I got a text from a state legislator on Wednesday that read, “How can a [U.S.] Supreme Court decision overrule our state Constitution? The [U.S.] Supreme Court has been wrong on Roe v Wade, Dred Scott and many others.” I get this question and others like it quite often. If you don't know the answer or if you mistakenly think the answer is "the Supremacy Clause," read on. The right answer is important because when you don’t know the rules of the game—which is what our state and federal constitutions are—then, in time, you will lose on every political issue you care about.

I remember well when, on a July 4th weekend in 1994, during my first campaign for the Tennessee Senate, I sat in the balcony of the church now known as Abba’s House for its patriotic service and quietly wept for the condition of my country. Twenty-seven years later, I look at the situation far differently.

It has been building for a couple of years, but it hit me like a ton of bricks on Wednesday that the basis for my pro-life advocacy for the last 20 plus years has been predominately upside down and backwards. Thankfully, that mistake will not be made in a friend of the court brief soon to be submitted to the United States Supreme Court on that issue that God led me to write.

Last month the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear a case involving Mississippi’s ban on all elective abortion from and after fifteen weeks gestation. The options before the Court in terms of whether to affirm Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v, Casey are limited. But the key for conservatives isn’t just the reversal of Roe, but the grounds on which it might be reversed. Seeing Roe and Casey only in terms of abortion is a huge mistake.

The Washington Post ran a story this week headlined, “The Supreme Court may toss Roe. But Congress can still preserve abortion rights.” Assuming Democrats can get the votes in the U.S. Senate to enact the abortion-protecting legislation that was filed, the pro-life community may find that it paved the way for them arguing that such a law is constitutional. 

Several years ago, June was designated as “Pride Month” by the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender community. That designation has since been picked up and celebrated by many in the business community and even many civil governing bodies. This morning I came to better understand the designation and its growing acceptance. In fact, here is why I think we should designate every day as “Pride Day” and make it for all of us.

An unexpected and unlikely friend of mine—one who is my polar opposite politically and theologically—recently said, after several years of observing me, something like this, “You’ve changed. You just seem a whole lot more at peace than you used to be.” I am. I hadn’t really given much thought to the truth of what my friend said, but I realized it was true simply from the way I now read newspapers (digitally).

It is good news that after ten months the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear an appeal from the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit holding unconstitutional Mississippi’s ban on all abortions after 15 weeks, except for those involving “medical emergencies” and “severe fetal abnormalities.” But the question the Court wants the parties to address is limited. Mississippi’s argument drives one nail in Roe’s coffin, but hundreds of state legislators could drive in the final nail. Here’s how.

The timing could not have been better if I had planned it. Last week was the National Day of Pray and, as required by law, President Biden issued a Proclamation calling on citizens to pray. He also gave a short address, but in neither did he use the word “God.” Franklin Graham and Catholic League president Bill Donohue both commented on the omission, but what would the inclusion of that word have really meant? Is there a valuable lesson Christians can learn from the omission?

The timing could not have coincided better if I had planned it. On Monday, the state House began a last-minute push to prevent public schools from teaching key components of Critical Race Theory (it passed Wednesday). On Tuesday, George W. Bush criticized “White Anglo-Saxon Protestantism” in politics. And on Wednesday, Ben Carson and Governor Kristi Noem published an editorial that advocates teaching “American values” to counter Critical Race Theory. Bush’s observation and the thrust of the editorial expose a blind spot in the thinking of some politically conservative Americans, particularly Christians, that will eventually give way to the push for Critical Race Theory.