Until next year...thank you

Dear friends,

I just wanted to thank all of you for reading my blog this past year and for sharing your thoughts, kind support and honest critiques. I appreciate it all more than you know and hope to see you all back here in 2016.

For now, I am allowing my fingers a much needed vacation from all things digital and will pick up again, God willing, in January.

I wish all of you and your loved ones a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful, happy and healthy New Year.

Thanks again for everything!

Best wishes,
Julie
                                              

Despite Christian genocide, more Muslims than Christians allowed entry to US

Christians in the Middle East are the victims of the worst religious persecution on earth, and are not even safe in UN-sponsored refugee camps. That's because the UN’s failure to make refugee camps safe is allowing intolerant Sunni Muslims — who share a creed with ISIS — to violently “cleanse” such camps of Christians.

According to British media, a terrorist defector asserted that militants enter UN camps to assassinate and kidnap Christians. In addition, an American Christian aid group reported that the UN camps are “dangerous” places where ISIS, militias and gangs traffic in women and threaten men who refuse to swear allegiance to the caliphate. Such intimidation is also reportedly evident in migrant camps in Europe, leading the German police union to recommend separate shelters for Christian and Muslim migrant groups.

Sadly, most of these helpless, unarmed Christian survivors of ISIS’s murder squads cannot even reach the “first safe” countries outside the Middle East that could welcome them, and instead live in windblown tents and unheated metal storage containers in places like Mt. Sinjar, just miles away from ISIS-controlled territory.

All this makes it particularly revolting, especially following the Paris and San Bernardino terrorist attacks -- that President Obama insists on giving priority welcome to Syrian Muslim immigrants over Christian refugees.

In fact, though more than a million Christians were driven at gunpoint from Iraq following the US's abrupt withdrawal from that country, the Obama administration is detaining Iraqi Christians at ICE detention centers - and refuses to let an Iraqi nun even visit America – while it is explicitly excluding Christians from lists of known victims of ISIS’s genocide.

The numbers make Obama’s actions even worse. Though 10 percent of Syria is Christian, on Obama’s watch, only about 2.5% of refugees that have been granted entry to America since Syria’s civil war broke out have been Christian. Put more numerically, at last count, Obama has welcomed 2098 Muslim refugees into America, and only 53 Syrian Christian refugees.

Even worse, since the Paris attacks alone, Obama has allowed 236 Sunni Muslim refugees to the US, and only one Syrian Christian. This is despite the fact that Syrian Christians in the Middle East— unlike their Muslim compatriots —have nowhere in the Middle East they can go to be wholly free of persecution.

Today’s persecuted Christians have been targeted for death, sexual assault, slavery, displacement, cultural eradication and forced conversion by ISIS. But the US government’s response has been to show the Christian refugees about as much respect as ISIS shows them.

Not only do Obama’s actions expose us to blatant threats of terrorism here in America, he exhibits an astonishing lack of compassion that can only be described as diabolical. On what grounds can anyone possibly defend what he is doing?

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For information on how you can help endangered and displaced Christians, please see below for a list of non-profit organizations sending aid to Middle Eastern Christians and advocating on their behalf:

Helpiraq.org. Assists in the funding and development of several projects geared toward helping the displaced Christians and other minorities of Iraq.

The Iraqi Christian Relief Council helps Christians from Iraq, Syria and other parts of the Middle East. Founded by Juliana Taimaroozy, it exists to support and protect the indigenous people of Iraq, the Assyrians (also known as Chaldeans and Syriacs), by providing emergency humanitarian aid, prayer support, advocacy and education. ICRC has helped thousands of displaced Christians throughout Iraq with food, shelter and medicine. Today, ICRC tirelessly promotes the cause of Assyrian Christians throughout the world. Current projects include a drive to provide electric heaters, cooking oil and modest Christmas presents to the abandoned Christians of Iraq and Syria.

·    Samaritan’s Purse is a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization providing spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the world. Over 3.2 million Iraqis have been displaced since January 2014 — the majority were forced to flee in the wake of ISIS advances. Many escaped with little but the clothes on their backs. As ISIS fighters remain in control of large swaths of their country, families are seeking refuge in tent camps and unfinished buildings, relying on the generosity and hospitality of local Christian hosts and international support. Samaritan’s Purse staff in northern Iraq have been helping these suffering families for over a year by supplying food, shelter, clean water, winter clothes, and more. It also supports local ministry partners throughout the region as they provide physical relief in Jesus’ Name.

·    Aid to the Church in Need was born out of the ashes of World War II in 1947 when a young Norbertine priest named Father Werenfried van Straaten — whose name means “Warrior for Peace” — set out to meet the material and spiritual needs of homeless and dispossessed victims of the war. Since 2008, in the Middle East, ACN has worked to counter the persecution and killing of Catholics (especially clergy and nuns) by Islamic fundamentalists, and is reaching out to the millions of displaced persons in Iraq, and other countries in the region.

