Faith & Justice: Kindred Spirits

Volume VIII, Issue 3

KINDRED SPIRITS How one family is relying on faith and each other in the face of government persecution

Volume VIII, Issue 3

CONTENTS

Jonathan Lopez found few supporters when he challenged an abusive professor on his college campus.

Cover

Ken and Lynn Storman (See story, p.10.)

4 TO BE THE BEST

Story:

“What we’re up against is absolutely huge … and some of it’s just evil.”

10 KINDRED SPIRITS “Never before ... have we as a nation required someone to participate in the taking of innocent human life against their will.”

6 GROWING LEGAL CHALLENGES UNDERSCORE NEED FOR CHURCHES TO PREPARE “Now is the time for churches to maintain a clear witness to biblical truth about marriage, human sexuality, and gender.”

9 ALLIANCE PROFILE: CHUCK ALLEN “It’s always especially satisfying to be able to do something that seems to have a direct relationship to the kingdom of God.”

18 A PRESCRIPTION FOR INJUSTICE

— Kristen Waggoner —

Alliance Defending Freedom

@AllianceDefends

“We don’t want to hurt or offend any customer— we just don’t want to be part of taking a life.”

ADFlegal.org

Editor

Chuck Bolte

Alliance Defending Freedom

Senior Writer

[Phone] 800-835-5233

Alliance Defending Freedom would enjoy hearing your comments on the stories and issues discussed in Faith & Justice. Please direct comments/questions to ADFlegal.org, call 800-835-5233, or write: Editor, Faith & Justice, Alliance Defending Freedom, 15100 N. 90th Street, Scottsdale, AZ 85260.

[Fax] 480-444-0025

©2015, Alliance Defending Freedom. All rights reserved.

Margo Thelen, Chris Potts, Alan Sears

15100 N. 90th Street Scottsdale, AZ 85260

Chris Potts

Art Director/Photography Bruce Ellefson

Contributors Rhonda Mesler, Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr.,

Minutes With Alan

All

we wanted was someone who could take the family picture for our annual Christmas card.

My wife and I were at the Alliance Defending Freedom Academy, on the coast of California, a summer or two ago. It seemed an especially picturesque setting for our yuletide photo. So I asked friends in the area for recommendations of a good photographer.

A name was suggested. We reviewed the woman’s website, found her work of high quality and her prices reasonable, and emailed for an appointment. But on learning what the ministry of ADF is about, she replied that she wouldn’t take our picture. She disagreed with some of our core beliefs, and didn’t want to use her artistic talents to tacitly show support for us by photographing my wife and me.

Now, some might call that “discrimination.” They

might urge us to sue this woman and force her either to photograph us, against her will, or pay us damages for daring to reject our business.

But I understand where she’s coming from. Our ADF attorneys spend a lot of their best energies defending business owners and artists who, out of convictions of conscience, choose not to use their talents to profit from, or support, certain activities of others.

The freedom to make those kinds of choices goes to the essence of what it means to be an American—enjoying the right to express and act on our convictions, whether they’re religious, political, or anything else.

We call it your “freedom of conscience.” And protecting it means showing genuine tolerance—the kind that goes both ways, for our clients and those who oppose them. Because what we’re protecting is not the viewpoint of one person or family or group, but the right of all Americans to have a viewpoint, and gracefully live it out, day by day.

The photographer in California didn’t scream at me. She didn’t call me names or threaten my life or my family. She didn’t submit me to a lengthy lecture filled with all of her objections to the work of ADF. She simply said “no,” and briefly explained her reasons. I respected that.

When a photographer client of ours in New Mexico did that to two women who asked her to use her talents in celebrating their same-sex ceremony, the women filed a complaint. A state Supreme Court judge told our client she should pay them thousands of dollars and photograph them. He called that “the price of citizenship in America today.”

That picture of our Constitution is more than a little out of focus. And I’d like to think a certain California photographer might agree with me.

Negative Exposure

by Alan Sears, President, CEO and General Counsel

Watch a special message from Alan.

Visit ADFlegal.org and click on “Faith & Justice.”

John 15:5—Apart from Christ, we can do nothing.

Alliance Defending Freedom

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On The Square

Q&A

with

Professor Helen Alvaré

To Be The Best

One of the nation’s premier experts on family law, Helen Alvaré is a professor at George

Mason University School of Law. She publishes regularly in both academic journals and popular media, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today, on matters concerning marriage, parenting, non-marital households, and the First Amendment religion clause.

She is a consultor for the Pontifical Council of the Laity at the Vatican, an advisor to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and cooperates with the Holy See as a delegate to various United Nations conferences concerning women and the family. She is also founder of Women Speak For Themselves, a consultant for ABC News, and speaks regularly to Christian law students at the Alliance Defending Freedom Blackstone Legal Fellowship.

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Why is the intensive training of the Blackstone Legal Fellowship so important?

There’s a great article that has been my favorite for my whole legal career. It’s by a French philosopher, Étienne Gilson, and it’s called “The Intelligence in the Service of Christ the King.” He says something like this: “You have to be the best, and you have to know your discipline.” In fact, he even goes on to say (paraphrasing),“The more you know your discipline, the more you’ll know God. The more you know God, the more light will be shed on your discipline.”

