“Top DOJ officials,” we are told in a Fox News report, “say they are looking into whether the agitators who disrupted services at St. Paul's Cities Church on Sunday violated the FACE Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act.”
Cities Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota is Baptist, a strong proponent of marriage (“We believe that marriage joins one man and one woman in a single, exclusive, lifelong union and that God designed and directs sexual intimacy exclusively for one man and one woman married to each other), also regards sexual immorality as sinful and abhorrent (“Any form of sexual immorality, such as adultery, fornication, homosexuality, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, pornography, or any attempt to change or disagree with one’s biological sex is sinful and offensive to God.”) The church is also largely white. Among cultural anarchists in the amusingly irrelevant 21st century, such quaint religious precepts are considered verboten.
“The FACE Act”, we are assured, “makes it a federal crime, with potentially steep fines and jail time, to use or threaten to use force to ‘injure, intimidate, or interfere’ with a person seeking reproductive health services, or with a person lawfully trying to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship (emphasis mine). It also prohibits intentional property damage to a facility providing reproductive health services or a place of religious worship. The Ku Klux Klan Act makes it a federal crime for individuals to deny citizens their civil rights.”
Across the nation just now, leftist Attorneys General — Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Connecticut Attorney General William Tong — are at pains to deny that their states look favorably on what have been called “sanctuary cities,” this despite previous declarations in support of sanctuary cities. A sanctuary city may best be described as that portion of a state to which border busting, unvetted illegal aliens may flee to escape interrogation or deportation by federal authorities. Following deportation, a financial burden softened by a promise of transportation payment by the Trump administration, the unprocessed border jumpers are encouraged to reapply for reentry to the United States.
The sanctuary state provides sanctuary from congressionally authorized federal laws by instructing undocumented immigrants in sanctuary jurisdictions not to cooperate with federal authorities in the apprehension or questioning of such lawbreakers and by restricting actionable evidence sharing among federal and state enforcement officers.
The word “sanctuary’, it has not often been noted, is derived from religious presuppositions. The word first appeared in the early 14th century and indicated, according to etymologists, a "consecrated place, building set apart for holy worship; holy or sacred object, from Anglo-French sentuarie, Old French saintuaire ‘sacred relic, holy thing; reliquary, sanctuary,’ from Late Latin sanctuarium ‘a sacred place, shrine’ (especially the Hebrew Holy of Holies in the temple in Jerusalem; see sanctum); also ‘a private room’ in Medieval Latin; also ‘a church, cemetery; right of asylum,’ from Latin sanctus ‘holy’ (see saint (n.)” Among most Christian sects, the sanctuary of a church is still considered inviolable.
Non-religious sanctuary jurisdictions are not “consecrated places.” They contain no “holy or sacred objects” or persons. Chief executives of various states, legislators, even judges, are generally not regarded as sacred, despite the protestation of some secular authorities stuffed with quasi-religious righteousness. Political institutions are not churches, but some do provide a secularized “right of asylum” from federal law enforcement officers.
Having previously supported the definancing of its own police authorities, officials in Minnesota now strongly favor the disbanding of ICE. Pending its abolition, police officials in anti-ICE states have been told not to cooperate with federal policing authorities.
The Face Act — not to mention the Constitution’s First Amendment — was recently trampled in the dust by a crowd of secular zealots clamoring for the secular equivalent of sanctuary in the case of lawbreakers who had entered the country illegally during former President Joe Biden’s administration. ICE, the nation’s U.S. Customs and Enforcement Agency, has been chasing down and apprehending what they call “the worst of the worst” of unvetted migrants who entered the country after former President Joe Biden opened the nation’s illegal entry sluice gates.
The crew protesting the religious service in St. Paul's Cities Church invaded the sanctuary of the church to declaim against ICE and so violated a legitimate religious sanctuary. A loud bearded guy — the Abby Hoffman of the invaders — seemed to be emotionally put off by what he regarded as the congregation’s heterodox Christianity. Unfortunately, Mr. Beard and others caught the eye of Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is forecasting prosecutions.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has argued the anti-ICE church disrupters did not violate the FACE Act, and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey wants all ICE agents in his state sent home. Good luck with that.
Here in Connecticut, state Attorney General William Tong is protesting the incivility of some ill-mannered internet commentators. Tong favors a bill known as state House Bill 6857 — An Act Concerning the Attorney General’s Recommendations Regarding Social Media and Minors that would, according to a Hartford Courant account, “place restrictions on social media for those under 18.” Tong’s plea for social civility was followed by a few standard anti-Trump thunderclaps. Trump, Tong said “…let Elon Musk and his army of hackers and wannabe storm troopers tear up the federal government.”
Republican leader in the state Senate Vince Candelora responded, with a polite bow in Tong’s direction, “I share the attorney general’s concern about dehumanizing language in politics and in social media. But a 20 minute speech attacking President Trump and lecturing Republicans isn’t a serious effort to bring people together… until the attorney general and Democrats acknowledge their own role in poisoning our political discourse — stoking the flames since day one of Donald Trump’s first presidency — these calls for unity will ring hollow.” Politely, Candelora added, “After a year of speeches about ‘protecting democracy,’ I trust the attorney general understands that any solution must not infringe on citizen’s First Amendment rights.”
