The president always claimed he wanted to unite people. And now, his bathroom edict finally has! Unfortunately for him, the country’s consensus is vastly different than his own. In the two weeks since the Obama administration announced its gender free-for-all, parents, leaders, and activists across America are lining up to fight back. Sick of seeing children’s safety sacrificed on the altar of radical sexualism, governors and attorneys general are drawing a line at their borders and telling the White House: Keep out!

Thirteen states were angry enough to up the ante in federal court, filing a massive suit against agencies for trying to throw open the doors of their school showers, locker rooms, and bathrooms to both genders. Turns out, that’s a bridge too far even for even those on the Left side of the political aisle. This week, the African-American leader of the Georgia ACLU resigned over the organization’s blind activism of such a policy. Maya Dillard Smith, who is very unlikely to be accused of being a conservative, graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, worked for the notoriously liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and even graduated from a program designed to elect Democratic women to Congress. But when it comes to Maya’s daughters, ideology doesn’t matter. Political party doesn’t matter. Privacy and security does.

“I have shared my personal experience of having taken my elementary school age daughters into a woman’s restroom when shortly after three transgender young adults, over six feet [tall] with deep voices, entered,” she said. “My children were visibly frightened, concerned about their safety and left asking lots of question for which I, like many parents, was ill-prepared to answer.” The ACLU refused to even consider incidents like Smith’s, insisting that the president’s position was a reasonable one. As a result, Smith told the press, “I found myself principally and philosophically unaligned with the organization.”

What was once a civil rights group is now “a special interest organization that promotes not all, but certain, progressive rights.” Like most moms, Maya thinks it’s time for the president’s team of extremists to pause and think about the “unintended consequences.” The president may not blink at rewriting decades-old laws when his own daughters are safe and sound in private schools, but not every family has that luxury. There must, Smith argues, be a way to protect women and children and accommodate other people too. “How can we ask these kinds of questions without being called a homophobe? How do we prevent predators from preying on kids in bathrooms?”

While she and other parents attack the issue from the ground level, state leaders like Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt are taking the battle to the government itself. In a strongly worded op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, he calls out the president for his “transgender power play” — which was nothing but a selfish, unconstitutional, knee-jerk reaction to the North Carolina offensive. “None of what the Education Department has mandated is in Title IX,” Pruitt wrote, “and no one can seriously argue that this is what Congress had in mind when it wrote the law or when President Nixon signed it. Even in today’s world of rapidly evolving norm, sex and gender identity are understood to be distinct.” Still, he continues, “If any of this makes you or your child uncomfortable, the administration’s response is ‘too bad.’ According to the letter a transgender student’s discomfort must always be accommodated, but if another student feels similar discomfort, those concerns must always be ignored because the administration has pre-emptively deemed all ‘others’ discomfort unjustified.”

Like most people, Pruitt is especially frustrated with what he calls the president’s “byzantine rule-making process.” Not only did the Justice and Education Departments not have the authority to rewrite the law, but they didn’t even bother to follow the process for posting and reviewing a policy like this. Seven and a half years into this tyranny, the administration doesn’t even operate under the guise of transparency. “This shortsightedness and illogic is to be expected when federal bureaucrats simply decree that the law is what they say it is, without following any of the required legal processes for making new law,” he criticized. “By ignoring such procedures, President Obama has essentially told every American: ‘I don’t care what you think, I don’t have to explain what I did or why I did it, and you can’t do anything about it.’”

In the end, Pruitt points out, the states’ offensive is about a lot more than genderless showers or even school policy. It’s about local control and executive overreach. “This suit is not about determining the appropriate policy on transgender issues for every state and school in the nation. We think that discussion should start in the school-board and PTA meetings that happen every day across the country. This suit is about letting those discussions continue.” Watch Alliance Defending Freedom’s powerful new video here, as women tell the stories that should serve as a warning to every school in America.

Originally published here.

Making Christians an Offer They Can’t Refuge

Under this administration, a terrorist would probably have an easier time getting into America than a Christian! According to CNSNews’s numbers, the Obama administration is still letting in hundreds of Syrian refugees — just not the ones who identify as Christians. The president may have finally caved to the pressure to call ISIS’s rampage “genocide,” but so far, it hasn’t translated into meaningful asylum for Christians in America. Apparently, the administration’s terminology has changed, but its agenda has not.

Since the start of May, the number of Syrians admitted into the U.S. “jumped to 1,037 — an increase of 130 percent over the previous month — but the proportion of Christians among them remains miniscule: two…” How’s that for a religious test? While Christians languish in makeshift camps, outside the official refugee camps because of fear of ISIS or other Muslim radicals, the administration continues to give preferential treatment to every faith except one of ISIS’s the main targets, the very faith our nation was founded on. Despite making up roughly 10 percent of the Syrian population, our brothers and sisters in Christ are still being blocked from the U.S. in disproportionate numbers.

This “has got to change,” Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) argued in a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee last week. Unlike others who may be using our lax policy as a means of gaining access to America, Christians pose zero risk to U.S. security — yet they still seem to get the short end of the refugee stick. It’s a discouraging reality for so many families, who have already lost so much. And while members like Congressman Smith continue to work tirelessly for the displaced, there is something you can do. Pray for the persecuted. And pray for our nation, which should always be leading on religious liberty — not following.

Originally published here.