·    The Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East, was founded by Anglican Canon Andrew White, who was dubbed by media the “Vicar of Baghdad” for his years of courageous service as a pastor and leader to the besieged Christians of that city. In just one of its projects, the Foundation has helped turn a former British military base into a new home for internally displaced Iraqi Christians. Tents that were once used by the British Army at Camp Bastian in Afghanistan will now provide winter shelter for approximately 600 Iraqi men, women and children, many of whom were forced to flee their homes by Islamic State militants. It is estimated that approximately 200,000 Iraqi Christians fled their homes last summer, escaping to the relative safety of north east Iraq. However, the vast majority have no proper shelter, regular food, or access to medical care. FRRME’s team on the ground, led by Dr Sarah Ahmed, has been providing vital relief for many of these people. The new camp, which is near Semele in the Dohuk region of Iraq, has been named ‘Sawra Village’ (Sawra means ‘Hope’ in Assyrian) and will comprise of 26 heated tents, three diesel generators, washing machines, showers, toilets, and a tent which will be used as a church.

You should stop praying for police - atheists demand it

The Johnson City Police Department in Tennessee has begun a program called, “Adopt a Cop,” in which citizens pray for an officer’s safety each day, and occasionally send them thank you notes. Predictably, anti-religion activists are not happy. The Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) is trying to silence the prayers of cops and citizens alike.

Earlier this week, the group sent a letter to the JCPD’s Chief Mark Sirois arguing that a prayer campaign is “not actually any protection for your officers.”

The FFRF also complained about JCPD’s chaplaincy program, in which a chaplain is employed to assist with death notifications, support victims in times of crisis, respond to suicide incidents and a variety of other duties.

The FFRF writes, “The employment of chaplains, even if volunteer, demonstrates government endorsement of religion, which is a violation of both the federal and Tennessee constitutions.”

The key word, by the way, in the Freedom from Religion Foundation's name is "from" - as in the Constitution does not guarantee our freedom from religion, but our freedom of religion. And the Constitution guarantees against Congress's establishing a formal religion, not endorsing  a religion.

This simply means that Congress (the only lawmaking body) cannot make any Christian sect or any religion a state religion. This does not mean that the government has to exclude all religious prayers or activities from government. It also means that Congress cannot keep any Christians from practicing their religious beliefs or modify that practice according to their liking. 

Since Congress cannot make a law to make a state religion or abridge religious practice, there can be no law that does so. Therefore,  if anyone wants to pray for the police or any other government officials he can do so, and if any government official wants anyone to pray for him, he can request people to do so -- there is no law that prohibits it.

The opinion of atheists is that there is no God, so prayer is of no effect. But if it has no impact in their minds, then what's the issue? Besides, there are many who have prayed and received answers to their prayers and, therefore, do believe that prayer works. Why should government bend to the opinion of these negative naysayers who have only opinion to go on? Our country was founded by those who believed in God for believers to practice their religion freely, unlike the oppressive country they left.

Whether prayer actually works or not, it's clear as day that since Bible reading and prayer were banned from schools, test scores have gone down (until the tests were dumbed-down, anyway), immoral behavior has increased, violence has increased, drug use has increased, and our society in general has declined.

Atheists don’t think there is any benefit from praying but there is an obvious negative effect since we publicly banned God from the public square. Should we conclude, then, that atheists want more destructive and negative effects for our society? It certainly seems that way since a prayer can do no harm, whereas turning away from God appears to be having terrible effects on our world. 

Will progressives require doctors to kill?*

*From Wesley J. Smith….

Secularist threats against religious liberty are spreading like a stain. Thus, I was attracted immediately to Bruce Abramson's Mosaic column, How Jews Can Help Christians Live as a Creative Minority.

Abramson warns Christians that the space to practice their faith in the way they live is shrinking. Tell me something I don’t know, I thought. But my attention focused when Abramson (citing political scientist Peter Berkowitz) cast the trending secularist oppression we are witnessing as a clash between classical “liberalism” and contemporary “progressivism.”

Liberalism stands for “freedom and the rule of law,” he writes, “a system of ‘negative rights’ that no government may legitimately infringe (as in the U.S. Bill of Rights).” In contrast, progressives seek to ensure “equality and justice,” by guaranteeing these outcomes through the enactment of a series of “‘positive’ rights like housing, food, and health care” that someone must provide—be it government or the private sector.

Abramson’s description of the conflict between liberalism and progressivism explains the drive to promote “patients' rights” over the consciences of doctors and other medical professionals in the abortion, assisted suicide, prescription, and other contexts. In this regard, mere legalization of these procedures does not guarantee the free and open access to them deemed by progressives as a positive right. Achieving that goal will require coercion; that is, forcing doctors (and other medical professionals, such as pharmacists) to participate—even when it violates their religious beliefs and deeply held moral convictions.

