It’s a right that officials in Illinois are trying to deny the proprietors of the TimberCreek Bed and Breakfast in Paxton, after they declined the request of two men to hold their “civil union” ceremony at the inn.

The two men filed complaints against TimberCreek with the state’s Human Rights Commission, claiming sexual orientation discrimination. Since then, the Commission has shown a much greater concern with the outrage of the two men – who of course had the option of holding their ceremony at any number of other establishments in the area – than with the conscience rights of the bed-and-breakfast’s owners, whose religious convictions spurred their refusal to host the event.

“TimberCreek does not host civil union ceremonies for same-sex or opposite-sex couples, so the discrimination charge is baseless,” says ADF Senior Counsel Bryan Beauman. “TimberCreek has done nothing wrong, and their right to freely exercise their faith should not be threatened.”

“No business owner may be forced to violate his sincerely held religious beliefs merely because someone demands it,” says Steve Amjad, one of more than 2,100 attorneys in the ADF alliance, who filed answers in December to the complaints lodged against TimberCreek.

“Constitutional and state laws guarantee religious freedom for every American, including business owners,” he says. “These complaints ignore those fundamental freedoms and are further examples of the threat the homosexual legal agenda poses to every American’s basic rights.”

The answers filed with the commission in response to the complaints assert that “TimberCreek did not engage in sexual-orientation discrimination under the Illinois Human Rights Act” and that applying specific portions of the act to this situation would actually violate the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, federal law, and the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  The case is currently still with the Illinois Human Rights Commission.

These encroachments on constitutionally protected religious freedoms are happening more and more in cities all over the U.S.  Please be in prayer for our ADF attorneys as they stand in defense of America’s first liberty … and for the clients we’re representing, many of whom are standing with great courage in the face of enormous pressures from a hostile culture.

Two days ago the nation’s leading breast cancer charity, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, announced that it would no longer provide grants to Planned Parenthood.  In recent years, Komen has donated between $500,000 and $700,000 per year to  Planned Parenthood perform manual breast exams on some women.  Ostensibly, Planned Parenthood refers some women to other healthcare providers for mammographies.  This referral was necessary because not a single Planned Parenthood clinic in the entire country has a mammogram machine. Not one.  Komen appears to have made the sensible decision that its donors’ dollars would be better used actually paying for mammograms instead of subsidizing Planned Parenthood’s abortion practice.   Who can disagree with that logic?  Most nonprofits would have taken that decision with disappointment but also with a measure of grace, thanked Komen for the millions it had given them over the years, and examined how they could improve their services to be worthy of receiving grants from Komen or others in the future.

But Planned Parenthood is not your typical nonprofit.  It is a corporation with an annual budget in excess of a billion dollars, nearly 40% of which comes from taxpayers.   Last year, Planned Parenthood received nearly $500 million in federal taxpayer dollars.  For four decades it has been able to evade public scrutiny as a  nonprofit and instead has successfully demanded billions in taxpayer dollars from the federal government.  Its political friends, who then receive the enthusiastic financial support of the largest abortionist east of Tiananmen Square, are happy to meet its financial demands.  These enablers also treat Planned Parenthood differently from other grantees, shielding them from questions — much less investigations — of how they spend precious taxpayer dollars.  Thus, despite decades of billions in federal funding, Chairman Stearns and the House Oversight Committee are in the midst of the first congressional investigation ever into how Planned Parenthood is spending the money Congress appropriates.  And even that has been met with vitriol by the abortion lobbyists (including the elected ones) who resist any attempt to have the abortion giant account for how it spends our money.

And so instead of graciousness, Planned Parenthood pitched what my grandmother would have called a “hissy fit.” Despite Komen’s plea that “[m]aking this issue political or leveraging it for fundraising purposes would be a disservice to women,” Planned Parenthood immediately made this issue political and leveraged it for fundraising purposes, accusing Komen of bowing to political pressure.  Planned Parenthood’s President, Cecile Richards, issued an emergency fundraising call to meet this supposed shortfall (less than 1% of its budget).  Its supporters responded, almost replacing the full amount in a single day (demonstrating that the association with the world’s most highly respected breast cancer organization, not the cash, is what was so valuable to Planned Parenthood).

