“For enquire, I pray thee, of the former age, and prepare thyself to the search of their fathers: (For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing ... ).”

– Job 8:8-9, KJV

The Great Republic stands on the precipice of its semi-quincentennial this July, marking an occasion that few constitutional systems have ever obtained. Depending on your source material, the typically recognized lifespan of a constitutional republic ranges from 15 to 20 years. Yes, that short. That is hardly an endorsement of a system of government designed to secure the binding obligations between citizens and their government for generations to come.

The reality of the fleeting parchment that so oft describes constitutional systems raises a natural question: Why is the United States of America different? How has she endured so far beyond what a constitutional actuary would conclude is her likely lifespan?

The answer, as is typical, is found in the wisdom of Scripture. Let us inquire then, as Job beseeches us, of the former age and commit ourselves to the search of our fathers.

Nearly 250 years ago, our fathers committed themselves to the search of what begat a nation that would not be changed “for light and transient causes.” By any reasonable measuring stick, they succeeded. But how?

Interestingly enough, it was the first time in human history that learned men bothered to write down an inescapable — indeed, “self-evident” — truth: “That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

As Thomas Jefferson’s quill put it, these unalienable rights were nothing more than the “separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.”

After listing the reasons for why the course of human events had led them to the remarkable recitation of the birthright of the Republic, the search of our fathers was to that of the Great Father — or, as the Declaration of Independence refers to Him, “the Supreme Judge of the world.” And, in America’s birth certificate, our fathers wrote that this Republic would be necessarily based on “a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence.”

Oh, what a search our fathers made!

Our Nation’s Storied History

Our birth certificate came in 1776 — July 4, to be exact. It was preceded by the remarkable battle at Lexington and Concord, a year earlier, where the resolve to birth a new nation probably reached its peak gestation. And it was followed by remarkable resolve at Bunker Hill, where a ragtag band of inexperienced revolutionary soldiers demonstrated their commitment against a massive surge of professional British soldiers.

It was followed shortly after by George Washington crossing the Delaware, an eight-year revolutionary and historic struggle, and the British surrender at Yorktown.

In 1787, the convention delegates again appealed to Nature’s God for His divine providence and assistance in drafting and ratifying the Constitution of the United States. Those prayers worked, and her pages still stand triumphant.

Lewis and Clark headed West, and the Republic gave birth to its idea of Manifest Destiny, which is probably the earliest ever expression of American exceptionalism.

She struggled to hold herself together almost a century later, when Southern States asserted their right to secession. It took a war that pitted brother against brother to reconcile her in what was only charitably described as the Late Unpleasantness.

Despite dealing with the recent unpleasantries, her citizens still had the insight and knowledge to invent the lightbulb and the telephone in the 1870s and built a transcontinental railroad that allowed commerce from sea to shining sea.

Her citizens split a continent by digging the Panama Canal, making traversing two oceans far easier and spurring commercial activity far beyond what was possible before its waters flowed.

Wilbur and Orville Wright, who were described by their neighbors as Christian gentlemen who were moral to their core, appealed again to the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God in 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and invented the world’s first successful airplane.

She saw her innovative sons create the automobile and spur its production with the creation of the assembly line in 1913. In 1917, she joined World War I and brought about victory for those who had struggled to prevail before she arrived.

Generations of her citizenry stared down Black Tuesday and the ensuing Great Depression that followed in 1929.

She faced an unprecedented attack in December 1941 when the Imperial Japanese launched an assault on Pearl Harbor. She showed her resolve by having her men heroically storm the beaches of Normandy in 1944, turning the tide of World War II. Little did our enemies foresee that they had awakened the greatest military and economic power the world has ever known.

In her benevolence, she begat the Marshall Plan and funded a complete revitalization of Europe that was devastated in the world conflict.

Her sons and daughters stood on the backs of the Wright brothers with even grander visions of touching the stars, and in 1969, she succeeded in having her children plant a flag on the Moon in the Apollo 11 mission. In that moment, too, her children appealed to the Supreme Judge of the Universe, when Buzz Aldrin read a passage from the Gospel of John and took communion while physically present on the “lesser light” to “govern the night” that God created in Genesis 1:16.

She saw the birth of a new era of civil rights in the 1960s and 1970s. At that same time, her citizens invented the cellular telephone in 1973, a device that would revolutionize the way humans communicate with one another.

She saw the defeat of communism in Europe when her elected president, Ronald Reagan, stood at the Brandenburg Gate and said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Her children won the Cold War, liberated nations, launched the Hubble Space Telescope, and invented the Internet all in the 1990s.

She suffered a devastating attack against her Christian values on September 11, 2001, when terrorists bent on destroying freedom attacked her symbols of international commerce and military might. And, though those same terrorists had designs on destroying her political symbols as well, Todd Beamer and his fellow passengers shouted, “Let’s roll,” and overpowered them in what Christ described as the greatest display of love — laying down their lives for their friends (John 15:13).

In 2003, Francis Collins mapped the Human Genome, giving a scientific understanding to what the psalmist described as God creating our “inmost being” and knitting us together in our mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13-14).

In 2022, she brought about an end to the constitutionally-protected holocaust of an entire generation of people — the unborn — recognizing the human dignity and worth of all individuals through affirming no constitutional “right” to abortion.

Space simply does not permit a more thorough recitation of her 250 years of unparalleled exceptionalism. These recitations wholly omit the literary, musical, artistic, legal, political, and economic contributions with which her children have blessed the world.

Returning to the Search of Our Fathers

As Job said, “Shall [these] not teach thee, and tell thee” (Job 8:10). Indeed, “Though thy beginning was small, yet thy latter end should greatly increase” (Job 8:7).

But, it is only through the inquiry of the former things that our fathers sought out the blessings of the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God. America’s history was birthed in the knowledge and admonition of the Lord, and the name of Christ has been proclaimed freely nationwide, leading many of her children to seek and find the Christ. And her end has greatly increased because of the founding principles of her fathers.

If the Lord shall see fit for her to have a quincentennial, it shall only come about should our current generation “enquire of the former age, and prepare itself to the search of their fathers.” And, should she do so and “make supplication to the Almighty ... surely now He would awake for [her] and make the habitation of [her] righteousness prosperous” (Job 8:5-6).

We are but of yesterday.

We must return to the search of our fathers should our future be prosperous and bright. God Bless the United States of America, and may He continue to shed His grace on thee.

First published by the Standing for Freedom Center.

For more from Daniel Schmid, Associate Vice President of Legal Affairs at Liberty Counsel, click HERE.

If we imagine all of human history as an hour on a watch, the story of America occupies barely two and a half minutes, an exceedingly short span. Yet in the 250 years between 1776 and 2026, the United States of America has reshaped the world and emerged as the greatest nation on Earth.

As our nation stands on the edge of celebrating its 250^th anniversary, America is like a man standing on his porch after a long day’s work asking, “Did I get it all done? And if I did, what did it all amount to? Will it last?” These are questions worth considering. And it would behoove all of us to pause and reflect on our nation’s founding and recalibrate to the principles that laid a solid foundation that has outlasted numerous wars, economic downturns, and times of civil unrest.

Ours is an extraordinary, albeit imperfect, history. From breaking free from British rule as undoubtedly one of history’s greatest underdogs to — borrowing words from President Ronald Reagan — achieving the “American vision of creating a new nation of free people, a country that would be a light unto the nations, and a shining city upon a hill,” America has risen to heights rarely seen in world history and its influence has reached and touched every corner of the globe.

And while the United States has enjoyed prosperity and power unmatched, we must understand that our nation’s history is at a pivotal crossroads, and we are at risk of squandering it all. It’s up to us to ensure that this Great Republic and its heritage will endure for generations to come.

In God We Trust — or Trusted?

Countries rise and fall because of what they do — or don’t — trust in.

The psalmist knew this when he wrote, “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God” (Psalm 20:7).

Our Founders agreed with this enduring truth. John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States, said, “Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth? That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity?”

The Founders’ courage to forge a new nation unlike any other was underscored by their own personal piety before Almighty God. They knew they needed God’s help and built a nation undergirded by Christian principles.

When we fast-forward to 2026, we see how far we have fallen from what our Founders intended. As John Adams wrote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Today, abortion is legal in all 50 states. Politics is so polarized that one party can’t define what a woman is. The very freedoms our Founders fought and died for are under attack. Religious “nones,” those who say they are atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular,” make up the largest cohort in the U.S. at 29%, according to the 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study from Pew Research.

Preserving a republic involves more than building a big fighting force and even bigger buildings. Getting this right begins in our kitchens, on front porches, during car rides, at Little League games, and during bedtime devotions. It means trusting in God, not government, and recognizing that Christianity is what makes our nation great.

Upon exiting the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the story goes that Benjamin Franklin was asked: “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”

He replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

These words serve as a sobering reminder that the survival of our republic is contingent on us fighting for its preservation and handing it down to our children.

Fight for a Nation that Endures

This is where it gets personal. I feel the weight of this every time I see my two little girls. They are Americans learning in their infancy about our nation and its citizens. They’ve got another sibling on the way — another child, another citizen, another American. While my children won’t see the next 250 years, they will see enough for it to matter.

America, please give them a nation that will still build, still lead, still innovate, still protect, and still achieve. Americans, do what you can at the ballot box, in the boardroom, and in our schools, so that they inherit a culture and a community that reflects truth, integrity, faith, justice, family, and humility.

As Ronald Reagan said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

America’s Founders understood the fragility of freedom when they set out to establish a nation by the people and for the people. I’ll do my part to preserve the freedoms we hold dear. America, do your part to preserve this nation for its next 250 years and beyond.

