“If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Psalm 11:3 (ESV)

This week, three Center for Arizona Policy (CAP) team members spent several days exploring the answer to that question with hundreds of allies from throughout the country.

The Family Policy Alliance’s first annual Social Conservative Conference (SoConCon) brought together some of the brightest ideas, hardest learned lessons, and promising visions for the future.

According to the Colson Center’s John Stonestreet, the foundations are not legislated, they are taught; the foundations that cultivate life and citizenship come from a worldview, and the key is education.

CAP’s Pastor Macario De La Cruz, who attended the conference, points to the loss of American foundational values based in freedom, “We are living the product of decades of seeding of progressivism in our education system. Only 3% of high school students are able to pass the citizenship test. This is the reality we are living in. Are we living President Reagan’s farewell speech warning? ‘An eradication of the American memory will result in an erosion of the American spirit.’ We must reverse years of progressivism.”

It is up to all of us to do our part to restore the principles of social conservativism that have proven most effective for human flourishing. It’s not the passive affirmation of relativism in the name of politeness, which has led to the critical theory movement denying the true story of God and His world.

Here is just a bit of what is ahead for CAP and other social conservatives working toward the restoration of vital foundations.

Life 

The proliferation of abortion pills makes them the greatest current threat to life. The abortion industry and its allies deceive women with a promise of a quick and easy “solution” to their unplanned pregnancy: a pill “as safe as Tylenol.” But it is not. It is deadly for both the unborn baby and the mother.

The Charlotte Lozier Institute finds the abortion pill four times more dangerous than surgical abortions. Yet, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has greatly weakened safety regulations on the pill.

Since the fall of Roe last June, more than 20 states have moved to enact either pre-Roe laws like Arizona, or pro-life trigger laws previously restricted by the Roe decision. Nine of those laws are held up in court, the others are now saving lives.

The abortion industry sees the abortion pill as a way around those laws, even encouraging unregulated and unsafe pills anonymously coming in from other countries. The movement that railed against “back-alley abortions” has now relegated women to a new type of back-alley abortion with horrible health risks including infertility, hemorrhage, infection, and death.

Our goal is to expose the gruesome truth of chemical abortions, use every tool legally available to stop them, and maximize care and support for women facing unplanned pregnancies so they can choose life.

Families

Perhaps the biggest threat to families is the assault on basic, biological humanity and the fatal lie that children don’t need their parents.

Them Before Us emphasizes the foundational value of putting children’s rights before adults’ desires. Not the kind of children’s rights the left sees as the “right” to hide their so-called transition from parents, but the basic right of children to their biological parents, and their right to innocence and intact bodies in the midst of a transgender craze.

Chloe Cole bravely tells her story in an attempt to hold those who deceived her accountable, and to warn other vulnerable families of the deceptive message of transgenderism.

At 12, Chloe started exploring transgender social media sites. At 13, she started taking cross-sex hormones. At 15, she had a double mastectomy, and by 16, she had detransitioned in regret. Now, she is suing those adults and other professionals who permanently altered her body. Watch her story at The Daily Signal here.

Walt Heyer was just a toddler when he was abused by his mother and later sexually abused by another relative. He says his desire to please his mother and avoid further abuse led him to live his life as a woman. Now living his true life as a man, Heyer helps others caught in the transgender trap of believing their childhood trauma is gender identity confusion. Read more here and here.

Religious Freedom 

After decades of losing religious freedom ground under the U.S. Supreme Court’s Lemon Test, a recent ruling has breathed new life into one of America’s greatest foundational freedoms: religious freedom.

When the Court recently ruled that Coach Kennedy could pray on the field after a football game, the Court essentially reversed prior rulings that prevented expressions of faith in public life. Now, we have the opportunity to again see discussions and emblems of faith return to public buildings, schools, and other proceedings. To learn more about what you can do, visit Restoring Faith in America.

ICYMI

• Read here how Pima County is violating parental rights by providing mental health services to minors without parental consent.
• Read here how a U.S. House committee found the DOJ had no legitimate basis on which to target parents who protested government actions.
• Read here how Arizona’s ESA program has reached a milestone with families eager to choose the best educational option for their children.

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