NPR: Babies' Cells Linger, May Protect Mothers

February 8, 2006 - RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

What would you say if we told you that when a woman has a baby, she gets not just a son or daughter, she gets an army of protective cells--gifts from her children that will stay inside her and defend her for the rest of her life? It's such an enticingly beautiful idea, the scientists who proposed it worry that maybe it's too beautiful. NPR's Robert Krulwich has the story.

ROBERT KRULWICH reporting:

For years it was thought as soon as a baby is conceived, once it starts to grow inside a mom, it gets its own very private space.

Dr. KIRBY JOHNSON, PH.D. (Research Assistant Professor, Pediatrics, Tufts University School of Medicine): There is, there's a placenta.

KRULWICH: Yeah.

Dr. JOHNSON: Placenta was thought to be a fairly impenetrable barrier.

KRULWICH: So says Dr. Kirby Johnson, of Tufts University. The baby and its cells stay on the baby side. The mommy cells stay on the mommy side and nature keeps them separate until ...

(Soundbite of baby crying)

KRULWICH: It's, yeah, time to go. And here's the surprise. When scientists at Tufts took blood from ordinary pregnant moms ...

Dr. JOHNSON: We would find, for example, in a teaspoon of blood, dozens, perhaps even hundreds of cells.

KRULWICH: From the baby.

Dr. JOHNSON: From the baby.

KRULWICH: So, baby cells were slipping out of the placenta into the moms. But, because babies do have different genes ...

Dr. JOHNSON: One would expect them to be attacked fairly rapidly. You would expect them to be cleared within hours if not days. What we found is that that is not the case, not anywhere near the case.

KRULWICH: It turns out that babies' cells stay in their moms, not for days or weeks, but for decades.

Dr. JOHNSON: Four to five decades following the last pregnancy.

KRULWICH: So, 40 years after conception, that son or daughter who could now be a middle-aged pharmacist or somethin', yet their fetal cells, their baby cells, are still floating around inside the mother?

Dr. JOHNSON: Yes.

KRULWICH: Even his 60-year-old mother? 70?

Dr. JOHNSON: 70, 80, perhaps 90-year-old women.

KRULWICH: You're sure of this?

Dr. JOHNSON: Absolutely.

Dr. CAROL ARTLETT, PH.D. (Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Medicine, Division of Rheumatology, Thomas Jefferson University): Yeah, these cells last essentially forever.

KRULWICH: In the mom!

Dr. ARTLETT: In the mom.

KRULWICH: And, says Carol Artlett, who studies fetal cells at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, even if a woman has a miscarriage or an abortion, even if there is no baby, the cells of an unborn child will stay in the mother for decades. But, why? What exactly are they doin' in there for years and years and years?

Dr. ARTLETT: (Laughs) That's a good question.

KRULWICH: (Laughs) Well, one early hypothesis--and it's not the nicest idea, says Kirby Johnson--is that certain autoimmune diseases...

Dr. JOHNSON: Such as lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma are much more common in women than men and that's one component of the hypothesis is that this prevalence in women is due to fetal cells.

KRULWICH: So, later in life, when the mother's joints inflame, maybe it's her fetal cells--her own baby's--taking a poke at her. In fact, Kirby's mom did have an autoimmune disease. It was a bad one and for awhile Kirby thought, well, his cells were responsible.

Dr. JOHNSON: So, I apologized immediately and said, well, there's nothing much I can do about it.

KRULWICH: (Laughing) Yeah, yeah, but it's like, stop it, Kirby.

Dr. JOHNSON: But, you know what? I was always doing that to my mother. Always causing problems and it was just another in a long line of those kinds of things.

KRULWICH: But happily the folks at Tufts proposed an alternative, a second theory, to explain what fetal cells are doing in the moms.

Dr. JOHNSON: Well, theory number two is the polar opposite of theory number one.

KRULWICH: The good fetal cell hypothesis proposes that the son or daughter cells stay in mom, not to hurt her, but to protect, defend and repair her for the rest of her life whenever she gets seriously ill and that's a more attractive idea.

Dr. JOHNSON: It's such a personal thing and it does touch the heartstrings of even the most hardnosed research scientist.

KRULWICH: But they all have mothers.

Dr. JOHNSON: But they all have mothers.