We would be wise to heed Reagan’s words: “Let it be said of this generation of Americans that when we pass the torch of freedom onto the new generation, it was burning as brightly as when it was handed to us. ... And we will have kept faith with God.”

Click HERE for more from Jonathan Alexandre, Esq., Vice President of Governmental Affairs and Senior Counsel for Liberty Counsel and Liberty Counsel Action.

A nation is strong when its citizenry has a shared national identity, love of country, and an understanding of its heritage and values system. When a nation forgets who it is and where it comes from, it becomes a shadow of its former self.

On a recent trip to Europe, my family and I were struck by this as we witnessed opposing, and even antithetical, ideologies ushered in by mass migration, juxtaposed against the timeless beauty of European architecture forged over centuries. It’s chilling to walk the streets of England, the birthplace of some of the greatest minds of the West, and see a mosque occupy a church building. It is a clear mark of conquest and civilizational decline when a culture so historically prominent in the spread of Christianity has forgotten God.

So much of England, steeped in a rich history of helping shape the Western world, has become a shell of its former glory. This is not about “tolerance,” or “multiculturalism,” or “progress”; this is letting bad ideas take root and usurp the very institutions that built a civilization. In the United States, we are experiencing the labor pains of what much of the European continent already faces with our own mass migration crisis that, too, threatens the fabric of our very nation.

America on the Brink

A video circulating on social media recently shows the extent of the illegal immigrant invasion into the United States, measured by a swarm of little red dots (each representing 100 illegal immigrants) that swept the U.S. map from 2020 to 2024, blanketing our nation virtually overnight. One group estimated there were as many as 18.6 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S., as of March 2025. In 2023, “anchor babies,” children born to illegal immigrant or temporary legal status mothers, accounted for almost one in 10, or about 9%, of U.S. births.

The marks of American greatness that defined our rise over the past two-and-a-half centuries are fading and being replaced by opposing ideologies and antithetical cultures, flying in the face of the American Dream. This inevitably causes a cultural shift and is a dilution of the distinctly American values that define our nation.

Rome didn’t fall in a day. It was a long, slow, pernicious fade into oblivion. Western civilization, and the America we love, is also on the brink if it rejects the ideals upon which it was founded.

This is why we must be reminded of these very ideals that gave rise to the greatest nation on earth. We, as a nation, need to remember our national heritage, believe in American exceptionalism, and carry on the legacy of those who forged the freedoms we take for granted.

An aesthetic that could be described as “Americana nostalgia” is trending across young, conservative social media, and it’s no surprise why. Quintessential American scenes — neighborhood children safely playing outside from dawn until dinnertime, families worshipping in full church pews, vast farmland untouched by developments or data centers, bustling small-town squares with clean streets, and even busy shopping malls in the 1990s — serve as the remnants of a past (not so long ago) but seemingly out of reach. These picturesque images remind us of what America once was, and what we can be again.

Bound by a Common Creed

As for the United States, what is our heritage? Put simply, we are a constitutional republic established by predominantly Christian men upon the foundation that all men are created equal and have intrinsic rights given by God, not government.

America is a Christian nation founded as one nation under God, and it was never intended to be anything else. America is not a subjective “idea” that shifts with the times; nor are we bound by race or ancestral origin. Instead, America is a people and a place bound by a common creed.

After his first visit to the United States in 1921, English writer and Christian apologist G.K. Chesterton observed this in his book What I Saw in America: “America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just.”

The preservation of our American heritage is not a passive task. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, we have a republic, “if you can keep it.” This requires active participation from all of us who have a vested interest in preserving our national identity by reclaiming ground, winning back institutions, and stewarding well the corner of the world with which we are entrusted.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, our Founding Fathers pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to form the United States of America. To them, America was more than a mere dream or idea; it was a homeland worth sacrificing for, for themselves and their posterity. The 13 original colonies would unite under a common creed to break free from tyranny, achieve independence, span an entire continent, emerge as a global superpower, and serve as a beacon of liberty worldwide.

This is our heritage and what binds us today — and it is worth preserving.

First published by the Standing for Freedom Center.

For more from Emily Wood Hawley, click HERE.

“Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:4-5, ESV)

This Good Friday, take a moment to pause and reflect on all Jesus endured leading up to, and on, the Cross — for us.
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Besides being spit on, mocked, and humiliated with a crown of thorns, Jesus also endured a brutal scourging at the hands of Roman soldiers. The 39 lashes inflicted nerve and muscle trauma on him, excruciating lacerations, and severe blood loss. Then in His weakened state, He was forced to carry a heavy rough-hewn solid wood cross that weighed over 140 pounds.
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Because Jesus suffered, He understands our suffering. While most of us will never know what it feels like to be flogged, figuratively, we can find ourselves “scourged” by what life whips at us and feel like we’re forced to carry crosses too heavy for us to bear.
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A devastating diagnosis.
An unexpected loss of income.
Death of a marriage.
Abandonment by a parent.
Rejection from friends.
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It’s here the “Good” in Good Friday invades the darkest day in all human history and intersects our lives.
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Jesus carried the weight of the world, so we don’t have to.
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As God’s Suffering Servant and Perfect Spotless Lamb, Jesus took our griefs, sorrows, sickness, anxiety, sadness and pain upon Himself. He carried them to the Cross to die with Him.
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Yes, your pain can die at the Cross.
Your anxiety and depression can die at the Cross.
Your sadness, sorrow, sickness and sin can also die with Jesus at the Cross.
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Jesus, “for the joy set before Him,” took all of it upon Himself for us — enduring the Cross and despising the shame that we might have peace with God (Hebrews 12:2). That we might be healed –– spirit, soul, and body.

This is the “Good” of Good Friday.

Whatever cross you’re bearing today, remember that over 2,000 years ago, Jesus carried it for you.
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Let Him.

For more from Annemarie McLean, click HERE.

Emily Bickford and her daughter, Ava, were on the way to church on a Wednesday evening in December 2024 when Emily, a single mom, received notice of the custody order preventing her from taking her preteen daughter to church at Calvary Chapel.

This was a devastating blow for them both, and they could not imagine the legal battle ahead. To this day, Ava is unable to attend Calvary Chapel because her father deems the church’s verse-by-verse, chapter-by-chapter preaching and biblical teaching — specifically on hell, demons, spiritual warfare, and salvation through Christ — to be “psychologically detrimental” to her.

In this heartbreaking case, a judge whose order demonstrated hostility toward Christianity weaponized the legal system against this Christian mom who intends to raise her daughter according to her Christian faith. In fact, in the custody order, every mention of God is spelled with a lowercase “g,” and it relies on testimony from an “expert on cults” who perceived the mainstream evangelical church to be a “cultic” organization.” Why? Because it teaches the Bible.

Cut Off from Christian Community

Under the unlawful order, Emily is prevented from taking her own daughter to the church they had attended since May 2021. Furthermore, Ava was immediately cut off from anyone “associated” with Calvary Chapel, including the friends she made during the 3 ½ years they attended the church. And she can have no contact and cannot be “exposed” to any literature, video, or anything associated with the evangelical church.

Emily is also prohibited from taking Ava to any church or religious organization or event, and Ava cannot be “exposed” to any religious literature, including the Bible, without express permission from the atheist dad (who has total veto authority of Ava’s religious involvement). Her father, Matthew Bradeen, has vetoed every church Emily has presented to him — and I cannot tell you how distressing this is for Emily and Ava. Ava has not even been able to celebrate Christmas, Easter, attend summer Christian camp, or see her Christian friends.

The judge acknowledges that Emily is a fit parent, and the order admits that there is no evidence that Ava has suffered any harm by being exposed to any teaching of the Bible. But the father still alleges that teaching the Bible verse-by-verse and chapter-by-chapter could expose Ava to potential harm. This is unbelievable.

Ava has just turned 13 years old and wants to go to church with her mom to be with her friends and church family and grow in her Christian faith — but this unconstitutional custody order prevents her from doing so.

Religious and Parental Rights Under Attack

Religious liberty and parental rights are clearly under attack in America today when a mother is prevented from taking her own daughter to church. This is not communist China or North Korea — this is in Maine, in a nation founded on the premise of religious freedom.

The bottom line is that Emily is unable to raise her daughter in accordance with her Christian faith because of an unlawful, overreaching custody order intended to stifle her freedom and silence her faith.

The court system intervened in the realm of private family life, trampling both religious liberty and parental rights. When a custody case interferes with fundamental freedoms, it is necessary to intervene. In November, I stood before the Maine Supreme Court, arguing the appeal of this outrageous order that has kept Ava out of church and away from Calvary Chapel since December 2024.

Legal precedent protects a parent’s right to instill their religious beliefs during their custodial time, so the court’s total prohibition on Emily’s decision-making authority is a direct infringement of this right.

A Deeper Spiritual Battle

This is evidence of a deeper spiritual battle that we face as Christians — a battle of light and darkness: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

The fight for religious liberty matters because right now, a single mother is unable to take her daughter to church, not even to worship our Risen Savior together this Easter. This is a unique case with far-reaching legal implications for religious freedom and parental rights in America.

As we await a ruling from the Maine Supreme Court, a parent’s right to raise his or her children in accordance with their religious beliefs is universal and should be undisputed, no matter what a custody order says.

This is more than just a legal fight; it’s a spiritual battle worth fighting.

For more from Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel, click HERE.

Jonathan Zinski’s lawsuit powered by the American Civil Liberties Unition (ACLU) against Liberty University has presented a critically important legal issue worth solving.

