Another Religious Liberty Victory … This Time in WA State

Atheists … masquerading as a so-called Satanist Temple group … recently ended its after-school program at Point Defiance Elementary School in Tacoma, Washington (WA). 

The after-school Satan club ceased meeting soon after teachers from the Seattle Satanic Temple offered their first meeting in December 2016.  Apparently, only one child joined the club.  The group states that its purpose is to target the districts where Good News Clubs meet after school.  The Good News Clubs are sponsored by Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF).

The Tacoma School Board’s decision of last year to allow the Satanist club drew protests from parents who asked school officials to ban it.  

The Satanic Temple is an atheist organization known for controversial publicity stunts proclaiming it is a Satanic group in order to scare school boards into blocking access to the Good News Clubs.  The after-school Satan club promotes evolution, gender confusion, and abortion to club attendees.

Good News Clubs are for children ages 5-12 and teach morals and character development from a Christian viewpoint.  In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Good News Clubs have a 1st Amendment right to meet on campus after school.  Liberty Counsel (LC) represents CEF nationwide and has never lost a CEF case.

Thank God for Christians (like the Tacoma parents) and legal firms (like LC) who take stands for our constitutional right of religious liberty!

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

A Farmer’s Religious Liberty Victory in MI

A farmer in Michigan (MI) has won a court battle against the city of East Lansing, MI which had denied him the right to sell his vegetables at a local farmer’s market because of his biblical views on marriage.  [I wrote about this case in a previous blog posting of Monday, June 12, 2017 – “Unless You Affirm Same-Sex Marriage, You Can’t Sell Produce”]. 

City officials developed a new vendor’s rule after Steve Tennes of Country Mill Farms posted on his Facebook page that he believes in the biblical view of marriage of being only between a man and a woman.  In addition, he had not allowed his farm - a popular wedding spot - to be used to host same-sex “weddings” … a stance the city said violated its civil rights ordinance.

Tennes was represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) legal firm.  His lawyer, Kate Anderson, says, “just like all Americans, a farmer should be free to live and speak according to his deeply held religious beliefs without fear of government punishment.”  The attorney says the court found that East Lansing officials changed their market policy to shut out Tennes because they don’t like his Catholic beliefs regarding marriage. Anderson says the court was right to issue this order, which now will allow Tennes and his family to return to selling his produce at the 2017 farmer’s market while his case moves forward.

Thank God for Christians (like Tennes) and legal firms (like ADF) who take stands for our constitutional right of religious liberty!

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

This NDAA Transgender Amendment Must Die

Out of the hundreds of amendments proposed to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the defense policy bill on the floor of the U.S. Senate, one amendment put forth by Senators Kristin Gillibrand (D) and Susan Collins (R) has stood out in particular.  It captured the media’s attention for two reasons:

First, these senators have now charged into the debate over how to craft policy addressing people who identify as transgender.

And second, these senators have linked arms across the aisle to directly oppose President Trump’s ban on transgender persons in the military.

The problem with the Gillibrand-Collins proposal to prohibit “discrimination on the basis of gender identity” in the military is that they create a whole new set of problems by mischaracterizing concerns about the military’s affirmation of transgender identity.  Just vague enough to sound harmless, this portion of the Gillibrand-Collins amendment purports to outlaw discrimination against current service members “solely on the basis of the member’s gender identity.”

Much like the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) laws popping up around the country, the Gillibrand-Collins amendment makes “gender identity” into a protected class within the military.  This action would legally equate gender identity, which is subjective and unverifiable, with objective and unchangeable traits like race.

Gillibrand and Collins’ proposed “solution” completely ignores the fact that the military doesn’t actually care about its members’ gender identities.  The military is not the thought police.  The military does care about the consequences of trying to change oneself into something one is not.  This includes the host of privacy concerns for female service members who wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing close sleeping and bathing quarters with anatomical males; protections for doctors and psychiatrists who don’t think that sex reassignment is a good way to treat gender dysphoria; religious freedom protections for chaplains who don’t believe in affirming a transgender lifestyle; and of course all of the money spent on sex reassignment surgery and cross-sex hormone therapy for members who are then unable to deploy for well over 200-days.

A transgender Army veteran even notes the unfairness of a biological male identifying as a woman then outperforming the biological females in physical fitness tests, which then affects the promotion system.

