Wyoming Judge Appeals to the Nation’s Highest Court

“Does a state violate the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause or Free Speech Clause when it punishes a judge who has discretionary authority to solemnize marriages because she states that her religious beliefs preclude her from performing a same-sex wedding?”

That’s the question Judge Ruth Neely, from Pinedale, wants the Supreme Court to answer.

Friday (August 4, 2017), she filed a petition with the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), asking them to review a March 7, 2017 ruling from the Wyoming Supreme Court. That ruling handed down a public censure and effectively removed her from a circuit court magistracy for answering a reporter’s question.

Each year about 10,000 such petitions are filed. Of these, only about 80 cases will be heard. But Neely’s petition already stands out above the crowd, giving her a far better chance than most.

That’s because SCOTUS does not usually take cases merely because a lower court got it wrong. They tend to take cases which fill three requirements. First, the case should be clean and uncomplicated. Second, they address important and emerging questions of constitutional law. Third, they must have nationwide and far-reaching implications. Neely’s case scores on all counts.

Cases as clean-cut as Neely’s rarely come before the Supreme Court. There is only one fact that underlies the whole case, and this is not under dispute, but freely stipulated by both sides: On a Saturday morning in early December 2014, in answer to a direct question, she told a reporter that she was unable to perform same-sex weddings because of her religious convictions.

The whole thing boils down to those words, and those words alone -- spoken outside of business hours and outside of the courtroom setting. Neely did not then, nor any time since, take any official action towards a same-sex marriage. Nor has she ever spoken again on the issue.

Over the course of the last 33 months she has turned down numerous speaking invitations and remained mute on the subject. This self-discipline now helps to make hers one  of the cleanest cases possible. There is one conversation between herself and one reporter, and nothing else to muddy the waters.

If you want to isolate the question of free speech and free expression, it cannot get any more isolated than that. Score one for Judge Neely.

As for emerging constitutional law, Neely’s case is on the cutting edge. The telephone conversation with a reporter happened more than six months before SCOTUS voided marriage law across the US with the Obergefell v. Hodges opinion, but she anticipated a question that would arise in its aftermath.

What prompted the reporter's phone call was the case of Guzzo v. Mead that brought same-sex marriage to Wyoming by vacating Wyoming Marriage statute (20-1-106). By the fall of 2014, four federal circuits had struck down marriage laws within their jurisdictions, but none had spelled out the specifics of what should replace them.

Changing marriage law is not like changing the speed limit. Speed limits are a balancing act between individual freedoms and public safety. Marriage law is about the very foundations of human existence. While there is a reasonable compromise between 60 and 70 MPH, there is no halfway ground between a sexual understanding of marriage, and an asexual understanding of marriage.

So, the question that Obergefell has raised across that land is this: can we craft laws that permit the peaceful coexistence of mutually exclusive views? Or must the disfavored view be driven out of public life altogether?

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) rules, which have been pushed on the judicial ethics commissions of numerous states, have the predictable effect of driving anyone with a sexual understanding of marriage out of government service.

Judge Neely’s case is not the only one of this type. Under similar rules in Washington state, Superior Court Judge Gary Tabor was "admonished" by the Commission on Judicial Conduct for publicly announcing that he would not perform any same-sex marriages.

As part of the discipline, he effectually agreed either to perform same-sex marriages, or none at all. While this case largely slid under the radar, Neely's case has raised the issue to national attention. It is time to address this question head on.

Such gag-orders and compelled speech are driving people out of government service either directly, or by the mere threat of sanction. Should SCOTUS allow this trend to continue it would set a dangerous precedent for the future of any group with a disfavored view.

Finally, the far-reaching implications of the Neely case are hard to overstate.

The Wyoming Supreme Court, guided by SOGI theory, assumed that every Wyoming judge must, without exception, not only recognize the legality of same-sex marriages, but personally perform them. This, despite there being no written law, anywhere, which requires this.

But the Court went farther still. They next asserted that any judge who contradicts this unknown and unwritten law is, by the mere act of speaking, undermining “public confidence in the judiciary.”

If a judge can be censured and removed merely for speaking disagreement with an unwritten law, what would prevent any judge, anywhere, from being punished and removed for speech disagreeing with any actual law or constitutional provision?

