Tag Archives: ACLU

News

Florist may lose her business, home and savings for refusing to service gay wedding

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I remember reading a blog post by very well known atheist from Washington just after his state legalized same-sex marriage. He said he was very proud of his state. Now we get to find out what he was so proud of.

The story is reported by Alliance Defending Freedom.

They write:

A state judge has determined that the government can force a floral designer to do custom design work and provide wedding support services even if she has a religious conviction that marriage is between one man and one woman. Barronelle Stutzman was found guilty for referring her friend and long-time customer to another florist because the customer wanted her to design floral arrangements and provide services for a  same-sex wedding. Barronelle’s referral ensured the customer received the services he wanted, but has been labeled “discrimination” under Washington law.

The court also ruled that both the state and the couple may collect damages and attorneys’ fees not only from the floral shop, but also from Stutzman personally.

The court said:

“On the evening of November 5, 2012, there was no conflict … The following evening, after the … enactment of same-sex marriage, there would eventually be a direct and insoluble conflict between Stutzman’s religiously motivated conduct and the laws of the State of Washington. Stutzman cannot comply with both the law and her faith if she continues to provide flowers for weddings as part of her duly-licensed business, Arlene’s Flowers.”

For simply abiding by her faith and a view of marriage held sacred for centuries, the 70-year-old grandmother not only may lose her business, but also her home and savings. Contrast this reality to the same-sex couple, who not only obtained exactly what they needed for their ceremony, but were offered free flowers and wedding services by a multitude of florists. Yet the state attorney general sued her and then the couple, represented by the ACLU, filed a second lawsuit.

Barronelle’s referral showed kindness and tolerance to her customer, doing as much as she could without violating her conscience.  But apparently there is no tolerance for her religious beliefs about marriage.

“America would be a better place if citizens respected each others’ differences and the government still protected the freedom to have those differences,” said Barronelle. “Instead, the government is coming after me and everything I have just because my beliefs are different from the government’s. I just want the freedom to live and work faithfully and to believe what God says about marriage without fear of punishment, just as others have the freedom to believe and say what they want to about marriage.”

“The message of these rulings is unmistakable: there is no tolerance for those who disagree with the state’s view of marriage,” said ADF Senior Counsel Kristen Waggoner, who argued before the court in December. “The couple had no problem getting the flowers they needed. In fact, they received several offers for free flowers. So, where’s the tolerance for Barronelle Stutzman? It’s hard to believe that Barronelle should prepare to have everything she has earned and built seized by the state just because of her beliefs about marriage.”

If you don’t celebrate same-sex marriage, then the courts will come after you and take everything you have to make you celebrate same-sex marriage. This is called tolerance. And it is sold to the public with the well-known gay rights motto “Celebrate Diversity”.

There is nothing in the atheistic worldview that has a problem when Christians have their consciences violated by government coercion. This is the atheist thing – using power to force others to tell them that their man-made hedonistic moralities are actually valid and true. They are really comfortable with government forcing religious individuals to violate their consciences. And forcing them to do a lot more, too. This is just the beginning. When you believe that morality is make-believe that varies by time or place, instead of something objective built into the universe by its Creator and Designer, then anything is possible. Anything is possible. Far from being an unexpected diversion from atheism, this is atheism put into practice. Might makes right. Survival of the fittest. There is no place for a “human right” to free speech in an accidental, materialistic universe.

To end this post on a happy note, I’m going to post a picture of Kristen Waggoner, and her bio, just to remind us who the hero of the story was.

Here she is:

Kristen Waggoner, Alliance Defending Freedom
Kristen Waggoner, Alliance Defending Freedom

Her bio:

Kristen K. Waggoner serves as senior vice president of legal services with Alliance Defending Freedom, leading the organization’s legal advocacy efforts. She is a Martindale-Hubbell AV peer-review rated attorney who clerked for Justice Richard B. Sanders of the Washington Supreme Court after law school and served in private practice in Seattle for nearly 20 years. Waggoner is admitted to the state bars in Washington, Florida, and Oregon. She is also admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 1st and 9th Circuits, and the U.S. District Courts for the Western and Eastern Districts of Washington.

It takes a lot to make one Kristen Waggoner – her parents must be proud of her. She tried her best, and it was good for us that she tried. There’s always the appeal. But even if we win that, the point was made – if you’re a Christian, then you’d better act like an atheist in public. Or else. You have to have their “morality” such as it is forced on you. Or else. We have been intimidated. To think that this happened in a country that was founded by theists, many of them Christians. It makes me sad.

There was a good episode of the Alliance Defending Freedom podcast on this story, which you can download the MP3 file here.

News

Christian valedictorian tears up censor-approved speech and recites the Lord’s Prayer

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From WXII 12 local news, a story from South Carolina.

Full text:

A school district under pressure to keep prayer out of meetings and gatherings got an unexpected delivery from one high school valedictorian

Saturday, at Clemson’s Littlejohn Coliseum, Liberty High Valedictorian Roy Costner IV took his speech to the podium, and in front of the crowd, tore it up.

John Eby, Pickens County School District spokesman, said, “They write their speeches. They send them to someone on staff to have them approved.”

But Costner clearly had something else in mind.

