Articles

Weekly Review

09/11/19

Warren Cole Smith

Fear of Chick-Fil-A. The University of Kansas recently renewed its contract with Chick-fil-A. The move seems to have “triggered” members of the school’s Sexuality and Gender Diversity Faculty Staff Council. In a letter to Chancellor Douglas Girod, the Council said Chick-Fil-A “violates the feelings of safety and inclusion that so many of us have striven to create, foster, and protect.” They call Chick-fil-A a “bastion of bigotry.” Chick-Fil-A’s “sins” against political correctness apparently include its contributions to Christian organizations like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Salvation Army through its charitable foundation. In 2012, Chick-Fil-A President Dan Cathey said that the United States was “inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and we say we know better than you what constitutes a marriage.”

Facebook Fascism? The social media giant last week apparently punished Live Action for posting “fake news.” That “fake news” was a pair of videos explaining that abortion is never a medically necessary procedure. Rose told The Federalist that the videos “explain a position shared by thousands of medical professionals.” She added, “Facebook should cut ties with the ideologically driven, inaccurate ‘fact-checkers’ they employed.” In fact, more than 1,000 medical professionals signed the 2012 Dublin Declaration asserting that intentionally killing an unborn child is never medically necessary and differs from treatments to save the life of the mother.

Thinking Rightly. The liberal town of Ann Arbor, MI., has a far-reaching public accommodation law that threatened a conservative political consulting firm. The law would have forced the Christian owners of ThinkRight Strategies to take clients whose political or other views it found inconsistent with their own beliefs. ThinkRight Strategies filed a lawsuit in July to stop Ann Arbor from enforcing the law. Under the settlement filed last week, the city agreed the law did not apply to ThinkRight because the firm “limits the platforms, views, policies, causes, events, or messages it will convey or promote through its services.” Our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom represented ThinkRight owners Grant Strobl and Jacob Chludzinski. ADF Senior Counsel Jonathan Scruggs said, “The positive outcome here … underscores a core American principle. The government can’t force creative professionals to surrender free speech and religious freedoms in order to operate a business.”

Daleiden in The Dock. Pro-life activists Sandra Merritt and David Daleiden released undercover videos in 2015 that exposed Planned Parenthood’s practice of selling fetal tissue. Now, Daleiden and Merritt are in a California courtroom facing the possibility of criminal charges. According to WORLD, “California Attorney General Xavier Becerra is attempting to prove to San Francisco Superior Court Judge Christopher Hite he has enough evidence to try the activists from the Center for Medical Progress on 15 felony counts each for recording abortionists and others involved in the buying and selling of fetal tissue without their consent.” But Daleiden has remained unrepentant. “It’s an assault on First Amendment civil rights,” Daleiden told Fox News host Tucker Carlson. “It’s using the law enforcement powers of Kamala Harris to punish dissenting thought, and to punish people who have a policy disagreement.” Harris, now a U.S. senator and presidential candidate seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination in 2020, filed the charges against Daleiden and Merritt while serving as California’s attorney general. She obtained a warrant and sent police to Daleiden’s home to seize the videos from his investigation.

 

Warren Cole Smith is the Vice-President of Mission Advancement for the Colson Center for Christian Worldview.

 

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