On Monday, December 5, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court began hearing 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, another case that pits the purported rights of same-sex couples to force Christian business-owners to create products (or provide services) that express messages related to same-sex “weddings” in violation of the Christian business-owners’ First Amendment rights.

The Court case is a challenge filed by Coloradan Lorie Smith, a wedding website designer who, in expanding her business, understandably wants to include a statement clarifying that she does not create websites for same-sex weddings. But Colorado’s boneheaded pro-religious discrimination, pro-censorship law “that bars businesses that are open to the public from discriminating against gay people or announcing their intent to do so” mandates both what Smith must do and may not say.

Smith has made clear the intent of her work:

As a Christian artist, I want to create freely and create messages that glorify and honor God. And for me, this means designing for weddings and telling the story of a couple through God’s lens of marriage. But the state of Colorado is forcing me to celebrate messages about marriages that are inconsistent with my faith. There’s a lot of misconceptions about my case and what it is that I’m asking for. I love everyone and my faith has taught me to love everyone, and I have worked with those who identify as LGBT. There are just certain messages that I cannot promote because of my faith.

While Smith originally challenged the Colorado law based on its violation of both speech and religious protections, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken it up only on free speech grounds. The threat posed to religious liberty, however, is at least as grave.

This case follows on the judicial heels of cases in which those who choose to place their homoerotic desires at the center of their identities have sued bed and breakfast inns, videographers, florists, cake bakers, and calligraphers. The plaintiffs in those cases like to pretend they are the Rosa Parks of the sexual revolution—the oppressed victims of irrational hatred based on a condition equivalent to skin color.

Anyone with an ounce of rationality should be able to see that this whole “LGBTQIAP+” political movement is based on a big fat, slimy lie—a lie not unlike a Guinea worm that works from deep inside the body politic, worming its way painfully through the muscles and sinews of its host. The only difference is the Guinea worm rarely leaves permanent damage.

For the millionth time, there are no points of correspondence between skin color per se and homoeroticism per se.

Skin color is an objective, 100 percent heritable, in all cases immutable, environmentally unaffected condition with no behavioral implications—and, therefore, morally neutral.

In contrast, homoeroticism is a subjective condition, with little to no genetic involvement, shaped in many cases by one’s environment, and constituted centrally by volitional acts that are appropriate objects of moral assessment. Making judgments about the morality of homoerotic acts and relationships is as legitimate as making judgments about any other erotic acts and relationships constituted by such acts.

Saying homoerotic acts and relationships are immoral no more constitutes hatred of “gay” persons who believe differently and act in accordance with their beliefs than does saying polyamory and plural unions are immoral constitute hatred of polyamorists.

Refusing to make floral arrangements, bake cakes, or create websites for weddings of two men is no more unjust or hateful than refusing to make floral arrangements, bake cakes, or create websites for weddings of five polyamorists, three brothers, or a man and his horse.

And refusing to create products or provide services for “weddings” of two men or two women is in no way akin to refusing to allow blacks to sit at a lunch counter. Only fools and deceivers would claim it is.

Here’s one way to know that that these cases have nothing to do with discrimination or hatred of persons and everything to do with the religious bigotry and discrimination of people who seek compulsory approval of their deviant sexual desires: Virtually every one of the Christians sued by homoeroticists, including Christian florist Barronelle Stutzman and cake baker Jack Phillips, happily made products for and served homoeroticist customers.

Theologically orthodox Christians do, indeed, sell their wares and services to homoeroticists. They simply will not use their gifts, time, and labor in the service of an event that violates their deeply held religious convictions, mocks marriage, and offends God.

Ignorant of both the meaning of the First Amendment as well as the nature and role of Christianity in the lives of Christ-followers, many non-Christians harbor (at least) two fallacious ideas. First, they believe Christians should exercise their religion only within the confines of their church building. And related, they believe the First Amendment protects only what takes place in church buildings.

Leftists want no protections for the exercise of religion outside the confines of church on Sunday. But here’s the cultural rub: For Christians, the exercise of their religion encompasses the totality of their lives, including their work.

Just as skin color, homoeroticism, and religious exercise have natures, so too does marriage. Marriage is something. It has a nature that does not change based on the legislative whims or prurient desires of humans. The law can no more change the nature of marriage than it can change the nature of horses by redefining them.

Until very recently, sexual differentiation has been central to any definition of marriage throughout history and cultures. In fact, jettisoning sexual differentiation is far more radical a change than would be jettisoning criteria regarding blood kinship, number of partners, or age of partners.

Of course, those changes are coming because—ya know—”love is love.” All that polyamorists, sibling-lovers, and hebephiles need to do now is organize, pressure the American Psychological Association to designate their erotic predilections “sexual orientations,” and abracadabra, their unions will be covered by anti-discrimination law and legalized.

When that day comes, will Christians who refuse to provide goods and services for sibling weddings, poly weddings, and hebephile-teen weddings be hauled before courts for discriminating based on “sexual orientation”? Will they be accused of bigotry and hatred?

The ceremony solemnizing an erotic relationship between two men or two women is not a wedding. Such a relationship is by nature and design non-reproductive, so it is neither sexual nor uniting. Since the central constituent feature of a true wedding is the sexual differentiation of partners, a ceremony recognizing and solemnizing a non-sexual, non-uniting relationship is not a wedding. It is the antithesis. It is an anti-wedding. And it harms all involved.

Leftists are trying to force Christian photographers, florists, bakers, calligraphers, and wedding website designers not only to create and sell products that violate their religion but also to create products that they have never before created: Anti-wedding cakes, anti-wedding floral arrangements, and anti-wedding websites.

Today we give thanks to God for the wisdom and courage of U.S Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito,  Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett for holding that the “Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey are overruled; [and] the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”

The syllabus (i.e., summary) in Dobbs v. the Jackson Women’s Health Organization outlines the major arguments addressed by the majority:

• Without any grounding in the constitutional text, history, or precedent, Roe imposed on the entire country a detailed set of rules for pregnancy divided into trimesters much like those that one might expect to find in a statute or regulation.

• Until the latter part of the 20th century, there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. No state constitutional provision had recognized such a right. Until a few years before Roe, no federal or state court had recognized such a right. Nor had any scholarly treatise. Indeed, abortion had long been a crime in every single State.

• Attempts to justify abortion through appeals to a broader right to autonomy and to define one’s “concept of existence” prove too much. … Those criteria, at a high level of generality, could license fundamental rights to illicit drug use, prostitution, and the like. What sharply distinguishes the abortion right from the rights recognized in the cases on which Roe and Casey rely is something that both those decisions acknowledged: Abortion is different because it destroys what Roe termed “potential life” and what the law challenged in this case calls an “unborn human being.” None of the other decisions cited by Roe and Casey involved the critical moral question posed by abortion.

• [T]he Court cannot allow its decisions to be affected by such extraneous concerns [i.e., stare decisis/precedent]. A precedent of this Court is subject to the usual principles of stare decisis under which adherence to precedent is the norm but not an inexorable command. If the rule were otherwise, erroneous decisions like Plessy would still be the law.

Writing for the Court, Justice Alito made mincemeat of the lousy arguments proffered in Roe and Casey, but the political invertebrate Chief Justice John Roberts did what he does best. He tried to swim smack dab down the middle of this roaring river. Hard to do without a spine. The political Roberts voted with the majority but refused to overturn Roe and Casey despite numerous leftist legal scholars acknowledging for decades that Roe lacked any grounding in the U.S. Constitution.

Justice Thomas again renewed his quest to revisit “substantive due process” jurisprudence, which he argues “has harmed our country in many ways,” and, therefore, “we should eliminate it from our jurisprudence at the earliest opportunity.” He shares this view with Justices Antonin Scalia and Hugo Black as well as Robert Bork and many other legal scholars.

Thomas has long argued that because of the “erroneous” nature of substantive due process jurisprudence, “in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”

Those cases addressed, respectively, the purported constitutional right to access contraception, the purported constitutional right to engage in homosexual sodomy, and the purported constitutional right of two people of the same sex to marry.

To be clear, Thomas’ argument regarding substantive due process jurisprudence has nothing to do with his moral view of contraception, sodomy, or marriage. Rather, he is making an argument about the constitutional basis—or lack thereof—of substantive due process doctrine, which Justice Antonin Scalia too criticized:

The entire practice of using the Due Process Clause to add judicially favored rights to the limitations upon democracy set forth in the Bill of Rights (usually under the rubric of so-called “substantive due process”) is in my view judicial usurpation.

