Selling Blueberries? .. or, maybe not.

A place to relate, share, care for, and support one another. A place to share about our daily activities and events around the home.
temporal1
Posts: 16275
Joined: Sat Oct 22, 2016 12:09 pm
Location: U.S. midwest and PNW
Affiliation: Christian other

Selling Blueberries? .. or, maybe not.

Post by temporal1 »

There's a short video in the link.
http://www.toddstarnes.com/column/city- ... y-marriage

Farmers' Market, near East Lansing, Michigan

City: You Can't Sell Blueberries Unless You Affirm Gay Marriage
City: You Can't Sell Blueberries Unless You Affirm Gay Marriage
By Todd Starnes

The Tennes family has been farming in Michigan for generations.

They grow all sorts of crops at the Country Mill Farm – organic apples, blueberries, pumpkins, sweet corn.

And for the past seven years, Steve Tennes and his family have sold their produce at the farmer’s market owned by the city of East Lansing.

But this year – city officials told the devout Catholic family that their blueberries and sweet corn were not welcome at the farmer’s market – and neither were they.

Last year, someone posted a message on Country Mill’s Facebook page inquiring about whether they hosted same-sex weddings at the farm.

Tennes told the individual they did not permit same-sex marriages on the farm because of the family’s Catholic belief that marriage is a sacramental union between one man and one woman.

City officials later discovered the Facebook posting and began immediate action to remove Country Mill from the Farmer’s Market – alleging the family had violated the city’s discrimination ordinance.

"It was brought to our attention that The Country Mill's general business practices do not comply with East Lansing's Civil Rights ordinances and public policy against discrimination as set forth in Chapter 22 of the City Code and outlined in the 2017 Market Vendor Guidelines, as such, The Country Mill's presence as a vendor his prohibited by the City's Farmer's Market Vendor Guidelines," read a letter the city sent to the family.

It also did not seem to matter to city leaders that the farm is located 22 miles outside the city limits – and had absolutely nothing to do with the business of selling blueberries at the farmer’s market.

“We were surprised and we were shocked,” Steve told me. “My wife and I both volunteered to serve in the military – to protect freedom now we come home and the freedom that we worked to protect – we have to defend in our own backyard.”

I reached out to city leaders but they did not return my calls seeking comment.

“Whether you are a Jew, Muslim or Christian – people of faith should not be eradicated from the marketplace simply because they don’t share the same thoughts and ideas that the government is choosing to promote,” Steve told me.

So they have decided to fight for their constitutional rights.

Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday alleging East Lansing violated the constitutional rights of the Tennes family.

“All Steve wants to do is sell his food to anyone who wants to buy it, but the city isn’t letting him,” said ADF Legal Counsel Kate Anderson. “People of faith, like the Tennes family, should be free to live and work according to their deeply held beliefs without fear of losing their livelihood. If the government can shut down a family farmer just because of the religious views he expresses on Facebook—by denying him a license to do business and serve fresh produce to all people—then no American is free.”

I warned you about this kind of attack in my new book, “The Deplorables’ Guide to Making America Great Again.” The attacks on religious liberty did not end just because a Republican is in the White House.

There is a concerted effort by the Left to silence free speech and eradicate Christianity from the public marketplace. The only course of action is to stand and fight.

I commend the Tennes famly and Alliance Defending Freedom for filing a lawsuit.
Don’t let up until every last kernel of sweet corn has been restored to its rightful place in the farmer’s market.

Shuck it to the cob, America!

Marching Orders

1. Contact the City of East Lansing and the Farmer’s Market. Be sure to let them know what you think of their unconstitutional behavior.

2. Contact the Country Mill Farm on Facebook. Be sure to leave them an encouraging message and thank them for standing firm in the faith.

3. Pray for the Tennes family and their attorneys.
this is to share info, not recruiting. :)
0 x
Most or all of this drama, humiliation, wasted taxpayer money could be spared -
with even modest attempt at presenting balanced facts from the start.


”We’re all just walking each other home.”
UNKNOWN
User avatar
JimFoxvog
Posts: 2891
Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2016 10:56 pm
Location: Northern Illinois
Affiliation: MCUSA

Re: Selling Blueberries? .. or, maybe not.

Post by JimFoxvog »

I appreciate the farm's decision and believe the market acted badly.

The video is a little misleading as it talks about discrimination because of belief, while the action is taken because of a business practice. The market seemingly has rules against businesses discriminating against "LGBT..." and the farm will not host a same-sex marriage, while presumably they are in the business of hosting real marriages.

