Written by Megan Basham

In September, Wheaton College dean Ed Stetzer interviewed National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins on his podcast, “Church Leadership” about why Christians who want to obey Christ’s command to love their neighbors should get the Covid vaccine and avoid indulging in misinformation.

For those not familiar with Stetzer, he’s not just a religious liberal arts professor and this wasn’t just another dime-a-dozen pastorly podcast. To name just a few of his past and present titles in the evangelical world, Stetzer is also the executive director of the Billy Graham Center and the editor-in-chief of Outreach media group. He was previously an editor at Christianity Today and an executive director at LifeWay, one of the largest religious publishers in the world. That’s to say nothing of the dozen-plus books on missions and church planting he’s authored.

Which is why, when Stetzer joined a line of renowned pastors and ministry leaders lending their platforms to Obama-appointee Collins, the collaboration was noteworthy.

During their discussion, Collins and Stetzer were hardly shy about the fact that they were asking ministers to act as the administration’s go-between with their congregants. “I want to exhort pastors once again to try to use your credibility with your flock to put forward the public health measures that we know can work,” Collins said. Stetzer replied that he sometimes hears from ministers who don’t feel comfortable preaching about Covid vaccines, and he advises them, in those cases, to simply promote the jab through social media.

“I just tell them, when you get vaccinated, post a picture and say, ‘So thankful I was able to get vaccinated,’” Stetzer said. “People need to see that it is the reasonable view.”

Their conversation also turned to the subject of masking children at school, with Collins noting that Christians, in particular, have been resistant to it. His view was firm—kids should be masked if they want to be in the classroom. To do anything else is to turn schools into super spreaders. Stetzer offered no pushback or follow-up questions based on views from other medical experts. He simply agreed.

The most crucial question Stetzer never asked Collins however, was why convincing church members to get vaccinated or disseminating certain administration talking points should be the business of pastors at all.

Christians and Conspiracy Theories

Stetzer’s efforts to help further the NIH’s preferred coronavirus narratives went beyond simply giving Collins a softball venue to rally pastors to his cause. He ended the podcast by announcing that the Billy Graham Center would be formally partnering with the Biden administration. Together with the NIH and the CDC it would launch a website, coronavirusandthechurch.com, to provide clergy Covid resources they could then convey to their congregations.

Much earlier in the pandemic, as an editor at evangelicalism’s flagship publication, Christianity Today (CT), Stetzer had also penned essays parroting Collins’ arguments on conspiracy theories. Among those he lambasted other believers for entertaining, the hypothesis that the coronavirus had leaked from a Wuhan lab. In a now deleted essay, preserved by Web Archive, Stetzer chided, “If you want to believe that some secret lab created this as a biological weapon, and now everyone is covering that up, I can’t stop you.”

It may seem strange, given the evidence now emerging of NIH-funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan, to hear a church leader instruct Christians to “repent” for the sin of discussing the plausible supposition that the virus had escaped from a Chinese laboratory. This is especially true as it doesn’t take any great level of spiritual discernment — just plain common sense — to look at the fact that Covid first emerged in a city with a virology institute that specializes in novel coronaviruses and realize it wasn’t an explanation that should be set aside too easily. But it appears Stetzer was simply following Collins’ lead.

Only two days before Stetzer published his essay, Collins participated in a livestream event, co-hosted by CT. The outlet introduced him as a “follower of Jesus, who affirms the sanctity of human life” despite the fact that Collins is on record stating he does not definitively believe, as most pro-lifers do, that life begins at conception, and his tenure at NIH has been marked by extreme anti-life, pro-LGBT policies. (More on this later).

But the pro-life Christian framing was sure to win Collins a hearing among an audience with deep religious convictions about the evil of abortion. Many likely felt reassured to hear that a likeminded medical expert was representing them in the administration.

During the panel interview, Collins continued to insist that the lab leak theory wasn’t just unlikely but qualified for the dreaded misinformation label. “If you were trying to design a more dangerous coronavirus,” he said, “you would never have designed this one … So I think one can say with great confidence that in this case the bioterrorist was nature … Humans did not make this one. Nature did.”

It was the same message his subordinate, Dr. Anthony Fauci, had been giving to secular news outlets, but Collins was specifically tapped to carry the message to the faithful. As Time Magazine reported in Feb. 2021, “While Fauci has been medicine’s public face, Collins has been hitting the faith-based circuit…and preaching science to believers.”

The editors, writers, and reporters at Christian organizations didn’t question Collins any more than their mainstream counterparts questioned Fauci.

Certainly The Gospel Coalition, a publication largely written for and by pastors, didn’t probe beyond the “facts” Collins’ offered or consider any conflicts of interest the NIH director might have had before publishing several essays that cited him as almost their lone source of information. As with CT, one article by Gospel Coalition editor Joe Carter linked the reasonable hypothesis that the virus might have been human-made with wilder QAnon fantasies. It then lectured readers that spreading such ideas would damage the church’s witness in the world.

Of course, Stetzer and The Gospel Coalition had no way of knowing at that point that Collins and Fauci had already heard from leading U.S. and British scientists who believed the virus had indeed escaped from a Chinese lab. Or that they believed it might be the product of gain-of-function engineering, possibly with funding from the NIH itself. Nor could they have predicted that emails between Collins and Fauci would later show the pair had a habit of turning to friendly media contacts (including, it seems, Christian media contacts) to discredit and suppress opinions they didn’t like, such as questioning Covid’s origins and the wisdom of masks and lockdowns.

What Stetzer and others did know was that one of the most powerful bureaucrats in the world was calling on evangelical leaders to be “ambassadors for truth.” And they were happy to answer that call.

The question was, just how truthful was Collins’ truth?

Evangelicals of a Feather

Stetzer, CT, and The Gospel Coalition were hardly alone in uncritically lending their sway over rank-and-file evangelicals to Collins. The list of Christian leaders who passed the NIH director their mics to preach messages about getting jabs, wearing masks, and accepting the official line on Covid is as long as it is esteemed.

One of the most noteworthy was the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), an organization funded by churches in the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S.

While a webinar featuring Collins and then-ERLC-head Russell Moore largely centered, again, on the importance of pastors convincing church members to get vaccinated, the discussion also moved on to the topic of masks. With Moore nodding along, Collins held up a basic, over-the-counter cloth square, “This is not a political statement,” he asserted. “This is not an invasion of your personal freedom…This is a life-saving medical device.”

Even in late 2020, the claim was highly debatable among medical experts. As hematologist-oncologist Vinay Prasad wrote in City Journal this month, public health officials like Collins have had a truth problem over the entire course of Covid, but especially when it comes to masks. “The only published cluster randomized trial of community cloth masking during Covid-19,” Prasad reported, “found that…cloth masks were no better than no masks at all.” [emphasis mine].

At this point, even the CDC is backing away from claims that cloth masks are worth much of anything.

Yet none of the Christian leaders platforming Collins evidently felt it was worth exploring a second opinion. And the list of pastors who were willing to take a bureaucrat’s word that matters that could have been left to Christian liberty were instead tests of one’s love for Jesus goes on.

Former megachurch pastor Tim Keller’s joint interview with Collins included a digression where the pair agreed that churches like John MacArthur’s, which continued to meet in-person despite Covid lockdowns, represented the “bad and ugly” of good, bad, and ugly Christian responses to the virus.

During Saddleback Pastor Rick Warren’s special broadcast with Collins on behalf of Health and Human Services, he mentioned that he and Collins first met when both were speakers for the billionaires and heads of state who gather annually in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. They reconnected recently, Warren revealed, at an “off-the-record” meeting between Collins and “key faith leaders.” Warren did not say, but one can make an educated guess as to who convened that meeting and for what purpose, given the striking similarity of Collins’ appearances alongside all these leading Christian lights.

Once again, Warren and Collins spent their interview jointly lamenting the unlovingness of Christians who question the efficacy of masks, specifically framing it as a matter of obedience to Jesus. “Wearing a mask is the great commandment: love your neighbor as yourself,” the best-selling author of “The Purpose-Driven Life” declared, before going on to specifically argue that religious leaders have an obligation to convince religious people to accept the government’s narratives about Covid.

“Let me just say a word to the priests and pastors and rabbis and other faith leaders,” he said. “This is our job, to deal with these conspiracy issues and things like that…One of the responsibilities of faith leaders is to tell people to…trust the science. They’re not going to put out a vaccine that’s going to hurt people.”

Leaving aside for a moment the fact that government does have a record of putting out vaccines that “hurt people,” is it truly the pastor’s job to tell church members to “trust the science?” Is it a pastor’s job to slyly insult other pastors who chose to handle shutdowns differently, as Warren did when he quipped that his “ego doesn’t require” him to “have a live audience to speak to.”

And still the list goes on.

The same week MacArthur’s church was in the news for resisting California Governor Gavin Newsom orders to keep houses of worship closed, Collins participated in an interview with celebrated theologian N.T. Wright.

During a discussion where the NIH director once again trumpeted the efficacy of cloth masks, the pair warned against conspiracies, mocking “disturbing examples” of churches that continued meeting because they thought “the devil can’t get into my church” or “Jesus is my vaccine.” Lest anyone wonder whether Wright experienced some pause over lending his reputation as a deep Christian thinker to Caesar’s agent, the friends finished with a guitar duet.

Even hipster Christian publications like Relevant, whose readers have likely never heard of Collins, still looked to him as the foundation of their Covid reporting.

Throughout all of it, Collins brought the message to the faithful through their preachers and leaders: “God is calling [Christians] to do the right thing.”

And none of those leaders thought to question whether Collins’ “right thing” and God’s “right thing” must necessarily be the same thing.

Why not? As Warren said of Collins during their interview: “He’s a man you can trust.”

A Man You Can Trust

Perhaps the evangelical elites’ willingness to unhesitatingly credit Collins with unimpeachable honesty has something to do with his rather Mr. Rogers-like appearance and gentle demeanor. The establishment media has compared him to “The Simpson’s” character Ned Flanders, noting that he has a tendency to punctuate his soft speech with exclamations of “oh boy!” and “by golly!”

Going by his concrete record, however, he seems like a strange ambassador to spread the government’s Covid messaging to theologically conservative congregations. Other than his proclamations that he is, himself, a believer, the NIH director espouses nearly no public positions that would mark him out as any different from any extreme Left-wing bureaucrat.

