In essence, Hobby Lobby has declared it will not be subject to government authorities with regard to offering drugs that kill the unborn. In an act of civil disobedience, the retailer will defy the law and face the consequences.

Does submitting to civil authorities mean obeying laws that are immoral? We are commanded by God to share the gospel. What if a law barred us from doing so, even privately? We see that obeying government authorities isn’t absolute. It should be clear to Christians that unless there is legal recourse against obeying a law that compels us to sin, we are justified in disobeying it. Is it a sin to offer employees “mini-abortion drugs”?

God instituted government, but the problem is that sinners run government—there aren’t any non-sinners around to appoint or elect.

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In February, it’ll be a year since I started writing an online opinion column for WORLD magazine. The editor has compiled a list of the top 25 most read Virtual Voices columns for 2012. Check it out.

WORLD publishes my column every Wednesday. You can read it here.

Last week, a federal judge ruled that North Carolina can’t issue license plates that read “Choose Life,” because the state legislature failed to approve a plate that reflects a different point of view. What point of view? Death. In this instance, the death of unborn babies. The other side won’t frame it that way, of course. Almighty “choice” is the chosen euphemism. The word “death” is raw and callous. It’s too specific. The focus is a woman’s control over her body after she becomes pregnant, not the cessation of tiny life inside the womb nor the manner in which it ends.

After all, killing unborn babies is legal in the United States.

Last year, the North Carolina General Assembly approved the bill that would allow 60 percent of the cost of the pro-life license plates to go to the non-profit Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship. The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina Legal Foundation challenged the bill on First Amendment grounds and won. Break out the champagne! From the Associated Press:

“This is a great victory for the free speech rights of all North Carolinians, regardless of their point of view on reproductive freedom,” said Chris Brook, legal director of the ACLU-NCLF. “The government cannot create an avenue of expression for one side of a contentious political issue while denying an equal opportunity to citizens with the opposite view. We are very pleased that the court agrees that such a one-sided scheme constituted viewpoint discrimination and violated the First Amendment. We would have made the exact same argument if the situation was reversed, and the state planned on issuing a pro-choice plate while not offering one expressing the opposite point of view.”

Free speech? Reproductive freedom? Choose life! Choose death! The whole matter could be cleared up if the legislature passes a bill that reflects the pro-death point of view, which no doubt will be couched in terms like “Respect Choice” or “My Uterus, My Choice!” or another variation. Can you imagine a “Choose Death” license plate? Neither can those who support abortion. But it would be honest. The choice pro-aborts seem to respect the most is the one that ends with an empty womb.

Almost everything is political. Even the pro-life side has an element of politics. Protecting unborn babies is a moral and political battle. A candidate’s stance on abortion is important. Media messages on the issue are important. One of the best pro-life political victories to emerge is state legislatures de-funding abortion mill Planned Parenthood. The U.S. Supreme Court might have discovered a previously hidden right of privacy of women to kill their unborn babies, but taxpayers, especially those who believe abortion is murder, should not be forced to pay for it.

“[F]or I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well.” Do discarded unborn babies have souls? Do these souls cry out? There will be a reckoning, but thanks be to God, there is redemption.

Don’t Cave to Bullies

Before reading about Karen Handel’s book deal to write Planned Bullyhood: The Truth about the Planned Parenthood Funding Battle with Susan G. Komen for the Cure, I’d never heard of her. I hadn’t followed the Komen-cuts-off-Planned-Parenthood backlash. After reading the book, it’s obvious that Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s former senior vice president of public policy was made the scapegoat. (Read or listen to Marvin Olasky’s interview with Handel from earlier this year.)

A Roman Catholic and a Republican, Handel rose quickly in Georgia politics, handling budgets and calling for ethical and financial reforms. She attributes her loss in the governor’s race to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s endorsement of her GOP primary opponent, Nathan Deal, and the Georgia Right to Life opposing her. Handel says she’s pro-life, but makes an exception for cases of rape and incest.

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Race, Government, and God

If black, Chinese, Hispanic, Pakistani, Saudi, Vietnamese, and other students can have ethnicity-based groups at taxpayer-supported universities, why can’t white students? That question is at the center of a swirling “controversy” at Towson University in Towson, Md.

Towson student Matthew Heimbach proposed a new group: the White Student Union. “We want to replicate what every student union does on campus,” he told a CBS affiliate in Baltimore. Earlier, Heimbach created a group called Youth for Western Civilization. “We want to be able to promote on campus for students who want to be proud of their heritage and the foundations of this country and stand up for themselves.”

