Tag Archives: 1964 Iowa Civil Rights Act

Bill Lockwood: The Rabidly Anti-Christian Biden Administration 4 (1)

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by Bill Lockwood

Christians and conservative Americans have lost their government. The sooner constitutionally-minded citizens awaken to this fact, the better. Individual freedom is a thing of the past, and no amount of “suing the government” is going to recapture it. Through the Biden Administration the liberal, Neo-Marxist, post-modern humanists, atheists and God-haters make up a Deep State.

If one doubts that assessment, consider the current lawsuit against the Administration by the College of the Ozarks.

According to The Federalist, the “College of the Ozarks in Hollister, Missouri, is suing the Biden administration over a directive from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development forcing religious institutions to permit students of the opposite sex in the same bathrooms, dorm rooms and dormitories.”

Here is the White House’s “justification.” It announced in February that “it will administer and enforce the Fair Housing Act to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Religious liberty legal group Alliance Defending Freedom filed a suit on behalf of the Missouri college, asserting Biden’s decision “requires private religious colleges to place biological males into female dormitories and assign them as females’ roommates.”

In other words, the Biden Administration is in the business of forcing private institutions to open girls’ dormitories to males based upon their “perceived” sexual identity. What high-handed arrogant atrocities by rulers! Biblical teaching regarding sexuality, marriage, chastity, and social order is under direct attack. As Dr. Jerry Davis, president of the school, announced, “To threaten religious freedom is to threaten America itself.”

Davis went on to make clear that “College of the Ozarks will not allow politicians to erode the essential American right or the ideals that shaped America’s founding.”

Recent History

In the above, I stated that “suing the government” is not going to fix this hedonistic communism that has taken over America. For proof, examine a source of this moral sepsis. In part, they go back to the outrageous “ruling” by the Supreme Court last summer in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia.

In that case, six justices “turned themselves into legislators, rewriting the intent of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to fit the current narrative, ruling that there is to be no ‘discrimination’ against the LGBTQ community, regardless of rights guaranteed in the Constitution protecting religious freedom.” This ruling was a 6-3 decision, in which supposed-conservative Neil Gorsuch, writing the majority opinion, stated that Title VII protections extended to sexual orientation and gender identity. “Sex-segregated bathrooms, locker rooms, and dress codes will prove unsustainable after our decision today,” he opined.

No, what is “unsustainable” is a Supreme Court, and Socialistic/Marxist government that intrudes upon all freedom—religious and otherwise. The federal government, and particularly the judicial branch in this case, has radically overstepped its constitutional boundaries. What solace therefore, should Christians take in “suing at court” the Biden Administration? And, even if there is a win in the College of the Ozarks’ case—what security has Christian America that these God-hating totalitarian trends will not continue?

The Constitution

Besides the obvious fact that the bounds of propriety, common-sense, decency, and morality have been trampled by Gorsuch and the Court, what about the Constitution? Ours is a Republic—the rule of law. This eliminated from the beginning the “rule by mob”, riotous mutineers, or even black-robed propagandists who goose step to political correctness. Adherence to law has been the hallmark of American society.

To change the law, specific provisions were instituted by our founders. These begin and end with the lawmaking branch of government—the Legislative. There is absolutely no lawmaking power granted by the Constitution to the judicial branch. Instead, they are sworn to uphold the Constitution as written.

However, in the Bostock case, the Supreme Court legislatively declared that that 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, must now include the non-scientific categories of “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” Gorsuch and crew enlarged the meaning  of the 1964 law so that “sex” now includes “manipulations in the biological makeup of human beings or conduct that is clearly forbidden by the Almighty.” These six justices brazenly and boldly cast science and God behind their backs and inserted their modernistic version of what they believe we should be doing in America.

In sum, we have no rule of law. It is the whim of the Judicial Branch, among other areas of deterioration. So, again, I ask, what will be accomplished by suing in the courts the Federal Government? Justices are making it up as they go along. Christians, beware!

Kathleen Marquardt: RED FLAG LAWS – DOUBLE SPEAK FOR GUN CONFISCATION 0 (0)

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by Kathleen Marquardt

When I went to pick up my concealed carry permit at the Sheriff’s office in Montana, I was asked if I would wait a few minutes because the sheriff wanted to talk to me. I wondered if he was going to impress on me the importance of being careful, that a handgun was a dangerous weapon, or something to that effect. He came out of his office and thanked me for getting my permit, stating that I was the only one who could save my life. He added that the police are not responsible for protecting us, they only respond after we call, and that is often too late.

