Michael Foust | ChristianHeadlines.com Contributor | Monday, May 13, 2019

Two days after a California school board approved new curriculum that includes LGBT history, parents of more than 700 students kept their children home in protest.

The Rocklin School District Board OK’d the curriculum May 1 by a vote of 3-2, requiring students in kindergarten through fifth grades to learn about the contributions of key LGBT figures in history and social studies curriculum, according to the Sacramento Bee. Rocklin is about one-hour northeast of Sacramento.  

A group of parents known as the Informed Parents of Rocklin had urged the board not to include the curriculum in elementary grades. 

The board’s action was in response to a new state law requiring schools to include the contributions of “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans” in history lessons. 

Unlike sex-ed, there is no opt-out for parents in the law. 

Parents of more than 700 students kept their children home on May 3, according to Sacramento’s Fox 40.  

“We believe that anyone who has made a significant contribution to society should, of course, be included in our history textbooks,” Rachel Crutchfield, spokeswoman for Informed Parents of Rocklin had said earlier in the week. “However, the concept of sexual orientation is far too complex of a topic for elementary-aged children to be introduced to at school. … Let’s let kids be kids.”

A proposed second-grade textbook says NASA astronaut Sally Ride was a lesbian.

“Many students enter middle school already knowing they’re different, which is why it’s so important for this curriculum to be adopted at the elementary level,” said Rocklin math teacher Amy Bentley, who supported the new curriculum.

Critics, though, said the curriculum is one-sided in its worldview.

“One view is the right view and the religious and conservatives are the wrong bigoted view,” Greg Burt from the California Family Council said, according to the Sacramento Bee. “Parents are being told to ‘get with the program.’”

Related:

California History Textbooks Now Include LGBT Heroes

California Installs New Sex Education Guidelines That Teach 5-Year-Olds about Transgenderism

Rugby Player Found Guilty of ‘High Level’ Breach of Contract for Posting Bible Verse on Instagram

‘No One Thinks it’s Fair,’ Girl Track Star Says after Losing to Transgender Athletes

Michael Foust is a freelance writer. Visit his blog, MichaelFoust.com.

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Women have had to fight several battles in society all through out history to be where they are today in America. To be a women who works hard, provides, and is an amazing mother is well applauded in our current society. A women who wins awards and opens doors for the women of the future is something I think we can all be proud about. Society has long since progressed from the time where women still couldn’t vote and because of those who stood up and fought for change, the women of the 20th century are doing great. It’s fair to say that women hold so much importance in all our lives, what they add to our world is irreplaceable. I’m happy to see that today women can have leagues and lanes of their own to dominate and succeed in without worry, specifically I’m referring to sports and anything that requires clear separation of a women and man.

Yes, a women could very well become a construction worker but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s man who will dominate in that lane simply because the way a man’s body is created. You cannot change biology and it is proven hundreds of times over that the capacity of a man’s strength will always surpass the capacity of a women’s strength. This doesn’t mean that women are better than men or men are better than women, it simply means that we were created differently and we are different. I believe it’s important to understand that the body of a man is very different from the body of a women, especially when we’re talking about sports.

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On Thursday, activist parents with MassResistance unmasked another child sex offender who greeted children at Drag Queen Story Time. According to local MassResistance leader Tracy Shannon, a drag performer with many aliases has sexually assaulted children and publicly recounted his history as a transgender dominatrix and prostitute for hire. His name has been redacted here because he was allegedly convicted for sexual assault against children at age 16, so his record has been sealed.

"We have another big reveal today at our press conference which will take place at 2 PM at the Freed Montrose Library," Shannon announced in an email. "Due to this individual using multiple aliases and having moved around a lot it was hard to nail down his identity but we finally connected the dots. We found his name a few days ago but trying to find some affirmation and photos was like looking for a needle in a haystack of social media postings."

"Once we affirmed the identity we ran background checks and found the record. We will reveal all at 2 PM Central time at our press conference," she added. She also excoriated the Houston Public Library (HPL) system for allowing child sex offenders to greet children.

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Cookie company Chips Ahoy! celebrated Mother’s Day by posting a video of a drag queen to social media.

