An Alabama lawsuit on behalf of unborn black babies that’s making its way through the state’s courts is alleging that the abortion industry is deliberately targeting black Americans and other minorities.

If successful, the attorneys and activists behind the case claim that it might ultimately lead to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 precedent-setting U.S. Supreme Court opinion that struck down state laws against abortion.

Even if the case doesn’t succeed in court, legal analysts and experts in the field say the implications in the court of public opinion are hard to overstate.

The lawsuit was filed by pro-life leader Amie Beth Shaver, named Miss Alabama in 1994, on behalf of “Baby Q,” an African American baby in Alabama who was unborn when the case began. Baby Q represents all other similar black babies in the womb across the state.

According to the complaint, Baby Q and other members of the “class” are being unlawfully discriminated against and targeted for abortion by the industry. Abortion giant Planned Parenthood acknowledges its roots in the eugenics movement, although it says it’s working to rectify that legacy.

“About 80 members of Baby Q’s class, which is African American babies in the womb, lose their lives in abortion every week in Alabama,” Sam McLure, the lead lawyer representing the babies, told The Epoch Times in a phone interview. “Enough is enough. This has to stop.”

Several leaders involved in the case told us that Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry more broadly have a long history of racism and support for eugenics, the highly controversial idea that humanity should be “improved” by weeding out allegedly inferior genes from the population.

“This case really boils down to the question of whether states have the right to prohibit eugenics abortion,” McLure added.

Many of the black leaders involved in the case were also behind the Equality Proclamation, signed in 2020 on the 158th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, to shed light on what they describe as the systematic targeting of black babies.

Why Alabama?

Conservative Alabama is the best jurisdiction in the United States to wage this fight, McLure said.

Because of a measure approved by about 60 percent of voters in 2018, Alabama has one of the strongest protections for the unborn in its state Constitution. It says the policy of the state is “to recognize and support the importance of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life.”

The Alabama Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized the personhood of unborn babies in other cases not directly involving abortion, McLure and other attorneys involved in the case told The Epoch Times.

The Baby Q case also hinges on a state law known as the Human Life Protection Act, which makes conducting an abortion a felony punishable by up to life in prison. Signed into law by Gov. Kay Ivey in May of 2019, the measure bans all abortions in the state except to protect the health and life of the mother.

That law is widely seen as one of the strongest in the nation prohibiting abortion. It is even stronger than the Mississippi statute currently being considered by the U.S. Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case many legal experts on both sides of the debate believe might overturn or at least scale back Roe v. Wade.

In October of 2019, a federal court issued a preliminary injunction against the Alabama law, arguing that it violates existing U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

As a result, Ivey and state Attorney General Steve Marshall have declined to enforce it for now, as the U.S. Supreme Court once again takes up the issue of abortion.

Legal filings and attorneys in the Baby Q case also point to the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects unenumerated rights, as well as the 14th Amendment, which provides for equal protection under the law.

Finally, the plaintiffs cite the U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which reserves to the states or the people all powers not specifically surrendered to the federal government, as authorizing or even requiring state action in defense of the right to life.

Intervening in the case on behalf of Baby Q are almost 50 state lawmakers and a supermajority of the state Senate, as well as dozens of black leaders from across America alleging that the abortion industry is targeting people based on race.

State Republican leaders are also active on the issue, with the executive committee calling on all GOP officials to use every tool at their disposal to stop abortion in Alabama, including shutting down clinics.

The Objective

The Baby Q case, originally filed in October of 2020, is aimed at forcing the government “to protect preborn African-American children from discrimination and to ensure their equal protection under the law,” according to court filings.

“The abortion industry has systematically targeted the African American community for extermination by abortion, and this history is undisputed,” said McLure, citing historical evidence and even recent statements.

More than 20 million black babies have been aborted in the United States, and are three to five times more likely to be aborted than white babies, said McLure, who noted that this sort of racial targeting is clearly prohibited under state and federal law.

“In New York City, more black babies are killed in abortion than are born alive,” he continued. “In Alabama, black Americans make up 27 percent of the population, and yet they make up more than 60 percent of the abortion cases. Nobody can argue that this is not deliberate.”

The plaintiffs in the case are asking the court to order Ivey to enforce the Human Life Protection Act and protect unborn children in the state from abortion and discrimination based on their race.

Eventually, the goal is to overturn Roe v. Wade and restore protections for the unborn that the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case undermined nearly 50 years ago.

Because equal protection and prohibitions on racial discrimination are so firmly established in U.S. jurisprudence, the activists and attorneys behind the case believe it might be a game-changer in the abortion debate.

The next major milestone will come on April 20, when the judge will hold a hearing on the issue after more than a year of inaction.

“Finally, on April 20th, these African American babies are going to get their day in court,” McLure said.

The previous hearing, which took place virtually on Zoom, dealt with whether the case should be public. While the abortion industry is seeking to keep the case behind closed doors, the state judge expressed a willingness to keep the proceedings open.

Attorney Brent Helms, who is representing the legislators seeking to intervene in the case, explained part of the rationale in a phone interview. “If the judge denies this case, that offers us the opportunity to get to the Alabama Supreme Court,” he said. “When the legislature looks at this case, Alabama’s law is more strict and says that the unborn child is a person with constitutional rights,” Helms continued. “Those rights cannot be denied without due process and equal protection.”

