Roger Marsh: Well, Welcome to back to Family Talk, the listener supported broadcast division of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. I'm Roger Marsh. Whether you listen to Family Talk every day, or you just came across the show for the first time, thanks so much for making us a part of your day. I'm so glad that you've joined us as we have a special and encouraging program for you today. It's the second half of a conversation featuring our co-host Dr. Tim Clinton and Brad Dacus, president and founder of a legal defense organization called Pacific Justice Institute. If you missed day one of their conversation, remember you can find it by going to drjamesdobson.org and selecting the broadcast tab. Pacific Justice Institute also called PJI consistently fights for religious and civil Liberty for churches, parents, and not-for-profit Christian groups. They have offices all across the country and they work with hundreds of affiliate attorneys and defense of parental rights, religious freedom, and other civil liberties, and get this, their services are absolutely free.
They are dedicated to providing their clients with the legal help that they need free of charge. Now, before we get into the body of the program, let me tell you once again about our guest, Brad Dacus is the founder and president of Pacific justice Institute. He earned his JD from the University of Texas School of Law and coordinated religious freedom and parental rights cases throughout the Western states before founding Pacific Justice Institute in 1997. Brad can be heard weekly on the Dacus Report on more than 700 radio stations across the country and can be seen daily at hischannel.com. He's also appeared on multiple national outlets, including the CBS Evening News, CNN and Fox News. Now, without any further ado here, once again is Dr. Tim Clinton and Brad Dacus on today's edition of Family Talk.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Brad, welcome back to Family Talk. What an amazing conversation we had yesterday. I love the linkage of understanding now why, people argue about Christians and politics, but when you start seeing the politics matter, because policies matter and policies is what this is all about. And policies are linked back to people. Everyday people who are trying to scratch out a living and make their way through a pretty tough life and man are we up against it. But Brad, help us again with just kind of that 36,000 foot view of the why Pacific Justice Institute again exists and who it exists for?
Brad Dacus: Yeah. We at Pacific Justice Institute, we exist to defend religious freedom, parental rights, the sanctity of human life. And we're unique in that we don't just cherry pick high profile cases. We work hard to make sure that everyone gets help, that no one's left on the side of the road when it comes to these issues. And we do it all without charge. We pick up all the costs. We also have a huge footprint to be able to do that. We have more offices coast to coast than any other organization of our kind, 16 states. We have 20 offices and attorneys from Miami to Boston, to Seattle, to Southern Orange County and everywhere in between.
Dr. Tim Clinton: And your services are free.
Brad Dacus: Exactly. And we're also very broad in what we take on and what we handle. I know yesterday we mentioned defending as far as child protective services and providing emergency counsel to parents who have social workers knocking on their door, threatening to take their kids, not knowing what to do, not knowing whether they should sign this document, which often is a surrendering of their rights. So, we provide those with emergency assistant when they call our main number and it's no longer working hours or it's on a weekend. There's a part of the message that says, if this is dealing child protective services and you're in need of assistance, and this is an emergency, call this number and that number is actually my personal cell number, because this is my expertise among our team of attorneys. We also get involved in addition to CPS, we also actually get involved in and take on religious asylum cases.
So, like for example, a young girl comes to Christ. She lives in Northern Nigeria and she used to be Muslim, her family's Muslim. Her family tells her you either renounce your Christian faith and come back to Islam or you will be killed. And the uncle is the one who does it. That's a part of the tradition in a good part of Islam. So, she flees to Southern Nigeria and then gets a plane to the United States. Well, then we have to defend, she needs to be defended, or she's going to be sent back to Nigeria or the pastor in Bangladesh. The other co-pastor was already murdered after receiving a warning note from radical Islam. This other pastor then gets a note after the first one's killed that this one has a wife in children and his wife and kids are on the line as well. He flees to Cambodia, then the United States and we go to bat for him and we protect him from being sent back to certain death.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Brad, there were a number of cases here in our Homeland that caught my attention that I think our listeners would really like to hear you talk about. I'm going to start out by going up to a case in Oregon. I know this would fire Dr. Dobson up. It's about indoctrinating our kids. The Pacific Justice Institute recently defended two teachers in Oregon who were fired for revealing what was being taught in sex ed in schools. Tell us about that case. What happened there?
Brad Dacus: Yeah, it's interesting. The case is in Grants Pass, Oregon. And these two teachers were really concerned about what was going on and also about policies. So, they decided, they didn't say anything to the students. They're very respectful to be professional, but they still want to get their message out. So, on their own time from their own homes, they put out a website or web messaging on the internet, talking about what they think are good policies that should be adopted. Among those policies for example, is a policy to respect the conscience of teachers. That they shouldn't be forced to use pronouns that violate their conscience when it comes to children who have confusion issues. They should be able to use alternatives like last names. Because of that, someone saw this on the internet and they reported this to the administration, this government institution for the school district.
