The U.S. military has mandated that all members of the Armed Forces, both those on active duty and in the reserves, be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

The different military branches can grant exemptions, both medical and religious, to the mandate. But so far, despite multiple members requesting a waiver to the mandate, the U.S. Navy has granted zero requests for religious accommodation.

In fact, when one Navy SEAL informed his command that he would request a religious exemption, he was immediately ordered to remove his special warfare device pin from his uniform.

In response, 35 Navy SEALs “whose careers and livelihoods are being threatened with punishment, involuntary separation or even court-martial” because of the vaccine mandate are suing the Biden administration and the Department of Defense (DoD) over their refusal to grant religious exemptions.

The SEALs are represented by First Liberty Institute and the lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

The lawsuit notes that each plaintiff objects to receiving a COVID-19 vaccine “based on their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

Matthew Dowd, one-time ABC News analyst and former advisor to President George W. Bush, ignited a firestorm on Sunday with a provocative Tweet:

“As I sat in church today I was thinking that if Jesus were here today he would be accused of being woke,” he wrote. “How about we just say it is human decency to treat all with respect and dignity and that it is constitutional to say all men and women are equal.”

In mainstream vernacular, the term “woke” has taken on a life of its own, generally used these days to describe a far-left perspective. In a political context, it was once intended to communicate being “aware” of racial injustice.

No longer.

It’s now being used as an all-encompassing term to describe radical activism – everything from the distorted understanding of gender to support of abortion and open borders. If you’re not “woke” you run the risk of being “cancelled” – a modern-day manifestation of intolerance – especially for people who hold to the historic teachings of the Christian faith.

It might be something of a new phenomenon to call Jesus “woke,” but it’s an old and tired habit of leftists (especially those who identify as Christian progressives) to call Jesus a liberal.

The recent election may have brought out the “mama bears” in droves in places like Virginia over controversial school board policies, but recent evidence suggests that the problems haven’t gone away.

In Fairfax, Virginia, for example, Stacy Langton, a mother of six, made news in September by reading aloud portions of books available in the high school library, at a school board meeting. The books, including Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison and Gender Queer: A Memoir, by Maia Kobabe include explicit illustrations of oral sex and masturbation, as well as graphic descriptions of sex between men and children.

The Fairfax school board was apparently so embarrassed at the meeting by the books’ contents that they ordered Langton to stop reading the books aloud and promised that the two books would be suspended immediately pending a review.

If the story stopped there, you might be tempted to conclude that Langton was successful in acting as a watchdog for her children, and perhaps deserving of the school board’s gratitude. After all, the school board did remove the objectionable books, at least temporarily.