Good Morning!

Benjamin Franklin used to reason, “If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect.”

The ongoing lobbying for and against the current “marriage” bill in Congress is strong:

1.   Ron Johnson won’t back same-sex marriage bill in current form 

From The Hill:

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) in new comments said he will not support the Senate’s marriage equality bill in its current form — a reversal from July, when he said he had “no reason to oppose” the measure.

“I always support civil unions. Never felt this bill is necessary,” Johnson told reporters on Wednesday in Washington. “This is just Democrats opening up a wound that doesn’t need to be opened up. And now that I’ve talked to people there are some very serious concerns on religious liberty.”

“I would not support it in its current state,” Johnson said at a Common Sense Citizens of Washington County meeting last week, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which obtained a recording of the remarks.

The Wisconsin Republican aired concerns about religious liberties before calling the issue of same-sex marriage “a wound that was healed.”

RELATED: 

Schumer announces same-sex marriage vote 

From Politico:

Chuck Schumer said the Senate would vote on legislation to protect same-sex marriage in the coming weeks, forcing Republicans to take a stance ahead of the midterm elections.

“A vote on marriage equality will happen on the Senate floor in the coming weeks,” the Senate majority leader told reporters Wednesday.

Schumer’s announcement comes as Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) are working to shore up the 10 GOP votes necessary to pass their bill to codify same-sex marriage. Baldwin and Collins met earlier Wednesday with Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Thom Tillis (R-N.C) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) to discuss the path forward.

2.   U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Now Offering Abortions in Direct Conflict with State Pro-Life Laws and Federal Law Prohibiting Such Action 

From the Daily Citizen: 

For the first time in its history, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is now offering abortions to veterans and their families at VA hospitals, effective immediately.

The VA set aside traditional rulemaking procedures when it issued an interim final rule last week, citing an “immediate detrimental impact on the lives and health” of veterans and their families if they are not permitted to access abortion services from the VA.

Under these new rulemaking procedures, the interim final rule goes into effect right away while the VA accepts comments on this proposed rule change for 30 days. Following the 30-day comment period, the VA Secretary will review comments and announce a final rule that may or may not include changes based on comments submitted.

According to the rule, the VA will provide abortions to veterans and their family members if the mother’s health is at risk, the mother’s life is threatened, and in cases of rape or incest.

The 40-page rule is very clear that this policy change is a reaction to pro-life states moving to restrict abortion in the wake of the reversal of Roe by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Opponents of the rule argue that the action is illegal under current federal law and regulation. According to opponents, Section 106 of the Veterans Health Care Act of 1992 specifically states that the VA is not to provide abortion care to women, and only Congress can rewrite the law.

RELATED: 

Judge strikes down Michigan pro-life law 

From World Magazine:

Judge Elizabeth Gleicher said Wednesday that a 1931 law that protects babies in every case except to save the life of the mother violates the Michigan Constitution. She classified abortion as “safe, routine medical care” and said denying it would be a violation of due process. Planned Parenthood sued in May, and Gleicher block enforcement of the law. The judge acknowledged she was a regular donor to Planned Parenthood but did not recuse herself from the case. The Michigan Supreme Court is expected to vote by Friday on whether to put a provision to add abortion “rights” to the state constitution on the November ballot.

What’s happening in other states? South Carolina lawmakers debated a bill Wednesday that could protect babies in every case except to save the life of the mother. The bill had an exception for rape or incest before a committee voted Tuesday to amend it. Now, senators are debating whether the protections should apply to infants who have fatal conditions and cannot survive past birth. They also discussed increasing access to contraceptives.

3. Irish Teacher Suspended for Refusing to Use ‘Transgender’ Pronouns – Jailed for Continuing to Go on Campus 

From the Daily Citizen:

Enoch Burke, an Irish schoolteacher, was suspended and put on paid administrative leave for refusing to use a different name and the plural pronoun “they” when referring to a male student confused about his sexual identity.

He was then arrested and jailed for contempt of court when he violated a court order and refused to stay off the secondary school’s campus.

