Rick Green: 0:12

Welcome to WallBuilders. I'm Rick Green America's constitution coach. I'm here with David Barton and Tim Barton. Tim's a national speaker and pastor, and President of WallBuilders. David is, of course, America's premier historian and our founder here at WallBuilders. And all three of us just want to thank you for listening, for being a part of the WallBuilders family. And for sharing the program, we hope you're a force multiplier that you don't just listen, but that you share it with your friends and family, you send it out there to folks and get them educated. We have a civics problem in America, and it's civic ignorance, it's Biblical ignorance. But that problem is curable by simply getting civic literacy and Biblical literacy. So that's what we do here at WallBuilders. And we love to bring good news about people out there that are doing what we talked about on the program. In other words, they're engaging in the process. And then we get good news from, you know, even from Congress, sometimes, believe it or not, or the Supreme Court, good news from state legislators across the country. And good news from folks just like you that are listening right now. So send in your good news stories to us as well. But let's dive right into that good news. David Barton's got our first piece, today.

David Barton: 1:10

Okay, guys, the news, I've got kind of deals with a lot of flurry of things that have happened at the Supreme Court in the last week. It's a lot of decisions that came down. And as always, they are really pretty, I guess, momentous decisions. I guess they're controversial depending on which side you're on. But generally, our kind of issues come down usually the last week of June. The court kind of holds the moral issues. And a lot of the potentially controversial issues like it did last year with the Dobbs decision. They hold it until right at the last and then kind of release it. So the Supreme Court term runs from October, it starts in October and it finishes up the last week of June. And they'll generally take 70-80 cases. And hard ones are the ones they think may kind of rock the culture they send to the end of June. And that's what they did. So there was a case called 303 Creative. It came out of Colorado, and a number of cases actually, this kind of things have come out of Colorado. About 3-4 years ago, there was another case out of Colorado that dealt with conscience, and that was Jack Phillips, a guy who who is a baker. And he was asked... he's a Christian guy, asked to do a wedding cake for a gay wedding. He said no. And so that's been in court now for five or six or seven years.

Tim Barton: 2:20

And actually Dad, I think there's been a couple of cases with Jack Phillips, the Supreme Court several years ago, looked at Colorado, and like their email chain was so ridiculous inside the state, where they were specifically targeting saying, hey, because he's a Christian, we can't let this happen. And so the Supreme Court decision initially was so narrow, it said, if somebody sends an email like that, it's clear what their bias is and therefore this was wrong. But they didn't deal with the much larger issue. And so just a year or two after that Jack Phillips was back under attack from the state because ultimately, he said, Look, I'm going to bake cakes for anybody. But when people ask me to do a special event, a special occasion, put additional time and effort into something to make it a big deal, he says, like right, that's part of who I am. And I don't want to do it for things that I would have a moral disagreement, a fundamental religious disagreement with. And so really a lot of the homosexual community transgender community has really targeted him trying to force him to violate his conscience, to do things explicitly outwardly to support some of their attempts at different kinds of unions, whatever the case might be, but he's actually had more than one lawsuit... and he's come back in the last couple of years. So Dad, I think you're referring to the first one, and there have been more attacks that they've continued to bring up. And I think there's still lawsuits against him, even right now. So this scenario with Jack Phillips, it's not just something of the past. This is something Colorado has now a track record with people that have a Christian belief system that say they don't want to take all of their time, effort, and energy to do something promoting something they think violates basic Biblical standards. Colorado has been very aggressive in trying to silence them and punish them for having a Christian belief or a Biblical worldview on some of those scenarios.

