Michigan Catholics sue over LGBTQ rule

The Catholic parish of St. Joseph in St. Johns, MI, is suing the state's attorney general over the state Supreme Court’s recent redefinition of “sex” discrimination to encompass “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” arguing that the redefinition, among other things, threatens the parish’s ability to hire people who model the Church’s teachings.  READ 

Voting 101

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – Well, I guess all good things must come to an end. I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to avoid the elections and eventual commentary, but it’s time I get back to those topics. Although, so you don’t worry about me, I didn’t go cold turkey altogether: We did have a political editor on the radio program right after to discuss the results and we interviewed our attorney general elect right after her upset victory.

So now, back to business — or “regular order” in political speak.

As you know from reading the last few columns I have a thing for Philadelphia. It was my family home, both my parents were born there and I spent a lot of time in my youth visiting relatives every summer. Love the athletic teams; its history; the Mummers; Automat, Horn & Hardart, and the Eagle at Wanamaker’s.

So it is not unusual for me to follow Philly politics and that includes statewide races for governor, senator, and president. Thus I took more than a glancing look at this year’s Senate contest and from it I have developed some ideas about what is wrong with our elections.

But first let’s refresh our memories and take a quick look back at the 2020 results. During that election, many states and local jurisdictions made several administrative changes in their election procedures that they claimed were necessary due to the severity of the pandemic. Many of those changes, such as unattended ballot drop boxes, as well as questionable early voting and mail-in voting procedures, were blamed for some major irregularities that infected that election and caused the ruckus afterward.

Many of these were highlighted in Mollie Hemingway’s 2021 book, Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections, and Dinesh D’Souza’s 2022 film, 2000 Mules, among others.

As a consequence, many states have revised their voting laws to curb abuses and to provide safer, more trustworthy elections. Interestingly, the Pennsylvania legislature was among those states that tried to make corrections in its election laws to curb some of the abuses that were found, but Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed it.

Since to me, Pennsylvania is a poster-child for how not to do things, I think it is interesting to look into some of its problems to see what might be learned from it.

Of course one of the first things we notice from the state results was that the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, John Fetterman, suffered a stroke during his primary and was never truly cognitive throughout the campaign. Now, as a stroke victim myself, I can sympathize with the man wanting to return to his profession (he was the sitting lieutenant governor) as quickly as possible.

So how could this man be elected especially after the debate performance he turned in gave lie to his party’s claim that the effects of the stroke were no barrier to his service in the Senate?
The easy answer, of course, is that early voting in the state began some 50 days before Election Day. Now one of the oldest chapters in the political playbook deals with off-site voting: Those ballots that are cast outside the view of election officials.

For as long as states administered elections, political operatives have tried to obtain as many of these early ballots as possible. Several methods are used, but the result is the same for all: bag enough early votes — by hook or by crook — and you’ll already have a nice lead before the Election Day itself. Some states even allow political apparatchiks to gather those early ballots and return them to designated receptacles.

Now it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the mischief this could play in a close election. Unfortunately for the Republicans, they emphasize voting in person on Election Day and they haven’t quite caught up with the Democrats’ playbook here. However, I suspect they will and will actually be better at that game than the Dems. Of course when that happens everyone will decide that it is time to play the game without all the early voting.

Of course it should be noted that there are many valid reasons for early voting — illness, business travel, armed forces, etc. so there should be a safe method to conduct it. But obviously there needs to be better time constraints. There is no logical reason for a 50-day period. Ten days to two weeks is surely enough.

But along with that we should be discouraging as much of the mail-in voting as possible. The solution, during this early voting period, is satellite stations, manned by election officials where voters can go to cast early ballots in person. Now a central station, opened normal business hours at the local courthouse, can easily fill the bill. Outlying stations can be placed in libraries, city halls, and other public places and do not need to be open every day for business hours. A library booth might, for example, be open only on Wednesday mornings and Monday afternoons.

Thus early voters could be channeled into “official” stations where IDs could be checked and normal procedures for in-person voting could be used as would be done on the actual day of election.

Now my next suggestion is this: Close early voting on the Friday before the election. Then, over the weekend, all the early votes cast — that will come in secured envelopes validated by election officials — can be sorted into their proper precincts and on Monday they should be delivered to the individual precinct where the voter would have voted. The morning of the election, before the polls are open to the public, judges and partisan observers could open the envelopes and put the ballot through the tabulation machines for that precinct. Thus ending the horrific delay in producing election results while waiting for the “early” votes to be counted.

