Marriage and Pregnancy Reduce Crime

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There’s a general assumption in public policy discourse that economic policy and social policy are separate universes.

When economic policy is the topic, we think about taxes, government spending, business, jobs, etc. When social policy is the topic, we think about marriage, family, children, abortion, etc.

But, in reality, the line between economic policy and social policy is ambiguous, if it exists at all.

In recent years, for instance, family structure has gotten increasing attention as an important factor to consider in policy discussions about poverty.

The demand for socialism is on the rise from young Americans today. But is socialism even morally sound? Find out more now >>

Now we have a new academic paper by economists—Maxim Massenkoff and Evan Rose, both doctoral candidates in economics at the University of California, Berkeley—that makes it even clearer that what we generally think of as social policy can fall into the realm of economic analysis.

The paper—”Family Formation and Crime”—examines the connection between the incidence of pregnancy, childbirth, and marriage, and the incidence of crime.

The conclusion, in the words of the authors: “Our event-study analysis indicates that pregnancy triggers sharp declines in crime rivaling any known intervention. For mothers, criminal offending drops precipitously in the first few months of pregnancy, stabilizing at half of pre-pregnancy levels three years after the birth. Men show a smaller, but still important 25 percent decline beginning at the onset of pregnancy, although domestic violence arrests spike for fathers immediately after birth.”

Marriage, according to the authors, “is a stopping point, marking the completion of a roughly 50 percent decline in offending for both men and women.”

The analysis, again per the authors, is “by far the largest such study ever conducted in the United States.” They tapped information on over a million births and, using data in the state of Washington, matched records on “criminal offenses, births, marriages, and divorces.”

George Mason University economist Alex Tabarrok discusses the work on his enormously popular blog Marginal Revolution.

Tabarrok notes his own research on crime deterrence, which shows that in the case of three-strikes laws, the prospect of an additional 20 years to life imprisonment reduced criminal recidivism by 17%. Compared with this, notes Tabarrok, “the effect of pregnancy is astoundingly large.”

Of course, demonstrating statistical correlation and explaining why the occurrences correlate are different things. Why is incidence of pregnancy followed by significant drops in criminal activity in both women and men?

What is it about birth and marriage that contributes significantly to reducing crime?

Tabarrok conjectures it’s about “socializing and civilizing both men and women.”

I would speculate that it is similar to why, when a pregnant woman sees an ultrasound image of the child developing within her, she is less likely to abort that child.

It’s a wake-up call to the awe and mystery of life, which produces a sense of meaning and personal responsibility.

It follows that we ought to be concerned about the decline in Americans’ sense of importance of marriage and children.

In a newly published survey from Pew Research Center, 57% of men and 46% of women said “having a job or career they enjoy” is “essential for a … fulfilling life.”

Compared with this, only 16% of men and 17% of women said marriage is “essential for a … fulfilling life.”

And only 16% of men and 22% of women said children are “essential for a … fulfilling life.”

I love my work and agree that satisfying and meaningful work is rewarding. But I think something is wrong when Americans are saying work is three times more important for a fulfilling life than marriage and children.

The public policy implications of this research showing a drop in crime after pregnancy are not clear. But what is clear is we should be thinking more about how our culture can do a better job conveying the importance of marriage and children.

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

COMMENTARY BY

Star Parker

Star Parker is a columnist for The Daily Signal and president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education. Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLE: Problematic Women: Beginning Motherhood in the NICU

A Note for our Readers:

With the demand for socialism at an all-time high among our young people—our future leaders and decisionmakers—the experts at Heritage stopped and asked a question that not many have asked:

Is socialism really morally sound?

The researchers at The Heritage Foundation have put together a guide to help you and our fellow Americans better understand the 9 Ways That Socialism Will Morally Bankrupt America.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

2,291 vaping-related lung injury cases in all 50 states, 2 US territories; 48 deaths in 25 states

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These data as of December 3, 2019 were adjusted by removing 175 non-hospitalized cases from previously reported national cases. From this date forward, CDC will report only hospitalized cases but deaths regardless of hospitalization status.

THC is present in most of the samples tested by FDA. While Vitamin E acetate is a chemical of concern, 152 different THC products have been used by patients.

An article in the December 6, 2019 issue of CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) provides more information about the kinds of THC products patients have used.

Of 2,291 patients, 1,421 vaped any use of THC, 956 vaped any use of nicotine, and 214 vaped any use of CBD.

More than half used Dank Vapes. The next popular brands were TKO, Rove, Smart Cart, Kingpen, and Cookie. “Cart” refers to the cartridge that is inserted into a vaping device.

Ten percent of patients in the Northeast and West regions reported using Dabwood and Brass Knuckles. From one percent to five percent of patients nationwide reported using the following brands: Off White, Moon Rocks, Chronic Carts, Mario Carts, Cereal Carts, Runtz, Dr. Zodiac, Eureka, Supreme G, and CaliPlug. Use of 134 other products were reported by 1 percent of patients.

While the marijuana industry insists that the THC cartridge brands making people sick are purchased exclusively from illicit, black-market dealers, several individual states report some patients have bought them from licensed dispensaries. Worse, anyone, including underage young people, can buy most of these products without even being asked their age before entering online stores.

Read CDC December 3, 2019 vaping-related lung injury update here.

Read CDC’s December 6, 2019 MMWR article here.

Every person who touches the lives of teenagers should watch “E-Cigarette Microlearning Video,” a 6-minute, 35-second brief produced by the nonprofit American Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. Dr. Brian King of the CDC’s Office of Smoking and Health narrates the video.

We highlight key points here to encourage you to watch it.

It begins with the news that e-cigarette use doubled in just one year (2017-2018) as shown above.

Every other kind of tobacco use has dropped since 2011, while e-cigarette use skyrocketed among kids who never smoked before, but became addicted to nicotine via e-cigarettes.

The primary driver of this escalation in use is Juul.

Several factors contribute to encouraging youth use. The first one is advertising.

Dr. King sums it up this way, “Advertising will bring a horse to water, flavors will get him to drink, and nicotine [and marijuana] will keep him coming back for more.”

The second factor is flavoring.

The third factor is nicotine. And nicotine is not the only thing e-cigarettes contain.

Cartridges containing THC, the psychoactive component in marijuana, can also be inserted into vaping devices. One-third of high-school e-cigarette users vape THC.

The Surgeon General says both nicotine and marijuana act on the brain and can change it. It’s not like you can buy a new brain. No adolescent or young adult should use either drug.

Prevention strategies we know work for cigarettes and other forms of tobacco can be applied to e-cigarettes.

National Families in Action adds:

Cigarettes are legal, but you cannot buy them online. So why can you buy e-cigarettes online?

Marijuana is illegal nationwide. So why can you buy THC vape cartridges online?

Watch “E-Cigarette Microlearning Video” here.

CDC nicotine and marijuana resources

Many resources for parents, healthcare professionals, and communities are available from CDC.

You can find them here and here.

Visit The Marijuana Report’s Facebook page

In addition to current issues of The Marijuana Report, we post several more marijuana messages each month on our Facebook page. Search Facebook for nationalfamilies to access it.

RELATED ARTICLE: My Son Was Addicted to Pot Vaping. Now, Congress Wants to Aid the Industry.

Looking for a past issue of The Marijuana Report?

Find it here.

Did you know that in addition to The Marijuana Report e-newsletter, National Families in Action also publishes The Marijuana Report website? There you can find summaries of (and access to) scientific marijuana studies, the growth of the commercial marijuana industry, and what families and communities are doing to restrain it. Begin at our Welcome Page to access all the resources The Marijuana Report website offers.

