There is a new poll from one of the politically bluest states in the nation expressing regret for their liberal ways. It didn’t take long.

In 2020 Oregonians voted nearly 60-40 percent to decriminalize drugs, a fairytale notion supported by libertarians and leftists. The results were the exact opposite of what advocates claimed would happen. Social problems, crime, addiction, and homelessness exploded. New tax money from legal drug sales disappeared into the government bureaucracy with no visible benefits to society.

Now, a poll by Portland-based DHM Research finds that support has flipped – 63 percent of Oregonians support reinstating criminal punishments for drug possession.

“Oregon has turned into an international spectacle and I think we looked at each other and realize that we made an enormous mistake,” Portland-based trial attorney Kristin Olson told Fox News.

A majority of every demographic in the poll, including younger Oregon voters ages 18-30, now support reinstatement of criminal penalties for drug possession and use.

“I think we didn’t realize that what we were signing up for was the deterioration of civilized norms and the public spaces being ceded to people in late-stage drug addiction and engaged in all sorts of criminal activity to keep that addiction going,” Olsen said.

An audit also found the state’s health authority could not provide data showing how hundreds of millions of tax dollars earmarked for addiction services through new decriminalization policies were spent.

On another note, Quest Diagnostics recently looked at 10.6 million workplace drug test results and found that positive tests for marijuana following workplace accidents are now at the highest levels in 25 years.  Not surprisingly, states that have legalized medical or recreational use had higher workplace test positivity rates.

Written by Dr. John A. Sparks

Among recent actions by the U.S. Supreme Court, a four-sentence order may set the stage for the court to eventually address the collision between free speech and religious freedom on one hand and gay rights on the other. The order voided a judgment by the state of Oregon that had imposed a $135,000 fine on Portland-area bakery owners—the Kleins—for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple. Oregon maintained that its anti-discrimination law condemned such a rebuff even when the bakery owners’ religious convictions run counter to participating in a same-sex wedding.

Besides vacating the fine, the court sent the case back to the Oregon Court of Appeals to be reconsidered in light of the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision. Masterpiece involved a similar situation in Colorado for Christian baker, Jack Phillips, when he refused, on religious grounds, to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple’s marriage. In Masterpiece, Colorado’s case against Phillips had relied on language in an earlier case, Employment Division v. Smith (1990), which said that religious liberty claims could not be used as a defense against “generally applicable” laws that were “neutrally” enforced. However, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the Colorado proceedings against Phillips were far from “neutral.” In fact, they were rife with religious hostility toward him. Besides that, the court found that Colorado had selectively enforced its anti-discrimination laws, making them less than “generally applicable.”  Now the court is ordering the Oregon court to review the Klein case looking for the same examples of unfairness it had discovered in Masterpiece.

Klein is the second case of this type that the U.S. Supreme Court has sent back to the courts below for reconsideration in light of the Masterpiece decision. Earlier, the Washington Supreme Court was ordered to make such a review in a case involving a florist, Barronelle Stutzman, and her business, Arlene Flowers. Stutzman had refused to provide wedding flowers for a gay couple’s ceremony. Just recently (June 6, 2019), the Washington court found that proceedings were not conducted with “religious animus.” The Washington court closed that review by repeating its conclusions that neither free speech, free exercise, nor freedom of expression were infringed upon by the anti-discrimination law in question.

It seems likely that the Oregon court will make similar findings of the absence of religious hostility. Once the Oregon court has spoken on the matter in the way it is expected to rule, the questions of religiously hostile proceedings and selective enforcement will have been disposed of. That will leave the central constitutional questions of free speech and free exercise of religion for the U.S. Supreme Court to face which it effectively avoided in Masterpiece. The arguments on those issues made by the Kleins and Mrs. Stutzman in their existing court filings will be brought up again.

What are the Constitutional claims supporting the positions of faith-guided commercial providers who are asked to set aside their religious beliefs by customers who ask them to offer services contrary to their convictions?

The first basis for relief from the reach of the anti-discrimination laws is the claim that such laws violate the freedom of speech of the providers. At first blush, it may seem a stretch to regard baking a cake or arranging flowers as “speech.” However, federal Constitutional cases have long recognized that protecting speech is not limited to “the spoken or written word.” Engaging in conduct that expresses a point of view or idea is speech, and that expressive conduct is protected by the First Amendment.

