#Trump's public and private opinion of evangelicals

[carolinemillerbooks]

New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/the-rapture-and-the-inferno/

The Rapture And The Inferno

Some people can be fooled some of the time, but not all of the people can be fooled all of the time unless they want to be.  Evangelical Christians seem to be among the latter. They have every reason to doubt Donald Trump’s religious convictions.  The number of fraud cases he has lost should be a clue: Trump University, his charitable foundation, and the E. Jean Carroll rape charge. The 91 current criminal indictments ought to be a red flag, too. Nonetheless, if polls speak true, a majority of the religious right gives the former president their unwavering support. Why they put their faith in him is unfathomable. Until  2016 when he ran for President, he had little commerce with them and identified as a  Presbyterian.  Even now, what he seems to admire most about evangelicals is the ability of their pastors to squeeze vast sums of money from the flock. “They’re all hustlers,” Trump says of them, the highest form of praise a con man can give to someone he believes is in the trade. In private, however, his remarks are anything but flattering. Despite his duplicity, evangelical pastors struggle to create what amounts to a squared circle, allying themselves with a man whose shenanigans rival those of Bernie Madow.  Instead, they turn a blind eye to his conduct or choose to see him as a “flawed vessel of God’s will.” An equivocation like the last one is a confession.  They know they have made a Faustian bargain, but given their priorities, they have no choice.  Under Trump’s leadership, they hope to drag the United States into the past, a period when women had few rights and LGBTQ was no more than a set of alphabet letters. So far, aligning themselves with an “infidel” has had its rewards. Trump chose an evangelical as his 2016 Presidential running mate, and after winning the election, he filled his Cabinet with people like Mike Pompeo who believe in the Rapture. Then he gave them the jewel they sought most.   He appointed three Supreme Court judges who were happy to overturn Rove v. Wade and deny women sovereignty over their bodies. When opposites conspire with one another, outcomes are unpredictable.  Trump and the pastors have cobbled together a wide net meant to ensnare an army of true believers. They’ve forgotten, however, that the same net circumscribes their boundaries and failed to foresee how a changed environment would alter their flock. One pastor complains his parishioners have begun to reject Christ’s teachings, finding them to be too weak. They seem to prefer the strum and dang of their new savior, Donald Trump. He not only embodies righteousness but also promises revenge. No doubt the former president thrills to the roar of the crowd, but the stage upon which he struts is a narrow one. The audience that gathers at his feet comes not to praise him but to hear their worst instincts validated. Moderate the message to the slightest degree and will they boo, as they did when he urged them to get a Covid 19 vaccine. Trump and the pastors have come to realize that their suppliants are more to be feared than exhorted. No longer a disorganized band of malcontents, they swell with the promise of the coming Rapture. To be ready, they’ve formed themselves into mindless hammers and are prepared to crush anyone who fails to share their frenzy. Trump’s rhetoric has grown more violent in response to their bloodlust. They may hurry him along the path he has chosen, but these suppliants demand of him a never-ending cycle of extremes, a demand that may appall some of the unscrupulous pastors and ambitious politicians who have been dragged within his wake like Marley’s chains. Having pledged their troth to a flawed vessel, these former luminaries must tread in their master’s footsteps or lose all import. Surely, a  compact this perfidious begs for a circle in Dante’s hell.

#Donald Trump's faith #Donald Trump's trials #E. Jean Carroll #Evangelical Christians' alliance with Donald Trump #The Rapture #Trump's public and private opinion of evangelicals #Trump's religion of revenge #unholy alliance between Trump and evangelical pastors

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Stop the ‘steal’? Brazil’s Bolsonaro looks poised to start it

The parallels between Brazil’s demagogic leader Jair Bolsonaro and President Donald Trump were obvious since the former took office. Both emerged from polarized political environments and appealed to angry nationalist bases. In power, the two leaders waged relentless culture wars and anti-liberal grievance campaigns. They pandered to corporate business interests and evangelical Christians. They railed against the international consensus on climate change and stood out as skeptics of the public health risks posed by the coronavirus.

Now, ahead of Brazil’s national elections in October, it appears that Bolsonaro may finish his term in ways similar to Trump. In opinion polls, Bolsonaro trails the leftist former president Lula Inacio da Silva by a wide margin. And so, for months, he has essentially dipped into the Trump playbook, casting doubt on the legitimacy of Brazil’s electoral process and, by extension, its democracy.

Last week, Brazilians were faced with the surreal spectacle of a nearly hour-long telecast of Bolsonaro lecturing dozens of foreign diplomats about the shoddiness of his own country’s voting systems from the capital, Brasilia. Not unlike Trump, he views electronic machines as suspect and vulnerable to rigging, although he has little to no evidence to prove his incendiary claims.

He has repeatedly harped on a 2018 data breach of the country’s election agency by hackers as evidence of lingering vulnerabilities, but electoral authorities have insisted throughout that the voting machines themselves were not compromised. They issued a 20-point fact check debunking some of the falsehoods put forward by Bolsonaro, who was also rebuffed by former legislative allies.

The abiding impression is that Bolsonaro and his supporters are preempting defeat with their own version of “Stop the Steal” — the slogan invoked by Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a bid to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power in Washington. In Brazil, the prospect of violent clashes now looms over the upcoming vote, with the president and his allies having laid the kindling with a torrent of conspiratorial fearmongering and ax grinding at perceived foes, from the political left to the country’s top justices.

“Many diplomats at the event were shaken by the presentation, including Bolsonaro’s suggestion that the way to ensure safe elections was through deeper involvement of Brazil’s military, according to two diplomats at the event who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conservations,” noted the New York Times. “Those diplomats worried that Bolsonaro was laying the groundwork for an attempt to dispute the ballot results if he lost.”

Continue reading.

#brazil #brazilian politics #politics #democracy #brazilian elections #jair bolsonaro #brazilian elections 2022 #mod nise da silveira #image description in alt

[truthdogg]

Falwell, and his Trump support

Jerry Falwell Jr’s enthusiastic support of Trump might be confusing for many people who look at Falwell as a religious leader, and not a political one. It shouldn’t be. The two men have a lot in common. Falwell, like Trump, is a businessman who inherited his empire, who looks down on anyone without his money, whose ends will always justify his means. But more importantly, Trump & Falwell have allied on a fight that many Americans thought was in the past.

In fact, Falwell’s support of Trump underscores why his own father entered politics in the first place. For him, the issues have not changed since then.

In 1974 the Supreme Court ruled to support IRS guidelines that organizations can’t be considered charitable institutions if they racially discriminate. While the ruling was in response to a suit from Bob Jones University, it also impacted Falwell’s Liberty University, as well as any other private universities & academies with racist policies all over the country, including those run by churches.

This was the Supreme Court ruling that led to the massive involvement of evangelical leaders in politics. It was not Roe v Wade. In fact, abortion was not even seen as a sin by most evangelicals at the time of Roe, or for several years after it.

Even the Southern Baptist Convention continued to publish the opinion that abortion wasn’t a sin in their reports for several years after Roe. It was extremely clear at the time that this was NOT what motivated leaders like Falwell Sr. to enter the political world. No, that motivation came directly from their loss of tax exemption due to racial discrimination.

This impacted not only the Falwells’ income, but also the very existence of religious academies all over the country, especially in the South, where the only reason these schools thrived was because they provided an all-white parallel option to the public school system.

Loss of tax exemption hurt these schools badly.

THIS is what rallied evangelical leaders; not abortion, not evolution, not some odd interpretation of what sort of gun Jesus would carry. It was the profitabilty of racism and unfair discrimination, plain & simple.

THIS moral bankruptcy is what led evangelical churches to become an extension of the Republican Party.

Abortion as an issue came later, and deliberately so. Rallying around racism doesn’t provide good optics, so leaders aggressively targeted abortion as a wedge issue. Political operatives made films and teaching materials to sell the idea it be considered murder, or at least a sin.

Until that time, while there was still real debate among them on the topic, most evangelical leaders saw abortion as a Catholic issue, and not as a general Christian concern. Its Catholic imprint may even be what led so many to dismiss its importance for their own flocks. But in the late 1970s it was seized upon as a stalking horse for racial segregation.

For these reasons, recent rule changes such as this one below now being implemented by Trump deserve special attention. “Make America great again” references this segregated world specifically. That slogan is a full circle continuation of the original segregationist fight, one that many of us thought was over, but is still ongoing today.

Trump has such unbridled support from Jerry Falwell Jr. because this is a fight Falwell has been working on literally for his entire adult life.

It’s for money, because discrimination and demagoguery sell. And it’s for tax money specifically, and the right to spend more of it on programs that discriminate against people. In the past 40 years, that desire from leaders like Falwell to discriminate and still keep their tax money has grown, now looping in LGBT groups along with racial minorities.

This is a decades-long battle, and while George W Bush also fought hard in it, evangelicals like Falwell are counting on Trump to finish it off.

[foreverlogical]

Just in case you missed seeing what caused tRump's latest meltdown, here it is again. From Christianity Today. #IMPOTUS Trump Should Be Removed from Office

In our founding documents, Billy Graham explains that Christianity Today will help evangelical Christians interpret the news in a manner that reflects their faith. The impeachment of Donald Trump is a significant event in the story of our republic. It requires comment.

The typical CT approach is to stay above the fray and allow Christians with different political convictions to make their arguments in the public square, to encourage all to pursue justice according to their convictions and treat their political opposition as charitably as possible. We want CT to be a place that welcomes Christians from across the political spectrum, and reminds everyone that politics is not the end and purpose of our being. We take pride in the fact, for instance, that politics does not dominate our homepage.

That said, we do feel it necessary from time to time to make our own opinions on political matters clear—always, as Graham encouraged us, doing so with both conviction and love. We love and pray for our president, as we love and pray for leaders (as well as ordinary citizens) on both sides of the political aisle.

Let’s grant this to the president: The Democrats have had it out for him from day one, and therefore nearly everything they do is under a cloud of partisan suspicion. This has led many to suspect not only motives but facts in these recent impeachment hearings. And, no, Mr. Trump did not have a serious opportunity to offer his side of the story in the House hearings on impeachment.

But the facts in this instance are unambiguous: The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.

The reason many are not shocked about this is that this president has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration. He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals. He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationship with women, about which he remains proud. His Twitter feed alone—with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders—is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.

Trump’s evangelical supporters have pointed to his Supreme Court nominees, his defense of religious liberty, and his stewardship of the economy, among other things, as achievements that justify their support of the president. We believe the impeachment hearings have made it absolutely clear, in a way the Mueller investigation did not, that President Trump has abused his authority for personal gain and betrayed his constitutional oath. The impeachment hearings have illuminated the president’s moral deficiencies for all to see. This damages the institution of the presidency, damages the reputation of our country, and damages both the spirit and the future of our people. None of the president’s positives can balance the moral and political danger we face under a leader of such grossly immoral character.

This concern for the character of our national leader is not new in CT. In 1998, we wrote this:

The President's failure to tell the truth—even when cornered—rips at the fabric of the nation. This is not a private affair. For above all, social intercourse is built on a presumption of trust: trust that the milk your grocer sells you is wholesome and pure; trust that the money you put in your bank can be taken out of the bank; trust that your babysitter, firefighters, clergy, and ambulance drivers will all do their best. And while politicians are notorious for breaking campaign promises, while in office they have a fundamental obligation to uphold our trust in them and to live by the law.

And this:

Unsavory dealings and immoral acts by the President and those close to him have rendered this administration morally unable to lead.

Unfortunately, the words that we applied to Mr. Clinton 20 years ago apply almost perfectly to our current president. Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election—that is a matter of prudential judgment. That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.

To the many evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we might say this: Remember who you are and whom you serve. Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior. Consider what an unbelieving world will say if you continue to brush off Mr. Trump’s immoral words and behavior in the cause of political expediency. If we don’t reverse course now, will anyone take anything we say about justice and righteousness with any seriousness for decades to come? Can we say with a straight face that abortion is a great evil that cannot be tolerated and, with the same straight face, say that the bent and broken character of our nation’s leader doesn’t really matter in the end?

We have reserved judgment on Mr. Trump for years now. Some have criticized us for our reserve. But when it comes to condemning the behavior of another, patient charity must come first. So we have done our best to give evangelical Trump supporters their due, to try to understand their point of view, to see the prudential nature of so many political decisions they have made regarding Mr. Trump. To use an old cliché, it’s time to call a spade a spade, to say that no matter how many hands we win in this political poker game, we are playing with a stacked deck of gross immorality and ethical incompetence. And just when we think it’s time to push all our chips to the center of the table, that’s when the whole game will come crashing down. It will crash down on the reputation of evangelical religion and on the world’s understanding of the gospel. And it will come crashing down on a nation of men and women whose welfare is also our concern.

