Religious Liberty is Under Attack

Why are Americans in general, and Utahns in particular, not outraged at the recent threats against religious rights in Houston, Texas? Of all the states intent on retaining their religious rights, Utah should be first in line. Religious worship is a fundamental freedom, yet our slumbering citizens seem unaware that this right is on the chopping block.

The first of Houston’s two major violations began with a city ordinance banning gay “discrimination” in commerce. Despite their prevalence, such ordinances wrongly insert government into citizen affairs because they dictate beliefs. Local churches began a petition drive to repeal the ordinance at the ballot box and collected more than 30,000 signatures. The city secretary, authorized to validate the signatures, approved the minimum 17,000 signatures to initiate the repeal effort. Acting without legal authority, city attorney David Feldman threw out thousands of the validated signatures. A coalition of 400 Christian congregations filed a lawsuit against the city for civil rights violation of the First Amendment’s freedom of petition.

The second mistake came from Houston’s lesbian mayor, Annise Parker. In retaliation toward pastors who had been preaching against the anti-discrimination measure from their pulpits, the mayor issued subpoenas against five local ministers. She subpoenaed “all speeches, presentations, or sermons” related to the issue, the petition, the mayor, homosexuality or gender identity. The subpoenaed materials also included confidential emails between pastors and their congregants. This kind of action is historically the opening salvo against rights and

freedoms. The First Amendment’s freedoms were under attack.

As tensions mounted, pastors and patriots came from across the country to demand First Amendment rights of petition, speech and religion for Houston’s churches. By invitation, Utah joined the cause to stand with the five pastors and 400 congregations that backed them. Utah’s Cheralyn Bacon Eagar spoke at the Oct. 29 press conference to declare that what happens to one of us happens to all; our rights must be defended or we forfeit them; if those who tear down freedom succeed in one city, the precedent is set for the fall of other cities; we cannot let this happen.

There are several important points here. First, the pastors acted legally to work for repeal of the anti-discrimination ordinance. IRS rules for 501(c)3 entities — the churches — prohibit only direct endorsements of individual candidates such as, “Let’s all vote for John Smith.” They do no prohibit recommendations for or against legislation. Second, the civil rights of citizens who signed the petitions were violated when their valid signatures were thrown out. Americans have a constitutional right to petition the government. The violations mounted when an unauthorized city attorney acted on matters outside his legal jurisdiction. Third, the Constitutions of both state and nation were disregarded by the mayor. Our U.S. Constitution guarantees the inalienable rights of religion, speech and petition, as does the Texas Constitution. Mayor Parker put herself above the laws of both.

The five subpoenaed Houston pastors have no intention of abandoning their religious rights. They’ve spoken to the media, in the press conference, personally to Utah’s contingent and in the Nov. 2nd “I Stand Sunday” event at Grace Community Church in Houston. Steve Riggle, the pastor and president of the Houston Area Pastors Council, said, "When elected officials abuse the power of their office ... we must stand against that action, whatever the cost." Another, Khanh Huynh of Houston’s Vietnamese Baptist Church, risked his life to flee Communist Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. He said, "In North Vietnam, people died fighting for freedom of religion and speech [which] we could not express. ... I never thought I would see the marching boots of tyranny here.” He fled to the U.S. to find these rights and now sees them being taken away. Pastor Magda Hermida, whose ministry bears her name, said, “We never thought we would see this happen in our country. ... This is the police state we experienced in Cuba. We cannot allow this.”

This issue is not about gay rights or the other bullying issues being used against the public. It is about maintaining the privileges of U.S. citizens and upholding the law. The federal Constitution’s First Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging freedom of speech…or the right of petition.” That’s crystal clear. Those protesting these violations are fighting for freedom, just as did our Founding Fathers two and half centuries ago.