David Barton: 4:12

Yeah, picking up with that... this there have now been four state cases against Jack Phillips. So Jack Phillips has been in the state courts four times, the Supreme Court said the first time, hey, you guys are showing hostility of religion, you can't do that. They've gone after him three more times. And this time, he's actually appealed to the Supreme Court. So the Supreme Court hadn't picked it up. But as you pointed, Tim, they have been after him just every way they can and Colorado has not been friendly. And so the one that that came out of Colorado this time was with a web designer and the web designer designs websites for weddings, events, etc. And when asked to specifically design a creative website for a gay wedding, she said "No, I'm not going to do that." And Colorado went after her the same way they have really, I'm going to use [the] word persecuted, harassed, harangued Jack Phillips. They went after her. And this went to the Supreme Court. And in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court said no, you cannot do this, you cannot force Christians to engage in speech that violates their beliefs and their conscience, you cannot do this. Now, it's interesting. This has been an issue that's going... been going on with trying to force Christians to affirm LGBTQIA+ kind of behavior and events for probably six or seven or eight years. I've got presentations I've been doing for a number of years, on the rights of conscience, where it goes through, literally Genesis 19. And it goes through also Judges 19, showing how the LGBTQ community even way back at the time of Abraham and Lot was trying to force people to participate in their activities and kind of the same thing they were doing Jack Phillips. And so the Supreme Court really gave a resounding victory. And part of that. And the reason I mentioned this, from six or seven years ago, is six or seven years ago, there was a case against Aaron and Melissa Klein. And they had a... they're out of Oregon, and they were doing the same kind of baking business. And they had LGBTQIA+ come after them. And they refused to do special things. And so their case has not been decided by the Supreme Court. And they were not winning that case. And it's been sitting out there for years and years and years. But interestingly, the Supreme Court appeared to be fully aware of that for right after they delivered the Creative decision that... the Creative 303 decision, they issued a remand back to the lower courts in Oregon and said, hey, you just saw what we did with this in Colorado. Now go back and look at the Aaron and Melissa Klein case and get it right. So the court has apparently... I've been told that for some attorneys, sometimes they'll just let those cases sit there for years, because they want to get the right case so they can make a decision and go back and make everything right. So in the case of the folks out of New York and the case... all these other places that we've talked about, hopefully this is going to be a big deal for them, because some of them had cases sitting there for a number of years. And then there's this big decision now. And by the way, this is another religious liberty win at the Supreme Court in the last four years, there's been almost a dozen cases where we've won religious liberty issues. And this is really a huge turnaround on the Court. So what happened in the Court with the Colorado web designer has now... I'm sure it's going to have an effect with the Jack Phillips case. That case is being appealed to the US Supreme Court. And I'm sure they'll just turn around and say, hey, did you not see the decision we just rendered? 6-3 decision? Colorado, get it right. So this as a real opportunity for being something good all the way across the nation for the LGBTQIA+ movement that is trying to force Christians into doing non-Christian behavior.

Rick Green: 7:36

All right, great news to start with there, David. I love Supreme Court victories. You know, this has been a nice year or so here of last summer, the summer of love, if you love the Constitution, and maybe we're getting another summer of love here with some some great, you know, additional religious liberty. Last year it was Kennedy, you know, obviously this is good stuff, for sure. But Tim, where are you taking this man? We're staying in the courts are we got other stuff

