Author: Penna Dexter

Penna Dexter
Nine years ago, the United States Supreme Court issued the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision that brought same sex marriage to every state. This — despite the fact that 31 states had specifically defined marriage in their laws and constitutions as being between one man and one woman.
Many Americans still hold to that definition of marriage, especially people of faith.
During oral arguments in Obergefell, Justice Antonin Scalia, asked, “Is it conceivable that a minister who is authorized by the state to conduct marriage can decline to marry two men if indeed this court holds that they have a constitutional right to marry?” Then he said, “I don’t see how.”
So far, the government has not forced churches and pastors to marry same sex couples. But public officials who perform marriages often experience opposition when they refuse to do so.
One such official is Dianne Hensley, a justice of the peace in McLennon County, Texas. She has refused to perform same sex weddings and thus received a reprimand from the State Commission on Judicial Conduct citing a violation of judicial impartiality. She now refers same sex couples to nearby officiants. Because of the public warning, she currently does not perform any weddings but, in order to serve her community, she would like to resume doing so.
In Obergefell, all nine justices affirmed that religious liberty should be protected. This was a slender reed to hang onto. Kelly Shackelford, President and CEO of First Liberty Institute, predicted that, post-Obergefell, religious liberty would come under attack.
Now the organization he leads is representing Judge Hensley in her quest to win the right for any justice of the peace in Texas to opt out of same sex weddings while still performing other weddings.
The TX Supreme Court recently ruled that Judge Hensley can challenge this warning in court, on the basis that her religious freedom is being violated. She’s fighting an important battle. 

Penna Dexter
Every four years each political party sends seasoned activists to the table to write a platform for convention delegates to pass. Words are carefully chosen; positions painstakingly framed.  The document — though not binding on candidates — provides a blueprint for policies advocated by the party.  Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, no other plank in the platform of either major party has received more scrutiny.
The 2016 Republican platform language on abortion is strongly supportive of the protection of human life. It adamantly opposes the use of public funds for abortion. In 2020, President Trump and the RNC did not reopen the platform, instead sticking with the one from 2016.
This year brings the first revision of the platform since the Dobbs decision which struck down Roe v. Wade. In the run-up to the convention the Trump campaign signaled a desire to “streamline” the platform to make it shorter, clearer, and more concise, with policy commitments that are “easily digestible.”
Pro-family leaders, including Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, were concerned that the RNC platform negotiated this past week in Milwaukee might end up watering down strong protections for the unborn.
Tony Perkins represented the state of Louisiana on this year’s RNC platform committee. He points out that “The platform not only gives insight to voters, it gives direction to Republican elected officials.” He cites research showing that “the parties actually follow their platforms” about 80 percent of the time.
At the convention this week, delegates will vote on a final platform with a pro-life plank that may be concise but, hopefully remains strong and clear.
The Democrats’ platform is pro-abortion and abortion is a front and center campaign issue for many of the party’s candidates. Post-Dobbs, we’ve learned that Republicans don’t do themselves any favors by shying away from the issue. Protecting human life is a moral imperative. GOP candidates must boldly articulate a pro-life position. 

Penna Dexter
On a recent trip to Greece, I learned that during the Athenian Golden Age, 449-431 BC, there emerged a fervent belief in the ability of man. 
Our tour leader, David Sparks explained the development of democracy in ancient Greece, which culminated in Athens taking power from the hands of a single ruler or aristocratic ruling class and redistributing that power to all male citizens regardless of social or economic status. “Each male citizen over eighteen was allowed participation in the Assembly, the legislative body that elected magistrates and created legislation.”
It’s hard to overstate the importance of this “shift from rule-by-the-few to rule-by-the-many.” This idea, democracy, is foundational to our government and culture. Sometimes our leaders forget that.
Nine years ago this week the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a landmark ruling that violates the very principles of democracy. 
In the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision, the Court struck down all state laws specifying that marriage is the union between one man and one woman, bringing legal same sex marriage to every state. 
When you get a bad decision from the Supreme Court, it’s worth reading the dissenting opinion. In this case each of the four dissenting justices wrote his own. All lamented the damage the ruling does to democracy. The dissenters agreed, the question in this case was not whether same-sex marriage is a good idea, but who should decide. It should not have been the Court, but the people and their elected legislators.
Chief Justice Roberts spoke of the sheer arrogance of the ruling, saying: 
“The Court invalidates the marriage laws of more than half the states and orders the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia.” He wondered: “Just who do we think we are?”
Since then, the Left has pulled out all the stops to force acceptance of same sex marriage into law and policy.

