ADF attorneys file reply brief with Washington Supreme Court
on behalf of Barronelle Stutzman, targeted for her beliefs.

Alliance Defending Freedom filed a brief Friday with the Washington Supreme Court that answers arguments the state and the American Civil Liberties Union have made in favor of government discrimination against a floral artist, whom they sued for acting consistently with her faith.

ADF attorneys asked the state high court to take up the case in June of last year after a lower state court ruled that Stutzman, owner of Arlene’s Flowers in Richland, must pay penalties and attorneys’ fees for declining to use her artistic abilities to design custom floral arrangements for a long-time customer’s same-sex ceremony. Rather than participate in the ceremony, Stutzman referred the customer, whom she considers a friend and had served for nearly 10 years, to several other florists in the area who would provide high-quality arrangements and wedding support.

“Barronelle and many others like her around the country have been more than willing to serve any and all customers, but they are understandably not willing to promote any and all messages,” said ADF Senior Counsel Kristen Waggoner. “No one should be faced with a choice between their freedom of speech and conscience on one hand and personal and professional ruin on the other.  Americans oppose unjust government actions that strong-arm citizens to create expression against their will.”

As the ADF reply brief explains,

“The case boils down to this question: is there room in our tolerant, diverse, and freedom-loving society for people with different views about the nature of marriage to establish their ‘religious (or nonreligious) self-definition in the political, civic, and economic life of our larger community…?’ The trial court’s and [the state’s and the ACLU’s] answer is ‘no.’ Their view is that those who seek to establish their self-identity based on the millennia-old view that marriage is solely between a man and a woman may be coerced by law to express different views or be silenced. This is contrary to the best of our historical and constitutional traditions, which mandate that citizens who hold non-majoritarian views be given room to express them and not be coerced, punished, and marginalized through force of law.”

“The trial court’s and [the state’s and the ACLU’s] view—that there can never be a free speech exception to public accommodation laws—endangers everyone,” the brief continues. “If correct, then the consciences of all citizens are fair game for the government. No longer could a gay print shop owner decline to print shirts adorned with messages promoting marriage between one man and one woman for a religious rally. Nor could an atheist painter decline to paint a mural celebrating the resurrection of Christ for a church. Indeed, no speaker could exercise esthetic or moral judgments about what projects to take on where a customer claims the decision infringes on his or her rights under the WLAD [Washington Law Against Discrimination].”

“People in creative professions regularly have to make decisions about where they lend their artistic talents and the events in which they will participate,” Stutzman said. “For me, it’s never about the person who walks into the shop, but about the message I’m communicating when someone asks me to ‘say it with flowers.’ The government should respect everyone’s freedom—including our artistic freedom and core religious beliefs about marriage—and not force us to create expression that violates our conscience.”

Washington attorneys George Ahrend, John Connelly, and Alicia M. Berry are also counsel of record in the lawsuits, State of Washington v. Arlene’s Flowers and Ingersoll v. Arlene’s Flowers.

The American church has a problem. It’s one part fear, one part confusion and one part apathy. Pastors, priests and rabbis have long swallowed the false notion that all things religious and all things political are somehow mutually exclusive – that never the twain shall meet.

Leading up to Ronald Reagan’s landslide presidential victory in 1980, Rev. Jerry Falwell, the founder of Liberty University, captured the crux of the church’s apathy problem. “I’m being accused of being controversial and political,” he said. “I’m not political. But moral issues that become political, I still fight. It isn’t my fault that they’ve made these moral issues political. But because they have doesn’t stop the preachers of the Gospel from addressing them. …”

“What then is wrong?” he continued. “I say the problem, first of all, is in the pulpits of America. We preachers must take the blame. For too long we have fearfully stood back and failed to address the issues that are corrupting the republic. I repeat Proverbs 14:34: ‘Righteousness exalteth a nation.’ Not military might, though that’s important. Not financial resources, though that has been the enjoyment of this nation above all nations in the last 200 years. But spiritual power is the backbone, the strength, of a nation.”

Indeed, it is not just within the church’s purview, but it is the church’s duty to insert itself into state matters relating to morality, public policy and culture at large.

Contrary to popular opinion, the words “separation of church and state” are found nowhere in the U.S. Constitution. Yet many are misled into believing they are.

So why the confusion?

It’s been intentionally fomented. It’s the byproduct of a decades-long religious cleansing campaign. The First Amendment’s “Establishment Clause,” a mere 10 words, is the primary tool secular separatists misuse and abuse to “fundamentally transform” America to reflect their own anti-Christian self-image.

Yet these words remain abundantly clear in both scope and meaning. The Establishment Clause states merely: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. …”

That’s it.

And the founders meant exactly what they said: “Congress,” as in the United States Congress, “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

In a letter to Benjamin Rush, a fellow-signer of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, often touted by the left as the great church-state separationist, spelled out exactly what this meant then, and what it means today. The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause was simply intended to restrict Congress from affirmatively “establishing,” through federal legislation, a national Christian denomination (similar to the Anglican Church of England).

As Jefferson put it: “[T]he clause of the Constitution” covering “freedom of religion” was intended to necessarily preclude “an establishment of a particular form of Christianity through the United States.”

The individual states, however, faced no such restriction. In fact, until as late as 1877, and after religious free exercise became absolute with passage of the 14th Amendment, most states did have an official state form of Christianity. Massachusetts, for example, sanctioned the Congregational Church until 1833.

Even so, today’s anti-Christian ruling class insists on revising history. The ACLU’s own promotional materials, for example, overtly advocate unconstitutional religious discrimination: “The message of the Establishment Clause [to the U.S. Constitution] is that religious activities must be treated differently from other activities to ensure against governmental support for religion,” they claim.

This is abject nonsense. It’s unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination – a twisted misrepresentation of the First Amendment. Secular-“progressivism” depends upon deception as much as it relies upon revisionism. Yes, “separation” applies, but only insofar as it requires the state to remain separate from the church. That is to say, that government may not interfere with the free exercise of either speech or religion.

For decades, hard-left anti-theist groups like the ACLU, People for the American Way (PFAW) and Barry Lynn’s Americans United (AU) have employed a cynical disinformation scheme intended to intimidate clergy into silence on issues of morality, culture and Christian civic involvement – issues that, as Falwell noted, are not political so much as they have been politicized; issues that are inherently “religious.”

AU, for instance, annually sends tens-of-thousands of misleading letters to churches across the nation warning pastors, priests and rabbis that, “If the IRS determines that your house of worship has engaged in unlawful intervention, it can revoke the institution’s tax-exempt status.”

That’s a lie.

