guns and eviscerate gun rights, even if that means exploiting tragedies.

Federal promotion of toxic ideas derived from Critical Race Theory will continue to corrupt the military.

Hopes for school choice will be obliterated.

They will continue their effort to get rid of the filibuster, thereby clearing the path to easily pass any oppressive piece of legislation their Machiavellian hearts desire.

In their unholy quest to acquire and secure power in perpetuity, leftists will make sure our borders are gaping open and continue their efforts to make Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. states.

They will continue to try to dismantle the Electoral College in order to effectively disenfranchise the Republican heart of America.

A Democrat presidency would mean a great leap forward toward the revolutionary “Great Reset”—a project of a small group of mega-wealthy globalists who seek to reshape the earth and the fulness thereof. That’s not some conspiracy group’s view of the Great Reset. That’s the explicitly stated view of the mega-wealthy globalists who meet every year in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The Great Reset envisions a “stakeholder” form of capitalism:

“Stakeholder capitalism,” … positions private corporations as trustees of society, and is clearly the best response to today’s social and environmental challenges. … The young Swedish climate activist [Greta Thunberg] has reminded us that adherence to the current economic system represents a betrayal of future generations, owing to its environmental unsustainability. Another (related) reason is that millennials and Generation Z no longer want to work for, invest in, or buy from companies that lack values beyond maximizing shareholder value.

[T]o uphold the principles of stakeholder capitalism, companies will need new metrics. For starters, a new measure of “shared value creation” should include “environmental, social, and governance” (ESG) goals.

A stakeholder form of capitalism contrasts with the “shareholder” form of capitalism most notably defended by University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman. Stakeholder capitalism is essentially “woke” socialism that will redistribute wealth to achieve “equitable” results. Sound familiar? “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”? And we thought the demise of the Soviet Union meant the end of Communism.

Integral to the Great Reset are the “environmental, social, and governance” (ESG) standards. Sounds innocuous as do all tyrannical leftist projects, but a closer look reveals the dark side cloaked in euphemistic language. Here’s a description of the goals of the Great Reset from the WEF’s website:

COVID-19 lockdowns may be gradually easing, but anxiety about the world’s social and economic prospects is only intensifying. … To achieve a better outcome, the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a “Great Reset” of capitalism. … We must build entirely new foundations for our economic and social systems. (emphasis added)

The goals are global and radical:

The Great Reset agenda would have three main components. The first would steer the market toward fairer outcomes. … governments should implement long-overdue reforms that promote more equitable outcomes. … (emphasis added)

Anyone who’s been paying attention understands what is really meant by “fairer” and “more equitable outcomes.” The goal of globalist socialists is not the creation of fairer more equitable opportunities but, rather, the flattening of outcomes to ensure that everyone’s outcome is the same—well, everyone but the mega-wealthy globalists.

Andrew Stuttaford, editor for National Review’s financial and economic coverage, warns against “stakeholder capitalism”:

[S]takeholder capitalism is a betrayal of democracy as well as of shareholders. The power it gives to managers is used to support an agenda influenced by a cabal of activists, NGOs, representatives of the “international community,” and politicians too arrogant to go through the usual legislative channels.

Like the “social and emotional learning” (SEL) standards leftists use to indoctrinate children with leftist views on sexuality in public schools, every company rejiggered in accordance with the wishes of the WEF will be expected to implement ESG standards, that is to say, leftist environmental and social standards:

Environmental criteria may include a company’s energy use, waste, pollution, natural resource conservation, and treatment of animals. … For example, are there issues related to its … compliance with government environmental regulations?

Social criteria look at the company’s business relationships. Does it work with suppliers that hold the same values as it claims to hold? Does the company donate a percentage of its profits to the local community or encourage employees to perform volunteer work there?

In other words, wokesters will control all aspects of the economy to control citizens’ beliefs.

In an opinion piece published by The Hill, Justin Haskins, editorial director and senior fellow at the Heartland Institute shares Stuttaford’s concerns about the Great Reset:

Instead of traditional capitalism, the high-profile group said the world should adopt more socialistic policies, such as wealth taxes, additional regulations and massive Green New Deal-like government programs. …

[T]he general principles of the plan are clear: The world needs massive new government programs and far-reaching policies comparable to those offered by American socialists such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in their Green New Deal plan. …

Or, put another way, we need a form of socialism — a word the World Economic Forum has deliberately avoided using, all while calling for countless socialist and progressive plans. … For those of us who support free markets, the Great Reset is nothing short of terrifying. … America is the world’s most powerful, prosperous nation precisely because of the very market principles the Great Reset supporters loathe.

Like the mostly violent protests Americans endured in 2020, this massive economic revolution requires an army of revolutionaries:

Of course, these government officials, activists and influencers can’t impose a systemic change of this size on their own. Which is why they have already started to activate vast networks of left-wing activists from around the world, who will … demand changes in line with the Great Reset.

In October 2020, Andrew Stuttaford warned that the pace of the march toward the WEF’s socialism-infused stakeholder capitalism “will only pick up in the U.S. should Joe Biden, who has caricatured shareholder primacy and described it as ‘an absolute farce,’ be elected president.”

The warning about the Great Reset is even more urgent today. The colossal economic reset envisioned by socialists who identify as capitalists, along with dozens of other reasons, should lead Americans to choose a new path: The Great Conservative Reset.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/America-Needs-a-Great-Conservative-Reset.mp3

Recently, America’s foolish president issued a foolish Transgender Day of Visibility Proclamation in which he pledged support for a bill that will jeopardize First Amendment religious free exercise and speech protections for conservative Americans. In his Proclamation, Biden also called for all Americans to adopt his controversial beliefs on cross-sex impersonation. Once again Biden—the self-identifying unity president—has intensified division.

Ordinary Americans—as opposed to those who make millions by selling political influence—fret about how they will pay for groceries and gas. They worry about fentanyl and criminals pouring over the southern border and about illegal immigrants being dumped by the government in their cities in the dark of night.

What keeps Joe Biden awake in the afternoon? Does he worry about the 56,000 synthetic opioid—mostly fentanyl—deaths in 2020? Or about the 900,000 humans killed in the womb annually? Do the 21,000 murders in 2020 cause him sleepless afternoons? Not so much. It appears from his Proclamation that what troubles Biden is what he calls “the epidemic of violence” against cross-dressers. That would be about 50 people killed in 2021, many of whom were victims of domestic violence—not anti-“trans” hate crimes. While every murder is a tragedy, 50 deaths does not an epidemic of violence make.

The name “Transgender Day of Visibility,” is intended to convey the fiction that on all other days, cross-sex impersonators are invisible. This, my friends, is what is called “gaslighting.” As Chastity “Chaz” Bono, Jaron Bloshinksy (“Jazz Jennings”), Roderick “LaVerne” Cox, Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner, Richard “Rachel” Levine, Bradley “Chelsea” Manning, Ellen “Elliot” Page, Gavin “Laurel” Hubbard, William “Lia” Thomas, Larry “Lana” Wachowski, Andy “Lilly” Wachowski, and scores of drag queens and teens masquerade as the sex they aren’t, invading bathrooms where they don’t belong, leftists claim “transgender” persons are invisible.

In his Royal Proclamation last week, Biden declared his enthusiastic support for the ruinous anti-constitutional Equality Act. The Equality Act has nothing to do with equality and everything to do with advancing the alchemical superstition about the alleged ability of humans to become the opposite sex through desire, cross-dressing, hormone-doping, and mutilating cosmetic surgery.

In order to accomplish the end goal of eradicating all public recognition of sex differences, “trans”-cultists must eradicate the ability of free people to speak freely their beliefs about “gender” and sex.

Lawmakers in thrall to or terrified by the “trans”-cult stripped the Equality Act of religious protections. Numerous legal scholars have warned that the passage of the Equality Act poses the most significant threat to constitutional protections of the free exercise of religion ever in America’s history.

Mary Hasson, graduate of Notre Dame Law School and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., testified about this threat at a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing:

The Equality Act threatens serious harm to religious believers and religious organizations. … The Equality Act attacks First Amendment rights as well, inserting language that attempts to tip the scales against believers if they assert claims under the First Amendment or Equal Protection.

The Equality Act … expand[s] “public accommodations” to permit discrimination claims wherever Americans “gather,” even virtually. The result? Churches, synagogues, temples, faith-based schools, soup kitchens, and shelters for battered women will be subject to government coercion pressuring them to compromise their religious beliefs or risk endless litigation.

Recipients of federal funds, including houses of worship, religious schools and other faith-based organizations are litigation targets under the Equality Act as well—even for something as simple as maintaining sex-segregated bathrooms. This means a Muslim food bank, Catholic homeless shelter, or Christian center for female survivors of domestic violence will be punished for doing good while following their religious teachings.

Similarly, any private school that enrolls students who receive Pell grants or who participate in school lunch programs are subject to the Equality Act’s sex discrimination provisions. Urban Catholic schools, for example, which provide life-changing education to low-income children would face an untenable choice: violate their deeply held religious beliefs about human nature, sexual difference, and marriage or close their doors to students who rely on federal help. Adoption and foster care programs run by religious believers who desire to serve the most vulnerable are also at risk.

Biden said one true thing in his Royal Proclamation. He said that those who identify as “transgender” are “made in the image of God and deserving of dignity, respect, and support.” Every human is created in the image of God, but that image is marred by our sinful desires and acts. Humans deserve respect by virtue of being humans—despite the sinful things we desire and do.

One’s dignity—the state or quality of being worthy of honor—is undermined by sinful acts like cross-dressing and mutilating one’s God-created, healthy body.

“Trans”-identifying persons do deserve support, but life and truth-affirming support should never include participating in a delusion or facilitating artificially induced cessation of natural biological processes and surgical mutilation of healthy, properly functioning parts of sexual anatomy.

When promoting false beliefs about “gender identity,” the left talks a lot about “authenticity” without providing their definition—or redefinition—of the term. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “authentic” as “conforming to fact and therefore worthy of trust, reliance, and belief.” As such, a man seeking to pass as a woman is the antithesis of authenticity, and celebrating cross-sex-passing robs men and women of dignity.

Leftists have also redefined “identity.” Homosexual activists first transformed the concept of “identity,” and then seeing how effective a propaganda tool the revised concept of identity was, cross-sex impersonators culturally appropriated it.

Homo-activists sought to recast identity as something intrinsically inviolable, immutable, and good. They sought to refashion identity in such a way as to make it culturally taboo to make judgments about any constituent feature of identity. They re-imagined identity in such a way as to move homoeroticism from the category of phenomena about which humans can legitimately make moral distinctions to one about which society is forbidden to make judgments.

Identity in its former incarnation was merely a way of describing someone. Identity when applied to individual persons denoted the aggregate of phenomena constituting, associated with, experienced and affirmed by individuals. Identity was “the set of behavioral and personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group.”