Tim Barton: 7:57

Well, for us in the Court, the top of my stack is going? one that came down. And this is this is probably the most controversial one in my estimation from the Supreme Court. This is the one where the Supreme Court struck down the...my article headline says"Supreme Court Strikes Down Race Based Admissions at Colleges." Ultimately, we know it as affirmative action. But this is something that is very significant when the Supreme Court says that you will no longer be able to give admissions based on the color of skin. But now maybe based on the academic standing or the content of character as the case might be. This is something that, of course, if everybody was new to our program, I'm sure everybody's heard about this. But this is one really worth highlighting. Because as we look at things in American history, so often, we can track back to where somebody wanted to make a change. And there are so many moments where there are good-hearted, good-intentioned individuals, good-intentioned pieces of legislation, good and well-intentioned ideas that have very negative consequences. And many times very unintended negative consequences. And this is certainly one of those scenarios reminds me a little bit of the Bible analogy where Jesus told the disciples, He was about to go be crucified, and Peter steps up and says, Lord, you know, we're not gonna let it happen. We're gonna keep you alive. And Jesus tells him "Get behind Me, Satan." And part of his explanation was, He said, you're seeing things merely from a human point of view, and not from God's point of view. And so often, I think in our modern culture, there's a lot of people that instead of recognizing what is constitutional that they have this kind of hard appeal and say, "But wait, we we need to do certain things." And if you back up to when things like affirmative action started, especially if you look in and some of the Democrat controlled southern states, right around but certainly before Civil Rights in the 1960s, right after the Civil Rights are going on, there was reason that people argued we need to do something to to help give a better foundation to many of the black individuals and some of these areas, some of these communities There's, there's a lot of reason that some of this made sense. And yet some of those well-intentioned ideas, arguably were never constitutional to begin with. But certainly what they became were things that were quite destructive. And one of the things that probably everybody listening, we probably know that affirmative action...and when you look at Harvard, that was specifically the case when the Supreme Court was dealing with Harvard. And there was Asian students who had incredible academic performance that scored incredibly high on tests nearly perfect at times on things like the SATs or ACT, and they were denied entry, because they were from the kind of wrong gender, ethnicity, whatever the case might be. So if you are a male, Asian, you don't fit the quota we need, so we're going to hold you out. And they would Harvard would literally lower their standards to get a different kind of diversity. So instead of, of allowing people to come in based on academic credentials, they literally were judging by the color of skin or at some cases by the gender or what their identity might be. So the Supreme Court and a six three decision struck down affirmative action, saying that you can't use race as one of your primary factors in determining if a student should be allowed admission into a university or not. Because anytime you are judging an individual based on race, and you are denying people based on race or accepting them based on race, that is a racist thing you are doing. So this was in fact, a very good decision for the Supreme Court. And there's guys like Thomas Sowell, many individuals who for years, I've argued against this. Many strong conservative voices that have argued against this. But guys, this is certainly something I look at and I see this as a major victory. And it really is getting back to I think, the heart of the famous MLK, "I Have a Dream" speech, where he said, I have a dream that one day, speaking of his daughters, that my daughters will be judged, not based on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character. And removing affirmative action is helping remove one of those racial pediments where people are being judged, not based on the content of their character, not based on their academic achievement, or capabilities, but instead based solely on the color of their skin. So in my estimation, this is a great thing that the Supreme Court overturned and a 6-3 decision. So the three liberal justices were on one side, and the other six justices were strongly together on the side saying that you shouldn't be judging people based on race, to give them admission or not, which certainly makes sense in my estimation, so I think this is great news, yet another great decision coming from the Supreme Court.

David Barton: 12:29

Another good side of this is not only that it moves things in that positive, I guess you could say, conservative direction. This is definitely much more constitutional, because the Court's taking the position here that we're not going to look at the group you're in, which is the progressive way of doing things. We're going to look at you individually - who you are, which is really our constitutional way of doing things. So this is great, and that the Court has embraced that constitutional view of individuals that every individual has unalienable rights, not because you're part of a group, or not because you're...you have certain superficial characteristics, or anything else. And this is back to the principles of the Declaration that "all men are created equal. They're all endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." And so this is good from that standpoint. And one of the things I think this really does is it raises the bar for excellence as well. And I found it was just almost humorous, to the point of sad to read part of what Justice Sotomayor said in her dissent. She was one of the three dissenting justices. And she pointed out she said, This is not a good deal. She says, if it had not been for affirmative action, I would not be on the Supreme Court because I wasn't smart enough to make law school. She said the only reason I made law school...she's had lower scores. A lot of people are so much smarter than I was. But she said I got here because affirmative action let me be here. Wait a minute. Do you not just realize what you just said about yourself? That you're not smart.

Tim Barton: 13:53

Which justice is this?