Mark Galli is editor in chief of Christianity Today.

[phroyd]

Even the sane Evangelicals, the old-school christians, and the publication founded by Billy Graham, knows that Trump is no Messiah, no gift from God, and needs to go! - Phroyd

In our founding documents, Billy Graham explains that Christianity Today will help evangelical Christians interpret the news in a manner that reflects their faith. The impeachment of Donald Trump is a significant event in the story of our republic. It requires comment.

The typical CT approach is to stay above the fray and allow Christians with different political convictions to make their arguments in the public square, to encourage all to pursue justice according to their convictions and treat their political opposition as charitably as possible. We want CT to be a place that welcomes Christians from across the political spectrum, and reminds everyone that politics is not the end and purpose of our being. We take pride in the fact, for instance, that politics does not dominate our homepage.

That said, we do feel it necessary from time to time to make our own opinions on political matters clear—always, as Graham encouraged us, doing so with both conviction and love. We love and pray for our president, as we love and pray for leaders (as well as ordinary citizens) on both sides of the political aisle.

Let’s grant this to the president: The Democrats have had it out for him from day one, and therefore nearly everything they do is under a cloud of partisan suspicion. This has led many to suspect not only motives but facts in these recent impeachment hearings. And, no, Mr. Trump did not have a serious opportunity to offer his side of the story in the House hearings on impeachment.

But the facts in this instance are unambiguous: The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.

The reason many are not shocked about this is that this president has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration. He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals. He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationship with women, about which he remains proud. His Twitter feed alone—with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders—is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.

Trump’s evangelical supporters have pointed to his Supreme Court nominees, his defense of religious liberty, and his stewardship of the economy, among other things, as achievements that justify their support of the president. We believe the impeachment hearings have made it absolutely clear, in a way the Mueller investigation did not, that President Trump has abused his authority for personal gain and betrayed his constitutional oath. The impeachment hearings have illuminated the president’s moral deficiencies for all to see. This damages the institution of the presidency, damages the reputation of our country, and damages both the spirit and the future of our people. None of the president’s positives can balance the moral and political danger we face under a leader of such grossly immoral character.

This concern for the character of our national leader is not new in CT. In 1998, we wrote this:

The President's failure to tell the truth—even when cornered—rips at the fabric of the nation. This is not a private affair. For above all, social intercourse is built on a presumption of trust: trust that the milk your grocer sells you is wholesome and pure; trust that the money you put in your bank can be taken out of the bank; trust that your babysitter, firefighters, clergy, and ambulance drivers will all do their best. And while politicians are notorious for breaking campaign promises, while in office they have a fundamental obligation to uphold our trust in them and to live by the law.

And this:

Unsavory dealings and immoral acts by the President and those close to him have rendered this administration morally unable to lead.

Unfortunately, the words that we applied to Mr. Clinton 20 years ago apply almost perfectly to our current president. Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election—that is a matter of prudential judgment. That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.

To the many evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we might say this: Remember who you are and whom you serve. Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior. Consider what an unbelieving world will say if you continue to brush off Mr. Trump’s immoral words and behavior in the cause of political expediency. If we don’t reverse course now, will anyone take anything we say about justice and righteousness with any seriousness for decades to come? Can we say with a straight face that abortion is a great evil that cannot be tolerated and, with the same straight face, say that the bent and broken character of our nation’s leader doesn’t really matter in the end?

We have reserved judgment on Mr. Trump for years now. Some have criticized us for our reserve. But when it comes to condemning the behavior of another, patient charity must come first. So we have done our best to give evangelical Trump supporters their due, to try to understand their point of view, to see the prudential nature of so many political decisions they have made regarding Mr. Trump. To use an old cliché, it’s time to call a spade a spade, to say that no matter how many hands we win in this political poker game, we are playing with a stacked deck of gross immorality and ethical incompetence. And just when we think it’s time to push all our chips to the center of the table, that’s when the whole game will come crashing down. It will crash down on the reputation of evangelical religion and on the world’s understanding of the gospel. And it will come crashing down on a nation of men and women whose welfare is also our concern.

Mark Galli is editor in chief of Christianity Today.

Phroyd

#trump #bily graham #christians

[feelingbluepolitics]

This article reflects utterly irresponsible right-wing media style reporting. The fact that this information is being presented this way, through a news source that reputedly leans left, is very bad news -- in every way.

Here is what Christine Blasey Ford's [CBF] lawyer said:

"Speaking on the theme of 'Applied Feminism and #MeToo' earlier this year, Katz told attendees: 'In the aftermath of these hearings, I believe that Christine's testimony brought about more good than the harm misogynist Republicans caused by allowing Kavanaugh on the court.'

..."'We were going to have a conservative [justice] ... Elections have consequences, but he will always have an asterisk next to his name. When he takes a scalpel to Roe v. Wade, we will know who he is, we know his character, and we know what motivates him, and that is important; it is important that we know, and that is part of what motivated Christine.'"

This language is being painted as a revelation of a political attack, a hatchet job by CBF against Kavanaugh...just as conservatives always suspected! This woman gratuitously revealed agonizing and personal details, and wrecked her life in most ways, just to pick on Kavanaugh! All along, she was a stealth pro-choice plant! This attorney helped her! So did Democrats! Every conservative should be outraged and should work to destroy these people!

It's the same old, but now freshly inspired. It's deliberately warped and politically opportunistic lies. It's Republicon strategism to try to build up pro-Kavanaugh momentum. Republicons will be using the disgusting intrusion of Kavanaugh onto our highest court:

- to help campaign for trump and Republicons, because they deem it a victory;

- to rehabilitate Kavanaugh's image, as if they can, by reasserting him as a "victim" cruelly smeared by Democrats, because that might help Susan Collins' election, to help Republicons hold a Senate majority; and

- to diffuse and distract from the knowledge -- everybody's knowledge -- of why he was installed, so that when the conservative-tainted Court flips more and more legal precedents upside down and hard right, it might not all look so corrupt and politically disgraceful.

Step back, and consider confirmation hearings. Every single one is supposed to be a "job interview," a process of understanding the nominee, including background, and character, and motivation, and intentions, and whether the nominee is appropriate and suitable for the position being considered.

What Republicons consider "appropriate and suitable" in a judge -- and we have terribly extensive evidence of this -- is an extreme conservative bias in a person who will not hesitate to impose their political and other beliefs onto the jurisprudence of our country, in order to drag our judicial system out of the justice zone, and into the zone of hard right, arbitrary, politically and judicially corrupt rulings imposed on this country.

What Democrats consider "appropriate and suitable" in a judge is someone of good character, a finely honed legal mind, and a balanced and judicial habit of well-reasoned and impartial assessment of facts and legal arguments, so that our judicial system is secure in steady justice and trustworthy legal principles and laws. "Justice for all."

Republicons nominated and confirmed Kavanaugh to torque the Supreme Court hard right, and to work relentlessly to personally warp laws to reflect his personal extreme conservative beliefs.

When Kavanaugh was nominated, with a strong likelihood of being confirmed, CBF stepped forward to her great detriment and sacrifice, to make clear that she knew Kavanaugh as a person of longstanding bad character, who would take opportunities to seize power, and who would then abuse that power in line with his personal inclinations, uncaring of any cost to others affected.

The means of CFB's knowledge happened to be available to her because young, drunken, entitled Kavanaugh attempted to rape her.

Her lawyer correctly realized that this information provided powerful insight, so that

"we will know who he is, we know his character, and we know what motivates him, and that is important; it is important that we know, and that is part of what motivated Christine."

So when Kavanaugh, the unprincipled hyper partisan political conservative hack specially chosen for the role, overturns Roe and other longstanding principles of American law and rights, we know it is not a better understanding of cumulative law that leads to this result, but disgusting personal and political corruption, instead. As CFB's lawyer said.

Why did a "left biased" news source pick up this despicable mess and run with it as "news"?

That points to another critically important issue, of the need for transparency in the sources feeding us news and shaping our perceptions.

This is some information that should be considered about Newsweek, for example, such as who has ownership stake and, perhaps, why.

"[I]n 2013...the current owner—then known as IBT Media—bought Newsweek, [and] revived the print edition that had been mothballed the year before.

..."IBT Media, a privately held firm founded by evangelical Christian friends Etienne Uzac and Johnathan Davis in 2006 when they were in their early 20s, seemed an unlikely candidate to restore Newsweek’s good name. Its flagship publication, the International Business Times, used cheap aggregation and search engine optimization to build impressive online readership figures. But IBT remained relatively little known, even within the industry, until the company purchased Newsweek.

"[I]n March 2017...[a] major update to Google’s search algorithm, designed to crack down on low-quality, ad-heavy sites and 'private blog networks' that are widely viewed as traffic scams, hit IBT Media hard. The flagship IBT publication’s organic search traffic plunged by 50 percent, according to the analytics site SEMrush, as did search traffic at other IBT Media properties."

A "left-leaning" "news" source quietly owned by a pair of evangelical Christians, which suddenly comes out with a distorted story like this, which is intended to be politically explosive?

We must demand from our news sources more transparency, more factual and fact-verified information, and more accurate labeling of the gamut from news to speculative or hysterical or explosive opinion pieces.

[scrotus-potus]

Inside Liberty University’s ‘culture of fear’

How Jerry Falwell Jr. silences students and professors who reject his pro-Trump politics.

Will E. YoungJuly 24, 2019

In my first week as editor in chief of the Champion, Liberty University’s student-run weekly, our faculty adviser, Deborah Huff, ordered me to apologize. I’d noticed that our evangelical school’s police department didn’t publish its daily crime log online, as many other private university forces did, so I searched elsewhere for crime information I might use in an article. I called the Virginia Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators to find out what the law required Liberty to disclose. But the public affairs worker there told the Liberty University Police Department, which complained to Huff. She called to upbraid me: Apparently, I had endangered our newspaper’s relationship with the LUPD. Huff and Chief Richard Hinkley convened a meeting inside a police department conference room, and Huff sat next to me while I proffered the forced apology to Hinkley — for asking questions. Huff, too, was contrite, assuring the police chief that it wouldn’t happen again, because she’d keep a better eye on me.

This wasn’t exactly a rude awakening. I’d spent the previous three years watching the university administration, led by President Jerry Falwell Jr. (who took a very micromanaging interest), meddle in our coverage, revise controversial op-eds and protect its image by stripping damning facts from our stories. Still, I stuck around. I thought that if I wrote with discretion and kept my head down, I could one day win enough trust from the university to protect the integrity of our journalism. I even dreamed we could eventually persuade the administration to let the Champion go independent from its supervision. I was naive.

Instead, when my team took over that fall of 2017, we encountered an “oversight” system — read: a censorship regime — that required us to send every story to Falwell’s assistant for review. Any administrator or professor who appeared in an article had editing authority over any part of the article; they added and deleted whatever they wanted. Falwell called our newsroom on multiple occasions to direct our coverage personally, as he had a year earlier when, weeks before the 2016 election, he read a draft of my column defending mainstream news outlets and ordered me to say whom I planned to vote for. I refused on ethical grounds, so Falwell told me to insert “The author refused to reveal which candidate he is supporting for president” at the bottom of the column. I complied. (Huff and the police department declined to comment on the contents of this essay. Falwell and the university did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

Eventually I quit, and the School of Communication decided not to replace me, turning the paper into a faculty-run, student-written organ and seizing complete control of its content. Student journalists must now sign a nondisclosure agreement that forbids them from talking publicly about “editorial or managerial direction, oversight decisions or information designated as privileged or confidential.” The form also states that the students understand they are “privileged” to receive “thoughts, opinions, and other statements” from university administrators.

What my team and I experienced at the Champion was not an isolated overreaction to embarrassing revelations. It was one example of an infrastructure of thought-control that Falwell and his lieutenants have introduced into every aspect of Liberty University life. Faculty, staff and students on the Lynchburg, Va., campus have learned that it’s a sin to challenge the sacrosanct status of the school or its leader, which mete out punishments for dissenting opinions (from stripping people of their positions to banning them from campus). This “culture of fear,” as it was described by several of the dozen Liberty denizens who talked to me for this story — most of them anonymously to protect their jobs or their standing — worsened during my four years on campus because of the 2016 presidential election.

By 2016, Liberty’s efforts to limit free expression were already well-established. (“The big victory was finding a way to tame the faculty,” Falwell told the New York Times last year for a story about privileging Liberty’s financial growth over its academics.) But the school’s methods became even more aggressive after Falwell endorsed Donald Trump early that year, according to multiple current and former faculty members. “The closer you get to the president’s office,” says former history professor Brian Melton, discussing a chilling effect at the school, “the worse it becomes.” Falwell’s staff now operates masterfully to squash challenges to his views and his rise in national political influence.

