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CP CHURCH & MINISTRIES | MONDAY, JUNE 20, 2022
By Nicole Alcindor, CP Reporter

A Virginia megachurch pastor recently tackled questions about how Christians should respond to LGBT activism in today's society, stressing that Christians must "communicate truth in love" and not affirm their friends' LGBT lifestyles.

Gary Hamrick, senior pastor of Cornerstone Chapel of Leesburg, took part in a question-and-answer session on June 8, where he answered a series of questions on a wide assortment of issues from illegal immigration to religious exemptions to vaccine mandates.

During the discussion, one person asked how parents can guard their children against "the push for the acceptance of sexual fluidity in their generation and future peer groups."

"It's unavoidable. All you can do as parents [is] pray a lot for your kids. And it is OK to shelter them as best as you can," Hamrick replied. "You do your best and you trust God to protect their hearts and their minds in Christ Jesus."

Hamrick said parents will often expose their children to ideas of gender fluidity and sexuality too early because they are fearful their children will be too "sheltered" from "the real world."

"You can shelter your kids as best as you can. And they're still going to eventually have to come to grips with the evils of the world. But you don't have to expose them at an early age. That's what's key," Hamrick said. "When kids get exposed to things at an early age, that's where it's much more detrimental."

Hamrick encouraged parents to direct their kids to Bible passages such as Genesis 1:27, which reads, "God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."

Another audience member asked: "How should Christians respond to LGBT friends who argue: 'Love is love.'"

Hamrick replied, "if you really believe the Bible is the basis for your belief system, then you are going to recognize that God calls homosexuality sin."

"And if you operate from that standard, from that description, from that definition, then it's a matter of 'how do I communicate truth In love?'" he said.

"Being loving is not denying the truth. That's a very unloving thing. Being loving toward somebody is figuring out a sensitive way to communicate the truth. It's a very unloving thing to say: 'Well, I'm just going to affirm them and not really tell them the truth.' So you're not doing them any good, and you're not being honest before the Lord or to yourself."

Hamrick believes that "the Church has not done a very good job on this topic of homosexuality" because they fall into two "extremes."

"[Churches are] either really harsh against homosexuals, or they're ... really affirming and [claim that] 'it's no big deal and God loves everybody,'" Hamrick said.

"And the truth is, it's really easy to live in the extremes of life and to live in extreme conversations. I mean, that's easy. What's hard is to find that balance in the middle where you're communicating the truth in love. And to affirm somebody in their sin is just lying to them."

Hamrick said Christians might face backlash when sharing the Bible's stance on homosexuality but encourages them to stand strong.

"They may not accept it. … But that's not on you. What's on you is 'how can I communicate this with sensitivity and love, without affirming what is wrong?'" Hamrick said.

He stressed that sharing the truth about the Bible's stance on sexuality can be challenging because "our world and our culture has now affirmed something that God does not."

"It's really easy to confront someone, even if you do it in a loving way, about something that the culture and God both agree on" but challenging when "the culture is saying the opposite," Hamrick said.

"Just the fact that you might hold the belief that homosexuality is wrong, you're going to be labeled a hater, intolerant, a bigot," he warned.

"You can't control that. All you can control is: 'I want to honor God and I want to always be truthful, and so I'm going to look for a gentle and sincere way to communicate truth when necessary when it comes up."

Hamrick asserted that Christians shouldn't "affirm anyone for whatever the sin might be."

"If somebody is a pathological liar, [and we tell them], 'Well, that's OK, everybody lies.' Why are you saying that?" said Hamrick.

"Or somebody is a gossip, or somebody is in premarital heterosexual sex, [and you say], 'Well, that's OK. You know, we all have urges.' … Why are we compromising the truth for the sake of just appeasing people?"

Hamrick's son, Austin Hamrick, the church's assistant pastor, was on stage with his father during the Q&A event and said he disagrees with the phrase "Love is love."

"The phrase: 'Love is Love' is not a very stable motto to stand on. I mean, I love a lot of things that are not beneficial for me. My daughter, she's 4. She loves to run in the middle of the road. And if she just said, 'Hey, love is love. Why would you infringe on what I love to do?' Well, it's because I know that there are harmful consequences to her love for running in the middle of the road," Austin Hamrick said.

