In June Medical Services v. Russo, 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 slaughterhouse 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.

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I and others have been shouting from our virtual rooftops for over a decade that there is no greater threat to First Amendment protections than that posed by the subversive “LGBTQ” movement. Can conservatives not yet see the end of the short pier toward which GOP leaders have long been pushing them? Really?

(Im)moderate Republicans, Libertarian-leaning Republicans, Republicans with dollar signs rather than Scripture reflected in their myopic eyes have been pushing conservatives toward the end of the short pier, hoping that either spines will crumble or conservatives will tumble into the dark waters. Supremacist Court Justice/lawmaker Neil-the-Usurper-Gorsuch just gave conservatives a huge shove toward the watery abyss.

U.S. Senator Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) is “fine” with Gorsuch’s Law—or as some euphemistically call it, a “Supreme Court decision.” U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said he’s “not disappointed by Gorsuch’s decision:”

“It’s the law of the land. And it probably makes uniform what a lot of states have already done. And probably negates Congress’s necessity for acting.”

No siree, can’t have Congress legislating, especially on controversial issues. “Let unelected Supreme Court justices make law. They’re accountable to no one,” say our cowardly lawmakers.

Conservatives get all giddy with chills running up their legs when homosexuals like Guy Benson, Dave Rubin, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Brandon Straka express Republican-ish views. “Oh gosh, the cool kids like us, they really like us!”

Meanwhile, those smart, articulate, good-looking homosexuals seek to change the Republican Party from within—like a cancer or a Guinea worm (am I allowed to call it the Guinea worm any longer?). We welcome camels into the tent at our peril.

We shouldn’t forget U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) who supported the radical redefinition of marriage to include intrinsically non-marital homoerotic unions. Did Portman defend his betrayal of the Republican Party and biblical truth with rational arguments? Nope. He said because his son is homosexual, he now supports anti-marriage. If there’s a conflict between faith and sexual license, sexual license has got to win—says Portman. Let’s hope Portman doesn’t have any polyamorous kids.

And then there’s U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) who, along with his father, pushed for and passed a Florida law that legalized adoption by homosexuals without even a piddly carve-out for faith-based adoption agencies. In other words, Gaetz does not recognize that children have an inherent right to be raised by a mother and a father. Either mothers or fathers are expendable in the foolish view of Gaetz.

When Gaetz was on The View, he defended cross-sex passers serving in the military: “We shouldn’t be banning anybody based on who they are or who they love. That’s not the kind of Republican I am.” That’s leftist rhetoric that serves leftist social, moral, and political ends.

The ways socially and morally ignorant Republicans seek to transform the party are ways that pertain to our most cherished and fundamental freedoms. The result will be government schools unfit for children, loss of parental rights, loss of religious freedom, loss of speech rights, loss of association rights, loss of private spaces, loss of Christian colleges’ accreditation status, and the destruction of women’s sports.

Here’s an idea: How about those with conservative fiscal, environmental, and foreign policy views but liberal views on social policy join the Democratic Party and try to change it from within on fiscal, environmental, and foreign policy rather than  remain in the Republican Party and seek to change its position on sexual matters.

Some “socially liberal” Republicans who don’t really respect Scripture abuse Scripture to shame conservatives, saying “Well, Jesus spent time with sinners.” True enough, he did, and we should emulate what he said when spending time with sinners (which, btw, means all humans).

When with sinners, Jesus called them to repent and follow him. He didn’t affirm their sin. I can’t recall a single Bible story in which Jesus said kudos to a sinner for his sin. I suppose it’s possible that God affirmed someone’s homoeroticism before he burned them up at Sodom and Gomorrah—nah.

To love others with Christ’s love is to model his interactions with the lost. He called them to repent and follow him. There is no evidence that he went around praising those who spread lies about sexuality and marriage as Benson and Portman do.

I hope people can hear the frustration in my virtual voice as I say, what the heck is wrong with Christians who have been rationalizing their cowardly silence and capitulation for decades? Those with eyes to see have been writing for decades that First Amendment protections for Christians are slowly eroding, and just now with Gorsuch’s intellectually and constitutionally indefensible act of lawmaking, Christians are fretting about their potential loss of rights.

