FAITH
JUSTICE Vo l u m e I X , I s s u e 3
Grounds For Dismissal The Supreme Court Will Decide: Are Some Children Less Worthy Of A Safe Playground?
Alliance Defending Freedom
CONTENTS 3 Q&A With Father Paul Scalia “Even when my father was dissenting, people loved to read what he wrote because it confirmed in them what they knew to be true.”
5 ADF’s Best Kept Secret “It goes far beyond the dollar amount we’ve given to a particular case—That’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
8 Alliance Profile: Virginia Prodan “Because of Christ, I had more freedom than the dictator. I was a free person even though he wanted to bend me to his will.”
9 Grounds For Dismissal “Over 95 percent of the children who attend this preschool are not members of the church … so you’re basically punishing a segment of the community, simply because it chooses to play on a church-operated playground.”
17 What Our Children Need To See “I think it’s important that we show our kids that there are some principles worth fighting for, no matter the personal cost.”
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Editor Joshua Tijerina
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Senior Writer Chris Potts
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Contributors
Alliance Defending Freedom 15100 N. 90th Street | Scottsdale, AZ 800-835-5233
ADFlegal.org
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Emily Conley Chris Potts Jane Scharl Alan Sears Charles Snow
Minutes with Alan Sears
In The Lions’ Den
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President, CEO, and General Counsel
s you read this, the tumultuous election year will finally have reached a climax. Whatever the results, many people will be discouraged, frustrated, even afraid … wondering what comes next under this new administration. This fast-changing culture seems to be so quickly forgetting what our nation was built on, what it has accomplished, and what it has always stood for. Watching, waiting, I am reminded of my days as a federal prosecutor, during the Reagan administration … and of one case, in particular. The accused was a very dangerous man, arrested before his plans could come to complete fruition—a mercy that spared us untold damage to physical property, and undoubtedly the lives of a considerable number of people. I had successfully made the case for the state against this man at the trial court level, and was on the brink of securing a second, decisive win in federal appellate court. Suddenly, word came that a key witness against the defendant wanted to reverse his previous testimony. If he did so—and the judge had agreed to hear what he had to say—the state’s whole case could come unraveled, and this dangerous man might well go free.
I was discouraged, frustrated, even afraid, the morning of the hearing, and turned to the
Bible for solace. The passage my searching heart found was Daniel 6: the story of the prophet in the lion’s den. I came to the moment when the king, frightened for Daniel’s safety, goes at dawn to the lions’ den and cries out, asking if Daniel’s God has somehow spared him from an awful fate. To which Daniel replied (vv. 21b-22a): “May the king live forever! My God sent His angel, and He shut the mouths of the lions.” Those words became my prayer, over and over, as I sat that day in the courtroom: “Lord, shut the mouths of the lions.” As I watched, the dubious witness was called to the stand and invited to revise his previous testimony. He sat silently. The invitation was pressed on him again. Not a word. The judge ordered him to speak up. The man refused to say anything. His silence ensured our victory. It was one of several cases, in the years following, in which I prayed the same prayer —and saw much the same results. The Lord, I saw, was bigger than what discourages / frustrates / frightens me—even bigger than this election and new administration. He shuts the mouths of lions, and all those who might destroy our reputation, misrepresent our faith, and speak the terrible words that would tear at God’s Truth and our nation. In these uncertain times, His character—His faithfulness—is our certainty. We press on.
To hear the latest from Alan Sears’ about our cases, read his weekly column at ADFlegal.org/FJ-Alan
Apart from Him, we can do nothing. - John 15:5
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OA with
Father Paul Scalia Father Paul Scalia, son of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, is the Episcopal Vicar for Clergy in the Catholic Diocese of Arlington, VA. Previously, he served as a parish priest throughout the Washington D.C. area.
What’s the state of faith in the public square today? We are seeing what Richard John Neuhaus called the “naked public square,” where faith is excluded from political and cultural discussions, and people of faith refuse to bring it there. The faithful in America could be much bolder. Just because something is religious doesn’t mean it can’t make sense to men of reason, even if they are without any religion. Think about the issues of marriage and abortion. We possess truths about marriage and the sanctity of life in part because of our faith, and we hold them more strongly because of faith, but those truths are also accessible to men and women who may not have faith but can apply their human reason. Christians can be bolder about making strong claims to faith and reason. We must not be afraid to live or discuss the faith. Christians in public life often shy away from hot-button issues because they’re afraid of being labeled “religious” or “fanatics.” The Papal Nuncio Archbishop Viganò raised the question several years ago, “Where does the government get the idea that religion does not have a role in the public square? Perhaps the government’s gotten that idea from us, because we have not brought it there.”
Have the challenges facing faithful families changed in the last few decades? Exponentially. When I was first ordained, the central matter for Catholic priests in America was the issue of contraception in marriage. Fast forward 20 years, it’s a fundamentally different situation. The
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question now is so much broader. It’s whether we accept ourselves as created, or whether we are going to create our own reality. For families, this is very frightening, because all of those cultural things that used to be taken for granted are now up in the air. There’s great fear about: Where can we send our kids to school? And what are the influences on our children’s lives? And how will our children know what is true, being in a culture such as ours? This is where bold Christian public figures can be of great help.
