Earlier this week, I posted about two ways that the Biden-Harris administration targeted Christians. First, by preventing Christians from taking in foster kids. And second, by punishing Christian medical workers who blew the whistle on the transgendering of children. I thought I was done, but Desert Rose sent me a couple more stories, which I will talk about below.

This story is from Christian Post:

The United States Department of Education is being accused of unjustly targeting Christian colleges and universities, allegedly to advance a “woke agenda.”

The American Principles Project, a conservative think-tank, published a report earlier this month that cites the department’s Office of Enforcement actions against Christian schools.

According to the report, although Christian colleges and universities have fewer than 10% of students in the U.S., they make up around 70% of the penalties imposed by the Office of Enforcement.

Additionally, over the past 10 years, while the average fine against public and private academic institutions that violated federal law on campus crime was around $228,571, the average fine against a Christian school was $815,000.

The report also took issue with the record fines recently imposed on Grand Canyon University and Liberty University, two prominent Evangelical Christian academic institutions.

Secular universities that had REAL scandals were punished much less:

According to the APP, when the department issued punitive fines on Michigan State University and Penn State University for high-profile abuse scandals, they were several million dollars less.

APP Policy Director Jon Schweppe, author of the report, said in a statement released on Nov. 18 that he believed this was an example of the Biden administration “weaponizing every part of the federal government to target their opponents.”

“As our report details, the Biden-Harris Department of Education has been engaged in a long-running scheme to punish Christian colleges that are ideologically opposed to the left’s agenda. The unfair targeting of these institutions has been egregious, and it needs to stop immediately,” stated Schweppe.

As you can see above, I posted a picture of Russell Moore, who rose to the top of a secular leftist advocacy group known as the ERLC. You can see him meeting with Democrat president Barack Obama, in the photo. I show that, because Moore is what I would call an “Evangelical for Biden” and “Evangelical for Harris”. Instead of advocating for Christian positions on fiscal policy, social policy and foreign policy, Moore used his platform to push for Democrat policies. Now that the news is coming out about what Obama did to Christian colleges, it sheds light on what Moore, and people like him, were really up to. There are a lot of fake Christians who advocate for secular left policies.

Here’s another article with four more instances of targeting conservatives, from Daily Wire. (archived)

Here are the four:

• Targeting Political Opponents (parents, pro-lifers, etc.)
• FEMA Skipping Homes Of Trump Supporters
• Censoring Conservative Media (e.g. – Facebook)
• Spying On Financial Transactions

I’ve blogged before about the first 3 (see the links), so let’s look at the last one:

Earlier this year, Rep. Jordan revealed how federal officials were ordering banks to comb through customer data in search of terms like “TRUMP” or “MAGA” used in transactions.

This came after the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) asked banks to help federal law enforcement identify transactions of “persons of interest” using specific typologies and Merchant Category Codes after January 6, 2021.

Other transaction keywords identified by the feds included “Cabela’s” and “Dick’s Sporting Goods,” along with the purchase of “religious texts” as potentially problematic.

“Despite these transactions having no apparent criminal nexus — and, in fact, relate to Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights — FinCEN seems to have adopted a characterization of these Americans as potential threat actors,” Jordan wrote in January. “This kind of pervasive financial surveillance, carried out in coordination with and at the request of federal law enforcement, into Americans’ private transactions is alarming and raises serious doubts about FinCEN’s respect for fundamental civil liberties.”

Why do you think that Evangelicals for Biden-Harris, many of whom are very pietistic pastors and church leaders, would support the secular left using government as a weapon against Bible-believing Christians and Constitutional conservatives? I think it’s because many of these “evangelicals” were raised in a Christian bubble. For them, Christianity is about being liked and feeling good. They embraced it because it made the Christians around them like them. They never had to work through evidence, such as the origin of the universe, fine-tuning, origin of life, Cambrian explosion, habitability, molecular machines, gospel reliability, minimal facts case for the resurrection, etc. like Desert Rose and I do on the Knight and Rose Show. They simply don’t know or care whether Christianity is true, they only care that they signal their virtue to other people.

So, when these pietistic pastors and charismatic church leaders grew older and went into the secular world, they just repeated what had worked for them in the Christian bubble. They said whatever they needed to say to impress the elites in the larger secular culture. There was no foundation for their faith based on truth, and based on experiences of self-sacrificial obedience. They never had the experience of using evidence to win a debate (like Jesus), and then suffering the shame and loss of being obedient to God (like Jesus).

I’m sure that my regular readers or Twitter followers will know about the Supreme Court case that started on Wednesday. The state of Tennessee, the best state in the Union, passed a law banning doctors from giving puberty blockers, hormone treatments and sex-mutilation surgeries to children. And the Biden-Harris Democrats, being secular leftists, decided to contest that law.

So, I am linking to a number of articles in this post.

