The Great Destroyer

Illustrating this administration’s broken moral compass, Vice President Joe Biden, on a trip to China, suggested he sympathized with that country’s authoritarian one-child policy. In prepared remarks, no less, he said, “Your policy has been one which I fully understand—I’m not second-guessing—of one child per family.” Biden was implying that our nation has no moral objection to a policy that involves forced abortions, sterilizations, and other major human rights abuses. Under this policy, according to Tom McCluskey of the Family Research Council, “hundreds of millions of Chinese women have been forced to have abortions. China’s unborn children who are tested and found to be female are at special risk. Nor is this heinous policy limited to the unborn. Female infanticide is routine in rural China.”¹ Amidst widespread criticism of Biden’s remarks, the White House issued a statement saying, “The Obama administration strongly opposes all aspects of China’s coercive birth limitation policies, including forced abortion and sterilization.”²

But does it really? Maybe Biden’s statement wasn’t out of school at all; perhaps he was speaking for President Obama too. Indeed, when Congressman Dana Rohrabacher pressed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to say whether Obama had confronted Chinese President Hu on the one-child policy during Hu’s visit to Washington, Clinton simply replied that “we” regularly raise the issue with the Chinese. She was unable to say whether Obama personally had discussed the issue with Hu—ever.³

As president, Obama has used gay rights as a wedge issue to divide Americans. He paints conservatives and Republicans as intolerant homophobes who favor a “small America,” as opposed to the inclusive “big America” he purports to embrace.⁴

Under Obama, the Department of Education refused to allow reporters into break-out sessions at its first Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) Youth Summit, even though it was a a taxpayer-funded event attended by teenagers. CNS News pressed Education Department public affairs specialist Jo Ann Webb to explain the secrecy, and she said, “Every summit we’ve had has been this way. It’s to promote an open exchange and that’s just the rule, okay?” When the reporter protested that it was a tax-sponsored event, Webb repeated her answer. CNS News also sought an explanation from Obama’s “Safe-Schools Czar,” Assistant Deputy Education Secretary Kevin Jennings, who claimed the media’s presence “has a silencing effect” on participants.⁵

Speaking by video at the summit, Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced that his Department would be warning school districts across the country against blocking students from forming gay-themed organizations in their schools.⁶ In fact, the entire summit seemed tailored to identity politics, appealing to the attendees exclusively as gays. What’s more, many of the appeals were barely disguised pleas to support the Obama administration. For example, a homosexual staff member for Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told students that Sebelius “gets us” and is “tireless” in her support of lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender youth.” HHS administrator Pam Hyde declared, “Your federal government has finally come out of the closet in support of LGBT youth.” Sebelius herself said, “I want to tell you, you have a friend in this administration, who will stand beside you each and every step along the way.”⁷

Sebelius also discussed statistics indicating that gay youths are more likely to experience depression, thoughts of suicide, have other emotional problems, or abuse drugs or alcohol—problems she and the administration presume are solely related to the students’ victimization by “homophobes.” As Sebelius said, “We know these behaviors are not the result of who these young people are. They are the result of what’s happening to them.”⁸

During his term Obama also signed a hate crimes bill into law that adds “sexual orientation” as a protected class, and even extended his gay rights policy to America’s foreign affairs, introducing a gay rights declaration at the United Nations, marking the first time the U.S. had endorsed such policies in that forum.⁹ He further mandated that U.S. foreign aid would be conditioned on the recipient country’s policy toward gay, lesbian, and transgender bias, and required all government agencies involved in foreign affairs to promote LGBT rights globally.¹⁰

Obama has tweaked and massaged his position on same-sex marriage as his term has unfolded, continuing his years-long pattern of disingenuousness on the issue. Although he claims to oppose same-sex marriage, he signed a questionnaire in 1996 indicating his support for it. He originally denied it was his signature on the form, but years later, his press secretary Jay Carney admitted it was his after all.¹¹

Obviously, that means Obama supported same-sex marriage back then. But Carney defiantly said that what was important was that from the time of his presidential campaign to the present, Obama’s position has been consistent: he has opposed same-sex marriage, but his view “is evolving.” ¹² Recently, Obama has continued claiming his views on the issue are “evolving,” saying there is “no doubt” his opinion is being affected by seeing friends, families, and children of gay couples “thriving.”¹³

The upshot is that Obama was for gay marriage in 1996, though he later denied it, has been openly against it since 2008, and is now warming to it again, though he’s still opposed to it. That’s more like spinning than evolving. What we obviously have with Obama is a politician who supports same-sex marriage but is unwilling to pay the political price of admitting it (at least before the 2012 election), especially among his core black constituency, which strongly opposes same-sex marriage.

But the administration’s support for same-sex marriage on various legal fronts reveals Obama’s deceit. While still claiming to oppose gay marriage, Obama strongly supports the Respect for Marriage Act, which would repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). DOMA defines marriage for federal law purposes as being between one man and one woman; provides that states may refuse to recognize the validity of same-sex marriages sanctioned in other states or territories; and prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.

In fact, the administration broke normal constitutional procedures by denouncing DOMA as unconstitutional and by indicating it would not enforce the law or defend it in court.¹⁴ House Speaker John Boehner responded, “In practice they can just look the other way. But this is not the way our government was intended to work. Our government is intended that Congress would pass the laws, the president would decide whether he wanted to sign them or veto them.”¹⁵

Obama’s decision to shirk his constitutional obligation to enforce the law produced immediate consequences. Mere hours after Attorney General Eric Holder announced the new policy, litigants cited Holder’s position in a court filing in their case to strike down California’s statutory definition of traditional marriage.¹⁶

The administration shrouded its decision-making process in its usual secrecy. When the Family Research Council sued the Justice Department for internal documents related to the decision, the DOJ withheld twenty-seven pages of emails, provoking Judicial Watch to file a Freedom of Information Request lawsuit. Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton commented, “Once again the Obama administration is playing politics with the Freedom of Information Act to avoid telling the American people the truth about one of its indefensible positions. The evidence suggests the nation’s highest law enforcement is refusing to enforce the law to appease another special interest group.”¹⁷

Obama extended his assault on traditional marriage to the state level in March 2012, less than two months before North Carolina residents would vote on a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union of a man and a woman. Obama’s campaign spokesman Cameron French issued a statement saying the amendment “would single out and discriminate against committed gay and lesbian couples—and that’s why the president does not support it.” Bishops Michael Burbidge of Raleigh and Peter Jugis of Charlotte responded that Obama’s “stated opposition to the referendum... is a grave disappointment, as it is reported to be the first time that the President has entered into this issue on the state level, further escalating the increasing confusion on the part of some in our society to the very nature of marriage itself.”¹⁸

All of this is troubling because the administration, by waging war against traditional marriage, is placing the imprimatur of government on the view that supporters of traditional marriage are somehow morally flawed and bigoted. As Archbishop Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said, “Our federal government should not be presuming ill intent or moral blindness on the part of the overwhelming majority of its citizens, millions of whom have gone to the polls to directly support DOMAs in their states and have thereby endorsed marriage as the union of man and woman.” Indeed, the DOJ argued in its brief in a recent lawsuit that federal courts should rule that treating same-sex couples differently from married heterosexual couples should be the legal equivalent of racial discrimination. Dolan observed that the federal government has no business treating a policy disagreement concerning the meaning of marriage as a federal offense, but that’s exactly where this is all headed.¹⁹

Obama’s assault on traditional marriage is also reflected in federal administrative regulations. An official at the Department of Education’s LGBT summit announced that the administration is actively recruiting LGBT parents to adopt children and become foster parents, and a White House spokesman indicated Obama wants a federal mandate to guarantee adoption rights for same-sex couples.²⁰ Meanwhile, the Agriculture Department implemented a sensitivity training program on “heterosexism,” and the Office of Navy Chaplains issued, then rescinded, a directive requiring Navy chapels to allow same-sex wedding ceremonies.²¹

