Family Council

Watch: Charlie Kirk’s 2022 Educate Don’t Mandate Tour at the University of Arkansas

Sep 29, 2025Jerry CoxVideoVideo

In 2022, the late Charlie Kirk came to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville as part of Turning Point USA’s “Educate Don’t Mandate Tour.”

Charlie spent an hour and a half speaking to the crowd and answering questions from individuals — many of whom disagreed with him.

Toward the end of his remarks, Kirk told a high school student:

If you make the decision to be an open conservative in your life it will come with a cost. It is unavoidable. … You’re going to be bullied. You’ll be called names. You’ll be ridiculed … But what’s really important is are you developing the soul of an individual? And when you’re fighting for things that are virtuous, and you’re getting backlash for them, that’s a great thing for a young person to go through. In fact it’s an essential thing for a young person to go through.

Charlie Kirk was tragically murdered on September 10 at an event on a college campus in Utah.

You can watch Charlie Kirk’s 2022 University of Arkansas speech and Q&A session below.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

Family Council Joins Brief Urging Supreme Court to Uphold Fairness in Women’s Sports

Sep 29, 2025Jerry CoxLGBTFairness in Women's Sports, LGBT, Transgender

Earlier this month, Family Council joined dozens of state policy organizations and more than 200 state legislators — including Rep. Mary Bentley (R – Perryville) and Rep. Robin Lundstrum (R – Springdale) from Arkansas — in a legal brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold fairness in women’s sports in Idaho.

In 2020, Idaho passed the The Fairness in Women’s Sports Act to prevent male student athletes from competing against girls in women’s athletics at school. However, the ACLU sued claiming the act is unconstitutional, and a panel of judges from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the law.

On September 19, Family Council joined an amicus brief alongside 37 other pro-family organizations and 206 female state legislators in support of Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. The amicus brief highlights the opportunities that women’s athletics offer to students, and it urges the Supreme Court to uphold the law and protect women’s sports.

Letting men compete in women’s sports reverses 50 years of advancements for women and effectively erases women’s athletics.

It hampers their ability to compete for athletic scholarships and hurts their professional opportunities as adults. Concerned Women for America reports that more than 1,900 male athletes who claim to be female have taken first place medals away from women and girls.

Female swimmers, powerlifters, cyclists, sprinters, volleyball players, and others have seen their sports radically changed by men who claim to be women. In some sports, it can even be dangerous.

Most Americans agree that athletes should compete according to their biological sex — not their gender identity.

In 2021, Arkansas passed Act 461 by Sen. Missy Irvin (R — Mountain View) and Rep. Sonia Barker (R — Smackover) preventing male student athletes from competing against girls in women’s athletics at school. This good law protects fairness in women’s sports in Arkansas.

Earlier this year, President Trump signed an executive order protecting fairness in women’s sports under Title IX. That is good, but it’s important for our federal courts to uphold laws like Idaho’s that protect fairness in women’s sports. A bad court ruling in this case could jeopardize the good work that Arkansas and many other states have done in this area. That is why Family Council is pleased to join this amicus brief in support of Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, and we believe the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately uphold the law as constitutional.

Abortion Isn’t Good for Anyone: Guest Column

Sep 26, 2025John StonestreetAbortionAbortion, Life, Pro-life, Sanctity of Human Life

In a recent article in National Review, Wesley J. Smith described a new study of over one million women in Quebec from 2006 to 2022. The study found that, “Compared with live births and stillbirths, patients with induced abortions had a greater risk of admission for psychiatric disorders, substance use disorders, and suicide attempts over time. ”

Also,

Abortion was associated with the long-term risk of hospitalization for psychiatric disorders, substance use disorders, and suicide attempts in models adjusted for age, comorbidity, preexisting mental illness, material deprivation, rural residence, and time period. Abortion was more strongly associated with eating disorders, hallucinogen use disorders, and cocaine use disorders.

This isn’t the first study to find that abortion, in addition to killing an innocent preborn child, is harmful for women. Back in April, the pro-life group LiveAction reported on another study which indicated that 11% of women who undergo chemical abortion suffer “serious adverse events,” a number far higher than reported by the FDA:

This means one in ten women experience at least one serious complication from taking mifepristone within 45 days—22 times higher than the “less than 0.5 percent” serious adverse events rate reported by the FDA on the mifepristone label, according to this study. The study authors state that serious adverse events in multiple categories were accounted for in the reported rate.

If abortion is truly about women’s health, as advocates claim, they should immediately demand more regulations and limits on the practice. That they do not, but rather double down on demanding abortion as a “right” demonstrates that abortion sits at the center of their worldview. After all, if it were discovered that a common prescription drug, medical procedure, or food had this same likelihood of negative side effects, there would be an immediate call to act and to ban the offending substance. There would not be nationwide rallies claiming whatever it was, was a human right. Yet, in this way and many others, abortion goes unquestioned, treated as if it is the fundamental right of a free people.

In a recently posted video, Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, shared an encounter with a Michigan State student who approached her and declared, “I love abortion.” When asked what she liked about abortion, the young woman replied, “I like that people don’t die through birth, and also, babies aren’t being born to people who don’t want babies.” Unwanted babies, she continued, burden the foster care system. When asked if that meant it would be good to kill kids presently in foster care to alleviate the burden on the system, the woman was shocked anyone would suggest killing children.

Like so many, she refused to connect obvious dots and instead regurgitated talking points. Her response illustrates how challenging it has become to change hearts and minds about abortion, even when the facts are so clearly on the pro-life side. In fact, even as the facts of the matter become more obviously pro-life, commitment to abortion has grown. According to the General Social Survey, agreement with the statement “women should be able to get an abortion for any reason if she wants one” increased from 42% in 2012 to 57% in 2022.

This is how deeply held beliefs work, especially those held at a foundational worldview level. When absolute autonomy, especially sexual autonomy, is the fundamental source of human value, abortion must become an absolute. Christians who want to move the needle on abortion must understand how worldview works. It’s the only way to make sense of those who refuse the facts about abortion and those who don’t like abortion but refuse to vote to restrict it. The most dominant idea over American culture right now is that nothing should prevent people from living as they please, not even the consequences of reality.

Unless we engage, counter, and unseat this first principle of this culture’s dominant worldview, it will not matter how many studies we present or how clever our rhetoric. Yes, we should pass as many laws as possible restricting this horror, but we must also pray for God to intervene, love and serve those who are most vulnerable, and seek to persuade as many as we can.