Who could have predicted it? Letting women rent out their wombs so gay men could purchase their babies — with no background checks — might have some ugly effects. Check out this story from The Blaze, where the title couldn’t be blunter: “
Logan Riley and Brandon Keith Mitchell of Seven Valleys, Pennsylvania, made a big show of their efforts to secure custody of a baby boy through surrogacy.
Although they apparently started the process in 2019, the homosexual couple began hitting up strangers for cash in 2020 on GoFundMe to help expand their “family by using a gestational surrogate.”
“Gestational surrogate” is the euphemism they use for “mother” down in Hell, where the idea of surrogate motherhood was workshopped and developed. The Blaze continues:
The couple recently shared a compilation video on social media featuring them repeatedly kissing a baby boy reportedly in their custody.
The video was subsequently reshared on X by critics concerned about the boy’s well-being as well as about homosexual adoption in general. Despite accusations of bigotry, it turns out that the critics were right to worry, as the boy is now allegedly in the custody of a registered sex offender.
State documents indicate that Mitchell, age 30 at the time, was arrested and charged in early February 2016 with three felony counts of possession of child pornography; endangering the welfare of children; corruption of a minor; felony sexual abuse of a minor; and felony photographing/videotaping sexual acts in Chester County, Pennsylvania.
Or how about this case, where the child himself was targeted for destruction when his buyers deemed him defective, as Townhall reported:
A California woman serving as a surrogate mother for a same-sex couple is claiming that the gay men who hired her demanded that she “immediately” “erase” the infant in the second trimester upon finding out she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer, threatening her with legal action if she were to birth the baby prematurely or place the child up for adoption.
Surrogate says that California couple who hired her demanded she terminate her pregnancy at 24 weeks due to her cancer diagnosis, barring her from having the baby prematurely or putting it up for adoption because ‘they didn’t want their DNA out there” https://t.co/2mxjF3Dvrx
— Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) July 3, 2023
It’s almost as if violating Natural Law in every way imaginable and commodifying helpless children were somehow out of sync with the way man himself was created, just as a car’s gas tank isn’t meant to be filled with maple syrup. But people who think “American values” can be boiled down to “tolerance” and “the free market,” and that drag queen story hours for kids are one of the “blessings of liberty” can’t see that. Neither can conservatives who write off same-sex “marriage” as a lost cause — even though U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, in his brilliant Obergefell dissent, correctly predicted governmental attacks on Christians would be an outcome.
In fact, since Natural Law is carved on the human heart, pagans, progressives, and even Vichy Christians can see abandoning reason leads to. They know that enforcing the common code of human decency is just, and the only proper basis for positive, coercive law. That’s why we hanged Nazis at Nuremburg for following unjust German laws.
But careerists eager to please our elites find that truth inconvenient. Like the Sadducees who turned Our Lord over to Pilate, they know exactly what they do.
The Real Blessing of Liberty: Free Exercise of Religion
Catholic Vote rightly calls our attention to one of the most encouraging initiatives of the Trump administration — dismantling the systemic hostility to Christianity that pervaded the Biden regime, leading to the FBI’s undercover investigations of pro-lifers and faithful Catholics. Here’s some good news to savor:
BREAKING: Trump admin orders federal agencies to protect religious expression at work — allowing employees to display a crucifix, carry a Bible, or pray with rosary beads.
The move follows Trump’s executive order to end the “anti-Christian weaponization of government.” pic.twitter.com/pq49f9uLBy
— CatholicVote (@CatholicVote) July 28, 2025
Tragic Shooting Spree in Manhattan May Be the Result of Football Concussions
In several of the mass shootings that have afflicted our country in recent years, ideology has been an issue — often transgender ideology, warping the mind of someone already suffering from mental illness (gender dysphoria) who was then further deranged by artificial hormones. In other cases, heavy psychiatric medications administered to misdiagnosed people likely played a role in goading the attacker on to violence.
But the recent atrocity in Manhattan that earlier this week saw a former football player saunter through New York City streets with an AR-15 might have a more homegrown, heartbreaking explanation: brain injuries. The New York Post reports:
The gunman who killed an NYPD officer and three other people in a Midtown office building on Monday evening was carrying a note that offered clues into his possible motive, sources told The Post.
Shane Tamura, 27, cited the NFL in the writings, which were found after he turned the gun on himself on the 33rd floor of 345 Park Ave. – a swanky skyscraper that houses the football league’s headquarters.
In the note, which was several pages long, Tamura blamed football for his apparent struggle with the neurodegenerative disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), law enforcement sources said.
Tamura, who fatally shot himself in the chest, also asked that his brain be studied in the note, according to the sources.
Expect enemies of our Second Amendment rights to try to exploit this tragic event — which, as scholar John Lott points out, none of their proposed policies could have prevented:
The New York City murderer who killed five people broke numerous gun control laws — he openly carried a rifle that was already illegal to possess in the city. Meanwhile, the law-abiding victims were defenseless, disarmed by the city’s strict regulations. Again and again, diaries…
— John R Lott Jr. (@JohnRLottJr) July 29, 2025
Pray for everyone involved, and for the ongoing survival of our basic liberties despite the onslaught of power-hungry progressives who follow such heartbreaking crimes like buzzards looking for carrion.
New York’s Ugandan Marxist Frontrunner for Mayor Wanted to “Dismantle” the Police
Fox News sees the Midtown shooting spree as a possible roadblack to Zohran Kwame Mamdani, New York City’s openly Marxist mayoral candidate who’s been embraced by many disaffected young voters and cossetted elites who live in high-security buildings. Fox reports:
New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mandani is facing renewed scrutiny for his past stances on policing in the wake of an office building mass shooting in Midtown Manhattan that left three civilians dead as well as a police officer….
[Online Mamdani critics] shared images of a June 8, 2020 post when Mamdani said “No, we want to defund the police” and a Nov. 5, 2020 post when he said “Queer liberation means defund the police.”
“We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD. But your deal with [New York City mayor] uses budget tricks to keep as many cops as possible on the beat. NO to fake cuts — defund the police,” he posted on June 28, 2020.
In December of the same year, he also called for it to be “dismantled.”
“All this misery. All for money. In the last budget, the City Council tried to make the NYPD reduce its overtime budget by half. They simply refused. There is no negotiating with an institution this wicked & corrupt. Defund it. Dismantle it. End the cycle of violence,” he wrote.
Since Mamdani opposes gun rights for citizens and also wants to “dismantle” the police, who exactly does he think will protect New Yorkers from threats like the late Shane Temura? New York City voters might want to chew on that for a while. Of course, in fully Marxist regimes such as Venezuela’s, committees of politicized thugs unbound by individual rights or the rule of law keep a kind of “order” — which our founders would have recognized immediately as tyranny.
Along The Stream…
Don’t miss Amine Ayoub’s provocative column questioning the viability of a “two-state” solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Later today, Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute breaks down all the reasons why natural selection and random mutation fail to explain the origin of genetic information. Divine design is a much more scientific explanation.
John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of 14 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.
The post The Brew: Are God’s Children Really Not for Sale? appeared first on The Stream.