Advocates of traditional marriage have long contended that the government has a compelling interest in protecting the institution of marriage as the union of one man and one woman because, among other reasons, men and women each make unique and important contributions to parenting. As Maggie Gallagher, president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, testified in a House Committee hearing on marriage, “Marriage is the union of a husband and wife for a reason. These are the only unions that can create new life and connect those children in love to their mother and father.”²² Similarly, a recent action alert posted on the website for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said, “Protecting marriage as the faithful and lifelong union of one man and one woman is critical to the common good.” The bishops emphasized how critical DOMA is to protecting marriage.²³

Archbishop Dolan wrote a letter to Obama warning that unless he ended his administration’s “campaign against DOMA, the institution of marriage it protects, and religious freedom,” the president would “precipitate a national conflict between church and state of enormous proportions.” According to CNS News, “Dolan indicated that the only ‘response’ he and his colleagues had received from their previous communications was a stepped up attack on marriage by the administration.”²⁴

As Dolan intimated, the assault on traditional marriage poses a threat to religious freedom. According to scholar Thomas Messner, if enough people come to believe that support for traditional marriage is tantamount to bigotry—which is the precise argument the Left often makes—then belief in traditional marriage could “come to be viewed as an unacceptable form of discrimination that should be purged from public life through legal, cultural, and economic pressure.”²⁵

This concern is neither imagined nor exaggerated. Messner describes three principal ways religious liberty could be suppressed:

1. Entities holding to the traditional marriage view could be denied equal access to various government benefits, and public sector employees could be subject to censorship, disciplinary action, and even termination.

2. Individuals could be subject to greater civil liability under nondiscrimination laws that include sexual orientation and marital status as protected categories.

3. Proponents of traditional marriage could be subject to private forms of discrimination and a climate of contempt for the expression of their views.²⁶

Messner has described another already-occurring form of discrimination against religious groups. Certain independent or nontraditional religious groups, called “parachurches,” which hire those who subscribe to the same religious views, could face civil liability for religious discrimination for firing those they discover do not hold to their views.²⁹ In just such a situation, two former employees sued World Vision, a Christian charity, after being fired for no longer following the group’s religious commitments. While a federal appellate court ruled against the former employees, one judge indicated he would deem it discrimination for a prospective employer to prefer his coreligionists over others.³⁰

These are not isolated examples; after studying some 1,000 state laws that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender, or marital status, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty concluded that more than “350 separate state anti-discrimination provisions would likely be triggered by recognition of same-sex marriage.”³¹

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission stepped in and filed a complaint against the church under the Americans with Disabilities Act, alleging the church “retaliated” against Perich for pursuing a lawsuit. The church, however, insisted its decision was simply based on beliefs held by orthodox Lutherans for centuries. The Obama Justice Department then weighed in on Perich’s behalf, as did Americans United for Separation of Church and State and American Atheists Inc., which filed amicus briefs siding with the administration against the church.³²

The DOJ’s position contradicted forty years of precedent in lower courts, which have generally recognized a ministerial exception to job-discrimination laws that protects the religious freedom of entities to hire and fire their own leaders.³³ The exception allows religious entities to give “preference in employment to individuals of a particular religion” and to “require that all applicants and employees conform to the religious tenets of such organization.”³⁴

So what about this case warranted the DOJ’s involvement? The intervention of the two atheist organizations is instructive; their goal clearly was not to protect a single aggrieved employee, but to attack the church’s policy against resorting to courts to resolve disputes, a policy based on the New Testament book of 1^st Corinthians.

In oral arguments before the Supreme Court, even liberal Justice Elena Kagan seemed incredulous when the DOJ’s lawyer, Leondra Kruger, said she thought neither of the First Amendment’s two religion clauses—the Establishment Clause or the Free Exercise Clause—applied to this case, and that it was the First Amendment’s freedom of association that was at issue. Kagan said she found that argument “amazing.” In response to a question from Chief Justice John Roberts, Kruger said it would make “no difference whether the entity was a religious group, a labor group or any other association of individuals.” This prompted Justice Antonin Scalia to exclaim, “That’s extraordinary. That is extraordinary. We are talking about the free exercise clause and about the establishment clause and you say they have no special application?”³⁵

In January, the Supreme Court, in what the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty called “its most important religious liberty case in twenty years,” ruled against the Obama administration in a unanimous 9 – 0 decision, holding that the view of religious liberty it presented was “extreme,” “untenable,” and “remarkable.” The Court unambiguously declared that religious groups should be allowed to choose their leaders free from government interference. Luke Goodrich, Deputy National Litigation Director at the Becket Fund, proclaimed, “This is a huge victory for religious freedom and a rebuke to the government, which was trying to regulate how churches select their ministers.”³⁶

When Obama began his push to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on gays in the military, the liberal media dutifully reported that the armed forces’ top brass fully endorsed his policy. In reality, while some officers such as Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did publicly support the repeal, others from the Army, Air Force, and Marines clearly did not. “We sometimes ask Marines what is their preference and I can tell you that an overwhelming majority would like not to be roomed with a person that is openly homosexual,” said former Marine Corps Commandant General James Conway.³⁷ Similarly, then-Army Chief of Staff General George Casey said, “I do have serious concerns about the impact of a repeal of the law on a force that is fully engaged in two wars. We just don’t know the impacts on readiness and military effectiveness.”³⁸

The administration buttressed its case for repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell via the Comprehensive Review Working Group (CRWG)—a large-scale survey of military members that found repealing the policy was unlikely to harm military effectiveness or cause disruptions. However, the Inspector General of the Department of Defense concluded that an executive summary of the group’s findings was prepared before the soldiers were even questioned on the matter. Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness said that Congress “was deceived, probably deliberately, by those with a pro-repeal agenda.” The CRWG’s purpose, said Donnelly, “was to circumvent and neutralize military opposition to repeal of the law.”³⁹

She said the Inspector General’s investigation concluded that the CRWG study was “a publicly-funded, pre-scripted production put on just for show” to create “an illusion of support” for repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The IG report also found that a person with “a strongly emotional attachment to the issue” and “likely a pro-repeal agenda” leaked misleading information to the Washington Post in violation of security rules. Following that alleged leak, the Post reported that the survey had found that 70 percent of active-duty and reserve troops were not troubled by repeal. Partly as a result of this apparent fabrication, Congress rushed through the vote on repeal during its lame-duck session in December 2010, and Obama quickly signed it into law, though delaying its implementation for one year. The Obama administration, said Donnelly, “misused military personnel, funds, and facilities to help President Obama to deliver on political promises to gay activists at the expense of trusting troops who became unknowing props in the pro-repeal campaign.”⁴⁰

In his statement celebrating the Repeal Act, Obama said that ending the policy “would enhance our national security (and) increase our military readiness.” This hardly reflected a consensus view. Marine Corps Commandant James Amos warned that the change could impact discipline, erode unit cohesiveness, and ultimately cost lives. As Family Research Council president Tony Perkins noted, “The American military exists for one purpose—to fight and win wars. Yet, today, the U.S. military became a tool in reshaping social attitudes regarding human sexuality. Using the military to advance a liberal social agenda will only do harm to the military’s ability to fulfill its mission.”⁴¹

President Obama has aggressively supported embryonic stem cell research—a controversial process that involves destroying human embryos. Pro-life advocates oppose the procedure on various grounds including moral ones, citing reports that companies have used aborted fetal cell lines—human embryonic kidney cells taken from an electively aborted baby—to test their products.⁴² President George W. Bush limited federal funding of such research to a small number of cell lines created before August 9, 2001. Any cell lines created since then were off-limits to federal funds, which in no way precluded privately funded research.