It is the attitude of Planned Parenthood and its defenders that is so revealing.  How dare Komen take away Planned Parenthood’s money?!  Thousands of Planned Parenthood employees, volunteers, and supporters have flooded Komen with hateful attacks on Facebook, Twitter, email, telephone, and newspaper stories.  Take one major paper as an example: a Dallas Morning News writer said Komen “voluntarily donned the theocratic burka of anti-abortion ideology Tuesday with its decision to de-fund Planned Parenthood.”  And its lead editorial writer said that he would “think twice” about editorializing in favor of any local breast cancer fundraising events for Komen.  Former Democratic National Committee Chair, and former Planned Parenthood board member, Howard Dean said Komen “lack[s] courage” and called for donors to stop supporting the largest breast cancer charity — apparently to show their support for women.  In the minds of the abortion lobby, Planned Parenthood is entitled to your money – and everyone else’s money, too.  And if you cross the abortion behemoth, you must pay with your reputation.

Given Planned Parenthood’s lack of transparency and oversight, they reveal a corporate giant unworthy of this privileged status.   Apart from the ongoing House investigation, federal audits into just a handful of Planned Parenthood’s affiliates have found evidence that Planned Parenthood has improperly overbilled Medicaid for millions of dollars.  And undercover investigations have revealed that Planned Parenthood clinics have been willing to help cover up and facilitate child sex trafficking, cover up statutory rape, and provide women incomplete and inaccurate medical information about their unborn child.

A typical nonprofit might decide that if it wants to be worthy of financial support, it should get its own house in order, perhaps showing some financial accountability, ensuring that every taxpayer dollar is well spent, complying fully with the law, and welcoming the opportunity to show Congress that it is doing just that.  And if it is interested in women’s health, perhaps actually purchasing mammogram machines to screen for breast cancer, instead of deluding some women into thinking the manual examination was effective, would be a good plan.

But Planned Parenthood is not your typical nonprofit.  After decades of taxpayer funding and insulation from scrutiny and thousands of dollars in political donations, it has revealed itself as a 95-year-old petulant child that lashes out when it doesn’t get something it wants.  It is evidently not learning its lesson from losing Komen funding.  Maybe Planned Parenthood needs a time-out from taxpayer funds, too.

After several years of service as a schoolteacher and informally counseling young people, Julea heard God’s call to help others in need.  She applied to EMU, worked hard, and distinguished herself as a student.  She was cruising toward her degree until she was assigned a client seeking assistance for problems with a sexual relationship.

This potential client’s problem conflicted with her sincerely held Christian beliefs, which prohibit her from providing counseling regarding heterosexual and homosexual relationships that fall outside of God’s design for marriage between one man and one woman. So, she did what she had been taught to do.  She went to her supervisor and asked her for advice on how to best handle the conflict.  The advisor told her to have the clinic assign the client to another counselor, advice directly from the counseling profession’s code of ethics.

Julea thought the matter was settled.  But a rude surprise awaited her as she was charged with ethical violations.  She was dragged before a formal review meeting where her beliefs were repeatedly mocked, and she was told she would have to see the “error of her ways” and change her “belief system” as a condition to getting her degree. Julea stood firm and refused to compromise in the face of the attacks and was dismissed from the program.

Julea called ADF and after two and a half years of hard-fought litigation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit asked:

“…what did Ward do wrong?  [She] was willing to work with all clients and to respect the school’s affirmation directives in doing so.  That is why she asked to refer gay and lesbian clients (and some heterosexual clients) if the conversation required her to affirm their sexual practices.  What more could the rule require? Surely, for example, the ban on discrimination … does not require an atheist counselor to tell a person of faith that there is a God if the client is wrestling with faith based issues.  Tolerance is a two-way street … A university cannot compel a student to alter or violate her belief systems . . . as the price for obtaining a degree.”

Julea’s case will now return to federal district court for reconsideration.  Please continue to pray for her, for the ADF attorneys representing her, and that this brave woman’s courageous stand will have an impact for the religious freedom of public university students and counselors across America.

Your support can make all the difference

ADF is committed to reclaiming and preserving religious freedom on public university campuses. By God’s grace, and with the prayers and financial support of Christians like you, we will continue our winning record of success—defending the constitutionally protected rights of students, like Julea Ward, to freely live out their faith.

Even at the time of Roe, some were concerned that legalized abortion would lead to compelled participation in abortion, a concern that was not misplaced as ACLU attorneys were working in Montana to force Catholic hospitals to perform sterilizations.  The Supreme Court acknowledged but dismissed that concern, holding only that “the attending physician, in consultation with his patient, is free to determine, … the patient’s pregnancy should be terminated.”  The Court cited favorably the resolution of the AMA House of Delegates stating:

RESOLVED, That no physician or other professional personnel shall be compelled to perform any act which violates his good medical judgment. Neither physician, hospital, nor hospital personnel shall be required to perform any act violative of personally held moral principles. In these circumstances, good medical practice requires only that the physician or other professional personnel withdraw from the case so long as the withdrawal is consistent with good medical practice.

