Soccer Star Keeps Ultimate Goal in Mind
When other sports leagues are tripping over themselves to promote LGBT pride, it’s inspiring when a few courageous athletes refuse to play along. Professional soccer player Jaelene Hinkle is one of them. When the U.S. Women’s Team announced it would be wearing jerseys with a rainbow theme last year, Hinkle knew what she had to do — even if it meant giving up her dream.
When other sports leagues are tripping over themselves to promote LGBT pride, it’s inspiring when a few courageous athletes refuse to play along. Professional soccer player Jaelene Hinkle is one of them. When the U.S. Women’s Team announced it would be wearing jerseys with a rainbow theme last year, Hinkle knew what she had to do — even if it meant giving up her dream.
“I just felt so convicted in my spirit that it wasn’t my job to wear this jersey,” she said in an interview for the “700 Club” this week. “I gave myself three days to just seek and pray and determine what [God] was asking me to do in this situation.” There was probably a point in her life when this wouldn’t have been such a struggle. Jaelene gave her life to Christ when she was 12, but struggled to live it out through her teenage years. A health crisis changed that, and she and her family found themselves relying on faith like never before.
During her junior year at Texas Tech, a dangerous blood clot forced Hinkle to come to grips with the fact that she might never play again. “They told me my vein was 80 percent closed,” she remembers. The doctor said, “You’re not getting any blood flow, and if we have to put a stent in, you can’t play any sports. It would be life threatening.” “The first thing my mom said to me was, ‘We’re just going to pray all night long.’” The morning after her second surgery, the impossible happened. Doctors sat her down and said her vein was clear. “He told me, ‘I’m not one to believe in God, but you’ve gotten a miracle.’”
From that point on, Jaelene was sold out to her faith. So when team officials came to her and asked her to promote a message that contradicted the Bible’s truth, Hinkle thought about the second chance she’d been given to play. “I felt so convicted in my spirit that it wasn’t my job to wear this jersey,” she said wistfully. She walked away from the team and everything she’d worked so hard to achieve. “The peace trumped the disappointment,” she explained, looking back. “I knew in my spirit that I was doing the right thing. I knew that I was being obedient.”
When team officials asked why she was withdrawing, she cited “personal reasons.” In the year since, Jaelene has never been asked to rejoin her national team — but she insists that’s okay. If she doesn’t get to play for U.S. Women’s soccer, “that just is part of His plan.” After all, she says, “maybe this is why [I was] meant to play soccer. Just to show other believers to be obedient.”
But unfortunately, standing up for your beliefs has its price. Even now, Jaelene is booed and harassed when her new North Carolina team — appropriately named the Courage — travels to other stadiums to play. Last week, a crowd full of rainbow-flag-waving fans in Portland taunted Hinkle with signs that read “personal reasons” in big colored letters. That’s because, The Weekly Standard’s Kevin Williamson points out, extremists will only have conformity, “abject and absolute.”
“We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!” became, “We’re here, we’re queer, and you will do as we say!” …You will wear the jersey celebrating gay pride, or you will not play. Hinkle chose not to play. Fair enough. To her credit, she has not engaged in Colin Kaepernick-level grandstanding or done the usual thing and filed a lawsuit. She only declined to participate, to give her affirmation.
Yet that’s an unforgivable crime for our so-called liberals. That’s what’s really behind the demand for public funding of abortion, contraception, and the like… It is not enough that gay people should be allowed to organize their own lives as they wish and to follow their interests and their pleasures where they will. You can decline to stand for “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but when they raise the rainbow banner, you’d better stand up straight and salute.
While the decks seemed stacked against Hinkle, there are plenty of people who see her stand for what it is — heroic. Teammates, coaches, and friends couldn’t be prouder. “I believe with every fiber in my body that what was written 2,000 years ago in the Bible is undoubtedly true,” Hinkle told fans. “It’s not a fictional book. It’s not a pick and choose what you want to believe. You either believe it, or you don’t. This world may change, but Christ and His Word NEVER will.”
Originally published here.