Is it constitutional to remove a judge who merely speaks in favor of removing the right to keep and bear arms? Should all those judges who publicly favored same-sex marriage prior to Obergefell vacated the laws of most states, have been censured and removed? What about judges (either pro-life, or pro-abortion) who openly acknowledge that Roe v. Wade was an abomination? Shall they be purged from our courts?

These questions are not just rhetorical. They are real. Wyoming’s censure of Neely opens the door to these absurdities and many, many more. It is high time we step back from the brink. Neely’s petition gives SCOTUS an opportunity to take in the big picture.

What we do today will have far-reaching implications for the free speech of all public servants, and all citizens in general, long after same-sex marriage recedes into the footnotes.

Further Reading:
The Federalist: Wyoming Judge Appeals to Nation's Highest Court After Losing Job for Being Christian

The Sequence to Success

“First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage.” This children’s rhyme is embedded among my earliest memories. It wasn’t taught to me at church, although I was a regular attender, and went to Sunday School to boot. It wasn’t taught to me by my parents, although my parents modeled this sequence themselves.

Rather, I distinctly remember learning this on the playground. It wasn’t particularly religious. It wasn’t meant to be preachy, or moralizing. It was just the way things were, and the way things ought to be. Call it “the world of Ozzie and Harriet,” if you want. You could even mock it, and say that ship has sailed.

In terms of cultural trends, you would be right. I was born at the tail end of the baby boom. Memories are sketchy from my early childhood, but the best I can figure, I learned this rhyme in the summer of 1968. Free love was already in the air and Woodstock was just around the corner.

A different wind was blowing. Soon, it would become a gale-force. In those years fewer than 9% of children were born out of wedlock. By the time the boomers came of age, 20% of them had children out of wedlock. Among the millennials the number rose to 33%. Today it is over 40%.

I haven’t heard this rhyme in years. Apparently, our children are not hearing it either. So what? Does it make any difference that the order of love, marriage, and baby has been upended in so many homes? Recent studies are suggesting that it does.

In 2009, a study from the Brookings Institute coined the term “success sequence.” Their study suggested that people who entered into family life by way of the specific sequence: education, job, marriage, then children, had a 98% chance of living in the middle to upper income levels.

Recently, the Institute for Family Studies released an analysis of the latest data gathered by the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth which was begun in 1997. This survey has been tracking a representative sample of around 9000 millennials born between 1980 and 1984. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics has been periodically surveying these people, since they were in their middle teens. The latest sampling checked on them when they were 28-32 years old.

What they found largely confirmed the predictions of the Brookings Institute. Across the board, 97% of these young adults who have completed the sequence of education, job, marriage, then children, have avoided falling into poverty. Of these, 51% are in the upper income bracket. By contrast, 53% of those who did not follow this sequence live below the poverty level, and only 7% are in the upper bracket.

With numbers so striking as these, you might think that they cooked the numbers, or neglected to take into account other significant variables. What about race and socio-economic background? What about sex and education, and test scores?

If you’re interested in the details, you will want to read the full report, “The Millennial Success Sequence: Marriage, Kids, and the ‘Success Sequence’ among Young Adults.” But the bottom line is this: after all these variables are taken into account, still the sequence of education, work, marriage, then children always comes out on top as the best indicator of success.

It remains true that childhood family income influences your prospects. So also do race, sex, and educational opportunities. These are areas which we should all be concerned about addressing. But they are factors over which the people born in them have no direct control.

The good news is that three factors that any person can control, matter a great deal in overcoming the disadvantages of circumstances beyond your control. We can control whether or not we stay in school. We have agency over how diligently we seek a job and how faithfully we work in it. We, alone, determine whether we get married before having children, or have children before getting married.

According to the latest research, each of these decisions has a strong economic impact on our future. Even among those who did not follow the sequence completely, finishing high school places you at an advantage over those who don’t. Of all millennials who finished high school, only 31% are now below the poverty line.

Adding a full-time job (or continuing school, or marrying and raising the kids at home) cuts that number by half. Then, by the time you add marriage before children, your chances of avoiding poverty are 97% certain. This sequence of success holds out hope for all young people, no matter how disadvantaged they are to start with.