Similarly, in Doe v. Bolton while the Supreme Court struck down some parts of a Georgia abortion law, it left standing a provision that allowed any medical professional or hospital to decline to participate in abortions, saying that this provision was an “appropriate protection to the individual and to the denominational hospital.”  Thus, in the seminal abortion decisions that President Obama and the abortion industry celebrate this weekend, the same Court acknowledged the right NOT to assist in abortions in violation of conscience.

To be absolutely sure however, the U.S. Congress passed the Church Amendments, turning back ACLU efforts to treat Catholic hospitals receiving Medicare funds as public hospitals and force them to perform sterilizations (and ultimately abortions), and prohibiting recipients of certain federal funds from requiring medical professionals or any person to participate in abortions, sterilizations, or other procedures in violation of conscience.  This was so uncontroversial it passed with only a single vote against in either house – a vote total unthinkable even for a bill to honor mom and apple pie today.  In fact, noted right wing extremist Senator Ted Kennedy spoke in favor of the law on the floor of the Senate, saying that it protected the constitutional right not to participate in abortion and he supported the “full protection to the religious freedom of physicians and others.”  In 1973, as the opinions reflect, there was no doubt that whatever right the penumbral emanations of the constitution gave to women and doctors to participate in abortions, it certainly protected the right not to participate in abortions or other medical procedures that violated one’s conscience.

It is in the face of this history that the Obama Administration announced on Friday that it will, with only a 1 year reprieve, fine virtually every faith-based ministry in the country that does not pay for contraception and abortifacients (Plan B, Ella, IUD, etc. included).  This decision is certainly an affront to religious liberty –perhaps the greatest in our nation’s history.  But it is also completely unsupported, indeed rejected by the very cases that the Obama Administration would use to support its cause.  Roe and Doe, as bad as those decisions are, reject the Administration’s claim that a woman’s “right” to contraception and abortifacients justify the federal government compelling Christ-centered ministries to violate their conscience by buying these for them.  When you hear abortion industry supporters rely upon those decisions to justify this assault on conscience, don’t believe it.  Even Roe itself is conservative compared to the radical anti-life advocacy of the present Administration.

Last year, he graciously alerted a campus official to his intention to visit the campus again – but this time, the official threw a flag on the play. He told Arneson he would have to abide by the school’s solicitation policy, which is not exactly a Constitutional model for encouraging free speech. The policy requires individuals to pay at least a $50 fee, buy insurance, and submit a request form with proof of that insurance 14 days before visiting campus.

All of which flies in the face of some pretty fundamental constitutional protections… so Arneson has enlisted the help of the Alliance Defense Fund.  Thanks to your support, ADF has been able to remind the Maricopa County community colleges – the largest community college district in the United States – of the contents of the First Amendment.

Even after some gentle legal prodding, the officials failed to change their policy, so ADF attorneys asked a federal court to suspend the college system’s enforcement of their solicitation policy, pending the outcome of an ADF lawsuit.

“Free speech is protected by the First Amendment, which means it can’t come with a price tag and a burdensome waiting period,” says ADF Litigation Staff Counsel Jonathan Scruggs. “Christians visiting public college campuses shouldn’t be deterred from expressing their beliefs because of cumbersome, unconstitutional policies.”

Chris Stovall of Phoenix, one of nearly 2,100 attorneys in the ADF alliance, is serving as local counsel in the lawsuit.  Please be in prayer for Chris and other dedicated Christian lawyers across the U.S. as they work to defend the right of all Americans to hear and speak the Truth. And join me in giving thanks for faithful believers like Ray Arneson, who are committed to sharing the Gospel in their communities.

Under that law, no woman could schedule an abortion without obtaining first a screening for coercion by a physician, then an assessment of that coercion and free counseling from a local pregnancy help center. To ensure that each mother has time to think through her decision with all the facts clearly presented, the law further requires a minimum 72-hour waiting period between a doctor’s assessment and the actual abortion procedure.

The law is designed to protect every mother’s fundamental right under the U.S. Constitution to her relationship with her child, says Harold Cassidy, the ADF allied attorney handling this case – and her freedom to embrace that right without the pressures of Planned Parenthood doctors and other abortion providers.

