Good Morning!
“Life is a right,” stated popular radio host and founder of The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro. “In fact, unlike abortion, which is not a right, life is specified directly in the Declaration of Independence, as well as the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, and remains the most fundamental right of all.”
He continued:
“Abortion is a real moral issue with real lives at stake, and no amount of leftist badgering could back conservative Americans off their attempts to protect the unborn.”
Which is why we’ll be gathering tonight for a special celebration of life:
- Focus on the Family Presents SeeLife 2022 – Watch Live Tonight
From The Daily Citizen:
Focus on the Family wants to encourage and equip YOU to be a light for life in your community!
This Tuesday night, we will host our 4th annual SeeLife event to rally together with pro-life friends and prepare to live out our pro-life values in a nation that has embraced a culture of death.
Many champions of the pro-life movement will be speaking, including Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, President of Focus on the Family Jim Daly, President of the March for Life Jeanne Mancini, contemporary Christian musician, singer, and songwriter Phil Wickham, and Christian author and speaker Jesse Minassian.
Register here to watch this event live on June 14, 2022, at 7 p.m. MT.
Together we can change hearts and minds on the issue of abortion and ultimately save lives!
- Yes, Susan B. Anthony Was Pro-Life
From the Wall Street Journal:
Early feminist icons Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony changed forever the role of women in American society. In the 19th century they tirelessly promoted public education on behalf of women’s equality and demanded that women be given the right to vote. But contrary to recent claims by advocacy groups, they were not in favor of abortion.
After a leaked Supreme Court draft decision appearing to overturn Roe v. Wade circulated in May, the nonprofit National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House in Rochester, N.Y., accused the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life political action committee, of misappropriating the famous suffragist’s name. “To suggest that Susan B. Anthony would support government intervention in a woman’s decision about a pregnancy is abhorrent,” museum president Deborah L. Hughes wrote in a post on the organization’s website.
The Elizabeth Cady Stanton Trust similarly claims that its namesake would have supported abortion-rights advocacy in the 21st century. The group has filed lawsuits in Michigan, New York and Rhode Island, asking courts, according to a press release, “to protect Roe v. Wade from being overturned, and firmly establish the Equal Rights Amendment . . . in the United States Constitution.”
In fact, it’s the pro-choice groups that have it wrong. During their lifetimes, both women vociferously condemned abortion. They certainly wouldn’t have embraced the use of their names to promote what they termed “foeticide.”
Besides educating women about pregnancy, suffragists believed if women were allowed to vote and earn their own money, single motherhood would become more socially accepted. The “murder of children, either before or after birth,” as the Revolution put it on Feb. 5, 1868, would decrease.
Modern abortion-rights activists are wrong to enlist Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in their cause. Both women were firmly opposed to abortion, as their extensive writing and publishing on the subject confirms. Arguments to the contrary do a disservice to women—and to women’s history.
- Pittsburgh parents sue over teacher instructing first graders on gender transitioning
From the Post Millennial:
Three Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania mothers filed a lawsuit last week to stop a first grade teacher from instructing their kids about transgender transitioning and other gender identity topics.
Fox News reported that the lawsuit seeks a “court order to stop the gender-related instruction or offer parents the chance to excuse their children from it” at Jefferson Elementary School in the Mount Lebanon School District.
The plaintiffs Carmilla Tatel, Stacy Dunn and Gretchen Melton name first-grade teacher Megan Williams in their suit as having violated the Constitution, state law, and district policy by teaching gender ideology in the elementary school class.
The parents’ lawsuit cited the 14th Amendment’s due process clause as the basis for their parental rights, something that American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten previously said “starts wars.”
- NYC shells out $200K in taxpayer dollars to bring drag performers to public schools: report
From Fox News:
New York City shelled out more than $200,000 in taxpayer funding in the past five years to have drag queens come into classrooms and interact with schoolchildren as young as age 3, according to a report.
The nonprofit Drag Story Hour NYC, previously known as Drag Queen Story Hour NYC, received approximately $207,000 in taxpayer funding since 2018, the New York Post reported, citing city records.
The total includes a $50,000 contribution from New York State through its Council on the Arts, along with $157,000 earmarked from New York City’s Departments of Education, Cultural Affairs, Youth and Community Development, and even from the Department of Transportation, according to the Post.
Records show that the non-profit received $46,000 from city contracts for appearances at public schools, street festivals and libraries in May alone ahead of Pride month.
- First Amendment Legal Group Expands from Campus to Culture
From The Daily Citizen:
One of the nation’s premier First Amendment advocacy and legal groups fighting for free speech on the nation’s college campuses has announced a major expansion of its work beyond the campus to the culture at large, filling a widening void created by the ever-leftward march of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), organized in 1999, is re-branding itself as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (emphasis added). Still to be known as FIRE, the group has undertaken a $75 million initiative to expand its role in the culture through litigation, public education and research.
It couldn’t come at a better time, according to the organization’s President and CEO Greg Lukianoff.
“America needs a new nonpartisan defender of free speech that will advocate unapologetically for this fundamental human right in both the court of law and the court of public opinion,” said Lukianoff in a press release. “FIRE has a proven track record of defeating censorship on campus. We are excited to now bring that same tireless advocacy to fighting censorship off campus.”
6. Nextdoor App Exposes the Best – and Worst of Neighborhood Life
From The Daily Citizen:
According to media reports, the California-based site representing 285,000 neighborhoods in 11 countries boasts that 1 in 3 U.S. households use the app.
Do you?
“By bringing neighbors and organizations together, we cultivate a kinder world where everyone has a neighborhood they can rely on,” we read on the site’s home page.