On March 17, I argued on behalf of Liberty University in this case, and it clearly has the Supreme Court written all over it, especially in light of the ACLU’s extreme position that raised the concern of the judges.

As Judge Wynn stated during the oral arguments in Zinski v. Liberty University at the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, “There are issues before us today that the Supreme Court has not addressed, some of which, probably, the Supreme Court intentionally deferred for [a] future look or just avoided having to deal with.”

A Setup from the Beginning

Upon application for employment, Zinski affirmed Liberty University’s Christian doctrinal statement, while remaining in open rebellion to it, having taken female hormones for at least four months. The plan was to work through the probation period and then tell Liberty, although Zinski admits the plan was revealed to some co-workers. Zinski also admits that female hormones would cause visible changes and wanted to let HR know before those changes became more apparent.

Zinski requested that Liberty set aside its doctrinal statement in favor of a different theology held by Zinski’s church. Liberty had no choice but to remain faithful to its doctrine and thus terminated Zinski, who concedes to not being a coreligionist to Liberty’s faith.

The ACLU hoped to use this case to destroy the Christian mission of Liberty University and all religious employers.

The ACLU’s case relies on a fundamental distortion of the Supreme Court opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County. The ACLU contends that Liberty University is required to employ Zinski, even while remaining in open rebellion to the university’s doctrine.

Zinski claims his religious is all that matters, that the courts are authorized to force Liberty University to set aside its doctrine and to allow employees to openly defy the school’s Christian faith. But how can Liberty “Train Champions for Christ” if its employees are heathen and actively working to undermine the university’s core Christian belief?

It can’t.

In fact, if the doctrine of faith-based employers had to yield to every contrary belief of employees, then religious freedom means nothing. No faith-based employer could survive.

Zinski’s entire lawsuit challenging Liberty University’s decision to terminate his employment on the basis that he openly violated Liberty’s religious beliefs can be boiled down to the notion that the Supreme Court in Bostock eliminated Liberty University’s constitutional right to demand its employees conform to its sincere religious beliefs. In other words, according to Zinski and the ACLU, the religious protection afforded under the First Amendment means nothing in the employment context because Bostock altered the landscape.

Hardly.

Zinski contends that Bostock answered every question of relevance to Liberty University’s decision to terminate Zinski for openly manifesting and defiantly stating an intention to act in direct contradiction to Liberty University’s doctrinal statement and religious employment requirements. Indeed, Zinski goes so far as to claim that Bostock involved “the very example before this Court.”

Not so fast.

The ACLU’s Ultimate Objective

During the oral argument, Judge Quattlebaum asked the ACLU attorney whether a “Christian church that has 16 employees, one of which is a janitor, must hire a transgender employee even though their beliefs … would be contrary to their doctrine?”

The ACLU attorney said, “YES!”

Judge Wynn pushed back on the “must-hire” notion, that forcing a church to hire someone whose beliefs contradict its doctrine would effectively “force a church to do something.” Judge Wynn questioned whether the court would be “making decisions for the church” in these matters.

The ACLU’s position is extreme and contrary to the law. This statement by the ACLU was astonishing, but it reveals the ultimate objective of this case — to eliminate religious freedom and replace it with a radical LGBTQ agenda.

Why the Supreme Court Should Weigh In

But that is not what the Supreme Court suggested in Bostock. The Court explicitly noted that it was addressing a narrow and singular question about “whether an employer who fires someone simply for being homosexual or transgender has discharged or otherwise discriminated against that individual ‘because of such individual’s sex.” The Court then said, “no other religious liberty claim is now before us.”

Bostock noted that the Court was “deeply concerned with preserving the promise of free exercise of religion enshrined in our Constitution,” and that “Congress included an express statutory exception for religious organizations.” Sections 702 and 703 of Title VII in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would impact the result reached in Bostock. The Court also said the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) is a “super statute” that “amends” the entire federal code to protect religious freedom.

In other words, Bostock means nothing in the context of a religious employer like Liberty University because Sections 702 and 703 of Title VII, RFRA, and the First Amendment itself fundamentally control the result in the ACLU’s case against Liberty University.

The Supreme Court was clear that it was not deciding issues like those pertaining to Liberty University’s religious beliefs, noting that “how these doctrines protecting religious liberty interact with Title VII are questions for future cases.”

The future is here with the Liberty University case.

Judge Wynn further noted “why the tension is now developing ... the Supreme Court ... had its chance to address this and it just hasn’t addressed it. ... This question has been out there for years and years and years. ... The Supreme Court could help us out on this and give us an answer.”

It should.

The Constitution Has the Final Say

And the answer is simple: The First Amendment and federal employment law protect Liberty University’s right to require every employee to abide by its religious convictions. Anything less would mean the First Amendment’s protection of religious institutions is a semantic exercise.

The Supreme Court must recognize the future is here. Liberty University’s fundamental right to espouse its religious beliefs, to operate according to those beliefs, and to demand that its employees abide by those beliefs is at stake.

It is not beyond exaggeration to say that the very basis for religious freedom hangs in the balance. The Constitution tipped the scales on that balance 250 years ago, and it is time for the Supreme Court to say so explicitly.

For more from Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel, click HERE.

As an old proverb espouses, the one-eyed man is king in a world of blind men. (More precisely, in Latin, in regione caecorum rex est luscus.)

In today’s “Alice in Wonderland” world where sometimes down is up and up is down, it sure seems like a realm of blind men wandering about, trying to articulate how sound legal principles apply in unsound biological constructs. Square pegs and round holes sure come to mind, but we won’t delve any further into that analogy rife with peril.

Inside the Blind Realm

Suffice it to say, there are a few examples from the recent Supreme Court docket that demonstrate the blind realm in which we find ourselves:

In Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J., the Supreme Court will decide this term whether a state violates the Constitution and federal statutory law by prohibiting biological men from playing in sports designed for biological women.

In Skrmetti v. United States, the Supreme Court decided that States do not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by prohibiting merchants of tyranny masquerading as medical professionals from radically altering the biological reality of a child by subjecting him or her to life-altering surgeries or experimental pharmaceuticals to “change” the child’s gender (as if that is even possible).

In Bostock v. Clayton County, the Supreme Court was tasked with the question of whether the definition of sex in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 included sexual orientation and gender identity when it was enacted six decades ago. It didn’t, by the way. Be that as it may, the Court saw it differently and held that discrimination on the basis of sex included protection for individuals who reject their biological and chromosomal reality in the employment context.

Enter Jonathan Zinski, and his charade against Liberty University. Armed with what seemed like guiding light in the dark room of biological rejection, Zinski contended that Liberty University is required under Bostock to hire him, continue to employ him, and even publicly affirm his rejection of biological reality regardless of what Scripture says. When Liberty terminated Zinski’s employment, he sued.

No “Clash of Rights” When Religious Freedom Is Set in Stone

This has notably led to a host of talking heads on television and talking quills in print dramatically noting this as a “clash of rights” or a “war” between two federal protections.

It isn’t.

That war (if there ever was one) was fought, those skirmishes were had, and constitutional protection for religion imposed unconditional surrender 250 years ago.

The First Amendment recognizes several key propositions: (1) the Church Autonomy Doctrine; (2) the Ministerial Exception; and (3) the Right to Association.

If one views the current landscape as a war of rights, the First Amendment’s triumvirate protections for religious institutions represent, not Epic Fury or Shock and Awe, but Dispositive Conclusion. In other words, game over.

For simpler minds like mine, a baseball analogy will suffice — three strikes and batter’s out.

Church Autonomy: The Supreme Court first articulated in 1871 a concrete proposition that civilian courts have no authority to adjudicate disputes involving the proper interpretation of Scripture. There, in Watson v. Jones, the Court held that civilian courts have no authority to adjudicate the proper interpretation of Scripture. The reason is simple: “the law knows no heresy, and is committed to the support of no dogma,” and “[A]ll who unite themselves to a religious body [or religious employer] do so with an implied consent to submit to it.”

Zinski fraudulently espoused agreement with Liberty’s biblical interpretation of biology, and when he revealed his fraud and announced his rejection of that religious doctrine, he was rightly fired. The First Amendment protects Liberty’s right to terminate him, and the courts have no business in adjudicating that dispute. In fact, it “would lead to the total subversion of such religious bodies, if any one aggrieved by one of their decisions could appeal to the secular courts and have them reversed.”

Simply put, Liberty’s officials “are the best judges of what constitutes an offence against the word of God and the discipline of the church,” and “civil courts exercise no jurisdiction [over] a matter which concerns theological controversy, church discipline, ecclesiastical government, or the conformity of the members of the church to the standards of morals required of them.”

Strike 1 – First Amendment church autonomy doctrine.

Ministerial Exception: The First Amendment also entitled Liberty to select who qualifies to minister to the faithful. Though somewhat of a misnomer, the ministerial exception is not limited to pastors and clergy. The Supreme Court in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC said that “[r]equiring a church to accept or retain an unwanted minister, or punishing a church for failing to do so, intrudes upon more than a mere employment decision. Such action interferes with the internal governance of the church, depriving the church of control over the selection of those who will personify its beliefs.”

There is no clash between whether Liberty must employ someone whose open and unrepentant sin places him in direct conflict with its religious doctrines. The clash was settled. Indeed, as Hosanna-Tabor held, “the First Amendment has struck the balance for us, and the church must be free to choose those who will guide its way.”

Strike 2 – First Amendment ministerial exception.

