Crosstalk: May 23, 2016

​Jim wrapped up the week with another headline-filled program so that listeners could get caught up on news items that affect Christians both in America and around the world. Stories included: --Those involved in the case of 2 year old Israel Stinson, who was set to have his life support removed, were in court as of broadcast time. --The Department of Health and Human Services published the final rule for Obamacare's section 1557 that requires health care providers receiving federal funds that they must perform gender transition services and abortions or face termination of government aid along with possible referral to the Department of Justice for legal action. --Under a new set of guidelines for Chicago public schools, children will now be required to address transgender students and employees by their preferred name and pronouns or face the consequences. --Representative Luke Messer of Indiana has proposed legislation aimed at blocking President Obama's new guidelines that requires schools to let transgender students use the restrooms of their choice or risk losing federal funding. --A man is accused of choking an 8 year old girl until she passed out in the bathroom of a restaurant in Chicago's South Loop. --A female security guard has been arrested and charged with assault because she physically escorted a man out of the women's restroom at a grocery store in Washington D.C. --Target retail stores may be on track for another major stock drop in the 2nd quarter possibly due to the company's transgender friendly policies and the boycott that followed. --Chaos took place in the House after a measure to ensure protections for LGBT individuals failed to pass. --President Obama marked the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia saying he is proud that his administration has made advancing the human rights of LGBT individuals a focus of U.S. engagement around the world. --A Florida pastor hired an attorney in Jacksonville, Florida, to handle a personal injury case. The attorney reconsidered when he learned of the pastor's strongly held religious beliefs that do not affirm homosexuality. He sent the pastor a letter stating that he must sever his business relationship with the pastor because he believes in homosexuality and has a homosexual son. --Alliance Defending Freedom filed a pre-enforcement challenge to Phoenix's city code May 12th on behalf of two individuals owners of a studio. The two who want to honor God through their art and business specialize in hand painting, hand lettering and calligraphy for events such as weddings. Phoenix law strips artists of their freedom to choose what to create and what to say in the marriage context. --Faced with two estranged parents in utter disagreement about their daughter's wish to be a boy, a British Columbia Supreme Court judge has appointed the child a legal guardian to protect her interests. --Thousands of people are expected to rally this weekend for Alabama State Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore who was suspended by a judicial commission for his administrative order directing judges to follow the state constitution. --The Food and Drug Administration has dumped 35.7 million dollars into an anti-smoking campaign aimed at getting members of the LGBT community to stop the habit. --Starting May 2, a Planned Parenthood clinic in Wisconsin ended its service of providing contraception although the business brags about offering affordable reproductive health care to women. The facility will now only provide abortions. --The former president of NARAL lamented that the pro-life movement was attracting so many young people while the pro-abortion movement was growing old and gray. A new pro-abortion group in Maine is recruiting the old, graying crowd, calling it, 'Grandmothers for Reproductive Rights'. --Language was added in the National Defense Authorization Act that would allow a single, non-profit organization to have control of 37.5 million dollars for international sex trafficking grants with little oversight and no guarantees that the funds will not be used to promote and perform abortion. --Oklahoma senators have approved making abortion a felony (SB-1552). --Is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell giving up on the fight to keep America's daughters from having to register for Selective Service? --Amazon is accused of selling ISIS and Hamas flags. --The Islamic State has executed 25 purported Iraqi spies by lowering them into a vat of nitric acid where they remained until their organs dissolved. --Some Somali's who've come to this nation as refugees are discovered hauling large amounts of money overseas. Much of the money came from welfare checks that the refugees received from the U.S government via taxpayers. --Pope Francis suggests a likeness between the conquest aspects of Islam and the dissemination of the New Testament gospel. --Pope Francis will be hosting Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, Imam of Cairo's Al-Azhar and considered to be the highest authority in Sunni Islam. --The Iranian regime has been escalating the advancement of its ballistic missile program ever since the nuclear agreement went into effect in January of this year. Some of Iran's dangerous ballistic missiles can carry multiple warheads. In the last four months Iran has launched ballistic missiles several times. --A senior Iranian missile force commander claimed that U.S. officials are secretly instructing the Islamic republic to keep its ballistic missile tests secret so as not to raise questions about whether Iran is obeying the demands of the nuclear deal. --Iran is demanding that the U.S. pay for 63 years of spiritual and material damage. --A leaked document has come forth regarding the proposed Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a global trade agreement negotiated between the Obama administration and Eastern Europe. Nearly 250 pages of text confirm that the controversial new trade regime aims to merge the regulatory regimes of the U.S. and the European Union under unaccountable, transnational institutions that would be a threat to liberty, privacy, self-government and to national sovereignty.