In addition, and important for these cases, citizens cannot be forced to deliver a message provided by the government or another person. The oldest and best-known case recognizing this idea—called the “compelled speech doctrine”—is W. Va. State Board of Education v. Barnett. There the court said that public school children could not be required to salute the American flag or say the pledge of allegiance when to do so was against their religion’s teaching. The case, though it involved religious convictions, is usually viewed as a free speech case in which the court forbade the government from making citizens express a message contrary to their beliefs. Both wedding providers—the Kleins and Stutzman—maintain that Washington and Oregon laws are, in effect, requiring them to use their artistic expression to further a conjugal union against which they have serious religious reservations, or face a legal penalty. When their only other choice is to abandon the means to make a livelihood that they have chosen, the burden placed upon them is unconstitutional.

The second constitutional claim asserted by the two wedding providers is that their religious liberty under the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment has been denied to them by the anti-discrimination laws. Employment Division v. Smith, as already mentioned above, makes that claim more difficult. The Smith defendants consumed an illegal drug—peyote—as part of a Native American religious ceremony. They were dismissed from their jobs with a drug rehabilitation organization and lost a claim for unemployment compensation. They argued that their free exercise of religion was being infringed upon by Oregon.

The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, maintaining that “neutral” and “generally applicable” regulations could not be avoided by religious liberty claims. The result was probably right: religious ceremonies do not give participants the right to use controlled substances. But, unfortunately, the court’s opinion needlessly swept away an almost three-decades-old case which had established a sensible legal formula for addressing those instances in which religious convictions clash with existing legislation. That formula, called the Sherbert test after Sherbert v. Verner (1963), protected religious believers when the court found that a law or regulation “substantially burdened” their “free exercise of religion,” and that the government had no “compelling interest” at stake, or that it overlooked a “less restrictive” way to further its interest. Congress vigorously sought to counter the Smith decision by passing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which required the restoration of the Sherbert test. However, the RFRA was ruled as only applicable to federal laws and regulations and not to the states and therefore does not help the Kleins and Stutzman.

Given the clear facts of these cases, and the uncertainty that remains for religious providers, it is high time for the court to hear and decide them. For the most part, the reasoning of Smith should be discarded and Sherbert reinstated. The court should not avoid these fundamental questions of free speech and free exercise of religion any longer. Rather, it must courageously set the cases for oral argument and address these key issues head on.

This article was originally published by The Institute for Faith & Freedom.

Written by Michael Foust

The U.S. Supreme Court handed religious liberty advocates a victory Monday when it vacated a lower court’s opinion that had ordered a Christian baker to design a cake for a same-sex wedding.

At issue was a ruling by the Oregon Court of Appeals that upheld a state decision forcing Aaron and Melissa Klein to pay a $135,000 penalty after they refused to design a cake celebrating a wedding for a lesbian couple. The Kleins eventually closed their business, known as “Sweet Cakes by Melissa.”

The U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday issued a one-paragraph order vacating the judgment and sending it back down to the Oregon Court of Appeals.

“The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the Court of Appeals of Oregon for further consideration in light of Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Comm’n,” the unsigned order read.

Masterpiece was a 2018 ruling in which the Supreme Court sided with a Colorado baker who refused to design a wedding cake for a gay couple. Former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy ruled the Colorado Civil Rights Commission demonstrated hostility toward religion when it ordered bakery owner Jack Phillips to design the cake.

The Kleins are represented by First Liberty Institute.

“This is a victory for Aaron and Melissa Klein and for religious liberty for all Americans,” said Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of First Liberty. “The Constitution protects speech, popular or not, from condemnation by the government. The message from the Court is clear, government hostility toward religious Americans will not be tolerated.”

First Liberty had hoped the Supreme Court would hear oral arguments and expand on its Masterpiece decision. The high court, though, punted on that decision.

First Liberty filed suit after the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) ruled the Kleins had violated a law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. The BOLI also handed down a $135,000 penalty. The Oregon Court of Appeals ruled against the Kleins, and the Oregon Supreme Court declined to take the case.

“The State of Oregon drove Melissa and Aaron Klein out of the custom-cake business and hit them with a $135,000 penalty, because the Kleins could not in good conscience employ their artistic talents to express a message celebrating a same-sex wedding ritual,” First Liberty’s petition to the U.S. Supreme Court read.

