The only ones happier than Patriots fans after [Sunday] night’s Super Bowl may be Houston’s leaders. That’s because Sunday’s game wasn’t just historic for the come-from-behind OT stunner but also for the city’s record revenue. Bringing one of the world’s greatest sporting spectacles to the city was a huge coup for businessmen like Earl Hesterberg. Like a lot of the area’s executives, the CEO of Group 1 Automotive fought long and hard to bring the NFL championship to Texas’s gulf coast. “There are 135,000 or more visitors here,” an excited Hesterberg told reporters in the lead-up to [Sunday], “so a lot of people [are] coming that won’t have a ticket to the game, and you can already see the city is really buzzing… It’s good economically anyway you cut it.” In other words, Houston is doing just fine after repealing the city’s controversial bathroom bill, thank you very much!

That’s music to the ears of conservatives, who for two years have had to endure a parade of doomsayers — all insisting that protecting the privacy and safety of locals would have a devastating effect on the area economy. Tourism will slump, they argued. Revenue will sag. Even Houston’s reputation will suffer, they insisted. Now, not only is the city forever associated with the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history, but Sunday’s game helped Space City to astronomical earnings. And what do we hear from the Left’s prophets of doom? Crickets.

Unlike the NCAA and NBA, one of the world’s wealthiest sports leagues did what successful business people do: It ignored the politics and followed the money. Does anyone honestly believe that if the decision to restore order to Houston’s public restrooms, locker rooms and showers would have depressed returns or turnout that the NFL would have agreed to keep it there? Of course not. It’s a profit-driven entity. You can bet it studied the revenue models even after picking Houston as the host city — and in doing so blew a huge hole in the Left’s bogus claims.

The rest of the state would be wise to consider that when they weigh the Texas Privacy Act, which has the backing of Lt. Governor Dan Patrick (R). Like the overwhelming majority of Houstonians, who soundly rejected Mayor Annise Parker’s transgender agenda, Patrick thinks it’s time to put safety above political correctness. As usual, the country’s camp of LGBT activists are trying to persuade people otherwise, even enlisting economists to make their point. There’s just one problem — the research is as flawed as their thinking.

But don’t take our word for it. Take PolitiFact’s. After the Texas Association of Business took a swipe at Patrick’s S.B. 6, plenty of people started to think twice about the bill. And why wouldn’t they? TAB claimed that passing the law would not only cost the state billions of dollars but 185,000 jobs as well. The media pounced on the study as proof of how ill-advised the law would be. But not everyone’s buying it. Thanks to PolitiFact’s investigators, it seems the results were as manipulative as the Left’s talking points. Things started smelling fishy when PolitiFact’s team wasn’t allowed to interview the study’s authors. Then, of course, there was the problem of citations — or more accurately, the lack of them.

“We were barred from talking to the people who made the projections,” W. Gardner Selby wrote for PolitiFact. “We noticed too that as of 2017, none of the study’s three analyzed states still had a mandate like the ones gauged by the study.” More than once, Selby points out, “The study footnotes [a figure] to a web link that doesn’t work.” Still, TAB claimed, “Given that the Texas travel industry has a $31 billion annual impact, a 15 percent reduction would result in an overall loss of $8.5 billion,” the study says, “or 0.5% of the state GDP.” When the projection wasn’t sourced, PolitiFact dug deeper and found a huge discrepancy. Turns out, “The ‘15 percent’ reduction was a typo that should have said ‘.5 percent,’ as the study states otherwise.” The result?

“We find this study’s headlined figures, reached about 13 months ago, to be based on predicted or actual effects of [privacy measures] in Arizona, Louisiana, and Indiana that didn’t make it into law or were rescinded or softened. Moreover, not all the study’s numbers, calculations, and assumptions proved solid, and a key figure, reflecting on Indiana’s losing $1.5 billion in conventions, doesn’t appear to have a documented basis. We rate this claim MOSTLY FALSE.”

Originally published here.

Three’s Company on Free Speech

President Trump didn’t waste any time proving his critics wrong. People who doubted whether the Republican would make good on his promises learned pretty quickly that there’s nothing empty about this president’s word. From the unborn to immigration, the new White House has been working its way through a long list of priorities — which, we know from last week’s National Prayer Breakfast, includes the Johnson Amendment. From almost the beginning of his candidacy, Trump has highlighted this 1954 law as one of the worst abusers of free speech in America.