Justice Hugo Black was similarly critical of substantive due process doctrine in Griswold:

[T]here is no provision of the Constitution which either expressly or impliedly vests power in this Court to sit as a supervisory agency over acts of duly constituted legislative bodies and set aside their laws because of the Court’s belief that the legislative policies adopted are unreasonable, unwise, arbitrary, capricious or irrational. The adoption of such a loose, flexible, uncontrolled standard for holding laws unconstitutional, if ever it is finally achieved, will amount to a great unconstitutional shift of power to the courts which I believe and am constrained to say will be bad for the courts and worse for the country. Subjecting federal and state laws to such an unrestrained and unrestrainable judicial control as to the wisdom of legislative enactments would, I fear, jeopardize the separation of governmental powers that the Framers set up and at the same time threaten to take away much of the power of States to govern themselves which the Constitution plainly intended them to have.

Leftists mock Thomas for his substantive critique of substantive due process mischief. They do so because they fear losing the power of the Court to act as a supreme law-making body. Well, they did fear that while they controlled the Court.

But Thomas’ critique is not a fringe critique, and he may have at least one ally on the Court: Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Now, the arduous work of changing hearts and minds that have been corrupted by nearly fifty years of leftist propaganda becomes even more urgent.

We need to donate more money to crisis pregnancy centers, both to help mothers who are considering abortion and to repair damage from domestic terrorists like Jane’s Revenge that promises violence to organizations that seek to protect children in their mothers’ wombs.

We need to pour money into creative, compelling public service/social media campaigns and the arts in order to elicit support for protecting preborn babies.

We need to elect wise, courageous state leaders who stand boldly for the sanctity of lives that pro-abortion activists deem unworthy of life.

We need to pass fiscal and social policies that end—rather than create—poverty, and we need to create a culture that doesn’t think a solution to poverty is baby sacrifice.

And we need to educate our children in places that teach that humans in their mothers’ wombs are sacred and that neither their developmental status, nor their convenience for others, nor their imperfections grant to their mothers the moral right to have them killed.

And we need to pray ceaselessly for the least of these. We must pray that incipient human lives are able to survive the dangerous waters of their mothers’ wombs.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/The-Nightmare-of-Roe-Ends.mp3

The big news of the week has been confirmed by Chief Justice John Roberts. The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade in the very near future, possibly by the end of June. In a news release from the High Court, however, they were careful to point out that, although the leaked draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito is authentic, “it does not represent a decision by the Court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.” In other words, the ruling is not official yet.

If it becomes official, it will be an enormous victory for the sanctity of human life in America. Repealing Roe is what pro-lifers have marched, prayed, worked, and voted for since 1973.

We are relieved to know that many states will restrict or completely outlaw abortion, thereby saving untold number of women and unborn babies from becoming victims. Yet, it’s sobering to realize that states like Illinois, New York, Maryland and California will become abortion destination points for those who are determined to kill their pre-born babies. And seeing women come out in droves screaming about the possibility of losing their right to kill their children is a grave reminder that we are in a spiritual battle.

The work before us continues, especially in Illinois. Our ongoing mission is to educate family members, friends and neighbors on the evils of abortion. We’ll need to continue working to change hearts and minds regarding “bodily autonomy,” the science of when life begins, and, most important, the fact that we are all created in the image and likeness of our Creator.  As such, every human has an intrinsic and inestimable dignity and worth. (Genesis 1:27)

Our culture has drifted away from God and no longer loves or values the things of God. We see proof of that in a birth rate which is disastrously low and abortion rates disastrously high. This disregard for life is also evidenced in the gang violence in our cities and by the skyrocketing suicide and overdose rates plaguing communities throughout the nation.

In response, followers of Jesus Christ must be diligent in praying for the courage, strength, and wisdom to engage the culture forthrightly on the abortion issue. Ironically, this morning, in response to the leaked opinion, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spoke dishonestly from the chamber floor to decry the pending decision, claiming that tens of millions of women will lose “bodily autonomy.”

Overturning Roe v. Wade does not constitute the loss of women’s “bodily autonomy” because abortions don’t destroy the bodies of mothers. Abortions destroy the bodies of women’s children. Abortion robs the unborn of bodily autonomy, body integrity, and life.

May God forgive us.

PRAYER ALERT

We cannot stress the urgency of your fervent prayers this month as our culture once again descends into a season of acrimony. Add to this the fact that we are in an election cycle in which dozens of federal and state legislative seats are in play. There are a number of God-fearing candidates running for office, and our prayers are vitally important.

Appeal to God for His Mercy

• Pray that God would forgive us for allowing the innocent blood of preborn children to be spilled for decades in America.

• Pray for forgiveness for using tax dollars to pay for abortions in Illinois and to sustain this wicked industry.

• Pray for the courage and strength to expose and refute lies and to offer hope to those who are stumbling towards death.

• Pray for a flood of new volunteers who will commit to prayer and sidewalk counseling at abortion clinics and at pregnancy centers to help turn individual hearts away from the slaughter of the most innocent.

• Pray that church leaders would speak boldly on this issue and offer hope to post-abortive women who need love, care, and assurance of God’s forgiveness. Pray that Christians will share the love of Christ with post-abortive women, and that these women would find healing through a church group and/or Bible study.

Abortion

• Pray that every leader in our nation would come to realize that “fetuses” are real humans in the womb who deserve protection.

• Pray that the agenda of Satan and his wicked disciples to kill pre-born babies in the womb and encourage immoral sexual activities to innocent young children in government schools would be exposed and stopped.

• Pray that Christians of every age would develop a biblical perspective on abortion, on caring for those who face unplanned pregnancies, and on our obligation to respond to sin with grace and compassion in addition to truth.

• Pray that we can be used to communicate effectively how God wants to redeem the lost.

For Those in Authority

For the next several weeks, please pray for the political leaders listed below. Pray that they would seek God’s wisdom when they make decisions that affect the people for whom they work. Pray that God would turn their hearts to Himself. (Proverbs 21:1)

This includes praying for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, J.B. Pritzker, and Julia Stratton and those who serve in these administrations. Pray also for our two U.S. Senators: Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth.

Please pray for the nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court: John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. (Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will take her seat on the Court when Justice Breyer steps down in late June or early July.)

In addition, please pray for the following officials:

• • U.S. Senator Mark Kelly (D-Arizona)
  • U.S. Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama)
  • U.S. Representative Robin Kelly (D-Illinois)
  • U.S. Representative John Yarmuth (D-Kentucky)
  • U.S. Representative Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado)
  • State Senator Melinda Bush (D-Grayslake)
  • State Senator John Curran (R-Lemont)
  • State Representative Deb Conroy (D-Villa Park)
  • State Representative Andrew Chesney (R-Freeport)
  • YOUR local City/Village/Township Officials

U.S. Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson has provided sufficient evidence for the U.S. Senate to vote against her nomination to fill Justice Stephen Breyer’s seat following the full-court press he received from leftists to abdicate his lifelong seat before the 2024 election. That evidence includes her stupefying claim that she is unable to define “woman” because she’s not a biologist. The press has profligately identified Jackson as a “woman.” Has anyone confirmed that with a biologist?

Jackson’s claim was made in response to a line of questioning by U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) who began by citing the U.S. Supreme Court Case United States v. Virginia in which the buttinsky U.S. government sued the state of Virginia and the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) claiming that the policy limiting VMI admissions to males violated the U.S. Constitution. Blackburn cited Ruth Bader Ginsburg who voted with the majority in overturning VMI’s male-only admission policy:

Supposed inherent differences are no longer accepted as a grounds for race or national origins classifications. Physical differences, however, are enduring. The two sexes are not fungible. A community made up exclusively of one sex is different from a community composed of both.

Blackburn then asked Jackson, “Do you agree with Justice Ginsburg that there are physical differences between men and women that are enduring?”

Jackson, looking like the proverbial headlight-blinded deer, took an awkward beat and then stammered,

Um, Senator, respectfully, I am not familiar with that particular quote or case, so it’s hard for me to comment as to whether or not …

This was a half-truth. While it likely was “hard” for Jackson to comment on the now-incendiary topic of whether there are enduring physical differences between men and women, the reason for that difficulty is not Jackson’s ignorance about the VMI case.

The reason it is hard for her to acknowledge the obvious truth that even children know is that Jackson didn’t want to offend either the rational members of the U.S. Senate who will vote for or agin her nomination or to offend the “trans” cult, which wields inordinate political power in service of their reality-denying disorder.

