Not too long ago, there was at least this understanding about hot-button issues: there are good people on both sides. Now, thanks to the woke hijacking of America’s towers of business, tech, sports, education, and entertainment, those days are long gone. Anyone who disagrees with the Left now is not only undeserving of respect — but cast out like a societal leper. It doesn’t matter how mainstream your beliefs may be. As the firing of Kathlyn Barrett-Layne in New York City proved, there’s no room at the table for anyone with Christian views.

She barely held the position for a day — long enough, it turns out, to have the city’s LGBT activists out for blood. Of all of Mayor Eric Adams’s (D) picks, she was the perfect candidate for his Panel on Educational Policy. A retired teacher, assistant principal, and field supervisor with more than 30 years of experience in NYC schools, Barrett-Layne had one glaring problem: she’s an orthodox Christian. The city’s extremists must not have scoured her name until the appointment was announced, but it didn’t take long for them to find a fireable offense. Several years ago, Barrett-Layne, in her ministry capacity, had written a book that listed “homosexuality” as one in a series of sins.

Leftist groups exploded. The mayor appointed a “virulent homophobe,” one former councilman declared, and she will have “direct impact on LGBTQIA+ students and staff. It’s unbelievable,” Danny Dromm fumed. “She’s got to go.” Within hours, Adams pulled the plug on Barrett-Layne, an African-American woman, withdrawing her name and sending a chilling message that people of faith need not apply.

“I feel bullied,” the shocked educator said. “I believe the city is being bullied. I feel as though my character, my name, my church have been defamed with lies and that everything was taken out of context.” Pushing back against the smear campaign that’s being waged against her, Barrett-Layne insisted to reporters, “I’m not homophobic. The answer is no, absolutely not.” Even so, State Senator Brad Hoylman (D) told reporters that the mayor “seems to have a ‘blind spot’” if he’s willing to appoint people who “make the LGBT community very uneasy.”

This controversy over a Christian with a Christian perspective should be another wake-up call to parents with children in government schools. Don’t think that the iron grip LGBT activists have on public education is limited to big-city schools. It’s everywhere. And these Leftist extremists are making it clear that they don’t want parents anywhere near the decision-making process. Of course, the other piece of this story is that the city is losing a valuable voice. As part of the education panel, Barrett-Layne would have had direct input in the local curriculum. What does this say to Christian moms and dads in the area who have kids in the public schools? Simple: their views will not be tolerated.

Adams, who’s already signaled weakness with Barrett-Layne, is in for a bumpy road. Once you feed the beast, it only gets hungrier. LGBT activists won’t be happy until they take out every Christian in the mayor’s young administration. And now that he’s proven he’s vulnerable to their demands, holding the line now will be next to impossible. “We were too nice to him,” Equality New York’s Cathy Marino-Thomas insisted before adding an unveiled threat: “Maybe he needs to see the other side. It’s a little nastier.”

Unfortunately, this is what happens when you surrender to the mob. They don’t go away — they only get louder. In this open season on faith, when believers are the hunted, the only way to stop it is to stand. A lesson Mayor Adams learned too late.

Originally published here.

‘The Rivers of Blood Flow down the Street’

They were the words of a father, spoken after a month of unspeakable loss. “Save your sons from war,” Volodymyr Zelensky said emotionally. So many of your children, he wanted Russians to know, are being “sent to die on our land.” It was a moment of raw humanity, a plea to stop the carnage. But it was also a poignant reminder that grief never takes sides. Thousands of Russian bodies, some frozen and bootless, now dot the Ukrainian roads and countryside. Lying next to charred tanks or stacked in the refrigerated compartments of trains, they are the grim reminder of war’s price.

As the thaw comes to Ukraine, so do the horrifying realities. In regions like Mykolaiv that were hit hardest, struggling villages are dealing with the smell of the dead. In a video that can only be described as surreal, the local governor, Vitaly Kim, asked local residents to help gather the abandoned corpses of Russians. “There are hundreds of them,” he urged, “all across the region.” Together, they’ve begun the grisly task of collecting the soldiers and putting them in plastic bags — determined to give faraway parents the closure their government would deny them.

