Faith & Justice: The Cost

Volume IX, Issue 1

THE COST

Punished for holding to his faith, a printer learns the growing price of doing business as a Christian

Volume IX, Issue 1

CONTENTS

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

Blaine Adamson (See story, p.10.)

Cover

4 ON THE SQUARE — ARKANSAS GOVERNOR ASA HUTCHINSON

Story:

“ADF was a good counselor, provided great wisdom, and very practical [help] during a very tough time in our state.”

10 THE COST

6 ADF MOUNTS MAJOR NATIONAL EFFORT TO EXPOSE, DEFUND PLANNED PARENTHOOD

“We’re called to believe what the Scripture teaches— not what we hope it teaches, or what our culture tells us it teaches.”

Alliance Defending Freedom

@AllianceDefends

9 ALLIANCE PROFILE: KARLENE TURRENTINE “For the first time … I was clearly in a room with lawyers who were arguing not just for the Constitution, but their faith.”

18 BREAKING THE SILENCE “If all kids needed were two loving stable adults, then my mom and her partner would have been enough.”

—Blaine Adamson—

Alliance Defending Freedom

“You can’t simply say, ‘Planned Parenthood needs to be stopped.’

You need to offer positive alternatives.”

ADFlegal.org

Editor

Chuck Bolte

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

©2016, Alliance Defending Freedom. All rights reserved.

Jane Scharl, Alan Sears

15100 N. 90th Street Scottsdale, AZ 85260

Chris Potts

Art Director/Photography

Bruce Ellefson, Jonathan Marshall

Contributors Sophia Kuby, Chris Potts,

Minutes With Alan

Celebrating a Warming Trend

by Alan Sears, President, CEO and General Counsel

My work as CEO takes me to Washington, D.C., at all times of the year, so it’s with some authority that I say it’s hard to overstate how arctic it gets in that city in January, as icy winds whip across the National Mall that runs from the Lincoln Memorial to the steps of the Capitol.

The young people come anyway. Bundled and laughing, jostling each other for warmth, hoisting signs in gloved hands, yelling words of encouragement, protest, prayer, and defiance from throats sore from exertion amid the wet and snow ... they come. Every January 22, even while so many of their peers head for ski resorts and beachfronts, they come by the hundreds of thousands, from every corner of the country.

They come for the March for Life, and to confront their fellow Americans with a truth so easily forgotten, because so many want earnestly to forget it: that the abortion laws that have allowed for the destruction of millions of lives in the womb are also destroying the soul of our nation.

Nearly 60 million babies have been killed since the Roe v. Wade decision 43 years ago. Enough to populate most of the western U.S. states—and all of Italy.

True, as Joseph Stalin famously said, “One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.” But this past year, Americans have rediscovered the tragedy of abortion through the widespread posting of horrific videos revealing just how callous Planned Parenthood has become about the worth of a baby’s life.

The callousness is not new; it’s just been dragged into the light—firing anew the urgency felt by all those young people crowding the National Mall to call for an end to this horror.

When Roe first became law, it was the

young people, especially on college campuses, who most seemed to embrace it.

Those pressing the pro-abortion agenda predicted that, as those students came of age and passed their values on to their children, the views of those embracing abortion would overwhelm the culture and command the ballot box. It hasn’t turned out that way.

America—a nation increasingly confused about same-sex unions and the demands of those claiming to be transgender—is gradually deepening its opposition to abortion. And young people are leading the way. I’m thankful our ministry has a part in that, through our cooperative efforts with Students for Life of America in their outstanding work on our nation’s college campuses. I’m thankful for what we’re doing with our allies to expose the corruptions of Planned Parenthood and its contempt for the lives of women and children (see p. 6).

But mostly, I‘m thankful—looking on the sea of frozen young faces that crowd D.C. every frigid January 22 —that this is a generation whose reverence for life burns deep and bright and strong.

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

America … is gradually deepening its opposition to abortion. And it’s the young people leading the way.

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On The Square

Q&A

with

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson

Where The Battle Must Be Fought

Asa Hutchinson was the youngest U.S. Attorney in the nation when he was appointed to that post for the Western District of Arkansas by President Ronald Reagan in 1982. Hutchinson went on to serve two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, then as director of the Drug Enforcement Administration under President George W. Bush. President Bush later appointed him the first Undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security.

During his first year as governor in 2015, Hutchinson directed the Department of Human Services to terminate Medicaid contracts with Planned Parenthood, and plunged into a nationwide political firestorm when he signed his state’s version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). While other public officials bowed to the enormous public pressure to rescind this crucial measure, Governor Hutchinson held firm, defending the statutorily protected right of all citizens to live and work in accordance with their deepest religious beliefs.

We must be wise, but we must also debate the issues with the right tone.

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What stirred your personal commitment to defending religious freedom?

Over 30 years ago, I attended a conference on religious freedom at Notre Dame. It was in 1981, right before I took on the responsibility of U.S. Attorney at the ripe old age of 31. I heard Francis Schaeffer speak about the need for the lawyers in that audience to be engaged in the fight for our culture. He talked about the battle for religious freedom ... about the importance of defending the rights of those of conviction.