The thing about Blackstone is, it attracts the best.

It brings in so many people that I know are at the top of their field, and it is not hiding at all from these students that this is a really tough row to hoe, and that they have to be their very best. You have to be better than everybody else. You just do. You have to be the smartest person in the room in your field, because that’s how hard it is out there. And Blackstone, everything about it—the surroundings, the students who choose this, the material they have to read—does not hesitate to send home the message that “we’re giving you the best, but we expect you to rise to that.”

Otherwise, we’re not going to win.

From your professional vantage point, what impact has Blackstone had in its 15 years?

journals to publish. So, it’s working at many different levels. Not just providing legal talent, but confidence, a leeway for scholarship, and leadership when they go out into the world, wherever they practice.

You’ve studied this at length: why is it important for children to have a mother and a father?

We know the importance of a mother and father from what we see when either of them is missing. We know the importance from what we see when they’re present and they’re making different contributions to

What we’re up against is absolutely huge … and some of it’s just evil. their children—[contributions] which have been measured to be not only overlapping, but unique. We also know that children model themselves on the person of the same sex, and they model their relation with the opposite sex beginning with the parent of the opposite sex.

We know both parents’ importance because we know the testimony of children—children who grew up with a mother and a father, and children who did not grow up with a mother and a father. We’re beginning to know at the input level, too—from neurobiology, psychology, sociology—not only what parents offer on an overlapping basis, but what they do differently because their brains are different in many ways.

It’s working at a couple of levels. It’s bringing some serious intellectual lawyers into the work that we need. That inspires people who are afraid to speak up on controversial issues to come forward. But it’s also providing courage to the students who get in [to Blackstone], who then go back to their schools and say, “Hey, there are hundreds of people like me … and they’re as smart as everyone around me at school who disagrees with me.” And so, we can’t even measure what it’s bringing back to their law schools in terms of confidence, etc.

I also know it’s working at the Visit ADFlegal.org to see an level of students who work on law extended interview with reviews and are willing to publish Professor Alvaré, and to learn articles that, previously, professors more about the Blackstone like me could not persuade the elite

Legal Fellowship and what ADF is doing to protect marriage and family in America.

On the marriage issue, you say you still have hope?

The silver lining is this: I was part of the pro-life movement for decades. I can’t even tell you how I love those people, and how good they (continued on page 21) Alliance Defending Freedom

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Special Feature

Growing Legal Challenges Underscore Need For Churches To Prepare To learn more about how to protect your church or ministry’s religious freedom, and obtain your free copy or download of Protecting Your Ministry, visit www.ADFlegal.org/pym.

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Now is the time for churches to maintain a clear witness to biblical truth about marriage, human sexuality, and gender.

—ADF Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley

In the months since the U.S. Supreme Court, in Obergefell v. Hodges, redefined marriage to include samesex couples, many Christian leaders have finally awakened to the real legal perils now endangering their ability to conduct their daily ministry according to biblical principles.

Pastors, denominational leaders, directors of Christian ministries and nonprofits, and administrators of Christian schools and colleges find themselves wondering how to cope with the spate of sexual orientation, gender identity nondiscrimination laws (or SOGIs) that have been or are being passed in the wake of the High Court’s decision.

Many looking at what to do next are finding their most practical legal resource in Protecting Your Ministry, a guide produced by Alliance Defending Freedom specifically to equip Christian organizations during these changing times.

“Now is the time for churches to maintain a clear witness to biblical truth about marriage, human sexuality, and gender,” says ADF Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley, who leads the legal team charged with helping Christian organizations resist state encroachments on their religious freedom. But it’s also crucial, he says,

This new guide from Alliance Defending Freedom can help churches prepare for legal hazards posed by an increasingly hostile culture.

for churches and other ministry groups to put their own legal house in order if they are to maintain the freedom to reach out to the lost and hurting of their own communities.

“The greatest threat is in jurisdictions covered by so-called ‘nondiscrimination’ laws and ordinances,” says ADF Litigation Counsel Christiana Holcomb. Those laws—which over the last few years have proliferated as marriage has been redefined—“prohibit discrimination in employment, housing, or places of public accommodation on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.” They’re also being used to prevent Christian ministries from hiring or otherwise operating in a way consistent with their biblical beliefs on marriage and human sexuality.

Which is why “leaders of every church, every ministry, every faithbased organization need the Protecting Your Ministry guide,” says Kyle Hawkins, senior director of marketing for ADF. “Our hope is that they will take it and use it now—before the lawsuits come up … while the issue is hot, and while it’s on their mind. This is something they can take to their church leaders, or to whomever is in charge of their school or ministry or organization, and act on now.”

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Protecting Your Ministry maps out three simple, clear steps any church or Christian organization can follow to prepare itself for potential legal action related to non-discrimination laws.

The greatest threat is in jurisdictions covered by so-called ‘non-discrimination’ laws and ordinances.

