A federal institution, the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum, just kicked out an entire group of pro-life students and their chaperones simply for having a pro-life religious message on their hats. It’s absolutely outrageous, it’s unconstitutional discrimination, and the ACLJ is fighting back.

Last Friday, students from a Catholic school in Greenville, South Carolina, traveled to Washington, D.C., to participate in the National March for Life. After the event, they went over to explore the nearby Smithsonian Air & Space Museum. Once in the museum, they were accosted several times and told they would be forced to leave unless they removed their pro-life hats. The group all wore the same blue hat that simply said, “Rosary PRO-LIFE.” Other individuals in the museum were wearing hats of all kinds without issue.

The museum staff mocked the students, called them expletives, and made comments that the museum was a “neutral zone” where they could not express such statements. The employee who ultimately forced the students to leave the museum was rubbing his hands together in glee as they exited the building. We here at the ACLJ are absolutely appalled at this blatant discrimination and won’t let this behavior stand.

Read more at: aclj.org

CV NEWS FEED // As civil unrest gripped the country in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in May 2020, Catholic churches were not exempt from mobs that destroyed property in cities across America. But while the riots and looting mostly died down in the summer of 2020, the attacks on Catholic churches have continued and escalated.

Since civil unrest began on May 28, 2020, there have been at least 281 attacks against Catholic churches in the United States, including arson attacks which damaged or destroyed historic churches; spray-painting and graffiti of satanic messages; rocks and bricks thrown through windows; and statues destroyed (often with heads cut off). A new spate of at least 124 attacks has occurred since the draft Supreme Court opinion proposing to reverse Roe v. Wade was leaked in early May 2022, with many including graffiti with pro-abortion messages. Crucially, while a handful of the attacks have included thefts, the vast majority have only involved property destruction, indicating that the primary motive is not material gain.

The attacks on Catholic churches have been widespread across the country, affecting 42 states plus DC. The states with the most attacks are California (42), New York (28), Pennsylvania (19), Texas (15), Colorado (14), New Jersey (14), Massachusetts (12), Florida (11), Washington (11), and Oregon (10). Hotspots with large clusters of attacks include New York City (25) and the metro areas of Denver (13); Los Angeles (13); San Francisco/Bay Area (11); Washington, D.C. (10); Boston (10); Portland, Oregon (9); Seattle (7); Chicago (6); and Houston (5). Some of the churches have been attacked multiple times.

Read more at: catholicvote.org

St. Joseph Medical Center in Baltimore violated Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (the anti-discrimination provision of Obamacare) by refusing to perform a gender transition surgery in 2020, ruled a federal judge in the District Court of Maryland on Friday.

Judge Deborah Chasanow reasoned in Hammons v. UMMS that the Catholic hospital system discriminated against a transgender-identifying woman by cancelling a surgery to remove her uterus once they learned that it was for gender dysphoria. “Defendants necessarily and intentionally relied on sex in creating and enforcing a policy that prohibits treatment if a patient’s medical need for that treatment is an incongruence between the patient’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth,” said the Clinton-appointed judge.

The opinion comes months after two circuit courts — the 8th Circuit and 5th Circuit — had ruled that Obamacare’s Section 1557 did not require Catholic hospital systems to perform gender transition procedures. However, several unusual facts could distinguish this ruling from those contrary decisions. The left-leaning 4th Circuit would hear any appeal from the District Court of Maryland.

Read more at: www.washingtonstand.com

Nearly all U.S. House Democrats voted against a resolution condemning attacks against anti-abortion facilities and churches. The vote came after a report was published showing violence escalated against churches and pro-life groups last year ahead of and after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

The House passed the measure Wednesday mostly along party lines. Three Democrats voted for it: Reps. Vicente Gonzalez of south Texas, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington.

The resolution “condemns recent attacks of vandalism, violence, and destruction against pro-life facilities, groups and churches” and “calls upon the Biden Administration to use all appropriate law enforcement authorities to uphold public safety and to protect the rights of pro-life facilities, groups, and churches.”

There have been at least 420 hostile acts committed against primarily churches in America over the past five years, according to the report published by the Family Research Council.

Read more at: justthenews.com

Mall of America security ordered a man to take off a “Jesus Saves” shirt, according to videos on social media.

A man wearing a “Jesus Saves” t-shirt was ordered by security to remove his shirt or leave the Mall of America last weekend, according to videos published on social media.

Some comments online have suggested that the man was eventually allowed to remain in the mall with his shirt on, but the Mall of America refused to provide any context or explanation when contacted by Alpha News.

The videos show a man talking with a group of three security guards near the mall’s rotunda. One of the videos was livestreamed to Facebook on Jan. 7.

“Jesus is the only way,” the back of the man’s shirt says, with the popular “coexist” symbol crossed out.