And because of that, they were investigated like criminals. And then they were fired. They contacted us at Pacific Justice Institute. We didn't hesitate. We have filed a lawsuit after several months, we got their jobs back. But we're still continuing in the litigation because the school district still doesn't get it. They still don't know what they did was wrong. And I'll just spell it out plain and simple, no person working for the United States government, including public school teachers, should ever have as a condition of employment to work for the government, that they have to agree with everything the government does.
And only say things that are positive in favor of the government or their government agency. That may be fine for communist China. That may be fine for Russia or Cuba or Venezuela. That's not fine for a nation that has a constitution and a first amendment to respect the rights of every individual, whether we work for the government or not to be able to express ourselves on our own time, in our own place, according to our own conscience and convictions.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Yeah. It's just amazing to me, this battle that we're seeing over parental rights, this intrusion, it's a war zone. And I think we're going to hear a lot more coming down that way. Let's jump to the vaccine mandate issue. I saw a number of cases from Trader Joe's. There was an employee who was fired, requesting religious accommodation for taking the vaccine. You guys in September of 2021 file a lawsuit on behalf of the LA Police Department. I saw where a lot of law enforcement are losing their jobs.
Brad Dacus: Thousands.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Thousands. And we've even seen military being released and their debate over whether not they're going to get an honorable discharge which is shocking to me. But what's the precedent out there where's this going?
Brad Dacus: We at Pacific Justice Institute, we're not about being pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine. Now I personally have very strong convictions. I do my homework, I do my research. But we're about freedom. And this whole vaccine issue with the COVID virus has opened the door for government tyranny, that if we allow it to take its full footing and let government get away with this, it's going to be a nightmare as a precedent for government control over other areas of our life moving forward. That's why everyone who appreciates freedom, liberty and our constitutional rights should take this with a serious, serious concern.
Dr. Tim Clinton: The issue of face masks for kids, I think falls right in line with this whole thing. A lot of school districts battling over this and states are waring over it. Same line of thought here, isn't it?
Brad Dacus: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Clinton: By the way, research is showing that mental health concerns for kids and even speech issues, et cetera, from wearing these masks are just going straight up.
Brad Dacus: It's child abuse. And I'm not saying that's just because that's my feelings. I'm just looking at the numbers, the stats. Children are in 2020, if they got the flu, they're more likely to die from the flu than if they got the COVID. So, the COVID is actually less dangerous to a child in terms of fatality than the flu. It doesn't protect the children to force them to have an experimental vaccine much less than it also doesn't protect them to wear a mask when they don't need to. What we do know about the mask, it does lead, and of course your background and with psychology I think is more formal than mine. So, but the studies show that it does cause depression, a lack of healthy peer interaction, difficulty in terms of social skills, communication. But more, even more basic to that are the rights of parents. We had a case down in Miami where Governors DeSantis of Florida came out with a mandate saying parents have the final say whether their children have to wear a mask.
Well then Palm Beach School District decided to ignore that and say, no. All these 11,000 plus parents who said they don't want their child wearing a mask, they have to wear a mask. Doesn't matter. They must wear a mask. And we at Pacific Justice Institute, we don't get angry over these things. We just take action. So, we filed a lawsuit and that school district has completely back pedaled. Those parents' rights are respected. But we still have other places like California, blue states that are still being dogmatic about it as we speak. In some school districts where children are still having to wear a mask, little children, five year olds having to wear a mask. We have a case matter down in San Diego, it was a preschool at a church. So, it was a church ministry preschool two year olds, three year olds, four year olds. That preschool says, we're going to let parents decide. These kids are not at risk. A public health officer comes in, shuts them down permanently. We have filed a lawsuit. We're representing them and that's ongoing.
But this is actually used as a pretext to target ministries, Christian daycare centers versus secular non-Christian daycare centers, which are not being challenged even though many of them have the same policies of not requiring kids to wear a mask. So, it's actually being used as a pretext to actually attack ministries as well.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Well, it gets interesting because go to the next level of this and that is the cancel culture piece. That if you take a position and even state your position potentially online, you may get your account shut down, certainly censored and it's happening. And people saying, no, it's not. Yes it is happening. And this censorship is real.