The Marijuana Report is a weekly e-newsletter published by National Families in Action in partnership with SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana).

Visit National Families in Action’s website, The Marijuana Report.Org, to learn more about the marijuana story unfolding across the nation.

Subscribe to The Marijuana Report e-newsletter.

SCOTUS: Breaking the (Ultra)Sound Barrier

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When Governor Matt Bevin walks out of his office for the last time tonight, it’s somewhat fitting that the U.S. Supreme Court picked today to uphold one of the most important laws he ever signed — the Kentucky ultrasound bill. The justices, who watched the ACLU appeal all the way to their doorstep, refused to even hear the case. Instead, they deferred to the Sixth Circuit, which didn’t see the harm in showing moms a picture of their babies before they abort. If it’s just “a clump of cells,” who cares? Liberals, that’s who.The last thing the abortion industry wants is for moms to come face-to-face with the personhood of their child. It’s why they’ve poured millions of dollars into fighting heartbeat bills, sonograms, even basic medical disclaimers. When it comes to abortion, technology is — and always has been — the single biggest enemy of the Left. Nothing comes between women and their business more than the truth about these tiny humans in the womb — humans that yawn, smile, suck their thumbs. The imaging is so advanced these days that doctors can track something as small as a baby’s hiccup. It’s a game-changer. Which is exactly why groups like the ACLU and Planned Parenthood are trying to shut down laws like Kentucky’s. It’s hard enough to get moms to destroy their babies. But it’s near impossible once they see and hear how intensely human their children are.

For young moms like Lisa, who never wanted to be pregnant in the first place, it was a revelation. “I didn’t want to go through with having the baby,” she explained. “I didn’t want to face all of the challenges that a single mom would.” And besides, she said, “My life was just beginning,” and this, “makes you feel like your life is over.” She made three appointments to abort her little girl. But every time, she found a reason not to go. Something just wasn’t right. She went back to the pregnancy care center and they offered her a free sonogram. “I heard the heartbeat,” Lisa remembers, “and it made it all real. There was a real life inside of me.” It made her realize that “no matter what I was feeling or thinking at the time, I had a little one to worry about.”

As hard as it was to tell her parents, Lisa was overcome when they found her note and called her crying. “Through tears they told me they would help — no matter what.” It hasn’t always been easy, but her daughter, Selah, has been the joy of her life. A few years later, while her daughter played at the park, Lisa struck up a conversation with a woman sitting by her on the bench. Laura was her name. She said she worked at Life Network. Stunned, Lisa pointed to the blonde little girl on the swings. “The pregnancy center saved her life!” she exclaimed.

It’s a miraculous story — one the folks at Planned Parenthood don’t want to see repeated. In its challenge, the ACLU even argued that giving women these options was somehow a violation of doctors’ free speech. But the Supreme Court didn’t buy it. Just like they haven’t bought other lies about “informed consent” laws. Under Kentucky’s, all doctors are required to do is describe the ultrasound while moms listen to the heartbeat. If the women choose, they can shut their eyes and cover their ears. Even still, the ACLU calls it “unconstitutional and unethical.”

No, what’s unethical is misleading women about the personhood of their baby and the life-long consequences of aborting her. Even now, Laura says, she’s met other young moms who “couldn’t see past their circumstances — a child they’re not ready for, a relationship they’d rather escape.” But then they see their baby’s “heartbeat, fingers, and toes.” She says they see the impact of their ultrasound machine every day. Thanks to the Supreme Court, let’s hope Kentucky can say the same thing about their informed consent law.

Focus Impact Story – Lisa and Selah

Tony Perkins’s Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

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Living as Light in a Divided Nation

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EDITORS NOTE: This FRC column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

The Salvation Army a “Hate” Group? Preposterous!

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I feel like I lost a friend when Chick-fil-A apparently decided to throw Christians under the bus to curry favor with the LBGTQ crowd. Not that they could ever be “good” enough to please the radical gays because the goal is not really tolerance….it is forced acceptance and celebration.

But one thing that truly galled me in this whole scenario was the mislabeling of the Salvation Army. To think of the Salvation Army—which does so much good work for people of every race, creed, color, sexual-orientation, whatever—as somehow anti-gay is preposterous.

In a similar vein, a few weeks ago a singer from England initially refused to participate in a half-time show at a football game in Texas because it was to benefit the Salvation Army.

Singer Ellie Goulding, who later relented, said, “I am a committed philanthropist as you probably know, and my heart has always been in helping the homeless, but supporting an anti-LGBTQ charity is clearly not something I would ever intentionally do.”

By what criterion is the Salvation Army an anti-gay hate group? Because they do not let practicing, unrepentant homosexuals become leaders? Should GLAAD or other radical LGBTQ groups be forced, against their will, to have as leaders those who oppose their lifestyle?

What if someone tried to force one of these LBGTQ groups to hire as a leader someone like Omar Mateen, a true anti-gay (and anti-Christian) hater, who shot up and killed dozens of homosexuals and lesbians at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando?

  • Is it hate when the Salvation Army houses the down-and-out, including many homosexuals and lesbians?
  • Or provides food for same?
  • Or job-training to help them find meaningful employment?

By what definition of “hate” is the Salvation Army in anybody’s dictionary a hate group?

This politically correct culture has lost any semblance of moral clarity to label a group like the Salvation Army as a hate group.

When a hurricane hits, the Salvation Army is among the first on the scene to offer help for the hapless victims. The Salvation Army doesn’t discriminate whom they help.

Why do they help anybody? I once had the privilege to interview for Christian television the worldwide head of the Salvation Army, General John Gowans, who has since graduated to glory, having died in 2012.

He told me, “There wouldn’t be a Salvation Army without a Savior….Without Christ, there would be no dynamo behind the Salvation Army; to push it forward and to even to bring it into existence. It depends upon a living Christ to exist.”

The dirty little secret of all this false-reporting of “hate” is that much of it comes from a self-proclaimed watchdog of “hate” in America—the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) out of Montgomery, Alabama.

They have been scaring Northeastern liberals for generations against “hate” in America. The problem is that when the KKK, neo-Nazis, and skinheads (genuine purveyors of hate) became largely marginalized in our culture, the SPLC still wanted to keep the money flowing into their coffers through their direct mail appeals. So they started labeling legitimate Christian ministries as “hate” groups.

A few years ago my own employer, D. James Kennedy Ministries (which, by way of full disclosure, is on the SPLC’s “hate map” as alleged haters), produced a television documentary exposé on the SPLC.

For that program, Dr. Richard Land, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary, said, “The Southern Poverty Law Center has an aura of respectability because of its history. It came into being because of the civil rights struggle. And they were exposing white supremacist groups.”

“But,” continues Land, “they’ve now taken such a hard turn to the left, they’ve just fallen off the surface of the earth. And they just label people that disagree with any of the multicultural moral relativist views concerning transgenderism, homosexuality, etc., as being a hate group.”

Since the early-2019 resignation of Morris Dees, founding director of the SPLC, and the forced ouster of its president, Richard Cohen, a lot of disturbing revelations about the liberal group have been reported—even among liberal media sources, like an article by a former SPLC employee, Bob Moser, in the New Yorker.

Moser tells how employees would walk past the words from Amos, chapter 5, “… until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream,” used by Martin Luther King, Jr., etched in marble at the SPLC, and mockingly change them to“…until justice rolls down like dollars.” In short, for many the SPLC is all about money.

It is not hate when you show love, as the Salvation Army does. God bless them. Maybe Chick-fil-A will no longer give to them, but God will provide for this ministry through some other source. But shame on those who would slander the Salvation Army as a “hate group.” Talk about “fake news.”