A lawsuit needs to address the real issue.
0 x
User avatar
Josh
Posts: 23821
Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2016 6:23 pm
Location: 1000' ASL
Affiliation: The church of God

Re: Selling Blueberries? .. or, maybe not.

Post by Josh »

JimFoxvog wrote:I appreciate the farm's decision and believe the market acted badly.

The video is a little misleading as it talks about discrimination because of belief, while the action is taken because of a business practice. The market seemingly has rules against businesses discriminating against "LGBT..." and the farm will not host a same-sex marriage, while presumably they are in the business of hosting real marriages.

A lawsuit needs to address the real issue.
One wonders what hosting special events on your property has to do with you selling produce in another town, not on that property. The two really have nothing to do with each other at all.
0 x
Valerie
Posts: 5309
Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2016 6:59 am
Location: Medina OH
Affiliation: non-denominational

Re: Selling Blueberries? .. or, maybe not.

Post by Valerie »

Josh wrote:
JimFoxvog wrote:I appreciate the farm's decision and believe the market acted badly.

The video is a little misleading as it talks about discrimination because of belief, while the action is taken because of a business practice. The market seemingly has rules against businesses discriminating against "LGBT..." and the farm will not host a same-sex marriage, while presumably they are in the business of hosting real marriages.

A lawsuit needs to address the real issue.
One wonders what hosting special events on your property has to do with you selling produce in another town, not on that property. The two really have nothing to do with each other at all.
Exactly!
0 x
User avatar
Bootstrap
Posts: 14441
Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2016 9:59 am
Affiliation: Mennonite

Re: Selling Blueberries? .. or, maybe not.

Post by Bootstrap »

Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday alleging East Lansing violated the constitutional rights of the Tennes family.
... the farm is located 22 miles outside the city limits – and had absolutely nothing to do with the business of selling blueberries at the farmer’s market.
I'm glad they sued. I don't know how non-resistant Mennos would approach this, I know there were suits to allow home schooling - I don't think this is the kind of thing 1 Corinthians 6 is about.
I warned you about this kind of attack in my new book, “The Deplorables’ Guide to Making America Great Again.” The attacks on religious liberty did not end just because a Republican is in the White House.
Yeah, right. Donald Trump should be the hero of Christians? Does Donald Trump look like Jesus Christ to any biblical Christian?

Here's our core problem: we are often teaching a Gospel that has nothing to do with anything in the New Testament and everything to do with partisan American politics. When people see through that, we lose credibility.

So by all means, we need to act morally and work hard to preserve our religious liberty. But we are Christians, not Republicans or Deplorables. If we lose track of that, it's about politics, not religious liberty. I don't want people to identify my faith with anything that is not a clear New Testament teaching. Let's be Christians calling people to discipleship again, not Deplorables making America Great Again (whatever that's supposed to mean).
0 x
Is it biblical? Is it Christlike? Is it loving? Is it true? How can I find out?
User avatar
Josh
Posts: 23821
Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2016 6:23 pm
Location: 1000' ASL
Affiliation: The church of God

Re: Selling Blueberries? .. or, maybe not.

Post by Josh »

Wisconsin v. Yoder had a plain Anabaptist as a defendant in a lawsuit, not a plaintiff.

I really don't know what the right Christian response is in this situation. Personally, I would withdraw from selling at that farmer's market, and seek other venues to sell my produce. Eventually, it could end up like the Soviet Union where Christians basically couldn't engage in commerce at all and were reduced to working as labourers and could not hold land nor buy and sell at a profit.

Interestingly enough, the most conservative Russian Baptists today have church rules against buying/selling at a profit and against farming at a profit. So the men in the church all work as labourers and are quite poor. Their doctrinal basis at this point is that wealth/riches will lead the church away from biblical Christianity.

Perhaps that'll happen to us, too.
0 x
Valerie
Posts: 5309
Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2016 6:59 am
Location: Medina OH
Affiliation: non-denominational

Re: Selling Blueberries? .. or, maybe not.

Post by Valerie »

Isn't it true that Apostle Paul was discouraging and teaching against Christians taking 'each other' to court and not being able to settle their own problems without turning to worldly law?

This is different.
0 x
temporal1
Posts: 16275
Joined: Sat Oct 22, 2016 12:09 pm
Location: U.S. midwest and PNW
Affiliation: Christian other

Re: Selling Blueberries? .. or, maybe not.

