Good Morning!
It was Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior who once observed:
“To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.”
Since its inception forty-five-years ago, Focus on the Family has been doing its best to confront the wicked efforts confronting Christians today:
- Heartache Over Silencing Heartbeats in Colorado
From Focus on the Family President Jim Daly:
As we eagerly await the Supreme Court’s decision in the Mississippi 15-week heartbeat case, activists around the country have been working feverishly with liberal state legislatures to enshrine unfettered access to abortion rights in their states.
I believe it’s a harbinger of the fight to come – and compared to what we’ve seen the last half-century, it’ll be a battle unlike any in the last fifty years.
Activists in my own state of Colorado have just pulled off a devastating legislative victory by passing the most radical abortion bill in the country. The new law allows for abortion at any point of a pregnancy – right up to delivery. No questions asked. The draconian legislation even went so far as to strip pre-born babies of any and all human rights. Colorado’s legislation puts our state’s disregard for preborn life on par with North Korea and China.
It’s wicked. It’s evil. And it’s now law in the Rocky Mountain state.
Focus on the Family joined other pro-life groups in lobbying vociferously against the legislation. The liberal state legislature forced us to wait until the wee hours of the morning to testify. Abortion-friendly lawmakers sat stone-cold silent as we warned about the bill’s dangers and its inherent inhumanity.
C.S. Lewis said good and evil both increase at compound interest. Indeed, this wickedness has come slowly and over time – but now it’s also coming all at once. You cannot discount life without reaping horrific consequences.
Lewis also presciently observed back in the early part of the twentieth century that “The greatest evils in the world will not be carried out by men with guns, but by men in suits sitting behind desks.”
That’s precisely what happened up in Denver, and is happening anywhere state legislatures, fearing the coming Dobbs’ ruling, are doing.
No matter how the Court rules in the coming weeks or months, convictional Christians must be ready to respond because the outcome of the decision will stoke deep emotions. Our neighbors, friends, and even family members may be angry, confused, and worried, especially if Dobbs is upheld and Roe is overturned. In contrast, we need to be calm, courageous, and equipped.
This is a kairos moment for Christian families (along with their pastors and churches) to step up efforts in showing compassionate pro-life care for women facing unexpected pregnancies and advocating for the protection of preborn babies. It is not enough to vote for pro-life candidates or hold personal pro-life values. The Body of Christ must take action, come alongside women in unplanned pregnancies and support pregnancy resource centers as a better alternative to abortion providers.
As a ministry, Focus on the Family is leading the way in speaking out in favor of life and in opposition to pro-abortion legislation. Through our work with pregnancy resource centers, we’re showing how compassionate pro-life care spares women from the pain and regret of abortion and saves the lives of innocent preborn babies. It also presents us with the opportunity to educate the public that pro-life care extends to helping children in the foster care and adoption system.
Our ultimate goal is to make abortion unthinkable and life so attractive that women will make the right choice and affirm and embrace God’s beautiful gift of life.
- Ohio Republicans Introduce Florida-Like Parental Rights Bill
From the Daily Wire:
Two Ohio House Republicans introduced a bill on Monday similar to Florida’s recently signed Parental Rights in Education law that would ban instruction regarding sexual orientation and gender identity for kindergarten through third grade.
House Bill 616 was introduced by Reps. Mike Loychik and Jean Schmidt.
“Curriculum about gender identity and sexuality has no place in K-3 classrooms, period,” Loychik tweeted.
“That’s why I just introduced a bill to ban curriculum about sexuality and gender identity until 3rd grade in Ohio,” he added.
“The classroom is a place that seeks answers for our children without political activism,” Schmidt said in a statement. “Parents deserve and should be provided a say in what is taught to their children in schools.”
- 44% of Children Were ‘Sad’ or ‘Hopeless’ During Lockdowns, New CDC Study Finds
From The Daily Citizen:
When the COVID-19 pandemic began, and people worldwide were faced with threat of a lethal pathogen, they intensely focused on their physical health and wellbeing, and rightly so.
Government-imposed lockdowns, mask mandates, and social isolation protocols were ostensibly implemented to try to save lives.
But at what cost?
According to a new study, the price of these lockdown measures was high, and particularly pronounced among children.
The CDC reported that during the government-imposed social isolation procedures throughout 2020:
- 37.1% of students experienced poor mental health
- 31.1% of students experienced poor mental health during the prior 30 days.
- 44.2% of students felt persistently sad or hopeless.
- 19.9% of students seriously considered attempting suicide.
- 9.0% of students attempted suicide.
These findings are shocking, and frightening.
- Abbott says Texas will bus migrants to DC after Biden lifts Title 42
From The Hill:
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced on Wednesday the state will send migrants who illegally cross the border to Washington, D.C., in response to the Biden administration lifting Title 42.
Title 42 is a public health measures that can be deployed to block asylum claims or expel migrants due to contagion risk. The policy was implemented during the Trump presidency and continued when President Biden took office, with the Biden administration recently announcing that it will be lifted next month.
Abbott said Texas will implement multiple measures to deter border crossing in response, with the governor warning numbers at the border would increase sharply.
One of the ways Abbott says he plans to remove migrants from Texas is by sending them to the nation’s Capital.