This kind of progressive authoritarianism is aborning in Canada. Earlier this year, that country’s Supreme Court conjured a Charter right to euthanasia. The debate has now shifted to whether doctors with deeply-held religious objections to killing patients should be able to opt out.

The trends are bad news for physicians who believe it would be a grievous sin to administer lethal injections or assist suicides. The Ontario and Saskatchewan Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons have issued ethics opinions that would require doctors to perform every legal medical procedure paid for by the government’s socialized system upon demand—which will include active euthanasia when the Supreme Court’s ruling goes into effect next year. If the requested physician has religious or moral objections, the Colleges have determined, the MD's have a positive duty to find another doctor willing to do the deed to ensure that the patient receives the death she wants.

If a willing doctor cannot be found, the Saskatchewan College requires the dissenting physician to do the deed personally, “even in circumstances where the provision of health services conflicts with physicians’ deeply held and considered moral or religious beliefs.” To guarantee the positive right to die, doctors will be forced to kill. Ontario’s College even requires doctors to euthanize or refer if the person asking to die is not the doctor’s patient!

Demonstrating how thoroughly progressive thought—as defined by Abramson—has shattered classical liberalism in Canada’s medical ranks, 79 percent of the Canadian Medical Association doctors recently voted against conscience protections for physicians opposed to participation in euthanasia. In other words, in Canada, becoming dead when one is ill or disabled and wants to die counts as a positive right that trumps the negative right to “freedom of conscience and religion” enumerated in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

What about the USA? Our physicians currently receive conscience protections against required participation where assisted suicide is legal, provisions promoters understood as necessary to gain enactment. But that approach is in danger of erosion. Some assisted suicide boosters are already grumbling about the difficulty of getting doctors to participate in ending patients' lives where it is legal.

Moreover, the same progressive tide sweeping religious freedom aside in Canada is also flowing here. The Supreme Court has ruled that the “negative right” to the free exercise of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment does not prevent individuals from being coerced into obeying laws of general applicability when doing so violates their religious beliefs. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling—the law that protected Hobby Lobby from forced coverage of abortifacient contraceptives—is now opposed energetically by previously strong progressive supporters like the ACLU. If Washington is ever controlled again by political progressives as it was in 2009, expect efforts to repeal.

Not only that, the federal RFRA does not protect against state laws that infringe upon religious liberty, and state religious protections are now vociferously opposed by progressive political adherents and large corporations—as Indiana discovered recently when it was threatened with economic ruin for attempting to pass an RFRA that extended to the operation of businesses. Thus, the stage is already set for the creation of a positive right to die here that could, one dark day, subsume the religious liberty of doctors not to participate—as is occurring now in Canada, and afflicts pro-life doctors in Victoria, Australia regarding access to abortion.

The only guaranteed way to prevent medical martyrdom is to maintain laws against assisted suicide and euthanasia. If that wall ever crumbles, orthodox Christians (and others) here may, as their Canadian brethren will next year, be forced to choose between being a doctor and violating the Sixth Commandment.

It's time to attack sin, not guns

The only thing that brought the deadly massacre in San Bernardino to an end yesterday was when the good guys with guns showed up. Imagine if the workers at the social services building were allowed to carry guns (and had them with them). How much less bloodshed might there have been? 

Had it not been a "no gun" zone, chances are the Muslim employee and his accomplice wife would not have even attempted to shower his coworkers with bullets (ironically not long after his co-workers had thrown a baby shower for him and his wife).

Astoundingly, I still heard hot-air talking heads say if "we" would only treat Muslims better, we would not have these problems. Are you kidding me? Tell me where non-Muslims are systematically killing Muslims while they are at work, at a theater, a soccer game, or on a plane? And if throwing a baby shower for someone isn't treating them well, then I don't know what is. Enough of the brainless, politically correct spinelessness - it's exacerbating the problem by enabling the problem.

Also adding to the problem is our collective turning of the back on God. The New York Daily news sported the headline today "God's not fixing this" in response to Ted Cruz and other Republicans telling the victims of San Bernardino that they're in our "thoughts and prayers". 

Apparently only thoughts are allowed. But tell me, if you were facing some serious incident, what would you rather have from someone: their thoughts about you, or prayers for you? Once again, liberals want to put humans above God as having more power.

While they make the charge that "God's not fixing this," I've got news for the godless liberals: God's not causing this either. Nor is prayer or guns or republicans. Sin and sin alone is causing the sick violence in the world and until we start a very loud and unwavering assault on sin in whatever form of violence it takes, we will get more of the same. 

Of course the liberals will only use the astonishing violence that's coming our way as a limp-wristed excuse for demanding more gun control. They will ignore things like the fact that the shooter of church goers in South Carolina originally targeted another place for his rampage until he found out that concealed guns were allowed there. He then chose a gun-free church instead. The liberals will ignore the fact that the murderer at the theater in Louisiana back in July originally chose another theater location for his assault until it was determined that it was not a gun-free facility. He then handpicked a theater that had a strict no-gun policy. The liberals will also ignore that we have a serious radical Islam threat in our world today. All we need to do is treat radical Muslims better and radical Muslims intent on sinful jihad will not want to murder us, liberals say.