What about the challenges facing faithful ministers and churches? There are new issues, but the challenges in ministry are essentially the same as they’ve always been: men and women who are wounded by sin, guilty of sin, who need to find salvation. The challenge remains to go into a world that’s hostile and bring the love and Truth of Christ.
Your father’s life and words have inspired so many who are not lawyers. How would you explain that impact? People who respect and admire my father often quote something that he said, and I tease them sometimes by asking them, “Well, you know that was a dissenting opinion?” What I’ve found is that even when he was dissenting, people loved to read what he wrote because it confirmed in them what they knew to be true. His was a voice of reason in the midst of insanity. This is a necessary role: confirming the just, telling the faith (continued on page 20)
There are new issues, but the challenges in ministry are essentially the same as they’ve always been ... to go into a world that’s hostile and bring the love and Truth of Christ.
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Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP, Pool
Father Paul Scalia
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Special Feature
ADF’s Best Kept Secret How Grants & Funding Drives the Work of the Alliance to Change the World By Emily Conley
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ne of Alliance Defending Freedom’s most effective and successful programs may just be one you’ve never heard of. For decades, before Alliance Defending Freedom was founded, attorneys weren’t taking on religious freedom, life, or marriage cases, unless they were prepared to work for free. But that’s only sustainable for so long. “At some point, you can’t donate 400 - 600 hours of your time, and still pay your bills,” Brett Harvey, Director of Grants and Funding, explains. “Most litigation is ultimately settled by a calculator,” he continued. “There’s a dollar amount that will settle most cases, so it just comes down to the attorney doing the math. How much did that contract dispute hurt your business? How much did that injury cost you in hospital bills?” But when it comes to civil rights cases, or religious freedom cases, the calculator doesn’t apply. “You can’t put a price on the harm done to a child who’s told by his teacher that he can’t talk about Jesus in his school assignment, for example. The parents may be furious, but a civil rights or religious freedom case could drag on for years, and cost anywhere from $300,000 at the federal level, to several million dollars at the Supreme Court level. Most people don’t have those kind of resources.” “That’s where Grants and Funding comes in—we help cover the basic costs to allow the attorney to continue donating their time to the case, so the case can stay alive. It
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doesn’t underwrite them—they’re giving far more of their time and expertise pro bono. It just helps manage their cash flow, so they can continue to give sacrificially.” When Alliance Defending Freedom launched in 1994, it was named Alliance Defense Fund for that reason: Grants and Funding was the first program of the one-man organization. The primary objective was facilitating attorneys who are passionate about life, marriage, and religious freedom so they could engage in the issues. Since then, it’s been a driving force in the rest of ADF’s work, including the Allied Attorney network, Direct Litigation, and Training. For example, in 40 of our 49 victories at the Supreme Court, our primary involvement included supporting the work of Allied Attorneys through grants. By 2013, of the 305 most engaged Allied Attorneys, more than 150 were first introduced to ADF via the grant program. Training programs were used to equip the attorneys we were funding, and now, our Allied Attorneys have reported more than $200 million in pro bono hours. Over the last 22 years, the program has supported life, marriage, and religious freedom work with $45 million in 3,004 grants to Allied Attorneys. And what’s that gotten us? “It goes far beyond the dollar amount we’ve given to a particular case,” Harvey says. “That’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
The experience changed the trajectory of my life and career.
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Allied Attorney Dan Dalton
ROI: Relationships Take Dan Dalton for example. In 2005, Dan Dalton represented a small church near his home in Detroit that was threatened with extinction due to zoning regulations. The small church had run out of money to pay Dan. He exhausted his firm’s line of credit and had no way of taking the claim to trial. But a grant from ADF enabled Dan to continue fighting, and eventually secure a victory for the church. Since then, he has litigated over 100 religious land use cases throughout the United States, becoming the legal expert and a national resource on land use. He literally wrote the book on the subject: Litigating Religious Land Use Cases, published by the American Bar Association.
“The experience changed the trajectory of my life and career,” Dan says. “It all started with the grant that helped me engage the culture. It continues to allow me to help churches thrive in cases throughout the country. And I’ve been blessed to have victories result in fee awards that have returned much of the grants awarded so that money can be reinvested in Kingdom work!”