The dissent that did exist — like off-message campus speakers, insufficiently sycophantic board members, student activists and our newspaper staff — was ruthlessly neutralized. Liberty, founded on principles of fundamental Christianity, is now a place that has zero tolerance for new questions and ideas. Those who harbor them must remain silent, or leave.

LEFT: During a staff meeting at the Liberty Champion in 2017, editor in chief Will Young reviews the layout plan for the next edition of the student paper. Young was the last student editor of the Champion. (Timothy C. Wright/For the Washington Post). RIGHT: Copies of the Champion are on offer at Liberty University. School administrators have taken control of the paper. (Marlena Sloss/The Washington Post)

Falwell, 57, possesses a certain Orwellian gift for painting Liberty as a bastion of tolerance where alternate viewpoints are not just permitted but encouraged. In March, he attended the signing of Trump’s executive order on college free speech and later claimed on “PBS NewsHour” that Liberty was inclusive of all ideas because it had invited Jimmy Carter to deliver its 2018 commencement address and Bernie Sanders to speak in 2015 at the assembly that students are required to attend twice a week. After Falwell learned last month that I was writing this essay, he posted a column on Liberty’s site disputing “sensational stories . . . that we do not allow opposing views.” He wrote, “If there’s one thing I’m certain of, it’s that there will be a strong and critical response to this article by a few former students and a handful of national media determined to paint Liberty in a completely different light on these issues.”

His Twitter account is a much better reflection of his approach to dissent. Falwell’s profile announces that “Haters will be blocked,” and several students who have disagreed or argued with him on Twitter have met this fate. Falwell outright lied on the platform to Sojourners Web editor Sandi Villarreal — who is now my colleague — when he said he’d removed a Champion op-ed criticizing Trump’s “locker room talk” defense because there was simply not enough room on the page. (The piece was already laid out on the page when he pulled it.) In fact, much of Falwell’s message control has to do with safeguarding Trump.

Mark DeMoss was something like Liberty royalty. His late father, Arthur S. DeMoss, gave $20 million to build DeMoss Hall, the school’s main academic building. Mark was also an alumnus, a former chief of staff to university founder Jerry Falwell Sr. and eventually a public relations executive who counted Liberty among his clients. He won a seat on the school’s board of trustees in 1991 after serving as Liberty’s spokesman and became the board’s executive committee chairman in 2008.

In January 2016, days before Trump was scheduled to speak at Liberty, Falwell emailed DeMoss asking whether he should endorse Trump for president. DeMoss says he recommended against endorsing anyone, and Falwell thanked him for the “great advice.” Falwell, at the speech, held back his imprimatur. But a week later, he anointed the billionaire with his support. DeMoss was horrified. “The bullying tactics of personal insult have no defense — and certainly not for anyone who claims to be a follower of Christ,” he told The Washington Post at the time. Falwell seemed to take the rebuke in stride, saying he was “disappointed” in DeMoss but understood “that all the administrators and faculty have their own personal political views.”

Falwell Jr. praises Trump's conservative credentials

[Why do white evangelicals still staunchly support Donald Trump?]

Within a few months, though, DeMoss would be gone. The night before a Liberty board meeting that April, the executive committee, including Falwell, convened without DeMoss to vote on a motion to oust him from his role as chairman. DeMoss says that his criticism of the endorsement was the cause. (Before the meeting, Falwell called him a pawn of rival campaigns.) DeMoss resigned as a trustee days later, on April 25, 2016, citing “a lack of trust.”

A week after that, Liberty changed the sign on DeMoss Hall to “Arthur S. DeMoss Hall,” making clear that the structure honored the father and not the wayward son. The message to faculty and students was clear: If you challenge Falwell, you will be not only removed but erased.

The culture of Liberty is governed by lists of principles. According to the Faculty Handbook, for instance, professors are expected to “promote . . . free market processes” and “affirm . . . that the Bible is inerrant in the originals and authoritative in all matters.” One cause of perpetual insecurity at Liberty is the school’s militant refusal to award tenure to any faculty member (outside the law school, which must offer it for accreditation). Instructors are instead hired on year-to-year contracts; during the spring semester, they find out whether they will be coming back the next fall.

The result is constant, erratic faculty turnover. One recently fired teacher describes the spring as a cycle of stressed-out, fearful professors wandering into each other’s offices to ask if they had their contracts renewed yet. “If you’re a conservative Christian in the academic world, the chances of you getting a job are nil in many areas,” says Melton, who worked at Liberty as an associate professor for 15 years before resigning because of what he described as the school’s surveillance and fear tactics. “The administration knows that, and . . . they wield that very effectively, keeping people quiet.”

Late-notice faculty removals have also become more commonplace, according to Melton, stemming in part from Falwell’s stated desire to tame the teaching corps. “He considers the faculty to be disposable beasts of burden,” Melton says. Last summer, 14 professors at Liberty’s School of Education were suddenly told that their contracts would not be renewed as part of what former Liberty spokesman Len Stevens called a “reorganization.” This June, a dozen faculty members at Liberty’s School of Divinity were notified that their contracts would not be renewed. By that late in the year, it is too late to find another job in higher education for the fall.

For former faculty members, Liberty’s culture of fear can live on. The school often requires terminated professors to sign a nondisclosure agreement if they want their severance packages, several told me — a practice that is extremely uncommon in higher education, according to Robert Bezemek, a California lawyer who represents labor unions at universities. (As Melton puts it, “They force this NDA on you by leveraging the ability to feed your family against you.”) Even former teachers who hadn’t signed NDAs told me they feared that talking to me on the record would somehow get them blacklisted from jobs elsewhere or imperil their friends who still work at Liberty. One thought my request to speak with him was a trap, calling my previous connection with the school “fishy.” When I contacted another for an interview, she warned me, “The university is on to you.” I confess I harbor a certain paranoia, too, from years of being watched at the Champion. Melton and several other current and former members of the faculty told me that they believe the administration surveils everything they do on Liberty’s server, tracking when instructors complete a task late and searching for evidence of “disloyalty” to Liberty or Falwell, as a former professor put it. Another onetime instructor declined to use his university-issued laptop because he thought Liberty had equipped it with spyware.

One cause for alarm came just before Trump’s inauguration, when then-Provost Ronald Hawkins ordered all campus faculty members to fill out an anonymous survey that asked respondents to rate how politically and socially liberal they were on a scale of 1 to 5. “We are interested in how we compare with other institutions on political and social views,” Hawkins’s office said in a follow-up email to faculty members. But, according to a former professor who talked with others in her department, many initially refused to take the survey out of fear that if a department had too many left-leaning professors, the administration might target it for more oversight or even firings. There is no evidence of Liberty firing a faculty member explicitly for his or her political beliefs, but everyone I spoke to believed that the school could easily manufacture some other pretense. “There is zero trust between the administration and faculty,” Melton says. FIRE, a nonprofit that fights for free speech on campus, put Liberty on its 2019 list of the 10 worst colleges for freedom of speech.

Things aren’t much better for the 15,000 students on campus. In 2009, Liberty withdrew funding and recognition for its College Democrats chapter because, as Mark Hine, the senior vice president of student affairs, put it, the national party defends abortion, opposed the Defense of Marriage Act, supported “the ‘LGBT’ agenda, hate crimes, which include sexual orientation and gender identity, socialism, etc.” A.J. Strom, who graduated in May, tells me that several students wanted to revive the College Democrats but no faculty members were willing to advise them, without which Liberty will not recognize a student club. “They said they would love to sign on but that if Jerry saw their name on the club application, they would be fired,” Strom says.

Student leaders have consistently helped administrators enforce the culture. After the Charlottesville rally in August 2017, members of Liberty’s Student Government Association drafted a statement expressing solidarity with Heather Heyer, the protester murdered by a neo-Nazi, and all people demonstrating against white nationalism. Then-SGA President Caleb Johnson refused to release the statement and send it to university administrators for fear of what Falwell might think. (Johnson said in an email this past week that the author was “a self-described ‘Never-Trumper’ ” and that “we would not allow the platform of Liberty Student Government to be improperly used by a political activist with obvious ulterior motives.”) “There’s 100 percent an atmosphere of fear at Liberty,” says Caleb Fitzpatrick, who was then the student government’s speaker of the House and helped draft the statement. “There was a need to avoid being seen as a liberal or progressive, or even being different.”

In September 2018, nearly a year into the #MeToo movement, Liberty invited conservative provocateur Candace Owens to speak at an assembly. A few days before her visit, Owens tweeted that the women accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault were “making it up.” In response, Addyson Garner, then president of a libertarian club on campus, organized a rally to support victims of sexual assault, called #LUforMeToo, which would occur right after the Owens speech. The day before, Jacob Page, then the student body president, summoned her to his office, where he and Vice President Derek Rockey pressured her to cancel the event, Garner told me in May. She left the office in tears, but she and her fellow organizers decided to protest anyway. About 25 students attended, a rare show of defiance on a campus that discourages political dissent. (In an email this past week, Rockey said he thought students should attend a public dialogue on these topics rather than stage a protest. Page said he and Rockey “support bringing awareness to victims of sexual assault” but “felt it was unproductive to engage in partisan protests.”)

[I helped start the Moral Majority. Trump is the opposite of what we wanted.]

Guests at the school who deviate from the prescribed philosophy can be targeted, too. In October 2017, the anti-Trump pastor and writer Jonathan Martin arrived at the invitation of the Christian musical duo Johnnyswim, who were performing on campus that night; Martin also announced on Twitter that he would lead a prayer meeting with students the next morning. Falwell took it as an unauthorized protest, and the LUPD sent three armed officers to remove Martin from campus, telling him he’d be arrested if he returned. Martin tweetedthat it was “evidently in response to my strong criticism of @JerryFallwellJr’s alignment not only with the darkest contours of Trumpism, but expressly with Steve Bannon & the alt-right he represents.” Falwell told the Champion that Martin’s forcible removal was “a matter of safety.”

A similar episode unfolded in 2015 when Jonathan Merritt, a Liberty alumnus and Christian writer, was disinvited to speak on campus after authoring an article critical of Hobby Lobby, the company permitted by the Supreme Court in 2014 to deny its employees contraceptive health-care coverage. The Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, is close with Falwell. “You don’t seem to remember who your friends are,” Merritt remembers Falwell saying over the phone.

One afternoon in April 2016, when I was still a cub reporter during my sophomore year, I received a one-sentence email from Deborah Huff, our adviser: “need to talk to you about SG,” the subject line read. I should call her that night. She copied the editor in chief, a senior. I was clearly in trouble.

“SG” stood for Scott Garrett, a traditionalist conservative who represents Lynchburg in the state legislature. According to records I had found through the Virginia Public Access Project, he owned millions of dollars in stock, some from companies that lobby lawmakers in Richmond. A few days earlier, I interviewed him for the Champion about possible conflicts of interest stemming from his assets.

After dinner, I called Huff. She sounded annoyed. When I described my reporting to her, she told me the Champion would not run my story, because Garrett was afraid that the article would hurt his reputation. The message was clear: I had no business heckling Liberty’s friends and allies. (“I don’t remember the incident in question,” Garrett emailed me this week when I asked him for a comment. “And I don’t understand why I would say the article would hurt my reputation because there was no conflict of interest.”)

Out of fear that arguing with her would end my career at the paper — she selected which students would advance to editorships — I apologized for looking into Garrett’s finances and assured her that this sort of thing wouldn’t happen again. I understood that her job, and by extension mine, was to protect our righteous, evangelical university. Before becoming a Liberty teacher and then supervisor of the Champion, Huff worked for the Fundamentalist Journal, a now-defunct Falwell-owned periodical. I didn’t see defending the faith as the main purpose of journalism, and I wasn’t out to safeguard Liberty. But in the face of a mentor I trusted, I believed I must have been in the wrong.

Looking back on the emails from that episode three years later, I’m embarrassed by my naivete — and my willingness to abandon a scoop with obvious journalistic merit. The scales began to fall from my eyes as, over the next 18 months, I saw how in every issue of the Champion the administration strategically manipulated or erased stories. Huff discouraged us from following leads that might disrupt the image of Liberty as a prestigious, respectable evangelical institution. In pitch meetings, she made it clear that the Champion would not cover Liberty scandals, even those that appeared in mainstream news outlets (such as the Falwells’ secret business relationships and the wave of Liberty alumni who sent back their diplomas after Falwell defended Trump’s comment that there “very fine people” on both sides of the white nationalist Charlottesville rally).