As others have noted, the most important issue at stake here is whether recruiting and retaining transgender service members hurts or helps military readiness.

While it is true that our military needs more personnel to serve, and respects the bravery of anyone who wants to make that sacrifice, there are many, many medical conditions that disqualify well-intentioned volunteers from serving.  Asthma and diabetes, for example, are conditions that would hinder a member’s ability to deploy, fight, and win in the commonly harsh battlefields; where there is no room in the medic bag for injections, and no ready treatment for asthma attacks.

Moreover, the higher levels of psychological distress among people who identify as transgender should be taken seriously before admitting them into military life.  As the director of the Center for National Defense at The Heritage Foundation put it recently:

“Some studies report that transgender individuals attempt suicide and experience psychological distress at rates many times the U.S. national average.  To be clear, this is self-reported data, not data gleaned from rigorously controlled, clinical tests.  But at this time, these survey results are the best available data.  It would be both irresponsible and immoral to place such individuals in a position where they are exposed to the additional extraordinary stresses and pressures of the battlefield.”

In other words, our military’s duty to spend resources in a manner that best protects our country — as well as the privacy, professional, conscience, and religious rights of many more service men and women — will be branded as discrimination on the basis of gender identity and thrown out the window.  

This is exactly what is happening across the country under similar SOGI laws.  These laws do not stop real discrimination against people who identify as transgender.  They only criminalize and stigmatize good people who are caught in the crosshairs when a man tries to live as if he were a woman and a woman tries to live as if she were a man.

If Republican senators are wise, they will not even let this amendment come to a vote. Should they be as spineless as the 24-Republican representatives who voted against Rep. Hartzler’s amendment to stop the Pentagon from paying for controversial sex-reassignment surgeries, they will be attaching a dangerous provision to a must-pass bill — a provision that can turn thousands of good, intelligent, and faithful military members into the legal equivalent of racist bigots.

As Trump’s directive stated, Secretary of Defense Mattis is currently awaiting feedback from a study and military advisors before deciding how to address current service members who wish to live and work as the opposite sex.  Rather than allowing this reasonable policy process to proceed, the Gillibrand-Collins amendment would suppress debate and lock the military into harmful policy.  [read my blog posting of Friday, August 11, 2017 – “Trump’s Transgender Ban in Military is Unfair, But Correct”]

So far, the media has gleefully headlined this amendment as a bipartisan one in order to make it seem less controversial than it really is — and the GOP Senate would be absolutely foolish to believe this spin.  When the people who put President Trump in office see these headlines, however, they read that Republicans are joining the Democrat crusade to obstruct the mandate they gave to Trump and his agenda.  New reports on Trump voters are emerging all the time, and two very clear conclusions can be drawn: (1) President Trump is still more popular than Congress, and (2) the future of the Republican Party lies with social conservatives, not moderate sell-outs.

For those Republican senators who can’t yet bring themselves to face this fact, it will be best if they don’t even allow this Gillibrand-Collins amendment to come to a vote, lest they go on record voting for this anti-Trump, anti-American, anti-freedom, anti-common sense amendment.  If they do, though, we’ll have their names.

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

HBI Ordered by CA’s BRN to Stop Teaching How to ‘Reverse’ Abortion

If there was any doubt about California’s status as the nation’s standard-bearer for abortion, a letter sent September 5 by the state’s Board of Registered Nursing (BRN) should clear that up.  Acting at the behest of abortion activists in the state legislature and online media, BRN reversed its decision from just a month prior, sending Heartbeat International (HBI) a letter to demand that the pro-life pregnancy help network “cease and desist” offering nurses continuing education units (CEUs) for Abortion Pill Reversal classes.

Nationally, over 350-physicians have joined the Abortion Pill Reversal network; while some 300-mothers have successfully rescued their children from abortion through this medical intervention which introduces an emergency and ongoing progesterone treatment to counteract the first of two pills in the chemical abortion (RU-486) process.

The BRN’s sudden reversal seems a direct effort to deny a woman access to her own choice during an unexpected pregnancy, said HBI President Jor-El Godsey.  “This is a naked political assault on a procedure that is the very essence of choice,” Godsey said. “To oppose Abortion Pill Reversal is not only to deny the science and reality that there are children living today because of it, but it’s to materially keep a woman from even so much as knowing she has the option to potentially stop a chemical abortion once it has begun. This is the abortion lobby taking choices away from women.”