He has not only defended experimentation on fetuses obtained by abortion, he has also directed record-level spending toward it. Among the priorities the NIH has funded under Collins — a University of Pittsburgh experiment that involved grafting infant scalps onto lab rats, as well as projects that relied on the harvested organs of aborted, full-term babies. Some doctors have even charged Collins with giving money to research that required extracting kidneys, ureters, and bladders from living infants.

He further has endorsed unrestricted funding of embryonic stem cell research, personally attending President Obama’s signing of an Executive Order to reverse a previous ban on such expenditures. When Nature magazine asked him about the Trump administration’s decision to shut down fetal cell research, Collins made it clear he disagreed, saying, “I think it’s widely known that the NIH tried to protect the continued use of human fetal tissue. But ultimately, the White House decided otherwise. And we had no choice but to stand down.”

Even when directly asked about how genetic testing has led to the increased killing of Down Syndrome babies in the womb, Collins deflected, telling Beliefnet, “I’m troubled [by] the applications of genetics that are currently possible are oftentimes in the prenatal arena…But, of course, in our current society, people are in a circumstance of being able to take advantage of those technologies.”

When it comes to pushing an agenda of racial quotas and partiality based on skin color, Collins is a member of the Left in good standing, speaking fluently of “structural racism” and “equity” rather than equality. He’s put his money (or, rather, taxpayer money) where his mouth is, implementing new policies that require scientists seeking NIH grants to pass diversity, equity, and inclusion tests in order to qualify.

To the most holy of progressive sacred cows — LGBTQ orthodoxy — Collins has been happy to genuflect. Having declared himself an “ally” of the gay and trans movements, he went on to say he “[applauds] the courage and resilience it takes for [LGBTQ] individuals to live openly and authentically” and is “committed to listening, respecting, and supporting [them]” as an “advocate.”

These are not just the empty words of a hapless Christian official saying what he must to survive in a hostile political atmosphere. Collins’ declaration of allyship is deeply reflected in his leadership.

Under his watch, the NIH launched a new initiative to specifically direct funding to “sexual and gender minorities.” On the ground, this has translated to awarding millions in grants to experimental transgender research on minors, like giving opposite-sex hormones to children as young as eight and mastectomies to girls as young as 13. Another project, awarded $8 million in grants, included recruiting teen boys to track their homosexual activities like “condomless anal sex” on an app without their parents’ consent.

Other than his assertions of his personal Christian faith, there is almost no public stance Collins has taken that would mark him out as someone of like mind with the everyday believers to whom he was appealing.

How did Collins overcome all this baggage to become the go-to expert for millions of Christians? With a little help from his friends, who were happy to stand as his character witnesses.

Keller, Warren, Wright, and Stetzer all publicly lauded him as a godly brother.  When presenting Collins to Southern Baptists, Moore gushed over him as the smartest man in a book club he attends that also includes, according to Time Magazine, such luminaries of the “Christiantelligentsia” as The Atlantic’s Pete Wehner and The New York Times’ David Brooks.

In October, even after Collins’ funding of the University of Pittsburgh research had become widely known, Moore continued to burnish his friend’s reputation, saying, “I admire greatly the wisdom, expertise, and, most of all, the Christian humility and grace of Francis Collins.” That same month, influential evangelical pundit David French deemed Collins a “national treasure” and his service in the NIH “faithful.” Former George W. Bush speechwriter and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson struck the most poetic tone in his effusive praise, claiming that Collins possesses a “restless genius [that] is other-centered” and is a “truth-seeker in the best sense.”

Except, apparently, when those others are aborted infants or gender-confused children and when that truth pertains to lab leaks or gain-of-function funding.

Since news began breaking months ago that Collins and Fauci intentionally used their media connections to conspire to suppress the lab-leak theory, none of the individuals or organizations in this story has corrected their records or asked Collins publicly about his previous statements. Nor have they circled back with him to inquire on record about revelations the NIH funded gain-of-function coronavirus research in Wuhan. They also haven’t questioned him on the increasing scientific consensus that cloth masks were never very useful.

The Daily Wire reached out to Stetzer, Keller, Wright, Warren, Moore, and French to ask if they have changed their views on Collins given recent revelations. None responded.

Francis Collins has been an especially successful envoy for the Biden administration, delivering messages to a mostly-Republican Christian populace who would otherwise be reluctant to hear them. In their presentation of Collins’ expertise, these pastors and leaders suggested that questioning his explanations as to the origins of the virus or the efficacy of masks was not simply a point of disagreement but sinful. This was a charge likely to have a great deal of impact on churchgoers who strive to live lives in accordance with godly standards. Perhaps no other argument could’ve been more persuasive to this demographic.

This does not mean these leaders necessarily knew that the information they were conveying to the broader Christian public could be false, but it does highlight the danger religious leaders face when they’re willing to become mouth organs of the government.

What we do know about Collins and his work with Fauci is that they have shown themselves willing to compromise transparency and truth for PR considerations. Thus, everything they have told the public about the vaccines may be accurate and their message a worthy one for Christians. But their credibility no longer carries much weight. It would’ve been better had the evangelical establishment never platformed Collins at all and shipwrecked their own reputations to showcase their lofty connections to him.

While these evangelical leaders were warning about conspiracy theories, Collins was waging a misinformation campaign himself — one these Christian megaphones helped further.

Why they did it is a question only they can answer. Perhaps in their eagerness to promote vaccines, they weren’t willing to offer any pushback to Collins’ other claims. Certainly, the lure of respect in the halls of power has proved too great a siren call for many a man. Or perhaps it was simply that their friend, the NIH director, called on them for a favor. If so, a friend like Collins deserved much, much more scrutiny.

There’s an instructive moment at the end of Warren‘s interview with Collins. The pastor misquotes Proverbs 4, saying, “Get the facts at any price.”

That, of course, is not what the verse says. It says get wisdom at any price. And it was wisdom that was severely lacking when so many pastors and ministry heads recklessly turned over their platforms, influence, and credibility to a government official who had done little to demonstrate he deserved them.

This article was originally published by The Daily Wire, which is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. 

More than two dozen pro-family organizations signed onto an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court to oppose the Biden Administration’s tyrannical vaccine mandate. The brief, filed on Monday, January 3, 2022, urges the Court to protect religious liberty and oppose this sweeping and unchecked mandate, which requires COVID-19 vaccination in employers with 100 or more employees with little to no regard for the religious liberty interests of American citizens.

In November, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) under the Biden Administration issued an unilateral vaccine mandate for the aforementioned employers. It did so without the approval of the U.S. Congress and without even allowing for public comment, which is a key part of the rule-making process. Because the mandate circumvented these critical checks, the mandate “undermines rule-of-law values,” the brief argues, “for it puts important policy decisions in the hands of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats…”

More importantly, by placing this power in the hands of an unelected agency, there is a great threat to religious liberty. “In the last 20 years,” says the brief, “[the U.S. Supreme Court] has repeatedly had to step in to protect religious exercise from agency hostility.” The OSHA vaccine mandate is evidence of this continued hostility, as it did not offer any guidance for religious employers or employees. Rather, it creates a potential religious conflict with its mandate, and then “places responsibility for that conflict in the lap of the employer.”

Putting aside the many strong opinions Americans have on the vaccine issue, this sweeping mandate by OSHA both exceeds the agency’s authority, and backhands religious liberty, a bedrock value of our nation.

IFI Family will keep you informed on any action by the U.S. Supreme Court on this issue.

Christmas is a time of reflection on the gift of Christ and the salvation that He provides through the cross. For generations, Americans have displayed nativity scenes in front of churches and in public settings. Yet, these displays have not gone without opposition. In Illinois, the Satanic Temple of Illinois constructed a display in the Capitol rotunda, near the nativity display. Despite their dark representation, the light of Christ remains on full display and the gospel is proclaimed.

A Christmas nativity scene is a staple in the rotunda and has been erected every year since 2008. The Springfield Nativity Scene Committee (SNSC), which was started as a non-denominational association by Dan T. Zanoza, began the tradition. Illinois was the first state to have a Christmas nativity. Other states have followed our lead, and there are now 32 displays in various states’ capitol buildings.

This year’s nativity scene debuted on November 30^th. Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the Springfield Catholic Diocese, Tom Brejcha, president of the Thomas More Society of Chicago, and Minister Gary Pierce spoke at the dedication ceremony. Springfield’s Majestic Praise and Worship Choir performed Christmas carols.

The U.S. Constitution’s first amendment allows religious displays in public settings as long as the exhibits are temporary and presented by private associations. However, the law also dictates that the state cannot discriminate between groups and must allow access to all private organizations and individuals. As a result, groups such as the Illinois branch of Freedom from Religion have posted displays for several years. These exhibits included a sign in 2019 denouncing all religions as “myth.”

For the last three years, the Satanic Temple of Illinois has placed displays in the rotunda in opposition to the Nativity. In previous years, the group’s display was called “Snaketivity” and represented Eve’s arm with her hand holding an apple and the snake wrapped around her arm. Upon the base of the sculpture appeared the phrase “Knowledge is the Greatest Gift.” Their statement was a deliberate affront to Christians, as Christians know that the greatest gift is Jesus Christ and His redemption on the cross. (See photo to the right.)

This year the Satanists put their display up on December 21st when many Pagans celebrate the winter solstice. The group used a statue on loan from the Satanic Temple in Salem, Massachusetts. Entitled “Baby Baphomet,” this statue of a male infant, human-goat hybrid is a grotesque representation and mocks the infant Christ in the manger. The group’s intent is to create a mockery of Christianity while presenting blasphemous images in the name of “equal access.”

Members from the temple were present for the ceremony. Some were dressed in black, while others wore regular clothing. They circled the display and chanted what can only be described as incantations. One member, who identified himself as “Minister Adam,” spoke to the media, stating, “The Capitol welcomes a diverse range of religions every year to display holiday statues during the holiday season, so we wanted to join in on that.” The group claims that the statue represents “plurality, unity, compassion, and empathy.” Despite the affirming descriptions the group gives to their sculpture and activities, the true nature of their group cannot be ignored.

