Ron Chambers

Respect for Marriage Act Will Usher In ‘New Era of Oppression’ for Christians

Ben Johnson – July 26, 2022

Senate Republicans are feeling the pressure to defend marriage and the natural family, as two large grassroots coalitions warn them that a controversial bill will fuel frivolous litigation and subject the most fundamental unit of society to an infinite variety of experimentation and tampering.

H.R. 8404, which proponents of redefining marriage have dubbed the “Respect for Marriage” Act, would require states to accept any marriage legally recognized in any other state “without any parameters whatsoever,” one of the coalitions notes. “This would include plural marriages, time-bound marriages, open marriages, marriages involving a minor or relative, platonic marriages, or any other new marriage definition that a state chooses to adopt, including through undemocratic imposition by a state Supreme Court,” wrote 83 grassroots organizations led by the Alliance Defending Freedom in a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Another letter cites 10 lawsuits that have already targeted Christians for living according to their biblical values, stating if the hastily introduced legislation passes, far-left activists will take Christians and observant Jews to court for living out their faiths.

“The Court’s decision in Obergefell unleashed religious freedom violations across the land, launching a new era of harassment and coercion of millions of Americans who hold a sincere religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is, or ought to be, between one man and one woman,” wrote the Conservative Action Project, which was founded by Reagan administration Attorney General Edwin Meese and is now chaired by former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. “The Respect for Marriage Act will further usher in this new era of oppression.”

“This legislation will only hasten and intensify hostility” against “those who decline to openly embrace extreme views regarding marriage and human sexuality,” agreed ADF. “H.R. 8404 effectively deputizes activist groups to sue religious individuals, organizations, and businesses that operate according to their sincerely held religious belief that marriage is between one man and one woman.”

The law could also give birth to draconian federal regulations designed to force Christian and other traditional religious organizations out of the public square. “The Internal Revenue Service could rely on this congressional declaration requiring full recognition of same-sex marriage to strip 501(c)(3) organizations of their tax-exempt status if they continue to adhere to their belief that marriage is only between one man and one woman,” ADF wrote.

https://washingtonstand.com

Alex Newman: How UN’s 2030 Agenda Is Driving Farming Restrictions

Alex Newman – July 22, 2022

The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for sustainable development informs government policies to restrict farming and transform the food systems in different parts of the world, said Alex Newman, an award-winning international journalist who has covered this issue for over a decade.

The 2030 Agenda is a plan of action devised by the United Nations (U.N.) to achieve 17 sustainable development goals (SDG). The goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development were adopted by all UN member states in 2015.

Then-Secretary General of the U.N. Ban Ki-moon called the 2030 Agenda “the global declaration of interdependence,” (pdf) Newman said in a recent interview on EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program.

“In my opinion, [it] was a direct swipe at our Declaration of Independence … So instead of being independent nations, we will all be now interdependent.”

The 2030 Agenda “covers every element of human life, every element of the economy,” including global wealth redistribution not only within the nations but also among the nations, Newman commented. The Agenda “specifically says that we need to change the way that we consume and produce goods,” he added.

Goal number two on the 2030 Agenda deals specifically with food, Newman said.

In September 2021, the U.N. held the Food Systems Summit, which emphasized the need “to leverage the power of food systems” for the purpose of achieving all 17 sustainable development goals by 2030, according to a U.N. statement.

“Everyone, everywhere, must take action and work together to transform the way the world produces, consumes, and thinks about food,” the statement said.

https://www.technocracy.news

Christian group warns social media can be ‘deadly’ after 2 girls die in TikTok challenge

Samantha Kamman – July 21, 2022

A Christian organization commented on the potential harms of young children using social media without proper supervision amid reports that two sets of parents are suing TikTok over the belief the company could have done more to prevent their daughters’ deaths via an online challenge.

The Social Media Victims Law Center filed a civil lawsuit against TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance Ltd., in a Los Angeles County court on behalf of the families of Lalani Erika Walton and Arriani Jaileen Arroyo, two children who died while attempting the viral TikTok challenge known as the “blackout challenge.”

Participants in the challenge share videos depicting self-strangulation until they lose consciousness. Walton and Arriani, ages eight and nine, respectively, died after participating in the challenge.

