IFI is asking for help from supporters in moving forward an important lawsuit against the state of Illinois. In light of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of pro-life crisis pregnancy centers in California (NIFLA v. Becerra) and with the encouragement of IFI and others, Mauck & Baker, a Chicago-based law firm committed to protecting religious liberty, is considering a lawsuit against the Illinois law that bans counseling for children and teens who experience unwanted same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria.

Background

The plaintiffs in the NIFLA case (i.e., pro-life crisis pregnancy centers) sued the state of California, which had passed the FACT Act requiring all crisis pregnancy centers in defiance of their beliefs to “notify women that California provides free or low-cost services, including abortions, and give them a phone number to call.” The pregnancy centers sued the state, lost, and then appealed that decision to the radical 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled against the pregnancy centers, claiming the state has the right to regulate “professional speech.” The NIFLA plaintiffs appealed the 9^th Circuit Court’s decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the pregnancy centers. Justice Clarence Thomas writing for the majority said,

Some Courts of Appeals have recognized “professional speech” as a separate category of speech that is subject to different rules…. But this Court has never recognized “professional speech” as a separate category of speech subject to different rules. Speech is not unprotected merely because it is uttered by professionals. 

The appellate court decisions to which Justice Thomas referred included two cases (Pickup v. Brown and King v. Governors of New Jersey) in which state laws banning “sexual orientation change efforts” were challenged.

Lawsuit against Illinois

The argument made by Justice Thomas provides a strong legal rationale for challenging the bill Governor Bruce Rauner signed into law in 2015 banning counseling for minors who experience unwanted same sex attraction or gender dysphoria, euphemistically named the “Youth Mental Health Protection Act.” This law was based on the false assumptions that “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” (i.e., subjective, internal feelings about one’s objective, immutable biological sex) are fixed and unchangeable—assumptions that are disputed even by many in the “LGBTQ” community.

Mauck & Baker believes this law violates the speech rights of mental health professionals in Illinois and is considering a lawsuit to restore to mental health providers their full complement of First Amendment protections. And that’s where IFI supporters come in.

We need plaintiffs, and they need financial and prayer support. If you know any mental health providers who have been unable to counsel minors with unwanted same- sex attraction or gender dysphoria due to Illinois’ unconstitutional, anti-autonomy, anti-choice law, please have them contact Mauck & Baker by calling (312) 726-1243 or by via email HERE. Please share with them that plaintiffs will remain anonymous. The promise of anonymity is desirable because of the vindictiveness of the powerful and oppressive “LGBTQ” community.

The plaintiffs also need funding for attorney fees and expert testimony about the harms inflicted by such unconstitutional bans. This is a critically important lawsuit, which we hope will serve as a model for states, cities, and counties with similar unconstitutional laws (i.e., New Jersey, California, Oregon, Vermont, New Mexico, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Nevada, Washington, Hawaii, Delaware, Maryland, New Hampshire, 40 cities, and 2 counties). Click HERE to DONATE to this important cause.

There are parents across the state in desperate need of proper counseling for their children who suffer from sexual confusion, sometimes caused by sexual abuse. This need is growing because of the pervasive promulgation of the false and destructive “LGBTQ” ideology that has eradicated the stigma associated with immoral sexual acts, poisoned the minds of children with perverse images, lured children into all manner of sexual experimentation, and provided a distorted lens though which children are misinterpreting normal human experiences. Compassionate people who care about the suffering of others—especially children—and who care about truth, must help these parents and children get the care they need.

Please help IFI, Mauck & Baker, professionals who want to counsel, and children and teens who want and need compassionate and sound counseling.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Lawsuit-Against-State-of-Illinois-Unconstitutional-Ban-on-Counseling-for-Minors.mp3

As a result of the passage of the deceptively named “Youth Mental Health Protection Act,” the law firm of Mauck & Baker is today filing a federal lawsuit against the state of Illinois on behalf of a group of Illinois pastors alleging that the Act “unconstitutionally restricts a young person’s right to make personal choices regarding his or her own choice of sexual identity, as well as the pastors’ right to free speech and the exercise of religion.” The suit seeks “a Declaratory Judgment from the court stating that the law should not apply to pastoral counseling.”

Read the Mauck & Baker federal complaint HERE.