Even those who were raised in the lowest income bracket have an 80% chance of rising out of poverty by following the sequence. Both blacks and Hispanics also have an 84% chance of living in an upper- or middle-income bracket when they follow the “success sequence.”

Of course, economic opportunity is only one measure of success. It would be wrong to put so much emphasis on money that we neglected physical health, emotional well-being, and spiritual care. Education, work and marriage also have benefits in these areas, but we cannot explore them here.

Still, just the economic numbers alone lead to some clear conclusions.

First, there is hope. We are surrounded by doomsday prophets who preach that your future is determined by the circumstances of your birth. They are quite wrong. The way you live has a whole lot more to do with your future success than other factors that you cannot control. Your future is not determined, it is in your hands.

Second, marriage matters. If I had a dime for every time I heard someone ask, “what can a marriage license give me that I don’t already have,” I’d be lifted to the high-income bracket. Social scientists and theologians might be able to explain why marriage makes a difference, but the numbers alone prove that it does make a difference.

Don’t forget, that the poverty numbers among the millennials are not just because single mothers are disadvantaged economically. Having children out of wedlock also hurts the economic prospects of the men who father them, even if they take no responsibility for the children. How could this be if it were only about single-motherhood?

Our grandparents said that marriage tames men. Women don’t tame men, marriage does. It increases incentive for responsibility, hard work and education. It brings out the best in both men and women.

That sounds like a pretty “Ozzie and Harriet” thing to say, and it is. American culture has spent the last 50 years trying to prove them wrong. But what if they were right?

SOGI Resolution - Wyoming Republican Party

Passed, August 12, 2017

 

Whereas the Party of Abraham Lincoln was created to abolish slavery, recognizing the dignity and equality of every human being under the law; and this same Republican Party continued to lead the fight for the natural rights of our common humanity, against the Jim Crow laws of the southern Democrats; and still stands for the rights of all people regardless of color, culture, ideology, or religion, and

Whereas such equal protection under the law demands protection against personal injury or property loss, but cannot demand affirmation of personal ideas, choices, or behaviors without infringing upon the integrity and property rights of other persons; yet “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” (SOGI) laws obliterate this foundational legal distinction, and

Whereas, laws using undefined and undefinable terms are inherently unjust, depriving persons under the law of any reasonable opportunity to know in advance how the law will be applied to them; and “gender Identity” lacks any definite legal content such that even its proponents are unable either to list every current identity, or rule out the addition of new identities in the future, and

Whereas wherever the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” have been added to antidiscrimination laws, this ill-defined language has enabled unjust prosecution and legal harassment such as…

• Forcing owners to use their own private property for objectionable uses…
• Stripping owners of the right to protect the privacy, safety and dignity of patrons in showers, privacy facilities, etc…
• Stripping owners of the right to hire persons of their own choosing…
• Forcing the use of pronouns, titles, and other speech demanded by others…
• Forcing artists to produce creative speech against their own views...
• Stripping mental health workers of the right to treat patients according to the best standards…
• Stripping physicians of the right to decide treatments according to their own judgement of what is best for a patient…

These and many other violations of personal integrity and property rights, are not only theoretical, but the actual ongoing results of SOGI laws which have closed businesses, confiscated savings, destroyed reputations, and costs millions in legal defense, and

Whereas even one use of a law that allows an unjust outcome is enough proof that it is a bad law; yet we have seen not one, but many cases where “sexual orientation and gender identity” language was used to materially harm law-abiding citizens depriving them of liberty, property and good name, therefore be it

Resolved that the Wyoming Republican Party stand opposed to the insertion of “sexual orientation,” and “gender identity” language into any policy, ordinance, guideline, or statute at every level of government, and be it further

Resolved, that the Wyoming Republican Party continue to protect the dignity, safety and integrity of every human being by advocating for just, defined, and limited laws which protect persons from injury and their property from loss while not punishing anyone for holding, expressing, or acting upon their sincerely held beliefs.

SOGI Laws Skew the Playing Field

Wyoming Equality has the right to discriminate. They have a right to treat me differently than they treat others, just because of what I believe. They have the right to refuse me employment, just because of who I am. When they declined to speak and act in support of my views, they were perfectly within their rights.