Blackburn tried again:

Do you interpret Justice Ginsburg’s meaning of “men” and “women” as “male” and “female”?

And again, Jackson bobbed and weaved:

And again, because I don’t know the case, I don’t know how to interpret it. I’d have to read the whole thing.

Surely, the third time would be a charm, particularly because Blackburn omitted reference to the VMI court case. Blackburn asked,

Can you provide a definition of “woman”?

Here came Jackson’s whopper. She replied confidently,

No. I can’t.

Incredulous, Blackburn asked,

You can’t?

Jackson chuckled and responded,

Not in this context. I’m not a biologist.

Surely Jackson knows how biologists define woman. Biologists defined “woman” long before cross-dressers decided to goose-step in their stiletto-accoutered jackboots through America’s institutions trying to convince Americans that biologists know nothing about the phenomena of man and woman.

Transtopians are baffled at the notion that biologists could know what a woman is because in Transtopia, “man” and “woman” have nothing to do with hard science, anatomy, physiology, genetics, or reproduction. Transtopians believe in pseudoscience and metaphysical alchemy.

Transtopia is a solipsistic Wonderland where words mean whatever Transtopians say words mean and where nothing exists outside each individual’s mind—including minds beclouded by sin, confusion, delusion, and deviant desires. If there’s a mismatch between a Transtopian’s mind/feelings and their anatomically healthy, properly functioning bodies, they just know the error is with their healthy, properly functioning bodies. “Treatment,” therefore, means artificially disrupting normal, properly functioning biological processes and excising normal, healthy anatomical parts as if they’re malignant tumors.

For Transtopians, nothing matters but the subjective feelings of the self, and that’s why Transtopians demand everyone ask every person they meet what their pronouns are. While weeping about being “mis-gendered,” they tyrannically demand compulsory mis-sexing.

Transtopians exalt subjective feelings, except for the subjective feelings of those who live and move and have their being outside of Transtopia. Their feelings, beliefs, and values mean nothing in Transtopia. Transtopians hate anyone who refuses to move body, mind, heart, and soul to Transtopia, ironically labeling dissenters hateful, intolerant, bigoted, and non-inclusive.

Jackson’s expansive ignorance of biology accounts too for why she doesn’t know when life begins or when a baby in the womb is viable. Maybe if she spent less time cozying up with Planned Parenthood, she would free up some time to read a basic biology text. Presumably, her husband—a doctor—or the Internet could help her find out the answers to those not-so-vexing questions.

But perhaps Jackson’s most troubling statement was this:

I have a religious view that I set aside when I am ruling on cases.

That claim drips with the anti-constitutional view that a Supreme Court Justice must sever her religious faith from the exercise of her duties. That view, however, is at odds with the spirit and text of the Constitution which prohibits religious tests for holding office and which guarantees the free exercise of religion. For true Christians, their religious faith inheres every aspect of their lives. It shapes their ethics; morality; political values; and their views of government, human nature, and liberty.

To paraphrase Richard John Neuhaus, that which is political is moral and that which is moral, for religious people, is religious. It is no less legitimate to have political or judicial decisions shaped by religion than by psychology, philosophy, “gender ideology,” or self-serving personal desire.

A democratic republic cannot exist without objective normative ethics that render legitimate the preservation or circumscription of individual rights. Historically, the sources of the absolute, transcendent, objective, universal truths that render legitimate our legal system have been “the institutions of religion that make claims of ultimate or transcendent meaning.” Neuhaus explains that this “does not represent an imposition of the private into the public spheres, but rather an expansion or transformation or recollection of what is public.” He argues that when religion is utterly privatized and eliminated as a “source or transcendence that gives legitimate and juridical direction and form, something else will necessarily fill the void, and that force will be the state.”

While Ketanji Brown Jackson may view her silly non-answers as canny political stratagems, many people view them as dishonest, foolish, and cowardly.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/SCOTUS-Nominee-Jacksons-Stupefying-Answers.mp3

Over Christmas break, I was hanging out with some friends and as we were playing some games in their basement, the topic of abortion was brought up. I stated my belief that all abortions are wrong. I did not think much of saying this as I assumed that they would at least somewhat agree with me. But shockingly, I was wrong. The two friends that were with me have been my friends since a very young age, and I know that they grew up in staunchly conservative families, yet they still were surprisingly of the pro-choice mindset. The disturbing thing is that they agreed abortion was murder and that it takes the life of an innocent child. This sounds contradictory, doesn’t it? How can one oppose abortion on moral grounds but still believe it should be allowed? The answer to this is the current generation of teens called Generation Z, apathy, complacency, and indifference.

When teens have everything we could ever need, such as a nice house, a TV, videogames, mindless social media apps, and countless other amenities, taking a moral stand on something can be stupid and even reckless. Taking a pro-life stand is controversial, potentially life ruining if seen by the wrong people on social media. Many people in this generation have no moral quandaries about abortion, but what is even more shocking it that some who do have problems with abortion are too indifferent or scared to say anything, even among people who they know agree with them. Morality for youth has been pushed to the wayside and this generation, even if they know something is wrong, will still go along with it for the sake of comfort and an easy life. The highest achievement for someone from Generation Z is creating for themselves an easy life, and sadly, most will do it by any means possible.

Conservative parents often raise their children thinking that their children will never stray from what they have taught them, but with the advent of social media and the effect of public education, this could not be more untrue. Again, both of these friends had grown up in conservative households. Their parents would be horrified if they knew the things that they told me that night. When we are bombarded by social media apps such as Tik Tok, Instagram, Twitter, and respected teachers that tell us abortion is not just acceptable, but something that should be celebrated, it is hard to take a stance that rejects it, even if you know deep down that it is wrong.

I know this firsthand since I was a victim of these lies. I was somewhat like my friends, believing that abortion was immoral, but I really did not care. I believe that it is more important than ever for parents to have in depth conversations with their teens about issues such as, but certainly not limited to, abortion. With the amount of brainwashing children are exposed to from a relatively young age, we all need to make sure that they are strong in their beliefs and cannot be swayed. This is why it is important to have regular conversations about this topic.

Talking to your child about abortion can be difficult, and thoroughly convincing them that it is wrong can be even harder. I am no expert, but I do have some recommendations that opened my eyes to the absolute horrors of abortion. In this day and age, people seem to care about “the science” and facts a lot. If something doesn’t have enough evidence to back it up, people will tend not to believe it. Back in the 70s, abortion advocates convinced women that the fetus in their stomach was nothing but a “blob of cells,” and quite frankly, that is what it looked like on an ultrasound screen back then. But with the technology we have now, we can clearly see that this “mass” is actually a living child. With today’s technology, we can see details such as the fingers, nose, toes, and other parts that can clearly show that this is a child that so many are willing to be allowed to kill.

Another thing that was jarring for me to see was Dr. Anthony Levantino’s testimony. As a warning, I would recommend watching this first before showing it to a child since it is very disturbing. Dr. Levantino was an abortion doctor. However, he has seen the truth, had a change of heart and is now fighting to protect the sanctity of human life. In this testimony, he describes in graphic detail the horrendous process of abortion. Many people do not grasp the severity of abortion. They just look at it as any other medical procedure, such as removing a tumor. In my earlier high school days, I somewhat looked at it in this way too. I assumed it was at least done in a humane and painless way. I did not realize that it was more like something out of a horror movie.

Another great resource to show teens is the movie Unplanned, which gives an inside look at the abortion industry from Planned Parenthood insider Abby Johnson. It would be hard for anyone to walk away from that movie unmoved and would certainly help teens understand that the abortion industry is a business and certainly not about their best interests.

The final and most important way I believe children can be raised to be strong in their pro-life beliefs is through their influence on social media. As I said earlier, social media for the most part is a cesspool of leftist ideology and brainwashing, but there are some good people out there. Teens today look up to YouTubers, Instagrammers, and other famous influencers. Whether it be a person that makes gaming content, or vlogs their travel adventures, they all can have a big influence on their audience. The problem with this is that most of these influencers, even if they are not political, will eventually spew some kind of leftist propaganda. With the way many young people look up to these influencers, they are likely to take whatever they say seriously and as near fact. Introducing your teen to influencers that are conservative and engaging is important, but difficult. Some good ones that I watch are Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, and Charlie Kirk, but there are plenty to choose from. Most teens, if they have a phone, are inevitably going to use various social media apps, so introducing them to good influences can help tremendously with their stance on pro-life as well as other contemporary topics.