So we need to realize that we are our own protectors. With that in mind, I posit that the Second Amendment is needed now more than it has been in a long time. All these actions attempting to take away our right to defend ourselves, our families, and our property, are very dangerous in today’s world.

Do you scoff? Am I being paranoid? Let me give you an example on which I rest my case. This is from JUSTIA’s Warren v. District of Columbia (see footnote 1):

In the early morning hours of March 16, 1975, appellants Carolyn Warren, Joan Taliaferro, and Miriam Douglas were asleep in their rooming house at 1112 Lamont Street, N.W. Warren and Taliaferro shared a room on the third floor of the house; Douglas shared a room on the second floor with her four-year-old daughter. The women were awakened by the sound of the back door being broken down by two men later identified as Marvin Kent and James Morse. The men entered Douglas’ second floor room, where Kent forced Douglas to sodomize him and Morse raped her.

Warren and Taliaferro heard Douglas’ screams from the floor below. Warren telephoned the police, told the officer on duty that the house was being burglarized, and requested immediate assistance. The department employee told her to remain quiet and assured her that police assistance would be dispatched promptly. Warren’s call was received at Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters at 6:23 a. m., and was recorded as a burglary in progress. At 6:26 a. m., a call was dispatched to officers on the street as a “Code 2” assignment, although calls of a crime in progress should be given priority and designated as “Code 1.” Four police cruisers responded to the broadcast; three to the Lamont Street address and one to another address to investigate a possible suspect.

Meanwhile, Warren and Taliaferro crawled from their window onto an adjoining roof and waited for the police to arrive. While there, they saw one policeman drive through the alley behind their house and proceed to the front of the residence without stopping, leaning out the window, or getting out of the car to check the back entrance of the house. A second officer apparently knocked on the door in front of the residence, but left when he received no answer. The three officers departed the scene at 6:33 a. m., five minutes after they arrived.

Warren and Taliaferro crawled back inside their room. They again heard Douglas’ continuing screams; again called the police; told the officer that the intruders had entered the home, and requested immediate assistance. Once again, a police officer assured them that help was on the way. This second call was received at 6:42 a. m. and recorded merely as “investigate the trouble” it was never dispatched to any police officers.

Believing the police might be in the house, Warren and Taliaferro called down to Douglas, thereby alerting Kent to their presence. Kent and Morse then forced all three women, at knifepoint, to accompany them to Kent’s apartment. For the next fourteen hours the women were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon each other, and made to submit to the sexual demands of Kent and Morse[1]

Appellants’ claims of negligence included: the dispatcher’s failure to forward the 6:23 a.m. call with the proper degree of urgency; *3 the responding officers’ failure to follow standard police investigative procedures, specifically their failure to check the rear entrance and position themselves properly near the doors and windows to ascertain whether there was any activity inside; and the dispatcher’s failure to dispatch the 6:42 a.m. call.[2]

Now tell me that we don’t need guns, that the police will be there to save the day. They may save the day, but they very well might not save us or our loved ones.

On top of that, they aren’t even held accountable when they ignore calls for help; they behave as they did in the above case. The attorney for the women cited the Civil Rights Act of 1981, Section 1983, as follows:

42 U.S. Code § 1983.Civil action for deprivation of rights

Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer’s judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable. For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia.

(R.S. § 1979; Pub. L. 96–170, § 1, Dec. 29, 1979, 93 Stat. 1284; Pub. L. 104–317, title III, § 309 (c), Oct. 19, 1996, 110 Stat. 3853.)

If you read the Code, you might believe that anyone acting under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, who causes someone to be deprived of any right

shall be held liable. Wow! Sounds great. But . . .. The big BUT. No, the Code doesn’t have a but, but a but is perceived to be in the Code by our courts today.

 Carolyn Warren, Miriam Douglas, and Joan Taliaferro, (and Wilfred Nichol in another case) sued the District of Columbia and individual members of the Metropolitan Police Department for negligent failure to provide adequate police services. The respective trial judges held that the police were under no specific legal duty to provide protection to the individuals who were suing the police department, and dismissed the complaints for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. A panel decided that Warren, Taliaferro and Nichol were owed a special duty of care by the police department and reversed the trial court rulings, while unanimously concluding that Douglas failed to fit within the class of persons to whom a special duty was owed, and affirmed the lower court’s dismissal of her complaint. The full court, on petitions for rehearing, canceled the panel’s decision, stating, “After re-arguments, notwithstanding our sympathy for complainants who were the tragic victims of despicable criminal acts, we affirm the judgments of dismissal”.

