Two Anti-Christian cases before the courts

By Bill Donohue, Catholic League President

There are two religious liberty cases before the federal courts that have much in common: (a) both evince a clear animus against Christianity, and (b) they emanate from the most militantly secular states in the nation, Oregon and Washington.

The Oregon case will be appealed to the Supreme Court; the Washington case will be decided in the spring by the high court.

In 2013, the Court of Appeals in Oregon ruled that Aaron and Melissa Klein, who owned a bakeshop in Gresham, discriminated against a lesbian couple, Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, when they refused to make a wedding cake for them. The evangelical couple did so on religious grounds, citing Leviticus for support.

The lesbians filed a complaint with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries. It said  the Christians violated Oregon's accommodations statute barring discrimination based on sexual discrimination. The panel ordered them to pay $135,000 in damages. The bakery owners appealed to the Oregon Court of Appeals in 2016, but they lost again. Then they appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 2019, the high court vacated the ruling and sent it back to the state court of appeals for reconsideration. It cited its ruling in a similar case, Masterpiece Cakeshop, (which was decided favorably to the religious liberty side), for review.

On January 26, 2022, the Oregon appeals court told the Bureau of Labor and Industries to reconsider its order fining the Christian couple. It said that the state agency "acted non-neutrally" against them. But it insisted that the couple was still guilty of discriminating against the lesbians.

Attorneys for First Liberty Institute, joined by former White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray, will appeal this ruling, arguing that the same agency that showed an anti-Christian bias should not be allowed to try this case one more time. They maintain that the appeals court should have put an end to this case once and for all.

The appeals court showed cowardice when it said the state agency "acted non-neutrally." This sanitized term is a ruse: it would be more accurate to say that flagrantly anti-Christian remarks were voiced by some on the panel.

The lawyers for the Christians contended that the panel's "administrative prosecutor disparaged" their client, labeling their objections a mere "excuse" for discrimination. They also unjustly compared their clients' objections to cases involving "physical violence, prolonged sexual harassment, and religious coercion." The bakery owners were even enjoined from "speaking about their religious beliefs, despite the lack of any basis for such a gag order."

The Washington case involves a football coach, Joseph Kennedy, who huddled with players for a prayer on the 50-yard-line after games at Bremerton High School, outside of Seattle.

When he was asked by school officials not to lead the players in a prayer, he complied. When he decided to take a knee and say a silent prayer with the players, the school objected again, saying students could see him praying. Finally, the school banned prayer altogether.

The school said that if he wants to pray he should do so in a janitor's closet or the press box; this way no one would construe his behavior to be a government-endorsed event. He refused, citing his First Amendment rights. The school fired him.

Kennedy sued and twice lost before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Ninth Circuit ruled that public speech of "an overtly religious nature" is forbidden, arguing that doing so gives the impression that the government is endorsing religion. Kennedy's First Liberty attorneys charged that the Ninth Circuit was now saying that "even private religious speech by teachers and coaches violates the Establishment Clause (italic in the original)."

Kennedy appealed to the Supreme Court but the justices declined the case; they asked the lower courts to review it. Now the Supreme Court has decided to hear the latest appeal.

Jeremy Dys, the First Liberty attorney for Kennedy, argued that the Ninth Circuit ruling sets a dangerous precedent. It would call into question whether "a public-school employee has a constitutional right to engage in brief, quiet prayer by himself (his italic.)"

Furthermore, if this ruling were to stand, it would mean that a teacher who bowed his head before a meal in the school cafeteria, or wore a crucifix or yarmulke, could be fired for giving the appearance of government endorsement of religion.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State president Rachel Laser, who represents the school board, frames the issue in a patently dishonest way. "No child attending public school should have to pray to play school sports." She's right about that, but it is a red herring: No student is being compelled to pray as a condition of playing sports in any public school in the nation.

These two cases are driven by a hatred of Christianity, and that is why they have been banging around in the courts for so long. The totalitarian left, which occupies a sizeable presence in Oregon and Washington (home to the crazed 2020 Portland and Seattle riots), must be stopped if liberty is to prevail.

Federal intimidation of Christians

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) -- It appears that the anti-Christian Biden administration is engaging in another attempt to intimidate conservative Christians into silence and inaction. And unlike some other measures, this one was taken in a manner to keep the public unaware.