Right to Association: Finally, the Supreme Court, in Roberts v. U.S. Jaycees, held the freedom of expressive association “presupposes a freedom not to associate” because “[t]here can be no clearer example of an intrusion into the internal structure or affairs of an association than a regulation that forces the group to accept members it does not desire.”

Liberty requires adherence to Scripture to qualify to be a voice for Liberty. Zinski does not qualify. Again, as the Supreme Court said in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, “[t]he forced inclusion of an unwanted person in a group infringes the group’s freedom of expressive association” in a way that the First Amendment does not tolerate.

Strike 3 – First Amendment right of association.

The batter (Zinski) is out, and his suit must be thrown out.

In short, there is no clash or war of rights. Zinski has no right to demand employment at a religious institution, and Liberty has a fundamental, constitutionally grounded right to terminate an employee who does not share its biblical views.

In a world of blind men, the First Amendment has both eyes wide open with 20/20 vision. And the clarion picture that emerges is that the First Amendment demands protection of the only existent right at issue here — Liberty’s right to abide by its religious beliefs.

First published in the Washington Stand.

For more from Daniel Schmid, Associate Vice President of Legal Affairs, click HERE.

When truth gets dragged into court, we have a responsibility to defend it. Every. Single. Time.

On the day after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Jacksonville public school teacher Hope McMath publicly celebrated Kirk’s murder with a vile and disgusting Facebook post: “Karma is a b****,” she said, “and she heard all your speeches...”

Not a rumor. Not a misquote. Her words. Her post. Her choice. And it didn’t stop there.

McMath’s social media was littered with similarly controversial and divisive posts, raising serious questions about judgment, bias, and professionalism in the public-school classroom.

Citizens saw it. They reported it. They asked school officials to do their job.

Enter Moms for Liberty — doing exactly what citizens are supposed to do: petition their government.

They didn’t just raise concerns about posts in a vacuum. They asked deeper, obvious questions:

• Were these publicly expressed views making their way into the classroom?

• Was the teacher sticking to approved curriculum — or injecting personal bias?

That’s called accountability.

And now Hope McMath is SUING them for reporting her posts to Duval County Public Schools and the Florida Department of Education.

That’s not justice — that’s retaliation.

That’s not accountability — that’s intimidation.

Let’s call this what it is: a meritless lawsuit designed to punish citizens for reporting a public employee’s own public statements — and asking whether those views were impacting students.

Moms for Liberty didn’t invent anything. They didn’t distort anything. They didn’t control what happened next.

They simply said: “Here are her words. You decide.”

School officials made their own decisions, as they should. But McMath wants to flip the script and make citizens the villains for speaking up. Not on our watch!

Enter Liberty Counsel. This week we filed a motion to dismiss this frivolous lawfare lawsuit, and we asked the federal court to order McMath to pay our legal fees and costs.

You can’t sue people for telling the truth. You can’t sue people for petitioning the government. And you can’t use the courts as a weapon to silence your critics.

If McMath’s theory were the law, then every parent, every citizen, and every watchdog would think twice before speaking up.

That’s exactly the chilling effect the First Amendment forbids. So yes, we stepped in. Because the Constitution doesn’t defend itself.

And citizens shouldn’t need a lawyer just to report what they can see with their own eyes. PRAY this case is dismissed quickly, and decisively.

Free speech is not a liability. It’s a right.

And if telling the truth gets you sued, the problem isn’t the truth; it’s the lawsuit.

For more from Horatio Mihet, Vice President of Legal Affairs and Chief Litigation Counsel at Liberty Counsel, click HERE.

Liberty Counsel filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of longtime Los Angeles County civil engineer Eric Batman — yes, that’s his real name — to stop unlawful religious discrimination in the workplace.

For more than two decades, Batman has faithfully served the county. But when he requested a simple, reasonable accommodation to work remotely during “Pride Month” (a time when his workplace at Department of Public Works is littered with the “Progress Pride flag” and related paraphernalia) so as not to be forced to choose between his job and his sincerely held religious beliefs, the county flatly refused.

He successfully worked remotely in June 2023 during construction but was denied a religious accommodation to work remotely in 2024 and 2025. Officials even told him his request conflicted with the county’s “inclusive and welcoming environment for all,” which seems to exclude Christians with sincere religious convictions like himself. They even suggested he seek “mental health counseling” if the “Pride” flag caused him distress.

Here’s the problem: Other employees were granted remote work accommodations (such as Muslims during the month of Ramadan), and Batman himself had previously been allowed to work remotely for an extended period for nonreligious reasons. Yet when the request was tied to his faith, the answer suddenly became “no.”

In other words, accommodations were and are available — just not for religious beliefs that the county does not like.

The law is clear. Employers must provide reasonable religious accommodations unless doing so creates an undue hardship. That didn’t happen here. Instead, the county forced Batman into an impossible choice: violate his conscience or face consequences at work.

Let’s be clear — this isn’t about capes or crusades. But it is about standing up for fundamental constitutional rights when the government crosses the line. And in this case, Batman shouldn’t have to fight alone.

Our lawsuit contends that “[The County] provided neither accommodation nor tolerance of Batman’s religious beliefs. Rather, they displayed overt hostility towards Batman by refusing to provide him an accommodation the law plainly requires.”

Viewpoint discrimination violates the First Amendment, and religious discrimination violates Title VII — which is blatantly unconstitutional and will not be tolerated.

We are asking the federal court to put a stop to this unconstitutional policy and to reaffirm a basic principle: The government cannot treat religious employees as second-class citizens.

Liberty Counsel will continue to stand in that gap — in California and anywhere else these rights are under attack.

Pray that justice prevails in Los Angeles County for Eric Batman— and that government employers learn that accommodating faith is not optional under the U.S. Constitution.

For more from Horatio Mihet, Vice President of Legal Affairs and Chief Litigation Counsel at Liberty Counsel, click HERE.

An entire industry built on medically mutilating young men and women leaves behind a pain-filled path of maimed bodies and shattered dreams. An ironic narrative plays on repeat as individuals who bought the lie of “being born in the wrong body” wake up one day post-surgery to realize they are now forever trapped in one.

Isabella “Fox” Varian, a “detransitioner,” is now picking up the pieces of undergoing a double mastectomy at the tender age of 16 when she was pushed into mutilating her body in the name of “gender identity.”

Kenneth Einhorn, a “gender affirming” psychologist, pressured Varian and even convinced her mother, Claire Deacon, that Varian should medically “transition” to a boy. Dr. Simon Chin, the plastic surgeon, met with Varian and her mom just twice before putting teenage Varian under the scalpel for a double mastectomy. She will forever have to live with the ramifications of this irreversible surgery.

Varian, now 22 years old, just won $2 million in the first successful lawsuit brought by a “detransitioner” before a jury. She sued her New York-based psychologist and plastic surgeon for rushing her into “affirming” her gender confusion with a life-altering surgery that left her “disfigured for life” in 2019. This may be the first medical malpractice lawsuit of its kind, but it certainly won’t be the last as many are realizing the permanent damage inflicted on them by the profit-driven medical establishment.

The house of cards is crumbling — and the medical industry is scrambling. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons has since issued a statement advising against mutilating gender procedures on minors. Too little, too late. But thankfully, many are waking up to this tragic reality and seeking to prevent others from taking this painful path.

At the time of her “transition” as a teenager, Varian struggled with anorexia, depression, and autism. If she had access to Christian change counseling, which is currently banned in New York, she could have avoided this trauma and abuse. Chiles v. Salazar, a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, could change this. We filed an amicus brief in this important case advocating for the free speech of licensed counselors who help clients deal with unwanted same-sex attractions, behaviors, or gender confusion.

Instead of being forced into a mutilating “transition” surgery, young men and women struggling with gender confusion should have access to Christian change counseling rather than being told they were born in the wrong body and at risk of suicide if they don’t undergo an irreversible procedure.

These stories need to be told. Varian’s successful lawsuit is a historic first, but mainstream media is largely silent. Independent journalist Benjamin Ryan claims he was the only reporter present for the entirety of Varian’s three-week trial in New York.

But the tide is turning. “Detransitioners” are waking up and speaking out. This will not be the last of such lawsuits as many more are pending, and I expect a flood of new lawsuits will be filed.

The Supreme Court is expected to release its opinion on Chiles v. Salazar this term. Through this case, the Court has the opportunity to ensure gender-confused children like Varian have access to Christian change counseling instead of being pushed down the pipeline of permanently altering their bodies.

The medical industry cannot continue to perpetuate this child abuse in the name of “gender identity,” and I pray we are nearing the day when both the medical industry and the government are forced to ban this medical mutilation for good.

First published in the Washington Stand.

For more from Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel, click HERE.

Imagine driving to church on a Sunday morning and being met with an empty parking lot and police on location to ensure that you do not attempt to go to church that day.

On January 25, 2026, this exact scene played out for Coastal Family Church in Flagler Beach, Florida, since the church was prohibited from holding in-person worship services due to an unconstitutional court order. Not even six years since churches nationwide were forced to close during the COVID era, it was obvious the government hadn’t learned its lesson.

Why Coastal Family Church Was Forced to Close Its Doors

To understand why Coastal Family Church was prohibited from worshipping in its own building, let’s back up to last year. The church purchased a unit in the Flagler Square strip mall in July 2025 while Flagler Square – JAX was also interested in the property. The church was slapped with a lawsuit from Flagler Square – JAX in August 2025 that eventually led them to close their doors for the last Sunday in January.