In other words, the police do not have to protect us, and even after some Keystone Kops behavior are not responsible for any harm done by their negligence.

So what does this have to do with Red Flag laws? Everything!

Yes, this happened in the District of Columbia, but that isn’t the only jurisdiction that has courts coming down with the same decision. What does that tell you?

It tells me that I want to be armed. And wish I had an AR-15. Pepper spray would have been as good as a squirt gun for those women. But what does this have to do with red flag laws?

John R. Lott Jr, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and an expert on gun rights, writing in the Washington Times on the Red Flag gun laws states, “. . . the laws are more complicated than usually discussed in the press. Depending upon the state, anyone from a family member, intimate partner, ex, house or apartment mates, or police can file a complaint. Under Colorado’s proposed law, anyone can make a phone call to the police. They don’t even have to be living in the state. There is no hearing. All the judge has before them is the statement of concern.” He also pointed out, “It has always been possible to take away someone’s guns, but all 50 states have required testimony by a mental health expert before a judge. Hearings could be conducted very quickly in urgent cases, But gun control advocates argue that it’s important to not even alert the person that his guns may be taken away. Hence, the 5 a.m. police raids.

“When people really pose a clear danger to themselves or others, they should be confined to a mental health facility. Simply denying them the right to legally buy a gun isn’t a serious remedy. If you think that you are any more likely to stop criminals from getting guns than illegal drugs, good luck. The same drug dealers sell both and are a major source of guns. And there are other weapons such as cars.

Despite the sacrifices, the evidence shows no benefits from these laws. Looking at data from 1970 through 2017, Red Flag laws appear to have had no significant effect on murder, suicide, the number of people killed in mass public shootings, robbery, aggravated assault or burglary. There is some evidence that rape rates rise. These laws apparently do not save lives.”

Lott mentioned that, “Depending upon the state, anyone from a family member, intimate partner, ex, house or apartment mates, or police can file a complaint.” That is scary enough; if an ex or even an angry or jealous family member wanted to, they could file a complaint. But we now live in very fluid times. Sue, a friend called me last week and related what had happened to her. Her daughter, Kerry, left a frantic text message that she needed her to come right away. Sue called Kerry to find out what was happening. Kerry was at a minor-league baseball game, enjoying herself and had no emergency. Sue called the police who told her that there is an app you can get that lets you use other people’s phone numbers. It happens that Kerry has a bit of a stalker situation at her work and she suspects that he is the one that made the call. But as the police told them, there is no way to trace who made the call.

I can easily imagine someone like that Red Flagging her. Or, there is another scenario I can imagine happening (and I don’t have much of an imagination or I’d be writing fiction and selling lots of books). That is someone(s) wanting to break into your house to rob you or worse, do to you what those men did to Carolyn Warren, above. With such open Red Flag laws, they can disarm you by cop. This isn’t farfetched. The police would take your guns and, by the time you got the situation rectified, you might be dead.

Because we humans need to protect ourselves and we aren’t born with claws, enormous teeth, or venom, we must use tools to protect ourselves. The quintessential tool is a gun. It’s easy to use and carry, and it is effective – both as a weapon and a deterrent. Plus, people have a choice whether they want to have and use guns or not.

And it has been a basic right. But right now, our right to own guns is being eroded faster than California’s bullet train. Not in one fell-swoop, but chipping away, one new law after another so that the powers-that-be will not have to come after our guns because we will have given them up with each new gun-grab.

There are people who are mentally unfit and are dangerous, who shouldn’t be allowed guns, and we need to find ways to protect society from them. But disarming the country is not the answer.

In reality, the Red Flag laws are being driven by emotion, not reason and logic. Gun owners, gun supporters, and freedom lovers need to stand up and bring common sense back to the dialog. This is truly an issue of protecting our lives, our families, and our property. We cannot, we must not, allow unsupported emotions to drive the day.

[1] https://law.justia.com/cases/district-of-columbia/court-of-appeals/1981/79-6-3.html

APC: https://americanpolicy.org/2019/05/15/red-flag-laws-double-speak-for-gun-confiscation/

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Bill Lockwood: Reparations and the Failure of Affirmative Action 5 (1)

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by Bill Lockwood

All recent talk coming from the Democrats is about current “reparations” to black Americans for yesteryear’s slavery. White America must begin paying financial compensation for sins of history. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) announced a bill this week to form a commission to recommend “reparations for slavery.” Booker says this could solve the “persistence of racism, white supremacy, and implicit racial bias in our country. It will bring together the vest minds to study the issue and propose solutions that will finally begin to right the economic scales of past harms and make sure we are a country where all dignity and humanity is affirmed.”

