In his November 1 op-ed for The Hill, Fox News Analyst Juan Williams claimed that the “parents’ rights’ mantra in the Virginia gubernatorial elections is simply “a code for white race politics.” To the contrary, this really is about parents’ rights and about what is best for all children. To inject charges of white supremacy and racism is to miss the whole point of why so many parents are so upset. In all candor and with due respect, I would have expected better from Mr. Williams.

The fact is that these parents are concerned with the injection of racism into every phase of their children’s education, not to mention the injection of an extreme LGBTQ agenda. Williams should be standing with these parents, not against them. With reference to campaigning strategies in the 2018 elections, he wrote,

“Virginia Republicans are back with a new and improved ‘Culture Wars’ campaign for 2021. The closing argument is once again full of racial division — but this time it is dressed up as a defense of little children.”

Specifically, he claimed that,

“It is a campaign to stop classroom discussion of Black Lives Matter protests or slavery because it could upset some children, especially white children who might feel guilt.”

To the contrary, every white Christian parent with whom I have interacted wants their children to know the truth about slavery, segregation, and the lasting effects of those sinful institutions. And they want to see equal opportunities for all.

But they do not want their children thinking they are evil because they are white (this is actually happening). And they do not want their children to feel guilty for having a nice home or good educational opportunities, as if all success of all white Americans was built on the shoulders of slaves. In the words of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,

“The way we’re talking about race is that it either seems so big that somehow white people now have to feel guilty for everything that happened in the past.”

Most of all, these parents do not want everything to be about race, to the point that math can be seen as racist. Or that famous European poets and historians are cancelled because of their whiteness.

Remarkably, to make his case, Williams repeats the “very fine people” lie, writing, “Recall, it was Trump who famously said there were ‘very fine people’ on both sides of the violence sparked by ‘Unite the Right,’ the 2017 rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va.”

Surely Williams must know that this has been debunked time and time again. But why let a good lie die? He also claims that,

“Critical race theory — broadly, a focus on racial disparities as a fact of American life — is not explicitly taught in Virginia’s public schools or anywhere in American public schools. But Republicans nationwide have made it a boogeyman to excite racial divisions and get their base to the polls.”

To be sure, there are different ways to define CRT. For some, it is healthy, positive, and objective. For others, it is unhealthy, negative, and biased. So, before we debate CRT, it’s important to ask, “What, exactly, do you mean by the term?”

And clearly, CRT in its full-blown, academic form, is not being taught to kids in Virginia (and elsewhere). But are classes taught through the lens of CRT? Without question.

As a Daily Wire headline announced on October 31, “Terry McAuliffe Claims CRT Has ‘Never Been’ In Virginia Schools. His Administration Pushed It, Documents Show.” The documentation is clear and undeniable.

Yet Williams approvingly cites McAuliffe, who said, “[Gubernatorial candidate Glenn] Youngkin’s closing message of book banning and silencing esteemed Black authors is a racist dog whistle designed to gin up support from the most extreme elements of his party — mainly his top endorser and surrogate, Donald Trump.”

To the contrary, it is authors with extremist views that are under scrutiny, or, at the least, authors whose views are being exploited by educators with extremist agendas, while contrary views are rejected and banned. (As an aside, but for the record, Youngkin largely campaigned as himself and for himself, not as an extension of Trump, as other political commentators have noted.)

To be clear, I would not deny that white racism remains an issue for some (perhaps many?) families in Virginia. Nor would I deny that some of them would prefer that the full truth about slavery and its legacy not be taught in schools. May they have a change of heart, may they face the facts, and may they enlighten their children. There is no place for white supremacy anywhere and at any time.

Unfortunately, Williams is guilty of a reverse racism, one that projects all kind of nefarious motives on to parents who really do care and who really want their kids to get a solid education rather than cultural brainwashing. In that spirit, I recently tweeted,

“The solution to anti-black racism is not anti-white racism (or anti-Asian racism, etc.). Instead, it is cultivating mutual understanding, respect, and love, with a real desire to see others thrive and enjoy the best of what America has to offer.”

Mr. Williams, I invite you to step higher with me so that, together, we could advance that mutual understanding, respect, and love – based on truth – rather than engage in an endless game of biased and racially charged sniping.

Surely America in 2021 deserves better.

This article was originally posted at AskDrBrown.org.

Written by Penny Pullen

It’s hard to believe that our lawmakers in Springfield would be in favor of cutting parents out of the life of their daughters at a time when they most need their parent’s counsel. But that is just what a group of legislators – one of whom is the Speaker of the Illinois House – are proposing in HB 1797 and SB 2190 in the Illinois Senate.

The bill would repeal the Parental Notice of Abortion Act of 1995, a law which took a bipartisan group of legislators years to enact because of powerful resistance from the abortion lobby. Finally, in 2013, the law was enforced and since then has saved thousands of unborn children from the horrors of abortion.

The abortion lobby’s chief goal for 2021 is to dispose of Illinois’ essential Parental Notice law, having already achieved elimination of such sensible laws as the ban on partial-birth abortion, which protected late-term developing babies from a gruesome and painful surgical abortion.

This proposal is so radical, even many voters who call themselves “pro-choice” are disturbed by the idea of cutting parents out of one of the most challenging times a minor girl might be facing.

