On a crisp autumn morning in October of 2011, just months before she would die only days after her 80th birthday, my mother made something of a curious request.

My parents were in town here in Colorado Springs for a visit, and my father was meeting up with an old Army buddy to visit Fort Carson, a large military installation where he and Don had met and served together in the early 1950s. It was “Camp Carson” back then, and while it had grown exponentially in size, the two men were going on a tour to relive some old memories.

“Please just drop me off at the Broadmoor,” my mother told them. “You guys go ahead and spend as much time as you want. I just want to sit out on the patio.”

The Broadmoor is a world class resort in the southwestern part of our city dating back to 1916.

The hotel features a large lake at the foot of Cheyenne Mountain, a site perhaps best known for housing the NORAD Combat Operations Center inside of it. But looking at a green and treed mountain on the outside, you’d never know the seriousness of what was going on beyond its granite exterior.

My Dad and Don did as my mother requested, and with a devotional book and journal in hand, Joan Batura happily shuffled off to a cushioned chair overlooking the water and mountain for several hours of silent bliss.

She would later say it was one of the most enjoyable mornings of her life.

Focus on the Family joined 12 pro-life organizations on Tuesday opposing the multi-year renewal of PEPFAR, a federal HIV/AIDS relief program worth billions of dollars, over concerns the program’s funding supports pro-abortion organizations.

Established by former President George W. Bush in 2003, The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) works with government contractors and international organizations to combat the global HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Congress has three days to decide whether to renew the program’s original five-year contract for the fourth time. Previous extensions enjoyed bi-partisan support because of PEPFAR’s success — the State Department estimates PEPFAR has saved 25 million people from dying of HIV/AIDS-related illnesses in Africa. This year, however, some pro-life organizations and legislators want explicit pro-life protections included in PEPFAR before Congress gives it another $30 billion.

In 2021, the White House repealed a 2017 law preventing the government from giving global health aid to pro-abortion organizations, calling it “(an) undue restriction() on the use of federal funds” that “undermine(d) the US’ effort to advance gender equality globally by restricting our ability to support women’s health and programs that prevent and respond to gender-based bias.”

Now, PEPFAR helps bankroll 26 explicitly pro-abortion international organizations, a Family Research Council report finds, which spent a combined $1.34 billion PEPFAR donations between 2021 and 2022.

North Point Community Church, an Atlanta megachurch pastored by Andy Stanley, is hosting the Unconditional Conference, featuring two gay-identified speakers who are in “same-sex marriages,” Justin Lee and Brian Nietzel.

North Point has a weekly attendance of almost 40,000, meeting at eight different locations.

The church lists dozens of church partners, “built upon the same vision, mission and strategy,” around the world.

The sold-out conference runs Thursday and Friday, September 28-29, and also features David Gushee, a Christian ethicist who shifted his views on homosexuality and transgenderism in 2014. He argues for “covenantal marital lifetime monogamy” for LGBT-identified individuals and for “full LGBT inclusion” in the church.

The event hasn’t yet taken place, so we don’t know exactly what Lee, Nietzel and Gushee will teach, but they’ve made it clear that they reject biblical teaching on sexuality, relationships and marriage, and they now embrace revisionist gay theology.

They twist and re-interpret Scripture to view homosexual and transgender identities and relationships as given and blessed by God.

This would be like inviting the president of Planned Parenthood to speak at a church about ministering to women who’ve had abortions. Or inviting a man who’s married to two women to be the keynote speaker at a Christian marriage conference.