In keeping with his campaign promise, President Obama, through executive order, lifted the ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, publicly affirming his well-known affinity for active government intervention in science. Urging him to re-evaluate his decision, Congressman John Boehner said, “The president has rolled back important protections for innocent life,” while Congressman Eric Cantor warned that “federal funding on embryonic stem cell research can bring on embryo harvesting, perhaps even human cloning.”⁴³

A coalition filed a lawsuit seeking to nullify Obama’s executive order and enjoin federally funded research. On August 23, 2010, a U.S. District Judge granted a preliminary injunction to the coalition,⁴⁴ but it was lifted about a month later by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The panel bought the Justice Department’s argument that enjoining these activities would cause irreparable harm to this kind of research, even though privately funded research could continue freely. The panel also seemed to ignore the demonstrably poor scientific track record at issue: reportedly, no human being has ever been cured of a disease using embryonic stem cells,⁴⁵ and the research is fraught with problems when used to treat animals.⁴⁶

Adult stem cell research, which should be less controversial because it does not involve destroying human embryos, has been much more effective, being used to treat more than a hundred diseases and medical conditions.⁴⁷ But so militant is Obama’s anti-life agenda that on the same day he lifted President Bush’s ban on federal funding of embryonic research, he also rescinded Bush’s executive order to fund adult stem cell research. Bioethics attorney Wesley J. Smith said Obama’s action showed that he, not his predecessor, is the anti-science president, “Of course, the administration didn’t have the candor or courage to publicize this part of his nasty work,” said Smith. “But the now dead order explicitly required funding for alternative methods such as the new IPSCs, which offer so much promise without the ethical contentiousness.” Smith continued, “I can think of only two reasons for this action, for which I saw no advocacy either in the election or during the first weeks of the Administration. First, vindictiveness against all things ‘Bush’ or policies considered by the Left to be ‘pro-life’ and second, a desire to get the public to see unborn human life as a mere corn crop ripe for the harvest.”⁴⁸

Obama has often repeated the mantra, common among Democrats, that he wants to make abortion “safe, legal, and rare.”⁴⁹ His silver-tongued assurances even persuaded such staunch pro-life advocates as former Reagan Justice Department official Doug Kmiec that Obama would be more pro-life in practice than many outspoken pro-life politicians. Kmiec was apparently unmoved that Obama told Planned Parenthood in 2007, “The first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act”—a bill that would eliminate federal, state, and local restrictions on abortion. Of course, Obama’s position often changes, depending on his audience. In the weeks leading up to his vaunted commencement address at Notre Dame, where he sought to portray himself as a reasonable moderate on the abortion issue, he said the Freedom of Choice Act “is not the highest legislative priority.”⁵⁰ Little did his audience know his administration would later deny a government grant to the Catholic Church for helping human trafficking victims, a move widely attributed to the Church’s anti-abortion position.⁵¹

Indeed, many of Obama’s subsequent actions would show just how immoderate he is on the abortion issue. Not only does he not apologize for abortion, he proudly celebrates it as a woman’s sacred right. While many Christians and others of faith consider abortion in America to be a stain on our nation’s moral record, Obama publicly commemorated the thirty-ninth anniversary of Roe v. Wade as a “historic anniversary.” He said, “We must remember that this Supreme Court decision not only protects a woman’s health and reproductive freedom, but also affirms a broader principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters.”⁵²

Some pro-life advocates contend that Obama’s policies show he is actually promoting more abortions. He has undoubtedly spread his pro-abortion leanings throughout the government by consistently nominating or appointing ardent pro-abortion officials and advisers. These include:

• His former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who had a 0 percent pro-life voting record from the National Right to Life;

• Former senator Tom Daschle, Obama’s failed nominee as Health and Human Services secretary, whose pro-abortion voting record was well established;

• Former NARAL legal director Dawn Johnsen, who served on his Department of Justice Review Team, and later as assistant attorney general for the Office of the Legal Counsel;

• Ellen Moran, former director of the pro-abortion outfit Emily’s List, as White House communications director (Emily’s List only supports candidates who favor taxpayer-funded abortions and oppose a partial-birth abortion ban);

• Pro-abortionist Jeanne Lambrew as deputy director of the White House Office of Health Reform, a choice that “excited” Planned Parenthood;

• Melody Barnes, another Emily’s List board member, as director of the Domestic Policy Council;

• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has a perfect pro-abortion voting record and even supported making unlimited abortions an international right.⁵³

Calling for more funding for Planned Parenthood and other abortion groups, the memo also urged Obama to lobby Congress to pass the Freedom of Choice Act, as Obama had already pledged to do, which would legalize unlimited abortions through all stages of pregnancy and nullify hundreds of pro-life laws in all fifty states, ranging from partial-birth abortion bans to parental involvement laws. Further, the memo advocated striking all limits on taxpayer-funded abortion in various circumstances, the appointment of pro-abortion judges, repeal of the Hyde Amendment, and including an abortion mandate in Obama’s healthcare reform program. The memo also pushed for restoration of funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), even though that organization has supported China’s oppressive one-child policy, which includes forced abortions and sterilizations. Finally, the memo urged Obama to reverse the so-called Mexico City Policy, which reversal would effectively restore taxpayer funding for groups that promote or perform abortions in other nations.⁵⁵

As president, Obama quickly acted on the agenda outlined in the memo. In his first week in office, he signed an executive order reversing the Mexico City Policy.⁵⁶ By 2013, this will likely result in hundreds of millions of dollars being distributed to groups that promote or perform abortions throughout the world, such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation—an organization that endorses abortion on demand as a universal birth control method. With the Mexico City rule reversed, two major abortion providers, U.S.-based Planned Parenthood and Marie Stopes International, both became eligible for taxpayer funding without discontinuing their performance or advocacy of abortion.⁵⁷

The administration also cooperated with pro-abortion advocacy groups at the United Nations during the March 2009 Commission of the Status of Women meeting, where they worked on a document that included language that could be used to promote an international right to abortion. The administration called for a review of all national laws to ensure they comply with international human rights instruments, which some fear could be misused to force countries to remove restrictions on abortion.

In addition, the administration created a new foreign policy advisory post inside the State Department that would focus on global women’s issues, immediately appointing pro-abortionist Malanne Verveer to lead it as ambassador-at-large. Verveer has been a staunch advocate of the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), a radical international agreement that seeks to enforce “abortion rights” internationally and to reduce or negate parental rights, among other things. Were the United States to approve the convention, it would be legally bound to take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in the field of healthcare in order to ensure, on the basis of gender equality, access to healthcare services, including those related to family planning. Though CEDAW doesn’t include the word “abortion,” the CEDAW committee interprets Article 12 to include abortion as a part of family planning. Under it, countries that restrict or outlaw abortion are reprimanded and instructed to change their laws.⁵⁸

Approving CEDAW would require a 67-vote majority in the Senate. With Secretary of State Hillary Clinton having indicated that ratification is a major priority of the Obama administration, Verveer is working on Capitol Hill to get this accomplished,⁵⁹ and she appeared before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s hearing on Women and the Arab Spring in November 2011 to tout the importance of ratifying the convention.⁶⁰

Further violating his pledge to make abortion rare, President Obama and congressional Democrats enabled the District of Columbia to fund abortions with taxpayer dollars, resulting in some 300 abortions being performed with public funds. Associated Press files showed that the District expended $185,000 for elective abortions for any reason and at any point in the pregnancy for women below the poverty level. Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, said, “The responsibility for these 300 government-funded abortions rests squarely with President Obama, who urged Congress to lift the longstanding ban in 2009, and with Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, who rammed through the repeal without allowing roll call votes on the issue in either house of Congress. Some of these unborn children would be alive today, if it had not been for the Obama-dictated change in policy.”⁶¹

In his healthcare reform speech to a joint session of Congress on September 9, 2010, Obama said, “One more misunderstanding I want to clear up—under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions.” But in fact, the ObamaCare bill did provide that federal dollars would pay for elective abortions and explicitly authorized federal subsidies for private abortion insurance. As a result, in order to secure the vote of Congressman Bart Stupak for the bill, Obama had to promise Stupak he would issue an executive order reaffirming a ban on the federal funding of abortion.⁶² As Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council, noted, “By offering an executive order as a so-called solution, President Obama is finally admitting there is a problem with a bill that would force taxpayers to pay for elective abortions for the first time in over three decades.” Perkins also observed that an executive order would not likely have much legal effect.⁶³

Many doubted Obama’s sincerity in following through with this commitment. Sure, he issued an executive order as he promised, but it didn’t keep him from planning to fund abortions through high-risk insurance programs to be created by his ObamaCare bill in states such as Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and Maryland.