Likewise, bakeries, florists and printers who think like Wyoming Equality have the right to refuse my request to create pastries, arrangements, or prints that contradict the message they want to send. They have the right to call you and me bigots, homophobes, and haters. They even have a right to say that we are morally wrong.

Every single day groups like these exercise their first amendment rights. And it hurts. It hurts me, personally. It shames me publicly – as it is intended to, and it has created a climate where people who share the same ideas that I do are materially harmed on a regular basis. It hurts, but I still defend their right to discriminate.

Some, like Memories Pizza in Indiana, were forced to close due to threats of arson and bodily harm. Others, like Melissa’s Sweet Cakes in Oregon, had their equipment vandalized. Still more have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to the harassment and fines of their own state or city governments.

Businesses like Elane Photography, Arlene’s Flowers, Masterpiece Cake Shop, have been shuttered. Public servants like Kelvin Cochrane and Ruth Neely have been fired for expressing their beliefs off the job.

Discrimination is happening every day, in plain sight. I wish it would stop. I have personally talked with LGBT lobbyists and asked them to stop. I have publicly written in these pages asking to be included in a serious conversation of how we might work together to stop it.  (Let’s Work Together to Protect All Wyo. Citizens, January 1, 2017)

There are many other civic-minded people as well who sincerely want to join hands to protect all Wyoming citizens from harm to both their person and property. Instead, two Cheyenne City Councilmen have been working in secret with Wyoming Equality for months, refusing every request even to see a draft of what they are working on.

It is clearer every day that the real point of the ordinance is not to stop actual discrimination, but to insert “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” language into city code. That’s the whole thing. Anybody who thinks there’s a better way to address discrimination is excluded from the table.

Advocating for this SOGI language, Wyoming Equality’s Sara Burlingame has a favorite talking point which was quoted in the WTE last Thursday: “[it is] currently legal to fire, evict or refuse service to someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.” (Councilmen Again Pushing for Protections for LGBT Residents, July 20, 2017)

Of course, this is true. But it’s a half truth, rather, it is a scintilla of the truth. The whole truth is that it is currently legal to fire, evict or refuse service to someone because of their political party, hair color, height, weight, I.Q., schooling, tattoos and a million other relevant and irrelevant factors.

But is anyone saying that we should include all of this in an ordinance? That would be silly. Laws are not given to make everybody virtuous, or to make everybody do whatever I think they ought to do.

Laws are passed when there is actual harm that is happening which needs to be stopped, not simply when there is potential harm which few, if any, are actually doing. So where is the actual harm? Who, exactly, has been denied employment or housing based on sexual orientation or gender identity? We have been debating these SOGI laws for years and still haven’t seen one single case of this kind of discrimination in Wyoming.

Andrew Koppelman, a law professor and progressive activist, has studied discrimination nationwide and found,

“Hardly any of these cases have occurred: a handful in a country of 300 million. In all of them, the people who objected to the law were asked directly to facilitate same-sex relationships, by providing wedding, adoption, or artificial insemination services, or rental of bedrooms. There have been no claims of a right to simply refuse to deal with gay people.” (A Zombie in the Supreme Court: The Elane Photography Cert Denial)

Again, there have been no claims of a right to simply refuse service to gay people. None. What people are claiming is the right to decline saying things, by word or deed, that they don’t believe to be true. They simply want the same right that Wyoming Equality exercises every day.

For this reason, I find it offensive and disingenuous when people who are defending the First Amendment are smeared as “haters” who want to deny service to certain people. Those who make these unjust claims know better. They just don’t want to talk about the real issue.

There simply is no rising tide of discrimination against people on the basis of gender ideology. But there is, demonstrably, a rising trend to punish people who disagree with gender ideology. So who wants Cheyenne to punish those who oppose the new gender ideology?

Benjamin Rasmussen, Rolling Stone Magazine

The June 23, 2017 edition of Rolling Stone suggests an answer. Andy Kroll writes about software mogul, Tim Gill, who is methodically using his $500 million fortune to bankroll SOGI legislation across the country (“Meet the Megadonor Behind the LGBT Rights Movement").

He is not putting his money into national politics. Instead, he is stealthily giving thousands of dollars to elect local officials and push SOGI laws which “punish the wicked” (Tim Gill's words). Is this what is happening to Cheyenne?

