Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Greg Lukianoff unpacks the latest Big Fed maneuver to control speech on campus through some pretty broad guidelines as to what now constitutes sexual harassment. Addressing a Title Iv and Title IX case at  the University of Montana,  a letter came to UM from the Justice Department and the Education Department:

But the joint letter, which announced a “resolution agreement” with the university, didn’t stop there. It then proceeded to rewrite the federal government’s rules about sexual harassment and free speech on campus.

Lukianoff is President of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education). He writes:

The implications for professors and students are enormous. An unsuccessful request for a date, or even assigning a potentially offensive book like “Lolita,” could now be construed as harassment. As attorney and civil libertarian Wendy Kaminer commented on The Atlantic’s website this week: “The stated goal of this policy is stemming discrimination, but the inevitable result will be advancing it, in the form of content-based prohibitions on speech.”

It seems there is a growing “right not to be offended.” Also, students in some cases may be punished before guilt or innocence is even determined!

Lukianoff is also the author of Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate. And an atheist. His book is the subject of an article by Les Sillars, Professor of Journalism at Patrick Henry College in Virginia. The article is “Lukianoff’s Ashes: What a Candid Postmodernist Might Do to an Atheist’s Book Exposing Campus Censorship.” Sillars takes us to a campus book burning where Lukianoff is denounced by the Vice President of the Office of Intellectual Diversity. (Should Lukianoff now watch out for the IRS?)

“Lukianoff”s Ashes” will be published in the next issue of Salvo Magazine, which goes to press Monday. (You may subscribe here.)

On these pages, I wrote last week about the meeting by Michael “Mikey” L. Weinstein, Esq., Founder and President of Military Religious Freedom Foundation (“MRFF”), a decidedly anti-Christian group, with President Obama Pentagon appointees on April 23, 2013, to develop court-martial procedures to punish Christians in the military (including chaplains) who express or share their faith with others.  Mr. Weinstein is the author of several anti-Christian books and named as one of the “100 Most Influential People in U.S. Defense” by Defense News in December 2012, where he outranked General David Petraeus.  Mr. Weinstein has stated that U.S. troops who proselytize are guilty of sedition and treason and should be punished – by the hundreds if necessary – to stave off what he called a “tidal wave of fundamentalists.”  Mr. Weinstein observed, “Someone needs to be punished for this.  Until the Air Force or Army or Navy or Marine Corps punishes a member of the military for unconstitutional religious proselytizing and oppression, we will never have the ability to stop this horrible, horrendous, dehumanizing behavior.”  The Pentagon tried to spin this as the only meeting between Pentagon officials and Mr. Weinstein.

However, while this meeting was depicted as the first meeting between Mr. Weinstein and Pentagon brass, The New York Times (“NYT”) reported on March 1, 2009, in a story entitled “Questions Raised Anew About Religion in Military,” (available here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/washington/01church.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1& ), that Mr. Weinstein first met with four-star general and Air Force chief of staff, Norton A. Schwartz, in February 2009, mere weeks after President Obama’s inauguration.  This was the first time that Mr. Weinstein and MRFF had an official meeting with a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  During President Bush’s presidency, Mr. Weinstein’s MRFF sued the Defense Department as part of his anti-Christian crusade, so President Obama political appointees and the sycophantic generals at the Pentagon knew exactly who Mr. Weinstein was, and what he wanted to do, when General Schwartz met with him in 2009.  The NYT story gives a laundry list of Weinstein and MRFF’s grievances against the Defense Department during the Bush administration, including a “ceremony that began and ended with a Christian prayer…the appearance of uniformed officers at religious events, [and] displays of crucifixes at military chapels…”    For their average NYT readers, the story indicated that “Christian prayers” are prayers that are offered “in Jesus’ name.”  (You sure didn’t need to explain that to readers in either Dallas or South Carolina.)  In any event, while the Bush Defense Department fought Mr. Weinstein and MRFF in court, President Obama and Secretary Hagel welcomed him again on Apr. 23, 2013, to discuss how to stop seditious and treasonous Christian evangelization (oops, I meant Christian proselytization) within the military, a distinction that may seem to be without a difference.

However, as a public service to our nation’s military personnel, Mere Comments offers to clarify the difference between Christian evangelism (which is still permitted speech and conduct) and proselytization (which is now prohibited speech and conduct).  Thus, military personnel are legally permitted to say, “Have you made the wonderful discovery of receiving Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?” and “Have you ever considered the claims of Jesus Christ on your life?”  However, military personnel are not permitted to say, “Hey Soldier, your life is all messed up!  You had better get right with Jesus Christ, Who loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life?”  Further soldiers will no longer be permitted to say, “Hey, Soldier, you want to come to the base chapel with me this coming Sunday morning?”  Notice the clear and distinct difference between the two sets of statements: prohibited statements use the term, “Hey, Soldier,” but permitted statements do not.  Clear, right?

Denyse O’Leary is on to something when she writes about the clearly growing unease that scientists who think science is the only path to true knowledge have with the Big Bang Theory. “Serious materialist atheists are well aware of its theistic implications and seek various ways to discredit it.”