Penna Dexter
I recently returned from a trip to Greece. One cannot go far in that country without being confronted with evidence of the rise and fall of great civilizations.
We spent a day in and around Corinth, a wealthy ancient Greek city, destroyed by the Romans in 156 BC.
The Romans killed all the men in Corinth and enslaved the women — and the children. The victorious Roman army sacked the city, utterly destroying it.
In 146-144 BC, Julius Caesar settled Corinth as a Roman colony. The Romans rebuilt it.
The Corinth the apostle Paul visited was Roman — again a great city which, because of its location, was the crossroads of civilization. Paul started from Athens and went to Corinth to end his second missionary journey.
At that time, Corinth was the commercial center of the world. Our tour leader compared Athens to Boston. But Corinth, he told us, was like New York City. He likened the ceramic earthen vessel, the main receptacle for storage and transport in this prosperous society, to the ubiquitous cardboard box which characterizes commerce today.
Corinth was filled with carnality and corruption. Ancient Gods, both Greek and then Roman, were corrupt. Greece’s most beautiful women worshipped Aphrodite through their bodies in temples dedicated to her. People indulged their vices.
Paul was an urban evangelist. When Paul got to Corinth, he had to teach people what sin is.
Rod Dreher’s newsletter recently referred to William Ophuls’ book, Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail. There comes a time for them when, “The majority lives for bread and circuses; worships celebrities instead of divinities; takes its bearings from below rather than above; throws off social and moral restraints, especially on sexuality; shirks duties but insists on entitlements; and so forth.”
William Ophuls continues: “The society’s original vigor, virtue, and morale have been entirely effaced. Rotten to the core, the society awaits collapse, with only the date remaining to be determined.”
We must ask: How near are we to this?

Penna Dexter
Population policy received heavy scrutiny recently at the annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on Population and Development.
Julia-Elena Cazan reported on the meeting which was held at UN headquarters in New York.  She wrote: “Governments voiced concerns that low fertility rates are threatening their societies with anemic economic growth, labor shortages, fiscal insolvency, and other social problems. But the UN population establishment insists it’s not a problem. Ms. Cazan says population bureaucrats, when confronted with these concerns, “tried to cast low fertility in a positive light.”
The UN has been able to convince some countries that population decline is a good thing and something to be pursued. But most are not buying it and are instead in a panic over steep declines in their populations.
Stefano Gennarini, Vice President for Legal Studies at the Center for Family and Human Rights, points out that “reality is catching up with the population control movement.” More and more countries,” he writes, “are awaking to the imminent threat of low fertility and aging in all societies.”  Many “countries are reaping the horrific consequences of sixty years of anti-natalist programs and propaganda.”
 According to Mr. Gennarini, “Currently, sexual and reproductive health is the number one item on the global health agenda. No other issue receives more funding.” But as countries suffer the harsh consequences of dwindling populations, and foresee worse down the road, they are questioning and scrutinizing the UN’s promotion of population control including reproductive health, i.e. abortion.
Western governments, including the U.S., constantly insist that “sexual and reproductive rights”  become international human rights. They attempt to exclude “language in UN agreements that protects the sovereign right of countries to decide questions of abortion and the provision of transgender affirming care, on their own.”
International pressure on governments is only one of many factors causing the decline in fertility rates and population worldwide. But these declines in population signal thatwe should abolish the UN’s population control apparatus.