The video featured Jose Cancel, an actor using the stage name Vanessa Vanjie Mateo, who competed in the most recent season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

The actor encouraged social media users to buy cookies for “your real mama, your drag mama, whichever mama, somebody, whoever taking care of you, whoever you feel or consider your mama” in the video.

“#HappyMothersDay to your moms, your drag moms and everyone who celebrates you being YOU,” Chips Ahoy! captioned the video, which it posted to Twitter and Instagram.

The cookie company was mocked and scorned for the video on social media.

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By Dan Lyman, Tuesday, May 07, 2019

Converse has announced the release of a new line of shoes celebrating LGBT culture alongside a marketing campaign featuring characters of various sexual orientations, including an 11-year-old ‘drag kid’ who goes by the stage name ‘Desmond Is Amazing.’

“We’re happy to launch our Pride Collection, partnering with six individuals connected to the LGBTQ+ community who show the power of expressing one’s true self,” the apparel company tweeted on Monday.
Desmond is highlighted on the Converse website wearing a flamboyant outfit and make-up, striking a dramatic dance pose alongside a quote stating, “There is no normal.”

A brief bio describes him as a “drag kid / lgbtq+ advocate.”

Desmond Napoles has autism, according to his parents, who say that his ‘drag performances’ help him to cope with his disability.

He began to garner attention in 2015 after dancing in the NYC Pride Parade, and amid rising popularity on social media, Napoles was invited to appear on Good Morning America, where he danced for the audience and was paid a visit from three adult drag queens.

Click here to read full article.

The economist J.K. Galbraith once wrote, “Faced with a choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy with the proof.”

Leo Tolstoy was even bolder: “The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.”

What's going on here? Why don't facts change our minds? And why would someone continue to believe a false or inaccurate idea anyway? How do such behaviors serve us?

The Logic of False Beliefs

Humans need a reasonably accurate view of the world in order to survive. If your model of reality is wildly different from the actual world, then you struggle to take effective actions each day. 

However, truth and accuracy are not the only things that matter to the human mind. Humans also seem to have a deep desire to belong.

In Atomic Habits, I wrote, “Humans are herd animals. We want to fit in, to bond with others, and to earn the respect and approval of our peers. Such inclinations are essential to our survival. For most of our evolutionary history, our ancestors lived in tribes. Becoming separated from the tribe—or worse, being cast out—was a death sentence.”

Understanding the truth of a situation is important, but so is remaining part of a tribe. While these two desires often work well together, they occasionally come into conflict.

In many circumstances, social connection is actually more helpful to your daily life than understanding the truth of a particular fact or idea. The Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker put it this way, “People are embraced or condemned according to their beliefs, so one function of the mind may be to hold beliefs that bring the belief-holder the greatest number of allies, protectors, or disciples, rather than beliefs that are most likely to be true.” 

We don't always believe things because they are correct. Sometimes we believe things because they make us look good to the people we care about.

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America’s public life is disordered; our discourse toxic. Competing lists of scandals and abuses (calls for impeachment, “nuclear options,” attacks on free speech, and so on) are long and shop-worn—and often miss the real issue that something profound, systemic, and dangerous has happened to our nation. A hostile ideology now permeates the institutions that inculcate our children’s values, that shape or manufacture public opinion, and that supply the public with our only menu of political options from which to choose.

In effect, our ruling class has declared a new social contract, and they expect us to accept in silent acquiescence.

A social contract reveals itself in action, not ideas, and the true nature of the new, progressive contract emerges in countless examples of applied tyranny rather than its rhetoric of liberation. If we allow this new social contract to become our national norm, we will no longer be Americans in any meaningful sense. We will descend from a self-governing people into the subjects of social democratic elites who will dictate what kinds of political, economic, and social relationships we have with one another and with our new rulers.

American public life grew from a creative tension between two competing but ultimately compatible visions of who we are and what makes our common life meaningful. In effect, Americans have lived in and between two social contracts, which we have come to call “liberal” and “conservative.”