Now those that have been mailed into the election office can be signature and ID verified by normal election officials, along with partisan observers, verified, placed back into their envelopes, and delivered to the proper precincts with the others.

My idea here is to limit the number of people who must touch each ballot. Normally only the poll worker who hands out the ballot and the voter touch the ballot before it is placed into the tabulation machine. Under my plan that would only increase by one more person if mail-in or early ballots are treated as I am suggesting.

Additionally, under this proposal the authentication of early ballots would be much easier since it would be done normally at satellite venues and in the election office for mail-in ballots. And by voting those ballots in the voter’s home precinct, it should eliminate the delay in tabulating all results and eliminate those hazy boxes full of unidentified ballots that just happen to show up overnight.

Fortunately many states use many of these procedures already, but it would be nice to have a uniform ballot protection law that could mandate this throughout the nation. Of course it would also require that the practice of ballot harvesting be banned in every state.

The only other matter to correct is to reinforce the constitutional requirement that only the state legislature may regulate the “times, places, and manner of holding elections” [Art.1 Sec. 4] for Congress. That was generally ignored by some states and local officials in 2020 as they tried to tailor new rules to “concerns” over the pandemic.

That, however, will probably be done in the Supreme Court’s new term as it has agreed to hear a reapportionment case from North Carolina, Moore v. Harper, which deals with the same constitutional provision. Oral arguments in that case are scheduled for December 7.

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday on Faith On Trial at https://iowacatholicradio.com/faith-on-trial/.)

Seattle Area Fascists Censor Christmas

By Catholic League president Bill Donohue

What do banning Christmas, mass killings, attacks on churches, support for the radical LGBT agenda, and promoting riots have in common? Moral anarchy. Welcome to King County, Washington, which includes Seattle. 

It is not unconstitutional for public employees to wear religious apparel, but in King County they will punish you if you do. In the name of equity, the fascists who work in Human Resources (HR) have decided that all Christmas and Hanukkah decorations are banned. But it is okay to celebrate LGBT Pride and Black Lives Matter. 

The justification for the censorship is that “Some employees may not share your religion, practice any religion, or share your enthusiasm for holiday decorations.” This is true. It is also true that some employees may not be enthusiastic about celebrating sodomy or racism, yet those who do so are applauded for their behavior. 

Employees are being warned not to have religious decorations in the workplace “including your virtual workplace.” So now they are policing your home! 

“Religious symbols are not appropriate in these [common] areas, because it may cause disruption to co-workers or members of the public that do not share that particular religion,” the HR memo says. In other words, because religious bigots may be offended by a nativity scene, Christians lose their rights. 

This is what Harry Kalven once called the “heckler’s veto,” meaning the right of hecklers to deny the free speech of those with whom they disagree. If this were to be allowed, only sterile debate would be permitted. By the way, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this tactic unconstitutional in 1949 (see Terminiello v. City of Chicago). 

In 2020, while innocent people were shot and raped, the mayor of Seattle called it the “Summer of Love.” Nothing much has changed since. Crime is out of control, with a record number of homicides, rapes, robberies, aggravated assault—to say nothing of police officers being shot. Bad as this is, the anarchists didn’t have to vandalize churches, or bask in sexually degrading behaviors, but they did. 

It all makes good sociological sense. The common thread uniting violence, moral destitution and attacks on churches is a deep-seated hatred for God. We’ve seen this before in history—the French Revolution, for example. The results are always ugly. 

It would be so refreshing if those who work in King County were to practice civil disobedience and decorate their work area with religious symbols, letting the courts decide who is right. It is one thing for the government to formally endorse a religion; it is quite another for government bureaucrats to dictate what employees can celebrate. 

It’s time for a “Winter of Resistance” in Seattle.

Democrat attorneys general seek to force Catholic schools to hire homosexual teachers

 

The lawyers' amicus brief argues that Catholic high schools do not have a right to hire and fire people in accordance with Church teaching. 

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (LifeSiteNews) — Eighteen Democrat attorneys general have joined in an amicus brief against a Catholic high school who fired a substitute teacher in a homosexual “marriage.”

The brief, filed last week, argued that the Catholic high school does not have a right to not hire individuals that live a lifestyle incongruent with Catholicism. A federal court ruled in September 2021 against the high school and this case is now on appeal. 

