1. Katie Herzog : Med Schools Are Now Denying Biological Sex
“Again, I’m very sorry for that. It was certainly not my intention to offend anyone. The worst thing that I can do as a human being is be offensive.”
His offense: using the term “pregnant women.”
2. Stephanie Slade: Judges Say Web Design Is ‘Pure Speech’ and That the State Can Compel It Anyway
The wildest thing about the decision is that it says giving a conscience-based exemption to a web design firm would “necessarily relegate LGBT consumers to an inferior market because Appellants’ unique services are, by definition, unavailable elsewhere.” The fact that “LGBT consumers may be able to obtain wedding-website design services from other businesses” is irrelevant. “The product at issue is not merely ‘custom-made wedding websites,’ but rather ‘custom-made wedding websites of the same quality and nature as those made by Appellants.’ In that market, only Appellants exist.”
3.
Between 2016-2018 more than 3 dozen abortion-giant Planned Parenthood affiliates across country spent more than $270 million in taxpayer funds, the GAO notes in report.
In that time they also killed about million children according to their own reports https://t.co/1g4YbmzGzc
— March for Life Action (@MFLAction) July 27, 2021
4. New Bill Would Defund Public Universities That Provide On-Campus Abortions
“This abortion regime is dangerous for women,” Jeanne Mancini said, adding there are “psychological ramifications” to “being your own abortionist.”
5. Chuck Donovan and Angelina B. Nguyen: U.S. abortion policy shouldn’t emulate China or North Korea. We should be more like Europe.
The question the court will face this fall is whether the Constitution allows any effective limit on abortion before the 1973 definition of viability (“usually placed at about seven months,” the Roe court said), though advances in science and medicine over the past 50 years continue to allow babies to survive outside the womb at a younger and younger age.
…
Mississippi lawmakers did not advance this law with the intention of achieving an international happy medium. Rather, legislators in Mississippi and in states across the country have passed abortion limits with the intent of recognizing the reality that human life exists in the womb. At 15 weeks, unborn children respond to touch, have fully functioning hearts that pump 26 quarts of blood per day, have the ability to feel pain, can suck their thumb and undergo lifesaving and life-altering treatment.
Full report from the Lozier Institute here.
6. Mary Margaret Olohan: Government Stimulus, Remote Work May Have Fueled A Baby Boom
“Conceptions plummeted during the lockdowns of March, April, and May, but as reopening began in June, conceptions rapidly normalized,” IFS researchers Brad Wilcox and Lyman Stone reported. “Conventional stories about fertility don’t fit well here: employment was still extremely suppressed in the summer of 2020 and excess death rates were very high. It was not, in conventional terms, a good time to make a baby.”
7. Nicole Russell: Abortion isn’t as popular as people think. The law just might catch up
8.
“Acosta also reported on social network that she is awaiting trial. “I’m not free, quite the contrary,” she added.” #SOSCubaLibre #AbajoLaDictadura https://t.co/JfjDpWNAt5
— Alberto Miguel Fernandez (@AlbertoMiguelF5) July 27, 2021
9. Coptic archbishop: Condemning persecution of non-Christians follows the example of Christ
Christians around the world must speak out against all religious persecution — including against the Muslim Uyghurs, the Coptic Orthodox Archbishop of London told CNA during a recent summit on international religious freedom.
“As Christians who live as part of persecuted communities, we understand the pain of persecution, and if we cannot accept it for ourselves, we should never accept this for anyone else,” Archbishop Angaelos of London said.
10. Qualified immunity won’t protect college administrators who discriminate against religion
The only role in (InterVarsity Christian Fellowship) that wasn’t open to everyone was leadership, where InterVarsity merely asked that the individuals who led its prayer, Bible study, and worship agreed with the fundamentals of InterVarsity’s Christian faith. Personnel is policy, and so – like virtually all other clubs on campus – InterVarsity simply wanted its leaders to support its mission. No one ever complained about that common-sense requirement.
Until summer 2018, that is, when the university sent InterVarsity notice that the group’s leadership requirement was in violation of university policy.