The Kleins “opened and operated” their baker as an expression of their Christian faith,” the petition said. Further, they believe “God instituted marriage as the union of one man and one woman.”

They served all customers “regardless of sexual orientation.” They even had sold a cake to one of the lesbian complainants in the case for her mother’s marriage to a man. But they could not, the petition said, create a cake celebrating a same-sex wedding.

“The Kleins created these cakes, in part, because they wanted to celebrate weddings between one man and one woman,” the petition said. “The Kleins do not believe that other types of interpersonal unions are marriages, and they believe it is sinful to celebrate them as such.”

The state’s order violated the First Amendment, the First Liberty petition argued.

“Unless this Court enforces the First Amendment,” the petition said, “similar cases will continue to arise, as creative entrepreneurs are compelled, under the guise of public accommodations statutes, to participate in same-sex marriage rituals that violate their sincerely held religious beliefs, or – as the Kleins did – to sacrifice their livelihood.”

The Thomas More Society, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Cato Institute were among the groups that asked the Supreme Court to side with the Kleins. The attorneys general for 11 states also issued a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the Kleins. Those states were Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia.

This article originally posted on ChristianHeadlines.com

This article has been updated to correct errors and add additional information.

Full-Term, Preborn Babies Can Be Killed For Virtually Any Reason

Why, I kept asking myself last week, are so many Americans so livid about Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) signing into law a bill passed jubilantly by the state legislature that makes it possible for women to abort full-term babies. Sure, the bill is morally repugnant and the jubilant applause by the legislature was grotesque, but 19 other states—including Illinois—allow full-term babies to be killed and for the same reasons. Seven other states and the District of Columbia allow full-term babies to be killed for any or no reason. Two other states allow full-term, healthy babies to be aborted if they were conceived during rape or through incest.

Toward the end of last week, just as outraged pro-life voices were dying down, it came to light that a new bill was proposed in Vermont which many mistakenly believe would legalize unrestricted abortion throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy. They were mistaken in that unrestricted access to abortion through the entire nine months of pregnancy has been legal in Vermont since 2014. The bill proposed in Vermont merely enshrines in state law the existing legal right as a “fundamental right.” Pro-baby-killing advocates are preparing for the day Roe v. Wade is overturned.

Late-term abortions are banned in 20 states except if the mother’s “health” is deemed at risk by allowing the baby to grow to term. But here’s the catch: “health” includes any physical, emotional, psychological, or familial factors that affect “well-being.” With that ambiguous and wildly broad definition, virtually any woman can have her baby killed at any point in her pregnancy.

Two states allow healthy babies to be killed in the womb in the 9th month if they were conceived in rape or through incest (AR, UT). Killing full-term babies is no less barbaric because they were created via criminal acts of someone else’s doing.

Seven states allow full-term babies to be killed if the babies have “lethal” abnormalities, which is de facto infanticide.

Take a gander at the chart provided by the Kaiser Family Foundation which lists the 20 states that allow late-term abortions for “health” reasons and the 7 that allow it for any or no other reason.

Also, take note of Alaska, Colorado, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont and the District of Columbia. Those places are virtual killing fields. They don’t even require the pretense of a “health” reason for women to abort their full-term babies. In those 7 states, there are no bans on abortion at any stage. It’s open season on babies who, through no fault of their own, have the misfortune of being conceived in the wrong womb.

Since all 50 states and D.C. allow late-term abortions that threaten a mother’s life—as distinct from her “health”—it’s important to understand the inconvenient truth “progressives” don’t want Americans to think about: There is no life-threatening condition that would ever necessitate the direct, intentional, active killing of a baby in the womb. There are relatively rare occasions in which continuing a pregnancy threatens a woman’s life, but ending a pregnancy does not require the direct, intentional, active killing of a baby.

Doctors can induce delivery or perform a C-section to save a woman’s life in a life-threatening or emergency situation without dismembering, crushing, burning, or chemically inducing cardiac arrest in a baby. In some induced deliveries or C-sections, babies will not survive, but that is wholly different from intentionally killing them. Obstetrician-gynecologist and former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino explains:

Let me illustrate with a real-life case that I managed while at the Albany Medical Center. A patient arrived one night at 28 weeks gestation with severe pre-eclampsia or toxemia. Her blood pressure on admission was 220/160. A normal blood pressure is approximately 120/80. This patient’s pregnancy was a threat to her life and the life of her unborn child. She could very well be minutes or hours away from a major stroke.

