It's legal for ICE agents to make arrests in houses of worship, but none of them do.
It's illegal for anti-ICE agitators to disrupt church services, but some do.
Those who would scream bloody murder if ICE agents entered a church, but are silent when protesters entered Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota are not only hypocrites, they are aiding and abetting the church-busters.
The three dozen protesters who invaded Cities Church on January 18 violated a 1994 federal law, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE).
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is only partly right when he says the FACE Act "is designed to protect the rights of people seeking reproductive rights."
What he left out is that the law also protects the right of people to worship.
Yet he confesses that it's "beyond me" that some are "stretching" the FACE Act "to apply to people who protested in a church."
It's beyond comprehension that the chief law enforcement officer in Minnesota has not been fired for gross incompetence.
The FACE Act "prohibits the use or threat of force and physical obstruction that injures, intimidates, or interferes with a person seeking to obtain or provide reproductive health services or to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship." (My italics.)
This explains why Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), cited the FACE Act as her reason for sending prosecutors from the DOJ to Minnesota.
Those allegedly aiding and abetting the church-busters include Don Lemon, the CNN commentator who was separated by the network.
He has now anointed himself a "journalist," and in that capacity he managed to show up at the Cities Church to observe the invasion.
Lemon justified the protest in the church on First Amendment grounds, even though it is not protected speech.
The "free exercise of religion" is protected by the First Amendment, not church invasions.
But he wouldn’t know any better.
Lemon inserted a racial element into this discussion when he attacked those who objected to what happened.
"I think they’re entitled, and that entitlement comes from white supremacy."
Lemon has previously argued that white men "are the biggest terror threat in this country."
To be fair, he does not believe whitey is always bad: the man he claims to be married to is a white dude, and they live in a Long Island town almost 100% white.
It's more serious when a sitting member of Congress justifies church-busting.
Rep. Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz., believes that "Churches have always been an open door," and when asked point blank, "Do you believe it was a step too far for protesters to go into a church," she replied, "I don’t. I don’t."
Her colleagues need to censure her before she gets really Nazi-like.
The protest organizer in St. Paul is a far-left black lawyer, Nekima Levy Armstrong.
She founded the Racial Justice Network, one of three Black organizations supporting the church invasion; the other two are Black Lives Matter (BLM) groups.
Her activist resume includes support for cop killers.
It makes sense that BLM — which is a shell of an organization which has allegedly ripped off Blacks and its donors by the millions — would be involved.
Its presence make sense because its goal transcends anything to do with the immediate cause of the unrest in Minnesota. To be exact, by justifying church invasions, it advances its goal of disabling American society.
BLM has condemned "the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure," explicitly stating that for its agenda to be fulfilled, it is "important to disrupt the Western nuclear family."
To that end, it supports an attack on every tenet of our Judeo-Christian heritage. That is its primary objective.
Ergo, by justifying the invasion of Cities Church, it is serving its mission.
What happened in St. Paul will continue unless these cultural Marxists are stopped. At stake is the very foundation of American society.
Dr. Bill Donohue is president and CEO of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. A former Heritage Foundation Bradley resident scholar, he's authored 11 books on civil liberties, social issues, and religion. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from New York University. His new book, "Cultural Meltdown: The Secular Roots of Our Moral Crisis," was released in June, 2024. Read more Bill Donohue Insider articles — Click Here Now.
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