Lee Ardis

The largest teachers union in America recommended educators include ‘Gender Queer’ in their summer reading

The National Education Association (NEA) on Monday recommended that teachers include the controversial book “Gender Queer” on their summer reading lists.

The book was featured in the NEA’s “Great Summer Reads for Educators!” list that showcased 11 books.

Among those books are “White Fragility,” a book that insists that White Americans use anger, shame and guilt to avoid taking responsibility for racial inequality.

Other sections included “books to help you forget about work” and “books to celebrate or help you understand Junetheenth.”

Under the “banned books” section, Gender Queer is recommended as a reading.

“Gender Queer” has as courted major controversy among America parents for being in public school libraries throughout the US and has been challenged for its depictions and descriptions of oral sex as well as discussions on masturbation.

Fox News Digital previously reported on Gender Queer’s author, Maia Kobabe, defending the sexually explicit graphic images in the memoir during an interview with NPR in January.

“And I honestly think the book is a lot less explicit than it could be,” Kobabe told NPR.

“The topic of gender touches on identity… and it touches on sexuality,” Kobabe continued.

“And it’s hard to fully explain I think what like how a gender identity can impact every facet of life as an adult without touching at least a little bit of sexuality. And I wanted to at least not to like shy away from that.”

The book also discusses Kobabe’s journey of self-discovery towards identifying outside the “gender binary.”

This list of books comes after the president of the National Education Association declared that racial and social justice is a “Pillar of the NEA’s efforts.”

Trans Barbie dolls? Hollywood braces for another woke disaster at the box office

On July 21, the new “Barbie” live action movie will hit theaters across the country.

Featuring Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken, the highly anticipated Warner Bros film is projected to earn over $80 million just on opening day.

But, there’s been a trend of movies flopping at the box office lately.

Not just any movies though — woke movies specifically.

Take Pixar’s film “Elemental.” It resulted in the second-lowest three-day opening in the history of the studio.

Why did it flop when it had a $200 million budget and was expected to earn $40 million on opening weekend?

Might it have had something to do with the fact that one of the characters is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns?

What about Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” remake?

Its box office performance was also deemed a failure.

Could it be related to the fact that Ariel’s iconic flaming red hair was suddenly … replaced?

Regardless, numbers are indisputable, and the numbers for many of these overtly woke movies are abysmal.

It won’t be shocking, then, if the new Barbie movie follows suit because it, too, has a woke agenda, and Dave Rubin, for one, is far from thrilled about it.

The film “includes a biologically male actor who identifies as a woman playing a female doctor,” tweeted Mary Margaret Olohan next to a picture of Hari Nef, the actor chosen for the role.

“I don’t have a problem with the trans person being an actor,” Rubin says.

But “there’s a gajillion girls out there who would love to be in the ‘Barbie’ movie as a girl, so why do they go out of their way to have a biological boy play a girl who’s supposed to be completely a girl in the ‘Barbie’ movie unless they’re trying to confuse kids?” he asks.

6,000 congregations are leaving the United Methodist church in a split over LGBTQ agenda

About a fifth of the congregations in the second-largest Protestant church in the U.S. are splitting away over a schism about the inclusion of the LGBTQ agenda in Christianity.

That comes to about 6,000 communities in the United Methodist Church, according to a report in the Chicago Tribune.

“I don’t think any of us want to see any of our churches leave,” said UMC Council of Bishops president Bishop Thomas Bickerton.

“We’re called to be the body of Christ, we’re called to be unified,” he added. “There’s never been a time when the church has not been without conflict, but there’s been a way we’ve worked through that.”

The mass exodus was the latest development in the years-long debate over LGBTQ inclusion in Methodist theology. Traditional Protestant teaching forbids gay relationships and marriages, but some members and churches are opposing the biblical teaching.

Many of the 6,000 congregations leaving are planning to join the Global Methodist Church, a new organization that will neither ordain or marry LGBTQ people.

Rev. Keith Boyette, the chairman of the council guiding the creation of the new denomination, said in March that many churches are frustrated with the actions of the UMC.