When “sexual orientation” and then “gender identity” were added to anti-discrimination policies and laws; when public schools started attacking conservative beliefs as “homophobia” through “anti-bullying” programs; when public school teachers started presenting pro-homosexuality novels, articles, essays, and movies to other people’s children; when SCOTUS jettisoned sexual differentiation as a constituent feature of legal “marriage”; when schools sexually integrated bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports; when foster care and adoption agencies lost the right to place children with only heterosexual couples; when schools started firing Christians for refusing to refer to boys as girls or vice versa, Christians largely said nothing. Now courts are starting to remove children from homes if their parents don’t affirm “trans”-cultic practices. And today, when the word “sex” is essentially redefined in the Civil Rights Act by six hubristic SCOTUS justices, what will Christians do?

Do Christians ever ask themselves what kind of culture and what kind of oppression their silence, their capitulation, their spinelessness over the past 10, 20, or 30 years is bequeathing to their children? What will it take for Christians to wake up and do something? When their children can’t send their kids even to private schools free of cross-dressers anymore, will they say something? When the state takes their own grandchildren away from their parents, will they say something? When their daughter or granddaughter has a double-mastectomy at age 13, will they say something? Please, tell me, what will it take for Christians to be part of the solution?

Oh wait, I know when they’ll start pulling their weight. They’ll start right after we get almighty tax policy just right.

Long before the Gorsuch decision, the erasure of public recognition of sex differences was made inevitable by the ignorant decisions made all over the country to add the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to “anti-discrimination” policies and laws. These inclusions in laws and policies—including in school policies—were aided and abetted by the silence of conservatives, and with those inclusions there now remains no way to maintain any sex-segregated spaces for anyone.

If, for example, a university allows a confused biological man called “Sue” to use the women’s locker room, there remains no rational or legal way to prohibit a normal biological man called “Bob” from using it as well. The university can’t say, “Bob may not use it, because he’s a biological man.” First, they’ve already allowed another biological man—i.e., “Sue”—to use it, and second, such a prohibition would constitute discrimination based on sex. And the university couldn’t say “Bob may not use the women’s locker room, because he’s not ‘transgender.'” Such a prohibition would constitute discrimination based on “gender identity.”

The intellectual and legal groundwork has been laid and fertilized for the eradication of all public recognition of sexual differentiation everywhere for everyone, which means no private spaces anywhere for anyone. And in those private spaces, children are likely to see biological men with gravity-defying breasts and the usual male apparatus (yes, they do that). Spend a moment ruminating on that disturbing image, for that is where conservative fear of being labeled “hater” has led us.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Self-Identifying-Republicans-Are-Destroying-Liberty.mp3

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I and others have been shouting from our virtual rooftops for over a decade that there is no greater threat to First Amendment protections than that posed by the subversive “LGBTQ” movement. Can conservatives not yet see the end of the short pier toward which GOP leaders have long been pushing them? Really? (Im)moderate Republicans, Libertarian-leaning Republicans, Republicans with dollar signs rather than Scripture reflected in their myopic eyes have been pushing conservatives toward the end of the short pier, hoping that either spines will crumble or conservatives will tumble into the dark waters. Supremacist Court Justice/lawmaker Neil-the-Usurper-Gorsuch just gave conservatives a huge shove toward the watery abyss.

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Conservative writer, podcaster, and attorney Ben Shapiro interviews Ryan T. Anderson, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and founder and editor of Public Discourse on the dire implications of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia that has roiled the political waters, including within the Republican Party. They discuss the likely affect of this decision on Title IX, speech mandates, businesses owned by people of faith, and more. To better understand the profoundly troubling nature of this decision, take 12 minutes to watch and listen to this important discussion.

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In a blistering must-see address on the U.S. Senate floor, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), the youngest member of the U.S. Senate, condemned Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia. Writing for the Majority, Gorsuch essentially legislated from the bench, changing duly passed federal law with far-reaching and destructive consequences for all Americans, especially religious Americans.

Hawley argued that religious conservatives have been sold a bill of goods. They have been commanded for years to shut up and the recompense for their dutiful silence would be judges like Antonin Scalia who adhere to the judicial philosophies of textualism and originalism that ensure judges don’t legislate. Hawley sarcastically points out that in Gorsuch, religious conservatives were duped. Hawley said, “it’s time for religious conservatives to stand up and to speak out.”

Please watch the entirety of Hawley’s compelling address and share it widely. (It is only 13 minutes long.)

U.S. Senator Hawley—a Christian and Harvard University and Yale School graduate who worked for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty—is  exactly the kind of leader religious conservatives have been praying for: wise, brilliant, and bold.

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In a shocking U.S. Supreme Court decision, Justice Neil Gorsuch voted with the axis of evil—that is, with Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor. In Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, the axis of evil decided that in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the word “sex” includes “sexual orientation” and “gender identity”—both subjectively constituted conditions. As a result, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination in employment based on “race, color, religion, sex, and national origin”—all objective conditions—now prohibits employers from firing employees who self-identify as homosexual or as the sex they are not and never can be.

