An Illinois Appellate Court just ruled that Hobby Lobby violated the Illinois Human Rights Act by refusing to allow a male employee who masquerades as a woman and goes by the name of “Meggan Renee” Sommerville to use the women’s restroom. If this decision is not appealed and overturned, it will mean the end of sex-separated private spaces in all companies in Illinois, including stores and restaurants.

Mark Thomas Sommerville was hired as the man he is and always will be by Hobby Lobby in 1998. In 2009, he began cross-sex hormone-doping to conceal his biological sex, and in 2010, he began cross-dressing. That same year, he legally changed his name and obtained a falsified driver’s license and Social Security card that wrongly identify his sex as female. He also “formally informed Hobby Lobby of her [sic] transition and her [sic] intent to begin using the women’s bathroom at the store.”

Hobby Lobby, justifiably and wisely, told him he could not use the women’s bathroom that was available to both female employees and female customers. Hobby Lobby, however, foolishly changed Sommerville’s personnel records and benefits information to reflect his “gender identity” rather than his sex.

Despite Hobby Lobby’s restroom directive, the self-absorbed Sommerville continued to use the women’s restrooms which resulted in Sommerville being written up. After “breaking down in tears,” he sashayed over to Illinois’ leftist Human Rights Commission to file a complaint. The Chicago Tribune reported,

The commission found Hobby Lobby violated the Illinois Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on gender identity in both workplaces and places of public accommodation, such as public restrooms. The commission determined that the company owed Sommerville $220,000 in damages, at the time the highest amount ever awarded by the commission for emotional distress.

The three Appellate Court justices, Ann B. Jorgenson, Mary S. Schostok, and Kathryn E. Zenoff, who decided this case are all Republicans. (But are they women? And what is a woman?)

So colossally self-centered is Sommerville that he was willing to forsake his marriage for his masquerade. By choosing an appropriated false identity over his marriage, Sommerville, who self-identifies as a Christian, clearly violated his marriage oath.

Forbes reports that “According to her [sic] lawyer, the decision applies statewide to every transgender individual and every public bathroom.”

The lawyer to whom Forbes refers is homosexual Jacob Meister, who is the founder of an “LGBTQ” advocacy organization. Meister ironically said, “To use the bathroom at work, without being humiliated and frightened … is a fundamental right.” Well then, are biological women entitled to use bathrooms free of the presence of biological men when the presence of those men makes them feel humiliated and frightened?

The Tribune also reported this:

There’s a woman’s restroom at the East Aurora Hobby Lobby where Meggan Sommerville works, but for 10 years, she’s [sic] been barred from using it because she [sic] is transgender. She [sic] has had to punch out of work and cross a parking lot in the rain or snow to access the bathroom at a fast-food restaurant, she [sic] said.

In 2013, Hobby Lobby installed a single occupancy unisex restroom to accommodate Sommerville’s ontological fiction, so he did not have to cross the parking lot in rain or snow for the past eight years.

The ruling by the triumvirate of female GOP justices includes this fanciful, science-denying statement:

Sommerville, who was born in 1969, was designated as male at birth.

Surely, three bright appellate court justices know that babies aren’t “designated” a sex at birth. Surely, even attorneys know enough science to understand that the sex of babies is identified and recorded at birth. And surely, they know that one’s sex never changes.

The triumvirs continued with their non-sense:

In 2007, Sommerville began transitioning from male to female. In 2009, she [sic] disclosed her [sic] female gender identity to some staff at Hobby Lobby

Do chemical and surgical cosmetic alterations really “transition” humans from male to female? If so, can such cosmetic alterations transition other mammals from male to female? Can such cosmetic alterations (e.g., human growth hormone injections, fillers, facelifts, knee lifts, tummy tucks, laser and chemical treatments) transition old humans to young? If not, why not?

The ruling inadvertently admits an inconvenient truth: The justices write that Sommerville felt “embarrassed and humiliated” by having to use the men’s bathroom because he identifies as a woman. If his embarrassment and humiliation when having to use a bathroom with those whose “gender identity” he doesn’t share is justification for the sexual integration of bathrooms, then why isn’t the embarrassment and humiliation of women when having to use a bathroom with those whose sex they don’t share justification for sex-segregated bathrooms?

Since the Illinois Human Rights Act that prohibits discrimination in places of public accommodation specifically exempts private spaces such as restrooms and locker rooms, many wonder how this queer, inequitable ruling came about. It came about via some rhetorical chicanery—some leftist sleight-of-tongue. Here’s what happened when too few were paying attention.

1.) Leftists passed laws that allow men and women to obtain legally falsified drivers’ licenses, birth certificates, and Social Security cards that misidentify their sex.

2.) The Illinois Human Rights Act that bans discrimination based on “sexual orientation,” declared that “sexual orientation” includes “gender identity”—something virtually no state had done and something which “progressives” ordinarily feverishly proclaim is wrong. They ordinarily proclaim that sexual orientation and gender identity are wholly different phenomenon. Any disagreement is considered ignorant, hateful bigotry. So, why did they make this queer conflation? We shall see shortly.

3.) The rights-trampling trio used the falsified drivers’ licenses, birth certificates, and Social Security cards—rather than objective reality—to define “sex.”

Here’s what they wrote:

Hobby Lobby contends that an individual’s “sex”—the status of being male or female—is an immutable condition. However, the plain language of the [Illinois Human Rights] Act does not support this conception. There is simply no basis in the Act for treating the “status” of being male or female as eternally fixed. … Illinois law has explicitly recognized in a variety of ways that gender identity is a primary determinant of a person’s “sex” for legal purposes. … under Illinois law, an individual’s gender identity is an accepted basis for determining that individual’s legal “sex.” … Given the interrelationship between “sex” and gender identity in Illinois law, the record establishes that Sommerville’s sex is unquestionably female.

Hobby Lobby contends that, rather than applying the definition of “sex” provided by the Act, the Commission should have imported a definition of “sex” found in a dictionary, namely: one of two “forms of individuals” that “are distinguished especially on the basis of their reproductive organs and structures.” …  However, it is unnecessary to resort to dictionary definitions where a statute itself defines a term. … Here, the Act provides a clear definition of “sex,” eliminating any need to look further.

While “sex” is not eternally fixed in the Upside Down formerly known as the Land of Lincoln, the Illinois Human Rights Act—our state bible—is.

When the justices say that the Illinois Human Rights Act does not recognize sex as an eternally fixed, immutable condition and when they say that Illinois law recognizes subjective feelings about maleness or femaleness (i.e., “gender identity”) as the determiner of “sex” for “legal purposes,” they have severed laws and the practices required by law from reality.

The justices make clear that objective reality has no bearing on their decision. Henceforth, leftist-constructed, science-denying statutory law determines what “sex” is.  No need to consult science or reality. No need to consult even a dictionary—well, not until our sex-impersonators change dictionaries. Then we will be free to consult them.

This constitutes a despotic attempt to manipulate language in the law to impose “trans”-cultic practices on all of America and results in dogmatic claims like this from “Ethan” Rice, senior attorney at the destructive law firm Lambda Legal:

Meggan Sommerville is a woman, full stop. … Well-established state and federal law says so, but most importantly, Meggan Sommerville says so.