With all the attention abortion is getting in the news lately because of the U.S. Supreme Court case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which could mean the end of Roe v. Wade, and the new Texas pro-life law, talking about abortion and spreading the pro-life message is extremely important since we know now that the Court listens to popular opinion, not the Constitution. What better time to do this than during the Sanctity of Human Life month which culminates in Washington D.C. on January 21,^st for the annual March for Life! My heart sinks when young people today are apathetic about such a serious topic, but perhaps with a lot of work, effort, and prayer, we can change that.

When our state lawmaker convene the 103rd General Assembly on January 11th, Democrats may immediately push for a Constitutional Amendment on Abortion, hoping to permanently enshrine abortion as a legal right in Illinois.

The recent election revealed that abortion was a decisive topic, driving women and men alike to the polls.

However, despite statistics showing a relatively even split on the abortion issue, election results prove that Illinois is even more left-leaning than believed.

Illinois Senate Minority Leader-Elect John Curran (R-Lemont) admits in defeat that Illinois has all but constitutionalized abortion, being the most liberal state when it comes to abortion legislation.

But Democrat legislators still claim abortion freedoms are insecure. Illinois House Speaker, Chris Welch (D-Westchester), expresses his concern: “Right now, we’re a single Legislature or a single Supreme Court away from losing [abortion] rights.”

The Democrats’ solution? A state constitutional amendment securely guaranteeing abortion rights.

Sarah Resnick, leader of prominent -pro-choice organization Personal PAC says, “The people of this country want choice to be protected and codified, and they don’t want it to be dismantled. Codifying on a constitutional level makes sense.”

This blue wave and push to constitutionalize abortion recognizes, ironically, that abortion has and will continue to be a ravaging concern for Christians.

Democrats, despite their landslide victory in Illinois this election season, sense opposition and pressure over abortion. Personal PAC’s website announces, “The Enemies of Choice will never stop. And neither will we.” A bold proclamation made from trembling knees.

Pro-choice organizations are uncomfortable and insecure because Christians are providing real pushback. From gargantuan legal battles like Roe V. Wade to trifles like evangelism, their idol–the scourge of abortion–is being attacked on all sides. The pagan’s consequent squirming signifies Christianity’s success. But it is apparent: Christians cannot grow lax. As John Owen once said,

“There is not a day in our lives in which sin does not either defeat us or is defeated, prevails over us or is prevailed over.”

Every day Christians must take up their swords, armor, cross and combat the sin of abortion. It is still an active battlefield, with pro-choice activists vowing to fight back. And so we begin the new year.

We recently read a great little sermon illustration in which a young boy asked his father, “Dad, I was watching a TV show about marine biologists. Why do scuba-divers jump backwards into the water?” His father wittily responded, “Because if they jumped forward, they’d still be in the boat!”

Scuba divers jump out of boats to investigate marine life in the coastal waters and oceans of the world. It is a way of visiting another ecosystem on our vast planet. Whether it is sunken wreckage, lost treasure or coral reefs, I can see how these diving excursions are great ways to escape the stresses of daily life.

Yet today, there are many people in our culture, in our families and even in our churches who might be tempted to jump out of the boat when things get stressful, depressing or uncomfortable. Those of us who still live in Illinois understand the added frustration of wicked and foolish political leadership. The temptation to move out of this state and into “calmer, peaceful waters” is very real.

Yet we should consider what Scripture has to say about escaping trials and tribulation. Right before He was arrested, Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane. He prayed John 17:14:

“I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.”  

Jesus could have easily prayed that God would deliver us out of the troubled waters of our world, but He didn’t. He prayed that we would remain in the world and that we would be protected from the evil one. Why didn’t He pray for our complete rescue? His prayer continues in John 17:18:

“As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”

Our Lord and Savior, the Son of God, prayed that we would remain so we could be on mission in this world for the advancement of the Kingdom of God.

Yes, our state and our culture is in trouble. But these troubles are a reminder that we are called to be salt and light to a dying world.  David Jeremiah once said, “Today is the day to be a light shining in a dark world, fueled by the joy of the Lord.” May we be that salt and light to a dark and decaying world, all to the glory of God.

PRAYER ALERT

We cannot stress the urgency of your fervent prayers this week as our state lawmakers return to the Capitol for the second half of the Veto Session. There are a number of bad proposals pending in Springfield. Prayer and action are vitally important.

Appeal to God for His Help

• Praise God that many pro-life activists and pastors are headed to Springfield to speak out against the efforts to repeal the Parental Notice of Abortion Act and the repeal of the Health Care Right of Conscience Act. Please pray that these activists would be seen and heard by lawmakers. Pray that their presence and dialogue would help them understand the importance of parental rights and conscience rights. (Read more HERE.)

• Pray that our state lawmakers would understand the wisdom in keeping qualified (or limited), immunity for police officers in Illinois. Pray that the anti-police agenda to dismantle, dishearten and make defenseless would fall short.

Abortion

• Pray for the members of the U.S. Supreme Court as they will be hearing arguments regarding significant abortion regulations in Mississippi and Texas. Pray that God would touch the hearts of the nine Justices on the Court. Pray too, as the debate rages, that eyes and ears would be opened to the abortion industry’s murderous barbaric practices.

• Please pray for the last week of this year’s 40 Days for Life campaign, which ends on Saturday, Oct. 30. Pray that many prayer warriors would take advantage of this opportunity to be a silent witness against the murderous practice of “choice.” Pray that workers at these abortuaries would have a change of heart about their work and leave.

• Pray that every leader in our nation would come to realize that these are real human babies in the womb who deserve protection.

• Pray that the agenda of Satan and his wicked disciples to kill pre-born babies in the womb and encourage immoral sexual activities to innocent young children in government schools would be exposed and stopped.

Public School Exit

• Please continue to pray for our Rescuing Our Children initiative to encourage an exodus from government indoctrination centers. Rev. Ceasar LeFlore, our field director for this project, is meeting with pastors throughout the City of Chicago and suburbs and has been getting favorable responses.

• Pray for Illinois Family Institute and our annual banquet which is scheduled for Friday evening. Pray that the event would be a success, and that our keynote speaker, Dr. Erwin Lutzer, would encourage and challenge us to live up to the high calling of our faith in Christ Jesus.

For Those in Authority

For the next several weeks, please pray for the political leaders listed below. Pray that they would seek God’s wisdom when they make decisions that affect the people they work for. Pray that God would turn their hearts to Himself. (Proverbs 21:1)

Of course, this includes praying for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, JB Pritzker and Julia Stratton and those who serve in these administrations. Pray also for our two U.S. Senators, Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth.

Please pray for the nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court: John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

In addition, please pray for the following officials:

• • U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal Bennet (D-Connecticut)
  • U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (R-Missouri)
  • U.S. Representative Bobby Rush (D-Illinois)
  • U.S. Representative Peter Aguilar (D-California)
  • U.S. Representative Rick Allen (R-Georgia)
  • State Senator Scott Bennett (D-Champaign)
  • State Senator Terri Bryant (R-Murphysboro)
  • State Representative Lakesia Collins (D-Chicago)
  • State Representative Dan Caulkins (R-Decatur)
  • YOUR local City/Village/Township Officials

Written by Jorge Gomez

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a potentially landmark case challenging a Maine law that bans families from participating in a student-aid program if they choose to send their children to religious schools.

The Institute for Justice (IJ), along with First Liberty as co-counsel, represents the parents in Carson v. Makin, and will argue the case in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2021-22 term.

Let’s quickly recap what this case is about, including what implications the final decision could have for the liberty of students (as well as their parents) to choose which school they attend and whether they’ll face discrimination for pursuing a faith-based education.

Choose Your School—Unless it’s Religious

Maine has a 200-plus year tradition of using government funds to ensure education for its residents. Historically, some towns would provide for families to send their children to private academies, often run by religious organizations.

In 1903, the state passed a law ensuring that all children would have access to primary and secondary education. But not every community had enough money—or students—to justify building their own schools.

To this day, when a school district does not provide a public high school, Maine compensates for this by helping fund tuition at any public or private school that families choose, unless it is a religious school. This religious restriction wasn’t always there, though. Throughout most of the program’s history, parents could choose religious schools and still participate in the tuition program.

That changed in the 1980s, when Maine’s Attorney General declared that it was unconstitutional to include religious schools in the program. Later U.S. Supreme Court cases clarified that allowing school-choice program participants to select religious educational options did not violate the Establishment Clause. Allowing families to independently choose from an array of schools which may or may not be religious in no way violates the Constitution.