Constituents must insist their state lawmakers oppose HB 1797 and SB 2190, or any other slick attempt to repeal Illinois’ Parental Notice of Abortion Act.

Please, for our the sake of our daughters and for the next generation, contact them today. And pass this message along to friends, to encourage them to weigh in as well.

Bulletin Insert: Ask your pastor to share this bulletin insert with your congregation.  The body of Christ and people of faith must be notified of this effort and encouraged to speak out now.

Bulletin Insert

Take Action: Click HERE to contact your state lawmakers. Let them know that gutting or repealing the Parental Notice of Abortion Act is unacceptable. Ask them to oppose any and all efforts to repeal or amend the law and, instead, uphold parental rights.

More Action: Look up your state representative at Officials Finder. Or, if you know his/her name, you can ask to be connected to his/her office through the State Capitol switchboard at (217) 782-2000.

Instructions to File a Witness Slip to Oppose HB 1797. Click HERE.

Section I. Enter your name, address, city and zip code. You can leave Firm/Business and Title blank. If it won’t allow you to leave them black, enter self.

Section II. Leave it blank if you are not representing a group, etc., or enter self.

Section III. Check that you are an Opponent.

Section IV. Unless you are filing a written statement, select Record of Appearance Only.

Agree to the terms of agreement by checking the box.

Click Create (Slip).

We would also ask you to please share this short video clip on social media:

Penny Pullen is president of Life Advocacy Resource Project and a nationally recognized advocate for Life. She served 16 years in the Illinois House, where she was chief spokesman for the right to life, for home-based education and generally, for pro-family policies. 

For 14 years, Penny served on the board of the American Legislative Exchange Council and served throughout its duration on the board of Project Reality, the abstinence-centered education pioneer. She has also served as president of Eagle Forum of Illinois and of two local Republican women’s clubs, one of which she founded. Immediately after leaving public office, she launched the Illinois Family Institute, serving 18 months as our first executive director.

Mandated Vaccines & the “LGBTQ” Agenda

A troubling trend is occurring in Illinois. It has happened mostly in the background but has become visible with the introduction of two new proposed laws concerning vaccines. If these proposed laws were to take effect, vaccines would be mandated by the state without religious exception. In addition, these bills apply to public and private schools, including Christian private schools and homeschools. Especially egregious would be the mandate for children to receive the HPV vaccine, a vaccine to protect a person from a sexually transmitted disease. Furthermore, and perhaps even more shocking, if this legislation passes, 14-year-olds will be able to receive vaccines without parental consent.

This isn’t the only erosion of parental rights in Illinois. “Progressives” in the Illinois legislature are also seeking to “teach” our children their “good news” on sex. Desiring to mandate a new curriculum on sex and sexuality through two new sex ed bills, there is a concerted push to normalize behaviors and a worldview starting in kindergarten that is anti-Christian. This includes teaching that novel “gender expressions,” pre-marital and non-marital sex, and non-monogamous heterosexual families are moral goods. If these bills become law, your kids will be indoctrinated with a new sexual ethic that is entirely different from that which has been taught for two millennia.

In Illinois, minors can receive an abortion without parental consent with only a judicial waiver. According to the ACLU, no judicial waiver has ever been denied.

If a minor enters into the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), the state will provide “gender transitioning” medical treatment, mental health “LGBTQ” advocacy, and placement in “affirming” households whether or not the parents agree. On their website, DCFS states that every child deserves these “rights,” and that these rights include children not in the DCFS system. For now, the law stops them from imposing their worldview on non-DCFS kids. Unless the state’s expansive powers are stopped, it’s not hard to imagine something that should scare all of us. We are on a trajectory where children will be removed from their parents because the parents will not embrace a child’s decisions on his sexuality or “gender identity.”

There are other examples, but these should suffice to show you what Illinois believes. In a new school guidance report that was ordered by Gov. JB Pritzker, the authors assert that schools have an obligation to act as a parent. DCFS also calls itself a parent, and the judge permitting an abortion without parental consent is acting as a parent. The state of Illinois believes it has a stronger claim to parent your child than you do, but the state of Illinois is wrong.

Biological parents are almost always better situated to parent than the state. In his essay “Of Paternal Power,” John Locke has written the strongest and most enduring Judeo-Christian argument for the preeminence of parental rights in modern society.

Parents have the freedom to raise their children as they see fit because this freedom is from nature and is not a right given by the state. Locke writes that parents have “a power over their children and have as much right to their subjection as those who are in the state of Nature.”

For Locke, Nature is the order of creation, and natural laws flow from this order. One of Nature’s laws is that the couple who births a child is a “temporary government” for that child. In other words, in the same way an adult is subject to civil authorities, a child is subject to his parents while he is a minor. The state of Illinois is usurping one of the most fundamental relationships in human society. Its intervention is about the indoctrination of children with a leftist worldview that stands diametrically opposed to a Judeo-Christian worldview. In a state that has more corruption than it does farmland, the last responsibility it should have is the right to indoctrinate our children.

