Courage on Campus: Now U.C. It
Standing up for Christian values is tough at any college, but on one of the most radically liberal campuses on the planet? That takes nerve.
Standing up for Christian values is tough at any college, but on one of the most radically liberal campuses on the planet? That takes nerve.
The University of California at Berkeley isn’t exactly a destination for students who care about the free exchange of ideas. That’s what makes the story of Isabella Chow even more astounding. After a clash in the student senate over gender policy, the student senator is a profile of true courage at a school that could use more of it.
When Chow won her seat in leadership, she was very clear that she would “represent the Christian community.” But now that she’s actually tried, the campus is demanding her resignation. The flare-up started on Halloween, when the student government met to consider a resolution condemning the Trump administration for its mainstream (and biologically-based!) views on gender. Chow, who was elected as part of the U.C. party of Student Action, abstained from the vote. And for it, she could lose her seat.
“I didn’t expect the backlash and misunderstanding to be so swift,” Chow told Campus Reform. “At the end of the day, it’s a belief in objective truth.” In the month since the vote, liberal students have protested across campus, posting hand-painted signs across the buildings that say, “Senator Chow Resign Now!” It’s been a difficult few weeks, to be sure, but Chow hasn’t wavered. “There’s a Christian community on campus that has been praying for me and encouraging me throughout all of this. And if I don’t represent their views, who else will?”
Before the vote, Isabella took a few minutes to explain her position. It was a powerful defense of faith, truth, and the free speech. “My God is one who assigns an immeasurable value to and desires to love each and every human being,” she started. “In God’s eyes and therefore my own, every one of you here today — and in the LGBTQ+ community as a whole — is significant, valid, wanted, and loved, even if and when our views differ.”
“I cannot,” she went on, “vote for this bill without compromising my values and my responsibility to the community that elected me to represent them. As a Christian, I personally do believe that certain acts and lifestyles conflict with what is good, right and true. I believe that God created male and female at the beginning of time, and designed sex for marriage between one man and one woman. For me, to love another person does not mean that I silently concur when, at the bottom of my heart, I do not believe that your choices are right or the best for you as an individual.”
After the vote, her party ousted her. The student author of the resolution openly attacked her, calling Chow’s stand “a harrowing reminder of the bigotry that persists in contemporary society.” And then, as if that weren’t enough, the student newspaper refused to print the op-ed she wrote in defense of her position, arguing that it didn’t “meet the newspaper’s editorial standards.”
Through it all, Chow hopes her stand will encourage others to stand up for truth. “As tumultuous as the past couple weeks have been for me, my deepest prayer is that the church in Berkeley and beyond would increase dialogue regarding the intersection of faith and the LGBTQ+ community,” she told the Daily Wire. A little backbone goes a long way! If more adults showed the kind of courage Isabella has, maybe we wouldn’t be having this ridiculous debate over gender in the first place.
Originally published here.
The Leader of the Free (Abortion) World
Congress’s freshmen aren’t the only ones getting oriented to their new jobs. Monday, Planned Parenthood’s new president officially took over the country’s biggest abortion business. And her biggest goal seems is getting you to bankroll it.
Dr. Leana Wen may be new, but her vision for Planned Parenthood isn’t: Free abortion for everyone! Below a picture of her first staff meeting, Wen posted on Twitter that her priority is to “continue to provide expert health care and education to ALL people. That means everyone — people of color, young people, people with low incomes, the LGBTQ community, the undocumented and immigrants.” She went on to suggest that abortion isn’t just health care, it’s a human right — one she intends to use your tax dollars defending.
“There is no question we are in a state of emergency for women’s health,” she told the Guardian. We are, she insisted, in “the biggest healthcare crisis of our time. There is huge unmet need across our country, and it is our moral imperative to provide care for all those who need us. I plan to expand our services, and expand our reach.” Which she and Planned Parenthood have every right to do, as long as it is legal and ethical. But that is not what Wen is really saying. What she means by that, she explained somewhat subtly, is that abortion “must be guaranteed to all regardless of our ability to pay.”