Identity was not conceived as some intrinsically moral thing, because identity could refer to either objective, non-behavioral, morally neutral conditions (e.g., height or skin color) or to subjective feelings, beliefs, and volitional acts that could be good or bad, right or wrong. Prior to the new and subversive conceptualization of identity, there existed no absolute cultural prohibition of judging the diverse elements that constitute identity.

By conflating all the phenomena that can constitute identity, “progressives” demanded that society should no more make judgments about feelings and volitional acts than they should about skin color.

In short, this is what “progressives” think about identity (except when it comes to those whose identity is found in Christ):

• All phenomena that make up identity are off-limits to moral judgment.
• Cross-sex impersonation is part of identity.
• Therefore, cross-sex impersonation is immune from moral judgment.

But if all conditions constituted by powerful, persistent, unchosen desires and the behaviors impelled by such feelings are part of this new and culturally destructive understanding of identity and, therefore, immune from moral judgment, then zoophilila/bestiality, “minor-attraction,” “Genetic Sexual Attraction,” and polyamory/promiscuity are immune from moral judgment.

Biden announced that “We celebrate the activism and determination that have fueled the fight for transgender equality.” Presumably, he is using the royal “we” since not all Americans celebrate “trans” activism, which is destroying all respect for and public recognition of sex differences. No more biologically based clubs for boys and girls, no more single sex bathrooms, no more girls’ sports.

Equality means to treat like things alike. As such, “trans”-cultists and their collaborators like Biden are promoting anti-equality. They are demanding that unlike things—that is men and women—be treated as if they’re alike in every context, including contexts in which sex differences matter.

When Biden refers to the “discrimination that the transgender community continues to face across our Nation and around the world,” he is using the word “discrimination” to describe moral beliefs about cross-dressing and mutilating cosmetic procedures with which he disagrees. If moral disapproval of ideas or volitional acts constitutes discrimination, then Biden’s disapproval of the beliefs of Christians on “gender” and sex as well as the acts impelled by those beliefs constitutes discrimination.

Applying consistently leftist redefinitions of authenticity, identity, and discrimination would mean that no one could express disapproval of any beliefs, desires, or volitional acts. These redefinitions pave the broad way to moral anarchy.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to our U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to urge them to oppose the federal Equality Act (H.R. 5) which seeks to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include protections for an individual’s perceived sex, “sexual orientation,” or “gender identity.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Biden-the-Unity-President-Divides-Again.mp3

With the disastrous Fall of Saigon Redux—that is, the Fall of Kabul—and the 2022 midterms fast approaching, it seems a good time for a cursory review of the past seven months of Joe Biden’s ill-fated presidency and of 2020 pre-presidential election discussions.

Befuddled Biden and his hapless administration have presided over the epically inept exit from Afghanistan, which is resulting in a humanitarian crisis, has left Afghans who helped the United States at risk, has left U.S. military weapons in the hands of terrorists, has increased the threat of terrorist acts on U.S. soil, has emboldened enemies,and has diminished our allies’ trust in America as a security partner.

The epically disastrous border crisis created by Biden policies and pronouncements dwarfs in magnitude of human suffering and in numbers anything that happened under the Trump administration. If the legacy press included ethical journalists, this would have been front page news every day until the Fall of Kabul. They would be rightly condemning Biden’s housing of children in overcrowded plastic pods, the release of COVID-positive illegals into the U.S., the record-setting number of deaths of immigrants along the Arizona border, the refusal of Biden to allow journalists to witness the housing crisis firsthand, and the failure of Kamala Harris to visit the border communities most affected by the crisis.

Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which incentivizes unemployment through the distribution of “free” money, has stymied an economy that should be surging.

Biden rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement which will result in thousands of lost jobs, and he shut-down the Keystone XL pipeline which has resulted in thousands of lost jobs. The energy independence the Trump administration secured is dwindling, and inflation is increasing.

The frantically pursued $1 trillion infrastructure monstrosity and $3.5 trillion socialist budget resolution will plunge America deeper into the hellhole of debt Democrats (at times aided and abetted by spendthrift Republicans) have dug with their Bagger 288 excavator.

Biden removed the Hyde Amendment from his budget, an amendment which prevented taxpayer-funding of abortions, and he rescinded the Mexico City Policy, which prevented federal dollars from going to foreign non-profit organizations that provide abortions.

While deceitfully promising to be the unity president, Biden has promoted controversial and divisive social policies. He is promoting racism from California to the New York Island by embedding critical race theory in all government agencies. He seeks to end women’s privacy and sports through his support of science-denying “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices. And he endorses “trans”-cultic medical experimentation on children that mutilates healthy bodies in a perverse effort to cosmetically conceal their sex.

Biden is still cheerleading the 800-page Voter Chicanery Law, H.R. 1, which, according to the Heritage Foundation’s  Hans von Spakovsky, “is a dangerous and radical bill”:

It threatens the security, fairness, and integrity of our elections and restricts the First Amendment rights of Americans to freely engage in political speech and activity.

It would force state legislatures to hand over the redistricting process to unaccountable bureaucrats and institutionalizes racial and gender quotas.

It would also implement what amounts to a test to participate in redistricting that violates the associational and religious rights of the public.

And Biden supports the equally dangerous and deceptively named Equality Act, which would require that federal law recognize disordered subjective feelings and deviant behaviors as protected characteristics. Federal law would absurdly recognize homoeroticism and cross-sex masquerading as conditions that must be treated like race and biological sex, which are objective, 100 percent heritable conditions that are in all cases immutable, and carry no behavioral implications. (Troubling side note: The third-ranking U.S. House Republican, Elise Stefanik, chair of the U.S. House Republican Caucus, was one of eight U.S. House Republicans to vote for the Equality Act.)

Here are some questions I posed one month prior to the 2020 presidential election to GOP voters who opposed Trump. As we approach the mid-term elections, perhaps it’s a good time to revisit these questions:

• Do we really want to give more power to corrupt Democrats in Congress or give the presidency to a cognitively impaired recluse?

• Do we want to pay for the slaughter of babies in the womb, including full-term babies?

• Are we so blind we cannot see the danger to the republic posed by the appointment of activist federal judges and Supreme Court Justices who will legislate from the bench?

• Do we want the U.S. Supreme Court packed and the filibuster eliminated?

• Do we want to destroy any hope for school choice, restore federal funding for Critical Race Theory propaganda, and further empower leftist teachers’ unions?

• Do we want to return the U.S. to energy dependence on Middle East oil?

• Do we want taxes raised and businesses regulated into the ground?

• Do we want “free” college for all students, including illegal immigrants?

• Do we want law enforcement “reimagined” and defunded, ICE and the DEA eliminated, and borders opened?

• Do we want all women’s sports, locker rooms, restrooms, prisons, shelters, semi-private hospital rooms, nursing home rooms, and dorm rooms sexually integrated?

• Do we want our First Amendment religious, speech, and assembly rights diminished through the “Equality Act”?

• Do we want government to protect the invasive, tyrannical, leftist behemoth Big Tech?

While Never-Trumpers and Christianity Today focused like laser beams on the morally and intellectually compromised Trump, calling into question the veracity of his claims of being a Christian, they deftly donned their blinders when turning their bobbling heads toward the equally morally and intellectually compromised Biden, whose claims to being a Christian are at least as dubious.

What too often became lost in all the frenzied virtue-signaling and tussling over which man is less worthy of the office was a discussion of whose policies and personnel will best serve the needs of America and Americans. The 2020 presidential election meant not just the replacement of Trump by Grampa Simpson but also the replacement of all members of the Trump administration with the gang that can’t shoot straight.

Remember all this as you make mid-term decisions.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/The-Disastrous-Biden-Administration.mp3

How can someone as foolish and manipulative as U.S. Representative Marie Newman get elected to Congress? Oh, yeah, she ran in Illinois, the land that once gave the nation Abe Lincoln but now saddles the nation with Dick Durbin, Tammy Duckworth, Jan Schakowsky, Sean Casten, and Brad Schneider.

On March 17 Newman, the anti-life, self-identifying Catholic, spoke in a U.S. Senate hearing in support of the execrable Equality Act, which has nothing to do with Equality and everything to do with advancing an alchemical superstition about the alleged ability of humans to become the opposite sex through desire, cross-dressing, hormone-doping, and mutilating cosmetic surgery.

She did what “progressives” do best. Rather than make a cogent, rational argument based on reason and evidence, she instead tried to manipulate feelings through a personal “narrative.” She told the sad tale of her troubled teenage son who now pretends to be a woman. Unfortunately, since she chose to exploit her son’s problems on the national stage in order to pass legislation that will affect the entire nation, others have a right to respond.

Newman began her exploitative sermonette by making this remarkable claim, the ramifications of which she clearly has not thought through:

The most important thing in life is to be authentic. I think we all understand that. … Imagine if I asked any of you … on the committee today to simply try being someone you absolutely are not … To try to be something that you are not every day is very difficult. Do this for a week, a month, a year and I guarantee you will feel deep depression, great anxiety, and yes, even suicidal.

Newman neglected to define “authentic.” The American Heritage Dictionary defines “authentic” as “conforming to fact and therefore worthy of trust, reliance, and belief.” As such, a man seeking to pass as a woman is the antithesis of authenticity.

Perhaps Newman believes an “authentic” life means living in accordance with deeply held beliefs. If so, then she should understand that for theologically orthodox Christians, Jews, and Muslims living an authentic life precludes treating humans as if they are the sex they are not. In other words, the Equality Act would compel many Americans to live inauthentic lives. It would compel them to participate in a destructive lie.

From the context, however, it appears Newman links authenticity to living a life of bondage to unchosen, powerful, and persistent desires, no matter how disordered, irrational, or delusional. To Newman being “authentic” appears to refer to yielding to desires that impel artificially induced cessation of natural biological processes and surgical mutilation of healthy, properly functioning parts of sexual anatomy.

Applying consistently Newman’s definition of an “authentic” life would mean that those who experience an unchosen, powerful, and persistent desire to be an amputee (i.e., those with Body Integrity Identity Disorder) should be treated as if they are amputees even if they are equipped with fully functioning, healthy limbs.

And those who experience unchosen, powerful, persistent sexual attraction to children should not be prohibited from acting on those desires, for trying to be someone they are not will—Newman guarantees—result in deep depression, great anxiety, and suicidal ideation.

If trying to be “someone you absolutely are not” is life’s greatest evil, should prideful, vain people stop trying to be modest and humble? Should greedy, selfish, narcissistic people stop trying to be generous, unselfish, and empathetic? Should slothful people stop trying to be industrious? Should people consumed by lust yield to their insatiable appetite for pornography and prostitutes?

Newman arrogantly presumed that everyone on the committee understands that “the most important thing in life is to be authentic”—as she understands authenticity. Perhaps, however, some on this U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee—for example, Marsha Blackburn, Vicki Hartzler, or James Lankford—believe an authentic life means living in a way that corresponds to material reality or to Scripture. To many people, living an authentic life requires denying their desires daily.