On July 13, 2010, three months after the bill was signed, the Obama administration approved the allocation of $160 million in federal funds to Pennsylvania for a high-risk pool of people with pre-existing conditions. The administration claimed the Pennsylvania legislation would pay for abortions only in cases of rape, incest, or to save the mother’s life, yet the statutory language omitted those restrictions. The solicitation describing the plan said it would include “only abortions and contraceptives that satisfy the requirements” of certain Pennsylvania statutes. One of those statutes specified that abortions could be provided by physicians who would determine whether in their “best clinical judgment, the abortion is necessary... in light of all factors (physical, emotional, psychological, familial and the woman’s age) relevant to the well-being of the woman. No abortion which is sought solely because of the sex of the unborn child shall be deemed a necessary abortion.”

Doug Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, said this language means that “federal funds will subsidize coverage of abortion performed for any reason, except sex selection. The Pennsylvania proposal conspicuously lacks language that would prevent funding of abortions performed as a method of birth control for any other reason, except sex selection—and the Obama administration has now approved this.”⁶⁴

The administration also authorized federal funding for abortions in the state of New Mexico. National Review Online reported that the state’s new, $37 million high-risk pool would begin receiving benefits in August, including elective abortion services, and this was corroborated by the state insurance department’s website. House minority leader John Boehner said, “In just the past 24 hours, we’ve learned of two states in which the new federal high-risk insurance programs created under Obamacare and approved by the Obama administration will use federal funds to pay for abortion, despite promises by the White House and Democratic leaders that no such funding would occur under Obamacare. These developments provide stark confirmation that President Obama’s executive order last spring was little more than a political ploy to ensure passage of Obamacare by circumventing the will of the American people, who are clearly opposed to taxpayer-funded abortion.”⁶⁵ A few days later, it was announced that Maryland, too, would receive federal funds for high-risk insurance programs created under ObamaCare that would include coverage for abortion.⁶⁶

Despite its aggressive record of federal funding for abortion, the administration still misrepresents its position. In early 2011 Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius declared, “There is no taxpayer funding for abortion. Not at community health centers, not as part of the new bill, not as any part of any services that we deliver.”⁶⁷

Further demonstrating its pro-abortion zeal, the Obama administration lobbied and contributed funds to convince the people of Kenya to approve a new constitution that would loosen restrictions on abortion. The administration denied it had lobbied for the proposed constitution, but our ambassador to Kenya revealed that the United States had given $2 million for “civil education” about the constitution and was committed to giving more. When the constitution was approved, Obama exulted, “My administration has been pleased to support Kenya’s democratic development and the Kenyan people.”⁶⁸

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigated the administration’s spending in Kenya and discovered that at least one grantee of the funds openly pushed to expand abortion—notwithstanding the Siljander Amendment, a law that prohibits federal tax dollars from being used to lobby for or against abortion in other nations. Further, the GAO reported that a key Obama official stonewalled investigators. Congressman Chris Smith said, “The Obama administration basically hired surrogates to do its dirty work of abortion promotion in Kenya. U.S. policy on international constitutional reform is, by law, supposed to be abortion-neutral.” Instead, it actively lobbied for abortion with taxpayer dollars.⁶⁹ The GAO called for an internal review of the expenditure of these funds. It also suggested that the State Department develop “specific guidance” to comply with restrictions on funding for abortion laws overseas, a suggestion the State Department rejected.⁷⁰

Obama’s Justice Department definitely got “the memo”—not the one instructing his administration to make abortion “rare,” which was never sent, but the one promoting the work of pro-abortionists. In deference to Obama’s soul-mates at Planned Parenthood, the DOJ sued an elderly pro-life “sidewalk counselor” for his ministry on behalf of young pregnant ladies outside the Planned Parenthood facility in Washington, D.C. Dick Retta, described as a “peaceful, prayerful man,” conducts training sessions to empower fellow pro-life advocates to offer words of encouragement to young women who enter and leave the abortion center. He insists he does not seek to block access to the facility, but to remind women that they have a choice—something self-styled pro-choice proponents would have no objection to if they were really “pro-choice,” and if abortion were not a highly profitable industry. Retta and his associates also offer post-abortion healing for women, based on their belief, supported by peer-reviewed research, that significant numbers of women who undergo an abortion suffer emotional or mental health problems.⁷¹

Despite Obama’s insincere call for us to “work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions,” his administration doesn’t take kindly to people actually trying to achieve that goal. His Justice Department doesn’t regard Retta as an innocuous champion of life, but rather “among the most vocal and aggressive anti-abortion protesters outside the Clinic.” So the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division sued Retta for $25,000 in fines, alleging that he has obstructed entrance to the clinic and that he walks “very closely beside patients” and yells at them, allegations that reportedly shocked Retta.⁷²

Thus, Obama’s Justice Department looks the other way when New Black Panther Party members brandish nightsticks outside election places to intimidate voters, but seeks to punish a harmless man reciting the Lord’s Prayer and passing out brochures outside an abortion clinic. Retta’s loving words cautioning against abortion are verboten, while the Panthers’ intimidating threats are ignored.

By contrast, the administration showed surprising leniency toward a woman who assaulted Retta. After the woman pepper-sprayed him when he offered her pro-life literature, the government granted her a generous plea deal in which it would drop charges after just six months’ probation. There were reportedly no fines, community service, or any other probationary conditions except that she avoid re-arrest for six months.⁷³

Barack Obama has been a strong ally of Planned Parenthood, the abortion factory that performed, in 2009, some 910 abortions a day.⁷⁴ His administration has shown its allegiance in many ways: while pro-life groups were largely shut out of Obama’s healthcare summit, Planned Parenthood was invited, along with other pro-abortion groups; the White House website serve.gov at one point promoted the organization’s abortion business by recruiting pro-abortion volunteers on its behalf;⁷⁵ Obama threatened to veto bills that would de-fund the Planned Parenthood abortion business;⁷⁶ and the Obama Justice Department filed legal papers to support Planned Parenthood in a lawsuit challenging the state of Indiana’s legislation that cut off funding for abortions.⁷⁷

During one of the many congressional budget skirmishes, the administration refused to relent on funding for Planned Parenthood. It had no problem eliminating $600 million in funding for Community Health Centers, which provide health services to the poor, including mammograms and pre- and post-natal care. But it insisted that Planned Parenthood’s work was indispensable in providing women’s healthcare. Frank Cannon, president of the American Principles Project, said that in 2010 Community Health Centers performed 320,000 mammograms while Planned Parenthood performed none. Cannon said, “Coating its ideology in flowery language about women’s health and alleged Republican mean-spiritedness, liberal Democrats refused to cut one dime out of Planned Parenthood’s plump federal purse during the budget debate. All the while a sharp knife was being taken to community health centers that actually perform full-scale exams for the needy.”⁷⁸

It came as no surprise, then, when Obama’s administration ignored undercover sting videos showing Planned Parenthood centers appearing to assist supposed sex traffickers in arranging abortions and STD testing for their underage prostitutes. In light of the videos, Congress approved a bill to defund Planned Parenthood. But the group was protected by its Democratic supporters in the Senate, who defended its funding, and by the Obama Justice Department, which refused to prosecute anyone involved. Lila Rose, head of the Live Action organization, the group that released the videos, said, “An untold number of women, and possibly underage girls, are being exploited and likely in danger and the Justice Department is looking the other way.”⁷⁹

