-Religious Freedom a Casualty of Legal Gay Marriage?
-Needed: A Million More Like Kim Davis
Kentucky clerk who denied gay marriage licenses released from jail
September 08, 2015
Judge orders Kentucky county clerk released from jail
Kim Davis, a Democrat, the Kentucky clerk locked up for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, was released from jail on Tuesday — as her case also drew the personal attention of two presidential candidates.
Davis was greeted by a crowd of singing and cheering supporters as she exited the jail. They sang “Amazing Grace” and “God Bless America,” as her attorney vowed Davis would be back to work “this week.”
The order for her release came from U.S. District Judge David Bunning,a Republican, the same judge who initially jailed the Rowan County clerk last Thursday on a contempt of court charge. But Bunning lifted that order Tuesday. He said the court is “satisfied” that since last week, the clerk’s office has been issuing marriage licenses “to all legally eligible couples” — those licenses have been handled by Davis’ deputy clerks.
At the same time, Bunning directed Davis not to “interfere in any way” with the marriage licenses now being issued by her office.
“If Defendant Davis should interfere in any way with their issuance, that will be considered a violation of this Order and appropriate sanctions will be considered,” he said in the order. Bunning is the son of former Kentucky Sen. Jim Bunning.
Her legal counsel did not say whether Davis had any intention to defy the courts.
Rather, attorney Mat Staver said: “She loves God, she loves people, she loves her work — and she will not betray any of those three.”
He said Davis will not violate her “conscience,” and said the court order “did not resolve the underlying issue.” He reiterated Davis’ request for an “accommodation” to remove her name from gay marriage certificates. “Kim still is asking for that today,” he said.
Davis later took the stage at a rally outside the jail, crying as the crowd cheered. “Thank you all so much, I love you all so very much,” she said.
The decision from Bunning came down just before Davis received jailhouse visits from Republican presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz. They were ushered into the building shortly after the judge’s order was issued, as was Davis’ husband, Joe Davis.
“She was willing to go to jail for what she believed,” Huckabee said, as he accompanied Davis and her attorney out of the jail. He also tweeted:
I was honored to meet w/ #KimDavis. A woman of such strong faith and conviction. #ImWithKim #ReligiousLiberty pic.twitter.com/RhcaENaA6i
— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) September 8, 2015
Davis’ stand has become a political lightning rod in the 2016 race, rallying social conservatives while drawing the scorn of Democrats; some Republican presidential candidates also have suggested she went too far in refusing marriage licenses.
But 2016 candidates like Cruz and Huckabee, a former Baptist minister, have used her case to highlight the issue of religious freedom and reach out to evangelical Christians.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/09/08/jailed-kentucky-clerk/
Kim Davis Speaks At Kentucky Rally After Being Released From Jail (9-8-15)
Why Mike Huckabee is standing with Kentucky clerk Kim Davis
Mike Huckabee to attend Kim Davis rally
Kim Davis Release Order
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We are All Kim Davis
8 September, 2015 AJ Castellitto
“There is no alternative but that of theonomy and autonomy” – Cornelius Van Til
“If the high authority does not refrain from unjustly and forcibly persecuting not only the lives of their subjects but even more their rights under divine and natural law, and if the high authority does not desist from eradicating true doctrine and true worship of God, then the lower magistracy is required by God’s divine command to attempt, together with their subjects, to stand up to such superiors as far as possible. The current persecution which we are suffering at the hands of our superiors is primarily persecution by which they attempt to suppress the true Christian religion and the true worship of God and to reestablish the Pope’s lies and abominable idolatry. Thus the Council [of Magdeburg] and each and every Christian authority is obliged to protect themselves and their people against this.” – The Lesser Magistrate Doctrine as stated in the preamble of the Magdeburg Confession
Our laws have been hijacked and our nation infiltrated. Romans 1 speaks of such rebellion against God, His authority and His natural order:
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
We must see the bigger picture and who is pulling the strings. We must expose and attack the root instead of merely swiping at the branches.
Our system has been confiscated, exploited and rotted by outside powers and forces. It’s not the system itself that’s the problem but the players and manipulators. It seems as if many of ‘the just’ have been placed on the outside.
Our God-given Natural Rights as guaranteed by the Original Intent of the US Constitution have gone out the window.
The Supreme Court has acted outside of their authority. They have no authority to render an opinion on the right to kill as in abortion and the right to pretend SSM is a legitimate form of marriage.