According to Locke, this “temporary government” is built upon parental obligations. The parents have freedom in raising their child because at the end of the day it is their responsibility to do so. Locke writes,

The power, then, that parents have over their children arises from that duty which is incumbent on them, to take care of their offspring during the imperfect state of childhood. To inform the mind, and govern the actions of their yet ignorant nonage, till reason shall take its place and ease them of that trouble … .

This includes the healthcare and education of the child. As a parent, I do not want my children exposed to “LGBTQ” ideology that normalizes what our faith says is sin. Based on science and common sense, “gender” isn’t a personal opinion or a subjective feeling. I will raise my children as the “gender” that is expressed in their sex; this is based on my understanding of gender being a gift from God and a revelation of the image of God in humanity.

My children are vaccinated, but I find it deeply offensive that Illinois would mandate a drug to prevent a sexually transmitted disease. The mandate gives sexual license to my children that I deeply disagree with. These legal mandates are the height of hubris. We must not give away our obligation to parent to the state. If it’s not obvious, Illinois has no idea what it is doing.

In the most serious error of the Illinois parental state, the child is being given adult rights without parental oversight. In what world can a minor be expected to make informed, rational decisions on deeply complex moral and life-changing choices? Locke writes,

Commonwealths themselves take notice of, and allow that there is a time when men are to begin to act like free men, and therefore, till that time, require not oaths of fealty or allegiance, or other public owning of, or submission to, the government of their countries.

Children are not required to act as adults because they are not adults. Children need parents. This is because, according to Locke, they are in the period of “ignorant nonage.” Parents make the decisions “till reason shall take its place and ease them of that trouble.”

The idea that the state would empower kids to decide on invasive medical procedures or embrace novel sexual expressions reveals a society collectively jumping off a cliff. By the very fact of being a child, they lack mature rationality and the ability to understand the effects of decisions, and they have an underdeveloped moral system. When the state intervenes, it interjects its opinions on life, sexuality, and marriage that are radically contradictory to a Christian view of the world. Such interventions are outrageous.

Dear parents in Illinois, please take notice of what is happening. Call your state lawmakers and Governor Pritzker to stop the two pieces of legislation concerning vaccines and the sex education legislation. Then, it’s time to take back parental rights. Our children are our responsibility. Their future, their faith and their well-being are dependent on us pushing back the intrusions of the state. It’s time for parents to fight for our children. Right now, the state is fighting harder for them.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state senator and state representative to ask them to vote against these bills: SB 3788, HB 4870 and HB 5012. Impressionable students in public schools should not be exposed to body- and soul-destroying messages that promote leftist beliefs about sexuality.

THIS SATURDAY! IFI is hosting our annual Worldview Conference on March 7th at the Village Church of Barrington. This year’s conference is titled “Thinking Biblically About Our Corrosive Culture” and features Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Rob Gagnon. For more information, please click HERE for a flyer or click the button below to register for the conference.

Late last week we sent an email alert about a dangerous Illinois House bill (HB 4870) mandating that ALL 6th grade students in Illinois receive the unnecessary and highly controversial HPV vaccine – both boys and girls. Politicians have no business mandating medical treatment for all children to prevent a disease that’s contracted solely through sexual activity. Parents should be outraged! But it gets worse.

On Friday the other shoe dropped, as Illinois Senator Heather Steans (D-Chicago) introduced SB 3668, which repeals all religious and medical exemptions for school immunizations and authorizes minor students, 14 years of age or older, to be vaccinated without parental consent. It also eliminates protections for parents who adopt children. From the synopsis of the bill, parents who do not immunize their children could be considered neglectful or abusive:

Removes language providing that the [Communicable Disease Prevention Act] does not apply if a parent or guardian of a child objects to immunization of his or her child for conflicting with his or her religious tenets or practices.

…

Removes language providing that a child shall not be considered neglected or abused for the sole reason that specified persons failed to vaccinate, delayed vaccination, or refused vaccination for the child due to a waiver on religious grounds.

The Illinois Department of Public Health lists 12 vaccine requirements for “Entering a Child Care Facility or School in Illinois, Fall 2019“: Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus, Polio, Measles, Rubella, Mumps, Haemophilus influenzae type b, Pneumococcal Conjugate, Hepatitis B, Varicella and Meningococcal Conjugate.

We cannot cede more authority to the state over the lives of our children and families, and we cannot remain silent in the face of these overt attacks on parental rights and religious liberty. This is not an issue for politicians! This is a decision that should be made by parents and their pediatricians.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your Illinois state lawmakers (House and Senate) to ask them to reject SB 3668 and HB 4870. Ask them to uphold parental rights and the right to freely exercise our federal and state religious civil rights. In addition to sending this email message, please also call the offices of both your state representative and state senator and leave a message stating your opposition to both of these bills.  Look up their phone numbers HERE.

It is interesting to note: according to a Pew Research article, all states except Mississippi, California, Minnesota, West Virginia, Maine and New York allow parents religious exemptions for vaccinations. Illinois must fight to not become the seventh state to severely diminish parental and religious liberties.

IFI is hosting our annual Worldview Conference on March 7th at the Village Church of Barrington. This year’s conference is titled “Thinking Biblically About Our Corrosive Culture” and features Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Rob Gagnon. For more information, please click HERE for a flyer or click the button below to register for the conference.