"You love Krispy Kreme doughnuts," he said to his father. "Now, to indulge in a lifestyle of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, there might be some harmful consequences to that."

The younger Hamrick said Christians should look to the Bible to find what is truly "good love."

Within Scripture, Austin Hamrick said Christians can discover what "God says [about] how we should flourish in our sexuality and in relationships."

"Love is love means you should affirm everything that I want or desire. … It's not true love. True love is to will the good of another," he added.

As the session neared the end, the Hamricks were asked about being attracted "to both genders" and if same-sex attraction is a sin.

"There are a lot of things that we might be drawn to in our hearts. And the one thing that we have to guard against is acting on it,' Gary Hamrick replied.

"It's one thing to have certain feelings, but the Bible [in] Paul's letter to the Corinthians, he said, 'take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.' So we need to rein in our thought-life."

It is not uncommon for Christians to have "unnatural sinful thoughts," Hamrick continued, but "the main thing" is "don't act on it."

"You don't give in to it. You 'take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.' So at the thought level, as long as you are not taking it to a place of fantasy and lust, … that's not going to be sinful. It's at the behavioral level that it's going to be sinful," he added.

The senior pastor then quoted Martin Luther: "I cannot control the birds flying over my head, but I can control whether or not they make a nest in my hair."

"There are a lot of things that are going to come in my head, and I can't always control that. And some of those desires or thoughts are wrong," Hamrick stressed.

"But the main thing is, don't let it take root. Don't let it nest and don't act on it. That's the main thing. Fight those thoughts and those desires that aren't pleasing to the Lord."

https://www.christianpost.com/news/megachurch-pastor-says-its-unloving-to-affirm-lgbt-lifestyles.html?clickType=link-topbar-news

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CP VOICES | TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 2022
By F. LaGard Smith, Voices Contributor

Never before has any generation had the slightest difficulty distinguishing between a “man” and a “woman.” Yet, folks are now talking glibly about “persons who menstruate,” rather than “women.” And “chestfeeding” instead of “breastfeeding.” And insisting, “People of all genders can get pregnant, not just women!” Ask a Supreme Court nominee to define “woman,” and she can’t (or won’t), though she is happy to be known as the first black “woman” to be appointed.

Giving new meaning to the familiar lament, “The world’s gone mad!”, our psychotic, brave-new-world generation has literally lost touch with reality, being unable to distinguish what’s objectively real from a subjective figment of “progressive” imagination.

The late, former head of the United Negro College Fund, Arthur Fletcher coined the phrase, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” Without doubt, it is. What a waste not to educate it to its full potential. Yet, worse than wasting a mind is losing a mind. The irony of today’s psychosis is that the most highly-educated folks are the ones most likely to have lost their minds. These are the same academics and pseudo-intellectuals who smugly note “preferred pronouns” (even the plural “them”) and designate toilets for “All Genders,” as if there were more than two. Educated fools!

Lately, there is much talk about a crisis in mental health — from the mental struggles leading to suicide (like country music’s Naomi Judd), to the increasing number of deranged perpetrators of tragic gun violence. As concerning as those conditions are, a more critical mental health crisis threatens our collective sanity: being delusional about the origin and nature of our existence.

Our cultural psychosis is but a symptom of a deeper disorder — thinking we humans are merely highly-evolved animals, produced by a process of mindless evolution. If you believe that an orderly, elegant, and hospitable planet — and humankind itself — happened by chance, you are already out of touch with reality. Believe the biggest delusion of all and lesser delusions follow.

Those who reject the foundational truth that “male and female created He them” are well on their way to the asylum. For us human inhabitants of the earth, there is one sun, one moon, and two sexes. Anyone thinking there is more than one moon is properly (and linguistically) deemed a lunatic. If someone insists there are many more than just two sexes, are they any less a lunatic?

What engenders such madness? When a culture exalts Nature itself rather than worshiping Nature’s Creator, it must fill the morals vacuum with secular social causes, which then must be defended even to the point of absurdity. Having made gender diversity a sacred cause, all else must be sacrificed to it, even if it means ludicrously denying obvious distinctions between “man” and “woman.” (Easily missed, even “transgendered” is from one to the other!)

