Liberals like to say that same-sex couples are the persecuted ones. Jim and Beth Walder can count 80,000 reasons why they’re wrong. Thanks to an activist judge, that’s how much the Christian couples owes for mistakenly believing that tolerance and equality applied to them. Like dozens of other family businesses, the Walders never thought that their faith would be a liability to their booming bed and breakfast business. They were wrong.

For 13 years, the Walders, did what successful people do, they worked hard to turn their inn into a premier wedding destination and peaceful getaway. Now, the atmosphere is anything but relaxing. Five years into an intense bitter legal battle, the government is demanding that the B&B fork over more than $80,000 to two men who wanted to be married on the property. Jim and Beth had declined the ceremony, because it would have violated their faith to host the event. Like Aaron and Melissa Klein, Barronelle Stutzman, and countless others, the hard-working Christians are learning that there’s a price for living by their Christian beliefs — and it isn’t cheap. But, as Jim has said since the beginning, “As long as I own TimberCreek, there will never be a gay marriage at this wedding venue.” If that means Illinois shuts down their inn, so be it.

In the end, the Walders insist, “it is better to obey God than men.” As far as the majority of Americans are concerned, no one should have to choose between their job and their God! When was the last time a same-sex couple was fined tens of thousands of dollars for being gay? Or hauled into court and stripped of their business? In a country founded on religious liberty, Christians should be able to live and work as openly as the same-sex couples who are harassing them. And thanks to state leaders, Mississippians will soon be able to. Under a hugely popular Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act that just passed the state legislature, no one will have to suffer like the Walders have.

As part of their pushback to this religious discrimination marching through the states, Mississippi officials are guaranteeing that public officials, business owners, faith-based groups, and churches won’t be punished by the government just because they hold natural views on marriage, gender, and sexuality. And guess what? Locals support it! Of course, you wouldn’t believe that based on the media’s spin, but 63 percent of the state — across age (including 61 percent of 18-34 year-olds!), race, sex, and party lines — are completely on board with stamping out this state-sponsored persecution. So it stands to reason that leaders like Governor Phil Bryant (R) and North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory (R) would listen to them — and not the bluff of big business bullies!

Corporations like Nissan, Disney, Intel, and others are only threatening states like Mississippi because they themselves have been threatened by a noisy and intolerant crowd trying to impose their sexual proclivities on the entire nation. And, as we saw in Houston, they have no intentions of following through! The Final Four is about to tip off in the same city where sports leagues kicked and screamed about letting grown men use our daughters’ restrooms. (A measure, fortunately, rejected by a landslide of voters.) As Lt. Gov. Dan Forest (R) pointed out on Washington Watch with me [Thursday], more than 10 million square feet of office space is under construction after the bathroom bill’s repeal. If anything, the economy has only accelerated since the November referendum. And when you press these CEOs, as Forest did, you find out that most of them never even read the bill at issue in the first place!

Speaking of North Carolina, where I traveled Thursday (and the plane was full, I might add, despite Governor Andrew Cuomo’s warning), people were overwhelmingly supportive of what Governor McCrory had done. They know, as we do, that protecting religious liberty is America’s only real chance at coexistence. “Give them an inch,” Forest warned, “and they’ll take a mile, especially if they sense any weakness.” They prey on weak leaders like Nathan Deal in Georgia, Mike Pence in Indiana and Dennis Daugaard in South Dakota. Fortunately for the people of Texas, North Carolina, and Mississippi, their leaders are refusing to yield on America’s First Freedom.

Originally published here.

Children of the Porn

Warning: Graphic Content. The worst part of Noah Church’s story isn’t that he was exposed to pornography at age nine. It’s that he didn’t stop watching it until he hit his mid-twenties. By then, his life and relationships had been completely consumed by the habit, which most millennials will tell you, is as normal for today’s teenagers as acne and homework. But, as Time magazine’s cover story warns, far more dangerous. The men who came of age in an era when pornography is only a click away are finally speaking up about how it’s destroyed their lives and the women in them. Time tells the heartbreaking tales of three of these survivors, who were so hooked on pornography at a young age that by the time they had girlfriends, they couldn’t function sexually without it.