Continuing in her presumption about what everyone knows, Newman said,

[W]e already have freedom of religion in our Constitution, and this act does not discriminate against religion, as we all know.

Actually, lawmakers in thrall to the “trans” cult stripped the Equality Act of religious protections, and numerous legal scholars have warned that the passage of the Equality Act poses the most significant threat to constitutional protections of the free exercise of religion ever in America’s history. Newman is either outright lying or indefensibly ignorant.

Mary Hasson, graduate of Notre Dame Law School and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., testified at this same hearing. She made clear what Newman tried to obscure:

The Equality Act threatens serious harm to religious believers and religious organizations, stripping away crucial protections afforded under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act—a law enacted in 1993 with overwhelming, bipartisan support. The Equality Act attacks First Amendment rights as well, inserting language that attempts to tip the scales against believers if they assert claims under the First Amendment or Equal Protection.

The Equality Act reaches far beyond Bostock (which pertained to workplace discrimination) by expanding “public accommodations” to permit discrimination claims wherever Americans “gather,” even virtually. The result? Churches, synagogues, temples, faith-based schools, soup kitchens, and shelters for battered women will be subject to government coercion pressuring them to compromise their religious beliefs or risk endless litigation.

Recipients of federal funds, including houses of worship, religious schools and other faith-based organizations are litigation targets under the Equality Act as well—even for something as simple as maintaining sex-segregated bathrooms. This means a Muslim food bank, Catholic homeless shelter, or Christian center for female survivors of domestic violence will be punished for doing good while following their religious teachings.

Similarly, any private school that enrolls students who receive Pell grants or who participate in school lunch programs are subject to the Equality Act’s sex discrimination provisions. Urban Catholic schools, for example, which provide life-changing education to low-income children would face an untenable choice: violate their deeply held religious beliefs about human nature, sexual difference, and marriage or close their doors to students who rely on federal help. Adoption and foster care programs run by religious believers who desire to serve the most vulnerable are also at risk.

Newman sneakily perpetuated the lie that minor children who experience gender dysphoria will commit suicide unless they “transition”—a euphemism for pretending to be the opposite sex. No one can “transition” from one sex to the other. Newman said,

More than five years ago, before she [sic] had transitioned, my daughter [sic], at just 14 years old had experienced deep depression and anxiety. Unable to identify the cause of her [sic] pain, she [sic] told her [sic] parents that the only two solutions she [sic] felt would solve it was either suicide or running away.

Newman’s son may have felt despair—he may have felt the only solutions were suicide or running away—but his feelings do not mean he was born in the wrong body. Many teens feel despair for many reasons. And now it’s becoming increasingly difficult for teens to access counseling that can help them uncover those reasons.

In addition, there is much mis- and dis- information about suicide and gender dysphoric children circulated eagerly by the “trans”-cult and its ideological allies—misinformation/disinformation that has been dispelled by medical experts who lack the cultural imprimatur and reach of “trans”-cultists. Newman and other members of Congress might do less societal harm if they would read more widely.

It appears Newman may have gotten her son tangled up in one of the many “therapeutic” programs that are, in reality, profiteering “trans”-advocacy programs staffed with activists who couldn’t identify mental health if it slapped them upside their indoctrinated noggins:

[W]e enrolled in a local day therapy program. One night after her [sic] program, my daughter [sic] perked up in her [sic] chair at the dinner table, excited to share some news. She [sic] told us she [sic] had figured it out. “Mom, I’m not a boy. I’m a girl, and my name is Evie Newman.” Everything had clicked at that moment. She [sic] had been pretending to be something she wasn’t. She [sic] wasn’t being authentic, and as we all know, it is the hardest thing in the world to pretend every day. It was the happiest day of our lives.

Newman’s son was not pretending to be a boy prior to the night he made his sudden perky announcement. He always was a boy and remains in perpetuity a boy.

Newman argues that the Equality Act will merely afford her son “civil rights” of which he is currently deprived:

Signing the Equality Act into law. … will ensure that Americans like my daughter [sic] are afforded the same civil rights already extended to every other American across the nation. … We’re not asking for anything special or different, equality and nothing more. No American should have to live a lie.

Baloney. Is Newman arguing that her son is currently denied the right to vote, assemble, speak, exercise his religion freely, own a gun, petition the government, or get a fair trial?

The irony is rich in her claim that “No American should have to live a lie” as she argues for a bill that will compel all Americans to live the lie she and her family are choosing to live.

Demanding that a condition constituted by desire and volitional acts that many view as immoral be treated like objective conditions with no behavioral features like, for example, race or biological sex is, indeed, asking for something special and different.

The irony continues in her statement about religion and sports:

I encourage all of you to not weaponize religion and not weaponize red herrings about sports.

Newman absurdly described the desire of theologically orthodox Christians to live authentic Christian lives when they refuse to affirm a deceit as “weaponizing religion.” And she described the desire of authentic girls not to be forced to compete athletically against biological males who impersonate females as a “weaponized red herring.” In Newman’s view, only the affirmation of “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices can be authentic.

Nearing the end of her Oprah-esque testimony, she almost spoke some sense. She began,

Truth is real and should be a part of this [Equality] act.

Then she had to go and ruin it by making yet another patently false claim:

And it is.

Nope, there is no truth about sex, civil rights, or equality in the Equality Act.

It’s astonishing that the most powerful nation in the world has leaders whose ethical philosophy hasn’t advanced beyond that of a heathen adolescent.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to our U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to urge them to oppose the federal Equality Act (H.R. 5) which seeks to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include protections for an individual’s perceived sex, “sexual orientation,” or “gender identity.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/IL-Congressional-Rep.-Newman-s-Dumb-Plea-for-Equality-Act.mp3

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Because the “Equality” Act will erase the category of human formerly known as “women,” it has managed to do the seemingly impossible. It has united conservatives and liberals. While Democrat supporters of the Equality Act, including President Biden, have exacerbated political division, conservatives, feminists, and homosexuals are uniting to defeat this bill, which they recognize as a threat to girls and women.

Earlier this week Tucker Carlson interviewed feminist attorney Kara Dansky, chair of the Committee on Law and Legislation for the Women’s Human Rights Campaign, board member of the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), and former senior counsel with the ACLU on the Equality Act. She rightly describes the increasing erasure of women as an “emergency” with many unforeseen consequences that will affect the “rights, privacy, and safety of women and girls.” She warns that the Equality Act, which will “redefine the word ‘sex” to include the nebulous, ill-defined, un-understood, made-up lie that is “gender-identity,” makes a national conversation about these serious consequences imperative.

IFI recommends taking 4 ½ minutes to watch and/or listen to this video interview with Ms. Dansky.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to our U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to urge them to oppose the federal Equality Act (H.R. 5) which seeks to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include protections for an individual’s perceived sex, “sexual orientation,” or “gender identity.”

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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The radical “Equality” Act—the pet project of sex-eradicationists (also known as “trans”-cultists)—is now in the U.S. Senate. The act would force the federal government to treat the nonsensical notion that spirit humans can be “trapped” in the wrong material bodies as if those disordered feelings constitute a reality equivalent to biological sex and one about which no one may make judgments. In other words, the Equality Act would enshrine in federal law a Gnostic superstition.

In addition, when the purported rights of cross-sex impersonators clash with First Amendment protection of the free exercise of religion, the Equality Act says cross-sex impersonation wins. Buh-bye Christian colleges whose students get federal aid. Buh-bye Christian adoption agencies that partner with the government. Buh-bye religious liberty. It was nice knowing you these past glorious 230 years.

If passed, “trans”-cultists will be well over halfway to their goal of eradicating all public recognition of biological sex. There are many reasons we have arrived at this insane, reality-denying, wrong-side-of-history moment, including the fact that citizens are not demanding their elected leaders dialogue on and debate the sandy foundation on which the “trans” cult is built. In the hope that sane people on the political right and left will start demanding such conversations, here is a list of questions that every lawmaker, school administrator, and school board member should have to answer:

1.) If sex and “gender” are two wholly different and unrelated things, with sex being an immutable objective phenomenon and “gender” being a subjective, internal, and sometimes fluid phenomenon, why should restrooms, locker rooms, shelters, prisons, nursing home rooms, and semi-private hospital rooms correspond to “gender identity” as opposed to biological sex which is both objective and stable?

2.) Why is it legitimate for girls to oppose sharing restrooms and locker rooms with objectively male peers who accept their sex (what the left calls “cisgender” boys) but not legitimate for girls to oppose sharing restrooms and locker rooms with objectively male peers who reject their sex? Why should a boy’s subjective feelings about his objective sex affect girls’ feelings or beliefs about undressing or going to the bathroom in front of or near him?

3.) Either biological sex has meaning relative to feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy when undressing or engaging in intimate personal acts, or it has no meaning relative to modesty and privacy. If biological sex has no meaning relative to modesty and privacy, why do we have any sex-segregated restrooms or locker rooms anywhere? Why not make all of them co-ed for everyone? If, however, the desire of humans to be segregated from unrelated persons of the opposite sex when undressing, showering, or going to the bathroom is natural, understandable, reasonable, and good, why should some opposite-sex persons be allowed to violate those spaces just because they don’t like their sex?

4.) If cross-sex identifying students should not be required to use restrooms and locker rooms with those whose “gender identity” they don’t share, why should other students be required to use facilities with those whose sex they don’t share? Why should gender-dysphoric boys (or men) be able to use restrooms with only women, but actual biological females are prohibited from being able to use restrooms with only women?

5,) If anatomy is irrelevant to both “gender identity” and privacy, should boys who identify as girls be allowed to shower with objectively female peers or undress in open areas of girls’ locker rooms? If not, why not? If it’s unjustly discriminatory to prohibit gender-dysphoric boys from using girls’ locker rooms—as leftists claim it is–then is it unjustly discriminatory to prohibit gender-dysphoric boys from showering with girls or changing out in the open in girls’ locker rooms as some schools do?

6.) Female teachers and coaches are allowed in girls’ restrooms and locker rooms. Should objectively male teachers and coaches who “identify” as female be allowed in girls’ restrooms and locker rooms as well? If not, why not?

7.) Will school administrations allow those who identify as gender-fluid to choose daily which restrooms and locker rooms they will use? If not, why not?

8.) Should other subjective, internal feelings be reflected in policy and practice? For example, should those who identify as amputees (i.e., those with Body Integrity Identity Disorder) be allowed to use wheelchairs and handicapped parking spots at school? Should they be allowed to leave class early to have more time to get from one class to another?

9.) Is it unnatural or pathological for girls or boys to object to engaging in excretory functions in a stall next to an unrelated person of the opposite sex doing likewise? If not, should schools respect and honor those feelings through policy that prohibits co-ed restrooms?