The agenda is the undermining of the Godly standard and the normalization of homosexuality. The intentions are fundamental demonic transformation of the culture and eradication of the last remnants of Christian truth from mainstream society.
The willful ignorance and blindness of others does not negate our responsibility to do what is good, lawful and true.
We are (and must all be and become) Kim Davis.
http://barbwire.com/2015/09/08/we-are-all-kim-davis/
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Anti-Christian Bigotry on the Bench and in the Media
8 September, 2015 by Cliff Kincaid
The federal judge who threw Christian clerk Kim Davis in jail previously “oversaw a legal settlement that included anti-harassment sessions” for students in Boyd County, Kentucky, The New York Times reports. In fact, the judge, David Bunning, had denied free speech rights to those students.
The so-called “anti-harassment sessions” in the Boyd County case were actually designed to instruct students “to withhold Christian viewpoints about homosexual behavior,” the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), the legal group representing the students, reported.
Bunning’s ruling against the students, a direct ban on free speech, was overturned on appeal.
The Times admitted this fact only later in the story, noting that Bunning’s ruling forcing students into the “anti-harassment sessions” was “overruled by an appellate court.”
The fact that he “was overruled by an appellate case” demonstrates how wrong his ruling was.
It is this out-of-control judge who is at the center of the Kim Davis case. Ironically, the media are reporting that Bunning is a Christian. If so, he has no fundamental understanding of how Christians helped create this nation, and are entitled to the rights and liberties guaranteed to them under the Constitution.
The Times’ handling of this case reflects how the actions of Davis have also been distorted by most of the media. The Times said Bunning sent Davis to jail for “refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses.” In fact, she had simply exercised her religious rights and liberties in refusing to sign the gay marriage licenses.
Her attorneys at Liberty Counsel noted, “Davis only asked that the Kentucky marriage license forms be changed so her name would not appear on them.” This simple request was deemed to be “contempt” and she was thrown in jail.
What we see in the case of Judge Bunning, under pressure from the gay lobby, is a pattern of discrimination against Christians, a pattern we also see in the coverage of the cases in which he has ruled. The media have refused to respect the rights of free speech and freedom of religion that Americans are supposed to have under the Constitution.
A rally in support of county clerk Kim Davis has been announced for Tuesday, September 8, at the Carter County Detention Center in Grayson, Kentucky at 3:00 p.m. The address is 13 Crossbar Road, Grayson, Kentucky.
Heather Clark of the Christian News Network first noted that Bunning, appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush, had, in the Boyd County case, “ordered Kentucky students to be re-educated about homosexuality despite their objections.”
In the case, she noted, a number of students objected to being forced to watch a video that asserted that it is wrong to oppose homosexuality and that a person’s sexuality cannot be changed. Clark reported, “They discovered that they could not opt-out of the training without being penalized, and contacted the legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) for assistance.”
That began the process of filing suit, and eventually the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Bunning’s ruling in October 2007.
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has sided with Davis, saying she not only has the right to object on religious grounds to signing gay marriage licenses, but that the Supreme Court did not in any sense make gay marriage the “law of the land.”
Numerous experts have pointed out that, under the U.S. Constitution, the Supreme Court cannot make law. The Supreme Court’s “power to offer opinion does not equal the power to make law,” notes the Tenth Amendment Center. Generally speaking, experts say, the Supreme Court can overturn laws and executive actions but it cannot enforce its rulings. The power to make law is given to the representatives of the people in the national and state legislatures.
Huckabee says Davis, a county official elected as a Democrat, should be immediately released from federal custody. “Exercising religious liberty should never be a crime in America,” he says. “This is a direct attack on our God-given, constitutional rights.”
Huckabee said, “Kim is asking the perfect question: ‘Under what law am I authorized to issue homosexual couples a marriage license?’ The Supreme Court cannot and did not make a law. They only made a ruling on a law. Congress makes the laws. Because Congress has made no law allowing for same sex marriage, Kim does not have the Constitutional authority to issue a marriage license to homosexual couples.”
Kentucky passed Amendment 1 in 2004, prohibiting recognition of same-sex marriages. It passed by a 75-25 percent margin.
Another Republican presidential candidate, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, called the order issued by Bunning to use federal marshals to arrest and jail Davis “judicial lawlessness [which] crossed into judicial tyranny.” He explained that “the government arrested a Christian woman for living according to her faith. This is wrong. This is not America.”
He added, “I stand with Kim Davis. Unequivocally. I stand with every American that the Obama administration is trying to force to choose between honoring his or her faith or complying with a lawless court opinion.”