—ADF Litigation Counsel Christiana Holcomb

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1. Update the organization’s statement of faith on the issues of marriage, human sexuality, and gender. “Putting clarifying language in the statement serves to codify a church’s long-standing religious beliefs,” Stanley says.

2. Ensure that the organization’s facilities usage policies allow only uses consistent with their religious beliefs. “The key point,” Stanley says, “is to tie usage of the church’s facilities to the statement of faith and religious beliefs of the church.”

3. Pastors should not stop performing marriages —but should clarify their theological stance on whom they will and will not marry. For at least the near term, Stanley says, “no pastor of a church will be forced to officiate any wedding ceremony with which he disagrees.”

“ADF has always made itself available to defend churches that get into a legal battle over these laws,” Stanley says. “But we will be much better positioned to represent churches if they have already taken the actions prescribed in this guide.”

The guide is available in both English and Spanish and has accompanying video materials. It is drawing major attention not only from churches and religious schools, Hawkins says, but also from other ministries all over the country. Even groups not normally aligned with ADF, he says, have shown strong interest in the guide’s message.

“They’re interested in the content,” he says, “and in the straightforward nature of what it’s saying: ‘Hey, here’s a legal group that wants to help you stay out of a lawsuit.’ That really speaks to people.

“This is why ADF exists,” Hawkins says, “to keep the door open for the Gospel. And Protecting Your Ministry is one of the best ways we can do that right now, practically … by helping ministries, churches, schools, and nonprofits stay focused on what they do—on the people they serve—and not have them getting embroiled in something that takes them off their mission and that they’re simply not ready for.”

Alliance Profile

Chuck Allen hadn’t been at the first session of the Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Academy long before he decided he didn’t fit the Allied Attorney profile. While he enjoyed the camaraderie of other Christian lawyers, he just didn’t see himself arguing religious freedom or family law cases.

“I’m an intellectual property attorney,” he remembers telling ADF staffers. “I don’t know how I can be useful to you guys.” Nearly 20 years later, he marvels at how quickly he learned. Over those two decades, he’s placed his skills and training in intellectual property law—trademarks, copyrights, patents—at the pro bono service of ADF clients. He’s been involved in everything from litigating family law to consulting on the Elane Photography case (the high-profile rights-of-conscience action in which ADF defended a New Mexico photographer penalized for declining to take photos at a same-sex commitment ceremony).

“It’s always rewarding,” he says. “I’ve had a number of intellectual property things come up, and I’m grateful that I’ve had that opportunity. All of us hope to live out our faith in our work. Even in those assignments we get that are not specifically faith-related, we nevertheless bring our faith to bear. But it’s always especially satisfying to be able to do something that seems to have a direct relationship to the kingdom of God.” Allen came to private practice by way of the military, graduating from West Point and training as a judge advocate general before retiring a colonel and opening his own firm, Goodman, Allen, & Filetti, in Virginia. Earlier this year, he won one of the most important cases of his career, successfully representing the pro-life Radiance Foundation at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. The crucial free speech lawsuit against the NAACP combined $100,000 in ADF financial grants, consultations from the ADF legal team, and amicus briefs filed by ADF allies.

Allen says the team effort was typical of ADF, which “takes very capable advocates, and arms them with the necessary financial support and training to be able to take on significant cases in their neighborhood—and in their own practice areas.” Even if that’s intellectual property law.

After all these years of professional association with ADF, Allen says he’s still surprised and pleased to find himself working on “cases where you have your hands and feet working for the kingdom of God, but you’re also able to use your own particular skills. That’s very Visit ADFlegal.org satisfying.”

to learn how ADF and its allies are working to defend life, marriage and family, and religious freedom.

Alliance Defending Freedom

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indred K

By Chris Potts

pirits S

how on e fa m i ly is rely ing on faith and each ot her i n th e fac e of gov e r nm e n t per secut ion

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Alliance Defending Freedom

He walks toward his grocery store, and Ken Stormans’ eyes get busy.

They take in everything. The young clerk selling fresh strawberries from the wooden stand out in front is down to his last few baskets. Not enough shopping carts available along the front wall. The woman in the green apron, arranging pots of flowers near the sliding doors, hasn’t posted the prices yet —she promises to have the sign up momentarily. A fluorescent light is out.

Walking in, he offers a warm, running commentary on the history of the place, but all the while his eyes sweep the crowded aisles and file their observations … prices on the displays … who’s working the shift … what needs restocking … the points where store traffic ebbs and flows.

Familiar customers nod or call his name. He pauses to answer a question, accept a word of encouragement. They know, here in Olympia, Washington, what Ken and his family have been going through these last nine years. Some of it, anyway.

Above: Lynn and Ken Stormans 12

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“your spiritual life

cannot be separate from your secular life . ” – K EN STORMANS

Many are shopping here because they know … it’s why they drove another mile or two or five, past the big chain stores closer to home.

Ken smiles at his grandson, working one of the registers, and begins moving toward the back of the store.

Inevitably, almost unconsciously, he slips into the habit of a lifetime.