However, Maine did not remove the religious exclusion from its program. Despite previous lawsuits, Maine continued to deny families in “tuitioning towns” the choice to send their child to a religiously affiliated school under the school choice program.

Hope for Victory: What the U.S. Supreme Court Has Already Said

Looking ahead to the upcoming oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court, there’s reason to have hope that First Liberty’s and IJ’s legal teams can achieve a victory on behalf of the families we represent who are challenging Maine’s religious discrimination.

In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court recently issued two decisions favorable to the constitutional rights of students and religious schools.

The first is Trinity Lutheran v. Comer (2017). Trinity Lutheran Church in Missouri applied in 2012 for a state program that used recycled tires to pad its playgrounds. The church runs a pre-school, but not all the students attended the church. The playground is also open to everyone in the community. Still, the state refused to let Trinity Lutheran Church improve the safety of its playground via the state program. Why? Because it was religious.

In 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that religious organizations such as Trinity Lutheran could participate equally in taxpayer-funded state programs. In fact, by excluding Trinity Lutheran, the state of Missouri was discriminating on the basis of religion and violating the Constitution.

The second favorable ruling for religious liberty came in 2020, when the Institute for Justice won the landmark U.S. Supreme Court victory in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. In that case, the Court held that states cannot bar families participating in student-aid programs from choosing religiously affiliated schools for their children. The Court held that discrimination based on the religious “status,” or identity, of a school violates the Constitution.

In light of these precedents, First Liberty and IJ argue not only that the U.S. Supreme Court has given the green light to include religious options in a school choice program, but also that barring parents who choose religious options from participating in school choice programs violates the U.S. Constitution’s Free Exercise and Equal Protection Clauses.

With the Maine School Choice case, the U.S. Supreme Court has a prime opportunity to reaffirm that in America, families should not be excluded from participating in widely available public benefits only because they choose religious schools for their children.

This article was originally published at FirstLiberty.org.

Written by Kelle Berry

Recently, an activist group known as the Secular Democrats of America (SDA) sent a document to the president and the administration with a directive “to take back the mantle of religious freedom and pluralism.”

On the surface, the title—Restoring Constitutional Secularism and Patriotic Pluralism in the White House—makes the SDA’s mission sound appealing. The document calls to:

“…Oppose discrimination against atheists, agnostics, humanists, seekers, religious and nonreligious persons and to champion the value of freedom of thought and conscience…”

This even makes it sound harmonious with First Liberty’s own mission of protecting religious freedom for all Americans. After all, the First Amendment grants everyone the right to freely exercise their religious beliefs, convictions and to act according to their conscience without government censorship, threat, or coercion.

However, scratching beneath the surface, one sees that the SDA’s demands are much more dangerous. Inside the document, one finds a detailed “blueprint” redefining religious freedom in a way that would be unrecognizable to America’s Founders.

Building a Higher Wall of Separation?

Invoking America’s third president, the SDA implores a return to a “Jeffersonian approach to governance.” In other words, the SDA is petitioning to fortify a higher “wall of separation” between church and state.

Many high school civics students are undoubtedly familiar with those words from Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists. But what may not be known is that Jefferson wrote them to reassure the church that the First Amendment ensured the government would not interfere in their religious activities. At no time did Jefferson believe that religion and government could not mix.

Indeed, one need look no further than Jefferson’s attendance at church services held inside the U.S. Capitol itself as evidence of his approval of strong church-state relations.

Jefferson and a vast majority of our nation’s Founders understood that faith is not only permissible in the public square, but also beneficial. Houses of worship and religious organizations all faiths care for the sick, feed the hungry, and shelter the homeless. And the benefits don’t stop with charity. A recent study reports that religion contributes $1.2 trillion to the U.S. economy.

In stark contrast to the Founders’ constitutional intent, the SDA commands employees “to separate their personal religious beliefs from their work.” Sadly, some government officials have completely bought into this unconstitutional view.

First Liberty continues to protect Coach Joe Kennedy’s right as a high school football coach to pray alone after games. If the SDA gets its way, Coach Kennedy and millions of other Americans who are government employees will suffer irreparable harm to their First Amendment rights—putting them in the untenable position of choosing between their faith and their job.

Government employees are not the only ones who will suffer under the SDA’s aggressive plan.

Private religious organizations who have historically been able to work with the government are also threatened. In the case of Fulton v. City of Pennsylvania, currently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, Catholic adoption agencies that have, for decades, worked with the government to provide loving homes for adoptive children have been told to sacrifice their religious identity in order to continue their work.

Unsurprisingly, the SDA opposes the right of the adoption agencies: “[n]o institution, religious or secular, is entitled to access taxpayer funding.” If the SDA gets its way, it won’t just be orphans in need of loving homes who suffer. Millions of Americans who benefit from the benevolent partnership between church and state will also suffer.

Legislation Already Under Way

It’s tempting to quickly dismiss the SDA’s demands. However, people of faith must realize that some in positions of power who sympathize with the SDA’s message are already acting to implement its agenda.

For example, look at the effort on Capitol Hill to pass the so-called Equality Act, which if signed into law, would effectively overturn the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) which, as its name suggests, was intended to restore religious freedom.

The Equality Act may sound appealing in name, but the only equality it seeks to achieve is to eradicate any religious beliefs that do not conform to the government’s preferred orthodoxy. It’s a law that would squash dissent and differing viewpoints from the public sphere. The sad irony is that the Equality Act is actually antithetical to the SDA’s stated principles and its championing of pluralism.

At a time when the SDA and many other activist groups are pushing to recreate the U.S. Constitution, First Liberty remains vigilant and undeterred in our mission to protect and defend religious freedom consistent with the vision of America’s Founders. And regardless of who resides in the White House or controls the U.S. Congress, we will continue being the best hope for victory for Americans of all faiths.

This article was originally published at FirstLiberty.org.

Written by Hiram Sasser

Eighty-four years ago, on February 5, 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt announced a bold plan. He grew tired of the United States Supreme Court striking down key pieces of the signature “New Deal” legislation because it gave too much power to the executive branch.

So, on that Friday in February, President Roosevelt announced his intent to seek legislation to expand the membership of the U.S. Supreme Court from nine to as many as fifteen justices—what came to be known as the “court-packing” plan.

Addressing the nation, President Roosevelt stated that his court-packing plan “seeks to restore the Court…and to have it resume its high task of building anew on the Constitution ‘a system of living law.’” Thus, according to President Roosevelt, the purpose of packing the Court with new justices was to create a more pliable U.S. Constitution bendable to his will.

It is important to explore exactly what President Roosevelt meant when he said, “a system of living law.” The so-called “living Constitution” doctrine calls for the U.S. Constitution’s meaning to evolve and change with new circumstances without being formally amended. The words mean what they meant when they were written, until they don’t. Under the “living Constitution,” the meaning of words changes depending on whether a new meaning becomes more convenient for the power currently in office.

And for the millions of Americans who’ve seen government abuse its power to attack our God-given liberties and rights, a living U.S. Constitution doctrine would mean at-will announcements from the U.S. Supreme Court giving new definition to a word or words heretofore seemingly commonly accepted for hundreds of years.

If this seems ludicrous and far-fetched, consider that in 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court said that the word “exercise” in the “Free Exercise Clause” of the First Amendment that protects religious freedom only meant the equivalent of thinking about religion and not actually doing an activity that is part of one’s religion. One might imagine someone sitting in a chair and upon inquiry admitting he is trying to get into shape by imagining he is in shape and calling that “exercise.”

That is what President Roosevelt meant when he said, “a system of living law.” He meant that words have no meaning other than the meaning that power assigns them and that meaning can change when those in power deem it useful for their own ends. This system would be disastrous for our most precious and fundamental freedoms—including religious liberty.

Who Will be Today’s Chairman Sumners?

In 1936, after winning a landslide victory, President Roosevelt had all the political tools necessary to materialize his court-packing vision—with his party in control over the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, the president faced little political opposition.

But in the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Hatton W. Sumners (D-TX), the forces pushing the bold court-packing plan found the immovable object.