The parents claim that their children became addicted to TikTok and that the platform promoted content that influenced the kids to harm themselves.

Paul Asay, senior associate editor of the Christian organization Focus on the Family’s PluggedIn.com, which helps parents navigate popular entertainment, weighed in on the controversy, stressing that social media comes with a “built-in irony.”

Asay told The Christian Post that these applications are intended to strengthen friendships but are also a “business.” He said the purpose of the business is to “keep their users as involved and engaged as much as they possibly can.”

He stated that this can be a problem for kids and teens using social media applications. The associate editor argued that children typically don’t have the ability to make “wise, healthy decisions for themselves.”

“Social media is designed to be addictive, in a way — designed to keep its users engaged with it as long as possible,” Asay wrote. “And, as this tragic story illustrates, content found on such sites can be damaging, dangerous and deadly — especially for children.”

https://www.terradaily.com

Khamenei adviser says Tehran ‘capable of building nuclear bomb’

JERUSALEM POST STAFF – July 17, 2022

Tehran is technically capable of making a nuclear bomb but has yet to decide whether to build it, a senior adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei told Al Jazeera’s Arabic service on Sunday.

Tehran will also directly respond against Israel should its security be targeted, the report says citing the advisor.

“In a few days we were able to enrich uranium up to 60% and we can easily produce 90% enriched uranium … Iran has the technical means to produce a nuclear bomb but there has been no decision by Iran to build one,” Kamal Kharrazi said.

Background
In 2018, former US President Donald Trump ditched Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, under which Iran curbed its uranium enrichment work, a potential pathway to nuclear weapons, in exchange for relief from economic sanctions.

About a year into Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy on Iran, Tehran started violating the pact’s nuclear restrictions.

Iran has long denied seeking nuclear weapons, saying it is refining uranium only for civilian energy uses, and has said its breaches of the international deal are reversible if the United States lifts sanctions and rejoins the agreement.

Indirect talks between Iran and President Joe Biden’s administration, which aim to bring both Washington and Tehran back into compliance with the nuclear pact, have stalled since March.

Kharrazi said Tehran would never negotiate over its missile program and regional policy, as demanded by the West and its allies in the Middle East.

https://www.jpost.com

Digital ID bill sees action in the House and Senate

FCW – July 15, 2022

A bill from Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.) and its Senate companion would raise the federal government’s profile in the digital ID ecosystem.

A bill meant to ramp up federal government participation in the digital identity ecosystem is inching closer to passage. The bill is poised to be advanced by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and a Senate version was just introduced.

The bipartisan “Improving Digital Identity Act” was first introduced by Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.) in 2020, but never never voted out of committee. It also didn’t get a Senate version in that session of Congress. Foster reintroduced the measure last year.

In the House, the committee recessed on Thursday before finishing officially recorded votes to report Foster’s bill and others out of the committee. That will happen when the committee picks back up on the markup, a committee aid confirmed with FCW.

Sen. Krysten Sinema (D-Ariz.) along with Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo) introduced a Senate counterpart on Wednesday.

The bill includes a few deliverables but the main impact will likely be felt from its proposed policy shift that puts the federal government more squarely in the digital ID business.

The legislation pushes the federal government to use existing authority to help Amerians “prove who they are online,” by providing opt-in ID validation services that “augment private sector digital identity and authentication solutions.”

The bill would also set up a task force on digital identity and establish a grant program at the Department of Homeland Security to support the creation of interoperable identity credentialing systems for digital identity verification on the state and local level.

This all comes in the midst of a government still grappling with increased identity fraud since the start of the pandemic. Identity fraud losses shot up from $16.9 billion in 2019 to $56 billion in 2020, according to Javelin Strategy and Research.

https://fcw.com

Why we should all be worried about a vulture apocalypse

Will Brown – July 18, 2022

A catastrophic decline of vulture populations in Africa and Asia is causing alarm among researchers, who fear that a “cascade” effect could lead to the spread of deadly old and new diseases, including plague, anthrax, and rabies.