David Barton: 13:55

Sotomayor.

Tim Barton: 13:57

Interesting. Although in fairness, if you read her opinions and decisions, you would know that probably she's not smart enough to be there. I just wonder, I wondered for a second if it was the one that couldn't define a woman because it seems like if you can't define a woman, maybe you're not qualified to go to law school either. That was just a sidenote curiosity.

David Barton: 14:14

Yeah, that's, that's going be interesting. No, this was Sotomayor and, you know, it's interesting our friends have for a long time said that she's, she's a lot more helpful on the Court, she does less damage for the conservative cause, because she's not really as sharp as the other Justices are in thinking about legal arguments. And so just the fact that she acknowledged that was pretty amazing to me that she understands or at least she acknowledges she's not there, because she's qualified to be there. She's there because we had an affirmative action program and put her there. Man, I hope we had the best Justice as possible on the Supreme Court and everywhere else as well instead of going by, again, the idea of having groups which is progressive and not a good deal. So this is a huge, huge decision, of course, as can be expected to set progressives off, they're looking for all sorts of ways to change this decision, change the Court to get things done. Because this undermines really, this undermines four decades of progressivism at least. And so this is really bad for them. And they're not going to get their progressives moving forward and moving into high places like they want them if you actually have to get there because you're smart, and you've earned it. That's not a that's not a good line for progressives. That's, that's good for individuals. It's not good for progressives, such a great decision.

Rick Green: 15:32

Well, David, like you said, I mean, it's not just undermining their progressive position, it's undermining their racist position. I mean, it is absolutely racism. And, and of course, Thomas had, you know, a great concurring opinion where, you know, as a black Supreme Court Justice, who was, you know, he grew up when there really was systemic racism and a lot of the communities in the south and he was dealing with a lot of that stuff and had to fight that stuff. Frankly, had to fight it in the US Congress whenever they tried to keep him from from being you know, actually get it on the on the Supreme Court. But anyway, you know, he talked about that you don't get rid of racism, by continuing to use racism, it's just really, really good, powerful stuff. And I think you guys are absolutely right, this is huge, huge, huge. This really is going back to MLK's dream, as you said, and, and, and actually being able to judge each other based on content of the character. And so really, really good stuff. Only negative, I'll say, I hate to be Debbie downer here. I wish Roberts hadn't left, open the door, like he left some language in there that really left open the door for applicants to still talk about their race and for the decision makers at the university then consider that. And so you know, in fact, you're already announcing they're going to use that and drive try to drive a Mack truck through that through that loophole there. So we'll probably see more litigation on this in the future. But the basic premise was very clear from the sixtin the majority. You shouldn't use race, we should not be being not have racism. And I do want to recommend to folks a book a an old, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, no, no, no, it was here in this galaxy. It was the very first book that Dinesh D'Souza wrote, and it was called Illiberal Education. And it was all about what you just said, David, you know, not only do we have a Supreme Court Justice saying I wouldn't be here. If it wasn't for affirmative action, Dinesh points out, it's bad for everyone of all races to have affirmative action, because then you look at each other. And you go, hmm, are you here because of affirmative action or because you've earned it and it creates more, you know, dissension between each other. And then that highly qualified, you know, this is what Thomas Sowell is, you were saying, Tim, Thomas Sowell talks has talked about this for years. As a black American, he talked about it over and over and over again, how this was bad for black Americans. Because then, when you did earn it, and you were there out of merit, everybody thought you got there because of affirmative action when you really did earn it. So just really bad stuff that we're finally getting rid of. This is that cultural Marxism and progressivism, that created a lot of conflict in America. So kudos to the US Supreme Court. So already two good news court issues. I don't know what you guys have, under the stack if it's all court issues or not, because we've had a lot of Supreme Court decisions in the last couple of weeks, but we're gonna take a break and find out when we return, you're listening to good news Friday on WallBuilders. Folks, we'll be right back.