Beto O’Rourke was against “reparations” when he was in Congress but has switcherooed to favor Booker’s commission. Whatever is vogue is what the Democrats support. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, another Texas Democrat, has supported reparations as well. Sen. Kamala Harris and Sen. Elizabeth Warren both cannot get on the bandwagon quickly enough.

Reparation talk is growing elsewhere. Black Princeton Seminary students in New Jersey are asking their school for reparations for slavery due to the fact that the early founders and faculty of the University had ties to slavery. A group of black seminarians have collected more than 400 signatures in an online petition calling on the Princeton to “make amends” by setting aside $5.3 million annually—15% of what the seminary uses from the school’s endowment for its operating expenses—to fund tuition grants for black students and establish a Black Church Studies program (Selwyn Duke, in The New American, 3.27.19).

What Shall We Say to These Things?

This is all a tacit admission that Reparations Do Not Work to the End for Which They are Intended. Why?  Booker says reparations will “right the economic scales of past harms.” This is exactly, almost word for word, the reason Affirmative Action was instituted in America in the first place.

Consider Pres. Lyndon Johnson, in a commencement address at Howard University in 1965 on affirmative action, who opined this way about Affirmative Action:

You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying, ‘now, you are free to go where you want, do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.’ You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe you have been completely fair …This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity—not just legal equity but human ability—not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result.

We were going to have equality “as a fact and as a result” provided by Big Brother Government in its meddlesome Affirmative Action programs. Compensate for past discrimination and persecution is the “reason.” The original purpose for Affirmative Action in the United States was to “pressure institutions into compliance” with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

According to the clintonwhitehouse2.archives.gov website,

The current scope of affirmative action programs is best understood as an outgrowth and continuation of our national effort to remedy subjugation of racial and ethnic minorities and of women — subjugation in place at our nation’s founding and still the law of the land within the lifetime of “baby-boomers.

Apparently, the government remedy did not take. Instead of a “remedy” affirmative action has exacerbated the racial problem, so much that Democrats are seeking again to “right the economic scales” in America—exactly what Affirmative Action was supposed to do—by government fiat.

Questions

There are a few hundred questions we need answered by the Booker’s, Harris’, Warren’s and O’Rourke’s of the world before “reparations” are underway. Just a sampling of those questions are these:

Since slavery is solely of the Democrat Party in America, why not make the DNC pay the reparations?

Since American Indians practiced slavery regularly, and photos exist of Indian tribes holding white captives as slaves, will whites receive payments as well? Will the government “shake down” the Indian tribes for their historical practice of slavery?

Since “slavery” is, by definition, for all practical purposes, the process by which one person is forcibly used to serve the purposes of another, how is it that modern-day forcible financial re-distribution (slavery) supposed to “right” slavery of the past? Will modern-day slavery via the tax code be repaired? What is the difference in principle between slavery to the government and slavery to a plantation owner?

Is Booker man-enough to note that the Koran teaches slavery and Muslims have practiced slavery throughout the centuries? Shall Muslims in America pay reparations for subjugating populations of Europeans in history? Will those that support Mohammed and the fact that he owned a black slave be forced to disown Mohammed? After all, those theological students at Princeton say that “Restitution is evidence of repentance.”

While thinking of Islam, since each and every black slave that was captured in Africa and sold to English slave-traders originated with Muslim slave-traders in Africa, will those who practice Islam be forced to pay reparation? After all, why target just a few Englishmen involved in slavery? Why not cast a wider net for reparations?

Since “righting past wrongs” is Booker’s game, what about abortion? Since abortion is the taking of innocent life, will the Democrat legislation force those who have aborted children to pay into a general fund for usage by others? Or, is our grievance against sin selective? Only some sins need apply.

And since abortion rates are higher in black communities than in white communities does this mean that more blacks will be paying than whites? Or, is abortion off-the-table as far as discussion is concerned?

Since the black Princeton Theology students tell us that “reparation is evidence of repentance” do they also teach that it is the government’s job to force repentance among the population? Is asking for free-will contributions the same as a government shakedown?

Ezekiel 18

While on theology students, perhaps a biblical passage will help us. Ezekiel 18.