For thousands of years, the birds have been synonymous with death and gluttony. “Where the corpse is, vultures will gather,” Jesus is quoted as saying in Matthew 24. But in reality, the birds serve us in ways that we are only just beginning to understand – helping to keep ecosystems and pathogens in check.

If the lion is the king of the savannah, the vulture is the hardworking, unsung grounds keeper. A flock of vultures can wipe a dead antelope clean in about 20 minutes, stopping the carcass from turning into a toxic soup leaking into water sources. Maggots and bacteria are the only things more effective at disposing of dead meat.

The birds’ digestive systems are thought to be tough enough to stop bacterial colonies of the plague, anthrax and botulism in their tracks. Some researchers believe vultures indirectly keep rabies infections in check by depriving rats and feral dogs of bountiful food. Certain species may even help disinfect the ground near carcasses with their highly acidic excrement.

But now, many vultures and other raptor species are diving beak first into the abyss. In the 1990s, vulture populations on the Indian subcontinent plummeted by about 99 per cent. Seven out of eleven of the species found in Africa are now on the verge of extinction.

“Vultures and other medium to large raptor species are probably the most threatened group of vertebrates on the planet,” said Shiv Kapila, director of the Naivasha Raptor Centre, 60 miles from the Kenyan capital. “The rate of decline is staggering. We still don’t know nearly enough about what all this means. We’re working on borrowed time,”

“If you screw up natural equilibriums that have developed over tens of millions of years, you can get what we call a trophic cascade effect,” he added, reaching up and giving Yusef, a seven-year-old Rüppell’s vulture with a broken wing, a helping hand down from the ledge.

“If you get rid of a hugely important component of an ecosystem – like a vulture which hoovers up dead meat – diseases can proliferate because they’re not being kept in check,” Mr Kapila said.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk

Atlantic plankton all but wiped out in catastrophic loss of life

Mark Howarth – July 17, 2022

Scientists have discovered a catastrophic loss of life in our oceans, we can reveal.

An Edinburgh-based research team fears plankton, the tiny organisms that sustain life in our seas, has all but been wiped out after spending two years collecting water samples from the Atlantic.

The landmark research blames chemical pollution from plastics, farm fertilisers and pharmaceuticals in the water. Previously, it was thought the amount of plankton had halved since the 1940s, but the evidence gathered by the Scots suggest 90% has now vanished.

The scientists warn there are only a few years left before the consequences become catastrophically clear when fish, whales and dolphins become extinct, with grave implications for the planet. In the report, the researchers from the Global Oceanic Environmental Survey Foundation (Goes) state: “An environmental catastrophe is unfolding. We believe humanity could adapt to global warming and extreme weather changes. It is our view that humanity will not survive the extinction of most marine plants and animals.”

The findings have prompted calls for urgent action on a number of fronts as observers warn the promises of Cop26 to ease the climate crisis have, so far, amounted to little.

Fiona Nicholls, an oceans campaigner for Greenpeace UK, said: “Our oceans can be our allies in fighting climate change, but there is simply no time to waste.”

Goes – based at Edinburgh University’s Roslin Innovation Centre in Midlothian – has been collecting samples from the Atlantic and the Caribbean from its yacht, Copepod. Setting out from Scotland, it sailed along French and Portuguese coasts before crossing the Atlantic. The yacht is currently moored in Cartagena, Colombia, before setting sail for Panama this week.

In addition to their own samples, the Goes researchers have provided monitoring equipment to other sailing boat crews so that they can perform the same trawls and report back with their results.

https://www.sundaypost.com

Francis Forgives Everyone

William Kilpatrick – July 20, 2022

In a recent article I made the case that the main thrust of the Francis papacy is to deemphasize sin. Whatever he might say about a moral issue such as abortion, same-sex marriage, or adultery, Francis has consistently given his support and praise to those on the permissive side of the issue.

By contrast, his harshest criticisms have always been reserved for traditional Catholics who worry about moral decay in the Church and society. Francis frequently attacks these “rigid fundamentalists” as the modern-day counterparts of the pharisees.

Judging by Francis’s actions, one might think that the Church was just emerging from a long dark night of narrow-minded puritanism—a real life Handmaid’s Tale. But the opposite is true.