By the time I became the Champion’s editor, the censorship I hoped to stop was already shameless. In February 2017, I wrote an article on a higher-education task force that Trump had asked Falwell to lead. Falwell emailed me his personal edits, removing every quote from an expert concerning possible conflicts of interest that Falwell created by accepting the position (in the end, the task force was never formed). Months later, Huff ordered that my story about Martin’s expulsion from campus include lines about how Liberty is inclusive of different political beliefs, in the face of obvious counterevidence. An administrator spiked a news report about an on-campus swing dancing club that was temporarily banned. When film students drafted a petition in early 2018 objecting to “The Trump Prophecy” — a hagiographic tale about a firefighter who said he had prophesized Trump’s election, which Liberty students were compelled to produce in order to receive their degrees — faculty at the film school craftedour coverage into a fluffy bit of PR highlighting students who looked forward to working on set. Champion reporter Jack Panyard was so disgusted, he removed his byline from the piece. Then there was sports editor Joel Schmieg’s column about “locker room talk” after the “Access Hollywood” video came out; Falwell blocked it from publication.

[White Christians need to act more Christian than white]

This interference frequently caused shouting matches with, and passive aggressive emails from, administrators. “Too bad the editor and chief of The Champion penned this editorial for the homecoming edition without any effort to learn all that is being done at Liberty to prevent and react appropriately to sexual assault,” Liberty General Counsel David Corry wrote to Falwell and Huff about my column on campus sexual assault. Instead of sticking up for the journalists she supervised, Huff emailed me to complain that I did not “make sure Liberty was separated from the conversation or address what Liberty does that is different than other schools.” Later that day, the piece was removed from the website without my consent. (In his preemptive statement last month, Falwell seemed to address these episodes. “In the past few years, some students screamed ‘censorship’ when they didn’t get their every word published in our campus newspaper,” he wrote. “But that standard isn’t even attained within the newsroom of commercial newspapers.”)

In the wake of these run-ins, members of our staff often gathered in my office to daydream about taking the paper independent or grouse about Huff, whom we felt was gaslighting us. What kind of newspaper adviser would denounce our attempts to keep Liberty accountable and make us repeatedly apologize to administrators for trying? By this point, it was clear that the principles of investigative journalism I was learning in class were verboten when it came to Liberty itself. The Champion could never be an avatar of press freedom or truth-telling.

I grew up in a politically conservative household and was active in my denomination; my values changed at Liberty as I embraced a more inclusive and open vision of the church. My views of Liberty, and of the values I saw Falwell profess on a daily basis, changed as well. I considered transferring schools or resigning from the paper. The weekly fight for the right to publish was exhausting. Still, I decided to stay because I saw that, on the occasions we won — when we either persuaded administrators to leave an article alone or worked around their objections — we sparked dialogue among students on Twitter and in classrooms that challenged Liberty’s status quo. But ultimately, our fraught relationship with our overlords was untenable, and something had to give.

The end finally came for the Champion when a left-leaning faith group, the Red Letter Christians, organized a “Lynchburg Revival” in April 2018 to protest Falwell’s support of Trump and what the group called “toxic evangelicalism.” Two days beforehand, Liberty’s police department notified RLC leader Shane Claiborne that he would be arrested if he set foot on campus. The Champion had already decided to cover the event, but the stakes were higher now. Huff told us it would be too controversial for print, but the other editors and I didn’t think we could ignore it.

The day before the gathering, Falwell sent an email to Erin Covey, our assistant news editor: “Let’s not run any articles about the event. That’s all these folks are here for — publicity. Best to ignore them.” When we explained our dilemma to RLC organizers, they tipped off a reporter at the Religion News Service, which ran a piece detailing Falwell’s censorship. Covey gave on-the-record quotes. Panyard, who was set to succeed me as editor in chief in a few weeks, briefed the reporter on background, as did I. (Vox also picked up the story and amplifiedit, and I imagine it galled Falwell to be depicted as an insecure tyrant in a liberal publication.)

The school’s response was swift. Falwell convened a tele-meeting with Bruce Kirk, who was then dean of the School of Communication, and our entire staff. They reprimanded us for talking to the press, and Falwell justified his censorship by arguing that the Red Letter Christians were “not keeping with the values of the university.” Then he spoke candidly for the first time about, as he saw it, the virtues of censoring us. “That’s what you kids are going to run into when you get into the real world and start working for for-profit newspapers. That’s what they’re going to expect of you, and I want you to learn that while you’re here.” Kirk, who was sitting with us for the meeting, chimed in, agreeing with Falwell’s depiction of the “real world” of journalism. Being censored by a higher-up in the media industry is “just a part of life,” he said. (Before he began at Liberty, he worked for a local news station operated by Sinclair Broadcasting.)

[The epidemic denial about sexual abuse in the evangelical church]

After the meeting, I felt sick. I hadn’t said a word while Falwell flayed us for trying to practice basic journalism and act with integrity. I went into my office, closed the door and waited until most of the staff members left the newsroom. Then I sat down at my desk and wept.

A week and a half later, Kirk called Panyard and Covey into his office and told them they were being let go as part of a “reorganization.” Nobody else was affected; they’d been fired. It was the most aggressive and direct action the administration had ever taken to silence the Champion. I was not fired — I was a lame duck anyway — but I resigned and refused to take part in the production of the last edition of the year. I cleaned out my office that same day. Soon after, I learned I would be the last student editor in chief of the Champion and that from now on the paper would be run directly by the school. (Kirk did not respond to multiple requests to comment for this story.)

Even at Liberty, there are still those who publicly reject Falwell’s diktats. A petition supporting Mark DeMoss won more than 70 student signatures when Falwell ousted him in 2016. During the presidential election, free speech lived a little when Liberty United Against Trump, a student group, scored national media attention for its stance that the school did not uniformly approve of Falwell’s endorsement. It said it accumulated more than 2,000 student signatures for its statement.

Panyard, the deposed editor, launched a new independent newspaper, the Lynchburg Torch, with the help of other refugees from the campus weekly. In the past year, it has published stories that the Champion’s overseers would have blocked, such as a report on LGBTQ students who oppose Liberty’s position on same-sex relationships. Addyson Garner put on another rally this year to support queer Liberty students after transphobic comments from Falwell and his wife, Becki. (“We’re raising her as a girl,” Becki Falwell said of their granddaughter Reagan, as her husband looked on. “We’re not letting her have a choice.”) Dozens of students participated, according to Garner and posts on social media. It was the first time I had ever seen the rainbow pride flag flown openly on Liberty’s campus. The school is changing.

But in significant ways, it is not more tolerant, and it certainly does not celebrate “the open exchange of competing ideas” that Falwell described in his column. In a discussion with the incoming Champion staffers after I left, Kirk said, “Your job is to keep the LU reputation and the image as it is.” The students who recall a more open time at Liberty, before Trump, have now graduated. All those who remain chose to go to Falwell’s school after he endorsed Trump, forming a much more compliant student body that generally accepts and even supports Falwell’s crackdown culture.

I graduated in 2018. Since then, I’ve tried to put Liberty — and the stress and self-doubt that officials there saddled me with — behind me. But I still fume when Falwell spews dumbfounding conspiracies online or retweets a bigoted rant from Trump, and I still become uneasy when I see my diploma, which is sitting in a cluttered drawer at my parents’ house. I made amazing friends and memories on campus, but I’m realizing the extent to which I internalized the fear tactics; I still sometimes self-censor my thoughts and writing. How can a college education stifle your freedom of thought? When people ask me if I regret going to Liberty, as many do, I usually pause. I don’t know.

#liberty university #white evangelicals #Jerry Falwell #trump #gop

[bountyofbeads]

Trump Is Betting That Anger Can Still Be Power https://nyti.ms/2FiawhC

Donald Trump has so many deep seated issues (just to name a few) including anger, loneliness, truthfulness and his feelings of inadequacy that are doing damage to himself, his cult MAGA followers and this once great nation. It saddens😪me deeply but it also frightens😰🥵 me. He needs an invervention now by his family and friends but we know that won't happen so it's up to Congress to do their job.

Trump Is Betting That Anger Can Still Be Power

Trump 2020 may sound a lot like Trump 2016, but this time around the fusion of president and party is complete.

By Peter Wehner, Contributing Opinion Writer | Published June 19, 2019 | New York Times | Posted June 19, 2019 |

Donald Trump has been the most persistently unpopular first-term president in the postwar era. Much of the nation is exhausted and embarrassed by his presidency, pining for normalcy, eager to change the channel. The president’s own internal polls show Mr. Trump trailing the former vice president, Joe Biden, not only in many battleground states Mr. Trump won in 2016, but in traditional Republican strongholds like Georgia.

But as we saw Tuesday night, during a huge, raucous rally in Orlando, Fla., Trump is viewed by his supporters almost as a demigod. One excited Trump supporter who was there told me he was overwhelmed by the unwavering support for Mr. Trump, driven by a sense that Mr. Trump has been deeply wronged — by the Mueller investigation, by the media and by what he described as “anti-Trump forces.” He also told me, based on conversations he had with others at the rally, that Mr. Trump’s supporters believe his era is “spiritually driven.” What he meant by that is that person after person reported that when it comes to Mr. Trump and the presidency, “God has chosen him and is protecting him.” It is the Children of Light against the Children of Darkness.

That certainly aligns with my sense of how Trump supporters see things. It’s not just that Mr. Trump is exceedingly popular among Republicans, with his approval rating this year hovering in the high 80s and low 90s. It is that he has won their undying loyalty and affection. As a Republican friend of mine put it to me recently, Mr. Trump is the general leading the army into battle against an enemy that needs to be vanquished for the good of the nation. When facing an existential threat, there is no room for public dissent. In Mr. Trump’s Republican Party, you are expected to treat him with reverence, submission and obeisance, or you will be treated as a traitor to king and cause. Just ask Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Mark Sanford and Justin Amash.

It was unthinkable when Donald Trump rode down the escalator at Trump Tower four years ago to announce his improbable run for the presidency, but his imprint on the Republican Party is at least as large as that of Ronald Reagan’s at a comparable point in his presidency. The Republican Party has been transformed by Mr. Trump.

That’s true in some areas more than others. In the realm of policy, Mr. Trump has pursued a fairly traditional Republican agenda on judicial appointments, abortion, tax cuts, deregulation and military spending. What makes Mr. Trump transformative is the areas in which he is redefining the right.

Let’s review. Until Mr. Trump, the Republican Party was committed, at least philosophically, to free trade. It is now led by a man who is instinctively protectionist and refers to himself as “Tariff Man.” The pre-Trump Republican Party championed limited government and entitlement reform; today it shows no interest in either. It was once unthinkable that a Republican president would target private companies in order to settle personal scores. For Mr. Trump, this is routine.

Republicans flayed President Barack Obama for implementing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program despite lacking the constitutional and legal authority to do so. Yet Republicans in Congress overwhelmingly supported Mr. Trump’s emergency declaration to fund border wall construction despite its being a clear violation of the separation of powers.

Past Republican presidents were deeply committed to American global leadership, the Atlantic alliance, good relations with allies like Canada and publicly calling out brutal regimes like North Korea. No more. Today the Republican Party is led by a man who levels attacks on Canada even as he admits he “fell in love” after exchanging “beautiful letters” with the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un. Mr. Kim, it used to go without saying, rules what is arguably the most repressive government on earth; this is the man to whom Mr. Trump makes enormous concessions while getting almost nothing in return. And let’s not forget, however remote it might seem now, that the idea that a Republican president would side with the leader of Russia rather than his own intelligence agencies was once unimaginable. Under Mr. Trump, it happened. Mr. Trump has also turned a party that for decades was pro-immigration and friendly with Mexico — and in the case of Reagan, in favor of amnesty for undocumented workers and against putting up even a fence on the southern border — into one that is increasingly antagonistic toward immigrants and relentlessly hostile to Mexico, the current thaw notwithstanding.

Mr. Trump has flipped the Republican Party from outward looking to inward looking, from the champion of an open society into the cheerleader of a closed one, from optimism to pessimism. (It’s a long road to travel to get from “Morning in America” to “American carnage.”) A party that once claimed to abhor “identity politics” now relies on them as its closing argument in elections.

But as significant as these changes have been, the Trump transformation of the Republican Party has been even more decisive and far-reaching in other realms.

Republicans once fashioned themselves as members of the party of ethics, morality and law-and-order; today they fiercely defend a president who is essentially an unindicted co-conspirator for authorizing hush money payments to a porn star, who is a promiscuous liar, a man whom Robert Mueller could not clear of obstruction of justice and who just last week indicated he would eagerly listen to a foreign power that offered damaging information on his opponent during the upcoming president race. He even criticized the F.B.I. director he chose for saying that the agency would want to know about any foreign election meddling.