Penna Dexter
With marriage rates down 60 percent since the 1970’s, some well-known authors are putting out books touting marriage. University of Virginia sociology professor, Brad Wilcox makes the case for marriage in his new book, Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families and Save Civilization.
In interviews, he points out that “a lot of young adults today are under the impression that what really matters in life is your education, building your own brand, and especially investing your life in a career.” He says, “there’s a sort of false orientation to a more individualistic and workist or careerist approach to life.” He calls this the “Midas mindset” and it’s a major factor in the tendency of young adults to marry later or not to marry at all.
Novelist and philosopher Cheryl Mendelson has a new book that The Wall Street Journal’s Tara Isabell Burton describes as “fascinating and morally serious.” Vows: The Modern Genius of an Ancient Rite chronicles the evolution of wedding vows describing how love became increasingly central to the vows and to marriage itself.
A key date is 1549, when a consultation of bishops met and produced the first Book of Common Prayer which became a permanent feature of the Church of England’s worship and a key source for its doctrine. It is generally assumed that this book is largely the work of Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, during Henry the VIII’s break with Rome. Archbishop Cranmer built upon robust medieval vows, adding the promises “to love and to cherishe.” Cheryl Mendelson says the vision of marriage that emerged brought to English society “a quiet reservoir of freedom and equality, encouraging individualism and free choice.”
But this brand of individualism and free choice is different from Brad Wilcox’s “Midas mindset” in which “self-written vows are as common as traditional ones.”
The Journal’s reviewer, Ms. Burton concludes, “there is something to those old school words” and “the ideals behind them.”

Penna Dexter
A landmark study released last month reveals that, when a child presents with “sudden onset gender dysphoria,” rushing to provide so-called “gender affirming care,” is not medical progress or a natural “next step.”
The standard warning has been that if the child exhibiting gender incongruence does not receive gender affirming care, he or she is a likely suicide risk. But the United Kingdom’s National Health Service recently released a nearly 400-page report that counters this narrative. Researcher and pediatrician Hillary Cass chaired this independent review, the most comprehensive evaluation of the evidence to date. Her data confirms that children who suddenly exhibit gender dysphoria are often suffering from other mental health challenges and would benefit from holistic evaluation and treatment.
The report noted the lack of quality in published studies which form the basis upon which clinical decisions are made. Researchers observed that gender affirming care is based upon “shaky foundations,” and evidence for the use of puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and medical transition surgeries as treatment for gender dysphoria is “remarkably weak.”
On puberty blockers, the report concludes: “The rationale for early puberty suppression remains unclear.”
On cross sex hormones: “The use of masculinizing/feminizing hormones in those under the age of 18 also presents many unknowns, despite their longstanding use in the adult transgender population.”
Currently, these — followed by surgery — are the go-to strategies even when gender dysphoria is accompanied by other mental health problems and conditions like autism spectrum disorder and neurodiversity issues.
Gender activists and practitioners recommend treatments as if the science were settled. It’s not. There are long term negative medical and psychological consequences to these treatments.
One of those consequences is that in pursuing this path the young person has not sufficiently dealt with the underlying mental issues.
The report concludes: “For most young people, a medical pathway will not be the best way to manage their gender-related distress.”
‘Perhaps the Cass Report will usher in some needed caution.

Penna Dexter
Headlines about the fact that the fertility rate is falling worldwide have government leaders worried. As workforces shrink, economic growth slows, and companies and government entities fail to sufficiently fund pensions, demographers are scrambling to offer explanations – and solutions.
The fertility rate has to do with the number of babies a woman has over her lifetime. It is believed that, for the first time, fertility has dropped below global replacement.
There are many reasons: Longer lifespans with more children surviving into adulthood, women’s higher education levels, women’s greater participation in the workforce, economic uncertainty beginning with the 2008 financial crisis.
The Wall Street Journal points to another factor:  a “’second demographic transition,’ a society-wide reorientation toward individualism that puts less emphasis on marriage and parenthood, and makes fewer or no children more acceptable.”
Melissa Kearney, an economist at the University of Maryland, told The Wall Street Journal that raising children is no more expensive now than in the past. She says parents simply have different “perspectives” and “perceived constraints.” Professor Kearney, the author of a recent book, The Two-Parent Privilege, points out that highly educated parents spend more time with their children than in the past and therefore may want fewer of them. She says, “The intensity of parenting is a constraint.”
Another scholar with the same last name — spelled differently — is the American Enterprise Institute’s Timothy Carney. His book is Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be. He and his wife have five children.
Tim Carney’s recent Washington Post op-ed recommends families have at least four children. He writes: “There’s nothing high-quality about the intensive parenting that is typical in today’s middle and upper-middle classes.” He recommends letting kids “off the leash,” ditching the daily after-school “race,” in favor of “independent play” because it’s fun, less exhausting, and helps children learn to cope with stressors (like when little brother smashes your record-breaking Lego tower).