© All rights reserved.

Transgenderism: Technology and role reversals have made both sexes unattractive

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Exactly what we should have expected from radical feminism.

Transsexuality affects around 0.6% or an estimated 1.4 million of the 327 million people in the U.S. and yet the media and the radical left has curiously made trans people’s experience central to our imaginations and regularly propose policy changes that purport to benefit them. I am skeptical.

From my (admittedly not very broad) experience of trans people they actually just want to be the other gender and are actually not interested in destroying gender itself. I sometimes wonder if trans people are being used by the left and that these proposals are actually less about helping a vulnerable minority and more about deconstructing the majority.

Nevertheless, I think we ought to take responsibility for the ways our own behavior may have contributed to the mess we are currently in. I have listed below eight ways in which mainstream behavior of the last hundred years might have influenced or even brought about this current public trend.

Radical feminism

For nearly a century, feminists have spread the idea that men, just by virtue of their sex, are against women and keep them in servile roles. As women achieve more freedoms and rights, now beyond what men have, feminists have only become more insistent about that oppression. Instead of more rights making women happier, polls show an alarming downward slope since the 1970s, precisely when one would have expected women’s lot to have improved by their own estimation.

Any discussion of this fact insinuates that because men’s unhappiness has not fallen as steeply as women’s it must be men’s fault. In light of this, conscientious boys and men who love the women in their lives will undoubtedly begin to distrust themselves, and females may feel the need to avoid femininity and a future of being the inherently vulnerable sex.

Feminism has also forbidden any discussion of the vulnerabilities of men unless it is to make those entirely his own fault or the fault of “the patriarchy”. Feminism has also forbidden any discussion of the inherent strengths of women over men, other women and children. By presenting these parodies of male and female, feminism makes both sexes unattractive.

Society redefines female and male

For more than 50 years women themselves have regarded men’s bodies as normative, using long term hormonal treatments and surgical means to avoid menstruation, achieve non-fertility or to avoid or destroy pregnancies. In a relatively short time women went from being overwhelmed with the necessity of caring for children for nearly half of their lives – and probably helping other women with the necessities of caring for children and the sick and elderly for the other half (during their girlhood and post-menopausal years) – to a very new reality.

Since women now see themselves primarily as people who interact in the markets and pursue serial, non-fruitful encounters with men, should we be surprised when others begin to see us as not that complicated; indeed, easily imitated? Why wouldn’t biological males say to themselves, Well, I can do that!

Life today is generally less strenuous and less dangerous. The rare dangerous event is not likely to be fatal, but is likely to be met with plenty of infrastructure and technology, safety nets, police, first responders, power tools and labor-saving devices. Women contemplating these challenges are less likely than ever to be pregnant or saddled with several clinging young children; as a result they are quicker to look at the historical expectation that men will take care of the hard and dangerous situations and think, Well, I can do that!

The influence of porn

Pornography is enormously influential and those who make money out of it do so by the industry’s continual ramping up of graphic content to produce the next “high”. Porn suggests means of sexual arousal that might not otherwise have been pursued by an individual. Some porn actually suggests feminization to men as a means of sexual arousal, and some anecdotal reports are speculating this promotes and suggests male-to-female transition.

Single motherhood and divorce

Some 40% of all children are born on purpose into single mother households. A single mom is caught in a daily frustrating grind of trying to do the job of two people and likely to get impatient and even tyrannical in that frustration (I am a widow myself and know this situation first-hand). The children no longer have the chance to see a daily example of compromise between men and women and could easily begin to believe it’s not possible. Women and men like this are beginning to open up and tell the sad stories of the potential tyranny of female led households.

A deeply divisive and broken family of origin where mothers and fathers are locked in a perpetual fight and demonization of each other causes deep doubt in children’s understanding of their own gender as good.

Children cannot escape the fact that they are a physical manifestation of both their mother and their father. If one or both parents hate the other the children will internalize this hatred as a hatred of themselves in spite of the parents’ attempts to the contrary. Transsexuality might be a perceived way to personally and physically reconcile the disharmony experienced by the child of a violent and divisive couple. And so a boy could end up wanting to be anything but a male and a girl might seek to avoid being as vulnerable as she perceives her mother to be.

Lost mother-infant bonds

A mother’s love is essential to a person having a sense of themselves as a loveable person just in who they are. This is unique, relative to the father, because a mother is the child’s entire world in pregnancy but also in the first years of life.

If the infant experiences loss, either from a mother’s depressive withdrawal from the infant, or isolation through the mother’s attention being shifted to market production, or some other distraction such as care of another sick child or other worry, the child may not have a deep and abiding sense of their own worth and may not be able to convince themselves that they are loveable just as they are. They may seek a sex change as way of finding love and acceptance they never experienced.

Drawbacks of all-female nurturing

As children are being more and more raised entirely by women instead of both men and women, not just by single mothers but also by teachers, doctors, therapists, social workers, because all the helping professions are predominately female, it is possible that children will take on the knee jerk fears and concerns of unreflective females. According to the data collected in the The Boy Crisis, in a female-led environment children of both sexes may become more risk adverse, and be less likely to learn delayed gratification.

For these reasons they may have lower self-esteem from repeated failure and lack of accomplishment. Boys especially may see competent achievement as something to be avoided so as not to become oppressive. It may become more apparent to modern children that one must remain safe at all costs. If one sex is seen as safer than the other a change may be required.

The need to break the feminist monopoly

Extreme feminism, with its one-sided story that refuses to admit female evil and oppression as surely as it refuses to admit the many positive contributions of men to civilization, has reigned for too long. It leaves one asking: “What must I do to neither oppress or be oppressed if what causes the oppression or the victim status is my sex? To what lengths am I willing to go to avoid oppressing another person or being oppressed myself?”

The trans phenomenon is the ultimate challenge to extreme feminist claims. If women are completely and totally oppressed by men, why would a man choose to be a woman? If women have nothing but suffering under men’s oppression and men get all the breaks, why doesn’t a woman just become a man? Radical feminist insistence upon women’s perpetual oppression is being unmasked now that changing one’s sex is an actual option.

Loss of Christianity

Trans people are suffering people just like everyone. We are all plagued by self-hatred, though it can be expressed in different ways. We all have a great desire to start again, to find forgiveness and redemption. If we present Christianity to the world as a club for the self-righteous rather than a hospital for the broken, if Christians remain untransformed by their own faith, why should they be surprised when people seek transformation and personal integration in other ways?

We should all refrain from indulging in disgust toward human beings, be they other people or ourselves. To my trans friends I want to say:

Forgive me for the ways I created a world in which you feel you must mutilate yourself or hide yourself to be loveable. Forgive me for not being transformed as I should be. I am not sure how to love you best but I am unable to join you in your rejection of yourself. I hope you can also help me the same way. Perhaps not indulging in the self-hatred of another person is part of the definition of friend.

COLUMN BY

KATHERINE BAKER

Katherine Baker is a freelance writer who lives in Western Pennsylvania.

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EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

‘Abortion on Demand Agenda Is Immoral’: Meet Georgia’s Incoming Senator

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In a televised speech on Wednesday, Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp officially announced financial executive Kelly Loeffler as his pick to be the state’s next U.S. senator.

Kemp—who has mulled over hundreds of applications in the months since Georgia Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson announced he would be stepping down—officially unveiled Loeffler as his choice on Wednesday. In a speech at the Georgia State Capitol, the governor said Loeffler would serve in the Senate as a steadfast conservative who would support the Trump agenda.