ROI: Transformative Movements In 1997, ADF held the first Allied Summit to form a legal strategy. The most pressing issue of the day was securing the right of Christians to access public facilities on the same basis as all other groups. As a result of this coordination, scores of these cases were filed in federal courts, funded
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through the ADF grants program. “All these cases created a wave, and that resulted in the Supreme Court accepting one to hear: Good News v. Milford Central School District.” Brett says, “Not only did the legal teams defending Good News receive significant financial support from ADF, when the Supreme Court ruled in their favor, they cited in their opinion a series of other equal access cases—all of which ADF funded—that led to their decision. Today, you barely even hear about equal access cases, because the law is basically settled on the issue.” Even when cases don’t end with a victory, they’ve still created a national debate. In 2000, an unknown attorney called ADF, desperate for help to enable her to continue defending a woman whose husband wanted to remove her life support against her parents’ wishes. The woman on life support was Terri Schiavo. Despite the legal loss, her fight for life captured the attention of a nation and ignited a debate on protecting the vulnerable. “Without the hundreds of thousands of dollars ADF invested in that case, Terri would have died five years earlier, and the world would have never known,” Brett says.
er to share hope with women considering abortion, but also prevents abortion clinics across the country from banning the pro-life message of hope and compassion from their sidewalks, saving countless lives.
ROI: Exponential Victories
Loaves and Fish
When a grandmother named Eleanor McCullen was forced to stand beyond a yellow line on the sidewalk so that she couldn’t easily share comfort and hope with women entering the Planned Parenthood clinic, attorney Michael DePrimo reached out to ADF for help. ADF invested over $100,000 to support the sevenyear litigation, ultimately resulting in a Supreme Court victory. In Michael’s words, “I could not have litigated this case for seven years without the ADF grant.” Over the life of the case, the legal team invested time and expenses valued at more than $2.4 million dollars due to the pro bono hours of the Allied Attorneys. Due to the victory, ADF recovered nearly the entire amount invested, and that money has since funded other cases. In this case alone, the investment ADF made played a direct role in securing Supreme Court precedent. The victory not only restored the freedom for a grandmoth-
Despite the challenges, the Grants and Funding program continues to provide massive return on investment. This calendar year at the time of this writing, 80 grants have been awarded, and that number is expected to reach 110 by press time. A sampling of those cases includes defending the Center for Medical Progress, the organization whose undercover videos of Planned Parenthood executives took the world by storm last year, from multiple lawsuits filed against them, defending a South Dakota Law that protects women from being coerced into abortions (Planned Parenthood v. Daugaard), challenging the validity of morally murky surrogacy laws in California (Cook v. Brown), and defending a Swedish midwife’s right to work without being forced to participate in abortions. Brett says they’re giving God the resources they have and allowing Him to multiply their impact: “God continues to immensely bless us and multiply our loaves and fish for His glory.”
You could be a part of funding the next key case! To equip more Allied Attorneys, donate today at ADFlegal.org/FJ-GF
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The Challenge The size of the Grants and Funding program belies its impact. Three people comprise the ADF staff portion of the program, with two review councils of senior level attorneys adding an additional seven people. “Prioritizing those cases, having to say no, or nearly no, to too many people ... it’s just hard. Seeing the need and not being able to meet it is the hardest part of the job,” Brett explains. In the month prior to the writing of this article, Grants and Funding received 21 requests, all legitimate cases, requesting more than $1 million. But the Grants and Funding team only had a small fraction of that to give. “To actually meet the need, we would need about $4 million a year. This year, we have less than half of what’s needed,” Brett says. How many Eleanor McCullens or Dan Daltons are we not able to invest in? Too many, Brett says. “When an attorney who is sacrificially devoting hours of their time to litigating these cases says, ‘I need $100,000 to keep this case alive,’ and I have to say, ‘We can give you $10,000,’ they say, ‘Thank you so much, but I really needed $100,000’ … ” Brett trails off. “It’s just hard.”
Alliance Profile
Virginia Prodan By Charles Snow
God does not need big people. For every Goliath, God has a David.
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Virginia Prodan
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quest for truth drove ADF Allied Attorney Virginia Prodan to become a lawyer in her home country of Romania. Though she believed she would find the answers she was seeking by practicing law, she discovered it in a different way than she ever expected, when a client introduced her to Christianity. Virginia began defending Romanian Christians against offenses like having Bibles in their homes and watching movies that depicted Jesus. For her work, she was “put under surveillance, interrogated daily, beaten, tortured, placed under house arrest, and came within seconds of execution under the orders of Nicolae Ceausescu, [Romanian] dictator.” Standing in the face of such hostility, Virginia was not a physically imposing individual: “While I was in Romania, I was under 100 pounds. God does not need big people. For every Goliath, God has a David,” she attests. With the help of the Reagan administration, her family was able to find new life in the U.S after being exiled from Romania in 1988. After arriving in the United States with no money, not speaking English, with two children and one on the way, she went on to graduate from Southern Methodist University. Virginia began practicing federal law and now works as an international human rights attorney. In ADF, Virginia discovered an ally with an equal commitment to truth, so
she became an Allied Attorney. Since becoming an Allied Attorney, Virginia has contributed research to various cases in which ADF has been involved, and speaks frequently on the importance of religious freedom. Having suffered under a communist regime, Virginia knows the consequences of losing basic freedoms. She fears prospective clients will one day be afraid to ask for help, understanding that such requests can often risk their livelihoods. “I believe the only reason for many to be silent is fear of the government, but we should be fearful of God and not of man.” Virginia explains, “Because of Christ, I had more freedom than the dictator. I was a free person even though he wanted to bend me to his will … The challenge is to walk in freedom in Christ.” Virginia is adamant that suffering for Christ is the highest honor possible. “Through suffering, God changes us and the world around us. Suffering is for a short period of time, even though it can often be petrifying. We are here for a purpose: to be the salt and the light.”