Penna Dexter
Radical transgender directives just keep coming from the executive branch of the federal government. The latest decree, official guidance for employers from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, concerns restroom and pronoun use.
The guidance states that “the denial of access to a bathroom or other sex-segregated facility consistent with the individual’s gender identity” could bring a workplace under harassment charges. So could misgendering: “repeated and intentional use of a name or pronoun inconsistent with the individual’s known gender identity.”
Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits employers with more than 15 employees from discriminating based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Now — without a vote in Congress — the EEOC is including sexual orientation and gender identity in the list of protected categories.
The EEOC’s mandate is to combat racism and sexism in the workplace. It is not to force employers to pretend a person can change his or her gender identity.
Last July, the United States Senate narrowly confirmed Kalpana Kotagal to serve on the EEOC. Leading up to the vote, Senator Ted Cruz voiced his concern about what he described as her “record of support for radical transgender ideology.” Ms. Kotagal was confirmed as the third Democrat on the 5-member commission. This guidance is the fruit.
When the EEOC proposed this update last fall, 20 state attorneys general expressed their opposition, arguing that the proposed guidance would threaten the First Amendment rights of employers, employees, and, in some cases, customers.
Reed Rubenstein, director of oversight at America First Legal, pointed out that “Most large corporations promote gender ideology and punish workers who dissent, but it is likely that the EEOC will focus on small and privately owned family businesses, many of which lack the resources to fight back effectively.” Christian employers: be warned.
The Heritage Foundation’s Jay Richards told The Daily Signal, “normal people” must understand. He warns, “We’re dealing with a totalitarian ideology that wants to destroy the present order.” 

Penna Dexter
When the U.S. Department of Education released its rewrite of Title IX a couple of weeks ago, it took a landmark guarantee of equality in education on the basis of sex and turned it upside down.
Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 was designed to protect women’s rights in education. These protections were hard won. They were a pillar of the feminist agenda. After they were enacted, women and girls gained important protections and opportunities.  Female participation in sports — from grammar school through college and beyond — exploded.
Title IX was passed in recognition of the inherent distinction between men and women. But this new rule imposes a radical redefinition of sex to include gender identity. In fact, according to The Washington Stand’s Ben Johnson, “The term ‘gender identity’ appears 289 times in the 1,577-page document.”
Sarah Parshall Perry, Senior Legal Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, has been warning for months that the administration was set to both “undermine constitutional freedoms  — like the freedom of speech — and erase the very  women that Title IX was enacted to protect.”
She explains in The Daily Signal that under the new rule, ”any K-12 school or institution of higher education that receives any federal funding would have to open girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms, housing accommodations, sports teams, and any other sex-separated educational program to biological boys who claim to ‘identify’ as girls.”
Ignoring or even questioning these guidelines will result in charges of harassment.
Certain state leaders have taken action against the new rule.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Florida Governor Ron De Santis directed their school districts to ignore the rewrite. Many state attorneys general are suing the administration over the changes.
How do we describe the gutting of such an entrenched law protecting women, such a brazen denial of biological reality?  Gary Bauer uses the term “assault on normalcy.” He’s right. What a radical move six months before an election.

