Top Evangelical Leader and Bestselling Author Dies

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Tim LaHaye, an evangelical leader and the author of more than 60 books, died Monday in a San Diego hospital at the age of 90.

LaHaye is best known for penning the 16-book Left Behind series with Jerry B. Jenkins. The books sold more than 80 million copies and topped the bestseller lists of The New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly and the Christian Booksellers Association.

Pastor Jerry Falwell, a friend of LaHaye, told Time magazine in 2005: “In terms of its impact on Christianity, it’s probably greater than that of any other book in modern times, outside the Bible.”

His co-author Jenkins said: “The Tim LaHaye I got to know had a pastor’s heart and lived to share his faith. He listened to and cared about everyone, regardless of age, gender, or social standing. If Tim was missing from the autograph table or the green room of a network television show, he was likely in a corner praying with someone he just met- from a reader to a part-time bookstore stock clerk to a TV network anchorman.”

LaHaye co-founded the Institute for Creation Research with the late Dr. Henry Morris. He also founded two Christian high schools, a system of 10 Christian schools, and what is now San Diego Christian College.

LaHaye wrote about his marriage on Facebook during his recent wedding anniversary: “69 years ago today I married the love of my life, Beverly LaHaye. She has been my faithful partner in marriage, parenthood, ministry, and many things we never dreamed. We are still in love today! God has been faithful to us and we continue to claim as our life verse, Proverbs 3:5 & 6, ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths.’”

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A Pastor Fights Against Government Restrictions on Political Sermons

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When the Rev. Gus Booth found out the IRS was dropping its inquiry into Warroad Community Church where he preaches, he was actually disappointed.

“We wanted to go to court,” Booth told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “This is the First Amendment vs. the IRS code. One standard of the law would win.”

The IRS has almost never fully enforced the Johnson Amendment, which the new Republican Party platform calls for getting rid of. The language of the platform is:

Places of worship for the first time in our history have reason to fear the loss of tax-exempt status merely for espousing and practicing traditional religious beliefs that have been held across the world for thousands of years, and for almost four centuries in America. We value the right of America’s religious leaders to preach, and Americans to speak freely, according to their faith. Republicans believe the federal government, specifically the IRS, is constitutionally prohibited from policing or censoring speech based on religious convictions or beliefs, and therefore we urge the repeal of the Johnson Amendment.

Republican nominee Donald Trump echoed the platform’s policy position in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention Thursday night, saying, “An amendment, pushed by Lyndon Johnson, many years ago, threatens religious institutions with a loss of their tax-exempt status if they openly advocate their political views.”

The IRS commenced its probe of the Warroad, Minnesota, church in early 2009 after Booth endorsed John McCain, R-Ariz., in the 2008 presidential election. The church had to turn over documents and minutes from meetings. However, in July he got a letter saying the probe was dropped for procedural reasons, but with a warning that it might start again.

Booth, the author of the 2014 book Shhhh! Be Quiet Christian, was one of 33 pastors across the country to endorse a candidate on “Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” a day promoted annually by Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious liberty organization. The point was to prompt the government to revoke a church’s tax-exempt status, creating grounds for a lawsuit to challenge the constitutionality of the Johnson Amendment.

Rarely Enforced

The Johnson Amendment was named for then-Texas Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, in 1954. Johnson and other lawmakers were concerned 501(c)3 nonprofit groups would get involved in the elections, on behalf of opponents. So just before the Senate’s summer recess, Johnson pushed through an amendment that would rescind a charitable nonprofit’s tax-exempt status if such an organization — including churches — campaigned for or against a political candidate.

To say this law isn’t enforced very often is one area of agreement between the ADF and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a group usually opposed to religious expression in the public square.

“Although church audits are rare, when an audit is warranted we would like to see the IRS enforce the law,” Americans United spokesman Simon Brown told The Daily Signal in an email. “We believe the IRS is not taking church audits as seriously as it should and we have pushed the agency to step up its enforcement in this area.”

“Since 1996, Americans United’s Project Fair Play has reported more than 100 churches to the IRS for what we believe was unlawful political activity—this means they used church resources to endorse or oppose candidates for public office,” Brown continued. “While we want houses of worship to keep their tax exemption, we also want the very few organizations that do not follow the rules to be thoroughly investigated by the IRS.”

An IRS spokesman did not respond to inquiries from The Daily Signal.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said he hasn’t read the Republican Party platform language, but broadly spoke to President Barack Obama’s views.

“I haven’t seen the language that’s included in the platform. I think I would just reiterate something I think the president has said, which is that one of the founding values of the country is the separation of church and state, both to ensure that state interests are not interfered with by religious authorities, but also to make sure that state interests are not interfering with the work of religious authorities,” Earnest told The Daily Signal during a White House press briefing.

“So the president believes that both our institutions of state and our institutions of religion in the United States both benefit significantly from observing that principle.”

The Rev. Barry Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, denounced the Republican Party’s platform.

“The Republican platform seeks to turn America’s houses of worship into miniature political action committees,” Lynn said in a statement. “I can’t imagine a more disruptive idea for our nation’s religious community or a real impediment to campaign finance reform.”

A “Violation of the Constitution”

Experts on the Johnson Amendment cite two cases of usage, only one of which was fully enforced. The other lasted about two years.

The IRS revoked the presumptive tax-exempt status of the Church at Pierce Creek in Conklin, New York, because the church bought newspaper ads in 1992 opposing Bill Clinton’s candidacy. Federal courts ruled the church crossed the line. However, this dealt with the organization opposing a candidate rather than regulation of what a pastor can say from the pulpit.

In a matter that deals more directly with what pastors oppose, the All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California, faced a near two-year investigation from the IRS after a 2004 sermon opposing the war in Iraq. The IRS dropped its investigation, but the church reportedly spent $200,000 in legal bills.

Tax-exempt status should not be conditioned on what a pastor says from the pulpit, contends Christiana Holcomb, ADF legal counsel, calling the law an unconstitutional infringement on free speech and the Establishment Clause.

“We have welcomed the IRS to really enforce this so we can make a challenge to the law, and make the public aware that any regulation of a pastor’s sermon is a clear violation of the Constitution,” Holcomb told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “But even without going to court, the IRS has used intimidation, bullying, and harassment tactics.”

Alliance Defending Freedom, which sponsors the “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” each year, has the signature of 4,100 pastors calling for the end of the Johnson Amendment.

Among those is the Rev. Jim Garlow of Skyline Church in San Diego, California, who has spoken out against the Johnson Amendment for years, and recently wrote the book Well Versed: Biblical Answers to Today’s Tough Issues, which urges pastors to speak out on public affair.

“I have sent my sermons to the IRS. I’ve had people on the left wing calling, saying they will report me to the IRS. I say, ‘please do,’” Garlow told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “What Thomas Jefferson meant by separation of church and state is no government interference in the pulpit.”

Garlow added, “Whether we’re talking about a conservative biblical-based church or a left-wing nonbiblical-based church, I want the Johnson Amendment gone for everybody.”

A “Cloud of Ambiguity”

But, if the Johnson Amendment has never really been enforced, why bother getting rid of it?

“The law itself is less powerful than the implications,” Garlow said. “It hangs with a huge cloud of ambiguity over pastors and lay people who think they can’t speak out on anything political or think it’s illegal to register voters.”

Booth adds a future administration might have more confidence in imposing the law.

“That’s a big if,” Booth said. “If the government thinks it can tell us what we can’t say about politics, it will think it can tell us what to say in our theological messages. If the government told me I’m not allowed to preach about baseball, my next sermon would be about baseball. This is not about politics.”

There are three primary reasons to be concerned about the law, said Hiram Sasser, deputy chief counsel for First Liberty Institute, a religious freedom advocacy group. The first is that pastors feel compelled to self-censor; the second is outside groups — such as the Americans United — have a means to threaten a church with litigation; and the third is that internally church members pressure pastors not to speak out on important issues out of fear of losing tax-exempt status.

“Since the founding, churches would have election Sundays, where the pastor would talk about the candidates and issues of the day,” Sasser told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “If the IRS were to try to enforce this, it would lose.”

Sasser said the most relevant case would be in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in 2012 that federal discrimination laws don’t apply to religious organizations in selecting religious leaders. Sasser said the decision was about church autonomy that would extend to speech.

Sasser said Americans United for the Separation of Church and State routinely send warning letters to churches, which chills speech.

The organization contends that it is not trying to threaten or intimidate churches.

“Every election season, Americans United sends letters to thousands of houses of worship from a variety of faiths and denominations,” Brown, the Americans United spokesman, said in an email. “These letters are intended to educate clergy about what the laws does and does not allow regarding political activity by 501(c)(3) organizations. We want every house of worship to maintain its tax exemption and that is why we send the letters.”

The IRS should assure that religious organizations are allowed to talk to their own members about public issues to their own people, said Roger Severino, director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society for The Heritage Foundation.

“The IRS has used the Johnson Amendment as a stick to threaten religious institutions that preach to their own members about faith and morals,” Severino told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. He later added, “The threat is always out there when activists with anti-religious groups go into houses of worship and essentially spy, then report them to the IRS. Neighbors should not spy on neighbors as IRS enforcers.” (For more from the author of “A Pastor Fights Against Government Restrictions on Political Sermons” please click HERE)

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Parents Beat Back Obama’s Transgender Bathroom Mandate in Texas Schools

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Administrators of a Texas school district changed guidelines for transgender students to involve parents and work with families on a case-by-case basis, after an uproar among parents.

The Fort Worth Independent School District announced the two new pages of guidelines dated July 19 after parents and others had a chance to speak at school board meetings, six public forums, and five meetings of a safety advisory panel, among others.

“The new guidelines place a heavy emphasis on involving parents and trusts students, teachers, and parents to work together to make the right decisions,” Superintendent Kent Scribner said in a prepared statement.

“We are grateful Superintendent Scribner reversed and repealed his illegal transgender directive,” a group of students, parents, and taxpayers called Stand for Fort Worth, said of the change.

The school district, comprised of 143 schools and 87,000 students, said it received comment from 235 individuals, including 119 separate emails.

“The new guidelines reflect what we’ve heard from students and teachers, parents and pastors,” Scribner said. “Our focus from the beginning has been the safety of all children and that, overwhelmingly, was the concern we heard from our parents and others.”

The previous eight pages of guidelines, approved by Scribner in April, allowed students to use the male or female restroom of their choice and directed school personnel to address a student by the name or gender pronoun he or she prefers, even without permission from a parent or guardian.

The Board of Education Trustees oversees the management and policymaking of the Fort Worth school district.

Scribner prepared the original guidelines, “completely done in secret,” and without “all the board members being aware of it, much less having parents having input on the process,” Julia Keyes, a Fort Worth resident and mother of five children, told The Daily Signal.

“It kind of came as a shock,” Keyes said.

Keyes, a member of Stand for Fort Worth, said parents and others were “outraged” and sent over 2,000 emails to school board members to hold the superintendent accountable.

“It was really the community that rose up,” Keyes said.

In May, the Obama administration issued a transgender student directive to schools around the nation, threatening to withhold federal funding if schools do not open up restrooms and shower facilities based on a student’s chosen gender identity.

Roger Severino, director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal:

Texas and 23 other states have already sued the administration over its lawless edict on school showers, bathrooms, and dorms. So it’s not surprising to see concerned parents in Fort Worth and around the country standing up to school bureaucrats to ensure the safety and privacy interests of their children.

“We feel good about the guidelines as they stand,” Keyes said. “However, trust has been broken with the superintendent.”

In an email to The Daily Signal, Matthew Kacsmaryk, deputy general counsel at First Liberty Institute, said Scribner’s original guidelines overrode rights guaranteed by the First and 14th Amendments to the Constitution:

Like its federal counterpart, [Scribner’s directive] was replete with speech codes that violated the free speech clause, shower mandates that violated the free exercise clause, and parent blocks that violated the 14th Amendment rights of parents to the care, custody, and management of their children.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, called for Scribner’s resignation over his unilateral implementation of the original guidelines.

Kacsmaryk said the Fort Worth school district’s original directive “expressly discouraged use of binary terms like ‘boy’ and ‘girl’” and made “no reasonable accommodation for dissenting Muslims, Jews, Mormons, Catholics, and Protestants who adhere to the Book of Genesis and continue to believe that God ‘created them male and female.”

The First Liberty Institute lawyer, who consulted with Keyes and her husband before Scribner backed down, added:

This is not diversity but displacement, the absolutist imposition of a sexually revolutionized view of the human person without any accommodation for religious dissenters who may have a different view of man and woman, male and female.

The group Stand for Fort Worth said it had “mobilized a bipartisan, multiracial coalition of students, taxpayers, and parents who were initially excluded from the process but whose voices have now been heard.”

The new guidelines say the school district will work with parents to create individual support plans for transgender students to address “the student’s unique needs.”

If the student requests access to an opposite-sex restroom, locker room, or related facility, the campus administrator, the student and his or her parent or guardian, and guidance counselor will review the request on a case-by-case basis.

The goal will be to create a “safe and supportive environment for students impacted by the accommodation with due recognition of the privacy rights of all students,” the guidelines say. (For more from the author of “Parents Beat Back Obama’s Transgender Bathroom Mandate in Texas Schools” please click HERE)

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The Difference Between Privacy Rights in Abortion and Same-Sex Locker Rooms Cases

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When most Americans consider the right to privacy they think about the privacy they enjoy in their homes and person. They don’t think about killing unborn children in the womb.

But that is not true of liberal activists. To them, the right to privacy is all about abortion because seemingly everything is about abortion on demand: a non-negotiable doctrine of the secular-political faith.

So it comes as no surprise that ThinkProgress’ Ian Millhiser sees Alliance Defending Freedom’s simultaneous defense of young boys’ and girls’ right to privacy in school showers and locker rooms and strong and unwavering opposition to abortion as hypocritical.

But he misses the mark completely.

The right to privacy that protects young boys and girls from being forced to shower and change in front of members of the opposite sex is not based on the left’s tortured view of “privacy” that was created out of whole cloth by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. Even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg acknowledged that the “right” invented in Roe to kill children in the womb was “heavy handed judicial activism.” Roe is a legal disgrace that ADF has and will tirelessly fight to overturn.

The privacy claim ADF asserts—the right to privacy in one’s unclothed or partially unclothed body—is deeply rooted in our nation’s history and traditions. Courts have said that this is the right test for protection under the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Roe obviously fails that test because, at the time of the court’s decision, there was not even a whiff of historical evidence that killing unborn children was an accepted, deeply rooted practice in the United States. Any look at history shows the opposite was true.

In stark contrast, the privacy right ADF defends easily meets the “deeply rooted” test under the Supreme Court’s current jurisprudence. It is indisputable that citizens have a right to privacy that protects them not just in their homes, but also from government-compelled exposure of their unclothed bodies to persons of the opposite sex.

As ADF explains in its Illinois lawsuit challenging the federal government’s gender identity mandates (read paragraphs 359-387), this right is a basic and essential aspect of personal liberty that has historically been protected in American law and society.

As Ginsburg has said, Roe was an act of political will—outcome-based jurisprudence, pure and simple. And its notion of “privacy” involves one person exterminating another person for convenience. How does that have anything to do with “privacy,” again?

But ADF’s locker room privacy argument truly protects the person—barring the exposure of one’s unclothed body against one’s will—a right grounded in basic aspects of human liberty and dignity that any government ought to protect.

So the answer to Millhiser’s “hypocrite” charge? Easy: Vindicating the long-established, much-cherished, historically-based privacy right of boys and girls, who would be scared, scarred, humiliated, and degraded by government policies that force them to change clothes in the presence of the opposite sex on a daily basis at school, lends not one whit of support to the “right” to abortion concocted in Roe. Simply put, the privacy claims in abortion and locker room cases are apples and oranges.

In reality, it is the left that is struggling with consistency problems here. Its (mistaken) position that locker room privacy arguments are based on the same privacy right invented in Roe raises an obvious question: How can Roe protect the horrific practice of killing unborn children but not protect something as basic, elementary, and historically as grounded as shielding one’s unclothed body from the view of opposite-sex strangers?

And what of the left’s newest invented “right,” the right to be free from governmental policies that harm one’s “dignity” (see Obergefell v. Hodges). How can government policies that force young girls and boys to expose their partially or fully unclothed bodies to opposite sex peers not violate this newly discovered right?

If I’ve learned one thing over the years, it’s that when the left cries “hypocrite,” it’s only to deflect attention away from the fact that it has nothing meaningful to say. And in this instance it serves one further purpose: to avoid answering for its own hypocrisy. (For more from the author of “The Difference Between Privacy Rights in Abortion and Same-Sex Locker Rooms Cases” please click HERE)

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Psychiatrist: ‘There Is No Gay Gene’

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Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and former psychiatrist–in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital, who has studied sexuality for 40 years, said it is a scientific fact that “there is no gay gene.”

“Environment,” however, “is very important,” said Dr. McHugh, author of The Mind Has Mountains: Reflections on Society and Psychiatry. He also explained that the permissive sexual culture in the United States today has confused “desire” with “love,” and that homosexuality is a false or “erroneous desire.”

In an interview with Virtue Online: The Voice for Global Orthodox Anglicanism, reporter Lydia Evans asked Dr. McHugh, “How do you view the popular assumption that science has somehow proven that sexual orientation is determined early in childhood, if not before birth?”

Dr. McHugh, who ended the sexual reassignment surgery program at Johns Hopkins because it was not helping the patients, answered, “Well, as I have said, there is no gay gene. And there are factors more influential than biology.”

“The best data, of course, [comes from the Framingham Study],” said Dr. McHugh. “If you are a man and you grow up in a rural environment, you are four times less likely to have homosexual relationships than if you grow up in a metropolitan area. That’s not left-handedness.” (Read more from “Psychiatrist: ‘There Is No Gay Gene'” HERE)

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Seattle TSA Worker Arrested on Voyeurism Charge

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A Transportation Security Administration agent in Seattle was arrested after allegedly being spotted using a phone to take video up a woman’s skirt at the city’s airport, according to authorities.

Nicholas Fernandez, 29, was arrested on a charge of voyeurism Tuesday, Seattle police said in an arrest report. The incident occurred on an escalator, and not in a security line . . .

“When such conduct is alleged, TSA investigates it thoroughly. When appropriate, TSA requests that it be investigated by a law enforcement authority. When an investigation finds that misconduct has occurred, the appropriate action is taken.”

Fernandez has been removed from screening duties and he has been suspended without pay, the agency said.

According to an arrest report, the TSA was investigating information it received that Fernandez, who works at Seattle Tacoma International Airport, might have taken inappropriate photos of women. (Read more from “Seattle TSA Worker Arrested on Voyeurism Charge” HERE)

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College Football Star Says He Raped Woman as Payback for ‘400 Years of Slavery’

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I will give you all the money in my pockets right now if this isn’t one of the most racist things you’ve ever read, also the most disgusting, vile, and evil things. A football player violently raped a woman (heinous enough as it is) and justified it thusly: “that’s for 400 years of slavery.”

If your eyes just popped out of your head and rolled across the floor, go pick them up. Dust them off. Put them back in your head. Because no, you didn’t read that wrong. This football player actually used that “justification” for his terrible act.

“Mr. Batey continued to abuse and degrade me, urinating on my face while uttering horrific racial hate speech that suggested I deserved what he was doing to me because of the color of my skin. He didn’t even know who I was” . . .

On Friday, multiple sources confirmed to The Tennessean the statement Batey made. “That’s for 400 years of slavery you b—-,” Batey said, according to the sources.

Thankfully, Corey Batey was sentenced to 15 years of prison in what the judge called “one of the saddest cases that I have ever encountered.” Unfortunately, it’s not under the prison where he belongs. We could spend days describing the place where this monster belongs. Days. I’ll give you a hint as to what I’m thinking: this place involves fire. Lots of fire. (Read more from “College Football Star Says He Raped Woman as Payback for ‘400 Years of Slavery'” HERE)

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Atlanta Mayor Flatly Rejects Demand From Local ‘Black Lives Matter’ Group to Cut Ties With ‘Apartheid Israel’

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The mayor of Atlanta on Monday flatly refused a demand by protesters associated with the Black Lives Matter movement to terminate the local police force’s cooperation and training with Israel.

Mayor Kasim Reed denied the request at a meeting with members of #ALTisReady — self-described as a “collective of student activists, community organizers and leaders working to amplify Black and other marginalized voices in Atlanta” — to discuss improving the relationship between police and the community, a week after hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Georgia governor’s mansion . . .

In a press conference following the meeting, Kasim told reporters:

There was a demand that I stop allowing the Atlanta Police Department to train with the Israeli Police Department. I’m not going to do that. I happen to believe that the Israeli Police Department has some of the best counter-terrorism techniques in the world and it benefits our police department from that long-standing relationship. That was a specific demand.

Over the last several months, the Black Lives Matter movement has become closely aligned with anti-Zionist and antisemitic movements, most notably the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) initiative. The logic behind the connection between the groups, according to anti-Israel activists, is that both are representing and defending dark-skinned minorities against oppressors. (Read more from “Atlanta Mayor Flatly Rejects Demand From Local ‘Black Lives Matter’ Group to Cut Ties With ‘Apartheid Israel'” HERE)

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George W. Bush’s Chief Speechwriter Calls Melania’s Speech A “Staff Failure”

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In the wake of the media maelstrom over Melania Trump’s lifting of several passages from a speech Michelle Obama gave in 2008, I reached out to Michael Gerson, the chief speechwriter for George W. Bush. My goal in talking to Gerson, who is now a syndicated columnist with the Washington Post, was to get a better understanding of how something like this could happen, who should be blamed and what it said about the broader Trump campaign. Our conversation, conducted via email and edited only for grammar, is below . . .

[FIX]: Who, ultimately, is to blame for plagiarism like this? The candidate? The campaign manager? The speechwriter? The spouse?

[Gerson]: This was a staff failure, indicating a weak campaign apparatus . . .

An error like the one Melania Trump committed last night tells us that the Trump campaign lacks seriousness and structure, which is also demonstrated by its divisive style, weak ground game and poor fundraising numbers. (Read more from “George W. Bush’s Chief Speechwriter Calls Melania’s Speech A “Staff Failure” HERE)

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Kansas City, Kansas, Police Captain Shot Dead

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A police captain was shot and killed Tuesday while responding to a drive-by shooting in Kansas City, Kansas, prompting members of law enforcement to lament that another one of their own had died violently.

Capt. Robert Melton was pronounced dead at a hospital as a manhunt for shooters continued, Mayor Mark Holland said in a statement.

Tuesday’s fatal shooting comes just on the heels of three police officers being fatally shot in Baton Rouge, La., last Sunday, and five police officers in Dallas being shot fatally July 7.

“This is a very tense and volatile time in our community and our nation,” Holland said in a statement. “It is important that we not jump to conclusions or speculate about this situation. Our police and city officials will share information as it becomes available. As we wait for that information, let us focus our thoughts and prayers on Capt. Melton’s family, our police department, and on the community.”

The public initially became aware of the incident via social media. (Read more from “Kansas City, Kansas, Police Captain Shot Dead” HERE)

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