Nope, not a woman, full stop. And saying so isn’t what determines someone is a woman. Science does. And that’s why “Ethan” Rice is a woman–a woman who pretends to be a man and is married to another woman who pretends to be a man. In other words, Rice is a lesbian in a faux-marriage.

The foolish justices wrote this foolishness:

The presence of a transgender person in a bathroom poses no greater inherent risk to privacy or safety than that posed by anyone else who uses the bathroom. …  In arguing that Sommerville’s use of the women’s bathroom will cause a legitimate intrusion upon privacy, Hobby Lobby “ignores the reality of how a transgender [person] uses the bathroom: ‘by entering a stall and closing the door.’” … We will not prioritize fears or discomfort that have no factual basis in the record. “Private biases may be outside the reach of the law, but the law cannot, directly or indirectly, give them effect.”

If the presence of a biological male who wishes he were or falsely believes he is a woman poses no greater inherent risk to the privacy of girls and women than that posed by women who use the bathroom, then why prohibit non-cross-dressing biological males from using women’s bathrooms? How does cross-dressing change women’s feelings about privacy?

Wouldn’t “entering a stall and closing the door” be sufficient to prevent intrusion of a “cisgender” man upon the privacy of women?

Why should the law give effect to the “discomfort” or “private biases” of women who oppose the presence of “cisgender” biological men in their private spaces?

The problem of where cross-dressing humans in cosmetically altered skin costumes engage in bodily functions is a problem of their own creation. The solution must not be demanding that normal girls, boys, women, and men relinquish their privacy to accommodate the disordered desires of persons of the opposite sex.

I hope by now, people realize that it is both foolish and dangerous to capitulate to the “trans” cult ever—not even in seemingly trivial things. Hobby Lobby agreed to change Sommerville’s sex on forms and then that capitulation was used against it by the justices:

[Sommerville’s] status of being female has been recognized not only by the governments of this state and the nation but also by Hobby Lobby itself, all of which have changed their records to acknowledge her [sic] female sex.

I hope by now, people also realize that once the terms “gender identity” and “gender expression” are included in anti-discrimination law, there remains no legal way to maintain any sex-separated private spaces for anyone anywhere. These laws spell the end of all public recognition of sex differences. If cross-dressing men must be able to use women’s restrooms and locker rooms, then so too can “cisgender” men. Why? Because prohibiting “cisgender” men from using women’s spaces while allowing biological men who identify as “transgender” to use women’s spaces would constitute discrimination based on both sex and “gender identity.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Hobby-Lobby-Loses-Right-to-Maintain-Sex-Separate-Bathrooms-80.mp3

Between now and Labor Day, you can double the impact of your tax deductible donations to IFI!

A group of donors are working with us to offer a $40,000 dollar-for-dollar matching challenge
to help us raise $80,000 for “Rescuing the Children” initiative here in Illinois!

Speaking at a recent conference on Social Justice and the Gospel, Dr. Voddie Baucham, Jr. addressed the meaning of social justice and explains that the term doesn’t mean what we think it means. Dr. Bauchman is a Dean of Theological Education at African Christian University in Zambia.

He begins by quoting Dr. William Young, who defines social justice as the redistribution of advantages and resources to disadvantaged groups to satisfy their rights to social and economic equality.  In theological terms, God demands justice, and therefore injustice is “sin.”  Accordingly, any disagreements cannot be allowed as this would be “injustice” and contrary to the Divine will.

But It’s important to remember that social justice is not about whether the individual experiences success.  It is always about the group: it is important to identify disadvantaged groups that require justice.  And it’s not about numbers.  Take women, for example.  They comprise more than half the population but are still considered disadvantaged.

This leads to the concept of “identity politics,” i.e., what politicians will do for “our group.”  If some group is not doing well – never mind any particular individual – we need to find out who is to blame.  There needs to be a redistribution of resources to address any disparities.

If we claim that the individuals in any particular group are responsible for their own disadvantages, that would amount to the dreaded accusation of “victim blaming.”  In fact, social justice assumes that those in “privileged” groups – as, for example, white people, who are successful, financially or otherwise, have acquired those resources illegitimately.  According to social justice, the answer is to redress the perceived grievances.  The fact that extremely high-paying professional sports is dominated by players of another color is an anomaly that is ignored or considered just.

Social justice demands that resources that are “unjustly” gained be transferred to those of an underrepresented minority.  Accordingly, a white person who started from nothing and became successful means nothing and is still considered the unjust one.  On the other hand, someone from a minority family of financial means deserves whatever privileges they enjoy.

Thus, central to the idea of social justice is the idea of “redistributive justice.”  According to its adherents, only this can guarantee genuine democracy.

Dr. Baucham cites the largest online professed Christian community that is claiming to fight for social justice.  The site, Faithful America, lists their victories and exploits in fighting for social justice.  Topping the list is their fight against a company called Hobby Lobby, which has stood for Christian values.  Number two on the list of Faithful America’s list of “victories” is convincing Google to delist World Vision, a worldwide Christian ministry.  Third on the list is their success in forcing MSNBC to drop the Family Research Council, which fights for Christian values in Washington D.C.

A pattern is beginning to emerge.  Faithful America also defended a pastor who was defrocked for performing a same-sex wedding in violation of the stated principles of his denomination.  If we recall the social justice assertion that injustice is “sin,” then standing for traditional marriage and refusing to sanction gay marriage is considered “sinful” behavior.

According to Dr. Baucham, the social justice movement centers on three main areas.  The first is minority equality; the second is feminism and women’s rights; and the third is the LGBTQA+ movement, which stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, the allies of the aforementioned, and anyone other aberrant sexuality not on this list.

Dr. Baucham refers to the classic gay propaganda strategy book of the last century, After the Ball, How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Homosexuality in the 1990’s.  The book describes three strategies to accomplish this goal: desensitizing, jamming, and conversion.  All involve acclimatizing “normal” heterosexuals to seeing – and eventually accepting – LGBTQA+ people by “bombarding” them through television, movies, the media, and the educational system to “getting used to” their abnormal lifestyle.  Those who resist are to be identified with neo-Nazis and the KKK, etc.

Thus, it has come about that those who hold to marriage and family as historically understood have become the enemies of “social justice.”  If such a thing can be imagined, it has come to the point where the views of traditionalists are considered “sinful,” and worthy only of an unforgivable disapproval until if and when they “see the light” and not only tolerate but celebrate the homosexual lifestyle.

This video and his message is well worth your attention:

IFI Worldview Conference

On Saturday, March 16, 2019, the Illinois Family Institute will be hosting our annual Worldview Conference. This coming year, we will focus on the “transgender” revolution. We already have commitments from Dr. Michelle Cretella, President of the American College of Pediatricians; Walt Heyer, former “transgender” and contributor to Public Discourse; Denise Schick, Founder and Director of Help 4 Families, and daughter of a man who “identified” as a woman; and Doug Wilson, who is a Senior Fellow of Theology at New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho, and pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho .

The Transgender Ideology:
What Is It? Where Will It Lead? What is the Church’s Role?
Click here for more information.

When Bill Clinton was running for president in 1992, his campaign strategist James Carville gave him the formula for success: Focus on the economy. In Carville’s famous words, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Today, President Donald Trump could easily campaign with a similar mantra, since many Americans are pleased with the economic uptick under his leadership.