Tim Barton: 18:10

Hi, Friends, this is Tim Barton of WallBuilders. This is a time when most Americans don't know much about American history or even heroes of the faith. And I know oftentimes for parents, we're trying to find good content for our kids to read. And if you remember back to the Bible to the book of Hebrews, it has the faith hall of fame where they outline the leaders of faith that had gone before them. Well, this is something that as Americans, we really want to go back and outline some of these heroes, not just of American history, but heroes of Christianity in our faith as well. I want to let you know about some biographical sketches we have available on our website. One is called the Courageous Leaders collection. In this collection, it includes people like Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Francis Scott Key, George Washington Carver, Susanna Wesley, even the Wright brothers, and there's a second collection called Heroes of History. In this collection, you'll read about people like Benjamin Franklin or Christopher Columbus, Daniel Boone, George Washington, Harriet Tubman. Friends, the list goes on and on. This is a great collection for your young person to have and read. It's a providential view of American and Christian history. This is available at wallbuilders.com. That's www.wallbuilders.com.

Rick Green: 19:13

Welcome back, folks. Thanks for staying with us on this good news Friday. Let's jump back in and see if we can get as many more in before the end of the program as possible. David, I think your next Bro.

David Barton: 19:21

Well, this is kind of a spin off from what I talked about in the opening good news piece, and that is that LGBTQIA+ community has gone so far in just trying to force people into their beliefs and their behavior and supporting them and affirming them and not letting people have choices that it's starting to backfire on them. And we're starting to see this now in public polling. One of the indications is here's here's a poll that is just recently out. It looks at the idea of gender, which is part of that that whole conglomeration of LGBTQIA+ plus however many it is now. I've seen everything from 97 to 120 to 150 genders depending on who the expert is on it. But in nonetheless, whatever it is, part of it is that Americans are now saying overwhelmingly by a margin of 65%, that there's only two genders. That's all there is. There's only two genders. There's nothing in the middle. There's no transition kind of stuff. There's just two genders. And it's amazing, just from last year, the numbers have increased fairly steeply in just a single year. And they've increased not only among Republicans, they've also increased among Independents and among Democrats. You're now reaching almost parity with Democrats, where the Democrats are now saying that they're right at the point of saying we just think there's two genders. And that's a big deal for Democrats to get there. But the other one I thought was really big, was even Gen Z, the younger generation has been really, really weak on this. And 57 of Gen Z. Now, say there's only two genders. So these are numbers that are moving in a very healthy direction, if you believe in absolute truth. And if you believe that there are absolutes, and if you believe, Biblically that there are just two genders, this is really good news. And so I think part of its a result of all the overreach that's happened with with things like we've seen what with trying to force bakers to do things and trying to force designers to do things and trying to force Christians to affirm things and teachers to say things and kids to not mispronoun, misgender. I mean that's just gone too far. And the good newsis that Americans are pushing back pretty strong right now and in a period of only a year, we've seen real significant increase.

Rick Green: 21:24

Alright, and more good news from you, Tim. Are you staying in the courts or you headed somewhere else?

