Feds Break Silence, Try to Explain Why They Didn’t Notify Victims in Secret Non-Prosecution Deal With Child Sex Offender Jeffery Epstein

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Federal prosecutors went on the offensive this month, denying allegations that they bowed to pressure from billionaire Palm Beach resident Jeffrey Epstein and his high-priced lawyers at the expense of dozens of teenage girls he sexually abused.

In their first public comment since 2007 — when they negotiated a deal that allowed Epstein to escape federal charges — prosecutors filed hundreds of pages of documents in U.S. District Court, explaining what led to the now infamous non-prosecution agreement that has been decried as “a sweetheart deal.”

Contrary to claims by attorneys representing two of Epstein’s victims in a lawsuit against the federal government, Assistant U.S. Attorney Marie Villafana said she and her superiors were trying to help the traumatized young women when they agreed to let Epstein plead guilty to state prostitution charges.

The now-64-year-old money manager, who spends most of his time on his estate in the Virgin Islands, served 13 months of an 18-month sentence in the Palm Beach County Stockade. He was allowed to leave each day to go to work. . .

In their [pending] lawsuit, the victims’ attorneys, Bradley Edwards and Paul Cassell, say [one of the released documents] is evidence of their claim that prosecutors lied to the victims. They also claim that prosecutors never told Epstein’s victims about the plea deal. (Read more from “Feds Break Silence, Try to Explain Why They Didn’t Notify Victims in Secret Non-Prosecution Deal Child Sex Offender Jeffery Epstein” HERE)

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SICK: Bill Cosby Announces Townhalls to Educate Young Girls on Sex Abuse

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Bill Cosby will hold a series of town halls to educate young people on sexual assault, his publicists said.

Andrew Wyatt and Ebonee Benson were on “Good Morning Alabama” Wednesday and said Cosby “wants to get back to work” and is planning town halls that could start as early as next month.

“This issue can affect any young person, especially young athletes of today,” Wyatt said. “And they need to know what they’re facing — when they’re hanging out and partying, when they’re doing certain things they shouldn’t be doing.”

The announcement comes less than a week after Cosby’s high-profile trial on charges of aggravated indecent assault ended in a mistrial. The jury was unable to come to a unanimous decision. . .

Cosby, 79, has been accused of sexual assault or misconduct by at least 50 women [and has settled many civil suits alleging his sexual abuse]. (Read more from “SICK: Bill Cosby Announces Townhalls to Educate Young Girls on Sex Abuse” HERE)

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Monopoly of the Fed Ending: Texas Picks Company to Run Bullion Depository

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The Texas bullion depository took a major step closer to reality last week when officials formally announced the private vendor that will run the facility. The creation of a state bullion depository in Texas represents a power shift away from the federal government to the state, and it provides a blueprint that could ultimately end the Fed.

Gov. Greg Abbot signed legislation creating the state gold bullion and precious metal depository in June of 2015. The facility will not only provide a secure place for individuals, business, cities, counties, government agencies and even other countries to to store gold and other precious metals, the law also creates a mechanism to facilitate the everyday use of gold and silver in business transactions. In short, a person will be able to deposit gold or silver – and pay other people through electronic means or checks – in sound money.

Last Wednesday, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar announced Austin-based Lone Star Tangible Assets will build and operate the Texas Bullion Depository. Officials say the facility could open as early as next January.

The company will initially run the depository out of its current Austin location, and will build a new vault facility in the Austin area. Hegar said customers will not have to travel to Austin in order to utilize the depository. The plan is to establish a branch-like system.

“We envision a network of licensed and insured depository agents to help Texans sign up for our services,” Hegar told the Texas Tribune.

Tom Smelker will serve as the state’s first Texas Bullion Depository administrator. He is currently the director of Treasury Operations in the Comptroller’s office.

According to an article in the Star-Telegram, state officials want a facility ‘with an e-commerce component that also provides for secure physical storage for Bullion in an existing facility or a newly constructed facility.’ Officials say plans for a depository should include online services that would let customers accept, transfer and withdraw bullion deposits and related fees.

By making gold and silver available for regular, daily transactions by the general public, the new law has the potential for wide-reaching effect. Professor William Greene is an expert on constitutional tender and said in a paper for the Mises Institute that when people in multiple states actually start using gold and silver instead of Federal Reserve notes, it would effectively nullify the Federal Reserve and end the federal government’s monopoly on money.

Over time, as residents of the state use both Federal Reserve notes and silver and gold coins, the fact that the coins hold their value more than Federal Reserve notes do will lead to a ‘reverse Gresham’s Law’ effect, where good money (gold and silver coins) will drive out bad money (Federal Reserve notes).

As this happens, a cascade of events can begin to occur, including the flow of real wealth toward the state’s treasury, an influx of banking business from outside of the state – as people in other states carry out their desire to bank with sound money – and an eventual outcry against the use of Federal Reserve notes for any transactions.

University of Houston political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus called development of a state gold depository a step toward independence.

This is another in a long line of ways to make Texas more self-reliant and less tethered to the federal government. The financial impact is small but the political impact is telling, Many conservatives are interested in returning to the gold standard and circumvent the Federal reserve in whatever small way they can.

The Texas gold depository will create a mechanism to challenge the federal government’s monopoly on money, and provides a blueprint for other states to follow. If the majority of states controlled their own supply of gold, it could conceivably make the Federal Reserve completely irrelevant.

State bullion depositories are one of four steps states can take to help bring down the Fed. (For more from the author of “Monopoly of the Fed Ending: Texas Picks Company to Run Bullion Depository” please click HERE)

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Wall Street Journal Fires Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for Having Stake in CIA-Run Company

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The Wall Street Journal today announced that it is sacking its chief foreign affairs correspondent, Jay Solomon, related to “ethical lapses” that were revealed in a Tuesday AP expose that revealed Solomon’s substantial ties to an arms dealer and smuggler for the CIA.

The AP investigation focused on Farhad Azima, an Iran-born magnate who had ferried weapons for the CIA, and founded a company, Denx LLC, that was trying to make a deal with the United Arab Emirates on a surveillance scheme intended to spy on Iran.

Solomon had been using Azima as a key source in his reporting for years, and the AP story found Azima offered Solomon a 10% stake in Denx LLC. Among the services Solomon was expected to provide was to secure a meeting with a top UAE official to sell him on the surveillance proposal.

The AP’s investigation doesn’t reveal how far this relationship actually went, and Solomon denied ever intending to have a business relationship at all. He did however admit to “mistakes in my reporting and entered into a world I didn’t understand.”

The Wall Street Journal insists Solomon forfeited their trust and that they were dismayed by his “poor judgement.” (For more from the author of “Wall Street Journal Fires Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for Having Stake in CIA-Run Company” please click HERE)

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Would Baseball Team Have Mocked Tebow’s Religion Had He Been a Muslim?

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The Charleston RiverDogs are in the doghouse with baseball fans after they incessantly mocked the Christian faith of Columbia Fireflies outfielder Tim Tebow.

“While we believe that our promotions were poking fun at Mr. Tebow’s celebrity status rather than his religion or baseball career, our intent was not to offend anyone, and for the fact that we did offend, we are sorry,” general manager Dave Echols wrote in a statement to The Post and Courier.

Tebow, a devout Evangelical Christian, was in Charleston last weekend for a three-game series with the minor league ball club. The Fireflies are the Class A affiliate of the New York Mets.

Every time Tebow came to bat, the “Hallelujah Chorus” was played over the public address system. The Riverdogs’ mascot wore eye black inscribed with “John 3:16” and was filmed “Tebowing” on the field.

You might recall during Tebow’s football career at the University of Florida, he would strike a prayerful pose on the sidelines that became known as “Tebowing.” He was roundly criticized by godless liberals for writing “John 3:16” in eye black during his gridiron days. (Read more from “Would Baseball Team Have Mocked Tebow’s Religion Had He Been a Muslim?” HERE)

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Suppressing Puberty to ‘Treat’ Gender Dysphoria. Really?

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Who’s for pumping confused kids full of hormones to suppress the onset of their puberty? It’s a common “therapy” given to boys who think they are girls and vice versa.

According to the must-read new paper “Growing Pains: Problems with Puberty Suppression in Treating Gender Dysphoria” by Paul W. Hruz, Lawrence S. Mayer, and Paul R. McHugh in The New Atlantis, puberty suppression “advocates argue that it represents a prudent and ‘fully reversible’ way to give young people with gender dysphoria and their families time to sort out the difficult issues surrounding gender identity.”

Gender dysphoria is the learned name for the mental malady of men thinking they’re women and vice versa.

The Problems With Suppressing Puberty

The problem, as Hruz and the others outline, it is that drugging kids up is a “radical and experimental” procedure “based more on subjective judgments and speculation than on rigorous empirical studies.” The so-called treatment is “being applied in an uncontrolled and unsystematic manner” and is endangering kids.

Worse is that “the claim that puberty-blocking treatments are ‘fully reversible’ is not supported by scientific evidence, and possible side effects include abnormal bone and muscle development, neurological problems, and infertility.”

And worst, “These treatments may make it more likely that patients whose cross-gender identification would not have persisted past childhood will continue to identify as the opposite sex into adulthood.”

Given the faddish and hip nature of transgenderism, where experimentation is increasing, this is no small worry.

As the authors rightly point out, “Children are not fully capable of understanding what it means to be a man or a woman. Most children with gender identity problems eventually come to accept the gender associated with their sex and stop identifying as the opposite sex.” Drugging confused kids or guiding them with “gender-affirming” words transforms what is often a temporary infatuation into a lifelong affliction.

What LGBT Advocates Say

Now some medical groups, such as the Endocrine Society and World Professional Association for Transgender Health, advocate giving kids who are confused about their biology chemicals to slow the onset of puberty. They do this because, they claim, “gender dysphoria ‘rarely desists after the onset of pubertal development’” and because, they claim, “suppression causes no irreversible or harmful changes in physical development and puberty resumes readily if hormonal suppression is stopped.”

Slowing puberty “gives adolescents more time to explore their gender nonconformity” and — and this a big and — the treatment “may facilitate transition [to living as the opposite sex] by preventing the development of sex characteristics that are difficult or impossible to reverse if adolescents continue on to pursue sex reassignment” (brackets original).

In other words, if a boy imagines he is a girl, stopping his testes (and so on) from developing makes it easier for him to pretend he is a girl. That he will ever become a girl (or woman) is, of course, impossible. Stopping a girl who thinks she’s a boy from developing her breasts makes it easier for her to pretend to be a boy, but that she will ever become a boy (or man) is also impossible.

This new “treatment” is also advocated by the “LGBT advocacy group” the Human Rights Campaign, who have partnered with the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Osteopathic Pediatricians. They have put out a guide which says “to prevent the consequences of going through a puberty that doesn’t match a transgender child’s identity, healthcare providers may use fully reversible medications that put puberty on hold.”

When “Treatment” Can Actually Cause the Malady

But, say Hruz and the others,

Whether puberty suppression is safe and effective when used for gender dysphoria remains unclear and unsupported by rigorous scientific evidence. … In the case of gender dysphoria, however, we simply do not know what causes a child to identify as the opposite sex, so medical interventions, like puberty suppression, cannot directly address it.

According to the industry standard Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, anywhere from 70% to 97.8% of boys and 50% to 88% of girls snap out of their gender dysphoria. So there seems little justification for chemical intervention.

Even worse, as Hruz et al. say, “The interventions could, in some cases, be harmful, if they lead children whose gender dysphoria may have resolved in adolescence to instead persist in a dysphoric condition.”

In other words, the treatment can cause the very malady it’s said to be curing.

Hormonal Treatments are Not the Answer

The claim that suppressing puberty in patients with gender dysphoria is “fully reversible” is also thin on evidence. “Given how little we understand about gender identity and how it is formed and consolidated, we should be cautious about interfering with the normal process of sexual maturation.”

And there “have been no controlled clinical trials comparing the outcomes of puberty suppression to the outcomes of alternative therapeutic approaches.” Plus, there is evidence from trials in animals that puberty suppression causes direct harm in neurological development.

We frequently hear from neuroscientists that the adolescent brain is too immature to make reliably rational decisions, but we are supposed to expect emotionally troubled adolescents to make decisions about their gender identities and about serious medical treatments at the age of 12 or younger. And we are supposed to expect parents and physicians to evaluate the risks and benefits of puberty suppression, despite the state of ignorance in the scientific community about the nature of gender identity.

It is obvious some kind of treatment is necessary for children suffering from gender dysphoria. “But as scientists struggle to better understand what gender dysphoria is and what causes it,” the authors argue, “it would not seem prudent to embrace hormonal treatments and sex reassignment as the foremost therapeutic tools for treating this condition.” (For more from the author of “Suppressing Puberty to ‘Treat’ Gender Dysphoria. Really?” please click HERE)

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Canadian Charged in US Airport Terror Attack

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A Canadian man from Tunisia shouted in Arabic before stabbing a police officer in the neck at a Michigan airport, and referenced people being killed overseas during the attack that’s now being investigated as an act of terrorism, federal and court officials said.

Amor Ftouhi, 49, of Montreal, was immediately taken into custody. A criminal complaint charging him with committing violence at an airport says Ftouhi asked an officer who subdued him why the officer didn’t kill him.

The attack Wednesday at Bishop International Airport in Flint, Michigan, is being investigated as an act of terrorism, but authorities have no indication at this time that the suspect was involved in a “wider plot,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge David Gelios. (Read more from “Canadian Charged in US Airport Terror Attack” HERE)

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Up to 5.7 Million Noncitizens Voted in Past Presidential Elections, Study Finds

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As many as 5.7 million noncitizens voted in the 2008 election and potentially more voted in 2016, according to a new study by Just Facts, a New Jersey-based research group, drawing on information from other studies.

The study—based on data compiled from Harvard University’s Cooperative Congressional Election Study, an analysis published in the journal Electoral Studies co-authored by Old Dominion University faculty, and Census data—also provides some support for what then-President-elect Donald Trump tweeted in late November, when he asserted he won the popular vote if the fraudulent votes were deducted. The Just Facts study did not look specifically at 2016.

The study by Just Facts, which identifies its point of view as conservative/libertarian, but says it maintains independent inquiry, determined as few as 594,000 and as many as 5.7 million noncitizens voted in 2008, in the race between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain. Eighty-two percent of noncitizens who admitted to voting in a survey said “I definitely voted” for Obama.

An estimate from 2012, which the study finds to have less complete data, is between 1 million and 3.6 million noncitizens registered to vote or voted, including both the “self declared” and the “database-matched” populations.

Democrat Hillary Clinton won the popular vote over Trump by about 2.9 million votes in 2016.

Previously, an Old Dominion University professor’s analysis found that, extrapolating on a more extensive 2014 study, an estimated 800,000 noncitizens voted in the 2016 election—falling well short of enough to affect the popular vote.

James Agresti, president of Just Facts, was cautious about stating whether this would have changed the result of the popular vote in the 2016 election. He concluded it is likely the number of noncitizen voters in the most recent presidential election was higher than eight years ago.

When asked if noncitizen voters changed the popular vote outcome in 2016, he said, “There is a distinct possibility.”

“The 3 million vote margin would be smack in the middle,” Agresti told The Daily Signal. “I don’t want to say it would. There are a lot of uncertainties. It’s possible.”

There are two ways of looking at the noncitizen voting figures for 2012, Agresti said. Based on the Harvard and Census data, between 1 million and 2.6 million noncitizens voted under “self-declared.” However, there are between 1.2 million and 3.6 million “database-matched” noncitizens who voted that year. So the full range is 1 million to 3.6 million. Because of the overlapping information, Agresti is particularly cautious about drawing conclusions here.

“Just Facts does not have all the data needed to calculate inclusive figures for the 2012 election, so these figures are undercounts,” Agresti said.

Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation who has written extensively about voter fraud, was not very familiar with Just Facts, but he said if the findings were true, it lends more evidence to a growing problem.

“This is just another indication of how serious the problem may be and why it is even more important to investigate the possibility of noncitizens voting,” von Spakovsky told The Daily Signal.

In May, Trump named Vice President Mike Pence to chair the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

The difference between the Just Facts finding and the estimate from Old Dominion University research is likely because of a different methodology, said Jesse Richman, an associate professor of political science at Old Dominion University, who did the aforementioned study that arrived at 800,000 noncitizen votes in the 2016 election.

“My impression is that the differences arise principally from the different assumptions we made about how to treat individuals for whom there was some ambiguity about whether they voted or not, e.g. individuals who said they didn’t vote but had a validated vote, etc.,” Richman told The Daily Signal in an email. “There are a variety of assumptioans one could make about how to treat those individuals, and my general impression is that this is the main thing driving the differences between our results.”

Richman’s figure was based on the 2014 study he co-authored that looked at noncitizen voting in the 2008 and 2010 elections. Richman applied the methodology from the study of those years to arrive at an estimated 800,000 noncitizen voters in 2016. (For more from the author of “Up to 5.7 Million Noncitizens Voted in Past Presidential Elections, Study Finds” please click HERE)

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4 Conservative Senators Say They Can’t Vote for GOP’s Draft Health Care Bill

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Four conservative senators promptly said they can’t support the draft of a health care bill released Thursday by the Senate’s Republican leadership as a cure for Obamacare.

“Currently, for a variety of reasons, we are not ready to vote for this bill, but we are open to negotiation and obtaining more information before it is brought to the floor,” Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and Mike Lee of Utah wrote in a formal statement.

The four Republicans said they oppose the Senate leadership plan, called the ‘‘Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017,” because it does not fully repeal and replace Obamacare.

“There are provisions in this draft that represent an improvement to our current health care system, but it does not appear this draft as written will accomplish the most important promise that we made to Americans: to repeal Obamacare and lower their health care costs,” the four senators wrote.

The Senate plan would end mandates for health insurance, including the Obamacare mandate forcing consumers to buy insurance or pay a penalty. It also would phase out the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare over three years, Axios reported.

The eventual support of Cruz, Johnson, Lee, and Paul is crucial because Republicans have a 52-46 majority over Democrats in the Senate. Two independents caucus with the Democrats.

Republicans will need at least 51 votes to pass a health care bill under a procedure known as budget reconciliation, with Vice President Mike Pence empowered to break a tie.

President Donald Trump said Wednesday night in a speech in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that it would be “so easy and so beautiful” if some Democrats would judge the final plan on its merits.

One major difference in form compared with the House-passed version of the health care bill is the absence of the so-called MacArthur amendment.

The MacArthur amendment, negotiated in the House to resolve differences between conservative and centrist Republicans, gives states “the ability to repeal cost-driving aspects of Obamacare” left in place in the original version of the American Health Care Act, the House Freedom Caucus said in a formal statement.

Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, R-N.C., and Tuesday Group Co-chairman Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., negotiated the amendment.

The Senate proposal instead leans on Obamacare’s “1332 waiver,” described this way by Heritage Foundation health policy expert Bob Moffit in a recent report:

Section 1332 of Obamacare allows states to apply to the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and get a ‘waiver’ from 11 statutory provisions, including the individual and employer mandates, the actuarial value mandate that determines coverage levels, the federal rules governing the definition of individual and small group coverage, and the federal essential health benefit requirements.

How much flexibility will states have under the Section 1332 waiver is an important question, some observers say.

In a statement provided to The Daily Signal, Moffit, who was traveling, said he is not sure how the Senate’s proposed legislation would repeal and replace Obamacare.

Overall, the Senate bill is better than Obamacare because it contains provisions to reduce insurance premiums and promote access to insurance in the short run; cut taxes; and provide major Medicaid reform that will help refocus the program to those most in need.

It is still an open question, however, whether the bill will repair enough of the damage caused by Obamacare so that the middle-class self-employed will be able to find affordable health insurance in five years.

The Senate plan retains Obamacare’s requirements for covering pre-existing conditions and preserves Obamacare’s tax credits for individuals based on age, location, income and geography, The Hill reported.

The legislation also would retain for two years Obamacare’s cost-sharing subsidies, which were created to reduce out-of-pocket costs for low-income patients who purchase silver-level insurance plans through Obamacare’s exchanges, as The Daily Signal previously reported.

Senate Democrats, some of whom Trump appears to be trying to shame publicly into negotiating, are wary of the draft. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was among them, tweeting:

Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., tweeted:

The House passed its revised version of Republicans’ health care bill May 4 by a razor-thin vote of 217-213.

Senate Republicans are using the tool called budget reconciliation to pass a bill because it requires only 51 votes to clear the Senate, rather than 60 votes to end debate and proceed to a floor vote.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., formally released the plan Thursday.

Four conservative senators promptly said they can’t support the draft of a health care bill released Thursday by the Senate’s Republican leadership as a cure for Obamacare.

“Currently, for a variety of reasons, we are not ready to vote for this bill, but we are open to negotiation and obtaining more information before it is brought to the floor,” Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and Mike Lee of Utah wrote in a formal statement.

The draft of the Senate bill would defund Planned Parenthood for a year, a promise that House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., made in March.

Senate Republicans’ draft also specifies that tax credits could not be used to pay for abortions.

Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., a member of the House Freedom Caucus, voiced concern in a statement about the Senate draft:

I am extremely disappointed by the lack of resolve from Congress to repeal Obamacare—most recently, with the U.S. Senate’s legislation. The American people demanded a full repeal. Now, the 115th Congress is dangerously close to abandoning our promise and opportunity to completely repeal Obamacare, remove government from the health care industry, permanently defund Planned Parenthood, and give Americans their long-awaited relief from overwhelming premiums.

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., another conservative senator, said he is studying the draft and hasn’t made up his mind.

“I’m going through it,” Lankford said in an interview with CNN. “I have a lot of questions still, a lot of things we have talked about. It’s 142 pages of text, but there’s things piled into that text that we’ve got to decipher. Put me down as a solid undecided.” (For more from the author of “4 Conservative Senators Say They Can’t Vote for GOP’s Draft Health Care Bill” please click HERE)

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Circuit Court Win for Religious Freedom on Gay Marriage

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The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously on Thursday that a Mississippi law that protects religious liberty and the rights of conscience in light of the redefinition of marriage may go into effect.

In the decision, the circuit court overruled a previous judgment from a district court judge who had declared the Mississippi law unconstitutional for violating the Establishment Clause and the Equal Protection Clause.

But as the circuit court pointed out, the challengers to Mississippi’s law lack standing because they “have not clearly shown injury-in-fact.” In other words, they did not show how the Mississippi law protecting liberty for people who hold to the pre-Obergefell v. Hodges definition of marriage harmed them.

The court explained that the “failure” of the “plaintiffs to assert anything more than a general stigmatic injury dooms their claim.”

While the ruling focused on the lack of standing of the plaintiffs, there are plenty of reasons to rule in favor of the constitutionality of laws like Mississippi’s on the merits.

As Sherif Girgis and I explain in our new book, “Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination,” there is nothing scandalous about protections for particular views that are at odds with those on which the government acts.

When the government takes Americans to war, exceptions cover pacifists. When the government guarantees abortion, exceptions cover pro-lifers. These exemptions don’t amount to establishments of any religion, and neither do laws protecting dissenters after Obergefell.

Indeed, as law professor Richard Epstein explains, the Establishment Clause—meant to “knock down state coercion for religion”—can’t be used to invalidate “a statute whose whole purpose was to insulate private parties from any form of coercion.”

So, what does the Mississippi law do? As previously explained at The Daily Signal:

Religious organizations, like churches, cannot be forced to use their facilities to celebrate or solemnize weddings that violate their beliefs.

Religious convents, universities, and social service organizations can continue to maintain personnel and housing policies that reflect their beliefs.

Religious adoption agencies can continue to operate by their conviction that every child they serve deserves to be placed with a married mom and dad.

Bakers, photographers, florists, and similar wedding-specific vendors cannot be forced to use their talents to celebrate same-sex weddings if they cannot do so in good conscience.

State employees cannot be fired for expressing their beliefs about marriage outside the office, and individual state clerks can opt out of issuing marriage licenses so long as no valid marriage license is delayed or impeded.

Counselors and surgeons cannot be required to participate in gender identity transitioning or sex-reassignment surgeries against their faith and convictions, while guaranteeing that no one is denied emergency care or visitation rights.

Private businesses and schools, not bureaucrats, get to set their own bathroom, shower, and locker room policies.

This is a reasonable bill. It protects the consciences of people who hold to the historic definition of marriage in the aftermath of the Supreme Court redefining marriage, and it does so while avoiding the awful outcomes that critics fear. The bill provides that the government cannot punish, fine, or coerce specific people and organizations, in specific contexts. It doesn’t harm anyone.

Other states should follow Mississippi’s lead in protecting religious liberty and the rights of conscience after the redefinition of marriage. So, too, should Congress pass protections at the federal level.

Longstanding Precedent on Abortion

There is great precedent for such protections on the abortion issue, as Girgis and I explain in “Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination.”

In 1973, just months after Roe v. Wade was handed down, Congress passed the Church Amendment, named for Sen. Frank Church, a Democrat from Idaho.

While Roe shielded the choice to have an abortion, the Church Amendment protected doctors’ and nurses’ choices not to perform one. It provided that health care organizations receiving federal funds could not force their doctors or nurses to perform or assist abortions.

Some 20 years later, Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed the Coats–Snowe Amendment. It prohibits the government from discriminating against medical students who refuse to perform abortions and medical residency programs that leave out abortion training.

And in 2004, Congress passed the Hyde-Weldon Amendment, which keeps the government from discriminating against health care institutions that don’t offer abortions.

Since 1973, then, U.S. policy has protected a right to choose an abortion right alongside an individual and institutional right to choose against facilitating one.

Our law should now do the same on marriage. It needn’t and shouldn’t penalize private associations for their beliefs on this issue. Doing so would make no appreciable difference to the ability of same-sex couples to receive the goods and services they seek, but it would undermine conscience rights for some.

So lawmakers can and should grant a categorical accommodation.

Current Legislation

A proposed federal law would do that. Much like the Church, Coats-Snowe, and Hyde-Weldon amendments, the First Amendment Defense Act would protect the freedoms of citizens and organizations who hold a belief at odds with one enshrined by courts.

Protecting pro-life consciences did not violate the Constitution—by establishing a religion or engaging in viewpoint discrimination or otherwise. Nor do laws protecting pacifists. Their only aim is peaceful coexistence in the face of disagreement.

The same goes for the First Amendment Defense Act. It would enact a bright-line rule to keep government from penalizing someone just for acting on her belief that marriage is the union of husband and wife. It would protect people who hold that belief for religious or secular reasons, and it would shield organizations from losing nonprofit tax status, licensing, or accreditation for operating by these beliefs.

But even the First Amendment Defense Act’s categorical protections reflect a careful balance. They protect individuals, nonprofit charities, and privately held businesses, but not publicly traded corporations, or federal employees or contractors in the course of their work.

The First Amendment Defense Act makes clear that it does not relieve the federal government of its duty to provide services, medical care, or benefits to all who qualify. It must simply respect conscience in the course of doing so.

Mississippi has shown the way forward on this issue at the state level. And on Thursday, the 5th Circuit allowed that law to go into effect.

Other states should offer similar protections at the state level, and Congress should do the same at the federal level.

Protecting a New Minority

America is in a time of transition. The Supreme Court has redefined marriage, and beliefs about human sexuality are changing.

During this time, it is critical to protect the right to dissent and the civil liberties of those who speak and act in accord with what Americans had always previously believed about marriage—that it is the union of husband and wife.

Good public policy is needed at the local, state, and federal levels to protect cherished American values. Good policy would help achieve civil peace amid disagreement and protect pluralism and the rights of all Americans, regardless of what faith they may practice. (For more from the author of “Circuit Court Win for Religious Freedom on Gay Marriage” please click HERE)

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