Here is what is going on: At least 19 federal agencies have announced that those employees who are seeking a religious (or conscience) exemption to Mr. Biden’s order that all federal employees must be vaccinated against COVID will be required to provide the government with certain personal information that raises concerns about how that information may be used.

[Editor’s Note: A federal court in Texas on January 21 issued an injunction against President Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for the federal workforce, thus pausing implementation of the requirement for over 2 million civil servants. The Biden administration has filed an appeal.]

The first whiff of this move came to me in a small news story January 12 and we immediately contacted the Heritage Foundation which had uncovered the story and booked a senior fellow from Heritage’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, Attorney Sarah Parshall Perry, for our next Faith On Trial Radio Program, January 20.

While the full extent of the administration’s actions have not been fully reported, here is what we do know: Employees applying for the vaccine exemption will need to provide not only their names and addresses, but maiden names, length and depth of religious practice, among other things, including — of all things — physical characteristics and identifiers.

The information came from a little-known publication called the Federal Register in which federal agencies are required to publish notices of proposed rule changes. The notice allows interested parties to file objections to proposed rules. Under the federal Administrative Procedures Act, agencies may not adopt or enforce a rule until such notice is published and the time period for public comment has ended.

Then before the final adoption of the rule, the agency involved will presumably review the comments submitted and adopt, reject, or modify the proposed rule. The usual time for comment is around 60 days.

However, what spooked the Heritage folks was that this rule was being proposed by a relatively obscure agency, the Pre-trial Service Agency for the District of Columbia. And after a little more digging, Heritage investigators found another 18 agencies had proposed similar rules giving the public a 30-day comment window. In addition, the Heritage investigators found that those applying for the religious exemption were to be included in agency databases that could be shared with other federal agencies.

According to the Heritage Foundation, the federal government employs around four million people and has tens of thousands of employees who are asking for a religious exemption to the vaccine mandate. Thus there are tens of thousands of people who will be entered into this federal database.

“We find this to be incredibly problematic, especially since we don’t know what that information will be used for,” Perry told our radio audience.

The Heritage Foundation was not the only entity to notice what was going on. Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt also found the notices, did his own investigation, and filed comments with the agencies seeking clarifications, noting that this suggests the administration is putting together a black list of religious objectors.

“It appears that the Privacy Act of 1974 which was ultimately designed to shield employees is being used by the federal government as a cudgel so that if you express your religious [objections to the mandate] you are automatically entered into this database. We’re going to start asking some questions to find out what the government wants to do with this information.”

Several other things are playing in the background that must be considered. First is the profile of those objecting to the vax mandate on religious grounds. By and large they are pro-life conservative Christians who object to using a vaccine that was developed with any connection to an abortion.

What connection does the government see between conservative Christians, who are attacked politically for their support of former President Donald Trump, and the white nationalists, white supremacists, skinheads, and neo-Nazis that Mr. Biden calls the foremost threat to the safety of the nation?

Only recently we reported the military was threatening court-marshals, punitive and criminal actions, and forced repayment of all training expenses, against any service member who refused to take the vaccine. To date, of all the military requests for a religious exemption to the vax mandate, only four were approved. One wonders what the rationale behind such a sweeping policy could be.

Also noteworthy is the action of the chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Michael Gilday, in urging sailors to read How to be an Antiracist, by the controversial woke author Ibram X. Kendi, shortly after the death of George Floyd. Why was the top military brass suggesting that young seamen, some only weeks out of high school, read this controversial book by this controversial author?

Then there is this little fact that the Heritage investigators found. In questionnaires submitted to those federal employees seeking an exemption, the applicant stating a pro-life view was asked if he had ever taken the over-the-counter drug Tylenol. When the applicant responded in the affirmative, the applicant were told he had waived his right to object since in its development, the makers of Tylenol had used fetal cells from aborted babies, thus negating their objection.

A small column like mine is not the place to discuss all the questions raised. But I do think it is the place to raise some questions, such as:
Who initiated this new “database” policy? Was it elements of the deep state? The Biden administration? Or even Mr. Biden himself?

Why was there an attempt to keep it hidden by use of a limited 30-day comment period?
What is to become of the database, and the people listed?
How do the agencies’ actions and those of the military fit with Mr. Biden’s belief that white nationalists pose a security risk to the nation and are akin to terrorists?
And perhaps the most important question of all: Why are pro-life Christians being so targeted? Is this an attempt to intimidate and silence them or just a routine bureaucratic over-reach?