Penna Dexter
Five years ago, in a one-hour radio interview, Jeff Younger told me the story of his battle to save his then-six-year-old son, James. When he was 3, his mother, Jeff’s ex-wife Anne Georgulas, began dressing and treating James as a girl. She began taking him to a transgender-affirming therapist. She obtained a court order enjoining Jeff from dressing James as a boy for school, from teaching him that he is a boy, and from providing religious teachings about sexuality and gender.
James’ mother instructed school authorities that he be treated as a girl. He goes to school, dressed as a girl and obediently answers to his girl name, “Luna.” But, with his dad and twin brother Jude, James is all boy. And, with family friends, he would always play with the boys, as a boy.
As James’s mom, a pediatrician, orchestrated his social transition, his father spent time and money fighting her in Texas courts. In 2019 Jeff lost custody of James and Jude. He did eventually manage to win a court order prohibiting Anne from subjecting James to gender mutilation surgery or hormone treatments.
In late 2022, Anne and the twins moved to California. Jeff maintains that, despite the Texas Supreme Court’s prohibition, Anne initiated the move to take advantage of California’s “trans refuge” laws.
These laws were strengthened in January 2023 when California Senate bill 107 took effect. One provision prohibits the state from enforcing court orders from other states that seek to remove custody from a parent who has moved to California to transition their child.
The question is: will Anne Georgulas now procure puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, and surgical castration for James?
Jeff Younger is convinced that California laws now allow her to do exactly that—and she will.
He’s still protesting, but will not even be allowed to testify at a May 30 court hearing in Los Angeles although several pro-trans “experts” will take the stand.
Stay tuned.

Penna Dexter
A rule has been added to the federal register that will make it  nearly impossible for an incoming president to fire certain federal employees.
The Office of Personnel Management issued the new rule which will shield employees appointed by the executive branch from being terminated for opposing the policies and agenda of a president.
The rule is to go into effect next month. It concerns employment protections in place for career civil servants that do not apply to political appointees.
The rule is based upon the idea that career bureaucrats — often lifelong federal employees — should not be subject to termination because they are not classified as policy-making executive branch employees.
But, as past presidents have learned, career civil servants often fill “policy-making and policy-influencing roles.”  They can form part of the deep state that plagues incoming presidents when they try to implement conservative policies.
National Review’s James Lynch explains that, toward the end of his administration, former President Donald Trump issued an executive order creating a new category, “Schedule F,” for policy-making employees. These employees would not be shielded from termination for “perceived disloyalty to the president and his agenda.” The rule states: “Faithful execution of the law requires that the President have appropriate management oversight regarding this select cadre of professionals.”
President Joe Biden repealed the Trump executive order upon entering office.”
According to Family Research Council’s Washington Stand, the new rule protects “those that the Biden administration has entrenched in the federal government from a possible Trump presidency.” FRC’s Senior Director of Government Affairs Quena Gonzalez, says this new rule “undermines the authority of the American people by tying the hands of an elected president.” He says it “undermines presidential elections.”
This issue goes beyond dueling executive orders.
Though employees with experience and expertise are valuable to a federal workforce, their role is not to undermine a president or impede his effectiveness. Any rule that perpetuates a permanent ruling class should be jettisoned.

Penna Dexter
Here’s the story of a young woman who became acutely aware of the relationship between social media and teen mental illness and is doing something important about it.
The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets describe her as a digital-wellness advocate. 
Larissa May, age 29, is Founder and Executive Director of a nonprofit called Half the Story. The organization’s founding concept is: “Social media is only half the story. We only share one part of ourselves on the internet.” This can be destabilizing, and worse.
Social scientist Jonathan Haidt has the data to prove the connection between social media and the rise in teen anxiety and depression.
In his new book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing An Epidemic of Mental Illness,” he highlights the teen mental health epidemic’s sudden onset. It occurred in 2012, the year Facebook bought Instagram. Instagram was founded in 2010, the same year Apple released the I-phone 4, the first smartphone with a front-facing camera.
Teens worldwide were drawn in, with girls spending hours “trying to perfect their Instagram profiles while scrolling through even-more-perfect profiles of other teens.”
Larissa says, “When I was a sophomore in college, I hit the darkest period of my life.” She says she was spending 10-12 hours per day on social media, ”which is not as uncommon as you might think.” She became depressed, anxious, and even considered suicide. Instead, in her senior year, as a class project, she started Half the Story.
She now educates middle through high schoolers “about the emotional skills that you need to thrive in the digital media.” She tells them, “If you aren’t in touch with your emotions, you’re not going to be able to control your digital habits.”
Larissa has developed a curriculum for educators called Social Media U plus an 8-week course for students. She also advocates for policy changes to limit online dangers.
She’s not waiting for tech companies but is actively shaping the future of the internet.