If only.
Like many, I use Nextdoor quite a bit – to find out what’s going on in our area, pay a compliment to an unknown neighbor, learn the latest on a new development, or get the low down on why the local police have descended upon our local drug store.
The site is extremely convenient and helpful – and also somewhat depressing.
It doesn’t take long for many of the seemingly innocent discussions to deteriorate on the site. Things can escalate quickly. This past Sunday, as neighbors started to share details about what they heard about the murder at Walgreens, accusations and concern for the victim and their family began to heat up.
There’s no question social media apps link us like nothing before. But they also provide a degree of anonymity that can bring out aggressive and even rude behavior. After all, many people are more willing to insult someone online rather than confront or engage them face to face.
For Christians, especially, Nextdoor can be a wonderful resource to quietly minister, encourage and fellowship with our neighbors. It can represent the very best social media has to offer.
“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you,” wrote the apostle Paul (Eph. 4:32). This is a helpful counsel anytime, anywhere – but certainly on social media – and especially when engaging with our neighbors on Nextdoor.
- Ohio Makes It Easier for Teachers to Carry Guns at School
From The New York Times:
Teachers and other school employees in Ohio will be able to carry firearms into school with a tiny fraction of the training that has been required since last year, after Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill into law on Monday.
While employees have for years been allowed to carry guns on school grounds with the consent of the local school board, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that state law required them to first undergo the same basic peace officer training as law enforcement officials or security officers who carry firearms on campus — entailing more than 700 hours of instruction.
That ruling, Mr. DeWine said on Monday, had made it largely impractical for Ohio school districts to allow staff members to carry firearms.
Under the new law, a maximum of 24 hours of training will be enough for teachers to carry guns at school, though the local board will still need to give its approval. Twenty-eight states allow people other than security personnel to carry firearms on school grounds, with laws in nine of those states explicitly mentioning school employees, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Polls in recent years show that a majority of Americans, and a large majority of teachers, oppose the idea of arming teachers.
- ‘Sudden Adult Death Syndrome’: Young, Healthy People Are Mysteriously Dying
From the Daily Citizen:
Experts and families of healthy, young people who have suddenly died are speaking out about Sudden Adult Death Syndrome, or Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome, known more commonly as SADS.
SADS, according to the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP), “is an umbrella term to describe unexpected deaths in young people (usually 40 years of age), whose cause of death following post mortem examination is ‘undetermined’ or ‘unascertained.’”
“She worked for an advertising company and was doing really well,” said Margherita Cummins, whose daughter Catherine Keane died suddenly at age 31. “She went to the gym and walked 10,000 steps every day.”
Cummins told the Irish Mirror last month that her daughter’s flatmates found Catherine’s dead body after she didn’t come down for breakfast.
9. Traffic Stop Turns into Powerful Moment of Prayer Between Trooper and Father with Cancer
From The Daily Citizen:
What started as a routine traffic stop quickly turned into a powerful moment of prayer between a North Carolina state trooper, and a father who was undergoing treatment for cancer.
ABC7 News reports that earlier this year, Dr. Ashlye Wilkerson was driving back home from Duke University hospital in Durham, North Carolina when she was pulled over for speeding.
Dr. Wilkerson was driving her father, deacon Anthony Geddis, back from the hospital, where he was receiving chemotherapy for stage four colon cancer.
But after the trooper approached their car, deacon Geddis spoke up to try and protect his daughter.
Wilkerson told ABC7, “He was still a little weak because he had a treatment that day. He cleared his voice and said, ‘This is my baby girl, she’s driving me back home from treatment I had chemo.’”
Instantly, Trooper Jared Doty had a change of heart.
“At that time, I knew there is no way I’m writing this lady a ticket,” Trooper Doty recalls. “I had to sit in there for a while just to compose myself to figure out what to say when I went back.”
Trooper Doty’s example is a good reminder for us all. We should always be ready to pray for those around us. And frequently, our neighbors, coworkers and acquaintances are going through difficult circumstances that we don’t know about.
So, when the Holy Spirit provides us with opportunities to pray and show mercy, we should be ready to make the most of those occasions.
“Praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints” (Ephesians 6:18 ESV).
“Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).
- We Should Fly the American Flag with Pride
From The Daily Citizen:
Tuesday is Flag Day – the 245th anniversary of the adoption of the Stars and Stripes as America’s flag. It comes at a time of great cultural and political upheaval.
In fact, rarely have we needed more of an excuse to lift up and celebrate Old Glory – a traditionally unifying symbol that stands for freedom, sacrifice, national pride, equality and American exceptionalism.
Although the Second Continental Congress passed a resolution on June 14, 1777, declaring the flag to be 13 alternating red and white stripes along with a constellation of white stars in a blue field, it wasn’t until 1916 that June 14 was officially established as Flag Day.
An editorial in The New York Times on that first Flag Day stated: “With united hearts; so, no matter what temporary bitterness and forces of division may have crept in here and there, Americans stand and will stand.”
During New York City’s first celebration of Flag Day in 1916 – a series of grand ceremonies marked by pomp and pageantry – a band played “The World Turned Upside Down.” Some historians suggest the English ballad was played by the British Army as its soldiers retreated from Yorktown in 1781 – the last major battle of the Revolutionary War.
The world too often seems upside down these days, but despite the metaphorical and actual “bombs bursting in air,” at first light of morning, our great flag is “still there.”
Come controversy or come calm, the American flag flies high. Long may it wave.
Don’t forget to watch SEE LIFE 2022 tonight – and Happy Flag Day!
