A Question to the Politicians and Media: “Do You Have No Sense of Decency?”

By John Kass

A jury has loudly issued “not guilty” verdicts in the malignant political prosecution of Illinois teenager Kyle Rittenhouse.

And now, what next?

What happens to corporate media—and its phony social justice warrior pundits–who savaged Rittenhouse and used race, when race had nothing to do with the case? They egged on the mob that screamed for the young man’s head on a pike, and now they’re still at it even after the verdict. They got their clicks out of him, and now they expect what, exactly? That we’ll forget how they howled even before the first witness testified?

And what of the politicians, from President Joe Biden on down, who falsely and maliciously defamed the  teenager as a “white supremacist” before trial, though no such evidence was ever presented. Biden and company fed him to the mob, stepping on justice for votes.

Can you sue a president for libel, even a witless meat puppet like The Big Guy?

The thing is tragic. Two men are dead. I don’t consider him a hero. He’ll carry the stain of this forever. The kid should never have been there that night with his gun in the chaos of the riots in Kenosha. But he was there, as the governor and mayor pulled law enforcement back, leaving Kenosha’s streets to the violent.

And in America, for now at least,  you can still defend your life when a mob tries to take it from you.

At least the jury got it right. They heard the evidence. They considered the testimony and acquitted Rittenhouse. He shot three men in self defense, one who tried to bash his head in with a skateboard, one who tried to take his gun, and the third who pointed a gun at him. Two of them died. And again, the mayor and the governor had withdrawn law enforcement, turning the streets over to the rioters who burned buildings that some fools in media called a “mostly peaceful” protest.

The prosecution revealed itself to be purely political, rushing to charge Rittenhouse before all the facts were in.  And they failed.

If they’d succeeded, the kid who cried on the witness stand could have been sentenced to life in prison. How would he survive inside, a kid like that? He wouldn’t. A kid like that wouldn’t survive five minutes.  The media that twisted and shaped the facts to suit a political narrative, and politicians who benefitted from narrative support would have moved on with their lives. And as they heaped glory on themselves, Rittenhouse, if put in a state prison, would be dead or wish he were dead every minute of his life.

So he’s free. I wonder if Biden and his Democrat and media allies ever read “The Ox-Bow Incident” that was made into a great classic movie in the early 1940s. It is about a posse that becomes righteous and lynches three innocent men. I suspect a few politicians and media read it, at least those who read more than their own Twitter feeds. And I’ve got to believe Biden read it, and watched the movie. He certainly was lucid enough back then to have handled it. Now, I don’t think so.

For years “The Ox-Bow Incident” was a favorite of liberal teachers and professors, who had lived through the McCarthy era and the “Red Scare,” when it was the political right making accusations and stoking anger through media. Sen. McCarthy’s political reign of terror ended as he hunted for Communists in the U.S. Army. Joseph N. Welch, the lawyer for the Army, confronted McCarthy at a public hearing with this withering question:

“Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

Things change and parallels are conveniently forgotten or ignored. Because now it is the left that goes out hunting for witches in the Armed Forces. Democrats shut their mouths and don’t dare ask the inquisitors if they’ve lost their sense of decency. Careerist generals, their fingers in the wind, have eagerly gone woke reading “White Fragility.”

Now that the jury has cleared Rittenhouse, mealy mouths pipe up and ask us to move past it all. I don’t want us to move past it. And I make a simple request: Don’t forget what politicians, prosecutors and media have done.

If  you do want to forget what happened, to make things easier for yourself, at least be honest about the cost of forgetting. Forget, move past it, and you’re inviting the next mob to grab blind Lady Justice by the hair, strip off her blindfold, and bend her to their political will. And if their politics aren’t your politics, you will pay for it. That’s where America is now, lusting for tribal justice, not blind justice.

Imagine your son or daughter in the middle of it all, or yourself or your friends, your neighbors professing innocence and being drowned out by the political barking dogs. In this case, the Kenosha jury stood up, and refused to cave to pressure. They were deliberate. They were careful. They saw that prosecutorial overreach had little in common to the reality they’d lived through in Kenosha. But the next time? Who can say? Is that what you want for America?

If you don’t want to forget, all you have to do is Google your favorite social justice warrior pundit and search out what they said and wrote in August of 2020, when the streets of Kenosha were on fire.

I’d recommend that you also read Miranda Devine of The New York Post. She recently compiled a list of ten debunked lies that were told about Rittenhouse. Or read Bari Weis on Substack, “The Media’s Verdict on Kyle Rittenhouse: Why so many got this story so wrong.”

The media got it wrong the way they’ve gotten other stories wrong, and for the same reasons, from media attacks on innocent Covington, Ky. teenager Nicholas Sandman, or media stubbornly pushing the false “Russia Collusion” narrative that is now completely falling apart. Will the Washington Post and the New York Times return their Pulitzer Prizes that were based on the Russia Hoax lie? They should, immediately. But they won’t.

In a recent column, I wrote that corporate, legacy media, which gave into hyper partisanship years ago, has rotted from the roots. Woke newsrooms push ideology over reason.  As Weis and I and many others who once worked in woke mainstream media newsrooms know all too well, woe to those who disagree.

In the current mainstream media world, with American cities under siege, editors outlawed the use of the word “riot.” A riot could not be called a riot lest some be offended. Other Newspeak fig leaves are offered up instead, and the people see how reality is distorted, and the disconnect added to the rot and decay of corporate media. If there is anything positive out of this, it’s that thinking Americans are abandoning the product of woke newsrooms to seek out independent media sites instead.

Weis begins her piece on Rittenhouse and the media this way:

“Here is what I thought was true about Kyle Rittenhouse during the last days of August 2020 based on mainstream media accounts: The 17-year-old was a racist vigilante. I thought he drove across state lines, to Kenosha, Wisc., with an illegally acquired semi-automatic rifle to a town to which he had no connection. I thought he went there because he knew there were Black Lives Matter protests and he wanted to start a fight. And I thought that by the end of the evening of August 25, 2020, he had done just that, killing two peaceful protestors and injuring a third.