KRULWICH: And happily they now have evidence--more and more evidence says Kirby Johnson--that looks like the good hypothesis may be correct. For example, here's a case.

Dr. JOHNSON: Well, this was a woman who came into a neighboring hospital in Boston with symptoms of hepatitis. She was an intravenous drug user ...

KRULWICH: And she had had five conceptions. She'd had one child, two miscarriages, two abortions, that's five in all; she could be carrying, therefore, a lot of fetal cells and they examined her ...

Dr. JOHNSON: And in the process, she had a liver biopsy ...

KRULWICH: And the doc said well, why don't we send her liver to the lab to see if there are any fetal cells gathering where she's got trouble, and when they looked ...

Dr. JOHNSON: We found hundreds...

KRULWICH: Wow!

Dr. JOHNSON: ...and hundreds of fetal cells.

KRULWICH: Normally they'd expect five or ten cells.

Dr. JOHNSON: But this was a very large--we saw, literally, sheets of cells, whole areas that seemed to be normal ...

KRULWICH: Meaning that those fetal cells had gathered at the liver and like stem cells, they just turned themselves, in this case, into healthy liver cells.

Dr. JOHNSON: And most interestingly, this woman did not desire to have any further treatment done. In fact, she wanted to get back to her normal life and be left alone.

KRULWICH: And so she left the hospital with hepatitis but when they checked months later, they learned ...

Dr. JOHNSON: That she is completely healthy, no signs of further liver damage ...

KRULWICH: So, no medical intervention, but just a huge number of her babies' fetal cells? Could that lead you to think the poetic thought, that she was saved by her kids?

Dr. JOHNSON: (Hesitates) We want to think that.

KRULWICH: (Laughs) I know you do.

Dr. JOHNSON: There, it's the most likely obser-, explanation.

KRULWICH: But, in science there is such a thing as a too dangerously beautiful idea.

Dr. JOHNSON: That's right, right! And we say the same thing to ourselves because it shows such a basic wonderful thing, but it has to be right and we can't be led astray by our own desire for it to be true.

KRULWICH: So they are systematically testing the good hypothesis and the bad hypothesis, all these ideas, on laboratory mice--and when they see mother mice with all kinds of diseases--infectious disease, cancer...

Dr. JOHNSON: Ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer, cervical cancers, we find fetal cells there. We know that fetal cells...

KRULWICH: Over and over and over and over?

Dr. JOHNSON: Over and over and over and over.

KRULWICH: Suggesting that fetal cells regularly rush to the places where they're needed in the mom, and, says Carol Artlett...

Dr. ARTLETT: There's a lot of evidence now starting to come out that these cells may actually be repairing tissue.

KRULWICH: That is, protecting the mom. While the other hypothesis, the fetal cells hurt the moms, there, the more they look, the less they find.

Dr. JOHNSON: I can't recall a single study that's been truly reproduced to verify the bad fetal cell hypothesis.

KRULWICH: So, while no one knows in the end which way it'll go...

Dr. JOHNSON: I think that that's something that we're going to see within the next five years or less.

KRULWICH: So far, a sense is building that fetal cells probably stay in mothers for decades to defend and to protect them, which increasingly, is a quiet consolation to Kirby Johnson, because it's now more likely that his cells and his brother's cells were helping their mom, not hurting, and even though his mother did die, Kirby's beginning to feel differently.

Dr. JOHNSON: Well, maybe if it wasn't for my brother and I, she may have passed a few years earlier. Maybe we bought her a couple of extra years of time so she could have a few more birthdays and a few more mother's days and then, if I can just say that, that there is some way where I can even have the remotest thought that I contributed to the extension of my mother's life, even if it was a few days, that would make all of the years that I've spent doing this research worthwhile.

KRULWICH: Robert Krulwich, NPR News, New York.[1]

This reminds me of two things.  One, these cells are being used in new types of blood tests that will possibly replace the amniocentesis. If these tests work, mothers will know the gender and whether their child has Down Syndrome within the first eight weeks.  There is some fear that this will create more selective abortions.  Only 10% of Down Syndrome children are not aborted.  Imagine if all mothers knew in the first trimester that their child had Down Syndrome.  

