I’d like to offer a few words about the separation of church and state—a concept long abused by “progressives.” The religion clauses of the First Amendment were intended to protect religion from the intrusive power of the state, not the reverse. The Establishment Clause states that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.” That does not mean religious convictions are prohibited from informing political values and decisions. To expect…

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I’d like to offer a few words about the separation of church and state—a concept long abused by “progressives.”

The religion clauses of the First Amendment were intended to protect religion from the intrusive power of the state, not the reverse. The Establishment Clause states that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.” That does not mean religious convictions are prohibited from informing political values and decisions. To expect or demand that political decisions be divorced from personal religious beliefs is an untenable, unconscionable breach of the intent of the First Amendment which also includes the oft-neglected Free Exercise Clause which states that “Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion.”

People from diverse faith traditions and no faith could all arrive at the same position on a particular public policy. For example, although Orthodox Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Baptists, and atheists may all oppose abortion because they value human life, the reasons (or motives) for that valuation of life differ.

If there is a secular purpose for a law (i.e., to protect incipient human life), then voting for it—even for religious reasons—does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The source or motives of the various parties’ desires to protect incipient life are not the concern of the government. It would be not only absurd but also unethical for the government to try to ascertain the motives or beliefs behind anyone’s opposition to abortion and equally unethical for the government to assert that only those who have no religious faith may vote on abortion laws. Such an assertion would most assuredly violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

Legal theorist Michael Perry explains that,

forcing religious arguments to be restated in other terms asks a citizen to ‘bracket’ religious convictions from the rest of her personality, essentially demanding that she split off a part of her self . . . [T]o bracket [religious convictions] would be to bracket—indeed, to annihilate—herself. And doing that would preclude her—the particular person she is—from engaging in moral discourse with other members of society.

To paraphrase First Things founder, Richard John Neuhaus, that which is political is moral and that which is moral, for religious people, is religious. It is no less legitimate to have political decisions shaped by religion than by psychology, philosophy, or self-serving personal desire.

If allowing religious beliefs to shape political decisions did represent a violation of the Establishment Clause and an inappropriate commingling of religion and government, then American history is rife with egregiously unconstitutional actions, for religious convictions have impelled some of our most significant social, political, and legal changes including the abolition of slavery, antiwar movements, opposition to capital punishment, and the passage of civil rights legislation.

“Progressives” seem to have no objection to people of faith participating in the democratic process so long as their views comport with “progressive” positions. “Progressives” never cry foul when Quakers or Catholics oppose war because of their religious convictions, and “progressives” do not object that Catholic opposition to the death penalty represents a violation of the separation of church and state. When conservative people of faith participate in the political process, however, suddenly the Establishment Clause has been violated.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is replete with references to his Christian faith which informed his belief about the inherent dignity, value, and rights of African Americans, a belief which he lost his life to see enshrined in law. He wrote what would now certainly generate howls of opposition if expressed by a conservative:

How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.

The same people who argue vociferously against the presence of religiously informed political decisions that are conservative in nature are curiously silent with regard to those Catholics, Jews, United Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Unitarians, and Episcopalians who were politically active in the movement to effect speech codes or revolutionize marital laws. One could argue that those who attend houses of worship that support legalized same-sex unions are similarly attempting to enshrine in law their religious beliefs.

When politicians like presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, former president Barack Obama, and Senator Rob Portman or celebrities like Jason Collins cite their Christian beliefs as the justification for their support for the redefinition of marriage, or fiscal policies, no one in the press or homosexual community accuses them of violating the separation of church and state.

Neuhaus argues persuasively in his book The Naked Public Square that a polity denuded of religion will be clothed soon enough in some other system that functions as religion by providing “normative ethics.” A democratic republic cannot exist without objective normative ethics that render legitimate the delimitation or circumscription of individual rights.

Historically, the sources of the absolute, transcendent, objective, universal truths that render legitimate our legal and judicial systems have been “the institutions of religion that make claims of ultimate or transcendent meaning.” Neuhaus explains that this “does not represent an imposition of the private into the public spheres, but rather an expansion or transformation or recollection of what is public.” He argues that when religion is utterly privatized and eliminated as a “source or transcendence that gives legitimate and juridical direction and form, something else will necessarily fill the void, and that force will be the state.”

If the body politic claims that there are no absolutes or delegitimizes religion as an arbiter of right and wrong, or good and evil, then the state will fill the vacuum, relativizing all values, and rendering this relativization absolute. Many would argue that there is little indication that society has heeded Neuhaus’ warning about the political implications of society’s rejection of religiously derived transcendent truths. And so, the coercive power of the state increasingly fills the space vacated by religious institutions.

Lawmaking absent an understanding that there exist moral truths that are objective and universal would represent an illegitimate and hubristic arrogation of power by the state. Acknowledging that there is objective truth regarding what is right and wrong and that it is universal and knowable is essential to democratic institutions. What sense does outrage at human rights violations make if we assert there are no universal, transcendent, eternal, objective truths? And if we agree that these truths exist and that they transcend the subjective opinions of any particular individual, then what is their source other than a supernatural, eternal, transcendent being?

Some argue that reason alone is sufficient to serve as the objective source of truth, but a recollection of Hitler’s eugenic reasoning reveals the problem with reliance solely on man’s reason. Claims of unalienable, self-evident rights, as our founding fathers understood them, both presume and require for justification, the existence of God. Robert L. Toms wrote that it was this understanding that generated “the concept that the state, the monarch, the dictator, the tribal leader, was no longer a deity to be obeyed unquestionably.” And the state neither creates ex nihilo nor confers our fundamental rights but, rather, provides legal protection for extant rights.

Charges of violating the separation of church and state are selectively hurled. Remember that next time a lefty tells you your political views must be severed from your religious views.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/cCHristians_church-and-state_audio.mp3

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File this story in your now-bulging “Don’t Say You Weren’t Warned” folder.

Just three weeks ago, on September 19, 2019, the U.S. House Ways and Means Oversight subcommittee—chaired by John Lewis (D-GA) and composed of 7 Democrats and 4 Republicans—held a hearing portentously titled, “HOW THE TAX CODE SUBSIDIZES HATE.” Since conservative beliefs on sexuality are deemed “hateful” by regressives, such a subcommittee hearing should raise the alarm antennas of conservatives and libertarians concerned about assaults on the First Amendment by “progressive” thought police who roam the halls of Congress and the nooks, crannies, and interstices of social media.

What should also trouble them is that 3 of the 7 Democrats specifically mentioned or alluded to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as their source for identifying “hate groups.” (Full, shameless, and cheerful disclosure: the Illinois Family Institute (IFI) has been erroneously listed on the scandal-pocked SPLC’s “hate groups” list since shortly after I began writing for IFI in 2008.) Less than two hours after the beginning of the hearing, the Oversight subcommittee tweeted this:

“[H]omosexuality is a poor and dangerous choice, and has been proven to lead to a litany of health hazards to not only the individuals but also society as a whole,” The American Family Association, Tax Exempt Hate Group.