In its lawsuit, Flagler Square – JAX, Inc. alleges that the church’s presence causes parking congestion, but on a typical Sunday, more than 160 parking spots are left available for a Dollar Tree, breakfast restaurant, consignment shop, Florida Tax Collector’s office (which is closed on Sundays), lawyer’s office (which is closed on Sundays), and Fraternal Order of Police Lodge. The lawsuit also cites a condominium covenant that bans “public assembly” in the strip mall. However, the strip mall is also home to businesses that host regular bingo nights and rent out their facility for public assembly.

Mind you, the church is not in hot water with the city, county, or any government jurisdiction. Instead, they are up against Flagler Square – JAX, Inc., a fellow property owner in the strip mall who lost the opportunity to purchase the unit the church owns and is alleging a violation of the condominium covenant. So, in turn, Flagler Square – JAX, Inc. shackled a Christian church with a meritless lawsuit and trampled on the constitutional rights of the church’s congregants.

The property was successfully rezoned to be a church and is fully compliant with United States and Florida law. No laws were broken, no harm was done, and the church meets the parking quota requirements. The only scrutiny the church doesn’t hold up to is the Flagler Square – JAX, Inc., assuming its desire to purchase the building the church occupies.

As a result, Coastal Family Church was forced to choose between canceling worship services or being held in contempt of court.

All of this came to a head on Sunday, January 25, when, in response to this lawsuit, an injunction by the Seventh Judicial Circuit Court forced Coastal Family Church and Pastor Roderick Palmer to close its doors — in violation of Florida law and First Amendment freedom of speech, assembly, and religious exercise.

A Constitutional Turn of Events

On Wednesday, January 28, Liberty Counsel filed an emergency appeal to reverse the temporary injunction that prohibited Coastal Family Church from in-person worship. And on late Friday afternoon, January 30, the Florida Fifth District Court of Appeal granted an emergency motion, allowing the church to proceed with worship in-person and open its doors on Sunday.

“Being deprived of this fundamental right — for even one additional Sunday — would do irreparable harm to [Coastal Family Church] and its congregants,” the order read.

The American colonists didn’t flee religious tyranny to forge a nation where a church could be legally threatened out of worshipping in person. The American founders didn’t draft a Constitution that fails to protect against such abuses. And an American church cannot be forced out of assembling for worship based on an unlawful injunction resulting from the whims of a fellow tenant’s lawsuit (or public health crisis, for that matter).

Coastal Family Church is free to continue meeting on Sunday until a final decision is reached. And as Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “Being deprived of religious liberty involving worship is an irreparable harm... Every Sunday a church is forced to close its doors inflicts irreparable spiritual and constitutional injury on its congregation.”

The freedom to worship is not, and never will be, up for debate. As this case continues, Liberty Counsel will keep fighting to ensure Coastal Family Church is never forced to close its doors again.

Nathaniel Hawthorne famously opined that “no man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.” There is, no doubt, truth in that statement as it pertains to man.

Fortunately, however, the same cannot be said of federal statutes.

The federal FACE Act, Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, does indeed have two “faces.”

One face prohibits the use of force or threat of force to obstruct, injure, interfere, intimidate, or attempt to do any of those things to women seeking access to clinics. 18 U.S.C. §248(a)(1).

The second face prohibits the use of force or threat of force to obstruct, injure, interfere, or intimidate “any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of worship.” 18 U.S.C. §248(a)(2).

It is the latter that pertains to the mulishly malevolent Marxist mob who stormed the hallowed ground of a church sanctuary in St. Paul on Sunday to disrupt a religious worship service.

Violations of the statute result in imprisonment for six months, a fine of $10,000, or both. The United States Department of Justice needs to shackle every one of the so-called “protesters” who stormed the holy sanctuary of religious congregants, prosecute them, and seek the harshest penalties allowed by law.

Recall, during the Biden administration, the Department of Justice arrested, tried, and imprisoned an 89-year-old Holocaust survivor for alleged violations of the FACE Act. In fact, the Biden administration charged her twice — once in Michigan and once in Tennessee for her alleged crime of obstructing entrance to an abortion clinic.

Did she join with other individuals to premeditate a plan to storm the doors of the abortion clinic and prevent women from obtaining anything? No. Did she accost the leader of the abortion clinic? No. Did she harass and harangue little children present at the facility? No. What this 89-year-old Holocaust survivor did was sing hymns, pray, and read Scripture in a public space outside of a clinic. Despite all this, Eva Edl (among many others) was hauled before the federal court systems in two different states to answer for her alleged crimes.

Here, the Marxist mob did not quietly sit on the sidewalks outside the church to advocate for their alleged views, which (though unseemly) would have been protected expression under the First Amendment. Rather, the mob stormed the doors, raided the sanctuary, intimidated women and children, disrupted a worship service, accosted the pastor, and threatened to injure every congregant in attendance.

The actions of this criminal and riotous mob were precisely why Congress amended the FACE Act to include protection for religious worship. In 1994, Congress stated that adding the protection for religious worship services in FACE was “a reflection of the profound concern of the Congress over private intrusions on religious worship, and the judgment of the Congress that the exercise of the right to religious liberty deserves federal protection.”

Disgraced “journalist” Don Lemon shoved a microphone in the pastor’s face, saying the First Amendment entitled his henchmen to engage in protest and make people uncomfortable. The pastor said they were merely trying to worship Jesus. Don Lemon said his mob was entitled to squash their entitled white supremacy. This is nonsense, but one shouldn’t expect much from that moron.

Ironically, if you ask the mob what they were at the church for, you get a host of answers:

Some said ICE.

Some said the church is a bastion of white supremacy.

Others claimed homophobia.

Others claimed racism.

Still others cried otherwise.

That should surprise no one, as there is nothing new under the sun. As recounted in Acts, unruly mobs are oft this way. “Some therefore cried one thing and some another ... and the more part knew not wherefore they were come together” (Acts 19:32, KJV).

Regardless of their varied and incoherent rationales for invading the sacred ground of religious houses of worship, the actions of this mob are criminal and should be punished as such.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said, ironically enough on Don Lemon’s YouTube channel, that the FACE Act only applies to women seeking access to a clinic. He said, “How they can stretch [FACE] to apply to people who protested in a church over the behavior of a religious leader is beyond me.”

Only by willfully ignoring Section (a)(2) can one reach such an insane statement. Mind you, Ellison himself has brought a federal lawsuit absurdly claiming that federal law enforcement officials have no right to be in his state, effectively arguing that states have veto power of federal enforcement of federal law.

So, to Ellison, Marxist mobs are perfectly permitted to storm religious worship services where they have no right to be and no constitutional right to engage in expression, but federal officials have no right to enter an entire state because Ellison does not like the particular law federal agents are enforcing.

Such double-mindedness is absurd, but as Scripture says, “a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8).

The rioters storming a church’s worship service are unstable; Attorney General Ellison’s nonsense rejection of federal law is unstable; and all of the actions taken against the church in Minnesota are criminal.

Mind you, Don Lemon spent countless hours on his show castigating individuals for storming the so-called “Temple of Democracy” on January 6 and arguing why they deserved to be prosecuted. Don Lemon and his Marxist mob stormed a Temple of the Most High God, and they ought to be prosecuted for it.

Anything less would leave the Republic bewildered as to which face of the Department of Justice may be true.

First published in the Christian Post.

For more from Daniel Schmid, Associate Vice President of Legal Affairs, click HERE.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump pressured Republicans to be “flexible” for the sake of dealmaking when it comes to maintaining the Hyde Amendment, a decades-old provision that prohibits federal tax dollars from funding abortion.

This is a troubling statement, yes. But it is also a direct contradiction to his executive order from less than a year ago that reinforced the Hyde Amendment, a move that signaled robust endorsement of this longstanding pro-life provision in national health care policy.

Allowing taxpayer-funded abortion by sacrificing the Hyde amendment for cheap political points is a line that cannot be crossed. We did not vote for this level of capitulation; in fact, we voted for the exact opposite.

When the message is relayed that the life issue is negotiable, abortion funding does not merely creep forward; it accelerates. Once government-run health care becomes a vehicle for subsidizing abortion, the policy is morally disqualified, regardless of how it is branded or budgeted. The pro-life base understands this, even if Washington does not.

As it now stands, the pro-life political reality in 2026 is sobering: Ballot initiatives have gone the wrong way with more losses than wins post-Dobbs. Chemical abortion is on the rise. Abortion deaths nationwide have increased.

It is clear we are fighting an uphill battle until every life in America is protected. So, when it comes to abortion, we must demand honesty and firmness — not flexibility and compromise — from our national leaders.

If conservative leadership wants to rebuild trust on health care, then they should tell the truth about Obamacare, reject taxpayer-funded abortion, and stop pretending a bad thing can magically become good because it scores a political “victory.” A bad idea on a good day is exactly what keeps voters away.

For more than a decade, voters have watched conservatives campaign against Obamacare, which is essentially a socialist takeover of health care, to later treat it as permanent or merely in need of adjustment. This disconnect has done real damage and created a deep lack of confidence that the GOP is able to deliver a genuine health care overhaul. And still the question lingers: Why should we even be trying to touch this third rail? In 2017, it was a clear failed attempt for Republican leadership to edit the law on socialized medicine. Just because we once again are in the governing majority does not mean that we have to own the mistakes of the opposing party. The unconstitutional expansion of government into healthcare is irredeemable.

At the center of this erosion of trust is an issue that will not disappear with well-written talking points or suggestions of compromise: that the fusion of nationalized health care with taxpayer-funded abortion is unequivocally a nonstarter. For pro-life voters, this is not one issue among many — it is a non-negotiable.