The crux of the argument goes something like this: If a company that allows a woman who gets breast implants, and wears lipstick, stilettos, and dresses to work fires a man who gets breast implants and wears lipstick, stilettos, and dresses to work, the company has discriminated against him based on his sex and, therefore, violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Not only are “trans”-cultists eradicating all public accommodation of real sex differences, but they’re also eradicating every cultural convention that recognizes, honors, and reinforces sex differences. They’re saying that not only are they permitted to reject cultural conventions regarding hairstyles, jewelry, clothing, and makeup, but everyone else must as well. Further, even biological reality as a signifier of biological sex must be rejected by everyone. So, as the very liberal author of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling, has learned, no one may say that only women menstruate.

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The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has garnered less attention than usual lately with COVID-19 monopolizing headlines. However, with the Court’s term ending in June, some of the most controversial decisions are expected to be released any day now. Among the most notable are three cases involving Title VII of the landmark Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of sex. The question is whether Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination also includes decisions based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The cases are Altitude Express, Inc. v. Zarda, Bostock v. Clayton County, and R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Zarda and Bostock involve gay men suing their employers, alleging that they were fired because of their sexual orientation. Harris Funeral Homes involves a transgender employee who formerly worked in a Christian-owned funeral home in Michigan and claims to have been illegally fired after coming out as a transgender woman and starting to wear women’s clothing.

It should be noted that twenty-two states, Illinois included, already prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Thus, the Court’s decision will not change employment decisions for nearly half the country. However, the cases are yet another instance of the Federal courts delving into a contentious cultural issue.

Title VII prohibits employment decisions based on certain protected attributes like race, religion, and sex. Yet there has been a push in recent years to interpret Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination as including sexual orientation and gender identity. The cases have significant cultural, theological, and moral underpinnings; however, the main question for the U.S. Supreme Court is one of statutory interpretation. Here is how the pertinent part of Title VII reads:

“It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employment agency to fail or refuse to refer for employment, or otherwise to discriminate against, any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”

No mention of “gender identity” or “sexual orientation.” Case closed—right? Not necessarily. The Federal courts of appeal have reached different conclusions based on their method of statutory interpretation. The methods have largely centered on “textualism” and “originalism.”

Textualism holds that the plain meaning of the legal text is the only thing you look at in interpreting, with no consideration given to any non-textual sources. Instead of considering the overall purpose of the law, legislative history, or policy arguments, a textualist approach only looks to the four corners of the paper on which the law is written, considering nothing besides the apparent meaning of the text. Textualism has long been heralded by justices like the late Justice Antonin Scalia and Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch.

One would think that since Title VII’s text does not mention “sexual orientation” or “gender identity,” a textualist approach would be an automatically mean excluding these statuses. However, several courts have used a textualist approach to come to the opposite conclusion. No one disputes that Title VII bans sex discrimination—it says so in the text. But LGBT proponents have developed a clever textualist approach to argue that sex discrimination also includes discrimination based on a LGBT status.

The argument goes that by discriminating based on one’s sexual orientation, you are inevitably discriminating based on his or her sex. For example, imagine that there are two employees: one heterosexual man dating a woman and the other a homosexual woman dating a woman. If the homosexual woman is fired for dating another woman and the man is not, the only reason the woman is fired is because of her sex. Both employees are participating in the same activity (dating a woman); the only difference is that one employee is a woman and the other is man—thus, sex discriminati0n. The argument goes that since Title VII bans sex discrimination, the law also necessarily bans discrimination based on sexual orientation. In the same way, a biological man who is wearing woman’s clothing and using the women’s restroom would not be fired if it were a biological woman doing those same things. LGBT advocates claim that this also is sex discrimination.

There are several weaknesses with this argument. In the first example, the primary reason the employee is fired is her sexual orientation, not her biological sex. Title VII’s inclusion of the term “sex” means just that and nothing more. In this case, sex may be a factor, but it is not the primary reason for the firing. Sex and sexual orientation are different concepts. Sex has to do with one’s genetic makeup and reproductive abilities while sexual orientation is based on one’s sexual attraction to others, and gender identity has to do with whether one’s expression or behavior corresponds with his or her biological sex.