A lot has changed since that time … in terms of our culture, in terms of Supreme Court decisions. But the importance of lawyers being in the fight has not diminished. The need is greater than ever.

How did passing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act become such a battle royal?

I was familiar with RFRA because I was in Congress and on the Judiciary Committee, and I understood the federal RFRA law that was passed. But as [the Arkansas version] was moving through the legislative process, Indiana became embroiled in the controversy over their version of RFRA. The public scrutiny of the religious protections was enhanced and shaped by the loud voices of the homosexual activists.

The Human Rights Campaign came to Arkansas.

They mounted the most expensive and active lobbying and public relations campaign of any group during the legislative session. Protestors were active, they were all over. The national media zoomed in on the state as the next battleground after Indiana. Some legislators who had voted for the bill came to me and said, “We’ve got a problem. Arkansas’ [bill is] going to be targeted, and this has the potential of being a public relations disaster.” It’s no fault to the bill. It was just the reality of the times.

I made the decision that [the Arkansas bill could] best be explained to the public and understood if our law, the RFRA law in Arkansas, precisely mirror[ed] the federal law. The federal RFRA law had been tested, understood, proven, and generally accepted. So I sent the

There are eternal principles as set forth in Scripture.

But when we enter the arena of government, there will be shades of gray in the application of those eternal values. bill back, and within 24 hours, the legislature came to my aid; they sent the bill back to mirror federal law … and I was able to sign it into law. The result is that Arkansas adopted a strong religious freedom bill, and it received sufficient bipartisan support and public support.

What challenges do you see, going forward, for those working to protect religious freedom?

First of all, religious freedom must be asserted and protected. RFRA is the right vehicle and standard to provide that protection. Secondly, government cannot win the battle for us. The fight for our values, for our culture and our worldview must be fought and won in the churches and synagogues, and by training lawyers [for] the courtroom. That is where we must fight the battle.

Thirdly, we must be wise. Yes, there is a black and white. There is a right and wrong. There are eternal principles as set forth in Scripture. But when we enter the arena of government, there will be shades of gray in the application of those eternal values. Judgment calls have to be made. We have to look at the end result. We have to look at working together as a team to accomplish the greatest level of religious freedom for our citizens.

We must be wise, but we must also debate the issues with the right tone. There Visit www.ADFlegal.org to (continued on page 21)

learn more about what ADF is doing to protect religious freedom in your state and across America.

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Special Feature

ADF Mounts Major National Effort To Expose, Defund Planned Parenthood Last summer’s release of a series of videos showing Planned Parenthood executives casually, callously discussing the profits they’ve made selling body parts from aborted babies awakened millions of Americans to a brutal realization: Planned Parenthood is far less committed to the care of women and their babies than they are to their own bottom line.

It’s a point Alliance Defending Freedom and its pro-life allies have been trying to drive home for years, but the videos—released

by The Center for Medical Progress (CMP)— opened many people’s eyes as never before.

ADF attorneys moved quickly to help support CMP amid a media firestorm, and to secure the group’s continuing freedom to broadcast its horrific discoveries.

“People only oppose abortion when they see abortion—when they know what it really is,” says ADF Senior Counsel Casey Mattox, “and that’s what these videos show.” Instead of news releases and speeches, he says, “people could see for themselves, and hear from Planned Parenthood executives’ own mouths what their real view is of unborn children.”

That new awareness opened the way for Defund Planned Parenthood, an ADF multifront initiative aimed at broadening and deepening Americans’ new awareness of Planned Parenthood’s activities and stopping the annual flow of half a billion dollars of tax-payer money to this highly profitable “nonprofit” organization. ADF has focused its efforts on:

MESSAGING: “You can’t simply say, ‘Planned Parenthood needs to be stopped,’” says ADF Senior Counsel Steve O’Ban, who leads the Defund Planned Parenthood initiative. “You need to offer positive alternatives.

You have to address how you can

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Specially created ADF website, GetYourCare.org to help women locate safe and nearby alternatives to Planned Parenthood.

best help the women who go to Planned Parenthood for the few services they do offer that aren’t abortion.”

Those alternatives have been addressed through a specially created ADF website, GetYourCare.org.

The site (which is being backed and promoted by 16 other pro-life allies) provides maps that allow anyone, anywhere in the country, to plug in their ZIP code and find one of more than 13,000 Federal Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and Rural Health Clinics (RHCs)—each a more-than-viable alternative to any of the 665 Planned Parenthood facilities nationwide.

“Planned Parenthood tends to be located in urban areas, where they can make the most money,” O’Ban To learn more about says. Not only are FQHCs available in ADF efforts to defend life more remote rural areas, but many and defund Planned Parenthood, offer crucial services Planned Parvisit ADFlegal.org/DefundPP. enthood doesn’t: mammograms, preventive care, pediatric services.

To find safer healthcare

options for women visit GetYourCare.org.

There are 20 community health clinics for every Planned Parenthood.

13,540

665

FQHCS AND RURAL HEALTH CLINICS*

PLANNED PARENTHOOD LOCATIONS

You need to offer positive alternatives.

You can’t simply say, ‘Planned Parenthood needs to be stopped.’

