Voter Registration Deadline Days Away! Are You Registered?

This year, the Pennsylvania Presidential Primary is a competitive one. Make sure you get out to vote in April!

You’ll get to vote for president of the United States, but will also vote on offices closer to home: your state representative and state senator, US representative in Congress and US senator.

Read the news on any given day and you’ll find that often it is local officials that make decisions that directly affect you, your family, your business, your church and your neighbors.

How are your elected officials doing to represent your values? You can become part of the answer only if you’re firstregistered to vote by March 26th, then get out and vote on Election Day! If you’ll be 18 by Election Day, make sure you register as well!

Are you registered to vote? How about your family, friends and church? Did you know polls show that as many as half of those sitting around us in our churches either are not registered to vote or don’t show up at the polls?! You can help change that!

Hold a “Voter Registration Sunday.” The registration deadline is next Monday, March 26, so you only have this Sunday, March 18 and next Sunday, March 25, advertise it in your church bulletin with the help of your pastor, set up a small table with the forms and information and you’re set! Just be sure to get those forms back to the county elections offices by March 27th.

You can find voter registration forms at your local County board of elections or online at www.votespa.com.

Watch for Pennsylvania Family Institute’s 2012 Primary Voters’ Guide for the April 24 Primary Electionavailable online at www.PAFamily.org before the election.

Geneva College Files Lawsuit Against Obama Mandate

From Alliance Defense Fund:

Alliance Defense Fund Senior Counsel Gregory S. Baylor will join Geneva College President Ken Smith Tuesday at a press conference to announce a new federal lawsuit against the Obama administration’s unconstitutional mandate that religious employers provide abortifacients, sterilization, and contraception to employees regardless of religious or moral objections.

Read more…

Great News for Religious Liberty in NYC Today!

A great victory today in Federal Court in New York. Alliance Defense Fund attorney Jordan Lorence won a temporary restraining order allowing churches and other houses of worship to continue meeting in NYC schools for two more weeks, with hope that a permanent order will allow them to continue to meet going forward. Here is a press release from just minutes ago from NYC Councilman Fernando Cabrera:

***Media Advisory***

PRESS CONFERENCE re: DISTRICT COURT TEMP. RESTRAINING ORDER ALLOWING HOUSES OF WORSHIP TO MEET IN SCHOOLS

WHO: Council Member Fernando Cabrera, Colleagues from NYS Senate & Assembly, City Wide Elected Officials, City Religious Leaders, ADF Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence

WHAT: Press Conference: Federal District Court orders temporary restraining order against the New York City’s Department of Education, houses of worship can continue to meet in schools. Calling State Legislature to action.

WHEN: Friday, Feb. 17, 2012 @ 10:00AM

WHERE: City Hall Steps, New York, NY 10007

****************************************************************
NEW YORK — Press conference will be held tomorrow at the Steps of City Hall regarding court order won today by the Bronx Household of Faith and Jordan Lorence and the Bronx Household of Faith. This court order allows churches to continue meeting for worship services in New York City public schools for the time being.

Text from earlier release:

“Now that the courts have spoken up on the side of fairness,” said Council Member Fernando Cabrera. “I call on the New York State Legislature and Speaker Sheldon Silver to move forward with bills that would rapidly solve this issue.” He continued, “This court order is a fantastic victory and will calm the 60 plus congregations that were frantically searching for space. I commend the US District Court for ruling justly.”

The temporary restraining order is in effect for 10 days while the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York more fully considers constitutional arguments about the city’s unique-in-the-nation prohibition on worship services in vacant public school buildings on weekends.

“Churches help communities; evicting churches hurts communities. Empty buildings offer nothing to communities that need hope,” said ADF Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence, who argued before the court on Tuesday. “The court’s order is a message of hope for fundamental freedoms in New York City because it means that, for the time being, the city must welcome churches as it does other groups. ADF will continue to fight this battle relentlessly until the city no longer unconstitutionally prohibits activity for purely religious reasons.”

ADF sought the order on Feb. 3 to stop the evictions based on violations of the First Amendment that had not been ruled on previously in the case, Bronx Household of Faith v. Board of Education of the City of New York. According to the court, it issued the order because “the Plaintiffs have demonstrated irreparable harm and a likelihood of success on the merits of their Free Exercise and Establishment Clause claims….”

Many New York City churchgoers have been protesting the city’s plans to evict them ever since the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the case on free speech grounds on Dec. 5 of last year. A bill that would compel the city’s Department of Education to allow the worship services passed the state senate this month and is awaiting action by the state assembly.

“This order from the court in no way should stop efforts by the New York Legislature to overturn this policy,” Lorence explained. “The courts have consistently ruled that the Constitution does not require New York City to ban religious worship services, so the city or the state legislature is free to repeal the policy.”
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Contraception Mandate is about Religious Freedom, Not Contraception

President Obama’s mandate that Catholic organizations must provide free birth control to their employees is a violation of their religious freedom. His “compromise” is not a compromise at all.