Manufacturing doubts about the Big Bang
http://tbsblog.thebestschools.org/2013/05/09/manufacturing-doubts-about-the-big-bang/

The Big Bang: Fireworks still on despite downpour?
http://tbsblog.thebestschools.org/2013/05/08/the-big-bang-fireworks-still-on-despite-downpour/

Still under construction: A No Big Bang Universe
http://tbsblog.thebestschools.org/2013/05/08/under-construction-a-no-big-bang-universe/

The “I hate the Big Bang” Cosmology Club
http://tbsblog.thebestschools.org/2013/05/08/some-five-star-members-of-the-i-hate-the-big-bang-cosmology-club/

Hence, Multiverses are now the rage. So Christians are medieval and unscientific for believing in some heaven beyond our world, but scientists can state with a straight face that there are billions of universes–only we just can’t ever see them? Or (the latest) that Nothing existed, and then Nothing spit out our universe? Nothing? May favorite, though, if that there is an infinite number of universes from which ours happily came into being. So an atheist posits that something Infinite had to cause our world? Well, it’s not much, but maybe that’s a step in the right direction…..

On these pages, I recently asked for prayer for Uwe and Hannelore Romeike.  The Romeikes, an evangelical couple from Germany, wanted to homeschool their six children in Germany as they had grave concerns that the German public schools taught non-Christian values.  Homeschooling in Germany, banned continuously since the Nazi era, is the only European nation where homeschooling is banned outright.  As a result, because the Romeikes homeschooled their children in Germany, they faced significant fines, imprisonment, and the loss of custody of their children.  As a result, the family fled to the United States in 2008, and applied for asylum.  In 2010, Judge Lawrence O. Burman reasonably and appropriately granted political asylum in the U.S. for the Romeikes based upon the evidence presented to him and the appropriate legal standard.  However, Secretary Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security appealed Judge Burman’s ruling arguing that German laws banning homeschooling do not violate the family’s fundamental human rights, and she withdrew the family’s asylum status.  (I suppose she didn’t want to open the floodgates to homeschooling Christian asylum seekers.)  In late April, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments on appeal from the Romeikes.

Yesterday, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Obama Administration’s denial of asylum granted to the Romeike family.  The court said that the Romeikes had not made a sufficient case, and that the United States has not opened its doors to every victim of unfair treatment.  (Of course, you might not know that from the more than thirty million illegal immigrants currently living in the U.S.)  Nevertheless, the court of appeals did acknowledge that the U.S. Constitution recognizes the rights of parents to direct the education and upbringing of their children (whew!), but then refused to concede that the harsh treatment of religiously motivated homeschoolers in Germany amounts to “persecution.”  (I suppose it has to be something more pernicious than merely significant fines, imprisonment, and the loss of custody of the children.  Perhaps the judges expected harsher treatment more akin to Iranian or North Korean legal and judicial standards?)

I am certain that the appellate court’s decision will be appealed to the Supreme Court, which typically hears fewer than 100 cases each year.  However, my suggestion is that the Romeikes can easily disappear into one of many “sanctuary” cities (which include the President Obama’s adopted home city of Chicago), where they can find “appropriate” documents any early morning at a local home improvement center, live openly, and teach their children as they see fit.  Please continue to keep the Romeike family and their litigation team in your thoughts and prayers.  And if you wish to assist the family in a more tangible way, please contact Michael Farris from the Home School Legal Defense Association at 540.338.5600.  If the Obama Administration wins this effort, your rights as a parent are at risk.

I hope that my readers had a wonderful Mother’s Day.  For those whose mothers are still living, I hope that it was a great day of celebration.  For those who like me no longer have our mothers with us, Mother’s Day is when I contemplate and thank God for the wonderful memories of the love, kindness, and nurture that my mother gave to me.  President Obama, whose mother died in 1995, had no public schedule of events for yesterday, so I am sure the First Family celebrated Mother’s Day together.  However, in recognition of Mother’s Day, the White House tweeted the following to celebrate non-motherhood: “Thanks to the #ACA, 1 in 3 women under 65 gained access to preventive care—like birth control—with no out-of-pocket costs. #HappyMothersDay.”  The ACA referred to in the tweet is, of course, the Affordable Care Act, the so-called Obamacare.  Thus, for President Obama, Mother’s Day is a day to celebrate an abortion mandate that compels religious groups and others to pay for birth control and other abortifacients under the employee health care plans in violation of their religious liberty.  As my readers know, the abortion mandate has led to more than 100 lawsuits from religious groups, businesses, schools and universities, and others, that are not allowed to deviate from the narrow provisions of Obamacare’s mandates.  Of course, there was much that the President could have said to the American people to celebrate motherhood on Mother’s Day.  He could have written something general and non-political, as did Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition, who wrote, “With all the bad news of late, let’s turn our focus to those women in our lives who have loved us, cared for us, and mentored us.  We are so grateful for all the praying, faithful mothers and women who won’t give up.  I hope you enjoy special time with your families rejoicing in the blessings of a mother.”  Alternatively, if the President wanted to focus on the importance of women’s choices, perhaps he could have quoted Donna Ball, who wrote in At Home on Ladybug Farm, “Motherhood is a choice you make every day, to put someone else’s happiness and well-being ahead of your own, to teach the hard lessons, to do the right thing even when you’re not sure what the right thing is…and to forgive yourself, over and over again, for doing everything wrong.”  Either would have been very classy, but I think that such statements are outside of President Obama’s comfort zone.  But, with the White House tweet, President Obama is, at least, consistent and able to draw clear “red lines” with regard to abortion absolutism (though he readily struggles with “red lines” in Iran, Syria, North Korea, and the Benghazi scandal).  He recently blessed the Planned Parenthood convention by concluding his formal remarks by saying “God bless you!” and now blesses the ability of women to be non-mothers with no out-of-pocket costs.  On Mother’s Day?  Really?