Beth Rogers, a member of the Springfield Nativity Scene Committee (SNSC), was present when members of the Satanic Temple of Illinois revealed their display. She interviewed the man who identified himself as “Adam and asked if “this religion is about secularism and pluralism?” He answered, “No, it is about Satanism.” She then asked what values represented Satanism. He stated, “compassion, empathy, benevolence, struggle for justice against arbitrary authorities, pluralism and making sure that all religions are represented especially at this time with the state.” Seemingly, the group utilized several of the buzzwords of the Left and the leftist agenda. (See video below.)

The question must be asked, how is mocking Christianity compassionate or empathetic? In what way is the grotesque figure of Baphomet benevolent? The truth is that groups enmeshed in darkness deceive the public and themselves in their attempt to paint an image of equality and peace. In reality, their public display is intended to oppose God, to blaspheme the name of Jesus, and to mock His believers.

This time the Satanists did not have an easy time displaying their hatred. A Catholic organization, the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, was present when the Satanists celebrated their display. The group held up protest signs stating, “Satan has no rights.” Some of the Catholics present recited the rosary during the ceremony. Beth Rogers of the SNSC quoted Scripture declaring the divine nature of Jesus Christ and the triumph He has over Satan.

Rogers questioned Adam about the nature of Satanism and shared her testimony and the gospel. She asked Adam, “if you were to die today where would you want to go? Heaven or Hell?” Adam responded, “I don’t believe in any of that.” He acknowledged Christians’ rights to display the Nativity and have equal access in the capitol, but he quickly discontinued the conversation with Beth. Perhaps he felt convicted by the gospel. Regardless, we should pray for Adam and all the members of the Satanic Temple to be convicted of their sins and to receive Jesus Christ as their savior.

The Nativity and the Satanic display in the Capitol rotunda represent the battle between the light of God and the darkness of Satan. Satan attempts to appear compassionate and benevolent. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 11:14 that “Satan transforms himself into an angel of light.” So, we should not be surprised that his followers would appear to be benevolent and interested in equality and justice. In reality, Satan is using them as agents of deception and destruction. As we read in I Peter 5:8, “Be Sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”

Take ACTION: Pray for those trapped in sin and deception, like Adam and other Satanists. Please, lend your support to groups such as the Springfield Nativity Scene Committee (SNSC) and the Thomas More Society, which underwrites the cost of the SNSC’s display, to ensure that the nativity scene and other religious displays in the capitol’s rotunda will continue. The Nativity crèche will remain on display until January 6th. If possible, visit the capitol to view it and show your support for the work of the SNSC. Today the most important thing we can do is share the Gospel with someone who needs to hear it.

We must make known the words of Jesus recorded in John 8:12;

“I am the light of the world;
He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”

Written by James A. Davids

Shurtleff v. Boston centers around the use of three flagpoles in front of Boston’s City Hall.  Boston made one of these flagpoles temporarily available for civic groups to fly their chosen flag while they used the adjoining plaza. Over the prior decade, the city had allowed almost 300 organizations to fly their chosen flags, even those of other nations.

But when a group that gives speeches on the Judeo-Christian heritage of our country asked to fly the Christian flag while it used the plaza, Boston said “no.”  Why?  Solely because it was “religious.”

The U.S. Supreme Court recently has reiterated that a governmental entity may not treat a religious organization worse than other organizations simply because it is religious. Boston obviously is violating that principle. The city’s excuse for this discrimination is that if it allows the Christian flag to be flown temporarily in front of city hall, people might think that the city was promoting Christianity. Any objective observer, however, would know that the Christian flag was only one of hundreds of flags that the city had allowed to be displayed temporarily by various groups. When the Portuguese flag was flown for a few hours, no reasonable person would have thought Boston was now pledging allegiance to Portugal; similarly, no reasonable person would have thought Boston was establishing Christianity as the city’s preferred religion.

The main significance of the case is that it provides the Court another opportunity to dispense with the suggestion—one much in favor among some—that the Establishment Clause somehow justifies limiting the free exercise of religion.  In our view, which is shared by the nine other organizations that joined this brief, both Religion Clauses are pro-religion, not hostile to it. Boston’s animosity to the Christian flag will hopefully be taken as an opportunity by the Court to shut the book on this improper reading of the U.S. Constitution.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on this case on January 18.

I know we shouldn’t be surprised. We know intuitively and intellectually that the nature of Big Government is tyranny. Yet I was stunned to watch Illinois Democratic State Lawmakers intentionally and aggressively pursue an agenda to diminish the civil rights of its people. Not only did they attack health care conscience rights protections, but they also repealed Illinois’ last major abortion regulation which ensured the rights of parents/guardians to be notified when their minor daughter seeks to have an abortion.

Thankfully, not one Republican state lawmaker voted for these tyrannical proposals.

The second half of the 2021 Veto Session started on Tuesday where the Illinois Senate Executive Committee heard testimony on HB 370, the legislation to repeal the Parental Notice of Abortion Act. A few hours later, it was sent to the Illinois Senate floor, debated and then passed by a vote of 32-22, with 5 senators not voting.

The bill was sent to the Illinois House Executive Committee on Wednesday, where it was debated and sent to the Illinois House floor. The bill was taken up for debate Wednesday evening where it was debated and then passed by a vote a 64-52 with 2 voting present. You can watch and/or listen to the debate here below:

Myles Holmes, IFI Board member and pastor of Revive Church in Collinsville emphatically points out that

“government is not God and has no right to usurp the place of parents in the instruction and direction of their children’s lives. The passage of this onerous bill demonstrates the Marxist control that Democrats want over our families. The first response of Christian families must be to remove their children from government control in the public schools, and the second  is to work hard to remove these politicians in the next election.”

Governor JB Pritzker is expected to sign it into law. According to an article in the Chicago Sun-Times, Pritzker “vowed” to sign the bill saying, “At a time when reproductive rights are under attack across the country, Illinois is protecting those critical reproductive rights.” The article does not explain that reproductive “rights” is literally license to kill pre-born human beings.

Conscience Rights

Immediately preceding their vote to usurp parental rights, the Illinois House of Representative decided to quash conscience rights when they took up and debated SB 1169. This bill diminishes the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act — specifically for COVID-19 remediation. In other words, the sponsors of this amendment intends to curtail the safeguard that existed in state law that allowed citizens to refuse the COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The bill passed the Illinois House by a vote a 64-52 with 2 voting present. UPDATE: Late Thursday night (10/28/2021), the Illinois Senate concurred with the Illinois House and passed this bill by a vote of 31-24.

The chief sponsor of this legislator, State Representatives Robyn Gabel (D-Evanston), repeatedly argued that the original intent of the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act was about abortion, birth control and sterilization and was crafted to protect healthcare professionals. In other words, it was not intended to protect people who want to avoid experimental and/or dubious medical treatments and/or the unmerciful despotism of vaccine mandates.

But the fact is, many who oppose being forced to take the COVID vaccine against their will firmly believe, as do we, that the Health Care Right of Conscience Act protects all citizens. You can read it for yourself.

(745 ILCS 70/5) (from Ch. 111 1/2, par. 5305)
Sec. 5. Discrimination. It shall be unlawful for any person, public or private institution, or public official to discriminate against any person in any manner, including but not limited to, licensing, hiring, promotion, transfer, staff appointment, hospital, managed care entity, or any other privileges, because of such person’s conscientious refusal to receive, obtain, accept, perform, assist, counsel, suggest, recommend, refer or participate in any way in any particular form of health care services contrary to his or her conscience.
(Source: P.A. 90-246, eff. 1-1-98.)

You can watch and/or listen to the debate here below:

Calvin Lindstrom, IFA board member and pastor of Church of Christian Liberty in Arlington Heights, is disgusted with Illinois politics, saying:

I hate to say this, but Illinois is a failed state in terms of political government. We have been dealing with a governor who for over 18 months passes executive orders with very little challenge from other elected officials. On these important matters the legislative branch is useless. And then unfortunately when the legislative branch does decide to pass legislation it follows an agenda rather than listening to the citizens of this state. There was no grass roots movement among citizens of Illinois to remove parental notification when a minor seeks to obtain an abortion. And in the face of massive opposition to changing the law over rights of conscience with respect to health care, our lawmakers again follow an agenda with no real concern for the voices of citizens.

I can speak personally to this when I met my own state representative, Mark Walker, in the state capitol building on Tuesday. I tried to engage him in conversation on Parental Notification for Abortion. I asked him his position and he said something like, “It’s an obvious choice.” I asked, what does that mean. He responded by saying, he was voting for repeal for the safety of women. He then walked off in a very rude manner. Perhaps he had somewhere to go, but his dismissive manner was not appreciated.

This is not a time for weakness or capitulation even though we are sorrowful, frustrated, and righteously angry. The psalm our church is using for this week, Psalm 68, is a good prayer for God’s people to follow. “Let God arise, Let His enemies be scattered; Let those also who hate Him flee before Him.” (Psalm 68:1).

Both of these bills will soon be sent to the Governor’s office for his consideration. While he has publicly declared his support for these feckless bills, you may want to call his office to let him know that many Illinois residents oppose the eradication of the parental notice statute and the amendment to our conscience rights protection law. His phone number in Springfield is (217) 782-6830. His phone number in Chicago is (312) 814-2121.

Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakes in Lakewood, Colorado since 1993, recently published his deeply moving story titled The Cost of My Faith in which he shares what he has experienced over the past nine years.

One afternoon in July 2012, David and Charlie visited Masterpiece Cakes and asked Jack to design a wedding cake for their upcoming “marriage.”

Jack told the two men, “Sorry, guys, I don’t do cakes for same-sex weddings.” He added, “I’ll sell you birthday cakes, shower cakes, cookies, or brownies. I just don’t do cakes for same-sex weddings.”

Twenty seven words, approximately twenty seconds.

This is how nearly ten years of legal challenges, death threats, obscene phone calls, and injustice began for Jack and Debbie Phillips and their family.

This is not the only part of the story that Jack so beautifully shares. This story is not ultimately about Jack’s courage but about God’s sovereign grace and work in the life of this family. Christians in America and around the world need to hear about Jack’s faith and courage.

So, what happened after this brief conversation in July 2012?