The letter, postmarked September 5 and received September 11, gives HBI 5-days from receipt of the letter to remove CEU credit from its online courses … offered online through the Heartbeat Academy.  It also marks a 180-degree shift from a letter the same BRN sent HBI and sister pro-life network, National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA), approving both organizations’ status as a continuing education providers.

The original letter, sent July 28, 2017, followed a 17-month period where the BRN reviewed hundreds of pages of submitted documentation starting in February 2016.  No subsequent paperwork or filing of any kind was requested prior to or cited in the most recent letter.

The BRN had originally questioned HBI’s inclusion of Abortion Pill Reversal courses during the audit process, but then agreed to reinstate the courses after HBI responded with a multi-point statement demonstrating the courses’ relevance to nursing practices.

While HBI is complying with the letter’s demand to remove CEU credit from its online Abortion Pill Reversal courses, the courses will still be activated while the organization appeals the BRN’s latest decree.  “How the Board of Nursing can play politics with the lives of women and children is beyond me,” Godsey said.  “If there were any hint of noncompliance on our part, it’s clear a 17-month audit would have uncovered it.  What could possibly have changed in one month’s time?  Meanwhile, nurses across California and the nation could be presented with patients who want to reverse their abortion decision before it is too late, and this new mandate prevents nurses from being prepared to serve their own patients.”

Meanwhile, radically pro-abortion media source Rewire.com reported September 8 — 3-days before HBI received the letter — that the letter had been sent.  The site had originally influenced San Francisco Bay Area Democrat State Senator Jerry Hill to call for the audit of HBI and others in early 2016.  After pushing the BRN to audit HBI — a nonprofit that serves 2,200 affiliates worldwide and operates a 24-7 pregnancy helpline, Option Line — Hill then proposed legislation that was eventually adopted by the state and signed into law in 2016 by Democrat Governor Jerry Brown that beefed up the requirements for nursing CEU providers.  That law, however — which mandated that courses rely only on “generally accepted scientific principles” — was insufficient to wield against the Abortion Pill Reversal courses.  Instead, the BRN cited California Code of Regulations (CCR) Section 1456 in its demand letter to HBI. 

Curiously, the section cited by the BRN pertains only to the need for courses to be “relevant to the practice of nursing,” differentiating between courses that deal with patient care (direct and indirect) and those which, “deal with self-improvement, changes in attitude, financial gain, and those courses designed for lay people … ”  Fitting that definition, HBI only offers CEU credit to nurses for Abortion Pill Reversal courses it offers online and at its annual conference.

HBI has been a California approved CEU provider since 2012, opting to go through California because the state’s CEUs are generally accepted throughout the U.S.  Since 2015, HBI has issued nursing CEUs to well over 400 nurses.

The BRN’s flip-flop fits into a larger pattern of the State of California’s targeting of political opponents who pose an alternative to abortion or otherwise threaten the abortion industry’s marketplace stranglehold.

In addition to pursuing charges against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt in response to their 3-year undercover work of exposing Planned Parenthood and others’ complicity in the trafficking of body parts harvested from aborted babies, the State of California also launched an assault on community funded pro-life pregnancy centers and medical clinics with a 2015 law that could be challenged at the U.S. Supreme Court in the near future.

Earlier this month, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by several California churches that are challenging the state’s Department of Managed Health Care requirement that all insurance companies cover the cost of their employees’ abortions.

“At this point, it’s hard to say we’re surprised by any effort to prop up the failing abortion industry,” Godsey said.  “But this is a direct effort to steal a mother’s choice right out from under her.  Women and men become nurses to help and serve others, but politically driven moves like this keep them from accomplishing their compassionate, God-given mission.”

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

SCOTUS Soon to Rule on One Man’s Conscience … Affecting Thousands of Others

At long last, Colorado baker Jack Phillips is heading to the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) to argue that the government shouldn’t force him to violate his religious beliefs … by making him create a wedding cake for an event he views as immoral (a same-sex 'marriage').