- Joe Rogan slams daughter’s elementary school for pushing woke ‘anti-racist’ ideology onto young kids
From TheBlaze:
Joe Rogan took aim at his 9-year-old daughter’s California elementary school this week, slamming the institution for pushing woke “anti-racist” ideals on young children.
The massively popular podcaster claimed the school, which he doesn’t name, issued a blanket statement to parents in May 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, telling them that their children “must be anti-racist.”
Rogan slammed the school’s email during Tuesday’s episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” arguing that the children were too young to understand the inflammatory message and charged that by telling them to be anti-racist, administrators were in essence introducing racism to them.
“When the whole George Floyd thing happened, one of the schools that my kids were going to back in California released this email, saying that it’s not enough to not be racist, you now must be anti-racist,” Rogan recalled.
“These kids are not even remotely racist. Like, they have all sorts of different kinds of friends,” he went on to say. “I’ve never heard them discuss it once. It’s just, ‘I like this person and she’s nice to me and we like to play together and we both like the same things.'”
- LA County votes to suspend official travel to Florida, Texas over parental rights, transgender laws
From Fox News:
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors (BOS) on Tuesday approved a motion suspending official travel to Florida and Texas over the southern states’ legislation regarding parental rights and transgender minors.
Critics have depicted recent orders from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Don DeSantis as harmful to LGBTQ inclusiveness and safety.
The LA County BOS responded to the legislation by voting to “suspend all travel to the States of Texas and Florida for the conduct of County business unless the Chief Executive Officer determines that the failure to authorize such travel would seriously harm the County’s interests.”
- Gay Disney Employee Explains Why Disney Wokeness Doesn’t Speak for Him and His Friends
From The Daily Citizen:
Disney is the valiant defender of oppressed minorities against the hateful, bigoted attacks of the Sunshine State’s governor and legislative branch. These evil people have made it illegal to even say “gay” in Florida. But fear not, Disney and other major media voices have come to the rescue to protect all children and “LGBT citizens” from the bad people.
Except this is a remarkably false and simplistic narrative and many in the same-sex community do not identify with it. That is what a gay Walt Disney World employee named Gary Lucia wants us all to understand, and he is as serious as he is passionate on the matter. He published a lengthy and major article over at Substack explaining all the various ways this carefully crafted and intentionally inflated narrative is untrue. It is well worth a full read by anyone concerned about this issue and how it is affecting our children and our culture.
Lucia gives us all a profound education, from his own ideological gay perspective, in how false so much of this narrative is.
- Sex Educators Say ‘Early Grades May Be the Best Time’ to Introduce Children to LGBT Issues
From The Daily Citizen:
In an online meeting with sex educators, two researchers said that sex education is “most important” for children, and, they stated, “It can be strongest when it starts in elementary school.
Eva S. Goldfarb, Ph.D., and Lisa D. Lieberman, Ph.D., both from the Department of Public Health at Montclair State University, cited an article they’d published and said:
This review suggests that not only are younger children able to discuss sexuality related issues, but that the early grades may in fact be the best time to introduce topics related to sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, gender equality and social justice related to the LGBTQ+ community before heteronormative and cisnormative values and assumptions become more deeply ingrained and less mutable.
That’s right. Teach young children – even preschoolers – about gender ideology and homosexuality. And do so before basic truths – such as the reality that humans almost always form opposite-sex relationships or that people come in two forms, male or female – get “more deeply ingrained” and less easy to change.
- Good Luck Buying That House
From MSN:
Oh, you want to buy a house? The bad news is that right now, you would pay a historically high price for a home, and as of today, you’d also hand over more money in interest for the privilege to do so — a whopping 5 percent, on average. In fact, save for two brief spikes in 2011 and 2018, home buyers haven’t been paying this much for a 30-year mortgage since the spring of 2010, when the economy was struggling to get out of recession and the unemployment rate had just fallen below 10 percent.
“It’s probably fair to say we have never seen an environment like this for home shoppers, and we certainly haven’t in recent memory,” Nicole Bachaud, economist at Zillow, told me. “Home values are climbing at a record rate, and buyers no longer have the respite of record-low mortgage rates to keep monthly payments in check.” The good news? Well, anyone who’s going to buy a house right now will be contributing to the economy by giving away lots of their money to the seller and the mortgage company — so there’s that.
- Boy bullied, pushed out of wheelchair at school for dressing as police officer becomes honorary member
From FOX 5:
A Houston-area third-grader, who was bullied and pushed out of his wheelchair for dressing as a police officer for Career Day, is now an honorary member of multiple departments.
Michael Martinez, 8, has cerebral palsy and wants to become a police officer, now has the titles to prove it: Honorary District Attorney’s Investigator, Honorary Deputy Constable, and Junior firefighter.
“Honorary badges are given to recipients who embody the characteristics required of every peace officer and first responder: courage, strength, kindness and resilience,” Ogg said at the ceremony held at the District Attorney’s Office. “We are presenting these honorary titles to this young man who, although not of age to be a peace officer, has taught us all about how to be brave in the face of adversity.”
Michael, who attends third grade in Humble, had donned a police officer costume for Career Day at school when a couple of older students, who have since been punished, pushed him out of his wheelchair in a congested hallway. Michael kept his cool and stayed calm as several students helped him back into his chair.
