If you don't want to miss anything posted on the Americans For Truth website, sign up for our "Feedblitz" service that gives you a daily email of every new article that we post. (This service DOES NOT replace the regular email list.) To sign up for the Feedblitz service, click here.
Family Man, Foe of Judicial Activism: SCOTUS nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh stands with wife Ashley and their two daughters, Margaret (left) and Elizabeth (Liza) (right), before being introduced to the nation by President Trump Monday night at the White House. In a 2017 speech Kavanaugh praised the restrained judicial approach of former Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist and called him his “first judicial hero.” Photo taken from White House video.
Folks, here is Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver’s take on Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. The monumental question before us is this: how would a future “Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh” decide on past cases like Roe v. Wade (coupled with Doe v. Bolton: Court-imposed nationalization of abortion-on-demand) and Obergefell v. Hodges (Court-imposed nationalization of homosexuality-based “marriage”), both of which relied heavily on an activist-minded judicial approach that displaced the legislative process?
Also, please note in the media discussions about Kavanaugh that commentary on the potential repeal of Obergefell is muted, despite it being only three years (as opposed to 45 for Roe) since the Court invented a new “constitutional right” by radically redefining marriage–effectively blocking the American people’s voice and votes in dozens of states from preserving real and natural marriage. — Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH; Twitter: @PeterLaBarbera
Press release by Liberty Counsel, July 10, 2018:
Kavanaugh’s Judicial Philosophy
WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Trump nominated D.C. Court of Appeals Judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy’s vacancy on the Supreme Court.
Judge Kavanaugh, who has written over 300 judicial opinions, said in his nomination speech last night that his judicial philosophy has been “straightforward. A judge must be independent and must interpret the law, not make it.” Kavanaugh also stressed he believes in interpreting statutes and the Constitution as they are written, “informed by history and tradition and precedent.”
In his speech, “From the Bench: The Constitutional Statesmanship of Chief Justice William Rehnquist“ that Kavanaugh presented for the 2017 Walter Berns Constitution Day Lecture at the American Enterprise Institute about Chief Justice Rehnquist, he said Rehnquist was “his first judicial hero.” Kavanaugh’s lecture focused on the impact that Rehnquist had on the Supreme Court, noting that the “Court unquestionably changed and became more an institution of law, where its power is to interpret and to apply the law as writing, informed by historical practice, not be its own person and policy predilections.”
Regarding the Supreme Court’s abortion decisions, he pointed out that Rehnquist dissented from the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision. In Casey, Rehnquist was originally writing the majority opinion to overrule Roe, but 30 days into the writing phase, Justice Kennedy changed his vote from striking down Roe to upholding Roe. The opinion was now removed from Rehnquist who then found himself in the dissent.
Rehnquist believed a judge must apply the law, not create it. He believed that fundamental rights must either be enumerated in the Constitution (like free speech) or deeply rooted in history and tradition. Abortion was neither an enumerated right nor deeply rooted in history and tradition. While Rehnquist’s views on abortion never became the majority opinion, he did write the majority opinion in the 1997 so-called “right to die” case known as Washington v. Glucksberg. Writing for the 5-4 majority, Rehnquist said that the “right to die” was neither an enumerated right nor deeply rooted in history and tradition. Here, Rehnquist’s originalist views did prevail.
“Life is winning,” says Pence. first VP to address annual March for Life in person
Vice President Mike Pence. Will the new administration reverse Obama’s immoral legacy on abortion and homosexualism? See AFTAH’s release on Trump and the evil SCOTUS Obergefell ruling HERE.
Wow, confident pro-life advocacy from the White House. What a welcome contrast to eight years of social leftism under Obama. We know that opposition to abortion does not automatically translate into resistance to the homosexual-bisexual-transgender agenda. But, pro-family folks, here is our mission field: the millions of Americans who stand up boldly for the unborn.
There is no true justice in defending life but not defending natural marriage, or not defending children against the push to indoctrinate them in aberrant sex and gender “identies” and “lifestyles.” We must not honor God by rallying to support innocent life but then dishonor Him by acquiescing to deviant reconfigurations of marriage and family. (Why again is Walmart selling Heather Has Two Mommies?) Rather, we must be all about the whole Truth. Remember that homosexualism, too, is anti-life.
