Tag Archives: Gay Marriage

News

What should gay activists do instead of using government to force their morality on Christians?

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Here’s an excellent post from Michael Graham, a talk show host in New England, of all places.

Excerpt:

I know, I know—Arizona’s “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” is the greatest act of human evil since Pol Pot’s killing fields.  So even suggesting that maybe—just maybe—the Arizona legislature has a point puts me on the same side of history as Hitler, Stalin and Robin Thicke.

But indulge me for a moment and consider how this would actually work:

A guy is at his print shop in Tempe. In walks a customer (good) who wants to give him money (even better!) to print thousands of fliers for the upcoming LGBTQ “Whip And Chain Exchange” at a local sex shop.

The printer—who has bills to pay—obviously wants to say “yes.” The reason EVERY business owner opens a business is to say “yes.”

But the guy is also serious about his religious beliefs. He sincerely believes that his faith is the most important aspect of his life. So he opened a business to care for his family, but he goes to church/synagogue/mosque because he needs to care his soul.

So he says “Uh, I appreciate the business but I’m really not comfortable being part of this event you’re having. Would you mind asking another printer? I’ll even recommend a few…”

Now, at this point what do you think should happen? Forget the law—what is the right thing for the parties involved to do?

To me the answer seems obvious: the LGBT folks should roll their eyes and say “whatever, man” and take their money somewhere else.  I wouldn’t mind if they said something snarky like “Dude—it’s your loss,” or “Can we leave you a copy in case you’d like a free spanking?”

Their integrity is in place. So is the religiously-devout business owner’s.  Why isn’t that the ideal outcome?

Oh, that’s right—because nobody gets to scream “I’m a victim! I’m a victim!”  And nobody gets to bully the person of faith.

And so instead what liberals and gay activists want is for the religiously devout printer, or baker, or wedding-band singer to be forced to participate—at gunpoint—in an event that violates their religious beliefs.

They want government agents to show up at the print shop or florist shop and order the owner to get to work. Force them to supply their labor for an event.

Seriously? That’s really what you want?  Because if you do—that’s sick.

Why do you care so much that some small business owner doesn’t support same-sex marriage? Why isn’t the jerk in this story the gay activist who doesn’t do what any decent straight/gay/bi/animal-friendly person would do and just take their business somewhere else?

The whole thing is worth reading. You might recognize Michael Graham as the interviewer on the Weekly Standard podcasts, which I highly recommend. The Weekly Standard itself posted an article on Wednesday that mentioned a letter to Governor Jan Brewer signed by 11 law professors who urged Brewer to read the bill and to see that the purpose of the bill was to protect Christians from having to participate closely in activities that were incompatible with their religious beliefs. The lawyers claimed that popular criticisms of the bill were “deeply misleading” and the bill was “egregiously misrepresented” by critics.

By the way, I noted that the National Football League and Major League Baseball were both opposed to the Arizona bill. Apple and American Airlines also opposed religious liberty. Please spend your money wisely. I never give these companies my money, and neither should you – if you can help it. Apple in particular is one of the most anti-Christian companies out there.

News

Coalition of African American Pastors: impeach Attorney General Holder

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First, let’s see what Eric Holder is doing with respect to gay marriage.

CNS News explains.

Excerpt:

State attorneys-general who refuse to defend state laws banning same-sex marriage won’t face any objection from the nation’s top law enforcement official. In fact, Attorney General Eric Holder will applaud them.

According to Holder, “decisions at any level not to defend individual laws must be exceedingly rare. They must be reserved only for exceptional – truly exceptional – circumstances.’

He said that state laws banning same-sex marriage rise to that “truly exceptional” standard — because they do not “advance the values that once led our forebears to declare unequivocally that all are created equal and entitled to equal opportunity.”

Holder told a gathering of state attorneys-general at the Justice Department that they are sworn, not just to win cases, “but to see that justice is done” and to “seize the opportunities that are before us.”

The legal system exists, he said, not just to settle disputes and punish wrong-doers, “but to answer the really fundamental questions about fairness and about equality that have always determined who we are and who we aspire to be, both as a nation and as a people.”

Holder explained that those “really fundamental questions’ prompted him and President Obama to decide in early 2011 that Justice Department attorneys would no longer defend the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

Holder said he and Obama were “motivated by the strong belief that all measures that distinguish among people based on their sexual orientation must be subjected to a heightened standard of scrutiny…and therefore this measure (DOMA) was unconstitutional discrimination.”

But a group of black pastors are not taking this lying down.