By a sustained lack of transparency, Councilmen Roybal and Johnson have left room for this suspicion. When we elect councilpersons, we expect them to work with each other to draft laws in Cheyenne’s interest. We don’t want them to outsource the drafting to out of state activists for partisan interests.

But let’s get back to Wyoming Equality’s right to discriminate. Do I want to pass a law that strips them of these rights? By no means. I will reason and cajole. I will seek to persuade them both publicly and privately to respect my person and my ideals. But I will never, ever, seek the force of law to hinder their rights to speak and act according to their convictions. We should agree on this, at least.

The freedom to speak and act according to one’s convictions comes from a source higher than government. It derives from our common humanity. Governments have no right to take it away. We shouldn’t give them the power. The sweetness of a momentary victory comes at a bitter cost to our common dignity.

For the moment, people on both sides of the issue are free to say and do things that challenge the other side. We are both free to disagree using reason, logic, morals, beliefs, and even feelings. The playing field is level. I don’t call this discrimination, but Wyoming Equality does. They have that right.

Whatever we call it, we should all use our freedoms in charity and respect. SOGI ordinances foster neither. They only take free speech from people like me, and skew the playing field.

A Human Chain Changes Lives

 

Last Saturday (July 8, 2017) a human drama unfolded in Panama City, Florida which captured the attention of the world. Even land-locked Wyomingites are learning about riptides and boogie boards. All because a couple at dinner saw a problem and acted.

The Ursrey family went to the beach for the afternoon. After a swim with her sons, the mother, Roberta, waded out of the water to continue watching them from the beach.

But when she turned around, they were not where she left them. Instead they were farther out, way farther out. She walked along the beach trying to get their attention. That’s when she heard their screams. They were caught in a riptide, a current formed by wave patterns that flows as strong as a mountain river away from shore and out to sea.

Ignoring the warnings of other beachgoers, she and her family entered the current to save them from drowning. But the current was too strong even for the adults. Soon nine people were trapped in 15 feet of water, unable to get back to shore.

An on-duty policeman also headed into the water. But quickly turned back calling for a rescue boat instead. Seconds counted, but minutes were passing. That’s when Jessica and Derek Simmons got involved.

They had come to have a relaxing dinner at the beach. After swimming to the sandbar, Jessica noticed flashing lights on the boardwalk. Then she saw that everyone was intently looking and pointing to the same spot in the water. Guessing that they were pointing to a shark, she made her way ashore to where her husband was.

That’s when they both realized that someone was drowning. Quickly they started organizing a human chain. By the time 50 people had linked arms out into the surf, Jessica grabbed a discarded boogie board she had found, and started swimming to the Ursrey family. Derek followed on a surfboard.

Before long more than 70 strangers were acting as one. They formed a human chain reaching 100 yards out to sea. By that time, Jessica and Derek reached the stranded party and started ferrying them one by one to the waiting hands of the outstretched chain.

When all was said and done, nine people were rescued. None lost their lives. Even Roberta’s mother, who suffered a massive heart attack during the ordeal, made it to shore safely and is now recovering in the hospital.

An event that could easily have ended in the tragic loss of an entire family, instead became a story worth celebrating. As I think about this story, several features stand out. First of all, I think about the power of family.

Recall that when Roberta first saw he children in the riptide, everyone discouraged her from going after them. It was unreasonable, against the odds, foolhardy and dangerous. Of course, they were right. On every logical level, it would be futile to go after them. Why risk the loss of one more life, if the chances of saving the boys are almost nil?

Why? Because that’s what parents do. They don’t count the cost, or calculate the odds. They just act from a place of love so deep that even they cannot explain it. This irrational, crazy love is naturally fostered in the sacred bonds of family.

Others on that beach were not willing to drown in an attempt to save two boys. Even a police officer, who had a sworn duty to serve and protect, decided to turn back once he realized the power of the riptide. But their mother and father would stop at nothing.

That’s not an indictment of anybody on the beach, not even the policeman. I don’t mean to criticize anybody who sized up the situation and decided it would be futile to risk their own life.

I only want to take the opportunity to reiterate the point of last week’s column: nobody, but nobody is a better or more tenacious advocate for life than parents.

That’s just the way it is. God made us that way, and everybody benefits when we recognize this fact and encourage families to be families.