The debate over Evolution and Creation isn’t inconsequential. As G. K. Chesterton observed, the same people who decry the evil of treating human beings as beasts (think whatever social oppression you wish) will boldly assert that human beings, themselves, are practically beasts.

So, have we evolved, or devolved? Prideful “progressives” now detached from objective reality have become stupefyingly psychotic. Even a lowly bull knows a heifer when he sees one!

F. LaGard Smith is a retired law school professor (principally at Pepperdine University), and is the author of some 35 books, touching on law, faith, and social issues. He is the compiler and narrator of The Daily Bible (the NIV and NLT arranged in chronological order).

https://www.christianpost.com/voices/psychotic-gender-delusions.html

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UNITED METHODIST
Grayson Jang on June 15, 2022

As United Methodism divides, an Arizona United Methodist confirmed some of the traditionalists’ worst fears about disregarding biblical authority in their denomination.

In his recent sermons Defusing Christianity’s Most Dangerous Ideas Series 1,2: Original Sin and Hell, Rev. David M. Felten declared:

“The notions of biblical inerrancy and the need to be born again create all kinds of discord and conflict in society…[and] keeps the whole church trapped in a quagmire of outdated fantasies.” He surmised: “Not to put too fine a point on it, but original sin has got to go.”

Felten argued that the notion of original sin is not from the Bible, “Unfortunately, though original sin is nowhere in the Bible, nowhere in the whole of Hebrew Scripture or the New Testament,” but from Saint Augustine. “Augustine was a promiscuous guy after all…so he decided to pass the buck and say: hey, my behavior is not my fault. It’s…Adam’s fault.”

The Methodist minister claimed that the concept that sin was passed from Adam’s generation to the next generation is invalid by accepting Darwin’s evolution theory. “The creation stories in the Bible are metaphors, not history…instead of the magical idea that human beings were once perfect and now because someone ate an apple, are damaged goods. How about simply acknowledging that Darwin was right? We were never perfect. We are evolving, emerging as a species and as individuals.”

“Is original sin in the Bible?” Felten asked rhetorically. “No…Is it totally made up? Yes. Has it, and does it continue to do social, psychological, and spiritual harm to people? Yes.” He explained that because Paul and Augustine were unaware of evolution, they tried hard to account for the primal urges and tendencies we inherited with the information they had.

According to Felten, Paul and Augustine “made up a fanciful story about sin and the power of Jesus to redeem us…But science has given us a story that makes more sense for the 21st century.” Felten insisted: “We are evolving creatures striving to emerge from the primal ooze of our past to achieve a more advanced form of life.”

Felten concluded that human tendencies to sin are not because of original sin but because we are all evolving: “We need to leave behind our magical thinking…I hope you’ve outgrown the image of a childish, petulant tyrant, punishing generations of subjects because some ancestors screwed up long ago…We are an evolving species, emerging over countless millennia into something more sophisticated than our reptilian ancestors.”

In his sermon on hell, Felten argued that hell is totally made-up and contradicts the nature of God, causing many believers to leave the church these days. People are agonizing between two choices: “One, [becoming] people who threaten eternal torture from a sadomasochistic God, or Two, [becoming] people who are too afraid to stand up and say no.” Felten believes that this fabricated notion of hell distorts “the very core of what following Jesus is about.”

“Hell is like the crystal meth of theological drugs,” Felten preached. “Once you’re addicted, it’s almost impossible to break away without some very serious intervention.” He said the word “hell” in the Old Testament is mistranslated. The word ‘Sheol( שְׁאוֹל )’ in Hebrew does not mean hell. “This (Sheol) wasn’t a place of punishment–just simply not living, kind of a precursor to limbo, [and] a much better translation of Sheol would simply be the grave,” he insisted.

Then where does the notion of Hell come from? Felten finds the answer in paganism. In the New Testament, Jews called the Hell of fire Gehenna or the Valley of Hinnom. He said, “It (Gehenna) was the stinking city dump where garbage was burned in a continuous smoldering fire before the Jews arrived.” In the same manner as Gehenna, images of lakes of fire from 2 Peter are also affected by paganism.