Starting in the early sixties, Church leaders increasingly took their moral cues from secular sources—particularly from psychologists. Middle-school religious studies texts were peppered with the theories of humanistic psychologists. In California, an entire order of 600 nuns left the Church in search of self-fulfillment. With the coming of the self-esteem movement, feelings of guilt were replaced with feelings of OK-ness. Almost overnight the long lines outside the confessional booths disappeared. Newly enlightened Catholics couldn’t think of any sins to confess. The new gospel was all about self-acceptance and self-love.

Many couldn’t think of any reason to attend Mass, either. The Son of Man came to save sinners; but since the label “sinner” no longer applied to those who had learned to esteem themselves, thousands upon thousands simply stopped going to church.

This doesn’t mean that they lost their faith entirely. Many simply re-adjusted their faith to bring it into conformity with the changing times. One Catholic writer recounts that until her mid-twenties, “I saw God as a permissive parent who was too ‘loving’ to enforce His own boundaries.”

This slide into permissiveness was slowed during the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI; however, the Church, at least in the West, continued to lose members.

https://www.frontpagemag.com

Texas Sues HHS, Says Biden Admin. Trying to ‘Transform Every Emergency Room in the Country into Walk-In Abortion Clinic’

Ben Kelley – July 21, 2022

The State of Texas, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, has sued the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) over its attempt to “transform every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic.”

The lawsuit, filed on July 14th, claims that “the Biden Administration’s response to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org., 142 S. Ct. 2228 (2022), which ended the terrible regime of Roe v. Wade, is to attempt to use federal law to transform every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic.”

The administration’s directive, released on July 11th, is a clarification of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), a law that forces hospitals to treat patients regardless of their ability to pay and protects doctors from being prosecuted under state laws if they perform a procedure that they deem necessary to save a patient from death or serious injury in an emergency situation.

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra’s letter says that “emergency medical conditions involving pregnant patients may include, but are not limited to, ectopic pregnancy, complications of pregnancy loss, or emergent hypertensive disorders, such as preeclampsia with severe features.”

Becerra’s letter goes on to state that an abortion may be an appropriate stabilizing treatment for pregnant patients with an emergency medical condition:

“When a state law prohibits abortion and does not include an exception for the life and health of the pregnant person – or draws the exception more narrowly than EMTALA’s emergency medical condition definition – that state law is preempted.”

Paxton’s lawsuit disagrees with this assertion: “To the contrary, EMTALA ‘do[es] not preempt any State or local law requirement, except to the extent that the requirement directly conflicts with a requirement of EMTALA.’”

EMTALA does not codify any right or access to abortion, so there is no direct conflict between EMTALA and a state law banning abortion, the suit alleges.

https://www.cnsnews.com

The ‘Disrespect of Marriage Act’: Democratic Bill Would Redefine Marriage

Ben Johnson – July 19, 2022

With economic pressures squeezing middle-class families tighter than any time in a generation, congressional Democrats have decided to ram through a series of laws that would write left-wing positions on social issues into law, including a national bill establishing same-sex marriage.

On Monday, Democrats in both chambers of Congress introduced a bill to redefine marriage in national law, which they have dubbed the Respect for Marriage Act. The bill would prevent any state from exclusively protecting the natural family in law, in the (unlikely) event the Supreme Court overturns Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 opinion which created the constitutional “right” to same-sex marriage.

“The far-right Supreme Court is on a rampage against the freedoms of the American people,” asserted Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), a democratic socialist who identifies as gay. “We will not sit idly by as Republicans and their activist judges take our country backward,” insisted Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), who also identifies as LGBT. “I look forward to bringing it to the [f]loor for a vote this week,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (R-Md.) on Monday.

“It really should be the Disrespect for Marriage Act,” Quena Gonzalez, senior director of Government Affairs at the Family Research Council, told “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Monday. The bill merely says that “an individual shall be considered married if that individual’s marriage is valid in the [s]tate where the marriage was entered into.” At no point does it limit marriage to two partners. Democrats plan to pass legislation preventing states from criminalizing interracial marriage or contraception, positions that have no political constituency in any state. This follows the House passing two bills to expand abortion nationwide last Friday, although one or both bills appears poised to die in the Senate.

https://www.washingtonstand.com