The one his grandchildren tease him about—but admit to emulating, now, in spite of themselves.

He pauses, every few feet, to adjust the goods on the shelves. Filling in gaps. Turning the cans and loaves and bottles face forward. Moving the older items up to the front. It’s a grocer’s habit, and he’s been doing it longer than most of those in this store have been alive.

It’s more than professional instinct—it is the essence of his life.

He lives in a world whose culture has turned things around from so many of the truths he learned as a child.

There are gaps, now, in people’s understanding of what’s important. And so many of the timeless moral values are being pushed out of sight. So Ken takes his time, doing what he’s always done. What his father taught him; what he, in turn, has taught his children and grandchildren. He adjusts, shifts, positions things correctly.

He knows that what’s on those shelves, and how everything’s presented, is important—to the store, and to those moving through it. Almost as important as what’s not on those shelves at all.

“I

didn’t even know what Plan B was,” says Ken’s oldest son, Kevin, who became president of Stormans Inc. when his father retired in 2007.

As president, he is ultimately responsible for everything sold in the two grocery stores owned by his family, but he is not intimately familiar with every product—particularly the medications sold in the pharmacy one store offers.

The “morning after” abortion pill “wasn’t even on my radar,” he says.

“I got a call from a customer saying, ‘Why don’t you carry this product?’

I said, ‘I don’t know. Let me call our pharmacist and find out.’” The pharmacist told him no one had asked for Plan B before, so they didn’t stock it.

Kevin called the customer back.

“We can’t stock everything,” he explained, and so, like any pharmacy, “we stock a sample of what our patients need and want and ask for.”

The customer acknowledged that,

but something in her tone troubled Kevin, who began doing some research into what exactly Plan B was.

“And I realized it was not a product that I could, in good conscience, sell, because it really stopped a fertilized egg from implanting—and when an egg’s fertilized, that’s a life.”

Kevin had no way of knowing that his moment of discovery and decision was a turning point for the family business, and the family itself. Or that it would precipitate nearly a decade of legal turmoil and political onslaught that would have them fighting for the survival of their stores and their legacy in a community they had served since Ken’s father, Ralph, founded the company in 1944.

Seventy-plus years of expansion, experimentation, and consolidation later, the company consists of two groceries that have long since become institutions in Olympia—Ralph’s Thriftway and Bayview Thriftway.

“We’re the only independent grocer left in Thurston County,” says Greg Stormans, Kevin’s brother, and a vice president and co-owner of the company. “We’ve been around a long time, and we’re known as a neighborhood kind of store. People like the way we do business.”

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“in the

first six years , we had to

reorganize the company five times. ”

– GREG STORMANS

Charelle Foege, with her mother, Lynn Stormans.

“It feels like a place where they’re comfortable,” says Charelle Foege, Kevin and Greg’s younger sister, and third coowner of the family company. “A place that’s familiar … where they know people, where they see the same faces.” Generations of families have shopped at the Stormans’ stores, and job applicants often say things like, “My grandma worked for you in 1952.”

“We’ve grown up with a lot of people, and they view us as being part of the community,” Kevin says. “We want to give back and respect that, because we live here. We want to make it great, too.”

“My dad taught me [that] giving back to the community was a privilege,

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but it was also a responsibility,” says Ken, who—though retired—still visits the stores almost daily. “That’s how I learned, by his example.” Ralph’s philosophy, he says, was that “we couldn’t miss, as long as we kept our eyes, No. 1, on the Lord, and No. 2, on the focus of giving back. That’s the environment I grew up in.” And the environment he recreated for his own children, as they in turn grew up working in the store and gradually learning the ropes of the business.

Watching her father and grandfather, Charelle says, “gave a perspective on serving other people and focusing on other people … of being a business in a community where you employ people and provide the opportunity for them to provide for their families.”

“They just wanted to serve,” says Lynn Stormans, Ken’s wife of 60 years.

“They never were in business to make money and to become a big supermarket, multi-store operation. Their hearts’ desire was always to provide a living for their family, take care of their employees, and pour whatever they could back

into the community. And that’s the way we operate even today.”

“The importance of all those things starts to amplify itself when you get affirmation and approval from the community that you’re serving,” Ken says.

And over the last 70 years, Olympia has looked to all three generations of Stormans for civic leadership as well as their butter and eggs. That communal trust has been built, Kevin says, not just on the family’s business success, but on their reputation as Christians who take their faith seriously.

“Our daily process of our business is really filtered through who we are as Christians. And so the decisions we make” he says, “whether from a business standpoint, an employee standpoint, a community engagement standpoint— products that we could carry, that we choose not to—it’s all part of that filter.

It’s really not something that we think a lot about, because it’s just who we are.”

“Your spiritual life cannot be separate from your secular life,” Ken says.

“And so you make the decision that your spiritual life is really going to be the regulatory agency in your life, and you measure everything against that.” Which made the decision not to sell the Plan B abortion pill pretty clear for Kevin and his siblings. But didn’t entirely prepare them for the consequences.