Two, these cells are from another human being, yet they are parasitically growing inside a body that is not their own.  So far the good hypothesis has found that they attach to damaged organs and grow new parts for these organs. (Imagine parts of your son may grow you a cervix?)  The a fore mentioned woman's liver is no longer composed of only cells from her own body.  Still couldn't these cells also grow liver cancer as easily as they can grow a liver?  Below is a TED talk about Tasmanian Devils that catch cancer from other Devils.



However as stated above, there is not much evidence for the bad hypothesis yet.

Who are the Yule Lads?

From the Iceland Review:

Thirteen days before Christmas the first Icelandic yule lad sneaks into homes in the dead of the night to steal candles, skyr or slam doors – and leave presents behind in the shoes of well-behaved children.
“Who will it be tonight?” kids debate: Stiff-Legs, Gully Gawk, Shorty, Ladle Licker, Pot Scraper, Bowl Licker, Door Slammer, Skyr Gobbler, Sausage Snatcher, Window Peeper, Sniffer, Meat Hook or Candle Beggar?
When I was a kid, Door Slammer was my favorite. When he was in town I felt that I had an excuse to slam doors as much as I liked. Once I thought Door Slammer had actually paid me a visit when a door slammed so hard that the whole house rattled and I jumped out of my seat… But then my father appeared with a mysterious grin on his face.
He used to read me 19th century poems about the 13 yule lads, their horrible mother Grýla and the dreaded Christmas cat. And because I anticipated their arrival with a shoe in my windowsill – preferably a large one to get bigger presents, like my father’s boot, but unfortunately I was told to use my own shoe – I behaved exceptionally well (which was very difficult) throughout December. Occasionally, though, I woke up to find a potato in my shoe.
I’m a real child of Christmas. I have always loved Christmas preparations; making my own Christmas decorations and Christmas cards, shopping for presents, baking cookies (I have already opened a Christmas bakery in my kitchen this year), putting up Christmas lights, making Christmas bread with my family and decorating the tree.
Best of all was the anticipation which grew with each day from 1 December until Christmas, reaching a high the night before Christmas Eve when I couldn’t sleep at all at the thought of all the wonderful presents waiting for me under the tree. The days before Christmas were bearable only because of the yule lads.
My world fell apart when I was seven when the one-year-older and wiser girl next door told me: “The yule lads don’t exist; our parents sneak into our bedrooms and put presents in our shoes.”
The thirteen yule lads have disturbed the sleep of Icelandic children for centuries. At first children couldn’t sleep because they were scared to death by the yule lads, now children can’t sleep because they look forward to the gift protruding from their shoes in the morning. Some children stay awake to disprove the yule lads’ existence and catch their parents red-handed.
In the old days, the yule lads were vicious trolls – according to some tales they were over 50 in total – who lived in the mountains like outlaws, but came down before Christmas to steal Christmas food rations and torment people with their pranks. Their mother and father also came to town to snatch naughty children and eat them. The monster of a family cat had an appetite for children who didn't get new clothes before Christmas.
The stories of the yule lads evolved through the ages, and by 1746 they became so bloody that the Danes, who ruled over Iceland at that time, issued a law banning stories used for scaring children into good behavior.
But the legend lived on and it differed from county to county. In a poem from the 19th century by Jóhannes úr Kötlum the number of the yule lads was established as 13 and these are the yule lads we know today. Their names come from a collection of folktales published in 1862 by Jón Árnason.
Gradually, the yule lads’ reputation improved, and by 1930 it had been given an extreme make-over. Probably under the influence of the foreign custom of St. Nicholas, brought home by Icelandic seamen, the yule lads begun giving presents to well-behaved children.
Since 1970 every child in Iceland puts its shoe in the window thirteen nights before Christmas to wake up to a daily surprise from the yule lads. The last brother arrives on 24 December and then, one by one, they start leaving for the mountains again. The last yule lad leaves on 6 January, the last day of Christmas.
In recent years the yule lads’ appearance has been influenced by Santa Claus. Nowadays the thirteen brothers often dress in red and white instead of wearing traditional wool and lambskin clothing in earthy colors. But this year, the original yule lads are back in fashion.[1]

James Dobson: Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America III

October 2008, Dr. James Dobson wrote a letter fictitiously from October 2012.  This is the third installment of excerpts from Dr. Dobson's apocalyptic future.

