LIBERTY COUNSEL: THE FREEDOM OF RELIGION MUST BE PROTECTED

With just 5 days remaining in the month, I am told that we are short of meeting our year-end goal. The funds raised from this challenge are extremely important to our mission and work. I pray that you will strongly consider Liberty Counsel in your year-end, tax-deductible giving.

If you haven't already done so, click here to make a gift of any amount to help us meet our exciting $75,000 challenge.

And please be sure to take a moment to read my update below on Liberty Counsel's efforts to protect our religious liberties and freedom to worship — Mat. 

Yesterday, many of Liberty Counsel's faithful supporters celebrated Christmas and were blessed to gather in their chosen houses of worship. The opportunity to celebrate the birth of God Incarnate and to choose where we worship and how we worship is a precious right! 
Quite often, I thank God that Americans can freely congregate and exercise our faith in public thanks to our forefathers and to those who fought and died to protect our precious, God-given liberties.
 

Religious liberty was so important to our nation's Founders that they took great pains to protect it in our Constitution. They believed it was our God-given right to be able to worship freely and live out our faith in the public square.

But now those very religious liberties are under intense attack.
We have come to expect that such attacks will come from radical groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AU). But now, our own federal government, whose purpose is to protect our liberties and Constitution from foreign and domestic enemies, has joined with leftist forces to become a domestic enemy in its own right! 

Right now, Liberty Counsel's docket contains many religious liberty litigation efforts (some listed below) including the protection of Christian public servants, business owners, ministry leaders, and Christian organizations. Defending our religious liberties and faith-based expression in public settings, including our nation's school systems, is among the principal activities undertaken by the Liberty Counsel legal team.

Of course, victories on behalf of religious liberty are among our most rewarding.

When you stand with Liberty Counsel, you are equipping us to fight for the essential liberties that undergird our exceptional nation.
 

Today, I hope you'll consider sending year-end financial support to allow our legal team to continue standing against the escalating assaults on our religious liberties.

Please click on the banner to participate in our $75,000 Year-End Challenge Grant, and help us meet this vital goal.+ + Liberty Counsel has been on the forefront of confronting and turning back assaults on religious liberty for over 27 years. 

I promise you, Liberty Counsel will NEVER stand by silently as any government entity, activist judge, or radical group attacks our precious freedom of religion! 

 

Click below to support Liberty Counsel and defend religious liberty with a generous donation of any amount:  



Thank you so much for your prayers and support! May God bless you!

Mathew Staver, Founder and Chairman
Liberty Counsel

P.S. Our legal battles cannot be fought without the support of faithful friends like you. Stand with Liberty Counsel today and stand for religious liberty!

Here are just a few of Liberty Counsel's actions taken on behalf of religious freedom in 2016:

• Filed a federal suit and an appeal on behalf of Tom Parker, Associate Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, challenging the constitutionality of several speech restrictive Alabama Canons of Judicial Ethics and the Alabama Constitution's automatic removal provision that requires judges be automatically suspended when the Judicial Inquiry Commission issues a charge. The radical Southern Poverty Law Center is trying to remove Justice Parker from the bench.

• Continue to defend Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore who was unlawfully suspended from the bench for the rest of his term ending in January 2019. Liberty Counsel argued before the Court of the Judiciary in the Alabama Supreme Court and the Chief Justice testified regarding the politically-motivated charges focused solely on his January 2016 Administrative Order in which he merely provided the status of the marriage case pending before the Court.

• Filed a motion for recusal of four Alabama Supreme Court justices in order for Chief Justice Moore to receive fair treatment in the appeal hearing to his case.

• Successfully defended Rowan County, Kentucky, Clerk Kim Davis against the ACLU, which tried to force her to issue same-sex marriage licenses with her name and authorization on them. Worked with new Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin and the legislature to unanimously pass religious freedom protection for Kim and all Kentucky clerks.

• Represented Magistrate Brenda Bumgarner to intervene in a lawsuit against North Carolina state law SB2 that provides a religious accommodation for magistrates who have a conscience objection to officiating or granting marriage licenses for same-sex couples. The judge later dismissed the suit brought by the plaintiffs and the case is now on appeal.

• Supported Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant for signing the Religious Liberty Accommodations Act, known as HB 1523, which protects natural persons, pastors, and closely-held corporations from discrimination by the state or state agencies, due to sincerely held religious beliefs or convictions.

• Supported HB 286, known as the Ohio Pastor Protection Act, that specifies that no ordained or licensed minister and no religious society is required to solemnize a marriage or allow property to be used to host a marriage ceremony if the marriage does not conform to the minister's or society's sincerely held religious beliefs.

• Provided testimony in the Pennsylvania Senate Labor & Industry Committee hearing regarding SB1306, a bill that would force religious organizations to hire and retain employees regardless of their adherence to the organization's beliefs on sexuality.

• Supported the passage of the Florida Pastor Protection Act that protects pastors and churches from performing same-sex weddings.

• Filed an amicus brief on behalf of Little Sisters of the Poor's legal challenge to the ObamaCare requirement that non-church religious organizations must provide contraceptive and abortion-inducing drugs and devices at no cost to the employees.

• Successfully represented Child Evangelism Fellowship Good News Clubs in many school districts throughout the country regarding equal access and equal treatment for the after-school Christian clubs.

• Won a major case involving Child Evangelism Fellowship in Ohio after three-year lawsuit against the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.
• Provided legal counsel to many school districts and local government bodies regarding prayer to open public meetings.

• Provided legal counsel to many school districts about the Obama LGBT directive seeking to force schools K-12 to imposed a dangerous "gender identity" policy on the students.
• Provided legal counsel to school districts and local government bodies on commemoration Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

• Filed an amicus brief in the U. S. Supreme Court on its own behalf and for the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference-CONELA to end discrimination against churches in the case of Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Pauley.
• Successfully represented the Zavala family in California regarding the violation by the Desert Rose Elementary School in California of their child's constitutional rights to share Bible verses and encouraging notes with classmates during non-instructional time, including during the lunch period. The school sent a Deputy Sheriff to the Zavala's home to warn the family to stop bringing Bible stories to school. But, the Palmdale School District backed down and allowed the seven-year old to continue sharing the Bible verses and stories.

• Continued to defend Pastor Scott Lively in a case filed by Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) and financed by rogue billionaire George Soros in which SMUG seeks to silence and impose significant financial penalties against Lively for speech about homosexuality in Uganda in 2002 and 2009. This year alone, the case has involved tens of thousands of pages of discovery, multiple depositions, and over 300-pages of legal argument.

 
Liberty Counsel, with offices in Florida, Virginia and Washington, D.C., is a nonprofit litigation, education, and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and the family.  Liberty Counsel . PO Box 540774 . Orlando, FL 32854 . 800-671-1776