The Enemy of Your Enemy Might Not Be Your Friend
By: Michaeljon Murphy
Director of Communications
Constitution Party of Wisconsin
Conservatives and Christians were understandably appalled at the invasion of Cities Church in Saint Paul on January 18. More than 30 anti-ICE “protesters” disrupted the service. Church members were blocked from their children in the lower level of the church.
FBI Training Photo by Jamal Wilson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Even the children in the sanctuary were directly targeted, with at least one of the liberal mob telling youngsters, “Do you know your parents are Nazis, they’re going to burn in hell?” While no church members responded physically to these provocations, this reminded me of the case of Mark Houck, who pushed a clinic escort away from his young son after the man got in his son’s face and uttered similar epithets outside an abortion clinic. Houck was later arrested in a SWAT-style FBI raid. He was looking at 11 years in jail but was later acquitted. Houck was charged under the FACE Act. Under the Biden Administration, there was a perverse emphasis on using this law to exact the severest penalties for those actively working against abortion.
The same treatment was applied to the small number of activists that still attempt clinic rescues (physically blocking the door of an abortion clinic) to delay women from entering and give more time to save the life of their unborn children. The Biden Administration would combine FACE with conspiracy charges in order to multiply the number of years of the possible sentence. Many remained jailed until President Trump provided pardons for them early in his second term.
FACE Targeted the Rescue Movement
Randall Terry being booked in Los Angeles
Joe Kennedy, Los Angeles Times, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
When the FACE Act was passed in 1994, it was in response to the rescue movement successfully shutting down or limiting abortion businesses. In Milwaukee, the number of clinics was reduced from five to two during the rescue years. A provision was added to the FACE law to attempt to make it more palatable for the Christian community. It offered the same protections for church buildings. The law states:
This 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.
The law did have the effect of ending the rescue movement. Some of my friends (and even a Constitution Party of Wisconsin member) were charged under FACE in the early days after the law was passed. The penalty was six months for a first offense and one year for a subsequent offense. Rescues quickly dwindled. However, no one was charged for any church infraction.
When the DOJ began arresting the agitators from the Cities Church invasion, it sought to charge them under the Ku Klux Klan Act and FACE Act. The Klan Act criminalizes depriving people of their civil rights. At first, arrest warrants were sought for eight individuals. Magistrate Judge Douglas L. Micko rejected arrest warrants for five defendants. For the three other warrants that were allowed, Micko struck out the FACE charges, claiming, “no probable cause.”
Ignorance Is Bliss
Keith Ellison
US House Office of Photography, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison showed his ignorance of the law’s protections for churches (or conveniently forgot), saying,
“The FACE Act, by the way, is designed to protect the rights of people seeking their reproductive rights to be protected, and so that people for a religious reason cannot just use religion to break into women’s reproductive health centers. So how they are stretching either of these laws to apply to people who protested in a church over the behavior or the perceived behavior of a religious leader is beyond me.”
Over the years, we have seen that equal application of the law was never anticipated by those who created the law, and we are seeing that continue in practice even with the Trump DOJ’s efforts to use it. It was a bad law to begin with and gave much more leverage for the wicked to promote evil than for the righteous to promote justice. There are many overjoyed at the Trump Administration going after these miscreants. It’s tempting to feel satisfaction over Don Lemon in handcuffs. However, using a bad law that was designed for unequal justice is not something we should be celebrating. Similarly, the occasional “hate crime” charge against someone accosting a Christian because of his/her beliefs does not make those laws good either. They were clearly designed to crush any dissent against the LGBTQ movement and force people to either celebrate it or keep their mouths shut.
Don’t Use It, Repeal It
When Roe v. Wade was overturned, the FACE Act should also have been done away with. If not in the same action, it should have followed swiftly on its heels. With no more federal protection for the diabolical practice of abortion, there should be no federal protection for the centers of child sacrifice either. We should renew the call for the repeal of FACE, not grant it the status of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Listen to this blog post as an audio file below.