10.) Those who identify as “trans” claim their biological sex as revealed in anatomy is unrelated and irrelevant to their “gender identity” (which is a subjective, internal feeling) and that anatomy doesn’t matter when it comes to restrooms, changing areas, and showers. They further claim they want to use restrooms with only those whose “gender identity” they share. So, why do boys who identify as girls demand to use girls’ restrooms and locker rooms? How do they know the males using the boys’ restrooms do not “identify” as girls, and how can they be sure that the females using the girls’ restrooms do “identify” as girls? Is it possible that boys who identify as girls are basing their restroom/locker room choices on biological sex (i.e., the female sex) as revealed in anatomy? If so, why are they permitted to do so but objectively female students are not?

11.) If it’s not hateful for gender-dysphoric biological boys to say they want to share private facilities with only biological females, why is it hateful for biological females to say they want to share restrooms and locker rooms with only biological females?

12.) Why is it hateful to believe that locker rooms and restrooms should correspond to one’s objective sex but loving to believe they should correspond to subjective feelings about one’s sex?

13.) Do children and adults have an inalienable and intrinsic right not to share restrooms and locker rooms with persons of the opposite sex?

14.) If restroom stalls and separate changing areas provide sufficient privacy to allow students to use facilities with those whose sex they don’t share, then why don’t restroom stalls and separate changing areas provide sufficient privacy for a gender-dysphoric student to share facilities with those whose “gender identity” they (presumably) don’t share but whose sex they do share?

15.) Leftists argue that the word “sex” in Title VII of the Civil Rights of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 actually includes “gender identity,” thereby prohibiting discrimination based on “gender identity” in restrooms and locker rooms. If gender-dysphoric boys or men are permitted in girls’ or women’s restrooms and locker rooms based on this reinterpretation, on what basis could other boys or men be prohibited from using women’s restrooms? “Cisgender” boys or men couldn’t be prohibited from using girls’ or women’s restrooms based on their male sex because other objectively male persons (i.e., those who are male but “identify” as women) would already have been allowed in. And wouldn’t prohibiting “cisgender” boys or men from using women’s restrooms based on their “identification” as males constitute discrimination based on “gender identity”?

16.) Leftists argue that separate restrooms and locker rooms for boys and girls are equivalent to separate drinking fountains for blacks and whites. Others would counter that while there are no substantive ontological differences between whites and blacks and that there are no differences that bear on drinking water at fountains, there are substantive differences between men and women. In fact, even homosexuals acknowledge that men and women are fundamentally and significantly different when they say they are romantically and erotically attracted to only persons of their same sex. Further, conservatives argue that the differences between men and women bear directly on the use of spaces in which private activities related to physical embodiment are engaged in. It is these important differences related to physical embodiment as male or female that account for the very existence of separate restrooms, locker rooms, shelters, and semi-private hospital rooms for men and women everywhere. If, however, separate restrooms and locker rooms for men and women are akin to separate drinking fountains for blacks and white as Leftists claim they are, are Leftists in favor of banning them everywhere?

17.) If separate restrooms and locker rooms for gender-dysphoric boys and girls are equivalent to separate restrooms and locker rooms for blacks and whites—as former Attorney General Loretta Lynch once claimed—then why aren’t separate restrooms and locker rooms for “cisgender” boys and girls equivalent to racism? Why aren’t separate restrooms and locker rooms for gender-dysphoric boys and “cisboys” equivalent to racism?

18.) When sex-segregation abolitionists accuse parents who oppose co-ed restrooms and locker rooms of being hateful, intolerant, bigoted, ignorant, heartless bullies, do they also smear children who object to sharing restrooms and locker rooms with peers of the opposite sex?

19.) Do school administrators, teachers, and community members think that Muslims and Orthodox Jews who don’t want their daughters sharing restrooms and locker rooms with objectively male students (or vice versa) are ignorant, bigoted, hateful, and unjustly discriminatory?

20.) Pronouns denote and correspond to objective biological sex—not subjective, internal feelings about one’s sex. So, if staff members, teachers, administrators, or students view the use of opposite-sex pronouns to refer to gender-dysphoric students as lying and for ethical, and/or religious reasons they object to lying, should schools accommodate their objections? Or, should schools—which are arms of the government—compel employees to lie?

21.) Liberal sex and gender researchers Michael Bailey at Northwestern University and Dr. Eric Vilain at UCLA write that 80% of gender-dysphoric boys—and most gender-dysphoric persons are male—will accept their real sex by adulthood. They claim that “it looks like parental acquiescence leads to persistence.” In other words, if parents accommodate their children’s efforts to pretend to be the opposite sex, their children are more likely to persist in their rejection of their sex. Are schools that allow gender-dysphoric minors to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms complicit in helping students persist in their rejection of their sex?

22.) If there is a mismatch between a person’s sex and his feelings about his sex, how can “progressives” be certain that the error resides in the healthy body rather than the mind? If a person has normal, unambiguous, healthy, fully functioning male anatomy but desires to be—or believes he is—female, might this not be an error or disorder of his mind?

23.) If a man “identifies” as “bi-gender” and has appended faux-breasts to his chest while retaining his penis and testes, as many cross-sex identifiers do, should he be to walk about unclothed in women’s locker rooms?

24.) Progressives routinely ask opponents of co-ed restrooms and locker rooms whether single-sex restrooms and locker rooms will require “genitalia police” to determine whether those seeking ingress are in reality the sex that corresponds to the spaces they seek to use. Well, will co-ed restrooms and locker rooms require “gender-identity” police to determine whether those seeking ingress are either the sex that corresponds to the spaces they seek to use or have proof that they have been diagnosed as gender-dysphoric? If not, how will we know if the persons seeking access to women’s restrooms are gender-dysphoric men masquerading as women or are male predators masquerading as gender-dysphoric men?

25.) Some argue that men masquerading as women have been successfully using women’s private spaces for years without women knowing and hence no harm, no foul. This suggests that if women’s privacy is invaded by men but they—the women—are unaware of the invasion, no harm has been done. By that logic, if voyeurs (not to be confused with men who “identify” as women) are able to secretly view women without women’s knowledge, have women been harmed or not?

26.) What is “gender identity”? If it’s defined as subjective, internal feelings about one’s sex, or one’s maleness or femaleness, on what basis do “trans”-identifying children determine their “gender identity”? Do they base their belief that they are the sex they aren’t or their desire to be the sex they aren’t on sex stereotypes, like which toys they play with? If so, is it “arbitrary, socially imposed” sex stereotypes that determine maleness or femaleness, or do biology and anatomy determine maleness or femaleness?

27.) When law enforcement agencies collect and disseminate information on crime, should crimes committed by biological men who pretend to be women be recorded as acts committed by men or by women?

28.) Should government contracts allocated for women business-owners be awarded to biological women only or also to biological men who “identify” as women?

29.) How will biomedical research into health issues that affect primarily women or primarily men be affected when the recognition of sexual differentiation is prohibited?

My hope is that these questions might help jumpstart a spirited conversation and perhaps help eradicate the pernicious and absurd “trans” ideology.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to our U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to urge them to oppose the federal Equality Act (H.R. 5) which seeks to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include protections for an individual’s perceived sex, “sexual orientation,” or “gender identity.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Questions-for-Sex-Eradicationists.mp3

For up-to-the minute news, action alerts, coming events and more you can now sign up for IFI Text Alerts! Stay in the loop by texting “IFI” to 555888 or click here to enroll right away.

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The Newsweek article by Natasha Chart and Rabbi Yaakov Menken begins with these words: “It would be hard to accuse an Orthodox Jewish rabbi and an agnostic feminist leader of walking in lockstep.” All the more would this be true if you added Catholics to the mix, then threw in some evangelicals. What cause could bring such disparate people together, all united as one?

Religious Rights and Women’s Rights at Stake

As Chart and Menken wrote, “We agree entirely that the Equality Act is a fatally flawed, and even hateful, piece of legislation.” Or, as expressed by the chairmen of five U.S. bishops’ committees, the Equality Act will “discriminate against people of faith” — meaning, of Christian faith or other faiths.

As summed up by evangelical leader Mat Staver, “HR 5 is a bill that pushes the LGBT agenda on all people and targets Christianity in every area of life — including the church. There will be an increase of instances where Christians and others are being punished unless they violate their beliefs in order to comply with such a law. And that is just the beginning of unconstitutional chaos in America.”

In short, not only would religious beliefs be trampled in the name of “equality,” but simple human rights — most specifically, women’s rights — would be trampled as well. (As Chart and Menken wrote, “Women, check your ‘privilege.’”)

That’s why many people of faith and non-faith are uniting together against the so-called Equality Act.

Just consider what it would mandate across the nation, with no possibility of religious exemptions.

Here are some potential scenarios.

What Might Soon be Illegal “Discrimination”? Plenty.

An out and proud gay schoolteacher wants to teach at an Orthodox Jewish day school. Under the Equality Act, the school could not refuse him a job because his out and proud lifestyle violated Jewish law. That would be discrimination. As for Orthodox Jewish synagogues, if challenged, they would not be allowed to have separate seating for men and women at public events. Discrimination again!

What if a biological male who identifies as a female, yet still likes to sport a 5-o’clock shadow, wants to work at a Christian preschool, reading stories to the children? The school could not say, “We’re sorry, but we’re not hiring you. That would be confusing to the children.” Under the Equality Act, that would now be discrimination.

Here are a few more scenarios to consider.

You are a professional counselor, and an 18-year-old girl struggling with unwanted same-sex attractions comes to you for help. She had been raped when she was 12 and since then, has found men repulsive. Yet she always wanted to be married and have children and she’s interested in getting to the root of her unwanted same-sex attractions. Under the Equality Act, counseling her would be illegal.

You run a women’s shelter for abused women and have always refused to house biological males who identify as transgender women. You have limited facilities, and there’s no way your clients, already traumatized, should be forced to share showers and bathrooms and bedrooms with biological males. Under the Equality Act, you would be forced to accept transgender “women.”

You are the principal of a public school with an excellent girls’ track team, and your top female athletes win college scholarships on a regular basis. Under the Equality Act, you would be forced to allow boys who identify as girls to compete with the girls, thereby robbing them of both victories and scholarships, not to mention personal dignity. (One website pointed out that, “In 2018, 275 high school boys ran the 400 meter faster than the lifetime best of Olympic Team USA member and world-record-holding sprinter Allyson Felix, while in 2017 thousands of men ran the 400 meter faster than any of the world’s three fastest women.”)

Your church building is used to host weddings on a regular basis. Under the Equality Act, you will not be allowed to say no to same-sex couples, even though this violates historic tenets of your faith.

Traditional Religious Practices: “As Unacceptable as was Jim Crow”

That’s why Mat Staver is almost shouting out this warning about the bill (emphasis his):

It even criminalizes those who share their own story of finding freedom in Christ from homosexuality in a book or speaking engagement. This bill literally sets the stage for banning the Bible, which offers the power to free those wanting to turn away from homosexual conduct.