“It turns out that account was mostly wrong.”

She argues her misperception wasn’t because of  a “disinformation campaign waged by Reddit trolls or anonymous Twitter accounts,” but pushed by mainstream media and the politicians to support a political narrative.

It was a case that should never have been brought, but was brought, because of politics. Kenosha’s streets were on fire after the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man who had allegedly sexually assaulted a woman and pulled a knife on police officers when he was shot. The BLM riots began, Biden and other Democrats rushed to curry favor with the Blake family because they had elections to win. Democrats had to blame someone for the chaos in Kenosha, and Rittenhouse was fitted for the jacket. All of it was political.

The police officer who shot Blake was exonerated. Blake was Black, but Rittenhouse and the three men he shot were white. Race wasn’t an issue in Rittenhouse, though media tried to make it so.

The prosecution saw its case fall apart when prosecution witnesses testified, including the one who admitted to pointing a loaded gun at Rittenhouse. The video shows clearly what happened. The mob attacking, trying to kill him and grab his gun.

The jury deliberated carefully for days, with great political pressure upon them. Even the jury bus was allegedly being stalked by MSNBC news. This begged the question of jury intimidation. And with all that pressure on them, the jury came to a just and responsible verdict:

Not guilty on all counts.

You might think with all the political and media lies being told, with media screeching and MSNBC resident racist and homophobe Joy Reid yammering on and on about “white tears,” that it would be difficult to sort out a truth.

Not “the” truth, but “a” truth, what those who wanted Rittenhouse to be found guilty believe as in an article of faith. It came from the lips of James Kraus, one of the prosecutors in closing argument.

He said that Rittenhouse shouldn’t have defended himself. That he had no right to defend himself. Instead,  he should have taken the beating, because, well, everybody takes a beating.

“Where is it that, when you get a couple scrapes? Everybody takes a beating sometimes, right?” Kraus told the jury. “Sometimes you get in a scuffle, and maybe you do get hurt a little bit. That doesn’t mean you get to start plugging people with your full metal jacket AR-15 rounds.”

Everybody takes a beating?

The Rittenhouse jury doesn’t live in the Washington Media Complex bubble. They live in Wisconsin, in Kenosha. They lived through the Kenosha riots. They’d seen what had happened to their town. They’d already gone through emotional and psychological beatings. And here was a prosecutor telling them that everyone should relax and take a beating.

Kraus didn’t sound like a prosecutor who just seen his own case blow up. Rather, he was like Henry Hill, the character in “Goodfellas” played by Ray Liotta, the gangster who also said “Everybody takes a beating.”

Did the prosecution prepare for trial by watching gangster movies?

If you were on the street in a riot, would you take a beating, just so a prosecutor wouldn’t get upset? Would you just lie down and let them put the boots to you? I don’t think that would be a good idea. The jury didn’t think it was a good idea, either.

We’re Americans. We don’t kneel and take beatings.

What the American people want is fairness. Yes, we need the law, but we need what’s behind the law, too.  In “The Ox-Bow Incident” movie, the cowboy, Gil, played by liberal icon Henry Fonda, reads a letter from one of the innocent men that the self-righteous posse has just lynched.

It is a letter from the dead man to his wife:

“Law is a lot more than words you put in a book, or judges or lawyers or sheriffs you hire to carry it out. It’s everything people ever have found out about justice and what’s right and wrong. It’s the very conscience of humanity. There can’t be any such thing as civilization unless people have a conscience, because if people touch God anywhere, where is it except through their conscience?”

Is the media stoking rage and racial resentment a civilized act? No. It is an act of force, an exercise in power. There is no restraint in an activated mob. There is no conscience to it. You can’t ride the mob as if it were a horse. Once it’s lathered up, there is no directing it.

Biden and the Democrats won’t apologize to Kyle Rittenhouse. Corporate media won’t apologize. And if you asked any of them that Joseph Welch question: “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” they’d look at you as if you were ill or from another planet.

But I’ll ask it again: Have you no sense of decency?

What happened to Kyle Rittenhouse wasn’t decent. There is no decency in power politics and he was the target. There is no conscience in power politics. And no restraint.

And that’s what all this was all about. Power politics.

Courtesy of https://johnkassnews.com/who-will-apologize-to-kyle-rittenhouse-biden-the-media-dont-hold-your-breath/?fbclid=IwAR1YZ0VhXx2Kugipm5bKIPYSw5cSfBf4D0vVxw7cP6tq4eEmM2zH8dV9xS8

Virginia Values Act Makes Everyone Who Disagrees a Bigot

A federal court in Virginia last week held a hearing on a wedding photographer’s lawsuit challenging a state law that he says requires him to participate in same-sex weddings against his personal Christian beliefs.

Lawyers representing photographer Bob Updegrove asked the court Friday to stop enforcing the law while his lawsuit against Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring proceeds.

In a public statement, Jonathan Scruggs, one of Updegrove’s lawyers with Alliance Defending Freedom who argued on his behalf, said:

Photographers, like all other Americans, should be free to peacefully live, work, and create art that’s consistent with their deeply held beliefs—without the fear of government punishment. Because of the state’s interpretation of its law, photographers like Bob face an impossible choice: Violate the law and risk bankruptcy, promote views against their faith, or close down.

Virginia has a long and important history of protecting constitutional freedoms, and this kind of government hostility toward people of faith has no place in a free society.

The Left has declared war on our culture, but we should never back down, nor compromise our principles. Learn more now >>

The case, Updegrove v. Herring, involves the Virginia Values Act, which went into effect last July 1. Essentially, the law expanded the Virginia Human Rights Act so that it prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in areas such as employment and housing.

The photographer’s lawyers with Alliance Defending Freedom say that under the new law, he could be “threatened with court orders forcing him to create artwork contrary to his faith, damages, attorneys’ fees, fines up to $50,000 initially and $100,000 per additional violation.”