(15) Freedom of Choice Act: Congress lost no time in solidifying abortion rights under President Obama. In fact, Obama had promised, “The first thing I’ll do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act” (July 17, 2007, speech to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund).  This federal law immediately nullified hundreds of state laws that had created even the slightest barrier to abortion.  States can no longer require parental involvement for minors who wish to have an abortion, waiting period, informed consent rules, restrictions on tax-payer funding or restrictions on late-term abortions. The act reversed the Hyde Amendment, so the government now funds Medicaid abortions for any reason. As a result, the number of abortions has increased dramatically. The Freedom of Choice Act also reversed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, so infants can be killed outright just seconds before they would be born. States whose laws were overturned challenged the law in court but it was upheld by the Obama Supreme Court. “The land of the free”? There is no freedom for these infants who are killed by the millions.

(16) Nurses and abortions: “The land of the free”? Nurses are no longer free to refuse to participate in abortions for reasons of conscience.  If they refuse to participate, they lose their jobs, for they are now failing to comply with federal law. Many Christian nurses have left the health care field rather than violate their consciences. A number of Christian nurses challenged their loss of jobs in court, but the Supreme Court ruled that medical professionals do not have the freedom to refuse nonessential, elective care on the basis of conscience. In its decision, the Supreme Court followed the reasoning of the California Supreme Court in the 2008 Benitez case (see section (6) above).

(17) Doctors and abortions: “The land of the free”? The same restrictions apply to doctors: Doctors who refuse to perform abortions can no longer be licensed to deliver babies at hospitals in any state. As a result, many Christian doctors have left family medicine and obstetrics, and many have retired.

(18) Pornography: “The land of the free”? It’s almost impossible to keep children from seeing pornography. The Supreme Court in 2011 nullified all Federal Communications Commission restrictions on obscene speech or visual content in radio and television broadcasts. As a result, television programs at all hours of the day contain explicit portrayals of sexual acts. The court applied more broadly the “Miller test” from the 1973 decision in Miller v. California, by which a work could not be found obscene unless “the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, and scientific value.” In the 2011 decision, the court essentially found that any pornographic work had some measure of “serious artistic value,” at least according to some observers, and thus any censorship of pornographic material was an unconstitutional restriction on the First Amendment. In addition, all city and county laws restricting pornography were struck down by this decision. As a result, pornographic magazines are openly displayed in gas stations, grocery stores and on newsstands (as they have been in some European countries for several years).

(19) Guns: “The land of the free”? It is illegal for private citizens to own guns for selfdefense in eight states, and the number is growing with increasing Democratic control of state legislatures and governorships. This was the result of a 6-3 Supreme Court decision in which the court reversed its 5-4 decision that had upheld private gun ownership in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008).  In the new decision, a response to test cases from Oregon, Massachusetts, and Vermont, the court adopted the view of the Second Amendment that had been defended in Heller by the four liberal justices, Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer. In this new decision, the court specified that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” was limited to that purpose specified in the Second Amendment, namely, to those people who were part of a “well regulated militia” in the various states. To those who argued that this view was not the “original intent” of the framers, they pointed to a long history of dispute over the interpretation of the expression and then said that, in any case, the Constitution was an “evolving” document that must change with the times, and so what may have been applicable in 1790 need no longer be decisive. Therefore they allowed cities and states to limit gun ownership to active-duty military personnel and police officers. Citizens in those areas who are discovered owning guns have been subjected to heavy fines and imprisonment. Inner-city violent crime has increased dramatically....

...Thousands of home schooling parents, seeing no alternative in the United States, have begun to emigrate to other countries, particularly Australia and New Zealand, where home schooling is still quite prevalent....

...After many of these decisions, especially those that restricted religious speech in public places, President Obama publicly expressed strong personal disapproval of the decision and said that the Supreme Court had gone far beyond what he ever expected. But he has also stated repeatedly that he had sworn to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States,” and, now that the Supreme Court had ruled, he had no choice but to uphold the law, for these decisions were the law of the land. [1]

Kermit is not a Kommie

THR: You can refuse to answer this question if you like, but it has to be asked: Are the Muppets communists?

