A new bill requiring sex education in all Washington public schools, starting at kindergarten, has progressed to the governor.

The highly controversial bill was approved by the state Senate over the weekend despite fierce protests against it, according to KREM-TV.

“I’m offended at the pornography that we’re going to be forced to teach our children,” said Republican state Rep. Robert Sutherland. “I’m offended at what this government is doing to the parents out there.”

The curriculum will focus on teaching kindergartners about boys’ and girls’ bodies, and that gender is on a spectrum and open for interpretation. Older students will dive deeper into issues such LGBTQ, contraception, pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and sexual consent.

According to Faithwire, in the first year of implementation, students in sixth through 12th grade will be taught the curriculum. It would expand to all students the next year. Parents are also allowed to opt their children out of the classes.

Opponents of the bill fear schools are going too far.

“Who will decide what is age-appropriate, where there is clearly going to be differences in opinion?” Republican state Sen. Steve o’Ban said. “Should that be a government-mandated decision from [the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction] or should that be based upon the values of parents as reflected in their school boards and…

The Trump administration has sided with a Christian wedding photographer in her fight against a Louisville, Ky., ordinance that could force her to photograph same-sex weddings.

The Department of Justice filed a “Statement of Interest” in federal court Feb. 27, citing the U.S. Constitution, Supreme Court precedent and even James Madison in arguing that the government cannot compel photographer Chelsey Nelson to “photograph, provide photography editing services for, and blog about weddings of which she does not approve.”

“Forcing Ms. Nelson to … participate in a ceremony that violates her sincerely held religious beliefs invades her First Amendment rights,” the DOJ brief says.

At issue is a Louisville ordinance that makes it unlawful “for a person to deny an individual the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of a place of public accommodation, … on the ground of … sexual orientation,” according to the original suit filed on her behalf by Alliance Defending Freedom.

The city of Louisville has acknowledged Nelson would be in violation if she declined a request from a same-sex couple to photograph their wedding. 

“The Supreme Court has made plain that the government cannot ‘[compel] individuals to mouth support for views they find objectionable,’” the DOJ brief says.

Nelson, who owns…

A Virginia police officer’s soulful rendition of gospel singer Marvin Sapp’s “The Best in Me” has taken the internet by storm.

After coming off of a shift, officer Mervin Mayo stopped by his church to minister to himself through music. He decided to video the experience in hopes that he could minister to someone else too.

According to CBN News, the video was uploaded on both Mayo’s personal Facebook page and on the Richmond Police Department’s Facebook page.

In the video’s description, Mayo noted that he was inspired by the song and couldn’t get it out of his head, so he decided to sing it.

“I had just gotten off work and stopped by the church, where I am a minister of music, on the way home to do Praise and Worship for myself,” he said, according to CBN News.

“I have to minister to myself before I can minister to someone else,” he added.

The original video was posted by Mayo on March 4 with the caption, “When everyone else around could only see my failures, God saw the best in Me … it doesn’t matter what I did, because God sees me for who I am … He knows MY heart.”

At the time of this writing Mayo’s cover of “The Best in Me” has 1.1 million views across both postings and 40,000 shares on Mayo’s Facebook page, where he sings in full uniform while playing the keyboard.

“I sing in or out of uniform at the drop of a dime,” he said.

“Know that, no matter what you are going…

WASHINGTON (RNS) — After an Episcopal rector at a Washington church tested positive for coronavirus, the Episcopal Diocese of Washington is instituting a sweeping set of policies designed to help stop the spread of the disease — including suspending the use of wine during Communion.

This week, officials announced the Rev. Tim Cole, a rector at Christ Church in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood, had tested positive for the coronavirus that causes the illness known as COVID-19. The cleric was the first confirmed case in the region, and the church’s organist, Tom Smith, has since tested positive for the virus.

The reaction was swift: Cole was quickly hospitalized, Smith is in quarantine, and health officials asked parishioners who attended services recently to self-quarantine due to their potential exposure to the virus.

But church officials expanded safety measures beyond Christ Church on Monday (March 9), when the Rev. Mariann Budde, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, distributed a letter outlining new diocesanwide policies meant to curb the spread of the disease.

The new policies include:

• Suspending the use of the “common cup” and the distribution of wine during Communion, and using wafers instead of bread.
• Ensuring worship leaders sanitize their hands before administering the wafers during Communion.
• Draining all water from baptismal…

JUBA, South Sudan, March 10, 2020 (Morning Star News) – It was more than a year ago that Muslims in the disputed area between Sudan and South Sudan noticed that Ahmed Alnour was no longer reciting his Islamic prayers five times a day.

The tribesman of the ethnic Misseriya Arabs was helping support his wife and seven children in Sudan working as a scrap trader at the Ameth common market in Abyei, a 4,072-square mile special administrative area on the border formed from the peace agreement that ended civil war in Sudan in 2005.

Alnour would soon have to leave that work, forced to flee when area Muslims confirmed that he had become a Christian.

“I saw them and heard them saying, ‘We will kill you because you left Islam and became infidel,’” he said of their attempt to burn down his home the afternoon of April 1, 2019.

Neighbors were able to douse the flames and he escaped unharmed, but on April 8 the assailants returned at 1 a.m. as he slept. He awoke to find his house in flames.

Alnour told Morning Star News that before Christians arrived to rescue him, he heard one of the assailants say in Arabic, “Let us throw him back in the fire, since he has abandoned Islam.”

The Christians took him to a hospital for treatment the following morning. He had lost all his possessions in the fire, including 600,000 South Sudanese pounds equivalent to US$6,000, but he had not lost his faith in Christ, he said.

The…