As the owner of the studio Bob Updegrove Photography, they argue, he creates art consistent with his convictions, and he does not agree with same-sex marriage.

In his pre-enforcement lawsuit, Updegrove proactively claims that the Virginia law violates his rights to free speech and free exercise of religion because he faces penalties just for refusing to photograph a same-sex wedding.

It might be tempting for some to malign people such as Updegrove, not only for holding to his belief in traditional marriage but for suing Virginia’s attorney general over a law that punishes that belief.

But let’s first look closer at the law in Virginia, the first southern state to add sexual orientation and gender identity to existing nondiscrimination law— although it’s not clear how necessary the new law was, since Bostock v. Clayton County was decided just a month before it went into effect.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock ensured that it would be illegal—a violation of Title VII’s discrimination law—to fire an employee based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.

Here’s the problem with Virginia’s law: Few Americans would agree it’s OK to discriminate against anyone for any reason, including sexual orientation or gender identity. The problem with expanding these protections, as Bostock did, is that the law is somewhat vague and tends to err on the side of offering protections to the LGBTQ community more than those on the flip side of these issues—such as Bob Updegrove.

I’m often told that it’s silly to want men and women such as Updegrove, who espouse traditional Christian beliefs, to be protected. Those beliefs clearly are already in the protected majority and those beliefs are common and, some would say, antiquated. Critics argue that protection is needed for marginalized Americans, such as gays and lesbians who want to get married and transgender individuals who just want to keep their jobs.

That used to be true, perhaps. But the legal protections already are being used against the very majority whose beliefs were thought to be too traditional to worry about anyway.

As Heritage Foundation scholar Ryan T. Anderson predicted in a 2015 report on laws on sexual orientation and gender identity, or SOGI:

These laws tend to be vague and overly broad, lacking clear definitions of what discrimination on the basis of ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ mean and what conduct can and cannot be penalized. These laws would impose ruinous liability on innocent citizens for alleged ‘discrimination’ based on subjective and unverifiable identities, not on objective traits.

SOGI laws would further increase government interference in markets, potentially discouraging economic growth and job creation. With regard to ‘gender identity’ and ‘transgender’ teachers, students, and employees, SOGI laws could require education and employment policies concerning schoolhouse, locker room, and workplace conditions that undermine common sense.

The Virginia Values Act challenged by Updegrove is one such example: It might mean well, but the law is worded in such a way that goes far beyond offering protections—rather it establishes entitlement for affected citizens.

Now, under the law, simply refusing to honor a gay marriage can be an act of discrimination and punitive measures could follow. But what about Updegrove’s own sincerely held beliefs? Those don’t matter.

Laws on sexual orientation and gender identity, in an effort to ensure equality across the board and make sure no gay or transgender person is left behind, are beginning to show their true colors. Such laws are penalizing those who fail to adapt to a certain worldview or change their beliefs to align with others.

Now, it’s not enough to have a gay man and a Christian pastor in the same church. The pastor must perform the gay man’s wedding or he’s a bigot. It’s not enough to hire a woman to be a professor of gender studies at a private college. If she decides halfway through her tenure to be a man and be called “sir,” doing anything but that is discriminatory.

So far, Updegrove hasn’t been faced with deciding whether to turn down an opportunity to photograph a gay couple’s wedding—as Christian baker Jack Phillips did in declining to make a custom cake for a gay couple in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. But Updegrove shouldn’t have to worry that if he did so, he’d lose his business or be forced to pay a hefty fine.

In the United States, citizens of a certain sexual orientation or gender identity must be able to live peacefully with those who espouse traditional Christian beliefs without one labeling the other a bigot.

Unfortunately, the Virginia Values Act elevates protections to another level, criminalizing anyone who dares to hold different beliefs and practices. An America that calls traditional religious beliefs bigotry and Christian practices discrimination is an America that seeks a grievance in every wedding chapel and with every Christian employer.

Laws such as the Virginia Values Act don’t help.

Courtesy of https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/01/21/virginia-values-act-makes-everyone-who-disagrees-a-bigot/?inf_contact_key=e99c15de1ac3f43c44c21bcfd98a1919cc0558ed5d4c28cbfab114022b1ec50d

Woke Elementary

An elementary school in Cupertino, California—a Silicon Valley community with a median home price of $2.3 million—recently forced a class of third-graders to deconstruct their racial identities, then rank themselves according to their “power and privilege.” 

Based on whistleblower documents and parents familiar with the session, a third-grade teacher at R.I. Meyerholz Elementary School began the lesson on “social identities” during a math class. The teacher asked all students to create an “identity map,” listing their race, class, gender, religion, family structure, and other characteristics. The teacher explained that the students live in a “dominant culture” of “white, middle class, cisgender, educated, able-bodied, Christian, English speaker[s],” who, according to the lesson, “created and maintained” this culture in order “to hold power and stay in power.”

Next, reading from This Book Is Antiracist, the students learned that “those with privilege have power over others” and that “folx who do not benefit from their social identities, who are in the subordinate culture, have little to no privilege and power.” As an example, the reading states that “a white, cisgender man, who is able-bodied, heterosexual, considered handsome and speaks English has more privilege than a Black transgender woman.” In some cases, because of the principle of intersectionality, “there are parts of us that hold some power and other parts that are oppressed,” even within a single individual.

Following this discussion, the teacher had the students deconstruct their own intersectional identities and “circle the identities that hold power and privilege” on their identity maps, ranking their traits according to the hierarchy. In a related assignment, the students were asked to write short essays describing which aspects of their identities “hold power and privilege” and which do not. The students were expected to produce “at least one full page of writing.” As an example, the presentation included a short paragraph about transgenderism and nonbinary sexuality.