Bobin: [Laughs] It's a very strange turn of events to hear a question like that. Cable news is 24 hours long so you have to fill it up with something. No, the Muppets are not communist. And the character of Tex Richman is not an allegory for capitalism in any way. The character is called Tex Richman. It's a joke. Clearly he is a classic, old school bad guy. He's bad not because he works for an oil company but because he's evil. No, it's not a communist movie in any way.[1]

James Dobson: Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America

James Dobson wrote a letter in October 2008 as if he was writing from October 2012.  In Dobson's apocalypse, four Supreme Court Justices retire and Obama has successfully confirmed four new Justices to the Court.  The Supreme Court then proceeds to go on a tyrannical tirade:

...(11) High schools: “The land of the free”? High schools are no longer free to allow “See You at the Pole” meetings where students pray together, or any student Bible studies even before or after school. The Supreme Court ruled this is considered speech that is both “proselytizing” and involves “worship,” special categories of speech which, as liberal Justice John Paul Stevens argued in his dissent in Good News Club v. Milford Central School (2001), should not be allowed in public schools, since it is in a different category from other kinds of speech. (Justice Souter filed a similar dissent, which Justice Ginsburg joined). The new 6-3 liberal majority on the Supreme Court followed his reasoning and outlawed any use of school property for any kind of religious meeting, even outside of normal school hours. In addition, Christian students cannot raise religious objections to curriculum material that promotes homosexual behavior.

(12) Church use of school property: “The land of the free”? Tens of thousands of young churches suddenly had no place to meet when the Supreme Court ruled that public schools in all 50 states had to stop allowing churches to rent their facilities — even on Sundays, when school was not in session. The court said this was an unconstitutional use of government property for a religious purpose. Most of these churches have been unable to find any suitable place to meet. Public libraries and public parks are similarly excluded from allowing churches to use their facilities. Once again, the reasoning of liberal Justices Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg in 2001 in Good News Club (see above) was able to garner 6-3 support with the new court.

(13) Campus ministries: “The land of the free”? Campus organizations such as Campus Crusade for Christ, InterVarsity, Navigators, Baptist Campus Ministry, and Reformed University Fellowship have shrunk to skeleton organizations, and in many states they have ceased to exist. After the Supreme Court ruled that “proselytizing” speech and “worship” speech did not have the same First Amendment protection as other speech, and after it declared same-sex “marriage” to be the law of the United States, a subsequent Supreme Court decision predictably ruled that universities had to prohibit campus organizations that promote “hate speech” and have discriminatory policies. Therefore these Christian ministries have been prohibited from use of campus buildings, campus bulletin boards, advertising in campus newspapers, and use of dormitory rooms or common rooms for Bible studies. Their staff members are no longer allowed on university property. The only ministries allowed to function on campuses are “nondiscriminatory” ministries that agree to allow practicing homosexuals and members of other religions on their governing boards. With the new Supreme Court appointed by President Obama, the long years of liberal opposition to these evangelical ministries finally bore fruit, and only liberal ministries are left on campuses.

(14) Pledge of Allegiance: “The land of the free”? Public school teachers are no longer free to lead students in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States. The 9th Circuit U. S. Court of Appeals heard a new challenge to the phrase “under God” in the Pledge, and, as it had in 2002 in Newdow v. United States Congress, Elk Grove Unified School District, et al., it held the wording to be unconstitutional. Now the Supreme Court has upheld this decision.[1]

Marriage Project

College (highly) educated people had an 11% divorce rate in the late 90's.

However less people are getting married than ever before.  The people who get married are more likely to stay married. [1]

James Dobson: Visions from 2012

In October of 2008, James Dobson and Focus on the Family put out a list of predictions that could possibly come to pass if Obama was elected.  In a little theater, Dobson writes this personal footnoted letter from the future, October 2012.  Most of these predictions are the result of Obama stocking the Supreme Court with four justices after Ginsburg, Stevens, Kennedy, and Scalia retired.  By October of 2009 with less than ten months in office Obama will shift the balance of the court.  This apocalyptic vision seems far fetched, but to be fair Dobson says the following: 

...This letter is not “predicting” that all of the imaginative future “events” named in this letter will happen. But it is saying that each one of these changes could happen and also that each change would be the natural outcome of (a) published legal opinions by liberal judges, (b) trends seen in states with liberal-dominated courts such as California and Massachusetts, (c) recent promises, practices and legislative initiatives of the current liberal leadership of the Democratic Party and (d) Senator Obama’s actions, voting record and public promises to the far-Left groups that won the nomination for him...