But, in terms of a lasting legacy, in terms of societal impact, the real mantra should be, “It’s the courts, stupid.” You can be assured that Trump and his Republican colleagues have a good grasp on this already.

And now, with a strengthened majority in the U.S. Senate, the sky is the limit with the good they can do.

As noted (with great concern) by Jennifer Bendery in the Huffington Post, “With a newly strengthened Senate majority, Mitch McConnell can plow ahead with reshaping the nation’s courts.”

Yes, “McConnell has said all along that judicial confirmations are his No. 1 priority as Senate leader. That won’t change going forward.”

And this, in fact, is a major reason many of us voted for Donald Trump: U.S. Supreme Court appointees and, more broadly, federal court appointees at all levels. Transforming the courts was our No. 1 concern.

How much has been done already?

Bendery writes, “To date, the Republican leader has confirmed two U.S. Supreme Court justices, 29 circuit judges and 53 district judges. He’s confirmed so many circuit judges, many of whom are strongly anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ rights and anti-voting rights, and nearly all of whom are ideologues handpicked by the conservative Federalist Society, that 1 in 7 seats on the U.S. circuit courts are now filled by judges nominated by Trump.”

Some might say, “But this is not healthy. The courts will now become distinctly conservative. They’re supposed to be neutral and impartial.”

To the contrary, the goal is to get the courts back to where they’re supposed to be, namely, rightly interpreting our Constitution rather than creating new laws. Yet for decades, many of the courts have swung dangerously left, leading to rampant (and dangerous) judicial activism.

Judicial activism, in turn, has become a direct threat to our freedoms. (For Mark Levin’s now classic exposé, see here.)

A lengthy, 2013 article published by the Heritage Foundation gave three glaring examples of judicial activism whereby the courts were guilty of “Contorting the Text” (meaning the First Amendment), “Playing Legislator,” and “Abusing Precedent.” (For the liberal argument that it is conservatives who are the judicial activists, see here. For an effective rebuttal to this position, see here.)

Since 2013, we have seen the courts redefine the very nature of marriage (in 1,000 lifetimes, the Founders would have never envisioned this) as well as rule against fundamental freedoms of conscience and speech. And it was judicial activism that made abortion legal in 1973.

Sixty-million slaughtered babies later – far more than the population of Canada (about 38 million), even more than the population of England (about 55 million), and roughly equal to the population of Italy – our nation is still reeling from this unjust and unconstitutional ruling.

It’s about time we had a reformation in our courts.

More recently, what if the U.S. Supreme Court had ultimately ruled against Hobby Lobby? Against the Little Sisters of the Poor? Against Jack Phillips?

Back in 1962, without any legal precedent, the U.S. Supreme Court removed organized public prayer from our schools.

Fifty years later, on June 16, 2012, the Saturday Evening Post ran this story: “Atheists v. Evangelists: The School Prayer Decision of 1962.”

“50 years ago, school prayer was declared unconstitutional, causing Billy Graham to wonder if we were becoming a spiritually-bankrupt nation.”

The article begins with these simple but striking lines: “How much has America changed in the past 50 years? Imagine kids in American public schools now starting each day with a prayer.” (For my answer to the question of how much America has changed since the early 1960s, see here.)

Earlier in the year, Graham had warned Post readers that “if the Court decrees negatively, another victory will be gained by those forces which conspire to remove faith in God from the public conscience.

“American democracy rests on the belief in the reality of God and His respect for the individual. Ours is a freedom under law. But it is also a freedom that will evaporate if the religious foundations upon which it has been built are taken away.”

Of course, he was right, although he had no idea of just how radically the society would be transformed in the decades that followed.

As for prayer in the schools, from the founding of our nation until 1962, it never occurred to the courts that this was a violation of separation of church and state. It was judicial activism that made this landmark decision.

And even though the prayer itself was quite generic and any student could opt out of praying, it was the symbolism that mattered. Prayer no longer belonged in our schools.

All of which leads us back to where we started: It’s the courts, stupid.

Thank God President Trump is keeping his promise to nominate conservative justices – meaning, Constitutionalists – to the courts. Keeping this up for two more years (or, better still, 6 more years) could well be his greatest legacy, not to mention the greatest legal bulwark against the loss of our fundamental freedoms.

As for those who protest, “Trump and the Republicans have no right to do this!”, to the contrary, the American people elected them to office.

They are doing what we the people have empowered them to do.

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.com.

Recall that liberals attacked Chick-Fil-A, the popular fast food chain, in 2012 when the CEO said he opposed same-sex marriage. Yet days later conservatives lined up for more than chicken sandwiches and waffle fries – they sought to express support on “Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day.”

According to the survey, more than a quarter of conservatives and more than a third of liberals are willing to change their shopping habits based on a company’s social stance, says George Barna, executive director of the American Culture and Faith Institute.

“When we look at conservatives,” he says, “they’re most likely to be no longer buying products from Starbucks, or Target, or Wells Fargo, or Disney.”

Liberals, meanwhile, avoid Chick-fil-A, Hobby Lobby, Wal-Mart, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America.

“Those were the biggest ones,” he says, citing the survey.

More people are willing to stop shopping somewhere to protest a social stand, Barna learned, than to start shopping somewhere to support a company.

The survey showed, however, that conservatives eat at Chick-Fil-A and shop at Hobby Lobby because of their public stands. Liberals, meanwhile, shop online at Amazon.com and buy Starbucks coffee due to their stands.

“Relatively few companies come out ahead,” Barna advises. “We found that Amazon, Google, Microsoft and PayPal were the four that actually were doing better based on some of the stands that they’ve taken.”

The ones who have been hurt for their stance, or are still being hurt, he says, makes for a “much longer list.”

This article was originally posted at OneNewsNow.com

Last week, President Donald Trump announced that his administration will exempt employers who have religious or moral objections to providing contraceptives, including drugs that can cause abortions. This is an important action to restore religious liberties that were stripped away in the Obamacare HHS mandate.

The Little Sisters of the Poor, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties brought the Obamacare violation of religious freedom to the national spotlight when they fought the mandate at the U.S. Supreme Court. The sincere religiously informed consciences of the owners of Conestoga Wood and Hobby Lobby played heavily into the opinion of Justice Samuel Alito, which upheld religious liberty and freedom of conscience.

“Our legal team went to court in 2012 to fight this unjust mandate on behalf of the Hahns, a Mennonite family and owners of Conestoga Wood Specialties,” said Michael Geer, President of the Pennsylvania Family Institute. “Thankfully, in 2014, the Supreme Court victory granted relief for the Hahns and the Green family (owners of Hobby Lobby) in a landmark ruling. We’re glad now to see that other religious employers and ministries will be protected as well, thanks to the President’s actions.”

“President Trump deserves to be thanked for upholding his promise on religious freedom,” said Paul Weber, President of Focus on the Family’s Family Policy Alliance. “And we’re grateful for the team of attorneys brought together by the Pennsylvania Family Institute that paved the way to this victory through their outstanding work that led to the Supreme Court win.”

Randall Wenger, Chief Counsel for the Independence Law Center, was interviewed by a local Fox affiliate outside of Conestoga Wood to discuss this policy improvement. “The first liberty in our Bill of Rights is the free exercise of religion, and what this mandate is doing is protecting the rights of conscience not only for religious people but for non religious people.”