After six weeks, Jack received a letter from the Colorado Civil Rights Division charging him with sexual-orientation discrimination. Ten days later, Jack received a second notice citing a second charge. A few months later, he received a third letter stating that the charges were going to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission–a panel of seven unelected gubernatorial appointees. Think of a commission that Joseph Stalin would be proud of and that is what this one was like. The prosecutors and judges would be in the same camp. No Colorado official bothered to investigate the situation from Jack’s perspective.

The Colorado Civil Rights Division moved forward to prosecute Jack. Shortly after, on Dec. 6, 2013, a judge ruled that Jack did not have the freedom to choose the messages he would use his artistic talents to express.

On May 30, 2014, Jack’s case was decided by the commission. It was ruled that Jack had to make all requested cakes, even pornographic ones. If he refused, he had to file a report giving his reasons why. In addition, all of his staff, including his 80-year-old mother at the time, had to undergo mandatory “sensitivity training.”

This perversion of justice forced Jack to stop creating wedding cakes, which was the heart of his business and talent.

Thankfully, Jack was not alone in standing for Jesus Christ. Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has helped Jack throughout his legal battles. They have done a fantastic job in the face of tyranny.

It should be noted that Jack’s views were compared to those of Nazis and his actions to the actions of Nazis during World War II and the Holocaust. This is the kind of perverse reasoning, Christians are increasingly facing.

Jack appealed the ruling of the thugs on the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. His case went to the Court of Appeals where he lost. Then his appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court was rejected. After four years of this fight, his final chance for justice was an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. On July 22, 2016, Jack petitioned the court to hear the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. After nearly one year of waiting, the court agreed to hear the case. The court date was scheduled for December 5, 2017, after more than five years into Jack’s story.

And then amazingly on June 4, 2018, Jack checked the latest news on his case on the SCOTUS blog. He won in a 7-2 decision, with only Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissenting.

You might think this would be the end, but you would be wrong.

The next round of battle was led by Denver attorney, “Autumn” Scardina, a man who pretends to be a woman. Scardina requested a cake that was blue on the outside and pink on the inside, celebrating his so-called transition. Jack and his team declined to make this cake.

On July 20, 2017, Scardina filed a charge with the Colorado Civil Rights Division. That meant that even after his historic victory, Jack enjoyed only about three weeks of “normalcy.”

Jack and ADF wisely went on the offensive in this round on August 13, 2018 and filed a federal lawsuit in the U. S. District Court. Masterpiece Cakeshop Inc v. Elenis charged the members of the commission, along with the state attorney general and governor, of unequal treatment in light of the fact that other bakers were allowed to refuse to make cakes with messages they could not support.

In the midst of this, on October 9, 2018, Jack learned he was going to be prosecuted a second time by the commission.

On January 4, 2019, Jack and his team won a legal victory against the state and its motion to block his federal lawsuit. And then much to his surprise, the state requested a settlement with Jack. Jack was now 2-2 after seven years of litigation.

But was this the end? Sadly, no.

On June 5, 2019, Mr. Scardina filed a new case in Colorado state district court seeking more than $100,000 dollars in penalties and damages against Jack for his refusal to make a cake. Masterpiece III is still in the works.

As of the printing of this book, the case was preparing to go to trial.

Jack is a humble but brave servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. I would encourage you to help him by purchasing a copy of his book and keeping him in your prayers. The fight is not over.

Dr. Jason Valentine of Mobile, Alabama has stated that he will, effective Oct. 1, no longer treat patients unvaccinated for COVID 19.  The Web site, “THINK” attempts to examine the ethics of the good doctor and others who have made similar choices or have indicated they are weary of treating patients who have refused to get the vaccination.

The site’s title “THINK” is rather ironic, as it appears little thought has gone into their evaluation.  It is also revelatory of the deterioration of ethics in America and in the medical profession that such questions are even considered in the first place.  Drawing their ethical standards out of thin air they try to make the case that while denying treatment for patients because you are angry with their choices may be unethical, you only need dig a little deeper to concoct an ethic for such a denial.

Their argument is that a physician may choose which patient has a more reasonable expectation of a good outcome and then deny treatment for those who don’t make the cut.  The assumption made, without support, is that there are fixed number of available beds, medicine, personnel, etc., which forces doctors to ration care and therefore, it is may well be appropriate to refuse treatment for those they deem to be ill due to their own bad choices.  No mention is made of how these facilities might seek greater flexibility so as to handle increased patient-loads when emergencies occur.  The caveat that they should direct the patients to other sources of care does nothing to mitigate the obvious: they believe the unvaccinated are unworthy of care.

Now, we could launch into satire, pointing out that Dr. Valentine has provided a remedy to the nation’s skyrocketing medical costs.  If we have no ethical responsibility to provide treatment to those who have brought on their own medical issues through bad choices then we no longer need to treat smokers, drinkers, obese, drug users or those who refuse to exercise regularly.  People who participate in any sport or dangerous activities like hang gliding or mountain climbing should also expect no medical treatment when things go wrong.  Driving has certain inherent risks, so hospitals should no longer be required to treat accident victims.  After all, these people have made the choice to endanger their lives, so they should not burden care givers with their self-inflicted injuries!

It is not surprising that as America spurns God and Christ we see a progressive deterioration of our historic compassion and mercy.  Christianity is THE religion of mercy!  Scriptures are clear that the foundation of salvation itself is the mercy and grace of God.  In Christ’s self-sacrificing death on the cross, He manifested the epitome of mercy.  While we deserved the wrath of God for our wanton rejection of His Person, will and goodness, Christ stepped into our place, took the wrath upon Himself and bestows love and eternal life upon all who come to Him.  Scriptures note that God is merciful to those who deserve judgment, and He calls us to imitate Him.

In fact, He stated that those who refuse to show mercy will themselves receive no mercy.  James 2:13 states, “judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful.  Mercy triumphs over judgment.” NIV.   And “Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy,” Matt. 5:7.  Mercy, by definition, is giving relief to those who through their own failures have brought disaster upon themselves!

Most Americans hold medical professionals in high regard for a reason.  We have believed that they enter such careers understanding the personal sacrifice which attends the work and are therefore worthy of praise.  If Dr. Valentine’s attitude is characteristic of most in the medical field today, then it may be that they are not so noble after-all and are unworthy of the high regard generally accorded the profession.

I would certainly hope that such a conclusion is unwarranted!

Many Christians and non-Christians misunderstand the relationship between morality and religion. Many mistakenly believe that morality is the same thing as religion and, therefore, mistakenly believe that they should not advocate for policies that reflect their moral beliefs. But morals and religion are not the same, and basing our decisions on public policies, laws, or elections on beliefs that derive from religious convictions does not constitute an unconstitutional establishment of a state religion.

All laws reflect or embody someone’s morality. The moral beliefs of people who hold theistic worldviews are no less valid in the public square than the moral beliefs of those who hold atheistic worldviews—which, of course, are faith-based also. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment was intended to prevent the establishment of a state religion, not to prevent religious beliefs from informing political decisions.

People from diverse faith traditions or no faith could all arrive at the same position on a particular public policy. For example, although Orthodox Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Baptists, and atheists may all oppose abortion because they value human life, the reasons for that valuation of life differ. If there is a secular purpose for the law (e.g., to protect incipient human life), then voting for it does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

The sources of the various parties’ desires to protect incipient life are not the concern of the government. It would be not only absurd but also unethical for the government to try to ascertain the motives and beliefs behind anyone’s opposition to abortion and even more unethical for the government to assert that only those who have no religious faith may vote on abortion laws. Such an assertion would most assuredly violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

The religion clauses of the First Amendment were intended to protect religion from the intrusive power of the state, not the reverse. The Establishment Clause states that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.” That does not mean religious convictions are prohibited from informing political values and decisions. To expect or demand that political decisions be divorced from personal religious beliefs is an untenable, unconscionable breach of the intent of the First Amendment which also includes the oft-neglected Free Exercise Clause which states that Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion.

Legal theorist Michael Perry explains:

“[F]orcing religious arguments to be restated in other terms asks a citizen to ‘bracket’ religious convictions from the rest of her personality, essentially demanding that she split off a part of her self … to bracket [religious convictions] would be to bracket—indeed, to annihilate—herself. And doing that would preclude her—the particular person she is—from engaging in moral discourse with other members of society.”

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

If allowing religious beliefs to shape political decisions represents a violation of the Establishment Clause and an inappropriate commingling of religion and government, then American history is rife with egregiously unconstitutional actions, for religious convictions have impelled some of our most significant social, political, and legal changes including the abolition of slavery, antiwar movements, opposition to capital punishment, and the passage of civil rights legislation.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is replete with references to his Christian faith which informed his belief about the inherent dignity, value, and rights of African Americans, a belief which he lost his life to see enshrined in law. He wrote what would now certainly generate howls of opposition:

How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.  To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.

“Progressives” have no objection to people of faith participating in the democratic process so long as their views comport with “progressive” positions. Liberals never cried foul when Quakers or Catholics opposed the Vietnam war because of their religious convictions, and liberals do not object that Catholic opposition to the death penalty represents a violation of the “separation of church and state”–a phrase not found in the Constitution.

I don’t recall any “progressives” objecting when Senator Rob Portman and former president Barack Obama cited their religious beliefs in defense of their radical shifts in position on homosexual faux-marriage. Portman said,

The overriding message of love and compassion that I take from the Bible, and certainly the Golden Rule, and the fact that I believe we are all created by our maker, that has all influenced me in terms of my change on this issue.

After his flip-flop—er, “evolution” on faux-marriage, Obama, like Portman, cited the Bible as his justification:

When we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know? Treat others the way you’d want to be treated.

In contrast, when conservative people of faith participate in the political process, citing their religion as the source of their judgments, suddenly the Establishment Clause has been violated.

Apparently neither Portman nor Obama think much about what the Bible says about sex, marriage, or repentance. And apparently, neither Portman nor Obama understand the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule does not require Christians to affirm all the desires, beliefs, and actions of all humans. It requires Christians to treat others as they—disciples of Christ—want to be treated as disciples of Christ.

And what should disciples of Christ desire? They should desire to follow God’s teaching more closely every day. They should desire to be willing to die to self and to take up their crosses daily. They should want their brothers and sisters in Christ to hold them accountable for their embrace of sin.