Our liberal social contract is largely individualistic; it stresses natural rights, political consent, and legal protections that extend from protecting contracts to guaranteeing equality of opportunity. Our conservative social contract, accepting much of liberalism, undergirds it by emphasizing the ties of community—of family, church, and local association—that make economic and political cooperation possible and help give life meaning. Freedom and stability, rights and duties, personal drive and the deeper ties and shared stories that bind us, these seeming contradictions have served as the poles of our common life, allowing us to forge a society of dynamic, ordered liberty.

Things have changed. Whether in the sweeping power grab of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal,” the old-style socialism of Senator Bernie Sanders, or the dogged resistance of “mainstream” Democrats to any judicial nominee who recognizes the duty of judges to follow rather than make law, formerly fringe positions have coalesced into a new consensus on the left more radical than anything we have seen previously in our two-party system.

How did this happen?

Barack Obama’s vapid speechifying about America’s coming “fundamental transformation” sounded sophomoric to many of us but inspired others—activists, academics, journalists, and politicians—to believe their vanguard had finally captured all the important cultural and political high ground. The words were conceptually empty but nonetheless important as they signaled a coming out for this vanguard. Feeling free to use naked power to implement their new social and political model, progressives largely immobilized non-progressive elites whose foolish complicity in the building of the new paradigm left them without a script.

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Alec McKinney, who has been identified as one of the two students accused in the mass shooting at STEM School Highlands Ranch in Douglas County, Colorado, railed about “STEM kids” on social media and was, according to The Denver Channel transgender and transitioning from female to male.

The shooting left a heroic teen, Kendrick Castillo, dead and eight others injured. McKinney is identified in Douglas County court records as Maya Elizabeth McKinney and was labeled a “juvenile female” by the sheriff in a press conference, but Heavy has learned that McKinney goes by Alec McKinney and identifies as male.

The Denver Post has confirmed that McKinney is the juvenile suspect in the shooting. Authorities gave the name of the adult male suspect as 18-year-old Devon Erickson. (Note: You can see a round up of heroes in mass shooting tragedies, including Highlands Ranch, here.)

The judge wouldn’t allow photos or video at McKinney’s first court hearing on Wednesday. However, Noelle Phillips of The Denver Post wrote on Twitter that McKinney’s attorney confirmed that McKinney goes by the name Alec and uses the pronoun he; Denver7 reported through sources that McKinney is transgender. A friend confirmed this on social media and wrote that McKinney didn’t get the support he needed.

On social media, Heavy has learned, McKinney tweeted angrily about STEM students. His Twitter profile picture shows him with Erickson, the other accused shooter. McKinney also posted that his mother didn’t like the “new Alec.”

“F*CK stem kids i swear to f*cking god,” Alec wrote on his Twitter page in January. He wrote in April: “When you’re putting yourself in life threatening danger” without explaining but added a kiss emoji.

McKinney referred to STEM kids with an expletive on his “finsta” account. The posts on that account are privatized.

Click here to read full article.

Devon Erickson, an 18-year-old high school student who has worked as a youth actor in Colorado, was identified by authorities as one of the two shooters accused of wounding nine students in a K-12 STEM school located in Douglas County. One of those students, 18-year-old Kendrick Castillo, died heroically in the attack after confronting one of the shooters.

In court for the first time on May 8, Erickson bowed his head, his purple hair dangling over his face. He’s facing more than two dozen charges. He shook his head to answer some of the judge’s questions. At one point, he answered “no” when asked whether he had questions. (Note: You can see a round up of heroes in mass shooting tragedies, including Highlands Ranch, here.)

The second accused shooter has now been identified as Alec McKinney. You can read about Alec here. Alec is identified in court records as Maya McKinney, but a Denver television station reports that McKinney is transgender and transitioning to male. The second suspect uses the name Alec McKinney on social media, so Heavy is using that name. The Denver Post confirmed the second suspect’s name. The judge didn’t allow video or photos in McKinney’s court hearing; Noelle Phillips of The Denver Post reported that McKinney’s lawyer said McKinney goes by Alec and uses the pronoun he. According to social media accounts reviewed by Heavy, McKinney had used expletives to refer to “STEM kids.”