Read the extraordinary story of how she helped expose the appalling secret that would lead to the demise of the Romanian dictator. Watch the book’s trailer: ADFlegal.org/FJ-Prodan 8
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GROUNDS FOR by Chris Potts
DISMISSAL The Supreme Court Will Decide: Are Some Children Less Worthy Of A Safe Playground?
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ver notice how hard it is to walk past a playground and not smile at what you see? Something way back in the memory stirs to life, seeing all those running, squealing, jabbering children scrambling to squeeze every wonderful moment of freedom out of a half-hour recess. “Those,” it’s difficult not to think, “were the days.” That wind in your face, soaring high on a swing. How brave you felt, going face-first down the slide. The buddies, the bullies, the cooties, the cliques. Getting your new shoes dirty. Trying hard to be big enough not to cry, when you scraped your knee and it really hurt. Running, to everything, just because you could. What you really didn’t appreciate, back then, was how much your joy came out of knowing, at least subconsciously, that someone you trusted was watching … that the teacher over there in the shade had an eye on you, and would be here in a moment if you fell, or crashed, or got a little too brave. There was comfort in that—just knowing someone bigger had your good health and well-being at heart. You could depend on that. You could depend on them. Of course, we outgrow the playground, eventually.
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Climbing monkey bars and dashing around yelling “tag” just doesn’t … fit, after some fuzzy point in time. But we never do get past that quiet hope that someone, in a good way, is watching—that someone out there is in a position to help and protect us, and has our well-being, and our child’s, and our grandchild’s, at heart. As grown-ups, we often look to the police and other elements of the government to help secure our safety, and our children’s. And it’s an unsettling feeling to find —as one small church in Missouri did, not long ago— that some of those elements we depend on are only half watching. That those supposedly committed to protecting all of our youngsters’ safety are, in fact, only committed to protecting some.
Trinity Lutheran Church started out on holy ground —which is how most people in Columbia, Missouri regard the campus of their beloved University of Missouri. Sometime in the early 60s, the church voted to launch a new church out in the suburbs, and that’s where Trinity now stands: with a magnificent A-frame auditorium that seems to touch the sky, a few of the more usual churchtype structures … and a couple of playgrounds.
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The playgrounds were built to accommodate Trinity’s popular preschool programs, but they’re open to everybody. Families throughout the community take advantage of them, whether they’re members of Trinity or not. The lawns are long, the grass is green, the gates are open, and the equipment is up to date, clean, and safe. The playground out near the main parking lot is more for older kids; it’s simpler, smaller than the one out back. That back playground, just as accessible, is the main attraction for the little ones—it’s simply got just about everything you need to make a five-year-old heart beat faster: swings, slides, monkey bars, sandboxes, a merrygo-round, and some of those modern-art shaped structures you can climb over, crawl under, wiggle through. On hot summer days out there, when a breeze sifts the leaves and the squirrels are bounding around and laughter’s in the air and the teachers bring out the popsicles … that Trinity playground gives even the nonchurch preschoolers a pretty fair glimpse of heaven. And, in fact, most of the preschoolers waddling about in the sandbox come from families that don’t attend Trinity. “We had 82 children last summer,” says the school’s just-retired director, Gail Schuster, “and only four of them were members.” That so many non-members want their children in
If the children are happy— if they feel well-loved, taken care of, secure— then we’ve done our job.
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Gail Schuster, Retired Preschool Director
the Trinity programs says a lot about the quality of the school, and its reputation. “This is a very well-known, very reputable preschool,” says Elly Eckhoff, whose family attends Trinity. Her daughter is in the preschool program. Eckhoff teaches at a local elementary school, and says she hears a lot of parents talking about their children’s preschool experiences. Trinity, she says, “is, nine times out of 10, the great one they wish they could have gotten into. There’s a waiting list. All my teacher friends—that’s a big word, but it’s all— bring their children here. You want your kids here.” “The preschool has a reputation in the community among all kinds of different people,” says Lori Knudsen, whose family are not members. “They offer a really great education—it’s a high quality environment for the kids.” “They like how attentive, how loving the teachers are,” Eckhoff says. “It’s that good, fine line between being a nurturer but also an educator. And I’ve heard a lot of parents talk about how they enjoy the playground. It’s a great place, and they enjoy the fact that the building also has a gym so that, if the weather is poor, the kids can still run around and get those wiggles out.” The only problem with running around and de-wiggling, of course, is that sometimes you fall down. How fast you get back up—and how bloodied, bruised, and
broken you arise—depends in large measure on what you fall on. “I’ve been teaching [at a public school] for 12 years now,” Eckhoff says, “and in those 12 years I’ve had multiple kids fall from monkey bars and break their arms. Just this past year alone, I’ve had two. Children fall. And when they fall, you want them to be landing on something that’s soft and gentle.”