All I can say is, wake up, liberals. Enough is enough.

What do you think?  Click on the comments link in the bar below to share your thoughts. No registration necessary. 

Temperatures more dangerous than terrorism? Here's Obama's take...

President Barack Obama’s attendance at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris this week on the heels of the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks there is interesting considering he has blamed terrorism on climate change and sees it – not terrorism – as the greater threat.

Case in point, in his 2015 State of the Union address he said, “No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change,” and he told Vox earlier this year he "absolutely" believes the media "overstates the level of alarm people should have about terrorism: as opposed to "climate change."

Oh, really. Tell that to the people in Paris, Beirut, Mali and elsewhere as they flee gun-wielding, bomb-strapped terrorists.

The climate change movement does have teeth as evidenced by its support from virtually every left-leaning organization in the world. Then again, as a $1.5 trillion dollar-a-year industry, there’s a lot of financial incentive to back it. But is it really about concern for the planet considering there is only, at most, conflicting evidence of a threat, or are other motives, besides financial, at play?

Climate alarmists warn about melting glaciers, but ignore National Park Service data on glacier expansion in some parts, and they cite storms like Katrina and Sandy as evidence of global warming-induced calamities, but don’t acknowledge these weren’t even the worst storms in history (regarding intensity, not physical damage due to today’s denser populations/infrastructure).

Alarmists present global warming as unquestionable fact, but ignore National Climatic Data Center, NASA and other findings that temperatures have risen and declined regularly for the past 100 years as part of normal weather patterns that pose no threat and that any warming of the past century is virtually insignificant at 0.8° C, or that we may even be in a cooling trend.

And while Obama likes to cite NASA’s recent assertion that 2014 was the hottest year on record, he doesn’t mention that NASA also later admitted it was mistaken.

The bottom line is, findings are conflicting, making the issue debatable (a debate some climate alarmists want outlawed), whereas it’s indisputable that people really are dying at the hands of terrorists.

Nonetheless we spend about $22 billion annually on dubious climate threats that even scientists at the Climate Research Unit in England were caught saying was a hoax. But despite the enormous spending, former Department of Energy Assistant Secretary Charles McConnel testified that “at best” all our climate efforts might reduce the global temperature by only “one hundredth of one degree.”

When asked in a congressional hearing about the benefit of this to the planet, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy admitted, “The value of this isn’t measured in that way. It’s measured in showing strong domestic action."

At least McCarthy’s confession gets us a little closer to what the real motives behind the climate change movement might actually have been all along. As cited by Forbes, former US Senator Timothy Wirth (D-CO) said at the 1992 Rio Climate Summit, “We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we’ll be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy.” 

Former Canadian Minister of the Environment, Lucien Bouchard, told the Calgary Herald in 1988, “No matter if the science of global warming is all phony, climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”

Adding their two cents, Mikhail Gorbachev said in 1996 that using the threat of an environmental crisis was key to unlocking a new world order, and in 2000, Jacques Chirac said France supported climate change initiatives as an instrument of establishing global governance.

Most recently, the UN's Christiana Figueres said in July 2015 about climate change objectives, “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we’re setting ourselves the task intentionally…to change the economic development model that’s been reigning since the Industrial Revolution.”

Still believe it’s about the weather? Unfortunately, Obama is right on board with the agenda, ostensibly to protect future generations, while terrorism is impacting us right now.

He underscored his priority this past September at the UN Climate Summit when he said, “For all the challenges we gather to address this week…there’s one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the growing threat of a changing climate.”

And he is using that unproven threat to explain away proven terrorism and other civil unrest. “Severe drought helped to create the instability in Nigeria that was exploited by Boko Haram,” he said about the terrorist group’s kidnapping of hundreds of girls, and he warned that climate change in general will cause more unrest around the world just as it has, by his assertion, in Syria.

So should we all start behaving immorally anytime our personal comfort level is not ideal? Talk about a recipe for civil unrest. Instead, how about we hold accountable those who are beheading Christians, raping and murdering children, burning and/or drowning men in cages, throwing homosexuals off rooftops, and committing mass murder at theaters, soccer games, sidewalk cafes and hotels –all in the name of jihad, by the way, not in the name of unpleasant weather.

Instead of focusing on reducing the planet’s temperature imperceptibly for the broader purpose of establishing some new world order, why not commit boldly to closing our borders and rooting out the murderous brutes who pledge to unleash their evil everywhere, including America? Why not at least put a moratorium on allowing astonishing numbers of refugees to enter our country, about whom FBI Director James Comey says it's impossible to vet for terrorist ties?