Penna Dexter
Back in 2017, Ed Stetzer, then a professor, dean and executive director of Wheaton College’s Billy Graham Center, published an essay on the website, In All Things, titled “How Can the Christian Church Thrive In a Non-Christian World?” He wrote, “Our society no longer assumes the gospel, which means the Church often stands at odds with the rest of society.”
Seven years later, a U.S president proclaimed that Transgender Day of Visibility will be recognized on March 31, Easter Sunday. Was the president trying to spite Christians? Though Trans Day of Visibility has been around for 10 years, the president’s words in affirmation of “transgender Americans” stand in direct opposition to Christianity. He stated that transgenders “deserve, and are entitled to, the same rights and freedoms as every other American, including the most fundamental freedom to be their true selves.” He then blasted Americans working to protect society and its children from the fruits of the transgender movement: pornography in schools, mutilating surgeries, violations of basic female privacy, and fairness in athletics.
If this is not hostility to Christianity, it is blindness. Cultural commentator Rod Dreher writes, “The more troubling thing is that Biden’s kind of Christian sees no contradiction between linking Easter with Trans Day.”
He wrote, “In the 1970’s, the gay rights movement adopted the Greek letter lambda as its symbol. This is why the premiere gay rights advocacy organization is called Lambda Legal. What we are living through now is a cosmological struggle within our culture, a fight to the death between the Lamb and the Lambda. The ruling Class — our political leaders, but not only them — is on the side of the Lambda.”
Dr. Stetzer wrote, “the gospel is always clearer in an age when it is not culturally assumed.” We can proclaim a “radically distinct” gospel message. But Rod Dreher wonders: “Can Christian faith be sustained for long without the support of a nurturing Christian culture?”
Lord help us.

Penna Dexter
Last month, more than two decades after the Clinton FDA approved the abortion pill, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that challenges the agency’s progressive easing of restrictions on chemical abortion.
The case is Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine vs. Food and Drug Administration. 
Alliance Defending Freedom filed suit in federal court on behalf of four medical organizations and four doctors seeking to have the drug, mifepristone, removed from the marketplace. Mifepristone is the first in a 2-drug regimen that constitutes a medical, or chemical abortion. Chemical abortion accounts for over 60 percent of abortions done in the U.S.  
A federal judge in Amarillo, Texas ruled that the drug’s initial approval was unlawful.
But the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals left intact the FDA’s initial approval of mifepristone. Its ruling would reverse changes regulators made in 2016 and 2021 that eased some conditions for administering the drug.
In 2000, the FDA approved the 2-drug regimen to be used during the first seven weeks of pregnancy and then, in 2016, extended it to be used up to 10 weeks’ gestation.
Over time, the FDA has also removed the requirement that a woman be examined in person when receiving a prescription for chemical abortion drugs.
According to Mary Szoch, Director of the Family Research Council’s Center for Human Dignity, “the use of the abortion drug is especially egregious, because we know that the abortion drug is four times as dangerous as surgical abortion for the mother.”
Increasingly, medication abortions are prescribed via telemedicine — that means there’s no physical exam, no ultrasound study. Prompt ultrasound evaluation is key in diagnosing ectopic pregnancy, which can prove deadly to the mother if not caught early enough.
The justices seemed to doubt the doctors’ standing. Nonetheless a competent FDA would do its job and reinstate the requirement that existed as recently as 2021, that to get a medication abortion, a woman must first see a medical provider.

