July 25, 2023

Dear Friends,

As expected, the LGBT defenders are up in arms over the Legislature’s decision to override Governor Edwards’s veto of House Bill 648, The STOP HARMING CHILDREN ACT.

Last week, an LSU Graduate teacher, identified as Marcus Venable, was disciplined by LSU management and will no longer be permitted to teach at the university due to his personal threats and profanity-laced voicemail directed to Louisiana State Senator Mike Fesi. 

The voicemail was in response to Senator Fesi's comments on the override of the governor's veto of House Bill 648. The not-so-controversial measure simply prohibits surgical and chemical medical procedures in an effort “to alter the sex” of a minor child. As a result of the incident, the university has taken action to remove Venable from his teaching position.  

Kudos to LSU, still a bastion of professor-led wokeness. Still, the top brass at LSU got this highly sensitive and necessary discipline right. LFF’s message to LSU: keep going and you will find a treasure trove of inexcusable efforts to bully, threaten, and simply intimidate students into accepting a woke orthodoxy without a critical examination of the facts. It's time to rid Louisiana’s publicly funded universities of this and similar foolishness.

Belief in God has dropped 16% over the last couple of decades, with 90% of Americans professing belief in God in 2001 and 74% professing faith in God today. Similar declines have been observed for the other four spiritual realities. Despite these declines, however, a majority of Americans still hold belief in each of these entities, as follows: 74% believe in God, 69% believe in angels, 67% believe in heaven, 59% believe in hell, and 58% believe in the devil.

Despite sharp drops in church attendance and religiosity, “Still, U.S. adults’ believers remain the majority, and regular churchgoers, Protestant and Republican in particular, remain resolute in their beliefs.” Further, nearly all growth in Christianity is among conservative and biblically faithful churches. 

While “faith” in America may appear “in decline,” God is still on the move, and many young adults who are understandably exiting compromised churches are, in fact, choosing biblically correct and faithful churches to attend. Want to join me for church this Sunday?

A surrogate mother in California has shared her heartbreaking story after a gay couple threatened legal action when she refused to abort the unborn son she was carrying “for them.”

Brittney Pearson, a 37-year-old from Sacramento, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer during her second trimester. Because California law recognizes “the intended parents” as the legal authority, the request to terminate care for the baby was granted. 

“The first thing I thought after I was diagnosed was I want to keep this baby safe and bring it earthside,” Pearson told the Daily Mail. “I would have been there, I would have given him every chance of survival. I had people ready to help.”

“They wanted no life saving measures if the baby was born alive,” she said. “They wanted the baby completely gone.” 

This serves as a striking illustration of how surrogacy prioritizes the desires of adults over the fundamental right to life, all while exploiting a woman for bodily and financial gain. In this reality, the child is simply a commodity and is deliberately separated from one or both biological parents, which violates the natural right of every child to their mother and father. 

“God’s children are not for sale”! Adults do not possess children as commodities, but as a stewardship responsibility. Every human life inherently possesses the right to their biological mom and dad and, above all, the right to life, regardless of the circumstances! Louisiana lawmakers take note…Senator Gary Smith & Representative Stewart Bishop brought this twisted logic to Louisiana years ago!

Friends, in order to experience a Christian restoration, we need to spend intentional time in God's Word, with His people, and listening carefully to the Holy Spirit's prompts. Then invite friends, family, and this culture to these “living waters!”

Abraham Kuyper said it well… ”There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”

In His Service,

Gene Mills
President, Louisiana Family Forum