A more compelling reason to reject this argument is that by reading sexual orientation or gender identity into Title VII, courts would essentially be acting as policy-makers. For over fifty years, Title VII has never been understood to include sexual orientation or gender identity. In voting for Title VII in 1964, no member of Congress could have imagined that the word sex would also include gender identity and sexual orientation, which have only recently entered the modern vernacular. The courts would simply be reading modern notions of sexuality into a law that was never intended to be used that way.

For years, LGBT lobbying efforts have tried to pass the Equality Act, which, among other things, would add sexual orientation and gender identity to Title VII’s list of protected classes. The bill has been introduced in Congress for years yet has never been enacted. The U.S. Supreme Court would essentially be adopting a policy that Congress has deliberately decided not to pursue.

There is another form of statutory interpretation called originalism, which some courts have used to come to the conclusion that “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” are excluded from Title VII’s protection. Originalism still focuses on the text of the statute, but a word’s meaning is frozen in time. Instead of incorporating changing meanings of words, as may be allowed under a broader view of textualism, originalism says that a word’s meaning is to be taken from the original public understanding of the text from the time the text was enacted. In other words, if a text was passed in 1950, a court ought to look at what the word meant in 1950–not what it means today.

The wisdom of originalism acknowledges that words change meaning over time, but to ensure a fixed meaning in law, the only meaning that a court will consider is what the public understood the words to mean when it was enacted. This approach is taken in order to avoid changing the law from its intended purpose. In this case, no one seriously argues that Congress or the general public would have understood the term “sex” to include “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.”

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for these cases in October, and the decisions are expected to come down any day over the coming weeks. Some observers believe Justice Neil Gorsuch to be the swing vote. Justice Gorsuch admitted that the issue was very close in his mind during oral arguments. Congress, the people’s representative, has so far refused to add gender identity or sexual orientation to Title VII by refusing to enact the Equality Act. Yet the Court may choose to bypass the democratic process and adopt this new reading of Title VII.

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As the Coronavirus pandemic wears on, government officials have shut down schools and businesses while stressing social distancing. The work continues to get personal protective equipment (PPE) into the hands of medical personnel with even elective surgeries canceled for the foreseeable future. However, the pandemic hasn’t slowed down the abortion industry. Several states have tried to close abortion clinics, calling the procedure an elective surgery that would take up medical resources, and Planned Parenthood has fought back in the courts to keep their doors open.

Only the state of Texas placed an outright ban on abortions as elective surgeries until the end of the pandemic. On April 7, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ban that Texas governor Greg Abbott put in place categorizing an abortion as an elective surgery. Planned Parenthood has petitioned the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Other states that have deemed abortions to be elective surgeries are Alaska, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Ohio, and Oklahoma. The Oklahoma ban was blocked in court April 6.

In an April 3 letter to supporters, Jennifer Welch, president & CEO of Planned Parenthood of Illinois (PPIL), shared, “To best serve our patients during this crisis, we have temporarily consolidated into six ‘Mission Health Centers’ to provide essential services including medical and in-clinic abortion care.” The six centers are located in Aurora, Flossmoor, Peoria, Springfield, and two in Chicago. However, eyewitnesses have noted that the Planned Parenthood in Fairview Heights has continued to receive patients.

National Planned Parenthood as well as PPIL have also continued to fund-raise heavily during the pandemic. In an apparent reference to the states that that don’t consider abortions essential medical procedures, Welch wrote, “We are also taking action against those who attempt to use the pandemic as an excuse to restrict health care for millions of people across the country.”

Abortions continue in Metro East area

In Illinois, the abortion industry is still going strong. The 18,000-square-foot Planned Parenthood abortion clinic built in secrecy in Fairview Heights and just 13 miles away from downtown St. Louis, Mo., has been a source of controversy since it opened in October 2019.

Angela Michael is a pro-life activist and head of Small Victories Pregnancy Outreach. Michael, a former obstetrical nurse, protests regularly outside the clinic in Fairview Heights and a nearby clinic in Granite City, called Hope Clinic. The latter is a privately-owned women’s health clinic that mainly provides abortions and sits across the street from the city’s only hospital.

Hope Clinic tweeted Governor JB Pritzker to complain about, and called the local police to disband, a group of protestors outside the clinic March 27. The group consisted of Michael and three others. Four police officers arrived, and Michael shared in a Facebook message that, perhaps upon seeing the body camera she was wearing, they told the pro-life advocates to “Have a nice day.”

Michael publishes eyewitness accounts from the two clinics almost daily to the Small Victories Pregnancy Outreach Facebook page. She has been noting the large groups of people entering the clinics, failing to practice social distancing, and cars traveling there from as far away as Colorado.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, there were 40 facilities providing abortions in Illinois in 2017, and 25 of those were abortion clinics.