The liberal attorneys general sided with Lonnie Billard, a homosexual substitute teacher who was let go from his job at Charlotte Catholic High School after “marrying” his partner. The Democrat attorneys general wants the Catholic high school punished for firing Billard, despite him living in open opposition to the teachings of the Catholic Church, values which the Catholic school is bound to uphold.

“Employees have a right to work free from discrimination, including the right to marry whom they love,” Connecticut Attorney General William Tong wrote in his news release. “The First Amendment is not a license for employers to discriminate. The North Carolina district court got this one right, and the defendants’ extreme and expansive theories here must be rejected.” 

“No one should be fired because of who they love,” Massachusetts’ Attorney General Maura Healey wrote. “We are filing this brief to ensure that our LGBTQ+ workers have equal protections and opportunities in the workplace.” 

But Becket Law, which represents the high school, explains that religious freedom must protect the hiring and firing decision of religious institutions. 

“The Constitution and federal law protect the right of parents to direct the religious education of their children, and the right of religious institutions like the Diocese of Charlotte to select teachers who agree to uphold their religious mission,” the legal non-profit explained. “These rights have repeatedly been upheld by the Supreme Court, which has emphasized that ‘educating young people in their faith, inculcating its teachings, and training them to live their faith are responsibilities that lie at the very core of the mission of a private religious school,’” the group wrote. 

“Religious organizations must be free to choose those who carry out their religious mission,” Becket Law noted. “This not only protects the fundamental freedoms of parents and religious schools to decide how to pass on their faith, but also protects the proper separation of church and state.” 

The court case comes at a time when Democrats, along with liberal Republicans, are pushing to put a federal “right” to same-sex “marriage” into law, despite significant religious liberty concerns. 

[The Bill passed the senate a short time ago. Iowa Republican Joni Ernst voted in favor.]

“The bill repeals the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 and requires the federal government and all 50 states to recognize homosexual ‘marriages’ and other civil marriages between ‘2 individuals’ lawfully performed in any state, potentially including incestuous and underage marriages,” LifeSiteNews previously reported. 

The legislation must pass the U.S. House in order to move forward. A vote is expected Tuesday.

Former Army lieutenant colonel speaks out after losing career for refusing COVID jab

(LifeSiteNews) – Refusing a COVID-19 vaccine was a “no-brainer” despite the career ramifications, says former U.S. Army Lt. Col. Bradley Miller.

In October 2021, Miller was relieved of his position as battalion commander in the 101st Airborne Division for not taking the mandatory shot and opted to resign completely the following January.

“I was very well aware of the ramifications my decision would have for my command, my career, and my retirement,” Miller told American Family News in comments published Tuesday. “But in my mind, I was placed in a situation where I had to choose the harder right over the easier wrong.”

He lamented being forced to “either choose the Army or choose the country,” and that in his view “far too many leaders of the military have turned their back on the country,” despite the fact that “the Armed Forces exist to protect the country – it’s not the other way around.”

Despite losing not only his career but his retirement pension, Miller said “there’s not a day that has gone by where I have ever regretted the decision that I made […] It felt like my continued service would have constituted an unspoken endorsement of everything that was going on [surrounding the military vaccine mandate] – and I was not going to have that. My values no longer aligned with the values of the senior leadership of the Department of Defense.”

Last August, at the direction of President Joe Biden, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered the secretaries of all military branches to “immediately begin full [COVID] vaccination of all members of the Armed Forces” and “impose ambitious timelines for implementation.” The majority of service members complied, but tens of thousands remain unvaccinated, with many seeking exemptions.

Catholic group receives ‘Jane’s Revenge’ shooting threat

Father Dan Andrews, pastor of the St. John Paul II Newman Center at the University of Nebraska, received a death threat Saturday morning in a note signed “Jane’s Revenge.” “If our right to abortion in Bellevue is taken away due to the attempt to pass an abortion ban and it gets passed[,] we will shoot up your Newman center with our new AR14 rifles. Sincerely, Jane’s Revenge,” the note read.  READ

How Your Free Speech Is Under Fire -- This case is being argued before the Supreme Court today!

Bias Reporting Systems at the University of Arizona

SCOTUS Hears Free Speech Case for Creative Web Designer

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Monday regarding a Denver-area website designer subject to a Colorado state law that censors and coerces the speech of creative professionals whose religious beliefs do not conform to state accepted beliefs.

Liberty Counsel filed an amicus brief to the High Court in 303 Creative v. Elenis in support of the free speech of Colorado native Lorie Smith. Senior Counsel for Governmental Affairs Jonathan Alexandre will speak at the rally in front of the Supreme Court steps at 9:30 a.m. before the oral arguments.