The first of the five witnesses to testify was busy-beaver homosexual activist Brandon Wolf, a “nationally-recognized advocate for LGBTQ issues” and  “Central Florida Development Officer and Media Relations Manager” for Equality Florida who survived the horrific Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida and said this:

[I]f you are not using everything at your disposal to snuff hate out, then you’re simply not doing enough. The time is now for us to fight harder, lead more courageously, and use everything we have to put an end to this cancer that is ravaging our communities…. Rather than use every tool at our disposal to combat hatred, we have chosen to subsidize it, embolden it…. Inaction in the face of hatred has consequences, and it’s high time that this Congress do something to protect those of us in the line of fire.

Wolf was urging Congress to use the IRS as a weapon to mow down moral views about homosexuality he hates and was doing so by deceitfully exploiting a tragedy that evidence suggests had nothing to do with “anti-gay” sentiment.

Journalist, constitutional lawyer, and (homosexual) co-founder of The Intercept Glenn Greenwald and co-author Murtaza Hussain published an article 18 months ago examining in detail the evidence for Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen’s motives:

Mateen went to Pulse only after having scouted other venues that night that were wholly unrelated to the LGBT community, only to find that they were too defended by armed guards and police, and ultimately chose Pulse only after a generic Google search for “Orlando nightclubs” — not “gay clubs” — produced Pulse as the first search result.

Several journalists closely covering the Mateen investigation have, for some time now, noted the complete absence of any evidence suggesting that Mateen knew that Pulse was a gay club or that targeting the LGBT community was part of his motive. 

…

By repeatedly emphasizing this anti-gay motive, U.S. media reports had the effect, if not the intent, of obscuring what appears to have been Mateen’s overriding, arguably exclusive motive: a desire for retribution and deterrence toward U.S. violence in Muslim countries.

…

Despite this mountain of evidence that strongly negates the original media-disseminated themes about Mateen’s life and his likely motive in targeting Pulse, the early myths remain lodged in the public mind and even in contemporary news reports. In part that’s because much of the evidence has remained under seal, in part because subsequent media debunking received a tiny fraction of the attention of the early, aggressively hyped inflammatory theories, and in part because there has been no political advantage to challenging the politically moving and useful narrative that the attack on Pulse was a hate crime against gay people.

Does anyone really believe full-time homosexual activist Wolf is unaware of this evidence?

Fortunately, one of the Republican members present at the hearing was Illinois’ own Darin Lahood (R-Peoria) who challenged references to the anti-Christian hate group, the SPLC:

[T]he IRS should not be used as a political tool to discriminate against organizations that differ in viewpoints…. We cannot use political disagreement as a metric to define hate speech or a hate group. This type of labeling can and has led to violent acts. I know my colleague just referenced the Southern Poverty Law Center. In 2012, an armed man named Floyd Lee Corkins walked into the Family Research Council Washington headquarters with the intent to shoot and kill as many of its employees as possible. He was apprehended, but not before wounding the non-profit’s business manager. Mr. Corkins later told the FBI that he had seen the nonprofit group listed as an anti-gay hate group on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website.

Also testifying was UCLA law professor, the libertarian-esque Eugene Volokh who argued that with only very narrow exceptions, all speech is protected by the First Amendment:

The Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear that tax exemptions can’t be denied based on the viewpoint that a group communicates…. The Court has also made equally clear that excluding speech that manifests or promotes “hate” is forbidden viewpoint discrimination…. The law may treat groups differently based on their actions, but not based on the views they express…. Groups may be denied tax exemptions for deliberately engaging in speech that falls within one of the few narrow exceptions to the First Amendment, such as true threats of criminal attack, or incitement intended to and likely to cause imminent criminal conduct. But “hate speech” writ large doesn’t fall within any such exceptions.

Our First Amendment rights will not long stand against the sexual appetites of the deviant who run amok among us. Neither our constitutionally protected religious free exercise rights, nor our speech rights, nor our assembly rights will be protected now that they have been subordinated to subjective and disordered sexual desires. And neither will our intrinsic privacy rights remain protected. Cultural critics warned about the dangers posed to this once-great Republic by 1. allowing the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to Guinea-worm their way into anti-discrimination policies and laws, and 2. the Obergefelle U.S. Supreme Court decision, which has been interpreted as legalizing same-sex marriage everywhere in the United States. But conservatives largely dismissed such warnings out of either a failure to think deeply about the implications of these changes or cowardice or both.

Leftists are turning—not turning right—turning against the U.S. Constitution, and slowly they’re coming, step by step, straight for the First Amendment.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your U.S. Representative to ask him/her to reject the SPLC’s definition of “hate groups,” which includes conservative and faith-based groups, such as IFI and AFA. Traditional Judeo-Christian teaching about human sexuality is neither “hateful” nor “vile.” Ask them to stand up for the First Amendment and protect religious liberty and speech rights by rejecting this effort to penalize so-called “hate” speech.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Slowly-Leftists-Turn-Step-By-Step.mp3

IFI depends on the support of concerned-citizens like you. Donate now

-and, please-

Several days ago, I took Tucker Carlson—a self-identifying Christian—to my teeny tiny virtual woodshed for congratulating homosexual Democratic strategist Richard Goodstein on his God-mocking, soul-destroying pseudo-marriage. Well, now I’m offering Carlson a hearty virtual pat on the back for Thursday night’s segment with Mark Steyn to whom I offer a bone-rattling pat on the back. Here’s an excerpt from their discussion of the loathsome Leftist tactic to oppress dissenters through control of language:

Steyn: “We have this immense cleansing of language. And [Leftists] are playing for big game here. I noticed about a decade ago, the government of Spain removed the words “mother” and “father” from its birth certificates and replaced them with “progenitor A” and “progenitor B”…. The fact is the abolition of “mother” and “father” is actually quite a big thing. And the Left is clever about this. They play for big prizes. One of the reasons I despair about the political Right is because we get all ‘Oohhh yeah, we’re trying to get a cut in capital gains tax through Congress!’ Meanwhile [Leftists] are abolishing the sexes. They’re ABOLISHING THE SEXES! That’s incredible!”

Carlson: “They’re re-ordering the natural order…. And the rest of us are either still playing these dumb low-stakes grievance politics… or arguing… the capital gains rate as if that really matters, because it doesn’t. Meanwhile no one’s getting married. The kids are all born out of wedlock. And  society collapses.”

Steyn: “One of the problems is… the Right gets head-faked into playing on the Left’s terms, in part because the Left changes the meaning of all the words, so you end up saying the same nonsense as the Left. People now can have their careers ruined because they ‘misgender’ someone on Twitter. We shouldn’t concede these things lightly…. This is actually industrial scale Orwellianism where you’re precisely inverting the meaning of language… so that people can’t even discuss certain topics anymore.”

