Well there's more than just a dusty Central Valley and trendy "dryscaping" happening in the West. Liberty, like our lawns, is dying slowly. What do I mean?
Our pro-life pregnancy centers are under attack.
Kindly remember this on your Rosary beads: in June the state's House passed legislation to force pro-life centers to refer clients for abortion (read more about it here). Right now our Senate is at recess but when they reconvene in August, they will vote on what pro-lifers have coined the "Bully Bill" or Action Bill 775. If it passes, and becomes law, and if centers refuse to comply, that is if they refuse to refer women for abortions (which they will), good-bye medical license.
I can't stress enough that this could spell the closing of all pro-life medical crisis pregnancy centers in the state, maybe even the country. For on the horizon, I'm sure, lies a Supreme Court case on the issue - and we all know how well those have gone for Christians lately.
Starting this fall, the state has prohibited teachers from giving any instruction that "reflects adversely" on the homosexual community (and school districts cannot sponsor any activity or group that promotes "discrimination," murkily defined, against homosexuals).
A law that basically kills speech and debate class is a bad law. California's new FAIR education act, or Senate Bill 48, goes beyond anti-bullying: it requires school materials to showcase homosexuality as always a good all of the time. It's unclear what will happen if you're a religious organization.
I'm all for inclusive academics but a law dictating that students MUST be taught to think about homosexuality only positively, like rainbow flag touting drones, is unprecedented. What this new social science curriculum means for Catholic and private schools is yet unknown. What is known is that our local media isn't reporting on this monumental change to the textbooks and school starts soon. We shall see what happens.
Brendan Eich happened.
When Brendan Eich was forced to "step down" from Mozilla for a private donation to the Proposition 8 campaign, a chasm of despair ripped open in the Silicon Valley political universe. If a founder of Mozilla can lose his livelihood for privately opposing gay 'marriage' what chance do the rest of us have?
The message from the technology elites to their cogs was clear: no one is safe. Do something distasteful to us and risk your career. Mozilla and companies like them are trying to excise freewill in an area where they know people claw desperately for the scraps from their billion dollar tables.
But there is hope!
I don't want to leave you with an image of lady liberty submerged in the sand of our sunny beaches - or our Death Valley for that matter. We may be California but hey, we're still the Catholic Church. Surviving adversity and persecution is kind of what we do.
With all the dire out here, many of us did a long, overdue happy dance with the announcement that Fr. Robert Barron is happening!
Let me just repeat that: FR. ROBERT BARRON is coming to LOS ANGELES as one of her auxillary bishops!!!
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| We're getting Fr. Robert. We're getting Fr. Robert. Woot, |
The Walk for Life West Coast numbers continue to swell. Also a big deal.
We still have our beautiful, historic Missions (a.k.a. the indigenous roots of our flip flop problem). Why our Mission Trail still isn't widely known as the Camino of America, I just don't know.
Catholic Answers is in San Diego. 'Nuff said.
And never, ever forget this: Californians voted not once but twice to affirm the traditional definition marriage. Twice. That fact alone should tell you two things about California: 1.) the people here do care and 2.) you'll never hear that we care, not in the mass media anyway, which has also been completely silent about our receding liberty.
It's tough out here. So please pray for us. For rain. For the Church in California.
Our souls and our soil will thank you.