“I

started getting more and more phone calls about the product and why

Ken Stormans (center) discusses recent store events with his sons, Greg (left) and Kevin.

didn’t we carry it,” Kevin says. “I made it clear that that was not a product we were going to carry, that we would refer them to another pharmacy.” More than 30 nearby pharmacies sell Plan B, and under Washington law pharmacists have always been free to refer patients to other stores for products they don’t stock themselves—whatever their reasons for not stocking.

What the Stormans didn’t realize was that the phone calls were no accident—their stores were being “testshopped” by abortion activists determined to force them to sell the Plan B pill. When it became clear that the Stormans wouldn’t do that, the activists unleashed their deluge.

They called for boycotts of the stores, and picketers flooded the groceries’ parking lots, blocking the main entrance, disrupting traffic, yelling and chanting. Local papers began running articles, including letters from state legislators denouncing the Stormans.

Olympia is the state capital, and some of those legislators left their offices to come down and join the protests.

“We were really very concerned about physical violence happening, because of just the nature of the signs and the aggressiveness of the group,” Kevin says. The family hired security guards, but customers began avoiding the stores, and sales plummeted. It was the beginning of a nine-year ordeal.

“You have to accept the consequences of making the right decision,” Greg says. “And the consequences are, No. 1, you can’t hang on to all the money you would have had otherwise. You can’t hang on to job security … to being liked by everyone that works with you, or the people in your town. The consequences are having to struggle, financially and emotionally. It’s a tremendous burden for us as owners to make sure that we provide for people daily and weekly and each year.

“In the first six years, we had to

reorganize the company five times,” he says. “We spent years just working through different business models that would keep us in business. It was extremely difficult on the staff … deferred bonuses, cuts in pay, significant reductions in hours all across the board, from the owners on down.” He and Charelle and Kevin even went back to checking out customers and bagging groceries for a while, during some of the more critical intervals.

To make things worse, the Stormans soon learned that the activists weren’t the only ones stalking them. The state’s highest official was personally helping paint a target on their backs.

“This

wasn’t—and isn’t—just about the Stormans or access to Plan B,” says Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Kristen Waggoner, who has represented the family for close to a

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“Not since colonial America have we as a

nation required someone to participate in the taking of innocent human life against their will .”

– KRISTEN WAGGONER

decade. “This is about a national proabortion, anti-religion agenda, with activist groups intent on forcing providers to violate their faith and participate in the taking of human life. In fact, no woman has ever been denied timely access to Plan B for religious reasons.”

“In every state, a pharmacist is permitted to refer a patient for all kinds of reasons—business, economic, convenience or religious,” Waggoner says.

“That’s a standard national practice in pharmacies.” With one exception.

“Washington allows pharmacies to refer for almost unlimited reasons,” she says.

“But in practice, they single out and ban religiously motivated referrals.”

In 2005, the Washington director of Planned Parenthood met privately with her former co-worker, Christine Gregoire, then the new governor of the state, urging her to force pharmacists to dispense early abortifacient drugs —even if the drugs were readily accessible elsewhere, and even if dispensing them violated the healthcare provider’s conscience. The governor obliged, calling on the state’s Board of Pharmacy to adopt a rule that would ban religiously motivated referrals in practice.

To her dismay, the board unanimously passed a regulation that continued to permit referrals, a practice

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endorsed by major medical and pharmaceutical associations, including the American Pharmacists Association. So the governor called for a revote, this time threatening to remove board members, if necessary. She also urged Planned Parenthood to prepare the new regulation for the board’s consideration. The board buckled, but prior to the final vote, the governor replaced board members, anyway, with new members chosen by the pro-abortion groups.

Facing the first board investigation of a referral in 40 years, and the threat of losing their pharmacy license, the Stormans realized they had three choices: ignore their faith and sell Plan B, close their pharmacy—or file a lawsuit.

“The pharmacy is a significant piece of our business,” Kevin says. “It runs

about 20 percent or so of the sales of that one store. If that pharmacy goes away, there’s a really good likelihood that the store doesn’t make it as well. And carrying the product wasn’t an option, so … it then became a business decision. ‘We’ve got to bring this into a lawsuit. This is what we have to do to stand up for our beliefs, and this is what we have to do to stand up for our company.’”

“We’re talking about our Constitution,” says Lynn, “about the freedoms that were guaranteed to us, first by God, then our country and our state. And we decided, ‘Yes, our country means enough to us, our God means enough to us, that we’re going to do this. We’re going to stand.’”

In 2007, ADF and its Allied Attorneys To see an inspiring video of the Stormans’ story, visit ADFlegal.org and click on “Faith & Justice.”

at Ellis, Li & McKinstry PLLC in Seattle filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the Stormans and two Christian pharmacists, Rhonda Mesler and Margo Thelen, from other parts of the state [see story, p. 14]. Early on, ADF secured a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the pharmacy board’s revised regulations, and secured a stipulation that its clients would be protected from prosecution and enforcement through

trial. Planned Parenthood (who by then had intervened in the case on behalf of third parties) joined state officials in appealing the injunction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which reversed it.