After two days in prison, he told the court that it “could deprive him of his liberty and his dignity but could not deprive him of his integrity and faith in God,” reported RTÉ News, an division of Radio and Television of Ireland (Raidió Teilifís Éireann).

“He said he would never leave Mountjoy Prison if in doing so, he must violate his well-informed conscience and his religious beliefs and deny his God,” the outlet said, adding that “the court had presented to him that he could be a Christian in Mountjoy or a Pagan respecter of transgenderism outside it, and in that case he knew where he belonged.”

4. Rumble Sets New Record for Traffic, Gen Z User Growth Surges As Big Tech Censorship Rages On 

From Human Events:

Video sharing platform Rumble has broken records in August, increasing monthly active users to 78 million. This, the platform reports, is a 77 percent year over year growth. Much of that growth came from Gen Z users, between the ages of 18-24.

That growth was strong in the US and Canada, as well, with a 63 million increase, or  a 103 percent year over year growth.

“When you look at the data, and especially our 63 million MAUs in the US and Canada, it is clear to me that Rumble’s growth is one of the reasons that Big Tech platforms have stagnated,” said Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski.

“In recent years, our user growth came primarily from consumers of news and political content. As new content creators come to Rumble, we are seeing growth from the Gen Z demographic, a massive new audience for our platform.”

5. Survey: Majority of young adults who moved back in with parents during pandemic still live there 

From Just the News:

The majority of young adults who moved back home with their parents at the outset of the pandemic still live there, according to a new survey, a sign that the economic fallout surrounding pandemic policies in the U.S. continues to squeeze more and more Americans.

Many adults who had just recently graduated college opted to head home at the start of the pandemic in the U.S., when businesses closed, urban centers shut down, and financial situations became precarious overnight.

LendingTree reported last week that “nearly a third (32%) of millennials and Gen Zers moved back home with their parents during the pandemic,” with the company finding this summer that “most still live there.”

“Two-thirds of young adults who moved back home remain with their parents. Slightly more than half (51%) of those who moved home say it was out of necessity,” the financial services firm said.

6. Bob Iger Predicts A Reckoning For Streaming Services, Linear TV Death, “Smaller” & “Scarred” Movie Industry 

From Deadline:

“I don’t think all streamers are created equal, “ Bob Iger bluntly said today at the 2022 Code Conference. “I don’t think they’ll all make it.”

“There will be haves and have nots,” the former House of Mouse boss added, predictably praising Disney+, Netflix, and the “deep pockets” of Apple and Amazon. “I’m not going to make predictions about the others, Iger went on to say, leaving the likes of HBO Max and Peacock dangling in the wind.

If survival of the streaming fittest was on the casually attired ex-CEO’s mind on Wednesday,  so was the future of movies and liner TV – and the future is bleak from Iger’s POV.

“Linear TV and satellite is marching towards a great precipice and it will be pushed off,” the man who worked for and ostensibly controlled ABC for years asserted, prophesying a “world of hurt” coming “I can’t tell you when, but it goes away,” he added in a steady voice. In terms of the big screen, Iger praised the communal experience of going to the cinema, and pinned the movie business as far from dead, but stated it was now simply “smaller.”

7. ‘Peppa Pig’ Debuts Lesbian Couple on Popular Children’s Cartoon 

From Fox News:

A popular British children’s cartoon has added a same-sex polar bear couple to its show.

A new episode of “Peppa Pig,” titled “Families”, premiered on Channel 5 on Tuesday. In the episode, a polar bear cub is seen speaking about her lesbian parents to her class.

“I’m Penny Polar Bear. I live with my mommy and my other mommy,” the cartoon character explains to her classmates.

“One mommy is a doctor and one mommy cooks spaghetti. I love spaghetti,” the child says while drawing a portrait of her family.

The debut is the first time a same-sex couple has been featured in the show’s 18-year history. It comes after a petition demanded a gay couple on the British children’s program, which got over 23,000 signatures.

8.   ‘We come in peace’: What the writers of ‘The Chosen’ want you to know about the show 

From the Deseret News:

What do you wish people could appreciate or understand about the writing process of the show?

Ryan Swanson: That we come in peace.