In response to Leftist hysteria over this minor change, National Review’s David French explains that “Totally ignored by these borderline-apocalyptic assessments of what was, in fact, a modest rollback is the reality that birth control has only very recently come to be viewed as an entitlement.”

IFI joins other pro-family groups across the nation in applauding this important action by President Trump. Moreover, we stand in full agreement with his statement on the issue: “No American should be forced to choose between the dictates of the federal government and the tenets of their faith.”

Oct. 27th – IFI Annual Banquet with Lt. Col. Allen West

Join us in Hoffman Estates for IFI’s annual banquet on Friday, Oct. 27th.  This year we are celebrating our 25th Anniversary with American hero Lt. Col. Allen West as our keynote speaker. Space is limited, don’t miss this special event. Click HERE for more information.

Call (708) 781-9328 for more information.

Baseball season gets underway this week, a welcome distraction from the political battles in Washington.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate is warring over the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.  The Republicans say he’s a stellar nominee, a judicial umpire who calls balls and strikes as he sees them.  Democrats, led by New York’s Charles Schumer, however, say the judge is a creature of “special interests” who would slide into a base with spikes up and who deserves to be filibustered.

Who are those “special interests” you might ask? Well, they would be anyone who disagrees with progressives, which the November election indicated is at least half the country if not more.

The Republicans say Judge Gorsuch will help the Court return to constitutional principles.  Democrats claim that he will “undo the gains” made by decades of liberal jurisprudence.  We can only pray that they’re both right.

Over the years, federal courts – especially the U.S. Supreme Court – acquired an out-sized role in the nation’s affairs, especially during Franklin Roosevelt’s administration.  Think of the federal government as a three-bodied creature, with one of the bodies in a black robe towering over the others with a giant Nancy Pelosi gavel.

Restraining the U.S. Supreme Court’s power, even slightly, has been a non-starter.  Congress is packed with lawyers who dream of serving on or before the highest bench someday.  It’s also an open secret that many politicians are relieved when hot button issues slide off their plates and directly onto the Court’s docket.

Nonetheless, given the Court’s near-omnipotence, the central question of what constitutes lawful authority will dominate public discussion in years to come, especially if there is a conservative majority.  Right now, “lawful authority” is in the eye of the beholder on many levels.

For example, progressives applauded a federal judge in Washington State in February for overruling President Trump’s order temporarily barring immigrants from seven terror-prone Muslim-majority nations.  The judge snapped his fingers, extending constitutional rights to foreigners not even in this country and accused Mr. Trump of racist motives for good measure.  Another judge in Hawaii piled on last week by ruling against Mr. Trump’s re-written order affecting six countries. Progressives again cheered.

On the other hand, when a federal judge in Texas ruled in 2015 that President Obama had usurped congressional authority with executive actions shielding five million illegal immigrants from deportation, progressives pledged resistance and urged people to take to the streets.

Progressives look with favor on the 500 or so “sanctuary” cities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration laws and procedures.  Conscience, they say, overrides mere lawfulness.  Except, of course, when it comes to Christian bakers, florists, wedding planners and photographers. They must be forced by law to violate theirs.

Only a few months ago, progressives cheered an edict from the Obama Administration ordering all school systems in America to accommodate female-identified males in girls’ restrooms and locker rooms or risk losing federal funds.  Can’t these schools follow the rule of law?

And what about those scoundrels, the Little Sisters of the Poor, or Hobby Lobby and other Christian-owned businesses that don’t want to obey Obamacare’s abortifacient mandate?  What are they trying to do, provoke anarchy?

When the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United restored collective political free speech, President Obama pilloried the justices in person during the 2010 State of the Union address, badly misrepresenting the facts of the ruling.  Fellow progressives vowed to see the opinion overturned.

But when the U.S. Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges invented a “right” to same-sex marriage in the penumbras of the Constitution in 2015, overriding state marriage laws – 31 of them constitutional amendments approved by voters – progressives instantly pronounced it “settled law.”

They said the same about the Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 that struck down abortion laws in every state – “settled law.”

If these examples leave you confused about what is actually lawful authority, don’t worry.  We have an omniscient media to explain it to us.  If they feature lots of people “hailing” a ruling or order, you can bet it’s about another judicial or executive demolition job on America’s heritage, the Constitution, founding values and genuine civil rights.  If they quote lots of people condemning the ruling or order as an abuse of authority, it’s a clear victory for constitutional governance.

To progressives and the lockstep media, legitimate authority means only advancing progressive causes.  If so, it’s no big deal for liberal presidents or judges to run outside the baselines when they need to score some runs.

This article was originally posted at Townhall.com

There was good news from North Carolina Monday morning, when Governor Pat McCory announced North Carolina would be suing the Department of Justice (DOJ). That news was followed by bad news from the Department of Justice, announced in a stunning statement from Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who compares those who believe that restrooms should correspond to sex to racists who supported separate restrooms, restaurants, drinking fountains, schools, libraries, and parks for blacks and whites.

Here is an excerpt from the ignorant, bigoted, and demagogic statement from Lynch:

Today, we are filing a federal civil rights lawsuit against the state of North Carolina, Governor Pat McCrory, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety and the University of North Carolina….

This action is about….the dignity and respect we accord our fellow citizens and the laws that we… have enacted to protect them–indeed, to protect all of us. And it’s about the founding ideals that have led this country–haltingly but inexorably–in the direction of fairness, inclusion and equality for all Americans.

This is not the first time that we have seen discriminatory responses to historic moments of progress for our nation. We saw it in the Jim Crow laws that followed the Emancipation Proclamation. We saw it in fierce and widespread resistance to Brown v. Board of Education…. Some of these responses reflect a recognizably human fear of the unknown, and a discomfort with the uncertainty of change….This is a time to summon our national virtues of inclusivity, diversity, compassion and open-mindedness. What we must not do–what we must never do–is turn on our neighbors, our family members, our fellow Americans, for something they cannot control, and deny what makes them human. This is why none of us can stand by when a state enters the business of legislating identity and insists that a person pretend to be something they are not, or invents a problem that doesn’t exist as a pretext for discrimination and harassment.

…This law provides no benefit to society–all it does is harm innocent Americans.

Instead of turning away from our neighbors, our friends, our colleagues, let us instead learn from our history….[S]tate-sanctioned discrimination never looks good in hindsight. It was not so very long ago that states, including North Carolina, had signs above restrooms, water fountains and on public accommodations keeping people out based upon a distinction without a difference….Let us not act out of fear and misunderstanding….

Let me also speak directly to the transgender community itself. Some of you have lived freely for decades. Others of you are still wondering how you can possibly live the lives you were born to lead….[T]he Department of Justice and the entire Obama Administration wants you to know that ….history is on your side.

Just a few thoughts about her remarkable piece of sloppy and insulting thinking:

• Lynch’s pernicious comparison of Americans who believe that objective, immutable sex matters and is the source of feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy to hateful, ignorant bigots is both morally indefensible and intellectually vacuous.

