Plus, some other headlines you may have missed.   Fighting For Faith, Family & Freedom Friday, December 9, 2022 To: Friends & Supporters From: Gary Bauer Stand With American Values Stand with American Values as we defend Faith, Family and Freedom! Year-end fundraising makes up a huge part of our annual budget, and your support is essential to our success! More importantly, as you will read next, your support has never been more urgently needed. So, please stand with me now when you can DOUBLE your support! Down The Slippery Slope The (Dis)Respect For Marriage Act passed the House of Representatives yesterday. The legislation is now headed to Joe Biden’s desk to become law. Not surprisingly, Democrats in Congress voted unanimously for the bill. What was surprising is that a minority segment of Republicans voted for it, too. The first time the House voted on this bill, it passed with 47 Republican votes. Now, once members of Congress vote on something, they’re “locked in” and almost never change their positions. Because of grassroots opposition and major efforts behind the scenes, eight Republicans who supported the bill in the summer switched their positions in our direction on yesterday’s vote. (See how your representative voted.) Unfortunately, 12 Republicans in the Senate and 39 Republicans in the House still treated this issue like it was no big deal. It is a huge deal. This legislation is a declaration of war on faith in America by the radical left. That’s why there are efforts underway to censure members of the GOP “Surrender Caucus.” This bill was just the latest effort in a concerted campaign to silence religious people, particularly Christians, and to redefine religious liberty as nothing more than the right to go to church. Beyond that, the left does not want you to have any right to express your faith in the public square. If you do, you will be canceled, punished and financially destroyed. It is no coincidence that the rise of the militant LGTBQ movement has coincided with the rise of censorship in America. The left routinely labels Biblical truth as “hate speech.” There is no doubt that free speech and religious liberty are under constant assault in America today. Just this week, the Supreme Court was yet again confronted with another case pitting religious liberty against the demands of the gay rights movement. The government attorney for the state of Colorado literally compared the Christian belief in traditional marriage to racial bigotry that should be punished. The fact that so many Republicans don’t understand what is happening and what is at stake is deeply troubling. There must be accountability for those members of Congress who ran for the tall grass. Already the radical LGBTQ movement is demanding more. They got what they wanted, but they’re not satisfied. They never are. The intolerant, totalitarian left will not allow you to “live and let live.” When the debate over “gay rights” first started, many conservatives didn’t take it seriously. Dr. James Dobson and I were mocked for suggesting that there was a “gay agenda” aimed at children. It wasn’t long before the idea of men “marrying” other men burst into the public debate. We warned that this was a slippery slope leading to all kinds of negative consequences. Too many politicians in Congress refused to back a federal marriage amendment, so the left used the Supreme Court to impose its values on the entire country. And we went further down the slippery slope. Now we’ve got drag queen story hours for children in public libraries and public schools. We’ve got boys in girls’ bathrooms. We’ve got mutilating transgender surgeries on children for profit. And some Republican politicians (here and here) still refuse to do anything about it because they don’t want to “impose their values on anyone.” They’re worse than useless! If we fail to stop this trans insanity and fail to defend our First Amendment rights, we will be taking a giant leap down the slippery slope to hell. Please, my friends, help me fight back! The Lies Of The Left Last night, Elon Musk released the second round of files exposing the censorship practices at Twitter. The key takeaway is that intolerant leftists at Twitter were routinely censoring ideas they did not like and Twitter executives routinely lied to the American people about what they were doing. For years, conservatives complained about “shadow banning,” but Twitter executives insisted they didn’t do that and leftists mocked conservatives as “conspiracy theorists” in order to discredit them. Well, we now know that the term used at Twitter was “visibility filtering.” In addition to visibility filtering, Twitter also employed “Trend Blacklists,” “Search Blacklists” and “Do Not Amplify” notices to suppress conservative ideas from gaining traction. Stanford University Professor of Health Policy Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a critic of Dr. Fauci’s lockdown regime, was a victim of Twitter’s “Trends Blacklist.” Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA was put on the “Do Not Amplify” list. Conservative commentator Dan Bongino was put on the “Search Blacklist.” And Libs of Tik Tok, a popular Twitter account that routinely exposes the woke left’s insanity simply by reposting what other progressives post themselves, was suspended seven times -- even though it never actually violated any Twitter policies. Think about what the Biden Administration is doing right now. Various government agencies, including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, are trying to crack down on “conspiracy theories” and “disinformation.” Well, the Hunter Biden laptop story wasn’t a conspiracy theory or disinformation. It was the truth! The Deep State’s suppression of the story was a conspiracy to rig the 2020 election. Big Government, working with Big Tech, used COVID to restrict our constitutional rights, and when people objected, they were labeled “conspiracy theorists” and banned on social media. What I just described is the road to totalitarianism. It’s George Orwell’s “1984” with Big Brother telling you what to think and what to believe. This is what the Soviet Union did. To silence dissent, the Soviets labeled people “insane” and locked them up. It’s what Marxist states like communist China, Cuba and Venezuela are doing today. Yes, our democracy and our rights are in danger. But the threat is from the neo-Marxist left, not conservatives. What’s Putin Got On Biden? As we noted yesterday, Joe Biden gave Vladmir Putin Viktor Bout, the “Merchant of Death,” in exchange for WNBA star Brittney Griner. He made that trade, according to the White House, because Griner is an inspiration to LGBTQ people of color. I guess Marines, like Paul Whelan, are chopped liver to the Biden White House. One can only hope that Ms. Griner learned a little more respect for America during her time in Russia. But I want to focus more on the monster Biden just let loose. Bout was called the “Merchant of Death” for a reason. He is a notorious arms smuggler, not some decrepit, old white-collar fraudster. The reason he was in jail is because he was caught trying to sell terrorists surface-to-air missiles that can shoot down commercial airliners. He’s a big part of the reason why we’re going through all the harassment in TSA lines at the airport. And Joe Biden just set him free. It almost makes one wonder what Vladimir Putin has got on Biden?! Sinema’s Switch Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema made headlines this morning when she announced that she was switching her registration from Democrat to Independent. It doesn’t make any difference. She made it clear she would continue to caucus with the Democrats. Chuck Schumer will still be the majority leader. In an interview, Sinema declared, “Nothing will change about my values or my behavior.” For the record, she votes 91% with socialist Bernie Sanders. But for whatever it’s worth, there are now 49 Republicans, 48 Democrats and three left-wing “Independents” in the Senate. Other Headlines The Biden Administration dissolved a left-wing “parents council” after multiple lawsuits. The radical teachers’ unions have lost more than 140,000 members in recent years. Vowing to “end COVID-era draconian overreach,” Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order directing state agencies to immediately review all COVID-19 related penalties. The Oregon Supreme Court has temporarily blocked an anti-Second Amendment law from taking effect. Citing the company’s ties to communist China and threats to personal and national security, several conservative states are taking action against Tik Tok. A West Virginia state senator left the Democrat Party and joined the GOP. A New York City councilman left the Democrat Party and joined the GOP. MAKE YOUR TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION NOW SHARE VIA SOCIAL MEDIA Share This Email Share This Email Share This Email As a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, donations to American Values are tax deductible for federal income tax purposes. 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