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday morning at 9:30 on Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com. Sarah Perry’s interview can be heard here: https://www.iowacatholicradio.com/faith/episode/28e89565/religious-exemptions-to-vaccine-mandate-12022.)

Religion Clause: Oregon Court Rejects Part Of Its Earlier Decision ...

Religion Clause: Oregon Court Rejects Part Of Its Earlier Decision ...: In Klein v. Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries ,  (OR App., Jan. 26, 2022), the Oregon Court of Appeals, in a case on remand from the U....

This week’s Faith On Trial

Here is the podcast of this week’s program with Denise Harlo, senior counsel and director of the center for Life with the Alliance Defending Freedom on the abortion cases now pending before the Supreme Court.

https://www.iowacatholicradio.com/faith/episode/3faa07d7/status-of-abortion-litigation-12722

This week on Faith On Trial

Denise Harle

What is the status of the current abortion litigation under review by the Supreme Court? That will be the topic this week when Denise Harle, senior counsel and director of the center for Life with the Alliance Defending Freedom, joins us. In her role Denise leads her team’s litigation and advocacy efforts to defend pro-life legislation around the nation. 

Join Gina and Deacon Mike every week for a discussion of issues that affect people of faith.

 FOT airs on Iowa Catholic Radio every Thursday morning at 9:30 CT on 1150 AM, and 94.5 FM, Des Moines; and 90.9 FM in Creston and 88.5 FM Adel. The program also streams on IowaCatholicRadio.com where you can also listen to broadcasts you may have missed.  

 

Mea Culpa and Navy Seals

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – I’m a bigot.

Yes, it must be true and I’m as surprised as you are. But alas, I’m trying to come to grips with my own white supremacy.

In my defense I don’t live in a compound, I’m not a member of any conspiracy group, I don’t fly the Confederate flag, and I don’t have a cache of weapons hidden in my basement.

And once in a while I take the American flag down and fly a team flag for an important game. Had it up for the Eagles, but I had to put it at half-staff after the game.
But, of course, if 52 U.S. senators can be bigots, I guess I could be one, too; but no one has chased me into a ladies’ restroom taking pictures and shouting at me, nor has anyone picketed my house or blocked my car from leaving. But I know they are all bigots because Chuck Schumer said so, and he should know — he is, after all, the leader of the Senate.

So I’m still trying to figure out just when I became one and how anyone found out.

I’m wondering if it was when I expressed my belief that voter ID laws were important to our democracy. Apparently they are a detriment because I know now that they work to disenfranchise poor and minority voters. Silly me! I always thought those folks were capable of getting the necessary identification for themselves. I was sorry to find out that apparently they can’t figure out the process, and that’s a darn shame. I guess there is some type of natural inferiority that I never suspected they had.

Or it might have been when I told a pollster that I favored signature verification for absentee ballots. That would be where the signature on the ballot should match the signature on file in the election office and not the signature on the absentee ballot application like they did in Georgia last time. Sorry but I thought that was wrong, too. Apparently I was wrong again.

Mea culpa.

Maybe it’s the police flag in my yard. Apparently from what I hear cops are bigots, too. After all I’m learning how horrible they are, beating and shooting poor people. I know that because Nancy, Chuck, and Joe told me so. After all they are three of the wisest people in the United States and I should take to heart what they tell me.

They are now my friends because they pointed out my sins to me. Thank you, o great trinity, for saving a wretched soul like me.

*****

Last week on my radio program our guest was Jeremy Dys, special counsel for litigation with First Liberty who is participating in the representation of the 36 U.S. Navy Seals who challenged the military’s vaccine mandate.

The 36 had objected to the mandate on religious grounds — mostly having to do with the use of aborted fetal cells in the vaccine’s development. They had all sought a religious exemption to the requirement and while a small number of Navy personnel had received exemptions for other reasons, none of the 36 religious accommodation requests had been approved. In fact, the court found that “denial” had become the Navy’s default position to the religious exemption.

The Seals had also been threatened with discharge, possible criminal charges, court-martial, and reimbursing the Navy for all training expenses. Yet the government claimed that the Seals would not have been harmed by the mandate, a legal predicate that must be shown.

The judge, Reed O’Connor however, found differently stating:
“[The Seals] testify that they have been barred from official and unofficial travel, including for training and treatment for traumatic brain injuries; denied access to non-work activities, like family day; assigned unpleasant schedules and low-level work like cleaning; relieved of leadership duties and denied opportunities for advancement; kicked out of their platoons; and threatened with immediate separation. At least one Plaintiff has received an email for enrollment in the TAP course, a prerequisite for separation from the Navy.”

