Guilty by Reason of Insanity

by David Limbaugh

  Georgia resident Ashley Bratcher, star of the pro-life movie Unplanned, responded to Milano’s letter in Deadline. “For the latter part of a year I’ve watched as women I’ve admired, like you, spoke out in regards to women’s rights, more specifically women’s reproductive rights,” Bratcher wrote. “With radical laws like the ones in New York and Vermont being passed, it’s more critical than ever that we are using our voices to fight for the rights of women. One problem, you’re forgetting about the rights of women within the womb. If feminism is all about equal rights, then where are her rights?” Bratcher also responded eloquently and defiantly to Milano’s boycott threat:

  In Georgia, we care just as much about being pro-life as being pro-film. We don’t believe in putting a price tag on the value of a human life. Our brave leaders have stepped up to say enough is enough, we will no longer sit idly by as innocent lives are taken by the thousands each day. If you fault Georgia for choosing to be morally correct over politically correct, then that says more of your personal agenda than the goal of our governor to protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all. You claim that the HB 481 “Heartbeat Bill” would make Georgia the most regressive state in the country; I couldn’t disagree more. Abortion is so 1973. Welcome to 2019, a time in which medical advances preserve the life of babies born as early as 21 weeks. In case you didn’t know, that’s three weeks earlier than what most states in the U.S. consider “viable” in their abortion legislation.60

  TV networks joined Hollywood to try to sabotage the Georgia bill. Marketers for Unplanned told the Hollywood Reporter that numerous networks refused to accept their advertising money, including the Travel Channel, Cooking Channel, HGTV, Lifetime, Food Network, Hallmark Channel, and USA Network. Some networks declined due to the “sensitive nature” of the movie’s content, while others said they didn’t want to get involved in the political nature of the topic.61

  The Hollywood threats failed to deter the Georgia legislature, which passed the bill on March 29, 2019. Mississippi and Kentucky already had similar laws, and other states are considering following suit. After the Georgia bill passed, entertainment giants Disney, Netflix, and WarnerMedia threatened to stop producing movies and TV shows in Georgia. Comcast’s NBC Universal hinted at doing the same. Disney CEO Bob Iger said Disney would find it “very difficult” to film in Georgia if the new law takes effect. “I think many people who work for us will not want to work there, and we will have to heed their wishes in that regard,” said Iger.62 He didn’t express concern over Disney’s millions of pro-life patrons. Nor did he address the inconsistency in his company’s willingness to film in foreign nations that have stricter abortion laws than Georgia’s, such as Bolivia, Croatia, and the United Arab Emirates.

  At the federal level, Senator Ben Sasse introduced the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, providing that babies who survive attempted abortions must receive medical care. “You’re either for babies or you’re defending infanticide,” says Sasse. “That’s literally what this bill is about.”63 Callous Democrats blocked the bill, with Senator Patty Murray accusing Sasse of misrepresenting the bill’s purpose, claiming laws already prohibit infanticide.64 As of August 2019, Democrats had blocked a vote on the House version of the bill eighty times.65

  The Trump administration has revised Title X funding programs to ban abortions from being referred or provided by participating health clinics, a change that caused Planned Parenthood to abandon the programs. Predictably, Hollywood liberals from Elizabeth Banks to Alyssa Milano have come out in droves to lobby against these changes, warning that “reproductive health care” is at risk.66

  While these are positive signs, we must also be aware that dark forces are ever at work to undermine life. In January 2019, the Supreme Court delayed its decision on whether to accept review of a Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals decision striking down two Indiana abortion statutes, one of which outlawed abortions due to the child’s race, sex, or disability. The bill was meant to address the indisputable fact that abortion facilitates eugenics. If an unborn child is a human being then disabled unborn children are human beings as well, and we have no more moral justification to terminate their lives than if they had already been born. “It is morally unacceptable to claim that either women or people with Down Syndrome are less valuable than men or people without Down,” writes Seth Newkirk. “… Reintroducing genetic ‘purification’ to modern society reveals the inherent problems with abortion: abortion dehumanizes the most vulnerable and pretends we can judge the unborn as unworthy of life based on arbitrary parameters. Parameters such as genetic makeup, sex, disability, even convenience have become legitimate measures of worth in the age of abortion.”67