The most withering line of the year, so far, came from one of the Democratic candidates, Pete Buttigieg, who referred to Vice President Mike Pence, an outspoken evangelical Christian, as a “cheerleader for the porn star presidency.” Many of those who during the Bill Clinton presidency insisted character and personal integrity were essential qualities in political leaders have in the Trump era decided such matters are utterly unimportant. By their refusal to confront those flaws and failures in Mr. Trump, they are complicit in the debasement of American culture and politics. Many of Mr. Trump’s most vocal and prominent evangelical supporters, because of their rank hypocrisy, are doing more to damage Christian witness than the so-called New Atheists ever could.

Beyond that, in their ferocious defense of the president, Trump supporters are signaling that decency is a form of weakness, that cruelty is a welcome and highly effective political weapon and that the low road is the preferred road. At one point, Republicans were willing to tolerate Mr. Trump’s brutish tactics and reprehensible character as the price of party loyalty; today many of them seem to relish it. They see the dehumanization of others as a form of entertainment.

All of this has come at a crushing price, including driving away young people in huge numbers. The Trump ascendancy has made far too many Republicans increasingly contemptuous of serious intellectual and policy argument, indifferent to empirical truth and disdainful of governing. They prefer to turn politics into an ongoing freak show. But the greater price is the indelible stain all this places on the integrity of a party many of us once believed in, served in and took pride in.

Mr. Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party is complete. Healing and renewal can’t begin until the party rejects the malignancy of Trumpism and embraces the belief that politics is not only a necessary activity but a noble calling, an imperfect but essential way to advance justice. That day may yet come. Right now it feels light years away.

#donald trump #u.s. news #politics #trump administration #president donald trump #trump #republican politics #white house #politics and government #international news #trump scandals #republican party #national security #must reads #robert mueller #trumpism #donald trump jr #Cult 45 #Trump Cult #maga

[the-mira-life-project-mtf]

‘Transgender’ Could Be Defined Out of Existence Under Trump Administration

     The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a government wide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law.

     A series of decisions by the Obama administration loosened the legal concept of gender in federal programs, including in education and health care, recognizing gender largely as an individual’s choice and not determined by the sex assigned at birth. The policy prompted fights over bathrooms, dormitories, single-sex programs and other arenas where gender was once seen as a simple concept. Conservatives, especially evangelical Christians, were incensed.

     Now the Department of Health and Human Services is spearheading an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government financial assistance, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times.

     The department argued in its memo that key government agencies needed to adopt an explicit and uniform definition of gender as determined “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.” The agency’s proposed definition would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with, according to a draft reviewed by The Times. Any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.

     “Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth,” the department proposed in the memo, which was drafted and has been circulating since last spring. “The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”

     The new definition would essentially eradicate federal recognition of the estimated 1.4 million Americans who have opted to recognize themselves — surgically or otherwise — as a gender other than the one they were born into.

“This takes a position that what the medical community understands about their patients — what people understand about themselves — is irrelevant because the government disagrees,” said Catherine E. Lhamon, who led the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights in the Obama administration and helped write transgender guidance that is being undone.

The move would be the most significant of a series of maneuvers, large and small, to exclude the population from civil rights protections and roll back the Obama administration’s more fluid recognition of gender identity. The Trump administration has sought to bar transgender people from serving in the military and has legally challenged civil rights protections for the group embedded in the nation’s health care law.

     Several agencies have withdrawn Obama-era policies that recognized gender identity in schools, prisons and homeless shelters. The administration even tried to remove questions about gender identity from a 2020 census survey and a national survey of elderly citizens.

     For the last year, the Department of Health and Human Services has privately argued that the term “sex” was never meant to include gender identity or even homosexuality, and that the lack of clarity allowed the Obama administration to wrongfully extend civil rights protections to people who should not have them.

     Roger Severino, the director of the Office for Civil Rights at the department, declined to answer detailed questions about the memo or his role in interagency discussions about how to revise the definition of sex under Title IX.

     But officials at the department confirmed that their push to limit the definition of sex for the purpose of federal civil rights laws resulted from their own reading of the laws and from a court decision.

     Mr. Severino, while serving as the head of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at the Heritage Foundation, was among the conservatives who blanched at the Obama administration’s expansion of sex to include gender identity, which he called “radical gender ideology.”

     In one commentary piece, he called the policies a “culmination of a series of unilateral, and frequently lawless, administration attempts to impose a new definition of what it means to be a man or a woman on the entire nation.”

     “Transgender people are frightened,” said Sarah Warbelow, the legal director of the Human Rights Campaign, which presses for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. “At every step where the administration has had the choice, they’ve opted to turn their back on transgender people.” After this article was published online, transgender people took to social media to post photographs of themselves with the hashtag #WontBeErased.

     The Department of Health and Human Services has called on the “Big Four” agencies that enforce some part of Title IX — the Departments of Education, Justice, Health and Human Services, and Labor — to adopt its definition in regulations that will establish uniformity in the government and increase the likelihood that courts will accept it.

     The definition is integral to two proposed rules currently under review at the White House: One from the Education Department deals with complaints of sex discrimination at schools and colleges receiving federal financial assistance; the other, from health and human services, deals with health programs and activities that receive federal funds or subsidies. Both regulations are expected to be released this fall, and would then be open for public comment, typically for 60 days. The agencies would consider the comments before issuing final rules with the force of law — both of which could include the new gender definition.

     Civil rights groups have been meeting with federal officials in recent weeks to argue against the proposed definition, which has divided career and political appointees across the administration. Some officials hope that health and human services will at least rein in the most extreme parts, such as the call for genetic testing to determine sex.

     After more than a year of discussions, health and human services is preparing to formally present the new definition to the Justice Department before the end of the year, Trump administration officials say. If the Justice Department decides that the change is legal, the new definition can be approved and enforced in Title IX statutes, and across government agencies.

     The Justice Department declined to comment on the draft health and human services proposal. The Justice Department has not yet been asked to render a formal legal opinion, according to an official there who was not authorized to speak about the process.

     But Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s previous decisions on transgender protections have given civil rights advocates little hope that the department will prevent the new definition from being enforced. The proposal appears consistent with the position he took in an October 2017 memo sent to agencies clarifying that the civil rights law that prohibits job discrimination does not cover “gender identity, per se.”

     Health and human services officials said they were only abiding by court orders, referring to the rulings of Judge Reed O’Connor of the Federal District Court in Fort Worth, Tex., a George W. Bush appointee who has held that “Congress did not understand ‘sex’ to include ‘gender identity.’”

     A 2016 ruling by Judge O’Connor concerned a rule that was adopted to carry out a civil rights statute embedded in the Affordable Care Act. The provision prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, age or disability in “any health program or activity” that receives federal financial assistance.

     But in recent discussions with the administration, civil rights groups, including Lambda Legal, have pointed to other court cases. In a legal memo presented to the administration, a coalition of civil rights groups wrote, “The overwhelming majority of courts to address the question since the most relevant Supreme Court precedent in 1998 have held that antitransgender bias constitutes sex discrimination under federal laws like Title IX.”

     Indeed, the health and human services proposal was prompted, in part, by pro-transgender court decisions in the last year that upheld the Obama administration’s position.

     In their memo, health and human services officials wrote that “courts and plaintiffs are racing to get decisions” ahead of any rule-making, because of the lack of a stand-alone definition.

     “Courts and the previous administration took advantage of this circumstance to include gender identity and sexual orientation in a multitude of agencies, and under a multitude of laws,” the memo states. Doing so “led to confusion and negative policy consequences in health care, education and other federal contexts.”

     One of the Trump administration’s first decisive policy acts was the rescission by the Education and Justice Departments of Obama-era guidelines that protected transgender students who wanted to use bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity.

     Since the guidance was rescinded, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has halted and dismissed discrimination cases filed by transgender students over access to school facilities. A restrictive government wide definition would cement the Education Department’s current approach.

     But it would also raise new questions.

     The department would have to decide what documentation schools would be required to collect to determine or codify gender. Title IX applies to a number of educational experiences, like sports and single-sex classes or programs where gender identity has come into play. The department has said it will continue to open cases where transgender students face discrimination, bullying and harassment, and investigate gender-based harassment as “unwelcome conduct based on a student’s sex” or “harassing conduct based on a student’s failure to conform to sex stereotypes.”

     The Education Department did not respond to an inquiry about the health and human services proposal.

     Ms. Lhamon of the Obama Education Department said the proposed definition “quite simply negates the humanity of people.”

A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 21, 2018, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump May Limit How Government Defines One’s Sex. New York Times.

#gender #transgender #gender transformation #gender bender #sex reassignment surgery #transformation #trans #Social structure #mtf hrt #tf #mtf #ftm hrt #ftm #lgbtq community #LGBTQA #lgbtq #lgbt #nonconforming #gender nonconforming #nonbinary #non-conforming #law #transgender law #trump #donald trump #president

[opedguy]

Biden’s Vaccine Mandates Rejected by 5th Circuit Court

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), Nov. 13, 2021.--President Joe Biden’s, 78, Sept. 9 vaccine mandates, covering some 100 million U.S. citizens, were tossed out Nov. 12 by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.  Biden used the federal Occupational Health and Safety Adminstration [OHSA] to force U.S. citizens to get Covid-19 vaccines, hoping to gain better national containment of the two-year-old deadly novel coronavirus that caused 47,876,446 infections and 783,174 deaths in the United States.  As a matter of Public Health, Biden thought he had the U.S. Constitution on his side, imposing the most far-reaching government mandates in U.S. history.  “The mandate is staggeringly overbroad,” said the opinion of the three-judge paned from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Biden thought he could impose mandates claiming overriding public health concerns, something the appellate court rejected.     

        Whatever the merits of Covid-19 vaccines, there isn’t enough evidence both on efficacy in preventing Covid-19 infections and on any adverse side effects. It’s not enough that Biden claims the vaccines are safe-and-effective for every America, without really knowing the science behind vaccines.  Biden and his 56-year-old Vice President Kamala Harris once warned voters not to trust any vaccine developed under former President Donald Trump. Yet once his election was certified Jan. 6 by the Electoral College, he and Harris were all in on vaccines.  It’s one thing to believe strongly and advocate that vaccines save lives and can lift the U.S. out of the Covid-19 crisis, it’s still another to impose mandates.  Reigning NFL Most Valuable Player 37-year-old Green Bay Packers’ quarterback Aaron Rodgers has been raked over the coals for choosing  alternative treatments over vaccines.    

         Rodger’s critics argue he endangered his teammates and league personnel by not getting one of three approved Covid-19 vaccines, including Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.  “The mandate is a one-size fits all sledgehammer that makes hardly any attempt to account for differences in workplaces [and workers],” Circuit Court Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote for the panel. Biden listens to his 80-year-old chief medical officer Dr. Anthony Fauci, strongly urging U.S. citizens to get vaccinated. Fauci has no problem selling vaccines to the public but he won’t admit that his employer, the National Institutes of Health [NIH] in Bethesda, Md., funded the dangerous bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology [WIV] that created the deadly novel coronavirus.  Fauci denies that he had anything to do with creating SARS CoV-2 but the facts say otherwise.   

          As it stands today with the 5th Circuit stay against Biden’s vaccine mandates, Rodgers had every right to resist taking any of the approved vaccines. Yet the government and NFL continue to apply pressure on Rodgers to take the vaccine.  Based on the 5th Circuit Court ruling staying Biden’s vaccine mandates, any U.S. citizens has the right to not take the vaccines without consequences to their federal, state or local government employment, including private sector employment with over 100 employees.  Judge Engelhardt reminded the White House that the Constitution is more important than the country’s transient political squabbles. “The public interest is also served by maintaining the liberty of individuals to make intensely personal decisions according to their own convictions—even, or perhaps particularly, when those decisions frustrate government officials,” Engelhardt wrote.  

           Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton, 58, hailed the 5th Circuit Court ruling, joining other states in stopping the Biden Covid-19 mandate.  But what’s good for the goose is good for the gander when it comes to government intrusion into citizens’ private health matters.  Paxton can’t reconcile Texas’ Sept. 1 anti-abortion law that runs afoul with established legal precedent under 1973 Roe v. Wade.  No matter how much evangelicals despise Roe v. Wade, it’s the law of the land to protect a women’s right to choose.  How does that differ from Paxton opposing Biden’s vaccines mandates because it interfered with a citizen’s right to choose his own medical treatment?  Biden clearly went overboard with his vaccines mandates.  But Paxton shows the kind of cosmic hypocrisy when it comes to personal medical decision-making.  Denying that same right to women shows unparalleled hypocrisy. 