First, this Daily Signal article explains the case from the secular leftists:

In Wednesday’s oral argument, lawyers for the U.S. government and the American Civil Liberties Union contended that the Tennessee law discriminates based on sex because it bans transgender medical procedures only “when inconsistent with the patient’s birth sex.”

U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelagor, representing the Biden-Harris administration, argued that so-called puberty blockers are prescribed to boys and girls with early-onset puberty. It is thus sex discrimination to deny puberty blockers based on sex to children with gender dysphoria, she said.

So, that’s their case.

And this Daily Signal article explains the argument from the Attorney General of Tennessee:

As Tennessee persuasively argues, rather than classifying based on sex, the law classifies on based on purpose. In other words, it distinguishes based on minors seeking drugs for gender transition and minors seeking drugs for any other medical purposes. The Supreme Court has never recognized restrictions on the use of drugs for a particular medical purpose to demand heightened scrutiny review, so rational-basis review applies.

So, the lawyers presented their cases, and they were asked questions by the Supreme Court Justices.

Now here’s an article from Daily Wire, which gives us the three big admissions made by the secular leftist advocates:

Proponents of transgender procedures on children made three stunning admissions on Wednesday as they argued against a Tennessee law protecting children from the irreversible procedures before the Supreme Court.

The admissions — that cross-sex hormones can cause infertility, that people regret the procedures, and that transgender procedures aren’t associated with lower suicide rates — undercut leftist activists’ core arguments that the procedures are necessary and lifesaving.

These revelations were made as justices heard oral arguments in the case brought by the Biden administration and the ACLU against Tennessee for a law that shields children from transgender procedures like puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.

The big hero of the day was Justice Alito, who knew more about what the evidence says about these issues than anyone else.

This Daily Signal article explains:

Roberts and Kavanaugh also stressed the shaky scientific footing of gender “medicine,” and cited various European reports, saying that “countries who have been at the forefront [are now] pumping the brakes on this,” something that Kavanaugh noted gave the court “a yellow light, if not a red light” in moving forward into “constitutionalizing” a new area of law.

But it was perhaps the line of questioning from Alito that was the most intense of the morning. Alito, too, cited specific studies from Sweden and England, including the bombshell Cass report, which indicated that gender medicine is largely unproven and presents significant health risks to children.

He chided Prelogar, saying that she had “relegated [it] to a footnote.”

And:

When transgender lawyer Chase Strangio took the podium for the ACLU, Alito continued his grilling, asking pointedly “Is transgender status immutable?” When Strangio responded that it would indeed “satisfy an immutability test,” Alito peppered the ACLU lawyer with various hypotheticals: What about people who are “gender-fluid,” or who change gender identities over time, or who are “nonbinary”?

When Strangio floundered, Alito retorted, “So, transgender status is not an immutable characteristic, is it?”

Desert Rose sent me two articles about the arguments of the affirmative action Supreme Court Justices (Sotomayor and Brown-Jackson) who were nominated by Obama and Biden.

Here’s the first article from Daily Wire:

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson compared Tennessee’s law against irreversible medical interventions that seek to change children’s sex to laws against interracial marriage.

Here’s the second article from Daily Wire:

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor drew a wave of backlash when she dismissed concerns about risks associated with gender transition surgeries — particularly among patients who are minors — by arguing that all medical treatments, even aspirin, can have side effects.

Again, you can double-check those articles to get the details, I’m trying to move through a list of notable events, though.

Daily Signal and Independent Women’s Forum both had reporters on the scene, and they were tweeting out useful things all day. Every time I got up to get coffee or go to the bathroom, I was checking my phone to get the latest updates.

This was my favorite tweet of the day:

https://x.com/DailySignal/status/1864341828901740803

That doctor looks Indian – probably East Indian, maybe West Indian. I hope we have a million more conservative Indians like him soon, arguing against secular left lies with evidence.

And here’s a good article about what the Daily Signal reporters saw outside the Supreme Court:

A mother told The Daily Signal her family travelled to the rally from Arizona to support her child “Violet,” a biological male identifying as a girl. Violet told his parents he was trans “when she one and a half,” the mother claimed.

“She knew since birth,” the woman said.

And:

A mom and transgender-identifying adolescent at the rally said they want the Supreme Court to rule the Tennessee law unconstitutional because their home state, Louisiana, bans transgender procedures for minors.

“The wrong puberty can kill us,” the young person who identified as transgender told The Daily Signal. “There are people here who are alive because they got access to gender-affirming care, and restricting the right to that will kill people.”

The mom added that the “most pro-life thing politicians can do” is allow “gender-affirming care” because transgender kids will commit suicide without it.

I know that in the men’s communities that I belong to, whenever we see children of single moms or children of lesbian couples behaving weirdly, we always like to say “The father could not be reached for comment”. That’s not throwing shade at men, that’s noting that the current family laws make it easy for mothers to eject biological fathers from their homes, often using false accusations that never go to trial. And then the children grow up without a male influence, which can sometimes lead to mental health issues.

