The 3 - October 28, 2018

On this week's edition of The 3, highlighting three stories of relevance to the Christian community, there's a story out of Virginia, where a middle school chorus will not be allowed to sing "sacred" Christmas songs; perhaps this is one of the first of such instances that we seem to see annually.  Also, in an age where we need prayer to address violence in our cities, police in a Louisiana city will not be allowed to promote prayer vigils now.  And, there are reports that the Trump Administration will soon reverse special treatment granted by the previous Administration for transgender individuals; some response, ahead.

3 - Middle school will not use Christmas songs containing the name of Jesus

It has become of regular occurrence of the Christmas season, where you see schools or governmental organizations place restrictions on the expression or celebration of the holiday.
ChristianHeadlines.com reported on a decision by a middle school in Virginia not to allow songs that mention Jesus - yes, the One whose birthday is being celebrated - as part of its Christmas-related presentations.

The story says that:

David Allen, the father of a student at Robious Middle School in Midlothian, Va., told WWBT-TV that the chorus teacher told him that songs of a “sacred” nature won’t be in the winter program. Allen gave the television station a copy of an email exchange he had with the teacher.

“They were unable to [sing this song] because the word ‘Jesus’ was in there and apparently someone assumed it was of a sacred nature,” Allen said.

The father said that the teacher had told him that some students were "uncomfortable" with the inclusion of "sacred" material. Allen is quoted as saying, "I’m trying to rationalize how you can encourage diversity and yet be exclusionary in one specific area,” according to WWBT.

2 - Shreveport police to discontinue prayer gathering after threats

We recognize that prayer can be a powerful tool to change the atmosphere of a community.  And, since 2017, the Police Department in Shreveport, LA, has encouraged people to take part in prayer vigils.  ChristianNews.net has reported that practice has now ended, thanks to a complaint from the so-called Freedom From Religion Foundation.  The article states that FFRF...

...sent a letter to Shreveport Police Chief Alan Crump in August to assert that the prayer vigils are unconstitutional because they prefer “religion over non-religion” and run afoul of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

FFRF also demanded that the department end its chaplaincy program.  The article continues:

While the City does not plan to end its chaplaincy program, it did agree to discontinue holding the prayer vigils.

“We have to be inclusive of all of our citizens and representative of all of them. We want to make sure we’re implementing practices that do not alienate certain groups of people,” City attorney William Bradford told the Shreveport Times.

ChristianNews.net stated, "The City of Shreveport will now depend on local citizens to organize their own prayer gatherings."

1 - Response to reports that Trump Administration will rescind changes in Title IX allowing for gender redefinition

When news surfaced that the current Administration was considering reversing the previous Administration's position on gender discrimination under Title IX, it certainly set off a wave of protest.  But, as David French of National Review wrote, this was just going back to a change made in 2014; a change that had reversed, as he puts it, "millennia" of social science.

He writes that a document from the Obama Administration...

...stated that “Title IX’s sex discrimination prohibition extends to claims of discrimination based on gender identity or failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity.”

Empowered by this new definition, the Obama administration issued extraordinarily aggressive mandates to schools across the nation, requiring that schools use a transgender student’s chosen pronouns and that they open bathrooms, locker rooms, overnight accommodations, and even some sports teams to students based not on their biological sex but their chosen gender identity.

Again, this was done without an act of Congress and without even a regulatory rulemaking process.

He made reference to a New York Times article, with the headline, “Transgender Could Be Defined Out of Existence Under Trump Administration," which, according to French, indicated "The administration may issue formal guidance establishing a biological definition of sex. Specifically, the administration may define sex to mean 'a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth.'"

Family Research Council expressed its alarm at the alarmism, stating:

In Sunday's piece, a trio of reporters argues that the Trump administration is disenfranchising people by defining gender as it always has been: a "biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth." No one is quite sure how that's radical, since it's how the law has been understood both before and since 1964. Not a single president questioned it until Obama, who decided that he didn't care what the Civil Rights Act said. He was going to "reinterpret" the 54-year-old law on "sex" discrimination to mean "sexual orientation" and gender identity too.