Felten said: “But these are from Egyptian and other pagan sources…the notion of hell as some sort of underground cavern of torture comes not from the Bible, but from Greek mythology and the idea of the realm of Hades.”

“Too many preachers are guilty of allowing the idea of hell to fester in the minds,” Felten complained. “So, let’s begin by confessing that when it comes to our concepts of hell, for the most part, were misinformed…So let me say it clearly…It’s all made up. The popular notions of hell are total fiction. Not to mention so contradictory to the gospel as to be laughable.”

Felten asked: “Is God really one who with one ear enjoys the music of the angels in heaven and with the other ear enjoys the screams of sinners tormented in hell?” He explained that “to plan for something in the afterlife, either for our own sense of self-aggrandizement or a sense of revenge…[is] not what Jesus had in mind.” Felten concluded: “If God is the manifestation of all things loving, merciful, and forgiving, hell cannot exist…Hell loses, and love wins.”
https://juicyecumenism.com/2022/06/15/methodist-david-felten/

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Stillwater NewsPress, Okla.
Thu, June 23, 2022, 11:59 PM

Jun. 23—One of the earliest history lessons we are taught about the founding of what would become the United States of America is that the Pilgrims were fleeing religious persecution.

They were Christians, just not the right kind of Christians, according to the crown.

Still, those Puritans would go on to enforce Puritan law on townsfolk, everything from mandatory church attendance to how people were supposed to dress.

Times change.

While public shaming is still very much en vogue, we don't have Puritans fining people for missing church anymore.

What we do have are people who seem very certain that their personal version of faith must not only be accepted but enforced.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court ruled on a case in Maine that overturned state law that kept public dollars from going to religious institutions. A program had been established to provide scholarships for rural children to attend schools and while it allowed for money to go to secular private schools it established that public funds should not go toward schools that have religious requirements. SCOTUS overturned it 6-3 with Chief Justice John Roberts determining that it was a First Amendment violation.

"Maine's 'nonsectarian' requirement for its otherwise generally available tuition assistance payments violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment," Roberts wrote. "Regardless of how the benefit and restriction are described, the program operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise."

Interesting because those schools nor the students that would attend them were not being prohibited from expression, they just weren't being given public funds to do so.

How theocratic are we willing to have our nation be?

In her dissenting opinion, notably liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the ruling a dismantling of "the wall of separation between church and state the Framers fought to build."

It's true, she borrowed that directly from Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson, it should be noted, actually attended worship services in the House of Representatives.

The kicker, he thought it was fine to do because it was voluntary and non-denominational.

Many at the time thought Jefferson was revolutionary even to the Christian faith.

Christ himself upended religious dogma of the day.

We don't entirely know what this could mean in the future for Oklahoma. A distinction seems to be that once an Education Savings Account is enacted, then the state couldn't discriminate against who gets one. What it doesn't mean is that Oklahoma would be forced go through with Education Savings Accounts in the first place.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/editorial-brick-precious-brick-035900966.html

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John Kruzel
Tue, June 21, 2022, 11:32 AM

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court’s most outspoken liberal, accused the court’s six-member conservative majority of eroding the barrier between church and state on Tuesday by striking down a Maine policy that barred religious schools from receiving taxpayer-funded tuition aid.

“This Court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers fought to build,” Sotomayor wrote, dissenting from the 6-3 decision that broke along ideological lines.

“In just a few years, the Court has upended constitutional doctrine,” she added, “shifting from a rule that permits States to decline to fund religious organizations to one that requires States in many circumstances to subsidize religious indoctrination with taxpayer dollars.”

Maine law gives school-age children the right to free public education. But because many rural districts lack a public high school, a workaround was devised that allows students to attend nearby qualifying private schools with public assistance.

The Maine law at issue in the case had deemed schools with religious instruction ineligible for the program.

The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, sided with a group of Maine parents who sued over the law, with the conservative justices ruling that the challengers’ constitutional religious protections were violated.