Even if Obama personally believes weather fluctuations are a future threat, his first obligation is to prioritize the immediate dangers of today, both in word and deed. Anything less is a dereliction of duty that can only serve to embolden those who seek to do us harm.

9th grade assignment: How to recruit ISIS members

Three things currently banned from public schools are God – or at least talk of Him, the Bible, or talk about it, and talk of Christianity by teachers lest they be guilty of promoting religion. So someone please explain to me how a teacher at Salem Junior High School in Utah felt it appropriate to assign her ninth grade students with the task of drawing Islamic State recruitment posters.

As part of the assignment, students were also asked to type the words “how to recruit for ISIS” in Google. I can only imagine what information this particular internet search exposed children to.

After a parent complained to the teacher and principal, the teacher called the parent to inform her the assignment had been cancelled and that the work of any students who had already turned in the project would be shredded.

From what I have been reading about public schools for a few years now, I can only say if I had children in public school, I would immediately remove them and look into either homeschooling or a well-vetted Christian/Judeo school.

What is being taught in some public schools is so antithetical to American and family values that I can only hope parents are closely scrutinizing their children’s schools for not only what is being taught, but also what the schools may be telling the children not to tell their parents.

The way the liberals are using the youth to achieve unholy goals is tragic. Just as historical figures, like Sun Tzu, have always stated that to destroy a society, all that’s needed is to brainwash the youth, we are seeing it manifested today in spades.

Vitamins, not ISIS, the real concern for Obama administration

Just days after the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris and Beirut, and just hours after it's been confirmed that the Russian airliner that crashed in Egypt last month was brought down by a terrorist bomb planted on the plane - (ISIS claimed responsibility for all three murderous sprees) - Barack Obama still refuses to associate ISIS with radical Islam, and in fact, still refuses to admit there is even a problem with radical Islam. Instead he still insists that we continue the practice of bringing in non-vetted Syrian refugees, even though it's been proven that at least one terrorist posing as a Syrian refugee was behind the massacre in Paris.

Of course, Obama and his minions don't feel radical Islam is a threat. Instead, the administration's priorities were made clear today on what they consider worthy of our focus. Today, several federal agencies including Obama's US Department of Justice are set to announce criminal and civil actions related to unlawful advertising and sale of dietary supplements.

The exact nature of the actions or charges against dietary companies is unclear. Funny, how the actions of ISIS are so painfully clear, yet elicit no clear response from our president (except to blame terrorism, as does Bernie Sanders, on the global warming hoax). But some murky, unnamed problem with dietary supplements is enough for our federal government to take immediate action. 

When you have a president that is so determined to fundamentally transform America, compromise our safety and turn his back on our allies at the expense of global stability, is it any wonder he should focus on vitamins and phantom weather problems instead of the real threats facing our world? 

What do you think?  Click on the comments link in the bar below to share your thoughts. No registration necessary. 

How we can thank our Veterans

                                                                   

                 
                                 Thank you, Veterans!

Veterans Day doesn't get the pomp and circumstance of some other holidays. But every year on November 11, we as Americans take the time to recognize the heroes among us. They are the men and women who served in our armed forces. They are the veterans of the United States military.

But how do you say thank you to millions of people who have given up years away from friends and family, often in extremely challenging and perilous conditions?

I like the way President John F. Kennedy put it when he said, “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” 

May we all do that: not only express our gratitude but show it to living veterans and current military members. From public gestures like picking up the restaurant tab for a soldier, to the more silent acts like praying for our military members and their families, who also make so many sacrifices while their loved ones serve in dangerous parts of the world. From simply saying thank you when we meet a veteran or when we pass a uniformed soldier in the store, to demanding that our politicians adequately fund our military - which has been absolutely gutted - to ensure not only that their basic needs are generously met, but that they are well supplied with the ultimate protection while they fight the battles they dutifully fight. And at the very least, let's clean up our Veterans Administration, and especially focus on giving our veterans the quality healthcare and support they so richly deserve. It's a disgrace that we don't.

More than anything, let’s show our thanks by committing ourselves to living the values upon which this country was founded. The values of freedom and self-responsibility, while helping our neighbors in need; the values of faith, hard work and moral character. The values our brave soldiers have always fought and continue to fight to protect. 

Let’s not allow these values to slip away from our own hands while our men and women in uniform risk their lives to uphold the values that have made America exceptional. We’re all in this together, because as another famous saying goes, “United we stand, divided we fall.” Let’s stand behind our military as they stand up for us, and let's stand united for our country. Together, America thrives.

Thank you, veterans, past, present and future, and thank you, all active military. What a difference you have made and continue to make. God bless you all.

LGBT business owners get it right on religious freedom

More and more frequently, it seems, business owners with convictions – religious or otherwise – are being discriminated against by some states. But finally, homosexual owners of some businesses are coming to the defense of a Christian business owner who’s being forced to violate his religious beliefs.