In doing so, the 9th Circuit sent the case back down to trial court, where lawyers from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty joined the Stormans’ team. A federal judge ruled the regulations unconstitutional, saying: “The facts of this case lead to the inescapable conclusion that the Board’s rules discriminate intentionally and impinge Plaintiffs’ fundamental right to free exercise of religion.”

“The court’s decision specifically says they were targeting religiously motivated pharmacists and pharmacy owners,” Waggoner says.

“The First Amendment prevents government from making value judgments that deem business and convenience referrals as more important and worthy of protection while religiously motivated referrals are not. The government can’t make that judgment.”

The Stormans’ opponents appealed that decision back to the 9th Circuit, which heard the case in late 2014. In July 2015, the court ruled against the Stormans and in support of the new state Board of Pharmacy regulations.

ADF is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review that decision.

“Not since colonial America have we as a nation required someone to participate in the taking of innocent human life against their will,” Waggoner says. “Washington’s law is an extreme outlier, but we will see activists propose more laws like this one if the courts do not protect the right of conscience here.”

Legally, the Stormans’ case has already had a far-reaching impact. Early on, the appeals court established that, as a closely held, family-owned corporation, Stormans Inc. enjoyed free exercise rights under the First Amendment—in other words, business owners have the same rights individuals have to speak and act in a way consistent with their religious beliefs. That precedent began laying the legal groundwork for ADF’s 2014 victory in the Conestoga Wood Specialties case at the U.S. Supreme Court.

On a personal level, though, the impact has been even more far-reaching, in ways the Stormans are still coming to terms with. (continued on page 21) Alliance Defending Freedom

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My View

A PRESCRIPTION FOR INJUSTICE

by Rhonda Mesler and Margo Thelen

The Stormans family [see story, p. 10] has not stood alone in its opposition to changes in Washington state pharmaceutical regulations—changes that have disallowed the long-recognized right of pharmacists to refer customers who request a product (like the abortifacient Plan B) that violates their conscience. Two Christian pharmacists from other parts of the state joined the family in its lawsuit. They won in district court, but in July 2015 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit overturned that decision. Unless the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear their appeal, the loss will require them to leave their profession or move out of state.

Together, the two pharmacists have more than 66 years in pharmacy practice. Rhonda Mesler has been working in pharmacies for 23 years, the last 10 as a manager in central

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Washington. Margo Thelen has been a pharmacist for 43 years, the last 13 in Washington.

As pharmacists, both have long been free to refer patients to other pharmacies for products their own store doesn’t stock—whether the reason for not stocking is a matter of business, or conscience. A 2006 decision by the state’s Board of Pharmacy changed that —eliminating referrals based on conscience.

Visit ADFlegal.org to learn more about this ministry’s efforts nationwide to preserve the sanctity of life.

For each of us, the Board of Pharmacy’s decision had life-changing implications that rocked us to our core. No longer would we be able to decline to fill a prescription for Plan B and refer a patient based on our religious beliefs about human life. The government was going to force us to stock and dispense early abortifacient drugs against our professional judgment and religious convictions—forcing us to choose between our deepest beliefs and the profession we love.

Faced with that ultimatum, we felt we had little choice but to join the Stormans and Alliance Defending Freedom in filing suit against the state. We knew we could never take on the state by ourselves. We each needed someone to stand beside us and lead us through all the legal turmoil, and ADF was there. We needed encouragement and inspiration, and the Stormans offered both.

Two things have amazed us both as we’ve gone through the experience of this nine-year legal fight. One is the sheer hostility of those on the other side of this question. Any hope we had that our opponents might be willing to respect us as women of principle, and take into consideration the real nature of the kind of work we do and the setting in which we do it, went out the window at the first deposition.

Their attorneys were invasive in their questions and contemptuous in their tone, and clearly had no idea what it means to be a pharmacist in a small town.

A

small-town druggist comes to know her patients very, very well.

Both of us have delivered medications on our own, after hours, and stayed long after closing time answering questions and doing re-

search for our customers.

Rhonda has visited customers in their hospital rooms and nursing homes. She and her husband have helped customers move, fed their cats, and mowed their lawns, as the needs arose. They even adopted the young daughter of a customer who could no longer care for her. Margo learned Spanish to better explain medications to her Hispanic customers, and took immunization training so she could administer flu shots. She spends hours on the phone, cajoling doctors for more affordable options for the poorer customers.

Sometimes she just sits for a few minutes with an elderly

Rhonda Mesler

Their attorneys were invasive in their questions and contemptuous in their tone, and clearly had no idea what it means to be a pharmacist in a small town. customer, listening, consoling, offering informal advice.

For us, none of this is going “above and beyond the call.” This is the call, if you have a heart for the people you serve. And that makes it all the harder when, in a deposition, or on the witness stand, the other side’s attorneys want to suggest that we have no compassion for our customers.

I n particular, Planned Parenthood and its attorneys like to portray

anyone with a religious objection to Plan B as being harsh and vindictive and treating Plan B customers with disrespect. In fact, both of us have been in those shoes. We know all too well what it’s like to be pregnant and not married, embarrassed and scared and wondering what to do.