Carlson: “When we give up these battles over words, we give up autonomy.”

I have long argued that there is no greater threat to our First Amendment protections than that posed by “LGBTQQAP” fascists. I have specifically said—and taken flak from RINOs for doing so—that the reductively called social issues are far more important than tax rates. And I have said countless times that under no circumstances should conservatives capitulate to language diktats. Do not ever mis-sex cross-sex masqueraders. Do not ever use pronouns that don’t match biological sex.

I would quibble with Steyn on one word. He said, “we shouldn’t concede these things lightly.” I would argue that we shouldn’t concede these things—period. It is neither loving nor “woke” to concede to the language edicts of the science-denying “trans” cult. (Pssst, come closer—you may also say “tr*nny,” just not on Facebook or the FB Overlords will come in the dark of night and throw you in the slammer.)

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Tucker-4.mp3

IFI depends on the support of concerned-citizens like you. Donate now

-and, please-

In a “Voice of the People” letter appearing in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune, JoAnn Lee Frank of Clearwater, Florida says the following:

The bill passed in Alabama banning nearly all abortions smacks of contempt and misogynistic views toward women. Why else would so many white Republican male legislators willfully rule that women carry a fetus to full term in cases of rape and incest? Even if it is their religious belief, it has no business influencing the law. The attitude of the lawmakers is not only cruel and unjust, it’s also sick and destructive. This stunning decision violates the constitutional protections guaranteed by Roe v. Wade.

How does opposition to human slaughter—including the slaughter of about 440,000 female humans annually—constitute “contempt and misogynistic views toward women”? And are the 36% of women who oppose abortion in “all or most cases” as revealed in a Pew Forum poll guilty of contempt for women and misogyny?

Frank asked why “so many white Republican male legislators willfully rule that women carry a fetus to full term in cases of rape or incest.” That’s an easy-peasy question to answer.

First, the voters in Alabama—including female voters—elected “so many white Republican male legislators.” Perhaps Alabama voters don’t discriminate based on race, skin color, or sex as Frank and so many other “progressives” do. Perhaps they judge candidates for public office by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin or their unchosen biological sex. One presumes that these white Republican male legislators are carrying out the will of their constituents, including their diversely hued female constituents.

Second, the white Republican male legislators—like humans of other colors and humans of the only other sex in our sexually dimorphic species—evidently understand the scientific fact that the product of conception between two humans is a human and that more-developed humans have no moral right to exterminate less-developed humans based on the evil actions of the biological fathers of those less-developed humans.

The decision of those lawmakers to protect the lives of humans in the womb is neither cruel, unjust, sick, nor destructive. It is the attitudes of people like Frank who have no regard for the dignity, worth, and rights of incipient human lives and who perversely call the slaughter of humans in the womb “health care” that are cruel, unjust, sick, and destructive—attitudes that result in the literal destruction of a human life.

Word to Frank: The Constitution says not one word about abortion. The Declaration of Independence does, however, say this: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Another word to Frank: The right to have our religious beliefs influence political decisions and the law is guaranteed by the First Amendment. The First Amendment prohibits the establishment of a state religion. It does not prohibit citizens of faith from having their religious beliefs inform political decisions. (I would add that no “progressive” ever tells homosexuals who attend heretical churches that it is constitutionally impermissible for their religious beliefs about homosexuality to influence law or public policy.)

Perhaps Frank doesn’t know that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said this in his Letter from Birmingham Jail:

How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.

To “progressives,” the idea of a separation of church and state no longer points to the importance of protecting religious freedom from the intrusive power of the state but instead refers to coercively eradicating religious expression from the public square. Only secular worldviews, which are shaped by myopic, dogmatic, unproved assumptions, will be tolerated—you know, the kind of assumptions that secularists argue religious worldviews represent.

Such a distortion of the idea of a separation of church and state poses a danger not just to people of faith but to the welfare of the nation. Can anyone look honestly at the state of the culture and reasonably argue that American society has benefited from six decades of divestment of religious influence from the culture?

People from diverse faith traditions and no faith could all arrive at the same position on a particular public policy. For example, although Orthodox Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Baptists, and atheists may all oppose abortion because they value human life, the reasons for that valuation of life differ.

If there is a secular purpose for the law (e.g., to protect incipient human life), then voting for it does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The source of the various parties’ desires to protect incipient life is no business of the government. It would be not only absurd but also unethical for the government to try to ascertain the motives and beliefs behind anyone’s opposition to abortion and equally unethical for the government to assert that only those who have no religious faith may vote to oppose abortion. Such an assertion would most assuredly violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

Moreover, lawmaking absent an understanding that there exist moral truths that are objective and universal would represent an illegitimate and hubristic arrogation of power. Acknowledging that there is objective truth regarding what is right and wrong and that it is universal and knowable is essential to democratic institutions. What sense does outrage at human rights violations make if we assert there are no universal, transcendent, eternal, objective truths? And if we agree that these truths exist, that they transcend the subjective opinions of any particular individual, then what is their source other than a supernatural, eternal, transcendent being?

I guess JoAnn Lee Frank believes the exercise of raw governmental power and control over the lives of its citizens absent any acknowledgment of objective moral truth is a good thing. Others tremble at such an idea.

Like Leftists around the country, Leftists in Springfield are apoplectic that pro-life Americans are finally making some real progress in protecting babies in the womb. Rumors are circulating that anti-life lawmakers in Springfield are gearing up to push their bills very soon. Please speak out now against their efforts to make human slaughter even easier in Illinois.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to your state senator, state representative, and to Gov. Pritzker. Urge them to stop targeting innocent pre-born children and vulnerable women in Illinois. Ask your state senator, state representative, and Gov. Pritzker to oppose all anti-life legislation.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Letter-Exposes-Bigoted-Anti-Liberty-and-Anti-Life-Attitudes-of-Leftists_audio.mp3

Written by Daniel Horowitz

In case you thought that the potential to flip Justice Kennedy’s seat alone will bring us back to the constitutional promised land, think again. So long as the lower courts are not restrained, we will never return to the Constitution and the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

There is nothing more radical than a lower court granting standing to random plaintiffs to sue against non-coerced public prayer in county government meetings, prayers that have been going on since our founding. Yet a district judge in 2015 and the en banc decision of the radical Fourth Circuit in 2017 barred Rowan County, North Carolina, from opening council sessions with a prayer, similar to what our federal Congress does every day. [Last week], the U.S. Supreme Court refused to grant certiorari to the appeal from Rowan County, despite three years of being under a tyranny that the judges know is unconstitutional.