That’s why, when Trinity upgraded its playgrounds a few years back, Schuster and her teachers pushed for rubberized material under the equipment. The rubberized material, made from old tires, has become a widespread and much lauded feature of playgrounds in re-
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community service, etc., schools and other organizations can put themselves in contention to be reimbursed for some of the money they invest in rubber ground cover. Before learning of the state program, Schuster and her teachers had found the rubber material too expensive, so they settled for the next best thing: pea gravel for the older children’s playground, wood chips for the preschooler’s play area. It was a necessary, but not especially satisfactory substitution. “It’s soft, it’s according to licensing, so it’s an approved surface, but it’s just not as good,” says Annette Kiehne, a longtime preschool teacher at Trinity who recently stepped into the director’s position upon Schuster’s retirement. “You can just picture it. When you have bare skin, and you’re landing on something rough, it just hurts more. And the woodchips stick to their knees.” What’s more, wood chips tend to move when they’re stepped on—which doesn’t help a toddler’s stability, and makes a lot of work for the teachers, constantly moving the chips around to fill in the gaps beneath the slides and swings. “All of those problems go away with the poured rubber surface, Kiehne says. “It’s just overall better, safer material—like walking on soft carpet.” Philip Glenn was on the church’s Board of Trustees when the playground was upgraded, and aware of the preschool workers’ concerns about the ground cover. Since the trustees are charged with responsibility for church property issues, he did a little homework, and soon discovered the Missouri reimbursement program. He obtained an application—and immediately saw a problem.
Why is the safety of the children at the church’s preschool any less important than the safety of children at a secular preschool?
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ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman
cent years, used across the country in schools, parks, and children’s hospitals. To parents and teachers, the soft, durable, almost foamy material puts that rather crucial space between their still developing youngsters’ knees, elbows, and craniums and the hard, rocky ground. But state governments, too, have found their own reasons to endorse the rubber ground stuff. Old tires are an environmentalist’s nightmare, and every state collects them by the tens of thousands each year. Converting those castoff tires into something safe, practical, and popular offers a happy, profitable alternative to storing them, stacking them, or hoping they don’t catch on epic, sky-blackening fire out at the city dump. So a number of states, including Missouri, have come up with grant programs that make the rubberized ground cover more accessible to financially pressed groups and facilities. By filling out a small mountain of paperwork, and meeting basic requirements with regard to safety, usage,
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Glenn is a retired Air Force officer who spent much of his career flying midair refueling planes; his job was getting a gasoline-laden aircraft as close as possible to another plane or helicopter without knocking either one of them out of the sky. The job requires a steady hand, a cool
head, and a remarkable capacity for threading needles at several hundred miles an hour. All of which turned out to be good practice for negotiating the intricacies of a state bureaucracy. Deep in the depths of the small print and red tape, he happened on a statement at the bottom of the last page of the form: “I certify … the applicant is not owned or controlled by a church, sect, or denomination of religion and the grant would not aid any church, sect or denomination of religion.” That gave Glenn pause. He called the state officer handling the grant, and tried to explain that the school he was applying was church-operated but open to the whole community. Would that make any difference? “We do not discriminate against anybody,” she told him. He reminded her of the line about churches on the form. “We encourage you to apply,” she said. That still didn’t quite answer his question. What, he asked, if the Trinity application scored high enough on all the government’s requirements—would they hold the preschool’s
Why is this case before the U.S. Supreme Court? Watch an inspiring video to find out: ADFlegal.org/ FJ-TrinityLutheran church setting against it? “That will be an issue for our legal counsel,” she said. And so it turned out to be.
Out of the 44 applications submitted, Trinity’s preschool placed fifth—good enough to receive a state grant. But the laissez-faire attitude that prevailed in the state offices before Glenn submitted his application vanished when officials realized the playground was on church property. Giving government money to a church-based operation would violate the state constitution, they said. Glenn immediately contacted attorneys at Alliance
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In the same way that the government should be color-blind, it should also be religion-blind.