Written by Josh Hetzler

Mississippi has become the latest test case for determining parental rights of same-sex couples where one of the adults has no biological relation to the child. Nationwide, disputes are raging about what the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to impose its redefinition of marriage on all 50 states now means for designations of parenthood, which prior to its opinion, rested on a paradigm that recognized children as the biological creation of a male (i.e. “father”) and female (i.e. “mother”).

But now with the Court’s 2015 same-sex marriage opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, and even more recently with the Court’s decision in Pavan v. Smith (2017) requiring both adults in a same-sex marriage to be listed on birth certificates, that long-standing paradigm has necessarily shifted. The “logical” effects are unavoidable: To dispense with biology in the marital union is to upend it in matters of parenthood too.

Aside from the most glaring harm of intentionally and officially depriving countless children of either their father or their mother for a lifetime, we should not fail to recognize that the further we go down this road of separating parental rights from biological ties, the closer we move towards enabling the State to usurp parental rights altogether. It’s not rocket science. Once having removed the most sacred, significant, and objective measure of parenthood from its nature – biological procreation – the State by default will delegate authority and recognize rights of parenthood however and to whomever it pleases.

This of course means that while some people stand to gain in this newly constructed system of parenthood, many others will lose and lose big, since a biological connection to one’s child can no longer be afforded any special weight for parenthood determinations in a post-Obergefell society.

This also means that children, and therefore all people, will increasingly become subjects of the State rather than citizens in a free society. (Historical Note: We fought a revolution to untether ourselves from that very kind of tyranny.) There is just no way around it; when marriage and parenthood are defined ultimately by the State, the State naturally assumes the ultimate and unrestricted role of parens patriae.

Welcome to the world, little one. Meet your Parents, the State. (who will assign to you your designated “official parents”)

We’ve seen this before (just elsewhere), and we will be no exception unless we decide to reverse course. What we should have learned by now is that the extent to which the government intrudes upon the dominion of the family, we lose in equal measure the opportunity to govern ourselves. And when that happens, we cease to be free.

Even if, in the end, we were all theoretically okay with that arrangement, we should still know that the State can never be an effective parent for any child. Contrary to the oft-quoted adage, it really doesn’t take a village to raise a child. It takes a mom and a dad. Knowing this to be true, as citizens in a free society (who wish to so remain), we owe it to every child and every parent to see that by all means – governmental and nongovernmental – they are ensured that opportunity.

This article was originally published at The Family Foundation blog.

On July 27, 2017 a judge made the final decision in the case of Charlie Gard, ordering that the infant be moved to hospice for his last days on this earth. Charlie was one of 16 known children in the world to have mitochondrial depletion syndrome. This condition is a very rare terminal illness  which causes progressive muscle weakness and brain damage.

This decision followed the determination of the hospital that he would be better off dead. The European Court of Human Rights backed this decision. According to BBC News the court determined that further treatment would “continue to cause Charlie significant harm:”

European Court judges have now concluded it was most likely Charlie was “being exposed to continued pain, suffering and distress” and undergoing experimental treatment with “no prospects of success… would offer no benefit”.

They said the application presented by the parents was “inadmissible” and said the court’s decision was “final.”

The legal battle to protect the life of little Charlie Gard began on March 3, 2017 when a Justice from the Family Division of the High Court in London held a hearing to analyze Charlie’s case. On April 11, Justice Francis subsequently decided that the hospital could stop Charlie’s life support. On May 3, Charlie’s parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, appealed the decision of Justice Francis but the appeal was analyzed on May 23 and dismissed on May 25. On June 8, the parent’s appeal at the Supreme Court also failed. The family’s lawyers then appealed the case to the European Court of Human Rights on June 20. That Court refused to stop Charlie’s death at the hands of socialized medicine, despite the fact that Charlie’s parents had raised millions of dollars for experimental treatment in the United States. Multiple hospitals, including a Vatican hospital offered to take in Charlie but a High Court ruled against Charlie leaving the Great Ormond Street Hospital, instead saying he should be “allowed to die with dignity.”

“We are utterly heartbroken,” Charlie’s parents said in a June 29 Facebook post the day before Charlie was to die, “spending our last precious hours with our baby boy. We’re not allowed to choose if our son lives and we’re not allowed to choose when or where Charlie dies. We and most importantly Charlie have been massively let down throughout this whole process. Charlie will die tomorrow knowing that he was loved by thousands… thank you to everyone for all your support.”

According to CNN:

Under British law, parental responsibility includes the right to give consent for medical treatment, according to the British Medical Association.

However, parental rights are not absolute, and in cases in which doctors and parents disagree, the courts may exercise objective judgment in a child’s best interest.

Anytime government can usurp parental rights, it is a slippery slope, but this especially rings true when a life is at stake. Even though Charlie Gard’s case was certainly a life-threatening condition, his parents still had hope that the experimental treatment offered in the United States would have helped alleviate Charlie’s suffering and give Charlie a legitimate chance at life. Sadly, Charlie was not given that chance. According to WND, in response “a team of experts on parental rights, and related child rights, is asking President Trump to get the United States out of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child:”

The group’s letter to the White House said, “The Charlie Gard situation highlights the stark difference between our national values and those of internationalists who believe that government bureaucrats and the courts should decide how children should be raised, and even whether a life is worth living.”