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In 1986, Missouri became the first state to pass an abortion law requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a hospital “in the community” to ensure the health and safety of women undergoing abortion.

Later, I was horrified to find out that a doctor was doing abortions just a few miles from my home in St. Louis. It turned out that his admitting privileges were in another country! The abortion clinic was closed.

As I wrote last August in “Pro-abortion Desperation in Missouri” :

“the last abortion clinic in Missouri lost its license because of numerous health and safety violations. The Planned Parenthood abortion clinic continues to operate only because of several temporary injunctions by a judge.”

While the Missouri case is still ongoing, now the U.S. Supreme Court is considering the June Medical Services v. Russo case concerning whether Louisiana’s law requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a local hospital conflicts with the Court’s 2016 Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt decision along with a second issue about “whether abortion providers can legally represent the interests of women seeking an abortion when those providers sue to overthrow laws protecting those women’s health and safety.”

IS ABORTION MORE IMPORTANT THAN SAFETY?

In a powerful commentary titled “The OB-GYNs Who Play Politics With Women’s Lives-Abortion is more important than safety to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists” in the March 3, 2020 Wall Street Journal, Dr. Christina Francis calls out the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) for “offering a medically unsound recommendation in the furtherance of its extreme position on abortion”.

Dr. Francis, a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist and the chairman of the board of the American Association of Prolife OB/GYNS, refutes ACOG’s friend of the court brief arguing that the admitting privileges requirement for abortionists is not “‘medically justified’ and therefore constitutes an ‘undue burden’ on a woman’s right to abortion’” by stating:

“Yet every second counts in an obstetric emergency. A pregnant woman experiencing severe uterine hemorrhage can bleed to death in as little as 10 minutes. That’s why its essential that anyone performing an abortion have the ability to admit a patient to a nearby hospital—preferably one closer than 30 miles away.”

ACOG routinely puts politics ahead of medicine by adopting the most extreme positions on abortion. It has lobbied and briefed against parental notification of minors and informed-consent laws, and in favor of taxpayer-funded abortion. It has advocated for laws restricting speech around clinics and compelling pro-life pregnancy centers to tell women where they can go to obtain state-subsidized abortions. ACOG’s work has gotten so political that in 2008 it added a lobbying arm. I was refused when I asked if I could direct our dues only to the organization’s nonlobbying arm.

Eighty-six percent of OB-GYNs don’t perform abortions, but ACOG’s position is that you either support the most extreme abortion lobbying or you’re off the island. Most of ACOG’s abortion advocacy is undertaken free of consultation with its almost 60,000 members. Physicians who’ve left the organization, like me, support its general work but don’t want to support abortion lobbying, especially when it comes to watering down or eliminating safety standards. (Emphasis added)

Dr. Ford also notes that:

“In any practice area other than abortion, a doctor performing an operation would have hospital-admitting privileges. In the case of complications that doctor would, at a minimum, call ahead to fast-track the patient to the appropriate emergency care. Abortion-clinic patients, on the other hand, are frequently kicked to the curb and told to make their own way to the emergency room.”

CONCLUSION

Those of us in Missouri have seen the problems and attempted coverups at the hopefully last Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Louis.  Just last year, it was reported that:

“Operation Rescue, with the help of Missouri pro-life activists, has documented 74 medical emergencies that have occurred at RHS Planned Parenthood in the past ten years, including three emergencies that required ambulance transport for women to a local hospital within a 22-day period ending on May 15, 2019.” (Emphasis added)

The U.S. Supreme Court decision is not expected until June and is likely to have an enormous impact on the state of abortion in our country, especially since pro-abortion groups have now abandoned the old rhetoric about keeping abortion “safe, legal and rare’” in favor of tax-payer funded abortion on demand up to birth and even leaving babies to die after failed abortions.

In the meantime, considering choosing and supporting pro-life health care professionals and their professional organizations such as the American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) and the National Association of Pro-life Nurses (NAPN).

This article was originally published at NancyValko.com.

Earlier this month the Trump administration announced the reversal of an Obama-era rule regarding the role of faith-based organizations in providing foster care and adoption services.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) revealed new rules Nov. 1 allowing faith-based providers to continue serving their communities in a manner consistent with their religious beliefs. According to a conference call between Vice President Mike Pence’s office and the media, the Obama rule jeopardized the ability of faith-based providers to continue serving their communities, penalizing them for their deeply held beliefs. It did so by forcing these providers to either place children in the homes of same-sex couples or discontinue care.