The lesson caused an immediate uproar among Meyerholz Elementary parents. “We were shocked,” said one parent, who agreed to speak with me on condition of anonymity. “They were basically teaching racism to my eight-year-old.” This parent, who is Asian-American, rallied a group of a half dozen families to protest the school’s intersectionality curriculum. The group met with the school principal and demanded an end to the racially divisive instruction. After a tense meeting, the administration agreed to suspend the program. (When reached for comment, Jenn Lashier, the principal of Meyerholz Elementary, said that the training was not part of the “formal curricula, but the process of daily learning facilitated by a certified teacher.”)

The irony is that, despite being 94 percent nonwhite, Meyerholz Elementary is one of the most privileged schools in America. The median household income in Cupertino is $172,000, and nearly 80 percent of residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher. At the school, where the majority of families are Asian-American, the students have exceptionally high rates of academic achievement and the school consistently ranks in the top 1 percent of all elementary schools statewide. In short, nobody at Meyerholz is oppressed, and the school’s high-achieving parents know that teaching intersectionality instead of math is a waste of time—and potentially dangerous.

One parent told me that critical race theory was reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. “[It divides society between] the oppressor and the oppressed, and since these identities are inborn characteristics people cannot change, the only way to change it is via violent revolution,” the parent said. “Growing up in China, I had learned it many times. The outcome is the family will be ripped apart; husband hates wife, children hate parents. I think it is already happening here.”

The small fight at Meyerholz reflects a larger development: for the first time, Asian-Americans on the West Coast have become politically mobilized. In 2019, Asian-Americans ran a successful initiative campaign against affirmative action in Washington State; in 2020, Asian-Americans ran a similar campaign in California, winning by an astonishing 57 percent to 43 percent margin. In both cases, they defended the principles of meritocracy, individual rights, and equality under the law—and roundly defeated a super-coalition of the states’ progressive politicians, activists, universities, media, and corporations.

The stakes are high for the Asian-American community. For progressives insisting on the narrative of “white supremacy” and “systemic racism,” Asian-Americans are the “inconvenient minority”: they significantly outperform all other racial groups, including whites, in terms of academic achievement, college admissions, household income, family stability, and other key measures. Affirmative action and other critical race theory-based programs would devastate their admissions to universities and harm their futures.

At Meyerholz Elementary, the Asian-American families are on high alert for critical race theory in the classroom. Since their initial victory, they have begun to consider campaigning against the school board. “We think some of our school board members are [critical race theory] activists and they must go,” said one parent. The capture of our public institutions by progressives obsessed by race and privilege deserves opposition at every level. The parents of Cupertino have joined the fight.

Originally Published at City Journal.

Courtesy of https://christopherrufo.com/woke-elementary/

Starbucks fired Christian employee for refusal to wear LGBT ‘Pride’ T-shirt, lawsuit claims

A Christian woman in New Jersey has filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against Starbucks, claiming the coffee chain fired her after she refused to wear an LGBT “Pride” T-shirt because of her religious beliefs.

Betsy Fresse began her employment with Starbucks by working as a barista at a store in Hoboken. Her manager at the time was aware of her Christian faith and was accommodating, but she was later transferred to work at a Starbucks in Glen Ridge, according to NBC News.

She claims that in June 2019, she saw a box of Starbucks Pride T-shirts on the floor in the store manager’s office during a meeting, so she asked if she, too, would be asked to wear one, and the manager said she wouldn’t have to, according to the lawsuit filed on Nov. 19 in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.

However, a district manager told her a month later that her employment had been terminated, according to the lawsuit filed on Nov. 19, the New York Post reported. 

“A notice of separation from Starbucks cited in the filing said Fresse was fired for violating the company’s ‘core values,’ and that she said her colleagues ‘need Jesus’ when she was given the T-shirt” but refused to wear it, the NY Post said. 

Fresse’s lawsuit alleges she was unlawfully discriminated against. She’s seeking backpay, punitive damages and payment of her attorneys’ fees as well as a permanent injunction preventing Starbucks from “failing to accommodate the sincerely held religious beliefs” of employees.

A Starbucks spokesman was quoted as saying that Fresse’s claims are “without merit” and the company would counter her claims in court. 

“We are very aware of the claims by Mrs. Fresse, which are without merit and we are fully prepared to present our case in court,” a Starbucks spokesman told the NY Post. “Specific to our dress code, other than our green apron, no part of our dress code requires partners to wear any approved items that they have not personally selected.”

Fresse’s lawsuit, however, states that before her termination, Starbucks’ ethics and compliance helpline contacted her in response to her request to be exempt from wearing the Pride T-shirt. At that time, she explained her opposition to wearing the LGBT T-shirt was “because her religious beliefs prevented her from doing so.” 

Weeks later, on Aug. 22, 2019, she was told she was being terminated because “her comportment was not in compliance with Starbucks’ core values.”

The suit adds that Starbucks mandating that Fresse wear an LGBT Pride T-shirt as a requirement of her employment “would be tantamount to forced speech and inaccurately show her advocacy of a lifestyle in direct contradiction to her religious beliefs.”

Fresse also said in the lawsuit that “all people need Jesus” and that Christians are called “to express in word and deeds Christ’s love for everyone.”

Courtesy of https://www.christianpost.com/news/starbucks-fired-christian-worker-for-refusal-to-wear-lgbt-pride-t-shirt-lawsuit-claims.html

Supreme Court Blocks Andrew Cuomo’s Lockdown Orders Limiting Churches to 10 People

In a huge late-night victory for the religious liberty of Christians and Americans of faith nationwide, the Supreme Court prohibited Governor Andrew Cuomo from enforcing his lockdown order limiting the number of people who can attend church or synagogue at any given time.

Just before midnight on the eve of Thanksgiving the Supreme Court stopped Governor Cuomo from imposing discriminatory 10- and 25-person caps on synagogues and churches. The Court agreed that the Governor’s “rules can be viewed as targeting the ‘ultra-Orthodox [Jewish] community,’” and violate the First Amendment by treating religious exercise worse than secular activities.

The justices split 5-4 with new Justice Amy Coney Barrett in the majority in favor of religious freedoms without government interference — making her first Supreme Court vote a huge one.