“Maine’s ‘nonsectarian’ requirement for its otherwise generally available tuition assistance payments violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment,” Roberts wrote for the majority. “Regardless of how the benefit and restriction are described, the program operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise.”

Sotomayor also joined in part a separate dissent written by fellow liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, whose opinion was joined in full by Justice Elena Kagan, the court’s third liberal member. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/sotomayor-accuses-conservatives-dismantling-church-153206021.html

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Andrew Chung
Tue, June 21, 2022, 10:45 AM·4 min read

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court further reduced the separation of church and state in a ruling on Tuesday endorsing more public funding of religious entities as its conservative justices sided with two Christian families who challenged a Maine tuition assistance program that excluded private religious schools.

In the latest in a series of decisions in recent years expanding religious rights, the justices overturned a lower court ruling that had rejected the families' claims of religious discrimination in violation of the U.S. Constitution, including the First Amendment protection of the free exercise of religion.

The court's conservative justices were in the majority in the 6-3 ruling https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1088_dbfi.pdf authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, with its liberal members dissenting. The decision built upon the court's 2020 ruling in a Montana case that paved the way for more taxpayer dollars to flow to religious schools.

Maine's program provides public funds for tuition at private high schools of a family's choice in sparsely populated areas of the northeastern state lacking public secondary schools. Maine required eligible schools to be "nonsectarian," excluding those promoting a particular religion and presenting material "through the lens of that faith."

Roberts wrote that Maine's program "operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise."

The plaintiffs sought taxpayer dollars to send their children to two Christian schools that integrate religion into their classrooms and maintain policies against gay and transgender students and staff.

The First Amendment prohibits government endorsement of any particular religion in what is called the "establishment clause." The liberal justices said the ruling forces states to fund religious education despite establishment clause concerns.

"Today, the court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation," liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent.

Powered by its increasingly assertive conservative majority, the court has expanded individual and corporate religious rights. Its conservative justices have been receptive to claims by plaintiffs - often conservative Christians - of government hostility toward religion including in education.

Conservative and religious advocacy groups have been seeking through the courts more access to public money for religious education, including through voucher or tax programs giving parents choices beyond public schools.

'VALUES WE HOLD DEAR'

Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey called it "disturbing that the Supreme Court found that parents also have the right to force the public to pay for an education that is fundamentally at odds with values we hold dear."

Frey said Maine's law may need changes to "ensure that public money is not used to promote discrimination, intolerance and bigotry."

The two schools describe themselves as seeking to instill a "Biblical worldview" in students, according to court records. They refuse to hire gay teachers or admit gay and transgender students. Bangor Christian Schools teaches that a "husband is the leader of the household" and includes a class in which students learn to "refute the teachings of the Islamic religion with the truth of God's Word."

Two sets of parents - David and Amy Carson, and Troy and Angela Nelson - sued Maine in 2018. The Nelsons wanted to use tuition aid to send their son to a Christian school called Temple Academy in Waterville, but instead used it for a secular private high school. The Carsons paid out-of-pocket to send their daughter to Bangor Christian Schools. She has now graduated.

"We always knew that we would be unlikely to benefit from a victory but felt strongly that Maine's discrimination against religious schools and the families who choose them violated the Constitution and needed to end," Amy Carson said after the ruling.

Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that state funding of religious activity risks causing societal "strife" as some might view the government as favoring one religion over another, or religion over nonreligion - problems the Constitution was designed to prevent.

"Taxpayers may be upset at having to finance the propagation of religious beliefs that they do not share and with which they disagree," Breyer wrote, adding that believers in minority religions might see injustice in public funds going to adherents of more popular faiths.

Roberts said the court previously decided that states need not subsidize private education, but because Maine chose to do so it cannot disqualify religious schools. Maine has other options, Roberts added, including expanding its public school system.

"The court appears concerned with discrimination only when conservative Christians make the claim, and often, as here, in ways that further discrimination," said Rachel Laser, president of the advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

The court's 2020 Montana ruling, involving an educational tax credit, prevented states from disqualifying schools from public aid based on their religious status or affiliation. The Maine ruling went further.