Phillips, who owns bakery Masterpiece Cake Shop, was fined by the State of Colorado for violating a non-discrimination law when he refused to design and bake a cake for a homosexual wedding in 2012.  He has said he didn’t refuse service to the two men who sued – he opposed the event they were involved in.  “I don’t do cakes for same-sex weddings,” he told the men.

The bakery owner’s case will be heard in October by SCOTUS, setting up a landmark decision that affects other Christian bakers, florists, photographers and others who have repeatedly lost their court fights while claims of illegal discrimination have won the day – so far - in front of judges.

Phillips has said he serves homosexual customers in his shop, meaning he doesn’t turn them away at the door, but he refuses to create bawdy cakes for bachelor parties, anti-American cakes, and demonic images for Halloween.  “If I was judging the people, I wouldn’t allow them in my store,” Phillips told FoxNews. 

In the FoxNews interview, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) attorney Kristen Waggoner was asked about Phillips’ recent appearance of the “The View,” where it was suggested by the left-wing hosts that Jesus would bake the cake for a homosexual wedding.  “That’s what this case is about.  If someone wants to make the cake because of their religious beliefs and their convictions, they should have the right to do that,” Waggoner said.  “Likewise, Jack should have the right to speak his messages and create his artistic expression that’s consistent with his beliefs.  And that’s what the First Amendment protects.”

Christian author and speaker Alex McFarland tells OneNewsNow that God expects Christians, including business owners, to follow their religious convictions and refuse to participate in evil.  “I would encourage Christians that they should – they really before God have the mandate, the expectation of the Lord and His Word, to stand against things that are blatantly ungodly and evil,” says McFarland.

Let’s pray that Godly wisdom will fall afresh upon SCOTUS justices as they make judgment on this one man’s conviction that affects thousands of other people of conscience.

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

FFRF Tells TN School to Stop Playing from Handle’s Messiah

The Freedom From Religion Foundation’s (FFRF) local chapter is angry after a teacher at Linden Elementary School (Oak Ridge, Tennessee) played a portion of the “Hallelujah Chorus” during morning announcements.

“While this music may be beautiful and even inspirational for Christians, it is not acceptable for broadcasting to the entire student body at Linden Elementary,” wrote Aleta Ledendecker on behalf of FFRF to the school district according to the Oak Ridger.

The aggrieved atheist group (FFRF) said they were acting on behalf of two parents who had children enrolled in the school.  “In consideration of all the possible choices of music, this piece with its distinctly religious content can be interpreted as proselytizing,” Ledendecker wrote.

For the record: There have not been any reports of children spontaneously converting to the Christian faith as a result of George Handel’s beautiful song.

“This is the litmus test I use: if I were a Christian parent walking in the school, and I heard over the PA system during morning announcements music with the words ‘Praise Allah. Allah is king on high.  Bow down to Allah,’ how would I feel as a Christian parent with that being broadcast to all the children in the schools,” Ledendecker told the Oak Ridger.

The school district told the Todd Starnes Show that a teacher had a good reason for playing a 20 second excerpt from Handel’s Messiah.  “The passage was selected to correspond with the school’s overall music curriculum that, for that particular week, featured the musical works of George Handel,” the school spokesperson told Starnes.  “The school system strongly disagreed with her [Ledendecker] position and, through our school board’s attorney, we responded promptly to the writer suggesting that she was in error,” the spokesperson told Starnes.  “The criticisms articulated by Ledendecker appear to have been based upon insufficient information taken entirely out of context, incorrect assumptions about the school’s music curriculum and a fundamental misunderstanding of the First Amendment’s relationship with historically sacred classical music compositions being taught in a public school music curriculum,” the spokesperson added.

It’s about time a school district stands up to these godless bullies and politely tells them to blow their horn elsewhere.  If Handel could speak, he would say, “Hallelujah!”

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

PA Beware! PP Wants to Set-Up Shop in Local H.S.

Parents in Pennsylvania (PA) are being warned to watch for attempts by Planned Parenthood (PP) to set up shop in the state’s high schools.

AccessMatters, a PP affiliate, had sought since last August to convince officials in Reading PA to grant permission to set up a PP-run counseling center in Reading High School.  Parents and others knowledgeable of the abortion giant’s sex-ed program turned out in force, and the school board voted 5-4 against it.

