While our Secretary of State is running around Europe insisting that refrigerators are as dangerous as ISIS, the real terrorists are having a field day. [Tuesday’s] attack on a church in France by radical Muslims shows a new, more aggressive tactic of the jihadists: targeted violence against Western Christians. Police are already beefing up security around houses of worship like the small Rouen church, where an 85-year-old priest was brutally beheaded during mass. As the Washington Times points out, his killing “marked the first time that the Iraq/Syria-based group targeted a church in the West, sending a shudder through religious communities that have highlighted the militants’ persecution of Christians in the Middle East.”

Of course, the war against men and women of faith is nothing new for ISIS. Unfortunately, the Obama administration’s attention to the crisis is. It literally took years for the president to acknowledge the genocide taking place across the Middle East against Christians — and so far, that acknowledgement hasn’t resulted in the leadership on this crisis the world so desperately needs. If anything, the White House has only continued its religious favoritism — granting asylum to thousands more Muslim refugees than Christians and casting the violence as rare deviations from a religion of peace.

After Tuesday morning’s murder — the latest in a string of small-town attacks — the White House did manage to release a statement through a spokesman for the National Security Council that insisted: “France and the United States share a commitment to protecting religious liberty for those of all faiths, and [Tuesday’s] violence will not shake that commitment.” That sounds good, yet — as the Apostle James said — “Do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead?” The NSC’s words ring hollow when you look at the State Department’s priorities in its foreign policies. Under a new brand of “diplomacy” that started under Secretary Hillary Clinton (and continues under John Kerry), State officials have repeatedly strong-armed countries on LGBT rights despite many nations’ moral and religious objections. By 2011, the State Department had all but morphed into a satellite office for the radical Human Rights Campaign.

While the military was struggling to keep up with the threats, the Obama administration had launched another offensive: Operation International Tolerance. In a major U-turn from the Bush years, the Obama administration began initiating “anti-discrimination” resolutions to strong-arm the world into embracing pro-LGBT policies. Secretary Hillary Clinton was already knee-deep in her goodwill tour for abortion when she agreed to start lecturing other nations about the need to endorse homosexuality and transgenderism. By the end of her four years at the helm of the State Department, Clinton was most remembered — not for improving the relations with key leaders, but her bullying approach to social extremism. “Gay rights,” she argued on a global stage in 2011, are “human rights.”

Meanwhile, her actions — and the actions of the entire administration — on behalf of persecuted Christians have been both reluctant and infrequent. Part of that blame lies with the president’s constant coddling of Islam and frequent criticism of Christianity. When combined with their abject foreign policy failures, both have put religious liberty at risk here and abroad. After all, it was under Clinton’s watch that the Ambassador at-Large for Religious Freedom position sat empty. And while the Secretary can’t appoint that person, he or she can certainly advocate its importance — something the Democratic nominee for president never did for the first two years of Obama’s term.

Not surprisingly, the situation dramatically worsened under Clinton’s watch — since the elevation of sexual politics came almost exclusively at the expense of religious freedom. After eight years of chipping away at our First Freedom, we must demand that the next administration place a priority on both religious freedom and national security — which, as we saw [Tuesday] in France, is closely related indeed.

Originally published here.

Of Abortion, By Abortion, For Abortion

Exactly one year ago, who could have ever guessed that Planned Parenthood would be sharing the stage with a national political party — or anyone, for that matter? The organization had just suffered the worst public relations disaster in its history (which is saying something), after a group of pro-lifers exposed the group’s ghoulish side business of selling baby body parts. Twelve months after Hillary Clinton called the revelations “disturbing,” the Democratic nominee seems to have gotten over her disgust and raced to embrace a group whose currency is killing.

Despite the sweeping nature of the scandal, the group seems to have rebounded in liberal circles to the point of defiance. In the middle of a congressional investigation, state action, and criminal suits, Planned Parenthood seems as “proud” of its Frankenstein money-making scheme as it was when Cecile Richards played damage control in 2015. Last night, the leader of that disgraced organization (which, over the protests of Congress, rakes in more than a million taxpayer dollars a day) took to the DNC stage to remind voters exactly what the president’s party has come to represent.

Using a word seldom invoked by the Left, Richards talked about abortion twice — sending ripples of surprise through a base that would prefer to distract the public from the group’s real business. But, like Hillary, who shamed Democrats for not invoking the term “abortion” more often, Richards talked about the deadly procedure with the indifference of a tonsillectomy. “[Hillary] will always stand up for Roe v. Wade and the right of every woman to access a full range of reproductive health care, including abortion, no matter her economic status.” What she didn’t mention is that her version of “standing up for Roe v. Wade” is forcing Americans to pay for the elective procedure right up until the moment of birth.

At other points, she did what Planned Parenthood does best: distort the truth. Midway through her speech, Richards pointed to the organization’s supposed success stories, sharing about Dayna Fisher, a mom who was diagnosed with breast cancer. “Today, Dayna is cancer-free. She says she couldn’t have done it without Vivian, the Planned Parenthood clinician who stuck with her all the way through treatment.” Of course, emotional support was all that Vivian could offer, since the group still doesn’t provide the life-saving mammograms it claims as a major reason for taxpayer support.

But Cecile was right about one thing: “Women’s health is on the line and on the ballot in this election.” And under Clinton, that health care looks like unsterile equipment, unlicensed staff, uninformed patients, and unregulated clinics. These are the third-world conditions that she and Planned Parenthood have fought for in facilities all across the country. It’s a presidential ticket where basic safety comes second to a fast buck, and the allegiance Americans are forced to pledge is to abortion.

Originally published here.

FDA Fights Blood Ban in Vein

Less than a year ago, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did away with an important public health measure to protect the safety of our blood supply — namely, the lifetime deferral of men who have had sex with men (MSM) as blood donors. This longstanding policy was a sensible precaution based on the extraordinarily high rates of HIV infection among MSM. The FDA replaced it with a deferral only of men who had sex with men in the past year.

Now, even that precaution is under attack — and the FDA has invited comments on the possibility of doing away with the deferral of MSM as blood donors altogether, and replacing the question about sexual partners with ones about specific high-risk behaviors.

Why the sudden change? It is being driven by an emotional response to the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando in June. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, people were told that one practical thing they could do to help the (surviving) victims was to donate blood — whereupon some men who engage in homosexual relationships were reminded that they were still rejected as donors. Rep. Jared Polis, a Democrat from Colorado who identifies as gay, has led the charge to do away with the deferral altogether.

Note that this has nothing to do with any shortage of blood. News coverage from the day of the shooting shows that while a story went out late that morning asking for blood donations, within hours medical facilities were saying they had enough and could not handle any more donors.

As recently as 2009, the FDA informed the public that: “Men who have had sex with men since 1977 have an HIV prevalence … 60 times higher than the general population, 800 times higher than first time blood donors and 8000 times higher than repeat blood donors.” These risks are enough to justify the previous lifetime deferral; they show it would be absurd to abolish the deferral period altogether. The FDA claims its decisions will be based on “scientific information” and declares that “the process must be data-driven.” If they mean it, they should reject the current calls to ignore the science in the name of political correctness.

Originally published here.