If you were hunting for eggs Sunday, you didn’t find them on Google. For the 18th straight year, the site blackballed Easter, refusing to give Christians’ holiest day the time of day on its homepage. To users who are used to Google’s rotating calendar of politically correct “Doodles,” the message was clear: If you’re searching for tolerance, you won’t find results here.

As usual, Google didn’t seem to mind the negative attention. The same company that ignited a firestorm for marking Cesar Chavez’s birthday instead of Easter in 2016 shrugged off the backlash, insisting, “We don’t have Doodles for religious holidays, in line with our current Doodle guidelines. Doodles may appear for some non-religious celebrations that have grown out of religious holidays, such as Valentine’s Day.” Besides, a spokesman was quoted as saying, “It’s difficult for us to choose which events to highlight…” In the end, I suppose the one they picked was more appropriate for a company with a policy like theirs: April Fools.

But if a picture says a thousand words, then the lack of one says a lot more, based on Sunday’s social media response. Even actor James Woods chimed in, “They loath Christians. Plain and simple.” He may have a point. After all, it’s not like the holiday itself is offensive. As Forbes points out, 80 percent of Americans celebrate Easter. If it’s controversial, then someone had better tell the rest of the country.

Of course, the irony of this is that Google has no qualms plastering rainbow flags or gay pride across its site — which is a lot more offensive to some than an empty tomb. If Google is honestly concerned about inclusivity, then maybe it’s time someone told it that not everyone shares its view of the redefinition of marriage and human sexuality. Our country is far more divided over the redefinition of marriage that Google celebrates than the religious holidays it snubs. But unfortunately, that’s the hypocrisy of much of corporate America. They say they’re fighting discrimination, but their policies only perpetuate it.

Take Target. The retail giant has stubbornly stuck to its gender-free guns with regard to its restroom policies, even when shareholders hit the panic button and dumped their stock. Now, more than a year into this ridiculous social experiment, the only thing growing about its stores is the number of bathroom and changing room incidents. Just last week, another man walked into the women’s bathroom of a Chicago-area Target, pushed his way into the stall of a little girl, and while her mom watched, pulled down his pants. “It’s pure evil,” another shopper said, “no matter how you look at it.”

A spokesman for the company recycled another meaningless statement about Target’s concern for its customers. “The safety and security of our guests is critically important to us,” she told reports. Just not important enough for the company to change its policy. “Immediately after a guest notified us of this incident, we called law enforcement and provided them with video footage from our store entrance to help with their investigation,” the store said, as if that somehow made up for the vulnerable position it put shoppers in across America. Reports of teenage girls being videotaped in changing rooms or sexual predators undressing in front of little girls have done nothing to change the company’s mind about the dangers of ignoring basic biology. Well, Target may not change its mind, but consumers have certainly changed theirs. #BoycottTarget is up to 1.5 million people — and counting.

Fortunately, not every CEO is deaf to consumers’ concerns. After years of campaigning, the National Center for Sexual Exploitation celebrated a major victory last month when Walmart agreed to move Cosmopolitan‘s racy magazines out of the checkout line in 5,000 U.S. stores. This had been the longtime goal of the National Center of Sexual Exploitation, which had been working behind the scenes for months to stop kids and parents from being exposed to the almost pornographic article titles and feature stories. Walmart officials explained that stores “will continue to offer Cosmopolitan to customers that wish to purchase the magazine, but it will no longer be located in the checkout aisles. While this was primarily a business decision, the concerns raised were heard.”

While moms and other Americans cheered the move, not every woman was pleased. In a sad defense of Cosmo’s messages of degradation, columnist Samantha Allen lashed out at Walmart — and social conservatives in particular — for trying to protect their kids from topics like “lesbian sex tips,” “BDSM,” or “anal sex.” “The Cosmo removal,” she writes, “isn’t just a 'perversion’ of the ‘#MeToo’ [movement], it’s an attack on consensual forms of sexual perversion. It’s an attempt to pretend like none of us have desires outside the mainstream when we so clearly do. Cosmo isn’t perverting us; rather, its success is proof that we’re all more perverted than our puritanical culture can acknowledge.”

Joy Pullmann, a writer at The Federalist and mom of two kids under 10, is tired (and understandably depressed) by the arguments Allen, Liz Wolfe, and Elizabeth Nolan Brown are making. It’s Puritanism, they cry! People have sexual needs! Let’s stop seeing sexuality as taboo! Pullmann goes through a list of recent Cosmo features that most Americans wouldn’t want to read aloud, let alone answer questions about to their young children.

Unless you are a real weirdo, I imagine even libertarians think there is some point in childhood short of which it’s best not to introduce ideas like [these]… That’s because sex is not trivial. It’s not just “playtime.” It’s not a child activity, and not only because children don’t have adult bodies, capabilities, or drives. Post-sexual-revolution decades of treating it as such, which both feminists and libertarians tend to do, has created such massive hurt among women that their real and imagined grievances have driven news cycles for six months now. …

What’s regressive, in fact, is treating sex like it’s not special. The #MeToo conversation is a public acknowledgement that the sexual-free-for-all third-wave feminists advocated is a major failure… Women are making it very clear that they’re no longer buying what Cosmo is selling, either culturally or as a tangible artifact. Nolan Brown points out the magazine “saw single-copy sales fall 67 percent from the end of 2014 to the end of 2016.” Good riddance.

Originally published here.

A Done Deal: Ga. Candidates Vie to Undo Legacy

Democrats may be running from religious liberty, but in Georgia, conservatives are running on it. And considering Gov. Nathan Deal’s (R-GA) legacy on the issue, not a moment too soon.

Peach State voters put up with seven years of Gov. Deal, and, as most Republicans would tell you, that was seven years too long. The quasi-conservative talked a big game on religious freedom, only to turn his back on the state when it mattered most. Now, two years after he and others killed Georgians’ hopes of passing legislation that would stop the government from punishing their faith, voters may get another crack at the bill under his successor.

In the hunt to land Amazon’s next headquarters, Deal tried to hush the state’s gubernatorial candidates, warning them that the company might not appreciate their views on religious liberty. “Religious liberty remains so popular with the GOP’s grassroots base,” the Atlanta-Journal Constitution pointed out, “that even Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who has positioned himself as the establishment-friendly Republican in the governor’s race, joined his rivals with a vow to sign [a Religious Freedom Restoration Act] if elected.”

As the race heats up, the Republican candidates all seem eager to outperform the competition. During Saturday’s debate, when the seven GOP candidates shared the stage, State Sen. Michael Williams went on the offensive on the need for the same basic protections for men and women of faith that Deal vetoed. “We need a candidate that’s not going to run from that issue,” he said. Former State Sen. Hunter Hill piled on. “Liberals are attacking our country, and religious liberty is a foundational constitutional principle that has created prosperity in our country. We need to stand in the gap on that important issue and deliver.”

Cagle, who some have accused of being a little more muted on the topic, banged on the podium when his opponents called him less committed to the idea. “No one has to question or wonder where I’m going to be to ensure that our protections are there as it relates to our free exercise of religion,” he thundered. “Look at my record. It speaks for itself.”

While the field narrows down, voters can take some solace in the fact that any Republican they elect is likely to be better on religious liberty than the one they have!

Originally published here.

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