One friend described the pair as struggling with “mental health issues.” The friend wrote on Instagram that Devon “did not do what he did because he’s liberal or to make a statement. He did it due to internal struggles. They’re both struggling with mental health issues and this is a time for awareness. Alec did not do this because he’s trans, but had people supported him in the way that he needed and deserved, he would not have struggled so much that he got pushed over the edge.”

The friend also wrote that the two suspects didn’t allegedly act because of hate for others but rather “hate in themselves” and called for more support for LGBT youth. She added that they did a “horrible thing.”

McKinney’s Twitter profile picture shows him with Erickson.

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Colorado students walked out of an event billed as a vigil for Kendrick Castillo, an 18-year-old killed in a shooting at his school on Tuesday, when prominent speakers attempted to turn it into a rally for gun control. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colorado) and Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colorado) each took a turn calling for gun control at the Douglas County event before students streamed out in protest.

Two students at STEM Highlands Ranch, a K-12 charter school focused on science, technology, engineering, and math, shot nine students, one fatally. The accused students, who were arrested, are an adult male and a juvenile female who identifies as male. The accused male had written anti-Christian social media messages. He drove a car with a pentagram spray-painted on the hood, as well as other graffiti.

In response to the shooting, a public vigil was announced at another local public high school: Highlands Ranch High School. It was sponsored by the gun control groups Brady’s Team Enough and March for Our Lives and featured Democratic politicians who seek limits on Second Amendment gun rights, but was billed instead as an event to remember and honor Castillo and other victims. As the politicians called for gun control, students left in protest over the politicization of the deaths and injuries.

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A robotics aficionado. A lover of fishing, hunting and automobiles. And a hero whose father says threw himself at an armed student so his classmates could live.

The father of the 18-year-old killed at STEM School Highlands Ranch on Tuesday confirmed to The Denver Post that his son, Kendrick Castillo, was the sole fatality in the school shooting that left eight other students injured.

“He was the best kid in the world,” John Castillo said through tears Wednesday morning.

Castillo said Kendrick’s friends and the coroner told him that Kendrick and another boy charged one of the shooters once they entered their classroom. The coroner told Castillo his son was a hero, that the gunfire he took would have hurt other people.

“It doesn’t surprise me,” Castillo said of his son. “He cared enough about people that he would do something like that, even though it’s against my better judgment.”

“I wish he had gone and hid,” Castillo continued, “but that’s not his character. His character is about protecting people, helping people.”

Still, Castillo said, “I had a hard time accepting that.”

STEM School senior Nui Giasolli told NBC’s “Today” show that as one of the suspects entered the classroom and pulled out a gun, Kendrick Castillo lunged. He was shot in the process, she said. Kendrick’s actions allowed her and the rest of the class time to get underneath their desks or run across the room to escape, Giasolli said.

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By Alex Swoyer - The Washington Times - Monday, May 6, 2019

A religious liberty advocacy group warned a Seattle-area school district Monday that it faces a lawsuit unless it revokes a letter sent to schools urging them to offer children an Arabic greeting for Ramadan, the Muslim holy month that has just begun.

Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund says the Dieringer School District is following a script laid out by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) that urged schools to make special accommodations, including altering testing times and wishing students “Ramadan Mubarak” or “Ramadan Kareem.”

The defense fund says Dieringer Superintendent Judy Martinson “enacted the letter as official district policy” by distributing it to principals, who in turn issued it to teachers. A parent and a teacher complained to the defense fund, which fired off its letter of a lawsuit unless the school district corrects matters.

Daniel J. Piedra, executive director of FCDF, said there are a number of problems with what CAIR suggested, including suggestions that schools proactively inform students they can take excused absences for religious observations and that teachers welcome Muslim students to class with the Arabic greetings.

“Exchanging Islamic greetings with Muslim students impermissibly advances and promotes a religious message,” Mr. Piedra said in his warning letter.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/may/6/schools-under-fire-encouraging-teachers-give-stude/?fbclid=IwAR3v5DEfuxRolzmeAoRmzDI2aEoxeRhqgWaB66jONT8hpPCmunWABADKXeU

An Ohio appeals court yesterday issued a ruling that upheld the Department of Health’s order to close the Women’s Med Center, a full-term abortion facility located in the Dayton suburb of Kettering.