“Kelly Loeffler will stand with our president, Sen. Perdue, and their allies in the House and Senate to keep America great,” Kemp said, invoking the president’s reelection slogan. “She will end this impeachment circus in Washington, and get Congress back to working for the people of our country.”

Despite Loeffler holding no prior political experience, Kemp chose her because he is betting that she will help bring female voters back into the Georgia GOP fold. Additionally, Loeffler’s strong business background was viewed as an advantage, allowing her to self-fund ahead of what will likely be a tough 2020 election cycle in the state.

Speaking for the first time as a senator-designate, Loeffler made clear her conservative bona fides.

“I’m not a career politician, or even someone who’s run for office. I’ve spent the last 25 years building businesses, taking risks, and creating jobs. I haven’t spent my life trying to get to Washington,” Loeffler said. “I’m a life-long conservative, pro-Second Amendment, pro-Trump, pro-military, and pro-wall,” she went on, which earned applause from the crowd gathered around her.

“I make no apologies for my conservative values, and I look forward to supporting President Trump’s conservative judges,” she said, adding that she is “strongly pro-life” and voiced explicit support for South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham’s 20-week abortion ban.

“The abortion on demand agenda is immoral,” Loeffler also said, adding, “when it comes to protecting innocent life, I look to God because every life is a blessing.”

Loeffler is mostly known for being the co-owner of Georgia’s WNBA team, the Atlanta Dream. She also serves as the chief executive of Bakkt, a subsidiary of the Georgia-based Intercontinental Exchange Inc. Loeffler is married to the Intercontinental Exchange’s founder and CEO, Jeff Sprecher, and together, the couple has made considerable donations to the Republican National Committee in recent time.

However, she will likely need to keep proving her conservative credentials in the run-up to 2020 elections, where voters will decide if she can finish the remainder of Isakson’s term. The days leading up to her appointment have been marked with Republican infighting, as some party hardliners believe she is not conservative enough for the seat.

Media personalities like Sean Hannity and lawmakers like Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz heavily pressured Kemp to shy away from Loeffler and to pick Georgia Rep. Doug Collins instead. Gaetz went so far as to threaten Kemp with a primary challenger if he chose the businesswoman. Those efforts were not successful in changing the governor’s mind in the end.

Collins, for his part, has not ruled out a 2020 campaign for the Senate seat. He said he will make a decision sometime after Kemp’s announcement.

As for national Republicans, they appear to be coalescing around Kemp’s choice.

“Everybody knows that a generational leader like Johnny Isakson is irreplaceable, but Ms. Loeffler has an impressive record in business and community leadership. I am confident she is well prepared to continue Sen. Isakson’s historic legacy of advocating for veterans, strengthening our national defense, and fighting for middle-class families,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday, adding that she has his “full support” for her 2020 election.

Isakson, who is suffering from Parkinson’s disease, announced in August that he would be stepping down at the end of the year.

COLUMN BY

Jason Hopkins

Jason Hopkins is a reporter covering immigration issues for the Daily Caller News Foundation. Twitter: @thejasonhopkins.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of this original content, contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

OSU’s Dobbins: Running Back for Life

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“When my dad was alive, he would tell me, ‘No matter what, have a smile on your face. No matter how you’re feeling, you’re living, and you should be able to smile.'” These days, Ohio State running back J.K. Dobbins has a lot to smile about. He just moved into second place on the Buckeyes’ all-time rushing list. He racked up four touchdowns against rival Michigan over the weekend. He’s a contender for the Heisman Trophy. But things haven’t always been easy. J.K. had to overcome a lot of obstacles to get where he is — including, Americans found out Saturday, just being born.

One of the first things people notice about Mya Dobbins’s son is his grin. Despite watching his single mom struggle to go to school and provide, despite seeing his father — the man he was closest to in the world — die of a stroke in the Bartlett State Jail, and despite an ankle injury almost costing him a future in football, J.K. stays upbeat. “I have a positive outlook on life, because I’m still living,” he said last year. No one knew how close the college junior came to not living until last weekend, when Fox sportscaster Gus Johnson explained that the world wouldn’t be watching this incredible talent if Mya hadn’t chosen life.

Late in the fourth quarter, after more than eight million viewers had watched Dobbins spring into the end zone, another commentator shook his head in amazement. “What does this kid not do?” While J.K. was on the sidelines being congratulated, Johnson started sharing the powerful story of a teenage mom, who was one clinic visit away from making Dobbins a name this country had never heard of. “[J.K.’s] mom, Mya, became pregnant when she was 18 years old,” he started. “She went to the doctor because she was thinking about aborting the baby — but changed her mind. That baby turned out to be that young man, J.K. Dobbins,” he added, “who she calls her ‘miracle baby.'”

The idea that the sports world might never have witnessed his gift for the game was overwhelming to Johnson — and everyone else — in that moment. It crystallized, in one half-minute of television, what the abortion debate is all about. Maybe that’s why liberals are so upset. When the clip went viral, social media lit up with angry posts about how “inappropriate,” “unnecessary,” and “stigmatizing” the testimony was. Others even called it “disgusting,” demanding that Johnson apologize. For what, most people wanted to know? For rejoicing that a world-class talent wasn’t destroyed in the womb? “Think about how backwards this is,” RedState argued. “[Liberals] think it’s ‘disgusting’ to talk about not aborting someone.”

That’s because, in their minds, abortion is a social good. Something to be celebrated, cheered, and plastered in pink lights across the New York City skyline. “We didn’t need to know all that,” one woman tweeted about the OSU junior. In other words, don’t put a face on it. Don’t remind us what abortion costs us. “Dobbins is a talented player,” one woman agreed, “but let’s just let him be talented… We can’t take choice away from Ohio’s women because of one feel good story about a football player.”

But that’s the problem. It isn’t just one feel good story. The world will never know how many millions of stories there would have been if more moms had been told the truth: that their babies had value and purpose and potential — not because of what they could do, but because of who their Creator made them to be. J.K. Dobbins isn’t special because he plays football, he’s special because he was created in the image of God, and He had a plan for his life. Just like He had a plan for Andrea Bocelli, Celine Dion, Tim Tebow, Pope John Paul II, Steve Jobs, and so many other survivors we can’t imagine the world without.

“Focus on the game,” one abortion activist insisted. But the problem is, you can’t focus on the game without seeing the players. J.K. was fortunate. But for every baby like him, there are so many others whose lives are ended before they begin. Theirs are the 60 million voices we’ll never hear, performances we’ll never see, and Heisman winners we’ll never meet because of abortion. If Mya’s story can save just one of them, those 24 seconds of live television will mean more than any football legacy ever could.

Tony Perkins’s Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

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EDITORS NOTE: This FRC column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Gender Fraud Laws

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Enough of the transsexual madness and the targeting of children for sexual perversion.

© All rights reserved.

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These 2 Cases Show Why Trans ‘Rights’ Could Upend the Rights of All

These 2 Cases Show Why Trans ‘Rights’ Could Upend the Rights of All

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The battle over the rights of “transgender” and “cisgender” people continues to escalate in one of the most influential arenas: our nation’s schools.

The Chicago Tribune reported this month that after a four-year battle, a school board in Palatine, Illinois, has granted transgender students “unrestricted access to locker rooms based on gender identity.”

Just a few days later, CBS News Minnesota reported a mother had sued her local school district, claiming that it discriminated against her child for being transgender.

These are just two of the most recent stories showing just how prevalent the transgender debate in schools has become.