The FRC piece also says:

This "new" definition of sex, the Times insists, "would essentially eradicate federal recognition of the estimated 1.4 million Americans who have opted to recognize themselves -- surgically or otherwise -- as a gender other than the one they were born into." First of all, this "new" definition of "sex" is 54 years old. Secondly, who are these 1.4 million Americans? The Times didn't bother citing the statistic, and it certainly seems higher than most credible national surveys. Lastly -- and perhaps most instructively -- people who identify as transgender don't enjoy special federal recognition under the law, because the American people have never passed any legislation granting it.

French notes:

In reality, the claim that you “dehumanize” a person if you hold contrary beliefs about sex and gender is a common, inflammatory rhetorical tactic that creates a false choice. Either you recognize a transgender person on their own terms, or you “deny their humanity.” You “deny their existence.”

Wrong. I believe that each and every single human being is created in the image of God. We are of equal worth and value in His eyes. I also recognize that some percentage of those human beings have gender dysphoria, but that condition does not transform a man into a woman or a woman into a man...

He also states, "The Trump administration’s proposed regulatory change conforms the law to the truth. Defending that truth isn’t dehumanizing. It’s not denying anyone’s existence. It’s standing athwart a lawless redefinition of biological reality and quite appropriately yelling stop."

The 3 - October 21, 2018

This week's edition of The 3 includes a revision to a campus policy at an Atlanta-area university allowing for greater freedom of speech, in response to a Christian group's desire to have a pro-life display on campus.  Also, the Alabama Supreme Court has ruled in a death penalty case that the death of an unborn child was indeed the death of a human person.  And, the former Fire Chief in Atlanta received a financial reward from the city's Council in light of the city's attempt to punish him for his expression of religious beliefs.

3 - Atlanta-area college changes policy regarding speech zones

The ability of Christian groups on college campuses to share their messages has become an issue at a number of schools over the years.  And, recently at Kennesaw State University, located in the Atlanta suburbs, a group called Ratio Christi, which is a Christian apologetics group, had wanted to place a pro-life display on campus.  That was OK'ed by school officials, but they limited the area in which the display could be erected.

Alliance Defending Freedom defended the campus group. Its website said the display was relegated "to a 'speech zone' that made up less than 0.08 percent of the 405-acre campus."  ADF states that:

Previously, no guidelines existed for KSU officials to follow, which gave them unrestricted discretion to grant, deny, or modify a student organization’s reservation request even for unconstitutional reasons. Thus, officials relegated any activities they deemed “controversial” to the small, less-accessible speech zone.

The university reached a settlement with the group, which provides that, according to the website, "the school will eliminate its speech zone, students will be free to speak freely in all outdoor areas of campus, and the university will pay $20,100 to ADF and Ratio Christi, the student organization that sponsored the pro-life display, to cover legal expenses incurred in defense of the group’s constitutionally protected freedoms.  The site states that, "The settlement eliminates the speech zone, allowing students to speak freely in all outdoor areas of campus, and when they seek to reserve space, they can’t be relegated to disfavored areas."

ADF Senior Counsel Travis Barham is quoted as saying, “Kennesaw State has done the right thing in ending the ability of officials to quarantine any student speech they deemed ‘controversial’ to a tiny, difficult-to-access part of campus. We hope that this settlement will prompt other public universities to eliminate similar unconstitutional policies..."

2 - Alabama Supreme Court upholds death sentence in case where unborn child died

In a recent court case involving the death penalty, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that a convicted murderer, Jessie Phillips, should receive that penalty not only for the death of his wife, but also for their unborn child.  Liberty Counsel provided news and commentary on the case.  It states:

Phillips had argued that he should not get the death penalty for killing his unborn child because he said the child was not a “person” under Alabama law. The Court rejected Phillips’ arguments and held that, under Alabama law, Baby Doe was a full “person” and that “the value of the life of an unborn child is no less than the value of the lives of other persons.”

