Gary currently serves as senior vice president of Public Policy and Culture at JDFI, president of American Values, and chairman of Campaign for Working Families PAC. Previously, he served in the Reagan administration as Under Secretary of Education and Head of the Office of Policy Development. Gary became president of the Family Research Council, senior vice president of Focus on the Family, and was appointed by President Trump to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.
The U.S. military has a proud history of protecting the United States from our foreign enemies. Our brave men and women in uniform have courageously sacrificed "life and limb" for the cause of freedom. Over many decades, the U.S. military has been an institution the American people trusted and admired, even when our faith in other institutions was declining. In the 20th century, we led the free world in defeating Nazism and Soviet Communism.
In September 2022, extreme pro-abortion California Governor Gavin Newsom paid to put up public billboards in seven states promoting California as an abortion haven. Some of Newsom's billboards outrageously twisted the words of Jesus in Mark 12:31, "Love your neighbor as yourself."
Monday and throughout the week, we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. We honor Dr. King in part because he recognized that despite the original national sin of slavery, America is a fundamentally decent country that has brought hope, liberty and prosperity to millions of people.
As the Apostle Paul reminds us, God works all things for good. We saw that play out recently as Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered a near-death tragedy on the football field.
A federal court has ruled in favor of Christian colleges and universities that hold biblical views on sexuality and marriage.
The Pew Research Center has done an analysis of the religious make up of the 118th Congress that was just sworn in. Pew concluded that Congress "remains largely untouched by two trends that have long marked religious life in the United States: a decades-long decline in the share of Americans who identify as Christian, and a corresponding increase in the percentage who say they have no religious affiliation."
The Dr. James Dobson Family Institute (JDFI) applauds the two significant pro-life victories in the House of Representatives yesterday. But we are deeply concerned about what the narrow margin of these victories says regarding the growing pro-abortion extremism and the declining moral state of powerful people in government.
The battle among House Republicans over the house speakership and rules governing the chamber in the new 118th Congress is over. Part of the agreement guarantees that seven specific pieces of legislation will get an up and down vote in the House of Representatives. Two of those votes will deal with abortion, which is good news.
The signs are everywhere. America's youth are in trouble. According to social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, Americans who were born after 1995 "have extraordinarily higher rates of anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicide and fragility." By 2020, more than 25% of teenage girls had a major problem with depression. Haidt points to social media and a victimhood culture as the culprits.
There is a growing dangerous trend in the United States of vandalism and violence aimed at places of worship. Increasing numbers of synagogues have been targeted by anti-Semitic extremists. Dozens of churches have been desecrated and were the target of profane graffiti, bomb threats and arson. These attacks have been increasing in recent years and really accelerated in the aftermath of the overturn of Roe v. Wade.