And there is NO RELIGIOUS EXEMPTION to this bill!

Similarly, Chart and Menken warn, “Incredibly, the Equality Act specifically strips away protection of religious practice guaranteed under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.” (Their emphasis.)

In short, “The Equality Act thus deems a religiously motivated refusal to participate in a same-sex marriage to be no different than a KKK member’s refusal to cater a multiethnic couple’s nuptials. Traditional religious practices, according to the Equality Act, are as unacceptable as was Jim Crow.”

And that is why people from a wide range of backgrounds are standing together against this ill-conceived bill. (I haven’t even mentioned the abortion-related aspects of the bill, among other important issues. See this relevant article from 2019.)

We Can All Stand Together on This. Here’s How

The U.S. House has passed the bill and it is now pending over at the U.S. Senate. Contact your senators at once, urging them to vote no. It’s one thing to stand against the mistreatment of those who identify as LGBTQ (or anything else). It’s another thing to turn the world upside down, throw out common sense and logic, and trash the religious liberties of the majority of the nation in the name of equality.

As expressed by the Catholic bishops, “Human dignity is central to what Catholics believe because every person is made in the image of God and should be treated accordingly, with respect and compassion. This commitment is reflected in the church’s charitable service to all people, without regard to race, religion or any other characteristic.”

Consequently, “It means we need to honor every person’s right to gainful employment free of unjust discrimination or harassment, and to the basic goods that they need to live and thrive. It also means that people of differing beliefs should be respected. In this, we wholeheartedly support nondiscrimination principles to ensure that everyone’s rights are protected.”

And that is precisely why we need our elected officials to vote against the Equality Act as it is currently written. We can all stand together on this.

Take ACTION:  The measure is pending a vote in the U.S. Senate where the outcome remains uncertain. Click HERE to send a message to our U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to urge them to oppose the federal Equality Act (H.R. 5) which seeks to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include protections for an individual’s perceived sex, “sexual orientation,” or “gender identity.”

Read more:

U.S. House Passes “In-Equality” Act

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.

The Great Gelding of American men was a necessary precondition for “trans”-cultists to begin in earnest their effort to eradicate all public recognition of sex differences everywhere for everyone. This goal is within reach because of policies and laws already in place. The “Equality” Act will be the coup de grace. This effort could not be successful without the gelding of American men, because in previous generations, men would have protected women and children. But that was then and this is now.

The “Equality” Act has already passed the U.S. House of Representatives with three traitorous Republicans voting in favor of it. It now moves to the U.S. Senate. Let’s hope and pray there are enough wise and courageous men and women to stop it there.

I have said and written ad nauseum something that no one to my knowledge is discussing, which is that once discrimination based on both “sex” and “gender identity” is prohibited in places of public accommodation—as it is here in Illinois and will be everywhere if the “Equality” Act is signed into law—there exists no legal way to prohibit normal men—those the left refers to as “cisgender”—from accessing women’s private spaces, including women’s bathrooms and locker rooms.

Let’s say the University of Illinois permits Bob who pretends to be Mary unrestricted access to the women’s locker room. Then one day “cisgender” John who identifies as the sex he is requests unrestricted access to the women’s locker room. The university couldn’t deny John access based on his sex because 1. Discrimination based on sex is illegal, and 2. The university has already allowed biological male Bob access to the women’s locker room.

And the university couldn’t deny “cisgender” John access based on his “cisgender” identity because discrimination based on “gender identity” is illegal–or will be soon.

There you have it, friends. Most obstacles—including the un-manning of men—to the eradication of sex-segregation in private spaces have been removed. The rest of the obstacles are being carried away as we sit in our homes watching Netflix.

Feminists, lesbians, and Christian women are now banding together as co-belligerents to fight this unholy, anti-science movement, which is a good thing. But are men really going to leave this ugly battle to women to fight? Are there not enough un-gelded men remaining in America to lead this effort to protect their daughters, wives, mothers, sisters, and girlfriends? Are there not enough Congressmen who will not only vote against the “Equality” Act but also speak out against it publicly?

Thankfully, not all American men have been gelded. As we learned last week, U.S. Representative Gregory Steube, a Republican from Florida, boldly defended God’s created order on the House floor and warned of the consequences for rebellion against that order.

Immediately, the always foolish and arrogant U.S. Representative Jerry Nadler (D-NY) leapt to his feet to express the impious, ignorant, and anti-American belief that Congress has no interest in God:

Mr. Steube, whatever any religious tradition ascribes as God’s will is no concern of this Congress.

Clearly, Nadler is correct. God’s will is of no concern to this Democrat-controlled Congress.

One wonders what Nadler would have said when in 1789, George Washington spoke these words to the first Congress at the first presidential inauguration:

[I]t would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official Act, my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the Universe, who presides in the Councils of Nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the People of the United States, a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes: and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success, the functions allotted to his charge. In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own; nor those of my fellow-citizens at large, less than either. No People can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People of the United States.

And what does Nadler in his infinite wisdom think of these words from George Washington in 1789:

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor, and Whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanks-giving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.

For those unfamiliar with Steube, he is an attorney who enlisted in the U.S. Army after 9/11 and “served with distinction from 2004 to 2008 as an Airborne Infantry Officer and a JAG Corps Officer.  Greg served as the Chief of Detainee Operations for Multinational Division North in Iraq with the 25th Infantry Division in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom from 2006-2007.”

In addition to obliterating the right of free people to distinguish between men and women in bathrooms, locker rooms, and shelters, the “Equality” Act specifically addresses the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The “Equality” Act essentially says that the right of people of faith to exercise freely their beliefs on the nature and meaning of biological sex must be subordinated to the invented “right” of cross-dressing persons to access the private spaces of opposite-sex persons.

The leftist hive mind affirms the destruction of all public recognition of biological sex as well as the First Amendment. Resistance is futile—or so our buzzing Overlords think.

Take ACTION:  The measure now proceeds to the U.S. Senate where the potential outcome remains uncertain. Click HERE to send a message to our U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to urge them to oppose the federal Equality Act (H.R. 5) which seeks to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include protections for an individual’s perceived sex, “sexual orientation,” or “gender identity.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Where-Are-Men-in-the-Fight-to-Protect-Women.mp3

For up-to-the minute news, action alerts, coming events and more you can now sign up for IFI Text Alerts! Stay in the loop by texting “IFI” to 555888 or click here to enroll right away.

Click HERE to donate to IFI

On Thursday afternoon (2/25/2021), the U.S. House of Representatives voted 224 to 206 to pass the so-called “Equality Act” (H.R. 5), which would enshrine “sexual orientation” (i.e., homosexuality) and “gender identity” (i.e., cross-sex identification) as legally protected classes in a myriad of federal laws. The vote fell along party lines, with only three Republicans (U.S. Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, John Katko of New York, and Tom Reed of New York) voting with the Democratic majority, and two Republicans not voting.

Illinois’ congressional delegation voted as expected. Republicans Mike Bost, Rodney Davis, Adam Kinzinger, Daren LaHood, and Mary Miller voted against H.R. 5.

Democrats Cheri Bustos, Sean Casten, Danny Davis, Bill Foster, Chuy Garcia, Robin Kelly, Raja Krishnamoorthi, Marie Newman, Mike Quigley, Bobby Rush, Jan Schakowsky, Brad Schneider, and Lauren Underwood voted in favor of H.R. 5.

Take ACTION:  The measure now proceeds to the U.S. Senate where the potential outcome remains uncertain. Click HERE to send a message to our U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to urge them to oppose the federal Equality Act (H.R. 5) which seeks to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include protections for an individual’s perceived sex, “sexual orientation,” or “gender identity.”

To be clear, H.R. 5 would remove significant rights and opportunities from many in our communities:

• People of faith who live and work consistently with their religious beliefs on marriage and human sexuality would be harmed. This includes medical professionals forced to participate in “gender transition” efforts, counselors banned from helping their clients, and religious employers (like Christian schools) forced to hire those who do not share their mission. The bill specifically takes away the religious protections we currently have under federal law.

• Women and girls would be forced to compete in athletics on an unfair playing field with biological males.

• School children and adults would have their privacy rights infringed upon by allowing sex-specific facilities (locker rooms, showers, bathrooms) to be used by the opposite biological sex.

• Women’s shelters would be forced to admit biological men.

• Adoption agencies and other non-profit charities would be subjected to government shutdown and discrimination lawsuits for continuing to follow their mission.

• Free speech would be censored by compelling policies for preferred pronoun use.

We believe every human being is created in the image and likeness of Almighty God, and therefore deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Using the heavy hand of government, however, to force good people to deny biological realities and to compromise their religious convictions is not the answer.

Speak up now before it is too late.

To understand more about the widespread harms the passage of H.R. 5 would have on our nation, see IFI recent Action Alert and the host of helpful resources from our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom.

Read more:

U.S. House passes pro-abortion ‘Equality Act’ to write transgenderism into civil rights law (LifeSiteNews.com)

For up-to-the minute news, action alerts, coming events and more you can now sign up for IFI Text Alerts! Stay in the loop by texting “IFI” to 555888 or click here to enroll right away.

Click HERE to donate to IFI

Apprise your U.S. Senator of your feelings about the “Equality Act”! Find their contact information here: https://www.votervoice.net/ILFI/Address

Written by Kelle Berry

Recently, an activist group known as the Secular Democrats of America (SDA) sent a document to the president and the administration with a directive “to take back the mantle of religious freedom and pluralism.”

On the surface, the title—Restoring Constitutional Secularism and Patriotic Pluralism in the White House—makes the SDA’s mission sound appealing. The document calls to:

“…Oppose discrimination against atheists, agnostics, humanists, seekers, religious and nonreligious persons and to champion the value of freedom of thought and conscience…”

This even makes it sound harmonious with First Liberty’s own mission of protecting religious freedom for all Americans. After all, the First Amendment grants everyone the right to freely exercise their religious beliefs, convictions and to act according to their conscience without government censorship, threat, or coercion.

However, scratching beneath the surface, one sees that the SDA’s demands are much more dangerous. Inside the document, one finds a detailed “blueprint” redefining religious freedom in a way that would be unrecognizable to America’s Founders.

Building a Higher Wall of Separation?

Invoking America’s third president, the SDA implores a return to a “Jeffersonian approach to governance.” In other words, the SDA is petitioning to fortify a higher “wall of separation” between church and state.

Many high school civics students are undoubtedly familiar with those words from Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists. But what may not be known is that Jefferson wrote them to reassure the church that the First Amendment ensured the government would not interfere in their religious activities. At no time did Jefferson believe that religion and government could not mix.

Indeed, one need look no further than Jefferson’s attendance at church services held inside the U.S. Capitol itself as evidence of his approval of strong church-state relations.