In reality, there is no legal mechanism whatsoever for the Internal Revenue Service to take away a church’s tax exemption. Churches are inherently tax-exempt, or, better still, “tax immune,” simply by virtue of being a church. Churches do not need permission from the IRS, nor can the IRS revoke a church’s tax immunity.

Since 1934, when the lobbying restriction was added to the Internal Revenue Code, not a single church has ever lost its tax-exempt status. Since 1954, when the political endorsement/opposition prohibition was added, only one church has ever lost its IRS letter ruling, but even that church did not lose its tax-exempt status. The case involved the Church at Pierce Creek in New York, which placed full-page ads in USA Today and the Washington Times opposing then-Gov. Bill Clinton for president. The ads were sponsored by the church, and donations were solicited. The IRS revoked the church’s letter ruling, but not its tax-exempt status. The church sued, and the court noted that churches are tax-exempt without an IRS letter ruling. It ruled that “because of the unique treatment churches receive under the Internal Revenue Code, the impact of the revocation is likely to be more symbolic than substantial.” Not even this church lost its tax-exempt status, and not one donor was affected by this incident.

As Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel has observed, “Pastors can preach on biblical, moral and social issues, such as natural marriage and abortion, can urge the congregation to register and vote, can overview the positions of the candidates, and may personally endorse candidates. Churches may distribute nonpartisan voter guides, register voters, provide transportation to the polls, hold candidate forums, and introduce visiting candidates.”

Since 2008, the Christian legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom has spearheaded a First Amendment exercise called “Pulpit Freedom Sunday.” Since then, thousands of pastors across America have boldly exercised their guaranteed constitutional rights by addressing “political” issues from the pulpit. This has included directly endorsing candidates. These pastors have dared the IRS to come after them, and, not surprisingly, the IRS has balked.

Pastors, this election season follow the lead of Christ. Speak moral/political truths, in love, fearlessly. Remain undaunted by the threat of government intervention or punitive action by the state. And encourage your congregation to vote for candidates who sincerely reflect, in both word and deed, a biblical worldview and biblical principles.

Be “salt and light.”

Because Christ didn’t give us an option to do otherwise.

Surprise, surprise, over the holidays, the anti-cultural coal mine emitted more noxious fumes. Unfortunately, people of faith continue to ignore the canary’s corpse.

Just before Christmas, New York City’s Commission on Human Rights released stunning speech code requirements regarding gender dysphoria that mandate that “employers, landlords, and business owners” lie or be fined up to $250,000.

The introduction to the spanking new “guidance” foreshadows oppressive things to come—everywhere:

 [T]he New York City Commission on Human Rights released new guidance that makes clear what constitutes gender identity and gender expression discrimination under the NYC Human Rights Law, making it one of the strongest in the nation in protecting the rights of transgender and gender non-conforming individuals. Although discrimination based on gender identity and expression has been illegal under the City’s law since 2002, previous guidelines never articulated the range of violations of the law. Today’s guidance provides bold and explicit examples of violations, sending a clear message to employers, landlords, business owners, and the general public what the City considers to be discrimination under the law. (emphasis added)

Lest IFI readers mistakenly think these strong, bold mandates have any connection to compassion or actual rights, here are just two of the violations that will result in hefty fines: 1. It is now a violation of anti-discrimination law to intentionally or repeatedly use correct pronouns rather than the pronouns gender-dysphoric people want others to use. 2. It is now a violation of anti-discrimination law to intentionally or repeatedly use correct titles, like Mr. for an actual man or Ms. for an actual woman.

Just as the unelected, non-lawmaking Office for Civil Rights unilaterally decided that the word “sex” in Title IX includes “gender identity,” the unelected, non-lawmaking NYC Commission on Human Rights unilaterally decided that grammatically correct pronoun-use now constitutes “discrimination.”

Ironically, in an anti-culture awash in obscene language—including in the materials recommended and taught by “teachers” in our middle and high schools—it’s correct pronoun-use that is banned.

With the usual “progressive” hubris and willingness to violate speech rights and religious liberty in their tyrannical quest for ideological submission to their fanciful assumptions about human nature, the NYC Human Rights Commission has decided that pronouns no longer correspond to objective biological sex and those who disagree must be punished. While well-respected theologian John Piper says Christians should not use opposite-sex pronouns when referring to gender-dysphoric persons, the NYC Commission commands them to do so or risk a $250,000 fine. The stakes are getting higher for the inevitable cataclysmic collision between religious liberty and sexual libertinism unmoored from morality and the common good.

The new “guidance” (Does guidance usually come accompanied by draconian punishments?) also requires that all restrooms, locker rooms, and single-sex facilities in “employment, public accommodations, and housing” be open to men who claim to be women. The “guidance” specifically mentions women’s shelters. Apparently, the feelings of men who wish they were women take precedence over the feelings of women and children who have been victimized by men. Lesbian Carmelyn Malalis, who Mayor Bill DeBlasio  appointed commissioner of the NYC Commission on Human Rights, should explain to abused women why it’s okay to allow a man in the shelter bed next to them as long as he dislikes his penis.

It’s interesting to note that the new “guidance” requires employers who provide prostate cancer-screening for actual men to provide it for men who pretend they’re women. How ironic that pretend-women are demanding to be treated in all situations as if they are in reality women—except when it comes to their healthcare. A recent editorial about prescription drug-testing in the Chicago Tribune inadvertently acknowledged the inconvenient truth that men cannot become women or vice versa:

“Every cell has a sex,” Dr. Janine Clayton, director of the NIH’s Office of Research on Women’s Health, told The New York Times. “Each cell is either male or female, and that genetic difference results in different biochemical processes within those cells.”

It is neither discriminatory nor hateful to recognize those differences in drug-testing, health-screening, or grammar.

George Orwell named the dangerous game that “trans-activists” are now playing “Newspeak.” With a surprisingly un-liberal and not so-surprisingly unholy vigor, trans-activists are engaging in precisely the kind of activity about which Orwell warned:

Newspeak was the official language of Oceania, and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of IngSoc, or English Socialism….

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all… a heretical thought…should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever….

[T]he special function of certain Newspeak words… was not so much to express meanings as to destroy them….

[W]ords which had once borne a heretical meaning were sometimes retained for the sake of convenience, but only with the undesirable meanings purged out of them.

Why do “trans-activists” believe it’s wrong to continue using pronouns in the historical way in which they denote and correspond to objective biological sex? Because it hurts the feelings of body-rejecting men and women who need to have every cultural signifier that suggests the immutable, objective nature and meaning of physical embodiment erased in order to maintain their ontological masquerade. “Trans-activists” feel bad when they encounter actions that indicate a refusal to acquiesce to Leftist “identity” constructs.

But here’s the rub: The identity of orthodox Christians includes both opposition to lying (Ex. 20:16) and affirmation of the goodness and immutability of sexual differentiation (Gen. 5:2). Orthodox Christians “feel bad” when the state requires them to deny their identity in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17).