He added, “That means the child’s right to life would supersede or at least compete with the mother’s alleged right to privacy, as the right to life is an enumerated right, while the mother’s privacy rights to obtain an abortion were discovered in the penumbras as opposed to actually being written down.”

Regardless of how the state circuit court judge rules, the losing side is expected to immediately appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court. The court is known as one of the nation’s more conservative state supreme courts. From there, it’s practically certain that the losing side will appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Role of the US Supreme Court

Numerous legal experts told The Epoch Times that the courts involved in the Alabama case may wait until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the Mississippi law banning abortions after 15 weeks before making any major decisions.

However, the Mississippi statute only protects unborn babies after 15 weeks, while Alabama is seeking to protect them from the time of conception. The Baby Q case also deals with racial discrimination, while the Mississippi case doesn’t.

The plaintiffs and intervenors hope the apparent conflict between the Alabama state Supreme Court’s positions and the federal district court’s rulings will be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of protecting the right to life of the unborn in Alabama and beyond.

McLure, the lead attorney for Baby Q, said justices from theU.S.  Supreme Court have been leaving “breadcrumbs” in their opinions regarding what elements they might like to see in a major abortion case.

In his concurring opinion issued in the case of Box v. Planned Parenthood, for example, Justice Clarence Thomas raised the issue of racial targeting as an important component.

“We think the type of case the U.S. Supreme Court wants to take on to return abortion issues back to the states involves eliminating the abortion industry’s history of racial targeting, a purely state law claim, and a reliance on the Ninth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” McLure said, noting that the Baby Q case had all of those.

“Obviously, we care about all life in the womb, but this case in particular deals with the racial targeting of children of African descent and this is a key issue,” he added.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s own 1973 ruling on abortion acknowledged that if the “suggestion of [a fetus’] personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [Fourteenth] amendment.”

The people of Alabama, as well as many medical and scientific experts, have concluded that unborn children are indeed persons, attorneys and leaders involved in the case said. Thus, under the reasoning in Roe v. Wade, the high court must act.

The hope is that, through the courts, the abortion industry can be prevented from targeting unborn persons based on race, and eventually, state governments can regain the authority to protect all unborn lives, McLure said.

Racism in Planned Parenthood, Abortion

Dozens of prominent black leaders from across the United States are involved in the case, arguing that Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry have been deliberately targeting the nation’s African American population and other minorities.

It started with Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, black leaders told The Epoch Times.

In her writings and her speeches to groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), Sanger openly advocated for eugenics to control the reproduction of populations she believed were less desirable.

Indeed, in 1939, Sanger launched the infamous “Negro Project” to pay and train black leaders to promote birth control and other measures in the black community.

Eventually, when Alan Guttmacher took the helm of Sanger’s organization, abortion became a major element of the campaign, Georgia gubernatorial candidate and Baby Q intervenor Catherine Davis told The Epoch Times in a phone interview.

After Guttmacher and his allies were able to get the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down state laws protecting the unborn, “Planned Parenthood established their abortion clinics primarily in communities of color across America,” Davis said.

Among other evidence, she pointed to an investigation using 2010 Census data showing that about 80 percent of the organization’s abortion clinics were located in minority neighborhoods.

Planned Parenthood would claim that their clinics are located where there is “the greatest need,” Davis said.

“But if you look at their marketing, they are regularly targeting black Americans,” she added. “On Halloween, they even tweeted out that it was safer for a black woman to have an abortion than to carry the baby to term. This is outrageous.”

According to Davis and the dozens of other black leaders involved in the case, this is racist population control and eugenics.

“The closest example of this is what Hitler did in Nazi Germany,” she added. “Look at Planned Parenthood: This is exactly what Hitler was doing to Jews, but Sanger’s program was more successful because they take care to disguise their agenda as ‘helping’ women and protecting their ‘right’ to abortion.”

Another prominent leader involved in the case, Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece and pro-life leader Alveda King, called this battle “the civil rights issue of our time.”

“No racial group in America has ever been more left out of societal protection nor suffered more deliberate discrimination, dehumanization, agonizing dismemberment, and death legally imposed upon them than black children,” she said.

“The Baby Q case is a gauntlet,” King told The Epoch Times in an email. “Pray that the hammer of justice will rule in favor of life.”

The controversial racial component of abortion also was highlighted nationally in the 2009 documentary “Maafa 21: Black Genocide in 21st Century America,” which argued that the targeting of black Americans through abortion constitutes a genocide.

Planned Parenthood Data Speaks

In recent years, as the Black Lives Matter movement gained prominence, almost 20 Planned Parenthood affiliates have issued public acknowledgments of racism within the organization.

Planned Parenthood of Greater New York, for instance, condemned Sanger’s “racist legacy,” while announcing that her name would be removed from its building.

“There is overwhelming evidence for Sanger’s deep belief in eugenic ideology,” the group said. “Removing her name is an important step toward representing who we are as an organization and who we serve.”

Planned Parenthood of Pacific Southwest, meanwhile, acknowledged “white supremacy of the past and present,” including “our own organization” and the “implicit bias” that it said still exists within Planned Parenthood today.

“Planned Parenthood has been complicit in upholding systemic racism,” the group’s Illinois affiliate said.

Similar statements confessing to “present participation in white supremacy” and acknowledging that Sanger’s “racist ideals” have “shaped Planned Parenthood today” were issued by numerous other affiliates.