Jefferson and a vast majority of our nation’s Founders understood that faith is not only permissible in the public square, but also beneficial. Houses of worship and religious organizations all faiths care for the sick, feed the hungry, and shelter the homeless. And the benefits don’t stop with charity. A recent study reports that religion contributes $1.2 trillion to the U.S. economy.

In stark contrast to the Founders’ constitutional intent, the SDA commands employees “to separate their personal religious beliefs from their work.” Sadly, some government officials have completely bought into this unconstitutional view.

First Liberty continues to protect Coach Joe Kennedy’s right as a high school football coach to pray alone after games. If the SDA gets its way, Coach Kennedy and millions of other Americans who are government employees will suffer irreparable harm to their First Amendment rights—putting them in the untenable position of choosing between their faith and their job.

Government employees are not the only ones who will suffer under the SDA’s aggressive plan.

Private religious organizations who have historically been able to work with the government are also threatened. In the case of Fulton v. City of Pennsylvania, currently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, Catholic adoption agencies that have, for decades, worked with the government to provide loving homes for adoptive children have been told to sacrifice their religious identity in order to continue their work.

Unsurprisingly, the SDA opposes the right of the adoption agencies: “[n]o institution, religious or secular, is entitled to access taxpayer funding.” If the SDA gets its way, it won’t just be orphans in need of loving homes who suffer. Millions of Americans who benefit from the benevolent partnership between church and state will also suffer.

Legislation Already Under Way

It’s tempting to quickly dismiss the SDA’s demands. However, people of faith must realize that some in positions of power who sympathize with the SDA’s message are already acting to implement its agenda.

For example, look at the effort on Capitol Hill to pass the so-called Equality Act, which if signed into law, would effectively overturn the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) which, as its name suggests, was intended to restore religious freedom.

The Equality Act may sound appealing in name, but the only equality it seeks to achieve is to eradicate any religious beliefs that do not conform to the government’s preferred orthodoxy. It’s a law that would squash dissent and differing viewpoints from the public sphere. The sad irony is that the Equality Act is actually antithetical to the SDA’s stated principles and its championing of pluralism.

At a time when the SDA and many other activist groups are pushing to recreate the U.S. Constitution, First Liberty remains vigilant and undeterred in our mission to protect and defend religious freedom consistent with the vision of America’s Founders. And regardless of who resides in the White House or controls the U.S. Congress, we will continue being the best hope for victory for Americans of all faiths.

This article was originally published at FirstLiberty.org.

The Hollywood actress Ellen Page has appeared in over two dozen movies. But if you congratulate her for being a successful actress you could get into trouble. You see, Ms. Page has decided that she is actually a man.[i] Now it is Mr. Page, and in some locales saying “Ms. Page” is considered “misgendering hate speech.” Misgendering people in Norway,[ii] Scotland,[iii] Canada[iv] – or even New York[v] – could put you behind bars.

Hate speech is just one argument against the freedom of speech and being able to act on your beliefs. This article examines just the hate speech issue. Other articles examine “cancel culture,” Black Lives Matter, and interacting with a culture that wants to de-person you (think Facebook and Twitter).

This article claims the following:

• Some speech or writings are called hate speech, even when completely truthful.

• Hate speech is meant to suppress opponents of cultural change. This means that the hate speech debate is about political power, and not about fairness.

• Activist politicians are taking sides, declaring winners in the hate speech debate even before the debate has hardly begun.

• Christians must not be cowed by hate speech accusations. Ours is an evangelistic faith. Everyone still needs to hear that Christ rules over all us, our culture, and our laws.

Telling the truth now called hate speech

What is hateful about these statements?

• God says that homosexuality is a sin.

• Just because you say you’re a woman doesn’t make you one.

What is hateful about them is actually…nothing.

• The Bible says that God detests homosexuality, in both the Old and New Testaments.

• Biology, not your ideology, makes you a man or a woman. It’s “science!” as some people like to yell at Christians.

But there are groups of people pierced by the message that “the Emperor has no clothes!” These groups cry “foul!” because telling the truth makes them feel sad, and makes them feel insecure about their carefully spun unrealities.

“The question is NOT whether it is TRUE that trans women are “men” with “male privilege”.  … The question IS whether saying that trans women are “men” or “male” is reasonably thought of as showing seriously hostile psychological intentions or motives: to harass, distress, alarm, threaten, and so on. This is really important, in a way that goes way beyond Miller’s case, because we are told all the time that “rejecting someone’s gender identity” or “misgendering” is evidence of hate — that is, talking of their sex in a way which conflicts with their gender identity.”[vi]

So telling the truth becomes hateful because it reminds them that they’re not really godlike, and reality isn’t whatever they say it is.

Using hate speech to silence Christian opposition to the cultural takeover

Why is it that telling the truth is considered to be offensive? It starts with God, who hates homosexual activity. We see in the Old Testament and New Testament condemnation of its acts, and doom for those who don’t repent of it.[vii] Ditto for transgender behavior.[viii] Just to be clear about what this hateful transgenderism is:

The subject of transgenderism, includes, specifically, “Trans-sexuality, cross-dressing,” and seeking “gender identity development,” i.e., physical identity through radical surgeries, and hormone treatment; and, more broadly, “gender atypicality” that includes “myriad subcultural expressions of self-selecting gender,” and “intersectionality” with other “interdependence” movements, i.e., feminism, homosexuality. The idea of transgenderism has its roots in the primordial rebellion of humankind to the creation order of God. [ix]

It is obvious that if society is to have unquestioned acceptance of homosexuality, and of things they covet like same-sex marriage and “choose your gender” education in grade schools, then Christian opposition must be removed. This naturally leads to the political and cultural conflict we’re experiencing.

Activists have tried to shame Christians into silencing themselves. One argument is this:

“Calling homosexuality a sin is an affront to your fellow citizens. It disparages the fundamental ideals of our country and ignores the teachings of Christ. It’s disgusting behavior without justification. Religious groups do not have a right to sow the seeds of hatred within our communities. They should be working towards harmony, unity, and love. In the United States nobody is above the law, and our laws say you cannot discriminate against anyone because of their sexual orientation.”[x]

We’re asked, even expected, to redefine Christianity into a cosmic Welcome Wagon:

“The whole point of religion is to strengthen the bonds of harmony within all humankind, not encourage discord or incite violence.”[xi]

The constant message of “disagreement is hate” would redefine Christianity, preferring it to become yet another devotion to the divinity of Man. To these proponents it is either us or them. And they can win over society if nobody – especially Christians – fight back.

The Constitution protects you against claims of hate speech… for now

What about Christians who refuse to shut up? Isn’t what they say illegally hateful? When judging a speech, or an article, for being hateful, what standard should be used? The Cambridge dictionary defines “hate speech” as “public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence toward a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation.” [xii]

This definition involves a lot of hand waving. A more pointed statement comes from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who recently said that free speech has its limits:

Those limits begin where hatred is spread. They begin where the dignity of other people is violated. This house will and must oppose extreme speech. Otherwise, our society will no longer be the free society that it was. [xiii]

In Europe the only allowed speech is government-approved speech. A commentator has said,

Such speech controls in Europe have led to a chilling effect on political and religious speech. In their homes, people will often share religious and political views that depart from majoritarian values or beliefs. This law would regulate those conversations and criminalize the expression of prohibited viewpoints.[xiv]

But the American view aligns with what George Washington told us:

For if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter. [xv]

The U.S. Constitution agrees with Washington’s views. There is no Constitutional definition of, or limitation for, hate speech. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that way many times over the years.[xvi] It ruled that even the “American Nazis” and the Ku Klux Klan had free speech rights. In a U.S. Supreme Court case involving the Communist Party, Justice Hugo Black wrote in his dissenting opinion:

I do not believe that it can be too often repeated that the freedoms of speech, press, petition and assembly guaranteed by the First Amendment must be accorded to the ideas we hate or sooner or later they will be denied to the ideas we cherish.[xvii]

Evading the Constitution

The U.S. Constitution protects free speech, but that doesn’t stop politicians and activists. They hope that if they enact a facially unconstitutional law that maybe the courts will actually uphold it. After all, supposedly, “the Supreme Court follows the election returns.”[xviii] And if the Court doesn’t yield the desired results, there is always “court packing.”

It was quoted again when the U.S. Supreme Court began ruling that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs were unconstitutional. Since the Democrats had a huge majority in Congress, Roosevelt began talking about “packing the court” by naming additional justices. He didn’t do it, but suddenly the U.S. Supreme Court began to see its way clear to allow the New Deal to continue.[xix]

This session of U.S. Congress saw the Equality Act (HR 5), which would enact into federal law a lot of the homosexual and transgender agenda, hijacking the debate before this culture war has come to a conclusion. The bill may as well be called the “Criminalizing Christianity Act.”[xx] It enshrines transgenders in women’s facilities, codifying transgenders into non-discrimination of the Civil Rights laws, and many other things. But the screw top lid on this jar of bad gifts is how it tries to ban dissent to its provisions.

Incredibly, perhaps attempting to counteract any future court rulings on the issue, the “Equality Act” specifically states that religious freedom may not be used as a defense under the bill. And the legislation applies to churches, religious schools, religious hospitals, religious employers, gathering places, sports, all government entities, and more.[xxi]

This “Equality Act” will be introduced again in the next session of Congress. It stands a good chance of being enacted. If it becomes law, then perhaps the courts will strike it down. Perhaps they won’t. But even while the legal battles go on, everyone – not just Christians – will have to abide by its provisions or suffer great loss.

The Christian obligation to influence culture and instruct our rulers

God wants His people, His church, to influence American culture and society. In summary:

• The Great Commission tells us to “make disciples of all the nations… teaching them to observe all that I commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20). We’re to be bold and conquering, not timid.

• We are “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14-16). Our words and deeds illuminate how different God’s ways are from those of the fallen world.[xxii]

• We are change agents, like yeast (Matthew 13:33), working to gradually transform people one-by-one. In the end we have a society that honors God through the transformed nature and desires of its individuals.

Christians are also compelled to speak in a prophetic role to our representatives, appointees, and judges. These officials are “servants of God” (Romans 13:6), whether they like it or not.

For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same; for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil. (Romans 13:4-5)

By accepting their offices, these people are charged by God to approve good and hinder evil. But how will they know what good and evil are unless Christians instruct them? Topic by topic, the corporate church, as well as Christian individuals, must instruct them and encourage them to do right by God. Who better than God’s people to tell them about God’s requirements?

A Christian response to this hate speech assault

The homosexual and transgender communities have become bold, rebelling against God and reality. When Christians mute themselves for fear of “hate speech,” society hears the sounds of cultural consensus. How do we set things right again, especially before it becomes effectively illegal to oppose evil things like the Equality Act? We ought to resume the duties God gives to His church.