Kids, remember this when you are upset and feuding with your parents. Friends, mentors, and peer groups will come and go, but nobody will ever love you more than your parents. Ever.

Parents, remember this when you think of your kids. You have been given a job that nobody else is capable of doing. Even the best, most dedicated, and brightest care-givers in the world simply do not have the same instinctual love towards your kids as you do.

Citizens, remember this when you are thinking about the role of government in our society. Whether we are talking about education, health care, crime control, or anything else, the more power we keep in the hands of the home and family, the more we are supporting the lives of all human beings.

The second aspect of this story that merits some comment is the spontaneous organization of the human chain that effected the ultimate rescue.

This, too, started with a family, and a Christian one, at that. During interviews with reporters, Jessica said that she originally intended to give the boogie board to her godchildren, and on her Facebook page, she spoke openly of God’s help and blessing.

So, a married couple with other family members, who just happened to be there, acted when everyone else was only staring and pointing. I don’t want to overstate this.

Obviously, anybody could have been motivated to do what Jessica and Derek did. But the fact remains that scores of people did not act when they did.

What they did was not only to form a human chain, but to foment a chain reaction. Derek and his niece started gathering people and holding hands to stretch into the surf. From the humble beginnings of five people joining hands to help, they gave hope and purpose to everybody watching on. Suddenly five turned to fifteen and fifteen into fifty.

This is often the way great things are done. It doesn’t require the whole plan to be worked out, and all the pieces to be in place. It just requires one or two people to show the way. That’s only human. Very often people who sincerely care about our world take no action simply because they don’t know what action to take.

We should not be quick to accuse anybody of laziness, or cold-heartedness, or any other vice. Rather, it could be just as simple as taking up the task yourself which points to a hope that others had not seen. Hope itself has an incredible capacity to encourage us to act and give us direction.

In the aftermath of the story, Mrs. Ursrey bubbled over with praise for her rescuers and joy that she did not lose her family to such a horrible tragedy. Her entire life was changed by the quick thinking of Jessica and Derek which triggered an entire community of rescuers to mobilize in mere minutes.

The Ursrey family had their lives changed that day. But so did everyone else on that beach. No one is ever the same after they have been a part of such an event. To feel the human spirit rise to the occasion is a joy to behold. It changes our lives and whets our appetite for more.

So, keep your eyes on the lookout for people in need of rescue. You will never regret it.

Parental Rights, A Matter of Life and Death

The plight of baby Charlie Gard has captured the attention of people across the world, and cast a spotlight on the issue of parental rights.

In case you have missed his story, here’s a quick overview. Charlie Gard was born August 4, 2016 with a rare and life-threatening genetic disease. Shortly after he turned two months old, he was admitted to Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), where he has remained in intensive care ever since.

In January 2017, the doctors at GOSH decided that continued treatment was futile. But his parents disagreed. They continued to research the problem, contacting doctors all over the world.

Finding one in America who believed he could help Charlie, they started a GoFundMe page seeking the resources to get him treatment. Through the generosity of more than 83,000 people, they are now financially able to transfer Charlie’s care to America.

To this point, Charlie’s story is a remarkable but reasonably normal case of parents working to care for their child in the best way they know how. Disagreements happen every single day. Even experts can only judge to the best of their knowledge, and no one has a crystal ball.

We can respect the doctors who have been intimately involved in Charlie’s case since October, and we can respect the doctors who gave a second opinion from afar. We can also respect his parents who hope against hope, and who will leave no stone unturned in caring for the child God has entrusted to them. We can cheer the thousands of generous donors who wanted to help give Charlie a chance.

To settle disagreements, we don’t need to demonize one or the other of these parties to the case. We only need to ask one question: who has the final word? It’s not about power, but about the authority to decide. After everyone has offered their best advice, those with parental authority lovingly act according to their best judgment.

But here is where Charlie’s story turns Orwellian. Instead of accepting parental authority and releasing Charlie, wishing him all the best, the hospital used its power to seize parental authority for itself. They filed an application with the Family Division of the High Court to take Charlie off life support.

While the Great Ormond Street Hospital is the lightning rod of the case, they are not the ultimate culprit. The fact of the matter is that every judge, appeals court, and supreme court since GOSH filed the motion has likewise behaved as though Charlie’s parents have no parental authority. What is even more frightening still, they have not even bothered to consider the question!

