Welcome to the Friday Five! Every Friday we share our top five
articles, stories, and quotes for you to read and share with your
friends and church families.
We
would be very grateful if you could make a donation of $100, $50, $25,
or $10 today towards our work producing these Friday Fives and
fighting for your values on thepublic square!
1. NC VALUES: 🎓 We practice it at
home.
Especially within our culture—with
its promotion of CRT on one hand and the politicization of the
classroom on the other—the home is the last bastion of the defense of
the family and childhood innocence. At the NC Values Coalition, our
entire team has lived that homeschool life in one form or another.
From my wife and I's experience homeschooling our four kids, to our
Executive Director's years spent homeschooling, to our Legal
Director's youth spent as one of 7 children homeschooled by her
parents, we are fighting something we preach and practice.
While you have yet to meet her, even our new
Communications Director—the talented Laura Macklem—is an passionate
homeschooling mom and advocate. So much so, that within her first week
of being hired, she was compelled to write an amazing opinion piece in
the Carolina Journal detailing her objections to comments by Democrats
stating a desire to regulate homeschool!
All that to say, we
know you agree with us that the last thing our homes and homeschools
need are the hands of big government, CRT-pushing,
regulation-fermenting bureaucrats who are too busy politicizing and
perverting classrooms to even bother fixing the massive challenges
facing many failing public schools.
2. LAURA MACKLEM: Fix public
schools before demanding more homeschool regulations
"I have been homeschooling in North Carolina for 10 years,
and many parents have approached me wondering what their homeschool
should look like. My answer to their question is that it should
reflect your own children’s interests and abilities. I know mine does.
However, when a North Carolina state senator suggested we need more
regulations that could compromise those freedoms, it caused many in
the homeschool community to contact their lawmakers asking to leave
the homeschool laws alone."
3. FOX NEWS: Transgender swimmer's
NCAA championship win 'just not right,' competitor's parents
say
"The parents of a female swimmer competing against Lia Thomas
in the NCAA championship criticized the transgender athlete's win as
unfair. 'It’s just not right,' the father of an Auburn University
swimmer told Fox News. 'It’s taking opportunity away from females that
have worked very, very hard for a long, long time, even before
college, to get in this position.' The swimmer's mother said she and
her husband 'do not support a biological male swimming in the women’s
championship meet' 'It is an unfair advantage,' she
added."
4. FOX NEWS: Web designer who
refuses to create sites for same-sex weddings says Colorado law
violates free speech rights
"Lorie Smith’s legal challenge against Colorado’s
anti-discrimination law, which the Supreme Court announced in February
it will hear, has drawn accusations that she is on an "anti-LGBTQ
crusade," but she adamantly insists that this is far from the truth.
Smith, a graphics and website designer, runs 303 Creative LLC,
a small business that she wants to expand into creating wedding
websites for couples. As a religious Christian, however, Smith opposes
same-sex weddings and does not want to promote them.
'I wanted
to invest my time and my talent and my passion in promoting messages
that I really care about and to also help people. And I get the
opportunity to do this every day through my custom graphics and
websites," Smith told Fox News Digital in an interview. "It’s
important to me that every message I promote, everything I create is
glorifying and honoring to our Creator.'"
5. HEADLINE USA: NC
Watchdog Devises ‘Mama Bear Manual’ to Fight School
Indoctrination
"About five years ago, Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of
the NC Values Coalition, first took notice of the disturbing new trend
in schools.
Parents of kids as young as kindergarten were
calling to raise concerns about the growing amount of LGBT content
(and other material that flouted traditional Christian values) seeping
into the curriculum.
At a gathering in Charlotte, NC,
Fitzgerald planned to instruct a handful of individuals about their
legal rights and recourse.
'I thought I was gonna meet with
about three parents,' she said. 'I walked in and there were about 25
people.'"
 WEEKLY PRAYER: LIBERTY
LORD, you have blessed us with a spiritual liberty that is so
wonderful and beyond description, that it can only be understood
through experiencing a life-giving relationship with Christ. However,
we also recognize that in your grace, you have blessed our country
with a political liberty that enables us to openly proclaim the
experience of a life lived in the freedom of the Gospel.
LORD, as individuals and as a nation, may we never take the
inalienable right of religious freedom for granted. Right now our
country has faced a rapid increase in the number of attacks made
against this cherished right. We have seen groups across our public
arena increase in boldness and frequency their smears against
religious liberty. They claim it is bigotry, when we know it is the
security of the greatest of all possible loves.
Be with your people and our country as it continues to protect
the constitutional right protected by our nation's Founders. Be with
legislators and the Supreme Court, as they determine through their
actions the protection of this particular and fundamental
freedom.
“It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore
keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery."
(Galatians 5:1)
"For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not
turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love
serve one another." (Galatians 5:13)
"Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for
evil, but use it as bondslaves of God." (1 Peter 2:16)
Amen
Will you chip in $100, $50, $25, or even $10 to help
the NC Values Coalition continue to fight for your rights? You can
donate by clicking here.
Sincerely,
North Carolina Values Coalition
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