Defending Freedom. They were “very interested” in his case, they told him. One ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman came out to meet with church leaders, answer questions from the congregation, and assuage everyone’s hesitations about filing a lawsuit against the state. From the get-go, ADF attorneys suspected the case might go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Church leaders found that hard to believe, but recognized the magnitude of the issues involved. They authorized the lawsuit, and over the next three years, watched the case move steadily through federal courts. Finally, early this year, the high court agreed to hear the Trinity case. “This case was actually very fast-moving, as cases go,” says David Cortman, vice president of U.S. Litigation for ADF, and the attorney arguing Trinity’s case at the Supreme Court this fall. It’s also drawn a lot of attention and interest. To date, 19 states and 34 members of Congress have filed friend-of-the-court briefs supporting Trinity’s position—an indication, to Cortman, of how much hinges on the Court’s decision. “This case is extremely important because of the principle that it represents,” he says. “And that principle is that people of faith or religious organi-
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zations shouldn’t be treated worse than anyone else simply because of their faith. “The state’s primary argument is that their constitution actually requires them to be hostile to people of faith and religious organizations. That’s certainly something dangerous for our government to pursue. Our position is that any constitution, state or federal, actually requires neutrality. Every citizen, regardless of their beliefs, should be treated the same. “In the same way that the government should be color-blind, it should also be religion-blind,” Cortman says. “It should not matter in any government program whether you’re from a particular religion, or no religion at all.” What’s more, he says, the State of Missouri, in denying its grant to Trinity, is actually punishing the church for “satisfying the whole purpose of the government program, which is both to reduce scrap tires and increase safety for kids on the playground.” “Why is the safety of the children at the church’s preschool any less important than the safety of children at a secular preschool?” asks ADF Senior Counsel Erik Stanley, director of the ADF Center for Christian Ministries. “Over 95 percent of the children who attend this preschool are not members of the church … so you’re basically punishing a segment of the community, simply because it chooses to play on a church-operated playground.” “The money’s going to a religious organization,”
This church preschool took a stand, not because of the money or the reimbursement grant, but because of the principle.
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ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman
Stanley says, “but it’s not going to religious use. It’s not funding sermons or Bibles. So it’s certainly our hope and expectation that the Court will not permit the state to engage in discrimination or hostility against people of faith, or religious organizations.”
“I can’t imagine the hours that ADF has spent on this,” says Glenn, who is now in his second term as chairman of the Trinity congregation. “There’s no way we could have afforded it, otherwise, to fight it. We were in no financial position to appeal a case or sue the State of Missouri. So, basically, all of our eggs were in one basket. We’re extremely in debt to them for what they’ve done for us. It’s very gratifying, and we’re extremely appreciative.” “Obviously, I’d like to see us win,” he says, “because it would have an impact, I hope, not just on us, but on all other churches when they apply for grants. It’s just ridiculous that they deny us based on the fact that we’re a religious organization. We’re not out there handing out ‘Come to Trinity Lutheran’ cards,” says Glenn. “If you stood on our playground, you would not hear Jesus brought up, unless a child was having so much fun that they’re singing songs that they might have learned while they were here,” Kiehne says. “But that’s just pure happiness and singing—it’s really not focused at all. We don’t have (continued on page 20)
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My View
What Our Children Need to See by Vicki Wilson
When her children’s school district secretly opened its schools’ restrooms to the opposite sex and then opened the girls’ locker room to a boy, Vicki Wilson took action. She organized a coalition of 51 families in the Palatine, Illinois area to advocate for the right to privacy and safety of all students.
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e all have to have a hobby, and mine is attending school board meetings. There’s a group of us in the Palatine, Illinois area who have been involved with local education for some time, so when the news broke that the U.S. Department of Education was threatening our school district with removing federal funding if administrators didn’t allow a boy into the girls’ locker rooms, we were all shocked. A student at our high school—Student A— is anatomically male, but identifies as female. Represented by his parents, he filed a complaint against the school district with the U.S. Department of Education for “discrimination on the basis of sex” because the school district would not allow him to access the girls’ locker room. To accommodate the student, the school even went so far as to install a bank of lockers in a private bathroom and offered that friends of the student who were also comfortable changing there could be assigned lockers in that area so that the student wouldn’t have to change alone. This didn’t satisfy the student, or the Department of Education which subsequently threatened to strip federal funding for the school district. As settlement discussions continued, parents with daughters at the school began calling to tell us that the school had put up privacy curtains in the locker room. Moms kept explaining to me that some people think, “Oh, well if there are privacy curtains, then it’s no big deal.” What those people don’t understand is that the boy who identifies as
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transgender is still walking past the other girls —while they’re getting undressed—on his way to and from the curtain. And a lot of these girls knew him as a boy during junior high or elementary school. The girls in our high school were very stressed and very uncomfortable. Studies show that up to 25% of girls will have been sexually abused by the time they’re 18, so our high school, like every high school, has girls who’ve experienced abuse. For all girls, the presence of a boy is a privacy violation. But for girls who have been abused, it can cause more significant psychological and emotional trauma. ADF sent administrators a letter explaining that the school didn’t need to give in on this, and federal law was on their side. Unfortunately, the school district chose to ignore that input.
So, a group of us parents launched the D211 Parents for Privacy group, meeting in one of the parent’s houses. We scrambled to respond— launching a website, handing out flyers, starting a Facebook page, getting on the radio … the goal was to motivate parents and community members to attend the next school board meeting, where this issue would be discussed. Over 400 parents attended that meeting. The board allowed two hours for public comments, and about 90 percent were in favor of privacy. Some of the girls bravely spoke out at the board meeting and shared how this policy affects them.
We’re living in a very strange time right now ... it is our duty to stay strong, speak out, and stand up for what’s right for our children and grandchildren.
