Two days after a California school board approved new curriculum that includes LGBT history, parents of more than 700 students kept their children home in protest.

The Rocklin School District Board OK’d the curriculum May 1 by a vote of 3-2, requiring students in kindergarten through fifth grades to learn about the contributions of key LGBT figures in history and social studies curriculum, according to the Sacramento Bee. Rocklin is about one-hour northeast of Sacramento.  

A group of parents known as the Informed Parents of Rocklin had urged the board not to include the curriculum in elementary grades. 

The board’s action was in response to a new state law requiring schools to include the contributions of “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans” in history lessons. 

Unlike sex-ed, there is no opt-out for parents in the law. 

Parents of more than 700 students kept their children home on May 3, according to Sacramento’s Fox 40.  

“We believe that anyone who has made a significant contribution to society should, of course, be included in our history textbooks,” Rachel Crutchfield, spokeswoman for Informed Parents of Rocklin had said earlier in the week. “However, the concept of sexual orientation is far too complex of a topic for elementary-aged children to be introduced to at school. … Let’s let kids be kids.”

A…

NAIROBI, Kenya, May 13, 2019 (Morning Star News) – Yusuf Tulo and his sizeable family were worshipping in their home in eastern Uganda on April 28 when they heard their neighbors shouting, “Fire!”

Tulo, 35, had left Islam to put his faith in Christ last October. He still had three wives and 14 children dependent on him living on a homestead with more than one house in Bugwere village, and the house they used for worship was on fire.

When they went outside, however, something was not right; among neighbors standing around the house looking at the smoke, one said, “Please remain indoors – your lives are in danger.”

Tulo had been receiving threatening messages from Muslims for months, but faced with the danger of smoke coming from the house, he chose to remain outside. An hour later, the roof collapsed in flames and the house was charred.

“We lost everything in that house: beddings, clothing, books, documents and other household belongings worth more than $1,000,” Tulo told Morning Star News.

The village is in Kitantalo parish, Tirinyi Sub-County of Kibuku District, and Tirinyi police arrived at the scene an hour later.

Since then the family has been living with friends and neighbors – in intense fear for their lives, he said. Among the threats he has received, one text message read, “The burning of the house was just warning. If you continue…

The former cell of Asia Bibi is now being used to hold another Christian woman in Pakistan.

Asia Bibi was freed earlier this month and joined her family in Canada. She spent some eight years in a Pakistani prison on blasphemy charges and faced the death penalty. She was exonerated in 2018.

Her former cell in Pakistan at the Multan Women Jail is now being used for Shagufta Kausar, a 45-year-old mother and wife.

Kausar and her husband were both condemned to death by a trial court in February 2014. A prayer leader at a local mosque accused Kausar’s husband, Shafqat Masih, of sending blasphemous text messages from his wife’s cell phone with her “connivance.”

The couple was arrested, and a mob surrounded the local police station, demanding the husband and wife be handed to them to be killed.

Since the arrest, the couple has been waiting five years for the Lahore High Court to hear their appeal.

“The couple is innocent,” their lawyer Saif-ul Malook said, “and there is no legal substantial evidence available that proves they actually texted those messages.”

Malook also represented Bibi.

“Every legal case requires a different strategy and I have decided a different strategy for this case as per the facts and relevant laws,” Malook told CT.

“Sending false persecution news [in the West] does not help the Pakistani Christians…

In a commencement speech delivered at Liberty University Saturday, Vice President Mike Pence told thousands of students that they should “be ready” for an increase in personal attacks on their faith.

In a bid to encourage and equip young Christians to live out their calling in our modern secular culture, Pence warned that, increasingly, believers will be asked to “tolerate things” that go completely against their personal faith and spiritual convictions.

“You’re going to be asked to bow down to the idols of the popular culture,” he explained, noting that it has become “acceptable and even fashionable to ridicule and discriminate against people of faith.”

Highlighting the absurdity of the secular left and its militant opposition to open Christian expression, Pence referenced the case lodged against the Little Sisters of the Poor by the previous administration.

This case involved a group of Catholic nuns who sought exemption from an Obama-era mandate that would have required them to provide birth control – something that would have infringed on their religious beliefs.

“It wasn’t all that long ago that the last administration brought the full weight of the federal government against the Little Sisters of the Poor merely because that group of nuns refused to provide a health plan that violated their deeply held…

Another church in Burkina Faso, West Africa was targeted by terrorists this Sunday leaving six dead.

According to Christianity Today, six Christians were killed in a Burkina Faso Catholic church in the town of Dablo after people on motorcycles raided the church, executed five worshippers and the priest and then set the church on fire.

Reportedly, the motorcyclists entered the church during the Sunday morning Mass and opened fire on the churchgoers.

According to the Burkina Information Agency, the attackers “ordered the women and children to clear the scene before executing six men, including the priest.”

According to Reuters, the men also looted several stores in the town, including the pharmacy, before taking off.

This is the second attack in this area since Easter that have had nearly identical M.Os.

As Christian Headlines previously reported, six Christians were executed in a West African Protestant church on April 28, after they refused to convert to Islam.

Several armed motorcyclists opened fire on the Assemblies of God church in a Burkina Faso killing six people, including the church’s long-time pastor Pierre Ouédraogo, after they refuse to deny their Christian faith.

According to the Associated Press, no one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack in April, though violent Islamist extremism has increasingly become a problem in…