From the outset, those against the gay marriage agenda have said the issue would be used to destroy religious liberty — that activists and then government would deny churches the right to teach the biblical stand against homosexuality. Houston’s mayor proved they were right. No government official has a right to information involving a congregation’s teachings, doctrines or members, nor can a government tell a church what to believe or teach. This is flagrantly illegal.

This issue has not been resolved and patriots have only begun this defense of freedom. America stands where she stood in the late 1700s. We can be grateful to Houston’s ministers for refusing to set the precedent of caving before government illegality. As it was over two centuries ago, some don’t see the need for freedom and some don’t care. Among the rest, coalitions are forming across the nation, including Utah, to uphold the rule of law. Be alert and get involved. Otherwise, you could become a closet Christian by necessity.



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Privacy Succumbs to the Party Line...Big Brother NSA?

In the “olden days” our telephones were all connected on a “party line”. Your one-per-household telephone was attached to all the neighbors’ phones. Only one phone could be used at a time and anybody on the circuit could pick up the phone and listen in. It was a great gossip tool. 

History is back, and so are party lines—it’s just you, the guy on the other end, and the US government eavesdropping on your conversations.

A federal judge has ruled that privacy doesn’t matter and it’s legal for the National Security Agency to collect our phone conversations. US District Judge William H. Pauley III ruled December 27 that this collection of phone data is necessary in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He says it increases the NSA’s ability to find terrorists.

It’s ridiculous to believe that this program is legal. It kills our first amendment right of free speech—you aren’t free to say what you want if you know the government is listening. It’s not because you’re saying anything bad, it’s the intimidation of having no privacy. It’s the fear that the definition of “bad” may change in the future. Just one example: the word “gay” meant happy when I was a kid. Take that statement forward several decades. You tell people you are gay today and you get a very different meaning. That’s why you don’t want anyone recording and storing your conversations.

The judge’s ruling also destroys our fourth amendment rights. We are being unreasonably “searched” without probable cause. The vast majority of us are law-abiding people and we aren’t doing anything wrong, so it is unreasonable to search us. The Fourth Amendment says a search warrant must be issued before these searches can occur. That goes out the window, as well.

So, it the judge says this is necessary to help the government find terrorists, what happens when the definition of terrorist changes—like, maybe, a Christian as a terrorist? That definition change is in progress now—the Obama administration is reported to be rewriting government training manuals to include Christians as terrorists.

While this is insane, it is, unfortunately, real. Tweak the situation just a little and you have religious persecution—a looming possibility.  

This is an ugly example of the courts destroying the Constitution by rewriting our laws—something they have no authority to do. This judge is completely out of line and his reasoning is bogus.

It’s a scary world when we trade freedom for safety. Once we start down that slippery slope there is no stopping place. There is always something that makes us unsafe. Taking a bath is unsafe, swinging on a swing is unsafe, riding in a car, using a paring knife, climbing a flight of stairs—all are unsafe. Once you give government the right to make you safe it can step into the smallest details of your life to force you. We narrowly missed a major “hit” on our rights this past year when a United Nations treaty was defeated that could have required every household in America to install expensive safety equipment on their staircases in case a handicapped person came to visit. This is the end result of “keeping us safe”.

When a nation decides to put safety first it abolishes liberty. All of us are now losing our right to privacy to find the few rotten apples in the barrel. Benjamin Franklin said it well: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” 

We Hope you All Are Enjoying a Very Merry Christmas and New Year!

As we celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ, may we remember the gifts He gave us through His birth and death. 

Among those gifts is freedom through our Constitution, which its Framers declared was divinely inspired.

It is not, and never will be, the intent of God for His people to be enslaved.

Slavery has many forms. It can come openly, with chains and prison bars, or subtlly, through excessive taxation, bureaucratic control, and unconstitutional law. Slavery can also come from an unlawful executive who makes himself a king over us, a Congress that abdicates its responsibilities to us, or a court system that destroys, rather than upholds, our Constitution.