From all this, I can only conclude that the evil is not located in the hospital, or in any of the judges handling the case, but in the entire system of laws which led to this debacle. Ever since the original application was filed on February 24, 2017, strangers have been intruding on the sacred responsibilities of Charlie’s parents with the false presumption that they have the authority to do so.

How did this happen?

We know how parental authority is given. It’s about the birds and the bees. From the moment a child is conceived in the womb, the mother and father who conceived the child are responsible to take care of it. Since they and they alone have parental responsibility, they and they alone have parental authority.

We also know how parental authority is taken away. When parents die, or if they abdicate their responsibility through neglect and abuse, the care of the child may be re-assigned to other parents. We call this “adoption” and it is such a serious matter that we have careful laws surrounding it to make sure that the natural parents have every chance to amend their ways before it happens.

But neither Christopher nor Constance, Charlie’s parents, have died. Nor have they done anything remotely deserving of being relieved of their parental authority. Yet, the net effect of Britain’s socialized medicine system, is that not only Charlie, but all British children, have been legally alienated from their natural parents.

This reality is not obvious on the surface. It is mostly hidden because British law still “allows” most parents continue to act like parents. But when push comes to shove – as it has in this case – the dragon is exposed to the light of day, and it’s ugly.

As more news comes out about Charlie’s condition, we are learning that children around the world have actually lived beautiful lives with this condition. In America, Arturito Estopinan has been fighting and surviving for six years, and Gina Mohan lived with Charlie’s condition until she was 15 years old. In Italy, nine-year old Emanuele Campostrini has been battling this condition since birth while playing chess, climbing mountains, creating art and participating in the Boy Scouts.

So why must Charlie die? This question is exposing the ugly truth of Britain’s socialized medical system, and the European Court of Human Rights behind it. They have been the objects of a world-wide outcry from the pope to the president.

 

The injustice is so obvious that neither the hospital (GOSH), nor the judges are willing to defend their decision on its merits. Rather, each in its own way is claiming that their hands are tied by “the law.”
This is what happens when injustices become so entrenched in bad laws that nobody can find a way back to sanity. After scrabbling for power and “rights,” nobody is willing to admit any responsibility. Rather, the fault lies somewhere in “the system.”

This is the inherent injustice of socialism. By denying the sanctity of marriage, life and family it robs people of their God-given authority, assigning it instead, to the state. Socialism, rather than resting upon the pillars of natural law, sets government up, not as the protector of rights, but as the arbitrary creator of rights.

The government is not God. It has the power to take life, but not the power to give it. Only God has the power to give life, and he gives it within families. Only a mother and a father can beget life, and take care of it. A government that is on the side of life, must be on the side of parents.

Notice that even in the case of adoption, parental responsibility is not given to society at large. It is always located in a particular set of parents. Families are the irreducible building block of any society. Break apart families and the whole society crumbles. Children, while gifts to the whole society, can only be realized as blessings when placed within their families.

As I am writing these words, news is coming across the wire that Charlie will not be killed today, but that he will get yet another hearing. This is good news. The world is hoping and praying that all those courts and doctors whose “hands are tied” will find some loophole that still allows them to do what is obviously right.

Nobody is asking for “society” to give Charlie life, or to foot the bill for his treatment. Rather, they are demanding that Britain, and the European Courts do what government is supposed to do in the first place: to protect the rights of his parents to love him in the best way they know how.

Meanwhile, now that we have seen where the careless stripping of natural rights can lead, it’s a good time for us all to get serious about protecting every individual right and freedom that was so carefully protected by our own constitution.

These rights are not arbitrary gifts from the government. They are the natural and inherent rights necessary for life, and the survival of any society. Charlie Gard is barely eleven months old. But even in such a short life, he has already taught the world this vital lesson.

Considering Guns in School, Let's Ask the Right Questions

When you send your kids to school, do you want them to be safe? Do you think that their safety is the responsibility of the school staff? Of course you do! Nobody would deny this.

Now, let’s go a little deeper. How much responsibility do you expect from the teachers? You expect them to give up some convenience to maintain safe procedures. You also expect them to stay alert for physical attacks upon your child and to intervene promptly. Teachers do this every day, and schools that fail to do this are likely to get sued – and rightly so.