  THE LEFT’S WAR ON CHRISTIANITY MARCHES ON

  The left’s attacks on the pro-life community are part of its wider assault on Christians and their religious liberty. I chronicled the left’s war on Christianity in my 2003 book Persecution, and matters have only deteriorated since. Many liberals deny the left targets Christianity and routinely demonizes Christians, but the evidence doesn’t lie. You can barely watch a television show without Christians being portrayed as kooks, bigots, racists, sexists, or homophobes, or scripture being treated as hate speech. In countless movies and television dramas fanatical white Christians are depicted as terrorists. Leftist politicians interrogate Christian judicial nominees about their faith as if it’s inherently dangerous, while on social media Christians are assumed to be enemies of science and reason. Examples of the left’s crusade against Christianity are too numerous to thoroughly detail here, but the following instances amply illustrate the point:

  During the confirmation hearing for judicial nominee Neomi Rao to replace Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Democratic senators grilled Rao on her religious beliefs. Senator Cory Booker homed in on Rao’s personal convictions about marriage, implying that if she holds the traditional, biblical view that marriage is between one man and one woman, she is unfit to hold public office. “Are gay relationships in your opinion immoral?” Booker demanded to know.68

  In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Senator Dianne Feinstein interrogated nominee Amy Coney Barrett on her Catholic faith. “When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you,” intoned Feinstein. “And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for for years in this country.”69 Feinstein denied she was invoking a religious test for the nominee, but she obviously was, since she implied Barrett’s Christian beliefs would impede her objectivity on the bench. Many liberals have a distorted view of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, thinking that Christian officeholders in all branches of government must erect a sort of Chinese wall between their religious faith and their policy positions. But no person, from Christian to Buddhist to atheist, can escape the influence of her worldview on her policy preferences. It’s preposterous to suggest that only Christians should operate in such a vacuum.

  Judges, of course, are required to put aside their predispositions and review cases impartially in light of the facts and the applicable statutes and precedents. Unlike legislators, they are not advocates. But they are not required to be spiritual cyphers under some baseless concern over church-state separation. Christian judges are no less capable than secular ones of putting aside their biases to decide a case based on the law and facts. Indeed, Barrett has argued that Catholic judges (and presumably all other Christians) must not impose their faith on others, and if they determine they can’t avoid doing so in a particular case, they must recuse themselves.70

  Christian soccer player Jaelene Hinkle refused to wear a rainbow pride jersey celebrating the gay lifestyle in several games because of her religious beliefs. Though she is considered one of the best players in the National Women’s Soccer League, the United States Women’s National Soccer Team omitted her from its
twenty-three-woman roster for the 2019 World Cup.71

  The left is on a mission to eradicate Christianity from foster care and adoption. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) claimed that South Carolina’s Miracle Hill foster care agency was guilty of discrimination and of “immoral” and “deeply disturbing” practices because it recruited only Christian parents. The ADL has attacked Catholic social services and charities in major American cities such as Philadelphia and Buffalo for operating in accordance with their principles—for example, by preferring to place foster children with families that have both a mother and father. Leftists are willing to shut down adoption agencies that won’t surrender to their demands, even if it leads to a shortage of homes for adoptive children. The left’s motivation here is clearly not to secure adoptive homes for non-Christian couples but to purge the adoption industry of Christian influences. How’s that for tolerance? There are other options for non-Christian parents, as there are secular agencies in all states. But just as with same-sex couples or transgenders who can get any number of bakers or photographers to perform services for them, they are not satisfied unless every knee bows to their will.