The removal or watering down of the Hyde Amendment is dead on arrival for conservatives. This is not extreme; it is responsible governance, and it is our position. This is why clarity from House and Senate leadership matters so much right now.

There is no room for “flexibility” when it comes to abortion. This very idea is fundamentally broken and incompatible with a culture of life.

Stop pretending that compromise, masquerading as “flexibility,” on the life issue can ever produce lasting victories or pretending that a negative can become positive because it gave us a political victory.

Our message must be loud and clear: the Hyde Amendment is a fundamental provision, not a bargaining chip.

Republicans in Congress cannot give an inch or cede any ground to the death cult when it comes to protecting life through the Hyde Amendment. This is a hill to die on.

For more from Jonathan Alexandre, Vice President of Governmental Affairs and Senior Counsel for Liberty Counsel and Liberty Counsel Action, click HERE.

Also published in the Washington Stand.

Since I was a little girl, I have loved everything about the Christmas season. Now that I am an adult, my love for Christmas has not waned. One of the aspects I love most is the anticipation, excitement, and wonder leading up to Christmas Day. I love lighting candles each Sunday of Advent and moving the marker on my Christmas countdown, all expectantly leading up to the day we join with all of Christendom to celebrate the birth of Christ.

As busy as the month of December has become, it is also a time of year where we have permission to delight and revel in the beauty, brightness, awe, and joy the season brings. It is a time of exciting anticipation, inviting us to take a break from the natural cadence of life as we anticipate the holiday.

While on earth, our hearts are wired for longing and expectation. Whether it’s counting down to the birth of a child, a wedding, or a vacation, we constantly look forward to greater things to come.

Maybe this is why the Christmas season is so bright and wonderful — it reorients our eyes and invites us to lean into this anticipation. Perhaps this reflects a deeper longing in our hearts and a desire for something greater and truer than anything this world could offer.

Waiting in Expectant Hope

In the words of C.S. Lewis, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

As believers, the world is not our home; Heaven is. This Christmas, I have reflected on the lyrics of these classic Christmas carols that have a common theme of expectant hope for the promised Savior: “O Holy Night,” “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” and “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus.”

The words of “O Holy Night” reflect this truth in this way:

Long lay the world in sin and error pining,

Till he appear’d and the soul felt its worth.

A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!

“O Come, O Come Emmanuel” also describes this expectant longing:

O come, O come, Emmanuel,

and ransom captive Israel

that mourns in lonely exile here

until the Son of God appear.

“Come Thou Long Expected Jesus” is similarly a call for the return of Jesus Christ:

Come, thou long expected Jesus,

born to set thy people free;
from our fears and sins release us,

let us find our rest in thee.

Hope Has Arrived

Jesus Christ was born after centuries of silence as more than 400 years had passed since God spoke at the close of the Old Testament. God’s people waited expectantly for the promised Messiah, and “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son” (Galatians 4:4).

In the temple, Simeon eagerly waited for the “consolation of Israel” and would not see death until He saw the Lord’s Christ (Luke 2:25-26).

When Mary and Joseph brought the child Jesus to the temple, Simeon took Him in his arms and said: “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel” (Luke 2:29-32).

Hope has arrived. Our King has come. The seed of the woman has crushed the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15). He has adopted us as His children and is making all things new. This is a season for rejoicing: The Savior is born and is coming again!

The Weary World Rejoices

In many ways, 2025 was full of darkness and loss. And for some, Christmas is not the most wonderful time of the year. The world is fallen, broken, tainted by sin. Even the very best this world has to offer is a pale shadow of what is to come.

May our longing for something greater focus our gaze heavenward and toward Christ. The world is indeed weary, but in Jesus, we rejoice!

This Christmas, as we celebrate the arrival of Jesus in a manger, may we tune our hearts to anticipate the Second Coming of King Jesus and all that is prepared for us in Christ.

“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever” (Revelation 11:15).

For more from Emily Wood Hawley, communications specialist and writer for Liberty Counsel, click HERE.

An Old Order Amish proverb states that “they who trim themselves to fit others will soon whittle themselves away.”

Thanks to a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States on Monday, New York’s storied Old Order Amish population need neither trim their religious beliefs to fit New York’s seemingly endless descent into godlessness, nor whittle the core values of their religious community down to nothing.

In 1860, New York became the second state in the nation to institute compulsory vaccination schemes on school pupils. Since 1966, as plainly required by the First Amendment, the compulsory vaccination laws in New York explicitly exempted those with sincerely held religious beliefs against forced vaccination to obtain a religious exemption to the regime and did not even require certification of such beliefs or the exemption from vaccination.

That all changed in 2019. Despite its near 160-year existence without the sky falling, New York repealed the religious exemption that year and made the compulsory vaccination scheme applicable to all students at all schools, including public, private, and parochial schools.

In repealing its constitutionally required religious exemption, New York contended that maintaining high vaccination rates against communicable diseases was necessary to protect its student population. And New York has noted in its legislative discussion that some schools had experienced significant drops in the vaccination rates, such that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s desired 95% vaccination rate was not being met. Fair enough (if one buys that vaccines actually work).

New York’s answer to this purported problem: revoke the religious exemption available to religiously objecting parents and pupils. One would naturally ask, then, was the percentage of religious exemptions so high that New York’s unconstitutional removal of the exemption solved its purported problem of some schools having only 80% vaccination?

Wait for it ... no.

In the years preceding New York’s unconstitutional repeal of the religious exemption, the average percentage of pupils claiming the religious exemption ranged from 0.54% to 1.53%. The horror!

One need not be a mathematician to understand that half a percentage point of religious exemptions does not cause a purported 20% shortcoming in the percentage of vaccinated pupils. So, what was the cause of the remaining population of unvaccinated pupils? The medical exemption. Did New York repeal the medical exemption that was causing the alleged shortcoming? No.

In other words, New York’s unconstitutional repeal of the religious exemption accomplished exactly none of its stated goals. Except, perhaps it accomplished precisely the goal when one realizes what the actual goal of the legislation was — religious discrimination.

In the legislative discussion of New York’s repeal of the religious exemption, state senators made their actual objectives well known, claiming that religious beliefs against vaccination were “fake” and “utter garbage.” One senator said the unconstitutional repeal was necessary because a group of people in New York had placed their religious convictions ahead of public health in what he described as a “selfish and misguided” ideology. One legislator went so far as to claim that the Old Order Amish were equivalent to those who tried Galileo as a heretic.

New York’s Old Order Amish population maintains a robust and exclusive system of educating its children. Doing so is vital to its continued existence. Since inception, the Old Order Amish have rejected institutionalized churches and sought to return to the early, simple, Christian life — de-emphasizing material success, denying the competitive spirit, and insulating themselves from the modern world. The Supreme Court has recognized this precise religious belief system since at least 1972.

As the Supreme Court put it in Wisconsin v. Yoder, “the Old Order Amish religion pervades and determines the entire mode of life of its adherents.”

One aspect of that pervasive system of deeply held religious beliefs is objection to modern schools of educational thought, including “separation from, rather than integration with, contemporary worldly society.” As part of that separation and in conformance with their sincerely held “commitment to a century’s old way of life,” Old Order Amish have sincere objections to vaccinations that have an inextricably intertwined connection with aborted fetal cells.

That placed them in direct conflict with New York’s newly minted regime. And New York took its newfound unconstitutional authority to new heights in the case of Miller v. McDonald. There, rather than protecting the state’s storied Old Order Amish population, the godless zealots of New York “audited” the vaccination compliance of three Amish schools, found them in violation of the unconstitutional prohibition on religious exemptions, and fined the schools and families $118,000 for permitting their pupils to maintain their religious convictions and abstain from vaccination. And New York threatened that the fines would continue to grow should the schools maintain their refusal to comply with the statist regime’s unconstitutional dictates.

Three families and three Old Order Amish schools sued New York, claiming that New York’s gross intrusion into a centuries-old religious way of life was a violation of the First Amendment.

It is.

The federal district court in New York and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals both held that New York was permitted to require the Old Order Amish to violate their religious convictions.

On December 8, the Supreme Court issued an order granting the Old Order Amish’s petition for a writ of certiorari, vacated the Second Circuit’s judgment, and remanded the case for the lower courts to reconsider the issue in light of Mahmoud v. Taylor.

The Court’s instruction to look at Mahmoud is a constitutional blockbuster with potential reverberations across the First Amendment. The reason? Recognizing religious exemptions not just from public school curriculum, as required in Mahmoud, but from broader compulsory schemes outside of the public-school context significantly enhances the free exercise of religion and the right of parents to opt out of laws compelling their adherence to objectionable dictates.

Remember, the New York case arises out of enforcement of a statute that applies to private and parochial schools, as the Old Order Amish were subject to the compulsory vaccination requirement even though they operated exclusively for Old Order Amish pupils on Old Order Amish land and were taught exclusively by Old Order Amish teachers.

Mahmoud, by contrast, involved the rights of parents to opt out of public education curriculum to which they had religious objections. As the Court said in Mahmoud, “the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment protects the ability of those who hold religious beliefs of all kinds to live out their faiths in daily life,” and that “for many people of faith across the country, there are few religious acts more important than the religious education of their children.”

The Court further noted in Mahmoud, that “the right of parents to direct the religious upbringing of their children would be an empty promise if it did not follow those children into the public school classroom.”

With the Miller v. McDonald order, the Supreme Court has now taken that a step further — the right to direct a child in the Old Order Amish religious system would be hollow if it did not carry with it the right to exempt one’s child from the overarching and religiously hostile compulsory vaccination laws in New York.