Diane Gramley of the American Family Association (AFA) of PA says while the center wouldn’t have offered abortions, it could have facilitated them quite easily.  “The Planned Parenthood there in Reading is only two miles from the school,” Gramley points out.  She contends that for questions or concerns the in-school center couldn’t handle, students would almost certainly be referred to the PP right down the road from Reading High.  Although the proposal failed by a narrow vote, it could arise again – so Gramley encourages residents to remain alert.  “This is the first school that I know of that’s been approached by AccessMatters or anyone affiliated with Planned Parenthood to allow abortion counselors in the schools,” Gramley says.  “I don’t see it as being the only one and it won’t be the last one.”  Gramley adds that parents should be concerned not only about such centers opening in high schools, but also about their being funded by tax dollars.

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

A Christian Ministry Sues over Labelling as ‘Hate Group’

The Christian pro-family organization of D. James Kennedy Ministries (DJKM) is filing a defamation lawsuit against the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for labeling it a “hate group.”

DJKM, formerly known as Coral Ridge Ministries, is among dozens of organizations opposing the LGBTQ agenda, radical Islam, and uncontrolled immigration that have been tarred as “hate” organizations by the SPLC … which is now receiving millions of dollars in new funding in the wake of the recent racial violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.  These dozen organizations are listed alongside racist and anti-Semitic extremist groups like Aryan Nation and the Ku Klux Klan.

The lawsuit, filed August 10 in federal District Court in Alabama, charges the SPLC with “trafficking in false or misleading descriptions of the services offered under the Ministry’s trademarked name, and for defamation pursuant to Alabama common law arising from the publication and distribution of information that libels the Ministry’s reputation and subjects the Ministry to disgrace, ridicule, odium, and contempt in the estimation of the public.”  The lawsuit also names Amazon.com, AmazonSmile Foundation and GuideStar USA — organizations that have relied on the SPLC’s “hate” designation to effectively punish DJKM and other pro-family and conservative groups by labeling them as “hate groups” and thus ineligible for charitable donation programs.

After receiving much criticism, the charity-listing group Guidestar backpedaled and said it would stop designating conservative organizations as “hate groups” based on the SPLC’s jaundiced characterization, as LifeSiteNews reported in June.

The DJKM civil suit appeals to the federal Lanham (Trademark) Act and asks for a permanent injunction enjoining the SPLC and its allies from disseminating the “hate group” declaration against the Christian ministry.  It also asks for monetary “punitive damages” from the SPLC, Guidestar and the Amazon affiliates for re-publishing the “hate group” designation “with knowledge that the matter published was false, or with reckless disregard of whether the matter was false.”

The DJKM civil suit further states, “The mission of the [DJKM] Ministry is to proclaim the Gospel upon which this nation was founded, to teach and nurture the followers of Jesus, to equip and encourage believers, and to defend religious liberty.  Nowhere in the purpose or action of the Ministry is there HATE or any room for HATE.”

SPLC endangers Christians such as when they designated the pro-family Family Research Council (FRC) as a “hate group.”  On August 15, 2012, a gun-wielding LGBT activist named Floyd Lee Corkins targeted employees at FRC’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., for mass-murder; but was thwarted by the heroic actions of building manager Leo Johnson.  Corkins, now serving a 25-year jail sentence for domestic terrorism, told the FBI that he found FRC through the “Southern Poverty Law [Center] lists [of] … anti-gay groups.”

In a statement, DJKM said the SPLC has “descended into a political attack machine, plastering the ‘hate’ label not only on legitimate hate groups, but also on anyone who disagrees with their far-Left political persuasions.  It is intellection and morally dishonest to group mainstream Christian ministries with neo-Nazis and violent militias — yet this is exactly what the SPLC does, and news media reporting uncritically parrots them.”

“Unfortunately, we live in a world where many people never get past the news headline or the sound bite.  But no one should be confused by the SPLC’s rank, rhetorical deception. Theirs is nothing more than a poorly disguised effort to stifle religious speech, while padding their sizable coffers,” said DJKM’s CEO Frank Wright in a separate statement.  By the “SPLC’s flawed and libelous criteria, both Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, Jr. were haters too — simply because their devout Christian convictions guided their views on human life, human sexuality, and marriage,” Wright said.  “The SPLC should be ashamed of themselves.  Sadly, they are not.”