The ruling from the state's high court was unanimous.  As Life Site News points out:

The Alabama legislature expressly enacted the “Brody Act” 12 years ago to protect pre-born babies. Under the Brody Act, the definition of a “person” includes “an unborn child in utero at any stage of development, regardless of viability.” The Brody Act is consistent with numerous other sections of Alabama law which recognize the equal status of the child in the womb.

The article also states that:

The national significance of this case cannot be understated, since the question of personhood has been the lynchpin to the so-called right to abortion, ever since Justice Blackmun erroneously wrote in Roe v. Wade that children in the womb are not persons and therefore not entitled to any of the fundamental constitutional protections.

Responding directly to Roe’s flawed ruling, the Alabama Supreme Court unanimously ruled that “unborn children are persons entitled to the full and equal protection of the law.”

That article, as well as the Liberty Counsel release, points out that Justice Tom Parker wrote an additional opinion.  Liberty Counsel states that:

Justice Parker wrote separately to emphasize how broadly and consistently the law and judicial decisions in Alabama and around the country protect the rights of unborn children. This, Justice Parker said, contrasts with “the continued legal anomaly and logical fallacy that is Roe v. Wade.”

1 - Former Atlanta Fire Chief receives significant payout in aftermath of termination

You're probably familiar with the plight of Kelvin Cochran, the former Fire Chief of Atlanta who was terminated as the result of a book that he wrote, outlining Christian principles regarding masculinity.  In the ensuing days, Cochran was fired by then-Mayor Kasim Reed.  WORLD Magazine reports:

Reed, in a letter, had defended the firing, saying Cochran didn’t have permission to write the book, which “required prior approval from the Board of Ethics,” and had compromised his ability to lead city employees who might be homosexual. But an investigation found no evidence that Cochran discriminated against any member of the fire department because of his religious beliefs.

WORLD references a WSB Radio report that the Atlanta City Council voted 11-3 to pay Cochran $1.2 million.  The article says:

Cochran won a lawsuit against the city and Mayor Kasim Reed late last year. A U.S. District Court ruled that Atlanta’s policies restricting speech outside of work allowed city officials to unconstitutionally discriminate against views with which they disagreed.

Alliance Defending Freedom pointed out:

With regard to the city’s “pre-clearance” rules, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia wrote in its December 2017 decision in Cochran v. City of Atlanta, “This policy would prevent an employee from writing and selling a book on golf or badminton on his own time and, without prior approval, would subject him to firing. It is unclear to the Court how such an outside employment would ever affect the City’s ability to function, and the City provides no evidence to justify it…. The potential for stifled speech far outweighs any unsupported assertion of harm.”

The 3 - October 14, 2018

This week, on this edition of The 3, voters went to the polls in Romania to define marriage as one man and one woman, but the vote on that constitutional amendment did not garner that necessary percentage of eligible voters in order to be recognized.  Also, cake bakers in the United Kingdom who declined to provide a cake in support of so-called "gay marriage" were exonerated by the U.K. Supreme Court.  And, an American pastor is back home in the U.S. after being released from captivity in Turkey.

3 - Romanian marriage amendment invalidate due to insufficient turnout

Residents of the eastern European nation of Romania were scheduled to go the polls recently to vote on a constitutional amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman.  But, according to a report on the WORLD Magazine website, the vote did not reach the threshold necessary to allow the referendum to be recognized.

WORLD reports:

More than 90 percent of Romanian voters supported defining marriage in the constitution as the union of one man and one woman, but election officials said just 20.41 percent of eligible voters participated, short of the 30 percent required for the referendum to be valid. The nation’s constitution currently defines marriage as between “spouses.” It does not allow civil unions, nor does it recognize same-sex marriage from other countries.