We shouldn’t even need to get into court precedent to understand our heritage and the true meaning of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. But just four years ago, in Town of Greece v. Galloway, Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority that as long as the prayer “comports with our tradition and does not coerce participation by nonadherents,” there is no room for judicial intervention. “To hold that invocations must be non-sectarian would force the legislatures sponsoring prayers and the courts deciding these cases to act as supervisors and censors of religious speech,” Kennedy wrote in the 2014 case.

The Fourth Circuit rejected precedent because this prayer, in the court’s estimation, was tantamount to coercion because it makes non-religious attendees feel like “outsiders” and “the overall atmosphere was coercive, requiring them to participate so they ‘would not stand out.’” (More on that case and how contrary it is to our founding here.)

For the U.S. Supreme Court not to take the appeal is egregious, especially given that the Sixth Circuit recently ruled the other way, triggering a circuit split. Justice Thomas, as has become his tradition recently, dissented from the decision to deny cert. Thomas noted, “The Fourth Circuit’s decision is both unfaithful to our precedents and ahistorical” and observed, “For as long as this country has had legislative prayer, legislators have led it.” Gorsuch joined the dissent.

There are a number of important observations to be made here in light of the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy, calling into question our ability to change the direction of the judiciary absent broader reforms:

• Aside from the contorted construction of the First Amendment inherent in this ruling, the courts are continuing to grant standing to random plaintiffs (as straw men for the ACLU) who have no justiciable injury-in-fact other than that their sensibilities are offended. The notion that you can even take such a policy to court is absurd and has grown the power of the courts to that of a legislature rather than an individualized adjudicative body. So long as the Left can lodge hundreds of frivolous lawsuits on important abstract policies every day and have the most liberal districts and circuits uphold them, the shift on the U.S. Supreme Court will not bring much relief. The ACLU and its offshoot organizations essentially have unlimited power so long as the U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t change its policies and more aggressively police the lower courts.

• The fact that Roberts knows there will be a more conservative fifth justice added to this wing of the court in the fall and still refused to take up the case is all the more disturbing and demonstrates that we cannot rely on him to overturn these insane lower court rulings expeditiously.

• There is no such thing as a conservative win at the U.S. Supreme Court. Lower court justices will always find hairs to split in any case that is not 100 percent identical and completely ignore precedent, something conservative lower court judges will never do in defiance of liberal U.S. Supreme Court opinions. This is why just hours after the high court affirmed the president’s full power to place conditions on entry, a California judge said that the president must find every single family entering illegally and unite them within 30 days. In another ludicrous ruling on immigration, a New York federal judge said yesterday that the Trump administration cannot promulgate a rule requiring the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement to personally sign off on the release of illegal immigrant child detainees. Yes, we have no sovereignty, and the president has no powers to even establish some oversight before swamping the country with foreign nationals, who flood into our schools and communities and who often join MS-13. Chief Justice Roberts said that there are no limits to the president’s power to regulate entry into the country, but that will not stop lower courts from granting standing to illegal aliens to sue against every minute piece of policy.

This is all to say that unless the lower courts are dealt with, we will continue to suffer increasingly at the hands of the lower courts even as the membership on the U.S. Supreme Court officially gets better. The bottom line is: We don’t have five Clarence Thomases and will not get them any time soon.

It is incumbent upon conservatives in Congress to create a movement to reorient the power of the lower courts. Rather than the default being that any random court can shut down our heritage and system of governance for years until the U.S. Supreme Court grants relief – if ever – the injunction should automatically be placed on hold until and unless the U.S. Supreme Court takes up the case and affirms the ruling. Granting a congressional-created court supremacy power over the other branches of government is a case of the inmates running the asylum. If the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to act supreme to its own underlings, then why should we respect its supposed “supremacism” over the rest of us?

This article was originally published at ConservativeReview.com

So much good news from the U.S. Supreme Court this week, including the announcement of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s impending retirement and the 5-4 decision in the NIFLA v. Becerra case, which asserts that the speech of pro-life crisis pregnancy centers is, indeed, protected speech.

Justice Kennedy surprised the nation by announcing his retirement at the end of July, giving President Donald Trump another opportunity to continue to restore respect for constitutional principles and historical American values. Perhaps we will see that proverbial long arc of justice bending more often toward justice.

Justice Kennedy surprised again, this time in NIFLA v. Becerra. Fascistic California lawmakers eager to impose their beliefs by any unethical means at their disposal passed “The California Reproductive Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency Act” (FACT Act) which requires the following:

Clinics that are licensed must notify women that California provides free or low-cost services, including abortions, and give them a phone number to call. Its stated purpose is to make sure that state residents know their rights and what health care services are available to them. Unlicensed clinics must notify women that California has not licensed the clinics to provide medical services.

Several crisis pregnancy centers sued, claiming that the law abridged their First Amendment speech protections. A district court voted against them, they appealed the decision, and then the nightmarish 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals voted against them as well. That decision was appealed to the Supreme Court, and in a 5-4 decision with Kennedy joining the majority, the Court decided in favor of the crisis pregnancy centers.

In his concurrence in NIFLA v. Becerra, Kennedy ridiculed and scolded the California legislature:

The California Legislature included in its official history the congratulatory statement that the Act was part of California’s legacy of ‘forward thinking.’ But it is not forward thinking to force individuals to ‘be an instrument for fostering public adherence to an ideological point of view [they] fin[d] unacceptable.’ It is forward thinking to begin by reading the First Amendment as ratified in 1791; to understand the history of authoritarian government as the Founders then knew it; to confirm that history since then shows how relentless authoritarian regimes are in their attempts to stifle free speech; and to carry those lessons onward as we seek to preserve and teach the necessity of freedom of speech for the generations to come. Governments must not be allowed to force persons to express a message contrary to their deepest convictions. Freedom of speech secures freedom of thought and belief. This law imperils those liberties.

This decision means, among other things, that pro-life crisis pregnancy centers cannot be forced to communicate information that violates their beliefs.

Kennedy used this teachable moment to educate lawmakers on the constitutional limits on their pernicious efforts to abuse the law to advance their ideological views. It’s a lesson children should be taught repeatedly in government schools but aren’t.

Buried within the NIFLA decision is something even more remarkable. According to Curtis Schube, Legal Counsel for the Pennsylvania Family Policy Institute, “NIFLA also overturned speech restrictions on therapists who assist people with unwanted same sex attraction.” Schube continues:

Laws which ban sexual orientation change efforts (“SOCE” for short) have increasingly entered the national conversation, most recently in California. Before California’s recent attempts to ban all forms of SOCE at any age, California already had such a law in place for minors. The law considered it “unprofessional conduct” to “seek to change sexual orientation” for a minor. Any counselor who violated the law faced professional discipline.  

California’s more recent SOCE laws take an even more extreme position. These laws ban all therapy that aims to change, or even reduce, sexual attraction to the same sex. Therefore, a patient who wants SOCE therapy cannot receive that service without risk to the professional counselor.