Such so called ‘news media’ like CNN continues to publish its “hate map” listings (originating from SPLC) as if it is an accurate and impartial listing of extremist groups.

While I’m truly sorry for what’s happening to DJKM … for whom I have the highest regard … I’m saddened that my preaching and publications have not awarded me the same designation.  I guess I need more readers and listeners of my ministry for Christ.

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

What Do Atheists Get in PA When They Demand 10-Commandments Display Taken Down? Thousands More!

Atheists excited that the Ten Commandments display will no longer be seen may have only temporary cause to celebrate, because it looks like they’ll be seeing the display in thousands of other places around the community instead.  Three Pennsylvania churches have responded to the removal of a Ten Commandments display on public high school property by distributing 1,500 signs that feature God’s famed rules for humanity.

Debate raged earlier this year when the New Kensington-Arnold School District removed the Ten Commandments display from Valley High School; but three churches — Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Church of North Huntingdon, St. Agnes Church of North Huntingdon and Immaculate Conception Church of Irwin — decided to take action, reports The Christian Post.  These churches handed out signs featuring the Ten Commandments all over town to residents who were interested in taking a stand on the dispute by placing placards in their yards.

Father John Moineau of Immaculate Conception and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton told The Christian Post that he felt it was a good opportunity for people to defend religious freedom; but he offered up two additional explanations:

“The second reason was to awaken the natural law that has been written on every human heart and resonating in each soul,” he said.  “In the face of relativism society needs to know that these truths are loving truths that lead to harmony, happiness and the fullness of life.

The third reason, Moineau said, was to offer a reminder to every person who saw the signs that God commands people to love others, to show mercy and to remember a “merciful God that forgives.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), an atheist activist group, claimed victory earlier this year after the New Kensington-Arnold School District announced plans to remove the 6-foot Ten Commandments display.  “The federal lawsuit was victoriously settled on February 15, 2017, when the school district agreed to remove the Ten Commandments marker, and pay attorneys’ fees of $163,500, of which more than $40,000 will go to FFRF for its attorney time and reimbursement of costs,” read a statement on the FFRF website.

The legal battle touched off in September 2012 when the FFRF wrote a letter telling the district that the monument was illegal.  Officials responded by defending its presence, which led to a legal back and forth that didn’t conclude until the atheist group finally won a settlement earlier this year.

TribLIVE.com has more on the history:

“In a highly-publicized case, a monument with the Ten Commandments was moved in October 2015 from outside Connellsville Area Junior High to the Connellsville Church of God, which is adjacent to the entrance of Connellsville Area Senior High School.  The monument was boarded up in 2012 after the Freedom From Religion Foundation filed a lawsuit on behalf of a student in the district.  That battle over the monument’s location spawned a Thou Shall Not Move organization that opposed moving the monument from where it had been since 1957.”

For now, the battle is over, but the presence of the Ten Commandments on private property is more pronounced than ever.

To the FFRF – Be careful what you ask for … for you’ve now multiplied a single Ten Commandments monument by the thousands!

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

SC Defunds Abortion Providers like Planned ‘Murderhood’

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (Republican) issued an executive order last week preventing abortion facilities from receiving any state or local money.  McMaster’s order means that South Carolina won’t provide funds “via grant, contract, state-administered funds, or any other form” to any physician or doctor’s office affiliated with an abortion facility.  This applies to “any physician or professional medical practice affiliated with an abortion clinic and operating concurrently with - and in the same physical, geographic location or footprint as - an abortion clinic,” according to the governor’s office.

The executive order notes that there are “a variety” of places women can access healthcare that doesn’t include abortion.  “The State of South Carolina has a strong culture and longstanding tradition of protecting the life and liberty of the unborn,” the order says.  It asks that South Carolina Medicaid petition the federal government for permission to take abortion facilities out of its provider network, which would further defund abortion entities.

Even though Medicaid can’t technically fund abortions in most states, taxpayer funding from it can go to other “services” at abortion facilities, enabling them to stay in business. 

“Abortion providers often focus primarily on abortion-related services and procedures,” the order acknowledges.  “There are a variety of agencies, clinics, and medical entities in South Carolina that receive taxpayer funding to offer important women’s health and family planning services without performing abortions,” said McMaster.  “Taxpayer dollars must not directly or indirectly subsidize abortion providers like Planned Parenthood.”