And yet, the massive disparities continue, advocates say. According to a legal filing by black leaders in the Baby Q case that cites state health statistics, 63 percent of the 7,538 “unborn children killed by abortion providers in Alabama” in 2019 were black.

This shows abortion providers “intentionally target African American children,” the black leaders said in the legal filing. And this “violence” based on race would never be tolerated in any other context, they argued.

Where the Case Goes Now

Later this month, a hearing on the case will be held in state court in Alabama to hear arguments from the various parties involved.

In its response to the lawsuit, Planned Parenthood Southeast asked the court to dismiss the case, based on lack of jurisdiction and Baby Q supporters’ alleged failure to identify a claim where the court would be able to provide relief. Neither the national Planned Parenthood office nor the Southeast office responded to requests for comment about the Baby Q litigation or the claims of racism.

The governor’s office is taking the same position as the abortion industry, urging the court to dismiss Baby Q’s case and refuse to allow legislators behind the Human Life Protection Act to intervene.

Gov. Ivey’s office didn’t respond by press time to requests for comment on why the governor has declined to enforce the Human Life Protection Act or why she is asking the court to dismiss the case. Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office also didn’t respond by press time.

Col. John Eidsmoe, a prominent constitutional scholar in Alabama who has worked closely with multiple state Supreme Court justices, told The Epoch Times that he doesn’t anticipate a ruling by the Alabama courts until after the U.S. Supreme Court issues its opinion in the Mississippi case. That ruling is expected by this summer.

“The general feeling is that the Supreme Court will uphold the Mississippi law, but it is not clear yet whether it will overturn or simply modify Roe v. Wade,” added Eidsmoe, a professor of Constitutional law at Oak Brook College of Law & Government Policy as well as senior counsel for the Alabama-based Foundation for Moral Law.

Alabama’s Supreme Court, he said, would likely want to wait for a favorable decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on the Mississippi law before moving on this. Eidsmoe also believes that, with its current makeup, the U.S. Supreme Court would be likely to uphold Alabama’s law protecting the unborn as well.

Potentially even more important than the legal issues is what this case could do in the court of public opinion, he said.

Multiple experts and leaders involved in the case told The Epoch Times that these may be the last days for Roe v. Wade, legal abortion, and racial targeting of minorities by the industry. The outcome of the Baby Q case may play a key role in that historic shift.

This article was originally published by the The Epoch Times.

With a bang of a gavel in 1973, 63 million fellow Americans were condemned to die. And the number keeps growing.

Now if the U.S. Senate confirms Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, another pro-abortion justice will be added to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Last week, Judge Jackson, nominated by Biden to the U.S. Supreme Court, faced four days of hearings in the U.S. Senate. South Carolina Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham raised an intriguing point to her: “Every group that wants to pack the court, that believes the court is a bunch of right-wing nuts who are going to destroy America, that considers the Constitution ‘trash’—all wanted you picked. That is all I can say. That so many of these left-wing radical groups who would destroy the law as we know it…supported you is problematic for me.”

Jon Schweppe of the American Principles Project noted, “On abortion and religious liberty, it’s clear where she stands. Jackson co-authored an amicus brief for the Massachusetts NARAL chapter characterizing pro-life sidewalk counselors as ‘indisputably harmful’ and supporting the notion that they should not be allowed anywhere near an abortion clinic.”

He adds, “Why would leftist groups like American Atheists, the Human Rights Campaign, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, the National Education Association and the Southern Poverty Law Center push the White House to nominate Jackson and the Senate to confirm?….Ketanji Brown Jackson is a woke Trojan horse, as the preponderance of evidence suggests.”

When asked to define what a woman is, Judge Jackson declined, claiming she’s “not a biologist.” When asked when human life begins, she said to Louisiana U.S. Senator John Kennedy: “Senator, um… I don’t know.”

Gary Bauer responded to her answer: “Of course, this well-educated, Harvard graduate knows life begins at conception. The problem is that she’s all in on abortion on demand.”

The U.S. Supreme Court decisions Roe v. Wade (1973) and Casey v. Planned Parenthood (1992) established by judicial fiat a right to abortion. Thus abortion, said Judge Jackson, is “settled law of the Supreme Court concerning the right to terminate a pregnancy. They established a framework the court has reaffirmed.”

One Constitutional authority had some criticisms of Roe v. Wade as a legal opinion. She said that Roe “tried to do too much, too fast—it essentially made every abortion restriction in the country at the time illegal in one fell swoop—leaving it open to fierce attacks. ‘Doctrinal limbs too swiftly shaped…may prove unstable.’”

Who was this radical anti-abortion activist that would dare criticize the left’s most beloved decision? It was Ruth Bader Ginsburg–before she became a justice on the high court who did everything in her power to preserve Roe v. Wade.

Writing for Lifenews.com, Micaiah Bilger observes that Judge Jackson has called peaceful pro-life sidewalk counselors at abortion clinics “hostile, noisy and in your face” people.

Bilger added, “Jackson has the support of NARAL Pro-Choice America, which advocates for abortions without limits up to birth…She also ruled against the Trump administration’s efforts to defund the billion-dollar abortion chain Planned Parenthood, and she clerked for pro-abortion Justice Stephen Breyer when he issued an opinion against the partial-birth abortion ban.”

I believe abortion is the single most important political issue of our time. It’s not complicated. Abortion takes a human life every time.