  What is presented as discrimination by Christians is actually discrimination against Christians who are forced to comply, which directly violates their free exercise of religion.72 This is the same phenomenon we saw earlier with “non-discrimination” ordinances that force Christians to involuntarily provide services for gay wedding ceremonies.

  Similarly, New York state threatened to shut down Christian adoption agency New Hope Family Services unless it agreed to change its long-standing practice of placing children only in homes with a married mother and father. Though no formal complaints were lodged against New Hope, the state sent it a letter saying its policy was “discriminatory and impermissible.”73

  A Catholic senior living center in Chehalis, Washington, prohibits residents from saying “Merry Christmas” or displaying religious-themed Christmas cards or decorations in common areas, supposedly because the center receives funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.74

  Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts & Sciences invited Tim Wise, an “anti-racism writer, educator and activist,” to speak at its annual diversity conference. He has demeaned Christians as “Jeezoids” and “fascists” and tweeted that “people who believe in a God of hell/damnation deserved to be mocked viciously and run out of the public square.” In 2015, he said that people who base their morality on the Hebrew scriptures “deserve to be locked up,” adding he was “sorta kidding but not by much.”75 It is inconceivable that such bigotry against any non-Christian or non-Jewish group would be tolerated on this campus.

  The city of Upper Arlington, Ohio, denied a permit to Tree of Life Christian Schools to operate in a vacant building it had purchased in the city, though the facility would provide the city tax revenues and 150 jobs. The zoning code permits secular day cares to operate in the area but not this Christian school.

  Senate Democrats attacked Brian C. Buescher, President Trump’s nominee for the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska, because of his membership in the Catholic-connected Knights of Columbus. They asked whether belonging to this Catholic charitable organization would inhibit his fairness and impartiality in cases. Buescher’s defenders denounced this religious bigotry and lamented the current trend of excluding Christians from public service based solely on their faith.

  In a series of articles titled, “12 Days of Chris-Mas,” which featured different actors named Chris, TV Guide magazine warned its readers about actor Chris Pratt. “When you take a deeper look at Pratt the man and not necessarily Pratt the actor, some of the shine wears off,” writes Kaitlyn Thomas. “Although he can be as funny offscreen as he is on—his recurring ‘What’s My Snack’ videos on Instagram are almost always delightful—it’s impossible to ignore some problematic aspects of his life offscreen.” Some of his “problematic aspects” are his love of hunting and his mocking of our outrage culture. Perhaps the fact that Pratt had recently read from the Gospel of Luke at Disneyland and confessed his Christian faith might have influenced Thomas’s view of him and her assessment that he “remains the most complicated and divisive of the Chrises.” To self-styled tolerant liberals, only conservatives and Christians are divisive.

  Comedian Jenny Hagel, a writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers, ripped into Pope Francis for saying that gays should not be priests. Pointing to his picture, Hagel said, “Here’s the thing: This guy’s not cool. This guy is homophobic. We should all care about this because the Pope is a world leader who is giving people permission to be prejudiced. This dude may seem harmless because he’s shuffling around in a white robe, but remember: White robes are the official uniform of people with bad ideas”76—

  presumably a reference to the Ku Klux Klan. Does it occur to Hagel that she is smearing all Catholics who believe the Church’s doctrine on homosexuality?

  To avoid offending students who don’t celebrate Christmas, Manchester Elementary School principal Jennifer Sinclair warned teachers not to adorn their classrooms with candy canes because their “J” shape stands for Jesus. Thankfully, the Nebraska school district placed the principal on administrative leave.77