Congress is moving to impeach the president. But will their plan to remove him from office succeed? Find out more now >>

What Happened in Illinois

The school board of Township High School District 211 passed its new policy by a 5-2 vote. The policy requires students, teachers, and administrators to treat students “consistent with their gender identity,” meaning students will have full access to restrooms and locker rooms of the gender they identify with.

This goes further than the old policy, which also granted transgender students access to the locker rooms but required that the student retreat to a private area within the room to change.

The school board made the announcement in front of about 250 parents and students. News reports say half the crowd cheered at the decision while the other half booed.

In a speech at the meeting, Superintendent Dan Cates explained the board’s logic by appealing to “other school districts” that have implemented the same policies “without disruption and in a manner that protects the interests of all students.”

Some in the crowd reportedly yelled “false” while the superintendent was speaking. Another student voiced her concern with the new policy, saying, through tears:

I feel uncomfortable that my privacy is being invaded. As I am a swimmer, I do change multiple times naked in front of the other students in the locker room. I understand that the board has an obligation to all students, but I was hoping they would go about this in a way that would also accommodate students such as myself.

The debate in Palatine began four years ago when a transgender student filed an initial lawsuit against the school district. It was the first time a school district was accused of violating Title IX based on gender identity—a category that does not exist in federal law.

At the time, the district acquiesced and allowed the student to use the girls’ locker room as long as he stayed in a private area of the room. But when parents countered with their own lawsuit, the policy was dropped.

Then in 2017, a student named Nova Maday, born a male who identifies as a female, filed a lawsuit claiming the district had violated his rights by restricting him to an “unspecified private changing area within the locker room.” From there, the district began to shift in the student’s direction.

The Minnesota Case

In the other recent case, a transgender student in Minnesota alleged even greater wrongdoing than the Illinois student.

Helen Woods, the mother of a middle school student in Wright County, filed a lawsuit alleging that Buffalo Community Middle School “repeatedly isolated her son from his classmates, limited his access to a suitable restroom, and removed him from physical education classes.”

Her child, Matt Woods, was born a female but began identifying as male in 2015 at the age of 11.

Like Nova Maday, Woods wanted to use the boys’ bathrooms and locker rooms, but the school required Woods to use a single-occupancy restroom. The student claims that bathroom was hard to get to in between classes.

School officials deny any wrongdoing, and the case is ongoing.

Key Factors Driving Both Cases

Though the lawsuits differ slightly in specifics, they share several common denominators that are key to understanding the transgender debate, particularly when it comes to students and schools.

First, these lawsuits are based on President Barack Obama’s 2016 “Dear Colleague” letter that mandated schools must include and accommodate transgender students and recognize gender identity, or else the school could face discrimination charges.

This was an order by executive fiat, not a law passed by Congress, and not a ruling from the Supreme Court.

In 2017, the Trump administration rolled back those provisions, while the Education Department acknowledged that “each school has a responsibility to protect every student in America and ensure that they have the freedom to learn and thrive in a safe environment.”

Second, both lawsuits share an important, particular curiosity: Both schools addressed the transgender student’s wishes to be included and to have “equal access” to facilities, yet in both cases, the students complained that equal access wasn’t equal enough. They claimed the accommodations were somehow still discriminatory, even though it appears the schools took extra efforts to ensure the transgender students were treated equally while also preserving the rights of other students.

In other words, both school districts went out of their way to protect all students’ rights, but transgender students made that an impossible task. They pushed for entitlement rather than equality.

These students keep shifting the goalposts with their self-focused demands. Their demands ultimately pose a greater risk to other students’ privacy rights, which raises questions about discrimination in the opposite direction.

Ignoring Reality and the Law Itself

The most egregious fact is that these lawsuits are even happening at all.

By caving to a few students’ demands for policies based on transgender ideology, school administrators are championing the feelings of a few over the privacy and safety of the many, even though gender identity does not have protected status in federal civil rights laws like sex, religion, and ethnicity.

This was the crux of the issue in the Harris Funeral Homes case recently heard by the Supreme Court: What is gender identity, who defines it, and what protections does it have, if any?

When school officials bow to the wishes of transgender students and their families, they submit themselves to the LGBT-backed groupthink that defies both biological reality and the law as it exists.

The asinine logic of this movement will act as a wrecking ball on public schools with no stopping point. It will eventually destroy social norms within school systems and pave the way for a system in which the interests of a select few are championed at the expense of the many, lest a lawsuit and bad publicity engulf the school board.

COMMENTARY BY

Nicole Russell

Nicole Russell is a contributor to The Daily Signal. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, National Review, Politico, The Washington Times, The American Spectator, and Parents Magazine. Twitter: .

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A Note for our Readers:

VIDEO: In a Blue State, Parents Beat Planned Parenthood’s Sex Ed Push

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Worcester, the second largest city in solidly blue Massachusetts, was the scene of a sex ed showdown between Planned Parenthood and concerned parents and church leaders. Last February, more than 75 of those parents and church leaders stood up alongside the Massachusetts Family Institute to outnumber pro-Planned Parenthood voices at a meeting of a local school committee.

The parents, church leaders, and Massachusetts Family Institute officials were there to pose a question: What would Planned Parenthood gain from teaching students about safe sex that would reduce both pregnancies and abortion? How would that benefit a business that relies heavily on income from abortion?

Planned Parenthood didn’t just want to redefine abstinence, it wanted to introduce comprehensive sex education, including curriculum on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Planned Parenthood advocates argued that their curriculum qualified as age-appropriate, medically accurate, and evidence-based. But when read aloud, as I did at the meeting, the content of the curriculum is found to be clearly neither age-appropriate nor medically accurate.

Congress is moving to impeach the president. But will their plan to remove him from office succeed? Find out more now >>

Watch the three-minute testimony: (Viewer discretion advised.)

To further expose what is going on in Massachusetts schools, we interviewed a young man who recently had been exposed to this curriculum. In this brief video (viewer discretion advised) pasted below, he explains what students are being taught and how sexual behavior and abortion are being completely normalized.

The Massachusetts Family Institute is working with local churches to introduce positive curriculum alternatives to Planned Parenthood’s version because many parents want their children to be taught to value abstinence and marriage. The organization is working with several churches in Lawrence, Massachusetts, to convince local school officials to adopt curriculum that is truly age-appropriate, medically accurate, and evidence-based.

Our organization believes there is a Biblical mandate to protect the minds of young people from being polluted and seeks to build on its success in Lawrence by replicating this strategy all over the state.

Over the past three years, the Massachusetts Family Institute has spoken at about 125 different churches across the state. Churches are starting to see that their Biblical mandate, as Martin Luther King Jr. explained, is to be the conscience of the state and never its slave. Relationships between local churches, parents, and pro-family groups are strategic.

Ultimately, in Worcester, the school committee voted to not allow the “Making Proud Choices” curriculum from Planned Parenthood into the schools.

We succeeded in defeating Planned Parenthood and protecting the minds and hearts of our young people in Worcester. But parents, community leaders, and pro-family advocates can team up anywhere to strengthen the family, life, and liberty.

COMMENTARY BY

Michael King

Michael King is the director of community alliances at the Massachusetts Family Institute.

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A Note for our Readers:

As we speak, Congress is moving to impeach the president.

We do not have all the facts yet, but based on what we know now, there does not seem to be an impeachable offense.

The questions stand: In drafting the Constitution, how did America’s founders intend for impeachment to be used? How does the impeachment process work, and what can history tell us about whether or not President Trump faces the real threat of being removed from office?

The Heritage Foundation is making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET YOUR FREE COPY NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

VIDEO: The Vortex — Trump & Satan. A very large spiritual war.