To paraphrase Mahmoud, “the compulsory-[vaccination] law carried with it precisely the kind of objective danger to the free exercise of religion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent because it placed Amish children into an environment hostile to Amish beliefs, where they would face pressure to conform to contrary viewpoints and lifestyles.”

Requiring the lower courts to reevaluate New York’s blatant hostility to the Old Order Amish in light of Mahmoud necessarily requires the courts to notice that New York’s religious discriminatory compulsory vaccination law “implicates direct, coercive interactions between the State and its young residents.”

To do so in a manner that runs roughshod over sincere (and centuries-old) religious beliefs violates the First Amendment.

In other words, the Court has rejected New York’s “chilling vision of the power of the state to strip away the critical rights of parents to guide the religious development of their children,” and has instead followed “a very different view of religious liberty, one that comports with the fundamental values of the American people.”

And those values recognize that the adherence to one’s religious beliefs trumps adherence to a state’s discriminatory regime applicable to all aspects of life. That is a welcome and significant change.

In Miller, the Old Order Amish refused to trim their religious beliefs to fit New York’s godless regime, and the Supreme Court has instead required that New York whittle its religious discrimination to nothing.

First published in the Washington Stand.

For more from Daniel Schmid, Associate Vice President of Legal Affairs, click HERE.

As Christmas approaches, America’s Christian heritage shines as millions of Americans celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. However, Americans must fight to protect the freedom to worship Him freely as communist influences continue to infiltrate this nation, just as Ronald Reagan warned about years ago.

As several “democratic-socialist” candidates recently won mayoral races in New York City and Seattle, it’s important this Christmas season to understand how quickly socialism can evolve into communism—and what that could mean for religious freedom and openly celebrating Christmas.

Mayors-elect Zohran Mamdani in New York City and Katie Wilson in Seattle campaigned on policies like state-owned housing, wealth redistribution, and progressive taxes. Whether through civic ignorance or ideological alignment, these victories reflect a growing acceptance of government dependency.

According to a November 2025 Cygnal survey, only 16 percent of Americans understand socialism as coauthor Karl Marx defined it in “The Communist Manifesto.” Marx and Friedrich Engels, both forefathers of communism, described socialism as the “lower phase” of communism, where production is publicly controlled for social welfare and equal distribution. They defined communism as going one step further where society demands from each person according to their ability and gives back only according to their needs.

When leaders view rights as coming from government rather than God, history shows that religious freedom is often one of the first casualties.

Why Communism Targets Christmas

In socialist and especially communist systems, the state often positions itself as the highest moral authority. Independent belief systems—especially Christianity—are viewed as rivals. This tension has historically led to the secularization of religious rites or outright banning of religious holidays, practice, and expression.

Before Ronald Reagan became president, he gave more than 1,000 daily radio broadcasts from 1975 to 1979, including one in which he shared a story about Christmas under communism in Ukraine. Communists feared the public outcry that would follow a complete ban on Christmas, so they began to slowly secularize the holiday. To suppress Christianity, leaders rewrote a beloved Christmas carol, Nova Radist Stala (“Joyous News Has Come to Us”), into a secular song:

• Original: “The joyous news has come which never was before. Over a cave above a manger a bright star has lit the world, where Jesus was born from a virgin maiden…”

• First rewrite: “The joyous news has come which never was before. A red star with five tails has brightly lit the world.”

• Second rewrite: “Long-awaited star of freedom lit the skies in October. Where formerly lived the kings and had the roots their nobles, there today with simple folks, Lenin’s glory hovers.”

Eventually, the Soviet Union banned Christmas altogether. St. Nicholas was replaced by “Did Moroz” (Grandfather Frost), who delivered gifts on New Year’s Eve. Christmas trees became “New Year’s trees.”

Christians resisted bravely. In communist Romania, Rev. Geza Palffy protested when December 25 was declared a workday. He was arrested, beaten, imprisoned and later died. Ukrainians continued singing carols in secret, praying for freedom. Reagan ended his broadcast: “I guess we all hope their prayer is answered.”

Modern-Day Christmas Under Communism

Communist regimes still suppress Christmas today. At least five one-party communist states restrict Christmas celebrations primarily due to its incompatibility with state ideology.

• North Korea: Christmas has been banned entirely for decades. Christmas celebrations can lead to imprisonment, torture, or even execution. Many North Koreans have no idea about Jesus Christ. Underground Christians must celebrate in secret. Instead of Christmas, the North Korean regimes have celebrated the birthday of Kim Jong II’s mother. This deliberate elimination of Christmas supplants religious devotion with loyalty to the ruling family.

• China: The Chinese Communist Party requires the complete subordination of religious groups to the state’s Marxist vision. Routinely, Christian churches are demolished, and leaders are arrested. True Christmas celebrations would have to be kept secret. In public, Christmas is nothing more than a commercialized shopping event.

• Cuba: Christmas was banned in Cuba from 1969-1997. Cuba’s government wanted Cubans to celebrate secular “Revolutionary Holidays.” Fidel Castro reinstated Christmas after Pope John Paul II requested it when he visited Cuba. Today, even though Christmas is officially recognized, public religious expressions remain subdued in many areas due to its communist government.

• Laos and Vietnam: In both countries, Christians are targeted and viewed as traitors to the regime facing potential violence and imprisonment. All religious gatherings and Christmas celebrations must be done in secret.

Censorship Trends in America

Attempts to censor Christmas in the U.S. have persisted for decades—removing Nativity scenes, banning “Merry Christmas” greetings and Christmas carols, and even prohibiting red and green decorations in schools and workplaces. Liberty Counsel has addressed and overturned hundreds of attempts like these to censor Christmas in the private and public sector.

Around 2003, the censorship of Christmas entered the retail market. Christmas trees were renamed “Holiday Trees,” Christmas decorations were referred to as “Holiday Decorations” or “Holiday Lights.” In response to this trend, Liberty Counsel launched the annual Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign, which is designed to educate and, if necessary, litigate, to ensure that the religious and Christian viewpoints of Christmas are not censored.

When pockets of America choose more government dependency, it should set off alarm bells for anyone who cares about religious liberty and freedom. America must not drift toward policies that centralize power, as dissent, cultural norms, and especially religious institutions will be threatened.

Even in America, where the First Amendment guards against censorship and religious hostility, Christmas still faces censorship and secularization attempts.

Repressive forces have always had the same goal—to first secularize and then to eliminate religious symbols, celebrations, and speech. Our freedom to publicly worship and celebrate Christmas must not be taken for granted and must be protected.

“Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever.” (Psalm 107:1)

Thanksgiving is a cornerstone of American heritage — a humble yet powerful expression of gratitude for liberty, faith, and sacrifice. From the Pilgrims to the Founders, through the Civil War and into modern times, Thanksgiving reflects biblical principles of humble prayer and thankfulness for the blessings of liberty and the sacrifices to achieve it.

The First Thanksgiving: A Journey of Faith and Freedom

While Thanksgiving certainly echoes the early biblical harvest festivals, such as the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot), a time when the Israelites gave thanks for God’s provision during the harvest season (Leviticus 23:33–43), the first Thanksgiving is traditionally traced back to 1621 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The Pilgrims, seeking religious liberty and escape from persecution, endured a 66-day voyage aboard the Mayflower through treacherous storms to reach the New World. Before landing, they voted to establish a new form of government and signed the Mayflower Compact, America’s first governing document, declaring their mission was “for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith.”

The Mayflower Compact established a form of self-government with the idea of “just and equal laws” made by and for the people — laying the foundation for American democracy. The Pilgrims would then develop relations with the native Wampanoag people who taught them their farming and survival skills. After surviving a harsh winter with help from the Wampanoag, the Pilgrims celebrated their first successful harvest with prayers and gratitude, acknowledging divine providence for their newfound liberty.

Thanksgiving in the Early Republic

After the first Thanksgiving, similar observances became common in the colonies. However, the holiday gained national significance in 1789 when President George Washington issued the first official Thanksgiving proclamation under the new Constitution. Washington, who witnessed and endured immense hardships during the Revolutionary War, understood that his army’s resilience, sacrifices, and ultimate victory were not powered by human strength alone but by divine providence. As President, Washington expressed liberty is a natural, God-given right, and he connected hard-won American liberty to a people who honored God and the Christian faith.

In his inaugural address, Washington affirmed that “the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained; and since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”

Later that year, he proclaimed November 26 as a day of national thanksgiving and prayer, urging Americans to offer “sincere and humble thanks” for God’s manifold mercies.

The Civil War and Lincoln’s Proclamation

By 1815, states had issued over 1,400 prayer proclamations — half for thanksgiving and half for fasting. Yet the national holiday owes much to Sarah Josepha Hale, known as the “Mother of Thanksgiving,” who tirelessly advocated over decades for a unified day of gratitude. As so, she wrote to President Abraham Lincoln advocating for a national Thanksgiving holiday.

During the Civil War’s darkest days, President Abraham Lincoln embraced Hale’s vision. After visiting Gettysburg and witnessing the graves of thousands of soldiers in November 1863, Lincoln consecrated himself to Christ.

On October 3, 1863, he proclaimed the last Thursday of November as a National Day of Thanksgiving and Praise, acknowledging that “No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.”

A Timeless Tradition Rooted in Gratitude

Thanksgiving is one of America’s most cherished holidays, deeply rooted in faith, community, and gratitude for God’s grace and provision.

From the Pilgrims’ prayers to Washington’s proclamations and Lincoln’s resolve, this holiday reminds us that the survival of our nation depends on biblical values and a grateful citizenry.