Well, below are the first series of excerpts of his "not 'predicting'": 

...October 22, 2012 

Dear friends, 

 I can hardly sing “The Star Spangled Banner” any more. When I hear the words,    

O say, does that star spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?  

 I get tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. Now in October of 2012, after seeing what has happened in the last four years, I don’t think I can still answer, “Yes,” to that question. We are not “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Many of our freedoms have been taken away by a liberal Supreme Court and a Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate, and hardly any brave citizen dares to resist the new government policies any more.  The 2008 election was closer than anybody expected, but Barack Obama still won. Many Christians voted for Obama – younger evangelicals actually provided him with the needed margin to defeat John McCain – but they didn’t think he would really follow through on the farLeft policies that had marked his career. They were wrong....   

...The Boy Scouts no longer exist as an organization. They chose to disband rather than be forced to obey the Supreme Court decision that they would have to hire homosexual scoutmasters and allow them to sleep in tents with young boys...

...Many Christian teachers objected to teaching first-graders that homosexual behavior was morally neutral and equal to heterosexuality. They said it violated their consciences to have to teach something the Bible viewed as morally wrong. But state after state ruled that their refusal to teach positively about homosexuality was the equivalent of hate speech, and they had to teach it or be fired. Tens of thousands of Christian teachers either quit or were fired, and there are hardly any evangelical teachers in public schools any more...   

...(5) Public broadcasting: “The land of the free”? The Bible can no longer be freely preached over radio or television stations when the subject matter includes such “offensive” doctrines as criticizing homosexual behavior. The Supreme Court agreed that these could be kept off the air as prohibited “hate speech” that is likely to incite violence and discrimination. These policies followed broadcasting and print restrictions that were in place prior to 2008 in Canada and Sweden.

(6) Doctors and lawyers: “The land of the free”? Physicians who refuse to provide artificial insemination for lesbian couples now face significant fines or loss of their license to practice medicine, following the reasoning of a decision of the California Supreme Court in North Coast Women's Care Medical Group v. Superior Court of San Diego County (Benitez), which was announced August 18, 2008.  As a result, many Christian physicians have retired or left the practices of family medicine and obstetrics & gynecology. Lawyers who refuse to handle adoption cases for same-sex couples similarly now lose their licenses to practice law.

(7) Counselors and social workers: “The land of the free”? All other professionals who are licensed by individual states are also prohibited from discriminating against homosexuals. Social workers and counselors, even counselors in church staff positions, who refuse to provide “professional, appropriately nurturing marriage counseling” for homosexual couples lose their counseling licenses.  Thousands of Christians have left these professions as a result. 

(8) Homosexual weddings: “The land of the free”? Church buildings are now considered a “public accommodation” by the Supreme Court, and churches have no freedom to refuse to allow their buildings to be used for wedding ceremonies for homosexual couples. If they refuse, they lose their tax-exempt status, and they are increasingly becoming subject to fines and antidiscrimination lawsuits.

(9) Homosexual church staff members: “The land of the free”? While churches are still free to turn down homosexual applicants for the job of senior pastor, churches and parachurch organizations are no longer free to reject homosexual applicants for staff positions such as parttime youth pastor or director of counseling. Those that have rejected homosexual applicants have had their tax-exempt status revoked, and now the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has begun to impose heavy fines for each instance of such “discrimination,” which, they say, is “contrary to the U.S. Constitution as defined by the Supreme Court.” These fines follow the pattern of a precedent-setting case in February 2008, in which the Diocese of Hereford in the Church of England was fined $94,000 (47,000 UK pounds) for turning down a homosexual applicant for a youth ministry position.

