“Top DOJ officials,” we are told in a Fox News report, “say they are looking into whether the agitators who disrupted services at St. Paul's Cities Church on Sunday violated the FACE Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act.”
Cities Church in Saint Paul,
Minnesota is Baptist, a strong proponent of marriage (“We believe that marriage
joins one man and one woman in a single, exclusive, lifelong union and that God
designed and directs sexual intimacy exclusively for one man and one woman
married to each other), also regards sexual immorality as sinful and abhorrent
(“Any form of sexual immorality, such as adultery, fornication, homosexuality,
bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, pornography, or any attempt to change or
disagree with one’s biological sex is sinful and offensive to God.”) The church
is also largely white. Among cultural anarchists in the amusingly irrelevant 21st
century, such quaint religious precepts are considered verboten.
“The FACE Act”, we are assured, “makes it a federal crime,
with potentially steep fines and jail time, to use or threaten to use force to
‘injure, intimidate, or interfere’ with a person seeking reproductive health
services, or with a person lawfully
trying to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of
religious worship (emphasis mine). It also prohibits intentional property
damage to a facility providing reproductive health services or a place of
religious worship. The Ku Klux Klan Act makes it a federal crime for
individuals to deny citizens their civil rights.”
Across the nation just now, leftist Attorneys General --
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Connecticut Attorney General
William Tong – are at pains to deny that their states look favorably on what
have been called “sanctuary cities,” this despite previous declarations in
support of sanctuary cities. A sanctuary city may best be described as that
portion of a state to which border busting, unvetted illegal aliens may flee to
escape interrogation or deportation by federal authorities. Following
deportation, a financial burden softened by a promise of transportation payment
by the Trump administration, the unprocessed border jumpers are encouraged to
reapply for reentry to the United States.
The sanctuary state provides sanctuary from congressionally
authorized federal laws by instructing undocumented immigrants in sanctuary
jurisdictions not to cooperate with federal authorities in the apprehension
or questioning of such lawbreakers and by restricting actionable evidence
sharing among federal and state enforcement officers.
The word “sanctuary’, it has not often been noted, is
derived from religious presuppositions. The word first appeared in the early 14th
century and indicated, according to etymologists, a "consecrated place, building set apart for
holy worship; holy or sacred object, from Anglo-French sentuarie, Old French
saintuaire ‘sacred relic, holy thing; reliquary, sanctuary,’ from Late Latin
sanctuarium ‘a sacred place, shrine’ (especially the Hebrew Holy of Holies in
the temple in Jerusalem; see sanctum); also ‘a private room’ in Medieval Latin;
also ‘a church, cemetery; right of asylum,’ from Latin sanctus ‘holy’ (see
saint (n.)” Among most Christian sects, the sanctuary of a church is still
considered inviolable.
Non-religious sanctuary jurisdictions are not “consecrated
places.” They contain no “holy or sacred objects” or persons. Chief executives
of various states, legislators, even judges, are generally not regarded as sacred,
despite the protestation of some secular authorities stuffed with quasi-religious
righteousness. Political institutions are not churches, but some do provide a
secularized “right of asylum” from federal law enforcement officers.
Having previously supported the definancing of its own
police authorities, officials in Minnesota now strongly favor the disbanding of
ICE. Pending its abolition, police officials in anti-ICE states have been told
not to cooperate with federal policing authorities.
The Face Act – not to mention the Constitution’s First
Amendment – was recently trampled in the dust by a crowd of secular zealots
clamoring for the secular equivalent of sanctuary in the case of lawbreakers
who had entered the country illegally during former President Joe Biden’s
administration. ICE, the nation’s U.S. Customs and Enforcement Agency, has been chasing down and apprehending
what they call “the worst of the worst” of unvetted migrants who entered the
country after former President Joe Biden opened the nation’s illegal entry
sluice gates.
The crew protesting the religious service in St. Paul's
Cities Church invaded the sanctuary of the church to declaim against ICE and so
violated a legitimate religious sanctuary. A loud bearded guy – the Abby
Hoffman of the invaders – seemed to be emotionally put off by what he regarded
as the congregation’s heterodox Christianity. Unfortunately, Mr. Beard and
others caught the eye of Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is forecasting
prosecutions.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has argued the
anti-ICE church disrupters did not violate the FACE Act, and Minneapolis Mayor
Jacob Frey wants all ICE agents in his state sent home. Good luck with that.
Here in Connecticut, state Attorney General William Tong is
protesting the incivility of some ill-mannered internet commentators. Tong
favors a bill known as state House Bill 6857 – An Act Concerning the Attorney General’s
Recommendations Regarding Social Media and Minors that would, according to a
Hartford Courant account, “place restrictions on social media for those under
18.” Tong’s plea for social civility was followed by a few standard anti-Trump
thunderclaps. Trump, Tong said “…let Elon Musk and his army of hackers and
wannabe storm troopers tear up the federal government.”
Republican leader in the state Senate Vince Candelora
responded, with a polite bow in Tong’s direction, “I share the attorney
general’s concern about dehumanizing language in politics and in social media.
But a 20 minute speech attacking President Trump and lecturing Republicans
isn’t a serious effort to bring people together… until the attorney general and
Democrats acknowledge their own role in poisoning our political discourse --
stoking the flames since day one of Donald Trump’s first presidency – these
calls for unity will ring hollow.” Politely, Candelora added, “After a year of
speeches about ‘protecting democracy,’ I trust the attorney general understands
that any solution must not infringe on citizen’s First Amendment rights.”
Might it not be helpful should Tong join Bondi’s pending
suit against the sanctuary disrupters at St. Paul's Cities Church in fraud
scarred Minnesota? It would add considerable weight to Tong’s suggestion that
acts of congress and constitutional protections should be religiously (pun
intended) enforced.
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