The Seals won a preliminary injunction against the government which, for now will allow them to stay on active duty — although not necessarily with special warfare units — pending a possible appeal by the administration. According to the court:

“Our nation asks the men and women in our military to serve, suffer, and sacrifice. But we do not ask them to lay aside their citizenry and give up the very rights they have sworn to protect….The Navy provides a religious accommodation process, but by all accounts, it is theater. The Navy has not granted a religious exemption to any vaccine in recent memory. It merely rubber stamps each denial. The Navy service members in this case seek to vindicate the very freedoms they have sacrificed so much to protect. The COVID-19 pandemic provides the government no license to abrogate those freedoms. There is no COVID-19 exception to the First Amendment. There is no military exclusion from our Constitution,” he added in his written ruling.

“To adjudicate a religious accommodation request, the Navy uses a six-phase, fifty-step process. Although ‘all requests for accommodation of religious practices are assessed on a case-by-case basis,’ Phase 1 of the Navy guidance document instructs an administrator to update a prepared disapproval template with the requester’s name and rank,” the judge wrote.

“What’s concerning to me, and we’ve seen this both in the military and private contexts, is that there seems to be a real desire to judge the sincerity of belief that people applying for these accommodations present, and that is something the Constitution, the courts has long held. It is not the domain of courts or employers,” Dys said.
The legal rule, he said, is that the employer is to take the reasons for the religious exemption request at face value and cannot sit in judgment of another’s belief or question its sincerity, he said.

Sounds to me like the rippling wave of anti-Christian bigotry that has consumed the Biden administration. Of course they’ll fight to keep people with strongly held religious beliefs outside the mainstream. And they’ve hinted they will continue to do so: several federal agencies are making lists of federal employees who have asked for their religious exemption. The documentation includes reasons for the request and the individual’s religious status.

You’ll hear more about this attack on our religious freedoms. Until, of course, government and big-tech shuts us down.

 

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday morning at 9:30 on Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)

 

Scary program today: Government intimidation of Christians?

This week’s (1-20) Faith On Trial program should put the fear of God into practicing Christians who may soon find themselves answering for their religious beliefs to officials of the Biden Administration. Our guest was Sarah Parshall Perry, legal fellow for the Meese Center for legal

Sarah Perry

and judicial studies for the Heritage Foundation.

She outlined for our listeners how the Biden Administration started slowly gathering personal religious information from government employees who asked for an exemption from President Biden’s vaccine mandate. Some of the information collected included religious beliefs, how long they were held, religious practices, and physical descriptions including any identifying physical characteristics.

Why does the government want that information? What will they do with it? One of the chief characteristics of those applying for the vaccine exemption is that they are mostly conservative Christians who are objecting to the vaccine due to its ties to a fetal cell line originated from an aborted baby.

You can listen to the entire program here. 

FOT airs on Iowa Catholic Radio every Thursday morning at 9:30 CT on 1150 AM, and 94.5 FM, Des Moines; and 90.9 FM in Creston and 88.5 FM Adel. The program also streams on IowaCatholicRadio.com where you can also listen to broadcasts you may have missed.

Social Justice Or Claptrap?

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) - Maybe I’ve been laid-up a little too long from my stroke, but without the ability to read well I’ve been left with only two options to keep me busy: watching TV and thinking.

TV loses its appeal the third time you see the same rerun or the sixth time you are force fed your most unfavorite commercial. Since football is almost over, and watching the news raises my blood pressure higher than my doctors want it to be, I’ve reluctantly turned to thinking.

But thinking is not my first choice, since it hurts my head. I think it is because I have a four-cylinder brain while trying to do some eight-cylinder thinking.

So to stave off boredom, I decided to risk the effects of severe brain damage to try to delve into some of the major societal and philosophical questions of the day.

But grappling with these problems is harder than it looks and I still can’t solve the problem of plain vs. peanut, which has perplexed me for some time, even though I have to admit that I am partial to almonds.

But on the less significant questions of the day, I think I have made some progress. And on one I am prepared to announce my decision: I do not believe that “social justice” really exists.