“Theologically conservative local churches and annual conferences want to be free of divisive and destructive debates and to have the freedom to move forward together,” said Boyette.

The U.N. Is Planning To Seize Global ‘Emergency’ Powers With Biden’s Support

The proposal might be the biggest attempted power grab in the history of the United Nations. If approved, the United States as we know it could cease to exist.

In September 2024, less than two months before the next U.S. presidential election, the United Nations will host a landmark “Summit of the Future,” where member nations will adopt a Pact for the Future. The agreement will solidify numerous policy reforms offered by the U.N. over the past two years as part of its sweeping Our Common Agenda platform.

Although there are numerous radical proposals included in the agenda, perhaps none are more important than the U.N. plan for a new “emergency platform,” a stunning proposal to give the U.N. significant powers in the event of future “global shocks,” such as another worldwide pandemic.

Many of the details of the U.N. emergency platform were laid out in a March 2023 policy paper titled “Strengthening the International Response to Complex Global Shocks — An Emergency Platform.” In the paper, the U.N. secretary-general writes, “I propose that the General Assembly provide the Secretary-General and the United Nations system with a standing authority to convene and operationalize automatically an Emergency Platform in the event of a future complex global shock of sufficient scale, severity and reach.”

Once triggered, the emergency platform would give the U.N. the ability to “actively promote and drive an international response that places the principles of equity and solidarity at the centre of its work.” The U.N. would bring together the “stakeholders” of the world, including academics, governments, private sector actors, and “international financial institutions” to ensure there is a unified, global response to the crisis.

The emergency platform would also give the United Nations the power to “Ensure that all participating actors make commitments that can contribute meaningfully to the response and that they are held to account for delivery on those commitments.”

In other words, the United Nations would be given unprecedented authority over the public and private sectors of huge swaths of the world, all in the name of battling a yet unknown crisis.

SCOTUS Unanimously Strengthens Religious Liberty In The Workplace

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously strengthened religious liberty in the workplace Thursday, ruling in favor of a Christian postal worker who lost his job for refusing to work on Sundays.

The Court’s unanimous opinion in Groff v. DeJoy, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, overruled the decision of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which held that the United States Postal Service (USPS) did not violate the religious accommodation rights of postal worker Gerald Groff under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

“This decision will give those religious minorities a fair shot in court and, one would hope, encourage more employers to adopt more inclusive workplace policies so that religious employees won’t have to choose between their livelihood and their faith,” Joshua McDaniel, director of Harvard Law School’s Religious Liberty Clinic, said.

After clarifying Title VII’s requirements, the Court gave the case back to the Third Circuit to retry the case because of its factual complexity. This means that either Groff or the USPS could eventually prevail, but the USPS — and all employers — must meet a much higher standard to deny a religious accommodation.

Groff, an Evangelical Christian and longtime employee of the USPS, never worked Sundays in line with his religious beliefs and his initial job description. But when the USPS started to deliver packages on Sundays because of a deal with Amazon, the postal service would require him to work on his Sabbath. To avoid conflict, he transferred to a different location.

His new location started delivering on Sundays, and he claimed that USPS “progressive[ly] discipline[d]” him because he refused to work Sundays. He then resigned and sued the USPS for religious discrimination. The Third Circuit rejected his claim.

The controversy in this case surrounded a 50-year-old standard from Trans World Airlines v. Hardison. In that case, the Court held that an employer could deny an accommodation if it causes a “more than de minimis cost” — a legal term meaning that anything more than a “very small” cost would be enough for an employer to legally deny any religious accommodation.

The Court held that Title VII’s “undue hardship” language requires employers to show that the accommodation would impose a burden that “is substantial in the overall context of an employer’s business.” Justice Alito stated that a business proving the accommodation would cause a small cost is not enough “to establish ‘undue hardship’ under Title VII.” This means that an employer now needs to show a substantial hardship would be caused by the religious accommodation in order to deny it.

Leftism Summed Up: Public Crotches Good, Public Crosses Bad.