No one who is committed to truth and human flourishing should acquiesce to demands to refer to men as women and women as men. Though those who suffer from gender dysphoria may desire that everyone participate in their elaborate ruse, doing so is not, in reality, good for them.

The Left elevates subjective feelings over knowledge, wisdom, truth, and reality, arguing that compassion is determined solely by affirming the feelings of others. Well, that’s not precisely accurate. As usual, the Left does not apply their principles consistently. They don’t argue that society ought to affirm the subjective feelings and beliefs of everyone. Rather, diversity-lovin’ Leftists believe society must affirm—or pretend to affirm—only Leftist-approved feelings and beliefs.

If you think this fascist policy will remain limited to New York City or to employers, places of public accommodation, or housing, you’ve been living under a proverbial rock. Those who value libertinism will pound on the doors of churches, private schools and colleges, and radio stations demanding that everyone everywhere adopt the official language of the United States: Newspeak. So, make your commitment about language-use now, or you will yield to language-fascists later.

Worldview Conference with Dr. Wayne Grudem

We are very excited about our second annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Wayne Grudem on Saturday, February 20, 2016 in Barrington. Click HERE to register today!

In the morning sessions, Dr. Grudem will speak on how biblical values provide the only effective solution to world poverty and about the moral advantages of a free-market economic system. In the afternoon, Dr. Grudem will address why Christians—and especially pastors—should influence government for good as well as tackle the moral and spiritual issues in the 2016 election.

We look forward to this worldview-training and pray it will be a blessing to you.

Click HERE for a flyer.

While the legal case will continue to work its way through the courts, the bottom line is this: Kim Davis has won. The homofascists have lost.

Last Tuesday, Kentucky’s new governor, Matt Bevin, issued an executive order that eliminates the names of all county clerks from marriage licenses and protects the unalienable constitutional rights and religious freedoms of Kim Davis and all other clerks in Kentucky.

“This action is a fulfillment of a campaign promise by Gov. Bevin and is directly what our client Kim Davis has been requesting for months,” said Mat Staver, Davis’ attorney and founder of the Christian civil rights firm Liberty Counsel. “This promise will enable her and other clerks to do their jobs without compromising religious values and beliefs.”

The governor’s statement reads in part:

“To ensure that the sincerely held religious beliefs of all Kentuckians are honored, Executive Order 2015-048 directs the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives to issue a revised marriage license form to the offices of all Kentucky County Clerks. The name of the County Clerk is no longer required to appear on the form.”

While the First Amendment alone should be enough to ensure these safeguards, the unconstitutional actions of five “progressive” lawyers on the U.S. Supreme Court, who, back in June, presumed to capriciously redefine the immutable meaning of marriage, has created legal and moral chaos from coast-to-coast, making fixes such as that issued by Gov. Bevin necessary. Furthermore, these extremist lawyers’ subjective and unprecedented opinion will require additional fixes in all other states to reaffirm Christians’ objective and constitutionally guaranteed rights. Although the fight to repair the perversion of marriage committed by the high court will continue, this is an important step in the right direction.

You may recall that Davis was arbitrarily imprisoned for five days earlier this year by federal Judge David Bunning for exercising her religious liberties and refusing to violate her conscience by signing her name to, and, thereby, giving her official approval of, counterfeit “gay marriage” licenses. These licenses, of course, violate both natural law and the manifold biblical proscriptions against the sin of unnatural same-sex deviancy. Bunning’s tyrannical move backfired tremendously, earning Davis’ the support of tens-of-millions of Christians worldwide, as well as both a private audience with, and the express support of, Pope Francis.

“This is a wonderful Christmas gift for Kim Davis,” continued Staver. “This executive order is a clear, simple accommodation on behalf of Kim Davis and all Kentucky clerks. Kim can celebrate Christmas with her family knowing she does not have to choose between her public office and her deeply held religious convictions. What former Gov. Beshear could have done but refused to do, Gov. Bevin did with this executive order. We are pleased that Gov. Bevin kept his campaign promise to accommodate the religious rights of Kim Davis. We will notify the courts of the executive order, and this order proves our point that a reasonable accommodation should have been done to avoid Kim having to spend time in jail.”

“Bah humbug!” cried the ACLU.

“Governor Bevin’s executive action has added to the cloud of uncertainty that hangs over marriage licensing in Kentucky,” claimed ACLU of Kentucky Legal Director William Sharp.

“The requirement that the county clerk’s name appear on marriage licenses is prescribed by Kentucky law and is not subject to unilateral change by the governor,” he demanded, proving that the anti-Christian left’s goal was never about so-called “marriage equality” but, rather, was to force Christians to deny marriage reality and personally affirm, under penalty of law, mock “gay marriages.”

The ACLU will soon have little more to say on the subject as lawmakers are poised to further codify and build upon Bevin’s executive order. “Next month, the Kentucky legislature is expected to update the state’s marriage laws and will consider a provision exempting county clerks from having to issue them,” reports ABC News. “Davis said Kentucky’s marriage laws have been ‘completely eviscerated’ by the Supreme Court’s ruling and said she would be willing to come to the state Capitol to testify about any changes.”

Other state legislatures, as well as the U.S. Congress, must soon follow suit if any progress is to be made into the impasse between secularist change agents hostile to religious freedom, and the faithful Christians who enjoy it as a matter of law.

“In an interview with the Associated Press about her year at the center of one of the biggest social changes in decades, Davis described it as ‘a very emotional and a very real situation to all people.’ But she said simply telling others about her faith was not ‘going to make anybody believe anything.’ And so she put her faith in action by refusing to issue the licenses,” added ABC.

“‘No one would ever have remembered a county clerk that just said … ‘Even though I don’t agree with it, it’s OK. I’ll do it,’ Davis said. ‘If I could be remembered for one thing, it’s that I was not afraid to not compromise myself.’”

Kim Davis will certainly be remembered for her steadfast refusal to compromise herself. But she, along with Gov. Bevin, will also be remembered for helping, this Christmas season, to re-establish the gift of religious freedom for the people of Kentucky.

Even so, the war for our culture will continue into the New Year and well beyond.

Support IFI

Please consider supporting IFI’s ongoing work to educate, motivate and activate Illinois’ Christian community.  Your donation will help us stand strong in 2016!  To make a credit card donation over the phone, please call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.  You can also send a gift to:

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 88848
Carol Stream, Illinois 60188

Written by Richard C. Baker

It is Christmas season, and many of us will follow the old ritual of watching It’s a Wonderful Life. There George Bailey, after pouring himself out for his community in the grips of the Depression, thinks he has made no difference and despairs of life. That is, until Clarence the angel sets him straight as to what would have happened had he not been there.