Now, before you start calling me names and sending me nasty emails citing St. Matthew’s Gospel, Leo XIII, Pius XI, members of the current crop of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, or worse yet, Nancy Pelosi, give me an opportunity to explain.

Justice is a concept that I think most Christians and Americans understand. My dictionary defines it as “the principle or ideal of moral rightness; conformity to moral rightness in conduct or attitude.” While there may be slight differences in how we define the term, I think they all mean the same thing: giving to each person his due and living accordingly.

Understand, please, that this is not to be confused with charity, which my book defines as “an act or feeling of benevolence, good will, or affection; forbearance in judging others,” or more simply providing for the needs of others, especially the less fortunate in both bodily and spiritual means.

While the two terms are separate concepts, both are valuable concepts for society and for Christianity.

But they are separate concepts and they should in no way be confused or treated as synonyms. Of course both can be used to manipulate others, such as the phony charities that pop up every holiday season that are only rackets disguised as humanitarian enterprises. Just as claims of charity can be used for nefarious ends, so can justice; but true charity and justice are, in and of themselves, pure and true.

Hearing no objections (or booing) at this point, I’ll move onto my thesis: There is no such thing as “social justice.” In fact, the term is an oxymoron, it is self-contradictory and thus is a perversion of the term “justice.”

You see there is only one justice; there is no special justice. There is only justice and its lack: non-justice, or injustice, anything else is a false justice.

The examples that usually crop up are in the area of civil rights where they often involve attempts to use so-called social justice programs as remedial action to correct racial or gender imbalances in workplaces and college admissions. That corrective action almost always creates winners and losers by favoring some individuals over others according to their race or gender — and that now includes racial and gender identity.

So do the losers, the folks who watched others jump the line in front of them, get any justice in this situation? Of course not. And while there was no justice for the loser, what justice could the winner claim, for his “rigged” victory was truly undeserved.

And yet the “social justice warriors” will claim that this affirmative action was necessary to even the playing field for the “disadvantaged.”

Are they right? Of course not. If they were looking for true justice in education, for example, they would level the playing fields by fixing the inferior schools that the poor and minority students overwhelmingly populate, and provide remedial assistance to those found left behind. But certainly not by denying another the opportunity that was rightfully earned.

If they want true equal opportunity in employment, rather than juggling the numbers to an artificially arrived outcome, why not make a recruiting trip to Grambling, Alcorn State, or any number of other traditionally black and minority colleges, or to one of those high schools populated by the “disadvantaged” that liberals are always complaining about where there are eager minority students looking to land that first job on their own and not by a weighted system.

The point I am trying to make is this: Those who espouse “social justice” should think hard about what that means in the particular circumstance in which they are involved. Advocating for a certain quota system by marginalizing some students, for example, does nothing to solve the problem of inferior inner city schools, and it surely does nothing for the student himself marginalized by the artificial manipulation of the system.
The bottom line my feeble brain is suggesting is that the term “social justice” is too often used as a quick fix remedy, or charitable endeavor, rather than an attempt to permanently fix the problem at hand.

Once I represented a young lady who had bought a house only to find that the previous owner had paneled over and painted its basement walls to cover up water damage that posed a significant threat to the house’s foundation.

Social justice, it seems to me, is a lot like what was done to that house: the problem, hidden from sight, only appeared fixed. But, of course, it wasn’t. The water damage was still there festering out of sight.

Think about that the next time you hear someone put an adjective before the word justice. Maybe, just maybe, it’s because they are blind to the true problem or just don’t have the will to tackle it.

And finally, don’t ever confuse it with charity. It is not that, either.

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday morning at 9:30 on Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)

Faith On Trial for Thursday January 20.

Why is the government collecting religious information from federal employees seeking a conscience exception to the vaccine mandate? Sarah Parshall Perry, legal fellow for the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies of the Heritage Foundation will join us to try to answer that question. So join Deacon Mike Manno and Sherill Whiseand, sitting in for Gina, this Thursday.

FOT airs on Iowa Catholic Radio every Thursday morning at 9:30 CT on 1150 AM, and 94.5 FM, Des Moines; and 90.9 FM in Creston and 88.5 FM Adel. The program also streams on IowaCatholicRadio.com where you can also listen to broadcasts you may have missed.  