When judges rule in favor of abortion, they are playing God. I find it amazing that the left constantly decries bullying, yet they favor abortion rights. What could be more bullying than dismembering a defenseless, unborn child limb by limb because it is perceived as somehow inconvenient?

Some critics on the left, like Bill Maher, say that the only reason conservatives oppose Judge Jackson is because she’s black. But people need to remember that the founder of the nation’s leading abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, was Margaret Sanger, who spoke at a Ku Klux Klan meeting. She wrote a letter to one of her board members (Dr. Clarence J. Gamble, 12/10/1939): “We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.” No wonder the majority of abortion facilities are in urban areas—to this day.

In our nation’s birth certificate, the Declaration of Independence, our founders said that our rights come from the Creator—and first among these rights is the “right to life.” Indeed, if you’re dead, how can you enjoy any other right?

The U.S. Constitution, which is predicated on the Declaration, notes in the preamble that one of its purposes is: “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Our posterity? That is, the yet to be born.

To paraphrase Dr. D. James Kennedy, Judge Jackson should get down on her knees and thank God that her mother wasn’t “pro-choice.”

If you get abortion wrong, you tend to get everything else wrong too.

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

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

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

This article claims the following:

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

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

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

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

Telling the truth now called hate speech

What is hateful about these statements?

• God says that homosexuality is a sin.

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

What is hateful about them is actually…nothing.

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

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

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

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

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

Using hate speech to silence Christian opposition to the cultural takeover

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Evading the Constitution

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

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

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

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

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

The Christian obligation to influence culture and instruct our rulers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Christian response to this hate speech assault

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[ix] Ibid.

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

[xi] Ibid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[xix] Ibid.

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

[xxi] Ibid.

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

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

Written by Worth Loving

Recently, Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest (R-N.C.) came under fire for comments he made regarding Planned Parenthood and its founder, Margaret Sanger. Speaking to an MLK Day breakfast at Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh, Forest said this: “There is no doubt that when Planned Parenthood was created, it was created to destroy the entire black race. That was the purpose of Planned Parenthood. That’s the truth.” Forest later defended his comments to McClatchy News:

“The facts speak for themselves. Since 1973, 19 million black babies have been aborted, mostly by Planned Parenthood. I care too much about the lives of these babies to debate the intent of Sanger’s views when the devastation she brought into this world is obvious.”

Margaret Sanger, her sister, Ethel Byrne, and Fania Mindell opened the first birth control clinic in the United States in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York on October 16, 1916. The clinic was later raided by the NYPD, and all three women were arrested and charged with violating the Comstock Act for distributing obscene materials. After laws governing birth control were relaxed, Sanger founded the American Birth Control League in 1921, which was renamed the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942.

While Lieutenant Governor Forest was attacked by many on the Left for pushing an uneducated, insensitive agenda, history backs him up. The fact is that Margaret Sanger strongly believed the Aryan race to be superior and that it must be purified, a view that finds its roots from Charles Darwin’s defense of evolution in The Origin of Species. Darwin argued that a process of “natural selection” favored the white race over all other “lesser races.” Sanger advocated for eugenics by calling for abortion and birth control among the “unfit” to produce a master race, a race consisting solely of wealthy, educated whites. Sanger said she believed blacks were “human weeds” that needed to be exterminated. She also referred to immigrants, African Americans, and poor people as “reckless breeders” and “spawning…human beings who never should have been born.”

Sanger once wrote “that the aboriginal Australian, the lowest known species of the human family, just a step higher than the chimpanzee in brain development, has so little sexual control that police authority alone prevents him from obtaining sexual satisfaction on the streets.” In an effort to sell her birth control and abortion proposals to the black community, Sanger said: “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.” In 1926, Sanger was also the featured speaker at a women’s auxiliary meeting of the Ku Klux Klan in Silver Lake, New Jersey.

Sanger opened her clinics in largely minority neighborhoods because she believed immigrants and the working class were inferior and needed their population controlled so as to purify the human race. That trend continues today where almost 80 percent of Planned Parenthood facilities are located in minority neighborhoods. In fact, although only 13 percent of American women are black, over 35 percent of all black babies are aborted in the United States every year. Abortion is the leading cause of death for blacks in the United States. According to Students for Life of America, “more African-Americans have died from abortion than from AIDS, accidents, violent crimes, cancer, and heart disease combined.” Black babies are about five times more likely to be aborted than whites. On Halloween in 2017, Planned Parenthood’s “Black Community” Twitter account tweeted: “If you’re a Black woman in America, it’s statistically safer to have an abortion than to carry a pregnancy to term or give birth.”

While Margaret Sanger tried to portray Planned Parenthood as a merciful organization that helps needy families, the facts speak for themselves. In her testimony to the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in September 2015, former Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards openly admitted that over 80 percent of her organization’s annual revenue comes from performing abortions and not basic health care for poor or disadvantaged women. When you dive deeper, well over 90 percent of Planned Parenthood’s annual revenue comes from performing abortions.

Despite this sordid history, Margaret Sanger is almost universally recognized as a pioneer for women’s rights rather than the racist she actually was. When accepting Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Award, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that she “admired Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision…I am really in awe of her.” Those like Hillary Clinton are ignoring the explicitly racist statements that Margaret Sanger made throughout her life. The fact is that Sanger normalized birth control and abortion in the United States as a means to accomplish eugenics. Her ultimate goal was to eliminate non-white races, people with sickness or disabilities, children born to felons, the poor, and immigrants, to name a few.

