The Patriot Post® · Restaurant Denies Entrée to Conservatives
At a restaurant in rural Virginia, liberals are ordering something to go: conservatives! For members of the Trump leadership team, there’s no such thing as eating out in peace — or, in the case of Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, eating at all. After a week of escalating tensions over immigration, the face of the White House’s PR became the latest victim of the Left’s “tolerance.”
Her table had barely touched their cheese boards when the owner approached Sanders and asked to speak with her privately. They walked out to the patio where Sarah was informed that she wasn’t welcome at the Red Hen restaurant. “I’d like to ask you to leave,” Stephanie Wilkerson told Sanders. Everyone else at the table would be welcome to stay, she was told. Without hesitating, Sarah said simply, “That’s fine. I’ll go.” Unfortunately for Sanders, who’s endured more than her share of harassment on the job, this is the treatment she and other members of the administration come to expect. In the end, she tweeted, Wilkerson’s actions “say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so.”
A few days earlier, Americans watched in amazement as protestors screamed at Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Neilsen at a restaurant in DC. (This was after her home had already been surrounded by a mob of angry Trump opponents shouting “No justice, no sleep!”) White House advisor Stephen Miller was another target, accosted by a group of unhinged liberals yelling “Facist!” while he tried to eat. Florida’s Attorney General Pam Bondi, who isn’t even an administration official, had to rush away from a movie screening when a confrontation outside got too heated. The threat of real violence is something every conservative is starting to take seriously.
House Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) watched in astonishment as Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters (CA) tried to stoke the fire. “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” she said to the horror of even her own party. Worried that things could escalate, Scalise spokesman Lauren Fine reminded America what happens when debates turn vicious. “Whip Scalise knows firsthand the dangerous consequences that can result from making political differences personal and vitriolic,” she said. “Harassment is never an acceptable method of disagreement.”
Even the Washington Post’s editorial board urged caution in a piece called, “Let the Trump Team Eat in Peace.”
Those who are insisting that we are in a special moment justifying incivility should think for a moment how many Americans might find their own special moment. How hard is it to imagine, for example, people who strongly believe that abortion is murder deciding that judges or other officials who protect abortion rights should not be able to live peaceably with their families? Down that road lies a world in which only the most zealous sign up for public service. That benefits no one.“
Some on the Left try to justify driving conservatives from public spaces by saying it’s the same as Christian bakers and florists, but the only ones denying service to people are liberals! Unlike the Red Hen’s owner, Christians Jack Phillips, Melissa Klein, and Barronelle Stutzman all offered to sell their customers anything in the store. They only objected to creating custom cakes for a wedding ceremony that they hold sacred. Yet somehow, it’s okay for the side that tosses Trump supporters from bars and White House employees out of restaurants to force Christians — under penalty of law — to do what they will not? If liberals want to hurt themselves by turning away customers, that’s their choice. But let’s not conflate the two.
Meanwhile, the political costs of these kinds of intimidation tactics are steep. If all of this public shame and humiliation is meant to get people to disconnect and disassociate from the president’s policies, it’s not working. Trump’s supporters, the New York Times’s Jeremy Peters warns, are only digging in deeper. There is, he points out, a very real "backlash to the backlash” of Trump. And it’s not just rallying conservatives but people on the fence too.
“I started to go out and talk to people about it,” he tells a Slate reporter. “This almost Silent Majority … is happening right now where you have a lot of Republicans who feel like the Left and the media are badly overacting to the Trump administration and holding him to an unfair standard that is now so routine and so omnipresent that they are outraged by the outrage.” Even the voters who aren’t even necessarily fans of the president are “tired of the constant attacks leveled against him by both Democrats and the media, which have led them to feel defensive of themselves and Trump.”
If the president’s opponents think they can mob, heckle, and harass their way to power, they’re about to be disappointed. The president’s approval rating is the highest it’s ever been in the face of these attacks — and climbing. Maybe more Americans are starting to realize what the country would look like if the bullies take over (and wondering if they’ll ever get to eat out if they do!).
Originally published here.
Jets Lag During Push for Pastor’s Release
What does a new fleet of F-35 fighter jets have to do with Christian persecution? A lot, according to a group of bipartisan senators.