New Delaware School Rule on Gender: Reg-rettable
If there’s one thing the extreme Left is afraid of, it’s engaged parents. On everything from graphic sex ed to genderless bathrooms, moms and dads are becoming a force to reckon with in cities across the country. When school districts try to slip more indoctrination into the class day, parents have been up to the challenge.
In Delaware, locals could have given lessons on holding politicians accountable when the Department of Education tried to pass a regulation that would’ve let students choose their race and gender — without ever telling parents! The idea was so outrageous that complaints poured into state offices. “Literally,” Delaware Family Policy Council President Nicole Theis told Todd Starnes last year, “if a parent affirms their child’s biological sex, and now race, they are [considered] discriminatory through policies like Regulation 225. These policies are setting parents up as … unsupportive, even abusive, if they affirm their child’s biological realities…”
By state law, Delawareans had 30 days to comment on the proposal — and more than 11,000 did! Together with the more than 8,000 petitions collected by Theis, the governor got the message. To the cheers of parents, the governor backed off in December and asked the team to reconvene in January with new recommendations. This week, almost six months later, Delaware released the fruits of those meetings, a revised Regulation 225. Unfortunately, though, it’s only mildly better.
Delaware officials have made a better effort to include parents in the gender and race changes of their kids, but it doesn’t do nearly enough to involve moms and dads. Even in this version, employees of the school or state can still have secret conversations about a student’s gender without ever calling home. The rewrite also doesn’t do a thing to address the privacy concerns of so many parents. Under this latest draft, Regulation 225 doesn’t provide any relief for kids who feel pressured to undress, shower, or share an overnight room with students of the opposite sex.
Parents in the area have done an incredible job making their voices heard — and it looks like they’ll have to keep speaking up until Delaware gets it right. The public will have another 30 days to comment on the changes, so it will be up to the state to keep the pressure on about privacy and parental rights. Based on what they’ve accomplished already, there’s plenty of reason to hope! Although the fight isn’t over (yet!), be encouraged. Your involvement does make a difference!
Originally published here.
Day of Heroes
Thirty-four years ago yesterday, President Ronald Reagan stood above the rocky crags of Normandy, France, and commemorated the largest and most significant military operation in the 20th century. To the brave men who survived D-Day, he said:
You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? … What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love… You all knew that some things are worth dying for.
So many tales of courage from that day have been handed down through the generations like fine heirlooms, knit together in the legacy of self-sacrifice. There are stories like Jack Lucas’s, the youngest Marine to be awarded the Medal of Honor. After forging his mother’s signature so he could enlist at age 14, Jack begged his superiors to let him fight. He even “stowed away aboard a Navy ship headed for combat in the Pacific Ocean.” When he explained his situation to the officers on board, they granted his wish to fight the Japanese. Today, even 74 years removed from those heroic moments, the deep tradition that burned bright in the hearts of our troops still blazes.
After the Obama administration, when even the presence of a Bible verse at your workstation could get you court-martialed, Americans could scarcely remember having a president who would call the nation to prayer like Franklin Roosevelt did in the wake of the thousands of men storming those bloody beaches. “Almighty God, our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.”
The odds the Allies faced then were as steep as the Normandy cliffs so many died climbing. Eric Metaxas, like so many others, wonders if that victory would have been possible without the faith of millions that day.
Stores closed, and prayer services were swiftly organized in small towns and big cities. Photographs taken on June 6 show just how widespread these prayers were. One picture shows a sign in the window of a novelty button shop reading, “Sorry, no covered buttons today. We are praying for the success of the invasion.” A sign in front of a church reads, “Come in and pray for Allied victory: Hourly intercessions on the hour.” Another photo shows Americans in a synagogue, bowing their heads in prayer. At a noon Mass, we see men and women on their knees, fervently praying.
New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia took to the airwaves, urging citizens to “send forth [their] prayers to Almighty God … to bring total victory … in [this] great and valiant struggle…”
… And prevail they did.
Many people, FDR said, urged him to call the nation into a single day of prayer. “But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer.” May Americans, seven decades later, heed his same challenge today. “As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.”
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