Chairman Sumners was, by all accounts, a plain man. It was common to find him propping his feet upon his desk and sporting a sizeable hole in the sole of his shoe. Frugal, practical, and self-educated, Chairman Sumners nevertheless commanded a great deal of respect in Washington, D.C. as a constitutional scholar. It was largely understood in D.C. that if Roosevelt’s court-packing plan succeeded, Chairman Sumners would become a new U.S. Supreme Court justice. Despite the allure of gaining a coveted U.S. Supreme Court appointment, Chairman Sumners delivered an impassioned speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on July 14, 1937 calling out the imminent threat of dictatorship posed by the court-packing plan:

“We know that as a people, as a Nation, we are at the cross-roads in America. Soon we must determine whether or not we are going to preserve [our] institutions in this country or join the other nations of the earth under a dictator. Do not let anybody fool himself about that. People do not have dictators merely because they, choose to have dictators…

Chairman Sumners continued:

“…If these advisers who are counseling the President to force that [court-packing] bill into this House under pressure which they may be able to command, when we are trying to preserve strength and unity required to do the Nation’s work, if they force that bill into this House for the sake of saving their faces or their hides, they ought not to have hide enough left to be worth bothering about.”

The court-packing bill died, and that was the last time a president made a serious effort to expand the membership of the United States Supreme Court in order to achieve political objectives and exercise raw power.

That brings us today.

Who will be our Chairman Sumners who saves the nation from going down a very dark path toward rule by raw exercise of power? Who will stand against the powerful forces gathering to force through Congress a new court-packing plan?

Someone needs to answer the call, because the forces of court-packing are at the gate.

This article was originally published at FirstLiberty.org.

Written by John A. Sparks

The idea of expanding the size of the U.S. Supreme Court, also known as “court packing,” has surfaced once again, as it did after the Brett Kavanaugh appointment. Often mentioned is a proposal by Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of University of California Berkeley’s Law School. He favors increasing the size of the court to 13 instead of its current nine. There are other calls for a larger court, such as those produced by organizations like “Take Back the Court” and “Demand Justice.” Of course, U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) simply demands: “Expand the court.”

Let’s start with the basics. The U.S. Constitution does not state a particular size for the U.S. Supreme Court. The number of justices are fixed by Congress. The initial size was set by the Judiciary Act of 1789, which was passed by both houses and signed into law by President George Washington. That act called for one chief justice and five associate justices—a total of six. The number has been changed a few times, but a later Judiciary Act (1869) set the total number at nine, where it has remained for over 150 years. Although there are other proposals circulating—rotating justices off the court and onto the U.S. Courts of Appeals and requiring mandatory retirement at a certain age—a change in the number of justices would be the only change which would clearly not require a constitutional amendment.

So, why change the size of the court? Is it really necessary?

One reason given by advocates of expansion is that the current configuration of nine justices does not give duly elected presidents sufficient opportunities to shape the court by their appointments. In theory, since a newly elected president can’t “clear the deck” and name an all new court, the president must wait for court retirements or deaths to occur. Until that happens, the president is unable to make a court appointment. In the case of President Trump, he had the rare occurrence of two deaths and a retirement during his first term.

However, such opportunities are not far from the norm. Remarkably, the facts show that with the exception of partial-term presidents (William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Andrew Johnson), virtually every U.S. president, beginning with George Washington and ending with Donald Trump, has been able to appoint at least one U.S. Supreme Court justice during his term of office, with Jimmy Carter being the only exception. In fact, the average number of appointments by each of our 45 presidents is approximately 2.6 appointments. Two-term presidents appoint on average 3.1 justices, if one excludes Franklin Roosevelt (8) and George Washington (11), who are “statistical outliers.”

Coming forward to the post WWII era, the 13 elected presidents—six Democrats and seven Republicans—have maintained an average similar to the historical average. Here are the number of appointments for each: Truman (4), Eisenhower (5), Kennedy (2), Johnson (2), Nixon (4), Ford (1), Carter (0), Reagan (3), George H.W. Bush (2), Clinton (2), George W. Bush (2), Obama (2), and Trump (3). The mean average per president for this period is 2.3 appointments. The statistics on appointments by sitting presidents seem to show that on average presidents have not been curtailed by the nine-justice configuration.

Another argument made years ago is now resurfacing. It challenges the fundamental structure of American government. These supporters of change say that our current constitutional system of presidential nomination and senatorial confirmation is outmoded because it is anti-democratic, that it is not responsive enough to “the people.” They say the existing judicial processes of choosing justices are  “relics” from a political “ice age” that was “pre-democratic.”

True, the court and the way its members are chosen and serve is not democratic, if by that one means that “the people” choose the justices directly and can regularly remove them. The fundamental configuration of American government put in place by the Founders is what Aristotle called “mixed government,” that is a mixture of democratic and non-democratic forms. Members of the U.S. Supreme Court are chosen by the president, not elected by the people. The confirmation of the nominee is done by the U.S. Senate, where population does not determine political power because each state has the same number of votes. The term of service for a justice (and other federal judges) is for life. These are the only federal office holders with life-long tenure. Therefore, the justices are not reachable by “the people” in the same way that, for instance, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives is. The reason? The Founders wanted the judicial branch to be able to resist the fitful pressures of majorities and of the executive which would endanger the cardinal rights of citizens—life, liberty, property, religious expression, and speech.

However, this is not to say that the people have no voice in the shape the court takes. But that voice is a muted, indirect voice. It is expressed by choosing a president who then, through the rigorous filter of the U.S. Senate, appoints a justice upon a vacancy. The voice of the people, though restrained by the existing system with nine justices, has produced courts of differing political hues. One only must only compare the New Deal court with the Rehnquist court or the Warren court with the current Roberts court. However, those changes in emphasis and judicial philosophy come gradually, helping to guarantee a substantial degree of certainty and predictability which should be the hallmark of a court, the chief interpretative body in our constitutional republic.

What the proponents of expansion actually fear is candidly expressed by Chemerinsky. Expansion of the court “is the only way to keep there from being a very conservative court for the next 10-20 years.” Chemerinsky’s statement reveals that he is not really dissatisfied with the current size, structure, and process of judicial nomination. What he is unhappy about is that certain Republican presidential wins coupled with deaths and retirements by justices have produced a court with a conservative tilt. He fears a “long winter” of conservative opinions by the court and is unwilling to trust that future Democrat presidential wins, deaths, and retirements could just as well turn the court back in the liberal direction he desires while keeping the current process and size of the court.

Despite current polls which indicate that court packing would be viewed unfavorably by the electorate, the temptation to pack the court would be significant with a Democrat presidential win. Assuming an expansion of the court to 13 justices, the four new members of the court would presumably be liberal judges inclining the court in that direction. Regrettably, such an abrupt change in the size of the court based on a single presidential victory would diminish and eventually destroy respect for and confidence in the court. It would result in long-term damage to the court, which would be converted from a generally impartial deliberative body following the rule of law into a branch whose size could be altered in favor of either victorious political party in any given election.

Court packing is unnecessary and potentially destructive of the court’s dignity and high standing. It would undermine the delicate balance between the branches that the Founders labored to ensure.

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

Illinois’ feckless U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth opposes the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the U. S. Supreme Court because Barrett signed a 2006 newspaper ad sponsored by an Indiana pro-life organization that said,

We, the following citizens of Michiana, oppose abortion on demand and defend the right to life from fertilization to natural death. Please continue to pray to end abortion.

In an October 2^nd letter to her Senate colleagues, Duckworth said the pro-life organization whose ad Barrett signed 14 years ago opposes,

a critical step of the in-vitro fertilization (IVF) process that gave me my children.

Duckworth conveniently omitted what that critical step is.

Duckworth went on to say in her “Dear Colleague” letter that Barrett is a

Supreme Court nominee who appears to believe that my daughters shouldn’t even exist.

Really? Does Barrett really believe Duckworth’s living breathing daughters shouldn’t exist? If there were technology that allowed doctors to create life in a lab and grow babies in artificial “wombs,” would opposing that technology necessarily entail the belief that children created and gestated like that shouldn’t exist?

Someone might want to clarify to Duckworth that what pro-life supporters oppose is the discarding of any siblings of IVF-created children that their parents—like Duckworth—didn’t want.

Duckworth began her missive the way “progressives” like to address all debates over substantive moral issues: with a heartstrings-tugging “narrative”—a narrative irrelevant to the underlying moral issue she hopes no one will think about as they read her appeal through misty eyes.