In Pickup v. Brown, same sex attracted minors and their parents, as well as counselors who wished to provide their services, claimed that this law violates their First Amendment rights to free speech and free expression. The Ninth Circuit, in 2013, determined that counseling is not speech, but rather professional “conduct.” The “First Amendment does not prevent a state from regulating treatment,” the Ninth Circuit concluded.

The Third Circuit upheld a similar law in New Jersey using the same logic in the 2014 case, King v. Governors of New Jersey. In relying partly upon Pickup, the Third Circuit concluded that counseling is speech (rather than conduct) but classifies that speech as professional speech. The Third Circuit states that a “professional’s services stems largely from her ability to apply… specialized knowledge to a client’s individual circumstances… Thus, we conclude that a licensed professional does not enjoy the full protection of the First Amendment.”

In the NIFLA case, the Ninth Circuit had justified the requirement for pregnancy centers to advertise for abortion as “professional speech,” just like the Ninth and Third Circuits had done for SOCE laws. The Supreme Court opinion overturning the Ninth Circuit’s NIFLA opinion, specifically identified Pickup and King as examples of “professional speech” protected by the First Amendment. Writing for the majority, Justice Thomas… stated: “Some Courts of Appeals have recognized ‘professional speech’ as a separate category of speech that is subject to different rules.” However, “speech is not unprotected merely because it is uttered by ‘professionals.’”

This is a paradigm shift in the existing precedents for SOCE bans.

Thomas seized the opportunity to provide protections to many other professions as well. “Professionals might have a host of good-faith disagreements, both with each other and with the government, on many topics in their respective fields.” He identifies doctors and nurses who disagree on the prevailing opinions on assisted suicide or medical marijuana as examples of good faith disagreements. So too are lawyers and marriage counselors who disagree on prenuptial agreements and divorces, and bankers and accountants who disagree on how to commit money to savings or tax reform. One would have to conclude that Justice Thomas’ intent is to protect all professionals from being regulated on matters of good faith disagreement.

There is no settled judgment within the mental health community regarding the efficacy and value of counseling for minors or adults who experience unwanted same-sex attraction. There is no settled judgment about the cause or causes of such attraction. Even the liberal American Psychological Association acknowledges that causation is unknown and is likely—in its view—a result of both nature and nurture. There is, however, fairly broad consensus within academia—including among homosexual scholars that “sexual orientation” is fluid. Kudos to Justice Thomas for providing a constitutional pathway to overturning bans that restrict the First Amendment speech rights of mental health professionals.

And kudos to Justice Anthony Kennedy for his week of surprises.

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In early January, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) overturned a longstanding policy that forbade churches from getting federal disaster relief money.

The rule change by the Trump Administration affected any houses of worship that were damaged on or after August 23, just before Hurricane Harvey devastated large areas of Texas and especially the Houston area.   It was a welcome relief also to congregations in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina in the path of Hurricane Irma, and to church communities in Puerto Rico that endured Hurricane Maria.

What might seem to be a neutral stance – that all damaged buildings in a disaster area could apply for aid financed by U.S. taxpayers – was denounced by atheist groups as a violation of the “separation of church and state” doctrine that has governed church-government relations since a series of Supreme Court rulings in the 1940s.

Beginning with Justice Hugo Black’s misapplication in Everson v. Board of Education (1947) of a reference in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury, Connecticut Baptists promising a “wall of separation” between church and state, the court effectively abandoned neutrality for hostility.

Federal officials’ initial singling out of religious institutions for denial of disaster aid is just one of many consequences from that serious misreading of President Jefferson’s letter — and of the First Amendment.  As historian David Barton notes, liberals now use the First Amendment as a sword to attack religious freedom, while conservatives use it as a shield.

Wrong-headed rulings have fundamentally transformed many constitutional protections into their opposite, but nowhere has more damage been done than to the First Amendment, the first part of which reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

America’s Founders, and particularly Mr. Jefferson and James Madison, who championed religious liberty, would be appalled at how those very words have been twisted to advance discrimination against religious speech and practice.

But perhaps a turnaround is on the horizon.

The Trump Administration’s appointment of judges who respect the Constitution is one good sign. Another is the recent move by FEMA to undo bureaucratic discrimination.  Still another is a pending Supreme Court case.  On December 5, the justices heard arguments in what could produce the most important First Amendment ruling in decades.

A Christian baker in Colorado who had declined to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding invoked First Amendment protection from having to use his artistic ability to express something against his values.  The case is Masterpiece Cake Shop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

Similar cases have arisen across the nation involving bakers, wedding planners, photographers and florists, all of whom say they have no problem with serving homosexual clients but draw the line at helping to facilitate weddings.  They say it is about the event, not the clients, a crucial distinction that the Court just might find persuasive.

Although all of these involve religious liberty, they could gain more support from liberals if they are based on freedom of expression.  After all, these are the same folks who think nude dancing is covered, so why not expressive cake baking?

In many arenas, the courts have invented new “rights” not envisioned by the Founders or ignored specific constitutional guarantees.  Without the Founders’ Biblically-based understanding of humans as flawed but redeemable, it’s easy to arrive at rulings, policies and laws that sound good on paper but are calamitous in the real world, producing a less responsible populace.

“If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments,” G.K. Chesterton observed, “they shall be governed by the ten thousand commandments.”  The less that people embrace personal responsibility, the more we need bureaucrats, police, prosecutors and prisons.

Thanks to the genius of the Framers, there is a way back.  The Constitution itself is the most articulate voice in any legal matter. Since people are policy, the short answer to how we can restore America’s constitutional freedoms and ordered liberty is to elect and appoint leaders and judges who respect the original text and defeat those who do not.

Another remedy would be to impeach lawless judges, something clearly authorized by the Constitution, but almost never exercised. Maybe we need the president to declare some of these judges a disaster.

This article originally posted on Townhall.com.

The ACLU is lending its full support to the reintroduction of the “Do No Harm Act” to make sure that religious freedom guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution and under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) doesn’t allow Christians and others of faith to deny services to homosexuals and transgenders. Passage of the Do No Harm Act, says the ACLU, will “prevent discrimination under the guise of religious liberty.”

But Matt Barber, founder of Barbwire.com and a constitutional attorney, says the ACLU is really fighting to create a license to discriminate against Christians.

“They presume with no real logic or history in law or any constitutional support that – as Chai Feldblum, President Obama’s appointment to the EEOC, once said – When religious liberty comes into conflict with so-called ‘gay rights’, gays win, Christians lose,” Barber says, paraphrasing Feldblum’s original remark.

He adds that nothing can be further from the truth. As he explains, the First Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the right to the free exercise of religion.

“The ACLU wants enumerated civil rights for these new-fangled gay rights, but these are not rights; they are gay wrongs,” Barber tells OneNewsNow. “These are behaviors and temptations that the Founding Fathers called a crime against nature.”