*Warning: the following article links to images containing nudity*

“Public crotches good, public crosses bad,” goes the Leftist worldview today. That mantra has actually summed up the Left for quite some time now, but it was on full frontal display — literally — this past Pride month.

In cities from coast-to-coast last weekend, grown men, women, and everything in between — their argument, not mine — practically bared it all in fountains, on bikes, and at dance parties in the street.

Children, of course, were present for and subjected to appalling scenes. Normal-minded Americans condemned this sort of behavior as depraved. Others like Ron Filipkowski said the real problem with these sorts of scenes is that they will be used by the GOP for political fodder. He apparently wasn’t so concerned with the destruction of childhood innocence.

Of course, pride parades have always included lewdness. In 2001, The Onion even lampooned the events with a column titled, “Gay-Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance Of Gays Back 50 Years.”

But it is no longer that the LGBTQ+ agenda seeks mere acceptance — if that was ever its goal. The Left wants to replace Judeo-Christian values. It always has.

As Daily Wire Editor emeritus Ben Shapiro said, “Pride Month is not a call for equality, but a call for revolution. The Pride movement was always a call for a replacement of historic, tried and true cultural norms with new, untried, and risky cultural norms.”

Indeed, from our Executive Branch to your local library, and even in “kid-friendly entertainment,” the message is simple: In order to be a good person, you have to accept the LGBTQ+ agenda wholeheartedly. Judeo-Christian values which put forth the traditional concept of family, sex, and gender are to be shunned, or somehow twisted into supporting the LGBTQ+ agenda (Jesus says to love everybody! No judgment!).

That sort of tolerance leads to events such as naked weirdos marching down the street under the rainbow flag.

Texas Heartbeat Act Resulted In 10K Additional Babies Born Last Year, Study Suggests

A new study released Thursday estimates that Texas’ abortion ban resulted in almost 10,000 more babies being born in the state.

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimated that between April and December 2022, 9,799 more babies were born likely because of the Texas Heartbeat Act, which bans abortion with few exceptions after a fetal heartbeat is detected — usually five to six weeks after a woman’s last menstrual cycle.

“Every baby saved from elective abortion should be celebrated,” Texas Right to Life president John Seago told The Texas Tribune. “This new study highlights the significant success of our movement in the last two years, while we look forward to helping the mothers and families of our state care for their children.”

Through statistical modeling and analyzing historical birth data from all 50 states, researchers were able to estimate that 287,289 Texan children would have been born in the nine-month period if the Heartbeat Act was not in place. In that time period, 297,088 babies were actually born, presumably because of the abortion ban.

The Heartbeat Act went into effect in September 2021, before the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, which allowed private individuals to sue abortion providers, effectively banning the practice in the state.

The Johns Hopkins study is the first to examine how the Texas law impacted the number of births in the state, and it was funded by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

“Although our study doesn’t detail why these extra births occurred, our findings strongly suggest that a considerable number of pregnant individuals in Texas were unable to overcome barriers to abortion access,” said Dr. Alison Gemmill, one of the study’s lead authors.

An earlier study released before Dobbs suggested that Texan women were traveling to neighboring states like Oklahoma and Louisiana to get abortions. However, since the Supreme Court’s landmark decision, every neighboring state except New Mexico restricted the practice. The authors of the study believe that this may lead to even greater increases in births.

North Korea holds rally with promise to ‘annihilate’ US

Rallies fell on 73rd anniversary of start of Korean War

North Korea held mass rallies across the nation Saturday, which marked the “day of struggle against U.S. imperialism,” when government leaders promised to “annihilate the enemy,” according to its propaganda outlet.

Rallies were held in each providence of the nation, and an extensive list of government leaders spoke to denounce the U.S. as “imperialist beasts,” according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency. The gatherings in Pyongyang reached 120,000 attendees, the propaganda wing reported.

“The entire continental US is within our range!” one sign shown by the outlet said.

“The imperialist U.S. is the destroyer of peace,” another sign pictured read.

The “day of the struggle against U.S. imperialism” falls on the 73rd anniversary of the start of the Korean War.