In the new Iowa Catholic Radio studio

Deacon Mike and Gina broadcasting today’s Faith On Trial program from the new Iowa Catholic Radio studio in West Des Moines. You can listen to the program here:

https://www.iowacatholicradio.com/faith/episode/3377e0b8/vaccine-mandate-and-religious-exemptions-denied-11322

This week’s Faith On Trial program: military denied religious vaccine exemptions

This week’s FOT guest was Jeremy Dys, attorney with First Liberty who is defending navy seals whose religious exemption to the vaccine mandate was denied. You can listen to the program here:

https://www.iowacatholicradio.com/faith/episode/3377e0b8/vaccine-mandate-and-religious-exemptions-denied-11322

FOT airs on Iowa Catholic Radio every Thursday morning at 9:30 CT on 1150 AM, and 94.5 FM, Des Moines; and 90.9 FM in Creston and 88.5 FM Adel. The program also streams on IowaCatholicRadio.com where you can also listen to broadcasts you may have missed.  

Deacon Mike's first column after stroke

The Big (Almost) Return

The Wanderer / January 13, 2022

By Deacon Manno

(Editor’s Note: The Wanderer is delighted to welcome Mike Manno back to our pages, and we ask our readers to continue to pray for his full return to good health.)

Well, I’m back.

Sort of. You probably read in this space that I suffered a stroke last October.

 

Fortunately, my wife took me to the hospital immediately and I missed the worst aspects of a stroke.

For what seemed an eternity, people kept coming into my room wanting me to squeeze their fingers, and give them the date. It’s Halloween, I’d say, only to be asked a question I kept getting wrong: what year is it?

 

Once they even asked me who the president was, when I gave them my answer they never asked that question again.

Initially I couldn’t formulate my thoughts into words and only gobbledygook came out as I struggled to say something that made sense; I think I sounded like a complete idiot when my bishop came to visit and I couldn’t talk in coherent sentences. I’ve since seen him and I think he understands, about the stroke part, not so sure about the idiot part.
I was in the hospital six days and with my speech returning, I made a case to the hospital to let me go home and put myself at the mercy of my regular doctor. The hospital doctors agreed and it has been doctor and specialists appointments ever since. I think I’m currently booked through February.

Most of the effects of the stroke are gone: I have my balance, I don’t run into things anymore, I can navigate the stairs, go out for lunch, and attend Mass. What I can’t do is read or drive. Apparently, the specialists tell me, that what my eyes see is not registering with the brain (I really do have one), which hinders my ability to understand how the letters make up a word on a printed page.

I’m doing what the doctors say, which is to try to read every day and hopefully the brain will reconnect with the eyes. It seems to be working and I am gradually getting through a book that I ordered just before my stroke.

It does leave me with another problem, however. Since I cannot read without some difficulty, I cannot proclaim the Gospel at Mass, nor can I read the Prayers of the Faithful that the deacon is supposed to read.

Since we have several deacons at my parish, I’ve been effectively “laid-off” for the duration, although I was on the altar for one of the big Masses for Christmas where I simply helped distribute Communion.

The eyes/brain problem has also affected my peripheral vision. Until that clears I can’t drive which means I can’t do my home and hospital visits. How long it takes my eyes/brain to adjust and get back to normal no one knows.

All I know is I’m working hard to get there, and I appreciate all the prayers on my behalf.

I am restarting my radio program, Faith On Trial, as I write this (early January). After my stroke my friend and co-host Gina Noll took the reins the first week, but was notified that the show would be put on hiatus until I could return. The station manager did move my show from 10 a.m. to 9:30 Thursdays. I think that as long as I can get a ride to the studio, I can make this work.

Additionally, I reported to the courthouse that I was unable to continue with the cases to which I had been appointed and the judge kindly removed me from all of them, which, of course, takes an enormous responsibility off my shoulders.

So as I’ve been home recuperating, and due to my continuing eyesight difficulty, I’ve spent a lot of time watching the news on TV — okay, a lot of time with football, too — but the point is I’ve been frustrated that so many disgraceful things have been happening under the new administration concerning religious freedom and our rights under the Constitution and I couldn’t talk back.

Now my wife worries about that because the neuro-specialists have warned me to keep my blood pressure in check lest I have another stroke. Fortunately, this column and my radio program give me a chance to vent that frustration and at least try to challenge the situation.

So now this is no longer just a ministry; it’s my rehab therapy.
For the immediate future you’ll probably be seeing a bit shorter column as it takes a bit longer to review court opinions and press releases. But, the important thing, at least for me, is that I’ll at least be back in the game, probably not as a starter, but I’ll be on the field again.