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TRANSCRIPT

It’s amazing when you look at how so many U.S. Catholic bishops are simply outshined by Protestant ministers when it comes to announcing truth.

For the most part, the U.S. bishops have been essentially AWOL when it comes the abortion battles. A handful, maybe, show up at the annual March for Life in D.C. Rarely does the bishops’ useless conference issue any kind of statement on the ongoing slaughter.

In 40 years they’ve never even taken up a single, solitary national collection for the pro-life cause, but they spin their wheels every year grabbing millions for the social-justice warrior pet causes, as we detailed in Friday’s Vortex last week — as if abortion isn’t the pre-eminent social-justice issue of our day.

But heck, 69 bishops at their semi-annual meeting a couple weeks ago voted it in fact wasn’t the pre-eminent issue. Climate Change is, or immigration, or whatever — because those issues might one day perhaps result in actual deaths, unlike abortion, which does.

The bishops remain silent also on abortion, even when President Trump flexes his pro-life muscle. For all his personal foibles that the Left likes to go on and on about (as if OBummer was the perfect man and had no foibles), Trump has proven himself to be the most pro-life president the nation has ever seen.

In fact, when it’s all distilled down, the impeachment idiocy, Russia, Trump Tower Meetings, the Mueller Report, Comey, all of it — when it’s all stripped down to essential bare-knuckles reality, it’s all about this [U.S. Supreme Court]. This is what has the Left insane with rage: the threat to abortion so-called rights.

For the first time since Roe v. Wade came into existence, its very existence is now in serious jeopardy. While there is a so-called conservative majority on the Court for the first time in decades, it is a shaky conservative bloc at best. It needs one more conservative jurist.

That’s why all the press coverage over the weekend when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was admitted — again — to the hospital; when she’s gone, all hell will break loose on Capitol Hill. And Adam Schiff (and his weirdo eyes) won’t have any role to play in it.

All the attacks on Trump, the completely over-the-top, raging assaults, all have to do with this one, single issue: Trump may be ultimately responsible for ending legalized abortion in America.

And because the very existence of legalized abortion — the sacrament of the Left — is at stake, the powers and the fury of Hell have aligned against him, and the Party of Death is Satan’s conduit to try and defeat him.

Consider why Satan, who is enraged at this prospect, so desires abortion. True, a child is killed, yes. But even more so, a mother is made into a murderer. A doctor becomes a killer. An entire industry, involving hundreds of thousand of souls, commits itself to the destruction of life. Politicians forsake their sacred obligation taken under oath to God.

And an entire culture is poisoned to accept the demonic notion that whatever consequences occur because of sex can be “taken care of.” Life becomes trivialized — actually, discardable.

Last week, Franklin Graham, son of the late Protestant preacher Billy Graham, gave an interview where he said, “Well, I believe it’s almost a demonic power that is trying [to attack Trump].”

Of course it is, yet you’d be hard-pressed to hear any bishop in the United States make that comment publicly.

The war is abortion, for all the above reasons, and the two sides fighting are Trump and Satan. And Catholic, Inc. is nowhere to be found. A bunch of gay bishops, and others who are just weak men, stay on the sidelines not wanting to break a nail or get their dresses dirtied.

Yet the son of a Protestant preacher and a former playboy billionaire president are the ones taking up the charge against Satan. How much more upside down can this get?

It’s probably not even on Trump’s mind or radar that he is the one leading the charge against the gates of Hell at this very moment in world history. But it’s certainly on Satan’s radar.

Trump has to be removed in the calculus of Hell. One more conservative appointment and the Court would be a solid 6–3 majority, practically ensuring the nail in the coffin for Roe.

As it stands right now, Supreme Court prognosticators say that the current make-up of the court — four socialists, including Ginsburg — would vote to uphold Roe. Four of the five conservatives would vote to overturn, and it would come down to Chief Justice John Roberts to cast the deciding vote to overturn Roe.

That would make the vote 5–4. Roe was originally ruled 7–2 in favor in 1973, and Supreme Court watchers think Roberts would be very fretful of overturning the Roe precedent by such a slim margin.

Insiders say he doesn’t want to be the guy who would do it. A kind of strange argument, considering Justice Kennedy seemed to relish being the guy who not only kept abortion safe and sound by a 5–4 vote, but also gave the nation homosexual marriage by a 5–4 vote.

Roberts has indicated that he’s very concerned about the Court appearing to be political and losing its perception of being neutral and objective. However, if one more conservative anti-Roe, pro-life justice was also on the Court, tipping the final tally to 6–3 to overturn, then Supreme Court watchers say Roberts would be much more inclined to overturn, for two reasons.

(1) He himself is pro-life, and (2) he would want a solid majority decision from the Court when scrapping Roe — and 6–3 is much better than 5–4. Plus, at that point, he might as well go along with what would be a 5–4 majority anyway and add his own weight behind the ruling.

Roe is this close to being killed — and it all is riding on Trump.

If Ginsburg does die and Trump gets to replace her seat, the Hill will go nuclear. If he wins re-election, it is very likely he will replace even another liberal, Stephen Breyer, who will turn 82 during next year’s 2020 campaign.

That would make the court a 7–2 conservative majority and lock it in place for decades to come, given the relative youth of the conservative jurists.

And even if the oldest conservative, Clarence Thomas, were to step down, as there were rumblings last year, it’s a certainty that Trump would just replace him with a much younger conservative as well.

As long as Trump is in the White House, the Left and their “master” are terror-struck, and rage is the only emotion. Rage is the only emotion because abortion is the only issue.

EDITORS NOTE: This Church Militant video is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

The ‘Rainbow Jihad’

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“How would the Rainbow Jihad react if we were trying to fly the Christian flag over the state Capitol? The Rainbow Jihad is not OK with simply living their lives. They are so hellbent on pushing their beliefs on us that they would go so far as to fly that flag over the state Capitol. It’s one of the most egregious acts of political aggression I’ve ever seen.” – Iowa State Rep. Skyler Wheeler

There is a growing fear that those few who are part of the LGBTQ movement have gotten out of hand. A recent interview with Iowa State Representative Skyler Wheeler put it into perspective. Rep. Wheeler called the LGBTQ movement’s “most egregious acts of political aggression“ a “Rainbow Jihad.” What was Rep. Wheeler’s concern? Flying the LGBTQ flag over the Iowa State Capitol Building.

Is Representative Wheeler right?

Let’s take a look at what has happened overtime to understand why people are increasingly nervous, if not outright against, about what is happening within the LGBTQ movement and one major political party’s support of homosexuality, including celebrating the first gay running for president.

In a comprehensive pro-LGBTQ report titled A Timeline of Lesbian, Gay,Bisexual, and Transgender History in the United States we learn that homosexuality in America dates back to 1624 when Richard Cornish is executed in Virginia for alleged homosexual acts with a servant.

In 1933 Eleanor Roosevelt and her lover, journalist Lorena Hickok, begin their voluminous correspondence as Roosevelt moves into the White House. During one separation Hickok writes: “I’ve been trying today to bring back your face. Most clearly I remember your eyes, with a kind of teasing smile in them, and the feeling of that soft spot just north-east of the corner of your mouth against my lips.”

In 1934 Hollywood adopts the “Hayes Code,” which stipulates, among other things, that “sex perversion or any inference to it is forbidden on the screen.”

In 1947 the State Department begins firing suspected homosexuals under President Truman’s National Security Loyalty Program.