The HSLDA notes that the Clinton administration signed the convention, but it never was ratified by the Senate.

HSLDA’s William Estrada explained, “When courts and medical authorities in England can overrule parents’ wishes and declare it is in the best interest of a child to let him die, it’s time to redouble efforts to protect parental rights here in America.”

The letter written to Trump by HSLDA rightfully states the belief “that life is precious and that parents, not the government, know best how to protect and care for their children.”

The United States has been the leader of the free world on the issue of human rights, and this must continue. With the case of Charlie Gard, critical time was wasted in legal battles when Charlie was left languishing to die in the Great Ormond Street Hospital If the United States ever ratifies the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, cases like Charlie’s would easily begin taking place in the United States.

“We just want some peace with our son – no hospital, no lawyers, no courts, no media, just quality time with Charlie –away from everything to say goodbye to him in the most loving way,” Yates expressed on Thursday, according to a CNN report posted by Fox 8. “Mummy and Daddy love you so much, Charlie, we always have and we always will and we are so sorry that we couldn’t save you. We had the chance, but we weren’t allowed to give you that chance. Sweet dreams, baby. Sleep tight, our beautiful little boy.”

In a fluid and volatile story, the London hospital that has been caring for 11-month-old British baby Charlie Gard decided last Friday to reconsider its decision to remove his ventilator while it reviews “new evidence” about the possible effects of an experimental treatment available in the United States. As of this writing, little Charlie is alive. How long he remains alive is yet in the hands—not of his parents, Connie Yates and Chris Gard, who are suffering with him—but in the hands of British doctors aided and abetted by judges who neither love nor suffer with Charlie as his parents do.

As people throughout the world now know, little Charlie was born with a rare genetic disease the symptoms of which first manifested a month after he was born. Charlie is now blind and deaf. He cannot breathe or move on his own. He has permanent brain damage and suffers from seizures.

Charlie has one of the rarest and most severe types of mitochondrial disease: mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome. Though his disease is incurable, there has been hope over the past 10 months that an experimental treatment called “nucleoside bypass therapy” could alleviate some symptoms and extend his life.

With this sliver of hope, his parents set up a crowd-funding page in January of 2017 that has now raised $1.7 million. Many, perhaps most, medical experts believe that Charlie’s condition has so deteriorated that whatever possibility there may have been for the experimental treatment to work no longer exists. Julian Savulescu, philosopher and bioethicist at the University of Oxford, explained that “Charlie Gard should have been allowed to go to the US for experimental treatment back in April (or better January when it was first considered), not because he would have been cured but just because we couldn’t then be confident his life would have been ‘intolerable’, or not worth living.”

Charlie’s parents have fought a tenacious battle first with the hospital and then in the courts for the right to take Charlie to America at no cost to either the hospital or the British people. Charlie’s parents have lost at every turn. The courts decided that Charlie’s parents will have no role in Charlie’s health care decisions. They have no right even to take Charlie home to die.

One of the attorney’s arguing for the hospital cited an earlier case in which a judge declared that a child’s ventilator could be removed against his mother’s wishes:

[E]ven if his life were completely pain-free, I would come to the conclusion that there is no measurable benefit to him to continue in his present condition and it is simply inhumane to permit it to continue.

Not only did the court’s decision to prohibit Charlie’s parents from taking him to America have nothing to do with limited public resources, but, as revealed in this statement, it also had nothing to do with an assessment of Charlie’s physical pain. The court’s decision was based on the assessment of judges about what constitutes a life worth living.

The Independent quotes an unnamed medical expert who shares how weighty and painful a decision it is for medical staff to unplug terminally ill children: “When a decision to withdraw life support is made for a baby this is not taken lightly and there are often tears in the medical and nursing staff looking after such a baby.”

As the mother of a critical care nurse, I don’t doubt the truth of that statement. But neither the seriousness with which medical staff take such a moment, nor the grief they feel justifies the usurpation of Charlie’s parents’ right to use their own funds to try to improve or extend the life of their child. And no amount of tears from medical staff can possibly equal the tears Charlie’s family has and will shed. What this hospital has done is increase the suffering of Charlie’s parents.

The potential efficacy of the experimental treatment to alleviate Charlie’s symptoms or prolong his life is not the central ethical issue in this heartrending story. The central issue is who gets to decide what treatments Charlie will receive. That Charlie’s inarguably loving and devoted parents have had their rights usurped by the British government should warn all people who enjoy freedom that oppressive, tyrannical governments take many forms.

Ruth Graham writing for “progressive” Slate Magazine frets that cuts to government funding of health care, including Medicaid, make deaths like Charlie’s more likely. Many others fear that nationalized health care poses greater risks. No government can afford to provide all medical treatments—conventional and experimental—to all people. Even in countries with socialized medicine, there are limited resources.

What Charlie’s terrible plight illuminates is how profoundly intrusive, presumptuous, and proprietary the government becomes when health care is nationalized. The British government is not merely deciding which treatments British hospitals will provide, but what treatments British citizens can pursue for their own children at their own expense.

Charlie’s parents are not asking for British doctors or hospitals to treat Charlie. They’re not asking for government funds. Charlie’s parents have the resources to fund his treatment, and yet they are unable to do so because Big Brother has in effect kidnapped little Charlie to whom Big Brother has no relation. Charlie, who was knitted together in his mother’s womb, is now owned by the state.

