Monday September 27, 2021 

Good Morning!

Winston Churchill once said, “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others.”

When reading the headlines, or just trying to get out of bed on Monday morning, it can be difficult to muster courage, much less a sense of hope. But as Christians, we are called to do just that.

“Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the LORD!”  – Psalms 31:24

As you start your week, remember that your courage may just help someone else find theirs.

  1. Swiss Voters Approve Law Allowing Same-Sex Marriages

From The NY Times:

Voters in Switzerland overwhelmingly decided on Sunday to legalize same-sex marriage, making the country one of the last in Western Europe to do so.

In addition to opening up the option of marriage to all couples, an amendment to Switzerland’s marriage law that was put to voters in a referendum, and approved, grants lesbian couples access to sperm banks and allows same-sex couples to adopt children.

The marriage laws were amended by the federal government and approved last year by Parliament to grant all couples the same rights. But opponents seeking to limit marriages to unions between a man and a women collected enough signatures to force a referendum.

Polls by local news media had predicted widespread approval for same-sex marriage in Switzerland, but they also showed the opposition gaining some last-minute momentum after an intense advertising campaign. The legislation change was accepted by 64.1 percent of voters and received strong support in both urban and rural areas.

  1. Update – House Votes to Pass ‘Abortion on Demand Act’

From The Daily Citizen:

On Friday, the House passed HR 3755, the so-called “Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021.”

The Act passed 218-211, on a party-line vote, with all Democrats except one, Henry Cuellar from Texas, voting for the law and all Republicans voting against it.

The measure would give any woman in the country the right to abort her child and would overturn any state abortion restrictions, such as mandatory waiting periods, heartbeat legislation, counseling or ultrasounds.

The bill is a response to the Texas Heartbeat Bill, which bans abortion in the state after a preborn baby’s heartbeat can be detected in the womb.

  1. Whose kid is that? Dems want big changes in who qualifies for child tax break

From Politico:

House Democrats don’t just want to expand their signature Child Tax Credit payment program, they also want to redefine what it means to be someone’s child.

As part of their sweeping reconciliation plan, they are proposing to overhaul, for the first time in almost a generation, the legal definition of a child that’s used to claim the hugely popular break. But that’s not as simple as it sounds, and implementing it could become a bureaucratic nightmare.

Lawmakers want to make the definition more expansive, so that more people can claim the benefit worth up to $3,600 per child. They’re proposing to dump long-standing rules requiring a child to be a relative of the person taking the credit.

Instead, they want to award the money to whoever is caring for the child, regardless of whether they’re related.

That’s designed to be more flexible and to accommodate people in a wider variety of living situations — researchers say hundreds of thousands of kids are currently ineligible for the benefit because they live with, say, a family friend.

  1. ACLU Implicates Ruth Bader Ginsburg as Transphobe in Commemoration

From The Daily Citizen:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an unapologetic defender of abortion, making her an absolute Saint of the Left. She earned many accomplishments such as the American Bar Association’s Thurgood Marshall Award, and the famed moniker Notorious RBG.

In commemorating the one-year anniversary of her death, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attempted to honor the judge but due to the Left’s quickly shifting language orthodoxy in turn demeaned her. Their tweet featured a famous quote from Ginsburg on the topic of abortion, but they took the liberty of editing it to eliminate any reference to the fact that women are the ones who become pregnant.

The ACLU degendered the quote, replacing “woman’s” with “person’s” and “her” with the generic “their” and “people” in various places. Why would they butcher the quote in such a fashion? It is now “transphobic” to say that only women can get pregnant and as Planned Parenthood now informs us, it is even wrong refer to abortion “as woman’s health care.” What was perfectly proper progressive rhetoric yesterday is now absolutely forbidden and qualified as discrimination. As a result, professors in leading medical schools are now sincerely apologizing to their sensitive medical students for referring to “pregnant women” rather than “pregnant people.”

So, in seeking to honor the Notorious RBG, the ACLU essentially declared her a transphobe because she lacked the sensitivity just a few short years ago to know that referring to abortion as a woman’s issue was deeply offensive. In commemorating the one-year anniversary of her death, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attempted to honor the judge, but due to the Left’s quickly shifting language orthodoxy, ended up demeaning her.

  1. Texas Abortionists Ask Supreme Court to Hear Heartbeat Law Challenge Now

From The Daily Citizen:

Texas abortion sellers who have challenged the state’s new heartbeat law that went into effect September 1 – which prohibits abortions once a heartbeat can be detected – have already been frustrated once by the U.S. Supreme Court in their attempts to get an emergency order blocking the law. Now they’re back, filing an unusual request with the nation’s high court to take the case away from the lower courts and hear it themselves.

Called a “petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment,” the legal maneuver is rare, but not unheard of in our history. The New York Times explains that it has only been used in cases “involving national crises like President Harry S. Truman’s seizure of the steel industry and President Richard M. Nixon’s refusal to turn over tape recordings to a special prosecutor.”