These sordid events have not dampened the administration’s support for Planned Parenthood in the slightest. In June 2011, New Hampshire’s Executive Council voted not to renew its $1.8 million contract with Planned Parenthood clinics in the state because of their provision of abortions. Just as with Indiana, the administration would not take no for an answer; the Health and Human Services Department argued that New Hampshire broke federal rules because de-funding Planned Parenthood might deny low-income women access to “family planning”—even though assistance is available from other agencies. New Hampshire Health and Human Services Commissioner Nick Toumpas worried that the state could lose federal Medicaid funding if it didn’t bend to the administration’s demands. Daniel St. Hilaire, a member of the New Hampshire Executive Council, said that the state’s contract should go to an organization that does not perform abortions. Republican David K. Wheeler said, “It is wrong to require taxpayers who believe that abortion is murder to have to pay for (abortions).”⁸⁰

The administration ended up circumventing the Executive Council and contracting directly with the Planned Parenthood clinics, a move that prompted Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser to complain, “President Obama has proven time and time again that he will do whatever it takes to ensure that Planned Parenthood continues to receive taxpayer subsidies, even if that means going around a state’s elected representatives. Obama is the most pro-abortion President in our country’s history and his allegiance to Planned Parenthood is unwavering.”⁸¹

The public got a first-hand view of the militant politics of Planned Parenthood when Susan G. Komen for the Cure, an organization committed to fighting breast cancer, decided to cut funding for the group because it does not do mammograms. But after Planned Parenthood, Democratic congressional leaders, and the liberal media publicly attacked Komen, it decided it would still allow the organization to submit grant requests. The coordinated assault was so vicious that Karen Handel, a top Komen official who was influential in the initial decision to defund, resigned from her position with the group. Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life was outraged at these developments, saying “Handel’s resignation only furthers Planned Parenthood’s status as a bully who shakes down whomever they need to in order to get their way.... Komen had good reason to defund Planned Parenthood and is now paying the price for doing business with thugs.”⁸²

Indeed, scandal surrounds this organization Obama seems to revere. Karen Reynolds, a long-time employee of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, in Texas, has filed a legal action alleging that twelve Planned Parenthood mills in Texas and Louisiana defrauded the government by billing medical agencies for unnecessary services and for services that were never provided.⁸³

Planned Parenthood also showed its radical pro-abortion colors when it joined with other pro-abortionists such as NARAL to promote a Washington state law that would require health insurance coverage for abortion if a health plan covers maternity care—a law that would compel everyone who wants to buy insurance coverage for maternity, including those morally opposed to abortion, to purchase policies that would cover elective abortions.⁸⁴ While Planned Parenthood claims to be about much more than abortions, some of its critics say that it “continually lobbies for and in fact promotes abortion on demand, unrestricted, and unregulated,” and is even “promoting abortion for underage minors without any parental involvement or consent.”⁸⁵

In 1973, Congress passed the Church Amendment, which barred any entity that “receives a grant, contract, loan or loan guaranty” under certain federal titles from “discriminating in the employment, promotion, or termination of employment of any physician or other health care personnel” because that person refuses to perform or assist in a “service or activity” that “would be contrary to his religious beliefs or moral convictions.”⁸⁶ Because the law did not specify how aggrieved parties would seek remedies, the Bush administration in 2008 issued clarifying regulations establishing a complaint procedure. But in March 2009, the Obama administration suspended these regulations, once again thwarting the intent of Congress.

Without specified legal remedies, the injured parties may be left without recourse. Catherine Cenzon-DeCarlo, a nurse working at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, a recipient of federal funds, filed an administrative complaint with the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as well as a federal lawsuit alleging she had been forced to participate in an elective second-trimester abortion. While the OCR/HHS opened an investigation, a federal appeals court shot down her lawsuit, saying the Church Amendment didn’t confer a cause of action for injured parties. The fate of Cenzon-DeCarlo’s administrative complaint was unclear because of the administration’s suspension of the 2008 Bush regulations. As Chuck Donovan of the Heritage Foundation observed, “A civil rights law without an enforcement mechanism is just a noble sentiment.”⁸⁷

In his speech at Notre Dame on May 17, 2009, Obama said, “Let’s honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded not only in sound science, but also in clear ethics, as well as respect for the equality of women.”⁸⁸ The remarks were particularly cynical, considering that a few months earlier the White House had quietly announced that Obama had started the process of overturning protections President Bush had put in place to make sure medical staff and centers are not forced to do abortions.⁸⁹ In March 2009, while administration officials were telling the media that they were merely trying to clarify the existing rules,⁹⁰ in fact, they had just published in the Federal Register a proposal to rescind the pro-life protections entirely.⁹¹

At least two congressmen were not fooled by Obama’s dissembling. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin and Chris Smith of New Jersey held a press conference following Obama’s Notre Dame remarks, calling on Obama to stop his effort to overturn the Bush protections. In a letter to Obama, they wrote, “You indicated that you wanted to ‘honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion.’ Given our agreement in regard to a conscience clause, we respectfully request that you put an end to your Administration’s review of the Bush administration rule that enforces existing conscience protection laws and completely forego the rescinding of this rule.”⁹²

But Obama continued to deceive the public on these policies. Despite the fact that his administration was in the process of repealing the Bush regulations, in September 2009, in one of his many healthcare speeches, Obama said, “One more misunderstanding I want to clear up—under our plan . . . federal conscience laws will remain in place.”

On March 22, 2010, true to form, Obama signed ObamaCare into law, a bill that contains no conscience protections. Meanwhile, his administration was still working hard to cancel the Bush conscience rights protections. In a lawsuit that the state of Connecticut filed to overturn the Bush-era protections, Obama administration attorneys admitted in papers filed with the court that the administration was seeking to finalize a rescission of the conscience rules.⁹³

In February 2011, the HHS scrapped a portion of the 2008 Bush rule, calling it “unclear and potentially overbroad in scope.” Officials then adopted a new rule that retained protections for conscientious objectors to abortion, but provided no protection for medical workers who have moral or religious objections to dispensing abortifacients such as Plan B, Ella, or other emergency contraception that could cause an abortion in some cases.

The HHS released a statement emphasizing that the new rule supported the conscience protections on abortions, but without mentioning the detrimental impact it would have on conscience rights concerning abortifacients. Dr. J. Scott Ries, on behalf of the Christian Medical Association, charged that the new rule would “weaken the only federal regulation protecting the exercise of conscience in health care.” Accusing the administration of using a specious argument (ensuring access to contraception) to justify abandoning conscience protections for dispensing abortion drugs, Ries argued that “absolutely no evidence is presented to justify any such concern. In the process, the administration blatantly ignores the scientific evidence that certain controversial prescriptions that abortion advocates promote as contraception are actually potential abortifacients, ending the life of a living, developing human embryo. This is a critical concern for pro-life patients, healthcare professionals and institutions.”⁹⁴

The rule change, Ries maintained, diminishes the civil rights of physicians ⁹⁵ and will result in losing conscience-oriented healthcare professionals and faith-based institutions, which will imperil the poor and patients in medically underserved areas. National surveys have shown that 90 percent of faith-based physicians say they would leave the medical profession before perfoming procedures that violate their consciences. A similar deterrent effect is occurring with faith-based medical students, 20 percent of whom say they are “not pursuing a career in Obstetrics or Gynecology” because of what they perceive to be discrimination and coercion in that specialty. Dr. Ries pointed out that this means fewer physicians in a field that is already facing critical shortages.⁹⁶

The administration further eroded conscience rights in August 2011 when the HHS categorized birth control and certain drugs that can cause abortions as “preventive care,” thus requiring insurance companies to cover them. This decision violates the conscience rights of Catholics and other religious and pro-life individuals who have moral objections to paying for insurance that covers birth control and abortion drugs.⁹⁷

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops strongly criticized the administration for the preventive services mandate that “requires health plans to cover female surgical sterilization and all drugs and devices approved by the FDA as contraceptives, including drugs that can attack a developing unborn child before and after implantation in the mother’s womb.”⁹⁸ The new HHS guidelines would also force Catholic colleges to choose between violating the law or violating the Catholic faith, according to Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, because they would force Catholic colleges to help students and employees obtain free contraceptives and sterilization. “Our religious freedom is under attack,” said Reilly.