I do have some churchy Christian friends who like to say that they don’t want to get involved in a “culture war”, and they don’t see much difference between the political parties. I have an idea of why they say things like this, and I’ll talk about that below. But first, let’s see two examples of how the Biden-Harris administration went after Christians, and is even doubling down on the persecution.

First story is from the wonderful Virginia Allen, who writes for the Daily Signal and also does their podcast.

She wrote this article in Life News:

The Biden-Harris administration finalized a rule in April requiring foster parents to affirm a child’s gender ideology.

“The provider must commit to establishing an environment that supports the child’s LGBTQI+ status or identity,” according to the rule issued by the Department of Health and Human Services.

The policy, says Herbie Newell, president and executive director of Lifeline Children’s Services, “made people of faith into a different category of foster and adoptive parent, saying that because they didn’t give in to this pro-radical LGBTQ+ agenda, that they couldn’t foster any child with gender dysphoria or any child that might be having any questions about their LGBTQ status.”

“Faith-based Christian people were put on the sidelines and not able to participate in our foster care and adoption system in the same way,” Newell says.

I heard about this story on the Daily Signal podcast, so if you would rather listen to the interview with the Lifeline guy (I thought he was very good, although he did say “during Biden’s pregnancy” when he meant “during Biden’s presidency”). Virginia Allen sounds great.

Anyway, you would think that this would be a concern for the church Christians, who don’t want to get involved in the “culture war”. Usually when I tell them stories like this, they say “well, I think Jesus would attend a same-sex wedding, I certainly would”. So, that’s their attitude to sin, go and participate in it. And the Christians who don’t deserve to be persecuted by the state.

Anyway, here’s another one that I found in Daily Signal. It’s written by Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell. This article is even more scary, because the DOJ is facing a house-cleaning right now, and you would think they would cool it with the secular leftist fascism. But no. More fascism. Fascism piled on top of fascism.

It says:

The Justice Department filed a reply Tuesday supporting its motion for a gag order against Dr. Eithan Haim, a surgeon indicted by the Biden-Harris administration after he blew the whistle on sex-change procedures for minors.

“The prosecutors in @eithanhaim’s case are doubling down on their shameless effort to ask the court to censor us and our client on @X,” the Burke Law Group, which is representing Haim, said on X. “We will continue to zealously represent @EithanHaim’s liberty, and now his (and our) First Amendment right to Free Speech.”

Haim initially came forward as an anonymous whistleblower to expose gender treatments being performed on minors at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. He is facing four felony counts of violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, also known as HIPAA, according to journalist Chris Rufo, who first reported on Haim’s story.

The Justice Department’s reply in support of its motion for a gag order against Haim and his legal team said the order would “prevent the defendant and his attorney from making inflammatory and unfairly prejudiced statements.”

[…]Haim was a resident at the Baylor College of Medicine from June 2018 to June 2023. He worked at Texas Children’s Hospital during part of his residency.

The gag order would “completely prevent Dr. Haim or his counsel from criticizing the prosecution, no matter how correct the criticism,” according to Burke Law Group.

[…]The DOJ particularly wants to prevent Haim from retweeting allies who have defended him on X, including Ethics and Public Policy Center legal expert Ed Whelan; Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas; psychologist and author Jordan Peterson; and Rufo, according to Burke Law Group.

So, this “gag order” procedure is very common. In fact, if you watched Matt Walsh’s first movie “What is a Woman?”, he spoke to a father who was having his child transed against his will. The court slapped a publication ban on the legal proceedings. The father was banned from speaking about the trial and from “misgendering” the child. Basically, they want to control people’s lives, but they don’t want anyone to publicize what they are doing, so that they might be shamed or disapproved of.

So, here is why many Christians say “I don’t want to get involved in the culture war”.

The reason is that they don’t have a plan to serve God that would be affected by laws and policies. They read the Bible. They attend church. But if they have to choose between advocating for Jesus’ vew of marriage, or going to a same-sex wedding in order to appease their leftist spouse, then they choose to appease the leftist spouse and go to the same-sex wedding. Why? Because they don’t think that obedience to God should ever result in any bad consequences for them. No bad feelings. No social disapproval. No being cut off by family members, like in Matthew 10:34-38.

For me, I have an interest in laws and policies because I do have a Christian life plan. And I understand that the secular left does not want me to achieve that Christian life plan. They have all of their own ideologies, and they want me to give up on Jesus, and bow down to their ideologies. And they get a lot of “Christians” like David French and Russell Moore to swap out Jesus for their ideologies. Me, I would prefer to stick with Jesus. And I understand that if the laws and policies don’t allow the secular left to force me to choose between Jesus and secular left ideologies, then I will have a much more productive life for my Boss. Instead of having to face false accusations, pay legal fees, go on trial, go to jail, etc. I can take more of my money and give it to FreeThinking Ministries (which has a matching grant right now!) or Eric Chabot or someone else worthy. So that’s why I care about laws and policies.