“We don’t do prayer.”
Those were the words uttered by a mayor in a southern California city trying to silence Tarin Swain, a mother of six who has spoken out against what she has described as the “social transitioning” of her daughter at the hands of the public school system.
Swain attended a Ventura County City Council meeting on March 18, where she took to the platform to speak out against the proposed Community Autonomy, Rights, and Equality (CARE) Policy, a statute that asserts, in part, “The City of Ventura and its law enforcement agencies shall not: Participate in the enforcement of any federal or state law that criminalizes or restricts access to reproductive healthcare or gender-affirming care for adults or minors, provided such care is delivered with the approval of a licensed healthcare provider and, in the case of minors, with parental consent in accordance with current California state law.”
If approved, the policy would make Ventura a “sanctuary city” for LGBT advancement among children and abortion, dubbed “reproductive rights” by the language in the statute.
As for Swain, she has said staffers at her daughter Penny’s school “changed her name and gender in classes and told her it would be kept from me” and “teachers recommended her inappropriate male homosexual ‘coming-of-age’ books without my consent.”
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So when Swain, the marketing manager for Moms for America, took to the podium, she began by stating, “I am a mother of six, and the Ventura County Public Schools socially transitioned my daughter without my consent,” constantly facing interruptions from dissenters shouting, “Lies, lies, lies!”
She pressed on: “I’ve come here today to offer nothing but prayer, and I want to lift up my Father in heaven.”
“Father God, I just come to you in Jesus’ name,” Swain prayed. “I pray, Father, that You would tear down the strongholds in this place. I pray, Father, that You would raise up the men in this room.”
By this point, the mother was facing intense boos and, as she was attempting to finish her prayer, Ventura Mayor Jeannette Sanchez-Palacios interrupted her, admonishing Swain, “We don’t do prayer. Please finish your comments.”
Again, Swain pressed on.
“I do pray all this in the name of the Jesus, the Son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit,” she concluded. “[J]esus is the King of kings and He is the Lord of lords.”
In an interview with The Christian Post, Swain said she did not initially plan to pray from the platform. Her plans changed, though, when she realized how little time she had and that her pre-written talking points were too long for the one-minute time slot.
The Christian mother did admit she was caught off-guard by the mayor ordering her to stop praying.
“At first, I couldn’t even hear the mayor telling me to stop because the crowd behind me was so loud,” recalled Swain. “I had a man from the community come up to me afterward and express that in his years of attending hundreds of Ventura City Council meetings, he’s never seen someone stopped from praying. To me, it was a proof point for the power of prayer.”
To be fair to Sanchez-Palacios, she also called out the protesters, urging them to stop interrupting the speakers. She told the crowd, “We are all adults. You can do better.”
You can watch the exchange in the video below:
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