Showing the administration’s cynicism toward the life issue, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius argues that the preventing services mandate pays for itself because fewer babies are born—babies that would otherwise need healthcare. “The reduction in the number of pregnancies compensates for the cost of contraception,” she says, which is similar to President Obama’s contention that “the overall cost of healthcare is lower when women have access to contraceptive services.”⁹⁹ The HHS said its preventive services mandate aims to “help stop health problems before they start.” But as Cardinal DiNardo, Archbishop of Galveston-Houston and chairman of the USCCB Committee on Pro-Life Activities, said, “Pregnancy is not a disease, and children are not a health problem—they are the next generation of Americans. It’s now more vital than ever that . . . employers and employees alike . . . have the freedom to choose health plans in accordance with their deeply held moral and religious beliefs.”¹⁰⁰

The administration’s relentless attack on conscience rights repeatedly pushed the issue into the spotlight. On November 2, 2011, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health held a hearing in which numerous panelists argued that the ObamaCare mandates threaten conscience rights and access to care. Furthermore, many employers with moral objections to such mandatory coverage were not mollified by the mandate’s narrowly drawn religious exemption, which can be invoked only by organizations which primary mission is to inculcate religious belief and which hire and serve co-religionists. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said that under this exemption “even the ministry of Jesus and early Christian Church would not qualify as religious.” Indeed, Janet Belford, chancellor and general counsel for the Washington Archdiocese, said, “HHS has drafted a religious exemption that is so narrow that it excludes virtually all Catholic hospitals, elementary and secondary schools, colleges and universities, and charitable organizations, none of which impose a litmus test on those they serve, as the HHS mandate would have them do.” Others worried that the rule could reduce access to care because some employers would have no choice but to drop coverage to avoid violating their convictions.¹⁰¹

In January 2012, the HHS issued a statement reiterating its position that ObamaCare requires health insurance plans to cover abortion-inducing drugs. Religious organizations that requested conscience exceptions were thwarted, as expected, as the administration gave them a year to comply with the requirement. This HHS rule would require religious entities to provide insurance plans that, in effect, cover abortions, which means that organizations grounded in the pro-life principle would have to cover their employees’ abortions.¹⁰² In its typical high-handed fashion, the administration prohibited a Catholic Army chaplain from reading a letter by Timothy Broglio—Archbishop of the Military Services, USA—criticizing the mandate.

This mandate sparked such a backlash that Obama devised a “compromise” : he would require insurance companies, rather than employers, to pay for birth control and abortifacients. In fact, this was no compromise at all, but a sham. As a group of prominent law professors and academics noted in a jointly written letter,

This so-called “accommodation” changes nothing of moral substance and fails to remove the assault on religious liberty and the rights of conscience which gave rise to the controversy. It is certainly no compromise. The reason for the original bipartisan uproar was the administration’s insistence that religious employers, be they institutions or individuals, provide insurance that covered services they regard as gravely immoral and unjust. Under the new rule, the government still coerces religious institutions and individuals to purchase insurance policies that include the very same services.

Outraged pro-life groups and individuals saw through the ruse. Alleging that the Catholic Church is being “despoiled of her institutions,” an influential Catholic Cardinal, Francis George of Chicago, warned that Catholic hospitals in the United States may close in two years under this new mandate.¹⁰⁴ Activists organized a protest at federal buildings in more than fifty cities throughout the United States with the theme “Stand Up for Religious Freedom—Stop the HHS Mandate!”¹⁰⁵

There are two main approaches to sex education. The so-called “safe-sex” or “comprehensive” approach focuses on the physical risk of sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy, and emphasizes contraception, especially condoms. Most supporters of this approach regard sex and sexuality as matters of personal choice that ought not be dictated by religious or political strictures.¹⁰⁶ In contrast, the abstinence approach centers on the social and psychological aspects of sexual activity. It teaches young adults to delay engaging in sexual activity, warns of the dangers of casual sex, and encourages students to consider sexuality as part of a process of developing intimacy and lifelong commitment.¹⁰⁷

President George W. Bush’s administration strongly promoted the abstinence approach, with the 2007 budget alone including approximately $204 million for such education programs.¹⁰⁸ President Obama, being reliably liberal across the board, predictably replaced Bush’s program with a comprehensive teen pregnancy prevention program.¹⁰⁹ More than 176 abstinence education programs would lose funding under Obama’s change.¹¹⁰

Proponents of the abstinence approach worried that the elimination of funding midstream in a five-year grant award would deprive some 2 million students of key skill-building lessons.¹¹¹ However, Melody Barnes, a White House domestic aide, said the change “reflects the research.... In any area where Americans want to confront a problem, they want solutions they know will work, as opposed to programming they know hasn’t proven to be successful.”¹¹² Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney boasted, “It’s about time that evidence-based management—and sanity—return to family planning programs.”¹¹³

While critics of so-called abstinence-only characterize it as a moralistic, head-in-the-sand approach, in reality it is abstinence-centered, but is not solely about abstinence; it does not preclude teaching about contraception. It teaches abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage as the standard for all school-age children while emphasizing related social, psychological, and health benefits. It teaches kids life skills, how to make decisions that are grounded in personal responsibility, and how to develop healthy relationships and marriages.

Proponents of abstinence programs deny critics’ claims that the weight of the evidence discredits the abstinence method. To the contrary, a number of studies cited by the National Abstinence Education Association demonstrate the program’s effectiveness.¹¹⁴ Heritage Foundation scholars Robert Rector and Christine Kim cite studies showing that young adults who receive abstinence education exhibit greater psychological health and perform better academically. Abstinence can also decrease teenagers’ rates of contracting STDs, having children out of wedlock, and experiencing psychological harm. Rector and Kim found that twelve out of sixteen studies of abstinence education reported positive findings, as did five out of six studies of virginity pledges. The authors concluded, “Genuine abstinence education is therefore crucial to the physical and psycho-emotional well-being of the nation’s youth.... When considering effective prevention programs aimed at changing teen sexual behavior, lawmakers should consider all of the available empirical evidence and restore funding for abstinence education.¹¹⁵

Another recent study showed that abstinence education programs are effective and are strongly supported by parents, many of whom believe recent sex education programs do not reflect their values. Embarrassed that this study had been funded by its own Health and Human Services Department, the Obama administration initially refused to publicize the results and even denied Freedom of Information Requests to release it, though it finally relented amidst grassroots pressure. The study found that 70 percent of parents believe that sexual relations should be postponed until marriage.¹¹⁶

On the other hand, comprehensive sex education programs, such as those the administration supports, are sometimes used as vehicles to promote values that many parents oppose. The “comprehensive” approach is often not comprehensive at all, and it can put kids at greater risk of pregnancy because it de-emphasizes abstinence—the most effective way to reduce teenage pregnancy—and promotes the use of condoms while downplaying their failure rates and related health risks. Indeed, some refer to this approach as “condom-based sex education.”