The Act, commonly called the “conversion therapy ban” but more properly called the anti-autonomy Act or the anti-identity-choice Act, prohibits professional mental health providers from helping minors who desire counseling for unwanted, unchosen homoerotic attraction. So, while leftists believe minors should be able to access medical help in a futile quest to reject their unwanted sex, these same leftists pass laws prohibiting minors from accessing help in constructing an identity that doesn’t include the affirmation of unwanted homoerotic feelings.

The anti-autonomy Act includes a host of other problems including the following:

• The Act prohibits “any practices or treatments that seek to….reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings towards individuals of the same sex.” The hubris of homosexual activists and liberal lawmakers knows no bounds. They passed a law to prohibit teenagers from pursuing ways of reducing unwanted homoerotic feelings.

• The Act makes no distinction between coercive aversion therapies and talk therapies.

• It makes no distinction between involuntary counseling and voluntary counseling desired by minors.

• It fails to address whether, for example, a 14-year-old who experiences homoerotic feelings and admits to having been sexually molested would be allowed to explore the connection between sexual molestation and homoerotic feelings with a mental health provider?

• The Act states that “No person or entity may, in the conduct of any trade or commerce use or employ any…conversion therapy services in a manner that represents homosexuality as a…” In other words, it is now illegal to present homosexuality truthfully.

• The Act presumes without evidence that all counseling efforts to help minors who reject their unwanted, unchosen “sexual orientation” are damaging. It is indefensible to ban counseling efforts for which there is no conclusive evidence of harm.

• The Act applies to licensed psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, marriage and family therapists, professional counselors and clinical professional counselors, as well as anyone assisting any licensed professionals.

It is encouraging to see pastors take a public stand for unpopular biblical truths and against oppressive, politically driven laws that violate constitutionally protected liberty. We see such courage among church leaders too seldom.

Click HERE to read more.

IFI Faith, Family & Freedom Banquet

We are excited to have as our keynote speaker this year, former Congresswoman and Tea Party Caucus Leader, Michele Bachman!

Please register today, before the early bird special expires…

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing an Illinois doctor and two pregnancy care centers filed suit in state court against Gov. Bruce Rauner after he recently signed a bill into law that forces doctors and medical facilities to promote abortion regardless of their ethical or moral views on the practice.

ADF sent a letter to Rauner in May on behalf of numerous pro-life physicians, pregnancy care centers, and pregnancy care center network organizations advising him that the bill, SB 1564, would violate federal law and therefore place federal funding, including Medicaid reimbursements, in jeopardy. ADF also warned legislators about the problems with the bill last year. The lawsuit claims the new law, which is actually an amendment to the existing Illinois Healthcare Right of Conscience Act, violates state law and the state constitution.

“No state should attempt to rob women of the right to choose a pro-life doctor by forcing pro-life physicians and entities to make or arrange abortion referrals. What’s even worse is that Illinois did this by amending a law designed specifically to protect freedom of conscience,” said ADF Senior Counsel Matt Bowman. “The governor should have vetoed this bill for many reasons, including its incompatibility with Illinois law and the state constitution, which specifically protects freedom of conscience and free speech.”

The new law forces medical facilities and physicians who conscientiously object to involvement in abortions to adopt policies that provide women who ask for abortions with a list of providers “they reasonably believe may offer” them. Illinois law prohibits government from placing burdens on religious conscience without a compelling interest for doing so. Additionally, the Illinois Constitution protects “liberty of conscience,” saying that “no person shall be denied any civil or political right, privilege or capacity, on account of his religious opinions.” It also protects free speech, which includes the right not to be compelled by government to speak a message contrary to one’s own conscience.

“Pro-life health care professionals shouldn’t be forced to hand out lists describing how to contact abortionists, yet that’s what this law mandates that they do,” explained ADF Senior Counsel Kevin Theriot. “If this profane amendment to Illinois’ conscience protection law remains on the books, doctors and medical staff committed to saving all lives will be forced to promote the killing of some children, women will lose access to doctors who unconditionally value human life, and pregnancy resource centers that offer free help and hope to pregnant women will be forced to refer to abortionists. This is the kind of government coercion that the state constitution, the state Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the very law that was amended were all designed to prevent.”