Join us for a Saturday evening event in Medinah on September 30th for a special one time event with Ray Comfort!

Tickets are just $10 each. Call 708-781-9328 or purchase tickets below.  Click here for flyer.

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On Friday April, 12, 2019 the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) is once again exploiting public schools to promote homosexuality and gender confusion as moral and normative through the political protest called the Day of Silence.

A coalition of pro-family groups is urging parents to keep their children home from school on the “Day of Silence,” if your school is allowing students to refuse to speak in class.

GLSEN’s Day of Silence, which began on college campuses and has now infiltrated even middle schools, exploits anti-bullying sentiment to undermine the belief that homosexual acts are immoral.

GLSEN shamelessly exploits teen suicide in order to create a climate of hysteria which they then use to falsely impute culpability for teen suicide to conservative moral beliefs.

GLSEN’s end game is the eradication of conservative moral beliefs and the creation of a social and political climate in which it is impossible to express them. Their cultural vehicle of choice for this radical social experiment is public education. What a strategic coup for homosexualists: use our money to capture the hearts and minds of our children.

Efforts to exploit public education for the purpose of eradicating conservative moral beliefs are dramatically increasing every year. Homosexual activists and their allies are aggressively targeting younger and younger children through “anti-bullying” laws, policies, and curricula; through the effort to nationalize “comprehensive sex ed”; through laws mandating positive portrayals of homosexuality and gender deviance in curricula; and through events like the Day of Silence, National Coming Out Day, Ally Week, Transgender Day of Remembrance; and Spirit Week.

And conservatives do virtually nothing. Our complacence makes us complicit in the damage done to our children and our culture.

Moreover, we teach our children by example to be cowardly conformists. It’s time to resist and there’s no easier way to resist than to call your children out of school on the Day of Silence.

Parents and Guardians: Call your children’s middle and high schools and ask if students and/or teachers will be permitted to refuse to speak during class on Friday, April 12, 2019. If your administration allows students and/or teachers to refuse to speak during class, call your child out of school. Every student absence costs school districts money.

When administrators refuse to listen to reason and when they allow the classroom to be exploited for political purposes, parents must take action. If they don’t, the politicization of the classroom and curricula will increase.

If your administrator tells you that they do not permit students or teachers to refuse to speak in class, ask him or her how that is communicated to faculty and students and how it is enforced.

The ACLU has issued this statement to students regarding silence in class:

“You DO have a right to participate in Day of Silence and other expressions of your opinion at a public school during non-instructional time: the breaks between classes, before and after the school day, lunchtime, and any other free times during your day. You do NOT have a right to remain silent during class time if a teacher asks you to speak.”

The idea that homosexual acts are moral, good, or normative is not a fact. It is an unproven, non-factual, controversial moral belief. As such, no government employee or publicly subsidized institution has the ethical right to teach it to children implicitly or explicitly. It is entirely possible for schools to work toward the important goal of eradicating bullying without affirming homosexuality or gender confusion.

It is unconscionable that conservative parents remain silent, acquiescent, fearful non-participants in our public schools while homosexuals and their ideological allies engage continuously in vociferous, vigorous, and bold action.

Conservatives need to start acting and speaking as if we think our moral beliefs are objectively true. Conservative teachers need to create activities that require students to speak on the Day of Silence, and conservative parents need to teach their children by example to take a stand for truth.

Please call your children out of school if your administration permits students to refuse to speak on the Day of Silence.

For further information, including parental instructions and a sample calling out letter, visit http://www.doswalkout.net/

Illinois Supreme Court accepts brief filed by ADF, allied attorneys in defense of parental notification law

Parents matter when their minor children seek abortions, according to the arguments of the Alliance Defense Fund and ADF-allied attorneys with the Chicago firm of Mauck & Baker in a brief filed with the Illinois Supreme Court.

Tuesday the high court accepted the friend-of-the-court brief filed on behalf of the Christian Medical and Dental Associations, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the Catholic Medical Association in defense of an Illinois law that requires parents to be notified if their minor child seeks an abortion.

Illinois Family Institute is proudly co-sponsoring Mauck & Baker’s efforts.

“Parents matter in abortion decisions,” said ADF Senior Counsel Steven H. Aden. “If abortionists truly cared about young girls, they wouldn’t be pushing to make sure parents stay in the dark while a clinic takes advantage of their daughters’ bodies and desperate situation–not to mention the life of the child in the womb.”

The brief argues that “parental involvement laws protect young women and their physicians, ensuring that full informed consent is given and a proper medical standard of care is met.”

Mauck & Baker, LLC, is lead counsel for the medical groups filing the brief. Richard Baker, Amy Parish, and Noel Sterett are three of nearly 2,100 attorneys in the ADF alliance.

American Civil Liberties Union attorneys representing an abortion clinic and an abortionist filed the lawsuit The Hope Clinic for Women v. Adams in an attempt to tear down the Illinois Parental Notice Act. A federal district court found the law constitutional in October 2010 and dismissed the ACLU’s case, which is now on appeal.