The WORLD article states that: "the Orthodox Church, which backed the referendum, called the vote 'a partial success which calls us to hope and work more.'" The country's president supports same-sex marriage, and, according to the article, "said the country should tackle the issue further with 'a mature approach and openness to dialogue.'"

2 - Cake bakers receive favorable court ruling in U.K.

There was a resounding court ruling recently from the U.K. Supreme Court in the case of Ashers Bakery, which, according to the Alliance Defending Freedom website, is "a Christian-owned business in Northern Ireland that politely declined to create a custom cake with the slogan 'Support Gay Marriage...'"

ADF Senior Vice President, U.S. Legal Division Kristen Waggoner, who had "argued the Masterpiece Cakeshop case before the U.S. Supreme Court," is quoted as saying:

“The UK Supreme Court recognized that artists and other professionals don’t discriminate when they object ‘to the message, not the messenger.’ The court also affirmed the fundamental freedom of Ashers Bakery’s owners to decline to express through one of their cakes ‘a message with which they deeply disagreed.’ In the U.S., Alliance Defending Freedom represents many creative professionals—like Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop, Barronelle Stutzman of Arlene’s Flowers, Carl and Angel Larsen of Telescope Media Group, and Blaine Adamson of Hands On Originals, just to name a few—who all draw that simple line: They serve all people but do not express messages that conflict with their deeply held beliefs."

The U.K.'s Coalition for Marriage states on its website:

This is an emphatic victory for free speech. Five of the UK’s top judges have ruled that the law cannot compel someone to endorse a message with which they fundamentally disagree.

This ruling was vital, not just for the McArthur family who own and run Ashers bakery, but for business owners across the UK.

On the website of The Christian Institute, General Manager Daniel McArthur is quoted as saying:

“We’re delighted and relieved at today’s ruling. We always knew we hadn’t done anything wrong in turning down this order. After more than four years, the Supreme Court has now recognised that and we’re very grateful. Grateful to the judges and especially grateful to God.

“We’re particularly pleased the Supreme Court emphatically accepted what we’ve said all along – we did not turn down this order because of the person who made it, but because of the message itself.”

The site noted that it was a unanimous ruling and that, "Senior judges accepted arguments put forward by The Christian Institute over the last four and a half years."

1 - American pastor held in Turkey freed

Great news out of the nation of Turkey, where American pastor Andrew Brunson had been ministering for over 20 years.  He has spent the better part of the last two years either in prison or house arrest.  And, early Friday, a Turkish court reaffirmed the charges against him - and then set him free.  The pastor is now back in the U.S.

A CBN News story quotes Pastor Brunson: "My entire family thanks the President, the administration, and Congress for their unwavering support. This is the day our family has been praying for – I am delighted to be on my way home to the United States."

The story states that:

Before the court hearing, US Vice President Mike Pence said the release of Pastor Brunson has been a priority for the Trump administration.

"Our administration has made very clear that we will continue to stand strong until Pastor Andrew Brunson is free and back home in the United States with his family and with his church," Pence said.

The article said that:

Turkey accused Brunson of participating in a 2016 coup to overthrow the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Pastor Brunson was facing up to 35 years in prison if convicted...of espionage, but those charges were dropped Friday.

CBN News reports that Brunson visited the White House on Saturday and met with President Trump in the Oval Office.  The article says:

Brunson prayed for the commander-in-chief in the Oval Office saying, “I ask that you give him strength. I ask you to protect him.. make him a great blessing to this country and fill him with your wisdom and strength.”

The 3 - October 7, 2018

In this week's edition of The 3, there is a story out of north Alabama involving prayer before football games and community response to the school board's ban on the practice.  Also, the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed a lower court ruling in favor of a Tennessee pro-life amendment to stand.  And, the governor of California has vetoed a bill that would have authorized on-campus medical abortions.