Here’s what Chuck Colson has to say about it:

 why does this matter? Why is it really such a big deal? The Administration is hoping you will think this is all about contraception, which not many people, even the majority of Catholics, care that much about. But this is not about contraception. This battle is all about religious freedom—the first and most important of all our freedoms.

Read more…

Are You Registered to Vote?

Are you registered to vote? Get the information you need by clicking here.

Congressmen Protest President’s Birth Control Mandate

From LifeNews.com:

A large group of U.S. Congressmen has sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius blasting the administration’s “unprecedented overreach” against the religious freedom of countless Christian schools, hospitals, and charities by forcing them to pay for all contraception, including abortifacients, and sterilizations.

Read more…

Report Outlining Planned Parenthood Fraud Presented to Congress

From Alliance Defense Fund:

The Alliance Defense Fund Tuesday officially made public its report to Congress identifying waste, abuse, and potential fraud by Planned Parenthood affiliates across the nation that may amount to multiple millions of dollars in wasted taxpayer money. ADF attorneys prepared the report to aid Congress in its investigation of the abortion giant. The Susan B. Anthony List has partnered with ADF on the effort.

Read more…

Ultrasound Bill Passes Health Committee

The PA House Health Committee passed House Bill 1077, the Woman’s Right to Know Act, with a vote of 15-7 (Republicans and Democrats). The bill now heads to the full House for a vote.

View the roll call here. If your representative is on this committee and voted Yes, please thank them!

Thank you for taking action! If you haven’t yet contacted your representative and asked them to support HB 1077, use our Citizen Action Center today!

Thank Your Legislator for Making 2012 The Year of the Bible

Late last month, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution to declare 2012 “The Year of the Bible.” This is a statement from Rep. Rick Saccone, the sponsor of the resolution:

“As not only Pennsylvania, but the United States, continues to face great tests and challenges, House Resolution 535 serves as a reminder that we must look to our faith in God and the Holy Scripture to provide us with the strength, wisdom and courage to conquer these great trials,” said Rep. Rick Saccone. “All over the Pennsylvania Capitol, one can easily see the tremendous influence that Christianity and the Bible have had over our founders and predecessors. These images and quotes illustrating the beliefs and morals that have shaped our great Commonwealth must never be forgotten.”

Supported by many members of the Pennsylvania Congressional delegation, legislation similar to House Resolution 535 was passed by the U.S. House and Senate to allow President Ronald Reagan to declare 1983 as the “Year of the Bible” at the national level.

How wonderful that a State Legislator can take such a stand and offer this resolution, and that his colleagues would vote unanimously in support! Isn’t it nice, for a change, for our public officials to acknowledge God at a time other than a grave national disaster?

This morning, I took a quick glance at Facebook this morning, and found this post from a State Representative:

Inbox filling with demands to repeal our House Resolution naming 2012 “Year of the Bible” – but >99% of emails from other states/areas

Friends, the secular left is going after this resolution with both barrels blazing. Newspapers have editorialized against HR 535, sometimes with a mocking tone.

This is yet another example of the ongoing, concerted effort to erase any public recognition or acknowledgement of the role of God and Christianity in our nation’s existence. Once again we face a time like that described by President Lincoln as he called for a National Fast Day in March, 1863.

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

I hope we are not now too proud, or more correctly put, too afraid to publicly stand up for truth in the public square, and to defend our lawmakers against these attacks that seek to silence them and silence us.

Today, I am asking you to send an email and/or make a telephone call to your State Representative, and to Rep. Rick Saccone (717-260-6122), and thank them for passing HR 535, declaring 2012 “The Year of the Bible.” And please recruit some friends and family to do the same. Can I count on you to take a stand?

It’s about time we’re the ones filling up our legislator’s inboxes, and not the radical secularists, don’t you think?

To read the HR 535 resolution, click here.

Click here to contact your state representative.

Women’s Right to Know Bill: Right Prescription at the Right Time

For Immediate Release

(Harrisburg, January 23, 2012)  Pennsylvania Family Council, the advocacy arm of the Pennsylvania Family Institute, today applauded the introduction of HB 1077, The Women’s Right to Know Bill, designed to let women considering abortion have a full picture and information, provided by up-to-date technology,  so that they can make a fully informed decision.

“Rep. Kathy Rapp (R-Warren) and Rep. Debra Kula (D-Fayette & Westmoreland) are to be commended, along with the 111 other cosponsors of HB 10777, for putting women and their healthcare first,” said Michael Geer, president of the Pennsylvania Family Council. “Abortion is an irreversible procedure, and one that is fraught with many ethical, emotional and medical considerations. Thus, women should be provided the opportunity to be fully and completely informed before making their decision,” added Geer.

“Sonograms are the gold standard of informed consent,” said Randall Wenger, Chief Counsel of the Pennsylvania Family Council.  “I cannot understand why any women’s advocate wouldn’t join in and support The Woman’s Right to Know Bill, and call for women to get all the medical information that’s available to them.”

The Pennsylvania Family Council encourages swift passage of HB 1077 in the House, the Pennsylvania Senate, and on to Gov. Corbett’s desk for signature.