The Women’s Med Center failed to comply with licensing regulations by not maintaining a hospital transfer agreement approved by the Ohio Department of Health.

The Women’s Med Center is one of six abortion facilities in the country that openly conduct abortions throughout all nine months of pregnancy.  Abortionist Martin Haskell is the sole owner and Medical Director of the facility.  He claims to have invented the grisly – and now-illegal – partial birth abortion procedure.

Ohio law requires that abortionists maintain hospital privileges, but allows for abortion facilities to obtain variances that substitute an approved hospital transfer agreement in the place of hospital privileges.  Those agreements must also include the names of physicians that do have hospital privileges who agree to treat women at local hospitals should they suffer abortion complications.

The attempt to close the Women’s Med Center began in 2015, when the clinic submitted a variance application that was not approved by the Department of Health.  This began a series of legal steps and appeals that have thus far taken four years to navigate.

“The appeals process in Ohio takes far to long.  It is ridiculous for an abortion facility that cannot comply with licensing standards to stay open for four, five, or six years until the appeals can be exhausted and the clinic finally closed,” said Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue.  “In the meantime, women are suffering abortion complications and are being transported away by ambulance.  These all could have been avoided had the appeals process allowed for the closure of this dangerous abortion clinic within a reasonable time frame.”

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Nik Hoot first made headlines in 2013 as a high school wrestler who was missing parts of his legs and fingers. He lost them when an abortionist failed to kill him, but still managed to rip off parts of his body.

Born in Russia, Hoot was immediately placed for adoption and a year later was adopted by an American couple, Martin and Apryl Hoot. He immediately took to his prosthetic legs, ditching his walker and learning to run within two weeks, according to his mother. As a boy, Nik loved sports, playing baseball, basketball, football, and wrestling. He had his obvious challenges, but never let those hold him back.

“It’s self-discipline. There’s so much you don’t want to do like all the hard work and conditioning. It’s just part of life,” Hoot said in an interview with News Channel 15. “You’re gonna hit a lot of barriers in life but you really have to just get over them.”

Hoot thinks of himself as a miracle and knows that he can accomplish a lot of things in his life. He doesn’t see himself as much different from his peers. While he wasn’t as fast as the other kids he played sports with, he said he found ways to get around any limitations.

“I knew that I was supposed to be an aborted baby and it failed. It makes me angry because I would never want for that to happen to any kid. Anybody can become anything, and getting rid of a kid like that isn’t right to me.”

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Doctors in Egypt captured an amazing new surgical procedure on film showing their work on the spine of an unborn baby boy with spina bifida.

Leading the surgical team was Dr. Wael El Banna, of Egypt, who said the baby’s mother chose the surgery after rejecting abortion, the Daily Mail reports. He said both baby and mother are doing well now.

The fetal surgery provides huge promise for children with spina bifida. Though it does not cure the disorder, the surgery helps to minimize damage by closing up holes in the child’s spine. Doctors in the United States and the United Kingdom have been performing these surgeries successfully for years.

El Banna said the surgery that his team performed and captured on video was the first of its kind in the region.

“There are lots of technical complications and lots of things which could go wrong with this procedure,” he said. “But the mother was brave and she didn’t want her son to be disabled and she didn’t want an abortion. This operation has been performed for years in the U.S. and children have better walking and less urinary and bowel incontinence.”

El Banna and his 11-member team spent five hours operating on the mother and her unborn son at Gohar Hospital in Cairo, according to the report. The mother’s name is not provided in the report.

“We located the position of the foetus and then manipulated his body to face the small opening that we made in the womb,” the doctor explained. “Then [we] drained some of the fluid around the foetus and kept the foetus under monitoring through the whole surgery.

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When doctors told 26-year-old mental health nurse Bethan Simpson after her 20-week ultrasound that her daughter Eloise had spina bifida — a condition in which the area around the developing spinal cord fails to properly close — they recommended abortion. But Simpson refused. “I couldn’t justify terminating a child I could feel kicking,” she said. Bethan and husband Kieron opted for prenatal surgery instead, which they called a “no-brainer.” The surgery has only been recently introduced to the United Kingdom, and has been done successfully there a handful of times. The BBC reports that Simpson is thought to be the fourth mother to undergo the surgery in the UK. The surgery has been done many times successfully in the United States and in Belgium.