3 - School prayer ban in Alabama county yields strong response from community

In Blount County, Alabama, the school board put an end to prayer before football games, even if led by a student or volunteer, an incorrect response to a threat from the so-called Freedom from Religion Foundation.  Parents responded by saying their own prayer in the stands at the county's Locust Fork High School, according to the Christian Examiner.  It reported:

Gregg Armstrong, a parent of a Locust Fork High School student and the county revenue commissioner, vowed to a local ABC News station after the announcement last week that he and other Christians around the county would say the Lord's Prayer in unison during the moment of silence.

"We are not doing this by any way to be negative or anything like that," Armstrong explained. "We are just doing this with love and doing what we feel like God has called us to do. I believe if you have 1,000 people in those bleachers saying the Lord's Prayer vocally, not over a PA system, that is probably going to be a little bit more moving than just one person praying."

Area churches banded together and sold over a thousand "We Believe" t-shirts and the article says, "An online video shows a spectator leading the crowd at the Locust Fork game by reciting the Lord's Prayer through a megaphone."

The article points out that, "Critics of the school district's decision include Roy Moore...," who "argued at a news conference in Montgomery last week that it's constitutional for students to pray over the loudspeaker before games as long as it's done so free of influence from school officials."

2 - U.S. Supreme Court allows TN pro-life amendment to stand

In 2014, voters in Tennessee amended the state constitution, according to a Baptist Press article; the amendment, "removed a right to abortion and a requirement for abortion funding from the Tennessee constitution."

The article states that:

The effort to pass the amendment followed a decision by the Tennessee Supreme Court in 2000 that struck down state restrictions on abortion and ruled the state constitution provided stronger protections for abortion rights than the U.S. Constitution, The Tennessean reported. In the wake of the ruling, an analysis by the newspaper showed more than 25 percent of abortions sought in the state were from women who lived in states where abortion restrictions were in effect.

Those challenging the amendment were essentially trying to get it thrown out on a technicality - the 6th Circuit found in favor of the state and on the first day of the new term of the U.S. Supreme Court, the justices said they would not review the lower court decision.

That Tennessee amendment was influential on an Alabama lawmaker, Matt Fridy, who proposed the constitutional amendment that Alabama voters will be considering on November 6, according to LifeNews.com, which reports:

The proposed amendment says the Alabama Constitution does not protect a right to abortion or taxpayer-funded abortions. It also directs state policy “to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life.”

The LifeNews.com article says:

State Rep. Matt Fridy, a Republican, said he had the future in mind when he proposed the amendment, according to AL.com. He told the local news that he was thinking about Tennessee where the state Supreme Court ruled that a woman has a “right” to abortion under the state constitution.

That ruling made it basically impossible for Tennessee lawmakers to pass even moderate abortion regulations, such as parental consent for minors or a ban on taxpayer-funded abortions. In 2014, Tennessee voters approved a ballot measure to amend their constitution to make it clear there is no right to abortion.

1 - CA Governor vetoes bill allowing abortion pills to be distributed at colleges

It is a bill that is not really unexpected out of California. According to a Fox News story, a bill, "would have required university health centers to offer women medical abortions on campus by Jan. 1, 2022. The majority of the funds-- $9.6 million-- would come from private donors, The Sacramento Bee reported."

Governor Jerry Brown vetoed the bill.  Fox reports that:

In his veto message, Gov. Brown called the bill “unnecessary,” noting that abortions are a “long-protected right in California.” He said most abortion providers are within a reasonable distance from campus communities.

So, not a pro-life epiphany for the governor, but a positive step for life nevertheless. The article quotes the San Francisco Chronicle: The bill was drafted after a failed effort in 2016 by students at UC Berkeley to provide medical abortions on campus, according to The Chronicle. Medical abortions differ from surgical abortions in that the former requires taking a pill over two days during the first 10 weeks of a pregnancy to trigger a miscarriage.