• Neither inclusivity, fairness, equality, diversity, compassion, open-mindedness, dignity, nor respect requires humans to ignore the objective, immutable sex of others. None of these qualities requires humans to treat objective, immutable sex as if it has no meaning. None of these requires women to share restrooms, changing areas, or showers with persons of the opposite sex. None of these requires Americans to make restrooms, changing areas, and locker rooms co-ed. None of these requires Americans to accept the view that restrooms should correspond to the feelings of people about their sex rather than their sex.

• Equality demands that we treat like things alike. It does not require us to treat unlike things as if they are alike. Men and women are substantively different as even gender-dysphoric persons and homosexuals acknowledge.

• Lynch urges Americans not to “turn” on friends, neighbors, and colleagues for “something they cannot control.” In her view, requiring restrooms to correspond to objective sex constitutes “turning” on gender-dysphoric persons. Does Lynch apply that odd principle consistently? Does she believe that a compassionate society must accommodate all behaviors impelled by powerful, persistent, unchosen, and seemingly intractable feelings, including those feelings that deny objective reality? Being loving and welcoming does not require women to share restrooms with objectively male neighbors, friends, and colleagues or vice versa. In fact, a case can be made that it is profoundly unloving to facilitate a desire to be the opposite sex.

• Lynch asserts that not allowing men in women’s restrooms is tantamount to denying “what makes them human.” Her claim is based on an arguable assumption about what makes a person human, which seems to stand far outside her professional bailiwick. Many would argue that physical embodiment as male or female is central to humanness—indeed, more central than feelings about physical embodiment.

• Lynch rightly states that separate facilities for blacks and whites were based on a “distinction without a difference,” implying that the difference between men and women is similarly insubstantial. This statement reveals a profound ignorance. Blacks and whites are distinct by virtue of their skin color, which is, indeed, a distinction without a difference. But men and women are substantively and significantly different. They’re so different, in fact, that gender-dysphoric men insist that they must use restrooms, changing areas, and showers with women only. If the difference between men and women constitutes a “distinction without a difference”—like the difference between blacks and whites—then why must gender-dysphoric men share private facilities with women only? Surely the differences between objectively male persons and objectively female persons are more significant than the differences between objectively male persons and objectively male persons who experience gender dysphoria.

  If there is no more difference between men and women than there is between blacks and whites—as Lynch seems to think—then why not eliminate all single-sex restrooms, locker rooms, and dressing rooms everywhere? Why not allow all men and all women to use the same restrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms, showers, and shelters? After all, blacks and whites do.

• Since Lynch suggests that the unwillingness of women to share restrooms with gender-dysphoric men is evidence of fear, disrespect, misunderstanding, closemindedness, unfairness, lack of compassion, unjust regressive discrimination, and the denial of equality, how would she characterize the unwillingness of gender-dysphoric men to share restrooms with non-gender-dysphoric men?

• How can Lynch possibly know that those who experience gender dysphoria were “born” to lead lives pretending to be the opposite sex? How can she possibly know with certainty that when there’s mismatch between one’s objective sex and one’s feelings about his sex that the error rests with his healthy, normally functioning body?

• America’s founding ideals did not include a commitment to deny objective ontological distinctions that have profound meaning.

North Carolinians and Americans everywhere better not treat this issue like they have treated every other incremental advance of a sexual ideology corrosive to truth and thus to human flourishing. They better be prepared to fight this with every fiber of their objectively male and female beings.

The federal government through its highly partisan Department of Justice (DOJ) is attempting to make law—again—by attacking North Carolina’s so-called “bathroom bill.” Last Wednesday, the DOJ sent a letter to NC governor Pat McCrory demanding that he rescind the law within three working days or face legal action and loss of federal funds.

The DOJ letter erroneously states that the NC law violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibits discrimination based on sex. In its infinite ignorance and hubris, the DOJ, has proclaimed that the word “sex” includes “gender identity.”

By attacking North Carolina’s law that requires restrooms in government buildings, state colleges and universities, and highway rest stops to correspond to sex and which does not apply to any private sector entity, the DOJ seeks to make law for the entire country.

This is the same stratagem the Department of Education (ED) is using to blackmail public schools into allowing gender-dysphoric students into opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms. While the DOJ is using the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the ED is using Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Both departments—neither of which have law-making authority—have unilaterally redefined the word “sex” in such a way as to make law.

If successful, the DOJ’s effort will be even more profound and destructive because of the scope of the applicability of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Whereas Title IX applies only to schools, Title VII applies to every business in the private sector with over 14 employees; every government entity; and every religious organization, including private elementary, middle, and high schools, private colleges, and churches.

Religious organizations and churches are exempt from Title VII only with regard to the prohibition of religious discrimination and only in hiring practices. Churches, synagogues, and mosques and religious organizations may discriminate based on religion in hiring. In other words, churches, synagogues, and mosques may not be forced to hire persons of other faiths. But how would this redefinition of “sex” in Title VII affect restroom or locker room usage in religious organizations or businesses owned by Christians like Hobby Lobby?

Would the redefinition of the word “sex” to include “gender identity” and “gender expression” require religious organizations, colleges, and churches to allow gender-dysphoric persons to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms? Would this fanciful reinterpretation of Title VII require that a gender-dysphoric father visiting his daughter at a Christian college or a gender-dysphoric woman attending a wedding in a church be allowed in opposite-sex restrooms?

Don’t let deceivers distract you with mocking arguments about how few gender-dysphoric people will be using opposite-sex restrooms; or how few incidents there are of gender-dysphoric men assaulting women or are likely to assault women; or how few predators are pretending to be gender-dysphoric in order to access women’s restrooms, locker rooms, showers, dressing rooms, or shelters.

And certainly don’t be distracted by the stupid comparison of separate restrooms for blacks and whites to separate restrooms for men and women. While there are no substantive differences between blacks and whites, there are substantive differences between males and females,  which even gender-dysphoric persons and homosexuals acknowledge.

The central issue is with the meaning of physical embodiment as male and female.

• Policies and laws mandating that gender-dysphoric persons be allowed to use opposite-sex restrooms embody and teach the lie that objective maleness and femaleness do not have objective meaning or value.

• These policies and laws teach that it is not one’s objective, immutable sex that matters but one’s feelings about one’s sex (“gender identity) that matter.

• These policies and laws teach that modesty and privacy have no intrinsic link to objective maleness and femaleness.

Leftists dismissively claim that anatomical parts are irrelevant when it comes to “gender identity,” modesty, and privacy. They’re demanding that everyone in society treat gender-dysphoric persons in all contexts and ways (including grammatical ways) as if they are in reality the sex they wish they were. So, what are the logical out-workings of this pernicious ideology?

Ultimately, if this view prevails, society will be unable to maintain any separation between men and women—including between normal men and women—in any context. If sexual anatomy has no intrinsic meaning, if privacy and modesty have no connection to objective sex, if objective males must be allowed in women’s showers and restrooms, then there remains no rational justification for separate facilities for men and women or girls and boys.

Since, in the mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world of lunatic leftists, all that matters are feelings about one’s sex, there is no need for surgery, cross-sex hormones, or cross-dressing. So, that “transwoman” (i.e., an actual man) walking naked past your 14-year-old daughter in the health club locker room just might have a chest full of hair, a wooly beard, and a penis. Remember “gender identity” has no fixed meaning, and sexual anatomy is only important if people feel it’s important, so that “transwoman” in the locker room may even have a penis and furry breasts.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to your U.S. representative, urging him or her to rein in the unelected, leftist federal bureaucrats in the Departments of Justice and Education. Demand that the federal government remove itself from issues of local control and stop misusing Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972.