• God has us living in the world, but we’re not to be of the world.[xxiii] By hewing a path that obeys God, while in the midst of people who “do what is right in their own eyes” (Deuteronomy 12:8), we act as bright lamps, witnesses of God, and testimony for a darkened world.

• God commissioned us to be evangelistic. Thus, we must unapologetically evangelize. Don’t hold back for fear of offending someone. When we’re acting as useful lamps (see above), we offer to our hearers a clear difference, a choice between life and death (Deuteronomy 30:15).

• God tells us to instruct our rulers (Romans 13). Some of us may even have an involuntary chance to do so (Matthew 10:16-20). But the rulers need to know their duties, to honor God (Acts 12:20-23), and render Biblical justice.

In other words, we should resume the tasks we should have always been doing. It isn’t that these tasks are a losing idea. Rather, they were found hard, or presumed unnecessary, and were abandoned.

Finally, we must pray that God confounds our enemies. Each day that they don’t succeed, that we don’t see evils enacted like the Equality Act, is another day closer to transforming American society into a God-honoring one.

[i] Cotrinski, Jennie, Ellen Page Comes Out As Transgender, Chicks on the Right, December 1, 2020, https://www.chicksonright.com/blog/2020/12/01/ellen-page-comes-out-as-transgender/

[ii] Turley, Jonathan, Norway Criminalizes Hate Speech Against Transgender People . . . In Private Homes or Conversation, Jonathan Turley blog, November 29, 2020, https://jonathanturley.org/2020/11/29/norway-criminalizes-hate-people-against-transgender-people-in-private-homes-or-conversations/

[iii] Lyman, Brianna, Scottish Hate Crime Bill To Prosecute People Who Use Hate Speech Even While Home, Daily Caller, October 28, 2020, https://dailycaller.com/2020/10/28/scotland-hate-crime-bill-free-speech/

[iv] Contrada, Amy, Free Speech Is Dead in Canada: The Persecution of Christian Activist Bill Whatcott, American Thinker, January 14, 2019, https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/01/free_speech_is_dead_in_canada_the_persecution_of_christian_activist_bill_whatcott.html

[v] Evon, Dan, New NYC Laws Prohibit Discrimination Against Transgender Community, Snopes, December 28, 2015, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/transgender-pronouns-fine-nyc/

[vi] Block, Kathleen, Hate speech and the statements “trans women are men” or “male”, Kathleen Stock blog, February 8, 2020, https://medium.com/@kathleenstock/hate-speech-and-the-statements-trans-women-are-men-or-male-f39b20b49729

[vii] What does the New Testament say about homosexuality?, Got Questions, https://www.gotquestions.org/New-Testament-homosexuality.html

[viii] Milton, Dr. Michael A., What the Bible Says about the Idea of Transgenderism, Bible Study Tools, February 6, 2020,  https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/topical-studies/what-the-bible-really-says-about-transgenderism.html

[ix] Ibid.

[x] Rhein, Walter, Calling Homosexuality a Sin is Hate Speech, Extra Newsfeed, July 28, 2020, https://extranewsfeed.com/calling-homosexuality-a-sin-is-hate-speech-e8390bf23e38

[xi] Ibid.

[xii] Hate Speech, Cambridge Dictionary, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/hate-speech

[xiii] Fjordman, Why Laws Against Hate Speech Are Dangerous, Gatestone Institute, January 18, 2020, https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15256/hate-speech-laws

[xiv] Turley, Jonathan, Norway Criminalizes Hate Speech Against Transgender People . . . In Private Homes or Conversation

[xv] Washington, George, Newburg Address, George Washington’s Mount Vernon, https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/quotes/article/for-if-men-are-to-be-precluded-from-offering-their-sentiments-on-a-matter-which-may-involve-the-most-serious-and-alarming-consequences-that-can-invite-the-consideration-of-mankind-reason-is-of-no-use-to-us-the-freedom-of-speech-may-be-taken-away-and-dumb-/

In this address, General Washington responded to a petition that apparently encouraged officers to mutiny over back pay. Washington reminded them that freedom of speech was one of the things they were fighting for.

[xvi] Head, Tom, 6 Major U.S. Supreme Court Hate Speech Cases, ThoughtCo, July 18, 2019, https://www.thoughtco.com/hate-speech-cases-721215

[xvii] United States Supreme Court, Healy v. James (1972), No. 71-452, FindLaw for Legal Professionals,, https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/408/169.htmlThe excerpt from Healy v. James actually quotes from Justice Black’s dissenting opinion on Communist Party v. SACB, 367 U.S. 1, 137 (1961). However, that 1961 case is very hard to find online.

[xviii] Cagle, Frank, Supreme Court follows election returns, KnoxTNTofay, October 20, 2020, https://www.knoxtntoday.com/supreme-court-follows-election-returns/

[xix] Ibid.

[xx] Newman, Alex, “Equality Act” Would Unleash Federal Persecution of Christians, The New American, May 8, 2019, https://thenewamerican.com/print/equality-act-would-unleash-federal-persecution-of-christians/

[xxi] Ibid.

[xxii] Barker, Matt, Light of the World, Sermon Central, August 10, 2008, https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/light-of-the-world-matt-barker-sermon-on-christian-witness-125576

[xxiii] Bradley, Michael, In the World – But Not of the World, Bible Knowledge, December 18, 2020, https://www.bible-knowledge.com/in-world-not-of-it/

Remember when homosexual activists lied with straight faces saying what they do in the privacy of their own bedrooms affects no one and, therefore, is no one’s business? And here we are today with the government recognizing non-marital unions as marriages, shameful parades polluting our streets, drag queens reading stories to toddlers in public libraries, a 4,000 percent increase in adolescent girls suddenly deciding they’re boys, and schools requiring faculty to use incorrect pronouns when referring to students who seek to pass as the sex they aren’t.

An NBC News article titled, “Biden administration on track to be most LGBTQ-inclusive in U.S. history” exults, “President-elect Joe Biden has repeatedly vowed to make LGBTQ rights a priority in his administration.” We now have leaders—grown men and women—who think it’s a noble achievement to pick administration officials based on what they do in the privacy of their bedrooms or because they pretend to be the sex they aren’t. Astonishing.

With that puckish grin, lost occasionally in his mental fog, Biden has cast aside character, knowledge, and experience as central employment criteria for his administration. All that really matters is sexual anatomy, erotic interests, and sex identification (oh, and skin color). Goodbye meritocracy. Hello intersectionality.

In the service of demonstrating his ardent commitment to unbiblical sexual deviance, Biden, the less ardent, self-identifying Catholic has so far picked a number of sexually dubious characters for administrative roles and other assorted functions.

Biden chose Karine Jean-Pierre, an “out lesbian” as his deputy press secretary. She may help speak on behalf of the cognitively impaired Biden or clarify the baffling things he says when his handlers allow him to speak. He chose Pili Tobar, another lesbian, to be the deputy White House communications director.  And he chose homosexual Carlos Elizondo to be the White House social secretary.

Elizondo is only the second man in the history of the United States to be chosen to be a White House social secretary. The first, Jeremy Bernard, was chosen by Barack Obama. Bernard too is homosexual and evidently not selected based on his educational background. Bernard, who didn’t finish college, along with his erotic partner at the time, Rufus Gifford, had been major fundraisers for Obama and were hugely influential in the homosexual community. Forget education, training, wisdom, and integrity. Money and sexual deviance will take you to the core of the Democrat machine.

Lesbian attorney Chai Feldblum and bisexual attorney Pamela S. Karlan, who is “married” to a woman, have been tasked with “reviewing the Department of Justice and related agencies for the Biden transition team … including the Federal Election Commission and the Commission on Civil Rights.”

Karlan’s name may be familiar to some. She is one of the three “progressive” law professors who testified before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in support of the impeachment of President Trump and was forced to apologize for using Barron Trump’s name to make a point. She is also one of the attorneys in the infamous Bostock U.S. Supreme Court Case that Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch bungled.

Homosexual Dave Noble “was named to two teams, one reviewing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the other the Office of National Drug Control Policy.”

Shawn Skelly, a man who now masquerades as a woman following his 20-year stint as a naval flight officer, “will be part of the team reviewing the Department of Defense.” Biden has vowed to reverse President Trump’s ban on gender-deluded men and women serving in the military. I guess Skelly believes that nothing strengthens the military quite like the presence of cross-dressing soldiers and forcing women to bunk and shower with men who cross-dress.

Axios has reported that 39-year-old failed former mayor of South Bend, Indiana and homosexual, Pete Buttigieg, is being seriously considered for the ambassadorship to China, America’s arch-enemy that unleashed the Wuhan Virus on the world and seeks worldwide economic and military domination.

But the homosexual rag The Washington Blade reports that Buttigieg wants nothing less than a Cabinet post. In the Blade piece titled “Frustration builds as Biden’s Cabinet includes no LGBTQ picks,” Chris Johnson writes,

In talks with the Biden transition team, one Democratic insider said the idea of Buttigieg becoming White House OMB director came up, but he rejected it and said he wanted a “real Cabinet” position, not a “staff-level” job.

Well, you can’t say the diminutive former small-town mayor lacks hutzpah.

Behind the scenes the homosexual community is fuming that Biden hasn’t yet chosen a Cabinet member based on his or her private bedroom activities. Johnson continues,

Some LGBTQ leaders are quietly expressing frustration that the movement hasn’t pushed more aggressively for representation in Biden’s Cabinet. …

Things might be changing in terms of ramping up calls for an openly LGBTQ Cabinet member. On Tuesday, the congressional LGBTQ Equality Caucus made public a letter to the Biden transition team making the case for prominent LGBTQ appointees in his administration. “While your administration is on track to be the most diverse in American history, we ask that you continue your commitment to diversity by ensuring LGBTQ+ professionals are included in your Cabinet and throughout your administration. …”

Biden must discriminate based on erotic desires and sex-identification status to keep the most tyrannical demographic in America—“LGB” and “T” activists—sated and quiet. He also needs to feed their legislative and policy desires—most of which involve stripping conservative people of faith of their First Amendment rights.

For example, the country’s largest, most influential homosexual/“trans” activist organization, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), whose 2019 revenue exceeded $44.5 million, has published a 24-page “Blueprint for Positive Change 2020” with a staggering list of “recommendations” for Biden. I’ll mention just two.

The HRC recommends changing a regulation regarding charitable organizations that partner with the federal government to help those with diverse problems and needs. The HRC wants to make sure that any religious charity that receives federal funds to help the suffering be forced to hire homosexuals and cross-sex impersonators.

The HRC’s blueprint for religious oppression also wants to make it possible for college accreditation boards to deny accreditation to any college that has employment or student conduct criteria that reflect biblical standards on sexuality. Such a radical accreditation change would constitute, in theologian Al Mohler’s words, “an atomic bomb.”

If Christian colleges cannot be accredited, then students who want to pursue masters’ degrees, Ph.D.s, law degrees, or medical degrees that require undergraduate degrees from accredited schools would be forced to go elsewhere.