And plenty of conservatives agree. After eight years of the Obama IRS breathing down the necks of nonprofits and churches, threatening to take away their tax exempt status, the Johnson Amendment has become just another way for liberals to crack down on pastors’ ability to speak openly about political issues and candidates. That changes now, say conservatives like Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) and Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA), who together introduced the Free Speech Fairness Act to stop the government from muting pastors who apply God’s laws to today’s debates. They, like President Trump, think it’s time to put an end to this culture of intimidation — especially since that wasn’t the purpose of the measure to begin with! In a joint op-ed for The Washington Post, the trio talks about their new bill and what it would mean for the pulpits of America.

“Specifically, our legislation would ensure that all 501(c)(3) organizations, including nonprofits, charities, and houses of worship are legally able to make comments about a political issue within the scope of their normal activities. An environmental nonprofit that sends out an e-newsletter educating its readers about the climate positions of candidates wouldn’t have to fear an audit. A church employee who distributes election voter guides (for which her church did not incur any cost for distribution) could not be punished by the IRS.”

As I said on CNN over the weekend, this has nothing to do with money being expended on political campaigns. And it certainly doesn’t mean that churches will become the new arm of the Republican Party — or either party. As Lankford, Scalise and Hice pointed out, “Every American should be able to speak freely about their conscience and convictions — no matter what their job is.”

“Leaders and employees of other entities that receive federal funding — such as hospitals and universities — are welcome to advocate for political causes and contribute to them. The IRS does not threaten to punish them when they engage in political speech. Critics who say this blurs the line between church and state misunderstand the principle. Thomas Jefferson’s ‘separation’ coinage doesn’t mean that there is a wall of separation between the two; it just means that the state should not have control over the church, nor shall the church maintain control over the state.”

The bottom line is this: Government bureaucrats should not serve as bouncers at the door of free speech and religious freedom. If you agree, contact your leaders and encourage them to support the Free Speech Fairness Act!

Originally published here.

FBI Answers FBWhy?

For years, the anti-Christian Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) bragged about its work with the FBI. Their partnership on issues like “hate crimes” helped fuel the Obama administration’s fierce targeting of mainstream pro-family groups. That abruptly ended in 2014, when the agency distanced itself from the controversial organization. When the FBI dumped SPLC from its hate crimes resource webpage, the media was as stunned as the rest of the Left. Now, thanks to new documents, Americans are finally get the whole story behind the move to cut ties — and the reasons might surprise you.

After more than two and a half years, the FBI finally got around to answering a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for communications surrounding the split. Turns out, conservatives weren’t the only ones with concerns about the radical group. Despite being linked in federal court to domestic terrorism, SPLC, the self-anointed authority on “hate,” had remained a go-to ally of the Obama administration. That all changed, emails reveal, when FRC took our concerns to Congress about the ties between SPLC and the gunman who walked into our lobby in 2012 and shot Leo Johnson. According to The Daily Caller:

“The timing of the decision is somewhat notable. The FBI, based on dates in the email, made the decision almost immediately after meeting with congressional staffers regarding concerns expressed by the head of the Family Research Council, a pro-family, pro-heterosexual marriage organization. The FRC’s head complained in February 2014 that its presence on SPLC’s ‘hate watch’ list inspired a terrorist attack on the organization [a fact upheld in federal court]. Floyd Corkins, the shooter, explicitly targeted FRC in August 2012 and wanted to kill as many employees as possible precisely because FRC had been listed as an ‘anti-gay’ group on the SPLC’s website since 2010. The FBI met with these congressional staffers March 12, 2014, and a document obtained by TheDCNF showed that the FBI promised to reevaluate the SPLC’s presence on the ‘resource’ tab on the agency’s site.”

The concerns we expressed to our friends in Congress was not just about FRC and our safety, it was about the dozens of pro-family groups and Christian organizations that the SPLC has targeted because of their biblical view of human sexuality. Just how outside the mainstream are the claims of SPLC? This was the Obama FBI that distanced itself from SPLC. When an administration as truth-challenged as Obama’s distances itself from an organization like SPLC over a “number of concerns,” you know it’s serious. Now, with an honest, law-abiding administration coming into place, hopefully those endangered by SPLC’s reckless tactics will not have to fear this group having influence in the Department of Justice for a long, long time.

Originally published here.

---

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