Mauck & Baker LLC attorney Noel Sterett, one of more than 3,000 private attorneys allied with ADF, is co-counsel in the case, The Pregnancy Care Center of Rockford v. Rauner, filed in the Circuit Court of the 17th Judicial Circuit in Winnebago County.

Attorney Noel Sterett, co-counsel in the case and partner at Mauck & Baker, LLC, in Chicago, says, “These crisis pregnancy centers have been doing tremendous work serving their community for years, but now their core mission is being threatened. People disagree on whether abortions end human lives, but I’d hope we can all agree that pregnancy centers dedicated to protecting the unborn should not be forced to recommend abortion to mothers.”

For the past two decades, America’s slide down the slippery slope of atheist-flavored secular humanism has accelerated at breakneck speed.

Once upon a time Dr. Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop were scorned and ridiculed when they suggested such a “slippery slope” existed in terms of the devaluing of human life. In retrospect, Schaeffer and Koop were radically prescient in their predictions.

Almost daily we are assailed with ever more cases of individual Americans strong-armed to violate their sincerely-held religious beliefs. In fact, the only belief system afforded respect by the Progressives (Socialists) is the secular, utilitarian and humanistic worldview.

Since the days of Dewey and Wilson, Progressives have schemed and plotted and maneuvered, relentless in pursuit of the goal: a secular utopia administrated by so-called “enlightened elitists.”

Add to the mix, the eugenicist depravity of Margaret Sanger, founder of  “the American Birth Control League, which would eventually become Planned Parenthood,” and the final concoction is a godless set of mores where humans are just another entity in the animal kingdom.

I wrote of Sanger in the 2014 article, Margaret Sanger’s Dream Come True: Eugenics by Abortion:

And like the modern day organization, cloaking its true agenda in palatable verbiage such as “family planning” and “choice,” Margaret’s goal was far more evil than the respectable facade she presented.

Sanger waged a crusade for legal and safe contraceptives, and for legal and safe abortions. The Left and Planned Parenthood would have you believe she was a paragon, an angel of mercy for women in desperate need.

. . .

The real Margaret Sanger espoused sinister motives for advancing birth control and abortion: she fully endorsed eugenics for the betterment of race and society.

Sanger was a Darwinist who embraced a utilitarian view of human life, and proposed to rid our nation of the criminal element and “inferior races” through abortion and breeding programs.

Think of this: Roe v. Wade pitted the right of privacy of the woman against the right to LIFE of her unborn child, and the Burger court ruled in favor of privacy.

I noted in my 2014 post, Roe v. Wade: The Shameful History of an Egregious SCOTUS Decision:

Justice Byron White wrote a stern dissent:

I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s judgment.

The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant women and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes.

The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the woman, on the other hand.

Now, 43 years and 57 million slaughtered babies later, our nation suffers under the corporate burden of guilt and the predictable loss of public virtue.

And somehow this wrongly decided “right to privacy” ruling, this right to terminate the life of the unborn for all or any reason, with no support whatsoever in our U.S. Constitution, supersedes all other rights and worldviews. So much so that taxpayers, in spite of their biblical objections and abhorrence of this infanticide, are forced to pay for abortions and abortifacients.

But even worse, those who object and refuse to take part in abortions, abortion referrals, or abortifacient prescribing, are punished.

A recent case in Rockford, Illinois, Mendoza v. Martell, is illustrative of the tyranny of the pro-abortion movement and its leaders.

Sandra Mendoza, a Rockford nurse and devout, pro-life Catholic, informed Public Health Administrator “Dr. Sandra Martell, of her conscientious objection to participating in any way in abortions, or the distribution of abortifacients.” Nurse Mendoza quickly discovered that the right to abortion trumps her First Amendment-guaranteed religious liberty:

Dr. Martell gave Ms. Mendoza two weeks to either quit or accept a demotion to a temporary job as a food inspector. Mendoza refused the demotion and was forced to resign in July 2015.

The suit seeks damages under the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act which prohibits public officials from discriminating against a person in any manner because of their conscientious refusal to participate in any way in the provision of abortions.

Once again, the U.S. Constitution is being circumvented to bolster this hell-bent “right to privacy.”