Barber concludes that imagining the Constitution supports “gay rights” is mind-boggling.

The Do No Harm Act to amend the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was reintroduced to Congress on July 13, 2017, by Democratic Congressmen Joe Kennedy (Massachusetts) and Bobby Scott (Virginia).

This article was originally posted at OneNewsNow.com

Tie her tubes, or we’ll sue you for sex discrimination, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) told a Catholic-affiliated hospital in California.

So after first declining to do so, Mercy Medical Center in Redding has now slated a tubal ligation for a woman after her scheduled C-section to deliver a baby in late September.

The ACLU’s demand is cut from the same cloth as the Obama Administration’s order under Obamacare to the Little Sisters of the Poor to violate their beliefs and provide contraceptives and abortifacients or pay crushing fines. That case is still in litigation.

The latest manifestation of the Left’s war on the First Amendment’s religious liberty guarantee began when Rachel Miller, a 32-year-old attorney, was rebuffed by hospital officials after she asked them to sterilize her following a planned live birth. In an Aug. 17 letter, the ACLU threatened to sue Mercy Medical Center, a facility run by the Sisters of Mercy and part of Dignity Health, which operates 40 hospitals — 22 of which are Catholic — in California, Nevada and Arizona, according to CNSNews.

Directive 53 of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops states:

“Direct sterilization of either men or women, whether permanent or temporary, is not permitted in a Catholic health care institution. Procedures that induce sterility are permitted when their direct effect is the cure or alleviation of a present and serious pathology and a simpler treatment is not available.”

Directive 70 states:

“Catholic health care organizations are not permitted to engage in immediate material cooperation in actions that are intrinsically immoral, such as abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and direct sterilization.”

Tough, said the ACLU, which regards all of the above as routine medical care, even though the procedures involve either taking an unborn child’s life, deliberately killing patients, helping them kill themselves, or rendering people sterile.

The ACLU noted that, ‘”getting one’s tubes tied,’ is the contraception method of choice for more than 30 percent of U.S. married women of reproductive age.”

Well, it’s one thing to voluntarily undergo it, as many do, but it is quite another to force others to perform it regardless of their beliefs. Given a deadline to respond by Aug. 24 or face a lawsuit, the hospital reversed its decision. In a brief statement, the hospital did not explain the about-face, other than to note, “tubal ligations are not performed in Catholic hospitals except on a case-by-case basis where a formal review by a committee of physicians and others gives permission to perform the procedure.”

The turnabout came even though the ACLU acknowledged that, “Miller’s insurance company had offered to cover her delivery at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, which would allow her to obtain the tubal ligation, but that hospital is more than 160 miles away.”

In a triumphant press release, the ACLU made it clear that this is only a small part of a larger campaign to break faith-based institutions to secular values.

“The reality remains that there is a clear conflict between the best interests of patients and the directives of the Catholic hospital system,” said Elizabeth Gill, senior attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. “Religious institutions that provide services to the general public should not be allowed to hold religion as an excuse to discriminate or deny important health care.”

The ACLU has also sued hospitals in Michigan and Washington State over their refusal to perform abortions, and has sued the federal Department of Health and Human Services to obtain documents that it claims show that Catholic relief agencies will not provide abortions or referrals to abortionists for unaccompanied immigrant children crossing America’s southern border.

On June 15, a federal district court dismissed the Michigan case as an unwarranted intrusion into religious doctrine. The ACLU has appealed.

In Washington State, in the face of an ACLU threat, the Skagit County Hospital District decided not to partner with a Catholic health provider. Later, the ACLU sued the district anyway on behalf of a woman who takes an acne drug that might cause birth defects and who wanted the option of abortion if she were to become pregnant.

This is the brave new world brought to us by social engineers who are turning the medical profession into an arm of the Left’s progressive agenda.

Don’t be surprised if the ACLU’s next move is to try to force the Sisters of Mercy to facilitate sex-change surgeries.

This article was originally posted at Townhall.com

Openly homosexual New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Bruni has announced his generous support for the right of people of faith “to believe what they do and say what they wish—in their pews, homes and hearts.” (emphasis added).

Wow, thanks, Mr. Bruni.

The hubris of “progressives,” particularly “progressives” of a particular rainbow-hued stripe, seems to know no bounds. According to Bruni, conservative Christians must relinquish their constitutionally protected right to the free exercise of religion on his altar to the god of homoeroticism.

A peevish Bruni starts his screed by moaning that he feels “chafed” by claims that homosexuals like himself are a threat to religious liberty and then proceeds to argue for a breathtaking limitation of religious liberty to only pews, homes, and hearts—which is actually no liberty at all. In so doing, Bruni reveals his lack of understanding of both the history of religious liberty and of what faith entails for followers of Christ.

The First Amendment was intended to protect the right of people of faith to practice their religion unencumbered by government, which has the unruly tendency to intrude into areas of human life into which it ought not intrude. The Free Exercise Clause was intended to provide broad protections for the exercise of religion—which is not limited to pews, homes, and hearts, and not abrogated by homoeroticism.

Homosexuals and their “progressive” ideological allies who condemn orthodox Christian beliefs are trying to arrogate to themselves the right to determine what the free exercise of religion for orthodox Christians entails. For true followers of Christ, the practice of religion is a holistic endeavor—at least as holistic as homosexuals claim their romantic and erotic desires are. Imagine someone saying that he supports the right of homoerotically-oriented men and women to believe what they do and say what they wish only in their churches, homes, hearts, and maybe the Center on Halsted.

Or imagine if those homosexuals who attend churches that embrace late 20^th Century, heterodox theology and as a result support legalized same-sex faux-“marriage” were told that they could believe what they wish and say what they wish only in their pews, homes, and hearts. In other words, they should lose the right to affect public policy or allow their business practices to reflect their religious beliefs.

In a hyperbolic rhetorical flourish, Bruni asks, “why should a merchant whose version of Christianity condemns homosexuality get to exile gays and lesbians?” Exiling gays and lesbians? Wow again.

The inconvenient truth for Bruni is that Christian florists and bakers are seeking neither to exile homosexuals nor to refuse to serve customers who affirm a homoerotic identity. Rather, they’re refusing to use their time, gifts, and labor to make a particular product that celebrates an event that the God they serve abhors. In reality, these same florists and bakers have actually served on multiple occasions the very homosexuals who are suing them for not making products for their “weddings.”

Bruni then digs in with his floppy shovel, suggesting that not making a cake or floral arrangement  for a same-sex “wedding” is analogous to a Muslim store-owner refusing to serve a woman whose head is not covered or a Mormon hairdresser turning away clients “who saunter in with frappuccinos.”