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Vicki Wilson
Not an easy thing to do in our community. The school board made their decision, voting 5-2. The settlement agreement they set forth was limited to this one student, who agreed verbally to change behind the curtain. But the Department of Education tried to change the terms of the agreement the next day. Three days later, the Board called another meeting. We tried to organize and motivate people to come out again, but most people were confused about why there was a second meeting. Unfortunately, the ACLU was more effective in motivating people from outside our com-
munity to come, including many LGBT activists —so the meeting wasn’t actually representative of our community at all. The original settlement, which didn’t protect the rights of all students, remained intact. At this point, we realized we had tried everything. The only way to protect our girls was through legal action. I’m one of the only parents in the group who has chosen to speak out publicly about the case and my concerns as a parent. Our group has been called a bigoted hate group by other speakers at the Board
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Watch Vicki Wilson’s speech at the press conference: ADFlegal.org/FJ-Parents
right there, in front of all the press, we had a prayer huddle. That was the best part of the day—the moment all my nervousness disappeared.
It’s great to have so much support. The 51 families in this
meetings. But so far, I haven’t faced many attacks as a result of speaking out, except online. I wasn’t worried about myself, anyway—but I was worried about my son. Once, people targeted my son by name in comments on an online article. But he’s actually handled all the uproar very well. I was nervous about speaking at the press conference to announce the lawsuit. The idea of standing at the federal building in Chicago to face a small army of reporters, their cameras snapping away, was nerve-wracking. But in the end, I wasn’t alone, after all. Because of their concerns with remaining anonymous, the other parents who came to the press conference were given the option of standing in an area off to the side where they couldn’t be seen. But when it came down to it, most of them decided they were willing to stand behind me … literally. In fact, so many parents wanted to stand behind me that we ran out of room for them all. We stood as a united front to face them together, parents and our legal advocates. A local pastor who has stood by our parents group since the beginning came for the press conference, and one of the ADF attorneys asked him to lead us in prayer. So
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lawsuit are a group of people who are willing and committed to stand up for their children—and the children who come after them. It’s wonderful to have like-minded parents who are willing to stick together and like-minded attorneys, like those from ADF, who are willing to protect our children. I am so grateful for ADF, for all their hard work on our behalf. I think it’s important that we show our kids that there are some principles worth fighting for, no matter the personal cost. Protecting privacy for our children is one of those principles that is worth the insults, the mockery, the social media ridicule, and the intolerance from those pushing anti-privacy policies on our schools. Our parents group continues to go to school board meetings, educating the community. We’re also preparing for the next school board election, so we can get some folks in leadership who will listen to the community. We’ll likely have a preliminary ruling in our legal case this fall. Our hope is that we win, of course, so that our children’s bathrooms and locker rooms can again be private, safe spaces for those of the specified biological sex, with accommodations for students with unique needs. Yes, we believe in providing those accommodations—we just want respect privacy, and safety for all students, too. To other parents facing this issue in their school district, I’d say: don’t give up! Find other parents, go to your school board meetings, learn who’s on your school board and talk to them one-on-one. Get organized, and don’t give up hope. There really is a way to protect and respect everybody. We’re living in a very strange time right now, where the social pendulum has swung so far to one side. But if we hope to swing it back to middle ground, then it is our duty to stay strong, speak out, and stand up for what’s right for our children and grandchildren.
Q&A With Father Paul Scalia
(continued from page 4)
ful, “You’re not crazy for believing this.” [For] the human mind—which is created for the Truth, and is designed for clear, concise, and systematic though—to have someone boldly articulate a reason to believe the Truth is very encouraging, even if that person happens to be dissenting. We need more voices like this in the public square.
How should Christians continue the fight for the sanctity of life as our culture begins a movement towards the so-called “right to die” and assisted suicide? A friend of mine named Lizz recently passed away from cancer at the age of 36. She lived in Portland, where the movement towards assisted suicide is strong. She is a great example of real “death with dignity”; she chose to accept and offer her suffering, not to escape it through suicide. She knew that we must accept our lives as given. As she put it, “My life is not mine to take. It’s mine to give.” Christians must be grounded in that. But also, we must care for the elderly and the ill. So many of these situations come about because people don’t have hope. Christians have the answer to suffering. Why aren’t we proclaiming it? We should be accompanying people in their suffering and showing them that they are not abandoned. The practical action from that is for us to seek out those who are suffering, to sit with the ill and the dying, to be with them and learn from them.
What gives you hope? Christ is risen! J.R.R. Tolkien, author of Lord of the
Grounds For Dismisal
Rings, described Christian history as a “long defeat” that ends in victory. I think that’s true. The world around us is hostile, but Christ is risen, and He will come again. These are two pivotal things that vindicate everything He taught and everything we believe. That is one of the meanings of the Resurrection: we do not believe in vain. Although we encounter difficulty and opposition and persecution in the world, if we are faithful to what we believe, we will rise with Him. The fact that He is already risen indicates that what we believe is true, and we hold fast to that.