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I’ve seen actress Ellen Barkin in a few movies, including The Big Easy with Dennis Quaid and Desert Bloom with Jon Voight. She’s a liberal, like most in Hollywood (Voight is conservative), but I never expected her to be nasty. At the start of last week’s GOP convention, she retweeted a fellow liberal’s comment…

Unless otherwise noted, a retweet is an endorsement. Barkin hopes pro-lifers, small government advocates, and traditional marriage protectors drown. Such tweets are easy to dismiss, but the whole thing bothered me. I typically don’t engage liberals on Twitter, but I felt Barkin needed a response from an atypical Republican voter.

I told her to shut up (not nice, I know) and asked her what reasonable person wishes death on someone who believes unborn babies should live.

Read the full article.

 Atheists’ Cross to Bear

Many Americans were righteously angry [after the 9/11 terrorist attacks]. During the operation to clear the debris, a worker discovered two crossed steel beams amid the rubble. The cross came to symbolize faith and hope, and some workers prayed there. Last year, the cross was moved to a permanent location: 70 feet in the ground where the towers once stood where it would become part of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum exhibit. The museum is scheduled to open next month.

The Christian faith is an undeniable part of America’s foundation. It undergirds Western civilization itself. The Muslims who rained fiery destruction down on America did so in the name of their god and against our faith and way of life. The presence of that steel cross probably quelled a lot anger and bitterness about the loss of life. Only empathy-challenged cynics would mount a legal fight against it.

Atheists enter, stage left.

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Atheists’ Camp Quest…for God?

Although I grew up going to church, I wasn’t saved. I attended vacation Bible school, where I memorized Scripture and sang catchy songs about Jesus Christ. I wasn’t saved. But my unbelief wasn’t an impediment for God. As the Apostle Paul said in Ephesians, God chose me “before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved” (Ephesians 1:4-6). Amen!

I briefly forgot about God’s elect and predestination when I read about a summer camp for children from atheist families. The word “tragic” came to mind. Camp Quest Northwest in Seattle rents the grounds from a Christian camp, and they cover up “Lord” or “God” on signs and replace them with words like “Flying Spaghetti Monster.” Chuck Wolber, one of the camp’s founders, said they encourage kids to attend church.

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When Condoleezza Rice’s name turned up in the Republican running mate rumor mill, I was disheartened. Her position on the issues matters, not her race. Rice is “mildly” pro-abortion, and she supports racial preferences, a practice in which our government treats individuals differently based on the color of their skin. Would Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney risk aliening social conservatives?

When Romney announced Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., as his running mate Saturday, I breathed the proverbial sigh of relief. The 42-year-old, married-with-children social conservative unequivocally opposes the redefinition of marriage. Ryan voted for the Federal Marriage Amendment, and he supports the Defense of Marriage Act (signed into law by President Bill Clinton). He also opposes homosexual couples adopting. Ryan backed his state’s effort to amend the state constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Opponents challenged Wisconsin’s law, but the state’s highest court ruled it constitutional in 2010.

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The Winston-Salem Journal published a series of stories about forced sterilizations performed years ago in North Carolina. Other states had similar programs, but most retreated in light of Nazi Germany’s notorious eugenics policies. North Carolina, however, expanded its program after WWII and didn’t end it until 1974.

Elaine Riddick Jessie, now in her late 50s, was sterilized at 14 in 1968. She and her seven siblings had become wards of the state, and five were sent to an orphanage. Jessie and a sister were sent to live in their grandmother’s crowded house. A man raped Jessie, and she became pregnant. Fortunately, the state didn’t kill the baby. Unfortunately, the state labeled the abused Jessie “feeble-minded” and killed her chance to have more babies. Her illiterate grandmother had signed an “X” on the sterilization consent form without knowing she was signing a sterilization consent form. Jessie didn’t find out until years later she was sterilized.

The North Carolina Eugenics Board sterilized over 7,600 people from 1929 to 1974, and 2,990 ranged in age from 10 to 19. But those days are behind us, right? Yes, and no. The days of forced sterilizations likely are long gone, and good riddance. But the days of minors “consenting” to sterilizations are upon us.

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(Image credit: FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

States have the authority to regulate the voting process. To even suggest voter ID laws infringe on voting rights is absurd in a country where citizens might be asked to show a photo ID while running everyday errands or using government services like the public library. To invoke Jim Crow (poll taxes, literacy tests, threats of violence, and actual violence) is scandalous.

Democrats now have the military in their sights. The Obama campaign is suing Ohio (18 electoral votes) because the state allows members of the military to vote early in person until the Monday before Election Day, while the deadline for other early voters is the Friday before the election. Democrats contend the “arbitrary” law is unconstitutional, as it treats similarly situated voters differently.

It’s no coincidence that the sort of people who don’t have a valid form of photo ID tend to vote for Democrats and that members of the military tend to vote for Republicans. But one side makes a better case for voting laws than the other.