Post by temporal1 »

Blueberries, farmers' markets, cakes, pictures, chicken sandwiches .. children ..
what's the difference? :-| This morning, i read this:

Canada
TORONTO, May 31, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) —

"Conservatives to oppose bill allowing gov’t to take kids from parents who reject transgenderism: source"

MPP opposition is growing to a radical Liberal bill that critics have warned for months will be used to enforce gender ideology in the home, give the state more power to seize children from families that oppose the LGBTQI and gender ideology agenda, and ban couples who disagree with that agenda from fostering or adopting children.

Indeed, a source who was in Progressive Conservative caucus meeting before Queen’s Park adjourned two weeks ago says the Tories will vote as a block against Bill 89.

That would be a marked change from second reading, when Bill 89 passed unanimously.

“This was a real hot, hot discussion when tempers flared,” the source told LifeSiteNews. After a group of about “three or four” MPPs dug in their heels against the bill “on the moral question,” the PC caucus decided they would all oppose the bill.

“Some of us just took the strong position that we just couldn’t bring ourselves around to vote for that,” the source said.

“It’s the wrong thing to do, it’s interfering in the ability of parents to be parents, and that’s just so fundamentally and morally wrong. The family unit is the basis of our society.”

Final debate on the third reading of Bill 89 is today and the final vote expected tomorrow. The Liberal majority almost guarantees the bill will pass.

At this point, Trillium Party MPP Jack MacLaren and Progressive Conservative MPPs Bob Bailey, Monte McNaughton, Steve Clark, Todd Smith, and Jeff Yurek have publicly said they’ll vote against the bill, according to Parents As First Educators Facebook page.

PAFE has been campaigning hard since January against Bill 89, which repeals and replaces the existing Child and Family Services Act governing child protection services, as well as adoption and foster care services.

“Because supporters have been very active for months in lobbying their MPPs to vote against Bill 89, we now have opposition to Kathleen Wynne’s continued social engineering,” Tanya Granic Allen, executive director of PAFE, told LifeSiteNews.

The Association of Reformed Political Action (ARPA) likewise has been at the forefront of the battle against the bill, which is entitled Supporting Children, Youth and Families Act, 2017.

Bill 89 adds “gender identity” and “gender expression” as factors to be considered “in the best interests of the child.”

At the same time, it deletes the religious faith in which the parents are raising the child as a factor to be considered, and mandates that child protection services instead consider only the child’s own “creed” or “religion” when considering what’s in the best interests of the child.

Critics warn Bill 89 gives child protection services greater power to intervene in families, and effectively bans parents who disagree with the LGBTQI agenda and gender ideology from fostering or adopting children.

Bill 89 retains the provision in current law that a child who is suffering or “at risk of suffering” mental or emotional harm and whose parents do not provide “treatment or access to treatment” is need of protection under the law.

But while the current law says the Children’s Aid Society should take the “least disruptive course of action,” Bill 89 adds “including the provision of prevention services, early intervention services and community support services," according an ARPA analysis.

“The implication is that intervention should not be presumed to be more disruptive than non-intervention,” the ARPA report adds.

Pro-family advocates point to public statements by Minister of Child and Family Services Michael Coteau as clearly signalling the pro-LGBTQ, gender ideology Liberal agenda.

Coteau told QP Briefing shortly after introducing the bill that he sees questioning teenagers’ self-identification as LGBTQI or telling them to change as abuse.

“I would consider that a form of abuse, when a child identifies one way and a caregiver is saying no, you need to do this differently,” he said.

“If it’s abuse, and if it’s within the definition, a child can be removed from that environment and placed into protection where the abuse stops.”

MacLaren, MPP for Carleton-Mississippi Mills who was ousted from the PC Party just before he was about to announce he was leaving to join the Trillium Party, agrees Bill 89 is bad news.

“The bill talks about a child may being confused about his or her sexual orientation, and the boy thinks he’s a girl, and the parent comes along and wants to say, no. Johnny, you really are a boy, and tries to guide the child along,” MacLaren told LifeSiteNews.

“This bill would potentially say that the parent is interfering in the child’s rights to choose his own sexual orientation.”

MacLaren reiterated this in a press release today on the Trillium Party Facebook page.

"Instead of being supported, more families could, in fact, be torn apart due to the increased threat of state intervention in their lives suggested by this bill,” he noted.

Tory MPP McNaughton confirmed with Campaign Life Coalition on Monday he will vote against the bill.

CLC is urging supporters to lobby their MPPs before the vote tomorrow. Jack Fonseca, CLC senior political strategist, lauds those who plan to oppose Bill 89.

“It gives moral support to parents to show we are not alone,” he told LifeSiteNews. “We see this as a totalitarian bill to take away our rights.”

Granic Allen echoed this.