This case was managed successfully by rapidly stabilizing the patient’s blood pressure and “terminating” her pregnancy by Cesarean section. She and her baby did well.

This is a typical case in the world of high-risk obstetrics. In most such cases, any attempt to perform an abortion “to save the mother’s life” would entail undue and dangerous delay in providing appropriate, truly life-saving care. During my time at Albany Medical Center I managed hundreds of such cases by “terminating” pregnancies to save mother’s lives. In all those cases, the number of unborn children that I had to deliberately kill was zero.

GET WOKE, AMERICANS! Full-term babies can be legally exterminated in the womb for virtually any reason or no reason in most states in the U.S. Take your righteous anger at this barbarism and do something useful.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Cuomo-Re-Recording-3.mp3

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Written by Joseph Backholm

You may not know what dhimmitude is and hopefully you never experience it.

But you’ve probably heard of ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) and you’re almost surely aware of what Christians are.

Dhimmitude is an Islamic system that governs non-Muslims who have been conquered through Jihad by folks like ISIS.

If you surrender to Muslim control – though not Muslim – you are referred to as dhimmi.

Sounds fun, right?

If ISIS took over the town you live in, they might move door to door and give you three options: “convert to Islam, pay the jizya, or die.”

The jizya is a tax for not being Muslim.

It doesn’t apply to everyone, but paying it is seen as proof of your subjection to the Jihadist state and its laws. In return, non-Muslim subjects are permitted to practice their faith, to enjoy a measure of communal autonomy, to be entitled to the Muslim state’s protection from outside aggression.

Acknowledging the difference, there are parallels between the way Jihadists treat those who are in dhimmitude and the way the new sexual revolution in America seeks to treat those who disagree with their (religious?) beliefs about sexuality and marriage.

Once they have political power, they are giving businesses three options “convert, pay a fine, or die” (economically, not physically).

After Arlene’s Flowers was sued for declining to decorate for a same-sex wedding, Attorney General Bob Ferguson offered to settle (demanded the jizya) for $2,000 on the condition that she would “convert,” or agree to make business decisions according to the state’s new values.

Only a few days ago, a judge in Oregon fined a bakery $135,000 because they attempted to run their business according to their Christian beliefs about sexuality rather than the government’s. When they rejected the government’s demands that they convert or pay the jizya, the government opted for what amounts to the economic death penalty.

“Nonsense,” you argue. “They broke the law. Having penalties for breaking the law isn’t exactly innovative. Nor is it jihadist.”

Fair enough.

But the left’s new found impulse to be sticklers for the letter of the law misses the larger point.

The left is proposing a regime change that fundamentally alters freedoms that have been taken for granted for in America for centuries.

Christians, Jews, Muslims and others have been not participating in same-sex “weddings” for millennia.

But under the new regime, doing what has always been done is illegal.

Your choice. Convert, pay a fine if you refuse to convert and then convert, or experience economic death.

Like the jizya, the non-discrimination law discriminates.  It protects one person’s right to decline to participate in an activity they disagree with, but denies that right to others. 

The good news is that if you accept the terms of the new regime, you will still be allowed a measure of communal autonomy, and be entitled to other benefits from the state.

Imagine a new law compelling church attendance or pork consumption on the grounds that refusing to participate is discriminatory. (Which, of course, it is. But that’s the kind of discrimination lefties still like.)

Being indignant with the atheist who objects to compulsory church attendance would be stupid since he’s simply doing what atheists have always done.

“But it’s the law,” you say, self-righteously.

“But it shouldn’t be the law, and you should know better,” he says in response.

And of course he’s right.

The way non-discrimination laws are being interpreted right now is not a modification to the building code that frustrates some builders or a change in the speed law that catches unsuspecting drivers.

It is a regime change that seeks to fundamentally alter the way Americans have always lived. It seeks to create the kind of conformity that America was created in opposition to.

America doesn’t and shouldn’t have conquered peoples. We make room for the atheists, Christians, Muslims, or Jew to be who they are, not just in their preferred place of worship, but in the rest of their life as well. We respect the right for people to be who they are, even if we think they’re silly and ignorant. We understand that we’re different and we make room for that.

Dhimmitude is for jihadists, not for Americans.

This article was originally posted on the blog of the Family Policy Institute of Washington.