Margaret Sanger is no heroine, and Planned Parenthood is not some merciful health care provider as the Left paints it to be. Margaret Sanger repeatedly stated her racist intentions for the whole world to see and hear, and Planned Parenthood was and still is the manifestation of those racist ideologies. America was founded on the idea that no matter your race, creed, national origin, disability, or station in life, everyone who comes here or is born here has the opportunity to live a successful, fulfilling life. Margaret Sanger didn’t believe that.

As pro-life activists, we must do our part to expose Margaret Sanger for who she really was. We must also expose the racist history of Planned Parenthood and how that history is still relevant today. For more information on Margaret Sanger and the racist roots of Planned Parenthood, check out these FRC resources: Planned Parenthood Is Not Pro-Woman and The Real Planned Parenthood: Leading the Culture of Death.

This article was originally published at the FRC Blog.

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:18-19).

In the wake of the Charlottesville melee, the mainstream press is citing the disreputable Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and its “hate” groups list ad nauseum with nary a peep about the repeated criticism of the SPLC as a bastion of anti-Christian bigotry.

The Illinois Family Institute (IFI) is included on the “hate” groups list alongside white supremacist and white separatist groups for no reason other than our biblical view of marriage as a sexually differentiated union and our biblical views of sexual morality—views that are shared by the Roman Catholic Church, many Protestant denominations, many non-denominational churches, Orthodox Judaism, 2,000 years of church history, and the Bible.

It’s not just IFI that finds the SPLC and its leaders unethical. The avaricious founder of the SPLC, Morris Dees, and the dishonest editor-in-chief of the “Intelligence Report” which is responsible for the corrupt “hate” groups list, Mark Potok, have come under sustained criticism from many people for many years. (Click here, here, and here  to read more.)

Several months ago, one such critic, Real Clear Politics writer Carl Cannon, wrote an exposé of the SPLC, to whom Cannon attributes blame for the anti-free-speech assault on political scientist Charles Murray at radical Middlebury College in Vermont.

Civil rights attorney Dees co-founded the lucrative non-profit SPLC in 1971, ostensibly to combat the racism endemic to the South, and on the way, he’s made a boatload of money that has enabled him to live the luxurious lifestyle to which he and his five serial wives had become accustomed. His clients? Well, they didn’t fare quite as well financially.

Cannon explains that when the Ku Klux Klan’s power waned and racism diminished, the SPLC had to find new ways “to frighten people into still donating.” He says that “Scaring the bejesus out of people requires new bogeymen, and lots of them.” Further, Cannon claims that “mainstream conservative groups” are among the bogeymen.

Cannon reports that the “most scathing assessments of Dees and his group have always come from the left” like “Stephen B. Bright, a Yale law professor and president of the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights,” who describes Dees as a “con man” and a “fraud.”

Even the far-Left magazine The Nation indicts Dees as “the archsalesman of hatemongering,” accusing him of stuffing “mailbags…with his fundraising letters, scaring dollars out of the pockets of trembling liberals aghast at his lurid depictions of a hate-sodden America in dire need of legal confrontation by the SPLC…. Dees and his hate-seekers scour the landscape for hate…it’s their staple.”

While useful idiots in the mainstream press disseminate the SPLC’s propaganda, thus smearing Christian organizations and lining the pockets of Dees, the FBI has stopped using the SPLC as a resource.

The SPLC has perfected the tactics espoused by homosexuals Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen who in 1989 wrote what they deemed a “gay manifesto for the 1990’s” titled After the Ball, in which they urged “progressives” to utilize the mainstream media in a campaign to eradicate conservative moral beliefs—what they call “homohatred”—or “silence” the expression of such beliefs in public:

[L]ink homohating bigotry with all sorts of attributes the bigot would be ashamed to possess and with social consequences he would find unpleasant and scary…. Gays must launch a large-scale campaign…to reach straights through mainstream media. We’re talking about propaganda…. Gays must be portrayed as victims in need of protection…. Make victimizers look bad…. The public should be shown images of ranting homohaters whose associated traits and attitudes appall and anger Middle America. The images might include: Klansmen… Hysterical backwoods preachers… Menacing punks, thugs, and convicts who speak coolly about the “fags” they… would like to bash… [or] A tour of Nazi concentration camps where homosexuals were tortured and gassed.

The SPLC employs all of these propagandistic tactics to stigmatize and marginalize Christian organizations like the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, Liberty Counsel, and the Illinois Family Institute for our beliefs about sexuality and marriage that derive from Scripture and for our willingness to express them publicly.

These are a few of the organizations that have not fallen prey to ravenous wolves or been taken “captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ” (Colossians 2:8).

For their faithfulness, Christ-followers will be hated, but enduring such trials brings blessings:

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:11-12).

The cost of discipleship has been minimal in America for over two hundred years, but the cost is rising due to the unholy efforts of “LGBTQQAP” activists.

While Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me,” many Christians—entire denominations—are choosing instead friendship with the world, ignoring the words of James:

“Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” (James 4:4).

Download the IFI App!

We now have an IFI mobile app that enables us to deliver great content based on the “Tracks” you choose, including timely legislative alerts, cultural commentaries, upcoming event notifications, links to our podcasts, video reports, and even daily Bible verses to encourage you. This great app is available for Android and iPhones.

