Watchmen Ministry North Idaho

(PJ Media) In 2020, Cherokee County, Ga., voted for President Trump by a margin of nearly +30. It is full of families where men do the muscular jobs and own businesses that keep the lights on, the internet humming, and the toilets flushing. It has also seen a steady influx of white-collar professionals with young families fleeing the chaos leaching out of Atlanta. Residents fly American flags in the county as a matter of course.

There are more churches than bars, and high school football on Friday nights is still a thing. Yet viral video of a Cherokee County mom has surfaced. Many people who live there would be shocked to learn that the video below came from their local school board’s March 17 meeting. The parent alerted school board members to explicit content from a book available to students called Homegoing and got cut off by one of the members.  (Read More)

(Family Research Council) In the fight over transgender treatments for kids, everyone from President Joe Biden to national medical organizations are defending these life-altering therapies as “necessary.” Just this week, a court reinstated its temporary ban on Texas’s protections for children, arguing that they could cause “imminent and irreparable harm.” Even the state’s Leftist medical association is throwing its support behind drugs and therapies that can destroy a young person’s body, insisting that it’s “developmentally appropriate care.” Other doctors and experts argue that laws putting a pause on gender transition are supported by basic scientific facts. Who’s telling the truth?

Sadly, when it comes to this issue, ideology is driving science more than science is driving itself. Statements like that of the White House avoid the facts about gender transition for children and instead employ a communications campaign fraught with hyperbole, misinformation, and inadequate research that is more emblematic of a bait-and-switch tactic rather than the gold standard of scientific inquiry. What are we to think of all this?  (Read More)

(Life News) California Gov Gavin Newsom has signed the “Kill More Babies” bill that would force taxpayers in the Golden State to fund more abortions.

Newsom and California Democrats aren’t helping pregnant women with things like baby clothes, maternity care, child care or employment assistance. Instead, they’re forcing taxpayers to fund more abortions and make ending the lives of unborn children a little less expensive.

The bill would make abortions much cheaper for people on private health insurance plans, making California the fourth state in the country to ban insurance fees for ending the lives of unborn children.

California already requires private health insurance plans to cover abortions. But insurers are allowed to charge people things like co-pays and deductibles, which adds an average of $543 to the cost of an abortion with the dangerous abortion pill and $887 to the cost of a procedural abortion, according to an analysis by the California Health Benefits Review Program.  (Read More)

(Family Research Council) It doesn’t take a whole lot of moral courage to protect girls’ sports in the middle of a nationwide controversy. But apparently, it takes a lot more than Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb (R) has. In a move that defies logic, timing, politics, and state values, the man heading up one of the biggest fan bases in America wants people who just watched Lia Thomas to believe: transgenderism isn’t hurting anyone.

It should’ve been the easiest decision crossing Holcomb’s desk. Not only had the country just witnessed the greatest NCAA larceny in the history of women’s sports, but Americans everywhere were outraged. Forty-eight hours earlier, a biological man had stolen the titles and racing lanes of actual women who had trained their entire collegiate careers for a crack at a national title. Unlike other leaders, the Indiana governor had an opportunity to do something about the outcry in real time: sign an enormously popular bill banning boys from Indiana’s K-12 girls’ sports. He refused.

In a letter to Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston (R) announcing his veto, Holcomb claimed that there’s no “problem” in Indiana. Incredibly, he argued that signing the bill would imply that the goals of “consistency and fairness” are not being met.  (Read More)

(Idaho Family Policy Center) Idaho Family Policy Center, a pro-family Christian ministry, celebrates the passage of legislation to modify our existing Heartbeat Law in the Idaho State House of Representatives today.

The legislation (Senate Bill 1309), which is sponsored by Senator Patti Anne Lodge (R-Huston) and Representative Steven Harris (R-Meridian), passed the Idaho Senate earlier this month, and now goes to the desk of Governor Brad Little for his signature.

Senate Bill 1309 would make a simple change to the existing Idaho Heartbeat Law by creating a private enforcement mechanism that allows family members of unlawfully aborted preborn babies to sue the abortionist who committed the crime. The changes to the law would go into effect thirty days following signature by Gov. Brad Little.