In what is already a controversial session due to the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on many cases in the upcoming months that will have wide-reaching effects in American life. Here are three decisions that Christians should know about.

Health Standards: Protecting or Burdening Women?

Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt (formerly v. Cole) 

Pro-lifers across the country will want to pay close attention to this case arising out of Texas. In light of the haunting Kermit Gosnell story in 2013, the Texas state legislature enacted safety measures for abortion clinics. The law would require abortion clinics to adhere to the same standards as outpatient surgical centers and would require abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles in case health complications for the mother arise. If enforced, approximately three quarters of Texas abortion clinics now in operation would close.

Abortion advocates say this law violates the “undue burden” standard of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a doctrine which says any law that places a substantial obstacle to abortion is unconstitutional. In contrast, Texas argues that these are commonsense health regulations and that women are not burdened because the remaining abortion facilities are within reasonable driving distances throughout the state.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Texas law saying that it is not the role of the judiciary to consider the extent a state’s health laws have on restricting abortion access. The Supreme Court will now determine whether the Fifth Circuit properly used the “undue burden” standard in making its decision.

Of Nuns and Birth Control

Zubik v. Burwell 

What wins? Freedom of conscience or government interests? In Zubik v. Burwell, religious employers, such as Christian universities and Little Sisters of the Poor, are fighting Obamacare’s HHS mandate which requires them to cover the costs of “all FDA-approved contraceptives,” including abortion-inducing drugs, for their employees.

This may sound similar to last year’s Hobby Lobby case where the Court ruled the government cannot force employers with longstanding religious beliefs to pay for coverage that violates their conscience. To comply with Hobby Lobby, the Obama administration created an exception for religious employers that excludes the objectionable content from their insurance plans.

However, the federal government is still forcing the employers’ insurance companies and other third-party administrators to cover the costs of their employees who seek to obtain abortion pills. This means employers are still actively involved in providing drugs in their healthcare plans that violate their conscience.

The Court will weigh whether Obamacare’s HHS mandate and its “accommodation” violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The Court’s decision will depend on whether the government can prove that this is the least restrictive way of advancing a compelling public interest.

A Separation between State and Playgrounds

Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Pauley

The state of Missouri prevented pre-school and daycare centers from using a government program that provides recycled tires for safer playground surfaces. The reason? The pre-school is run by a church. Missouri claims that allowing the program to serve a church-run daycare will violate the principle of separation of church and state.

The Court will determine whether excluding churches from an otherwise neutral government program constitutes a violation of the Free Exercise and Equal Protection Clauses.

This article was originally posted at Mauck & Baker, LLC.

Written by John Zmirak

The U.S. Supreme Court has announced that it will hear another Obamacare case, this one connected to the Obama administration’s mandate that religious employers help their workers buy contraceptives, including abortifacients such as the “morning after pill.” In this case we can see the stark outlines of the struggles Christians will face over future decades in America. Can we maintain any freedom of action in a country where a massive and growing federal government believes that it has a mandate to impose a godless utilitarian worldview into every nook and cranny of life? Or will we have to settle for a narrow “freedom of worship,” which covers a couple of hours every Sunday?

When Obamacare was proposed, it received broad support from naive religious leaders because it rectified a supposed injustice: unequal access to health care in America. Some, like Chicago’s Archbishop Blaise Cupich, still argue that supporting an egalitarian system of health care is the genuinely pro-life position to take: Since better health care can save lives, if you aren’t willing to do whatever it takes to offer everyone the same level of health care, then you are really not much different from doctors who abort unborn children.

This kind of sloppy thinking smooshes together the intentional murder of unborn children for convenience with the sad but stubborn fact that in a fallen world, man is mortal. There is a radical, absolute difference between directly killing someone, and not diverting all your resources to postponing his death. Otherwise, every time you switch the channel away from some hunger appeal on TV, you might as well have hired a hitman to knock off a neighbor — since either way, people die. To use “pro-life” this way is to make it mean everything and nothing, which is handy if your other political priorities make you lean toward the rabidly pro-choice Democratic party.

Conservative critics, many of them Christians, warned that federalizing health care would pose a grave threat to the independence of employers — including religious employers, such as Hobby Lobby and the Little Sisters of the Poor — to follow their consciences and make their own free decisions on how to spend their own money, time and talents. And the Obama administration’s fierce fight over this subject proves that conservatives were right. The Democrats know that letting religious employers opt out of paying for abortifacients won’t “force” working women into pregnancy. They are fighting on principle, the principle that no citizen’s conscience can be permitted to trump federal policy. If the mandarins in Washington, D.C., decide that a practice is in the best interest of the masses, then the masses will comply. They must be forced to be free.

It was independence of conscience which our country’s founders thought that they were declaring in 1776. They rejected those systems of government which tried to micromanage the religious and moral decisions of their citizens “for their own good,” like the Inquisition’s Spain or Calvin’s Geneva. Our government would not be closing churches because they taught the “wrong” doctrine, nor banning books because they spread “pernicious” ideas that led people astray.

Nor would our government try to iron out all the inequalities that naturally arise among human beings, who freely choose to use their talents wisely or squander them, to save their money or waste it, to run marathons or to smoke cigarettes, to invest in health insurance or face the tender mercies of the public emergency ward (which should offer a basic, minimum level of care to all comers). Instead of viewing its people as hapless children to be coddled and protected from themselves, America’s leaders were supposed to see its citizens as their equals, moral equals who could make their own decisions and face the consequences, like grown-ups. And grown-ups can decide where they want to work, who they want to hire, and what kind of priorities govern the way they run their businesses. They can also decide how to pray, and how to obey their consciences, so long as they do not violate the fundamental rights of others.

Inflate and distort those rights in the name of equality, and you take away that freedom. If everyone has the right to equal health care, why not equal housing? Interchangeable education? Equally well-cooked, nutritious food? Equal amounts of healthy exercise? That all sounds lovely at first blush, very small “c” Christian. Such a vision appeals to college sophomores still living on their parents’ dimes in spaces kept “safe” from pointy, dissenting ideas. But what such a vision yields in practice is a gray world of uniform public hospitals, public schools, mandatory gymnastics and federal cafeterias in government dormitories, where no one’s talents or choices matter since everyone’s outcome is the same. Such a system, created in the name of equality, once dominated half the world. We fought the Cold War to stop it from conquering the rest.

Our new battle is not with overt Marxist tyranny, but with something more subtle — an irreligious government that wants to agglomerate ever more power over our lives in the name of making things fairer and keeping people happier, of smoothing over our differences and soothing our fragile egos. If two men want to get married, then it is the Supreme Court’s job to protect their “dignity” and open the way for them — and the state’s job to punish those florists, caterers, or preachers who won’t cooperate. If an employee wants the abortion pill (and in five years, if the Democrats win you count on it, a sex change operation), then Mt. Zion Baptist or Our Lady of Sorrows will have to pay for it. There is no logical stopping point for this kind of radical secularism and statism. It is an ideology, which means that its appetite only grows, the more that it feeds.