(10) Homosexuals in the military: One change regarding the status of homosexuals did not wait for any Supreme Court decision. In the first week after his inauguration, President Obama invited homosexual rights leaders from around the United States to join him at the White House as he signed an executive order directing all branches of the military to abandon their “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and to start actively recruiting homosexuals. As a result, homosexuals are now given special bonuses for enlisting in military service (to attempt to compensate for past discrimination), and all new recruits, and all active-duty and reserve personnel, are compelled to take many hours of “sensitivity training” to ensure they demonstrate positive attitudes toward those with different sexual orientations and practices. Any one who seems hesitant or who objects is routinely passed over for promotion. In addition, any chaplain who holds to an interpretation of Scripture that homosexual conduct is morally wrong and therefore does not espouse “mainstream values,” is dismissed from the military.  This is not “the land of the free” for them.[1]

Liberty Counsel's statement

Macy’s Fires Employee for Protecting Women’s Dressing Rooms from Cross-dresser

www.LC.org

San Antonio, TX – A young woman was fired from the Macy's San Antonio Rivercenter department store for refusing to violate her religious beliefs by permitting a young man dressed as a woman from entering the women’s dressing room. Natalie Johnson claims she saw the young man walk out of the women’s fitting room and politely told him that he could not go back in because it was for women only. The cross-dressing young man claimed that he is a “female.” Johnson said that he was wearing make-up and girl’s clothing, but clearly he was a male. The cross-dresser was accompanied by five other individuals. The group argued with expletives that Macy’s is LGBT-friendly, to which Johnson replied that Macy’s is also non-discriminatory toward religion, and that it would go against her religious beliefs to lie that he was a woman or compromise with homosexuality. The group then demanded to speak with a manager.

When Johnson was confronted by her employer, she explained that she could not allow a male to change in a female’s fitting room. Johnson’s boss referred her to Macy’s LGBT policy which allows “transgender” people to change in any dressing room they want. However, Johnson pointed out that the same policy also protects against religious discrimination and, in this case, it protects her right to her beliefs that were being violated. The manager demanded that she comply with the LGBT policies or lose her job. Johnson refused to go against her sincerely held religious beliefs and was terminated from her job.

Mathew Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel, commented: “Macy’s policy which allows men to use the women’s dressing room is fraught with problems. This policy will cause significant problems and will alienate the majority of Macy’s customers. Macy’s has essentially opened women’s dressing rooms to every man. The LGBT agenda has become the theater of the absurd.”

Liberty Counsel encourages readers to contact Macy’s and politely let them know that this is completely unacceptable. You can reach Terry Lundgren, the CEO of Macy’s at macys_execs@macys.com or call their corporate offices at 513-398-5221 or fax them at 513-573-2049.[1]

Christian Dressing Room Beliefs

Macy's allows transgendered people to use dressing rooms of their self-identified gender. An employee was fired for forbidding a transgender woman from using the women's dressing room. Her Christian beliefs tell her that transgendered people cannot and do not exist. She and the Liberty Counsel are suing for religious discrimination.

Johnson filed a complaint with the Federal Employment Commission, claiming her religious beliefs prevent her from recognizing transgender people.[1]

“There are no transgenders in the world. A guy can dress up as a woman all he wants. That’s still not going to make you a woman,” Johnson said. “If you’re a man going into the women’s fitting room, I will kindly escort you to the men’s fitting room.”[2]

A conservative Christian organization, Liberty Counsel defines marriage as between a (biological) man and woman. They have characterized the rise of GLBT rights as “a radical agenda… seriously out of touch with mainstream American values.”

“Macy’s has essentially opened women’s dressing rooms to every man,” said Liberty Counsel founder Mathew Staver. He is pushing for the department store to add a third dressing room for transgender individuals or change their policy.

Liberty Counsel’s position on transgender rights diverges from most Americans’ and even most Christians’ opinions.

More than 8-in-10 evangelical Protestants and more than 9-in-10 Catholics and mainline Protestants agree that transgender people should have the same rights and protections as everyone else, according to a recent Public Religion Research survey.

Additionally, about 75 percent of Americans favored Congress’ expansion of hate crime legislation to protect transgender people.[3]

Why do we need another place of worship if there is already one there?

One of the arguments against the Sufi mosque near Ground Zero was that there was already a Salafi mosque in the basement of one of the nearby buildings.  This is an old argument. I found this quote in one of my Baptist history books.

"I [Fristoe]  knew the General Court to refuse a license for a Baptist meeting-house in the county of Richmond, because there was a Presbyterian meeting-house already in the county, although the Act of Toleration considered them distinct societies." ~ 1772

William Fristoe "History of the Ketocton Baptist Association" 1766-1808 pg 73[1]