“If Planned Parenthood truly cared about the well-being of women, it would not try to rush them into the abortion chamber before determining that her decision is not being coerced,” Cassidy says. “This law ensures that women have a chance to get accurate information and counseling from those who seek to protect the mother’s true rights. The requirement of a 72-hour waiting period is essential to ensure her decision is voluntary and informed.”

The U.S. District Court for the District of South Dakota, Southern Division, ruled that the two centers, Alpha Center and Black Hills Crisis Pregnancy Center, have a right to intervene in this case, since both “have a significant or legally protectable interest in the legitimacy of the Act because their primary mission of counseling pregnant women, particularly those who are contemplating abortion, would be impeded by striking down the Act.”

Cassidy is also representing the centers in a separate lawsuit, in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit is reviewing the only remaining provision in South Dakota’s 2005 informed consent law that has not yet been upheld by two other 8th Circuit opinions.

Please be in prayer for Mr. Cassidy, and for all ADF staff and allied attorneys across the U.S. who are working diligently to protect life and families.  Please pray, too, for crisis pregnancy centers nationwide that are doing so much to preserve the lives of preborn children and the health of their mothers.

In the aftermath of a federal court hearing that day on the nurses’ lawsuit against the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ), the hospital agreed – in compliance with state and federal law – not to force the nurses to assist with abortion cases, not to replace them with other nurses who would perform abortions, and not to reduce their hours.

“No pro-life medical personnel should be forced to assist or train in services related to abortions,” says Alliance Defense Fund Legal Counsel Matt Bowman, who represented the nurses before the court that day. “The hospital has finally done the right thing in agreeing to obey the law and not force our clients to do any work on abortion cases in violation of their beliefs. The hospital agreed not to penalize our clients in any way because they choose, according to their legal rights, not to participate in abortion.”

The court’s ruling came on the heels of a temporary restraining order it issued in November prohibiting the hospital from coercing the nurses until the court could further consider the case on December 23. In this latest ruling, the judge left the door open for the nurses to revisit their lawsuit should the hospital renege on any of its promises.

New Jersey law clearly states that “No person shall be required to perform or assist in the performance of an abortion or sterilization,” while federal law expressly prohibits hospitals that receive certain federal funds from forcing employees to participate in abortions. UMDNJ receives approximately $60 million in federal health funds annually. The lawsuit asked that the hospital be ordered to obey these laws and to return a portion of the federal taxpayer money it has received if it continued violating federal conscience laws.

Demetrios K. Stratis, a lawyer with the firm Ruta, Soulios & Stratis, LLP, is one of nearly 2,100 attorneys in the ADF alliance, and has done excellent work as local counsel in this case.

Please join us in giving thanks for this wonderful legal victory, and be in prayer for other medical professionals and health care workers around the country – many of them defended by ADF attorneys and allies – who are fighting their own battles today for the right to follow their conscience as they practice their profession.

And there’s so much to reflect upon. So many major legal victories God blessed us with this year, in crucial cases like ACSTO v. Winn, where the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the ACLU’s challenge to the right of parents to determine the best education for their children — including religious schools – through Arizona’s tuition tax credit program …

… or A, B, & C vs. Ireland, where the most powerful court in Europe reaffirmed that the European Convention on Human Rights does not contain a “right” to abortion – a decision that impacted 47 countries (and countless preborn children) across that continent and which will reverberate here in the United States.

Sometimes, though, it’s the faces, as much as the victories, we reflect on … like Brian Hickman, the 10-year-old boy who, with the help of ADF attorneys, took on the second-biggest school district in the country for the right to proclaim his Christian faith at an after-school talent show.  Or Angela Swagler, the college student whose pure faith shines so true despite the humiliation of a night in jail and the two invasive searches she endured just for quietly standing up for life.

And yet many of our most important wins will affect people whose faces and names we’ll never know – like the Arizona case that so affirmed protections for women and pre-born children that Planned Parenthood had to shut down seven abortion clinics around the state.  As a result, the number of infanticides in Arizona dropped to nearly half what it was the year before.

In every arena of our work this year, the Lord gave us success: defending marriage, life, and religious freedom.  But, of course, we reflect, too, on the setbacks – like decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court not to consider the case involving roadside memorials in Utah, where a simple cross memorializing fallen highway patrol officers somehow “offends” a handful of atheists.