In other words, Bruni suggests that when a baker chooses not to make a particular product for a particular type of event—and a type of event for which this baker has never made a product—it is analogous to a business-owner demanding that a customer adopt the owner’s religious practices in order to be able to purchase a product or service.

But of course, no Christian florist or baker has demanded that customers adopt his or her religious practices or beliefs in order to purchase a product or receive a service. Conservative Christian bakers sell their cookies and cupcakes to homosexuals. Christian photographers take photos of homosexuals. Christian florists sell flowers to homosexuals. No Christian has turned away customers who saunter in wearing a PRIDE t-shirt. And Christian business-owners do not demand that customers wear crucifixes or take Communion in order to be served.

It’s important to note this critical distinction: A ceremony that celebrates the union of two people of the same-sex is not identical to a ceremony that celebrates the union of two people of opposite sexes. Such a ceremony is the antithesis of a marriage, which is why many orthodox Christians will not use the terms “wedding” or “marriage” to describe the union of two people of the same-sex.

Calling a homoerotic union a “marriage” does not make it a marriage in reality. Just as legally construing a human as 3/5 person would not make him in reality only 3/5 a person, the foolish decision of foolish people to recognize legally a homoerotic union as a “marriage” does not make it in reality a marriage.

So, the request of homosexuals for a cake for their “wedding” is not the same as a request from a heterosexual couple for a cake for their wedding. Homosexuals are seeking to compel bakers to make a product for an entirely different type of event, and one which the bakers believe mocks real marriage and offends God.

Bruni trots out and beats the dying but still useful homosexuality = race horse: “As these lamentations about religious liberty get tossed around, it’s worth remembering that racists have used the same argument to try to perpetuate segregation.” It’s also worth remembering that the fact that one group of people with a gross misunderstanding of Scripture appealed to religious liberty to defend evil practices does not mean all groups who appeal to religious liberty are guilty of engaging in evil practices or of grossly misinterpreting Scripture.

Moreover, it makes no rational sense to compare a condition like race that has no inherent connection to either feelings or volitional acts to homoeroticism which is constituted solely by feelings and volitional acts.

Since Bruni is busy declaring the boundaries in which people of faith may exercise their religion, maybe Bruni can help us out by answering these questions:

• Should a male Muslim massage therapist whose faith prohibits him from touching unrelated women be required to give massages to unrelated women?

• Should a Mormon hairdresser whose faith teaches that polygamy is profoundly sinful be required to use her skills to style the hair of brides in a polygamist’s commitment ceremony?

• Should a Christian whose faith teaches that racism is sinful be required to bake a cake decorated with a white supremacy message for a Neo-Nazi event?

• Should a baker who identifies as a “gay Christian” and attends a theologically heterodox church—perhaps a Metropolitan Community Church or a Dignity USA chapter—be compelled to make a cake for a National Organization for Marriage event?

Bruni makes clear the error in his thinking when he says that Christian bakers, photographers, and florists “are routinely interacting with customers who behave in ways they deem sinful. They don’t get to single out one group of supposed sinners. If they’re allowed to, who’s to say they’ll stop at that group?”

Bruni’s rendering of the plight of Christian owners of wedding-related businesses is backwards. Christian owners of wedding-related businesses are not singling out and refusing to serve a particular group of sinners. Rather, some members of a particular group of sinners are trying to force Christian owners of wedding-related businesses to participate in their sin.

Bruni presumptuously proclaims that “Baking a cake, arranging roses, running an inn: These aren’t religious acts…”

Well, God may beg to differ with Bruni:

• “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31).

• And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col. 3:17).

• “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men…” (Col. 3:23)

• “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness…” (Jer. 22:13).

• “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10).

• “For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.  Therefore do not become partners with them; for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.  Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.  For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret” (Eph. 5: 5-12).

Due to the astonishing influence of homosexual and “trans” activism and the unbiblical cowardice of Christians—including especially Christian leaders—we’re going to see the government increasingly making demands on Christians with which Christians ought not comply. It is during those times that Christians should remember that we are commanded to “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

The Truth Project

First Annual IFI Worldview Conference
featuring Dr. Del Tackett
April 10-11, 2015

CLICK HERE for Details

Written by Jonathan S. Tobin

Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court once again affirmed that the so-called “wall of separation” that exists between church and state is not quite the edifice that liberals would like it to be.  In Town of Greece v. Galloway, the court ruled today that a village in upstate New York did not violate the First Amendment in allowing members of clergy to begin town board meetings with prayers, some of which were explicitly sectarian (and usually Christian) rather than ecumenical. The narrow vote along the usual 5-4 conservative/liberal lines is bound to incite many on the left to express fears about the court trying to turn the U.S. into a “Christian nation.”

But in upholding the rights of Greece, N.Y. to have meetings begin with a religious invocation, the court has done no such thing. Rather, it has simply affirmed a long American tradition of beginning public meetings with prayer. Even more to the point, by refusing to be drawn into the question of regulating the content of such prayers, the court has preserved religious liberty rather than constricting it. The decision also provides a timely reminder that for all the talk about separation walls, the main point of the First Amendment is to preserve freedom of religion, not freedom from any mention or contact with faith.

In recent decades, the “separationist” position on church/state interaction has grown more, rather than less, aggressive. In its 1962 Engel v. Vitale decision that banned public school prayers, the court rightly ruled that school districts had no business imposing what were often sectarian prayers on children. Given that students were not free agents who could accept or reject these prayers with impunity, it was clear that the practice could easily be considered an “establishment” of a state religion that is prohibited by the First Amendment. But purely ceremonial affairs such as invocations before legislative proceedings cannot be reasonably interpreted in the same light. Since, as Justice Anthony Kennedy noted in the majority opinion, such prayers go back to the First Congress and have been repeatedly upheld since then, any attempt to overturn these precedents was unwarranted.

It is true that for any member of a minority faith or for atheists, the repeated use of Christian prayers at Greece’s public meetings might be tedious or possibly offensive. But in the absence of a more diverse group of local clergy in this hamlet not far from the shores of Lake Ontario, the town’s choices were between either censoring the prayers of local clergy who were willing to take part or eliminating the practice. Clearly there are many on the left who would have been comfortable with the former and well pleased with the latter.

But what must be acknowledged is that being put in a position where one must listen to the prayers of another faith is not a violation of one’s constitutional rights. A ceremonial prayer, like the words “In God We Trust” on our coinage, does not transform our republic into one with a state religion. So long as those participating in such gestures are not attacking other faiths or those who do not believe in religion, their words are not an establishment of religion or impinge on the freedom of those listening. Adults at a town board meeting are not like schoolchildren in a closed class. They can join in the prayer or not at their own pleasure with no fear of punishment.