Pence’s office contended that by “excluding thousands of willing organizations and families, the Obama rule threatened the well-being of children in search of a good home.”

HHS reports there are approximately 443,000 children in foster care nationwide, with more than 100,000 awaiting adoption, and that number has risen for five consecutive years, fueled in part by the opioid crisis.

“Allowing faith-based organizations to provide an enhanced role in foster care will take the pressure off some states who are need of additional foster families and foster care capacity,” Pence’s office claimed.

However, it’s too early to celebrate. Lori Windham, a religious liberty lawyer at Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, tweeted, “it’s a smart thing to do, but it would only fix part of the problem.” She shared that state and local governments can use similar rules to try to close faith-based agencies. In Illinois, faith-based agencies are only affected if they accept government funding.

Windham tweeted further, “Ultimately, we need not just better regulations, but a clear answer from the courts. @BECKETlaw has asked #SCOTUS to ensure that these critical social services are no longer jeopardized. The petition for Fulton v. Philadelphia has been conferenced for Nov 15.”

Brittany Raymer at Focus on the Family pointed out, “The Equality Act, which has been passed by the U.S. House but not the U.S. Senate, would have amended the Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes. This would mean that even if this new regulation is in effect, the potential passing of the Equality Act would still force agencies to place children with same-sex couples or close unless there are religious freedom protection.”

The announcement also reversed Obama Administration policy denying federal disaster aid to houses of worship.

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File this story in your now-bulging “Don’t Say You Weren’t Warned” folder.

Just three weeks ago, on September 19, 2019, the U.S. House Ways and Means Oversight subcommittee—chaired by John Lewis (D-GA) and composed of 7 Democrats and 4 Republicans—held a hearing portentously titled, “HOW THE TAX CODE SUBSIDIZES HATE.” Since conservative beliefs on sexuality are deemed “hateful” by regressives, such a subcommittee hearing should raise the alarm antennas of conservatives and libertarians concerned about assaults on the First Amendment by “progressive” thought police who roam the halls of Congress and the nooks, crannies, and interstices of social media.

What should also trouble them is that 3 of the 7 Democrats specifically mentioned or alluded to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as their source for identifying “hate groups.” (Full, shameless, and cheerful disclosure: the Illinois Family Institute (IFI) has been erroneously listed on the scandal-pocked SPLC’s “hate groups” list since shortly after I began writing for IFI in 2008.) Less than two hours after the beginning of the hearing, the Oversight subcommittee tweeted this:

“[H]omosexuality is a poor and dangerous choice, and has been proven to lead to a litany of health hazards to not only the individuals but also society as a whole,” The American Family Association, Tax Exempt Hate Group.

The first of the five witnesses to testify was busy-beaver homosexual activist Brandon Wolf, a “nationally-recognized advocate for LGBTQ issues” and  “Central Florida Development Officer and Media Relations Manager” for Equality Florida who survived the horrific Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida and said this:

[I]f you are not using everything at your disposal to snuff hate out, then you’re simply not doing enough. The time is now for us to fight harder, lead more courageously, and use everything we have to put an end to this cancer that is ravaging our communities…. Rather than use every tool at our disposal to combat hatred, we have chosen to subsidize it, embolden it…. Inaction in the face of hatred has consequences, and it’s high time that this Congress do something to protect those of us in the line of fire.

Wolf was urging Congress to use the IRS as a weapon to mow down moral views about homosexuality he hates and was doing so by deceitfully exploiting a tragedy that evidence suggests had nothing to do with “anti-gay” sentiment.

Journalist, constitutional lawyer, and (homosexual) co-founder of The Intercept Glenn Greenwald and co-author Murtaza Hussain published an article 18 months ago examining in detail the evidence for Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen’s motives:

Mateen went to Pulse only after having scouted other venues that night that were wholly unrelated to the LGBT community, only to find that they were too defended by armed guards and police, and ultimately chose Pulse only after a generic Google search for “Orlando nightclubs” — not “gay clubs” — produced Pulse as the first search result.

Several journalists closely covering the Mateen investigation have, for some time now, noted the complete absence of any evidence suggesting that Mateen knew that Pulse was a gay club or that targeting the LGBT community was part of his motive. 

…

By repeatedly emphasizing this anti-gay motive, U.S. media reports had the effect, if not the intent, of obscuring what appears to have been Mateen’s overriding, arguably exclusive motive: a desire for retribution and deterrence toward U.S. violence in Muslim countries.