—ADF Senior Counsel Steve O’Ban

Learn more at ADFlegal.org/DefundPP * Data based on information provided by https://www.cms.gov/Outreach-and-Education/Medicare-Learning-Network-MLN/mlnProducts/Downloads/rhclistbyprovidername.pdf (last visited Sept. 3, 2015) and http://datawarehouse.hrsa.gov/Data/datadownload/hccDownload.aspx (last visited Sept. 3, 2015). Federally Qualified Health Clinics (“FQHC”) and “Look Alikes” provide primary and preventive medical care and enabling services. Rural Health Clinics also offer primary and preventive medical services. Note: this map does not include the thousands of additional private health providers who accept Medicaid for women’s health needs.

To download a copy of these maps to share with others, go to GetYourCare.org

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On January 6, Congress passed a budget reconciliation bill that—for the first time ever—included a provision terminating federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

MEDIA:

“While mainstream media continues to take its information directly from Planned Parenthood,” says Bob Trent, ADF media relations director, “ADF has been able to place high-profile stories that underscore the company’s scandal-ridden reputation as ‘the nation’s largest abortion business.’”

“We’ve drawn not only on the CMP videos, but on the body of work that ADF has compiled about other wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood,” O’Ban says, “[including:] their pattern of failing to report child sexual abuse, their widespread overbilling for Medicaid; their medical fraud, waste, and abuse; their systematic failure to follow health and safety requirements for health care clinics in their states.”

Those stories have captured the attention and informed the efforts of state and federal officials investigating the company.

United for Life not only partnered with ADF, but benefited from ADF promotion of their messaging and social media content. Family Policy Councils coast to coast have also asked for and received ADF resources and help with funding, messaging, and strategy for how best to work with their state leaders to defund Planned Parenthood.

RESOURCES: Members of Congress and state leaders across

On January 6, Congress passed a budget reconciliation bill that—for the first time ever—included a provision terminating federal funding for Planned Parenthood. President Obama immediately vetoed the measure. To date, eight states have now moved to cut off Medicaid support and defund Planned Parenthood.

the U.S. have been consulting ADF as “the leading legal expert on how to defund Planned Parenthood,” O’Ban says.

“We have been asked to provide legal information about states’ authority to disqualify Planned Parenthood from continuing to be a Medicaid provider in many states.” Both Mattox and Sue Thayer, an ADF client and former Planned Parenthood employee, testified at Congressional hearings, and officials pressing the case for defunding drew on many of the maps and materials created by ADF.

More than half a year after the release of the CMP videos, the impact of these multi-faceted, ADF-coordinated efforts continues to grow.

“Going into this battle, polls showed that more than half of Americans did not know that Planned Parenthood did abortions,” says Mattox. “Now, they can’t hide that fact. People are waking up to the reality of what Planned Parenthood does. We’ve seen a significant drop in their poll numbers, and we’re impacting their bottom line.”

ALLIES:

“The first thing we did (once the CMP videos began airing) was bring together all of our prolife allies to share information, to coordinate our efforts, determine how to use each organization’s resources to their highest and best effect,” O’Ban says. Groups like Students for Life of America, the Susan B. Anthony List, Evangelicals for Life, and Americans

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ADF attorneys Casey Mattox (far left) and Steven H. Aden (far right) joined Students for Life of America for a recent March for Life event.

Alliance Profile

Karlene Turrentine came to last summer’s Alliance Defending Freedom Academy spiritually exhausted by the sometimes brutal realities of practicing law in the “Research Triangle” bounded by Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

When she left a few days later, she was singing.

Even in a Bible Belt state, practicing law “is often difficult for a Christian who wants to live their Christianity ‘out loud,’” Karlene says. Almost everyone identifies as “Christian,” whatever his beliefs, and corruption is often a casual reality of the system, she says—so honoring God as an attorney means “you find a way to advocate for your client with integrity, and with honor.”

For Karlene, that means “in everything I do”—accepting a case, searching out legal precedents, gauging a witness’s veracity on the stand—“I’m seeking the Lord, asking Him to ‘help me see what natural eyes do not see.’ And I’m grateful to say that wisdom always shows up!”

Karlene had no interest in a legal career when she was drafted 20 years ago by an old friend to be the paralegal for his firm; he quickly saw talent and urged her to go to law school. She finally did, she says, “because it was clear to me ‘this is where the Lord wants me.’” Today Karlene not only leads her own firm, but is county attorney for Warren County,

N.C. Not long ago, in a continuing education class, she was astonished, listening to a presentation by two ADF attorneys.

“For the first time in all my years as an attorney,” she says, “I was clearly in a room with lawyers who were arguing not just for the Constitution, but their faith. It was really a blessing—they were just full of the joy of the Lord.” After class, she cornered them and said, “Tell me about ADF.” A few months later, she was attending her first ADF Academy.

“By far the best legal conference I’ve ever attended,” she says. “I came with a heart that was heavy ... and a mind that was tired and wondering if I was really making a difference.” She left, she says, “reminded that I See Karlene’s powerful testimony am in this to win. Not just from and deeply moving rendition of a worldly standpoint—there is “Amazing Grace.” a true destiny involved. There Visit www.ADFlegal.org are cases out there that matter beyond the day ... that have an eternal purpose and an eternal effect.” During a closing banquet testimonial, she delighted the crowd with a spontaneous, a cappella rendition of “Amazing Grace”—then said: “I’m going home with a new Kingdom purpose. We’re warriors, and it’s time for us to fight!”