Former President Trump engaged in disarmament talks in 2019 with Kim Jong Un, supreme leader of North Korea, but a deal was not reached. Kim has since launched tests of new nuclear missiles under the Biden administration with the goal they can reach the U.S.

Senator Says 200,000 Babies Have Been Saved From Abortions Since Dobbs

As the nation celebrates the first anniversary of the Supreme Court decision returning abortion to democratic control, national leaders celebrated the birth of tens, or hundreds, of thousands of unborn children saved by pro-life laws.

Although precise estimates vary, “the best guess that we have is about 200,000 children were born this year that would not have been born” apart from the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, said Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) at a news conference Tuesday. “That’s 200,000 kids. That’s 200,000 smiling faces on playgrounds. That’s 200,000 silly songs, starting in kindergarten. That’s 200,000 families that will be blessed with looking in the eyes of a child.”

The Dobbs decision, which took the shackles off voters and lawmakers to enact life-saving protections for the unborn, eliminated 96% of abortions in the 13 states that enacted pro-life protections between the June 24 decision and year’s end, The Daily Caller found. Although abortion rates had risen early in 2022, state pro-life laws prevented 32,260 abortions in the first six months following the ruling, according to the WeCount report from the Society of Family Planning released in April. A total of 25 states have since enacted some pro-life protections, since they “now have an opportunity in the United States to see this message in the hands of lawmakers and the people,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins told Newsmax on Friday.

Saving 200,000 babies — the upper end of an estimate analysis from Susan B. Anthony Pro-life America — would be enough people to fill a city the size of Grand Rapids, Michigan; Vancouver, Washington; or Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Republicans and Democrats had starkly different reactions to the one-year anniversary, much as they did to the landmark pro-life ruling.

Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) led 20 fellow Republican senators in introducing a resolution praising the Dobbs decision. “[M]odern science has illuminated our understanding of the humanity of unborn life,” the resolution reads. Their motion “celebrates the millions of lives that will be saved as a result of the ruling in Dobbs” and “commits to proclaiming the humanity of the unborn, consistent with the findings of modern science and the unswerving demands of justice.”

“Thank God Almighty for the Dobbs decision!” Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.) told the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference Friday. In an online ad, Scott highlighted Biden administration Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen saying the Dobbs decision would prove “very damaging” for the U.S. economy. “That’s unconscionable,” Scott replies in the 60-second spot. “As a black man born to a woman living at the poverty line, I’m so thankful my mama chose life.”

The “Gospel truth” is “the foundation of this nation,” he says.

By contrast, Democrats seethed, cursed, and vowed to remove the voters’ newfound right of democratic consultation in the life-or-death issue.

Video: Church recites ‘The Sparkle Creed,’ which proclaims belief in ‘non-binary God whose pronouns are plural,’ Jesus Christ who ‘had two dads’

A Minneapolis church’s livestream Sunday caught the moment when one of its pastors led the congregation in the recitation of “The Sparkle Creed,” which proclaims belief in the “non-binary God whose pronouns are plural” and to Jesus Christ who “had two dads,” among other things.

What are the details?

Anna Helgen, one of the pastors at Edina Community Lutheran Church, asked those in the sanctuary to “confess our faith today in the words of The Sparkle Creed,” which is a radical variation of “The Apostles’ Creed.” Here’s what was recited:

I believe in the non-binary God whose pronouns are plural. I believe in Jesus Christ, their child, who wore a fabulous tunic and had two dads and saw everyone as a sibling child of God. I believe in the rainbow spirit, who shatters our image of one white light and refracts it into a rainbow of gorgeous diversity. I believe in the church of everyday saints, as numerous, creative, and resilient as patches on the AIDS quilt, whose feet are grounded in mud and whose eyes gaze at the stars in Wonder. I believe in the calling to each of us that love is love is love, so beloved, let us love. I believe, glorious God. Help my unbelief. Amen.

After “The Sparkle Creed,” Helgen led a congregational prayer to the God of “expansive and inclusive love” for “the summer solstice” and for “honey bee populations experiencing extreme loss,” as well as “climate justice,” Pride events, and “all LGBTQIA+ leaders.”