Cruz went on, “In dissent, Chief Justice Roberts rightly observed that the Court’s marriage opinion has nothing to do with the Constitution. Justice Scalia observed that the Court’s opinion was so contrary to law that state and local officials would choose to defy it.”
Indeed, as AIM reported, Scalia had called the Supreme Court decision in the same-sex marriage case a judicial “Putsch,” an attempt to overthrow our form of government. Scalia said the court was a “threat to American democracy.”
In the face of this emerging judicial dictatorship, Kentucky clerk Kim Davis exercised her religious rights and liberties, only to be sent to prison.
Her attorney, Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel, reports, “Despite being held as a prisoner for her religious beliefs, her conscience remains unshackled. Liberty Counsel will challenge Judge Bunning’s contempt order and her unlawful confinement. Kim is resolute in her decision to challenge the issuance of any marriage certificate bearing her name without her authority.”
As the coverage by The New York Times indicates, however, Judge Bunning is being greeted with fawning attention in the Davis case because he had muzzled Christians previously for standing up for their faith. The coverage demonstrates that there is a pattern of anti-Christian activity on the federal bench and in the media.
http://barbwire.com/2015/09/08/anti-christian-bigotry-on-the-bench-and-in-the-media/
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Religious Freedom a Casualty of Legal Gay Marriage?
8 September, 2015
The case again Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis is just the latest example of how religious freedom is quickly becoming a casualty of same-sex marriage proponents.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s June ruling legalizing gay marriage nationwide, some activists are trying to make opposition to same-sex marriage itself illegal.
For years, those who campaigned for same-sex marriage claimed it would not harm their opponents or believers in traditional marriage.
A new book, Truth Overruled: the Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom by Ryan Anderson, argues that harm is already being seen.
“The main rhetoric that we’ve heard for the past decade from those in favor of redefining marriage was that if you’re against same-sex marriage, you’re just like the racist bigots who were against interracial marriage,” Anderson told CBN News. “And we’re already hearing voices say the government should now treat people who believe marriage is the union of a man and a woman as if they’re racists.”
Anderson cites business owners who are already being punished for not actively supporting gay marriage or at least for not serving gay couples.
“The fourth chapter of the book, Bake Me a Cake, Bigot, tells the story of all these professionals who simply asked to be left alone by the government to run their business in accordance with their belief,” Anderson continued. “And they’ve been fined sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Erick Erickson, editor-in-chief of the popular RedState blog, says the fact that Anderson’s young is both striking and meaningful.
Because he’s younger, his perspective is “kind of counter-intuitive because people perceive it as being a generational issue.”
“So here’s this young guy who has a mastery of these issues and the implications for the future of the country,” Erickson explained.
Anderson, meanwhile, says the fight by proponents of gay marriage to punish people is a serious threat to freedom. He said he actually doesn’t know how he’d advise a person trying to decide to bake or not bake a gay wedding cake.
“The government’s role shouldn’t be telling them what to do either,” Anderson continued. “So my position on this is whether you would bake the cake or not isn’t a reason for you telling someone else that they should have to bake the cake.”
“Freedom is actually what should be reigning supreme here and the people who are in favor of baking the cake can bake the cake,” he said. “Those who aren’t cannot bake the bake, and the market can sort these things out. It’s one of the beauties of freedom.”
Even before the book was published, gay rights activists organized a campaign against it on Amazon.com.
Erickson pointed out that such folks are intolerant of any opposition to gay marriage. Click here for Erickson’s blog on the campaign. “They cannot have that,” he said. “They also cannot have books and data that dispute their claims.”
“The fact that they’ve attacked his book on Amazon to discourage people from buying it — before it even came out, they were trying to drive down its ranking on Amazon so people wouldn’t buy it — just tells you everything you need to know about the contents of the book,” he said.
Although it’s difficult to say which criticisms are legitimate disagreements and which are orchestrated, clearly many people took strong shots at the book.
Following are comments on Amazon by some of the book’s critics.
“This is a sad and desperate book written by a sad and desperate man clutching at any straw that will enable him to justify what, in the end, is simply homophobia.”
“It really is time for you religious zealots to move on.”
One writer even defended the way opponents are so obviously showing intolerance.
“Tolerance in and of itself is not a virtue. I am intolerant of a lot of things like racism, sexism, and homophobia.”
“It was people who didn’t even want a dissenting voice to be heard and so they were trying to sink the book,” Anderson said. “Many of them were nasty reviews. One review went up with pictures of Holocaust victims, saying this book was the equivalent of Nazi propaganda.”