Penna Dexter
This true story has a positive ending. But it never should have happened. Dr. Johnson Varkey is a biology teacher, adjunct professor at St. Philip’s College in San Antonio, Texas.   
He was fired for stating a fact of human biology: that sex is determined by X and Y chromosomes.  
I learned in 9th grade that females have two X chromosomes in their cells, while males have one X and one Y. For 18 years, Dr. Varkey taught this in his Human Anatomy and Physiology classes at St. Philip’s. But in November 2022, 4 students walked out of Dr. Varkey’s class for presenting this basic scientific concept.
Two months later, St. Philip’s College fired Dr. Varkey, citing “numerous complaints” about his “offensive” speech in the classroom and accusing him of “unacceptable religious preaching.”  First Liberty Institute was asked to help. The firm’s attorneys wrote a letter to the school outlining the illegality of its action in firing Dr. Varkey. First Liberty states it also “filed a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.”
Several members of Congress weighed in. Last month, a full year after Dr. Varkey was fired, St. Philips College and the Alamo Community College District — of which the college is a part — reinstated Dr. Varkey. According to the settlement, Dr. Varkey will be back in the classroom this fall.
In today’s academy, an admired professor gets fired for teaching biology because someone steps up and defines sex differently. Dr. Varkey is a quiet, serious academic. Since he’s known to be a Christian, he’s a target.
Christian professors in these environments are being told to lie. So are Christians in other workplace settings — think pronoun requirements. But people do not have to capitulate to woke policies and regimes contrary to their faith.
Last year, a Supreme Court decision affirmed postal worker Gerald Groff’s right to his reasonable practice of faith. That was First Liberty’s case. Its powerful protections are a game-changer. 

Penna Dexter
Last week Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Minneapolis to visit an abortion clinic. The Washington Post reports that this is ”believed to be the first time an American president or vice president has toured such a facility while in office.” Even pro-abortion administrations have never considered it good campaign strategy to showcase an abortion mill.
Until now.
The trip to Minnesota was the sixth stop on Vice President Harris’s “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms” tour. It took place a week after President Biden’s State of the Union address in which he highlighted his administration’s emphasis on abortion access. It’s interesting — though — that the president never used the word. CNN reports that his written speech “included the word: abortion, but he did not say it when he delivered the speech.” Mr. Biden once held to the Catholic position on the sanctity of human life. Perhaps he retains some lingering cognitive dissonance on the subject.
This White House has made broad abortion access a core campaign strategy aimed at attracting and galvanizing moderate voters. Are we really a country that has devalued motherhood to such a degree that a major party’s campaign would run on making it easier to abort children?
The Washington Stand reports that voters in Ireland recently honored motherhood. They voted down two proposed constitutional amendments: One, the Care Amendment, removed existing references to motherhood and statements regarding the contributions mothers in the home provide. Seventy-four percent of Irish voters rejected this change. And sixty-seven percent of Irish voters turned down an amendment that altered the Constitution’s declaration that the family “is founded” upon marriage, instead stating that the family may be “founded on marriage or on other durable relationships.”
Celebrating these votes, the pro-life, pro-family Irish Freedom Party stated, “The referendum results reveal a huge disconnect between the people of Ireland and the political establishment. They seem to live on a different planet to normal people.”
Hopefully, American voters will also honor motherhood.