“I can see that the efforts of the thousands who have lobbied on Bill 89 have been effective as they managed to convince several MPPs to vote against this bill when it was previously voted for unanimously,” she told LifeSiteNews.

“Finally, the MPPs are standing up to Patrick Brown and his whipping of the vote, and apparent support for the Wynne social agenda.”

PAFE, she added, has “launched a petition which now has over 5,000 signatures to stop this disastrous Bill.”
i intentionally put this topic in "Other," not "Politics," because my interest is in the human and family aspects, not the political.

in my view, far too much has been hijacked for biased politics.
(Trump did not start it, he may be a response to it, but he is not responsible for starting it.)
if Trump's name is a "trigger" for you, please bypass this topic, rather than hijack it for political statements. please avoid political arguments and accusations. :)
0 x
Most or all of this drama, humiliation, wasted taxpayer money could be spared -
with even modest attempt at presenting balanced facts from the start.


”We’re all just walking each other home.”
UNKNOWN
User avatar
Bootstrap
Posts: 14441
Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2016 9:59 am
Affiliation: Mennonite

Re: Selling Blueberries? .. or, maybe not.

Post by Bootstrap »

temporal1 wrote:(Trump did not start it, he may be a response to it, but he is not responsible for starting it.)
if Trump's name is a "trigger" for you, please bypass this topic, rather than hijack it for political statements. please avoid political arguments and accusations. :)
Sorry, but Trump and LifeSiteNews are extremely political, and that's hard to ignore.

I agree with you that gay marriage is wrong, and I would not allow one on my property either. But politicians are hijacking our Christian concerns for their own purposes. If your posts contain quotes urging us to have political allegiances, I will point that out. To ignore that is to let political factions hijack our faith. If an article starts out discussing a choice of faith made by a Christian and starts bringing in Deplorables, that's hijacking. A true Christian could make a long list of things Donald Trump might repent of if he took faith seriously.

The question is really whether Christianity is about the things we find in the New Testament or the things political factions want to make it about. We can't have it both ways.
Last edited by Bootstrap on Thu Jun 01, 2017 10:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
0 x
Is it biblical? Is it Christlike? Is it loving? Is it true? How can I find out?
temporal1
Posts: 16275
Joined: Sat Oct 22, 2016 12:09 pm
Location: U.S. midwest and PNW
Affiliation: Christian other

Re: Selling Blueberries? .. or, maybe not.

Post by temporal1 »

Another doozy for this morning: :-|
Illinois
Illinois DCFS' Leftist Social Experiment on Children
Written By Laurie Higgins
Illinois is making national news again, and again for destructive public policy.


In an act of stunningly brazen wickedness, foolishness, and hubris, the Illinois Department of Children & Family Services (DCFS) has made radical revisions to policies regarding children who experience homoerotic attraction and/or gender dysphoria.

The DCFS, controlled—like every other government agency in Illinois—by ignorant “progressives,” has declared war on children and potential foster and adoptive families by changing rules to make affirmation of children’s homoerotic attraction and/or sexual confusion an absolute condition for employment, fostering or adopting, volunteering, or contracting with the DCFS.

Last night, DCFS director George Sheldon–Rauner’s pick in 2015–resigned, becoming the 8th director or acting director to leave the DCFS in the past five years. Sheldon leaves while still a subject of an ethics investigation and while the DCFS faces face sustained and intensifying criticism for actions that have resulted in incomprehensible suffering for and even deaths of children under their care. In the midst of this turmoil, DCFS bureaucrats see fit to make radical rules changes that will further harm children.

If you can stomach it, read Appendix K of the DCFS procedures document titled “Support and Well-Being of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) Children and Youth.” It promotes every doctrinaire and arguable assumption of the far Left’s sacred sexuality ideology and even includes a Leftist lexicon for use in their indoctrination efforts.

Appendix K includes the following:

1.) A statement of purpose which mandates that everyone who works directly or indirectly with or for the DCFS—including all staff, volunteers, potential foster or adoptive families, and private agencies that contract with the DCFS—must affirm the homoerotic desires and/or biological sex-rejection of children under the care of DCFS (and I use the word “care” loosely).

2.) Directives on how the DCFS will impose Leftist beliefs about homoeroticism and biological sex-rejection, include through “mandatory training in LGBTQ competency. Specifically, LGBTQ training will be part of the retraining Child Welfare license, will be included as part of PRIDE training, and will be included in DCFS core training. DCFS and POS staff must complete additional, mandatory standalone LGBTQ training at least once per year. Agencies must include LGBTQ training in their training of volunteers. Annual training in LGBTQ competent care is required for all child welfare providers; whether or not they believe they have care for [sic] or currently care for any LGBTQ child/youth.”