Tim Barton: 21:28

I'm staying in the Court, and this is one that we've talked off air about with Kelly Shackleford. First Liberty is one that had this case. Well, the the title of this article is that "Supreme Court Delivers Unanimous Landmark Victory for Postal Carrier," this is the one with Gerald Groff. And he was the one that worked for the post office and was a Christian. One of the things that actually is fundamental in the Constitution is there is what is called the the Sundays excepted clause that the government does work on every day, except Sunday. Sunday was the Sabbath. Sunday was a day of rest, and Dad, you've actually talked about this before. It's something that a quote and reference we use in some of our presentations periodically, there was a court decision, where the Court acknowledged that if you look at kind of the Sabbath of the different religions that Friday is the Sabbath for the Muslims, and Saturday is the Sabbath for the Jews. And Sunday is a Sabbath for the Christians. And it was very clear in the founding, it's very clear in our Constitution, the fact that Sunday's is the exception that we don't do any work on Sunday. Well, it goes back to the Christians understanding of the 10 Commandments that you remember the Sabbath. You keep it holy. So we don't do work on Sunday. Again, like this is a pretty basic thought in Christianity. It's a pretty basic thought in the 10 Commandments, although interestingly enough, it's the maybe the one commandment that I think most Christians struggle the most with, nonetheless, the idea that we take Sunday off, that's the way that the government always was. And I think maybe since Amazon's are delivering on Sunday, that all of a sudden, the post office and everybody else says, Hey, we have deliver on Sunday, too. And so now mail comes seven days a week. It's just kind of what happens these days. Well, Gerald Graff said, as a Christian, he didn't want to do this. And he didn't want to have to work on Sunday when he goes to church and then be required to come and he was fired. for refusing to work his job on Sunday, when you're never supposed to work on Sunday in the first place. It's a federal government job. You don't work on Sundays, that's in the Constitution- Sundays excepted. And yet he lost his job. Well, this went to the Supreme Court. And you know, guys, we've already talked about several cases that we're going to be semi-controversial, all the way up to incredibly controversial depending on what perspective you come from. Well, this is one that actually surprisingly, was not that controversial, at least not for the Supreme Court, because they ruled unanimously a 9-0 decision meaning every single liberal Justice on the Supreme Court agreed that he should not have been fired for refusing to work on Sunday, when that is his clearly held religious belief that is the day of rest, the Sabbath. Like this is this should be so clear in Christianity. And just because so many Christians fail to maybe honor a Sabbath and they don't, they maybe don't take a day of rest. It doesn't change the fact the Bible is very clear about having a day of rest. And this is one that I mean, guys, to me, is one of the remarkable things coming from the Supreme Court, not just because they got this right, and you can't fire someone who's a Christian for refusing to work on Sunday when you're not supposed to even be working on Sunday in the first place at that job. But what's more impressive to me is the fact it was a 9-0 decision, which I'm saying that I mean, most of these decisions we talked about should be 9-0 decision. They shouldn't be that complicated, but unfortunately, for many liberal Justices, they are. It's very encouraging to me that this one was not complicated for the liberal Justices, that they acknowledged and agreed he should not have been fired and at this point, he's having some restoration from what he lost along the way. That is very good news.

David Barton: 24:54

And you know, this may be the sleeper case this year, Rick and maybe the big blockbuster. Kelly said that he thinks this one is going to have repercussions that nobody's seeing right now. That this will absolutely transform the way that workers are dealt with in the workplace in all companies. And that is going to deal with the rights of conscience. You can't coerce someone into doing something that goes against their conscious not just with Sabbath, but with other things. And he thinks the way that this is done and the ways that this has happened, that this is going to rock the business world, and what they try to do with with not allowing conscience, whether it be COVID, or vaccination or anything else, that this is going to have a huge, huge, huge effect in that area. So we may be looking at really multiple blockbuster decisions from this year, that three, four years from now, we may be seeing a whole sea change that happens because of this and, and that's, that's really good, that it may have all these unintended positive consequences that we have yet to see.

Rick Green: 25:49

Yet maybe it'll even open that discussion, Tim, back to you know, this particular commandment and, and taking Sundays off and, you know, honoring the Sabbath, God gave it to us. I know when I fail at it, I wear out faster when I do it, and I use it, I have more energy and get more done the rest of the week. In fact, we had Robert Morris on from Gateway Church several years ago with his book, "Take the Day Off" and it was all about following that command. So you know, even from a Supreme Court decision, we could end up having lots of conversations about why this is a valuable, Biblical concept. Alright folks out of time for good news today. We'll have some more for you next week. Be sure to check out our website today at wallbuilders.com Get you some good materials, to share with your friends and family. Be a force multiplier, and share the links. Thanks so much for listening. You've been listening to WallBuilders