Looking back on 2022, I am deeply humbled by the amazing support that has helped us make progress toward our goals. We also treasure the encouragement you give us regularly. This year has passed quickly, and it is hard to believe that we have a few days left on 2022’s calendar.

We have seen many changes to the culture this past year:

• The Dobbs U.S. Supreme Court decision is saving thousands of lives each month. Tragically, Leftists have made Illinois  an abortion mecca. Illinois Democrats have already removed all protections for the unborn by repealing the Parental Notice of Abortion law. Now, they want physician assistants, nurses, and midwives along with other healthcare personnel to be able to legally commit abortions in Illinois in order to accommodate the flood of women coming across state lines. And they want to elevate the so-called “right” to abortion with an amendment to the Illinois State Constitution.

• Emboldened drag queens are grooming children at events in community libraries, Christmas parties, and other venues, including the White House signing ceremony to redefine marriage. This pernicious ideology teaches impressionable young children that we can redefine who God created us to be and that the pursuit of happiness is achieved by discovering and expressing one’s true inner “self.” Instead of parents and pastors teaching children the importance of cultivating virtue and becoming who God has called them to be, the LGBTQIA+ crowd and their allies are encouraging them to engage in unrestrained self-expression and explore dangerous, unnatural sexual activities.

• It is hard to believe that so many mothers and fathers are willfully exposing their toddlers and young children to this depravity. Do we understand that our unchanging God has declared cross-dressing to be an abomination? (Deuteronomy 22:5)

• Sexual deviance has a prominent platform thanks to the Biden Administration: Pete Buttigieg is the first openly homosexual person confirmed to serve in a president’s Cabinet; lesbian Karine Jean-Pierre is the White House press secretary; Dr. Richard Levine (aka “Rachel” Levine) is the assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; cross-dressing fetishist Sam Briton was, until recently, the deputy assistant secretary of the Office of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition; homosexual Joaquin Tamayo, a former high school teacher and principal, is chief of staff for Cindy Marten at the U.S. Department of Education. There are dozens more. To see a full list of the Biden administration’s LGBTQIA+ appointments, click here.

• The LGBT lobby is large, vocal, active, and very well funded. The Human Rights Campaign is located in Washington D.C. and lobbies Congress for their queer agenda fulltime. Equality Illinois does the same in Springfield. The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) is dedicated solely on using government schools to corrupt K-12 students. And the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) focuses on using media, including Hollywood, to indoctrinate Americans.

• Leftists are bold and proud about their wicked agenda. You may remember an article written by Laurie Higgins in 2021 about how a gay men’s choir published a video touting that they were “coming for your children.”

• A wide open southern border has allowed an invasion of millions of illegal immigrants into the United States over the past two years. These immigrants are not being screened for health issues or criminal records. We do not know if they are committed to the freedoms guaranteed to us in the U.S. Constitution or if they embrace a socialist worldview. How many anti-God, anti-family, and anti-capitalist Marxists are flooding in? How many violent MS-13 gang members? How many radical Jihadists?

In response, IFI is dedicated to increasing our efforts in 2023 to educate, encourage, and mobilize Christians in the Land of Lincoln. The prophet Hosea warned that “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge … because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.” (Hosea 4:6) While the prophet was speaking about Israel, the principle hasn’t changed. If God’s people are ignorant of His laws, precepts, and commandments–if we disregard what is good, pure, noble, and true–then we cannot expect His blessings.

We know with certainty that in our post-Christian society Bible literacy is at an all-time low in America. Therefore, the Christian worldview is feeble in our culture. Now more than ever, we all need to be about the business of making disciples and teaching them about all that God has commanded us to do. (Matthew 28:19-20)

As it relates to public policy issues, this means that our work to uphold the sanctity of human life is just beginning. Proverbs 24:11 exhorts us to “deliver those who are drawn toward death, and hold back those stumbling to the slaughter.” We MUST respond with the love and compassion of Jesus Christ to rescue innocent children and their mothers.

This also means we must continue our efforts to rescue our children from government schools. Too many children in our families, in our churches, and in our communities are being discipled in ways that are contrary to what the Bible teaches. This must not continue. School choice must be embraced immediately. Homeschooling, private schools, micro-schools and co-ops are excellent alternatives.

Therefore…

We need you to be part of this year’s Matching Challenge Campaign to equip us for 2023.

It is only through your support that we are able to do this vital work.

Any donation given or mailed by December 31st will go toward
this dollar-for-dollar matching challenge and will be fully tax-deductible.

We know full well that the woke crowd doesn’t walk away from the battle. They are already planning lawsuits and executive orders, forming coalitions, and devising strategies to promote their ideology and agenda. They are preparing to redouble their efforts to promote their culture of depravity and death in the media, through pop culture, in our government schools, and in our legislatures and courts. And you can be sure that all of their efforts will be very well-funded.

We need both your prayer covering and financial support as we go into 2023!

If you haven’t done so already, please consider IFI in your year-end giving. Every donation–small, medium or large–brings us closer to our goal. Don’t miss this great opportunity!

Here are some ways you can give your tax-deductible donation:

• Contribute online HERE.
• Give a gift of stock or appreciated assets. Contact Colleen Garcia, IFI’s Financial Administrator, at (708) 781-9328 or email her HERE.
• Mail your year-end gift. Send to: Illinois Family Institute, P.O. Box 876, Tinley Park, IL, 60477
• We also accept credit card donations over the phone at (708) 781-9328 during normal business hours.

Thank you for your consideration. Your financial support and prayers are what makes our mission to protect and preserve life, marriage, family, and liberty in Illinois possible.  THANK YOU!

Sincerely,

David E. Smith
Executive Director

P.S. Donations must be postmarked by December 31 in order to qualify as 2022 gifts. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

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

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We are committed to upholding truth while resisting and opposing the rising wave of delusional thinking and tyrannical laws/mandates that have afflicted our state and nation. IFA will continue to provide our supporters with timely alerts, video reports, podcasts, pastors’ breakfasts, special forums, worldview conferences, and thought-provoking commentaries—content that is increasingly hard to find.

We encourage you to join us in our efforts. Your support will help us to continue our vital work in 2021. A vigorous defense of biblical truth is needed more than ever in Illinois.