“A young child’s well being is worth much more than an abortionist’s bottom line,” Sterett said. “This law balances the needs of desperate young girls with the rights of the parents who care most about them. The Illinois Supreme Court should allow this protective law to go into effect and reject the arguments of those who want to shut parents out of their children’s critical health decisions.”

ADF is a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith. Launched in 1994, ADF employs a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family. 

In his famous letter from a Birmingham jail Martin Luther King Jr. observed, “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” Senator Kimberly Lightford (D-Westchester area) has introduced a very troubling anti-family, big government resolution.

Senator Lightford’s resolution calls for the support of a radical United Nations treaty that would usurp parental authority to oversee their own children. If this treaty is officially ratified by the United States Senate, it would become legally enforcible throughout our country. The Lightford resolution, if passed by the Illinois General Assembly, will put Illinois on record in support of the horrible United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

The adoption of this evil globalist resolution will force the government into the sacred parent-child relationship. CRC supporters want the government to have a say in what church your children attend, how much time they spend on chores, what websites and books they read, whether they should be homeschooled, and who they choose for friends.

According to the Homeschool Legal Defense Association Senator Lightford’s legislation will “enable state agencies and judges to begin implementing aspects of the CRC in the state of Illinois, even if the U.S. Senate never ratifies it.”

To preserve freedom, families in Illinois must demand the rejection of the Lightford resolution, and instead ask their representative to endorse the important Parental Rights Amendment, which is being introduced in state legislatures all over America. (Watch for more information on this in the near future!)

Remember, Christian families must diligently and vigorously defend freedom. Dr. King’s observation above reminds us of the fact that our godless government is not just going to give it to us.

Take ACTION: Send an email or a fax to your representative. Urge them to reject the Lightford resolution — SR 92 –.

You can also call the Capitol switchboard at 217-782-2000.

It is vital that you voice your concerns to your your elected officials in Springfield regarding SR 92.

Contact Sen. Maloney and your State Senator ask them to drop this unwarranted expansion of government.

A deeply troubling bill (SB 136) has been proposed in the Illinois General Assembly by State Senator Edward D. Maloney (D-Chicago) that will affect all children in non-public schools, including home schools.

Existing school code permits the voluntary registration of non-public school students with the state. If SB 136 were to pass, it would compel all parents or legal guardians of home or privately schooled students to register with the state. Registration that is now voluntary would become compulsory. The arguments used to justify such compulsory registration are specious and reveal underlying flawed assumptions.

Sen. Maloney has expressed concern that those who homeschool their children are not accountable to anyone — and by anyone, he clearly means any government employee. Does Sen. Maloney actually believe that the state has proved itself better at educating children than parents who homeschool?

What Maloney fails to acknowledge is that many of these parents know that they are accountable to a much higher authority than the state. They know that they are accountable to God for the manner in which they educate, train, and nurture their children as well as how they steward their time, talents, and resources.

Proponents of mandatory registration fail to address the serious problem of requiring parents to register with a government entity that is actively engaged in undermining their political, moral, and theological beliefs. At significant personal costs, these families are trying through homeschooling to avoid the subversive ideological indoctrination in which many public school teachers increasingly engage.

Proponents fail to acknowledge that bias and censorship pervade public school curricula. The problems in public schools involve not merely what troubling ideas are being promoted to students but what ideas students are never exposed to because of systemic bias and censorship.

Proponents of this bill fail to address the likely, if not inevitable, slippery slope from registration to regulation. While SB 136 requires parents only to register their children with the state, it’s naïve to think that our bloated and still ravenous state bureaucracy will not expand its purview to dictate curriculum, administer tests, monitor or evaluate student progress, require certification of those who serve as teachers, and/or mandate home visits by state officials — all in the service of protecting children, of course.

Those in favor of mandatory registration fail to provide any evidence for the need for such registration. Such evidence would need to be something far more substantive than anecdotal accounts of a few homeschool parents who have failed to educate adequately their children. And such evidence would need to prove that homeschooled students are failing at higher rates than students in public schools. If there were evidence, for example, that homeschooled students have poorer test scores; higher rates of suicide or drug and alcohol use; greater involvement in gang activity; feel less safe; have lower admission rates into colleges and universities; or have lower college retention and graduation rates than public school students, then perhaps there would be a case for mandatory registration.

Since current research suggests that homeschooled students actually score higher on average than public school students, the effort to mandate registration must be driven by the baseless assumption that government bureaucrats are inherently more effective at protecting and educating children. If this assumption weren’t so gallingly presumptuous, it would be laughable.

Let’s take a moment to clarify for hubristic politicians and public educators (which does not mean all public educators) what some current research reveals about homeschooled students.

The following statistics come from a 2009 study that explored “academic outcomes of home school students attending a medium sized, doctoral institution located in the Midwest”:

Homeschool students ACT Composite score 26.5–Public school ACT Composite score 25
Homeschool students ACT Reading score 28.2–Public school ACT Reading score 25.6
Homeschool students ACT English score 27.8–Public school ACT English score 24.5
Homeschool students ACT Science score 25–Public school ACT Science score 24.5
Homeschool students ACT Math score 24.6–Public school ACT Math score 24.7

The college retention rate for homeschool students was 88.6 percent as compared to 87.5 percent for public school students.