            Biden’s vaccine mandates are wrong because they don’t accomplish his mission of vaccinating more U.S. citizens without creating more division.  What the government and NFL have done to Aaron Rodgers is exactly why vaccine mandates don’t fit the American model of freedom of choice.  If Biden wants more Americans vaccinated, he needs to make his case to the public, not make employment contingent on receiving vaccines.  Now the Circuit Court invalidated vaccine mandates, the NFL has no case against Aaron Rodgers for deciding to use alternative treatments over FDA-approved Covid-19 vaccines.  No one talks about the untold number of double-and-triple vaccinated citizens testing positive for Covid-19.  Blaming Rodgers for “lying” to the public or endangering his teammates is preposterous. Rodgers did what any other American has a right to do:  Make his own choice. 

About the Author  

 John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.    

[automatismoateo]

Religion shouldn't mess with porn and sex work via /r/atheism

Submitted January 31, 2021 at 11:02AM by MichioBu (Via reddit https://ift.tt/3cuwv6i) Religion shouldn't mess with porn and sex work

DISCLAIMER: This post wont contain any links or evidence, because it might goes against the rules of Reddit. If you want to see evidence against the claims of the anti-porn movement, and evidence against the claims against sex work, send me DM. But im not going to share it publicly, because my post might get deleted. I will only share articles that are already public.

In the United States, totalitarianism is the form of government evangelical christians want. They want ultra-militarized police, which penalizez the expression of uncomfortable opinions, including LGBT+ people, women's rights, sex workers, etc... They want to control your sex life, restricting your practice and preference of partners.

There are a lot of religious organization that are funded by conservative groups (i wont share names). Their goal is to spread false claims against porn. They say that porn leads to increased violence against women, and increased human trafficking, but this is debunked by all official studies.

The goal of these religious organizations, is to spread fear-mongering narratives, so people can accept laws (bills) that are based on religious dogma. When these laws are being proposed, no one will tell you that these laws are based on religious dogma. They will always tell you that the laws are not based on religious dogma. The laws are worded in a way to make you to think that the laws are the ultimate solution to all problems.

These laws only restrict freedom. I have said it many times, and i will repeat it again: when lawmakers make laws, they must focus of science, not on religious beliefs, myths, and stereotypes.

EVERYTIME WHEN RELIGIOUS HAS POWER OVER LAW, IT RESULTS IN VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS!

All religious organizations that are making such laws, support the Nordic Model for sex work. They believe that restricting sex work will solve the problem of human trafficking. This is not true. Restricting sex work will drive sex work underground, which will lead to a lot of problems, including increased human traffcking.

When sex work is criminalized, no sex worker will call for help in case of violence, because of the fear of prosecution. This is very good argument for full decriminalization of sex work. All serious human rights organizations recommend full decriminalization o sex work, including W.H.O, UNAIDS, and Amnesty International. The Nordic Model is not supported by these and other organizations, including the U.N.

Religious people should understand that sex workers don't have to be repressed. Sex work is work like all other kinds of work. Everyone should be free to choose what to work. Stop trying to implement religious dogmas on everyone.

If you want to live in your Fantasy World with God and Earth and humans being the very special center of universe, that's fine... you are free to live in this Fantasy World - but don't try to force other people to live in this world, too. This is your work, we don't like it. I prefer to listen to science and objective truth.

This such as homophobia and xenophobia are mainly coming from religion. I'm not saying that only religious people are homophobes and xenophobes - there are non-religious people who are like this, too. The majority of xenophobes and homophobe are religiously motivated people. Violence against women is caused by the idea that women are something lower than males - this idea comes from religion, because in evolution, there is no such thing as higher and lower individuals.

Discrimination against LGBT+ people, immigrants, disabled people, is also caused mainly by religion. Religiously motivated discrimination against immigrants, is mainly caused by christian/evangelical nationalism. This kinds of nationalism is on the rise in the US. During the Trump's presidency, this kind of nationalism was on the rise, now, i hope that during the Biden's presidency this kind of nationalism will decrease.

Religion is harmful for human rights, because religion is trying to implement ideas that are NOT consistent with the way human body and mind evoveld.

Church and government have to be separated. Sex work and porn must be fully decriminalized. When lawmakes make laws regarding porn and sex work, they must focus on science, not on false religious beliefs, myths, and stereotypes.

There is no scientific evidence to indicate sex work and porn are causing problems,... yet, religous organizations say that porn and sex work are causing degradation of the brain, more violence, and more human trafficking. If this is true... if increased porn consumption leads to increased violence against women, and porn consumption is increasing, then why is violence against women decreasing?

There are some religious organizations that are the main players against porn and sex work. They spread misinformation and they are misrepresenting studies, so they can lie the public that porn and sex work are bad.

Here are some articles about there organizations. All information in the articles is legal. I don't own any of the articles.

The Siren Song of Exodus Cry: https://medium.com/@justinethalley/the-siren-song-of-exodus-cry-d507a594c05d

Fundamentalist organization and CEO homophobe behind anti-sex movie: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/revealed-christian-group-netflix-spring-break-sex/

Limiting society's exposure to adult content: https://www.xbiz.com/news/256502/lindsey-graham-admits-goal-is-to-limit-societys-access-to-porn

Stereotypica, fear mongering anti-trafficking show: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-slavery-porn-trfn/uk-slavery-museum-criticised-for-dehumanising-sex-trafficking-exhibition-idUSKBN28R2TU

Shady evangelical group linked to Trump: https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-exodus-cry-the-shady-evangelical-group-with-trump-ties-waging-war-on-pornhub

Anti-LGBT organization tried to scam people for donations, literally: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/11/melissa-mccarthy-exodus-cry-apology

The organization you will read about, used false stories to discredit PornHub. They are still using false stories. NCOSE, for example, is using false story against Twitter now. They claim that someone reported CSEM to Twitter's support, but the support refused to remve the content, because Twitter want to earn money from CSEM. This claim is not true. Twitter have one of the strictest anti-CSEM rules. The goal of these false claims and false lawsuit, is to pressure Twitter ban nudity entirely. This is what these organizations did to other social media platforms.

These organizations use false stores that rae debunked, but it seems that some people still believe. Im not going to share the proofs here, because my last post got deleted. If you are interested in this topic, feel free to ask for proofs on private messages.

This is everything i wanted to say. I hope i will see the death of religious in my lifetime. Religion is very dangerous for our freedom and human rights.

The most dangerous part of christianity, is the fact that christian fundamentalists spread misinformation about vaccines. They say that vaccines are dangerous, they lead to auism, and contain the Mark of The Beast. The fist 2 claims make a lot of people to refuse vaccination, which leads to more outbreaks such as meases. There are diseases that were on the edge of extiction, but these diseases are returning, because collective immunity is decreasing, because more people refuse vaccination.

Read mroe here: https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/l6kbv7/mark_of_the_beast_leads_to_vaccine_skepticism/

Thanks for reading my post. If you like it, upvote it. If i see people upvoting my posts, this would mean they like my posts. I will expose more hypocrisy about religion soon. If you want to hear something specific, comment what you want me to research, debunk, and expose.

Thanks.

#reddit

[phroyd]

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a governmentwide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law.

A series of decisions by the Obama administration loosened the legal concept of gender in federal programs, including in education and health care, recognizing gender largely as an individual’s choice and not determined by the sex assigned at birth. The policy prompted fights over bathrooms, dormitories, single-sex programs and other arenas where gender was once seen as a simple concept. Conservatives, especially evangelical Christians, were incensed.

Now the Department of Health and Human Services is spearheading an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government financial assistance, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times.

The department argued in its memo that key government agencies needed to adopt an explicit and uniform definition of gender as determined “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.” The agency’s proposed definition would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with, according to a draft reviewed by The Times. Any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.

“Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth,” the department proposed in the memo, which was drafted and has been circulating since last spring. “The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”

The new definition would essentially eradicate federal recognition of the estimated 1.4 million Americans who have opted to recognize themselves — surgically or otherwise — as a gender other than the one they were born into.

“This takes a position that what the medical community understands about their patients — what people understand about themselves — is irrelevant because the government disagrees,” said Catherine E. Lhamon, who led the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights in the Obama administration and helped write transgender guidance that is being undone.

The move would be the most significant of a series of maneuvers, large and small, to exclude the population from civil rights protections and roll back the Obama administration’s more fluid recognition of gender identity. The Trump administration has sought to bar transgender people from serving in the military and has legally challenged civil rights protections for the group embedded in the nation’s health care law.

Several agencies have withdrawn Obama-era policies that recognized gender identity in schools, prisons and homeless shelters. The administration even tried to remove questions about gender identity from a 2020 census survey and a national survey of elderly citizens.

For the last year, health and human services has privately argued that the term “sex” was never meant to include gender identity or even homosexuality, and that the lack of clarity allowed the Obama administration to wrongfully extend civil rights protections to people who should not have them.

Roger Severino, the director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services, declined to answer detailed questions about the memo or his role in interagency discussions about how to revise the definition of sex under Title IX.

But officials at the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed that their push to limit the definition of sex for the purpose of federal civil rights laws resulted from their own reading of the laws and from a court decision.

Mr. Severino, while serving as the head of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at the Heritage Foundation, was among the conservatives who blanched at the Obama administration’s expansion of sex to include gender identity, which he called “radical gender ideology.”

In one commentary piece, he called the policies a “culmination of a series of unilateral, and frequently lawless, administration attempts to impose a new definition of what it means to be a man or a woman on the entire nation.”

“Transgender people are frightened,” said Sarah Warbelow, the legal director of the Human Rights Campaign, which presses for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. “At every step where the administration has had the choice, they’ve opted to turn their back on transgender people.”

The Department of Health and Human Services has called on the “Big Four” agencies that enforce some part of Title IX — the Departments of Education, Justice, Health and Human Services, and Labor — to adopt its definition in regulations that will establish uniformity in the government and increase the likelihood that courts will accept it.

The definition is integral to two proposed rules currently under review at the White House: One from the Education Department deals with complaints of sex discrimination at schools and colleges receiving federal financial assistance; the other, from health and human services, deals with health programs and activities that receive federal funds or subsidies. Both regulations are expected to be released this fall, and would then be open for public comment, typically for 60 days. The agencies would consider the comments before issuing final rules with the force of law — both of which could include the new gender definition.

Civil rights groups have been meeting with federal officials in recent weeks to argue against the proposed definition, which has divided career and political appointees across the administration. Some officials hope that health and human services will at least rein in the most extreme parts, such as the call for genetic testing to determine sex.

After more than a year of discussions, health and human services is preparing to formally present the new definition to the Justice Department before the end of the year, Trump administration officials say. If the Justice Department decides that the change is legal, the new definition can be approved and enforced in Title IX statutes, and across government agencies.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the draft health and human services proposal. The Justice Department has not yet been asked to render a formal legal opinion, according to an official there who was not authorized to speak about the process.

But Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s previous decisions on transgender protections have given civil rights advocates little hope that the department will prevent the new definition from being enforced. The proposal appears consistent with the position he took in an October 2017 memo sent to agencies clarifying that the civil rights law that prohibits job discrimination does not cover “gender identity, per se.”

Harper Jean Tobin, the policy director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, an advocacy group, called the maneuvering “an extremely aggressive legal position that is inconsistent with dozens of federal court decisions.”

Health and human services officials said they were only abiding by court orders, referring to the rulings of Judge Reed O’Connor of the Federal District Court in Fort Worth, Tex., a George W. Bush appointee who has held that “Congress did not understand ‘sex’ to include ‘gender identity.’”

A 2016 ruling by Judge O’Connor concerned a rule that was adopted to carry out a civil rights statute embedded in the Affordable Care Act. The provision prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, age or disability in “any health program or activity” that receives federal financial assistance.

But in recent discussions with the administration, civil rights groups, including Lambda Legal, have pointed to other court cases. In a legal memo presented to the administration, a coalition of civil rights groups wrote, “The overwhelming majority of courts to address the question since the most relevant Supreme Court precedent in 1998 have held that antitransgender bias constitutes sex discrimination under federal laws like Title IX.”

Indeed, the health and human services proposal was prompted, in part, by pro-transgender court decisions in the last year that upheld the Obama administration’s position.

In their memo, health and human services officials wrote that “courts and plaintiffs are racing to get decisions” ahead of any rule-making, because of the lack of a stand-alone definition.

“Courts and the previous administration took advantage of this circumstance to include gender identity and sexual orientation in a multitude of agencies, and under a multitude of laws,” the memo states. Doing so “led to confusion and negative policy consequences in health care, education and other federal contexts.”

The narrower definition would be acutely felt in schools and their most visible battlegrounds: locker rooms and bathrooms.