As a teenager, Rhonda had to face her parents and a future with an unplanned child. Ultimately, she put the baby up for adoption. Margo was 18 when she became pregnant with her first child, and was

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Updates sent by her mother to talk to a doctor whom she hoped would convince her daughter to have an abortion.

Instead, she remembers, the doctor held up his thumb and forefinger, just a scant quarterinch apart. “That tiny being, no matter how small it is, is alive and moving,” he said. Margo instantly determined to keep the child in her womb.

Given those experiences, neither of us would ever want to judge or criticize anyone who comes into our store asking for the Plan B “morning after” abortion pill. We graciously offer to direct them to any of the dozens of other nearby pharmacies that offer the medication. We don’t want to hurt or offend any customer—we just don’t want to be part of taking a life.

None of this is going ‘above and beyond the call.’ This is the call, if you have a heart for the people you serve.

M

argo lost her job almost immediately when the board changed its rules about conscience referrals. Although a kind friend secured her a job at a hospital in another town, the transition meant saying goodbye to all the customers she had served so long. It also meant a $17,000 pay cut, later shifts, a long commute, and no guarantees.

And while Rhonda’s employers have been supportive of her beliefs, they’ve also made it clear that, ultimately, they’ll have to abide by the law’s final decision on conscience referrals.

Rhonda is the primary breadwinner in her family. If the court ultimately rules against her, she will be forced to take another job in another state, facing a drastic change of lifestyle and leaving her home, her extended family, and her customer friends behind.

But no matter what happens, we are committed to the belief that life is sacred, and neither of us will have any part in contributing to the death of a child in the womb. The legal fight to defend our right to follow our conscience has been long, often painful, sometimes very difficult. But we have been blessed with the opportunity to stand for Him, and to stand alongside each other and the Stormans. We wouldn’t change that. And we trust our God to prescribe what is best for us, in the months and years to come.

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MAN OF THE HOURS

Vol. II, Iss. 2

Since

attending the very first session of the Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Academy in 1997, Allied Attorney Kevin Clarkson has provided more than 10,000 hours of pro bono / dedicated service to people of faith across America—the equivalent of nearly five years of legal assistance, offered at no cost to clients mired in conflicts related to life, family, and religious freedom.

Across these 18 years, “Kevin has been the epitome of faithfulness, servanthood, and gratitude,” said ADF President Alan Sears, in presenting Clarkson with the ministry’s Gold Service Award on July 8, during this year’s ADF Legal Academy.

SAME MESSAGE, NEW OPPORTUNITIES

On

Clarkson is one of more than 2,600 Allied Attorneys in the ADF alliance, who together have donated nearly $190 million worth of free legal service to people of faith in all 50 states and around the globe.

Vol. VII, Iss. 1

July 14, Alliance Defending Freedom launched its new website: ADFlegal.org, designed, says ADF Vice President for Digital Communications Joshua Tijerina, to “create a forward-

looking platform to connect people with relevant and timely information and action items that empower them to impact the issues we all care most about: life, family, and religious freedom.

“Crafting an online web experience is about more than just elegant design and innovative technology,” Tijerina says. “It demands that we create something with the power to change lives.

Our goal is to change the world by building a website where people connect with the vision of ADF, engage with transformational content, and return to a timeless experience every time they visit.”

To Be The Best

(continued from page 5)

are, and how much they know about how to run a grassroots campaign that keeps what everybody says is a “dead issue” alive. We’ve learned from 40 years of that, and if we have to have a grassroots movement on marriage, we’re not starting clueless. We’re starting brilliant. And we’ll be very, very good.

It’s going to be a while. But we start brilliant. And I have a great confidence that this movement will be even more amazing than the pro-life movement.

What do you see Alliance Defending Freedom doing right?

ADF has committed itself to a level of excellence in legal scholarship, in legal advocacy, and in training. What we’re up against is absolutely huge … and some of it’s just evil. And

Kindred Spirits

The thing about Blackstone is, it attracts the best … so many people that ... are at the top of their field. so, intellectually, you have to be your best. The practicing attorneys—they’re brave; they’re bold; they’re not on the defensive; they’re ambitious for the right things. They have all the shine of excellent lawyers at a top secular firm, but they’re putting that to use on a good cause. They’re not the least bit naïve … and [they’ve] picked the right side of the issues, right?

By virtue of all this, they inspire people around them.

(continued from page 17)

“It’s very difficult,” Kevin says. “It consumes our time, it’s emotionally draining. I don’t know why God placed us in this position. I don’t know what the end result’s going to be. But it’s clear we’re here for a purpose. I’ll just ride this ship and do the right thing and believe that God’s going to use that for His glory.”

“He gave us this responsibility to fulfill; He trusted us to do it,” says his mother, Lynn. “We’re honored to think He trusts us enough to handle this.”

“If this [had] been an issue that resolved itself in a month, it wouldn’t [require] the same perseverance that it takes for an issue that may not resolve itself in 10 years,” says Charelle.