…

Despite this mountain of evidence that strongly negates the original media-disseminated themes about Mateen’s life and his likely motive in targeting Pulse, the early myths remain lodged in the public mind and even in contemporary news reports. In part that’s because much of the evidence has remained under seal, in part because subsequent media debunking received a tiny fraction of the attention of the early, aggressively hyped inflammatory theories, and in part because there has been no political advantage to challenging the politically moving and useful narrative that the attack on Pulse was a hate crime against gay people.

Does anyone really believe full-time homosexual activist Wolf is unaware of this evidence?

Fortunately, one of the Republican members present at the hearing was Illinois’ own Darin Lahood (R-Peoria) who challenged references to the anti-Christian hate group, the SPLC:

[T]he IRS should not be used as a political tool to discriminate against organizations that differ in viewpoints…. We cannot use political disagreement as a metric to define hate speech or a hate group. This type of labeling can and has led to violent acts. I know my colleague just referenced the Southern Poverty Law Center. In 2012, an armed man named Floyd Lee Corkins walked into the Family Research Council Washington headquarters with the intent to shoot and kill as many of its employees as possible. He was apprehended, but not before wounding the non-profit’s business manager. Mr. Corkins later told the FBI that he had seen the nonprofit group listed as an anti-gay hate group on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website.

Also testifying was UCLA law professor, the libertarian-esque Eugene Volokh who argued that with only very narrow exceptions, all speech is protected by the First Amendment:

The Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear that tax exemptions can’t be denied based on the viewpoint that a group communicates…. The Court has also made equally clear that excluding speech that manifests or promotes “hate” is forbidden viewpoint discrimination…. The law may treat groups differently based on their actions, but not based on the views they express…. Groups may be denied tax exemptions for deliberately engaging in speech that falls within one of the few narrow exceptions to the First Amendment, such as true threats of criminal attack, or incitement intended to and likely to cause imminent criminal conduct. But “hate speech” writ large doesn’t fall within any such exceptions.

Our First Amendment rights will not long stand against the sexual appetites of the deviant who run amok among us. Neither our constitutionally protected religious free exercise rights, nor our speech rights, nor our assembly rights will be protected now that they have been subordinated to subjective and disordered sexual desires. And neither will our intrinsic privacy rights remain protected. Cultural critics warned about the dangers posed to this once-great Republic by 1. allowing the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to Guinea-worm their way into anti-discrimination policies and laws, and 2. the Obergefelle U.S. Supreme Court decision, which has been interpreted as legalizing same-sex marriage everywhere in the United States. But conservatives largely dismissed such warnings out of either a failure to think deeply about the implications of these changes or cowardice or both.

Leftists are turning—not turning right—turning against the U.S. Constitution, and slowly they’re coming, step by step, straight for the First Amendment.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your U.S. Representative to ask him/her to reject the SPLC’s definition of “hate groups,” which includes conservative and faith-based groups, such as IFI and AFA. Traditional Judeo-Christian teaching about human sexuality is neither “hateful” nor “vile.” Ask them to stand up for the First Amendment and protect religious liberty and speech rights by rejecting this effort to penalize so-called “hate” speech.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Slowly-Leftists-Turn-Step-By-Step.mp3

IFI depends on the support of concerned-citizens like you. Donate now

-and, please-

Former State Representative Peter Breen (R-Lombard) has two words for his fellow Illinoisans, “Fair Maps.” Fair Maps is an effort to break the hold Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) has on the state’s election map.

On the website FairMapsIllinois.com, Breen explains, “If you despair over the future of Illinois… if you’re frustrated about the stranglehold of a corrupt political machine over Illinois politics… if you worry about whether your friends and family—and even you yourself—will be able to make a home in Illinois in the years to come… then this message is just for you.”

Fair Maps is a grassroots plan to let voters put a referendum on the 2020 ballot to amend the state constitution. If passed, the referendum would give the power to redraw the redistricting maps to an independent, bipartisan commission. To get Fair Maps on the ballot, Breen needs the signatures of 360,000 registered Illinois voters.

Breen does have public opinion on his side. According to a poll conducted in the spring by the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University, 67 percent of Illinoisans supported a constitutional amendment such as Breen’s that would allow an independent commission to draw legislative maps, instead of the state’s lawmakers.

The state constitution mandates redistricting be done every 10 years. New maps will be drawn up in 2021, after the 2020 election. Unless Fair Maps is placed on the ballot and passed by voters, Breen suggests the maps will be redrawn once again to favor Democrats who will be beholden to House Speaker Mike Madigan.