Blaine Adamson, owner of a Lexington, KY, print shop called Hands on Originals, refused to print T-shirts for Lexington's 2012 gay pride festival. As a result of his refusal, he was found guilty of discrimination by the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission. Additionally, the print shop was ordered to serve future requests from LGBT activists.

The legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom stepped in to defend Adamson’s personal and religious beliefs and filed an appeal.

As reported in The Christian Post , “Fayette Circuit Court Judge James D. Ishmael Jr. reversed the Human Rights Commission's decision in April and stated the commission went above its statutory authority."

Unfortunately, this was not the final legal word since liberals never give up or give in. The commission, which ordered Adamson to print shirts and attend government-mandated ‘diversity training,’ has now appealed to the Kentucky Court of Appeals.”

But in a turn of events, an unlikely group of printers has come to Adamson’s defense. LGBT-owned businesses, including BMP T-Shirts, expressed support for Adamson.

"No one should be forced to do something against what they believe in,’ said Diane DiGeloromo, one owner of BMP T-shirts, a lesbian-owned business. "‘If we were approached by an organization such as the Westboro Baptist Church, I highly doubt we would be doing business with them, and we would be very angry if we were forced to print anti-gay T-shirts,’ DiGeloromo said. ‘This isn't a gay or straight issue. This is a human issue.’

Her business partner, Kathy Trautvertter, added, “You put your blood and your sweat and your tears into your business and it's very personal. When I put myself in Mr. Adamson's shoes, I could see it from his side."

This point has been made many times, but bears repeating: No one – religious or not – should be forced to do business with anyone, especially someone whose message is contrary to one’s own.

Should a Jewish printer be forced to print signs for a neo-Nazi parade?

Should a print shop owned by a socialist be forced to print signs that say “Socialism is Slavery”?

Should a print shop owned by pro-abortionists and Planned Parenthood supporters be forced to print brochures denouncing abortion and Planned Parenthood?

Should a black-owned print shop be forced to print signs for a KKK parade? After all, as vile as the KKK is, citizens have the right to join that group, so wouldn’t a KKK member’s “civil rights” be violated if a black business owner refused to do business with him? Well, yes, according to the same logic put forth by homosexual activists. By their logic, the black man should be forced to provide services.

Commenting on the issue, Douglas Laycock, professor of law at the University of Virginia, stated, "The American solution to this conflict is to protect the freedom of both sides — not punish the side that dissents."

Amen.

US Muslims get to exercise religious rights. Why not Christians?

Just how far does the persecution against Christians in America have to go before we all start opening our eyes and fighting against it? Joe Kennedy, the long-time high school football coach in Bremerton, WA, had the habit of kneeling down in prayer on the 50-yard line after football games. He forced nobody to participate, though he was often joined by his players, and sometimes even players from the opposing team.  

But because someone in the stands who could not tolerate the sight of prayer complained about it, the school district began investigating the coach, and then ordered him to cease and desist. On Sept. 17, Kennedy, a private citizen, was told he must avoid kneeling, bowing his head or doing anything that could be seen as remotely religious. 

After deciding to continue exercising his Constitutional right to express his religion freely and therefore, continue the post-game prayer tradition, Kennedy was informed by the school district’s Superintendent Aaron Leavell that he violated the directives by engaging in religious-type behavior while on “duty”. So Kennedy was put on administrative leave pending further review of his conduct. This is an outrageous example of the insidious assault on Christians in public.

Nowhere in the First Amendment does it say Christians cannot exercise their religious rights just because they are on tax-funded public property. In fact, as taxpayers, we should have all the more right to exercise our Constitutional rights, but more to the point, only the government is prohibited from establishing a religion or from telling a citizen he cannot exercise his religion. The limits are on the government, not the citizen.

But what’s so sad and so telling, is that in this day of violence, hatred and evil, shouldn’t the sight of peaceful prayer be seen as a good thing? Don't we have bigger fish to fry? Unfortunately, not when you’re an anti-Christian, freedom-hating liberal.

Ironically, liberals, who customarily shun the Bible, are using it to cite a passage from it in defense of the school’s actions against Kennedy. Citing Matthew 6:6, which states: "When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen," liberals claim that even the Bible tells us not to pray in public.

But that Bible passage refers to those who pray insincerely only to be seen. Actually, Jesus tells us that where two or three gather in His name, He is present, and commands us to publicly evangelize and spread the Gospel. You cannot do that from your bedroom behind closed doors. Moreover, the Constitution backs up our right to do just that – publicly express our religious beliefs -- no matter how much liberals hate that fact.

Still, the hypocrisy of the Left is astounding, if not outright frightening.