Above Photo: Karlene Turrentine (front row, center) stands with fellow Christian attorneys at the 2015 Alliance Defending Freedom Academy in California.

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THE

Punished for holding to his faith, a printer learns the growing price of doing business as a Christian

by Chris Potts

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E

It

was

Christmastime,

and a reporter in

Lexington, Kentucky,

decided to interview some schoolchildren for their take on the holiday.

Granted access to a local first-grade classroom, he began

asking the youngsters what yuletide meant to them.

The

answers

were predictable enough: toys and trees, songs and snow, reindeer and stockings and

Santa.

Finally, one little blond-haired boy stepped up for his turn with a quietly curious look on his face, bemused at the answers he’d

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“It was just like, ‘Okay, God— You’ve got this. It’s going to be all right. It’s going to work out.’”

—BL AINE ADAMSON

heard from his friends and classmates.

“Christmas,” he told the reporter, “is about Jesus.”

It wasn’t, he remembers years later, the answer the journalist was looking for.

The simplicity of that little boy’s faith would eventually fade, as he grew into the distractions and detours of youth and early manhood.

But it returned, in time, even stronger ... bringing with it that same growing awareness of the distance between his own convictions and those of many of the people around him. A distance that would eventually position him for attack from those who didn’t find, in his beliefs, the answers they were looking for.

T

he candid little boy, Blaine Adamson, grew up to become managing owner of Hands On Originals, a promotional printing company in Lexington that specializes in putting logos, illustrations, and messaging on everything from golf clubs to Frisbees, coffee mugs to beach balls. But especially T-shirts. Every size, every

color, every style. If you want your message on a tee in the land of mint juleps and thoroughbreds, Hands On has your back.

“Managing owner” makes Blaine sound like an executive, but in reality, his heart is in the design end of the business. While in a fraternity years ago at the University of Kentucky, he found he had a talent for creating artwork for the T-shirts his fellow Greeks sold to raise money.

“I loved the creative side of art,” he says, “just designing things that I felt like were either funny or hit the mark with where our culture was at the time. So I said, ‘Hey, let me see if I can come up with something ... maybe we could sell some more shirts.’”

He did, and soon Blaine was being enlisted by other Greeks to design their shirts. By his senior year, he was working for a local printer, making a good living off commissions generated through his own creativity.

His art was sharp, clean, and imaginative, but his once-vibrant faith was not. Things once so clear to that little blond-haired boy seemed less certain to a young man reveling in college life.

“I remember saying, ‘God, I’m tired of the conviction. I just want to see what life is like,’” Blaine recalls.

His fraternity offered all kinds of opportunities for letting go of old constrictions, but amid the parties and general mischief came the nagging sense that God wasn’t letting go of him. The tug-of-war finally culminated on the deck of a cruise ship, where—beer in his hand, girl on his arm, and carousing students swirling around him—Blaine remembers an almost-audible voice asking: “You’ve got everything. Are you where you want to be?”

He wasn’t. “God,” he prayed, “I feel like I’ve been away from You long enough.” It wasn’t a casual repentance. “I knew there was going to be ... a cost. If you choose to follow the Lord, there will be a cost.”

At

first, the cost was not so apparent as the value. Everything in Blaine’s life seemed to come together. He met his wife, Amy, and began a family. He took a job with Hands On Originals, where he and his friend

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“This is a case that’s important for all Americans … no one in our country should be forced to promote ideas that they disagree with.”

— ADF SENIOR LEGAL COUNSEL JIM CAMPBELL

Craig Humphrey began bringing in bigtime clients like the University of Kentucky, and developing new divisions for their company, including “Christian Outfitters,” which marketed T-shirts for people of faith.

“At the time, Christian-themed shirts were terrible,” Blaine says “They were cheesy.” He set out to “create Christian shirts that would actually be worn by high school and college kids —shirts that were culturally relevant, that wouldn’t just be thrown in a drawer because they were embarrassing. We felt like we could do a better job giving the message of what Christianity was all about.”

Soon, Christian camp directors and mission-team leaders were calling Blaine to say, “Here’s our verse. Create something.” More often than not, they liked what he came up with—and two lessons began to emerge. For Blaine, the realization that, even on a shirt, a coffee mug, or a golf ball ... a message

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means something. That highlighted for him the need to be mindful of the messages he prints.

“We’re the ones, at the end of the day, who have to print an item,” he says, “and it speaks a message the second it goes off the press. I’m accountable for that.”

The second lesson was for Hands On Originals’ owners. They realized that, with his skills and great passion for creating promotional materials, Blaine should be making the day-to-day decisions for their struggling company. They offered to bring him on as managing owner and hand him the reins of a business half-a-million dollars in debt. He embraced the challenge. But despite his best efforts, nothing seemed to turn the finances around ... and as Christmas approached at the end of his first year, he was weighing how to tell his employees that they needed to close the company.