There is room for the baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph at the center of Illinois government. Thanks to a group of private citizens who believe in the true meaning of the season, a Nativity scene is on display in the state capitol rotunda in Springfield. See video below:

Written by John W. Mauck

The church today faces attacks from many directions. On the front of religious liberty, past behavior and expressed objectives indicate the LGBT movement will not be satisfied with the recent Supreme Court’s ruling requiring same-sex marriage recognition and gay activists will continue to assail Biblical teaching on marriage and sexuality.

Now that the Court has declared same-sex marriage a “fundamental right,” churches which hold to Biblical teaching must be prepared to confront any possible lawsuit. For example, if a church refuses to rent out its facility for a same-sex wedding or remove someone from membership because of sexual sin, it may be open to legal action. Nevertheless, churches are not without defenses under current law.

To ensure the best legal protection, church boards need to review and if necessary update bylaws, membership policy, statement of faith, facility use policy, and employment criteria, clearly stating the church’s position on marriage. Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has provided an excellent free resource of legal templates to protect your church and ministry from some legal issues that may lie ahead. The handbook is called Protecting Your Ministry.

ADF’s guide is general in scope and is not a substitute for customized legal advice. A church should always have their attorney review any changes to its foundational documents bearing. The attorneys at Mauck & Baker are also able to assist you.

Also be mindful that legal danger to most churches in our times is not an external attack from the LGBT activists or even from the state. Rampant church splits within a congregation or between a congregation and denomination are by far the most common legal and spiritual threat to the Lord’s body.

The ensuing legal battles can be bitter costly and destructive, not only to the health and well-being of individual congregations but to the families of people involved through several generations. These divisions result from deceptive philosophies, faulty interpretations of the Bible and lies fed to God’s people. Members of the congregation are often influenced by the culture and new Scriptural eisegesis condoning sexual immorality and distorting the Gospel’s message. Even mature believers are susceptible to these types of deceptions because the world and its secular courts fail to tell them of the disastrous results consequential to the gay lifestyle.

To guard against a church split over the issues of same-sex marriage, gay ordination, or sexual sin, we are recommending three preventatives:

1. Teach people the pathology of homosexual lifestyle. NARTH.com has a wealth of information on the subject.
2. Teach people that God can and will help people change. The feature length documentary, Such Were Some of You by Pure Passion Media, is an excellent resource for testimonies of people who overcame their same-sex attraction. Visit SuchWereSomeofYou.org.
3. Teach people of the danger to our children of gay adoption, child custody, or foster care. Visit FamilyStructureStudies.com.

Pastors who are firm in true Biblical doctrine will face fewer legal problems, than pastors who equivocate. A unified congregation armed with truth and firm in the faith can withstand legal attacks against their church.

Let us always remember the words of Paul, “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” 1 Cor 15:58 (ESV).

Originally published at MauckBaker.com.

It is as though someone dropped our culture, what remains of it, into a fifty gallon drum of solvent, and then complained loudly when the whole thing wound up as a solution. That’s not the kind of solution I meant, complained the president.

For the time being, the trappings still look fine. We look around and see cities, and concerts, and monuments, and mammon, and armies, and news reports, all done with the very latest developments in CGI. With these images flashing on the tall backdrop of a very deep stage, our president walks out to the center, faces us, and proves himself to be a very able platitudinarian.

But nothing coheres any more, and the impressiveness is all surface. It is like discovering a shining body of water the size of the Pacific and then finding out it was ankle deep all the way across. To change the image somewhat abruptly, it is like that free couch left outside the fraternity at the beginning of summer — you can take it or leave it.

Scripture tells us that Christ is the one in whom all things hold together (Col. 1:17). Our secular society laughed. We scoffed. That is simply ridiculous, we said. We can hold it together without Him. And so, just a few generations after rejecting Him, where are we? As one fellow said in a similar context, everything is at sea except for the fleet.

We don’t need Jesus Christ to hold everything together. That’s what we said. We turned away from Him, and how has it gone with our bold new experiment? Without Jesus Christ, we no longer know the difference between boys and girls. Without Him, our college students need safe spaces for protection against tacky Halloween costumes. We no longer know that mothers should bear and suckle their children. We have turned age-old variations in the weather into an argument for massive increases of statist power. We can’t tell the difference between white people and black people anymore. Those appearances might just be a trick of self-identification, designed to get us to reveal our latent bigotries. If I say something awkward to that guy on the subway I might find myself remanded into counseling. We don’t even know what marriage is anymore, and if it had been within our reach we would already have been messing around with optional gravitation. Gravity is oppressive, not democratic at all.

Our sexual mores are turning into one vast pig rut. The art world is a gigantic taxpayer-supported guano collection. Our college faculties, training up the next generation in the way they should go, is a clamjamfry rabble, certified at least two grad degrees past their intelligence. As for the students, our elite college campuses are populated by lily boys of both sexes.
Our culture is a 62 Galaxie 500, one which has crested the Continental Divide, lost its brakes on the other side, is careening toward western Colorado, with the axles growing hot. Kind of like that.

And the progressives, the driving force behind all of this nonsense, hate being questioned about any of it for several reasons. First, it is easier to shout your opponents down than to answer the arguments. Shoot, it would be far easier if they could just have them arrested. You are not a climate denier by any chance, are you? Second, the lack of answers forthcoming is not to say that their deep down space is occupied by a blissful and serene ignorance. No, down below the sternum of every man and every woman is the knowledge that nonsense remains nonsense, no matter how many people are yelling it. And so that means, at the bottom of everything, is massive, unrelenting, ever-present, always-restless, never-asleep guilt. Men without answers get angry in debates, and guilty men get even angrier in debates. That is why debates will soon be illegal.

In the meantime, establishment Christian leaders, who should be leading the resistance, are tuft-hunters, aching for the kind of respectability that only a disintegrating and leprous culture can bestow. And the Christian leaders who are part of a faithful remnant and who therefore show some fight are chastised by the others as troublemakers. Those Christian leaders soon get the treatment. Fight? Far better to labor quietly off grid on something that the progressives will have no trouble seizing whenever they decide to. Gives us something to do while we wait.

So what is the central problem? The difficulty is that we don’t want a fixed standard. Everything is coming unstuck because we cannot have the kind of certainty that we need in order to keep it from becoming unstuck. But in order to have that kind of certainty, we have discovered that we would simultaneously have to bring in the possibility of being wrong. And because we are a proud, haughty, and conceited people, we will not accept the very old-fashioned possibility of simply being wrong.

That would hurt our feelings, which we all know is now illegal.

This article was originally posted at Blog & Mablog.