“It demands a steadfastness. That’s been part of the uniqueness of the circumstances—it’s not been one person; it’s been a family, a family of people going through this journey, and a business of people, and a community of people, and so it’s allowed us to persevere.”

“It’s been a wonderful, wonderful thing to have ADF come alongside us and support us in so many different ways,” Ken says. “It’s been very encouraging. It’s created an aura of hopefulness and the ability to be able to counter something that on our own we would never be able to do.”

“You know that the right thing is going to happen,” Greg says, “but you don’t get to decide what it is. We’re blessed to be in a position where we can take a position … and this happened. Not because we wanted it to, just because maybe,

in some way, in important ways, other people will be encouraged to step forward and say, ‘I’ll do the right thing,’ in a culture that says, ‘You have to be politically correct. You can’t say that, you can’t do that, you can’t think that.’

“It’s important that we do stand up and say, ‘No, this is right.’ We can talk about the journey, the struggle, the difficult times, all the things that happened because of it. But at the end of the day, it’s still just the right thing to do. And what you’d want other people to do, in the same situation.”

The Stormans are a family known for their hospitality, and being around them, one soon suspects that there’s probably no one in Olympia who hasn’t taken supper at their table at least once. Lynn laughs to tell how many people, enjoying a juicy slice of meat or some particularly fresh fruit, ask, “Where did you buy it?”

She tells them, smiling at her husband. Ken always does the shopping, standing in line with the other customers to buy his small portion of all the food his family has purchased from growers and suppliers all over the country. “But how much do you pay?” some guests ask.

“Oh, we pay just as much as you do,” Lynn says. “Only we pay it twice.”

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Opinion

Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr.

The Gathering Storm The work of the Alliance Defending Freedom is essential, singular, and urgently vital. This battalion of defenders fights most of all—and most effectively—for our “first freedom,” religious liberty.

You will recognize that I borrowed from Sir Winston Churchill for the title of my remarks—“The Gathering Storm.” In the first volume of his history of World War II, the great statesman looked back at the storm clouds that had gathered in the 1930s, when he had bravely warned of a war that would determine the destiny of human dignity and liberty for untold millions of people.

We are not facing the same gathering storm, but we are now facing a battle that will determine the destiny of priceless freedoms and the very foundation of human rights and human dignity.

Speaking 30 years ago, Attorney General Meese warned that “there are ideas which have gained influence in some parts of our society, particularly in some important and sophisticated areas that are opposed to religious freedom and freedom in general. In some areas there are some people that have espoused a hostility to religion that must be recognized for what it is, and expressly countered.”

Those were prophetic words, prescient in their clarity and foresight.

The ideas of which Mr. Meese warned have only gained ground in the last 30 years, and now with astounding velocity. A revolution in morality

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now seeks not only to subvert marriage, but also to redefine it, and thus to undermine an essential foundation of human dignity, flourishing, and freedom.

Religious liberty is under direct threat. The Solicitor General of the United States served notice before the Supreme Court that the liberties of religious institutions will be an open and unavoidable question. Already, religious liberty is threatened by a new moral regime that exalts erotic liberty and personal autonomy and openly argues that religious liberties must give way to the new morality, its redefinition of marriage, and its demand for coercive moral, cultural, and legal sovereignty.

A new moral and legal order is ascendant in America, and this new order is only possible, in the arena of American law and jurisprudence, if the original intent and the very words of the Constitution of the United States are twisted beyond recognition.

These

are days that will require courage, conviction, and clarity of vision. We are in a fight for the most basic liberties God has given humanity, every single one of us, made in His image. Religious liberty is being redefined as mere freedom of worship, but it will not long survive if it is reduced to a private sphere with no public voice. The very freedom to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ is at stake, and thus so is the liberty of every American. Human rights and

human dignity are temporary abstractions if they are severed from their reality as gifts of the Creator.

The eclipse of Christian truth will lead inevitably to a tragic loss of human dignity. If we lose religious liberty, all other liberties will be lost, one by one. I am a Christian, and I believe that salvation is found in no other name than Jesus Christ and in no other gospel, but I will fight for the religious liberty of all.

There is a gathering storm, and its threat is urgent and real, but there are arguments to be made, principles to be defended, rights to be respected, truths to be cherished, and permanent things to be preserved. We face the danger of a new Dark Age marked by the loss of liberty and the denial of human dignity. Thus, there is a battle to be joined and much work to be done. Together, may we be found faithful to these tasks. As Churchill would remind us, in every gathering storm there is a summons to action.

This article is condensed from remarks made by Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, on May 15, 2015, upon receiving the 2015 Edwin Meese III Award for Originalism and Religious Liberty from Alliance Defending Freedom.

The very freedom to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ is at stake.

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TODAY’S PLAN TOMORROW’S PROMISE

“Freedom of religion and the sanctity of the First Amendment represent the bedrock of this nation’s founding. We are both proud and humbled to support this noble organization.”

—Dan and Cathy S.

Pass on a legacy of freedom. Please contact Lisa Reschetnikow at 800-835-5233 or LisaR@ADFlegal.org to discuss your legacy giving.