Or the high court’s decision, earlier this month, not to give hearing to the right of churches to meet on weekends in New York City’s public schools … a decision with profound implications for the members of nearly 60 congregations and synagogues throughout the New York area.

Clearly, our work isn’t done. We have so much legal ground still to regain for religious liberty. But we find joy in the assurance than none of the events that surprised us this year, good or bad, caught our great God off guard. He knew and He knows the path before us, the challenges still to come, all the hundreds of court cases we’ll present and defend by His grace in the months ahead.

In spite of aggressive, well-funded opponents … some judges with their own agendas … the revelations and upheavals of the long election season to come … our God reigns. We stand with Him, confident and hopeful that He will encourage our clients, inspire our attorneys, strengthen and expand our alliances, multiply your gifts – and accomplish His good and perfect will.

We are so blessed to be a part of that … to have a front-row seat for so much of what He’s doing in our nation and around the world today to keep doors open for the spread of His “wonderful words of life.” Please join me in praying that we will be worthy of the trust, and faithful in His service, and to Him be the glory.

Sometimes it seems as though that is where the Grinch who stole Christmas lives. During this Christmas season, as every year, we read about schools giving the ol’ bah humbug to Christmas. Like in a Stockton, California school where teachers have allegedly been forbidden to display Santa, Christmas trees, or even a poinsettia. It’s allegedly to prevent any “association with any religious affiliation” of Christmas. But isn’t Christmas itself a “religious affiliation?”

Or, a school in New Jersey that told students organizing a holiday breakfast to avoid choosing Christmas songs that include the words God, Jesus, Santa, Christmas and Chanukah. Good luck trying to pull that one off. They were trying to be “diverse” and not “offend anyone with belief-specific music.” Hmmm. But I guess it’s ok to offend the more than 90% of Americans who celebrate Christmas by banning any mention of the word Christmas. The good news (no pun intended) is that they seemed to have regained their senses and have now called the ban “inadvertent.” But was it? Or was the outcry that it created what moved them to backtrack?

Must we go through this every year at Christmas time? Well, it seems we must. Is that because this is what the law requires, you ask. No, it is not. It is because there are groups and individuals on the left who don’t want any mention of faith or beliefs in the schools (or anywhere in the public square, for that matter). And they are cheered on, or threatened with lawsuits, by groups like the ACLU and Freedom From Religion Foundation.

So what exactly does the law say about “Christmas in the public schools?” See, it doesn’t even sound that bad. You may be surprised to learn that it is absolutely permissible for a school to call its closing down for the Christmas break, “Christmas Break”; to include religious Christmas songs with secular songs during their “Christmas concert”; or to allow teachers and students to say, wait for it, “Merry Christmas,” to each other. ADF has drafted a letter to educate schools on this most important area of the law. So remember, Merry Christmas, it’s okay to say it—even in public schools.

Following the September 15, 2011 announcement by Congressman Cliff Stearns (R-FL) that his House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee had launched a massive investigation of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its affiliates’ use of federal funding and compliance with federal abortion funding restrictions, members of the ADF Life Team briefed Congressman Stearns and his staff on the experiences of ADF in identifying waste, abuse, and potential fraud by Planned Parenthood and its affiliates.

In addition to other information, ADF advised Congressman Stearns of the 15 federal and state audits which had determined there had been Title XIX-Medicaid overpayments to Planned Parenthood affiliates in excess of $46 million. By all accounts, Planned Parenthood’s primary motivation has been to enhance its profits by taking advantage of “overbilling” opportunities in complex, well-funded, but understaffed federal and state programs.

Most recently, in a December 7, 2011 letter signed by seven former Planned Parenthood employees, including ADF friends Abby Johnson of Texas and Susan Thayer of Iowa, these seven former employees, which include a former Planned Parenthood abortion doctor, two former clinic managers, and one former clinic director, told Congressman Stearns that Planned Parenthood indeed used federal money for abortions despite federal prohibitions.

The seven former Planned Parenthood employees told Congressman Stearns that they could “state categorically, from personal experience, that abortion is indeed deployed [by Planned Parenthood] as a means of family planning.” They also expressed to Congressman Stearns that, since Planned Parenthood receives $1 billion or more in a three year period, close governmental oversight is indeed warranted.

Planned Parenthood’s pro-abortion allies, including the Obama Administration, are doing all they can to resist Congressman Stearns’ long overdue investigation. But who can disagree that, in the words of former Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, “a million here, a million there, and pretty soon you are talking about big bucks.”

Let the Stearns’ investigation proceed apace!