Executive Director Timothy Head: Faith and Freedom Coalition Focuses on Life, Marriage, Traditional Family, and Religious Liberty

Executive Director Timothy Head: Faith and Freedom Coalition Focuses on Life, Marriage, Traditional Family, and Religious Liberty

Live from Music Row, Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the National Executive Director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition Timothy Head to the newsmaker line to discuss their four key issues going forward in 2023.

Leahy: We are joined on our newsmaker line right now by our very good friend Timothy Head, national executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition. Good morning, Tim. Thanks so much for joining us.

Head: And good morning to you. How are things in Nashville today?

Leahy: Things in Nashville are great. You’re based down in Georgia. How are things in Georgia today?

Head: Well, it’s a little chilly, but that’s because we enjoy actual four seasons here. So not complaining. And we’ll start queuing up for the Masters here in probably just a few weeks.

Leahy: Are you a golf fan?

Head: I am, and I’m a golf enthusiast. I am reluctant to ever even call myself a true golfer, but we’ll leave that for another day.

Leahy: Yes, the Masters is quite an event down there. Let’s talk about the Faith and Freedom Coalition. You’ve been the executive director for some time. Ralph Reed set it up, what, 15 years ago or so?

Head: The end of this year is year 14. We’re almost turning the quarter into year 15. I’ve been here about eight and a half years and, you know, seeing a lot of, first of all, growth across the country, but then also a lot of really great successes on either the political side or the legislative side.

Sometimes we like to say that we’re working on public policy from a biblical worldview in a constitutional framework. And I think more and more we’re seeing good things happening across the country on that front.

Leahy: Yes, it’s interesting because the founders of our constitutional republic and of our country mostly had a biblical worldview. Even those who were, I don’t know, Agnostic or Deists at the time. We’ve lost that, haven’t we, in the country?

Head: We’ve certainly lost that prevailing sentiment. So the remnants are absolutely still there. You still see a lot of it there in Nashville and in Tennessee. So I would say they’re probably on the state level.

There are about 39, 30, 31 states that I actually am pretty encouraged by the makeup of their either governorship or their state legislature. D.C. is another matter. That place is a bit of a foreign country of sorts these days.

Leahy: I’m guessing neither California nor New York is on that list of states in which you are encouraged.

Head: Surprisingly enough, they’re not. Michael. (Leahy laughs)

Leahy: No, not at all. And increasingly of late, Michigan looks to be along those lines as well. You got a Democrat governor now for the first time in 40 years. Democrats control both Houses of the state legislature. They are going in the wrong direction there in Michigan, it seems to me.

Head: That’s right. In recent years, I would say you’re right. Michigan is one that we’ve kind of lost some bearings there. But thankfully, I would say places like Missouri and Iowa, Ohio, and now Florida. And I’ll tell you whose next step on the list is North Carolina.

There actually are some states that are trending the correct way the right way. And then you got a couple of places like Michigan where we still have our work cut out for us there.

Leahy: Speaking of Iowa, we just launched The Iowa Star last week, kind of a special edition to focus on the upcoming year from today, Iowa Caucuses. The GOP will still be first in the nation, but not so much for the Democrats. Talk about the national agenda of the Faith and Freedom Coalition. What are your key focuses these days?

Head: On the policy front, the kind of classic four issues that drive a lot of so-called social conservatives are issues surrounding life, marriage, and traditional family, religious liberty, and for a lot of religious conservatives, the state of Israel. So those are four key issues that we work really around the clock on.

And then we also work a lot on issues related to education, to our justice system, human trafficking and supporting victims there, and then also to immigration, both restoring a rule of law and having a solid, sound border.

 But then also being able to deal with innocent people that are caught up in that web and making sure that religious minorities and vulnerable populations are seen to effectively. So we kind of work on eight or nine different issues pretty consistently, either on the federal level or on states across the country.

Leahy: On the education level, I look at our K-12 public education system, and I think it’s an absolute disaster. They’re not teaching kids to read or write or do arithmetic, but they are trying to indoctrinate them into various LGBTQ transgender, anti-American Ideologies.

It seems to me that a couple of states are doing pretty well, though, in pushing back, particularly as it relates to choice, parental choice, and vouchers. Arizona and Iowa seem to be leading the way. What are your thoughts on that and what other states do you think can follow in that direction?

Head: I think you’re hitting the nail on the head. I think that a bunch of people coming out of 2020, was a major wake-up call for a bunch of parents across the country. And frankly, even people who may not even have kids in school systems anymore, were like, wait, what is my kid having to learn in a Zoom class from home?

And they’re learning anything but reading, writing, and arithmetic. And so I would say West Virginia and Arizona were kind of the cutting edge. But now we’ve seen Iowa just in the last about three weeks, take a major surge in the right direction. Governor Kim Reynolds and the legislators there have done a great job, and as has the leadership in Utah, also doing great things.

I would say Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia have kind of taken a move in the direction of a kind of education savings accounts, which are a decent kind of alternative. But Texas is in the middle right now of probably the biggest and most hopeful, say, school choice move really in Texas’s history.

We’re seeing kind of good is begetting better on state fronts. You kind of see that vision and leadership tend to kind of stir one another on in issues like this. And so, really, over the next two years, I think we’re going to see a lot of major victories on this front.

Leahy: So this is interesting. I’d like to get your reaction to talking about leadership here in Tennessee. You’re probably aware of this. Speaker of the House Cam Sexton has proposed the idea that the state of Tennessee should tell the federal Department of Education that the $1.8 billion that they want to provide to the state, the federal government can take that money and put it where the sun doesn’t shine.