By Wallace Henley

“If I could choose one more course for ministry training and preparation, it would be ‘Courageous Leadership’,” says Thom Rainer in a recent Christian Post article.

Rainer, president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention, says that many challenges pastors and churches face now “can only be understood in the context of spiritual warfare” for which many church leaders are “ill-prepared.”

On the other hand, “many younger leaders within the church have grown tired of culture wars and a politicized Christianity,” writes Ray Nothstine in a Christian Post review of Onward: Engaging the Culture Without Losing the Gospel, by another Southern Baptist leader, Russell Moore.

Nevertheless, Thom Rainer says “Courageous Leadership” should be taught because of the “dramatic shifts in culture, most of them adversarial to biblical Christianity.”

Some churches under the pressures of social upheaval do indeed “grow tired” and withdraw from cultural and political engagement. They claim their relationship to society is to be almost exclusively pastoral, nurturing those who come “in”. To go “out” in confronting cultural tides “adversarial to biblical Christianity” through the prophetic ministry is not part of the self-assumed identity of such churches. They often seclude themselves in pietistic fortresses.

John Milton’s words, in Areopagitica, come to mind: “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heap.”

Prophetic ministry is the “dusty heap” of Elijah confronting the prophets of Baal, the institutional guardians of Jezebel’s palace. The prophetic church is an Amos or Jeremiah in its culture, overcoming its timidity, addressing governing powers and people alike with tear-soaked truth.

Contemporary society’s craziness calls for much pastoral ministry, but not to the exclusion of the prophetic voice. If Rainer is right — and he is — what modern society needs from the Church is the hard facts about values, and the biblically revealed Judeo-Christian worldview that establishes orderly, peaceful, free and prosperous societies.

Why, then, do many churches shrink from confronting cultural and social institutions and their powers, including the political sphere?

A look at six types of relatively non-engaging churches, gives some clues:

The Marginalized Church — This is the church that accepts marginalization by the culture and its institutions. In fact, such a church desires to be marginalized because it is then off the hook and can avoid threats to it’s cloistered pietism.

The Muzzled Church — Such churches muzzle themselves in the face of an adversarial culture to protect their own institutional survival and societal benefits. They tailor-make a non-confrontational theology.

The Myopic Church — This is the church that simply does not understand the expanse of Christ’s Kingdom. It focuses mainly on the eschatological hope and engages little with existential need. Such a church would not understand Abraham Kuyper’s observation that “there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!”

The Mouthpiece Church — These are churches that buy into the values of popular culture, viewing it as more authoritative than the Bible itself. One thinks of the official German Church under Hitler, resisted by Bonhoeffer and his allies, as well as much of the American southern church during slavery who wrenched the Bible into grotesque shapes to justify its culture, as well as churches today that hop on every cultural bandwagon that passes it by.

The Me-Church — The me-centered consumerist church relishes prophecy as long as it forecasts health, wealth, happiness and well-being. It rarely confronts people and institutions with the prophetic call to biblical values and repentance because this disrupts its comfort.

The Me-Too Church — This is the “stylistic” church that looks at the culture, and says, “me-too!” It is the church whose pastors shock with gutter-words from contemporary lingo, whose “worship” is primarily performance characterized by unsingable, theologically starved, but very professional music. This church’s identity is more in the culture than in Christ, and so it finds very little in the world to confront.

The contemporary battle for the world’s soul and survival is spiritual and theological. The struggle for the West and Judeo-Christian Civilization is a battle for values. To sever America’s founding principles from the biblical stream from which they emerged separates the contemporary nation from its very history.

I admit this is personal for me. Had it not been for church leaders who dared to work both pastorally and prophetically in the political sphere where I labored forty years ago I might not be writing these lines or working in a church today.

I am glad Christian leaders in Washington challenged the values both of the 1970s culture and the delusions of Washington and its institutions of power. They had a transforming impact on a starry-eyed junior aide trying to hold on to his critical capacities midst the pressures of the Nixon White House.

None of those leaders had given up on the culture wars. They refused to stop reminding society of the need for recovering values that created a nation that gave freedom to the church and prosperity for its global mission. They pastored me but they also blasted me with prophetic truth.

The church now must do the full work of “shepherding” — both feeding and nurturing the flock pastorally, and warning and guiding prophetically.

This is no time to give in to our weariness with engagement with the culture — including the political sphere.

This article was originally posted on ChristianPost.com 

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) will revisit the legality of the Obama Administration’s contraceptive and abortion drug mandate in a crucial case this coming term.

SCOTUS announced last Friday that it will hear another challenge to the mandate filed by various religious groups, including the Catholic religious order The Little Sisters of the Poor.

Under the mandate, all health insurance policies issued in the United States must include coverage of abortifacient drugs and devices such as Ella and Plan B without co-pays or deductibles.

Ella and Plan B and the like are often marketed as “morning-after pills,” or “emergency contraceptives.”  However, these drugs also operate after conception to destroy developing human embryos in their earliest stages.

The SCOTUS has previously ruled that closely-held corporations with religious objections cannot be forced to subsidize abortifacient drugs in their health insurance plans.

In a high profile case involving craft giant Hobby Lobby, the court ruled that family businesses were “persons” under the Constitution, and thus entitled to the free exercise protections of the First Amendment.

The Obama Administration has attempted to evade the SCOTUS ruling by establishing what they have called an “accommodation” for religious institutions and religious ministries.

Under this sham arrangement, religious entities can notify their third party health administrator or the Department of Health and Human Services that they object to the abortion drug mandate on religious grounds.

The religious organization’s health insurer is then required to provide contraceptive and abortion drug coverage to the company’s employees directly “for free.”

Christian colleges and ministries have rightly objected to this “alternative,” which still requires that they facilitate and likely pay for drugs and devices that destroy human life.

“We perform this loving ministry because of our faith, and we cannot possibly choose between our care for the elderly poor and our faith, and we shouldn’t have to,” says Sister Lorraine Marie McGuire, Mother Provincial of the Little Sisters of the Poor.

“All we ask is that our rights not be taken away,” Sr. McGuire continued.  “The government has exempted [others] from what they are now imposing on us.  We just want to keep serving the elderly poor as we have done for 175 years.”

The SCOTUS is consolidating a number of cases in hearing the appeal of the Obamacare mandate.  Other plaintiffs include Priests for Life, two Catholic dioceses, East Texas Baptist University, Southern Nazarene University (SNU), and Geneva College.

“The government has no legitimate basis for forcing faith-based organizations to be involved in providing abortion pills to their employees or students,” says Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Gregory Baylor, who is representing Geneva College and SNU.

“These Christian colleges simply want to abide by the very faith they espouse and teach,” Baylor explains.  “They should not be forced to choose between giving up their fundamental freedoms and paying financial penalties.”