Smith creates unique and beautiful websites for her clients and started her business in 2012 to exercise creative freedom. Smith serves everyone but cannot use her design skills and creativity to express messages that violate her deeply held religious beliefs. However, under Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act, Smith could be punished simply for offering to create websites only celebrating weddings consistent with her beliefs that marriage is between one man and one woman.

In addition, the law acts as a gag order that prevents Smith from expressing on her website the reasons why she only creates messages celebrating certain ideas. Ironically, Colorado’s public-accommodation law allows secular artists but not religious ones like Smith to make “message-based refusals.”

Smith filed a lawsuit in 2016 in federal court. Nearly three years later, a judge issued a final ruling allowing Colorado officials to force Smith to design and publish websites promoting messages that conflict with her religious beliefs. In July 2021, the Court of Appeals ruled the state can force an artist to create expressive content, even if that speech violates their faith.

Biden’s Not So Subtle Lurch Toward Dictatorship

Commentary by Richard Stern

In the wake of the midterm elections, President Joe Biden was asked during a rare press conference—in reference to Twitter’s new owner—whether he thought Elon Musk was a threat to national security. With a pause and a smirk, the president said that topic was “worthy of being looked at.”

With those words, Biden made it clear that if you even seem to oppose his politics, your private life will be under the direct scrutiny of the state. Despite his constant prattle about saving our democracy, Biden seems to think he’s running an authoritarian police state.

In truth, the federal government already maintains entities that review acquisitions such as Musk’s for anything from foreign influence to anti-competitive business practices. After many months in which Musk’s negotiations to purchase Twitter happened in full public view, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said last week that she sees no basis for the government to investigate that purchase.

Despite Musk’s having followed the law, Biden, on a whim, wants to change the game. Suddenly, and after years of Twitter and other social media having significant foreign investors, a normal and transparent voluntary transaction is a potential “threat to national security.”

Biden signaled his desire to strip off the veneer of the rule of law and use the power of the presidency as a dictator would—by his whim and without respect for the rules that everyone else must abide by.

It is important to remember that, unavoidably, all government actions are rooted in government’s coercive power. As such, it is crucial for the federal government to act within the bounds of the Constitution and in a precise and careful fashion to avoid lurching into tyranny.

The mechanisms of our Constitution lay out one sacred duty of the federal government—to protect each of our natural rights. The Framers intended this design to ensure that the government could not interfere arbitrarily with civil society. The goal was to ensure protection of rights and not otherwise invade our personal lives with the coercive whims of bureaucrats and politicians.

With the protection of our individual freedoms, America developed a strong and flourishing civil society and became the most prosperous and advanced nation on Earth—a beacon of liberty and a model for the rest of the world.

A core component of our civil society is the free market. It is a system where everyone’s natural rights are defended and where everyone plays on the same field and by the same rules. A free market is a place where talent and determination are not suppressed and where innovations lift the standard of living for all.

Tragically, our free society has given way to increasing government manipulation—weakening our communities and civic institutions along the way.

Niche corporate and political interest groups stopped focusing on how to produce value for other people and instead on how to persuade politicians to regulate in their favor—a system where you’re rewarded for wielding the manipulative power of government, not for providing value to society.

We stand now at a place where the federal, local, and state governments consume and redirect more than a third of what Americans work hard to produce, and where the burden of regulations is an additional quarter of our economy. Put differently, out of your five-day workweek, two days are there just to feed the government.

This isn’t the free society and free market our Founders envisioned, where the government serves the people. This steady fall into a controlled society has been the playbook of the Left—a callous shortchanging of most families to concentrate power and money in the hands of a well-connected few.

What does it say of our nation if the president, with no accountability and in deference to no law or electorate, can on a whim command the people as if he regards us all as his property? What does it say that the president can marshal the force of government against a single individual for simply not sharing his politics?

With his shameful comment on Musk and Twitter, Biden made it clear that the rules apply as he sees fit, to whom he sees fit. There can be no prosperity in a country where your right to the fruits of your labor is not sacrosanct, and where the law is applied unevenly to favor those connected to the regime.

The Biden administration has acted with reckless irreverence toward our institutions and continued the intentional chipping away of the rule of law. The administration increasingly has weaponized the federal government against the American people.

We’ve seen the Biden administration come for industry after industry and sap the strength of our nation through an onslaught of regulations. He has unleashed an inflationary plague that already has stolen $7,400 from the average American family.