You don’t see this type of harassment with other religions. Recently two Muslim truck drivers sued after being fired because they refused to deliver beer, as they were payed to do, because alcohol violates their religious beliefs. Did the jury back up the business that fired the truck drivers for not doing the job they were hired to do? No. The jury awarded the drivers $240,000 after being defended by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

So let’s get this straight. A high school football coach wants to exercise his Constitutional right to peaceful religious expression and he gets fired. Christian bakers who don’t want to provide services for a same-sex marriage for religious reasons get fined. But Muslims exercising their religious beliefs get nearly a quarter of a million dollars. Do you think a Baptist who also shuns alcohol would have his religious liberty defended like this?

Tell me there is not persecution against Christians in America. We really need to wake up to what is happening.

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Liberals just don't get the Islamist threat

Democratic Presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton has urged the United States to take in thousands of Syrian refugees, despite the concerns of many Americans that these immigrants will likely include Islamic extremists among them. 

Hillary seems not to notice that European nations are currently overwhelmed by the refugee crisis, and wants to bring the same situation here to America. It's of no concern to Hillary that this week, Germany's national security apparatus had a message for Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel:

“Your immigration policy will produce extremists,” and your country is importing “Islamist extremism, Arab anti-Semitism, [and] national and ethnic conflicts of other nations”.

Former Interior Secretary August Hanning told Die Welt Am Sonntag (the World on Sunday): “The German security authorities will not be able to handle these imported security issues and the resulting reactions,” warning that not only is Germany welcoming Islamist extremists, but that it will foster resentment in the native population.

He recommended that Germany closes “the border for immigrants without an entry permit in accordance with the legislation immediately, and to reject those traveling without an entry permit immediately”.

These are precisely the type of recommendations that are so revolting to American liberals and cultural relativists. The American people should be reminded that one such relativist is Hillary Clinton, who told the sister of one of the Benghazi victims that she should feel bad for the Libyan people, because they're poor and uneducated. 

Apologies, Hillary, but poverty does not cause Islamist extremism. In fact, many of the people being recruited to terrorist movements like ISIS come from privileged, well-educated backgrounds.

So the other thing American Democrats, like our president did back in May, are blaming the Islamist terrorism on is global warming. Dear Lord, help us. How about we blame the rise of terrorism on the real culprits: Spinelessness by governments out of fear of offending anyone, and plain old bad policy?

As the Republican field struggles to produce a clear frontrunner, Americans should be absolutely terrified that what's happening in Germany could well happen here. We simply haven't got the leadership or the backbone to stand up to terrorism and nobody is on the horizon as a clear frontrunner to run our country other than Hillary. But tell me, do you really trust your children's future to the likes of Hillary?

Principal withholds school election results because they're not diverse enough

When San Francisco-based Everett Middle School held its recent school council election, its principal, Lena Van Haren, refused to release the results, saying she was concerned that the winners were not diverse enough. 

While she would ultimately relent and release the results, her decision spurred anger among parents and kids who felt that the principal was putting diversity ahead of democracy. 

Critics compared her to a dictator who scraps elections when results don’t go her way...“The whole school voted for those people, so it is not like people rigged the game,” seventh-grader Sebastian Kaplan, who had run for class representative, told KRON 4, yet had no clue a week later if he won. “But in a way, now it is kinda being rigged.”

The controversy began as soon as the Oct. 9 election results rolled in. The principal was disturbed by the lack of diversity among the winners, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The school sits in San Francisco’s Mission District, a historically diverse neighborhood that has recently struggled with both gentrification and gang violence. Everett is as much a melting pot as the community, with 80 percent of its population comprised of students of color. Only 20 percent of students are white, Van Haren told KTVU.

So what’s the problem? An open, fair election was held, candidates openly competed, the student body voted, their votes were counted, and a disproportionately high number of non-minority students happened to win. 

“It’s not okay for a school that is really, really diverse to have the student representatives majority white," the principal told the San Francisco Chronicle. "The easy thing would have been to announce the results and move on. I intentionally did not choose the easy way because this is so important.” 

So let’s get this straight. The election results were “not okay," even though it was freely determined by the diverse students themselves who they wanted as their student council? What's more important than honest displays of democracy in this case?

Students who had run for office were left in limbo, wondering if they had won or lost and if it even mattered anymore. “I wanted to get more involved and change some things,” Kaplan, the seventh-grader running for class representative, told KRON 4. “I feel like it is disrespectful to all the people who were running,” he said, adding he felt discouraged and didn’t really even want to be involved anymore.

As one parent, Todd David, put it to the Chronicle. “It’s really, really disturbing to me that withholding the results somehow equals social justice or equity.”

After relenting and publishing the results -- in which "white, Asian, and mixed-race students" were statistically over-represented -- the school's (white) principal pronounced herself "concerned" about whether students' "voices are all heard.”

Yes, their voices were heard. Their voices are just under an attempt to be silenced by a politically correct administrator who seems more obsessed with race than the students clearly are.

Nevertheless, said administrator is reportedly considering adding seats or roles to the student council as an ex post facto means of mitigating this imaginary problem.