Because our government is by its very nature secular, the larger the sphere of government action, the less freedom there is for Christians — full stop. The only free spaces for conscientious action by believers are those that we carve out by cutting the state down to size. Like kudzu, this invasive species won’t give up, but will keep growing back, trying to smother us. So keep your weed-whacker fueled. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

This article was originally posted at Stream.org.

Another legal challenge to ObamaCare that raises crucial questions related to other pro-life cases awaits a federal court decision within the next few months.

March for Life has challenged the Obama administration’s mandate to provide free insurance coverage for contraception and abortion-causing drugs on a pro-life organization. ObamaCare, which forces employers – regardless of their moral convictions – to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs under threat of heavy financial penalties, has been under fire from pro-life organizations and Christian business owners.

Alliance Defending Freedom is representing March for Life in the case. Elissa Graves, the ADF attorney on hand for arguments in federal district court in Washington, DC, tells OneNewsNow, “March for Life is an organization that holds 100-percent pro-life views based on science and ethics instead of religion. It advocates for life at all stages which includes from conception until death. Some of these drugs do have effect after conception.”

As a pro-life organization, the attorney says, “March for Life should not be forced to help destroy life.”

According to Graves, the presiding judge was very engaged during the court proceedings. “The judge was very interested in arguments for both sides and seemed to really know the arguments and asked a lot of great questions of both sides,” she offers.

A similar lawsuit was brought by Priests for Life, a Catholic pro-life group that also objects to the mandate on religious grounds. Graves maintains that if courts can force coverage on groups like these two, they can likely compel all to do so.

ADF senior legal counsel Matt Bowman, who presented arguments Wednesday on behalf of March for Life said, “Pro-life organizations must be free to operate according to the beliefs they espouse. March for Life was founded to oppose the tragedy of abortion – the very thing the government is forcing the organization to provide through its health insurance plan.”

Hobby Lobby, in a high-profile Supreme Court case ruling in June, won the right to exclude coverage for abortion-causing drugs on religious grounds.

Bowman added: “The government cannot selectively punish organizations that wish to abide by their beliefs.”

In case you didn’t know it, if you are a conservative Christian, you are just like Boko Haram and ISIS. At least, that’s what the secularists are saying. More absurd still, they actually believe this.

Of course, secularism has been waging war against religion for centuries, but more recently, in America and Europe, the rhetoric of secularism has become more extreme and shrill.

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby, critics complained that the Court’s eminently reasonable decision was “anti-scientific.”

As noted by Jonathan Adler in The Washington Post, “The Daily Beast’s Sally Kohn decried the Court’s reliance on ‘bunk science’ and The Nation’s Reed Richardson claimed the Hobby Lobby majority’s opinion rested on ‘specious scientific claims.’ ‘Alito and the four other conservative justices on the court were essentially overruling not just an Obamacare regulation, but science,’ reported Mother Jones, while another MoJo story ranked Hobby Lobby to be among the Supreme Court’s four ‘biggest science blunders.’ And over at The Incidental Economist, Austin Frakt simply declared ‘The majority of the Supreme Court doesn’t get science.'”

Adler, hardly a flaming fundamentalist, refuted the claim.

But is anyone surprised that a faith-based challenge to Obamacare would be branded “anti-scientific”?

Shades of the Church’s historic suppression of intellectual progress!

Still, attacks like these are minor compared to secularism’s idea that all committed believers must be the same, be they Islamic extremists or evangelical Christians.

Earlier this year, “City councilors from Nanaimo, B.C. [Canada] voted . . . to ban a Christian leadership conference scheduled to be podcast at the city’s convention center because one of the sponsors of the conference was U.S. restaurant chain Chick-fil-A. According to one councilor, the chain spreads ‘divisiveness, homophobia…[and] expressions of hate’ because of its CEO’s pro-marriage views.”

But it gets worse: “City councilors condemned the event as ‘hateful’, compared it to the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram, and said the decision to ban the event from public property was no different than if they had voted to ban an organized crime ring, too.” (Ironically, the conference featured speakers like Laura Bush and Desmond Tutu, both of whom support same-sex “marriage.”)

There you have it. Chick-fil-A is no different than Islamic radicals who burn little boys alive and kidnap and rape young girls, not to mention being similar to an organized crime ring.

In the same spirit, radio host David Pakman stated that he saw no real difference between ISIS and what he called conservative, right wing extremists (a definition that he would use to describe many evangelical Christians), a charge affirmed by his producer during the show as self-evident and irrefutable.

But of course! Bible believing Christians who affirm the sanctity of life and marriage are the same as monstrous brutes who behead the innocent in cold blood. Who can’t see this?

In case this isn’t clear enough for you, on October 14th, the Peter Tatchell Foundation, led by the UK gay activist of the same name, released its “Manifesto for Secularism – Against the Religious Right.”

Tatchell issued a “call on people everywhere to stand with us to establish an international front against the religious-Right and for secularism.”

And what exactly does Tatchell mean by “the religious-Right”? Specifically, “The Islamic State (formerly ISIS), the Saudi regime, Hindutva (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) in India, the Christian-Right in the U.S. and Europe, Bodu Bala Sena in Sri Lanka, Haredim in Israel, AQMI and MUJAO in Mali, Boko Haram in Nigeria, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria.”

Read that list again slowly.

Tatchell explicitly places conservative Christians in the US and Europe in the exact same category as the Taliban, ISIS, and Boko Haram, among others. (I’ll not comment here on his reference to ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel, called Haredim.)

As the manifesto declares in its opening line, “The launch of the Manifesto for Secularism is a challenge to the global rise of the Religious Right and its menacing values, which threaten women, LGBTs, atheists, minority faiths, apostates and many others.”

Yes, dear believer, you are a menace, and war has been declared against you.

“We call on people everywhere,” the manifesto declares, “to stand with us to establish an international front against the religious-Right and for secularism.”

Among the manifesto’s demands, not all of which are outrageous, are the calls for the, “Separation of religion from public policy, including the educational system, health care and scientific research” and, “Abolition of religious laws in the family, civil and criminal codes.”

Make no mistake about it.

You have been marked, and you have been classified as a dangerous extremist capable of all kinds of nefarious acts.

And you have been forewarned.

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

Why We Must Defend Religious Liberty

In Appleton, Wisconsin, Marge Christensen labors tirelessly to share the Gospel. In her eighties, Marge is active in her church and has been promoting biblical citizenship for more than twenty years. She and her husband are ambassadors for the Alliance Defending Freedom and have been working lately to encourage churches to promote marriage with greater boldness.

Recently, Marge shared with a colleague of mine that churches do not seem to sense the urgency of teaching on matters of marriage, family and especially religious liberty.

Folks, that’s a problem.

A friend of mine, you may have heard of him, Rick Santorum, shares Marge’s concerns. After a long and illustrious career in politics, Rick has taken over as chief executive of EchoLight Studios with the goal of bringing top-notch and redemptive media to a darkened culture.

EchoLight’s latest documentary film, “One Generation Away,” draws its inspiration from Ronald Reagan’s famous inaugural address as California’s 33rd governor. In it, Reagan warned: “Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.”