A Heritage Foundation study found that comprehensive sex-ed curricula often provide no standards about when students should begin sexual activity. Though an overwhelming majority of adults (94 percent) and of teens (92 percent) believe it is important that society sends a “strong message” that young people “should not have sex until they are, at least, out of high school,” few, if any, comprehensive sex-ed programs promote or even include that message. In this study, the authors examined nine separate curricula consisting in total of 942 pages, and found fewer than ten sentences urging young people to defer sexual activity until a later age—and most of these sentences lacked force.¹¹⁷

Consider one “comprehensive” sex-ed program that was contemplated in the Helena, Montana public school system. The program would teach fifth graders that “sexual intercourse includes, but is not limited to vaginal, oral or anal penetration.” It would teach kindergarteners about “basic reproductive body parts (penis, vagina, breast, nipples, testicles, and scrotum).” It would teach all grades that marriage is a “commitment by two people.” It would teach first graders that “human beings can love people of the same gender and people of another gender.” It would teach that sexual orientation refers to a “person’s physical and/ or romantic attraction to an individual of the same and/or different gender.” And, it would teach sixth graders that sexual intercourse includes “using the penis, fingers, tongue or objects.”¹¹⁸

Irrespective of whether one supports an abstinence-centered approach, there are serious objections to so-called comprehensive programs, which would likely be even more unpopular if more parents were aware of their contents. In fact, many parents would be shocked to learn what the HHS once taught on its own website. In a post titled “Questions and Answers About Sex” the HHS instructed, “Children are human beings and therefore sexual beings.... It’s hard for parents to acknowledge this, just as it’s hard for kids to think of their parents as sexually active. But even infants have curiosity about their own bodies, which is healthy and normal.” The post further related that teens may “experiment” with homosexuality as part of “exploring their own sexuality.” None of this is surprising considering that President Obama has declared his support for “age-appropriate” sex education for kindergarteners. ¹¹⁹

President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2010 Omnibus Appropriations bill contained numerous items that should concern traditional values voters. ¹²⁰ Aside from defunding abstinence education and funding “comprehensive” sex education, it included:

• A 30 percent increase from President Bush’s 2008 budget on means-tested welfare programs, including housing, food stamps, and healthcare. Studies have shown these programs perpetuate dependency and that expanding them harms individuals in the long run and is detrimental to the economy and jobs.

• An allowance of federal taxpayer money for “needle exchange” programs for drug addicts. Aimed at impeding the spread of infection rather than eradicating addiction, these programs exacerbate the underlying problem by focusing on symptoms instead of causes, similar to the condom-based approach to sex education.

• Substantial increases in Title X family planning funding, the main recipient of which was Planned Parenthood.

• An increase of $5 million to the UN Population Fund, some of which is allocated in support of China’s draconian one-child policy.

• As noted, an increase of $103 million for overseas family planning groups that promote or perform abortions—groups that were denied federal funding entirely until Obama cancelled the “Mexico City policy.”

• A removal of the ban on federal funding for enforcing the “Fairness Doctrine,” through which the Left aspired to emasculate conservative talk radio. Under Republican pressure, the FCC abolished the rule in 2011.

• Changes affecting funding for the District of Columbia, including: a) the elimination of a scholarship program allowing some poor D.C. parents to send their children to private school; b) lifting a ban on the District using local funds to promote and finance abortions for residents; c) removing the prohibition on federal tax money being used for healthcare benefits for domestic partners of D.C. employees; d) allowing D.C. to use local funds to begin and operate a medical marijuana program; and e) removing the restriction on using local funds for a needle exchange program for drug addicts in the District. Even a clause prohibiting such programs from operating within 1,000 feet of schools, day care centers, or youth centers was removed from the bill.¹²¹

In 2012, the late Andrew Breitbart’s websites released video clips showing Obama’s connection to racist academic Derrick Bell, the first black Harvard Law School professor. It turns out Obama, while a Harvard Law student, strongly supported and warmly embraced Bell after the professor initiated a high-profile campaign to pressure Harvard into hiring a black female law professor. As explained by author and economist Thomas Sowell, who was interviewed about the incident at the time, Bell wasn’t referring only to black skin color, but a black woman who also thought black. That is, Bell wasn’t merely insisting that Harvard’s hiring be based on race, but on ideology. Sowell also revealed that Bell, who had an “ideological intolerance” and a “totalitarian mindset,” launched a despicable attack against a young black professor who objected to Bell’s agenda.¹²²

Calling Derrick Bell “the Jeremiah Wright of academia,” Joel Pollak of Breitbart.com explained that Bell was the originator of critical race theory, “which holds that the civil rights movement was a sham and that white supremacy is the order and it must be overthrown.”¹²³ Bell, who argued that “racism is an integral, permanent and indestructible component of this society,”¹²⁴ was indeed a racial militant extraordinaire, which is why it’s unsettling to see video of future President Barack Obama urging Harvard students to “open up your hearts and your minds to the words of Professor Derrick Bell.”¹²⁵

Some might dismiss these signals as old attitudes that Obama has since outgrown. But if Obama is now committed to race-blindness, it’s strange that his administration is shot through with high-ranking officials who obviously oppose him on that score.

For example, Obama’s nominee for assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Thomas Perez, is a strong proponent of racial preferences in admissions to schools that train healthcare professionals. He has advocated that medical schools drop standards for black applicants, arguing they are more likely to work in “underserved” communities than whites.¹²⁶ Similarly, in August 2009 the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights expressed concern that Obama’s healthcare legislation included racially discriminatory provisions such as according minority students preferential treatment for scholarships and favoring medical schools deemed more likely to send graduates to underserved areas.¹²⁷

Obama’s former Green Jobs czar, Van Jones, was decidedly radical, including on race issues. In September 2009 he declared, “You’ve never seen a Columbine done by a black child. Never. They always say, ‘we can’t believe it happened here. We can’t believe it was these suburban white kids.’ It’s only them. Now a black kid might shoot another black kid. He’s not going to shoot up the whole school.” Military analyst Ralph Peters responded, “It’s symptomatic of the extreme leftward lurch of this administration. It’s the farthest left administration we’ve ever had in American history. Obama makes FDR look like Barry Goldwater.”¹²⁸

Van Jones’ bizarre declarations became well known, leading to his resignation. What is less well-known is that the same month Jones spit out his racial analysis of Columbine, Obama’s “diversity czar” (the FCC’s Chief Diversity Officer), Mark Lloyd, was caught on video saying, “There are few things, I think, more frightening in the American mind than dark-skinned black men.” A few years earlier Lloyd had complained that whites owned and controlled 98 percent of all federal broadcast licenses and urged white media executives to “step down” so that “more people of color, gays,” and “other people” “can have power.” Lloyd also panned the First Amendment, saying the freedoms it guarantees are “too often an exaggeration.... The purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance.”¹²⁹

In May 2009, amidst debate over Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor as a Supreme Court justice, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs pointedly admonished “anybody involved in this debate to be exceedingly careful with the way in which they’ve decided to describe different aspects of this impending confirmation.” The remark was a clear insinuation that Sotomayor’s critics were motivated by racism. And in fact, race had entered the discussion—but only because Obama’s nominee herself viewed the legal system through the prism of race and group identity, once having said that a “wise Latina woman” like herself should be more capable of adjudicating certain kinds of cases than a white male.¹³⁰

Contradicting candidate Obama’s post-racial appeals, the Obama administration has zealously promoted race-based policies and preferences—under the euphemism of “diversity”—inside and outside the government. The Obama administration used federal “stimulus” funds for such politically correct projects as purchasing manuals for every Omaha public school teacher, administrator, and staff instructing them on how to become more culturally sensitive.¹³¹ And according to The Hill, the Obama Agriculture Department has implemented numerous diversity initiatives and even hired a consulting firm to advise on diversity issues.¹³² Department Secretary Tom Vilsack said the agency would also adopt most of the recommendations from a two-year study that examined USDA’s alleged history of discrimination and its alleged civil rights failings, which is all in line with the administration’s goal of bringing “transformational change” to a department that has been guilty of “egregious cases of discrimination.” One recommendation was that the USDA’s rural development department should be made more accessible to women and that a “chief diversity officer” should be appointed in each of the agency’s state offices.¹³³

But spreading “diversity” through just one department is not nearly ambitious enough for Obama. In August 2011, he issued an executive order called “Establishing a Coordinated Government-Wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce.” The order calls for all agencies in the federal government to “develop and issue” a “diversity and inclusion strategic plan.” Though vague, the order reflects the administration’s obsession with race and the inclusion of race-based factors for employment. While these types of initiatives are often billed as efforts to prevent discrimination, they promote it by their very terms, compelling government agencies to factor in race and ethnicity in their employment decisions rather than to factor them out, encouraging them to discriminate rather than to aspire toward a policy of non-discrimination.¹³⁴

Not content with making the entire federal government subject to its race-conscious “diversity” initiatives, the administration does what it can to impose them on the private sphere as well. For example, an Inspector General report on the government’s takeover of GM and Chrysler contained a little-known finding: “Dealerships were retained because they were recently appointed, were key wholesale parts dealers or were minority-or-woman owned dealerships.” This seems to mean that in order to meet the Obama administration’s unilaterally imposed race- and gender-based strictures, the big auto companies were forced to close potentially stronger dealerships because their owners were the wrong race or the wrong sex.¹³⁵

In July 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder gave banks a good dose of diversity, ordering them to relax their mortgage underwriting standards and approve loans for minorities with poor credit as part of a new crackdown on discrimination, according to Investors Business Daily. Prosecutions, said IBD, had “already generated $20 million in loan set-asides and other subsidies from banks that have settled out of court rather than battle the federal government and risk being branded as racist.” A Department of Justice spokeswoman admitted that another sixty banks were under investigation.¹³⁶ It’s hard to imagine more striking proof that the administration learned nothing from the nation’s housing and financial crisis.