President Joe Biden's administration had backed Maine in the case.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham

https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-supreme-court-backs-public-144542374.html

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Cheryl Teh
Tue, June 21, 2022, 1:41 AM

• In its latest platform document, the Texas GOP has suggested that it might secede from the US.

• In the document, the state GOP called for a referendum on secession in 2023.

• The referendum will determine if Texas should "reassert its status as an independent nation."

The Texas GOP is pushing for a referendum on seceding from the US — a split that could lead to the state becoming an independent nation.

The state GOP outlined its intention to press for such a referendum in a document from its Platforms and Resolutions committee, wherein it specified its demand that the state holds a vote on the matter. The document was produced in connection with the Texas Republican Party's convention in Houston, during which it also voted "overwhelmingly" to reject the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

The document, which contains a section on state sovereignty, calls for the state to hold a vote and outlines the Texas Republican Party's opinion that the federal government has "impaired" its right to locally self-govern.

Per the document, the Texas GOP proposed that any "federally mandated legislation that infringes upon the 10th Amendment rights of Texas should be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified."

"Texas retains the right to secede from the United States, and the Texas Legislature should be called upon to pass a referendum consistent thereto," the document reads.

In the document, the Texas GOP also urged state lawmakers to bring a vote to the people of Texas "to determine whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation." Per the state GOP's proposal, this vote would be on the ballot in 2023.

On top of its call for secession, the Texas GOP also asked for state lawmakers to look into prosecuting election fraud.

"We urge the passage of a constitutional amendment that gives the Texas Attorney General concurrent jurisdiction to prosecute election fraud along with the county District Attorneys," the GOP's platform document read.

While the Texas GOP has not outlined when exactly such a vote might take place, this is not the first occasion that the idea of secession has been floated. In November, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said the state might secede if the situation in the US becomes "hopeless."

"We're not there yet, and if there comes a point where it's hopeless, then I think we take NASA, we take the military, we take the oil," Cruz said.

However, according to the Constitution, Texas is not able to unilaterally leave the Union.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/texas-gop-pushing-referendum-decide-054117744.html

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Brent D. Griffiths
Fri, June 24, 2022, 11:06 AM

• Chief Justice John Roberts said the Supreme Court shouldn't have overturned Roe v. Wade.
• He argued the court's conservative justices went too far in ending a federal right to abortion.
• He added that a "narrower decision" would have been "markedly less unsettling."

Chief Justice John Roberts made it abundantly clear that he felt the Supreme Court's five other conservative justices went too far in their decision on Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade and end a federal right to an abortion.

"The Court's decision to overrule Roe and Casey is a serious jolt to the legal system—regardless of how you view those cases," Roberts wrote in his concurring opinion, released on Friday along with the majority opinion. "A narrower decision rejecting the misguided viability line would be markedly less unsettling, and nothing more is needed to decide this case."

Roberts' view, though, became largely moot in the face of the bloc of other Republican-appointed justices, including President Donald Trump's three picks, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the court's majority opinion, which overturned nearly 50 years of precedent holding that abortion rights are part of a constitutional right to privacy. As he had in a leaked draft opinion, Alito torched the landmark 1973 decision in Roe.

"Roe was egregiously wrong from the start," Alito wrote. "Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division."

Roberts has long cut a reputation as a justice who would prefer that the court more directly address the questions before it as opposed to authoring sweeping opinions that go down in the history books. It has long been thought that this principle animated his decision to preserve the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, better known as Obamacare, in the 2012 ruling that protected President Barack Obama's signature domestic achievement.

Roberts made clear in his concurring opinion that he would have upheld Mississippi's near-complete ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy — the law at the center of the case decided on Friday — but he stressed that overturning Roe and the 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey would have profound effects. Roberts called such an action a "dramatic step" that Mississippi did not want the court to take. (The state changed its view of the case after Barrett was confirmed to the court.)

"Both the Court's opinion and the dissent display a relentless freedom from doubt on the legal issue that I cannot share," Roberts wrote. "I am not sure, for example, that a ban on terminating a pregnancy from the moment of conception must
be treated the same under the Constitution as a ban after fifteen weeks."