Driving down the road, his children tussling in the backseat, Blaine

was gnawing on his dwindling options when his youngest—outnumbered in the backseat melee—called for reinforcements: “Daddy! Help!” It suddenly struck Blaine that he’d never put his business struggles to his own Father, in quite that clear, simple way. So he did.

Almost overnight, something changed. In a bad economy, in the dead of winter, Hands On shirts started flying off the shelves. They kept flying in the months that followed; sales soared “like God reached down and turned the faucet on,” Blaine says. In three years, the company had paid off its debts and become one of the preeminent shops of its kind in the region.

The

faucet was still wide open one day in 2012 when Blaine returned a call from a prospective customer, asking him to print shirts with a message promoting the Lexington Pride Festi-

Visit ADFlegal.org/Blaine for exclusive videos on Blaine and the Hands On Originals case.

val, an upcoming event sponsored by the Gay and Lesbian Services Organization (GLSO).

“I knew as soon as he told me what he wanted, that wasn’t something I was going to be able to print.” Blaine explained that he couldn’t print the shirt, but offered to connect the man with another local company that would create the shirts at the same cost Hands On would have charged. The man, clearly unhappy, quickly ended the call.

Blaine put down the phone ... and knew he was in for trouble.

“I remember him warning me that this was going to be big,” Amy says, “and just that foreboding feeling, waiting to see.” Blaine tried to brace his fellow owners and co-workers for the impact, but most just didn’t believe it would be that big a deal. They were wrong.

The following Monday brought news that the GLSO had filed a complaint with the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission, al-

leging Blaine had illegally discriminated against the man who had asked for the Pride Festival shirts.

With the charge—“like the flip of a switch”—came a stunning deluge of attacks. Front-page headlines in the local paper. A flood of derogatory comments on Facebook. An avalanche of emails and phone calls bitterly denouncing Blaine as a bigot. Public excoriation by the mayor. And word that crucial longtime clients—like the University of Kentucky, which Hands On Originals had worked with for years—were now cancelling their contracts with the company.

“They pulled out before a judge had even seen the case,” says Craig Humphrey, Blaine’s longtime righthand man at the company. “Before we were found ‘guilty’ or ‘innocent.’”

The blistering assault came from every direction. By nightfall, Blaine and Amy were sitting on their bedroom floor, in darkness, shattered and sob-

bing. “I began to cry out to the Lord,” Blaine says. “God, I will stand, no matter what the cost. But I am so broken right now.”

Just then, the doorbell rang.

A large crowd from the Adamsons’ church had come en masse to hug and cry and pray and show their support.

Across town, one of Blaine’s co-owners was surprised by a similar crowd from his church. It was a turning point. Beginning next morning, the torrent of calls and social media contacts became more supportive, encouraging—and, for the most part, continue to be.

One of those next-day calls was from Alliance Defending Freedom, a group Humphrey had urged Blaine to contact. Within an hour, an ADF attorney was in his office, telling a still dazed Blaine that his was not an isolated case, that other Christian business

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“We’re called to believe what the Scripture teaches— not what we hope it teaches, or what our culture tells us it teaches.”

–BL AINE ADAMSON

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leaders across the country were grappling with similar legal assaults, and that ADF would be glad to take on his case, free of charge.

Blaine still remembers the relief: “It was just like, ‘Okay, God—You’ve got this. It’s going to be all right. It’s going to work out.’” That relief deepened, in the days that followed, with the growing realization of what it meant to have Christian attorneys defending him.

“You don’t have to worry about trying to explain why you’re passionate, why you’re standing by your convictions, why you’re willing to take the heat,” he says. I can’t explain what that does to you, having someone show up who says, ‘You’re not crazy. You haven’t lost your marbles. Fight the good fight.’”

“Blaine’s a very easygoing guy,” says ADF Senior Legal Counsel Jim Campbell. “But he takes his faith seriously. He thinks critically about how his faith and work interact and how his beliefs inform everything he does.”

“What makes America unique is our freedom to peacefully live out our beliefs,” says Bryan Beauman, a former ADF staff lawyer and now an Allied Attorney with a Lexington firm that, together with ADF, is representing Blaine. “We don’t force people to promote messages that are contrary to their convictions.”

Which is why “this is a case that’s important for all Americans,” says Campbell. “Whether you have religious convictions, political convictions, or philosophical convictions … no one in our country should be forced to promote ideas that they disagree with.”

The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission didn’t see it that way, ruling in November 2014 that Blaine had violated local ordinances prohibiting sexualorientation discrimination when he turned down the order for the Lexington Pride Festival. This, despite Blaine’s long record of employing and serving people who identify as gay

and lesbian. And despite the intercessions of people like the lesbian owners of a print shop in New Jersey, who actually went on national television to support Blaine.

“Their perspective was, ‘We wouldn’t want to be forced to print some messages, so we can understand you all not wanting to print a message with which you disagree,’” Humphrey says.

ADF staff and Allied Attorneys appealed the commission’s ruling to Fayette County Circuit Court, which, in April 2015, overruled the commission’s decision, saying Blaine was free to decline to print messages that conflict with his religious beliefs and that the government cannot force him to do otherwise. The commission has now appealed that decision to the state’s court of appeals.