Key Features:

• It’s FREE!
• Specific content for Christians
• Performs a spiritual assessment
• Sends you daily Scriptures to encourage and equip you
• You determine when and how much content you get

In the wake of the violent confrontation and death in Charlottesville, Virginia, the response of the church seems curiously one-sided. For example, one of my friends, a pastor, expressed his sadness and anger about the events and that he was grateful for those pastors who stood with the counter-protesters.

Most of what I see on social media are denunciations of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), Nazism, and white supremacy, with calls for pastors to use the opportunity to condemn racism. Since the church of Jesus Christ must oppose any kind of racism, this is a good thing.

But my friend’s post implied that Christian pastors were standing with the counter-protestors, and perhaps suggested that other pastors should too, which is alarming. If Christians aren’t careful, they may be pulled into an association they will later regret.

While the white supremacists must be rejected and categorically condemned for their ungodly ideology, the counter-protestors—known collectively as antifa (short for “anti-fascist”)—are just as ungodly. The two groups live at the extremes of our national politics and are really two sides of the same coin. It is unconscionable for a Christian (much less a Christian minister) to join with either movement.

The conflict in Charlottesville originated with a request from Unite the Right, a white nationalist organization, for a permit to hold a rally protesting the removal of the city’s Robert E. Lee statue. White nationalists, like all American citizens, have the right to gather under the auspices of free speech, no matter how repugnant that speech may be.

And repugnant it is. White nationalism, known also as white supremacy, is a relatively small movement that believes white people are superior to all other races. It includes organizations like the KKK, neo-Nazis, and some armed militias.

Also known as the “alt-right” (“alternative right”), adherents are inspired by fascist movements like Benito Mussolini’s in Italy and Adolf Hitler’s in Germany. The Nazi flag was prominent during the Charlottesville protest, as were tiki torches which called to mind the torch-bearing lynch mobs of the late 1800s and early 1900s. The alt-right despises Jewish people, Christian doctrine, and the American Constitution, and embraces Nietzschean philosophy.

White supremacy, white nationalism, neo-Nazis, the KKK, and the alt-right all share the same goal: a whites-only nation that preserves a white culture rooted in its European ancestors. They would say they are fighting the encroachment of foreign cultures that threaten to eventually supplant “white” culture.

Such ideology has no place in our body politic, which was founded on the Lockean idea that “all men are created equal.” It should also go without saying that such sentiment rejects the biblical teaching that mankind was created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) and, therefore, all men equally retain a measure of the divine imprint, all are sinners, and all are candidates for salvation, no matter ethnicity or skin color.

In sum, the white supremacist movement is a fringe activist cult that deserves to stay on the margins of society. There must be no uniting with them.

But neither is there uniting with antifa, the anti-fascist movement (sometimes known as the “alt-left”) which is heavily rooted in anarchy and opposition to the state. The September 2017 issue of The Atlantic includes an essay titled, “The Rise of the Violent Left,” in which Peter Beinart writes,

Antifa traces its roots to the 1920s and ’30s, when militant leftists battled fascists in the streets of Germany, Italy, and Spain. When fascism withered after World War II, antifa did too. But in the ’70s and ’80s, neo-Nazi skinheads began to infiltrate Britain’s punk scene. After the Berlin Wall fell, neo-Nazism also gained prominence in Germany. In response, a cadre of young leftists, including many anarchists and punk fans, revived the tradition of street-level antifascism.

…

Since antifa is heavily composed of anarchists, its activists place little faith in the state, which they consider complicit in fascism and racism. They prefer direct action: They pressure venues to deny white supremacists space to meet. They pressure employers to fire them and landlords to evict them. And when people they deem racists and fascists manage to assemble, antifa’s partisans try to break up their gatherings, including by force.

This explains what we saw in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election and what has followed. Members of antifa consider Trump a racist and have lumped conservatives and Republicans in with white nationalists. That’s why Ann Coulter, Ben Shapiro, Gavin McInnes, Katie Pavlich and Ann McElhinney, Charles Murray and other conservatives have encountered sometimes violent protests shutting down their speaking engagements on college campuses.

It also explains the violence at Trump rallies (click here, here, here, and here). This is not a defense of Trump (some of his supporters were no better) but illustrates what is happening in our country and why.

Perhaps the most even assessment of the events in Charlottesville came from Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The New York Times, who tweeted, “The hard left seemed as hate-filled as alt-right. I saw club-wielding ‘antifa’ beating white nationalists being led out of the park.”

Further, recall that the antifa counter-protestors were, in essence, defending the removal of Robert E. Lee’s statue. Excising history calls to mind the communists of Stalinist Russia or current U.S. nemesis Kim Jong-un, who airbrushed allies-turned-enemies from photos and purged state records of any evidence they ever existed. Where will such a purge end here in America?  Will Mt. Vernon or the Jefferson memorial be next?

The antifa movement is Marxist in form, emphasizing divisive identity politics and class warfare, and sanctioning the use of violence to subvert authority. They are godless materialists who believe that a socialist utopia can be achieved via their views of diversity, equality, and tolerance, and that violent resistance is necessary to overthrow the established order. Anarchy by definition is opposed to the biblical admonition to be subject to the governing authorities (Romans 13:1).

If allowed to progress, both movements—white nationalism and antifa—ultimately end in dictatorship. Hitler and Stalin may have been enemies in World War II, but the sickle and swastika both oppressed their people, just from different directions.