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Are you like Jonah?

When I hear about terrible things like a former Penn State football coach sodomizing young boys and other men covering it up for fear of bad publicity, I wish God would make me an Avenging Angel superhero, traveling the planet rescuing children and dealing with perverts. I want them to suffer for what they’ve done and feel the same pain they’ve inflicted on the vulnerable and the weak. What I don’t want to do is to pray for the salvation of perverts or “cry out against their wickedness” so they can repent. Although God gave me the awesome and undeserved gift of eternity in His presence, I want certain sinners to be denied that gift.

I am like Jonah.

Read the full article.

DNC Adds Redefinition of Marriage to Platform

In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional. The court in Loving vs. Virginia contended there must be a “permissible state objective, independent of the racial discrimination which it was the object of the Fourteenth Amendment to eliminate” to uphold racial classifications and that Virginia had no “legitimate overriding purpose” to outlaw marriage between interracial couples.

It should go without saying that a ban on interracial marriage is fundamentally different from a law that recognizes marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Loving didn’t redefine marriage; it struck down racial restrictions on marriage. Racial distinctions are not comparable to complementary sex distinctions that characterize the institution.

Homosexuals represent maybe 3 percent of the population, yet their lobby has convinced people in power that sexual behavior is equivalent to race. For the first time in its history, anonymous sources told Politico, the Democratic National Committee will add homosexual “marriage” to the party platform. The Democrats will present this endorsement at the convention in September in Charlotte, N.C.

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Liberal politicians divide and conquer through class warfare. They pontificate about how the “rich” don’t pay their fair share of taxes or how that nice, safe neighborhood isn’t diverse enough, so the government ought to build low-income housing to mix things up.

So-called social justice, the impetus behind government policies like racial preferences, drives the Democratic platform. But no matter how level the proverbial playing field, individuals will always possess different levels of drive, initiative, intelligence, motivation, skill, and talent. Individuals will never have equal amounts of stuff. Equality of outcome cannot exist. We are equal where it counts in a free, pursuit-of-happiness kind of country: under the law.

One factor driving the inequality liberals claim they’re concerned about is family instability. As research and common sense have borne out, marriage benefits the whole of society, the adults who made the vows, and the products of the union — the children. An article in the New York Times making the rounds, Two Classes, Divided by ‘I Do’, compares and contrasts two women with several similarities and one important difference, especially where children are concerned: one has a husband and the other doesn’t.

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Ryan Bomberger is no stranger to controversy. The pro-life Christian and Emmy award-winning creative director is the man behind provocative black pro-life billboard campaigns such as “Black Children Are an Endangered Species,” and he often reminds abortion supporters of Planned Parenthood’s eugenic roots and its founder Margaret Sanger’s opinions about the “unfit.”

Co-founder of The Radiance Foundation, a non-profit, “life-affirming” organization that advocates adoption and protection of the unborn, Bomberger recently released an anti-Obama advertisement titled “GET OUT.” In the two-minute, animated video (see clip below), he imbues President Barack Obama’s “Hope and Change” and “Yes We Can” slogans with new meaning.

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John Wolff, an 80-year-old Jew-turned-Catholic-turned-atheist in Pennsylvania, filed a complaint with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission against Prudhomme’s Lost Cajun Kitchen in Columbia, Pa., which offers a 10 percent discount to patrons who present a current church bulletin on Sundays. According to the York Daily Record, the man has never eaten at the restaurant. He read about the discount on the restaurant’s website.

“I did this not out of spite, but out of a feeling against the prevailing self-righteousness that stems from religion, particularly in Lancaster County,” the atheist said. “I don’t consider it an earthshaking affair, but in this area in particular, we seem to have so many self-righteous religious people, so it just annoys me.”

Wolff sounds like a curmudgeon who has a personal problem with Christianity and intends to waste government resources on a non-earthshaking affair.

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Being a Christian in America is easy. Most of us will never know the kind of persecution perpetuated around the world. Some Christians must practice their faith inconspicuously, mindful of who might be watching or listening. For now, we still live in a county where we may criticize our government and petition it for redress. Christians in America are free to gather in the open and pray and worship. Christians in America don’t have to smuggle in Bibles or read them in secret.

Religious freedom is the cornerstone of America’s foundation. Within our Declaration of Independence is the acknowledgement that all men are equal before their Creator. The fundamental belief that we were made by One greater than ourselves shaped a nation that eventually lived up to the promise of securing the unalienable rights of all citizens to life, liberty, and the pursuit—not the guarantee—of happiness. America and Christianity, and not just religion in general, are inseparable. Morality, an objective distinction between right and wrong, is of divine origin. Without it, freedom from tyranny is impossible.

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