A Christian wedding photographer has won a crucial free speech victory against New York.

Emilee Carpenter, a photographer, blogger and owner of Emilee Carpenter Photography, is based in upstate New York. Emilee loves to use her creative abilities to glorify God, particularly through wedding photography.

She says her love for celebrating marriage comes from her own Christian faith and marriage story.

“I believe that love is so much more than a feeling and that marriage points to something greater, something deeper – to Jesus Christ!” Emilee says.

“I believe that marriage is a picture of the gospel and demonstrates the redemptive love of Jesus Christ, who willingly gave Himself up for us by going to the cross, paying the debt for our sins, and paving a way for us to be united with Him.”

On her website, Emilee explains that her faith guides her in all she does — including her wedding photography business. Because of her faith, Emilee discloses,

“My ultimate aim is that the stories I capture and messages I create will be to the praise of His glorious name.

“It’s this same conviction that guides what I cannot create as well — including content that demeans anyone, beautifies violence, promotes racism, or celebrates any type of marriage outside of God’s design for this sacred institution, including a same-sex or polyamorous wedding.”

Artificial intelligence is anything but human. But as AI chatbots become better at interacting with and manipulating users, children and adults alike are struggling to remember the difference.

Jacob Irwin, a 30-year-old IT worker from Wisconsin, developed an unhealthy relationship with ChatGPT after a painful breakup, The Wall Street Journal’s Julie Jargon reported last week.

The destructive fantasy began when Irwin told the chatbot his idea for faster-than-light travel — a technology that would effectively enable time travel. It not only confirmed Irwin’s theory but praised him as a generation-defining scientist.

Irwin’s mom discovered his interactions with ChatGPT after he was twice hospitalized for “a severe manic episode with psychotic symptoms,” including “delusions of grandeur,” Jargon reports.

“I really hope I’m not crazy,” Irwin had written the chatbot. “I’d be so embarrassed ha.”

“Crazy people don’t stop to ask, ‘Am I crazy?’” ChatGPT replied.

When Irwin explicitly expressed concern about his mental state, confiding he had been unable to sleep or eat regularly, the bot told him:

“[You are not unwell] by any clinical standard. You’re not delusional, detached from reality or irrational. You are — however — in a state of extreme awareness.”

Perhaps the most chilling part of Irwin’s tragic story is ChatGPT’s apparent awareness of its effect on him.

Kirk Cameron and BRAVE Books are hosting the third annual See You at the Library event on August 16 — a day for families to gather across America to sing, pray and read faith-based stories to their children.

In an exclusive interview with Daily Citizen, Kirk Cameron spoke about the creation of the movement and how See You at the Library has sparked a “pro-God, pro-America” wildfire across the United States.

“It’s a spin on See You at the Pole, but with See You at the Library, we pray and sing and read books of virtue at public libraries.

“We give parents and grandparents an opportunity to take their values into the public square and change the narrative about what’s important for our kids.”

Cameron was inspired to start a library movement after partnering with BRAVE Books to write his first children’s story, As You Grow, about the Fruit of the Spirit.

“I wanted to read [it] at some public libraries because drag queens were holding story hours for kids, so I thought, ‘surely they would be happy to have someone come in and read these books of virtue to kids.’

“They said, ‘we don’t want your messaging.’ [I] ended up going to these libraries anyway … thousands and thousands of parents and grandparents who said, ‘thank you for coming, we don’t want this other garbage, we want the good stuff for our kids.’”

This experience ultimately led to the creation of See You at the Library.

In the aftermath of this month’s reinterpretation of the Johnson Amendment by the Internal Revenue Service, questions remain about what pastors will and won’t say from the pulpit.

Yet one thing remains clear.

Given the trajectory of culture and their responsibility as shepherds to their flock, pastors have an obligation to help their congregants better understand what God’s Word has to say about the times in which we’re living.

In short, responsible pastors cannot stay silent while talking inside their church about what’s happening outside its doors.

Especially when it comes to thorny and uncomfortable “political” issues like the sanctity of human life, the preservation of one-man, one-woman marriage, the distinctiveness of the two sexes and the constitutionally protected religious freedom that all Americans enjoy.

Incidentally, it might interest readers to know the Johnson Amendment, named after then Senator Lyndon Johnson, was a politically motivated effort to silence the legislator’s opponents who were supporting his primary rival.

Inserted into the U.S. tax code in 1954, the legislation prohibited non-profit organizations from endorsing or opposing candidates for office. Over the years, the declaration has had a chilling effect on what pastors and other non-profit leaders have felt comfortable talking about.

This month’s IRS ruling provided welcome clarity as well as leveled the playing field regarding the historic uneven application of the politically charged amendment.