For the last few years, ESPN has been trying to settle a different score. And unfortunately for viewers, it has nothing to do with sports. The network, whose profits are bleeding more than Curt Shilling’s sock, is sinking under the weight of its liberal politics — and fast. Ratings are deflating faster than New England’s footballs, as a huge chunk of viewers tune out the one-time king of sports.

Now, with viewership down 16 percent in the first four months of 2017 (32 percent for ESPN 2!), executives are scrambling to climb out of the hole dug by their activism. Pitching politics instead of baseball has been a costly decision for the company, which has been a financial drag on parent company Disney. Left without viewers (or options), ESPN decided to downsize, laying off at least 100 staffers to try and make up some of the company’s losses. Of course, the irony is that ESPN didn’t scale back the political side of the network. It cut employees whose job was actually sports.

Well, the network had better learn its lesson about picking teams in the culture wars or the half-million subscribers (621,000) fleeing ESPN after the Colin Kaepernick controversy will be just the beginning. Like us, most of them are sick of the network’s bait-and-switch. They click over for baseball and get pitched politics instead. You shouldn’t have to be a broadcasting genius to understand that if viewers wanted MSNBC, they’d turn there! Instead, executives keep force-feeding their lopsided views on fans who don’t want their sports channels picking teams. “They think going left-wing will save them,” Clay Thomas writes. “The reality is the opposite. ESPN going to left-wing was like giving a drowning person a big rock to hold and thinking it would keep them from drowning. Instead, it just made them sink even faster.”

Viewers want to be entertained, not offended. Over at the Federalist, Sean Davis talks about how unwelcome this ideological intrusion has been.

“An obsession with politics didn’t doom ESPN, but it’s going to make it extremely difficult for ESPN to dig itself out… People in this business know you have to pick a side. That works in political news. It doesn’t work if you have a bipartisan mass media audience… ESPN ended up communicating to half its audience that it didn’t respect them. How? By committing itself entirely — not to political news, but to unceasing left-wing political commentary. You want to watch the Lakers game? Okay, but first you’re going to hear about Caitlyn Jenner. Want some NFL highlights? We’ll get to those eventually, but coming up next will be a discussion about how North Carolina is run by racist, homophobic bigots.”

Forget Michael Sam — or even Uncle Sam! The only rivalries fans care about are on the field, not on the Hill. “America is politicized enough already,” Davis goes on, “and if its citizens want political news, several cable outlets do political news far better than ESPN ever could. Instead of doing sports and politics poorly, perhaps the network could return to the thing that it used to do better than everyone else: cover live sports.” When only three percent of Americans think your network leans conservative (and 60 percent say liberal), your brand’s in trouble.

In the meantime, the ACC, NCAA, NFL, and NBA should be watching ESPN’s implosion like hawks. With losses in the millions, it’s pretty clear now that the company is paying for its radical agenda. The NBA and NCAA had a taste of that pain in ticket sales when it pulled out of a state with common sense privacy laws. If they pick sides, you can rest assured — so will fans.

(Originally published here.)

A Century of Chaplains

There’s been a lot of talk about 100 days lately — but what about 100 years? That’s what the chaplaincy of the U.S. military is celebrating this month, CBN reports. When the U.S. entered World War I, the former U.S. Army Chief of Chaplains points out, there weren’t even 150 chaplains in the ranks. By the end of the war with Germany, that number climbed to 2,300.

After a century of caring for our brave men and women, today’s chaplains aren’t ministering in the attack — they are being attacked. The eight years of President Obama’s anti-faith policies wreaked havoc on our military, and its spiritual leaders in particular. In fact, those victims — people like Chaplain Wes Modder, who was framed for punishment by an LGBT activist — are some of the most compelling reasons for the need of an executive order on religious liberty. The “personal ministry, pastoral care, and training resources” of our chaplains, not to mention the troops’ own ability to exercise the freedom they’re defending, all hang in the balance in the Left’s war on the First Amendment.