In 1948 Alfred Kinsey’s study of sexuality in the U.S. is published and found that 50 percent of American men and 28 percent of American women have “homosexual tendencies,” shocked Americans. Kinsey’s study was deeply flawed. A series of videos published in the column The Secret History of Kinsey’s Pedophiles interviews those involved in Kinsey’s research. Those interviewed tell the true story of what Kinsey did to come up with his false notion about homosexual tendencies in men and women.

In 1953 President Dwight D. Eisenhower issues Executive Order #10450, banning the employment of homosexuals by the federal government. Many state and local governments soon adopted similar policies.

The Rainbow Jihad’s “Homophobia” hammer.

In 1966 Dr. George Weinberg, a Manhattan psychotherapist with a doctorate in clinical psychology from Columbia University, first coins the term “homophobia.” According to Dr. Weinberg’s biography:

He coined the word “homophobia” (in his 1972 book, Society and the Healthy Homosexual) to propose that those who harbor prejudice against gay people and not gay people themselves are suffering from a psychological malady, an irrational state of mind. Weinberg, though heterosexual himself, became a leader in the ultimately successful struggle to have homosexuality removed as a diagnostic category from the DSM, the professional therapeutic index of mental disorders. He has been instrumental in shifting public perception of homosexuality.

Weinberg began using the word homophobia in 1966 and soon the then minute, pre-Stonewall “homophile movement” began using it. Weinberg next prevailed on a friend, Al Goldstein who published the underground newspapers Gay and Screw, to introduce the word. He wrote articles for the underground press himself. He then persuaded a young student, Ken Smith, to do a research study for his master’s degree on homophobia and they designed the questionnaire together. It was the first published scientific study of homophobia.

The term “homophobia” has become a pejorative to silence those who are heterosexual. Including but not limited to anyone who believes:

  1. There are only two sexes male and female
  2. That marriage can only be between one man and one woman.
  3. That sodomy is an unhealthy lifestyle.
  4. That teaching under aged children that homosexuality is normal is wrong
  5. And that sodomy is a sin.

Daily individuals, politicians, small businesses and large corporations are beaten down and made to submit to the “Rainbow Jihad” or face being labeled homophobic or sued.

Pedophilia, Pederasty and the Rainbow Jihad

In a July 2019 column by Dr. Judith Reisman titled The Secret History of Kinsey’s Pedophiles we learn that:

There is a global movement to mainstream pedophilia. This effort has the goal of re-branding pedophiles as “minor attracted persons.” Pedophiles are attempting to join the LGBTQ movement.

In 2000 Vermont became the first state in the country to legally recognize civil unions between gay or lesbian couples. The law states that these “couples would be entitled to the same benefits, privileges, and responsibilities as spouses.” It stops short of referring to same-sex unions as marriage, which the state defines as heterosexual.

In 2003 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence vs Texas that sodomy laws in the U.S. are unconstitutional. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct.”

In 2004 Massachusetts legalizes same sex marriage, officially becoming the first state in the U.S. to do so.

This video expose explains how they are mainstreaming pedophilia.

Where are we now?

As we reported in our July 13th, 2014 column World Leaders: Please Stop The Kinsey Institute:

For more than a half century, most developed nations have been undergoing a “sexual revolution.”  This radical shift in traditional sexual norms, values and expectations has led to the liberalization of laws regulating sexual behavior.  This in turn has caused a dramatic increase in heterosexual and homosexual promiscuity contributing to the breakdown of the family and other social problems.

Many of these dramatic changes in sexual norms and laws can be traced back to the fraudulent sex “research” and sexual ideologies of Dr. Alfred Kinsey, founder of the Kinsey Institute.  Kinsey has been called the “father of the sexual rights revolution” because many sexual rights advocacy organizations rely on his ideologies to support their positions.

The Kinsey Institute’s philosophy that “children are sexual from birth,” has been used by pedophiles to justify sexual crimes against children.  The Institute’s sexual ideologies also form the basis of harmful sex education programs commonly known as “comprehensive sexuality education (CSE).”

Today the LGBTQ movement has infiltrated public schools, colleges, universities, the Catholic Church and Boy Scouts of America.

Each of these organizations has submitted to the Rainbow Jihad. Each of these governmental, religious and social organizations has destroyed its religious and cultural foundations in the name of “tolerance.” But where is the tolerance from the Rainbow Jihad?

Answer: The Rainbow Jihad has no intention of being tolerant or of giving up it’s political power to anyone, unless and until everyone submits to it’s ideology.

The end game is cultural suicide.

© All rights reserved.

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2020 Dems: A Base Hit by Abortion

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Barack Obama knows a thing or two about winning elections. So when the former president warns you that your campaign is out of touch, most people would listen. Not these candidates. If anything, they’re setting out to show America just how radical they can be — giving the 44th president and the rest of his party plenty to worry about.

It was a rare moment of admonishment from the 44th president — and an even rarer moment of clarity for the Left. But when Obama sat down with a roomful of liberal donors last Friday, his concern was impossible to miss. Whoever Donald Trump’s challenger is, they’re setting a dangerous table of extremism in these primary debates — too dangerous, he worries, for the average American. “Even as we push the envelope, and we are bold in our vision, we also have to be rooted in reality,” he insisted, “and the fact that voters — including Democratic voters and certainly persuadable independents or even moderate Republicans, are not driven by the same views that are reflected on certain, you know, left-leaning Twitter feeds, or the activist wing of our party.”

If the 2020 field heard his cautionary words, they didn’t heed them. Despite the “#TooFarLeft” hashtag trending on Twitter, the Democrats in Georgia did nothing to allay the fears that they’ve jumped off the deep end on abortion, infanticide, immigration, health care, gender, socialism, and climate change. “There are a lot of persuadable voters, and there are a lot of Democrats out there who just want to see things make sense. They just don’t want to see crazy stuff.” Unfortunately for Obama, this field specializes in crazy — and proved it again last night.

After five of these events, the commentators are right about the boredom factor. Where I part ways with the analysis is that these are just “standard politicians saying standard things.” There isn’t anything routine about the agenda these candidates are proposing for America. Theirs is a country where mothers can rock their newborns to death, where criminals stream over our borders without consequences, where 230-plus years of democracy are swallowed up by a Venezuelan system of unrest and lack. “Listen to Obama,” the Washington Post pleaded. And not that I want to aid them in their efforts to capture the White House, but I agree.

In choosing Atlanta for last night’s debate, MSNBC did have the perfect backdrop to tee up their questions on one of the most controversial topics: abortion. “Most states, including right here where we are tonight in Georgia, have passed laws that severely limit or outright ban abortion,” Rachel Maddow started. Right now, Roe v. Wade protects a woman’s right to abortion nationwide. But if Roe gets overturned and abortion access disappears in some states, would you intervene as president to try to bring that access back?” Their answers, as usual, went far beyond Roe. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) insisted that we should “codify” the ruling, meaning she would wipe the country clean of pro-life laws. Then, in a night that featured some statistical whoppers, she piled on with arguments that were ridiculous on their face.

“We have to remember,” she insisted, “… the people are with us. Over 70 percent of the people support Roe v. Wade. Over 90 percent of the people support funding for Planned Parenthood…” For starters, the majority of Americans do not support Roe v. Wade — which is abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy — and certainly not by the fantasy figures Klobuchar used. Only eight percent of Americans support the Democrats’ late-term abortion platform, according to the Harvard Center. And the objection to the Left’s birth day abortion campaign are even more dismal: six percent. There’s a consensus all right — but it’s not for abortion.