Several of the cases examined in the movie are familiar to us. There’s the decades-long battle to remove the large cross from the Mt. Soledad Veteran’s Memorial in San Diego. And then there’s the coercive healthcare mandate that sought to force businesses like Hobby Lobby to violate Christian conscience and pay for abortion-inducing drugs.

But what makes “One Generation Away” so interesting and valuable is that it interviews leaders on both sides of the issue. Along with a great cast of stalwart defenders of religious freedom like Mike Huckabee and Ryan Anderson of the Heritage Foundation, you’ll hear from members of the ACLU and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State—people who are leading the crusade to restrict religious expression in public life.

And as I myself say in the film (and yes, I was privileged to take a part in it), to preserve our freedom we have to know what our liberties are and what they aren’t. And we have to defend them—and that requires knowing our opponents’ arguments and intentions.

Part of the task will be reminding our fellow Christians that we believers have full rights of citizenship. Too many of us have bought into the idea that religion is purely a private matter. God forbid! As Vincent Munoz of Notre Dame said so well in the film, “Just as other citizens can bring their convictions into the public square, religious citizens can and should bring their convictions into the public square. Don’t you lose your rights because you’re religious!”

Folks, the lesson of “One Generation Away” is that vigilance in defending our freedoms is not a one-time task, but a sacred trust that we pass from generation to generation.

This is why I hope you will get your church to host a screening of “One Generation Away”—and please get your friends and neighbors to attend. Come to BreakPoint.org and click on this commentary. We’ll link you to the movie’s website so you can learn how your church can premiere the movie at no cost to you or your congregation.

Folks, we’ve got to do something. And this is something we can do. I hope you’ll do it.

This article was originally posted at the BreakPoint.org website.

For an organization that frequently goads government into advancing an atheistic viewpoint on everyone within reach, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) talks a good game about how wrong it is for some people to “impose their beliefs on others.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June in favor of Hobby Lobby and another Christian-owned company that refused to comply with Obamacare’s abortifacient mandate has sent the leftwing legal group into ongoing apoplexy:

“While religious freedom gives us all the right to make personal decisions about how to practice religion,” the ACLU states, “it doesn’t give institutions or individuals the right to impose their beliefs on others.”

Really? Doesn’t requiring the Christian owners of Hobby Lobby or Conestoga Wood Products to cut their conscience to fit the ACLU’s atheism constitute a situation where the ACLU itself is trying to use the law to “impose their beliefs on others?”

According to the ACLU’s reading of the First Amendment, it’s okay to have “freedom of worship,” which means keeping religious stuff strictly in your head or behind church doors. But God help you if you try to live it out in the real world, where the ACLU prowls for “victims.”

On the bright side, the ACLU is doing us all a favor by keeping track of its many religious freedom challenges to the oppressive Obamacare contraceptive mandate across the nation.

“To date, 101 cases have been filed challenging the rule as an infringement on religious liberty,” the ACLU states on its website. “Eighty-nine of these cases are currently pending: 41 cases brought by nonprofit organizations, 45 cases brought by for-profit companies, and 3 cases brought by both nonprofit and for-profit plaintiffs.”

The devil’s law firm and other atheistic groups are also actively attacking religious freedom by contending that religiously-affiliated schools cannot require employees to live by religious standards.

In 2012, in the Hosanna-Tabor case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the government cannot interfere with religious groups’ faith-based employment qualifications. But the lawsuits keep coming.

In 2013, San Diego Christian College dismissed an employee, Teri James, who had become pregnant out of wedlock. She retained feminist camera hog attorney Gloria Allred and sued the university, even though Ms. James had signed a covenant as a condition of employment agreeing not to engage in certain behaviors, including premarital sex. But what’s a promise or a contract worth?

“Women out there should not have to worry about losing their income and independence just because they are carrying a child,” Ms. James said in a statement.

Independence? She means that the school has a duty to support her in the manner in which she is accustomed even if she breaks their rules. The ACLU summed up the situation this way:

“There are cases … of religious schools firing employees who are unmarried and pregnant, for example, in the name of religion.”

Well, yes. A Christian school should have the right to employ people who abide by Christian values, such as keeping sex within marriage. What’s the point of having an expressly Christian organization if the people within it openly defy its values?

Would the ACLU be comfortable hiring someone who opposes abortion on demand or same-sex “marriage?” How about an anti-porn advocate?

In Missouri, the American Humanist Association is threatening to sue because one recruit was made uncomfortable when he spotted some donated Gideon Bibles on a shelf at a National Guard intake center in St. Louis. Maybe the recruit would benefit from a stint in a country not yet influenced by Christianity’s unique respect for individual rights.

The ACLU is the point of the spear, legally speaking, of a larger Leftist campaign to fundamentally transform America into a place where fornication of any kind under the sun trumps all other human rights. It’s the only freedom we’ll have left after they establish government-enforced diversity re-education to stamp out anything resembling traditional religious values.

Achieving diversity used to mean ending discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or other immutable characteristics. Now it means dividing people into groups based on grievances and then constantly inflaming those sore points. Google the “war on women” for more details.

For good measure, anyone resisting this onslaught is said to be “obsessed” with it, as if the activists demanding a wholesale moral meltdown are, by contrast, only casually involved.

In his classic, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis’s professorial devil instructs his demon nephew that in order to make it easier to steal souls, “All extremes except extreme devotion to [God] are to be encouraged. Not always, of course, but at this period.

“Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep. Other ages, of which the present is one, are unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them.”

For decades, the ACLU has been reading the devil’s mail and acting accordingly.

They’ve learned only too well how to “impose their beliefs on others.”

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

The Left is wasting no time responding to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 30th ruling upholding religious liberty. U.S. Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Mark Udall (D-CO) have introduced legislation to undo the protections of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA)–the very law that the Court used to rule in favor of Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties.

Unfortunately, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin has co-sponsored this ominous legislation.

The Protect Women’s Health from Corporate Interference Act (S. 2578) could be used to further undermine all existing federal protections of conscience and religious freedom regarding health coverage mandates. According to our friends at the American Family Association (AFA), “it specifically strikes at the heart of religious liberty by nullifying the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” which would affect even those organizations “run by Christians with deeply held convictions about abortion.“

U.S. Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) Reid has promised to bypass all committees to put this on the “fast track.” This means a vote could take place as early as this week. (Read about Sen. Reid’s racist comment about the Supreme Court.)  

This bill dictates that employers cannot interfere in their employee’s decisions about contraception and other health services through discrimination by (from Sen. Murray’s website):

• Banning employers from refusing to cover any health coverage–including contraceptive coverage–guaranteed to their employees and dependents under federal law.
• Stating that all federal laws do not permit employers to refuse to comply with the ACA requirement, including the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
• Including the exemption from the contraceptive coverage requirement for houses of worship and the accommodation for religious non-profits.

This is a very pointed attack against conservative people of faith everywhere. Please take a few moments now to ask U.S. Senator Mark Kirk to oppose the misleadingly titled “Protect Women’s Health From Corporate Interference Act of 2014.” This liberty-quashing bill runs contrary to the religious liberty that Americans hold dear and the ruling the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a few weeks ago.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send and email or a fax to U.S. Senator Kirk urging him to reject S. 2578. 

Eric Metaxas at the IFI Annual Banquet
Sept. 19th in Rolling Meadows!  
Click HERE for details.