A sharp decline in the Texas abortion rate has been observed after a similar law in that state became effective and successfully withstood three challenges at the United States Supreme Court. For nearly seven months, Texas abortionists have voluntarily complied with the law and are no longer offering abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Supporters and opponents of the Idaho legislation both expect a similar outcome here if it becomes law.  (Read More)

(Family Research Council) “It’s in the schools. It’s online. It’s in cartoons and media. It’s in the medical system. There is a coordinated attack on our children… And I would just say, you just cannot be too careful.” –Brenton Netz, father of a gender-indoctrinated son

He said that he’s the only adult in his son’s life who is not affirming his “delusion.” For Brenton Netz, dad of Miles, that’s meant a painful last two years. “[T]he schools are calling him Miley. … Everybody in the medical establishment treats him as a girl, calls him Miley,” he explained. “If anybody met my son, within the first five minutes, you would realize that… he’s incapable of coming to those conclusions.” And yet, Netz warned, “If they can do it to my son, they can do it to any child.”

For parents like Brenton, this past weekend’s Detrans Awareness Day hits especially close to home. At 12, Miles hasn’t undergone any radical gender surgeries or taken the dangerous cross-sex hormones, but that’s only because Netz won a court order to keep therapists from taking him further down this destructive path with “gender-affirming” treatment.  (Read More)

(Townhall) Whenever “Critical Race Theory” – which is both a specific pedagogical strain and an umbrella term for racialized indoctrination in schools – arises as an issue, many on the left insist that it’s an invented right-wing scare tactic. Some even claim, as failed gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe repeatedly did in Virginia, that parents concerned about the broad phenomenon of CRT are themselves engaged in racism. These denials and deflections are easily refuted through reams of documented evidence. CRT and toxic CRT-adjacent inculcation is being introduced and taught in public schools across much of the country. Some so-called progressives toggle back and forth between denying the existence of CRT and celebrating the essential nature of CRT. One example I often cite is this explicit, public boasting by the superintendent of a large school system in a major American city:

Detroit Superintendent @Dr_Vitti: “Our curriculum is deeply using critical race theory, especially in social studies, but you’ll find it in English language arts and the other disciplines. We were very intentional about … embedding critical race theory within our curriculum.”  (Read More)

(The Federalist) A parent can look at the label on a juice box to decide what ingredients to allow into her child’s body. He should also be able to decide what ingredients a teacher puts into his child’s mind, but that isn’t the case in a growing number of public schools.

When Covid-19 brought the classroom into the kitchen, parents’ eyes were opened to some unsettling revelations, including that their children are being indoctrinated into critical race theory, and that some schools are secretly treating girls as boys and vice-versa.

Food labeling helps parents make informed decisions about what their children eat. In the same way, transparency helps parents make informed decisions about what their children learn. Yet some schools are resisting calls for transparency. Corporate media and teachers’ unions have inaccurately disparaged parents, but these critics are wrong.  (Read More)

(Family Research Council) If you want to know what a small world it really is at Disney, ask CEO Bob Chapek. The head of the happiest place on earth hasn’t had a magical 72 hours after his decision to stay out of Florida’s debate over sex education blew up in the company’s face. Chapek, who tried to lay low on a bill to keep transgender talk out of K-3 classrooms, found out pretty quickly that when it comes to LGBT issues at Disney, things get, well — animated.

As head of Florida’s most popular tourist destination, Chapek had been under intense pressure to speak out against H.B. 1557, the popular Parental Rights in Education bill. For weeks, the legislation has been the center of the media’s attention, since it represents one of the most brazen pushbacks to the Left’s indoctrination in schools. Although the word “gay” is never mentioned in the bill’s text, LGBT extremists — in a desperate effort to derail the legislation — dubbed it the “Don’t Say Gay Bill.” In the end, though, even the Left’s misinformation campaign failed to make a dent, and the legislation — propelled by tens of thousands of parents across the state — sailed through both chambers.  (Read More)

(PJ Media) According to comedian Adam Carolla, the reason kids were forced to mask in schools for two years had nothing to do with protecting them from COVID-19, but actually with making them “good subjects.”

