"To those who would crush religious freedom, our message is plain: you may jail your believers. You may close their churches, confiscate their Bibles, and harass their rabbis and priests, but you will never destroy the love of God and freedom that burns in their hearts. They will triumph over you." These remarks were in President Ronald Reagan's speech to the National Religious Broadcasters on January 31, 1981, during his second week in office as president and a couple months before he was almost assassinated.
Undoubtedly, President Reagan was mostly speaking to the communist dictatorships in the world at the height of the Cold War. However, if he was president this year, he could well be speaking to Canada and Sweden, etc. which have thrown pastors in jail for preaching the Bible from their pulpits on politically-incorrect topics.
America is quite close to emulating these countries, so President Reagan could just as well be warning the ACLU-types and other left-wingers in America whose ultimate goal is to establish similar laws as Sweden, Canada, etc. using such laws as so-called "hate crime" laws to stifle religious freedom. Indeed, the United States Congress is very close to passing such a "hate crime" law which Barack Obama has promised to sign into law.
This week the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) capitulated and allowed a graduating student, Christina Popa, to give thanks to Jesus in her personal statement. She was illegally and unconstitutionally threatened by her school's Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology and she was told that she could not mention "Jesus" during her graduation speech.
UCLA Professor of Biology, Dr. Pamela Hurley, actually took any reference to "Jesus" or "Jesus Christ" out of Christina Popa's graduation remarks. She told the graduate student that "UCLA is a public university where the doctrine of separation of church and state is observed."
For many decades now, left-wingers -- especially at the ACLU and in the federal judiciary -- have been deceitfully using a letter by Thomas Jefferson to the Baptist Church at Danbury, Connecticut which mentions the phrase "separation of church and state" to eliminate God from the public square. President Jefferson would be absolutely appalled as to the lengths his party has gone to squelch religious freedom in America.
However, as President Reagan said in his January 1981 remarks, those who are against religious freedom, in this case, the ACLU and left-wingers such as Professor Pamela Hurley, and countless other liberals, "will never destroy the love of God and freedom that burns in their hearts. They will triumph over you." Christians and others who love religious freedom, such as UCLA graduate student Christina Popa, will never let the ACLU and others triumph over them.