When the latest Joint Strike Fighters rolled off the assembly line at Lockheed Martin, at least 100 of them were earmarked for Turkey, part of what would normally be a routine sale to a NATO-allied country. But the shipment is on hold, at least for now, thanks to Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Thom Tillis (R-NH). The unlikely duo is trying to force Turkey’s hand in the case of American Pastor Andrew Brunson, who’s been held under bogus charges since last October.
If the government refuses to release him, a vast majority of the Senate (66 members, to be exact) will take “measures” to ensure that “the government of Turkey respects the right of law-abiding American citizens to travel to, reside in, and work in Turkey without fear of persecution.” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was just reelected, “has continued down a path of reckless governance and disregard for the rule of law,” Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) insisted. “Individual freedoms have been increasingly diminished as Erdogan consolidates power for himself, and Turkey’s strategic decisions regrettably fall more and more out of line with, and at times in contrast to, U.S. interests.”
Their biggest weapon for blocking the sale is the National Defense Authorization Act, which the Senate approved last week. In an amendment added by Shaheen and Tillis, the Senate version bars the Pentagon from moving the jets until Pastor Brunson is set free. The House version of the bill also puts a hold on the fighters, but under different terms. In the upper chamber’s draft, the Trump administration would have to certify that Turkey “is not threatening NATO,” a process that could take months. The difference will be worked out in a House and Senate conference committee.
For Shaheen, the decision was a difficult one. “It is with regret that our relationship with Turkey has reached a point where we must consider severing defense and business ties in order to free American hostages… Erdogan and his government must abide by the rule of law within his own country … and release Pastor Andrew Brunson… Until that occurs, I’ll continue to join with Senators Lankford and Tillis to call for punitive action.”
At a time when it’s difficult to find common ground in the Senate, we’re encouraged to see both parties making religious liberty a priority. Let’s hope they can continue working together to bring an end to the suffering — not just of persecuted Americans but of all men and women of faith around the world.
Originally published here.
Arlene’s Flowers the New Centerpiece of Court Fight
There are only a handful of days left on the U.S. Supreme Court’s calendar, and when it comes to religious freedom, the justices are making every one of them count. After delivering a huge win for Masterpiece Cakes owner Jack Phillips earlier this month, America’s highest court is hinting that it’s not done with Christian wedding vendors yet.
Like Aaron and Melissa Klein, and every other baker, florist, and photographer tied up in litigation over a same-sex wedding client, Barronelle Stutzman was thrilled for Jack when his verdict came down. But, with the narrow scope of the ruling, they also longed for the day when they, too, would be free to exercise their faith. Yesterday, the Supreme Court inched at least one of those cases — Arlene’s Flowers — closer to that goal.
In a hopeful sign, the justices threw out a lower court’s ruling and sent Barronelle’s case back to the Washington Supreme Court to consider in light of the Phillips’s case. Thanks to this move, Stutzman and her attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) will have a second crack at vindicating the longtime florist, whose home, assets, and livelihood are all on the line.
ADF’s Kristen Waggoner, who represented Jack before the Supreme Court, thinks the two cases have a lot in common — especially when it comes to animus. “No one should be bullied or banished from the marketplace for living out her or his beliefs about God and marriage. But it takes a special kind of focused hostility to target this woman, to relentlessly pursue her business and personal assets, all for the purpose of making an example of her. Yet that’s exactly what the State of Washington is doing.”
… Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson got involved. He was so eager to file a lawsuit against Barronelle that he did so without receiving a legal complaint from Rob or Curt, and he bypassed the state agency charged with enforcing the state’s nondiscrimination law. He then handpicked Barronelle to make an example of her, even suing her in her personal capacity to frighten her and anyone who dared to live out those same beliefs about marriage…
Like Jack Phillips, Barronelle serves all people. Like Jack, Barronelle can’t celebrate all events or express all messages. Like Jack, Barronelle has been the target of government hostility. And like Jack — and all Americans — Barronelle deserves the protection of the First Amendment.
Our hope and prayer is that the lower court that ruled against Barronelle’s religious freedom will acknowledge its error and restore her freedom to live out her deeply held convictions in her own business. As we’ve said so many times before, constitutional freedoms don’t stop at the door of your church — they extend to every area of life. It’s time the Washington State Supreme Court acknowledges that fact.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.