Fortunately, I feel confident the Trump administration recognizes the threat to our military, business community, students, and everyday Americans. As FRC’s own Ken Blackwell, who served on the Trump transition team, has said repeatedly, it’s not a matter of “if” the administration will protect religious liberty, but “when.” Leonard Leo, a White House advisor confirmed that, saying as recently as this week, “The administration is not stepping back. It’s doing precisely what it should be doing here… [B]ecause of the way people are attacking Trump executive orders, it’s very important that this thing gets done right and be as litigation-proof as possible, knowing full well they’re going to get sued anyway.”

Rest assured that FRC will keep driving home the importance of our First Freedom with events like next Tuesday’s special program, “Free to Believe: Religious Liberty in the Land of Free.” Together with people like Chaplain Modder, we’ll profile real people whose freedom to believe has been affected in real ways. We’ll discuss the need for positive protections for religious freedom, and steps that can be taken to secure religious liberty for all Americans. Don’t miss the webcast! For more information, check the website.

(Originally published here.)

Brussel Sprouts a Summit With FRC’s Weber

While we’re working hard to honor God in law, policy, and culture here in the U.S., it’s easy to forget that Christians in other parts of the world face a lot of the same struggles, usually in more dire circumstances. We were honored with the opportunity to speak on that issue over the past few days, as our own Travis Weber briefed the Transatlantic Summit of the Political Network of Values on FRC’s efforts to accomplish our priorities in the era of President Trump. The Summit is a several day-long gathering of government policy makers and advocates from Europe and Latin America, who — like us — are focused on defending life, marriage and family, and religious liberty.

Travis primarily spoke to the diverse group gathered in Brussels, Belgium — capitol of the European Parliament — about the voting patterns of Christians in last fall’s presidential election, explaining that while many Christians may not have been initially enthusiastic about Donald Trump, as they considered what was at stake on the issues of life and the Supreme Court, they were eventually won over by Mr. Trump’s promises on those values.

As Travis pointed out to the Summit, Christians in the United States (and around the world) have reason to be hopeful three months into President Trump’s term, as he’s reinstated a robust Mexico City Policy eliminating the public funding of abortion overseas, signed legislation allowing states to deny taxpayer funds to Planned Parenthood, eliminated funding for the UNFPA over abortion concerns, and nominated and overseen the confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch. As Travis noted, we’ve seen some positive developments on the life issue, but we’ll continue to work to ensure the administration enacts good policies in defense of religious liberty at home and abroad.

Aside from sharing good news with the Summit attendees, we were encouraged too! The positive attitudes and developments, particularly among younger activists, lifted our spirits. The youngest member of the Columbian parliament, Angela Hernandez, passionately shared how she has activated multitudes of Columbian youth to march against imposition of repressive sexual anarchy on their society. Travis heard similar stories from Peru. He was also pleased to hear Swedish Member of European Parliament Lars Adaktusson speak about his efforts to bring to fruition a resolution declaring ISIS’s actions against Christians, Yezidis, and others in Iraq and Syria to be a genocide. Travis was pleased to see this at the time, and it was a pleasure to hear him speak and be encouraged by his efforts in person.

In the battle for life, marriage and family, and religious liberty, we’re tempted to believe we’re alone. As Brussels showed, nothing is further from the truth. Alejandro Ordonez, former Attorney General of Columbia, spoke alongside Travis on a panel about his battle against destructive gender ideologies being waged in his country. When Croatia’s Zeljka Markic observed her country’s defense minister defending transgender policies, she asked, just as we have here in the United States, exactly what business the defense agencies have in promoting such social policies. Theresa Okafor of Nigeria observed that it is time for those of us in the West to rise up and simply “be heroic” against the forces seeking to marginalize Christians. She noted the missionaries coming to Africa in years past who were ready to give their lives for the gospel.

In many countries, defenders of life, marriage and family, and religious liberty are facing opponents who use the same tactics: calling us bigots, putting us on hate lists, and trying to marginalize us. But the truth will not be silenced. As Christians who are facing this common struggle, it’s imperative that we — advocates, activists, policymakers, and all followers of Jesus Christ — band together across our national borders in this fight against our common spiritual enemy. The Transatlantic Summit was both an encouragement and a call to action, and we look forward to continuing to partner with defenders of life, marriage and family, and religious liberty — wherever they may be found!

(Originally published here.)

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