So what is the national crisis the Texas abortionists assert as justification for this extraordinary petition? Apparently, only that women seeking abortions are being inconvenienced.

  1. Giving birth under the Taliban

From BBC News:

In a matter of weeks, the birthing unit Rabia delivered her baby in had been stripped down to its bare basics. She was given no pain relief, no medicine and no food.

The hospital sweltered in temperatures topping 43C (109F) – the power had been cut and there was no fuel to work the generators. “We were sweating like we were taking a shower,” says Rabia’s midwife Abida, who worked tirelessly in darkness to deliver the baby by mobile phone light.

“It was one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had in my job. It was too painful. But this is our story every night and every day in the hospital since the Taliban took over.”

Surviving childbirth means Rabia is one of the lucky ones. Afghanistan has one of the worst maternal and infant mortality rates in the world, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), with 638 women dying per 100,000 live births.

  1. ‘City of the Walking Dead:’ Junkies shoot up in broad daylight in Midtown

From Fox News:

The Garment District is Gotham’s newest shooting gallery, a disturbing heroin hotspot of addicts shooting up in broad daylight.

The outgoing de Blasio administration appears unwilling or unable to address the crisis, as the quality-of-life disaster unfolds just steps from high-profile Midtown landmarks such as Macy’s, Madison Square Garden and the sparkling new Moynihan Train Hall.

The block bordered by 35th and 36th streets, and Seventh and Eighth avenues, is “littered with used needles, broken glass crack pipes, trash, urine, and feces” as junkies shoot up and dealers brazenly sell drugs, lamented one neighbor on social media. “I’ve personally seen dozens of deals go down. I’ve seen a person OD and nearly die.”

During a single walk around the block last week, The Post witnessed three different people injecting needles in their wrists or fingers in the middle of the afternoon. Each addict sat on the sidewalk or in empty storefronts. Dozens of other junkies sat or lay nearly comatose, many of the men shirtless, on the same block.

  1. Enraged New Yorkers Tear Down Sexually Explicit ‘OK Cupid’ Subway Ads

From PJ Media:

The dating site “Ok Cupid” has invested in a disturbing and bizarre ad campaign that focuses on sexual fetishes and rejecting lovers with conservative views. Because these ads are plastered all over subway cars in New York City, children are exposed to them on a regular basis. Viral video has surfaced of a woman tearing them down and admonishing other riders for sitting there and allowing the ads to pollute the public space. Others soon join her and walk through the cars while removing the offensive posters.

“It’s gross. You want kids to be looking at this? Is that okay? This is propaganda,” the woman says while tearing the signs down. “I don’t know why no one see this.”

A small sampling of the ads shows people simulating sex acts, in sexually suggestive positions, or using words that would lead a child down a very dark internet search. One ad says, “It’s okay to have strong convictions and abandon them for the night.” The political messaging is also equally disturbing. “It’s okay to choose Mr. Right based on how far he leans left.” OK Cupid also leapt at the chance to get a pro-abortion message out there. “It’s okay to choose to only date someone who’s pro-choice.” By omission, it’s clear that OK Cupid does not think it’s okay to not date someone who supports baby killing. If they really wanted to upset people, they should have made an “It’s okay to date a Trump supporter” ad, don’t you think? If they were truly interested in “all” people, why did they leave out half of America?

  1. Scientific American says Jedi in ‘Star Wars’ are problematic white saviors steeped in toxic masculinity; the internet strikes back

From TheBlaze:

Scientific American is a science magazine founded in 1845 that has published articles by more than 200 Nobel Prize winners. The magazine has featured brilliant minds such as Hans Bethe, James D. Watson, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Linus Pauling, and Albert Einstein. However, now one of the science magazine’s goals is “advancing social justice,” which was evident in a recent article attempting to cancel the Jedi in “Star Wars” for being “problematic.”

It took a total of five Scientific American writers to spew out a 2,060-word article titled: “Why the Term ‘JEDI’ Is Problematic for Describing Programs That Promote Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.” The opinion piece oozed out an exhausting laundry list as to why the Jedi are “inappropriate symbols for justice work.” The wokescold composition explained why Jedis — the mythical knightly order in the fictional movie “Star Wars” — should not be compared to the acronym “JEDI,” which stands for “justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.”

The article listed all of the ways that the members of the fabled Jedi order are problematic, including white saviors, toxic masculinity, and even the phallic-shaped lightsabers (which are also used by the enemy Sith).

  1. U.S. Fans Belt National Anthem ‘Loud And Proud’ Ahead Of International Golf Competition

From the Daily Wire:

Golf fans joined in unison to sing the national anthem before the 2021 Ryder Cup teed off at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin on Friday.

The Ryder Cup is a biennial golfing competition that trades off between locations in Europe and the United States. The event was scheduled to take place at Wisconsin’s Whistling Straits last year, but was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Fox News.

“USA fans made sure the national anthem was loud and proud before the first tee shots. Ryder Cup in Wisconsin is underway,” WISN reporter Hannah Hilyard said, posting video capturing the anthem’s final moments to Twitter.