Earlier this year, when Barrett’s liberal predecessor, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was still on the court, the justices left in place onerous lockdown provisions in Nevada.

In its opinion, the Supreme Court said that, “…even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten.  The restrictions at issue here, by effectively barring many from attending religious services, strike at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty.”

The Justices also emphasized that “there is no evidence that the applicants have contributed to the spread of COVID-19,” and, to the contrary, that they “have admirable safety records.” Moreover, the Court explained that “there are many other less restrictive rules that could be adopted to minimize the risk to those attending religious services,” including tying maximum attendance to the size of a synagogue or church.

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Agudath Israel of America, a 98-year-old Orthodox Jewish umbrella group headquartered in New York City, succeeded in its first-ever lawsuit to go to the Supreme Court. Its attorneys with the Becket Fund asked the Supreme Court for emergency protection on behalf of Agudath Israel and affiliated synagogues as part of an ongoing lawsuit against Governor Cuomo’s restrictions on their right to worship – which were abruptly declared just 48 hours before a trio of sacred Jewish holidays, Hoshanah Rabbah, Shmini Atzeres, and Simchas Torah. The Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn brought a parallel case challenging the restrictions.

The Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, which covers Brooklyn and Queens, was also a party to the suit and argued houses of worship were being unfairly singled out by the governor’s executive order.

“We are extremely grateful that the Supreme Court has acted so swiftly and decisively to protect one of our most fundamental constitutional rights — the free exercise of religion,” said Randy Mastro, an attorney for the diocese, in a statement.

“Governor Cuomo should have known that openly targeting Jews for a special COVID crackdown was never going to be constitutional,” said Eric Rassbach, vice president and senior counsel at Becket and counsel to the Jewish plaintiffs. “But treating synagogues and churches worse than the pet stores, liquor stores, and department stores also just didn’t make any sense, particularly when Agudath synagogues and Brooklyn parishes have carefully and responsibly followed the rules. The Supreme Court was right to step in and allow Jews and Catholics to worship as they have for centuries.”

New York had tried to avoid a Supreme Court ruling by changing its classifications while the application was pending at the Supreme Court. But the Justices rejected that cat-and-mouse game, finding that houses of worship “remain under a constant threat” that the Governor would reclassify them and “there may not be time for applicants to seek and obtain relief from this Court before another Sabbath passes.”

The dissenting justices argued that the Court did not need to decide the issue now because of New York’s recent rule change. Even these justices, however, emphasized the importance of protecting religious liberty during a pandemic. For example, Chief Justice Roberts noted that the restrictions “do seem unduly restrictive” and “may well … violate the Free Exercise Clause.”

“The Governor might reinstate the restrictions. But he also might not. And it is a significant matter to override determinations made by public health officials concerning what is necessary for public safety in the midst of a deadly pandemic,” he wrote.

Justices Sotomayor and Kagan agreed that “Free religious exercise is one of our most treasured and jealously guarded constitutional rights” and that “States may not discriminate against religious worship” even in times of crisis.

The injunctions issued by the Court will remain in place while the appeal continues at the Second Circuit and the Supreme Court.

Courtesy of https://www.lifenews.com/2020/11/26/supreme-court-blocks-andrew-cuomos-lockdown-orders-limiting-churches-to-10-people/

The ‘Irreversible Damage’ of Censorship

Another week, another bout of Twitter outrage.

At the center of the latest scandal is a book by Abigail Shrier of the Wall Street Journal. Shrier has the pedigree of an elite journalist. She attended Columbia University and the University of Oxford as an undergraduate and graduated from Yale Law School.

In Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, she details the results of her investigation into “the sudden, severe spike in transgender identification among adolescent girls.” This trend concerned Shrier. So, she set out to find its cause.

Shrier was alarmed by what she found. She learned about the “social contagion” aspect of the spike in transgender identification, especially among friend groups. She discovered the rapid pace at which teenage girls are undergoing gender transition surgeries, making irreversible decisions with irreversible consequences. Americans can’t drive until they’re 16, vote until they’re 18, or drink until they’re 21. Yet, as teenagers, they are now being allowed to have “gender reassignment surgeries” that betray their biology and often leave them sterile.

Shrier notes in an editorial for the Wall Street Journal that there is debate on this issue within the medical and LGBTQ communities:

Many transgender adults, including some I interviewed for the book, agree that teen girls are undergoing medical transition too fast with too little oversight. Others disagree and have written books. Amid a sea of material unskeptically promoting medical transition for teenage girls, there’s one book that investigates this phenomenon and urges caution.

That book is Shrier’s. But it “is the book the activists seek to suppress.”

Book Banning… and Burning

Target retail stores quickly pulled Irreversible Damage from their shelves after tweets denouncing its “harmful rhetoric.” Despite being ranked No. 1 in multiple categories on its site, Amazon would not let Shrier’s publisher advertise the book on its site.

Grace Lavery, a professor of English at UC Berkeley, encouraged her Twitter followers “to steal Abigail Shrier’s book and burn it on a pyre.”

Chase Strangio, the ACLU’s Deputy Director for Transgender Justice, tweeted that the “book is a dangerous polemic” and that “[s]topping the circulation of this book and [others like it] is 100% a hill I will die on.” This breaks with the ACLU’s longstanding opposition to censoring speech. And as journalist Glenn Greenwald pointed out: “the ACLU is being pulled and weighted down by the same censorious trends currently plaguing academia, the corporate world and … news organizations.”

As private companies, Amazon and Target are within their rights to sell or not sell Shrier’s book. In fact, after receiving significant pushback, Target reversed its decision and her book is once again on its shelves.

However, when powerful corporations and influencers on Twitter move to ban books and other messages, the spirit of free inquiry and debate is violated. When ideas are “winnowed in one direction,” as Shrier says, there is a victim:

… the public. A network of activists and their journalistic enablers have largely succeeded in suppressing a real discussion of the over-diagnosis of gender dysphoria among vulnerable girls… there are parents everywhere being lectured to by authority figures about how they have to affirm their daughter’s sudden interest in becoming a boy—no questions asked.