The South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Health and Environmental Control will publicly list all qualified non-abortion women’s health and family planning providers operating within a 25-mile radius of any abortion facility excluded from the state’s Medicaid provider network.

The Associated Press called McMaster “one of Donald Trump’s earliest backers.”  It reported that Planned Parenthood (PP) received “about $300,000 in combined state and federal Medicaid funding for non-abortion services” in South Carolina between 2010-2015.

In April 2017, President Trump signed a law allowing states to defund PP.  PP is America’s largest abortion business.  It commits over 300,000 abortions (annually) and has been involved in a number of high-profile scandals, including the sale of aborted baby parts, covering up child sex abuse, and accepting racist donations.

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

Time to Turn the Tables on ‘Tolerance’

Students and parents at Auburn High School are turning the tables on liberal snowflakes by demanding that the school remove a homosexual-friendly rainbow flag from a teacher’s classroom.  The demand comes at the same time that Leftists are defacing and tearing down Civil War memorials, and also attacking monuments honoring our Founding Fathers – in the name of diversity and tolerance.

The ‘tolerance’ promoted by the Left is often reserved solely for their views, however; so a petition to remove the rainbow flag at Auburn High School states that it’s “unprofessional for a teacher to so openly express and subject students to his or her personal political views.”

The high school teacher, referred to as Mrs. Yeager in the petition, leads a diversity-promoting club known as EDUCATE at the high school, FoxNews reported.

“Of course flying an LGBT activist rainbow flag in the classroom creates a hostile and provocative learning environment,” observes Americans for Truth leader Peter LaBarbera, whose organization exposes homosexual activism.  “So I’m glad these students are adopting the tactics of the Left to at least make the classroom neutral.”

The petition also turns the tables on liberals since it uses website change.org that often serves as a rallying point for liberal demands about gun control and climate change.

It’s unlikely the petition will bring down the rainbow flag, of course, but LaBarbera says the point is to push back against a left-wing movement that attacks public displays of faith and conservative politics while proclaiming diversity and tolerance.

FoxNews reported 2-years ago that 9th graders at a California high school were grilled by the school’s Queer Student Alliance about their personal views – and their parents’ views - on homosexuality.  What parents and students described as grilling and indoctrination were defended as a “tolerance workshop,” the school district superintendent told FoxNews.

OneNewsNow reported more recently on a Florida high school, where a lesbian teacher went unpunished for telling students to remove their religious jewelry and for decorating her classroom with pro-homosexual propaganda.

“I think there is such a rising resentment against the Left and its one-sided political correctness,” LaBarbera says.  “I think people are tired of it.”

Amen to that!

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

CA School Makes News Again … Disciplining a 1st Grader for Wrong Pronoun

I posted a blog about this school last week [August 28 – “A Celebration of a Kindergarten Student’s Transgender ‘Transition’ Makes Parents Livid and Kids Traumatized”].  Now this same California charter school (Rocklin Academy) has sent a 1st grader to the principal’s office after she accidentally “mis-gendered” a transgender classmate in what’s being called a “pronoun mishap.”

This latest incident occurred during the 1st week of school when a 1st grader came across a classmate on the playground.  She called the student by his given name – apparently unaware that the boy now identified as a girl.

“This innocent little first grader sees a classmate, calls him by the name she knew him last year and the boy reports it to a teacher,” says Capitol Resource Institute’s (CRI) Karen England.  “The little girl gets in trouble on the playground and then gets called out of class to the principal’s office.”  [CRI is a California-based public policy group that specializes in strengthening families.  They are working with a number of parents at Rocklin Academy upset about the LGBT agenda being forced on their children.]

England said the 1st grader was investigated by the principal to determine whether or not she had bullied the transgender child by calling him by his original name.  After about an hour it was determined the little girl made an honest mistake and she was not punished or reprimanded.  But she was terribly traumatized by the incident, England said.  “The daughter came home from school upset and crying – saying, ‘Mommy, I got in trouble at school today,’” said England.

The little girl’s mother, who asked not to be identified, immediately contacted the school to find out what had happened.  “She was told that whenever there is a pronoun mishap with this biological boy who now claims to be a girl – the school must investigate,” England said.  The mother said, “It makes me sad that my daughter felt like she was punished for trying to be kind to the kid.”