Penna Dexter
The nation’s two largest pharmacy chains, CVS and Walgreens, are about to start filling prescriptions for the abortion pill, mifepristone, in states where it is legally allowed. Since restrictions on prescribing the drug through telemedicine have been lifted, the reckless practice of providing abortion drugs through the mail has exploded. The availability of mifepristone at drug stores will increase the ease of getting an abortion with no doctor or nurse present. In excruciating pain, the mother will expel her baby, or pieces of it, into a toilet, or her hand.
Mifepristone cuts off progesterone, which is required to sustain a pregnancy.
The FDA approved the abortion pill in 2000 with strong requirements to mitigate its risk to women receiving it. The stipulation that abortion pills be dispensed by a qualified prescriber at a clinic or hospital or similar health care setting was once deemed crucial. Since non-surgical, or chemical, abortions must be done within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, the gestational age of the unborn baby must be accurate. If a woman misdates her pregnancy, she risks infection from fetal tissue left in the uterus. And not seeing a medical professional often rules out a timely diagnosis of ectopic pregnancy, which can be life-threatening.
Board certified OB-GYN Ingrid Skop, vice president for the Charlette Lozier Institute, says, “This is not health care. This is an ideology that prioritizes destruction of unborn human life and does not care that the women injured by these abortions, whom I see in the ER on a regular basis, are collateral damage.”
In just a few weeks the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on whether mifepristone should remain available for abortions. At issue is whether the FDA approval of mifepristone, and the agency’s removal of health safeguards in 2016 and 2021, adequately protected women.
Nonetheless, CVS and Walgreens are moving ahead. Depending upon where you live, your corner pharmacy may be about to become an abortion business. 

Penna Dexter
A Christian high school girls’ basketball team forfeited a playoff game last year because a transgender student, a biological boy, was playing on the opposing team. Now the Vermont Principals’ Association says the team will not be allowed to participate in future tournaments.
FOX NEWS reports that “Chris Goodwin, who coaches at Mid-Vermont Christian School, said he was notified of the transgender player on the other team, but it wasn’t until the playoffs last year that his team ended up facing them on the court.” The school is taking legal action against the state to regain the right to participate.
Coach Goodwin told FOX NEWS that “boys just play at a different speed, a different force.” He explained that he and school administrators held discussions with players and parents. He said, “we decided that instead of going against our religious beliefs” regarding the fact that males and females are created differently, just to forfeit that particular game and withdraw from the tournament.
“And at that point,” says the coach, “the state of Vermont Governing body kicked us out of all athletic competitions in the state.”
The coach’s decision was validated by viral footage from another recent girls’ basketball game, this one between Massachusetts Collegiate Charter School of Lowell and KIPP Academy. As two players vied for a rebound, one of them — a large, biological male from the KIPP team — threw a female player from the Charter team to the ground, grabbing the ball from her and causing her to grip her back in pain. The trans-identifying player took out two more Charter players before halftime. Not wanting to lose more players, the Charter team forfeited the game.
It’s unfair that women across America have been losing all sorts of athletic competitions, titles, and scholarships to men identifying as women. And when males play on girls’ teams, it’s downright dangerous. These coaches were right to forfeit. Let’s pray Coach Goodwin and Mid-Vermont School win their lawsuit.

Penna Dexter
Last week thousands of Christians gathered in Nashville for the National Religious Broadcasters Convention. The NRB was formed in the early years of radio broadcasting, when evangelical broadcasters, who were faithfully proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ, built radio audiences in the millions. This threatened liberal mainline denominations who wanted a ban on religious broadcasting that was not done by “responsible” religious broadcasters — like themselves.
On Thursday night of the conference, Donald Trump was the speaker. He hit every issue Christians and conservatives care about. He identified himself as a believer. But he focused on his audience — people involved in communicating the gospel and spreading God’s truth. He spent a lot of time on religious liberty, the freedom of Christians to practice our faith. He addressed the growing threats to religious liberty and promised to “protect God in the public square” if he is elected.
But, as I sat in that audience, what impacted me most was President Trump’s words about the good Christians do for the country and the world by using pulpits and the media to tell people about Christ and His principles and by loving people and caring for their needs. It was as if he was speaking, not so much to get our votes, as to encourage us to keep doing what we are doing and step it up.
This was encouraging. But I couldn’t help wondering if the church is doing enough. Is our message clear, or watered down?  Are we worthy of the compliments this former president was articulating.
In his four years in the White House, Donald Trump got a taste of how difficult it is to govern people hostile to faith and biblical principles.
On Friday morning at NRB, Bott Radio Network hosted a breakfast. Leesburg, Virginia pastor, Gary Hamrick told attendees, “The marriage between woke ideology and liberal theology has produced passive pastors.” Faithful pastors — and broadcasters — need their freedom protected. They also need courage.