According to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the hours-long surgery is typically done between 19 and 25 weeks, and will likely require the mother to remain on bedrest after the surgery for as long as possible. If labor does not begin early, CHOP states that mothers will deliver by planned C-section at 37 weeks.

The Simpsons reportedly conceived Elouise through IVF, and were alarmed when they learned at their prenatal scan that she had spina bifida. As is sadly typical when a fetal anomaly is found during pregnancy, abortion was recommended. Bethan told  the Daily Mail that doctors “did say it would be a pretty bleak outcome… very bleak. It was such a raw time.” Her husband Kieron added, “It was a pretty stark choice. How could we bring a child into this world with such a poor quality of life? She may not have had the use of her lower limbs as well as dysfunctional bladder and kidneys.”

But after going to another hospital and learning of the surgical option, the Simpsons were determined to help their child — not to terminate her for having physical challenges. At 25 weeks, Bethan had the surgery, done by a team of 20 doctors — and because of the choice to try to give Elouise a chance at life, she is doing amazingly well today. She reportedly shows no signs of spina bifida. When she was born on April 1, 2019, she “came out literally kicking and screaming – and peeing all over the place – so she ticked all the boxes,” her mother told the BBC.

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40 Days for Life’s current initiative has only been going on for a little over a month, yet the pro-life effort has already saved hundreds of unborn lives from abortion.

Timed to coincide with Lent, the latest 40 Days campaign began on March 6 in 377 cities across the United States, United Kingdom, and 29 other countries around the world. Volunteers have been stationed outside abortion facilities for 12 hours a day to conduct prayer vigils and offer sidewalk counseling to women considering abortion.

“The whole point of this is to take a positive and upbeat pro-life message to the whole community,” Robert Colquhoun, 40 Days’ Director of International Campaigns, told LifeSiteNews last month. “It is simple, and effective, because it works. Lives are saved, hearts and minds and changed and eternal souls are impacted. Abortion workers leave [their employment] and abortion centers close.”

Since then, 40 Days has received 446 confirmed reports of mothers choosing life for their babies, the group revealed Monday. The post shared several examples of the fruits of their efforts.

In Memphis, Tennessee, a man named Marcus who reluctantly accompanied his girlfriend to Planned Parenthood spoke with the sidewalk counselor, who promised help and convinced him to text her to leave the building before going through with the abortion. The couple left “smiling” and eager to go to a pregnancy center instead, and Marcus even participated in the prayer vigil.

Click here to read full article.

Alabama state Rep. John Rogers, a Democrat, said, while debating a bill that would ban most abortions in the state, “Some kids are unwanted, so you kill them now or you kill them later.”

“You bring them in the world unwanted, unloved, you send them to the electric chair,” Rogers continued. “So, you kill them now or you kill them later.”

Alabama State Rep. John Rogers (D) on abortion: “Some kids are unwanted, so you kill them now or you kill them later. You bring them in the world unwanted, unloved, you send them to the electric chair. So, you kill them now or you kill them later” pic.twitter.com/dxPg6X759h

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) May 1, 2019

U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne, a Republican from Alabama who is challenging Sen. Doug Jones in 2020 for his Senate seat, tweeted: 

It’s an abomination that Alabama has a Senator in @DougJones who is unabashedly pro-abortion & refuses to stand up to this type of extremism from members of his party in defense of innocent human life.

Alabama deserves a 100% pro-life voice representing us in the US Senate. https://t.co/Mpz5EbXhaI

— Bradley Byrne (@BradleyByrne) May 2, 2019

The Alabama state House overwhelmingly approved a measure Tuesday that would ban most abortions in the state. Lawmakers in the House voted, 74-3, to approve the legislation after most Democrats walked out of the chamber, refusing to vote.

Rogers chastised his colleagues for their decision to walk out of the chamber, reported Yellow Hammer News.

“When you’re opposed to something, stand there and fight it,” Rogers said. “I’m not leaving and walking out… I’m not scared of a fight.”