What the government must not do is impose laws exclusively religious in nature like Sharia laws. There should be no laws requiring the observance of any particular religion. No laws governing baptismal practices or Communion. No laws requiring prayer or circumcision. But, for example, people whose faith points to the worth of all people may legitimately work toward enacting laws that oppose capital punishment, euthanasia, or abortion. People whose religious beliefs include pacifism may legitimately work toward preventing or stopping military engagements.

No one is legally, constitutionally, ethically, or morally obligated to divorce their faith from their political decisions.

Richard Neuhaus argues persuasively in his book The Naked Public Square that a polity denuded of religion will be clothed soon enough in some other system that functions as religion by providing “normative ethics.” A democratic republic cannot exist without objective normative ethics that render legitimate the delimitation or circumscription of individual rights.

Historically, the sources of the absolute, transcendent, objective, universal truths that render legitimate our legal system have been “the institutions of religion that make claims of ultimate or transcendent meaning.”

Neuhaus argues that when religion is utterly privatized and eliminated as a “source of transcendence that gives legitimate and juridical direction and form, something else will necessarily fill the void, and that force will be the state.”

If the body politic claims there are no absolutes or delegitimizes religion as an arbiter of right and wrong, or good and evil, then the state will fill the vacuum, relativizing all values, and rendering this relativization absolute.

Lawmaking absent an understanding that there exist moral truths that are objective and universal would represent an illegitimate and hubristic arrogation of power.

What sense does outrage at human rights violations make if we assert there are no universal, transcendent, eternal, objective truths? And if we agree that these truths exist, that they transcend the subjective opinions of any particular individual, then what is their source other than a supernatural, eternal, transcendent being?

There are numerous factors that have resulted in a diminished valuation or recognition of the essential place of a belief in God as the source of transcendent truth in American society and politics, one of which is our remarkable cultural diversity. A healthy respect for the pluralism in America, however, need not and should not degenerate into what retired Campbell University law professor Lynn R. Buzzard describes as a “religion of secularism, excluding religion from participation in the pluralism.”

Princeton University law professor Robert George explains that our cultural degradation has, at least in part, resulted from an “orthodox secularism [that] stands for the strict absolute separation of not only church and state, but also faith and public life.”

Allowing religious institutions and ideas to inform our understanding of right and wrong, which is a necessary precursor to making legislative and juridical decisions, does not represent a violation of the Establishment Clause. Indeed, as Samuel Silver explains, “The government, as defined by the First Amendment and explained by its author James Madison, must remain neutral between various sects of religion, but it is not required to remain neutral between religion and irreligion.”

Prohibiting religiously derived understandings of right and wrong to shape political decisions, would, however, represent a violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Buzzard writes that “Free Exercise will not be construed as merely creating a zone of non-governmental interference or the creation of an exemption from conscience-opposed activity, but the opportunity to be full partners in the pluralism of our day.”

To leftists, the idea of a separation of church and state no longer points to the importance of protecting religious freedom from the intrusive power of the state but instead refers to coercively eradicating theologically orthodox religious expression from the public square. Only secular or theologically heterodox worldviews, which are as shaped by myopic, dogmatic, unproved assumptions as secularists claim theologically orthodox religious worldviews are, will be tolerated in our pretend-tolerant society.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Do-Christians-Regularly-Violate-the-Separation-of-Church-and-State.mp3

The United States was legally founded upon the principle of limited government, under which at the time of the founding, the federal government mandating specific medical treatment to individual citizens would never have been tolerated.

Yet, on September 9^th, Joe Biden issued an executive order [1] that “[e]ach agency shall implement, a program” to “require COVID-19 vaccination for all of its Federal employees.”

Current COVID vaccinations have been rushed to market (the first “full” FDA approval of a COVID vaccine was just weeks ago [2]), with apparently substantial shortcuts such as the overlooking of thousands of adverse events including death [3].

While for political purposes, Biden puffs the universality of his vaccine mandate, his staff has recognized [4], and technically complied with legal limits on his power to do so.

In order to make the order sound as broad as possible, the words “each agency” were used, but understanding that the Executive Branch has no authority over the Legislative or Judicial branches (or businesses and individuals not employed by the Executive Branch), they hide the limitation in a definition:

“Sec. 3.  Definitions.  For the purposes of this order:

     (a)  The term “agency” means an Executive agency as defined in 5 U.S.C. 105”

In typical contract legalese, Biden’s legal staff has also quietly made a disclaimer that such programs be only, “to the extent consistent with applicable law,” which would include the requirement to accommodate a sincerely held religious belief (see “Resources To Fight Tyrannical Vaccine Mandates”).

Interestingly, Biden is the lone wolf in the federal government, as neither the United States Congress, nor the federal Judiciary has yet seen fit to follow suit. Perhaps they understand that the recovery rate for this pandemic is well over 98 percent, and would prefer to avoid the risks of taking the vaccine themselves.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to the offices of the President, U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth and your U.S. Representative to demand that elected officials recognize that American citizens have Constitutionally protected liberties that the Executive Branch cannot usurp.

Moreover, you may want to ask them to stop mandating unproven medical treatments and allow citizens to consult with their own private physicians to decide what course of preventative treatment is best.

IFI supports an individual’s civil right to choose,
as an American, to vaccinate or not.

More ACTION: Please pray for the governing authorities, that they shall follow our law and the law of the Creator upon which it was founded, in all of their actions.

Read more:

Leftist Authoritarians Push Their Values By Any Means Necessary (IFA)

Vaccine Mandate Sticks It To Freedom (Tony Perkins)

The Revolution Will Be Bureaucratized (The Federalist)

Biden’s Divisive COVID-19 Vaccination Plan Favors Coercion Over Persuasion (The Daily Signal)

Footnotes:
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/09/09/executive-order-on-requiring-coronavirus-disease-2019-vaccination-for-federal-employees/

[2] https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-covid-19-vaccine

[3] By contrast, in 1982 Eli Lilly recalled the popular and effective drug, Oraflex, a drug for the pain and inflammation of arthritis based upon 61 deaths in Britain and 11 deaths in the U.S.  As of September 9, 3,867 (of 9,470, or 40%) adverse event reports had been filed with the FDA for deaths of those receiving the single approved vaccination (Pfizer).   https://wonder.cdc.gov/vaers.html 

[4] Unlike the Pritzker administration whose unlawful attempts through “executive orders” to extend his power over private individuals have recently become well-known, and well-challenged by Illinoisans.

Vaccines are not a threat to liberty. However, being forced to submit to taking medicine and/or a medical procedure that is both controversial and troublesome to many of us is.

Vaccine mandates are a violation of the unalienable individual right to liberty, endowed by God our Creator, which is prohibited by the American system of government.

Christian responsibility in America isn’t to follow the wishes, and especially orders, of whomever in a position of authority recommends a particular action.

Christian responsibility in America, to submit to the governing authorities (Romans 13:1), is to: a) vote, speak, and hold office so as to protect and defend the Constitution (i.e., self-govern), and b) follow elected or appointed representatives exercising legitimately enumerated powers which don’t violate State and individual rights or God’s law.

Forcing an individual’s choice of medical treatment, such as mandated COVID vaccination, is about as un-Constitutional and un-American as one can get.  It was the medical experimentation on Jews in Nazi Germany that resulted in the Nuremberg Code [1].

Furthermore, an Illinois law that’s been on the books since the 90’s protects individuals from being forced to accept any health care service that violates their conscience. The relevant section:

(745 ILCS 70/5) (from Ch. 111 1/2, par. 5305)
    Sec. 5. Discrimination. It shall be unlawful for any person, public or private institution, or public official to discriminate against any person in any manner, including but not limited to, licensing, hiring, promotion, transfer, staff appointment, hospital, managed care entity, or any other privileges, because of such person’s conscientious refusal to receive, obtain, accept, perform, assist, counsel, suggest, recommend, refer or participate in any way in any particular form of health care services contrary to his or her conscience.
(Source: P.A. 90-246, eff. 1-1-98.)

Vaccines do not reduce disease spread, immunity does.

A new study out of Israel described by Bloomberg as “the largest real-world analysis comparing natural immunity – gained from an earlier infection – to the protection provided by one of the most potent vaccines currently in use” showed that the vaccinated were 13x as likely to be infected as those who were previously infected, and 27x more likely to be symptomatic. (emphasis added.)

Vaccines are for the purpose of inducing immunity, while reducing the impact of an illness as widespread public immunity develops.  Diseases like flu and COVID aren’t very good candidates for vaccination because with modern treatments, a) they aren’t serious enough for most people not to just conquer the illness on their own, thereby developing natural immunity, and b) viruses tend to mutate faster than we can safely develop new vaccines.

Vaccine-induced immunity, while worthwhile for some, is necessarily inferior to natural immunity, partly because of the measures taken to avoid producing the more serious symptoms of the illness itself.

Current COVID vaccinations have been rushed to market (the first “full” FDA approval of a COVID vaccine was last week [2]), with apparently substantial shortcuts and unusual [3] overlooking of severe adverse events. Never in medical history has a vaccine been developed and approved so quickly.

If you are now convinced, or already were, to defend your liberty (and those of other Americans) against heavy-handed government vaccine promotion, several legal organizations have provided sample letters to employers who are wrongly mandating vaccination in genuflection to current political despots or face losing their job.

Requests for religious accommodation by federal law must be in writing, and Alliance Defending Freedom [4] and other trustworthy sources have developed legally and Biblically sound template religious accommodation request letters below, including the most important objections reflected in law and recent U.S. Supreme Court affirmations of religious liberty.  We highly recommend these as a pattern for drafting such a letter to your employer.

Also provided below is a letter providing your pastor’s agreement to the religious objection, which can be submitted if you wish to further strengthen your religious objection. The America’s Front Line Doctors form provides a list of questions employers should be presented with relating to the assumption of responsibility if an adverse reaction should occur.

Resources:

ADF Sample Employee Request Letter for Religious Exemption to COVID Vaccine

ADF Sample-Pastor-Letter-Supporting-Religious-Accommodation-Request-1

GAB Religious Exemption Letter to Employer

Sample Student Request for Religious Exemption to COVID Vaccine

America’s Front Line Doctors: College Student Form

More templates and resources

We support your individual right to choose, as an American, to vaccinate or not.