As Vice President Pence stated, 44 years ago the Supreme Court turned away from the “timeless ideal” of the inalienable right to life. But just two years ago, the Court in its arrogance–helped by Obama’s treachery–turned away from God’s wonderful plan for marriage as uniting the sexes to create children and families. Pray and work for this new administration to roll back the previous White House’s evil abortion AND homosexualist agendas! –Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH; Twitter: @PeterLaBarbera
March for Life Remarks of Vice President Pence – As Prepared for Delivery
MARCH FOR LIFE
FRIDAY, JANUARY 27, 2017
WASHINGTON, D.C.
As Prepared for Delivery –
On behalf of President Donald Trump, my wife Karen, and our daughter Charlotte, I’d like to welcome you all to Washington, D.C. for the 44th annual March for Life.
And I am deeply humbled to be the first Vice President of the United States to ever have the privilege to attend this historic gathering.
More than two-hundred and forty years ago, our Founders wrote words that have echoed through the ages.
They declared “these truths to be self-evident.” That we are, all of us, “endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights,” and “that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Forty-four years ago, our Supreme Court turned away from the first of these timeless ideals.
But today, three generations hence, because of all of you, and the many more who stand with us in marches just like this across this nation, life is winning in America again.
That is evident in the election of pro-life majorities in the Congress of the United States.
But it is no more evident than in the historic election of a president who stands for a stronger America, a more prosperous America, and a president who I proudly say stands for the right to life – President Donald Trump.
“Man-made law must be consistent with God-given, natural rights,” asserts GOP’s guiding document
No Longer Free: New Mexico photographers Elaine and Jon Huguenin were fined more than $6,000 for politely refusing to shoot photos at a lesbian commitment ceremony, due to their Christian faith. The suit against them was filed under New Mexico’s “sexual orientation” law. The Huguenins appealed the decision but ultimately lost in the New Mexico Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to one day hear a case that will help decide whether “gay rights” supersedes Americans’ freedom of conscience on homosexual “marriage.” The next president could pick as many as four SCOTUS justices.
The following are extended excerpts of the newly minted 2016 Republican Party Platform, with a focus on the social issues and religious freedom (emphasis ours):
_____________________________
We the People
We are the party of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Declaration sets forth the fundamental precepts of American government: That God bestows certain inalienable rights on every individual, thus producing human equality; that government exists first and foremost to protect those inalienable rights; that man-made law must be consistent with God-given, natural rights; and that if God-given, natural, inalienable rights come in conflict with government, court, or human-granted rights, God-given, natural, inalienable rights always prevail; that there is a moral law recognized as “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”; and that American government is to operate with the consent of the governed. We are also the party of the Constitution, the greatest political document ever written. It is the solemn compact built upon principles of the Declaration that enshrines our God-given individual rights and law, defines the purposes and limits of government, and is the blueprint for ordered liberty that makes the United States the world’s freest and most prosperous nation. …
In a free society, the primary role of government is to protect the God-given, inalienable rights of its citizens. These constitutional rights are not negotiable for any American. We affirm that all legislation, regulation, and official actions must conform to the Constitution’s original meaning as understood at the time the language was adopted.
…
Defending Marriage Against an Activist Judiciary
Traditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman, is the foundation for a free society and has for millennia been entrusted with rearing children and instilling cultural values. We condemn the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States v. Windsor, which wrongly removed the ability of Congress to define marriage policy in federal law. We also condemn the Supreme Court’s lawless ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which in the words of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, was a “judicial Putsch” — full of “silly extravagances” — that reduced “the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Storey to the mystical aphorisms of a fortune cookie.” In Obergefell, five unelected lawyers robbed 320 million Americans of their legitimate constitutional authority to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The Court twisted the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment beyond recognition. To echo Scalia, we dissent. We, therefore, support the appointment of justices and judges who respect the constitutional limits on their power and respect the authority of the states to decide such fundamental social questions.
HRC, National LGBTQ Task Force and other homosexual groups work hand-in-hand with Planned Parenthood and pro-abortion lobby
Learning Activism from Planned Parenthood: LGBT activists work hand-in-hand with the Abortion Lobby. This is a notice for a day-long “institute” for LGBTQ activists to be held at the National LGBTQ Task Force’s “Creating Change” 2015 conference; it adopts Planned Parenthood tactics in the leftist crusade for “sexual rights.” The world’s leading abortion provider is very active in promoting homosexuality and gender confusion–and even fringe sexual “lifestyles” like BDSM (Bondage & Discipline, Dominance & Submission, Sadism & Masochism)–to young people. View the full 151-page Creating Change 2015 program HERE; we added the emphasis to this item, which is found on page 66. Creating Change 2015 will be held next month in Denver. Click to enlarge.