57-year-old Carolla shared his theory on Tuesday during an appearance on Megyn Kelly’s SiriusXM podcast, after he was asked to give his thoughts regarding the continued push to mask kids in the Los Angeles Unified School District despite all the data showing kids aren’t at risk from COVID.

“Why? Why the kids, and why the emphasis on the kids? This hasn’t been dangerous for kids. We’ve known this. This kills sick people, old people, obese people, comorbidity people. It doesn’t ostensibly affect kids; they’re in the safest category,” Carolla pointed out.

Carolla believes it had nothing to do with the virus and instead likened it to crate training — though Carolla argues there’s something sinister about the prolonged masking of kids because “there is no science to what they are doing.”  (Read More)

(Life News) A sex education summer camp in Indianapolis will instruct elementary school children about condom usage, the “spectrum” of gender and sexual kinks, according to the camp’s event page.

Sexuality educator Ashley Robertson will host the weeklong camp from June 6 – 10 for third through fifth graders, according to the camp’s All Events page. All parents who plan to send their kids to the camp, which teaches a curriculum called “Our Whole Lives,” must attend an orientation on May 28 where they are required “to sign behavior agreements, enrollment paperwork, and waivers,” according to the event page.

“The Our Whole Lives curriculum offers a positive, affirming take on puberty, human sexuality, and social emotional skills without coercive abstinence-based strategies,” the page reads.

Kids attending the workshop will not be divided by gender while discussing puberty, bodies and sex, because “gender is a spectrum and not a binary,” according to the FAQs of the page.  (Read More)

(Creators) Tom Bevan at RealClearPolitics shared on Twitter a local horror story from the Chicago area. His fifth grader came home from school with a vocabulary assignment in science class. The words included “transgender,” cisgender,” “nonbinary” and “consent.”

The last word carries the most irony — because the educational elite in this country isn’t interested in the consent of the governed. Resistance to LGBT indoctrination in our public grade schools is not recognized as part of a democratic, governing process. Just like the cause of critical race theory, the parents are not simply irrelevant; they are seen as an impediment to essential progress.

The other words sound ridiculous in a science class. They are at war with science. They are at war with common sense. And they are at war with religious Americans who feel that God made the human race male and female, not some unscientific blur.  (Read More)

(Creators) The distorted rhetoric — should I say lies? — labeling Florida’s legislation about parental rights in public schools as, “Don’t say gay” demonstrates the hypocrisy of LGBTQ activism.

I say hypocrisy because this movement has always showcased itself as being about freedom, rights and social justice.

But the reality is that LGBTQ activism is not at all about freedom and rights. It is about advancing their particular agenda at the expense of alternative ways of viewing the world.

The Florida legislation, which defines itself at the outset as about parental rights, has 163 lines, out of which a total of five address sex education.

Those few lines simply say that “instruction” in “sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”  (Read More)

(Idaho Family Policy Center) Idaho Family Policy Center, a pro-family Christian ministry, celebrates the passage of the “Vulnerable Child Protection Act” (House Bill 675) by the Idaho House of Representatives. It now moves to to the Idaho Senate for consideration.

The legislation, which is sponsored by Representative Bruce Skaug (R-Nampa) and Senator Steve Vick (R-Dalton Gardens), bans puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex reassignment surgeries for children struggling with gender dysphoria.

There is no reliable evidence that sex reassignment improves either patient health outcomes or psychological wellbeing. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which conducted an exhaustive review of the available medical literature, found that “the four best designed and conducted studies that assessed quality of life before and after the surgery… did not demonstrate significant changes in psychometric test results” after sex reassignment surgery.

Furthermore, as many as 80 to 95 percent of children struggling with gender dysphoria will naturally grow out of it and accept their biological sex if they are allowed to pass through puberty, according to data from the American Psychiatric Association.  (Read More)

(Standing For Freedom Center) Within the past few weeks, governments have begun lifting mask and vaccine mandates. While we celebrate what appears to be the end of the COVID emergency response, we must also not forget the degree to which our officials were willing to infringe on civil liberties in the name of public health. This issue of freedom versus safety is an ongoing struggle, and there is no question that we will face it again, whether it’s in the guise of a pandemic or some other emergency.