Tyler Thompson: That we don’t have an agenda. I think that’s really important. We have source material that’s divinely inspired. Then we’re exploring ways to look between the lines and explore the motivations of these characters, all in hopes that it would point people to Jesus or at least make them at a minimum curious, or bring to life some things they think they already know.

Yes, that we come in peace. We’re not trying to push some narrative on them that we came up with for nefarious purposes, or for our own purposes. We want it to be entertaining and to move people. If it does that, then we are happy.

It feels like every denomination is so certain that all the other 1,000 denominations are completely wrong. We don’t think of that at all. We’re both very nondenominational people. We try to paint as broad a picture as possible. It’s been nice to have thing perspectives like Messianic Rabbis, Catholics, Latter-day Saints, all of these things to help, ‘Here’s how we see things.’ But at the end of the day, we are of none of those things and are just saying we’re doing our best trying to make something for you.

DN: How have people responded to the writing of the show?

TT: People have been so gracious, honestly. There’s the occasional Instagram direct message of someone saying we that we got something wrong, but we have a pretty airtight room. We are well supported by researchers and the Biblical scholars.

We also have Dallas, who is a very public show runner. We have the luxury of being quietly invisible just researching and writing while he’s out there doing live streams, talking to people and being really prominent on social media. We’ve chosen not to take that route. I think he bears the brunt of things like negative feedback.

9. Lifemark – A Review

From Plugged In:

Christian filmmakers Alex and Stephen Kendrick have a history of tackling the toughest issues that families can wrestle with. And with Lifemark, they’ve added another such pair of topics to their cinematic resume: adoption and the pro-life movement.

This inspiring true story gives us a poignant glimpse of what it might feel like to put a child up for adoption, as well as showing us that child later pondering whether he wants to reconnect with the mother who made that choice. The result is a movie that will, as the Kendricks’ films often do, pull a tear or two out of viewers’ eyes even as it deepens our perspective on this complex subject.

Lifemark also shows us that the decision to choose life and to choose a better life for a baby is both a difficult one and a redemptive one. More than once while watching the film, Melissa’s story, especially, prompted an ache in my heart. How hard it must have been for her, yet how beautiful and life-giving the outcome.

As far as content goes, there’s little here visually that warrants a warning—though I can imagine not all parents would want their teen sons jumping off a small cliff into a lake. Still, the subject of abortion is necessarily a difficult one to address, even if graphic imagery is completely avoided. That issue has earned the film its PG-13 rating, and it’s something that parents of younger children will want to consider before seeing it.

That caveat aside, however, Lifemark feels like the kind of story God could use in deep ways in the lives of those who see it. It affirms the beauty of adoption even as it gently encourages those in crisis pregnancies to make the choice for life instead of ending those pregnancies.

Lifemark is being distributed by Fathom Events and currently is scheduled to run seven nights in participating theaters. Ticket information can be found here. 

10.      New York Yankee Aaron Judge, His Adoption and the Bible Verse Shaping His Record-Setting Season & Career 

From the Daily Citizen: 

Born and raised in the small town of Linden, Calif., Aaron Judge’s parents, Wayne and Patty, adopted him at birth.

“I feel they kind of picked me,” Judge told a reporter. “I feel that God was the one that matched us together.”

Judge’s parents chose not to discuss his adoption with him while he was young, leading Aaron to suspect something was up by the time he was ten.

“I knew I didn’t look like them,” Judge remembers. “So I started asking questions and they told me I was adopted and answered all my questions, and that was that. I was fine with it. It really didn’t bother me because that the only parents I’ve known.”

Judge has said the whole thing was “no big deal.”

But of course, adoption is a big deal – and though the Yankee outfielder might have downplayed it then, he nevertheless recognizes today that his adoptive family played an invaluable role in his development as a believer and ballplayer.

Wayne Judge calls the family’s adoption of Aaron a “miracle,” saying “Words can’t describe how proud of him we are.” After her son mentioned how blessed he was to hail from such a family, his mother, Patty, responded by saying, “We’re more blessed than he is.”

Good families are mutual admiration societies.