Across more than four centuries, the fabric of America was woven with timeless thankfulness revealing, “Where there the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Corinthians 3:17).

On Monday morning, the Supreme Court declined to hear Davis v. Ermold, marking the end of a decade-long legal battle for Kim Davis, the first victim jailed, sued, and held personally liable post-Obergefell v. Hodges for her religious beliefs on marriage.

This denial is heartbreaking for Kim Davis and is a miscarriage of justice. Refusing to take up this case is a stark departure from the Constitution the Court purports to protect.

Kim Davis now personally faces hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for refusing to put her name on a “marriage” license that violated her Christian faith. Despite this, our fight for the religious liberty of Americans like Kim Davis, and to overturn the Obergefell opinion, is far from over.

Kim Davis didn’t ask to become the center of a hot-button culture war debate when she took a stand for her faith. Instead, she sought to abide by her Christian convictions in her role as the county clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky.

When the Obergefell opinion fabricated a “right” to same-sex “marriage” nationwide, Davis sought a religious accommodation to prevent her from issuing “marriage” licenses contrary to her belief that marriage is exclusively a union between one man and one woman.

Kim received the religious accommodation she desired so that her name would be removed from marriage licenses in three forms just months after the 2015 Obergefell opinion was handed down. This accommodation came from Democrat Gov. Steven Beshear in September 2015, from Republican Gov. Matt Bevin in December 2015, and from a bill unanimously passed by the state legislature in April 2016.

Kim Davis received the simple accommodation she requested, and David Ermold and David Moore received a license. But they wanted Kim’s name on their license. When that did not happen, they continued this case as a vendetta against Kim to punish her for her Christian faith and belief that marriage is between one man and one woman.”

David Ermold and David Moore sought to personally target Kim Davis for her Christian faith and make an example out of her. They could have gone to other county clerks or officials for their “marriage” license, but they wanted to force a Christian, Kim Davis, to depart from her religious beliefs and put her name on a document that violated God’s Word.

As a result of their public crusade to humiliate, punish, and bankrupt Davis for her faith, Davis was jailed, hauled before a jury, and she now faces crippling monetary damages based on nothing more than purported hurt feelings and a vendetta against her Christian convictions. Government officials like Davis do not shed their constitutional rights upon being elected.

By denying Davis’ petition for justice, the High Court has let stand an opinion that stripped a government defendant of her immunity and any personal First Amendment defense for her religious expression.

This time, Kim Davis is the victim of religious animus and is being deprived of her constitutional freedom of religion. Tomorrow, it could be you.

The Supreme Court’s denial of this case is an aberration from the religious freedom the Constitution ensures for all Americans. Our fight to overturn Obergefell is not over –– it is not a matter of if, but when, this wrongly decided opinion will be overturned.

Much like Roe v. Wade, Obergefell v. Hodges was egregiously wrong from the start and has no basis in the Constitution. Marriage should have never been federalized, and we will continue working with state legislators and individuals to overturn Obergefell and to return the issue of marriage to the states.

This may mark the end of an era in litigating Davis’ case, but the fight to overturn Obergefell and protect religious liberty has just begun. I have no doubt that Davis’ resolve will serve as a catalyst to raise up many more challenges to the wrongly decided Obergefell opinion.

Obergefell is legal fiction pulled out of thin air that jeopardizes the religious liberty of countless Americans who believe in God’s definition of marriage. Obergefell’s days are numbered, and we will not rest until it is overturned.

Until then, we must pray, fight, and contend for when Obergefell is no longer the law of the land.

For more from Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel, click HERE.

Christians nationwide face controversy when they confront lies with truth and have faced retaliation, lawsuits, and even termination from their jobs for standing for such convictions. Some of these individuals are presented with a choice: give in to a lie or lose your livelihood.

Take Luke Ash, the bivocational pastor of Stevendale Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who understands the personal cost of standing for his convictions. Pastor Ash refused to wrongfully refer to a female trainee by her “preferred” male pronouns in his job at the East Baton Rouge Parish Library.

Pastor Ash showed no animus or disrespect. He simply said, “I don’t do that,” when another colleague confronted him about not using the female trainee’s “preferred” pronouns. When given the option to change his mind and use her “preferred” pronouns in compliance with the library’s so-called “inclusivity” policy, he refused.

As a Christian, Pastor Ash could not lie to affirm a delusion that seeks to defy God’s design. As a result, he was unlawfully fired from his second job that allowed him to better support his family.

If they come after people like Pastor Ash for standing for his convictions (and for biological fact as basic as male and female), they will come after you. This is why the fight for religious liberty matters.

This is why we are fighting for Kayleigh Bush, who could not continue as Miss North Florida after refusing to sign a newly minted Miss America contract with a false definition of “female.”

This is why we are fighting for Daniel Grossenbach, who was fired from his job as an adjunct ethics professor at the University of Arizona for speaking up for his children and parental rights at local school board meetings as schools in the district were pushing LGBTQ indoctrination on children without parental knowledge or consent.

This is why we are fighting for a social worker in Clackamas County, Oregon, who is facing unlawful retaliation at work for refusing to call children by their “preferred” pronouns contrary to the way God made them.

This is why we are fighting for Liberty University that is being sued for terminating an employee who violated the Christian university’s doctrinal statement by announcing his “transition” to female.

The list goes on, and this just scrapes the surface of Americans nationwide facing backlash for refusing to accept a lie. Truth matters. Males cannot be females. In each of these cases, Christians were penalized for rightfully standing for what they know is true and exercising their faith. For each of these individuals, standing for their beliefs was costly — but worth it.

Thankfully, the rule of law is on our side. For Pastor Ash, the Louisiana Constitution, the Louisiana Protection of Religious Freedom Act, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protect his right to uphold his religious beliefs about human sexuality in the workplace.

The East Baton Rouge Parish Library acted illegally in firing Pastor Ash and not even considering offering him a religious accommodation to avoid using false pronouns. Liberty Counsel is demanding the library reinstate Pastor Ash with back pay and revise its pronoun policy to respect the religious free exercise rights of all employees to avoid further legal action.

The United States is a bastion for religious liberty and free speech with guardrails in place to ensure Christians can stand for truth in a culture that rejects it. Americans cannot be forced to choose between their faith and their livelihood.

Christianity is countercultural, standing for the truth is costly, and the truth is under attack. In an age of lies, be bold in your faith, abide by your convictions, and, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, “live not by lies” — no matter the consequences. Truth is worth fighting for, and a Christian’s religious liberty to stand for truth is worth defending.

Originally published in the Washington Stand.

For more from Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver, click HERE.

Daniel Grossenbach, a Christian father of two, spoke up at school board meetings to protect his son and daughter from ideologies contrary to his faith. He never imagined that standing for his children, what he describes as an “instinctive parental response,” would lead to the loss of his job as an ethics professor.

In 2023, Catalina Foothills School District (CFSD), the district in which Grossenbach’s children attend school, came under fire when its policies promoted teachers secretly pushing radical gender ideology on students. Grossenbach knew he could not remain on the sidelines.

The tipping point for Grossenbach was when he found out the school district began to allow (and even encourage) staff to hide information about students, such as their preferred name or pronoun, from parents.

“It was a separation of the kids from their parents,” he explained. “And so, I was just advocating for all kids to have a right to parental involvement, obviously starting with my kids because my kids are first and foremost for me.”

He began speaking at local school board meetings to advocate for parental rights, and he even established SaveCFSD, a nonprofit organization focused on restoring “truth, trust, and transparency” to the Tuscon, Arizona-area school board.

Grossenbach’s defense of parental involvement stemmed from his Christian worldview but also from a “commonsense perspective as an American.” He said that Christian parents have an even greater responsibility to stand up for their children.

“If we don’t speak out for truth, especially for our kids, then we’re going to let them continue to be exposed in this environment that’s harmful for them,” Grossenbach said. “And what we’re doing is we’re letting them fight that battle then.”

This problem will continue to grow and become “far worse” years down the road if it remains unchecked, subjecting children to face such battles alone, he explained.

“And now we are putting our kids into that environment saying, ‘OK, kid, now you fight it for me when I should have been the one that fought it for them,’” he continued. “We’re the parents. We should be the mama bears and papa bears that are out there taking the arrows on this now before it gets worse and before it really targets our kids.”

His public stand for parental rights, a concept once considered mainstream, did not come without cost. A coordinated effort to silence him through a barrage of anonymous complaints to his employer that disparaged him and even falsely accused him of “domestic terrorism” led to the University of Arizona unlawfully terminating him as an adjunct ethics professor.

The fact that he was fired for standing for something as non-controversial as a child’s right to have their parents involved in their upbringing is “mind-blowing” to him.

Liberty Counsel filed a lawsuit on Grossenbach’s behalf against the University of Arizona for retaliating against his First Amendment rights, declaring that the university’s discriminatory actions against his freedom of speech and freedom of religion are illegal and unconstitutional. The lawsuit seeks to reinstate Grossenbach to his prior position, restore his benefits, and award damages.

Grossenbach is not finished fighting, or as he calls it, “taking the arrows” for his kids. He believes that his story, and stories like his, will embolden others to speak up.

“We have to be more bold than those who are opposing our values,” Grossenbach said.

Grossenbach now sees some positive change in the school district, such as a Turning Point USA chapter starting and students speaking up and defending traditional values.

As for now, Grossenbach plans are to “[continue] to expose when we see things that are wrong, but also [have] hopefully a positive influence, too.”

For more from Emily Wood Hawley, click HERE.