Sunday, September 15, 2019

The 3 - September 15, 2019

This week's edition of The 3 focuses on a pastor in Myanmar who had faced criminal charges as the result of sharing concerns about religious persecution with the President while in America at the recent religious freedom ministerial.  Also, there's more fallout to report about the endorsement of Bring Your Bible to School Day by NFL quarterback Drew Brees.  Plus, in a sickening discovery, the remains of over 2,000 aborted babies were found at the Illinois home of an abortionist who died recently.

Pastor who pleaded with Trump gets reprieve

A pastor in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has had charges against him dropped in a case involving comments he made to President Trump while in the U.S. attending the recent religious freedom ministerial, according to The Christian Post.  Rev. Hkalam Samson, president of the Kachin Baptist Convention (KBC), in a session that was streamed online, stated:
“I’m ... from Baptist Convention from Northern Burma. And then, as Christians in Myanmar, we are very been oppressed and tortured by the Myanmar military government,” Samson said.
“And then, we don’t have chance, many, for religious freedom. And also, ethnic armed groups fight against the central military government. So, please, American government focus on ethnic people and the ethnic leader to get general democracy and federalism.”
Samson also thanked the Administration for sanctions that had been issued against leaders in Myanmar, the result of, as the Post states, "human rights abuses committed against the Rohingya Muslim community in the Rakhine state in 2017."

After Samson's comments, Lt. Col. Than Htike of the northern command of Myanmar had filed a criminal complaint against him, but it was withdrawn last week. The judge in the case, Than Tun, said, “Lieutenant Colonel Than Htike, who had filed the case, submitted a request to settle and withdraw the case on Sept. 9...So the court has allowed the settlement in accordance with legal procedure[s]… Dr. Hkalam Samson has been acquitted.”

The Post article also relates:
State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said in a statement that the criminal complaint against Samson “seeks to unduly limit his freedom of expression and potentially could disrupt his critical work on behalf of tens of thousands of internally displaced people.”
The article reports that Samson stated, “Growing international [pressure] probably led to the decision.” But, a spokesman for Myanmar's military said the complaint was not withdrawn due to U.S. pressure.

Former teammate calls out Brees critics

The reaction to the endorsement of Drew Brees of a Focus on the Family initiative, Bring Your Bible to School Day, continued for a second week, which began with a Saints' Monday night victory over Houston, with Focus President Jim Daly in attendance; Focus had encouraged fans to bring their Bible to the Saints' home stadium, the Superdome, for the game.

And, a former New Orleans teammate of Brees, Benjamin Watson, had some choice words to say about the quarterback's critics. ChristianHeadlines.com reports that Watson said on Fox and Friends that an article criticizing Brees "...was misleading and a mischaracterization of Focus on the Family and of Drew. It was slanderous,” adding, "And so my response was to stop lying with those sorts of labels.”  The article continued:
It is a lie, Watson said, to label Focus on the Family “as anti-gay, anti-non discrimination.”
“It's a shame in this country right now, where if you adhere to certain biblical beliefs that we all have a right to choose what religion we adhere to, you're labeled as anti,” he added. “What Focus on the Family does is uphold marriage. Family is the basic building block of society. [Focus on the Family] upholds those things, and they're labeled [as] anti by other people. And there's an agenda there. And that's what really upset me.”
John Stonestreet, in a Breakpoint commentary, stated:
...as one blogger noted recently, any movement that spends years trying to shut down a Denver bakery and discredit a chicken sandwich restaurant is a movement that has, long ago, run out of real injustices to fight. This second-degree-of-separation guilt-by-association campaign against Brees indicates that the gatekeepers of the LGBTQ movement have moved on, and are now demanding that everything, and I mean everything—from football to business to education to politics to Stranger Things—has to be about this.
As Focus on the Family Jim Daly demonstrated so well in his response to this nonsense, Christians should resist the demand to frame every issue of life and culture around LGBTQ issues. There’s so much more to life than this.
Over two thousand bodies of aborted babies found at IN abortionist's home

Ulrick Klopfer is a former abortionist who died on September 3. His medical license had been revoked back in 2016, according to CBNNews.com, which reported that Klopfer "...had practiced abortions in South Bend, Indiana, but had a home in Will County, Illinois." Family members "going through his possessions at that Will County home" discovered the remains of unborn babies. Investigators discovered the bodies of 2,246 aborted babies.

Jeanne Mancini, President of March for Life, stated:
“This tragic case bears a strong resemblance to that of Kermit Gosnell, who was convicted of murdering born alive infants slated for abortion. Like Gosnell, Ulrich Klopfer had a long and troubling history of ‘willful, intentional and detrimental’ noncompliance with state regulations and his disregard for those regulations intended to protect women and minor girls was appalling."
According to Mancini, Klopfer had even performed an abortion on a 10-year-old and sent her back into an abusive situation.

Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser said:
“This devastating discovery proves Kermit Gosnell’s ‘House of Horrors’ was not an outlier and shows the U.S. Supreme Court ruled correctly in upholding Indiana’s law, signed by then-Governor Mike Pence, requiring the humane and dignified disposition of human fetal remains."  
She expressed the desire that "this atrocity will awaken hearts and consciences across the nation to the brutal reality of abortion."

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