AFTAH President Peter LaBarbera issued the following statement on January 22, 2015–the 42nd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which, along with the companion case Doe v. Bolton, ushered in legalized abortion-on-demand as a privacy “right” across the United States:
“On this day marking the 42nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we remember and memorialize the unborn victims of abortion-on-demand. We stand with Americans and people the world over who are working to stop the ongoing massacre of innocents made possible by this judicial travesty.
“Sadly, many pro-homosexual groups like Human Rights Campaign and the National LGBTQ Task Force also aggressively promote abortion ‘rights.’ Planned Parenthood, in addition to being the world’s biggest abortion provider, actively promotes homosexuality, bisexuality, gender confusion–and even sadomasochism–to young people.
“Ideas and laws–and unjust court decisions–have consequences, and today is a reminder that the Culture of Death and Disease takes an immense toll on humanity. We must continue to stand up for the most defenseless in society by working to stop abortion.”
Peter LaBarbera Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH)
Court’s defense of religious liberty for profit-making companies could help Christian small businessmen oppressed by “gay rights” laws
Current U.S. Supreme Court: left to right in back: Sotomayor, Breyer, Alito, Kagan. Front, left to right: Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Ginsburg. Alito wrote the Hobby Lobby decision, and Kennedy is lionized by “gay” activists for writing last year’s decision striking down DOMA. Click to enlarge.
By Peter LaBarbera
It’s easy to understand why hard-core feminists with their frenzied, overblown “War on Women” rhetoric would be outraged by the Supreme Court upholding Hobby Lobby’s right as a Christian-run corporation not to be forced to provide abortifacients to its employees through an Obama-care mandate. (See Hillary’s misinformation on the decision HERE.) But why are liberal “gay” activists freaking out over the Hobby Lobby ruling?
The case was never about denying women birth control, but you wouldn’t know that from the “reporting” by liberal media and hyperventilating “progressive” bloggers. Hobby Lobby still provides 16 forms of birth control as a health benefit to its employees, but its founders—along with another Christian-owned corporation, Conestoga Wood Specialists—sued HHS over being forced to provide four contraceptive methods that could terminate a fertilized egg.
Hobby Lobby’s founders, David and Barbara Green, are committed Christians who believe that life begins at conception and should be protected. To quote the Court decision, “Hobby Lobby’s statement of purpose commits the Greens to ‘[h]onoring the Lord in all [they] do by operating the company in a manner consistent with Biblical principles.’” So strong is the Greens’ commitment to Jesus Christ that they have lost countless millions of dollars in profits over the years by closing their 500 craft stores nationwide on Sunday.
Now, one would think that obtaining cheap, subsidized contraception would be low on the priority list for homosexuals, seeing that two men or two women by themselves cannot produce a child. Nevertheless, Big Gay Inc is in a tizzy over the Supreme Court decision—because Burwell vs. Hobby Lobbyisn’t really about contraceptives but rather whether Americans like the Greens will be free to live out their religious convictions.
Immediately after the decision, feminists flew into a rage, circulating crude versions of Justice Ginsburg’s dissent and distortions about women being denied birth control by their “male bosses.” Too bad most Americans will never read the actual Hobby Lobby decision—which lays out two diametrically opposed, competing visions about freedom of conscience and the role of government in these United States.
Freedom of conscience vs. Big Government
Hobby Lobby’s owners, David and Barbara Green, seek to use their business to glorify Jesus Christ. Their 500 stores across the country are closed on Sundays, costing the Greens many millions of dollars in profits.
On the side of preserving and even expanding Americans’ religious liberty were five judges: Alito, Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia and Thomas. In his concurring opinion Kennedy writes:
“In our constitutional tradition, freedom means that all persons have the right to believe or strive to believe in a divine creator and a divine law. For those who choose this course, free exercise is essential in preserving their own dignity and in striving for a self-definition shaped by their religious precepts. Free exercise in this sense implicates more than just freedom of belief….It means, too, the right to express those beliefs and to establish one’s religious (or non-religious) self-definition in the political, civic, and economic life of our larger community.”