Israelites in Babylonian captivity were self-righteous. They were disposed to shift blame off of themselves and lay it partly upon their fathers and partly upon God. Shifting blame to some other quarter that we might be just and God unjust is still prevalent among men!

Their Illusion is that they were suffering, not for their own sins, but the transgressions of their fathers. Their proverbial statement to that effect was, “The fathers have eaten sour grapes and set the children’s teeth on edge.” An old proverb repeated by the modern-day Democrat-Socialist. The prophet dispels this idea in the balance of the chapter.

Ezekiel lays out four cases to illustrate Divine Justice. Number one: the righteous man (v. 5-9) is just (dealings with others) and will live. Number two: a wicked son of a righteous man (v. 10-13). The father will not be held accountable for the sin of the son. Number three: a righteous son of a wicked father (v. 14-18). Here is where liberal idea of reparation rests. Must wickedness of past generations be paid today? The inspired prophet’s answer: NO. The principle is: The soul that sins, IT is the one that shall die! (v. 2).

Number four: Ezekiel has one more scenario (v 21-24). The wicked AND the righteous. If the wicked repents, then he is forgiven. If the righteous apostatizes, he is lost. This involves a change, not in the character of one generation to the next, but in the character of the individual. Such is repentance. Princeton Theology students and the Cory Booker’s of the world notwithstanding.

Bill Lockwood: Is Freedom Disappearing in America? 0 (0)

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Is Freedom Disappearing in America?- “The government will create ‘zones of exemption’ for a time which presumably will include churches.”

by Bill Lockwood

The issue is freedom. It always has been. The two-world views, a God-centered Christian worldview and the socialist/communist worldview, have always clashed in America, but now that the latter has the upper hand, freedom is on the chopping block. An absolutely perfect example of this is now occurring in the state of Iowa. The Iowa Civil Rights Act has banned places of “public accommodation” from expressing their views regarding “human sexuality” if those places either “directly or indirectly” make persons of any gender “feel unwelcome.”

Under the 1964 Civil Rights Act places of “public accommodation” are forbidden by the federal government to “discriminate” against persons of any class—be it race, color, national origin or religion. Along with this the federal government empowered itself to investigate alleged violations and prosecute.

The misstep here was to reverse what the founders had intended for a limited government. As right as it may be to eliminate discrimination based upon race, the very reason that the framers of America left the oversight for this in the hands of the states and local municipalities and forbade it to the federal government was a matter of principle. Freedom has historically been enjoyed only under limited federal government.

Our second misstep has been and continues to be the refusal of the American people—even Christians—to oppose homosexuality. This in spite of the fact that the Bible demonstrably shows that sodomy is a sin, and therefore a choice that people make. Our culture has by default placed homosexuality in the same category as race. Therefore, the same laws will apply. Now comes Obama to cram “transgenderism” into the same folder. Compliant weak-spined states meekly comply.

For example, the Iowa Civil Rights commission recently explained in a brochure that refusing to use the correct pronoun in addressing transgender individuals is a form of harassment. God’s grant of freedom of speech be hanged. Discrimination is defined by that Commission as “publicizing that the patronage of persons of any particular sexual orientation or gender identity is unwelcome, objectionable, not acceptable or not solicited.” The standard is: do not to make others feel unwelcome.

Now comes the third misstep, which naturally follows from the first two. The government decides what is a legitimate or illegitimate usage of speech; in what places or zones it may occur; who might be exempt and under what conditions. The Des Moines Register reports that Kristin Johnson, director of the Iowa Civil Rights Commission, assured churches that the “state code provides some exemptions for bona fide religious institutions engaged in activities with a bona fide religious purpose.”

The problem with this, as everyone who has not had their thinking by-passed by liberalism can see: this places the state in charge of deciding what is and what is not a legitimate religious institution. And remember, we are not talking about human or animal sacrifice or killing, which violates basic natural law codes.

The government will create “zones of exemption” for a time which presumably will include churches. I write, “for a time,” since it is already being discussed in some circles what constitutes a “legitimate” sermon or Bible lesson and what does not. Maura Strassberg, Drake University law professor said that “sermons that stick to human sexuality matters pertaining to theology would be constitutionally protected.” But according to the Des Moines Register she suggested that sometimes a situation may occur where a preacher’s sermonic material “crossed the line” into harassment. “There is a line: You go from ‘this is what God believes’ … to ‘You are bad, so we don’t want you here.’”

This would amount to the the state deciding what is and what is not proper sermon etiquette and content. Freedom is fast disappearing in America. Time to retrace our steps.

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