One of the greatest gifts of God is freedom--the right to choose our goals, lifestyle, beliefs, and form of religious worship. It follows, then, that the adversary of freedom would make it a priority to take our freedom.

Please stand with me and make the decision to give a gift back to Jesus Christ: the gift to support and sustain the Constitution He gave us. Study its brilliant, balanced design, and cherish it for what it is: the most original, inspired system of government in the world; the pattern for and path to freedom. Learn the Constitution, love it, preserve it!

Merry Christmas!

War on Religious Freedom

Reposted because we thought this is a very important topic

by Phyllis Schlafly

November 6, 2013

Americans who believe in God had better wake up and realize that a well-orchestrated campaign is moving to fundamentally transform the United States into a scrupulously secular nation. If this succeeds, we will no longer enjoy our First Amendment right of “free exercise” of religion but will be forbidden to speak or display any prayers, Bible quotations, or other evidences of religion in any public place or event.
The major strike force working to accomplish this consists of the ACLU plus various atheist groups. They are always ready to file lawsuits to get some supremacist judge to restrict religious expression.
This effort is magnified by two other organizations that have a major impact on our culture: the military who feel the temptation to be politically correct and the liberal bureaucrats in public schools who now feel free to teach their leftwing views. Barack Obama’s fingerprints are not on most of these acts, but his anti-religious attitudes are widely enough known to encourage those on the public payroll to charge ahead with extremist politically correct policies.
We’d like to know if Pentagon officials have met with any Christian leaders to balance the aggressive lobbying by those who want to silence all religious expression by members of the military. Nine senior Army or Navy officers were dismissed this year, and some wonder if this was a purge of senior officers suspected of not toeing the Obama party line.
A Young Marines program in Louisiana, which has been helping at-risk youth for 25 years, lost its federal funding because its graduation ceremony mentions God. The oath says simply, “I shall never do anything that would bring disgrace or dishonor upon my God, my country and its flag, my parents, myself or the Young Marines.”
Graduation also includes a voluntary and non-denominational prayer that, in 25 years, no one ever complained about. But Obama’s Department of Justice discovered the oath and prayer in a random audit and then demanded that both be removed or else the government would cut off its $15,000 in federal funding.
Some public school busybody bureaucrats are trying to suppress any and all religious mention on school property. Their orders are far more extreme than anything courts have ever held to be violations of the First Amendment.
Sports are a favorite target of the anti-religious crowd. A high school football coach, Marcus Borden, was forbidden even to bow his head or “take a knee” during voluntary student-led prayers before the games.
In Texas, a boy’s track relay team ran its fastest race of the year and defeated its closest rival by seven yards, which should have enabled it to advance toward the state championship. The team’s anchor runner pointed to the sky to give glory to God as he crossed the finish line, but someone didn’t like the gesture so the authorities disqualified this winning team because of it.
The ACLU in Rhode Island filed a lawsuit to force Cranston High School to remove a prayer banner in the auditorium, even though there had been no complaints in 38 years. The banner reads in part: “Our Heavenly Father: Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win. Teach us the value of true friendship, help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School.”
High school officials in Kountze, Texas, and a Wisconsin atheist group called Freedom From Religion made a tremendous effort to stop the cheerleaders from displaying a banner before a football game that read: “And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.”
In North Carolina, a high school junior knelt for a brief two-second prayer before a wrestling match, and the referee penalized him a point for doing so. A senior at Tomah High School in Wisconsin was given a zero on an art project because he added a cross and the words “John 3:16 A Sign of Love” to his drawing of a landscape.
You can laugh at the following rule issued by the principal at Heritage Elementary in Madison, Alabama, but she was downright serious. She allowed Easter observances including a costumed rabbit, but she issued this imperious warning, “Make sure we don’t say ‘the Easter bunny’ because that would infringe on religious diversity.”
America was founded on very different beliefs about government actions. As Alexis de Toqueville, the Frenchman who traveled around our country in the mid-19th century, wrote: “Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention. … The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other.”