Let us pray that God will use this effort to persuade businesses to protect the liberties of their employees against government tyranny rather than supporting it!

Footnotes:

[1] http://www.cirp.org/library/ethics/nuremberg/

[2] https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-covid-19-vaccine

[3] By contrast, in 1982 Eli Lilly recalled the popular and effective drug, Oraflex, a drug for the pain and inflammation of arthritis based upon 61 deaths in Britain and 11 deaths in the U.S.  3,867 (of 9,470, or 40%) adverse event reports have been filed with the FDA for deaths of those receiving the single approved vaccination (Pfizer).   https://wonder.cdc.gov/vaers.html

[4] https://adflegal.org/resources/covid19-vaccine-mandate

Written by Rick Claybrook, Esq.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Hosanna-Tabor (2012) and Our Lady of Guadalupe (2020) embraced what Justice Samuel Alito described as the “so-called ministerial exception,” a doctrine that exempts religious organizations from discrimination laws when dealing with certain employees. Why “so-called”? Because the exemption covers more than just ministers or the top officials of a religious organization. It also covers some teachers in church elementary schools, as the U.S. Supreme Court held in both of those cases. The cutting issues now are how to define other employees who will be covered and who will decide which individuals qualify.

The majority of justices are advancing a loose definition that weighs the employee’s religious duties and functions. But that leads to decisions like the recent one of the highest court in Massachusetts, which, after sifting the evidence, ruled that a social work faculty member of Gordon College, a forthrightly Christian college, was not a “minister.” Yes, the court reasoned, the college required her to integrate a Christian worldview into her teaching and to be a moral exemplar and counselor for her students, but the court could not see what social work had to do with religion.

The problem on the surface is that most state court judges went to secular colleges and “just don’t get it.” The deeper problem is that no secular judge (even U.S. Supreme Court justices) should even be trying to determine whether a faculty member at a Christian college must conform to the college’s statement of faith and practice for the college to best carry out its mission.  That should solely be the decision of the college.

The U.S. Supreme Court in both Hosanna-Tabor and Our Lady of Guadalupe correctly observed that the “ministerial exception” grows out of the larger doctrine of so-called “church autonomy,” so-called because it covers all sincerely religious organizations, not just churches. A key principle of that doctrine is that secular officials have neither the competence nor authority to decide religious questions, and hence, they must keep hands off the internal governance of religious organizations in any way that affects their religious ministry or involves examining religious doctrine.

Since a person employed by an organization is central to its internal governance, it follows that religious organizations must be the ones to decide which of its employees must comply with its faith and conduct principles. This is the position Justice Clarence Thomas took when concurring in both cases, and he was joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch in Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The Massachusetts court worried that if it adopted such a principle, a religious organization could abuse the process by saying that a janitor was protected by the ministerial exception. The implications that motivated the court are all false: religious organizations will not, as a general matter, try to abuse their legal privileges; janitors will not always be outside the proper scope of the exception (they too may offer prayers and provide worship content); and, more broadly, there is a well-accepted check on potential abuse that secular courts can administer.

This check is the requirement that a religious organization’s assertion of who is a “minister” must be “sincere” or “in good faith.” In the case of a janitor, a court could look to see whether the religious organization had consistently imposed faith and practice requirements on those performing the task. Secular courts have applied this limiting principle of good faith for years in cases involving religious claims, and it should be applied in the ministerial exception context as well.

The Illinois Family Institute is filing a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court requesting that they review the Gordon College case and to adopt that rule.

Between now and Labor Day, you can double the impact of your tax deductible donations to IFI!

A group of donors are working with us to offer a $40,000 dollar-for-dollar matching challenge
to help us raise $80,000 for “Rescuing the Children” initiative here in Illinois!

An Illinois Appellate Court just ruled that Hobby Lobby violated the Illinois Human Rights Act by refusing to allow a male employee who masquerades as a woman and goes by the name of “Meggan Renee” Sommerville to use the women’s restroom. If this decision is not appealed and overturned, it will mean the end of sex-separated private spaces in all companies in Illinois, including stores and restaurants.

Mark Thomas Sommerville was hired as the man he is and always will be by Hobby Lobby in 1998. In 2009, he began cross-sex hormone-doping to conceal his biological sex, and in 2010, he began cross-dressing. That same year, he legally changed his name and obtained a falsified driver’s license and Social Security card that wrongly identify his sex as female. He also “formally informed Hobby Lobby of her [sic] transition and her [sic] intent to begin using the women’s bathroom at the store.”

Hobby Lobby, justifiably and wisely, told him he could not use the women’s bathroom that was available to both female employees and female customers. Hobby Lobby, however, foolishly changed Sommerville’s personnel records and benefits information to reflect his “gender identity” rather than his sex.

Despite Hobby Lobby’s restroom directive, the self-absorbed Sommerville continued to use the women’s restrooms which resulted in Sommerville being written up. After “breaking down in tears,” he sashayed over to Illinois’ leftist Human Rights Commission to file a complaint. The Chicago Tribune reported,

The commission found Hobby Lobby violated the Illinois Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on gender identity in both workplaces and places of public accommodation, such as public restrooms. The commission determined that the company owed Sommerville $220,000 in damages, at the time the highest amount ever awarded by the commission for emotional distress.

The three Appellate Court justices, Ann B. Jorgenson, Mary S. Schostok, and Kathryn E. Zenoff, who decided this case are all Republicans. (But are they women? And what is a woman?)

So colossally self-centered is Sommerville that he was willing to forsake his marriage for his masquerade. By choosing an appropriated false identity over his marriage, Sommerville, who self-identifies as a Christian, clearly violated his marriage oath.

Forbes reports that “According to her [sic] lawyer, the decision applies statewide to every transgender individual and every public bathroom.”

The lawyer to whom Forbes refers is homosexual Jacob Meister, who is the founder of an “LGBTQ” advocacy organization. Meister ironically said, “To use the bathroom at work, without being humiliated and frightened … is a fundamental right.” Well then, are biological women entitled to use bathrooms free of the presence of biological men when the presence of those men makes them feel humiliated and frightened?

The Tribune also reported this:

There’s a woman’s restroom at the East Aurora Hobby Lobby where Meggan Sommerville works, but for 10 years, she’s [sic] been barred from using it because she [sic] is transgender. She [sic] has had to punch out of work and cross a parking lot in the rain or snow to access the bathroom at a fast-food restaurant, she [sic] said.

In 2013, Hobby Lobby installed a single occupancy unisex restroom to accommodate Sommerville’s ontological fiction, so he did not have to cross the parking lot in rain or snow for the past eight years.

The ruling by the triumvirate of female GOP justices includes this fanciful, science-denying statement:

Sommerville, who was born in 1969, was designated as male at birth.

Surely, three bright appellate court justices know that babies aren’t “designated” a sex at birth. Surely, even attorneys know enough science to understand that the sex of babies is identified and recorded at birth. And surely, they know that one’s sex never changes.

The triumvirs continued with their non-sense:

In 2007, Sommerville began transitioning from male to female. In 2009, she [sic] disclosed her [sic] female gender identity to some staff at Hobby Lobby

Do chemical and surgical cosmetic alterations really “transition” humans from male to female? If so, can such cosmetic alterations transition other mammals from male to female? Can such cosmetic alterations (e.g., human growth hormone injections, fillers, facelifts, knee lifts, tummy tucks, laser and chemical treatments) transition old humans to young? If not, why not?

The ruling inadvertently admits an inconvenient truth: The justices write that Sommerville felt “embarrassed and humiliated” by having to use the men’s bathroom because he identifies as a woman. If his embarrassment and humiliation when having to use a bathroom with those whose “gender identity” he doesn’t share is justification for the sexual integration of bathrooms, then why isn’t the embarrassment and humiliation of women when having to use a bathroom with those whose sex they don’t share justification for sex-segregated bathrooms?

Since the Illinois Human Rights Act that prohibits discrimination in places of public accommodation specifically exempts private spaces such as restrooms and locker rooms, many wonder how this queer, inequitable ruling came about. It came about via some rhetorical chicanery—some leftist sleight-of-tongue. Here’s what happened when too few were paying attention.

1.) Leftists passed laws that allow men and women to obtain legally falsified drivers’ licenses, birth certificates, and Social Security cards that misidentify their sex.

2.) The Illinois Human Rights Act that bans discrimination based on “sexual orientation,” declared that “sexual orientation” includes “gender identity”—something virtually no state had done and something which “progressives” ordinarily feverishly proclaim is wrong. They ordinarily proclaim that sexual orientation and gender identity are wholly different phenomenon. Any disagreement is considered ignorant, hateful bigotry. So, why did they make this queer conflation? We shall see shortly.

3.) The rights-trampling trio used the falsified drivers’ licenses, birth certificates, and Social Security cards—rather than objective reality—to define “sex.”

Here’s what they wrote:

Hobby Lobby contends that an individual’s “sex”—the status of being male or female—is an immutable condition. However, the plain language of the [Illinois Human Rights] Act does not support this conception. There is simply no basis in the Act for treating the “status” of being male or female as eternally fixed. … Illinois law has explicitly recognized in a variety of ways that gender identity is a primary determinant of a person’s “sex” for legal purposes. … under Illinois law, an individual’s gender identity is an accepted basis for determining that individual’s legal “sex.” … Given the interrelationship between “sex” and gender identity in Illinois law, the record establishes that Sommerville’s sex is unquestionably female.

Hobby Lobby contends that, rather than applying the definition of “sex” provided by the Act, the Commission should have imported a definition of “sex” found in a dictionary, namely: one of two “forms of individuals” that “are distinguished especially on the basis of their reproductive organs and structures.” …  However, it is unnecessary to resort to dictionary definitions where a statute itself defines a term. … Here, the Act provides a clear definition of “sex,” eliminating any need to look further.

While “sex” is not eternally fixed in the Upside Down formerly known as the Land of Lincoln, the Illinois Human Rights Act—our state bible—is.

When the justices say that the Illinois Human Rights Act does not recognize sex as an eternally fixed, immutable condition and when they say that Illinois law recognizes subjective feelings about maleness or femaleness (i.e., “gender identity”) as the determiner of “sex” for “legal purposes,” they have severed laws and the practices required by law from reality.