Breen calls the current system, “The linchpin that takes otherwise fleeting control over the political process and turns it into a decades-long, sustained political machine: the power to draw legislative maps to guarantee a permanent partisan majority. No matter how the political winds blow, whether for him or against him, Madigan’s majority cannot be overcome.”

Other states that have tried to reform redistricting have faced court battles that have gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In June 2019 cases involving the States of Maryland and North Carolina were declined by the Court. Chief Justice John Roberts admitted the problems states have with gerrymandering and partisanship writing, “But the fact that such gerrymandering is ‘incompatible with democratic principles’ does not mean that the solution lies with the federal judiciary. We conclude that partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.”

Iowas voters passed Fair Maps in 1980 and Breen calls the state, “A national model of clean, responsive government. Iowa’s debt and tax burden are under control. Iowa’s schools are good and its crime rate low. The people of Iowa are happy with their representation, and it’s easy to see why: when you have fair maps, legislators have to be much more careful to respond to the needs of the people they serve.”

Take ACTION: Click HERE to volunteer to collect a minimum of 10 signatures on an official petition page. You can also volunteer to sign up friends or promote this effort on social media.

This is an important way to return the political process to the voters of Illinois. Please prayerfully consider this worthy project, and spend a couple hours working to break free of the political headlock we’ve been in for decades.

A Night With Rev. Franklin Graham!
At this year’s annual IFI banquet, our keynote speaker will be none other than Rev. Franklin Graham, President & CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Christian evangelist & missionary. This year’s event will be at the Tinley Park Convention Center on Nov. 1st. You don’t want to miss this special evening!

Learn more HERE.

Forty-six years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in America through a 7-2 decision in Roe v. Wade. Then in 1992, in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed the right to terminate preborn babies in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Over the past 45 years, over 60 million innocent human lives have been sacrificed on the altar of convenience and the non-existent constitutional “right to privacy.”

There is a large Planned Parenthood surgical abortion center located in Flossmoor that is open 5 days a week, ending innocent lives right in your back yard. Christians and non-Christians are their targets. How the Christian community responds is what will determine who will win this urgent battle for Life.

We invite you to join with others who refuse to wave the white flag of surrender and who are committed to disseminating truth about abortion and its victims.

Invitation

We urge you be part of this nationwide, peaceful, prayerful 40 Days for Life effort to save lives and share truth. (See flyer HERE.)

The Southland 40 Days for Life team is hosting a special church leaders’ luncheon on September 19^th at the Tinley Park Convention Center. We want you to hear the vision, understand the importance, and learn the details of the upcoming “40 Days” campaign, which runs September 25th to November 3rd this year, which you can then share with your members.

We must not be silent any longer. In a society that has advanced every form of hedonism, the foundational battle is life versus death.

What does the Bible have to say about life?
For You created my inmost being;
You knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Your works are wonderful,
I know that full well. ~Psalm 139:13-14

I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live. ~Deuteronomy 30:19

Yes, there is a battle and Ephesians makes clear who we are fighting:

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. ~Ephesians 6:12

At the heart of this matter is a spiritual battle, and prayer is our most effective weapon against it.

Enter 40 Days for Life!

We have the tremendous opportunity to pray for expectant mothers to choose life and to pray for those deceived by the lies of the wicked one.

The stated vision and mission of 40 Days for Life:

Vision

40 Days for Life is a focused pro-life campaign with a vision to access God’s power through prayer, fasting, and peaceful vigil to end abortion.

Mission

The mission of the campaign is to bring together the body of Christ in a spirit of unity during a focused 40-day campaign of prayer, fasting, and peaceful activism, with the purpose of repentance, to seek God’s favor to turn hearts and minds from a culture of death to a culture of life, thus bringing an end to abortion.

In other words, by partnering with 40 Days for Life we can live out Ephesians 6:13-18: “your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace…. Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit.”

There is power in prayer! And there is even greater power when we gather with fellow Christians in prayer!

We cannot and should not be silent. Instead, we can be a silent witness and a prayer warrior for those little ones who cannot speak for themselves.

Please join us to learn more. If you are unable to join us, please send another church leader who you think would be interested in this prayer campaign.

RSVP to v.kathy@illinoisfamily.org or call (708) 781-9329.

We hope to see you there!

Sincerely,

Dr. Rich Mantoan
Leader: 40 Days for Life
(708) 557-0011 or southlandsmiles@gmail.com

>Download Flyer HERE<

Written by Dr. John A. Sparks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Written by Michael Foust

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

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

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

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

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

The Kleins are represented by First Liberty Institute.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally posted on ChristianHeadlines.com