At the heart of this issue is the notion that any expression of faith in the public square is a violation of a vast mythical wall that some believe must completely separate religion from state. But while the Founders explicitly and with good reason forbade any one sect, denomination, or faith from being empowered by and identified with the state, they did not intend the First Amendment to be used as a shield to prevent Americans from any contact with religion. To the contrary, they saw faith as having an important role in preserving a democratic nation and a civil society.

There may have been a time when religious minorities and non-believers felt that the identification of the state with the faith of the Christian majority resulted in discriminatory practices that compromised their rights. But what is at stake here are not cases of bias or religious rule but rather the desire of some to be insulated from expressions of faith, and that is a privilege that the First Amendment does not provide them.

As we have seen with the efforts by the Obama administration to restrict the rights of religious believers in the Hobby Lobby case concerning the ObamaCare contraception mandate, there is a not inconsiderable body of opinion that would like to promote a cribbed definition of religious liberty that would be restricted to prayers in houses of worship or private homes. But Americans have always defined religious freedom in a more open and expansive manner that allowed them to practice their faith on the public square rather than only in private. It is that rich legal tradition that the court has upheld in Town of Greece. Though only a narrow majority is defending that principle on the Supreme Court at present, it is one that is well worth preserving.

This article was originally posted at the CommentaryMagazine.com website.

It’s hard to think of a more dangerous threat to First Amendment freedoms than the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) scheme a few months ago to station government “researchers” in newsrooms.

It had all the makings of a 1984-style intimidation of journalists, and it was allegedly abandoned shortly after a public outcry.

I say “allegedly” because our betters never give up their quest to dictate to us what is allowable speech. They wait until they think we’re not paying attention, and try again. A couple of years ago, they floated, but abandoned, the old Fairness Doctrine, which throttled talk radio before the FCC under President Reagan rescinded it in 1987.

In recent days, an even more hare-brained plan has arisen, courtesy of Massachusetts Democratic U.S. Sen. Ed Markey and Democratic New York U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries. They’re sponsoring a bill to have federal researchers comb through broadcast radio and television, cable and public access television, “commercial mobile services and other electronic media” – and get this – the Internet – for any communications that may have prompted violent acts and “hate crimes.”

Given that our ruling elites insist that merely stating that marriage necessarily involves a man and a woman is evidence of “hate,” this is scary stuff.

The bill’s language assures that the eventual report on all this data will include recommendations “consistent with the First Amendment.”

Remember, this crowd thinks the Constitution is a “living document” constructed primarily of judicial silly putty.

The good news is that “The Hate Crime Reporting Act of 2014,” introduced in early April, is not going anywhere in the current Congress – we hope.

Even liberal commentator Alan Colmes has raked it over the coals. Noting that Markey and Jeffries tied their companion bills to the deadly shootings on April 13 at a Jewish Center in Kansas, Colmes writes, “no matter how many heinous crimes are committed by deplorable white supremacists, it’s inane to make the case that it’s because [of] something someone said on the radio.”

Besides, there’s more than enough left-wing censorship in the media without the government getting into the act. The Los Angeles Times’ letter editor, for instance, announced last October that he would no longer run letters from people who deny the existence of man-made climate change. As with the 1970s prediction of a coming ice age, the science is apparently settled. Well, okay. At least the Times is out and proud with its suppression of skeptics. Thanks for the warning.

Over on Facebook, the censors are hard at work, removing postings that offend liberal sensibilities. This is not to be confused with Mozilla Firefox’s recent forced resignation of CEO Brendan Eich for donating $1,000 six years ago to a campaign for California’s Proposition 8 marriage amendment.

A few days ago, Facebook removed a posting by Fox News and Commentary radio host Todd Starnes that was slyly critical of former Republican Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Mr. Bush had said that “many” illegal immigrants came here “because they had no other means to work to be able to provide for their family. Yes, they broke the law, but it’s not a felony. It’s an act of love.”

Using as a platform the news about armed federal agents seizing the cattle of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy (who has since gotten into scalding hot water over his beyond-insensitive racial remarks), Mr. Starnes wrote:

“Rancher Bundy should’ve told the feds that those were Mexican cows—who came across the border illegally to seek better grazing opportunities. It was an act of love.”

Well, they didn’t find this amusing in the Facebook guard tower, where they donned their Ministry of Truth helmets and pushed buttons. Presto, the posting was gone, along with thousands of comments. In a column published on the Christian website CharismaNews.com, Mr. Starnes relates what next transpired:

“‘We removed something your page posted,’ Facebook told me in a rather unpleasant message. ‘We removed the post below because it doesn’t follow the Facebook Community Standards.’”

Mr. Starnes continues: “I reached out to Facebook to find out which part of the message violated their standards. Never heard back. I suspect I should’ve used the term illegal alien cows.

“It’s not the first time my postings have been bleeped by the Facebook Purge Police….I’ve been banished, blocked and censored for writing about Chick-fil-A, God, the Bible, Paula Deen, Cracker Barrel rocking chairs, sweet tea, Jesus, the Gaither Vocal Band, the Gideons, the National Rifle Association and June bugs.”

It’s not possible in one column to chronicle all the ways the political Left is suppressing dissent to turn America into a socialist paradise. They want it to be a place where capitalism is a memory, the U.S. is the military equivalent of Tunisia, everyone is subsistent on the government, three people of any sex can marry, guns are confiscated, Christianity is effectively silenced, Tea Party membership is actionable, and illegal immigrants vote early and often.

It’s up to the rest of us to do what we can to make sure their dream doesn’t become our nightmare.

This article was originally posted at the Townhall.com website.

U.S. Senator Edward J. Markey (D-MA) has introduced legislation for the federal government to monitor and analyze speech on the Internet, television, and radio looking for anything it considers “hate speech.”

The Hate Crime Reporting Act of 2014 (S.2219) would capture Internet and other telecommunications that the government interprets as encouraging hate crimes based on gender, race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.

This is a bad bill, even to the liberal Boston Herald editorial staff. It mandates that the government monitor and analyze speech and press statements that are protected by the First Amendment. The wording is deliberately fuzzy, so that although it sounds like it only addresses constitutionally unprotected speech, it reaches much further.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to Illinois’ U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk asking them to reject S. 2219.  The federal government has no business monitoring constitutionally protected speech.

The danger of this bill
Although the bill innocuously purports to analyze electronic speech that might “advocate or encourage violent acts or hate crimes,” it gives the government far reaching power to monitor constitutionally protected speech…even yours.

We believe S.2219 is a cloaking device for silencing Christians and advancing the homosexual agenda that Sen. Markey wholeheartedly supports.

For example:

• Pastors who upload a message promoting God’s word on marriage on the church’s website could be monitored by the government under U.S. Senator Markey’s bill and have the message labeled as “hate speech.”
• AFA’s Christian radio network and Christian conservative websites will be tracked for promoting natural marriage as between only one man and one woman.
• Even individuals who post personal beliefs on their Facebook page would be subject to government spies and covert monitoring.