“The Russian people are dying here,” Zelensky insisted. “Nobody is counting them, people dying in this war. Do you know they have brought a cremation chamber with them? They’re not going to show the bodies to their families. They’re not going to tell the mothers that their children died here.” Like a modern-day Gettysburg, Ukrainians everywhere are struggling to cope with the casualties. In places like Chernihiv, the mayor warns that the cemeteries cannot handle all of the dead. “We were burying people in front of their gardens, in patios,” a mother from Mariupol said, her eyes off in a faraway place. “Our neighbors asked us to help dig the graves for their sons, for their kids.” Other people loaded their dead into cars, desperate to lay them to rest — somewhere. Looking out over the apocalyptic wasteland that was her home, she wrote in her diary, “The rivers of blood flow down the street.”

And there is no end in sight. As President Joe Biden closed out today’s emergency meetings with the G7 team in Brussels, there were fresh concerns about Russia’s use of chemical or nuclear weapons. With the Ukrainians making unexpected gains, the world worries what a desperate Vladimir Putin may do. Near Kyiv, where the Kremlin thought Russian flags would be flying over the Cabinet building weeks ago, CBN reporter George Thomas told “Washington Watch” that the Ukrainians have actually managed to push Putin’s forces back — the kind of progress that would have been unthinkable a few short weeks ago.

During two rounds of 35-hour curfews in the capital, Zelensky’s fighters have been able to go on the offensive. “There is reporting that in the northwest quadrant, about 30 kilometers from where I am, [that] the Ukrainians have managed to surround to encircle the Russians. I think in the days ahead, you’re going to see them go after their supply lines and in essence starve them from food as well as military ammunition and other pieces of equipment. It’s just absolutely stunning that you have the second largest military in the world, in essence, stuck in their operation.”

And they’re taking heavy casualties in the process. Anywhere from 7,000-15,000 Russian soldiers are estimated to be dead — rivaling what the country lost in Afghanistan over a 10-year period. “They’ve also,” Thomas pointed out, “lost five to six top generals in the process. And part of the reason is that these soldiers are just not prepared… There is also reporting that because of [these] mass casualt[ies], [Russia] is beginning to move more troops into the theater. And then there is also concern that Belarus, Ukraine’s neighbor to the north, could potentially get involved in the conflict, perhaps send three waves of soldiers, each wave containing close to about 5,000 troops [to] reinforce the Russians in the north…”

As to what Putin might do, Thomas reluctantly agreed that the worst is possible. “Look, this is the playbook of the Russians. We’ve seen it… in Syria. We saw it in Chechnya. We saw it in Georgia. And we saw it in 2014 in the eastern part of the country. They escalate in order to try to de-escalate — and in the process get Zelensky and others to the negotiating table. When you are the attacker and you are not making the sort of military progress and fulfilling the operations of your commanding general in 28 days, there is a sense of frustration that is clearly happening.”

A half a world away, he urges people to pray. While Americans go about their days and routines, millions of people are suffering, grieving, and living in the most inhumane conditions and fear. Families are facing starvation in basements where there’s no water, heat, toilets, or electricity. “We didn’t have anything. No mobile connection. No internet connection. Everything was cut. The gas supply, the water supply. The lights,” Dmytro Shvets shook his head. “We were cooking outside, making the fire. Taking wood from the parks. Because there was no other option to survive — sharing food with our neighbors, our relatives.”

Others are running right into the jaws of the enemy, desperate to defend their homes. Many more are headed to the areas under the worst shelling, heedless of their own safety. “I have seen some remarkable, heroic acts of valor by Christians who are busy driving into these dangerous hotspots, these dangerous places… risking their lives to get people out,” Thomas testified. “And the churches have mobilized across the country, providing their churches [as a] refuge for those who are transitioning to the West. Incredible. Be encouraged. The Church of Jesus Christ today in Ukraine is blossoming in the midst of war. They are being the hands and feet of Jesus. And I see it all around the world… Whenever there’s conflict, the church always rises to the occasion…”

Rise to the occasion now, and join FRC in daily prayer for the people of Ukraine, world leaders, and humanitarian missions on the ground. “When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of their troubles” (Psalm 34:17).

Originally published here.

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