She spent 2 ½ paragraphs describing bringing her second baby onto  the floor of the U.S. Senate “swaddled in blankets” with colleagues “cheering … as little Maile Pearl continued to sleep blissfully in my lap.” She quickly switched to describing the “deep knot of dread and anguish in the pit of my stomach” she experienced when hearing that Amy Coney Barrett had been nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Duckworth experiences dread at the prospect of a woman sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court who believes all lives are of infinite value—including imperfect humans and humans Duckworth views as disposable. Duckworth feels no dread about U.S. Supreme Court Justices who have no qualms about the dismemberment of humans or about chucking humans in an incinerator, but she does experience dread about a woman sitting on the Court who is raising a disabled child and who has adopted two Haitian orphans.

Duckworth appealed particularly to “Republican colleagues who cooed and cuddled” her ten-day-old infant, while never mentioning that she supports the legal right to have ordered the killing of her daughter 11 days prior to the day of cooing and cuddling. In Duckworth’s foolish view, eleven days prior to the day of cooing and cuddling, her daughter was a non-person and deserving of no legal protections.

Worse still, Duckworth believes all Americans should have to pay for the choice of women to order the killing of their offspring up to the day of birth for any or no reason.

Demagogue Duckworth claims that “Judge Barrett’s willingness to associate her name” with an organization that believes that humans are not disposable “is disqualifying and, frankly, insulting to every parent, hopeful parent or would-be parent who has struggled to start a family.”

Duckworth’s claim insults every American who believes the science that the product of conception between two humans is a human and who believes that all humans are of infinite worth. The feelings of other more developed or less “defective” humans about tiny humans in the womb does not abrogate the right of tiny humans to exist. Despite what Duckworth may believe, subjective feelings do not determine either reality or morality.

Duckworth claims to,

fear that, if confirmed to the nation’s highest court, Judge Barrett would be unable to resist the temptation of overturning decades of judicial precedent in an effort to force every American family to adhere to her individual moral code.

Duckworth must focus on “judicial precedent” because nowhere in the text of the U.S. Constitution can a right to abortion be found.

John Hart Ely, former dean of Stanford Law School, former Yale and Harvard law school professor, and former clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, wrote,

What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the U.S. Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure. … It is bad because it is bad constitutional law, or rather because it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.

No matter to Duckworth. She wants what she wants and will use any means to get it.

Although Duckworth isn’t an attorney, surely, she knows that all laws “force” Americans to “adhere to” someone’s moral code. Make no mistake, Duckworth and her pro-feticide collaborators have no problem forcing every American to adhere to their moral code. If they did, they wouldn’t try to force Americans to perform abortions or pay for abortions (not to mention bake cakes for faux-weddings, share locker rooms with opposite-sex persons, or use incorrect pronouns when referring to opposite-sex impersonators).

Desperate to retain laws that reflect the non-existent moral right of women to off their offspring, Duckworth concludes her letter with these patently silly words:

I hope you’ll join me in speaking out for every American family who has struggled with infertility by opposing this confirmation.

Leftists know that Barrett is eminently qualified and morally beyond reproach. They also know that since religious tests for holding office are constitutionally prohibited, they can’t again attack her religious faith as Diane Feinstein once did, so now they will start manufacturing fanciful new justifications for opposing her. Duckworth’s fanciful justification is that Barrett will try use her position on the U.S. Supreme Court to thwart the use of IVF by infertile families. Where’s an eyeroll emoji when you need one?

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to let them know that you support the nomination and confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. We must confirm nominees who will uphold the U.S. Constitution’s protections of life and religious liberty.

Amy Coney Barrett is a proven originalist who sees her roles as limited to interpreting the U.S. Constitution. She is the type of judge conservatives have been praying for. Her faithful approach to the U.S. Constitution and her experience on the 7th Circuit federal appeals court make her an outstanding nominee.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Duckworths-Foolish-Attack-on-Amy-Coney-Barrett.mp3

HELP: Our get-out-the-vote campaign is up and running. We are distributing the IFI Voter Guide to hundreds of churches, civic groups and tea party organizations. Will you financially support our endeavor to educate Illinois voters and promote Christian family values?

Written by Calley Mangum

Last Saturday, President Trump nominated U.S. Circuit Court Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the seat held by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court. Barrett, 48, has served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit since October 2017. While there may be much dissent across political lines over the confirmation of Judge Barrett for the U.S. Supreme Court, the facts of her extensive qualifications speak for themselves.

Amy Coney Barrett is a married mother of seven children, five biological and two adopted from Haiti. She grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana and graduated from Rhodes College magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. She then attended Notre Dame Law School, where she was the executive editor of the Notre Dame Law Review. Barrett graduated summa cum laude in 1997, and she clerked from 1998-99 for the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

“That is trial by fire,” Barrett said in an interview with The Heritage Foundation. “The way Justice Scalia ran his chambers is we all had to be prepared to discuss all the cases […] Justice Scalia, obviously very quick witted, brilliant, and he didn’t want you to agree with him. He wanted you to say what you thought. And so disagreeing with him as I sometimes did and pushing back with someone like Justice Scalia really taught me a lot.”

After clerking for Justice Scalia, Barrett worked a few years in private practice before returning to Notre Dame Law School in 2002 to teach. She remained at Notre Dame until President Trump nominated her for the 7^th Circuit in 2017. When she was nominated, every clerk who served with Barrett at the U.S. Supreme Court from 1998-99 wrote a letter to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee recommending Barrett for the 7^th Circuit seat.

During her 7th Circuit confirmation hearing, Barrett was subjected to continued questions regarding her Catholic faith and its influence on her role as a judge, questions that many argue violated the U.S. Constitution’s No Religious Tests Clause.

“I don’t think that faith should influence the way a judge decides cases at all,” said Barrett in her interview with Heritage. And she said the same to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee during her hearing. “Somehow people seem to think that I said the opposite of what I said, but I think that one of the most important responsibilities of a judge is to put their personal preferences and their personal beliefs aside because our responsibility is to adhere to the rule of law.”

Barrett’s record while on the 7^th Circuit reflects this dedication to the law, including the U.S. Constitution. (Read Heritage’s article for more details on Barrett’s rulings while on the 7^th Circuit.) Barrett has said her judicial approach falls under “original public meaning originalism,” or that “the meaning of the words at the time they were ratified is the same as their meaning today.”

The confirmation hearings for Judge Barrett in the U.S. Senate are scheduled to start Monday, October 12.

This article was originally published by NCFamily.org.

Written by Walter Williams

The United States Constitution’s Article 2, Sec. 2, cl. 2, provides that the president of the United States “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States.” President Donald Trump has nominated Amy Coney Barrett as U.S. Supreme Court justice who will replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Barrett currently serves as United States Circuit judge of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The 7th Circuit serves the Midwestern states of Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.

It is now the U.S. Senate’s job to decide whether to confirm Barrett’s appointment as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. In thinking about the U.S. Senate’s criteria for making their decision, we might ask what is the role of a U.S. Supreme Court justice? A reasonable answer is to recognize that our U.S. Constitution represents our rules of the game. It dictates what is and is not permissible behavior by government and its citizens. Therefore, a U.S. Supreme Court justice has one job and one job only; namely, that of a referee.

A referee’s job, whether he is a football referee, baseball umpire or a U.S. Supreme Court justice, is to know the rules of the game and to ensure that those rules are evenly applied without bias. Do we want a referee or justice to allow empathy to influence their decisions? Let us answer this question using this year’s Super Bowl as an example.

The San Francisco 49ers have played in seven Super Bowls in their franchise history, winning five times. On the other hand, coming into the 2020 game, the Kansas City Chiefs had not won a Super Bowl title in 50 years. In anyone’s book, this is a gross disparity. Should the referees have the empathy to understand what it is like to be a perennial loser, not winning a Super Bowl in five decades? What would you think of a referee whose play calls were guided by empathy or pity? Suppose a referee, in the name of compensatory justice, stringently applied pass interference or roughing the passer violations against the San Francisco 49ers and less stringently against the Chiefs. Would you support a referee who refused to make offensive pass interference calls because he thought it was a silly rule? You would probably remind him that it is the league that makes the rules (football law), not referees.

U.S. Supreme Court justices should be umpires or referees, enforcing neutral rules. Here is a somewhat trivial example of a neutral rule from my youth; let us call it Mom’s Rule. On occasion, my sister and I would have lunch in my mother’s absence. Either my younger sister or I would have the job of dividing the last piece of cake or pie. Almost always an argument would ensue about the fairness of the cut. Those arguments ended when Mom came up with a rule: Whoever cuts the cake gives the other person the first choice of the piece to take. As if by magic or divine intervention, fairness emerged and arguments ended. No matter who did the cutting, there was an even division.