Historically, both conservatives and liberals, religious and irreligious, have engaged in censorship. But book banning and “corporate censorship” are never the answer. The answer is more speech—speech in which one articulates why an opposing idea is wrong. Which path do we want to follow: a culture of free speech with a robust marketplace of ideas, or a culture of censorship in which activists, CEOs, and journalists decide which ideas are open for debate?

The events of the past week were not even the first uproar directed at Schrier and her book. When popular podcaster Joe Rogan interviewed her about the book on his show, employees of Spotify (which hosts his podcast) called for the episode to be pulled down. They even threatened to walk out if their demands were not met. So far, the podcast remains. (Disclaimer: The advertisements at the start of this podcast include profanity. The interview begins at 7:42.)

Censorship, made possible by corporate gatekeepers bending to the will of vocal activists, is the breeding ground of cancel culture. Those who advance cancel culture believe they alone hold the truth that must be spread, that speech can be violent and dangerous, and that what they deem as “hateful” speech must be countered with force (in the form of bans, demonization, and mobs).

It’s on all of us to choose debate over demonization, speech over suppression, to stop and reverse the irreversible damage of censorship.

Join the Movement for Free Speech

Stand for improved civil discourse and the open marketplace of ideas by signing the Philadelphia Statement today. Change begins with all of us, and your voice is needed.

SIGN THE STATEMENT

Courtesy of https://www.adflegal.org/blog/irreversible-damage-censorship

A School District Is Evading Federal Law to Hide Information from Parents

As public schools shut down due to the COVID-19 outbreak, parents across the country find themselves homeschooling their children. For many, this is an eye-opening experience revealing exactly what their children are being taught at school.

Parents in one school district had this epiphany well before the shutdown. And it wasn’t positive.

When parents in Madison, Wisconsin learned that their children were being taught experimental theories about gender identity, they were understandably upset. Under a new school district policy, children as young as kindergarten were being exposed to the idea that gender “is a spectrum” and that you can choose your own gender based on how you feel.

Worse, part of the policies required teachers to assist and encourage children of any age in the adoption of transgender identities without parental notice or consent, and required teachers to actively deceive parents about their child’s struggle with gender identity disorder!

Something had to be done to protect these children and protect parental rights. That’s why 14 parents filed a lawsuit against the school district. Here’s what you need to know about this case.

Who: 14 parents of children in the Madison Metropolitan School District

A policy intended to “disrupt the gender binary” sounds like a political agenda you would see from a radical, left-wing activist group, not an idea that should be taught to young children in public schools. But in 2018, Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) adopted such a policy for all of its schools.

MMSD’s new policy defines gender as “a person’s internal sense of self as male, female, both or neither” and includes lesson plans and books that affirm transgender ideology, such as the highly controversial I Am Jazz book for children in kindergarten.

Right after the policy changes in 2018, an elementary school played a video about a teacher’s gender transition for the whole school (kindergarten through fifth grade) without parental permission.

But that’s not even the worst of it. Part of this school district policy also requires teachers and administrators to actively deceive parents about their own children. According to the policy, if a child professes a different gender identity and is called by a different name at school than at home, school employees must revert to using the child’s birth name around the child’s parents to keep them in the dark.

This isn’t just a school policy. This is activism at the expense of young children who will be taught the largely experimental idea of gender identity in their formative years.

Parents knew they had to do something to protect their children and their rights.

What: Doe v. Madison Metropolitan School District

Parents are the first teachers of their children and should be the first to know about issues their child is having at school—especially when it comes to the possibly life-altering topic of gender dysphoria.

That’s why 14 individual parents from eight families filed a lawsuit challenging MMSD’s policy that requires teachers to hide information from parents and lie to them. Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys along with the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) asked a state court to halt MMSD’s policy.

“Whether a child with gender dysphoria should socially transition to a different gender identity is a highly controversial and consequential decision,” reads the complaint, “and is therefore the type of decision that falls squarely within parental decision-making authority.”

Also, Dr. Stephen B. Levine, a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, submitted an expert declaration in this case. “For a child to live radically different identities at home and at school, and to conceal what he or she perceives to be his or her true identity from parents, is psychologically unhealthy in itself,” writes Dr. Levine.

Experts and parents agree: this MMSD policy could harm children.

When: February 2020—present

WILL and ADF attorneys filed a lawsuit on behalf of parents on February 18 and asked for a temporary halt to MMSD’s policy on February 19.

Where: Madison, Wisconsin

MMSD is the largest school district in the state of Wisconsin with over 27,000 students and 52 schools.

Why: To protect children and parental rights

Parents have the best interests of their children in mind. But policies like MMSD’s pit children against their parents when it comes to important questions about sex and gender identity.

Several studies have shown that of the children who experience discomfort with their gender but do not socially transition (begin to dress as the opposite sex and use a new name), 80 to 98 percent eventually desist or become comfortable with their biological sex. Yet, school officials from the MMSD want to encourage children to socially transition, putting them on a path toward puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.

Elsewhere, some parents have already experienced situations like this. A man name Jay Keck found out school officials hid his daughter’s struggle with gender identity disorder from him. And others, such as 20 year-old woman Sydney Write, have spoken up about how they regret taking cross-sex hormones.

Children who struggle with gender dysphoria need their parents’ support.

The Bottom Line

This school district policy harms children and violates parental rights, requiring teachers and school officials to be dishonest with parents about what their children are experiencing.

But it is parents who know what is best for their children, not school employees and administrators. And these parents will not allow their children to be used as pawns to further an ideological agenda.

Liberals Try to Shut Down Christian Adoption Agencies That Want Kids to Have a Mom and Dad

Why would anyone want to shut down organizations that have a long history of successfully placing vulnerable children in loving homes?

