Why Is The Military Funding Abortion Leave With Tax Money
This week on The Liberty Action Alert with Greg Seltz, join Dr. Seltz and his guest, Rev. Craig G. Muehler, CAPT, CHC, USN, (Ret.) — Director of LCMS Ministry to the Armed Forces (MAF), talking about the outrageous misuse of the military to incentivize abortion by funding leave, travel, and all expenses for abortions with taxpayer monies. Listen in for what must be done now to stop this egregious misuse of our soldiers and their commanders. Also hear the political, the cultural, the moral, and the faith perspective on these vital issues….as we continue to grow in the wisdom needed to be 2 Kingdom citizens for the country we love. Join us!
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Extended Transcript Summary
The following is 4 minute, 25 second summary of the 25 minute interview.
The administrative state, which is operating outside of our representative government, is a real threat to religious liberty. They are beginning to use these kinds of ways to knuckle the church under to a new message, a very secular message, a very anti-christian message.
When the states start to encroach on virtually every aspect of our lives, including education, you have to address this whether you like it or not, because the administrative state can actually silence the public voice of the church and her Ministries.
The administrative state is encroaching on the areas of the church they utilize tax money, and if they partner in those areas with the church, they use that to change the church's message. The benevolent state is heretical and bad policy.
The state should have nothing to do with the hard issues of the soul, so how can the church and the state work together to help those in need?
Justin Butterfield is Deputy General Counsel at First Liberty Institute and was previously Senior Advisor for Conscience and Religious Freedom at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He talks about the new partnership rules that are happening with the Biden Administration.
Federal agencies partner with private organizations to provide social services to communities that are underserved or unserved. These partnerships are described in the Equal Treatment Regulations, which explain how the government can partner with faith-based organizations as well.
In rural low-income areas of the country, religious organizations are the only organizations that are still there serving those communities. The government can partner with these religious organizations to provide these services to these communities, but those religious organizations don't have to sacrifice their religious beliefs.
This new proposed regulation would roll back a lot of protections for religious organizations, including the ability to say they're only going to hire people who hold to their religious convictions on certain issues.
They're saying no to religious providers if they're the only ones in an area, and that means that organizations that are serving the least served communities in America are being discriminated against because they're religious.
Church people push back against receiving state funds, but they don't ask the fundamental question, what is the state doing involved in this stuff? They've been browbeaten into believing that they have no say in how the state spends their money.
The federal agencies that deal with sexual protection can change the definition of sexual protection on us without any recourse. And so many Americans pay attention to what Congress is doing, but how many Americans look at the Federal Register?
First Liberty Institute submitted a public comment on the Biden Administration's attempt to weaken religious liberty protections for faith-based organizations. The government agencies are supposed to listen to the American people, but many don't know this is even an avenue that affects their lives daily.
We've got 2200 schools, we've got high schools, universities, we have preschools, and all this stuff, and suddenly we're dealing with state agencies that change the definitions overnight, and then they send the lawyers to our doors. Now we have to defend ourselves.
The new regulation would strip away protections for faith-based organizations that want to provide temporary housing for battered women, and would even apply some of these restrictions to indirect federal aid.
The federal government gives money to homeless people and needy people and then those people spend the money wherever they want, but they're trying to restrict money that comes indirectly through the homeless person. I talk about parental choice because we have a substantial parochial education system in the Lutheran Church and I think government is getting crafty and regulating education even that way. I can't understand why people think this is a good thing.
Every day, the Federal Government posts all the regulations they're considering for comment on Regulations.gov. Anyone can comment on them. There are thousands of pages per week of regulations on every topic, and if you're just going to the website, you got to Wade through a whole bunch of stuff you're not going to care about. So join for somebody's mailing list and pay attention to what the Federal Government is doing.
A world view exists that sees the church as a nefarious actor in the Public Square. The government has created agencies that want to push the church out in a variety of ways, and this is one of those silent but deadly Ways.
The federal government often discriminates against religious organizations, but the courts are often fact specific, so even if a court says no, an administrative agency will often do it anyway, because they don't know if a court would prohibit it.
Our church has been involved in some of these cases, and one that took nine years to fight back was trying to take away our radio station. We did nothing wrong, and we were exonerated on every level, but we keep voting for these frustrated people.
Oftentimes the process is the punishment, which is why we advocate for putting in regulations like this explicit religious protections right for religious organizations so that it's clear what their rights are and they don't have to litigate from this area of I'm not sure if this is protected or not.
A downtown Chicago Church was having services and the police showed up and put 500 tickets on every one of their cars, but they wouldn't let them in. The church said they should protect themselves from gangs.
The Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty is back in D.C., and they're worried that government folks actually think their work supplants the work of the church. They want to make it so punitive that faith-based organizations won't do this kind of service.
Thank you so much for your work, Justin, and we will continue to pray for you and comment on all of this stuff. I will thank you very much for having me, take care, and God bless.
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