Brad Dacus: Yeah. Over 90% of all communications that take place, take place via the internet. When our founding fathers came up with our first amendment, it was protect free speech in the public square. Well, the new public square is the internet. Those who control the internet control communications, which also controls who gets elected. It is the greatest threat of tyranny that our nation has faced, I believe in our history, in terms of maintaining the integrity, even of elections much less the ability to communicate and express ourselves. So, this is a huge challenge. It's not just a few people who have been taken off. I know countless numbers of pastors, ministries doing great work have been booted off because their messaging does not agree with the radical left and your messaging doesn't have to be extreme to be taken off.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Brad, I mean, if I'm listening right now, I'm thinking, okay. Well, hey Brad, I want to hear your thoughts on what happened in Canada. You have all these preachers, pastors up there who want to take a position and they have sincerely held religious beliefs on sexuality and they're getting canceled. And even hey, somebody, big brother's watching everything they're doing and they're knocking on the door. And people say, that's coming, that's coming. What are we doing to push back at this level? Because it's like big tech. We can't get our hands around it. They can do anything you want. They shut down president of the United States. They make a decision on whether or not Putin is on or whoever else, you know what I'm saying?
Brad Dacus: One great thing about our history. And I give Teddy Roosevelt the credit here, is we've dealt with capitalistic tyranny before. Now I'm not against capitalism, I'm for capitalism. But one of the flaws of capitalism can be monopolies. Well, when you have a monopoly of communications-
Dr. Tim Clinton: That's what's going on.
Brad Dacus: ... and thoughts and ideas, that's the worst kind of monopoly we can have. Early in our nation's history in the early 1900's under President Teddy Roosevelt, we had dropped antitrust statutes and laws that had a big impact on maintaining integrity, non-monopoly, so we had a fair competing system in terms of economics. In the same way, we have to maintain that same fair competing system with ideas and thoughts and convictions. That is why I am very optimistic, especially after the midterm election and then in 2024, we're going to see the people in Congress and hopefully in the White House that will be adopting legislation to bring forth similar antitrust, if you will, reform.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Yeah, because currently there's a loophole that they're getting through.
Brad Dacus: Right. Initially it was interesting when the law was originally passed, it had protections. It had empowerments for social media. And at the same time it had restrictions and limitations in terms of what they could do, what they couldn't say. It was a nice balance and that's how it was passed. But then the Supreme Court, they went ahead and looked at this and they maintain the part that gives them this tremendous freedom and liberty in terms of excluding and saying things. But it took out the protective measures and ruling that those were against free speech. So, we ended up with a monster giving a blank check of censorship and control over just a few individuals who control internet, expression, and thought.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Yeah. You know, at the end of the day, Brad, what we're talking about is just individual liberties. It's all about freedom. It's like people joking and saying the mantra of the day is Braveheart's, freedom cry. But at the core, that's what we are talking about. And the intrusion and control and insanity is, this isn't about, of the people, by the people, for the people. We're drifting here. And boy, we've got to get back to center.
Brad Dacus: Yeah. Along with communications as we mentioned earlier is the workplace. I have never seen such an enormous purging of people of faith because of what they believe in the workplace. Not just the private sector, but even worse in the government sector. So, we are extremely busy working on these cases. We have a professor, Eric Thompson, who is fired from Moreno Valley Community College. He was twice voted faculty of the year among his peers. He was fired because as a sociology professor, he decided to promote critical thinking on the issue of marriage and same-sex marriage. And because he did that, he was fired by the diversity committee. Now this is George Orwell take two. The diversity committee said, "There's only one viewpoint you can mention in the classroom about marriage. And because you promoted critical thinking, you're fired." Well, we're representing him and we have taken on and represented professors just like him.
And we do so without charge across the country because it's becoming more and more difficult for universities to maintain the open marketplace of ideas. And most of them now have become the opposite. The most oppressive part of society and most censoring part of society has become what was once the open marketplace of ideas, which are universities and colleges.
Dr. Tim Clinton: So, bringing this all back to center and the Pacific Justice Institute, if I'm out there and I'm listening, and I'm thinking about our conversation of the last two days, I'm saying, you know what? I know some parents who are struggling with their kids and who are fighting a school board. I know some parents that people are threatening to take their kids away because of what they believe. We're not talking about abuse here and stuff like that. I'm talking about just people who have beliefs about how they want to raise their kids and more. Those kind of things become really important here because we want to battle back up through that judicial branch to bring some sanity to the modern day insanity that we see all over the internet.
Brad Dacus: Yeah. There's several takeaways that people I think could actually do. Some things that are actually in their realm of that can make a real difference. One is to let their pastor in their church be made aware of our church finds its voice.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Well, we need to pray for pastors too, that they would become more emboldened and bold.