At a recent hearing held by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Democratic members voiced support for regulations that would do exactly that, by discriminating against faith-based adoption agencies that believe every child deserves both a mom and a dad.

If Democrats on the committee succeeded, federal and state governments would have to cease partnering with, and providing funds to, those organizations if they did not abandon their religious beliefs at the behest of the militant LGBT lobby.

Eliminating qualified agencies would reduce America’s capacity to place children in loving homes where they could be fostered or adopted.

Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., defended the work of faith-based adoption agencies. He challenged his colleagues on the other side of the aisle to “take a look at policy instead of politics,” reminding them that child welfare services would not have developed without the work of faith-based communities.

In the United States, child welfare services began with private, faith-based organizations in the early 1800s. The government did not become involved until the early to mid-1900s.

Public-private partnerships with faith-based adoption agencies provide numerous benefits to states’ foster care and adoption programs. Those agencies are uniquely able to recruit prospective parents from faith communities, who are twice as likely to adopt as the general population.

Those organizations also “excel at placing children who may have a more difficult time finding adoptive homes, including older children, sibling groups, and children with special needs,” wrote Natalie Goodnow, a research fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.

Kelly advocated passage of HR 897, the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act. The bill prohibits discrimination and adverse action against faith-based organizations who, based on their sincerely held religious beliefs, place children only with a married mom and dad.

The Pennsylvania lawmaker emphasized the inclusiveness of the bill. It does not prevent any child welfare provider from carrying out its mission, nor does it prevent same-sex couples from adopting or fostering.

Every state in the country allows same-sex couples to foster and adopt, and many states and agencies make special efforts to recruit same-sex couples. HR 897 takes an “all hands on deck” approach by ensuring that all providers, secular or faith-based, can continue placing children in nurturing and stable homes.

Kelly pointed out his colleagues’ hypocrisy in labeling faith-based providers as “discriminatory.” Unlike HR 897, which excludes no one, Democrats are proposing legislation like the misleadingly named Do No Harm Act that would discriminate against faith-based agencies for following their consciences.

Rep. Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y., misleadingly suggested that faith-based agencies that prioritize placing children with moms and dads are depriving children of loving families. But with a shortage of eligible foster families to care for the more than 435,000 children in the system, it’s shutting down faith-based agencies that would deprive children of “forever families.”

Both Maloney and his fellow New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made statements in support of discrimination against religious adoption agencies, even as, in New York alone, more than 25,000 children are still in the foster care system.

Many children have already been placed in homes by faith-based adoption agencies, and more could be placed if the government would stop targeting these agencies.

New York state has threatened to shutter New Hope Family Services, a faith-based adoption provider. After a site visit by the Office of Children and Family Services that led to praise for the agency’s work, officials returned and confronted New Hope regarding its practice of placing children in homes with a married mother and father. That policy was, according to the family services agency, “discriminatory and impermissible.”

But prioritizing placement of children with a married mom and a dad isn’t discrimination.

As Ryan Anderson—a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation who writes about marriage, bioethics, and religious liberty—has noted, the “legal right of an unmarried or same-sex couple to adopt, where it exists, should not require every adoption provider to perform such adoptions.”

“Requiring that they do so places the interests of adults over those of children, the exact opposite of what good policy on adoption should do,” Anderson wrote.

New Hope treated same-sex couples respectfully, including by referring them to other adoption providers. Nevertheless, the Office of Children and Family Services gave New Hope an ultimatum: Abandon your religious beliefs or stop providing adoption services.

New Hope has filed a lawsuit against the state.

Kelly was indignant at his colleagues’ intolerance, purportedly in the name of tolerance. “I find it interesting that we have decided today that unless you believe what I believe, you are not entitled to provide loving homes for little boys and little girls. Unbelievable,” he said.

If faith-based agencies were shut down, a noticeable impact would be felt by children awaiting adoption or a foster family.

Catholic Charities alone placed 82,000 children with families from 2006 to 2016 and was responsible for 25% to 30% of foster adoptions in Michigan.

There are names and faces behind the numbers. Each of these children are now members of “forever families” that love and cherish them. Without faith-based adoption agencies like Catholic Charities, these placements would not have happened.

Faith-based adoption agencies have an illustrious record of caring for children and placing them in loving homes. Their magnificent work should be allowed to continue.

For the sake of America’s most vulnerable children, Congress should cease politicizing adoption and foster care.

As Kelly said, “If this is about children, let’s make it about children.”

LifeNews Note: Andrea Jones is a research assistant in the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society. Alex Richey is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. This originally appeared at Daily Signal.

Courtesy of https://www.lifenews.com/2020/03/17/liberals-try-to-shut-down-christian-adoption-agencies-that-want-kids-to-have-a-mom-and-dad/

Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s Tyrannical Tactics to Suppress Religious Belief in Traditional Marriage—TMLC Lawsuit

ANN ARBOR, MI—Watching, listening, tracking, and compiling secret dossiers on dissidents until they are finally accused and prosecuted—these are the police-state tactics one might associate with an authoritarian regime in a World War II movie.

Yet, these are the very methods the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) has found are being used by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel acting in concert with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

On February 19, 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a notorious and discredited radical left-wing anti-Christian organization, published its annual Hate Map report which listed 31“hate” groups operating in Michigan in 2018.  Listed in that group as “ANTI-LGBT” was Church Militant, a nonprofit Michigan-based religious media organization which advocates traditional Catholic belief that marriage as instituted by God is for one man and one woman.

Three days later, on February 22, 2019, a disturbing joint news release by Attorney General Nessel and the Director of the Michigan Department of Civil Rights was issued referencing and linking to SPLC’s Hate Map. The joint release contained Nessel’s promise to establish a hate-crimes unit to fight against hate crimes and hate groups which have been allowed to proliferate in Michigan.

Nessel’s spokeswoman, Kelly Rossman-McKinney, noted that SPLC is a good place to start when investigating hate and bias.

The Director of the Civil Rights Department told a Detroit News reporter that the Department is creating a database which would document hate and bias incidents that don’t rise to the level of a crime or civil infraction.

