Welcome to the Friday Five! Every Friday we share our top five articles, stories, and quotes for you to read and share with your friends and church families. We would be very grateful if you could make a donation of $100, $50, $25, or $10 today towards our work producing these Friday Fives and fighting for your values on the public square!
1. NC VALUES: 🧭 The election is over. Now what?
After all the ads, calls, emails, mailers, and more, we can finally say that the 2022 midterm elections are coming to a close. While some votes are still being counted in important races across the nation, our state’s current electoral results paint a picture of what our political future has in store.
Overall, the team at NC Values is enthusiastic about the General Election results! Across North Carolina we saw conservatives dominate a number of important elections. They secured the US Senate seat; they swept statewide judicial races (even flipping control of the NC Supreme Court); they secured a supermajority in the Senate; and they established a working super-majority in the House. However, as joyous and genuine our celebrate, we must also acknowledge the challenges that are ahead of us.
Read more: https://ncvalues.org/the-election-is-over-now-what/
2. WFAE: North Carolina’s election results mean fight over abortion laws likely to intensify
“Tami Fitzgerald leads the conservative, Christian, anti-abortion rights group NC Values Coalition. She said she was ‘thrilled’ with the results of the election.
‘There are Democrats who are pro-life,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘Our hope is that these Democrats will have the courage to go against their party and that they will have the courage to take a moral position on an issue which we believe has great moral implications.’
Abortion rights supporters are preparing for a ‘tough fight ahead,’ according to Jenny Black, CEO of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, which operates 14 locations across North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.”
3. THE FEDERALIST: How Safe Are Your Parental Rights? Depends On Your Politics
“Less than a year ago, Abigail Shrier shocked readers with her story of a California judge who stripped a father of his parental rights because he showed insufficient support for performing irreversible medical procedures on his sex-confused son.
These cases are popping up all around the country. Sexual ideology is becoming the governing factor in a child’s placement, trumping the will and the voice of a parent. In a state whose governor was elected on a parental rights platform, Virginia Del. Elizabeth Guzman brazenly introduced a bill that would charge a parent who fails to affirm a child’s ‘sexual orientation or gender identity’ with a felony. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed legislation that makes his state a ‘refuge’ for trans-identifying minors who seek irreversible medical procedures. Just make it to the Golden State … and there is nothing your objecting parents can do.”
4. THE FEDERALIST: My Abortion Made Me A Pro-Life ‘Extremist’
“I am a pro-life extremist and proud of it. It happened one day over 50 years ago pre-Roe v. Wade but when abortion was legal in New York. Coerced as a teen by my father into an abortion, I had a saline procedure in which I gave birth, after hours of labor, to a dead baby boy.
Nothing prepared me for this (not that anything could). I was not told about the development of my baby or anything about what I was about to undergo. To this day when I think back on it, it seems unbelievable that what happened was legal. When I saw my son’s small, lifeless body on the bed next to me after hours of labor, my extremism was born. Sadly, it is still like this, even worse, as women shout their abortions, deliver their dead babies at home from pills, and plea for abortion any time, with no exceptions, and without apology.”
Read more: https://thefederalist.com/2022/11/08/my-abortion-made-me-a-pro-life-extremist/
5. WRAL: NC Supreme Court orders multimillion-dollar fund transfer for Leandro education plan
“The order issued Friday applies to the second and third years of the plan, which originally called for $1.75 billion, before the most recent state budgets partially funded elements of the plan.”
WEEKLY PRAYER: FAMILY
LORD, we cry out to you as Father. You are a model of the love, mercy, and authority of the perfect parent. We thank you for modeling for us what every parent should strive for, and for creating this wonderful institution called family.
LORD, we thank you for creating us with a basic nature designed to not be alone. You made us to desire the intimacy of relationships, and it is here where we experience joys indescribable: the joys of marriage, the joys of having children; the joys of seeing our children have children. What a blessing and mercy you gave us in the family! In it we find our first teachers, our first guardians, and our first authorities.
LORD, we recognize how deeply you love your children, and how deeply it pains you when they go astray. Alongside our adoration and thanksgiving, we pray in confession—as individuals and as members of larger communities—over any sins we may have committed that undermine your beloved institution. Forgive us when we endanger your institution through selfishness and arrogance. Forgive our communities and nation for attempting to redefine some of the most basic and deepest parts of being human—being made male and female, having lifelong marriage vows and responsibilities, and having parental rights over educating one’s children.
“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Colossians 3:12-17)
Amen
Tami & Team
NC Values