  Outraged that Vice President Mike Pence’s wife Karen had taken a job at a Christian school, Lady Gaga lashed out at him during a concert in Las Vegas. “To Mike Pence who thinks that it’s OK that his wife works at a school that bans LGBTQ, you’re wrong,” she exclaimed. “You’re the worst representation of what it means to be a Christian. I am a Christian woman, and what I do know about Christianity is that we bear no prejudice, and everybody is welcome. So you can take all that disgrace, Mr. Pence, and look yourself in the mirror and you’ll find it right there.”78Sure, Lady Gaga bears no prejudice against anyone—except practicing Christians who embrace the biblical view of marriage. Other like-minded progressives, such as the Human Rights Campaign, the ACLU, and a writer for HuffPost, joined Lady Gaga in trashing Karen Spence. CNN anchor John King questioned whether she should be denied Secret Service protection and government housing during the government shutdown because she works at a Christian school.79 One Pence basher tweeted, “Karen Pence is a terrible human being.” Another said, “Mike Pence is an extremist bigot, Karen Pence is an extremist bigot. She’s unfit to even be around kids, let alone teach them. Anyone willing to allow their kid to be taught by a dangerous monster like Karen Pence is unfit to be a parent. Ask me how I really feel.”80 During this controversy, a New York Times reporter solicited help from Twitter users for an article he planned to write on Christian schools. He included the hashtag #ExposeChristianSchools, whose creator said it was intended to expose the “trauma” induced by “those bastions of bigotry.”81

  It’s pretty clear who the extremists, haters, and bigots are—who is tolerant, kind, and loving, and who isn’t. Just being a Bible-believing Christian makes you subhuman to these belligerents. Almost all religious schools, Christian and otherwise, have codes of conduct and voluntary acceptance of a specific belief system. This attack on Karen Spence and the Christian school for which she works is an ominous sign for what Christian schools may be facing from the militant left in the near future. The left’s goal is not to preserve the church-state separation as they claim but to ban Christian expression and practices from the public square and even from private life, as they demand utter uniformity of thought and seek to stigmatize the Christian faith and punish its adherents.

  Sheridan School, a progressive private school in Virginia, refused to play sports with Christian kids from Immanuel Christian School, the school where Karen Pence teaches, because playing basketball at a Christian school supposedly makes children feel “unsafe.” Sheridan principal Jessica Donovan said that when Immanuel kids come to play at Sheridan, her students plaster images from the gay community on their clothing and wave celebratory signs during the games.82 Who is the aggressor here?

  On The View, Joy Behar said of Vi
ce President Mike Pence, “It’s one thing to talk to Jesus. It’s another thing when Jesus talks to you. That’s called mental illness, if I’m not correct.”83

  The annual comic book convention Comicon banned actor Kevin Sorbo due to his conservative political leanings and, some believe, his Christian faith.84

  U.S. district judge Haywood Gilliam Jr. blocked a Trump administration rule change designed to expand the Obamacare exemption to include more employers who, because of their religious or moral convictions, can refuse to cover employees’ contraception. “No American should be forced to violate his or her own conscience in order to abide by the laws and regulations governing our health care system,” said Caitlin Oakley, spokeswoman for Health and Human Services. “The final rules affirm the Trump Administration’s commitment to upholding the freedoms afforded all Americans under our Constitution.”85

  James Wesolek, a writer at The Federalist, argues that leftist legislators in Texas are promising a “transformative agenda, which includes a number of “sexual orientation and gender identity” laws that Wesolek says “would attack people of faith so aggressively that they can justifiably be described as ‘Ban the Bible’ bills.”Under the guise of anti-discrimination advocacy, the bills would authorize the government to ban the free expression of biblically grounded beliefs, says Wesolek. They would force religious homeless shelters, colleges, and universities—even shelters for abused women and small dormitories—to allow biological men to sleep next to women. They would force private business owners to allow men into intimate spaces intended for women—showers, locker rooms, and public bathrooms. They “would force all businesses to adopt these radical LGBT policies, even those owned by people who oppose them for religious or safety reasons,” writes Wesolek. Another bill would permit the government to discipline counselors, marriage and family therapists, psychologists, and other mental health providers licensed by Texas if they discourage homosexual behavior or the desire for a “gender transition.”86