Leftists want to close all avenues to positions of influence for those who reject their sexuality ideology. So much for diversity and tolerance.

Biden has promised that his first order of business will be to pass the pernicious Equality Act, which will happen if Republicans lose the Senate. The Democrat-sponsored Equality Act—which as everyone knows has nothing to do with equality and everything to do with oppression—will deny conservative people of faith First Amendment speech and religious free exercise protections.

As I wrote 1 ½ years ago when the U.S. House passed it, the Equality Act would require federal law to recognize disordered subjective feelings and deviant behaviors as protected characteristics. Federal law would absurdly recognize homoeroticism and cross-sex masquerading as conditions that must be treated like skin color and biological sex.

It’s a remarkable feat of rhetorical and political legerdemain to use the ugly racial discrimination suffered historically by blacks to normalize discrimination based on race (i.e., against whites), sex (i.e., against men), mental health (i.e., against “cisgenders”), and erotic desire (i.e., against heterosexuals). Now it’s not only acceptable to choose not to hire people because they’re white, male, heterosexual, or who accept their biological sex, it’s de rigueur.

The real goal in the new and socially acceptable form of discrimination is to normalize homoeroticism and cross-sex impersonation by exploiting the instruments and institutions of power to silence public expressions of moral beliefs that leftists don’t like.

The first step is to confuse the issue by treating dissimilar conditions as if they were the same. So, conditions that are not genetically determined, in many cases fluid, and constituted centrally by freely chosen acts (e.g., homoeroticism and opposite-sex identification) are compared to conditions that are 100% heritable, in all cases immutable, and have no behavioral dimensions (e.g., skin color and biological sex). This is called a “category mistake.”

Leftists use this category mistake relentlessly in their effort to make it socially and legally impossible for Christians to exercise their religion and speech rights freely. They want to make it impossible to publicly express moral propositions about homoerotic acts or to conduct one’s business in accordance with religious beliefs. They want to make it impossible, for example, to refuse to hire a man who freely chooses to cross-dress.

Homoeroticism and cross-sex passing are moral issues about which it is entirely fitting to express views even if others disagree with or detest those views. Shouting “identity” and “authenticity” is not a “Get Out of Moral Assessment” free card. It doesn’t seem that leftists feel any shame about condemning my beliefs even if they derive from my authentic identity as a theologically orthodox Christ-follower.

“LGB” and “T” activists are far from done with their unholy work of transforming a once decent place to raise children into a moral sinkhole in which the government will soon appropriate children whose parents don’t toe the line drawn by regressive pagans.

I have long contended that there is no greater threat to First Amendment religious free exercise and speech protections than homosexual and “trans”-cultic activism. If Harris and Biden win the White House, and Democrats win the U.S. Senate, fasten your seatbelts, Christian conservatives, because it will be a bumpy night.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Harris-Biden-Administration-Sexual-Deviance-and-Religious-Oppression.mp3

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The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has garnered less attention than usual lately with COVID-19 monopolizing headlines. However, with the Court’s term ending in June, some of the most controversial decisions are expected to be released any day now. Among the most notable are three cases involving Title VII of the landmark Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of sex. The question is whether Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination also includes decisions based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The cases are Altitude Express, Inc. v. Zarda, Bostock v. Clayton County, and R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Zarda and Bostock involve gay men suing their employers, alleging that they were fired because of their sexual orientation. Harris Funeral Homes involves a transgender employee who formerly worked in a Christian-owned funeral home in Michigan and claims to have been illegally fired after coming out as a transgender woman and starting to wear women’s clothing.

It should be noted that twenty-two states, Illinois included, already prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Thus, the Court’s decision will not change employment decisions for nearly half the country. However, the cases are yet another instance of the Federal courts delving into a contentious cultural issue.

Title VII prohibits employment decisions based on certain protected attributes like race, religion, and sex. Yet there has been a push in recent years to interpret Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination as including sexual orientation and gender identity. The cases have significant cultural, theological, and moral underpinnings; however, the main question for the U.S. Supreme Court is one of statutory interpretation. Here is how the pertinent part of Title VII reads:

“It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employment agency to fail or refuse to refer for employment, or otherwise to discriminate against, any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”

No mention of “gender identity” or “sexual orientation.” Case closed—right? Not necessarily. The Federal courts of appeal have reached different conclusions based on their method of statutory interpretation. The methods have largely centered on “textualism” and “originalism.”

Textualism holds that the plain meaning of the legal text is the only thing you look at in interpreting, with no consideration given to any non-textual sources. Instead of considering the overall purpose of the law, legislative history, or policy arguments, a textualist approach only looks to the four corners of the paper on which the law is written, considering nothing besides the apparent meaning of the text. Textualism has long been heralded by justices like the late Justice Antonin Scalia and Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch.

One would think that since Title VII’s text does not mention “sexual orientation” or “gender identity,” a textualist approach would be an automatically mean excluding these statuses. However, several courts have used a textualist approach to come to the opposite conclusion. No one disputes that Title VII bans sex discrimination—it says so in the text. But LGBT proponents have developed a clever textualist approach to argue that sex discrimination also includes discrimination based on a LGBT status.

The argument goes that by discriminating based on one’s sexual orientation, you are inevitably discriminating based on his or her sex. For example, imagine that there are two employees: one heterosexual man dating a woman and the other a homosexual woman dating a woman. If the homosexual woman is fired for dating another woman and the man is not, the only reason the woman is fired is because of her sex. Both employees are participating in the same activity (dating a woman); the only difference is that one employee is a woman and the other is man—thus, sex discriminati0n. The argument goes that since Title VII bans sex discrimination, the law also necessarily bans discrimination based on sexual orientation. In the same way, a biological man who is wearing woman’s clothing and using the women’s restroom would not be fired if it were a biological woman doing those same things. LGBT advocates claim that this also is sex discrimination.

There are several weaknesses with this argument. In the first example, the primary reason the employee is fired is her sexual orientation, not her biological sex. Title VII’s inclusion of the term “sex” means just that and nothing more. In this case, sex may be a factor, but it is not the primary reason for the firing. Sex and sexual orientation are different concepts. Sex has to do with one’s genetic makeup and reproductive abilities while sexual orientation is based on one’s sexual attraction to others, and gender identity has to do with whether one’s expression or behavior corresponds with his or her biological sex.

A more compelling reason to reject this argument is that by reading sexual orientation or gender identity into Title VII, courts would essentially be acting as policy-makers. For over fifty years, Title VII has never been understood to include sexual orientation or gender identity. In voting for Title VII in 1964, no member of Congress could have imagined that the word sex would also include gender identity and sexual orientation, which have only recently entered the modern vernacular. The courts would simply be reading modern notions of sexuality into a law that was never intended to be used that way.

For years, LGBT lobbying efforts have tried to pass the Equality Act, which, among other things, would add sexual orientation and gender identity to Title VII’s list of protected classes. The bill has been introduced in Congress for years yet has never been enacted. The U.S. Supreme Court would essentially be adopting a policy that Congress has deliberately decided not to pursue.

There is another form of statutory interpretation called originalism, which some courts have used to come to the conclusion that “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” are excluded from Title VII’s protection. Originalism still focuses on the text of the statute, but a word’s meaning is frozen in time. Instead of incorporating changing meanings of words, as may be allowed under a broader view of textualism, originalism says that a word’s meaning is to be taken from the original public understanding of the text from the time the text was enacted. In other words, if a text was passed in 1950, a court ought to look at what the word meant in 1950–not what it means today.

The wisdom of originalism acknowledges that words change meaning over time, but to ensure a fixed meaning in law, the only meaning that a court will consider is what the public understood the words to mean when it was enacted. This approach is taken in order to avoid changing the law from its intended purpose. In this case, no one seriously argues that Congress or the general public would have understood the term “sex” to include “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.”

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for these cases in October, and the decisions are expected to come down any day over the coming weeks. Some observers believe Justice Neil Gorsuch to be the swing vote. Justice Gorsuch admitted that the issue was very close in his mind during oral arguments. Congress, the people’s representative, has so far refused to add gender identity or sexual orientation to Title VII by refusing to enact the Equality Act. Yet the Court may choose to bypass the democratic process and adopt this new reading of Title VII.

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The “trans” cult argues that biological sex is unimportant and always, in every context and activity, subordinate to “gender identity,” which is constituted by subjective, internal feelings about one’s “maleness” or “femaleness.” In the “trans” mythology, “gender identity” has nothing to do with biological sex. Therefore, a human with XY chromosomes and a natal penis can be a woman if he so conceives himself to be. If he dreams it, he is she. No need to get rid of any appendages because women can have penises.

One of these mythological women–“Jessica” Yaniv (sometimes Jonathan) emailed esthetician Marcia da Silva, owner of a home-based salon in Canada who provides Brazilian waxes for real women. The mythological woman–complete with the anatomical accouterments of real men–requested a Brazilian wax around said accouterments. The owner of the salon refused because she was neither comfortable depilating nor trained to depilate hirsute dojiggers. You probably know what happened next.

Yaniv, the mythological woman, pirouetted right down to the Human Rights Tribunal in his stilettos to file a complaint against this woman for discriminating against him based on “gender identity.” This is the 16th female esthetician–“almost all of whom come from minority backgrounds”–against whom he has filed a complaint. He managed to extort $2,500 from one young, single mother who paid him to have the complaint dropped.  According to the Post Millennial, “Fighting JY’s discrimination complaint all the way through to a hearing would cost each esthetician between $20,000-30,000 or more.” But isn’t it sexual assault when a man forces a woman against her will to touch his dojigger? What does the #MeToo movement think about this?

But there’s more. The perverse Yaniv who fancies himself a woman and wants to force women against their will to wax his private parts also wants to help minor girls with their menstrual pads and tampons and wants to rent a public pool for a topless pool party for “LGBTQ” persons between the ages of 12-24. His request to appear before a Township Council asks for,

permission for LGBTQ2s+ organizations to be allowed to host an ‘All-Bodies Swim’ at… civic pools… for all people aged 12+ where these events will be restricted to LGBTQ2S, and individuals will be permitted to be topless (at their leisure), in compliance with the laws of Canada and where parents and caretakers will be prohibited from attending these events as it’s considered safe and inclusive.

Wait, the event is “inclusive,” but he wants to exclude parents? Hmmm…

As Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon has written about Yaniv’s complaint, “This will be compulsory in the U.S. if the “Equality Act” (so-called) is signed into law.” The Equality Act would change the definition of “sex” in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include “gender identity,” thereby legally prohibiting recognition of sex differences anywhere and everywhere. Further, it explicitly nullifies religious liberty protections.

I wonder, will those who claim Christian bakers should be forced to bake cakes for homosexual anti-weddings argue that Muslim estheticians should be forced to wax the nether regions of mythological women?

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.