Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson Can a state government compel speech? That is a question that surfaced in the Supreme Court case concerning a Christian baker. It came up again last week when the same court heard oral arguments about a California law that compels pro-life pregnancy centers to promote abortion. Pro-life people with religious objections to abortion run these centers. But this case is much more than a religious liberty case. It is fundamentally a First Amendment free speech case. The law…

Penna Dexter The US Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in a case that will determine whether pro-life pregnancy centers will be forced to speak a message that promotes the very evil they exist to combat.  NIFLA v. Becerra challenges the Reproductive FACT Act. This 2015 California law orders licensed crisis pregnancy centers to instruct women on how to obtain free or low-cost abortions through the state’s Medi-Cal program. The FACT Act levies draconian fines on centers that don’t comply….

Kerby Anderson In his new book, The Hidden Enemy, Michael Youssef warns us that we face both external threats and internal threats. We face an external threat from radical, political Islam. That does not mean that all Muslims are an enemy. He has great concern and passion for Muslims, having been born in Egypt. His broadcasts go into Muslim countries to proclaim the gospel. But he is well aware that radical Muslims want to sweep away Western civilization and impose…

Kerby Anderson Shelby Steele is a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and an African-American author and commentator. Recently he was reflecting on the stark difference between the civil rights movement and the current liberal marches and protests. “Unlike the civil-rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, when protesters wore their Sunday best and carried themselves with heroic dignity, today’s liberal marches are marked by incoherence and downright lunacy—hats designed to evoke sexual organs, poems that scream in anger…

Kerby Anderson In my commentaries I often refer to the millennial generation. But what does the term “millennial” really mean? According to John Quiggin, “millennial means nothing.” That is the title of his op-ed in the New York Times. He is on to something. Some social commentators make broad statements about a particular cohort of people: baby boomers, baby busters, or millennials. As we all know, for any general rule there are bound to be exceptions. That is why he…

Kerby Anderson The opioid crisis is getting worse, but there is also good evidence that solving this crisis will require careful strategies because the problem is more complex than many might imagine. First, let’s look at the crisis. Americans are showing up in emergency rooms from opioid overdoses in record numbers. According to the CDC, suspected opioid overdoses increased by 30 percent from July 2016 to September 2017. But as soon as you look at the statistics in various states,…

Kerby Anderson This weekend students will hold demonstrations demanding gun control legislation. As I have said in previous commentaries, these young people have every right to express their views. And since they are making their arguments in the public arena, we have every right to discuss, debate, and correct what they say. Jonah Goldberg, writing in USA Today, focuses on a broader concern. We seem to be resurrecting “an old American tradition of celebrating young people as inherently wiser and…

Penna Dexter Two Washington Post columnists wrote opposing columns last week on Down syndrome babies’ right to life. The title of Mark Theissen’s piece is, “When will we stop killing humans with Down syndrome?” Ruth Marcus called hers, “I would’ve aborted a fetus with Down syndrome.” Ruth Marcus says she had two babies. If amniocentesis had revealed Down syndrome she would have aborted, “grieved the loss, and moved on.” She condemns laws passed in North Dakota, Ohio, Indiana, and Louisiana…

Kerby Anderson   Harvard University placed a Christian group (Harvard College Faith and Action) on “administrative probation” because they “pressured a female member . . . to resign in September following her decision to date a woman.” Andrew Walker, writing in The Weekly Standard, makes the issue very clear. He says, “Harvard is disciplining a Christian student group for the group’s expectation that its student leadership follow basic Christian ethical teaching on sexuality in accordance with Christianity’s 2,000-year-old doctrine on…

Kerby Anderson Teenagers are sending sexually explicit images and videos to each other at an alarming rate. That is the conclusion of a study posted recently in the journal Pediatrics. The journal article, “Prevalence of Multiple Forms of Sexting Behavior Among Youth,” is a meta-analysis of 39 worldwide studies that included 110,380 participants. They found that sexting is more common than most parents would even imagine. The studies focused on teens between the ages of 12 and 17. The researchers…

Kerby Anderson You may start seeing the phrase “opinion laundering” more often in news and commentaries. Journalists have used the phrase to identify something that has been taking place in the public relations industry. Politicians and journalists try to get legitimate third parties to validate their policy positions. That way they don’t have to look like they are taking a position. Instead, they use someone else to express their opinion. Kyle Smith documents the latest way this is being used…