This week's edition of The 3, featuring three stories of relevance to the Christian community, includes arguments before the nation's highest court on the case of a high school football coach who was fired because he would go to midfield after football games to pray. Also, a South Carolina church is the latest to announce a "drag queen" show. Plus, there is more legislation that is now law designed to preserve parental rights and to protect children from harmful gender ideology.
High court considers coach's defense against being fired for post-game prayers
Joe Kennedy, a football coach in Bremerton, Washington, lost his job back in 2015 because of his practice of walking to midfield following the local high school's football games to pray. His case has gone up and down through the federal court system, and last week, the coach had another day in court, before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Christian Post reported that former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, in defense of the coach, "said that the coach’s prayers were 'doubly protected by the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses” of the First Amendment of the Constitution.'" He said:
“When the school district fired him for that fleeting religious exercise out of endorsement concerns, it not only violated the First Amendment, but it ignored a veritable wall of this court’s precedents that make it clear that a school does not endorse private religious speech just because it fails to censor it...
The article examined exchanges between justices and the attorneys on both sides of the case. Here are a couple of examples:
Justice Sonia Sotomayor pressed Clement about when a school official’s religious practices can be considered private and when they are considered public, such as if a teacher is reading the Bible aloud before class begins.
Clement answered that if a teacher read her Bible “before the bell” or “after the bell” and did so “either silently or barely audibly,” that would be protected as “private speech.”
Also:
Justice Elena Kagan expressed concern with Kennedy’s prayers putting “a kind of undue pressure, a kind of coercion on students to participate in religious activities when they may not wish to.”
Clement countered that the school district did not cite “coercion concerns” when they punished Kennedy years ago but instead expressed concern over “endorsement” issues.
Drag shows spread from public libraries to...churches
For years, we have seen public libraries host so-called Drag Queen Story Hours, which one particular conservative commentator had described as an expression of free speech. Is it certainly the type of behavior that people want to have in their communities? It's another example of the deviant LGBTQ agenda being sold to young children.
And it certainly isn't something that we want in our churches! But, a church in South Carolina begs to differ: CBN.com reports that "Trinity Lutheran Church of Greenville, South Carolina has announced a 'Drag Me to Church' event..." The article quotes from the church's Facebook page, which says: "You'll be endlessly entertained" by the drag queen, who would present "...her unique style of worship which includes as many laughs as it does amens!"
Writer Gary Lane states:
Yes, God loves everyone, including drag queens, but he wants us to come into a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
It's not about being entertained by a drag queen, or anyone else. Churches should be holy temples – places where we bring honor and glory to Him, not to us.
How does a man dressed as a woman, strutting his stuff in a church bring glory to God? Isn't it really a slap in His face?
It's saying, "God You may be the Creator of the universe, but when You created me, You made a mistake – I really feel like I'm a woman, not a man."
This follows on the heels of an incident in Georgia last fall, which, according to CBN.com, was presented by the Emory Pride group, an LGBTQ+ organization from Emory University, at a United Methodist Church in Atlanta. The article says that:
Tom Greenler, a senior attending the school, hosted the event dressed in drag.
Greenler told Campus Reform that "there is something very subversive about hosting a drag show at a church, especially a Methodist church like Glenn Memorial."
"The UMC has officially adopted some anti-LGBT stances in recent years," he continued "but I think it says a lot about Glenn Memorial as an individual church that it has continued to welcome the drag show in their space."
"I personally think it's kind of punk, to be a queer person hosting an unapologetically queer event in a church like this — I feel like this kind of breaking barriers is what drag is all about," Greenler added.
More bills in effect to protect children and parental rights
There is a trend of policy moves that have occurred upholding parental rights and protecting children from harmful ideologies centered around gender. For instance, in Georgia, the Legislature passed, and the governor signed a package of bills, according to a Daily Caller article published at The Stream:
The bills included the Georgia’s Parents’ Bill of Rights or HB 1178, which “provides greater transparency to parents and legal guardians regarding what their student is being taught in school and protects the fundamental right of moms and dads across this state to direct the education of their child,” according to a press release. Another bill, the “Protect Students First Act” or HB 1084, prohibits “divisive concepts” such as the belief that one race is inherently superior to another race, the U.S. is fundamentally racist country or that an individual, “by virtue of his or her race, is inherently or consciously racist or oppressive toward individuals of other races.”The article also notes, "The law also allows the state athletic association to pass a law prohibiting 'students whose gender is male from participating in athletic events that are designated for students whose gender is female.'"
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