The numbers from Marist are even more frightening from the DNC’s perspective. Their January poll found that found 75 percent of Americans favor substantial restrictions on abortion, including 60 percent of Democrats and 61 percent of those who identify as “pro-choice.” Women, who’ve been exploited by the Democratic Party for years, feel even more strongly — a reality even Democratic pollsters admit. So when Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) says that “If there’s ever a time in American history where the men of this country must stand with women,” he’s right. But, like the rest of his movement, he’s dead wrong on what that stand should be.

As for the 90 percent “consensus” on Planned Parenthood, that’s flat-out absurd. A generous number would be 50 percent, which is what the scandal-ridden group has typically polled at Rasmussen. But here’s where Democrats are really in trouble: their blind assumptions about their own party. When Maddow pressed Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Democrats’ abortion litmus test, she replied, “I have made clear what I think the Democratic Party stands for.”

But her assessment — and the other candidates’ — has the potential to severely hurt Trump’s eventual challenger. If the party truly wants to make support for abortion a qualifying issue for people, it’ll be kissing a significant chunk of its support goodbye. “The number of Democrats now identifying as pro-life is 34 percent, up from 20 percent [in January 2019], while the number identifying as pro-choice fell from 75 percent to 61 percent.” “Does the party have a message to 20 million pro-life Democrats other than, ‘Drop dead?'” Kristen Day, who heads up Democrats for Life of America, asked. Based on the last five debates, no.

For more on the pro-life laws in your states — the same ones that would be in jeopardy if these candidates get their wish — check out FRC’s Pro-Life Map.

Tony Perkins’s Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC Action senior writers.

RELATED ARTICLES:

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EDITORS NOTE: This FRC column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Journalism Is Not a Crime

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The First Amendment took a major beating in a California courtroom last week.

On Friday, 11/15/19, a jury in San Francisco’s U.S. District Court found David Daleiden and his team guilty of trespassing, fraud, and other infractions. Daleiden and his group produced the 2015 undercover videos (still available at www.cmp.org) that expose the trafficking of unborn-baby body parts.

The Thomas More Society, the Chicago-based legal group defending Daleiden, reports that the

“jury handed down a multi-million dollar (over $2.2 million) [compensatory and punitive] verdict under the federal Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law, among others, in favor of abortion giant Planned Parenthood.”

Thomas More Society’s attorney Peter Breen said:

“Rather than face up to its heinous doings, Planned Parenthood chose to persecute the person who exposed it.”

David Daleiden, the young man in the middle of the case, said:

“Justice was not done today in San Francisco. While top Planned Parenthood witnesses spent six weeks testifying under oath that the undercover videos are true and Planned Parenthood sold fetal organs on a quid pro quo basis, a biased judge with close Planned Parenthood ties spent six weeks trying to influence the jury with pre-determined rulings and suppressed the video evidence, all in order to rubber-stamp Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit attack on the First Amendment.” [Emphasis added]

In other words, the ones exposing the crime were prosecuted while the ones committing the crime are rewarded. It’s as if someone witnessing a robbery screaming “Stop! Thief!” were prosecuted for violating noise ordinances—and forced to pay the robber for startling him.

Breen says of Daleiden:

“His investigation into criminal activity by America’s largest abortion provider utilized standard investigative journalism techniques, those applied regularly by news outlets across the country.”

Tom Brejcha, the founder and director of the Thomas More Society, sees this decision as a blow against the First Amendment: “This case puts the constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech on trial.” Brejcha is confident they’ll win on appeal.

James O’Keefe of Project Veritas—a conservative group that consistently brings to light undercover videos exposing Google, CNN, and other groups of liberal bias—commented after the verdict: “Imagine if he exposed puppies being aborted and their body parts sold illegally. The verdict against Daleiden for investigating the abortion of human babies and the sale of baby parts clearly demonstrates the power of the abortion industry.”

Defending Daleiden’s colleague Sandra Merritt (who helped produce the undercover videos) is Liberty Counsel, the founder and chairman of which is Mat Staver.

Staver’s Liberty Counsel notes that the judge in this case essentially took the First Amendment off the table: “[Judge William] Orrick…told the jury it couldn’t look at this as a First Amendment case, where freedom of speech and the press could be considered as a defense.”

I spoke with Mat Staver on the radio a few months ago about this case, long before the recent verdict.

Staver told me:

“The whole point of the case is trying to silence any kind of information that comes out regarding Planned Parenthood’s participation in harvesting, selecting baby body parts, and providing them for profit to third parties, which then turned around and sold them to entities, such as Stanford University and other places which were the buyers.”

Some of the charges included airing private conversations that were secretly recorded, without consent. But, Staver notes, many of these recordings were done in public places, such as elevators, exhibition shows, and public restaurants—where there are people around. Staver notes the witnesses admit that people could overhear them in these conversations. Staver said the real question boils down to this: “Was the conversation confidential?”

We look back in horror at the medical experiments the Nazis did during the Holocaust. They treated the victims in a subhuman manner, and they took meticulous notes through it all. Such research is widely and justifiably condemned.

How will future generations look at modern America, where hidden in laboratories is research gathered by examining the brains and hearts and lungs of unborn babies that had been killed in their mothers’ wombs? Do the mothers having these abortions even knowingly consent to this?

Staver notes that an animal-rights group made an undercover recording and video in California, highlighting abuse of animals. They recorded conversations, and those conversations were not by consent of those being recorded. This is just like what Daleiden and Merritt did in the Golden State, except on behalf of unborn humans. Said Staver: “But the state never prosecuted [the animal-rights producers]. And that information became public…and the animal abuse was ultimately addressed…. Undercover investigators do this all the time.”

David Daleiden points out,

“This is a dangerous precedent for citizen journalism and First Amendment civil rights across the country, sending a message that speaking truth and facts to criticize the powerful is no longer protected by our institutions.”

On Int’l Men’s Day: A Plea to Empower Our Boys [+Video]

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On International Men’s Day, November 19, Clarion makes a plea to empower our boys so they will grow up to be productive members of society and not fall into the trap of extremist groups. 

Violent extremists exploit our crisis of masculinity to push their ideology toward a vulnerable population of our young men. Here are nine facts on how one of the cornerstones of preventing violent extremism is understanding gender challenges:

  1. The vast majority of school shooters grow up in fatherless homes.
  2. Extremist recruiters use masculine tropes of heroism to lure in new members. This is occurring in a our culture, which offers fewer expressions of traditional masculinity and as boys fall behind in college.
  3. If we want to fix political extremism, we have to look at what’s going on with our young men. Is there a clear path for how to fit in and succeed as a man in this generation? It doesn’t look like it.
  4. Why is suicide for young men on the rise? According to the journal of the American Medical Association, in 2017, suicide claimed 5,016 males compared to 1,225 females between the ages of 15-24 in the United States.
  5. Our society is failing boys, and we need to find out why.
  6. If we can’t come up with a reasonable, achievable track that gives young men status, emotional security, a path to a secure job and stable, loving relationships, more and more young men are going to be drawn into ideologies which are misogynistic and extremist. Both Islamism and white supremacy movements share these ideologies.
  7. Extremists are telling our young men, ‘The system isn’t working for you and doesn’t care if you live or die. But we care, join us.” It’s a powerful message.
  8. If mainstream culture’s response is to sneer, laugh or complain about toxic masculinity, we’re not going to get anywhere. Preventing violent extremism is a men’s issue.
  9. If you look at what Islamist and Far-Right extremists are actually saying, they’re talking in an explicitly gendered way, essentially: “We will offer you the masculinity you have been denied.” We can’t afford to cede the concept of positive masculinity to the extremists.

RELATED STORIES:

Get Educated on Preventing Violent Extremism

How Generation Z is Most Vulnerable to ISIS and Antifa

Far-right Groups Using Islamist Techniques to Recruit