It seems there isn’t a news cycle which goes by without someone “making history” these days. Everyone and everything is making history everywhere at all times, apparently. It’s hard to pinpoint when this trend started, but the “historic” election of Barack Obama certainly brought the fascination with history-creation into vogue. Now it seems that a story isn’t worth covering unless some history has been made. What is behind this trend? Why the fascination with making history? Does the predictive power of potential importance really imply worth and meaning?

History was apparently made during two significant events recently. The first was Oregon becoming the 18th state to recognize so-called gay marriage. This change was achieved by adherence to the same playbook which has brought so-called gay marriage advocates success over the past year: they brought a case against the state, challenging the constitutionality of a so-called gay marriage ban, and found themselves arguing the case in front of a highly-sympathetic federal judge. Much like the judge who ruled on Proposition 8 in California, Judge Michael McShane found himself in a situation where he could grant a ruling from which he stood to reap the benefits. Judge McShane is himself in a same-sex relationship and could not resist the opportunity to make history by overturning the will of the people, as it had been expressed via the legislative process.

In 2004, Oregonians had voted overwhelmingly to define marriage as being solely between a man and a woman. This had never been rescinded by subsequent legislation, despite claims that a majority of the state now supports so-called gay marriage. For some reason, the judge was not forced to recuse himself in this case, despite his own subjective position on the matter. Would a self-professing Christian judge be allowed to overturn a ban on teaching intelligent design in the public school classrooms? One can almost hear liberal pinheads popping in angst over the thought of such history in the making.

The second significant history-making event recently was the crowning of Towson University’s debate team during the 2014 Cross Examination Debate Association National Championship. The topic was the War Powers Resolution, which Towson’s team used as an opportunity to launch into a jarring cacophony littered with racist slurs and college-speak. (Just the mention of “otherness” provokes the desire to stop by the student union for a pick-up drum circle, amiright?) The debate performance was unpalatable and awful, yet the Towson team walked away with the trophy in what was called by one reporter—wait for it—an “historic victory”.

Why this fascination with making history? It’s clear that progressives and social do-gooders get a tangible thrill up the leg from being a part of history in the making. So much so that they look for opportunities to recreate the feeling by forcing radical change on the rest of us in increasingly drastic ways; much the same way a junkie isn’t born overnight but moves from an occasional joint to popping pills to quivering in line at the methadone clinic, always moving in search of a higher high. They got such a buzz from foisting the first Marxist President on the rest of us that they’ve had to look for more drastic means to “make history”.

“Override the political wishes of the citizenry, while bypassing the legislative reform process? HECK YEAH! Roll out those rainbow limos, it’s so-called wedding time!!!”

“What do you mean, why are we rewarding a slur-ridden, incoherent screed with the National Debate Championship?!? Because it will be HISTORIC! Duh…”

And let’s not neglect to highlight a favorite nuance of progressives here. By putting these unnatural abrogations of the rule of law in the context of history-being-made, they are subliminally implying that this is a one-way street. History cannot be un-made and so, if they are truly making history by forcing the acceptance of their worldview, they are planting the theme of inevitability and immutable change in our minds. To quote network television, they hope that this is now “the new normal”.

Progressives have been using this technique for ages, attempting to draw us into knocking down one social foundation after another, always in the name of progress and history. This has been readily apparent in the admonitions surrounding the global warming debate. If the “science is settled” and the “debate is over” then we should get straight to the business of buying government Yugo’s and tugging a forelock in Algore’s general direction.

What Oregonian matrimony and Towson U’s championship demonstrate is that for leftists, feeling good is better than doing good. It feels good to give someone something they don’t deserve. But the very act of bestowing undeserved favor on the unworthy necessarily creates injustice. God is able to bestow salvation on the unworthy because He placed the resultant injustice of the act upon His Son, Who carried it willingly. The difference being that when man does it, he usually seeks to ignore the injustice or define it away.

Towson University wins the championship despite turning in a terrible performance. This is unjust and unless the adjudicating body acknowledges the injustice and atones for it, the injustice is allowed to thrive and grow, until the criteria of merit is so unbalanced and unrecognizable that the very definitions of
“good” and “bad” in debate performances are meaningless.

None of this is lost on those who are making it so. It is, in fact, their goal. They seek to strip our cultural institutions of all meaning so that we are left rudderless and vulnerable to their reprogramming. Sadly, the feel-good sheeple are more than willing to carry the water to their own drowning.

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