But how far does this responsibility go? If protecting your child from a bully meant that a teacher risked getting punched or kicked herself, would you still hope her to intervene? And as the threat of danger increases, what then? At what point would a thoughtful parent say, “Go ahead, and let my child get beat up. You have to look out for yourself.”

Jesus once talked about the hireling who sees the wolf coming and flees because he cares nothing for the sheep. But the Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. When I think about the teachers in our school district, I do not know a one of them who would act like a hireling.

Even though I have no right to command that any teacher protect my kids at the risk of her own life, I have every confidence that this would be their instinct -- and their prayer. They want to sacrifice themselves for the good of our children. They prove it every single day.

That’s all part of the principle of “in loci parentis.” Teachers daily act “in the place of parents.” When you send your kids to school, you are entrusting other adults with the job of acting like parents toward your kids for the time that they are there. And this job comes with whatever rights and responsibilities are needed to get the job done.

It is only against this backdrop that we can really address the question posed on the front page of last Friday’s Uinta County Herald: “Should guns be allowed in schools?” (June 23, 2017). It is interesting how the question is framed.

A question like this makes no reference to people at all. Instead of naming teachers and children, it talks only about inanimate objects. Instead of considering the full range of possible circumstances, it assumes one unspoken assumption: that nobody will ever do what is not allowed.

We don’t ever write laws based on the assumption that people will never do what is not allowed. Rather, we write laws specifically to cover those times when people do what’s not allowed. And the one thing that we all agree on – the only reason we are talking about guns at all -- is that we don’t ever want to allow somebody to come into our schools and shoot our children.

So, what exactly, is the school board debating? Are they proposing that we buy metal detectors and hire airport security to screen every teacher, student, and parent who enters the school for guns? Or are we debating an after-the-fact policy which would fine a person days and weeks after they have already brought a gun into school? Only the first would prevent a school shooting. The second does not.

Every single school shooting that we have ever seen happened in a school that had after-the-fact policies in place. These policies make law-abiding citizens reluctant to remain fully prepared to stop evil, but they do nothing to prevent people with evil intent from carrying out their murderous plans.

So, unless the school board wishes to shoulder the cost of airport-level security at every one of Uinta County’s schools, we are back to the real question. If someone does bring a gun into school for the purpose of murder, is there a better way to prevent harm than to allow the men and women whom we entrust with the care of our children to bring the tools to school that would help them stop it?

If we are already hoping that they will sacrifice themselves for our children, isn’t it only human to permit them the tools to level the playing field, and to be successful? If we don’t, who becomes responsible for their lives and the lives of our children?

There is also a constitutional question here. Ever since the passage of the 14th Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the Bill of Rights applies not only to the federal government but to the states as well.

This is called the doctrine of “incorporation.” In 2010 (McDonald v. the City of Chicago) the U.S. Supreme Court explicitly said that since the United States government is forbidden from infringing on the right of its citizens “to keep and to bear arms,” so is the state and all its subsidiaries.

School districts are branches of the state government. So, the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States applies to them. The new state law (HB 194) that has raised this question for our school board seems to contain an internal inconsistency that will be litigated at some point in the future. If it is illegal for the State of Wyoming to infringe on 2nd Amendment rights, why would we think that the state can allow its school districts to infringe on these same rights?

Constitutional questions aside, we should consider the question practically as well. We have learned from bitter experience that the threat of fines cannot prevent a Columbine, or Virginia Tech, or Sandy Hook from happening. We have also learned that the threat of having even one armed person in the building can.

It may be that not a single teacher in all of Uinta County would want to carry a concealed weapon into his or her classroom. That is their right. But the mere threat that one of the teachers might have a weapon, makes it virtually impossible for an Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, or Adam Lanza to plan their evil. That is a far greater deterrent than all the fines in the world.

Our neighboring state of Utah has allowed concealed carry in schools for seventeen years. In all these years, not one single child or teacher has been attacked by a gun-wielding attacker, nor has one of these concealed carriers ever threatened another student or teacher.

We trust our teachers with the lives and well-being of our children every day. We even expect them to protect our children with the same selfless love that we do. Entrusting them with the tools to carry out this high calling is the right thing to do.