But the young author isn’t a bit surprised at the tactics used against him.
“The Left didn’t win this debate by the goodness of redefining marriage,” he said. “They won this debate by silencing people and then getting the courts to overrule the people.”
Despite the campaign against the book, supporters far outnumber its attackers.
Advocates for traditional marriage believe that just because the court has ruled against their position doesn’t mean truth has actually changed. And no amount of shouting it down is going to change that.
http://barbwire.com/2015/09/08/religious-freedom-a-casualty-of-legal-gay-marriage/
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Needed: A Million More Like Kim Davis
Supporters of Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis file into the Rowan County Courthouse in Morehead, Ky., Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2015. Davis refused to issue marriage licenses in defiance of a federal order. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley)
September 8, 2015 By J. Matt Barber
For the first time in American history a woman has been imprisoned by the government for merely exercising her Christian faith. War has been declared on Christ and His followers.
And there’s no turning back.
Anti-Christian persecution is the civil rights cause of our time. The cultural Marxists in power have seceded from our constitutional republican form of government, with its Judeo-Christian moorings, and have supplanted, in its place, a secular-socialist oligarchy. Like Union troops hunkered at Fort Sumter, faithful Christians are now exiles in our own land. Anti-Christian “progressives” have demanded unconditional surrender, and federal Judge David Bunning has fired the first mortar.
Even as I write, a kind, soft-spoken and well respected civil servant of 27 years sits languishing, like some violent criminal, in a Kentucky prison. She is confined, indefinitely and without benefit of a trial, to a tiny cell. She is a political prisoner in a spiritual war. Like so many accidental civil-rights heroes that came before her, Davis, a Democrat who was overwhelmingly elected as Rowan County clerk, has peacefully and graciously refused to violate her Christian conscience. She has declined to sign her name to marriage certificates that defy God’s natural design for the timeless institution and has requested, as a simple accommodation, that either her name be removed from the marriage licenses, thus eliminating her personalized acquiescence to the Supreme Court’s novel attempt to usurp God’s authority and redefine this cornerstone institution, or, alternatively, “to allow licenses to be issued by the chief executive of Rowan County or [by] developing a statewide, online marriage license process.”
That’s it. Simple, reasonable and fair. Our nation has a rich history of respecting the rights of conscientious objectors, and Kim Davis, like tens-of-millions of her brothers and sisters in Christ, is exactly that.
“There is absolutely no reason that this case has gone so far without reasonable people respecting and accommodating Kim Davis’ First Amendment rights,” said Mat Staver, Davis’ attorney and head of Liberty Counsel, a Christian civil rights organization.
“This is a heaven or hell issue for me and for every other Christian that believes,” Davis said on Thursday. “This is a fight worth fighting. … I’ve weighed the cost and I’m prepared to go to jail.”
And so she has.
Reasonable people can disagree on the propriety of Kim’s actions. Some say that she was right in refusing to violate her conscience by signing her name to a legal document that presumes to solemnize that which God condemns. Still others say that she needs to either “do her job” or resign – that she took an oath and is violating that oath.
Nevertheless, all reasonable people must agree that imprisoning this innocent woman for her conscience is both an absolute outrage and gross violation of her constitutional liberties. Even the ACLU thought it was a bridge too far. The fact remains that people don’t shed their First Amendment rights when they become government employees. Kim Davis swore to uphold the U.S. Constitution, the Kentucky Constitution and the laws of the Bluegrass state. When she took her oath, United States law, the Kentucky Constitution and the Kentucky Revised Statutes all reflected the millennia-old definition of natural marriage: “Only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Kentucky.”
The Kentucky Legislature has yet to change this law one jot or tittle. Instead, five left-wing extremist lawyers in Washington, D.C., issued an opinion presuming to move the goalposts mid-game. Court opinions are not “the law of the land.” Judges don’t make laws – only the legislature can do that. Kim Davis is not defying the law; she is upholding it as codified.
Accordingly, she has repeatedly asked, “Under what law am I authorized to issue homosexual couples a marriage license?”
Neither Judge Bunning nor anyone else can answer.
Because no such law exists.
In a statement on Friday, Mat Staver made the same point: “Not long ago 75 percent of Kentuckians passed the state’s marriage amendment. Today a Christian is imprisoned for believing what the voters affirmed: marriage is between a man and a woman. Five people on the Supreme Court imposed their will on 320 million Americans and unleashed a torrent of assaults against people of faith. Kim Davis is the first victim of this tragedy.”