The expansion of race preferences in school admissions is a key goal of the Left, and this administration has worked hard to further it as well. In March 2010, the Obama administration filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, supporting the University of Texas’ use of racial preferences in undergraduate admissions. In the brief, the administration advocated preferences not just at the university level but also from kindergarten through high school: “In view of the importance of diversity in educational institutions, the United States, through the Departments of Education and Justice, supports the efforts of school systems and post-secondary educational institutions that wish to develop admissions policies that endeavor to achieve the educational benefits of diversity in accordance with [the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision upholding the use of preferences by the University of Michigan law school].”¹³⁷

The administration, even in its presentation of budget proposals, couches its marketing materials in terms of identity politics—what the plan will do for specific minorities and other groups, as if it strives to end once and for all the notion of e pluribus unum and the very idea of the melting pot. Its byword, instead, should be “balkanization.” The administration’s list of “fact sheets” for the 2012 budget included, among other items: Expanding Opportunities for the LGBT Community, Expanding Opportunities for Latino Families, Fighting the HIV/AIDS Epidemic and Supporting People Living with HIV/AIDS, Helping Women and Girls Win the Future, Standing with Indian Country, Winning the Future for African-American Families, Winning the Future for Asian-American and Pacific Islander Families, and Winning the Future for People with Disabilities.¹³⁸

Eventually, Obama began to describe his legislation in terms of the benefits it would provide for blacks. The administration described an unemployment benefits renewal and tax bill as “a major win for African-American families.” The White House sent out an email outlining the specific ways the bill would benefit black families, which was not only interesting for its racial focus, but also as an illustration that Obama had no answer other than extending government benefits to reverse the devastating effects of his economic and regulatory policies on black families. There was no eye to growth and no incentives, only more income and wealth redistribution to perpetuate and deepen the dependency cycle. Despite his enormous transfer payments and other leftist policies, 15.8 percent of adult African-Americans were unemployed in December 2010, more than twice the rate of whites and also dwarfing the national average of 9.8 percent. Obama’s email bragged that 2.2 million African-American families would benefit from the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit in the bill, while the unemployment extension, it said, would benefit 1.1 million African-Americans. ¹³⁹

A few months after Holder called Americans cowards, the DOJ dismissed voter intimidation charges against New Black Panther Party members, even though the government had already won a default judgment against the defendants a month earlier when they had failed even to appear in court.¹⁴⁰ It was later revealed that in March 2007 then-candidate Barack Obama, during a campaign stop in Selma, Alabama, had shared a podium with members of the New Black Panther Party, received a personal greeting from the wife of Panther chief Malik Zulu Shabazz, and walked next to Panther members in a civil rights march.¹⁴¹ Notably, Malik Zulu Shabazz, who was one of the Panthers who marched near Obama, was also one of the party members charged in the voter intimidation case that the DOJ dismissed. As Andrew McCarthy wrote at National Review Online, “This is a shocking story, and a breathtaking indictment of the mainstream media which went out of its way to avoid vetting Obama as a candidate—and to make sure anyone who tried to do due diligence got no sunshine. A candidate who chose to appear in the company, of say, the KKK, would have provoked relentlessly hostile media coverage, and, in short order, have been marginalized as disqualified to hold responsible elective office.”¹⁴²

Scandalously, on February 11, 2011, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, with the help of Obama’s newly appointed commissioners, voted to shut down its investigation of the DOJ’s dismissal of the Panther case. This was a sweet reward for Eric Holder, who had been trying to suppress the investigation for eighteen months by stonewalling document requests and forbidding his subordinates from being deposed or interviewed. Writing for Pajamas Media, former FCC commissioner Hans A. von Spakovsky said he “couldn’t believe how the Commission’s Democratic appointees abandoned their duty as civil rights commissioners in order to defend the administration’s stonewalling.” He claimed some commissioners had “acted as the virtual defense counsel for the Obama administration, trying to stop the investigation and obscure and obfuscate the Commission’s findings.”¹⁴³

The inexplicable dismissal of the New Black Panther case reflected deeply disturbing trends at the Obama-Holder DOJ. In his book Injustice , J. Christian Adams, a former DOJ attorney who had worked on the New Black Panther case, gave a first-hand account of how the DOJ, under Obama’s presidency, has been staffed top-to-bottom with radical racialists who believe civil rights laws should not be enforced in cases involving black offenders and white victims. Adams further recounted how numerous aspects of the DOJ’s expansive authority—from voting rights to business regulations to employment and housing rules—now serve a fringe racial agenda that would repulse the vast majority of Americans.¹⁴⁴ Adams and others also alleged that those at the Justice Department fighting for race-neutral application of the civil rights laws were subjected to harassment and intimidation.¹⁴⁵

Testifying before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Christopher Coates, a DOJ Voting Section veteran with extensive civil rights credentials, said the election of President Obama “brought to positions of influence and power with the Civil Rights Division many of the very people who had demonstrated hostility to the concept of equal enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.” Coates provided specific examples of how the division refused to enforce civil rights laws to protect white victims against black perpetrators. He averred that his supervisor, Loretta King, who was then acting assistant attorney general, expressly forbade him from even asking prospective DOJ employees if they would be willing to commit to race-neutral law enforcement. Moreover, Coates testified that the DOJ is refusing to enforce federal laws requiring states to remove ineligible voters from their rolls, including dead people and incarcerated felons—laws that DOJ radicals believe somehow to be racist.¹⁴⁶

After more than three years of Obama’s presidency, it is hard to deny that his administration is engaged in a sustained attack on Americans’ most cherished values. This makes perfect sense when you consider how Obama and his officials view a large segment of the American people: we are unenlightened cowards, bitterly clinging to guns and religion, brimming with xenophobia and racism, a people with a history that demands a lot of apologies. To improve our condition, Obama and his allies seek to enlighten us, putting us on the righteous path of federally funded abortion and racial preferences. That is their vision—and if we don’t share it, then they’ll use all the coercive power of government to make us see the light.

A SECRET, “OPEN EXCHANGE” ON GAY ISSUES

“EVOLVING”

A THREAT TO RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

“EXTREME,” “UNTENABLE,” AND “REMARKABLE”

A PREDETERMINED CONCLUSION ON GAYS IN THE MILITARY

**THE REAL ANTI-SCIENCE PRESIDENT**

MAKING ABORTION RARE? HARDLY

OBAMA’S BROKEN ABORTION FUNDING PROMISE

HAVING “SURROGATES DO ITS DIRTY WORK”

HARASSING A PEACEFUL, PRAYERFUL MAN

“THE MOST PRO-ABORTION PRESIDENT IN OUR COUNTRY’S HISTORY”

“DIMINISHING THE CIVIL RIGHTS” OF HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS

“PREGNANCY IS NOT A DISEASE”

CHILDREN AS “SEXUAL BEINGS”

AT WAR WITH THE TRADITIONAL FAMILY

“A NATION OF COWARDS ON RACE”

DIVERSITY UBER ALLES

OBAMA’S DEPARTMENT OF INJUSTICE