In other words, she — like the president’s most liberal opponents — wants to tear down the Hyde Amendment and force taxpayers to finance the killing of innocent unborn children. That won’t exactly be a popular crusade in a country that just rewrote two state constitutions last Tuesday. In West Virginia and Alabama, voters insisted there wasn’t a right to abortion — let alone a taxpayer-funded one. And that’s consistent with most polling. Six in 10 Americans — including 43 percent of Democrats — oppose the idea of using tax dollars for abortion.
Just because you act irresponsibly doesn’t mean someone else should pay for it. The architects of Obamacare certainly thought otherwise. They wanted Americans to believe that they could live recklessly, and the government would foot the bill. What happened to promoting and rewarding healthy life choices? In the end, it’s just another example of how out of touch the group — and its sponsoring party — is with the majority of Americans. This is a nation who believes in reducing abortion — not subsidizing it!
Originally published here.
New Gov Takes a Kick at the Kans.
I know from experience that laws are hard to pass — and they’re just as hard to change. That’s by design. Laws are meant to provide some stability from one administration to the next. But apparently, someone needs to share that insight to the new governor of Kansas, Laura Kelly (D). The state’s next chief executive didn’t waste any time letting locals know that their democratically-passed adoption law would be the first thing she’ll scrap. Forty-eight hours after her win, the administration seems to have a new motto: upholding the law is optional.
Kelly, who must have graduated from Barack Obama’s school of lawlessness, kicked off her victory parade by thumbing her nose at the legislature. After Kansas scored a huge victory in May — passing a law that would stop the attacks on faith-based adoption groups — the new governor has flat-out said she won’t enforce it. Kelly, who called the Adoption Protection Act “discriminatory” says she’s already had her staff “review how far the state can go to avoid enforcing the law.” In her first statehouse press conference, the new governor was clear, “If there is way to direct the agency to not implement that, then I will do that.”
Of course, none of this should come as a surprise. Kelly was endorsed by the state’s biggest LGBT activists — and seems intent on showing her gratitude. For now, though, no one is quite sure how the new governor can bypass the law. It states, very clearly, that Kansas can’t block licenses, permits, grants, or any other contracts to adoption agencies because of their beliefs. If a Christian group wants to place kids with married moms and dads, that’s their right. And as Chuck Weber, the head of the Kansas Catholic Conference, pointed out, conservatives were “very careful in drafting that bill — dotting i’s and crossing t’s and making sure that this would pass constitutional muster.”
There’s absolutely no reason — except spite and intolerance — to force everyone else to chuck their beliefs as a condition of serving children in need of homes. For years, faith-based adoption and foster care ministries have helped take the burden off of the government’s overextended, finally-strapped social service agencies. And here’s the irony. On the same day the governor-elect made her pronouncement, HHS released a report on showing that more kids need homes than ever. “The number of children waiting to be adopted is at a high,” CNS News points out. In other words, the worst thing we could do – in Kansas or any state – is elbow groups out when kids need them most.
Unfortunately, this debate has never been about children. It’s about forced conformity. “This is not a surprise, that Governor-elect Kelly would try to circumvent the will of the people of Kansas to advance her own radical agenda,” Weber told reporters. After eight years of Obama, Democrats have become the party of lawlessness. Don’t like a policy? Don’t enforce it. Kansas’s new governor already promised to roll back the privacy protections that had been in place under Sam Brownback. “I am planning to actually have an executive order drafted before I take office,” she vowed, triggering a fiery new debate over bathrooms, workplace freedom, and religious liberty.
Increasingly elections have far reaching consequences. If you don’t think it matters who’s leading our communities, our states or our nation, you’re not conscious. States like Kansas prove: the people put forth from two parties have never provided a starker contrast in values and ideology than they do today.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC Action senior writers.