“According to some, printers should be forced to promote messages that violate their own consciences,” says Humphrey. Blaine’s demurral “was done in the most decent, polite, kind, and generous way that you can say, ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t do this.’ And yet that won’t be tolerated.”

“Why would I, as a business owner—whose business has grown, year after year—want to bring this on my company?” Blaine asks. “I know we’re going to lose business because of this decision. If anything, as a businessman, I would want to stay as far away from that as possible.”

Still, he says, “we’re called to believe what the Scripture teaches— not what we hope it teaches, or what our culture tells us it teaches.” And “there’s something that calls out to me that says I’ve got to speak truth, regardless of what it costs me.”

What

worried Blaine, much more than the cost to himself, was what his stand might cost others. During that first dark night of soul-searching, amid the media barrage and deserting clients, his worst fear was that his choice

“I want them to see God’s glory and understand that He’s faithful. I want His faithfulness shown to people who don’t even believe in Him.” —BL AINE ADAMSON Blaine with his family: (l.-r.), Amy, Hayden (back), Ethan, and Bailey.

might mean his employees would lose their jobs.

None did. For all the major clients who left, enough have remained to keep the business afloat.

And while some of his workers disagreed with Blaine’s position—and told him so—they’ve all stayed. “They trust his character,” Humphrey says. “That’s one of the things that’s held the company together. We’re not all coming from the same worldview, but they respect Blaine as a fair-minded man.”

“It’s not that God needs people to understand,” Blaine says. “God is God. But from my human perspective, I want them to see God’s glory and understand that He’s faithful. I want His faithfulness shown to people who don’t even believe in Him.” And in the eyes of some who do.

“One of the good things about this has been the impact that it’s had on my own family,” Blaine says. “Our kids have seen that ... if they’re going to live out their faith, it’s not just going to be easy, happy, and fun. There are going

to be those who are against you. And you need to know what you believe and make sure you believe it.”

“I want God to find joy in what we do and how we work, how we treat our employees, and the messages we print,” he says. “So if someone walks in and says, ‘Hey, I want you to help promote something,’ I can’t promote something that I know goes against what pleases Him.” To do that, Blaine says, would make his faith nothing more than a Sunday morning ritual, when in fact real worship “is in what we do every day. It’s how we treat our families. It’s the shows we watch. It’s how we work and how we treat our employees and customers.”

Posted at Blaine’s desk is a paraphrase of a verse he heard a man pray in a church service, during the early days of storm and upheaval. “‘In quietness and trust, in repentance and rest, will be your salvation (Isaiah 30:15).’”

“It was just like it was the voice of God, speaking so deeply to me,” Blaine says. “It just brought me such peace.

It’s stayed with me through the whole process. Any decision I was about to make, this verse kept me right in line where I was supposed to be.” And still does.

“I had a young lady—a believer— say to me, ‘Why didn’t he just print the shirt?’” his wife, Amy, remembers.

“It just broke my heart, because it was like, ‘Take the easy way out. Is it really that big of a deal?’” But “Blaine desires to be righteous, above all else.

And even in the church, that’s rare.

I hope I would have done the same thing ... and followed through with my decision.”

“We feel such a peace right now that, even if we ultimately lose the case and have to sell the business, it’s okay,” Blaine says. “We’re going to continue to follow what God says in His Word. My hope is that somehow through it, the Gospel goes out.” And, in the end, the owner of Hands On Originals is confident Whose hands he is in.

“Wherever God has us,” he says, “He has us.”

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My View

Rivka Edelman

Katy Faust

Denise Shick

BREAKING THE SILENCE

Featuring Katy Faust, Denise Shick, Dawn Stefanowicz, Rivka Edelman, and Bobby Lopez

The ongoing national conversation about same-sex marriage usually centers on what the adults in these relationships think and feel. But there is another side to the story: the effect of same-sex parenting on children.

Last year, in Obergefell v. Hodges, as the Supreme Court debated a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, five individuals raised by LGBT parents filed amicus briefs with the court expressing their grave concerns about redefining marriage.

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All of these individuals—Katy Faust, Denise Shick, Dawn Stefanowicz, Rivka Edelman, and Robert Oscar Lopez—love their parents, but each is also convinced children need both their father and their mother. All have partnered with Alliance Defending Freedom in the Marriage is Our Future initiative, and have shared some of the experiences that shaped their views on this issue.

Dawn Stefanowic

k

A must-see! Go to MarriageIsOurFuture.org to view more of these powerful personal testimonies.

For

Katy Faust, the argument that children just need two stable, loving adults in their lives—no matter the gender—doesn’t hold water. She grew up with her biological mother and her female partner, a couple that has been together for 30 years. Theirs was the idyllic same-sex family. “If all kids needed were two loving stable adults, then my mom and her partner would have been enough,” Faust says.

But it wasn’t enough: “I needed my father.” Fathers and mothers meet different needs for their children, she says. “Kids are made to be loved and adored, cherished and known, by both of their parents.” Simplifying the definition of marriage to include any two adults who love each other, Faust says, ignores the complex reality of a child’s emotional needs.

She is frustrated by studies suggesting that children from same-sex households are happy and normal.

“None of those studies were conducted using random samples,” she says. “They were either volunteers or recruits.” What’s more, she says, the studies are asking the wrong question. Sure, children love the same-sex adults in their house, but “for me, the issue is not about the gay parent at all.