As such, churches must be vigilant to recognize the threat that lockdowns, mandates, and other coercive measures hold for religious liberty and freedom of conscience and to take the time to reflect on our response over the past two years so that they can effectively stand up for their congregations and communities.  (Read More)

(Breakpoint) In Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, President Joe Biden told young people with gender dysphoria that he will “always have (their) back.” Though he didn’t specify what exactly that means, presumably it had something to do with extending Title IX protections to include allowing men full access to women’s facilities and sports; extending mandatory insurance coverage for “gender reassignment” surgeries; and restricting any counseling, treatments, or public advocacy that does anything less than fully affirm one’s gender dysphoria.  

Immediately following the President’s late-speech shoutout was a call to pass the Equality Act, something that remains (at least for now) dead in the Senate. The Equality Act would be a kind of legislative nuclear option, rendering the approximately 250 so-called “anti-LGBTQ” bills under consideration across America pointless, and leading to serious restrictions on religious liberty, especially for religious schools.  

Over the last few years, following a strategy that proved effective for advancing pro-life protections, states like Texas have been laying creative groundwork to hold adults accountable for experimenting on young people struggling with gender identity.  (Read More)

(Just The News) A decade ago, the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed a civil rights complaint on behalf of a California junior high student “initially raised as a female” who now identified as male and wanted to use the boys’ bathroom at school and room with boys on overnight school trips.

The Obama administration reached a resolution agreement with the Arcadia Unified School District in 2013, requiring it to treat students according to their gender identity and facilitate their social transitions to the opposite sex, subject to ongoing federal supervision.

Yaeli Martinez was one of the first Arcadia Unified students to be treated under this new system. According to her mother, the transition to “Andrew” worsened Yaeli’s mental health problems, and in 2019 her “beautiful girly girl” who dressed like a princess as a child stepped in front of a train at age 19.  (Read More)

(Family Research Council) The Biden administration is so good at ignoring problems in hopes they will disappear that it could get adopted into a family of ostriches. But Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) is undeterred. Along with 13 other state attorneys general, he filed a lawsuit against the administration for ignoring Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed last fall. “I didn’t use anything that any citizen or person in this country couldn’t use,” he informed “Washington Watch” viewers. “Ignoring me and thirteen other states, now for five months, thinking that we’re just going to get bored and go away… is not going to be the final result.”

Politicians sometimes file petty lawsuits and litigate non-issues for years, but Rokita’s suit is not of that sort. No, he’s going after the Department of Justice for colluding with the National School Boards Association (NSBA) to invent a pretext for investigating parents as domestic terrorists. By this point, even the DOJ has to realize they conjured up a pretext no sturdier than a ladder painted on a wall, but they’re refusing to budge.  (Read More)

(Faith & Freedom) Public schools are pushing an ideology, entertainment is pushing an agenda, big pharma is pushing profits, which is pushing some in the medical field—but Texas is pushing the light switch.

God bless Texas.

Texas has issued a formal opinion stating–on the basis of their legal and medical research—the use of trans surgeries and puberty blockers is child abuse.

Their position is rattling progressives across Texas and across the country.

The “truth” stands in direct defiance of what parents and kids are being told by all of the above institutions.

Be informed, not misled.

Each day your children and grandchildren go to public school they are exposed to radical— in-your-face indoctrination.  (Read More)

(The Federalist) A professor was locked out of his classes and email account without warning in apparent retaliation for criticizing his Christian university’s use of “diversity” and “equity” as criteria for selecting its new president, he and several witnesses told The Federalist.

The Rev. Dr. Greg Schulz was immediately and indefinitely suspended from his classes at Concordia University Wisconsin and banned from campus by interim college President William Cario on Feb. 18, a Friday. That was not formally conveyed to Schulz, however, until his lawyer obtained the suspension letter on Feb. 22, Schulz’s Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty attorney Dan Lennington told The Federalist.