It's funny how liberals claim they are looking for a color-blind society, but they balk when it seems that’s exactly what these students demonstrated in the way they voted. 

It’s too bad that the principal herself is displaying the typical liberal trait of stonewalling and manipulation when things don’t go their way. Democracy was alive and well in this school, but liberalism tried to squelch it under the stifling chains of political correctness.

The bottom line is -- Lena Van Haren, not the vote or the election's outcome -- is the problem. Van Haren should be fired for teaching dishonesty rather than celebrating the electoral process, which sometimes provides results that disappoint some people. Heaven knows, I've been disappointed since 2008.

Now is not the time to disarm honest citizens

Following the evil campus shooting in Roseburg, OR, earlier this month, politicians immediately called for tougher gun laws, and a lot of comments on social media and news sites demanded an outright confiscation of all guns, even legally owned ones. To those calling for an unarmed America, I can only say, be careful what you wish for.

For all the gun laws already on the books in America, it’s not clear what new law would prevent a criminal intent on violence from committing such acts. It may be a cliché, but by definition, criminals don’t obey laws.

We could enact a thousand more laws only to diminish law-abiding citizens’ access to legal gun ownership, either because regulations make it too hard to get a gun, or because crippling regulations drive gun and ammunition manufacturers and retailers out of business.

Criminals, of course, would still obtain guns smuggled through the black market or other illegal means, creating a frightening imbalance between the armed and unarmed. And who do you think a criminal would feel more comfortable targeting, the defenseless victim, or the armed citizen? Anti-gun proponents say that’s what the police are for – to protect the endangered citizen confronted with violence -- but, as the saying goes, when seconds count, the police are minutes away.

Some are advocating laws to make it more difficult for the mentally ill to obtain guns. Nobody would disagree with this. The problem is, we often don’t know someone is mentally ill until they go on a rampage.

And while it is common sense that a mentally unstable person should not have a gun, the concern is, who decides what is considered mentally unstable? Expanding gun control under a “mental health” umbrella could easily open the gates toward allowing legislators to include all sorts of traits deemed unacceptable for gun ownership, just like how the Department of Homeland Security lists people like veterans and pro-lifers as potential terrorists and extremists.

Just as suffocating regulations can threaten gun & ammo manufacturers’ existence, this medical backdoor method could advance anti-gun politicians’ goal to diminish gun ownership without even having to mention the Second Amendment, let alone attempt to change it in any way.

But what if all private, law-abiding citizens were stripped of their guns, as some are advocating. Would that be a good thing for America? Not if history is any indication.

Presidential candidate, Dr. Ben Carson, caught a lot of flak recently for reminding us of what happened in Nazi Germany. In his new book, A Perfect Union, Carson contends, “Through a combination of removing guns and disseminating propaganda, the Nazis were able to carry out their evil intentions with relatively little resistance.”

He defended that argument on national television, saying, “I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed. I’m telling you there is a reason these dictatorial people take guns first.”

In its condemnation of Carson, the Anti-Defamation League actually proved Carson’s point when ADL National Director Jonathan Greenblatt said, "The small number of personal firearms available to Germany’s Jews in 1938 could in no way have stopped the totalitarian power of the Nazi German state.” Exactly. Perhaps if they hadn’t been stripped of their weapons, the persecuted may have had a fighting chance. The same goes for the students recently targeted in Oregon. Had it not been a gun-free zone, maybe the shooter would have met resistance, or been afraid to try in the first place.

Another well-documented look at how the Nazi regime used gun control to disarm and repress its enemies and consolidate power can be found in Stephen Halbrook’s book, Gun Control in the Third Reich.

In it, Halbrook notes, “A skeptic could surmise that a better-armed populace might have made no difference, but the National Socialist regime certainly did not think so — it ruthlessly suppressed firearm ownership by disfavored groups.”

One thing that protects America from dictatorship is precisely the fact that we are an armed citizenry. Considering not only Hitler, but Mao Tse-tung, Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and other dictators in history were assisted in gaining control by reducing citizens’ access to weapons, we’d be naïve to think the same could not happen here were we to significantly disarm the populace. As Mao Tse-tung said, “All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party.”

In a perfect world, it would be great if we had no need for weapons or if we could believe that government officials looking to curtail our possession of guns was for our own good, as Hillary Clinton has promised to do should she become president. But it’s not a perfect world. Besides dictatorships, other evil exists. Just look at ISIS, for example, which promises to strike America.

Look also at our increasingly immoral culture, the devaluing of human life, and the bizarre trend of desiring fame, as the Oregon shooter himself said he was seeking. Now is not the time to disarm honest citizens. If anything, it is time instead to focus our efforts on renewing the culture through a return to faith and morals.

While President Barack Obama once ridiculed Americans for “clinging to their Bibles and their guns,” keep in mind those Bibles and guns are key to America’s foundation and liberty. Let's keep both our foundation and our liberty intact.

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