This is what our society needs — the kind of rules whereby you would be OK even if your worst enemy were in charge. Despite the high stakes of bitterly fought football contests, most games end peaceably, and the winners and losers are civil. It is indeed a miracle of sorts that players with conflicting interests can play a game, agree with the outcome and walk away as good sports. That “miracle” is that it is far easier to reach an understanding about the game’s rules than the game’s outcome. The same conflict-reducing principles should be a part of a civilized society.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
This article was originally published at the Creators Syndicate webpage at creators.com.

In June Medical Services v. Russo, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts again disappoints conservatives. Roberts voted with the politically “progressive”/morally regressive majority to strike down a Louisiana law requiring abortionists to have hospital privileges within 30 miles of the slaughterhouses in which they kill tiny humans and occasionally end up killing or maiming their mothers. This law would have required abortuaries in which surgical procedures are performed to adhere to the same safety regulations as all other ambulatory surgical centers.

Ironically, in a similar case out of Texas similarly decided, Roberts dissented, siding with conservatives. In June Medical Services v. Russo, Roberts concluded that following precedent (i.e., stare decisis) rather than sound reasoning is the absolute highest priority of any Justice. Good thing Roberts wasn’t sitting on the Supreme Court when Brown v. Board of Education overturned Plessy v. Ferguson or when Loving v. Virginia overturned Pace v. Alabama.

In his dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas made clear that the abortionists pursuing this lawsuit lacked “standing”:

Their sole claim before this Court is that Louisiana’s law violates the purported substantive due process right of a woman to abort her unborn child. But they concede that this right does not belong to them, and they seek to vindicate no private rights of their own. Under a proper understanding of Article III, these plaintiffs lack standing to invoke our jurisdiction.

Despite the fact that we granted Louisiana’s petition specifically to address whether “abortion providers [can] be presumed to have third-party standing to challenge health and safety regulations on behalf of their patients,” a majority of the Court all but ignores the question. The plurality and THE CHIEF JUSTICE ultimately cast aside this jurisdictional barrier to conclude that Louisiana’s law is unconstitutional under our precedents.

Attorneys represent litigants in lawsuits, and litigants must be able to claim that they are in some way harmed by a law. The purported harmful effect is what gives them “standing” to pursue a lawsuit. Since feticidal profiteers have trouble getting women to argue against abortionists having hospital privileges, this lawsuit was pursued by “third parties” who would be “harmed” monetarily by a law requiring abortionists to have hospital privileges.

The ability of abortionists to serve as third-party litigants was secured in the 1976 case Singleton v. Wulff in which two feticide providers sued for the right to have Medicaid reimburse them for killing humans in “not ‘medically indicated’” abortions. It was determined by the liberal court that the feticide providers had “standing” because, according to Justice Blackmun, “they will benefit by receiving payment for the abortions.”

“The point is, Ladies and Gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works,” says Gordon Gekko.

‘Twas ever thus.

Justice Thomas goes on to remind America of the fundamental truth that Supreme Court precedents defending abortion lack even “a shred of support from the Constitution’s text”:

Our abortion precedents are grievously wrong and should be overruled.

He’s far from alone in his assessment of the precedents as “grievously wrong.” Here are some assessments of Roe v. Wade from liberals:

• “One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” (Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law School professor).

• “As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible. I say this as someone utterly committed to the right to choose” (Edward Lazarus, former clerk to SCOTUS Justice Harry Blackmun).

• “[A]s a matter of constitutional interpretation, even most liberal jurisprudes — if you administer truth serum—will tell you it is basically indefensible” (Edward Lazarus).

• “Blackmun’s [U.S. Supreme Court] papers vindicate every indictment of Roe: invention, overreach, arbitrariness, textual indifference” (William Saletan, Slate magazine writer).

• Roe “is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be…. What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the U.S. Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure.” (John Hart Ely, clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren).

• “[T]he very basis of the Roe v. Wade decision—the one that grounds abortion rights in the Constitution—strikes many people now as faintly ridiculous. Whatever abortion may be, it cannot simply be a matter of privacy. … “[Roe] is a Supreme Court decision whose reasoning has not held up. It seems more fiat than argument. … Still, a bad decision is a bad decision. If the best we can say for it is that the end justifies the means, then we have not only lost the argument—but a bit of our soul as well” (Richard Cohen, Washington Post columnist).

• “Judges have no special competence, qualifications, or mandate to decide between equally compelling moral claims (as in the abortion controversy) …. [C]lear governing constitutional principles… are not present” (Alan Dershowitz, former Harvard Law School professor).

• “In short, 30 years later, it seems increasingly clear that this pro-choice magazine was correct in 1973 when it criticized Roe on constitutional grounds. … Thirty years after Roe, the finest constitutional minds in the country still have not been able to produce a constitutional justification for striking down restrictions on early-term abortions that is substantially more convincing than Justice Harry Blackmun’s famously artless opinion itself. As a result, the pro-choice majority asks nominees to swear allegiance to the decision without being able to identify an intelligible principle to support it” (Jeffrey Rosen, George Washington University Law School professor, former clerk to Judge Abner Mikva).

• “Liberal judicial activism peaked with Roe v. Wade, the 1973 abortion decision…. Although I am pro-choice, I was taught in law school, and still believe, that Roe v. Wade is a muddle of bad reasoning and an authentic example of judicial overreaching” (Michael Kinsley, attorney, political journalist).

• “[I]t is time to admit in public that, as an example of the practice of constitutional opinion writing, Roe is a serious disappointment. You will be hard-pressed to find a constitutional law professor. … who will embrace the opinion itself rather than the result. … As constitutional argument, Roe is barely coherent. The court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether.” (Kermit Roosevelt, University of Pennsylvania Law School professor).

• “The failure to confront the issue in principled terms leaves the opinion to read like a set of hospital rules and regulations…. Neither historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution” (Archibald Cox, JFK’s Solicitor General, former Harvard Law School professor).

The super creepy pro-feticide organization Personal PAC, whose sole reason for its creepy existence is to protect the legal right of women to have their own offspring offed, is expressing only tepid kudos for this decision. Their enthusiasm is tempered by their correct assumption that pro-life activism will not cease:

While the Supreme Court’s decision in June Medical Services was a temporary reprieve from the assault on reproductive rights. … [d]on’t be fooled. … The anti-choice extremists are emboldened by today’s decision and it is to our great peril if we think it portends anything other than a reprieve by the Court Trump promised would end Roe.

“Choice” is an obvious and deceitful euphemism that is not up to the task for which it was created: it can’t conceal the truth about the unseemly nature of the choice leftists want women to have.

There exists no absolute or constitutional right “to choose.” Leftists exploit the word “choose” or “choice” because of its positive connotations. They exploit it because of the fondness everyone has for making choices in life. But not even leftists believe that a free-floating right “to choose” exists. There are a host of choices they want to proscribe:

• Leftists don’t believe parents should have school choice.

• Leftists don’t believe parents should have the right to choose whether their minor gender dysphoric children are chemically sterilized or surgically mutilated.

• Leftists don’t believe parents should have the right to choose the type of sex education their children should receive.

• Leftists don’t believe minors who experience unchosen, unwanted homoerotic feelings should have counseling choice.

• Leftists don’t believe employers should have the right to choose whether to hire or fire cross-dressing men.

• Leftists don’t believe anyone should have the right to refer to cross-dressing men by male pronouns.

• Leftists don’t believe women have the right to choose to exclude all biological men from their private spaces or sports.

• Leftists—well, most leftists–don’t believe minors should have the right to choose to have sex with adults.

So many choices of which tyrannical leftists want to deprive Americans. Well, many Americans don’t believe women have a moral or constitutional right to order the killing of imperfect or inconvenient humans.

Feminist and family abolitionist Sophie Lewis cheerfully admits,

Abortion is … a form of killing. It’s a form of killing that we need to be able to defend. I am not interested in where a human life starts to exist.

Because science confirms that the product of conception between two humans is a human, abortion inarguably kills humans. At no point in the gestational process is the product of conception anything other than human. Since abortion kills humans, legalized human slaughter will never cease to divide America.

Anything that gnaws around the edges of the child-killing cultural tumor that we refer to as Roe v. Wade is a good thing. Chief Justice Roberts didn’t help babies, women, or America.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/mp3-Chief-Justice-Roberts-Votes-with-Liberals-Against-Tiny-Humans-and-Women-_audio_01.mp3

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