President Obama has made plenty of history (not much of it good). And if he follows through with his threat on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), he’ll make more. For 53 straight years, the military’s spending bill is one of the few things that Congress has succeeded in passing on time. Unfortunately, this White House is complicating that this year, thanks to its stubborn opposition to the First Amendment. In a staggering move, administration officials announced last week that they’re willing to send the bill that funds our military down in flames because it dares to protect religious liberty.

And as Heritage Foundation expert Justin Johnson points out, this is hardly an insignificant piece of legislation. “The bill covers a range of issues, from troop pay to the size of the Army to the legal authority for assisting other countries who are fighting the Islamic State… While this may just be political posturing, it fits a clear pattern of President Barack Obama’s willingness to use national security, and the defense bills in particular, as hostages to help him advance an unrelated domestic agenda.”

So what could possibly be so controversial that the president would risk the supply line to the military? Try religious liberty. Back in 2014, the White House issued an executive order elbowing religious contractors out of government work unless they surrendered their views. Under his rule, any company that wanted to contract with the federal government had to adopt special LGBT rights first — including policies on genderless bathrooms and showers. Essentially, organizations had a choice: They could swallow their beliefs to get a government job or make themselves ineligible by operating according to their faith.

Rep. Steve Russell (R-Okla.), a retired Army Colonel, refused to stand for that. After all, faith-based groups have just as much right to partner with the federal government as anyone. They shouldn’t be disqualified just because they don’t share the president’s extreme sexual ideology. So, Rep. Russell addressed the problem the way the president refused to: legislatively. He drafted — and passed — an amendment that levels the playing field for religious contractors. And liberals were none too happy about it. “To curtail the blatant discrimination against these groups, I offered a simple amendment to protect them under existing law in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1990 Americans with Disability Act. You’d have thought I had killed someone’s mother,” he said on the House floor.

“Instead of upholding the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, we have now seen this body continue its assault on faith in America. It is not enough to level accusations of injustice. They will not be satisfied until their assaults of intolerance on people of faith in this country has produced an elimination of God in public life in America. We are accused of hatred, called out as shameful, and enjoined to use the whole Constitution to support an opposing view that embodies behavior, mores and outcomes that not only violate our conscience, but have been prohibited under the laws of nature and nature’s God. Like our forebears, I cannot be silent.”

Unfortunately, it shows the president’s hostility — not just toward religious liberty, but to the military as a whole. And Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), for one, is tired of it. “It is deeply disturbing that President Obama would threaten a veto over what had, until now, been settled law on religious liberty,” he told the Washington Examiner. “These protections have been the law of the land for decades and ensure that religiously affiliated organizations are not forced to surrender their religious identity when they enter into agreements with the federal government.” Congress is just a conference report away from sending our troops the help they need. Contact your leaders and tell them to support the religious liberty our brave men and women are giving their lives to defend!

Originally published here.

Home Is Where the Classroom Is…

Liberals may be scratching their heads over the latest homeschooling numbers — but after two terms of President Obama, we can understand the surge! The number of children educated at home have doubled since 1999 according to a new government report. (And given the distrust of answering government questionnaires I would venture to say the percentages are probably even higher.) “The share of parents who said their most important reason [for homeschooling] was concern about the environment at other schools, such as safety, drugs, and peer pressure, rose from 21 percent to 25 percent,” The Washington Post explains.

Four years into this administration, it’s no wonder that more families are pulling their kids out of the sex-saturated moral void of the public schools. Maybe if the Obama Department of Education wasn’t so hostile toward traditional values in its aggressive push of its agenda, it wouldn’t be driving so many children out of the public classroom. Instead, families are running for the exits after the president’s team put its agenda of sexual anarchy ahead of kids’ safety and learning experience. As Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick (R) predicted back in the spring when the president ordered the gender free-for-all in schools and universities, “This will be the end of public education, if this prevails. People will pull their kids out, homeschooling will explode, and private schools will increase.”

So far, that seems to be the trend, as Americans erupt in frustration over the president’s school mandate. There are at least 13 lawsuits over the edict spanning Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Illinois, Ohio, and Nebraska. And that doesn’t include the multi-state suit by state leaders! Fortunately, the Supreme Court seems to grasp the gravity of the situation, agreeing last week to take up the case of Virginia’s Gloucester County School Board. “Girls should never be forced to undress in the presence of young men,” said one of the mothers in Palatine, Illinois, where parents are also taking the Obama administration to court. “There are sensitive solutions for students that don’t violate the privacy of many other students at the school. Schools will always have a duty to protect the privacy and preserve the dignity of all children, because every child matters. We hope the [Supreme] Court remembers this.” (For tips on how you can keep your kids safe, download FRC’s Parent’s Guide to the Transgender Movement in Education.)

Like so many issues, the presidential election is going to have a major impact — not just on this genderless bathroom debate, but on the Supreme Court that decides it. Do you know what kind of justices your candidate would nominate? Find out in FRC Action’s presidential voter guide. Also, check out our new ad on the importance of SCOTUS in this blockbuster video.

Originally published here.

This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.