Additional damning evidence of AG Nessl’s hostility toward traditional marriage was provided by the findings of Chief Judge Robert Jonker of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan. In a published 2019 legal opinion, Buck v. Gordon, Judge Jonker found that Nessel attempted to stop St. Vincent Catholic Charities from performing adoption and foster placement services because it professed the Catholic belief on marriage. Judge Jonker said that past statements by Nessel “raise a strong inference of hostility toward a religious viewpoint.”

Jonker concluded that “St. Vincent was targeted based on its religious belief, and it was Defendant Nessel who targeted it.”

Concerned that AG Nessel is continuing to weaponize the Attorney General’s Office to suppress religious beliefs in traditional marriage by threats of investigation and prosecution, the Thomas More Law Center, a national nonprofit public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, filed a request for records under the Michigan Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Using sham excuses, Nessel refused to supply crucial records that would shed light on her use of her law enforcement powers to target organizations that opposed her personal ideology supporting same-sex marriage.

TMLC filed a lawsuit in the Michigan Court of Claims on January 9, 2020, against Nessel for her refusal to comply with Michigan’s FOIA.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of TMLC, which represents Church Militant and its Founder and President Michael Voris, commented: “This lawsuit is about the right of the people to know what their public officials are doing. We believe that Attorney General Nessel targeted Church Militant because of its stance on traditional marriage as she had done in the case involving St. Vincent.”

Continued Thompson: “The combination of actions by the Attorney General Nessel, the Department of Civil Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center have a chilling effect on the freedom of speech and religion not only of Church Militant, but every religious group in Michigan that stands for traditional marriage.”

Astonishingly, Nessel’s office admitted in its response to Thomas More Law Center’s FOIA request that:

• It had no policies in place to safeguard the constitutional rights of individuals who committed no crime but are being investigated for espousing traditional marriage.
• It has no clear definitions of “bias incidents” or “hate crimes” against LGBT persons that are backed up by Michigan statutes or court decisions.
•  The AG’s Office failed in its FOIA response to provide any clear policies or parameters governing the prosecution of hate crimes. Nor does it have a clear definition of what constitutes a “hate group.”

Without policies to adequately guide the actions of the Hate Crime Unit, it is free to roam about launching secret investigations against any organization based solely on the fact that it supports traditional marriage.

Consequently, it was easy for the Attorney General’s Office to claim that Church Militant was under investigation to avoid turning over records and to escape public scrutiny.

“Nessel has single-handedly turned the Attorney General’s Office into an instrument of thought control by intimidation, using its law enforcement powers to police the speech of Michigan residents.

“One of her primary goals is to suppress the religious definition of marriage that does not conform to her opinions on same-sex marriage,” Thompson said.

Church Militant, headquartered in Ferndale, Michigan, reports on current events around the world from a Catholic perspective. Defending the institution of marriage as between one man and one woman has always been a major theme of its video broadcasts and written reports, which are viewed by millions of people throughout the world via its website and YouTube channel.

Click here to read TMLC’s full complaint.

A win for religious liberty at the Arizona Supreme Court

On Sept. 16, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in favor of Joanna Duka and Breanna Koski’s right to free speech. Duka and Koski own and operate an art studio named, Brush & Nib Studio. The studio willingly serves all people while clearly stating that they “will not create custom artwork that communicates ideas or messages that contradict biblical truth, demean others, endorse racism, incite violence, or promote any marriage besides marriage between one man and one woman, such as same-sex marriage.”

At the heart of their case is the principle of free speech which maintains that no one should ever be compelled to promote or communicate a message that is contrary to their sincerely held beliefs. As the Arizona Supreme Court ruled, “an individual has autonomy over his or her speech and thus may not be forced to speak a message he or she does not wish to say.”

As others have noted, this case marks another major victory regarding religious liberty in the United States. Americans should be grateful for this victory, as i t both protects the consciences of people of faith, and  also protects those that do not share the same faith convictions.

Custom works of art, like those offered by Brush & Nib Studio, are a reflection of their creators. And, because such artwork cannot be separated from the artists themselves, Duka and Koski should be free to use their artistic gifts in ways that are in accordance with their consciences. They should not be forced to use their gifts to provide customized artwork to promote messages that conflict with their convictions. Furthermore, the freedom enjoyed by Duka and Koski should be extended to all. Whether a person is baking a cake, arranging flowers, creating wedding videos, or creating wedding invitations, no one should be forced to use their creative gifts to support or celebrate something that contradicts their beliefs.

In terms of what this means for Christians, though, this victory adds another legal precedent to the books to protect from coerced speech, particularly as it relates to crucial matters involving Christian sexual ethics.

This case, like the others before it, should encourage everyone who is concerned about freedom of speech and religious liberty. It is a victory for anyone that wants the freedom to live according to their conscience. In terms of what this means for Christians, though, this victory adds another legal precedent to the books to protect from coerced speech, particularly as it relates to crucial matters involving Christian sexual ethics.

As society marches down the path of the sexual revolution, Christians will continue to see an attack on freedom of speech. While our hope and allegiance are ultimately in Christ, we should also be thankful for God’s mercy toward a country that supports a public square where conversations and debates can be enjoyed between people with differing viewpoints. If, however, we one day find ourselves living in a society that does not welcome the free exchange of our ideas, we must not lose heart or deviate from our obedience to Christ. We must resolve now to obey God rather than man (Acts 5:29), while remembering that we are exiles and sojourners in this land (1 Pet. 2:11-12) , seeking the City that is to come (Heb. 13:14).

By Casey B. Hough

Casey B. Hough is lead pastor at Copperfield Church in Houston, Texas, and a Ph.D. student at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He also blogs regularly at http://www.CaseyHough.com. Casey and his wife, Hannah, have three sons and two daughters.  Read More 

Courtesy of https://erlc.com/resource-library/articles/a-win-for-religious-liberty-at-the-arizona-supreme-court