After speaking for a few minutes, he thanked his parents for leading him to the Lord at a young age, and then he said, “I think most of you will understand when I say, ‘Our Father, who art in heaven…” as he began to recite the Lord’s Prayer.

Much of the crowd broke into tentative applause that then grew into cheers that nearly drown out Costner’s voice as he continued the prayer.

Brian Hoover, who is from Liberty and attended the graduation, said, “You couldn’t even hear him doing the prayer anymore because everybody was clapping and cheering.”

Costner finished, pointing his finger in the air for emphasis, saying, “For Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen,” followed by more cheers and applause.

Hoover said, “From the ACLU sending FOIA requests to every district in the state this year after the Chesterfield County case, then the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent us a complaint about religion at board meetings and some other issues as well. That is why the reaction to the prayer at graduation was loud.”

The district says there will be no repercussions because of the prayer.

Costner was out of town on Monday, but he said he added the prayer to the speech because God is the biggest part of his life.

According to a school publication, “Costner plans to head to Clemson University in the fall to pursue a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science. He said he hopes to work as a computer programmer overseas, but has dreams of saving up enough to come back and start a chain of restaurants in the U.S. He said computer programming was an interest he picked up outside of school as he developed a local news website, “Liberty Speaks.”

In the publication Costner is quoted as saying: “I have big ideas for mobile applications, and even for starting a new social network, but I don’t have the knowledge to pull it off yet.”

It warms my heart to see a good, brave Christian man take up computer science, where he should be able to find work in spite of the politically correct censors he might find on campus.

Here’s the verse that should scare anyone about what exactly it is that Jesus expects from his followers:

Matthew 10:32-39:

32 So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven,

33 butwhoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.

34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 

35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 

36 And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.

37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 

38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 

39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

That’s why he did what he did. He had to do it to honor God instead of pleasing godless men.

In other news, the ACLU, which opposes free speech that secular leftists find offensive, is also in favor of sex-selection abortions and race-selection abortions. I wonder which is more offensive? Free speech or killing a baby because it is the wrong sex or the wrong race? That’s what the ACLU stands for: sexism and racism and fascism.

Polemics

Was Hitler a Christian? Is Nazism similar to Christianity?

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One of the strangest things I have heard from atheists is the assertion that Christianity is somehow connected to the fascism, such as the fascism that existed under Adolf Hitler. Two posts by Jewish author Jonah Goldberg from National Review supply us with the facts to set the record straight.

Let’s start with the first post.

Here are some of the points:

1) Hitler wanted Christianity removed from the public square

Like the engineers of that proverbial railway bridge, the Nazis worked relentlessly to replace the nuts and bolts of traditional Christianity with a new political religion. The shrewdest way to accomplish this was to co-opt Christianity via the Gleichschaltung while at the same time shrinking traditional religion’s role in civil society.

2) Hitler banned the giving of donations to churches

Hitler banned religious charity, crippling the churches’ role as a counterweight to the state. Clergy were put on government salary, hence subjected to state authority. “The parsons will be made to dig their own graves,” Hitler cackled. “They will betray their God to us. They will betray anything for the sake of their miserable little jobs and incomes.”

3) Hitler replaced Christian celebrations with celebrations of the state

Following the Jacobin example, the Nazis replaced the traditional Christian calendar. The new year began on January 30 with the Day of the Seizure of Power. Each November the streets of central Munich were dedicated to a Nazi Passion play depicting Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch. The martyrdom of Horst Wessel and his “old fighters” replaced Jesus and the apostles. Plays and official histories were rewritten to glorify pagan Aryans bravely fighting against Christianizing foreign armies. Anticipating some feminist pseudo history, witches became martyrs to the bloodthirsty oppression of Christianity.

4) Hitler favored the complete elimination of Christianity

When some Protestant bishops visited the Fuhrer to register complaints, Hitler’s rage got the better of him. “Christianity will disappear from Germany just as it has done in Russia . . . The Germanrace has existed without Christianity for thousands of years . . . and will continue after Christianity has disappeared . . . We must get used to the teachings of blood and race.”

5) Hitler favored the removal of mandatory prayers in schools

In 1935 mandatory prayer in school was abolished…

6) Hitler favored the banning of Christmas carols and nativity plays

…and in 1938 carols and Nativity plays were banned entirely.

7) Hitler abolished religious instruction for children

By 1941 religious instruction for children fourteen years and up had been abolished altogether….

And now the second post.

8) Hitler opposed the ideas of universal truth and objective moral absolutes

…Just as the Nazi attack on Christianity was part of a larger war on the idea of universal truth, whole postmodern cosmologies have been created to prove that traditional religious morality is a scam, that there are no fixed truths or “natural” categories, and that all knowledge is socially constructed.

Practically everything this man believed was 100% anti-Christian. But he fits in fine on the secular left.

Conclusion

Adolf Hitler was a man influenced by two big ideas: evolution and socialism. His party was the national SOCIALIST party. He favored a strong role for the state in interfering with the free market. He was in favor of regulating the family so that the state could have a bigger influence on children. And he favored the idea of survival of the fittest. His ideas are 100% incompatible with Christianity and with capitalism as well. Christians value individual rights and freedoms, small government and the autonomy of the family against the state. The differences are clear and significant.