Failure on the part of an employer to comply with the abortion drug mandate can result in fines of $100 per day per employee.  Such fines would bankrupt many nonprofit religious ministries.

Support the work & ministry of Illinois Family Institute!

Written by John Zmirak

The U.S. Supreme Court has announced that it will hear another Obamacare case, this one connected to the Obama administration’s mandate that religious employers help their workers buy contraceptives, including abortifacients such as the “morning after pill.” In this case we can see the stark outlines of the struggles Christians will face over future decades in America. Can we maintain any freedom of action in a country where a massive and growing federal government believes that it has a mandate to impose a godless utilitarian worldview into every nook and cranny of life? Or will we have to settle for a narrow “freedom of worship,” which covers a couple of hours every Sunday?

When Obamacare was proposed, it received broad support from naive religious leaders because it rectified a supposed injustice: unequal access to health care in America. Some, like Chicago’s Archbishop Blaise Cupich, still argue that supporting an egalitarian system of health care is the genuinely pro-life position to take: Since better health care can save lives, if you aren’t willing to do whatever it takes to offer everyone the same level of health care, then you are really not much different from doctors who abort unborn children.

This kind of sloppy thinking smooshes together the intentional murder of unborn children for convenience with the sad but stubborn fact that in a fallen world, man is mortal. There is a radical, absolute difference between directly killing someone, and not diverting all your resources to postponing his death. Otherwise, every time you switch the channel away from some hunger appeal on TV, you might as well have hired a hitman to knock off a neighbor — since either way, people die. To use “pro-life” this way is to make it mean everything and nothing, which is handy if your other political priorities make you lean toward the rabidly pro-choice Democratic party.

Conservative critics, many of them Christians, warned that federalizing health care would pose a grave threat to the independence of employers — including religious employers, such as Hobby Lobby and the Little Sisters of the Poor — to follow their consciences and make their own free decisions on how to spend their own money, time and talents. And the Obama administration’s fierce fight over this subject proves that conservatives were right. The Democrats know that letting religious employers opt out of paying for abortifacients won’t “force” working women into pregnancy. They are fighting on principle, the principle that no citizen’s conscience can be permitted to trump federal policy. If the mandarins in Washington, D.C., decide that a practice is in the best interest of the masses, then the masses will comply. They must be forced to be free.

It was independence of conscience which our country’s founders thought that they were declaring in 1776. They rejected those systems of government which tried to micromanage the religious and moral decisions of their citizens “for their own good,” like the Inquisition’s Spain or Calvin’s Geneva. Our government would not be closing churches because they taught the “wrong” doctrine, nor banning books because they spread “pernicious” ideas that led people astray.

Nor would our government try to iron out all the inequalities that naturally arise among human beings, who freely choose to use their talents wisely or squander them, to save their money or waste it, to run marathons or to smoke cigarettes, to invest in health insurance or face the tender mercies of the public emergency ward (which should offer a basic, minimum level of care to all comers). Instead of viewing its people as hapless children to be coddled and protected from themselves, America’s leaders were supposed to see its citizens as their equals, moral equals who could make their own decisions and face the consequences, like grown-ups. And grown-ups can decide where they want to work, who they want to hire, and what kind of priorities govern the way they run their businesses. They can also decide how to pray, and how to obey their consciences, so long as they do not violate the fundamental rights of others.

Inflate and distort those rights in the name of equality, and you take away that freedom. If everyone has the right to equal health care, why not equal housing? Interchangeable education? Equally well-cooked, nutritious food? Equal amounts of healthy exercise? That all sounds lovely at first blush, very small “c” Christian. Such a vision appeals to college sophomores still living on their parents’ dimes in spaces kept “safe” from pointy, dissenting ideas. But what such a vision yields in practice is a gray world of uniform public hospitals, public schools, mandatory gymnastics and federal cafeterias in government dormitories, where no one’s talents or choices matter since everyone’s outcome is the same. Such a system, created in the name of equality, once dominated half the world. We fought the Cold War to stop it from conquering the rest.

Our new battle is not with overt Marxist tyranny, but with something more subtle — an irreligious government that wants to agglomerate ever more power over our lives in the name of making things fairer and keeping people happier, of smoothing over our differences and soothing our fragile egos. If two men want to get married, then it is the Supreme Court’s job to protect their “dignity” and open the way for them — and the state’s job to punish those florists, caterers, or preachers who won’t cooperate. If an employee wants the abortion pill (and in five years, if the Democrats win you count on it, a sex change operation), then Mt. Zion Baptist or Our Lady of Sorrows will have to pay for it. There is no logical stopping point for this kind of radical secularism and statism. It is an ideology, which means that its appetite only grows, the more that it feeds.

Because our government is by its very nature secular, the larger the sphere of government action, the less freedom there is for Christians — full stop. The only free spaces for conscientious action by believers are those that we carve out by cutting the state down to size. Like kudzu, this invasive species won’t give up, but will keep growing back, trying to smother us. So keep your weed-whacker fueled. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

This article was originally posted at Stream.org.

Is it true that the push for “transgender rights” is simply a compassionate effort to protect a tiny, vulnerable portion of society? Is it an innocent, well-meaning effort that will not adversely affect other Americans? The answer to these questions is decidedly No. While we should be compassionate to those who struggle with gender identity issues, we should beware of the push for “transgender rights.”

To be sure, we already have reason to be concerned about the normalizing of transgender identity in our society, from the almost satirical choice of Bruce Jenner to be Glamor magazine’s Woman of the Year to shocking stories like this one, reported by family activist Linda Harvey:

A 17-year-old Chicago girl recently had healthy breasts amputated because she read about the possibility of becoming ‘transgendered’ and decided this was the answer to her depression and suicidal tendencies — and her parents said, ‘Well, OK.’ So Emily is now called ‘Emmett’ and has just begun hormone therapy to (supposedly) become a male.

Yet there is far more at stake than public perceptions about gender identity and the health and well-being of teenagers who amputate healthy body parts.

We’re talking about downright dangerous legislation that even affects our children in their schools. Under the guise of LGBT non-discrimination bills, an aggressive agenda is being advanced across the country, one that protects LGBT “rights” at the expense of the rights of other citizens, foremost of which are our religious rights.

Thankfully, many American Christians have recognized the very real, gay-activist threat to these freedoms of speech, conscience and religion. But when it comes to transgender issues, most are not as aware of the real issues involved.

One obvious concern is the impact on our privacy, specifically, in public bathrooms and locker rooms. If LGBT activists have their way, public bathrooms and locker rooms would be rendered gender neutral, leading to obvious chaos, confusion and possible danger.

As a woman, would you want to use a gender neutral bathroom? As a father, would you want to send your daughter into one? How about you as a woman having to get undressed in the fitness center’s locker room next to a biological male who identifies as a female? (This is not hypothetical; see here.)