One need only look to the coal industry to see the honorable and necessary occupations that Biden now attacks. If history is any guide, heads of state who recklessly abuse the natural rights of their people rarely curtail their own crusade. 

Biden may have directly named Elon Musk at that press conference, but his threat was aimed at every household in America.

***

Richard Stern is a senior policy analyst for budget policy at The Heritage Foundation.

Protecting Christmas values: this week on Faith On Trial

This week Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel (lc.org) joined us to discuss secular and commercial attacks on Christmas as well as the results of Liberty Counsel’s “Naughty or Nice” list of businesses. He also reported on how one of his Supreme Court cases strengthened religious freedom. Listen here https://iowacatholicradio.com/faith-on-trial/ where you can also listen to other programs you may have missed.

Dear GOP: Wage war against the lies of same-sex ‘marriage.’ Stop begging for religious liberty carve-outs!

By Doug Mainwaring

(LifeSiteNews) — Arguments focusing on religious liberty to amend or fend off the so-called “Respect for Marriage Act” (RFMA) are way off the mark, tantamount to raising a white flag, signaling yet another defeat for the immutable definition of marriage, the nuclear family, and timeless –– accurate –– definitions of man and woman. 

Arguing for religious liberty carve outs is not a bad thing, but it’s not the best thing and it certainly isn’t a strategy that aims to regain vast swaths of territory ceded to politically correct Wokeism.  Doing so indicates demoralized resignation to the utterly impossible notion of same-sex marriage established by the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell decision.  

There is no rationale –– NONE –– for acknowledging or surrendering to a law that enshrines something that is not real, that does not actually exist, and can never come to be. Same-sex marriage is an illusion, a grand pretension perpetrated on an immense scale, which must be dealt with accordingly. 

The goal of conservatives on Capitol Hill should not be to stave off RFMA, but to focus energy and resources on striving for the ultimate good: Overturning Obergefell and then restoring the indisputable, immutable definition of marriage state by state.  

Republicans and anyone else they can get on board need to wage war against the lies upon which Obergefell was decided instead of sheepishly pleading for pathetic carve outs.   

“Today’s Senate vote does not change the nature of marriage. It tells a falsehood about what marriage is,” said Andrew T. Walker, Ethics Professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center following Tuesday’s passage of the RFMA in the upper chamber. 

“I … reject the entire premise that when we talk about [RFMA] we immediately hop into the defensive posture of religious liberty,” announced Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer in a recent NatCon Squad podcast.   

Hammer said that the American right lost on same-sex marriage politically and juris prudentially because “we had so few people willing to actually make the affirmative, positive case for what marriage is: The permanent, exclusive, monogamous union of one man and one woman.” 

“Let’s not immediately dive into religious liberty discussion. Let’s not necessarily forsake the affirmative case for marriage as one man and one woman” urged Hammer, “because that actually is the best and correct definition of marriage for families, for society, and for the country at large.” 

“No matter how hard progressives try to deny it, marriage is the irreplaceable foundation for stable societies,” wrote William Wolfe, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon and a Director of Legislative Affairs at the Department of State in the Trump Administration. “Not just any ‘marriage’ but marriage marriage: One man joining with one woman in a permanent, monogamous, committed union and dedicated to caring for any offspring such a union may produce.” 

“The Obergefell decision invented a constitutional right to same-sex marriage out of thin air,” declared Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts in July.

Democrats More Likely to Trust Delayed Elections Results, but Americans Don’t, Poll Finds

Heritage view: When asked, “How much do you trust that America’s elections are fair and accurate?” only 43.2% of respondents said they “strongly trust” the election system. A majority, 56.8%, expressed concerns about the system, with 17% saying they “somewhat trust” it, 17.9% saying they “somewhat distrust” it, and 21.9% saying they “strongly distrust it.” Heritage Expert Tyler O’Neil

Marriage bill fallout

While Democrats congratulated themselves for passing the radical Respect for Marriage Act in the Senate, others warned of grave consequences. "Today the Senate, including 12 Republicans, voted to undermine religious freedom and expose Catholics to debilitating lawsuits brought by those seeking to silence our voices in the public square,” said CatholicVote President Brian Burch. "Those in Congress who dismissed legitimate warnings about this bill and the harms that would be caused by it must be held accountable.”  READ  

Apple: Rotten to the Core - The Stream

Apple: Rotten to the Core - The Stream: Apple has become rotten to the core in supporting a Chinese dictatorship while suppressing free speech in America.