One of the Trump administration’s first decisive policy acts was the rescission by the Education and Justice Departments of Obama-era guidelines that protected transgender students who wanted to use bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity.

Since the guidance was rescinded, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has halted and dismissed discrimination cases filed by transgender students over access to school facilities. A restrictive governmentwide definition would cement the Education Department’s current approach.

But it would also raise new questions.

The department would have to decide what documentation schools would be required to collect to determine or codify gender. Title IX applies to a number of educational experiences, such as sports and single-sex classes or programs where gender identity has come into play. The department has said it will continue to open cases where transgender students face discrimination, bullying and harassment, and investigate gender-based harassment as “unwelcome conduct based on a student’s sex” or “harassing conduct based on a student’s failure to conform to sex stereotypes.”

The Education Department did not respond to an inquiry about the health and human services proposal.

Ms. Lhamon of the Obama Education Department said the proposed definition “quite simply negates the humanity of people.”

Phroyd

#civil rights and liberties

[maximuswolf]

Religion shouldn't mess with porn and sex work via /r/atheism

Religion shouldn't mess with porn and sex work

DISCLAIMER: This post wont contain any links or evidence, because it might goes against the rules of Reddit. If you want to see evidence against the claims of the anti-porn movement, and evidence against the claims against sex work, send me DM. But im not going to share it publicly, because my post might get deleted. I will only share articles that are already public.

In the United States, totalitarianism is the form of government evangelical christians want. They want ultra-militarized police, which penalizez the expression of uncomfortable opinions, including LGBT+ people, women's rights, sex workers, etc... They want to control your sex life, restricting your practice and preference of partners.

There are a lot of religious organization that are funded by conservative groups (i wont share names). Their goal is to spread false claims against porn. They say that porn leads to increased violence against women, and increased human trafficking, but this is debunked by all official studies.

The goal of these religious organizations, is to spread fear-mongering narratives, so people can accept laws (bills) that are based on religious dogma. When these laws are being proposed, no one will tell you that these laws are based on religious dogma. They will always tell you that the laws are not based on religious dogma. The laws are worded in a way to make you to think that the laws are the ultimate solution to all problems.

These laws only restrict freedom. I have said it many times, and i will repeat it again: when lawmakers make laws, they must focus of science, not on religious beliefs, myths, and stereotypes.

EVERYTIME WHEN RELIGIOUS HAS POWER OVER LAW, IT RESULTS IN VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS!

All religious organizations that are making such laws, support the Nordic Model for sex work. They believe that restricting sex work will solve the problem of human trafficking. This is not true. Restricting sex work will drive sex work underground, which will lead to a lot of problems, including increased human traffcking.

When sex work is criminalized, no sex worker will call for help in case of violence, because of the fear of prosecution. This is very good argument for full decriminalization of sex work. All serious human rights organizations recommend full decriminalization o sex work, including W.H.O, UNAIDS, and Amnesty International. The Nordic Model is not supported by these and other organizations, including the U.N.

Religious people should understand that sex workers don't have to be repressed. Sex work is work like all other kinds of work. Everyone should be free to choose what to work. Stop trying to implement religious dogmas on everyone.

If you want to live in your Fantasy World with God and Earth and humans being the very special center of universe, that's fine... you are free to live in this Fantasy World - but don't try to force other people to live in this world, too. This is your work, we don't like it. I prefer to listen to science and objective truth.

This such as homophobia and xenophobia are mainly coming from religion. I'm not saying that only religious people are homophobes and xenophobes - there are non-religious people who are like this, too. The majority of xenophobes and homophobe are religiously motivated people. Violence against women is caused by the idea that women are something lower than males - this idea comes from religion, because in evolution, there is no such thing as higher and lower individuals.

Discrimination against LGBT+ people, immigrants, disabled people, is also caused mainly by religion. Religiously motivated discrimination against immigrants, is mainly caused by christian/evangelical nationalism. This kinds of nationalism is on the rise in the US. During the Trump's presidency, this kind of nationalism was on the rise, now, i hope that during the Biden's presidency this kind of nationalism will decrease.

Religion is harmful for human rights, because religion is trying to implement ideas that are NOT consistent with the way human body and mind evoveld.

Church and government have to be separated. Sex work and porn must be fully decriminalized. When lawmakes make laws regarding porn and sex work, they must focus on science, not on false religious beliefs, myths, and stereotypes.

There is no scientific evidence to indicate sex work and porn are causing problems,... yet, religous organizations say that porn and sex work are causing degradation of the brain, more violence, and more human trafficking. If this is true... if increased porn consumption leads to increased violence against women, and porn consumption is increasing, then why is violence against women decreasing?

There are some religious organizations that are the main players against porn and sex work. They spread misinformation and they are misrepresenting studies, so they can lie the public that porn and sex work are bad.

Here are some articles about there organizations. All information in the articles is legal. I don't own any of the articles.

The Siren Song of Exodus Cry: https://medium.com/@justinethalley/the-siren-song-of-exodus-cry-d507a594c05d

Fundamentalist organization and CEO homophobe behind anti-sex movie: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/revealed-christian-group-netflix-spring-break-sex/

Limiting society's exposure to adult content: https://www.xbiz.com/news/256502/lindsey-graham-admits-goal-is-to-limit-societys-access-to-porn

Stereotypica, fear mongering anti-trafficking show: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-slavery-porn-trfn/uk-slavery-museum-criticised-for-dehumanising-sex-trafficking-exhibition-idUSKBN28R2TU

Shady evangelical group linked to Trump: https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-exodus-cry-the-shady-evangelical-group-with-trump-ties-waging-war-on-pornhub

Anti-LGBT organization tried to scam people for donations, literally: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/11/melissa-mccarthy-exodus-cry-apology

The organization you will read about, used false stories to discredit PornHub. They are still using false stories. NCOSE, for example, is using false story against Twitter now. They claim that someone reported CSEM to Twitter's support, but the support refused to remve the content, because Twitter want to earn money from CSEM. This claim is not true. Twitter have one of the strictest anti-CSEM rules. The goal of these false claims and false lawsuit, is to pressure Twitter ban nudity entirely. This is what these organizations did to other social media platforms.

These organizations use false stores that rae debunked, but it seems that some people still believe. Im not going to share the proofs here, because my last post got deleted. If you are interested in this topic, feel free to ask for proofs on private messages.

This is everything i wanted to say. I hope i will see the death of religious in my lifetime. Religion is very dangerous for our freedom and human rights.

The most dangerous part of christianity, is the fact that christian fundamentalists spread misinformation about vaccines. They say that vaccines are dangerous, they lead to auism, and contain the Mark of The Beast. The fist 2 claims make a lot of people to refuse vaccination, which leads to more outbreaks such as meases. There are diseases that were on the edge of extiction, but these diseases are returning, because collective immunity is decreasing, because more people refuse vaccination.

Read mroe here: https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/l6kbv7/mark_of_the_beast_leads_to_vaccine_skepticism/

Thanks for reading my post. If you like it, upvote it. If i see people upvoting my posts, this would mean they like my posts. I will expose more hypocrisy about religion soon. If you want to hear something specific, comment what you want me to research, debunk, and expose.

Thanks.

Submitted January 31, 2021 at 03:02AM by MichioBu via reddit https://ift.tt/3cuwv6i

[canadianabroadvery]

Canada's Conservatives are “completely clued out” about the unpopularity of hard-right social policies and are essentially “campaigning against themselves,” two leading political commentators argued in an online panel discussion last Monday.

Answering questions from Canada's National Observer editor-in-chief Linda Solomon Wood, columnists Bruce Livesey and Sandy Garossino spent an hour tackling wide-ranging questions about why today's Canadian conservative movement has moved so far to the right, its hopes for retaking power in the face of an increasingly progressive populace, and how evangelical Christians and Big Oil got a stranglehold on the right.

“The social conservative base is enormously powerful,” Livesey told Solomon Wood and the audience of 100 participants on the Zoom webinar, part of Conversations, sponsored by Canada's National Observer. “The reason (leadership rivals) Peter MacKay and Erin O'Toole have taken the positions they're doing — which are ludicrous in terms of ever trying to get elected — is because the base has this enormous social conservative element. In order to win the leadership, you've got to pander to them.”

But that's precisely what has lost them repeated elections, and will only worsen their chances over time, he said.

Livesey — an award-winning investigative journalist with experience on CBC's flagship shows The Fifth Estate and The National, Global News' 16×9, and PBS's Frontline — most recently did an analysis on the state of the Conservatives for the National Observer entitled, How Stephen Harper is destroying the Conservative party.

He said he interviewed between 25 and 30 sources for his story, and other than a couple political scientists as experts, focused almost entirely on hearing from Conservative members past and present.

“I tried to basically interview just Conservatives … people within the party, both from when they used to be called the PC (Progressive Conservative) party all the way up to the current generation,” Livesey said. “There's a lot of people who wouldn't talk to me … It was a big challenge; given that I was going to talk to them about Stephen Harper, there seemed to be a bit of a concern.”

But some did want to talk, and could be broadly lumped into two camps: the long-ousted progressive wing of the party, once nicknamed “Red Tories”; and the more recent alumni and strategists of the Harper era.

“If you talked to the sort of Red Tories — the 'liberal' wing of the party — there was no surprise there that they think the party's stuck in a ditch,” Livesey said. “The more interesting thing was finding the younger generation who were around Harper in some capacity, who are beginning to realize — having lost two back-to-back elections — that something was wrong.”

What exactly is wrong, however, he found divisive amongst loyalists. Some expressed hope to find a better leader than Andrew Scheer to save their flagging fortunes. But others, Livesey said, had started to see problems in the party's offerings to voters altogether.

“That's the contradiction the party's in at the moment,” Livesey, author of the book Thieves of Bay Street, said. “The base just thinks, 'We just need the next Stephen Harper to lead us back into power.'

“Abortion and gay marriage — those are the two issues that get social conservatives all agitated, and they want to have something done about them. Harper was brilliant at keeping that element under a lock and key. Scheer was not … nobody trusted him on those issues. The social conservative base is an enormous problem for that party.”

Whoever wins the leadership of the party, Livesey predicted, must “basically ignore what the base is” if they want to win enough seats outside Alberta, the Prairies and rural Ontario.

Hard Right

Garossino, meanwhile, agreed that infighting over who can be the most hardline on divisive issues such as LGBTQ rights and abortion is only hurting the party more with each utterance and campaign plank.

The popular longtime columnist with Canada's National Observer spent years previously as a Crown prosecutor and trial lawyer and Vancouver community advocate. She is also a keen observer of Canadian and American political trends, admitting Monday she's a big nerd for electoral data and crunching riding numbers. While she and Livesey admitted few Tories are likely paying heed to this publication, they ought to at least pay attention to the dismal electoral data.

When it comes to hard-right social issues, the numbers don't lie.

“They're actually campaigning against themselves the more they play to that,” Garossino said. “It doesn't play in any of the areas that the federal Conservatives need to take power. They have got to get into the 905 — the (Greater Toronto Area) — and they've got to get into Quebec.”

According to the most recent polls, the Conservatives are indeed trailing behind the Liberals — despite Scheer's repeated attempts to portray Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a reckless spendthrift, contemptuous of accountability and the rule of law.

A new poll released June 28 by respected pollster Léger Marketing placed Liberals at 40 per cent support, double-digits ahead of Conservatives in voter intentions compared to the Tories' 28 per cent. (The survey of 1,524 Canadians gave the NDP 17 per cent support, the Bloc Québecois seven per cent, and Greens one point behind; the online poll's margin of error could be considered equivalent to 2.5 per cent.) The results mirrored another opinion survey last week.

But yet another poll by Ekos Research found an even starker divide when it comes to gender last week, with Liberals leading among women with a staggering 24 per cent lead over the Tories, which held a slight lead over the Grits among men.

Multi-poll aggregator 338Canada, meanwhile, ran 250,000 statistical election simulations using recent polls and predicted a 189-seat Liberal seat majority if an election were held now, with the Tories trailing at 94 seats (a party needs a minimum 170 seats to win a majority government).

But both Livesey and Garossino reminded participants in the Zoom event that key to electoral victory in Canada is commanding broad support across the most vote-rich, densely populated urban centres — particularly the Greater Toronto Area suburbs, Montreal, and B.C.'s Lower Mainland. It was a lesson former Prime Minister Stephen Harper understood despite his past social-conservative, Reform Party roots.

That's something Livesey believes the Conservatives have lost sight of completely. He has little hope the once-moderate stalwarts of the party will regain control any time soon because of the need to survive the hard-right base that serves as a gauntlet for would-be leaders.

“They're not taking into consideration the electoral math that plays into this,” he explained. “The Tories' base gets them about 30 per cent of the vote, but to win a minority, you need around 35, a majority around 40.