First year GPA for homeschool students was 3.41 as compared to 3.12 for public school students.

The four-year graduation rate for homeschool students was 68.7 percent as compared to 58.6 percent for public school students. (For more information on the academic success of homeschool students click HERE.)

Problems like poor test scores, high dropout rates, teenage pregnancies, teenage suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, and gang activity are not common problems within the homeschooling community as they are in many government schools. Unmotivated teachers too are uncommon among home schools.

So, Sen. Maloney believes that all homeschool and private school students in Illinois, including those who fare better than public school students, should be forced to register with the state that has demonstrably and miserably failed countless students over many years?

Has anyone calculated the additional costs to our bankrupt state that will be incurred if unwarranted compulsory state registration becomes the law for all non-public school students?

Government bureaucrats and educators like Bill Ayers and his “agents of change” see themselves as academic experts nonpareil and the ultimate protectors of children. As a result, they arrogate to themselves the right to intrude without warrant into family business.

Illinoisans should oppose this unjustifiable and needless expansion of governmental authority. This is especially important now as Illinois public schools stand poised to expand their advocacy of radical beliefs regarding homosexuality into every public elementary, middle, and high school, which IFI hopes will result in more families exiting public schools.

Thomas More Society Files Motion for Immediate Transfer of Parental Notice Challenge to Illinois Supreme Court

Our friends at the pro-life Thomas More Society law firm just delivered the justices of the Illinois Supreme Court a motion to immediately transfer the legal case pending against the Illinois Parental Notice of Abortion Act of 1995 from the Appellate Court to the Supreme Court. Arguing that pregnant minors at risk for abortion suffer harm every day that the Act is not enforced, the Society invoked the Supreme Court rule allowing transfer of an appeal when the “public interest requires prompt adjudication.” The pending appeal, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), is currently in the Illinois Appellate Court, First District, where a decision is not expected for a year or more.

Contact Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan to request that she support the motion filed by Thomas More. It is high time to end the delay of enforcing this law that was enacted fifteen years ago. The people of Illinois overwhelmingly support parental notice.

You can also call the Attorney General’s office at the numbers listed below:

Chicago — (312) 814-3000

Rockford — (815) 967-3883

Springfield — (217) 782-1090

Quincy — (217) 223-2221

Belleville — (618) 236-8616

Carbondale — (618) 529-6400

Background
“More than fifteen years ago, with overwhelming bipartisan support, parental notice was supposedly made the law in Illinois, but as we sit here today, secret abortions on pregnant minors continue unabated,” said Peter Breen, Thomas More Society executive director and legal counsel. “With this motion to transfer, the Supreme Court has the opportunity to immediately and definitively decide the constitutionality of parental notice in Illinois.”

Earlier this year, Judge Daniel Riley of the Cook County Circuit Court allowed the Thomas More Society to appear as “friends of the court” as he rejected the ACLU’s Illinois state constitutional challenges to the Parental Notice Act. However, after the decision, both the ACLU and the Illinois Attorney General’s office agreed to an indefinite stay of the law, extending through the duration of the appeal a temporary restraining order entered earlier by Judge Riley.

Since the Parental Notice Act was signed into law in 1995, more than 50,000 abortions have been performed on pregnant minors in Illinois, including almost 5,000 abortions on girls 14 years of age and younger. Illinois is the only state in the Midwest that does not have a law requiring parental notification or consent prior to an abortion, and more than 55,000 abortions have been performed on non-residents in Illinois since 1995, including an unknown number of out-of-state pregnant minors.

While the Act was passed in 1995, it was in late 2006 that the Illinois Supreme Court issued the Act’s required “judicial bypass” rules, which allow a minor a confidential bypass proceeding in court in lieu of notifying her parents. Notwithstanding the bypass rules, the Act also allows a minor to forego notification if she declares in writing that she is the victim of abuse. In early 2009, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit rejected the ACLU’s federal constitutional challenge to the Act.

It is not yet known whether the Attorney General and the ACLU will support, oppose or remain neutral on the motion to transfer. A copy of the motion to transfer can be downloaded at www.thomasmoresociety.org.

International Planned Parenthood Foundation’s recently released report, “Stand and Deliver: Sex, Health and Young People in the 21st Century,” advocates policies that jeopardize the well-being of children’s health, the importance of parents and the moral values of our society, says Family Research Council.

The report promotes contraceptive sex education for children as young as ten years old. Most disturbingly, the report advocates that children as young as ten be “empowered” to “develop satisfying and pleasurable sexual lives.” The report demands that children 10 and older be given a “comprehensive sexuality education” by governments, aid organizations and other groups, and that young people should be seen as “sexual beings.”

This report represents an ideological point of view that over sexualizes children and attempts to remove parents from being the primary conveyor of what their child learns and from whom. Illinois citizens will be shocked and outraged by what this report recommends. Parents should find out what is being taught in their child’s school and understand their rights under the law.

Moreover, polls show parents overwhelmingly believe that sex education should reflect the values taught at home. Contrary to parental desires, Planned Parenthood seeks to undermine parental and religious influence by advocating for a ‘human right’ to unlimited contraception and mandating so-called comprehensive sex education for children as young as ten.

You can read the report online HERE.