Good morning,

What would you go to jail for? Would you sacrifice your freedom to defend liberty? I’ll share my thoughts in today’s Reflection. 

But first, here’s the Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Friday, November 20, 2020
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• Democrats failed in their attempt this week to inject a far-left agenda into Texas public schools’ sex education curriculum. Robert Montoya reports the state’s new health curriculum heads for a final vote today of the State Board of Education.
      
• The health portion of Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills has been center stage in a conflict between citizens and the far left over what taxpayer-funded schools should be teaching children about sex. Citizens won the previous round in September, preventing highly sexualized “LGBTQ+” and pro-abortion material from being added.
      
• Rather than listening to citizens, Democrat board members Ruben Cortez Jr. (District 2) and Marisa Perez-Garcia (District 3) tried and failed earlier this week to steer sex education in the opposite direction.
     
• “Abstinence is the optimal health message for all of our children. There is no need to label, no need to target, no need to separate different groups of our children,”the SBOE was told by Janice Weaver, a retired educator and executive director of South Texas Pregnancy Center.

• So far, no member of the Texas House—Republican or Democrat—has been willing (or able) to say what Dade Phelan’s legislative agenda or priorities will be despite supporting him for the speakership. And that includes Mr. Phelan himself.
     
• Brandon Waltens reports the Beaumont Republican and his supporters have been quiet on what exactly a Speaker Dade Phelan would try to accomplish during the 87th Session of the Texas Legislature, which convenes on Jan. 12, 2021.
     
• What is known, based on his early actions, is that the practice of placing Democrats in powerful committee chairman positions is likely to continue.
   
• “It’s not rocket science. When Democrats are in office, they don’t mess around. They get busy passing their own agenda and stomping on ours. Why would any serious conservative then put those Democrats in a position of power where they can kill every conservative measure we elected our representatives to pass? A child can grasp that concept, and I’m sure our speaker can too.” – Julie McCarty, CEO of the True Texas Project

• In a new commentary, Cisco businessman Jon Francis argues we have allowed the left to hijack and redefine the words we use to describe the important issues of our day.
   
• “Make no mistake: The left is destroying America by lying and by bullying. Although the lying is still hidden, the bullying is in full view... As bad as the situation is, I firmly believe we can reverse course and win. But to do that, we must recognize our enemy’s strengths and our weaknesses in the hope that we can improve our position.” – Jon Francis

• Amarillo businesses not enforcing Gov. Greg Abbott’s mask mandate may soon be subjected to stricter penalties thanks to a proposed ordinance being considered by the Amarillo City Council. Thomas Warren has the details.

• A new study from Denmark, with more than 3,000 participants, has found “no statistically significant difference between those who wore masks and those who did not when it came to being infected by Covid-19.” That’s how Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson of the University of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine describe the study in Spectator of London.
   
• “The results of the Danmask-19 trial mirror other reviews into influenza-like illnesses. Nine other trials looking at the efficacy of masks (two looking at healthcare workers and seven at community transmission) have found that masks make little or no difference to whether you get influenza or not.” – Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson

Friday Reflection

Would you go to jail for what you believe in? Would you give up your freedom in the pursuit of liberty? Are you sure?  

I’ve been asking myself that recently. It’s not that I feel immediately threatened with imprisonment, but because in doing some reading about views of citizenship in the Bible I was reminded the Apostle Paul was arrested at least three times. The first time his imprisonment lasted a day, the second for five years, and the third for less than a year though ending with his martyrdom.

Set aside his martyrdom; Paul was willing to be repeatedly jailed for his beliefs. His movement and freedoms were restricted because of his faith.

He wrote to Galatians: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”

Our Founding Fathers famously pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause of liberty. That included the knowledge they, and possibly their families, would be imprisoned – before being marched to the gallows. Comparatively, today we risk much less.

A flashpoint in the Civil Rights Movement was a woman willing to be jailed over race-based bus seating assignments to make an indelible point about systemic injustice. 

A couple years ago my friend Jim Graham of Texas Right to Life and I were briefly threatened with jail because we and other activists were protesting a state representative’s campaign re-election announcement. Instead, we were merely ticketed for holding an "illegal parade" – even though no one was going anywhere. The tickets were later laughed out of court.

But no one in my lifetime has more readily embraced imprisonment for the cause of liberty than Shelley Luther. The former school teacher is a part-time rock band performer and a full-time salon owner. 

When Gov. Greg Abbott followed the lead of the Democrat governors in New York and California and ordered the shutdown of the Texas economy, Shelley Luther found her family – and the families of the stylists who worked with her – couldn’t last through the shutdown. So she risked jail and reopened her store. Risked it... and was tossed behind bars by a leftwing judge eager to exercise the powers granted to him by our Republican governor.

The Supreme Court of Texas intervened and ordered her release. The episode revealed Greg Abbott’s carefully coifed conservative image to be photoshopped cronyism rather than principled substance. And it showed Texans that if a salon owner can go to jail for her rights, and survive, so can they.

Shelley Luther, like so many in history, risked her freedom to defend liberty – and in so doing put a check on our governor’s power grab.

Being a prisoner of conscience requires having principles that aren’t dulled by convenience or comfort. Being jailed for liberty requires an understanding that freedom of movement is less important than standing firm in our beliefs.

As citizens, we can be thankful for men and women who have placed their lives, fortunes, and honor on the line to defend the gift of liberty and self-governance. And we should be willing to do likewise.