The question is, how is that going with the missing parent?” Ask a child that, she says, and you’ll unlock a whole world of pain and confusion—something she understands perfectly from her own experience.

“It’s a challenging thing to tell the truth,” Stefanowicz says. She’s no stranger to telling it, though. In 2004 she addressed the Canadian Senate, asking lawmakers not to add sexual orientation as a protected category under hate crime legislation. “I need the freedom to share my story,” she says.

Her father and mother were both involved in same-sex relationships.

Not until her early 30s was she able to fully process her childhood experience. “I didn’t feel… as a little girl growing up into womanhood, that I was valued,” she says. “I have had to live with a lifelong sense of rejection of my femininity from growing up surrounded by gay men.”

“It shouldn’t be illegal to say something negative about our upbringing,” Stefanowicz says. But the Senate ignored her concerns; an objection to

a woman. Now, 30 years later, she still tears up recalling that conversation.

“As a child, you look to your parents to give you the emotional support you need,” she says. “I didn’t have that.” Throughout her childhood, “it was his needs ahead of mine,” she says. Eventually, he transitioned to living as a woman.

Shick experienced much pain and confusion prompted her, at 14, to consider suicide. Eventually, she was able to forgive her father, but the shadow of her childhood re-

If all kids needed were two loving stable adults, then my mom and her partner would have been enough. –Katy Faust sexual orientation is now considered a hate crime in Canada. “Freedom of speech is what’s at stake,” Stefanowicz tells Americans, after living 10 years in a country where same-sex marriage is legal. But she’s determined to tell her story. “Children’s voices are being silenced,” she says, and that gives her courage to keep speaking the truth.

When

Denise Shick was nine, her father told her he wanted to become

mains. “Children voice,” she says.

should

have

a

Bobby Lopez agrees. “Gay marriage is wrong,” he says. Claiming same-sex unions are identical to a mother and a father raising children together puts the emotional burden on the child, he says—and the child knows instinctively that something’s missing. “The idea is so powerful in your head that there’s a father and a mother out

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Updates there—how can you erase that?” Lopez asks. “It just doesn’t work.”

Lopez grew up with his mother and her same-sex partner; he had no contact with his father. “But I still wanted to see my dad.” As a teen, he identified as homosexual, but “I never really had a chance to figure out what I wanted,” he says. At 27, he finally connected with his father. Two years later, he fell in love with a woman and is now married with two children.

“I guess I just want justice,” he says, looking down at his son. “I want our country to find a sense

Children’s voices are being silenced.

—Dawn Stefanowicz of putting others before themselves.” For Lopez, that starts by acknowledging that children need both their mother and their father, and building families around that.

“Reality is not always as happy or as easy as the image that people want to portray,” Edelman says.

Her parents had an open marriage, and her mother pursued same-sex relationships. “I didn’t have an idea of a family as a functioning unit until I was out of the house,” she says.

She recalls being sent home from school in the third grade because she weighed only 30 pounds; her parents were too preoccupied with their various relationships to keep food in the house. Her physical hunger became a symbol of her emotional starvation. At 14, she went to a foster home, where she first experienced a family preparing meals together.

“It was bonding, it was democracy … it became to me the organizing principle of a family,” she says.

Edelman says so many children are growing up like she did, “lost in the shuffle.” She says the cultural push to accept and validate same-sex parenting frustrates her, especially since most of those doing the pushing have no sense of what such families are really like.

“Unless you grew up in a same-sex relationship and in the gay community, you don’t know,” she says. Someday, she says, children from these families will ask, “Why didn’t anybody say anything? Why did you think this would work?” When that happens, she wants to be able to say that she stood up for them. “I had to [speak out],” she says, “just because of the kids.”

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WHY I LEFT PLANNED PARENTHOOD

Vol. III, Iss. 2

On October 8, Sue Thayer testified in Congress before the House Committee on the Judiciary, sharing her experiences and observations as the former manager of Planned Parenthood facilities in Storm Lake and LeMars, Iowa.

Thayer, who has filed suit against Planned Parenthood under both federal and state False Claims acts, alleges that the company deliberately committed Medicaid fraud from 20022009. Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys represent her in her lawsuit.

In her congressional testimony, Thayer provided detailed examples of Planned Parenthood’s emphasis on profit margins at the expense of the health

needs and even safety concerns of women. “No business, certainly no healthcare clinic, should view a woman’s body as a profit center,” she told legislators, “yet that is exactly what Planned Parenthood does.”

WHEN THE GOVERNMENT SUBPOENAS A PASTOR

Vol. VIII, Iss. 1

On November 3, Houston voters rejected, by a decisive 62-38 percent vote, a so-called “bathroom bill” that, among other things, would have required all public-access businesses to open their bathrooms to persons selfidentifying as transgender.

The bill drew national attention when the city’s mayor, Annise Parker, subpoenaed the sermons and private emails of five prominent local pastors who expressed opposition to the legislation, including Dr. Steve Riggle, founding pastor of Grace Community Church. ADF attorneys represented the pastors, and the city was soon forced to rescind the subpoenas.

“The people of the city have spoken and they have spoken loudly,” Riggle said, after the vote. “People are fed up.

