Pushback: California loses big for trying to force churches to violate their religious beliefs

Mary Watanaba, head oppressor in California's health system
Mary Watanaba, head oppressor
in California’s health system

They’re coming for you next: After California health authorities in 2014 imposed a mandate requiring requiring churches to provide elective abortion coverage to its employees, four churches sued, and after a long court battle, have now won a $1.4 million settlement.

Alliance Defending Freedom [ADF] attorneys represent Skyline Wesleyan Church, located in the San Diego area, in one federal lawsuit, and Foothill Church in Glendora, Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Chino, and The Shepherd of the Hills Church in Porter Ranch in another. Both lawsuits challenged California’s abortion-coverage mandate. In both cases, the courts ruled that the U.S. Constitution protects the churches’ freedom to operate according to their religious beliefs, which include their belief in the sanctity of unborn lives.

The rulings in both lawsuits (here and here [pdfs]) not only release the churches from the illegal abortion mandate, they both require payments to ADF and the church’s local attorneys to pay all legal costs. Interesting, in both lawsuits Mary Watanabe, the director of the California Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) was named, and in one case she was the only defendant. Unfortunately, she walks away unharmed, because DMHC will pay for everything, out of tax dollars.

What made the mandate especially egregious is that it was written in league with officials at Planned Parenthood and the ACLU, as shown by emails [pdf] between DMHC and those officials. » Read more

Pushback: Missouri school libraries sue to keep porno on their shelves; Missouri lawmakers zero out library budget

Cody Smith
Missouri House Republican Cody Smith

Bring a gun to a knife fight: In 2022 the Missouri legislature passed a law that made it illegal to provide any student with books containing images “‘showing human masturbation, deviate sexual intercourse,’ ‘sexual intercourse, direct physical stimulation of genitals, sadomasochistic abuse,’ or showing human genitals.” The aim of the law was to put reasonable limits on the kind of material available in school libraries, and was passed in response to the recent nationwide effort by teachers and librarians to include such smut in these places.

A normal person’s response should be, “Gee, why do we need a law? What sane adult would ever give this stuff to kids? Isn’t that why we have a movie rating system?” A normal person would also note that anyone who did want to distribute this kind of porno to kids is really nothing more than a pedophile.

Well, it looks like the Missouri Association of School Librarians, the Missouri Library Association, and the ACLU are all pedophiles, when you get right down to it. These organizations immediately banded together to sue to overturn the law. They want to give kids porno.

On March 28, 2023 the Missouri House responded in turn to these pedophiles by passing a budget that cuts the entire $4.5 million budget for all public libraries. The cut was put forth by the House budget chairman Cody Smith, who said this:
» Read more

New Mexico is being sued by the ACLU over a third case of an intrusive medical probe, this time without a warrant.

New Mexico is being sued by the ACLU over a third case of an intrusive medical probe, this time without a warrant.

The ACLU is representing a New Mexico woman in her fifties who was subjected by federal agents to a two-handed (!) vaginal and anal examination, an involuntary X-ray and CAT scan, and was forced to defecate in front of strangers. The woman was suspected of being in possession of drugs, on the basis of a drug-dog alert at the Juarez/El Paso border-crossing. No drugs were found. The federal agents — it’s not clear what agency they were with — did not obtain a warrant. The doctors at University Medical Center in El Paso performed the procedures without the victim’s consent, including the CT scan, which subjects people to a high dose of potentially harmful radiation. [emphasis mine]

As I said earlier today, more victims of this abuse are going to be found.