The justices make clear that objective reality has no bearing on their decision. Henceforth, leftist-constructed, science-denying statutory law determines what “sex” is.  No need to consult science or reality. No need to consult even a dictionary—well, not until our sex-impersonators change dictionaries. Then we will be free to consult them.

This constitutes a despotic attempt to manipulate language in the law to impose “trans”-cultic practices on all of America and results in dogmatic claims like this from “Ethan” Rice, senior attorney at the destructive law firm Lambda Legal:

Meggan Sommerville is a woman, full stop. … Well-established state and federal law says so, but most importantly, Meggan Sommerville says so.

Nope, not a woman, full stop. And saying so isn’t what determines someone is a woman. Science does. And that’s why “Ethan” Rice is a woman–a woman who pretends to be a man and is married to another woman who pretends to be a man. In other words, Rice is a lesbian in a faux-marriage.

The foolish justices wrote this foolishness:

The presence of a transgender person in a bathroom poses no greater inherent risk to privacy or safety than that posed by anyone else who uses the bathroom. …  In arguing that Sommerville’s use of the women’s bathroom will cause a legitimate intrusion upon privacy, Hobby Lobby “ignores the reality of how a transgender [person] uses the bathroom: ‘by entering a stall and closing the door.’” … We will not prioritize fears or discomfort that have no factual basis in the record. “Private biases may be outside the reach of the law, but the law cannot, directly or indirectly, give them effect.”

If the presence of a biological male who wishes he were or falsely believes he is a woman poses no greater inherent risk to the privacy of girls and women than that posed by women who use the bathroom, then why prohibit non-cross-dressing biological males from using women’s bathrooms? How does cross-dressing change women’s feelings about privacy?

Wouldn’t “entering a stall and closing the door” be sufficient to prevent intrusion of a “cisgender” man upon the privacy of women?

Why should the law give effect to the “discomfort” or “private biases” of women who oppose the presence of “cisgender” biological men in their private spaces?

The problem of where cross-dressing humans in cosmetically altered skin costumes engage in bodily functions is a problem of their own creation. The solution must not be demanding that normal girls, boys, women, and men relinquish their privacy to accommodate the disordered desires of persons of the opposite sex.

I hope by now, people realize that it is both foolish and dangerous to capitulate to the “trans” cult ever—not even in seemingly trivial things. Hobby Lobby agreed to change Sommerville’s sex on forms and then that capitulation was used against it by the justices:

[Sommerville’s] status of being female has been recognized not only by the governments of this state and the nation but also by Hobby Lobby itself, all of which have changed their records to acknowledge her [sic] female sex.

I hope by now, people also realize that once the terms “gender identity” and “gender expression” are included in anti-discrimination law, there remains no legal way to maintain any sex-separated private spaces for anyone anywhere. These laws spell the end of all public recognition of sex differences. If cross-dressing men must be able to use women’s restrooms and locker rooms, then so too can “cisgender” men. Why? Because prohibiting “cisgender” men from using women’s spaces while allowing biological men who identify as “transgender” to use women’s spaces would constitute discrimination based on both sex and “gender identity.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Hobby-Lobby-Loses-Right-to-Maintain-Sex-Separate-Bathrooms-80.mp3

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Written by Jorge Gomez

Once upon a time, the LAST place you would expect to find attacks on our constitutional freedoms would be inside the U.S. Military.

However, over the last several months, there’s been an alarming surge of anti-religious bias and censorship against military chaplains and service members who express or live out their religious beliefs.

Hiding behind the guise of combating so-called “extremism,” high-ranking officials in the armed forces are going “woke”—embracing the new culture of political correctness over our nation’s tried-and-true founding principles.

What’s most appalling is that religious service members—whose faith and beliefs inspire them to serve and risk their lives in the first place—are paying the consequences of this disturbing shift towards discrimination and silencing. Wokeism has infiltrated the military to the point of labeling people of faith as “extremists” and even threatening the destruction of their distinguished careers just for peacefully acting in accordance with their religious convictions.

Our armed forces should not be a place for political games. If the radical Left does succeed at turning the military into an experiment of its policy preferences and orthodoxy, the results could be chaotic. It’s possible that we could soon see a day when people of faith in the U.S. Military are forced to choose between their faith or serving their country.

Religious Freedom: Essential to Our Military’s National Defense Mission

A military that’s focused more on promoting popular political ideologies than protecting the fundamental religious liberties of America’s service members could end up doing a disservice to our country’s national security.

Consider how wokeism is a deterrent in recruitment on the front end. Department of Defense (DOD) data show that that nearly seventy percent (70%) of military service members identify as people of faith. But if the woke brigade’s anti-religious agenda gets implemented, it would essentially send a message discouraging a significant portion of religious Americans from volunteering and enlisting to serve.

What’s more, this toxic cancel culture is already taking a toll on men and women currently serving in uniform.

Recall the recent example of First Liberty’s client, Andrew Calvert, a decorated Army Chaplain of sixteen (16) years who recently used his personal social media account to express support for then-existing DOD policy banning those diagnosed with gender dysphoria from serving in the military (in keeping with his religious beliefs).

Because he expressed his own religious point of view on a private page, the Army relieved him of duty and accused him of “illegal discrimination.” These adverse actions would effectively bring Chaplain Calvert’s military career to an end.

Chaplain Calvert is by no means the only one to face career-threatening punishment.

First Liberty clients U.S. Army Chaplain Scott Squires, U.S. Navy Chaplain Wes Modder and U.S. Air Force SMSGT Phillip Monk all had their lifelong careers thrown into jeopardy for exercising their faith.

So, instead of helping the DOD focus on its national defense mission, the woke commissars on the far Left are doing more to distract our military by using the armed forces as a testing ground for social policy experimentation.

And if any service members of faith dare to object or express opposition based on their faith, the Left will promptly bring down the hammer and ruin their reputation, career and their livelihoods.

This is truly a recipe for disaster. America’s external enemies want nothing more than to see us distracted by playing politically correct games rather than focusing on defending our nation against the very real threats to our freedom around the globe.

It is our mission here at First Liberty to protect the freedom of those who protect ours. Our military heroes deserve nothing less.

We have a stellar track record of defending people of faith in the armed forces. Headed by our General Counsel Mike Berry—a former active-duty U.S. Marine Corps officer—First Liberty’s military division has won victory after victory on behalf of service members facing religious hostility.

In fact, of the chaplains we’ve defended in recent years—such as Chaplain Wes Modder, Chaplain Scott Squires and Chaplain Joseph Lawhorn—First Liberty has won every one of their cases to restore their constitutional rights.

The increasing wave of attacks that’s surfacing like never before means we need your financial support like never before to continue deliver victories for America’s military heroes.

Together, with your faithful support, we will save America’s armed forces from the “woke” brigade and preserve the timeless bedrock of religious liberty for future generations.

This article was originally published by FirstLiberty.org.

How can someone as foolish and manipulative as U.S. Representative Marie Newman get elected to Congress? Oh, yeah, she ran in Illinois, the land that once gave the nation Abe Lincoln but now saddles the nation with Dick Durbin, Tammy Duckworth, Jan Schakowsky, Sean Casten, and Brad Schneider.

On March 17 Newman, the anti-life, self-identifying Catholic, spoke in a U.S. Senate hearing in support of the execrable Equality Act, which has nothing to do with Equality and everything to do with advancing an alchemical superstition about the alleged ability of humans to become the opposite sex through desire, cross-dressing, hormone-doping, and mutilating cosmetic surgery.

She did what “progressives” do best. Rather than make a cogent, rational argument based on reason and evidence, she instead tried to manipulate feelings through a personal “narrative.” She told the sad tale of her troubled teenage son who now pretends to be a woman. Unfortunately, since she chose to exploit her son’s problems on the national stage in order to pass legislation that will affect the entire nation, others have a right to respond.

Newman began her exploitative sermonette by making this remarkable claim, the ramifications of which she clearly has not thought through:

The most important thing in life is to be authentic. I think we all understand that. … Imagine if I asked any of you … on the committee today to simply try being someone you absolutely are not … To try to be something that you are not every day is very difficult. Do this for a week, a month, a year and I guarantee you will feel deep depression, great anxiety, and yes, even suicidal.

Newman neglected to define “authentic.” The American Heritage Dictionary defines “authentic” as “conforming to fact and therefore worthy of trust, reliance, and belief.” As such, a man seeking to pass as a woman is the antithesis of authenticity.

Perhaps Newman believes an “authentic” life means living in accordance with deeply held beliefs. If so, then she should understand that for theologically orthodox Christians, Jews, and Muslims living an authentic life precludes treating humans as if they are the sex they are not. In other words, the Equality Act would compel many Americans to live inauthentic lives. It would compel them to participate in a destructive lie.

From the context, however, it appears Newman links authenticity to living a life of bondage to unchosen, powerful, and persistent desires, no matter how disordered, irrational, or delusional. To Newman being “authentic” appears to refer to yielding to desires that impel artificially induced cessation of natural biological processes and surgical mutilation of healthy, properly functioning parts of sexual anatomy.

Applying consistently Newman’s definition of an “authentic” life would mean that those who experience an unchosen, powerful, and persistent desire to be an amputee (i.e., those with Body Integrity Identity Disorder) should be treated as if they are amputees even if they are equipped with fully functioning, healthy limbs.

And those who experience unchosen, powerful, persistent sexual attraction to children should not be prohibited from acting on those desires, for trying to be someone they are not will—Newman guarantees—result in deep depression, great anxiety, and suicidal ideation.

If trying to be “someone you absolutely are not” is life’s greatest evil, should prideful, vain people stop trying to be modest and humble? Should greedy, selfish, narcissistic people stop trying to be generous, unselfish, and empathetic? Should slothful people stop trying to be industrious? Should people consumed by lust yield to their insatiable appetite for pornography and prostitutes?

Newman arrogantly presumed that everyone on the committee understands that “the most important thing in life is to be authentic”—as she understands authenticity. Perhaps, however, some on this U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee—for example, Marsha Blackburn, Vicki Hartzler, or James Lankford—believe an authentic life means living in a way that corresponds to material reality or to Scripture. To many people, living an authentic life requires denying their desires daily.

Continuing in her presumption about what everyone knows, Newman said,

[W]e already have freedom of religion in our Constitution, and this act does not discriminate against religion, as we all know.