And theirs isn’t an isolated story. Young men everywhere are so physically and emotionally broken by this addiction that they’re downing pills to be effectively intimate with real people. In 1992, Time points out, 5 percent of men under 40 needed drugs to treat ED. Today, that number is 26 percent — and even higher in the military. It’s no wonder, says former professor and author of Your Brain on Porn. “Porn trains your brain to need everything associated with porn to get aroused. That includes not only the content but also the delivery method. Because porn videos are limitless, free and fast, users can click to a whole new scene or genre as soon as their arousal ebbs and thereby condition their arousal patterns to ongoing, ever changing novelty.”

As with most problems, this isn’t a victimless one. As Noah Church laments, his body’s cravings destroyed his girlfriends and led to the greatest pattern of sexual dysfunction anyone could experience. Like most young men, he couldn’t replicate the feeling with women that he had online. “Quitting porn,” he now tells men “is one of the most sex-positive things people can do.” In a world where 88 percent of pornography is violent, this new drug, as people are calling it, is particularly dangerous for young women, who are being asked to do things and act in ways that abuse and dismay them.

A 2014 Cambridge report explained it this way: “men with compulsive sexual behavior responded to explicit clips in the same way users of drugs respond to drugs; they craved them, even if they didn’t like them.” But if you think the church is immune from this disease, think again. A recent Barna Group study sent shockwaves through the pews when it reported that 54 percent of churchgoing men confessed to looking at explicit images and videos once a month — and many, several times a week. That’s just 11 points less than the nonbelieving population. Among young men, the trends are even worse. Seventy-nine percent fall into the trap of porn monthly.

Obviously, it’s not an easy time to be a virtuous man. And unfortunately, this is a microcosm of a macro problem, which is the acceptability of all kinds of perversion. Is it any wonder that young people are more accepting of same-sex marriage and homosexuality when they themselves are trapped in their own form of sexual immorality? Today’s teenagers don’t even know what normal sex is — and there’s no one to blame for the country’s cultural condition but us. Too few families are drawing a clear line on sexuality of any kind. Premarital sex is through the roof among young Christians. And yet some teenagers say their parents have never brought up the harms of that or pornography. Not once. Yet both are killing more marriages and true intimacy than any other factor combined. Pornography devastates God’s vision for human sexuality and debases everyone involved in it.

As discouraging as Time’s stories — and others’ — are, they may be exactly what parents and pastors need to hear. It’s time for America to wake up to the fact that too few Christians are talking about the problem of pornography. And until they do, the battle for the family can never be won. Are you or someone you know struggling with porn addiction? Check out these resources offered by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.

Originally published here.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment

It’s been a no-good, very bad week for Donald Trump. The GOP front-runner was already dealing with a messy sideshow with his campaign manager, then, to make matters worse, he managed to outrage nearly everyone with his suggestion that women be subjected to “some form” of punishment for aborting their children. Of course the most outrageous aspect of his comments was that he delivered them to conservative Republicans.

Now, the brash candidness that used to be an asset is turning into the mogul’s worst liability. According to new numbers, if Donald Trump became the Republican nominee, “he would start the general election campaign as the least-popular candidate to represent either party in modern times.” With his favorability ratings in a freefall (67 percent view him unfavorably, the Washington Post wonders — as do we all — how these latest fiasco will affect the billionaire’s first-place standing. And it’s not just the polling that’s affect — so are delegates, who are increasingly ready to break from him on the second nomination ballot.

His ill-informed abortion comments, which could have come straight off of a Planned Parenthood fundraising email, rather than a pro-life policy paper, may have finally broken voters from the spell Trump’s blunt appeal. For once, Donald wasn’t telling it how it is — but how it isn’t. As people across the pro-life movement were quick to point out, no one has ever, as Trump suggested, called for the conviction of women — only compassion toward them. As Charles Krauthammer said, citing my comments and others’, “The problem isn’t only that he got it wrong… he really ought to spend the time [with pro-lifers], and get this right, but it is the lack of curiosity… Perkins said anybody who’s been on this issue, who knows the pro-life community, who knows what the arguments are, and what people really believe, knows that is not true. That is not the position of anybody on the pro-life side.”

It’s time for Trump to stop ascribing positions to conservatives and start learning them. Otherwise, he’s not only damaging his campaign, but the movement as a whole.

Originally published here.