“Jesus is associated with religion and it’s offending people,” a security guard tells the man. “People have been offended.”

They then ask the man to either remove his shirt or leave the mall.

Read more at: alphanews.org

A 27-year-old transsexual has reportedly admitted to burning down a historic Korean church in Portland, Oregon, underscoring how he wanted to “take credit” for this act of apparent anti-Christian hatred.

What are the details?

The 118-year-old, 3,000-square-foot Portland Korean Church at Southwest 10th and Southwest Clay Street, formerly the First German Evangelical Church, was set ablaze around 5:30 p.m. on Jan. 3.

In response to multiple reports indicating that the structure was fast becoming an inferno, 12 fire engines, six ladder trucks, four battalion chiefs, and 75 Portland Fire and Rescue Personnel arrived on the scene.

Portland Fire and Rescue indicated that the church was not occupied when the three-alarm fire broke out.

Read more at: www.theblaze.com

More than 30 graves at a historic Christian cemetery in Jerusalem were found toppled and vandalized, the diocese said Wednesday, jolting the Christian minority in the contested city.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry called the attack an “immoral act” and “an affront to religion.” Jerusalem’s Anglican Archbishop Hosam Naoum called it a “clear hate crime.” The British consulate said it was just the latest in a string of assaults on the Christian community in the holy city of Jerusalem.

Police officers were sent to the Protestant Cemetery on Jerusalem’s Mount Zion to investigate the profanation. Mount Zion, associated in Christian tradition with the site of the Last Supper that Jesus shared with his disciples the night before his crucifixion, is also sacred to Jews and Muslims and has been at the center of competing religious claims throughout the decadeslong Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Widely shared security camera footage on Sunday showed two young men — both wearing a Jewish skullcap and tzitzit, the knotted ritual fringes worn by observant Jews — breaking into the cemetery, knocking over stone crosses and smashing and stomping on tombstones, leaving a trail of debris and broken headstones.

Among the destroyed tombs was one containing a 19th century bust of Samuel Gobat, the second Protestant Bishop in Jerusalem who died in 1879, the Episcopal diocese said. The graves of three police officers, British citizens serving in the police force of what was then British-ruled Palestine, were also vandalized.

Read more at: apnews.com

Hundreds of Christians in Chhattisgarh forced to flee into forests

12/22/2022 India (International Christian Concern) — Christians in 20 villages in the Narayanpur and Kondagaon districts in the Chhattisgarh state of India were attacked this week by radical Hindu nationalists for refusing to re-convert from Christianity to Hinduism.

The attacks took place on Sunday, Dec. 18, as Christians gathered for worship. The attackers looted and destroyed the homes of many Christians and desecrated three churches.

Sources told International Christian Concern (ICC) that the Hindu nationalists used bamboo sticks to attack Christians. Several people were severely injured and hospitalized, while others fled to the jungle or to nearby police stations. When Christians reported the attacks to authorities, police told them to fend for themselves.

Read more at: christiannews.net

United Kingdom authorities arrested a pro-life woman praying outside an abortion clinic for allegedly breaking a temporary Public Space Protection Order on four separate occasions earlier this month.

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, a 45-year-old charity volunteer, was arrested and charged on four counts after she told police she “might” be silently praying near the U.K.’s leading provider of NHS-funded abortion services BPAS Robert Clinic in Kings Norton, Birmingham, according to local media.

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) published footage earlier this week showing authorities approaching Vaughan-Spruce outside the clinic. During the interaction, authorities questioned why Vaughn Spruce was standing outside the abortion facility “of all places.”

“Are you standing here as part of a protest?” asked the officer.

“No, I’m not protesting,” Vaughan-Spruce said.

Read more at: www.dailywire.com

The Biden State Department once again has refused to designate Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC), despite Christians being killed by militant Muslim groups almost daily with no effective intervention by the Nigerian government.

Over the recommendations of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and pleas from religious freedom advocates, the Biden administration, for the second year, left Nigeria off of a list of 12 other nations designated as CPCs in an announcement on Dec. 2. The Trump State Department had designated Nigeria as a CPC, but the Biden administration dropped that label in 2021.

The CPC designations are announced annually by the State Department to spotlight the world’s worst violators of religious freedom.

Since 2011, the terrorist groups Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have murdered more than 40,000 Christians in Nigeria, in addition to thousands more killed by Muslim Fulani herdsmen, Genocide Watch reports. In 2021 alone, according to the persecution watchdog group Open Doors, some 4,650 Nigerian Christians were murdered by these groups—equal to one Christian killed every two hours.

Open Doors estimates that Nigerians made up nearly 80% of the world’s Christian martyrs in 2021.

The State Department’s announcement revealed a sharp disagreement over Nigeria between the Biden administration and the members of the USCIRF, which is an appointed commission mandated by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act.

Read more at: www.harbingersdaily.com