We’re fed up with being threatened and intimidated. It’s time for people across the nation to stand up and say we’re not taking this anymore.”

Where The Battle Must Be Fought (continued from page 5) will always be those voices of anger, hate, and intolerance.

And most of those voices are on the other side. But every once in a while, our side has those voices. And so it’s the voice of wisdom, the voice of calm rationality that we must display in this debate.

ADF was a good counselor, provided great wisdom, and very practical [help] during a very tough time in our state.

–Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson

How was Alliance Defending Freedom able to help?

When we got into the tough time during the legislative session and the debate on [RFRA] and all the attention that was being brought to it, we were able to rely on the legal expertise of Alliance Defending Freedom. ADF was a good counselor, provided great wisdom, and very practical [help] during a very tough time in our state.

So I want to thank ADF for what you all have done … for your leadership, for your constancy in the battle, for the tone that you express, and for the victories that you achieve for us. And thank you for what you have done in helping us in the state of Arkansas.

Religious liberty, marriage and family, and life itself are too precious not to be spoken for ...

... and your voice needs to be heard.

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You can make a difference by sharing life-changing Truth with your world.

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Opinion

By Sophia Kuby

Building Relationships That Will Secure Religious Freedom For Europe Nothing

on the legal and political horizon poses a greater threat to religious freedom in Europe than the Equal Treatment Directive (ETD), a legislative proposal well on its way to becoming binding law in all 28 states of the European Union (EU). First proposed in 2006 as a legal means for eradicating discrimination in the provision of goods and services, the ETD now poses an unprecedented threat to freedom and rights of conscience.

Under the law, any group or individual that chooses to perceive a particular service or limitation of a service to a certain target group as discriminatory would be able to file charges against any party that offends them—and that person or business or organization would be considered guilty automatically, unless they could prove otherwise. Well-funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or third parties, that are not directly impacted, but might have a political interest in litigation, would have the right to sue on behalf of an alleged victim of discrimination. No exception would be made for religious groups or individuals peacefully living out their faith.

The bureaucratic burden this would impose on local courts and governments, and the legal uncertainty inflicted on businesses, ministries, churches, and individuals, is almost impossible to overstate. Although unanimous agreement by all 28 EU member states is required to pass the ETD—that agreement could be achieved at any time. Indeed, so far, Germany is the only EU member state explicitly opposing this legislative project.

ADF International is leading the effort to inform member state representatives, Members of the European Parliament, and other political officials of the

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terrible implications of the ETD. We’ve created a website (RespectFreedom.eu) that offers key information on what the ETD is, its progress through political channels, and practical advice on what government officials, business owners, and ordinary citizens can do to help block this dangerous legislation.

We’re

also organizing awarenessraising events for EU officials with well-connected partner organizations and renowned speakers, such as UK journalist Brendan O’Neill, to facilitate wide debate on the ETD and stir potentially crucial opposition to its passage.

One recent ADF International symposium drew an extraordinary variety of leaders from across the European legal and political scene: a Dutch member of the European Parliament, the deputy prime minister of Slovakia, Catholic bishops from the Czech Republic, the director of the International Academy of Philosophy at the University of Liechtenstein, among others. Across barriers of language and culture, history and tradition, these game-changers met to talk candidly and plan strategically for how best to confront the singular challenges facing people of faith —and all who love freedom on the European continent.

Relationships

are absolutely key to accomplishing anything in Europe, and these symposiums help ADF International establish crucial new relationships, build on those already developed, facilitate communication and collaboration between potential allies, and recognize untapped expertise from every country in the EU. For instance: two of Europe’s most politically charged cases related to

rights of conscience right now involve a) a Swedish nurse fired because she refused to participate in abortions, and b) a famous Polish obstetrician who lost his position for the same reason. Both of their attorneys attended and presented at last year’s symposium.

Another attendee in Vienna was an Irish attorney who’s helped draft every pro-life law passed in that country in recent years. “Whatever you need, call me,” he said at the close of our meetings. The attorney, Lorcan Price, is now legal counsel in the ADF International office in Strasbourg.

What

is bringing all these disparate leaders together, more than anything else, is a growing awareness of the deepening threats and challenges all Europeans face on a changing continent—and a desire to bring our combined resources to bear on these challenges. As attorneys and politicians from Italy and Croatia share their concerns and insights with those of Spain or Great Britain, we build a unity that we hope will prove impregnable in the face of battles to come.

Although we are still a relatively new arrival on this legal scene, God is using ADF International to bring together the men and women who together can wage the great battle for religious freedom on this continent ... and perhaps lay critical legal groundwork for similar fights already building in the United States.

Sophia Kuby is director of European Union Advocacy for ADF International. Learn more about the threat posed by the Equal Treatment Directive at RespectFreedom.eu.

Nothing on the legal and political horizon poses a greater threat to religious freedom in Europe than the Equal Treatment Directive.

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TODAY’S PLAN TOMORROW’S PROMISE

“The Christian ministries that we love and support are under risk of attack. Alliance Defending Freedom has the right people in the right place at the right time to defend our religious freedom. We are pleased to provide a place for them in our financial planning.”

—Warren and Joan B.

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