The compelling argument in favor of Sandra Mendoza:

Mendoza’s attorney, Noel Sterett, a partner at Mauck & Baker, LLC, in Chicago, says, “Ms. Mendoza has spent her life serving children and protecting life. People disagree on whether abortions end human lives, but I’d hope we can all agree that pro-life doctors and nurses should not be forced out of employment on account of their faith or commitment to protecting life.”

Nurse Mendoza is to be commended for her pro-life conviction, even in the face of job loss. But the fact is, no American should ever have to face the loss of their livelihood because of their biblical convictions. The First Amendment allows for freedom of religion (NOT worship, as the Left would try to assert), an inalienable right which cannot be absconded by government.

However, Illinoisans are now seeing an effort to strengthen the tyranny of the abortion lobby via Senate Bill 1564:

…lawmakers in the General Assembly passed SB 1564 in an effort to expand abortion services in Illinois. This legislation would force medical professionals and many pregnancy care workers to violate their conscience by forcing them to refer patients for medical procedures they find morally objectionable such as abortion, sterilization and certain end-of-life care.

People of faith in Illinois, people of biblical worldviews, must not relent; they must vote and vote in record numbers to send this bill directly to the paper shredder.

The Left has brought us to this slippery slope of dehumanizing people in the womb, people at the end of life, and people in-between birth and natural death. The journey toward this broad road to destruction was approached stealthily, circuitously.

The time has come for conservatives, for Believers, to stop the descent down the slippery slope predicted by Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop.

The Bible is clear: we are told to choose life. The U.S. Constitution is clear: the First Amendment, codifies our God-given religious liberty and freedom of speech.  The Illinois State Constitution is clear: Article 3 forever guarantees the free exercise of religion and religious opinions.

Now it’s time to stand on that truth, one bill, one case, at a time, and never relent in OUR pursuit of what IS intrinsically, morally right.

Take ACTION: Click HERE and ask Governor Rauner to uphold conscience rights for Illinois medical personnel.  Urge him to veto this ominous proposal. No American should be forced by the government to violate his or her deeply held convictions.

Please also call Governor Rauner’s office at:

(217) 782-0244 — Springfield
(312) 814-2121 — Chicago

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Mauck & Baker is a well-respected Chicago law firm committed to protecting religious liberty through the application of biblical principles. In the service of this commitment, they have issued a statement regarding Republican Governor Bruce Rauner’s deeply troubling abandonment of conservative principles through his enactment of a controversial, anti-autonomy law that prohibits mental health professionals from helping minors who seek assistance in resisting unwanted, unchosen same-sex attraction, rejecting a “gay” identity, and/or accepting their physical embodiment:

Rauner Signs Bill Restricting Sexual Orientation Counseling for Minors

(Chicago, Illinois) Late last Friday, Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner signed into law the deceptively titled “Youth Mental Health Protection Act,” becoming one of only three states to make it illegal to counsel minors on how to cope with or overcome unwanted same-sex attraction. The Act further provides that “no person or entity may, in the conduct of any trade or comer… represent homosexuality as a mental disease, disorder, or illness.”

The law is written broadly enough to put at risk not only licensed counselors but also pastors and others  who are in “commerce” (compensated for counseling) and refer to homosexuality as an illness or “disorder” (i.e. sin) to any counselee, minor or adult, with the purpose of helping the counselee be free from same-sex attractions. Those who continue to provide such counseling and care will face disciplinary actions by the state and are subject to suit under the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act.

Attorney John Mauck, partner at the law firm Mauck & Baker responded, “According to Scripture, it is possible for all of us who have sinful tendencies and compulsions to change and become holy in God’s sight. The Apostle Paul indicates this is also true for those involved in homosexual conduct. In 1 Corinthians 6:11, speaking of ‘homosexual offenders’ and others, Paul writes, ‘such were some of you.’”

Licensed counselors, minors who struggle with same-sex attraction, or pastors, are encouraged to contact Mauck & Baker to discuss their civil rights and join with others interested in challenging the law. Also, the full length documentary, “Such Were Some of You” from Pure Passion Media is a valuable resource for testimonies of ex-gays and how Jesus helped them leave the gay lifestyle. To purchase the DVD for $15, call (312) 726-1243 or email info@mauckbaker.com.