And, good news for me, my wife will be retiring from her job later this month. That means she’ll shortly have all day to read court opinions and press releases to me. Nice how that is working out – not sure how she will feel about it, but I still have faith in my ability to sweet-talk her (by the way, don’t anybody show this column to her).
And, of course, it’s important that we do what we do. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., recently opined to Tucker Carlson that during the past year nine of the Bill of Rights have been eviscerated, and only the Second Amendment — the right to bear arms — has been left intact. The nine he referred to include freedom of religion, free speech, and the right to assemble — all contained in the First Amendment.

These are challenging times. Every voice needs to be heard and as long as I can write I intend to contribute.

Oh, and don’t ask me about the president. You don’t want to hear a deacon use those words like the poor nurse at Mercy Hospital did.

Thank you for all your well-wishes and prayers.

 

 (You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com.)

 

Vaccine mandates for the military even those religiously opposed – this Thursday (1-13)

Jeremy Dys

This week on Faith On Trial we have Attorney Jeremy Dys, special counsel for litigation at First
Liberty who will discuss the problems military members are having getting their religious exemptions from the vaccine mandate approved, as well as other legal matters surrounding the mandates themselves.  

FOT airs on Iowa Catholic Radio every Thursday morning at 9:30 CT on 1150 AM, and 94.5 FM, Des Moines; and 90.9 FM in Creston and 88.5 FM Adel. The program also streams on IowaCatholicRadio.com where you can also listen to broadcasts you may have missed.  

MassResistance reports on Drag Queen story hour for children at public library

Another library director is very candid about supporting sexually deviant “Drag Queens” from those who would promote sexual deviancy. Now those people are paid handsome salaries and given the support of public officials.

Back in September 2021, we got a call from a former School Committee member in Reading,

Massachusetts who’s also a MassResistance activist. He was very upset that the local public library had scheduled a bizarre “Pride Storytime” in the children’s room featuring Drag Queens and others. The event was categorized as appropriate for children “birth through 5” and (ages 6-11).

The Pride Storytime event on Sept. 18 was apparently such a “success” at introducing young children to sexual entertainers that the Reading Public Library has scheduled another one for Jan. 22.

Massachusetts state law requires that organizations such as public libraries do criminal background checks (known as “CORI checks”) on all adults who will be working with children:

The Reading Public Library is arrogantly ignoring this requirement. Even worse, as the Library Director admitted above, they don’t even know who the people are who will be coming in to work with the young children.

Many people still think (or want to believe) that “Drag Queen” presentations to children in public libraries somehow happen by mistake, or through an oversight. In fact, they are put there purposefully by library officials who take pride in presenting these deviant characters to children. And normal safety checks are thrown out the window.

These library officials are out to get children to accept deviant behavior as normal. But they blatantly don’t care how this can adversely affect young minds. In their opinion, it’s not their problem.

One thing that these library officials do get right, however, is that this kind of perversion does constitute “serving the LGBT community.” As we’ve observed before, LGBT activists are obsessed with children – and pushing their agenda on young people. While most of the community is sickened by these presentations, it’s the “LGBT community” and their allies who are thanking the library for hosting them.  

What you can do: Monitor your local library for similar events and work to cancel them.

Read more at: https://www.massresistance.org/docs/gen4/22a/Reading-MA-Library-Director/index.html

 

Faith On Trial is now back, and here is this week's (1-6-22) program

Mark Lippelmann

Our guest this morning was Mark Lippelmann, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, discussing the plight of a Christian adoption agency, New Hope Family Services, that sought the protection of the federal court against a claim of discrimination by the State of New York for failing to provide adoptions for same-sex and unmarried individuals in accordance with its religious beliefs. No sooner did the appeals court vindicate New Hope when a second state agency made a similar claim against it.

Our earlier booked guest on the state of abortion litigations was ill and will be re-scheduled. Deacon Mike is recovering nicely from his stroke and was back behind the FOT microphone today.

Listen to the program here:

https://www.iowacatholicradio.com/faith/episode/3655a68e/religious-discrimination-against-christian-adoption-services-1622

FOT airs on Iowa Catholic Radio every Thursday morning at the new time of 9:30 CT on 1150 AM, and 94.5, Des Moines; and 90.9 FM in Creston and 88.5 FM Adel. The program also streams on IowaCatholicRadio.com where you can also listen to broadcasts you may have missed.