“They told him to ‘recant’ in a memo that they never gave him,” Lennington said in a phone call. Lennington also noted his public interest law firm, which won a high-profile 2016 academic freedom case in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, has “never heard of something like this” swift ejection of a professor from campus for publicly expressing his views.  (Read More)

(Life News) Pro-abortion activists are becoming more open and aggressive about pushing risky sexual behavior and abortions on younger and younger children.

Last summer, the Kentucky group Sexy Sex Ed even advertised a “Sexy Summer Camp” for children as young as 13, City Journal writer Christopher Rufo noticed this week.

Organized by a self-described “witch” and a college student who worked with Planned Parenthood, the camp advertised workshops on “self pleasure” (masturbation) and “self-managed abortions,” as well as “sex liberation,” “being a sex worker” and “BDSM,” including sadomasochism. One workshop described on the group’s website also promoted discussion about “sexual activity while using licit and illicit drugs.”

On the group’s Facebook page, it welcomed campers ages 13 and up. However, its website says its programs are for “all ages.”  (Read More)

(Daily Signal) As Big Tech gatekeepers like Google and Amazon face long-overdue scrutiny in Washington for anti-competitive practices that limit choice and reduce quality online, they have resorted to a national security defense: Breaking us up, they claim, will only help China.

It’s an ironic move. These tech giants have extensive, well-documented ties to Beijing, doing high-volume business in China’s marketplace, while capitulating to the whims of its government for fear of losing access and status.

Their arguments are an insult to the spirit of American ingenuity, which is driven by innovation unleashed through competition, not by condoning a chokepoint of five global corporations that have become ever more complacent as their market power grows.

Innovation comes from all corners, not from a handful of gatekeepers that keep new ideas and services from coming to market.  (Read More)

(Family Research Council) For the men and women milling about the Senate floor, it was a surreal moment. They’d been back in session barely two hours — the first time, many will point out, since Vladimir Putin unleashed his war against the West. But instead of joining the rest of the world in racing to stop the threat against Europe, Democrats had other priorities: the spilling of innocent blood here at home. For the president’s party, the timing of their unlimited abortion bill vote will be another thing Americans won’t forget this November. It was a disturbing snapshot of the Left’s leadership team, who made one of the first orders of business after Russia invaded Ukraine advancing their own war on the unborn.

Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kans.), who’s delivered more than 5,000 babies in his Kansas practice, couldn’t talk about it without getting emotional. “I can’t believe it myself, but at a time when Vladimir Putin is murdering Ukrainians, my Democrat colleagues want to murder more unborn Americans for any reason up until the baby takes its first breath. Can you imagine that — up until the baby takes its first breath? … It’s just unthinkable.  (Read More)

(Standing For Freedom Center) A recent survey shows that Americans no longer place much importance on religious liberty. The survey, conducted by the Freedom Forum, showed that only 14 percent of Americans consider religious freedom to be the most important freedom. In addition, 37 percent said that religious business owners should be required to comply with requests that violate their religious beliefs. Only 68 percent said the First Amendment should not be changed and just 63 percent said they would ratify it today.

The survey tracks with other polls that reflect Americans’ views on this pivotal liberty.

The Becket Fund found that Americans have inconsistent views on religious liberty. Over 61 percent said that it is absolutely essential that people be allowed to choose their religion, while 24 percent say it is somewhat important. Yet only 26 percent said it was absolutely essential that people be able to practice their religion even if it inconveniences others, with 36 percent saying it was somewhat important.  (Read More)

(Coeur d’Alene Press) Coeur d’Alene Public Library trustees recently denied a request to remove or at least separate two books from the children’s library.

Trustee Steve McCrea made it clear why.

“Our function is to provide everybody with access to these books,” he said Thursday. “And it’s the parents’ responsibility to limit their children, not our responsibility.”

“There are parents that like these books in the library, believe it or not. They want these books in the library; they want access to them for their children,” McCrea continued.

He said he reviewed the challenged books, “Prince & Knight” by Daniel Haack and “The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish,” by Lil Miss Hot Mess.

“In my opinion, they’re very benign, there’s no sexualization. There’s no pornography. There’s nothing explicit in either of those two books,” he said.

Parents who spoke to the board, both in person in the Library Community Room and online, said they found the books — and others at the library — inappropriate for young children.  (Read More)