Brad Dacus: Yes. And be aware of what their rights are to express themselves and not to be... But legally they have tremendous freedom. They can have voter registration of their churches. We are willing to work and help them all, all our work is without charge and we have a whole division Pastor Pinamord is there ready to work with them. That's something they can do. We also have resources, spelling things out in detail as to what they can do. For example, we have a 12 point resource on how to deal with social workers when they knock on your door. It's really clear. 12 steps how to deal with CPS. We have other resources like for business owner, and they want to know what their rights are to live their faith.
We have a two part training, video, faith in the workplace on how they can legally evangelize their employees, their customers, their community, and overcome pressures from the outside to be silenced. We also have resource reclaim your school. It talks about strategies to practically and legally evangelize public schools and a four part different models, four different ways that churches can start church homeschool co-ops right now, as we speak. In all our resources, we not only provide free counsel and assistance to help them, but we also provide them free legal representation and protection if there's ever a challenge or sued. We've got their back anywhere where the American flag is flying. We're willing to do that. And we do it. We've been doing it since 1997. By God's grace we intend to continue to do that in the years ahead.
Dr. Tim Clinton: When we opened the broadcast, Brad, I talked about how it's been a pretty tough time. Now it's been a really tough time for all Americans, people around the globe and specifically for Christians. It's a confusing time. There is frustration. There's a lot of angst, fear, anger, and the truth it's been, let me use a mental health word. It's been pretty traumatic. And what happens in trauma is trauma makes you feel unsafe. It also works to silence you, to take away your voice. And this cancel culture thing has pushed to silence and shame and stigmatize good people. But silence, meaning to ignore these things, it's not an option anymore. They say the antidote to trauma is relationship. The only way we win this thing is we do it collect together as the church of Jesus Christ. We press in.
Brad Dacus: What's interesting about churches is that some churches closed their doors and never opened them up. They just went under. However, many churches are seeing a very exciting revitalization, if you will. My church in California, I'd say about 30% of our people have moved out of state. Yet our church is still growing, people attending church that have never attended before. They realize there's something empty out there. They realize there's got to be more to life than what they have. They felt like they were in control before. Now they don't feel like they're in control. This is a fantastic opportunity for outreach for helping address people and the issues that they're dealing with. Oftentimes also we can get discouraged as believers, I think. Because we think we see the results, we've become results oriented. And in a free market economy I get that. Business is very results oriented. But spiritually we're not to be results oriented. Results is a God thing. God is worthy of all glory and praise. He's the one who decides whether it's going to be in season or out of season in terms of the results and sharing the gospel.
Dr. Tim Clinton: These are unprecedented times. Difficult times, but God's at work and He's at work through organizations like the Pacific Justice Institute. And if people want to locate you, find out more, maybe they have a case or something they'd like to share with you. How would they go about doing that?
Brad Dacus: Yeah. Our resources are there. They can sign up to get our legal insider newsletter. And also I do, I guest preach at a lot of churches who want me to come and guest preach at their church are preaching a second Timothy chapter three.
Dr. Tim Clinton: We got a lawyer in the pulpit. There we go.
Brad Dacus: Miracles happen. But if you like any of that resource or information, or we can ever help them, they simply go to our website. It's pji.org. P for Pacific, J for justice, I for institute.org, pji.org.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Our special guest again today has been Brad Dacus of the Pacific Justice Institute. Been a delightful couple of days together, Brad. Thank you for joining us. And on behalf of Dr. Dobson, his wife, Shirley, and the entire Family Talk team, Brad, we salute you in the great work that's being done at the Pacific Justice Institute and pray that God would continue to use you, raise you up for such a time as this.
Brad Dacus: Thank you.
Roger Marsh: You've been listening to Family Talk. And that was the second and final installment of Dr. Tim Clinton's recent conversation with Brad Dacus. Brad is the president and founder of Pacific Justice Institute, a nonprofit legal defense organization, whose mission is to defend religious liberties and parental rights for those who cannot defend themselves. I'd like to remind you that PJI has offices coast to coast and coordinates hundreds of affiliate attorneys nationwide.
Thanks to generous donations Pacific Justice Institute's services are completely free and they are known for taking cases that other religious liberty firms won't handle. To learn more about PJI, Brad Dacus and what you can do to help defend civil liberties, go to drjamesdobson.org and select the tab that says today's broadcast. That's drjamesdobson.org and click the today's broadcast tab. Well, I'm Roger Marsh, and that's all the time we have for today. Thanks so much for listening and please join us again next time right here for another edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk.
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