How about that biological male getting undressed in the locker room next to your wife, sir?

Transgender activists want to be able to use the bathroom and locker room of their perceived gender identity, no matter how uncomfortable it would make anyone else, thereby imposing the struggles of less than 1 percent of the population on the other 99 percent.

And, while I do not believe that a man who truly believes he is a woman is going into the bathroom in order to check out the ladies — or worse — I’m quite sure that heterosexual predators have taken advantage of these situations to pose as transgender women in order to have access to unsuspecting women. As reported October 8, the “University of Toronto Dumps Transgender Bathrooms after Peeping Incidents.”

Yes, “The University is temporarily changing its policy on gender-neutral bathrooms after two separate incidents of ‘voyeurism’ were reported on campus September 15 and 19. Male students within the University’s Whitney Hall student residence were caught holding their cellphones over female students’ shower stalls and filming them as they showered.”

What kind of madness is this?

It is the madness of the gender-neutral bathroom craze, a direct result of transgender activism. More seriously still, younger children are being negatively impacted, without parental knowledge or consent. As reported by MassResistance on February 19, 2013, “The ‘transgender agenda’ onslaught is now hitting Massachusetts schoolchildren with full force. What you are about to read is nothing short of madness. But it is happening.”

These charges are then outlined in disturbing detail, with direct citations from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Gender Identity document, including:

• There is a difference between a child’s “assigned sex at birth” and his or her “gender-related identity.”
• All schools must include “gender identity” in policies, handbooks and written materials.
• “A student who says she is a girl and wishes to be regarded that way throughout the school day and throughout every, or almost every, other area of her life, should be respected and treated like a girl. So too with a student who says he is a boy and wishes to be regarded that way throughout the school day and throughout every, or almost every, other area of his life. Such a student should be respected and treated like a boy.”
• Parents can be excluded from the process of a student changing his or her gender identity if the student so desires, meaning that if Jane decides to become Joe at school while hiding this from her parents, she can do so, provided she has a letter from a “parent, health care provider, school staff member familiar with the student (a teacher, guidance counselor or school psychologist, among others), or other family members or friends” verifying that she wants to be treated as a boy.
• The concept of “gender”/biological sex will be removed from all school life.
• There will be mandatory transgender diversity training for children and school staff.
• There will be no tolerance for other students’ discomfort with transgenderism.

As Brian Camenker of MassResistance said to the school board when these changes were being announced, this is “complete lunacy.” But it could well be coming to a school near you if transgender activists succeed.

You have been forewarned.

This article was originally posted at the Stream.org.

Faith Driven Consumer, representing 41 million Christian consumers who spend two trillion dollars annually, has earned wide recognition for rating the faith compatibility of consumer and entertainment brands, as well as serving as a voice for its community. Yesterday, the group announced the first annual Faith Equality Index (FEI)-the only industry benchmark to measure compatibility with Faith Driven Consumers-as well as a rating of the top 7 brands.

Today, the group reveals the 10 brands with the lowest ratings.

“The brands listed today fall far short of earning the business of Faith Driven Consumers, but also have a significant opportunity to get into the game and improve their positions relative to marketplace competitors,” said Chris Stone, Certified Brand Strategist and founder of Faith Driven Consumer. “With two trillion dollars to spend, the newest color of the diversity rainbow is a huge untapped and underserved market-70% of whom are actively looking for a brand home.”

FaithEqualityIndex.com offers a transparent tool to discover the degree to which each brand values Faith Driven Consumers, contrasted against scores the same brands have received from the groups they value most. Each brand rating contains the FEI score alongside:

• The Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index (CEI), rating LGBT equality
• The Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility’s Corporate Inclusion Index (CII), rating Hispanic inclusion
• Black Enterprise’s Best 40 list for African-American diversity
• Diversity Inc.’s Top 50 ranking for diversity

The Faith Equality Index annually rates, on a 100-point scale, how well brands acknowledge Faith Driven Consumers (FDCs) by welcoming, embracing, and celebrating them. The FEI is the benchmark tool FDCs use to make consumer choices-through the lens of their biblical worldview.

According to American Insights, 93% of Faith Driven Consumers see value in a resource that allows them to easily identify the faith compatibility of brands, 86% are more likely to do business with a brand that welcomes them and acknowledges their values, 77% would switch to a more compatible brand, and 70% are actively seeking brands. The FEI establishes the standard by which Corporate America demonstrates its commitment to equality, specifically inclusion of the Faith Driven Consumer market segment.

The 10 Lowest-Rated Companies

• Bank of America 11
• Unilever 11
• DirecTV 14
• Expedia 15
• Nationwide 16
• Pfizer 16
• Microsoft 17
• AT&T 17
• Apple 19
• T-Mobile 19

View the Faith Equality Index here: www.faithequalityindex.com.

Article originally posted on WND.com

In 2012, the fast-food restaurant Chick-fil-A came under intense criticism from homosexual groups and their supporters after CEO Dan Cathy said he was “guilty as charged” for supporting traditional marriage.

Christians overwhelmingly gave their support, filling restaurants with new customers who turned out, not only for the food, but to make a statement.

That may all be about to change.

Chick-fil-A is now listed as a sponsor for Level Ground, a “faith-based LGBT film festival,” reports Christian News Network — a discovery that has sparked an online petition demanding the company clarify its “corporate stance regarding previously stated Christian values on marriage and stewardship.”

According to Level Ground’s website, the group “creates safe space for dialogue about faith, gender, and sexuality through the arts.” The group’s film festival started as a student-run event in 2013. It has since expanded and hosted programming in six cities across the U.S., billing itself as “the world’s first film festival connecting lesbian, gay and transgender sexuality with faith and evangelical Christianity.”

Baptist Press reported participants in Level Ground’s most recent film festival, held Oct. 8-10 in Nashville, Tennessee, included former contemporary Christian artist Jennifer Knapp, who came out as a lesbian in 2005, and Karen Swallow Prior, a Liberty University English professor and research fellow for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. Gracepointe Church, an evangelical church in Franklin, Tennessee, that came out in January in support of same-sex marriage was also a sponsor.

Prior tweeted her appreciation to Chick-fil-A for its support in Nashville.

image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/10/pryor_tweet.jpg

“Outlasting the Gay Revolution” spells out eight principles to help Americans with conservative moral values counter attacks on our freedoms of religion, speech and conscience by homosexual activists

This is not the first indication of a possible Chick-fil-A about-face. In June, a local restaurant donated 200 sandwiches and side dishes to the Iowa City Pride Fest’s picnic. The restaurant’s owner, Adam Donius, agreed to this arrangement, according to local reports, after being approached by event organizers.