Roberts' preferred decision would still have significantly curtailed abortion rights. Upholding Mississippi's law without overturning Roe would have limited the concept of fetal viability that the court made the center of its ruling in Casey. Roberts said he agreed that the court erred in its original decision in Roe, but he added that the justices did not need to gut the decision "all the way down to the studs."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/chief-justice-john-roberts-says-150614846.html

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The Gainesville Sun
Tue, June 21, 2022, 6:00 AM·4 min read

Nothing but obstruction

America can no longer afford to have a political party that does nothing more that obstruct efforts to address our social, economic, public health and environmental challenges.

Every day, we see the consequences of the Republican Party's devotion to "do nothing." By "doing nothing," the GOP is actually eroding faith in government. At the same time, the GOP is encouraging what can only be referred to as corporate welfare.

Witness the latest insurance legislation passed by Ron DeSantis and the GOP majority in our state Legislature. Will Florida homeowners benefit? No! The insurance industry makes off like a bandit with a couple of billion dollars of taxpayer money.

It’s pay now and pay later for Florida homeowners. Insurance rates are skyrocketing because of extreme weather brought on by climate change, something the GOP won’t allow to be addressed at any level of government.

Despite repeated government attempts to limit the sale of assault rifles or expand background checks, the GOP blocks every effort More evidence pours in every day on the negative effects of GOP misinformation regarding our country's response to the COVID pandemic, with death rates much higher in states with Republicans in control.

When are we going to wake up and vote them out?

Albert R. Matheny, Gainesville

National service needed

The political discussion over how to preserve gun rights while eliminating mass shootings seems to me to miss a key point and a key opportunity. Men 18 to 23 years old are responsible for most of the shootings. The 13 million young Americans in this group have many unmet needs that a voluntary universal national service program could address.

Such a program could allow everyone to choose how to serve their country, whether civilian or military. It could bring together young Americans of different backgrounds in common constructive purpose and provide useful job training. This program could put resources into maintaining our state and national parks, building low-income housing, caring for vulnerable people and much of the other work that needs to be done if we want to make America greater.

Forgiving college loans helps this age group, but only those who attend college. AmeriCorps is a national service program, but only three out of every 10 people who apply are accepted, and it serves less than 1% of our young adults.

We need a program that accepts everyone in the age group that is interested and finds meaningful work for them to do. Opportunities for young men to learn discipline, new skills and common purpose may do more to reduce gun violence than background checks and bulletproof school doors.
David Kennedy, Interlachen

Stop banning books

Taking away novels for ideas, words or scenes found offensive is like painting over “The Birth of Adam” on the ceiling of Sistine Chapel because Adam is naked.

The hallmark of every great civilization that we learn about is the free flow of knowledge and information in the societal realm. People may not agree sometimes, but ideas are discussed and debated in the public sphere in a civil discourse that moves society forward. We begin to end our American republic when we only embrace thought with which we agree and never hear voices of dissent.

We need books to represent a multitude of ideas and information. They connect the past and present together; in addition, they promote empathy and understanding. To remove the books that Moms for Liberty are proposing to remove will leave a generation of malnourished minds in America; the knowledge and wisdom they contain are food for the soul.

Starving the young mind of books they find objectionable leaves them ill-equipped for life and at a significant intellectual disadvantage. Policing the reading material or television programs for your own children is certainly within their parental rights, but an outright ban or removal of said materials is certainly not conducive to a group promoting more freedom.

Christopher Pearl, Trenton

Act differently

A recent discussion with my 10-year-old grandson brought to mind a book of essays by Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing.

On topics as diverse as books, guns (school shootings), cars (electric, hybrid, gas, hydrogen), lockdowns, pandemics (masks, zoom, vaccines), and religion, Ryan wondered at adult behavior in modern America.

What Lessing called "inherited structures of unquestioned beliefs" continue to cripple, confuse and endanger us. The young do not live in the prisons we have chosen to live inside. We can act differently to stop the repeated disasters we create. The doors are open. The young are already outside. Let's join them.

Susan M. Stanton, Gainesville

https://www.yahoo.com/news/readers-gop-obstruction-national-banning-100041681.html