Indeed, many scoffed at our warnings that Christians will someday be forced to either endorse “gay marriage” or go to jail. Well, scoff no more. That day has arrived. In just two months since the high court’s disgraceful Obergefell v. Hodges opinion, the full-on criminalization of Christianity has begun. You must either bow a knee before the false gods of same-sex “marriage” and “gay rights,” or face the fiery “contempt of court” furnace. We have moved from anecdotal instances of anti-Christian discrimination to systemic religious persecution.
Here’s the formula: 1) Force affirmation of homosexual behavior, abortion or some other institutionalized sin via judicial fiat; 2) Christian objects, refuses to disobey God and requests a reasonable religious accommodation; 3) Accommodation is denied and Christian is jailed for “contempt of court.”
You’re going to hear that term a lot in coming days, weeks, months and years – “contempt of court.” It’s the straw man charge that will be utilized to imprison not just Christian public officials, but others as well. Christian business owners, lawyers, private sector employees, parents of school-age children who don’t want their children indoctrinated by sexual anarchist propaganda and many others will be held in contempt of court, denied due process and incarcerated indefinitely.
The persecution isn’t coming.
The persecution has arrived.
And that’s what it means to be a Christ follower.
So pray for a million more like Kim Davis.
Become like Kim Davis.
Is she perfect? Certainly not. None of us are. Indeed, before Kim’s transformational Christian re-birth four years ago, she was thrice divorced and “played in the devil’s playground” for much of her life.
She was lost.
But now she’s found.
God has an amazing way of taking empty, broken vessels, rebuilding their lives and then using them mightily for His glory and honor.
Stand, like Kim, fearlessly, lovingly and boldly for Christ, declaring, as did the apostles when faced with a similar decision, “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (see Acts 5:29).
Indeed, as the Bible’s Daniel, a “public official,” boldly refused to disobey God and commit sin by worshiping a pagan king, so too has Kim Davis honored our Lord by refusing to bow before a pagan court – by refusing to call evil good and good evil.
They wanted to make an example of her.
Instead, they made a martyr of her.
And awakened a sleeping giant in the process.
Matt Barber is founder and editor-in chief of BarbWire.com. He is an author, columnist, cultural analyst and an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. Having retired as an undefeated heavyweight professional boxer, Matt has taken his fight from the ring to the culture war. (Follow Matt on Twitter: @jmattbarber).
http://cnsnews.com/commentary/j-matt-barber/needed-million-more-kim-davis
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Related
http://barbwire.com/2015/09/08/an-introduction-to-the-heart-of-clerk-kim-davis/
http://barbwire.com/2015/09/08/why-a-christian-blogger-is-100-wrong-about-kim-davis/
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/jailed-clerk-who-fought-gay-marriage-ordered-released
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/08/judge-releases-county-clerk-kim-davis-from-kentucky-jail/
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Related previous posts on this blog
https://reclaimourrepublic.wordpress.com/2015/09/06/video-kim-davis-did-not-break-the-law-judges-anti-christian-history-husband-we-cant-let-the-govt-bully-us-rosa-parksbarry/
https://reclaimourrepublic.wordpress.com/2015/09/05/video-gods-law-war-and-a-jailed-county-clerk-media-candidates-what-weve-learned-from-the-kim-davis-jailing/
https://reclaimourrepublic.wordpress.com/2015/09/04/video-it-begins-in-the-usa-ky-clerk-kim-davis-jailed-for-christian-faith-what-difference-does-it-make/
https://reclaimourrepublic.wordpress.com/2015/09/07/how-to-restrain-scotus-30-govt-officials-in-north-carolina-refusing-to-conduct-homosexual-marriages/
https://reclaimourrepublic.wordpress.com/2015/09/02/kentucky-clerk-still-wont-deny-jesus-and-issue-same-sex-marriage-licenses-big-mountain-jesus-can-stay/
https://reclaimourrepublic.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/time-to-choose-god-or-man-whom-will-you-serve/
https://reclaimourrepublic.wordpress.com/2015/08/17/grassroots-nullification-clerk-says-no-to-homosexual-marriage-licenses-gays-thrown-off-tall-buildings/
https://reclaimourrepublic.wordpress.com/2015/07/08/video-10-fascinating-stories-from-the-psych-evaluations-of-the-nazis/
https://reclaimourrepublic.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/kim-davis-who-broke-no-law-requests-relief-against-gov-beshear-pending-appeal-kim-davis-is-rosa-parks/
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