According to Yellow Hammer, Rogers added: “I may bring a bill to force all men to have vasectomies. That would end this whole debate. There would be no more abortions and eventually no more voters.”

The Human Life Protection Act, HB 314, would make abortion a Class A felony and attempted abortion a Class C felony. The only exceptions are in cases in which “abortion is necessary in order to prevent a serious health risk to the unborn child’s mother.”

The measure would make performing an abortion punishable by a minimum of ten years for an abortionist.

“The heart of this bill is to confront a decision that was made by the courts in 1973 that said the baby in a womb is not a person,” said Republican state Rep. Terri Collins, who sponsored the bill in the state House, reported the Associated Press. She added that while such a ban would likely be struck down by lower courts, the goal is to get to the Supreme Court.

Click here to read full article.

By MAIREAD MCARDLE
May 2, 2019 3:26 PM
 

The Trump administration on Thursday adopted protections for medical professionals who have moral objections to performing certain controversial procedures.

The new rule, instituted by the Department of Health and Human Services, will prohibit regulations designed to punish doctors who decline to perform abortions, assisted suicides, and sterilizations, among other procedures. The rule requires that clinics and research institutions receiving federal funding from programs including Medicare and Medicaid “submit written assurances and certifications of compliance” with federal laws safeguarding conscience and religious rights.

“Just today we finalized new protections of conscience rights for physicians, pharmacists, nurses, teachers, students, and faith-based charities,” Trump said in the White House Rose Garden during a statement honoring the National Day of Prayer. “They’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.”

The rule will be enforced by the Office of Civil Rights and will take effect in 60 days.

“Laws prohibiting government funded discrimination against conscience and religious freedom will be enforced like every other civil rights law,” OCR Director Roger Severino said in a statement. “This rule ensures that healthcare entities and professionals won’t be bullied out of the health care field because they decline to participate in actions that violate their conscience, including the taking of human life.”

Pro-life and religious-liberty groups issued statements of support for the rule.

“Those who serve our nation’s sick in the health care industry, or who are training to do so, should not be forced to violate their conscience in the process,” said Jeanne Mancini, president of March for Life. “No one should be forced to participate in life-ending procedures like abortion or similar activities that go against their religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

Ashley McGuire, a senior fellow at the Catholic Association, agreed that “no health-care worker should ever be forced to choose between their practice or their faith.”

“That principle is enshrined in countless laws and regulations but has been violated for far too long. Today’s regulation restates our nation’s commitment to conscience rights in the health-care industry,” McGuire said.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/trump-administration-guarantees-conscience-protections-for-doctors-who-wont-perform-abortions/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=McArdle&fbclid=IwAR2HxewnWgfPt7k6OJkdzs_h72RoPLdB1mNXgYt-LYmiWDTyrwd5QF_Gdys

Lawmakers in Tennessee have sent a bill to legalize online sports betting to the governor.

The Senate heard S 16 on Tuesday morning, adopting and amending the House substitute (H 1) and voting 20-12 in favor of passage. The House passed the previous language by a 58-37 vote last week and promptly concurred with the Senate changes.

Just like that, the Tennessee Legislature becomes the fourth in the US to authorize single-game wagering this year. The fate of each proposal now rests in the hands of its respective governor.

Of the four, though, the TN sports betting bill creates the least attractive framework for regulation.

Betting on Sports Tennessee

This effort had a difficult path in the House, and the amended version is a distant relative of the original.

The lower chamber removed provisions for retail betting in committee, passing it as an online-only measure. Additional House amendments increased the license fee hundredfold (to $750,000annually) and doubled the tax rate (to 20%). One notable Senate change empowers sports leagues to request certain restrictions.

The bill also retains language restricting operators to official data sources for settling in-play bets. Such provisions allow statistics to be weaponized and monetized, representing an unwelcome influence from professional sports leagues.

The NBA, MLB, and NFL are listed among the registered lobbying organizations in Tennessee.

For all the legwork they’ve done over the last year, this type of mandate has no statutory precedent in the US. Eight states currently regulate sports betting, and licensees are not subject to data restrictions in any of them.

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