3.) Dictionary of Leftist sacred sexuality Newspeak, including the terms asexuality, bisexual, cisgender, coming out, culturally competent, gay, gender expansive, gender expression, gender identity, lesbian, LGBTQ, “preferred gender pronoun (PGP),” queer, “sex assigned at birth,” and transgender.

4.) A directive on child placement which emphasizes in boldface that “In no instance should LGBTQ children/youth be placed with a non-affirming caregiver who is opposed to sexual orientations that differ from the caregiver’s own. Nor should LGBTQ children and youth be placed with caregivers who are unwilling/unable to support children and youth whose gender identity or gender expression differs from traditional expectation.”

5.) A directive for caregivers on “choice of clothes, make-up, hairstyle, friends, and activities within appropriate boundaries (e.g., if a caregiver permits a cisgender heterosexual child/youth to date at a certain age, the caregiver may not prohibit a gay or transgender child/youth from dating). The child/youth’s chosen name and preferred gender pronoun (including gender-neutral pronouns such as “they” or “ze/hir”) must be respected.”

6.) Advice regarding school restroom and locker room usage: “[T]ransgender students have the right to use the gendered school facilities (e.g., restrooms and locker rooms) that correspond to the student’s gender identity. Caseworkers and caregivers should assist children/youth in obtaining their school’s permission to use these facilities.” To help caregivers force schools to allow gender-dysphoric students into opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms, the DCFS refers them to two of Illinois’ most vigorous promoters of sexual deviance: the ACLU and Illinois Safe Schools Alliance.

7.) A directive on body searches that states that “If a DCFS child/youth is to be body searched, cross-gender searches of transgender youth are prohibited. The child/youth most be searched by someone of the same gender as the child/youth’s gender identity unless the child/youth requests otherwise.” To clarify, this means that if a girl who identifies as a boy must be body-searched, the search must be conducted by a man—unless she objects because, you know, she’s actually a girl.

These changes are rationalized by the DCFS as serving the welfare of self-identified “LGBTQ” children. In the view of DCFS, these children cannot flourish unless their homoerotic desires or rejection of their sex is affirmed. In the view of DCFS, safety requires non-judgmentalism—well, except for their judgmentalism that permeates these changes and which, like arsenic in a cup of tea, is undetectable and lethal.

This is a governmental experiment based on Leftist theories being performed on children who can neither understand what is being done to them nor offer informed consent. And we taxpayers are footing the bill for an experiment that harms children.

The DCFS evidently doesn’t see the irony in its command that “Staff may not impose personal, organizational or religious beliefs on LGBTQ children, youth and families, and in no way should personal beliefs impact the way individual needs of children/youth or families are met.”

The entirety of the DCFS changes constitutes the imposition of arguable, leftist “personal and organizational beliefs” on children, youth, and families that will “impact the way the individual needs of children and youth are met.” The fact that the DCFS is imposing a set of beliefs through policy is revealed in its absurd, reality-denying reference to a “child/youth’s sex assigned at birth.” That is Leftist language. No child is “assigned” a sex at birth. The objective sex of children is identified at birth, and that sex can never change.

There is no research proving that children are best served by having gender dysphoria affirmed. The best research to date suggests that if gender dysphoria is not affirmed in young children, it diminishes over time. Do the omniscient powers that be at the DCFS believe it’s better for children to endure castration or double mastectomies, a lifetime of cross-sex hormone-doping with its unknown health risks, and social struggles than to accept their immutable sex? And do these government bureaucrats know with absolute certainty that when children experience a mismatch between their bodies and their subjective, internal sense of being male or female that the error rests with their healthy bodies?

Quite obviously, these changes preclude people of theologically orthodox Christian faith from fostering or adopting children who experience same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria. Denying people of theologically orthodox faith the opportunity to foster or adopt these children constitutes the antithesis of a commitment to diversity and puts the lie to DCFS’s claim to care about the needs of children. The number of available foster and adoptive families for these children who are in desperate need of love, guidance, and wisdom, will decrease. Children will be deprived of truly good families, families with mothers and fathers who can distinguish truth from falsehood. Through these changes, the DCFS has proven that the desires of adults supersede the needs of suffering children.
0 x
Most or all of this drama, humiliation, wasted taxpayer money could be spared -
with even modest attempt at presenting balanced facts from the start.


”We’re all just walking each other home.”
UNKNOWN
Post Reply