“That means you've got to convince ... the very seat-rich urban hubs like Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal … that you represent their interests. That is the programmatic problem with the party now. They have completely clued out to the fact that those voters don't want to vote for that particular platform.”

Stuck on Harper

In his June 25 analysis, Livesey argued former prime minister Stephen Harper remains the most powerful force in today's party, but may be, in fact, undermining “the very thing he created” as his successor Scheer steers the party sharply towards the far right on issues such as abortion and LGBTQ rights.

It's something Tory supporters should be extremely wary of, particularly as the far-right administration in the pandemic-gutted United States faces “potential devastation of unbelievable proportions because of the failure of this one man,” Garossino said. But the roots of the crisis go back decades to Reagan-era right-wing neoliberal movements, she and Livesey agreed, as billionaires and corporations were effectively handed the keys to power in the U.S.

Today, with tens of millions of unemployed losing their private health benefits, the chickens are now coming home to roost in that country.

“If you look at the trajectory, this is the sum result of a program that began in the '70s and '80s to, in effect, ensure the state did nothing for the average American citizen,” Livesey said. “(It marked) the end of the so-called welfare state — the New Deal type of government — and the capture of the state by largely the billionaire class.”

But although the Tea Party hasn't taken hold to the same extent north of the 49th parallel, similar hardline right movements have found sympathy in many parts of Canada.

Canadians, and particularly those loyal to the Conservative party, ought to worry about similar political movements here gaining any more foothold than they have. But it was actually Canada's Reagan-era Conservative leader who garnered some positive attention in Monday's online discussion.

Faced with a stark ideological choice today, Tories might look for inspiration — and success — to former PM Brian Mulroney.

“The PCs recognized they had to be a centre party to win power. The person most genius at figuring that out was Mulroney, he won two solid majorities … and destroyed the Liberals in Quebec. They had the 'big tent' approach, that social conservatives, Red Tories, environmentalists, people from all walks of life, fiscal conservatives, could all be under the same umbrella." Livesey said.

“It worked until it didn't work.”

Mulroney was also considered a leader on environmental issues, and even stalwart Conservative architect Tom Flanagan told Livesey he hoped for some critical Tory reflection on their climate change and carbon pricing policies.

“There is increasing awareness they have to be better on that front,” Livesey said, “even if it is in a very cynical way.”

But it's not just the evangelicals trying to steer the Tory ship. Another powerful force in the country has leveraged influence extremely effectively. Livesey and Garossino said other than the Tories' social conservative base, the party also has been held “hostage” by the oil industry lobby and some of Harper's former entourage, such as Jason Kenney, now Alberta premier.

Garossino has frequently commented on the state of Canada's Conservatives, most recently in her May 27 column, Stephen Harper's power dissolves, in which she argued that Harper continues to “control his chastened party” from the sidelines, but as “the right’s energy and narrative has been seized by Trumpian ideologues,” the Canadian electoral as moved on and is no longer interested.

Canada's Conservatives ought to ponder those trends carefully before selecting their next leader, Garossino said, but she's not hopeful.

“To get to be a contender nationally, you have to get past the base, which is far more conservative than the Canadian public,” she said. “They're almost fighting against themselves.”

Could the Red Tories stage a Mulroney-inspired comeback — and retake the reins from today's increasingly unpalatable oil and religious party wings? That remains to be seen.

#canpoli #consernative party of canada

[glittergummicandypeach]

Opinion: Trump acolyte DeVos steers more COVID-19 stimulus money to religion

Republicans found another means of enriching religion with taxpayer dollars meant to aid Americans suffering the horrid effects of Trump’s plague and economic devastation.

When filthy rich, and highly-unqualified, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos began her quest to shift all taxpayer dollars intended for public education to private, for-profit religious schools, evangelicals and Republicans were ecstatic. After all, money allocated to sustain small businesses ravaged by Trump’s plague and economic disaster was just recently handed over to churches and clergy even though those institutions pay no taxes because they claim they are not businesses.

Apparently it was not enough to use coronavirus stimulus dollars to support churches and clergy at the expense of struggling small businesses, so DeVos made sure that even more taxpayer dollars were given to private religious schools.

Particularly exciting to the evangelical Republican sect was DeVos’ stated intent that as Education Secretary she would reform the public education system to “advance god’s kingdom.” Of course her secondary goal was robbing funding intended for public schools to give for-profit corporate schools the keys to the education budget vault, but it is noteworthy that no small number of those private schools are founded and run by evangelicals.

DeVos’ theft of taxpayer dollars fulfills both of her goals and one can only imagine that the religious Republican cult and dirty Don Trump are celebrating another fleecing of the taxpayers; especially because the theft involves hurting the poor to advance religion.

When Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), it designated billions for public schools to be distributed to public school districts based on the number of low-income students they enroll. However, DeVos ignored the congressional mandate and issued a directive from the Department of Education ordering that the money belongs to private and religious school students; despite the fact that fewer than 5% of those children are poor.

Even before Trump single-handedly decimated the economy, children in low-income neighborhoods were disadvantaged because they, and their school districts, lacked the resources to participate in digital learning opportunities. Democrats in the House understood the dilemma and appropriated funds in the CARES stimulus bill to aid those students in low-income school districts with equipment and Internet access to continue learning while schools were closed.

Those funds, like the funds meant to assist small businesses suffering Trump’s economic disaster, were prime for theft by the likes of DeVos who seized on the opportunity to steal those funds and transfer them directly to private religious schools as an integral part of using taxpayer dollars to “advance god’s kingdom.”

It is noteworthy that DeVos is unabashed in declaring her intent to spend taxpayer dollars on private and religious schools at the expense of public schools. The evangelical extremist stated:

“There are not enough philanthropic dollars to fund the need of [private religious] education…versus what is currently being spent every year on public education…Our desire is to confront this culture in ways that will continue to advance God’s Kingdom.”

Although Republicans are wont to claim America was founded as a Christian nation and forcing taxpayers to fund religion is the intent of the Founding Fathers, nothing is farther from the historical truth. None other than Founding Father Thomas Jefferson stated emphatically that:

“No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever.”

Not only is handing out money allocated for small businesses to members of the clergy and their churches directly “supporting religious worship, place[s] or ministries,” sending taxpayer money to private religious schools is obviously supporting religious places and ministries.

Jefferson’s statement fits squarely with the rest of the Founding Fathers and Constitution’s Framers intent that the religious clauses in the First Amendment serve as “a wall of separation” between church and state. Since the rise of the so-called moral majority that concept has been systematically attacked and any pushback is treated as an attack on Christians’ religious liberty.

No-one denies religious people their liberty to worship as they please, but the idea of Republicans, especially Trump, supporting them with taxpayer money is a gross abomination as well as contrary to the Founders’ intent in the First Amendment.

Allowing Republicans to give churches and clergy money allotted for “real businesses” who are struggling due to Trump’s economic catastrophe is beyond cruel, but it is unconscionable that Trump’s Education Secretary is taking money allotted for low-income public schools and giving it to private religious schools.

The real tragedy is there is hardly any pushback from the people because for some bizarre reason too many Americans still consider it a mortal sin to utter an unflattering word about Republicans handing taxpayer dollars to the evangelical (Christian) religion. For dog’s sake, it is a horror that Republicans are willingly allowing them to shape domestic policy, but it is an atrocity that Republicans are granting them nearly unfettered access to taxpayers’ money.

Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.

Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn’t look good.

Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.

This content was originally published here.

[yangkcrystal]

At the Table - CT

We are a part of the Church, the Bride of Christ—called to exude the image of God and be His witnesses in a world so broken. Nevertheless, we are also humans who are tainted with the sin of Adam. This is one crucial piece that we often forget when we are filled with the Holy Spirit. We forget that we are still sinful and are capable of evil if we just simply…let go.

So then why have we become so judgmental of the one who God has placed at the headship of the United States of America? Do we trust that God is still sovereign in who and what He commands creation to do? Even in President Trump’s divisive comments, we must trust that through his mouth and actions, God’s truth abounds to His glory (Romans 3:7). Like many people today, I had immense doubts for Trump when he was only a candidate. In fact, I voiced my opinion many times on social media during the tenure of the Presidential Race. My doubts had not changed about Trump when he became President, but my attitude and respect did change because He is the President. Whether we like it or not. 

We create blind spots for ourselves when our doubts, attitude and respect for someone is on the adverse end of the spectrum. Unfortunately, that is exactly what America has done. It is indisputable that we ought to bring wisdom and beautiful storytelling both to the church and from the church to the world. It is certain that politics matter, yet will never bring the dead back to life. But I ask, how is the church bringing wisdom and telling stories in light of who God has placed as the head of America? 

The Trump Administration has done more goodness to Christian witness than it has “wrought enormous damage”. Christians can again witness to children in welfare programs (WJS.com); persecuted Christians [and missionaries] are being sought out for by the Administration for protection around the world (americamagazine.org); VA facilities have access to religious freedoms again such as religious symbols, Bibles, and spiritual and pastoral care (VA.gov); and, these are just a few of many more Christian witness pursuits. We can witness because of the Trump’s pro-religious due diligence. So, I echo the words of Paul again from Romans 3:7, God’s truth abounds to His glory no matter an individual’s lie, hostile actions, or divisive comments. This is a call-to-action; let us not allow Trump’s past and present sin become a veil to God’s goodness in the Christian community.

If you are interested, I’ve included a few of my responses to the notions articulated in Christianity Today’s article, The Flag in the Whirlwind: An Update from CT’s President.

CT: It has harmed African American, Hispanic American, and Asian American brothers and sisters.

I’m not sure I see where the current Administration has harmed people of color. Unemployment for African American, Hispanic, and Asian American has decreased significantly, wherein the unemployment rate is at an all time low. His support from people of color has doubled because of the new policies he has passed, and old policies he’s reformed. The media tells us the Administration has hurt people of color, but in reality, he has created opportunities that benefited both the private and public sector, and people of color. Just to name a few, First Step, HBCU, and Opportunity Zones.

On the contrary, the policies Obama's Administration and previous Democrats have passed has hurt the minority population significantly. Just research how Asian-Americans and Black-Americans are being marginalized and failed by the policies; its details are staggering.

CT: And it has undercut the efforts of countless missionaries who labor in the far fields of the Lord.

I wished the President of CT provided data on how he came to the conclusion that missionaries were being undercut in their efforts. His statement may be coming from a stance that is only a collective, not factual. After Christianity Today posted their article, one author, Dr. Michael, came out with this data: 17% of missionaries working overseas have said supporting Trump hurts their witness, while the remainder 84% stated it did not. Even for missionaries in West Africa, their support for Trump impacted them at 0%--so on and so forth to Nigeria, New Zealand, all the way down to Australia (Askdrbrown.org). So are American missionaries really hurt by Trump's presidency? Overall, no. To use the lesser data and speak to it as a whole, is similar to Planned Parenthood's method of using their low mammogram stat as their primary care.

The problem is that we as evangelicals are also associated with President Trump’s rampant immorality, greed, and corruption; his divisiveness and race-baiting; his cruelty and hostility to immigrants and refugees; and more. In other words, the problem is the wholeheartedness of the embrace. It is one thing to praise his accomplishments; it is another to excuse and deny his obvious misuses of power.

This is a great point, and though I do agree to some extent on this statement. However, I want to remind us that we are all sinners who are prone to immorality, greed, and corruption. “It is one thing to praise his accomplishments; it is another to excuse and deny his obvious misuses of power.” I want to see the evidence of his misuse of power. I am the type of person to listen to full hearings from the Senate, House, Court, and even press conferences. If there is any misuse of power, it is the mainstream media. With their greed, they create corrupt narratives to fit their propaganda—both the left and the right media.

In regard to cruelty and hostility to immigrants and refugees, there is no intentional cruelty or hostility. If there is, it is amongst the lower line of command. In Trump’s Administration there has been less inhumane treatment since Obama and his predecessors. Before Trump, immigrants were brutally deported at a rate 3 times higher. They were housed like chickens in a coop; not only that, tear gas and other aggressive methods were used to maintain the number of incoming immigrants. Cruelty and hostility will exist for as long as sin exists in this world.

Bottom line, there is no problem with evangelicals associating themselves with President Trump. We must ask ourselves if we are doing justice to God if we support the latter, or remain in silence as the Bride of Christ. How will our Christian witness be perceived if we supported someone who stood against all our Christian values? Should we stand idly by and watch our religious liberties be stripped away by remaining silent--how then would we witness? I want nothing more but for the church to exude Christ, in hopes that we may restore our country in the likeness of Hezekiah and the many other faithful doers of justice.

CY

#Christianitytoday #presidenttrump #trumpadministration