“We offered him different ways he could contribute and be a part of our bridge, help us build community,” Iowa City Pride chairwoman Jewell Amos said. “He said he totally believes in building community. So he was like, ‘sure.’”

Likewise, Chick-fil-A franchisees in Southern California are participating in fundraisers for Level Ground.

Chick-fil-A has been under pressure since 2012 when CEO Dan Cathy gave an interview to Baptist Press, saying, “We are very much supporting of the family — the Biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.”

Later in a radio broadcast, Cathy expressed his concern about the growing call to legalize same-sex marriage.

“As it relates to society in general, I think we’re inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage,’” he said. “And I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to try to redefine what marriage is about.”

Christian News Network reached out to Chick-fil-A for comment and explanation from the corporation regarding the reported sponsorship of Level Ground, but received no response. Following the controversies of 2012, the company had announced its “intent … to leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena.”

“For many months now, Chick-fil-A’s corporate giving has been mischaracterized,” the fast-food chain wrote in a separate news release. “Our intent is not to support political or social agendas.”

But now, some Christians see the Chick-fil-A brand re-entering the debate supporting an agenda to distort and infiltrate their faith.

How did America get from “Mayberry” to “gay marriage?” Here’s the explanation, in “A Queer Thing Happened to America: And What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been.”

Geoffrey Grider, Christian blogger at NowTheEndBegins, criticized the Chick-fil-A association with Level Ground, saying the group has “one agenda, the promotion of the ‘Love Gospel,’ … a perverted brand of “christianity” that only focuses on the love of God, and leaves out everything having to do with sin and judgment. The Love Gospel states that because the Bible says that ‘God is love,’ then everything and everyone must be accepted. You have to accept same-sex marriage, transgender, cross-dressing, whatever …”

Grider continued: “Shame on you, Dan Cathy. Christian Americans stood by you and Chick-Fil-A every step of the way back in 2012 when you were persecuted for taking a stand for Jesus Christ. But we will not stand with you on this. No sir. One of my favorite places to get lunch is at one of your restaurants, but that can and will change. Your move.”

Article was originally posted here

Thousands of parents in District 211, the largest high school district in Illinois, should be outraged. And anyone who rightly fears the ravenous appetite of the slavering dumb beast we call the federal government should be equally outraged. The beast’s minions in the laughingly called Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which is a gangrenous section of the cancerous federal Department of Education, has concluded its 2-year investigation of District 211’s actions with regard to a male student who wishes he were a girl. Through its minion the OCR, the Fed-Beast (FEAST), lusting after the bodies and brains of children, has concluded that District 211 has violated federal law.

The very troubled boy—and he is a boy—at the center of this phantasmagorical tale wishes to remain anonymous, so hereafter he will be referred to as “Lola.” Lola has been seeking unrestricted access to the girls’ locker room—yes, you heard that right. Lola—an actual, factual boy, complete, one presumes, with the requisite anatomical parts—wants unrestricted access to the girls’ locker room, which would, of course, include the shower.

Plot summary

What District 211 has already agreed to:

In acts of contortionist-worthy back-bending and misguided charity, the district has agreed to have all school records identify gender-dysphoric students by their new names, identify them as the sex they are not, and refer to them by opposite-sex pronouns (which is to say that the district is lying on school records). In addition, gender-rejecting students are allowed to use opposite-sex bathrooms and are allowed to play on opposite-sex sports teams.

But that’s not all, folks, oh no, that’s not all. According to the Chicago Tribune, the district has also “installed four privacy curtains in unused areas of the locker room and another one around the shower.” This means a boy may, if he wishes, walk through the locker room to the shower area, where presumably girls are showering, to use these private changing areas.

But, even that leaves the beast, its minions, and its allies slavering for more.

What beast-ally John Knight demands:

John Knight, Lola’s ACLU-attorney and FEAST’s ally, vehemently opposes the district’s excessive accommodation of Lola, bleating that requiring Lola to use private dressing areas is unacceptable:

It’s not voluntary, it’s mandatory for her [sic]….It’s one thing to say to all the girls, ‘You can choose if you want some extra privacy,’ but it’s another thing to say, ‘You, and you alone, must use them.’ That sends a pretty strong signal to her [sic] that she’s [sic] not accepted and the district does not see her [sic] as girl.

Word to Knight, neither the “the district” nor any student has a moral obligation to “see her [sic] as a girl,” because he isn’t a girl.

What the beast-minion OCR has decided:

Student A has not only received an unequal opportunity to benefit from the District’s educational program, but has also experienced an ongoing sense of isolation and ostracism throughout her high school enrollment at the school….All students deserve the opportunity to participate equally in school programs and activities—this is a basic civil right….Unfortunately, Township High School District 211 is not following the law because the district continues to deny a female student the right to use the girls’ locker room.

So, now it’s a civil right for boys to use girls’ restrooms, changing areas, and showers.

By “law” the OCR is referring to Title IX, the federal law that prohibits discrimination based on “sex,” which the unelected minions in the OCR have unilaterally decided includes “gender identity” and “gender expression.” When the law was written, “sex” meant objective biological sex, and the law has not changed. The school policy changes that the beast-minion OCR is demanding would require that if gender-rejecting humans with male DNA and penises want to change clothes and shower with girls, they must be allowed to do so—and girls must comply or change in private areas. Not wanting to shower with boys is now seen as an act of bigotry and hatred.

What bothers Lola:

According to the Chicago Tribune, “the student, who plays for the school on a girls’ sports team, said she [sic] broke down in tears after her [sic] coaches reprimanded her [sic] for using the locker room to change. The coach told her [sic] some students felt uncomfortable dressing in front of her [sic].”

Think about what that means. It means Lola—a boy—is offended that girls don’t want to change clothes in front of him. Lola is essentially demanding that everyone accept his delusion that he is in reality a girl.

What Superintendent Daniel Cates rightly and courageously said about this arrogant and preposterous decision:

“The policy that OCR seeks to impose on District 211  is a serious overreach with precedent-setting implications….The students in our schools are teenagers, not adults, and one’s gender is not the same as one’s anatomy….Boys and girls are in separate locker rooms—where there are open changing areas and open shower facilities—for a reason.”

Conclusion

It’s not tax rates or immigration policy or ISIS that most gravely injures and weakens America. It’s the bloodthirsty devouring of the hearts, minds, and bodies of our children; the dismantling of marriage and family; and the erosion of the First Amendment. Deception and depravity are consuming our children, often by nibbles that barely register and at other times by huge chunks. The father of lies conceals his deceit under a cloak of compassion. Christians should not be so easily deceived or so easily cowed.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone,
“it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
~Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll~

Boldly standing for the truth.  Is truth a priority for you?