11.
In the Mississippi abortion case at the Supreme Court, @BECKETlaw just filed a #SCOTUS brief explaining how the Court’s abortion rights framework has generated many First Amendment conflicts. https://t.co/6n9odosPgm
— María Montserrat Alvarado (@Mmontsealvarado) July 27, 2021
12. Richard W. Garnett: Fulton and the Art of Cooperation: Religious Freedom as a Public Good
As President Clinton once observed, echoing many scholars, religious freedom is our “first freedom,” not merely because it is guaranteed by (what turned out to be) the First Amendment to our Constitution but because it reinforces—and indeed is essential to—all the others.
Headlines notwithstanding, a religious liberty case or controversy is much more likely to involve a prisoner’s diet, an Indigenous community’s sacred land, or an employee’s religiously mandated garb than, say, a contraception coverage requirement or a wedding vendor’s objections to participating in the celebration of a legal same-sex marriage. It is a grave mistake for citizens to suppose that religious minorities’ right to religious freedom is not vulnerable or that it must necessarily be subordinated either to current policy preferences or even to principled commitments.
She also set an Olympic record after lifting a combined weight of 224 kilograms.
After completing her final lift in a very close competition, Diaz held her hands to her face, burst into tears and clutched at her Miraculous Medal of the Blessed Virgin Mary hanging from her neck.
14.
This interview Simone Biles did with the NYT was so sad. On the physical toll the sport takes on her: https://t.co/Vtc97WYGBR pic.twitter.com/tsa614nq5e
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) July 27, 2021
15. Catholic priest attacked with glass bottle while praying at cathedral
“Just prior to the attack the man had asked him if he was a priest. When the priest replied that he was, the man attempted to hit him on the head with the bottle, before chasing him to the back of the cathedral.”
16. Fox News: Diversity staff at major universities tends to outnumber history professors: Report
The conservative Heritage Foundation searched the staff of 65 universities within the five major athletic conferences, and the average school had 45 people whose formal responsibility included promoting DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion).
DEI staff tended to outnumber by a factor of 4.2 the staff dedicated to helping students with disabilities.
17. William McGurn: The Revolt of the Unwoke
All three of the school-board members targeted for recall voted to drop merit from Lowell admissions. Ms. López, the president, also asserted that a merit-based system is inherently racist.
This school-board revolt is a reminder that even if the Supreme Court passes on the Harvard case, the issue won’t go away. It will soon be back before the justices—maybe in one of these elite public high school cases.
“Asian-American bias is one of the last permitted bigotries in the United States,” Ms. Dhillon says. “That needs to stop and it’s up to the Supreme Court to do it.”
18. Bishop Robert Barron: ‘Imagine,’ blared at the Olympics, is a totalitarian’s anthem
I frankly can’t imagine anything worse. To say that there is no heaven or hell is to say that there is no absolute criterion of good and evil — no way of meaningfully determining the difference between right and wrong, no standard outside of the subjectivities of each moral actor by which to say any one agent is better than any other.
If you doubt the convictions of a Roman Catholic bishop, take a good hard look at the tens of millions of corpses piled up in the last century by people who took very seriously the proposition that there is “no hell below us; above us only sky.”
Flashback: William F. Buckley, 1990: No, Yoko, I Can’t Imagine
It is quite difficult to understand John Lennon’s point in wishing that all that life stand for is the present moment, today. And the notion that there is only sky above us suggests a kind of ethereal vapidity that is downright depressing. And what are we to say about the word “heavenly” if heaven doesn’t exist?
19.
📣WE ARE HIRING📣
The Philos Project is expanding our communications department – please email a cover letter and resume/portfolio to Josefa Gonzalez at
josefa@philosproject.org.Open positions: 💻Graphic Designer, 📹Video Content Creator, 📱Social Media Associate. pic.twitter.com/fyvq9y0MQa
— The Philos Project (@philosproject) July 27, 2021
20. Tevi Troy remembers Jackie Mason