What is ADF’s role in the current cultural conversation? Our nation was founded by people who believed. The founders saw that in order for America to continue, faith has to have a role in the public square. ADF’s defense of religious liberty is essential to creating that space where men and women can make the proper arguments, can witness to the faith, can be leaven in the United States. If we don’t have that freedom, it’s not just that we lose the voice of religion. We lose the voice of culture, of civilization, and of reason in our public square. This is why we have to defend that right to speak and to witness as we do.
In November, he and his family will accept the Edwin Meese III Originalism and Religious Liberty Award, presented by ADF in posthumous honor of his father’s work to protect religious freedom.
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lessons out here. It’s just a playground. There are no ‘Jesus signs’ anywhere.” Which not only shows the absurdity of the state’s position, Cortman says, but underscores the higher motives of Trinity’s decision to file the lawsuit. “This church preschool took a stand,” he says, “not because of the money or the reimbursement grant, but because of the principle. These teachers love these kids. It’s very apparent how much they are concerned about their safety and their well-being.” “The most special part of this job and this school is the wonder,” Schuster says. “If the children are happy—
if they feel well-loved, taken care of, secure—then we’ve done our job. Because the parents pick up on that.” Now and then, she says, a child comes into the preschool for the first time, and it’s not a bright new adventure—it’s overwhelming. Tears, fears, panic, desperation. “But that’s when we step in and say, ‘Mom, Dad—go,’” Schuster says. “‘Your child is safe at our preschool. We’ll love your child, and they will be safe.’” Schuster and her teachers treat every child, every family that way—whatever their background, whatever their faith or lack of it. And they can’t help wishing their government would treat every child that way, too.
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Opinion
When Art and Faith Collide by James Gottry, ADF Director of Marketing, Legal Counsel
F
reedom of religion requires more than a governmentsanctioned right to “[p]roselytiz[e], preach[], and pray[].” But according to one court, that is the only protection available for two young artists in Phoenix. We covered the story of Joanna Duka and Breanna Koski, the owners of Brush & Nib, in Vol. IX, Iss. 2 of Faith & Justice. To recap, Joanna and Breanna met in late 2014 and started the business based on their shared passion for Christ, painting, hand-lettering, and calligraphy. Their website states that they seek to “announce and commemorate life’s important moments,” which includes weddings. As Christians, Joanna and Breanna seek to create art that is consistent with their beliefs, which includes the belief that marriage is between one man and one woman. A recent ordinance passed in Phoenix, however, threatens the pair’s ability to operate their artistic business while remaining true to their beliefs. According to the city’s interpretation, the law requires Brush & Nib to create art celebrating same-sex wedding ceremonies because Brush & Nib creates art celebrating oppositesex wedding ceremonies. The law also prohibits Joanna and Breanna from expressing on its website any religious beliefs about God’s design for marriage which even imply that a request to celebrate a same-sex wedding would be “unwelcome ... or not solicited.” And the law carries stiff penalties: up to $2,500 in fines and 6 months in jail ... for each day the studio violates the law. Joanna and Breanna recognized that the “freedom” we’re guaranteed means little if you can be fined or jailed for expressing your beliefs. The pair confronted a question that people of faith increasingly face: whether to abandon their beliefs or stand up for them. They stood. With ADF’s help, Joanna and Breanna asked an Arizona Court to protect them from the Phoenix ordinance. They also asked the court to issue an order banning enforcement of the law while the case moves forward. On Monday, September 19, the court issued its decision, refusing to suspend the law. While the ruling was dis21
appointing, it does not signal the end of this case, as we will appeal immediately. The Court also denied the City’s motion to dismiss, a victory allowing the case to move forward. In its ruling, the court stated that the law did not violate Joanna and Breanna’s freedom of religion. The Court put forth an alarmingly narrow construction of religious exercise, implying that only “[p]roselytizing, preaching, and prayer” are protected. Therefore, the court determined that forcing Christian artists to create custom artwork celebrating same-sex weddings does not burden religious freedom. The court also stated that “nothing about [Brush & Nib’s work] is expressive.” In fact, the court classified Brush & Nib’s art work as conduct, rather than expression. It is incredible to suggest that a wedding invitation encouraging people to attend a wedding, celebrating that wedding, and containing “details of the date, time, and place of the wedding and [identity of] the persons getting married” could fail to convey a message understood by its recipients, Stand with these but that is exactly what courageous artists! the court concluded. Increasingly, people Visit ADFlegal.org/ of faith in America face a regime that seeks to FJ-BrushandNib force them to abandon their conscience or, at the very least, to keep their beliefs safely tucked away in the deepest recesses of their minds. One state supreme court justice recently and approvingly opined that this compulsion “is the price of citizenship.” Freedom of belief is not a token to be surrendered as the price of citizenship in a free society; it is the mark of citizenship and the fruit of a free society. And so ADF will continue to defend your right to freely live out your faith. Photo Right: Joanna Duka letters the First Amendment to the Constitution.
And the law carries stiff penalties: a $2,500 fine and 6 months in jail ... for each day the art studio violates the law.
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James Gottry
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