On the other side—of Big Government overriding citizens’ religious beliefs, restricting conscience exemptions to federal mandates, and putting federal power behind expanded access to entitlements–were Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Breyer and Kagan. In fact, Ginsburg spends nearly two pages in her dissent [see pp. 24-25] defending the idea that Obama-care’s provision of subsidies for IUD’s (intrauterine devices) –one of the four contraceptives resisted by Hobby Lobby as a potential abortifacient—is a “compelling government interest.”
As much as Ginsburg believes the majority’s “immoderate” reading of Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) is too broad, hers is too narrow: she ends by arguing that exemptions under the RFRA should be limited to explicitly religious organizations—leaving for-profit Christian businessmen like the Greens unprotected.
The bigger government gets–in both its “social justice” mission and the amount of goodies it gives out as “entitlements”—the greater the threat to Americans’ right to freely exercise their faith. This is precisely why homosexual activists are nervous about Hobby Lobby’s victory. If the nation’s highest court grants that even very large “closely held” family businesses like Hobby Lobby (which has more than 13,000 employees) possess a religious liberty claim under RFRA, then surely small family businesses like Elane Photography in New Mexico—owned by Jonathan and Elaine Huguenin—should have the right not to use their creative talents to serve homosexual “weddings,” which violate their Christian faith.
Folks, I’ve taken the extraordinary step of asking some pro-life and pro-family leaders and friends to vouch for me in the face of a leftist attempt to dislodge me as a speaker at the upcoming Saskatchewan Pro-Life Association event April 11-12. [See AFTAH story HERE.] The following note is from Joe Scheidler, one of my personal heroes and the founder of the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League. Scheidler’s “Truth Tours” featuring placards with photos of unborn babies victimized by what the liberals call “choice” have educated countless tens of thousands of people across America as to the murderous reality of abortion-on-demand.
Thanks to Joe and all the wonderful leaders and advocates who have come to my defense regarding the Canada trip. The Left is whipping up hysteria in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, and sadly more than a few pro-lifers are confused about the false charge of “hate” leveled against me. — Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH
_________________
Joe Scheider writes:
I called the Saskatchewan Pro-Life Assn. and told Loraine what a great guy Peter is and that we have worked with him over the years and that being picketed by a bunch of homosexuals will bring publicity to his talk and to get word to the people in charge to greet him with open arms. She said she’d pass on my message of support. They have been getting lots of calls, letters, e-mails, etc. Best.-Joe
On Friday, I attended a funeral mass yesterday that celebrated the life of Dick Walsh (pictured at right), who passed away July 31. Dick was a remarkable man who crusaded tirelessly for the rights of the unborn and, in his later years, to preserve real marriage against the revolutionary homosexual redefinition. He was also a faithful husband, a loving dad and grandfather, a committed Catholic, and a very successful businessman.
Dick was a “big picture” guy who knew what we were up against in Illinois — but he was neither intimidated nor discouraged by the Left. Rather, he fought with tenacity, courage and creativity — once erecting a pro-life billboard on top of a skyscraper in the heart of downtown Chicago — that quoted Mother Teresa:
“[I]f we accept that the mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another.”
I got to know Dick when he was in his 70s, but he still had more guts and energy than most men a third of his age. We worked together on “Defend Marriage Illinois.” A few years earlier, Dick created the “Walsh Forum” radio show in a valiant attempt to bring a fair discussion of conservative issues to Illinois’ citizens — who have been dumped on for decades by a biased and corrupt media. Dick spent a ton of his own money on the project but could not sustain it. But at least he tried, compared to the apathy and resignation of lesser men.
Dick was a can-do cultural warrior of the sort we could use more of if we are ever to restore America to her former greatness. His life was a rebuke to the cynicism that grips this state and, increasingly, this nation, which he loved as a patriot. I will miss him.
When President Obama and the Democrats formally embraced homosexual “marriage,” “gay” activists cheered. But many members of a larger political constituency, Black Christians, cringed. This video by Bishop E.W. Jackson, founder of Chesapeake, Va.-based STAND (Staying True to America’s National Destiny), has gone viral, with over 1.1 million YouTube hits. Americans For Truth’s radio/podcast interview with Bishop Jackson will be posted shortly. — Peter LaBarbera, Americans For Truth