England said Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a nationally-known religious liberty law firm, is currently investigating the playground incident as well as the classroom lesson on gender identity.  “Our focus is on ensuring that every student’s privacy is protected and that parental rights, including the right to be notified that before children are exposed to gender identity teaching, are respected by the school officials,” said an ADF spokesman.

What’s happening at Rocklin Academy is an example of how schools have become indoctrination grounds for the LGBT agenda.  And one way to stop the indoctrination is for moms and dads to take a stand.  It may be unpleasant and it may be uncomfortable; but it’s well past time to stand up to these activist bullies.

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

A Call for Consistence in Destruction of Statues

In what amounts to a sad commentary on the state of our cultural degeneracy, it appears that we’ve decided the best solution to our social ills that we can muster is the violent destruction of stone statues.

Christian historian, David Barton, says the people calling for the removal of Confederate statues – which they see as symbols of a hateful, oppressive, and racist past – very well may be sowing seeds for an even more hateful future.  “It’s not that I have any strong affinity for sculptures or busts, nor am I of the opinion that many of those who receive them are worthy of such distinction.  But seeing social justice warriors ramp up their militancy by declaring jihad against a bunch of inanimate objects just proves to me that these people don’t have a clue how to really address the existential crisis facing our civilization.  I’m not even sure they know what the actual crisis is,” says Barton.

But desperate to “do” something, they become like the blind boxer hurling punches in the dark just hoping to land one.  Their allies in the equally clueless media shamelessly liken their efforts to the heroes of Normandy or the liberators of Baghdad – comparisons that are as unconscionable as they are ignorant.  Still, it is clear that toppling towers of dead men who once did bad things or thought bad things will be this era’s thundering contribution to making the world a better place is ridiculous.

Where is the intellectual consistency?  Margaret Sanger was a vile degenerate.  She believed in exterminating lesser human beings, inferior races, and the handicapped; and she set up a murderous organization called Planned Parenthood to do exactly that.  Her legacy is the lifeless bodies of tiny innocent infants thrown out in the garbage bins.  But she remains immortalized with a stone monument in the halls of the Smithsonian.

If statues must come down of a man like Robert E. Lee, whose complicated views on slavery at least included his labeling it a “moral and political evil in any country,” so must all public enshrinement of Sanger.  Her views on the “unfit” race, or “human weeds” that needed to be “cultivated” in her “Negro Project” weren’t nearly so ambiguous, after all.

And what about Charles Darwin?  If we’re so committed to rooting out and destroying white supremacy for the empty-headed idiocy that it is, why are there no riots and protests to remove the ramblings of Charles Darwin from our kids’ textbooks and the statues and exhibits we finance in his honor?  Darwin believed and wrote in “The Descent of Man” that dark-skinned Africans were inferior and closer to apes than Caucasians.  Darwin’s defenders always dismiss his latent racism by declaring that he was merely a “product of his time” … oddly not granting that same excuse to Confederate generals and southerners who lived at the exact same time.  

But if that’s the justification, it still doesn’t explain how former recruiter and Exalted Cyclops of the KKK, Democrat Senator Robert Byrd gets multiple statues.  This is a man who wrote in 1944:

“I shall never fight in the armed forces with a negro by my side ... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.”  It could be argued that most slave owners held black Americans in higher regard than Democrat icon Robert Byrd.  Yet to this point, his legacy has gone untouched by the social justice militants.  Why?

And this is only the beginning of course.  Alfred Kinsey sexually molested and abused hundreds of infants, toddlers and Kindergarteners as he attempted to induce them to orgasm in disgustingly depraved “sex studies.”  But no one is setting Indiana University on fire despite it honoring his perverted legacy with an entire institute.

And we could go on and on.  

Listen: Every human is fallen and in some degree reflects the sinful spirit of their age. This seems to leave us with two options:

First, we can move in the direction where we reject the idea of building monuments to honor any man, expect the only One (Jesus, the Christ) to ever live who is actually worthy of our honor. 

Or, we could begin collectively teaching and understanding that monument and statue building can be less about worshipping individuals who are every bit as flawed, abhorrent, and sinful as we are; and more about acknowledging and remembering the part key figures played in our country’s epic struggle to create a “more perfect union.”

I’m for the second option.  How about you?

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel