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Activists protest church's 'hateful' messages on Pride Month — pastor says he welcomes the protests

The Blaze
5 days 10 hours ago


The pastor of the New Hope Community Church in Palatine, Illinois, says that he isn't backing down from preaching the truth after LGBTQ+ activists showed up to protest.

The protesters are angry at messages the church has posted on its digital sign that refer to Pride Month, and they want the church to stop.

'That gives us the chance to share God's truth. I wish they'd come every day so we can have conversations.'

One of the messages reads, "We love you enough to tell you the truth," while another reads, "Ditch Pride, embrace humility."

"Our goal was to let other residents of Palatine know what this church preaches and that Palatine is better than that," said Paul Dombrowski of the Northwest Suburban Pride Network to WLS-TV.

"It is important to stand up for those in our community who are being marginalized and who are being ostracized clearly in this way," said Chelsea Laliberte Barnes, a member of a group named Liberal Moms of the Northwest Suburbs.

Some said they were concerned about the messages because the church is near a school.

The WLS news video report showed that one protester held up a sign reading, "Hate has no home here," while a report from LGBTQ Nation called the messages "hateful."

Members of the church came out to defend the innocuous messages and discuss the issue with the protesters.

James Pittman Jr., the pastor of the church, said they would not change their messaging and added that he welcomed the protests.

"That gives us the chance to share God's truth. I wish they'd come every day so we can have conversations," Pittman told WLS.

RELATED: NY Pride group disbands after founder is arrested for disgusting alleged crime with minor

The pastor explained that the church's digital messages would often reflect the season, such as Christmas or Easter, but in June they refer to Pride Month.

WLS noted that LGBTQ activists had also tried to get Palatine city officials to fly a Pride flag outside of city hall but had been rebuffed.

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Carlos Garcia

1776, not 1608: What the Supreme Court got wrong on birthright citizenship

The Blaze
5 days 11 hours ago


Chief Justice John Roberts begins the Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship opinion in Westminster in 1608 with Calvin’s Case and the English law of royal subjectship.

I would begin in Philadelphia in 1776.

English law rested upon allegiance to the Crown. The American Republic would rest upon the consent of a self-governing people.

Between those two places — and those two moments — lies the American Revolution. And the Revolution changed more than who governed America. It changed the very foundation of political membership.

That is the central problem with the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Barbara. The court’s opinion is learned, careful, and historically rich. Chief Justice Roberts traces the English doctrine of jus soli through Calvin’s Case, Blackstone, a substantial body of antebellum American authorities, and finally United States v. Wong Kim Ark.

It may well become the definitive defense of the conventional understanding of the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause. But it answers the wrong question.

The issue is not whether America inherited English legal language. It plainly did. The issue is whether America also inherited England’s understanding of political membership.

The majority assumes that the American Revolution left the English understanding of political membership largely intact. The dissents argue that the Revolution rejected that understanding and replaced it with an American conception of citizenship grounded in the consent of the governed. That is the real disagreement in this case.

A new creed

Under English common law, nearly everyone born within the king’s dominions became a natural-born subject. Birth within the sovereign’s territory created permanent allegiance to the Crown because the child was born under the king’s protection. That doctrine made sense in a monarchy. It reflected a world of subjects, sovereigns, dominions, and perpetual allegiance.

But the United States is not a monarchy.

The Declaration of Independence did more than announce separation from Great Britain. It rejected the political philosophy upon which English subjectship rested. Jefferson’s words — that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed” — were not mere rhetorical flourishes. They announced a new theory of political legitimacy.

The Declaration’s closing words made the rejection of perpetual allegiance explicit: The new states were “absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown.”

English law rested upon allegiance to the Crown. The American Republic would rest upon the consent of a self-governing people.

That revolutionary transformation should have been central to the Court’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment.

Instead, the majority largely assumes that English subjectship and American citizenship belong to the same constitutional lineage. Roberts proves an important proposition: England recognized birthright subjectship. But he does not prove the decisive one: that Americans who had repudiated monarchy intended, less than a century later, to constitutionalize the English law of royal subjectship as the definition of citizenship in a republic.

Mere obedience to law is not the same thing as complete political allegiance.

Justice Joseph Story helps explain why that distinction matters. Story was steeped in English law, but he was not merely Blackstone with an American accent. His great constitutional project was to explain how inherited English legal concepts had been adapted to the institutions and principles of an American republic.

He stands as a bridge between the common-law inheritance and American constitutionalism.

That is the bridge missing from the majority’s account. Roberts reads the inherited legal tradition largely as a line of continuity from Calvin’s Case to Wong Kim Ark. But the American constitutional genealogy runs along a different path: the Declaration of Independence, Story’s adaptation of inherited law to republican constitutionalism, Lincoln’s reaffirmation of the Declaration as the nation’s first principle, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the 14th Amendment.

Abraham Lincoln understood this better than anyone. He did not treat the Declaration as a mere political manifesto. Lincoln treated it as the nation’s statement of principle. In his famous meditation on the Constitution and the Union, Lincoln described the Declaration’s principle of liberty as the “apple of gold,” with the Constitution as the “picture of silver” framed around it.

The frame was made not to conceal or destroy the apple, but to preserve it.

That is precisely the point here. The Constitution must be read as law. But it is American law, not English law. And the 14th Amendment must be read as part of the Constitution’s effort to vindicate the principles of the Declaration after the catastrophe of slavery and Dred Scott.

Preserving the cornerstone

The Reconstruction Congress was not attempting to preserve English constitutionalism. It was completing the work begun in 1776.

The Declaration proclaimed that “all men are created equal.” Dred Scott denied that promise, holding that an entire class of Americans could never become members of the political community. The 14th Amendment repudiated that decision.

But it did so by restoring the principles of the American founding, not by reviving the legal doctrines of the British Crown.

This is why the majority’s repeated description of the Citizenship Clause as “declaratory” does not resolve the question. Declaratory of what? The common law of royal subjectship inherited from England? Or the constitutional law of citizenship that Americans had transformed through the Declaration, the Revolution, and nearly a century of republican self-government?

The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, not 1768. It should therefore be interpreted through the constitutional understandings of the American Republic, not simply those of the British Empire.

The Citizenship Clause provides: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.” The clause does not simply require birth in the United States. It adds a second requirement: The person must be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.

Those words must do real work.

RELATED: The Supreme Court puts border judges back in their lane

Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The majority effectively equates “subject to the jurisdiction” with “subject to American law.” Anyone physically present in the country, except diplomats and members of sovereign Indian tribes, must obey American law. From that premise, the majority concludes that virtually everyone born here becomes a citizen.

But the Reconstruction Congress was speaking of something more profound than traffic laws and criminal jurisdiction. It was defining membership in the American political community.

The debates surrounding the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th Amendment repeatedly invoked the ideas of complete jurisdiction, complete allegiance, and undivided political obligation.

Senator Lyman Trumbull, the principal author of the Civil Rights Act, explained that citizenship extended to those who were subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States — not merely to those temporarily answerable to its laws.

Every foreign visitor is obliged to obey American law while here. So is every foreign student, every tourist, every diplomat’s driver, and every person who crosses the border unlawfully. But mere obedience to law is not the same thing as complete political allegiance. If it were, the jurisdictional language would add almost nothing to the constitutional text.

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 used slightly different language, extending citizenship to persons born in the United States and “not subject to any foreign power.” The 14th Amendment altered the phrasing, but not the underlying concept of complete political jurisdiction. The point was not mere geography. It was political membership.

That is why the dissents have the stronger originalist argument.

Citizenship in America

Justice Clarence Thomas begins with a question the majority never fully confronts: What did Americans understand citizenship to mean after they had rejected English subjectship? That is the proper originalist inquiry. It is not enough to ask how English courts defined the king’s subjects. The constitutional question is how Americans defined members of a self-governing republic.

The majority’s treatment of United States v. Wong Kim Ark illustrates the same methodological difficulty. Roberts portrays today’s decision as little more than the faithful application of settled precedent. That gives Wong Kim Ark much broader force than it actually possessed.

The case involved a child born in San Francisco to parents who had been lawfully admitted and permanently domiciled in the United States. That holding was sufficient to resolve the controversy before the Court. Whether the Constitution mandates citizenship for children born to temporary visitors or to those unlawfully present was not presented.

To be sure, Justice Horace Gray’s opinion draws heavily on the English tradition of jus soli. But the opinion’s reasoning extended well beyond the facts before it. Its discussion of temporary visitors and the full scope of the Citizenship Clause should be evaluated on the strength of its historical reasoning, not treated as though every observation carried the force of the Court’s holding.

That is especially important because Wong Kim Ark itself looked backward through the English common-law tradition. Today’s Court repeats that move. But whether Justice Gray correctly understood the original meaning of the 14th Amendment remains the very question under debate.

Over the past two decades, Edward Erler, Michael Anton, and I, along with several other prominent legal scholars, have argued that the Citizenship Clause must be understood against the backdrop of the American Revolution rather than the English common law of perpetual allegiance.

That argument does not deny England’s commitment to jus soli. It asks whether the American Revolution rejected the premise on which English jus soli rested.

RELATED: Sen. Schmitt offers glimmer of hope after birthright citizenship 'mistake' from SCOTUS

Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images

Chief Justice Roberts presents an intellectually serious account of the conventional view. The majority opinion deserves respect for its scholarship and for its careful engagement with difficult historical sources.

But scholarship is only as persuasive as the question it seeks to answer.

Roberts proves that England followed jus soli. He proves that English subjects acquired allegiance by birth within the king’s dominions. He proves that Wong Kim Ark embraced that historical tradition.

What he never quite proves is why the American people, after repudiating monarchy and proclaiming government by consent, should be presumed to have constitutionalized that English doctrine rather than adapting inherited legal language to their own revolutionary understanding of citizenship.

The disagreement between the majority and the dissent is therefore not ultimately about Blackstone, Calvin’s Case, or even Wong Kim Ark. It is about what the American Revolution accomplished. Did it merely transfer sovereignty from the king to the people while leaving the English understanding of political membership intact? Or did it reject that understanding and replace it with citizenship grounded in consent, allegiance, and membership in the American political community?

Justice Thomas places that question at the center of the inquiry. For an originalist, that is exactly where it belongs.

The Declaration of Independence eloquently and definitively answered that question in favor of the doctrine of consent rather than the feudal doctrine of jus soli. In this, its 250th anniversary, it should not have been overlooked.

Editor's note: The headline of this article has been edited after publication for clarity.

John C. Eastman

Comedian Druski and BET Awards LAMPOON the black church

The Blaze
5 days 11 hours ago


Comedian Druski took the stage at the BET Awards as a flamboyant preacher obsessed with celebrities' net worths and extravagant displays of wealth. And while it was a joke, BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock believes it exposed something very real about the current state of the black church.

“The black church is now a running joke to the point that the BET Awards can be based off of it. Druski opened up the BET Awards mocking the black church,” Whitlock says, before playing a few clips from Druski’s performance.

In one clip, Druski yelled that “somebody getting impregnated with the Word of God in here, in the front row right here.”


In another clip, he says, “We’ve got so many stars in the building whose net worths are blessed and who God has ordained to bless me. Put Tyler Perry net worth up there. Oh my God! Glory! $1.4 billion dollars! We pulling net worth tonight. Amen.”

“Somebody better donate, amen? Amen. Amen. Who else in the building? We got Stevie Wonder in the building. Put his net worth up there. $200 million,” he continues, with the screen behind him showing Wonder’s net worth in brail.

“This man is mocking the black church, taking God’s name in vain in front of a national television audience on the biggest night in black culture,” Whitlock says.

“I actually think he’s a force for good. He’s holding up a mirror and saying this is the type of clown show we have become,” he continues.

“Druski is using comedy properly to hold up a mirror and say ... our behavior is so foolish that the only thing I can do is mock it,” he adds.

While Shemeka Michelle agrees, she also doesn’t think the comedy is for everyone.

“I don’t have a problem with it when it comes to people like us who actually can say this is so sad, that it’s accurate ... but I think where my problem would come in at is that so many people won’t see it. They won’t see that this is accurate and this is sad and that there needs to be a change,” Michelle says.

“They will just take it as ‘OK, this is nothing to take serious, and we can continue to just play with God and the church, and it’s something that should be made a joke of,’” she continues.

“That’s what I’m kind of fearful of, that people just won’t have any reverence for God,” she adds.

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BlazeTV Staff

Report: GOP Rebels Threaten Iran Spending Over Poland Troops

NewsMax
5 days 11 hours ago
A group of moderate House Republicans is threatening to withhold support for an $88 billion emergency spending package for the Iran conflict unless the Trump administration follows through on its pledge to restore thousands of U.S. troops to Poland, Politico reported.