Actually, lawmakers in thrall to the “trans” cult stripped the Equality Act of religious protections, and numerous legal scholars have warned that the passage of the Equality Act poses the most significant threat to constitutional protections of the free exercise of religion ever in America’s history. Newman is either outright lying or indefensibly ignorant.

Mary Hasson, graduate of Notre Dame Law School and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., testified at this same hearing. She made clear what Newman tried to obscure:

The Equality Act threatens serious harm to religious believers and religious organizations, stripping away crucial protections afforded under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act—a law enacted in 1993 with overwhelming, bipartisan support. The Equality Act attacks First Amendment rights as well, inserting language that attempts to tip the scales against believers if they assert claims under the First Amendment or Equal Protection.

The Equality Act reaches far beyond Bostock (which pertained to workplace discrimination) by expanding “public accommodations” to permit discrimination claims wherever Americans “gather,” even virtually. The result? Churches, synagogues, temples, faith-based schools, soup kitchens, and shelters for battered women will be subject to government coercion pressuring them to compromise their religious beliefs or risk endless litigation.

Recipients of federal funds, including houses of worship, religious schools and other faith-based organizations are litigation targets under the Equality Act as well—even for something as simple as maintaining sex-segregated bathrooms. This means a Muslim food bank, Catholic homeless shelter, or Christian center for female survivors of domestic violence will be punished for doing good while following their religious teachings.

Similarly, any private school that enrolls students who receive Pell grants or who participate in school lunch programs are subject to the Equality Act’s sex discrimination provisions. Urban Catholic schools, for example, which provide life-changing education to low-income children would face an untenable choice: violate their deeply held religious beliefs about human nature, sexual difference, and marriage or close their doors to students who rely on federal help. Adoption and foster care programs run by religious believers who desire to serve the most vulnerable are also at risk.

Newman sneakily perpetuated the lie that minor children who experience gender dysphoria will commit suicide unless they “transition”—a euphemism for pretending to be the opposite sex. No one can “transition” from one sex to the other. Newman said,

More than five years ago, before she [sic] had transitioned, my daughter [sic], at just 14 years old had experienced deep depression and anxiety. Unable to identify the cause of her [sic] pain, she [sic] told her [sic] parents that the only two solutions she [sic] felt would solve it was either suicide or running away.

Newman’s son may have felt despair—he may have felt the only solutions were suicide or running away—but his feelings do not mean he was born in the wrong body. Many teens feel despair for many reasons. And now it’s becoming increasingly difficult for teens to access counseling that can help them uncover those reasons.

In addition, there is much mis- and dis- information about suicide and gender dysphoric children circulated eagerly by the “trans”-cult and its ideological allies—misinformation/disinformation that has been dispelled by medical experts who lack the cultural imprimatur and reach of “trans”-cultists. Newman and other members of Congress might do less societal harm if they would read more widely.

It appears Newman may have gotten her son tangled up in one of the many “therapeutic” programs that are, in reality, profiteering “trans”-advocacy programs staffed with activists who couldn’t identify mental health if it slapped them upside their indoctrinated noggins:

[W]e enrolled in a local day therapy program. One night after her [sic] program, my daughter [sic] perked up in her [sic] chair at the dinner table, excited to share some news. She [sic] told us she [sic] had figured it out. “Mom, I’m not a boy. I’m a girl, and my name is Evie Newman.” Everything had clicked at that moment. She [sic] had been pretending to be something she wasn’t. She [sic] wasn’t being authentic, and as we all know, it is the hardest thing in the world to pretend every day. It was the happiest day of our lives.

Newman’s son was not pretending to be a boy prior to the night he made his sudden perky announcement. He always was a boy and remains in perpetuity a boy.

Newman argues that the Equality Act will merely afford her son “civil rights” of which he is currently deprived:

Signing the Equality Act into law. … will ensure that Americans like my daughter [sic] are afforded the same civil rights already extended to every other American across the nation. … We’re not asking for anything special or different, equality and nothing more. No American should have to live a lie.

Baloney. Is Newman arguing that her son is currently denied the right to vote, assemble, speak, exercise his religion freely, own a gun, petition the government, or get a fair trial?

The irony is rich in her claim that “No American should have to live a lie” as she argues for a bill that will compel all Americans to live the lie she and her family are choosing to live.

Demanding that a condition constituted by desire and volitional acts that many view as immoral be treated like objective conditions with no behavioral features like, for example, race or biological sex is, indeed, asking for something special and different.

The irony continues in her statement about religion and sports:

I encourage all of you to not weaponize religion and not weaponize red herrings about sports.

Newman absurdly described the desire of theologically orthodox Christians to live authentic Christian lives when they refuse to affirm a deceit as “weaponizing religion.” And she described the desire of authentic girls not to be forced to compete athletically against biological males who impersonate females as a “weaponized red herring.” In Newman’s view, only the affirmation of “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices can be authentic.

Nearing the end of her Oprah-esque testimony, she almost spoke some sense. She began,

Truth is real and should be a part of this [Equality] act.

Then she had to go and ruin it by making yet another patently false claim:

And it is.

Nope, there is no truth about sex, civil rights, or equality in the Equality Act.

It’s astonishing that the most powerful nation in the world has leaders whose ethical philosophy hasn’t advanced beyond that of a heathen adolescent.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to our U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to urge them to oppose the federal Equality Act (H.R. 5) which seeks to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include protections for an individual’s perceived sex, “sexual orientation,” or “gender identity.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/IL-Congressional-Rep.-Newman-s-Dumb-Plea-for-Equality-Act.mp3

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The founding of higher education in America was almost entirely Christian, to the point that, even by 1881, “80 percent of the colleges in the United States were church related and private.” As one Christian author pointed out, “106 of the first 108 colleges were started on the Christian faith. By the close of 1860 there were 246 colleges in America. Seventeen of these were state institutions; almost every other one was founded by Christian denominations or by individuals who avowed a religious purpose.”

Yet an op-ed published in USA Today has called for the NCAA to ban Oral Roberts University because of its biblically-based, Christian standards. What an example of bigotry and intolerance, not to mention an anti-American spirit – and I mean the op-ed, not ORU.

According to sports columnist Hemal Jhaveri, as ORU made a surprising run in the annual NCAA men’s basketball tourney, “the university’s deeply bigoted anti-LGBTQ+ polices can’t and shouldn’t be ignored.”

Put another way, ORU’s Christian views shouldn’t be ignored. Yes, Jhaveri tells us,

“Twice in their student handbook, Oral Roberts specifically prohibits homosexuality. In their student conduct section, under the heading of Personal Behavior, the school expressly condemns homosexuality, mentioning it in the same breath as ‘occult practices.’”

How horrific and unthinkable. A Christian university founded by Oral Roberts holds to Christian values. A Christian university that bases its code of conduct on the Bible holds to biblical values.

Oh, the bigotry. ORU should be banned!

Yes, this is the thought process of Jhaveri, who is so shocked by ORU’s code of conduct that she quotes an entire section verbatim:

Students are expected to maintain the highest standards of integrity, honesty, modesty and morality…Certain behaviors are expressly prohibited in Scripture and therefore should be avoided by members of the University community. They include theft, lying, dishonesty, gossip, slander, backbiting, profanity, vulgarity (including crude language), sexual promiscuity (including adultery, any homosexual behavior, premarital sex), drunkenness, immodesty of dress and occult practices.

How about we quote the words of the apostle Paul directly – the words of the Bible? Paul wrote, “Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10).

Jhaveri’s problem is with Scripture, not with ORU. And Jhaveri, through the vehicle of USA Today, is, by implication, calling for the NCAA to ban any university that honors Scripture.

Think about that for a moment. And think about what the Christian founders of Harvard and Yale and Princeton and a host of other major universities would have felt had they known what would happen to their beloved schools.

One of the original rules of conduct at Harvard stated:

“Let every Student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life.” And, “Every one shall so exercise himself in reading the Scriptures twice a day . . . .”

Now, a sports columnist writing for a national publication wants the NCAA to ban a university from competition because it honors the Scriptures. Is it any wonder that America is so morally and spiritual confused today? When it comes to sexual mores, our fall has been precipitous. Jhaveri writes,

“As a private university and under the banner of fundamentalist Christian beliefs, the school is free to impose whatever standards of behavior they see fit, even if those standards are wildly out of line with modern society and the basic values of human decency. Now, as Oral Roberts gains national attention, the focus shouldn’t just be on their very good men’s basketball team, but on their prejudiced teachings and moral regressiveness.

“That Oral Roberts wants to keep its students tied to toxic notions of fundamentalism that fetishize chastity, abstinence and absurd hemlines is a larger cultural issue that can be debated. What is not up for debate however is their anti-LGBTQ+ stance, which is nothing short of discriminatory and should expressly be condemned by the NCAA.”

In point of fact, USA Today should be ashamed of itself for providing a platform for such bigoted, anti-Christian, Bible-mocking commentary.

The truth is that ORU is not “fetishiz[ing] chastity, abstinence and absurd hemlines.” Rather, in a sea of immorality and promiscuity and immodesty, ORU is simply calling for decency and modesty and integrity.

The university also recognizes that – perish the thought – marriage is the union of a man and a woman. But for Jhaveri, this too, is an example of religious fanaticism. She writes, “as part of their honor code, the university requires students to abide by a pledge saying that they will not engage in ‘homosexual activity,’ and that they will not be united in marriage other ‘than the marriage between one man and one woman.’”

Oh, the horror. A Christian university honoring marriage. Ban them!

Sadly, Jhaveri, with the help of USA Today, is guilty of glorifying anti-Christian, Bible-mocking, morality-twisting bigotry, thereby spreading hatred and narrow-mindedness rather than tolerance and grace. A Christian university should not be penalized for being Christian. As for those who disapprove of those standards, there are hundreds of others schools to attend.

In response, then, to this ill-conceived editorial, Christian schools should be strongly encouraged to reinforce (and/or return to) their Christian roots, ORU should be applauded for standing strong, and USA Today should be challenged for giving place to such Bible-bashing bigotry.

Having said that, let the young people compete and have fun. Jhaveri’s editorial should not be allowed to detract from the moment – or from ORU’s unlikely run so far.

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.