The truth is obvious: Christians must not make common cause with either movement. Yes, we must oppose racism wherever and whenever we find it, but we must not join a violent, anarchical movement simply because it too opposes racism.

We stand against both racism and anarchy, and we do so in the name of Jesus Christ who submitted himself to the ruling authorities to atone for the sins of all men. And it is to Jesus Christ alone whom we owe our allegiance and obedience.

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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

On Thursday, Nov. 29, at the second meeting of the East Aurora High School ad hoc committee formed to revisit the possibility of establishing policy regarding students who experience gender confusion, over 120 people showed up, including approximately 10 pastors and 15 chaplains.

Most of these community members were Hispanic as were the faith leaders who serve the Aurora community. Almost all of the 120 people opposed such policy. Over 20 people, including a high school student, voiced their opposition to any policy that would permit boys and girls to use the restrooms and locker rooms designated for those of the opposite sex. And they expressed their views with unapologetic, unself-conscious, bold, and impassioned conviction, often with the help of a translator.

In contrast to their respectful tone, the two attendees who spoke in support of such policy—neither of whom live in Aurora and one of whom identifies as “transsexual”—were by multiple accounts condescending and rude.

After the meeting, one of the gender-confused non-community members who serves on the ad hoc committee sent the following offensive email to the entire committee, which he also asked to be shared with the school board. This disturbing email alone should suffice to disqualify him from serving on any school committee (emphasis added):

Dear Fellow Ad Hoc Committee Members,

One of the nice things about being in business for myself is that I enjoy the freedom to speak my mind without fear of having my employment terminated or other negative repercussions. I was invited to serve on the Ad Hoc Committee and have every intention of continuing to do so. But I cannot go through an experience like last Thursday night’s meeting without saying what I need to say about it. I didn’t speak up at the meeting only because I understand and respect Robert’s Rules of Order and the process by which governmental and quasi-governmental bodies operate.

Never have I seen so many people gathered in one place so determined to display their own ignorance, bigotry, and mean-spiritedness. I should not have been surprised because the protest was organized by the Illinois Family Institute, which has been certified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Beacon News had a photograph of David Norck of the Illinois Family Institute assisting the protestors. It would be like having the Ku Klux Klan come to a meeting of a committee whose work was to craft a policy for racial integration.

We had speakers tell us that transgender people have “twisted minds” and are “gender confused”. My favorite part of the evening was when a speaker, who for some reason was allowed to stand behind my chair for the entire meeting in an intimidating posture, pointed his pen at me, and told the assembled throng that I was there to “push my lifestyle” on the children of East Aurora. This same person had never met me before that evening; doesn’t know anything about my “lifestyle”; doesn’t know if I spend my free time with my children, in the library, out clubbing, or at church; and knows nothing about me other than the fact that I am transgender. Because he knows nothing about me other than the fact that I am transgender and feels justified in attacking my “lifestlye”, he is nothing but a hate-filled ignorant bigot. It is no different from making assumptions about a person’s “lifestyle” because they are black or Hispanic.

We heard a lot of talk about putting girls in the boys’ bathroom and boys in the girl’s bathroom. But the only people at the meeting who want to put girls in the boys’ bathroom are the people who want to force transsexual girls into the boys’ bathroom where their identity, comfort, and safety will be compromised.

I was disappointed not to have had an opportunity to speak out at the meeting, and to have to listen to ninety minutes of transphobic diatribes.

We cannot let a certified hate group prevent the Ad Hoc Committee from having its dialogue, proposing policy, and taking a vote. We don’t have mob rule; we have a democracy. And while the First Amendment certainly protects every one, including bigots (the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the American Nazi Party to march in Skokie), reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions may be imposed on the right of public comment so that government bodies and quasi-government bodies can do the work that they are charged to do. It is my suggestion that we, as a Committee, or the School Board, itself, adopt reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions on public comment so that the Committee can do its work.

This letter will be an open letter which I post on my blog.

Joanie Rae Wimmer

This remarkable letter calls for some remarks:

1. It should take Aurora community members aback to learn that someone who is not a community member is being allowed to serve on a non-elected committee that will be developing and voting on policy for their school. The Aurora community should demand to know who invited Wimmer and every other non-community member (e.g., Rick Garcia and Sara Schriber) to serve on the committee.
2. The community should be outraged that Wimmer seeks to limit the capacity of community members with whom he disagrees to express their opinions.
3. Adding insult to injury, Mr. Wimmer calls community members and other attendees with whom he disagrees ignorant, mean-spirited, hate-filled bigots who are the equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan. Does anyone think a conservative community member—let alone an outsider—who hurls epithets like that would ever be included on this committee?
4. Wimmer’s anger reveals how self-righteous and presumptuous homosexual and gender-confused activists have become from years of being coddled, wooed, apologized to, and deferred to. When they encounter public dissent from their assumptions about homosexuality and gender dysphoria expressed with the same certitude that they express theirs, they respond with rage and incivility.
5. Mr. Wimmer attributes “mean-spiritedness” to his ideological opponents. It is appropriate for compassionate people to feel sympathy for those who suffer from gender dysphoria. We should have sympathy for the pain that such obsessive thoughts about one’s sex and the compulsive acts that are impelled by these thoughts create. But compassion does not require people to accept Wimmer’s beliefs about what constitutes gender or about the morality of cross-dressing and elective amputations of healthy body parts.Further, once he brings his non-factual ontological and moral views into the public square, demanding that public policy and laws reflect them, it is ethical and critically important for conservatives to express their dissenting views.No one argues that compassion requires society to affirm the beliefs and desires of those who suffer from a similar disorder: Body Integrity Identity Disorder (i.e., who identify with amputees, desire to have limbs amputated, and often pretend to be amputees). Compassion and kindness do not require conservatives to deny reality or censor their competing views regarding truth and morality. Quite the contrary. Compassion demands that our actions reflect truth, morality, and objective reality.
6. Homosexual and “transgender” activists have cleverly constructed a rhetorical universe in which only they are permitted to speak. They simply assert that their subjective, non-factual beliefs about homosexuality and gender dysphoria are inarguably true and central to their identity and that all dissenting views are hateful, ignorant, mean-spirited bigotry that make them feel “unsafe.” Therefore, because they feel“unsafe” if they hear views with which they disagree, such views must not be permitted to be spoken or reflected in policy or law.I would argue that if Mr. Wimmer finds it too hurtful to hear dissenting views about gender dysphoria, then perhaps he shouldn’t venture into the public square demanding that public policy reflect his.
7. Mr. Wimmer is incorrect when he compares conservative views of homosexuality to racism, which he does when he suggests that allowing conservatives to speak at ad hoc committee meetings or serve on the committee is equivalent to having a racist serve on committee to establish policy on racial discrimination. Wimmer went so far as to defame one attendee, David Norck (who is not an employee of IFI), by calling him the equivalent of Ku Klux Klansman. Wimmer’s suggestion is both offensive and wrong.

   First, gender dysphoria is utterly different from race. While race, or perhaps more accurately skin-color, is 100% heritable and does not impel any kind of behavior, let alone morally questionable behavior, gender dysphoria is constituted by subjective feelings and impels behavior that many consider profoundly disordered. There are no points of correspondence between these two conditions, and, therefore, his analogy fails.Second, most people who believe that cross-dressing and elective amputations of healthy body parts are unhealthy, perverse responses to disordered thinking do not hate those who suffer from gender dysphoria.

8. Does Wimmer have any evidence that those who believe differently than he does about gender dysphoria hate those who suffer from it? And does Wimmer have any evidence to justify his implicit comparison of gender dysphoria to race?As discussed earlier, it makes more sense to compare gender dysphoria to Body Integrity Identity Disorder. Should someone who suffers from Body Integrity Identity Disorder serve on a committee formed to create policy on the use of school elevators intended for use by injured or disabled students?
9. We have exalted social science to some unjustifiable position as the ultimate arbiter of truth, reality, and morality. Even if the majority of mental health professionals were to conclude that the desire to be the opposite sex constitutes a healthy and normative mental state and that achieving “congruence” between one’s self-perception/desires and one’s “presentation” through elective amputation of healthy body parts and cross-dressing  is proper and good doesn’t make those conclusions true. History is littered with the detritus of psychosocial theories once accepted as gospel truth.
10. Wimmer takes umbrage at one community member’s reference to his “lifestyle,” fulminating that this person knows nothing about Wimmer’s lifestyle. I’m not sure if Wimmer is being deceitful or obtuse, but clearly this person was referring to the only relevant aspect of Wimmer’s lifestyle: his cross-dressing and elective amputation of healthy body parts, both of which Wimmer has made public. In fact, Wimmer is serving on this committee in order to advance his non-factual beliefs about these aspects of his lifestyle.
11. Wimmer uses the terms “transphobic,” which denotes irrational fear, and “hate-filled” to malign those who disagree with him about gender dysphoria. Does Wimmer believe that all expressions of moral disapproval about volitional behavior constitute fear or hatred , or is it just the expression of beliefs with which he disagrees that are “phobic” and hateful?The most hate-filled language I’ve come across in any reports about the East Aurora controversy appears in Wimmer’s invective.
12. Wimmer criticizes Aurora community members “who want to force transsexual girls into the boys’ bathroom.” “Transsexual girls” are, in reality, boys. Wimmer treats as indisputable fact his non-factual belief that boys who suffer from gender dsyphoria are actually girls and arrogantly suggests that no one has the right to any other beliefs about gender.
13. One final and less significant comment: Wimmer twice refers to IFI as a Southern Poverty Law Center-“certified” hate group. If this designation were not so malignant, Wimmer’s comment would be funny. Wimmer, an attorney, might spend some time researching the SPLC’s “certification” process. In short, the SPLC decided which organizations espouse views on sexuality with which the SPLC disagrees, placed those groups on its hate groups list, and then after-the-fact invented criteria that would justify their inclusion. There is no certification process.

The kind of radical sexuality activism that East Aurora High School has encountered will come to every elementary, middle, and high school in the country. Let’s hope that every community has men and women as courageous as the men and women in Aurora—including faith leaders. Right now the picture looks bleak on the courage front, but maybe the actions of these Aurora community members will inspire others to follow their lead.

Stand With Us

Your support of our work and ministry is always much needed and greatly appreciated. Your promotion of our emails on Facebook, Twitter, your own email network, and prayer for financial support is a huge part of our success in being a strong voice for the pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-family message here in the Land of Lincoln.  Please consider standing with us.

Click here to support Illinois Family Institute (IFI).  Contributions to IFI are tax-deductible!

You can also send a gift to P.O. Box 88848, Carol Stream, IL  60188.