I suppose you could say, right. And they don’t want it because with money comes strings. Your thoughts on that bold proposal from the Speaker of the House Cam Sexton here in Tennessee?

Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:

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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Reporwith Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Timothy Head” by Council on Criminal Justice. Background Photo “Church” by Pixabay.

 

TN State Director of Faith and Freedom Coalition Praises State Senate for Passing SB 1, Which Prohibits Gender Mutilation of Children Younger Than 18

TN State Director of Faith and Freedom Coalition Praises State Senate for Passing SB 1, Which Prohibits Gender Mutilation of Children Younger Than 18

Live from Music Row, Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Aaron Gulbransen, director of Tennessee’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, in studio to discuss the passing of SB 1 in the State Senate which would not allow gender transition surgeries to children under the age of 18.

Leahy: In studio with us, the official guest host of The Tennessee Star Report and the Tennessee state executive director for the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Aaron Gulbransen. Well, Aaron, this is your time. The Tennessee General Assembly is in session and you are up there walking through the halls of the state Capitol talking to state legislators about the priorities of the Faith and Freedom Coalition. What are your big priorities right now, and where do they stand in the Tennessee General Assembly?

Gulbransen: Of course, a lot of news has been made over the last few months over SB 1, which is the anti-transgender mutilation bill which is sponsored by House Majority Leader on the House side William Lambert and Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson.

Leahy: The key to that bill is if you’re under 18, you cannot have any parts of your body removed (I’ll put it that way) or have any puberty blockers that will kind of…

Gulbransen: Yes. It passed the State Senate yesterday.

Leahy: Oh, it did!

Gulbransen: Which is great.

Leahy: It passed the State Senate yesterday.

Gulbransen: So now we got to go through the House.

Leahy: Where does that stand in the House?

Gulbransen: It’ll pass. It’s going to pass. That’s SB3.

Leahy: Will the governor sign it?

Gulbransen: I haven’t seen him object to it. I can’t see if he objects to this, I’m going to go buy a lotto ticket.

Leahy: And by the way, the issue there is, and I think actually both Jack Johnson and Cam Sexton were smart in the way they framed it because they put the age at 18. Eighteen matters because that seems to be literally a no-brainer. A lot of people argue that it should be higher, 21, 26. They make good arguments because the brain is still developing.

But politically, if you can vote at 18, if you can drink in some states at 18, it’s hard to make the argument for the higher case. And in Oklahoma, a legislator started out at 26, and he backed down to age 21. So I think that’s a good starting point.

Gulbransen: Yes, that’s a very high-profile bit of legislation we’ve been supporting the entire time. This year, Senator Leader Johnson in the Senate has really come out with a lot of good bits of legislation. A bill that I’m waiting to see, I’ve had conversations on HB 0800, and on the Senate side is SB 0425. I believe if you were to count everything all together, you have over 3,000 bills between the House and the Senate.

Leahy: What do those bills mean?

Gulbransen: A lot of them are joint bits of legislation. But anyway, this is a conscience bill when it comes to religious objections raised to things in health and human services and that sort of thing. But we got a caption bill there. I’m waiting for the actual language to be put in.

Leahy: Tell everybody what a caption bill is.

Gulbransen: A caption bill is essentially a placeholder while the real legislation is being worked on.

Leahy: Yes, it’s a category and there’s a timeline. The timeline is coming, gone now for this session.

Gulbransen: But pay attention to this legislation by Representative Jason Zachary, who I’m very impressed with and of course, very impressed with Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson. There is legislation that I and my cohort, Aaron Spradlin of the Mission America Foundation, as well as a board member of the Tennessee Faith and Freedom Coalition, are working on that deals with enabling new tools to fight child human trafficking in the state. I would say pay attention and stand by on that.

Leahy: So let’s talk about that particular bill and Jason Zachary. Since I first met Jason, we held an event at the Blount County Library in Maryville back in the Beat Lamar days, which would be back in 2013, 2014.

The first I met him, he was running for Congress then and didn’t win, but went on to serve in the state legislature. This is his third term, maybe the fourth term in the state legislature. He’s turned out to be quite a leader, it seems to me.

Gulbransen: I would encourage anybody if you’ve got a chance to go spend a few days at the General Assembly and just walk the halls and try to meet with a few of them because one of the privileges we have is you get to see in my position and in your position, you get to see who the workhorses are.

You get to see who the show horses are. You get to see the people that are thoughtful elected officials. There are people that you could disagree with, but you realize that they’re thoughtful. There’s respect for a particular issue. But I’ve been particularly impressed with getting to know Representative Zachary, been very impressed with our friend Jody Barrett, what he’s been doing in the General Assembly.

Leahy: Jody Barrett, first term. He’s from Dickson. And he went to high school with John Rich, the performer, who’s been in studio here with us. He’s an attorney as well. When you become a state legislator, I think if you have a level of maturity, you think, okay, I’m here, and I’m going to play sort of the long game.

I’m going to approach this, treat my colleagues with respect, make my arguments, win or lose. If you lose, go on, play for the next year. I think that’s a good strategy. Not every state legislature adopts that approach.

Gulbransen: No, I mean, just Gloria Johnson out of the eastern part of the state, out of Knoxville. She’s a far-left liberal communist. (Leahy laughs) I don’t mince words when it comes to this garbage. Let’s just call it what it is.

Leahy: Gloria Johnson is a far-left liberal.

Gulbransen: She’s competing yearly for the title of worst legislation. We should come up with that, like the Razzies for legislation.

Leahy: You want to do that? We could do that.

Gulbransen: The Lefties, we’ll call it.

Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:


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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Reporwith Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Background Photo “Tennessee Senate” by Tennessee General Assembly.