CNS News explains.

Excerpt:

A coalition of black pastors announced on Tuesday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. that they are launching a campaign to gather one million signatures on a petition calling for the impeachment of Attorney General Eric Holder for violating his oath of office by trying “to coerce states to fall in line with the same-sex ‘marriage’ agenda.”

“President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have turned their backs on the values the American people hold dear, values particularly cherished in the black community: values like marriage, which should be strengthened and promoted, rather than weakened and undermined,” says a statement by the Coalition of African American Pastors that has been posted online with their impeachment petition.

“Our nation calls for the building up of a healthier marriage culture; instead, our elected leaders are bent on destroying marriage, remaking it as a genderless institution and reorienting it to be all about the desires of adults rather than the needs of children,” says the coalition.

“In pursuing this intention, the president and his administration are trampling the rule of law. Attorney General Holder in particular has used the influence of his office and role as the chief law enforcement figure in our nation to try to coerce states to fall in line with the same-sex ‘marriage’ agenda,” says the coaltion. Millions of voters in 30 states have voted to defend marriage as the union of one man and one woman, but Attorney General Holder is attempting single-handedly to throw those votes away!

“For abandoning the oath he swore in taking office and his duty to defend the common good, Attorney General Holder should be impeached by Congress,” says the coalition. “CAAP is calling on all men and women of good will to sign the following petition urging Congress to take action against the Attorney General’s lawlessness today!”

I am happy this sort of bold leadership from black pastors. Although 94% of black Protestants voted for Obama in 2008, and thus for gay marriage, at least there is a remnant of courageous black Protestant leaders who are still under the authority of the Bible. It makes me wonder why their defense of traditional marriage is not shared by 94% of their flocks – at least in the ballot box (where it counts). There must be some huge gulf between Protestant leaders and the laity.

News

What is the Arizona religious liberty law really about?

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National Review explains what the proposed law is designed to do.

Excerpt:

In response to a number of lawsuits in which such providers of wedding-related services as bakers and photographers have been threatened with conscription into participating in same-sex ceremonies to which they object on religious grounds, Arizona’s state legislature has adopted a law under which businesses that decline to provide such services will enjoy protection.

It is perhaps unfortunate that it has come to this, but organized homosexuality, a phenomenon that is more about progressive pieties than gay rights per se, remains on the permanent offensive in the culture wars. Live-and-let-live is a creed that the gay lobby specifically rejects: The owner of the Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado was threatened with a year in jail for declining to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding. New Mexico photographer Elaine Huguenin was similarly threatened for declining to photograph a same-sex wedding. It is worth noting that neither the baker nor the photographer categorically refuses services to homosexuals; birthday cakes and portrait photography were both on the menu. The business owners specifically objected to participating in a civic/religious ceremony that violated their own consciences.

And the so-called liberals answer: “To hell with your consciences.”

In T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, the nature of totalitarianism is captured in the motto “Everything not forbidden is compulsory.” Gay marriage has made the sprint from forbidden to compulsory in record time; the day before yesterday, a homosexual marriage was a legal impossibility — and today it is a crime to sit one out.

Gay Americans, like many members of minority groups, are poorly served by their self-styled leadership. Like feminists and union bosses, the leaders of the nation’s gay organizations suffer from oppression envy, likening their situation to that of black Americans — as though having to find a gay-friendly wedding planner (pro tip: try swinging a dead cat) were the moral equivalent of having spent centuries in slavery and systematic oppression under Jim Crow. Their goal is not toleration or even equal rights but official victim-group status under law and in civil society, allowing them to use the courts and other means of official coercion to impose their own values upon those who hold different values.

Which is to say, what is regrettable here is not Arizona’s law but the machinations that have made it necessary. It seems unlikely that those religious bakers and photographers were chosen at random, or that their antagonists will stop until such diversity of opinion as exists about the subject of gay marriage has been put under legal discipline.

That’s a very short and sweet explanation of the law, and what led up to it.

On the one hand, we have a citizen who is offended at being refused a product or a service. The remedy is for them to go next door and get the product or service from someone else. Is that hard? On the other side of the case are Christians with a Constitutional right to religious liberty. Apparently, it is now OK for people to trample on Constitutional rights if they feel offended and have to go next door for something they want. 

Look at it another way. Whose is forcing their values on whom? If the gay couple has to leave the store and go somewhere else, are they being forced by the state through trials and punishments to accept the traditional definition of marriage? Hell no. But Christians who are dragged in front of courts, forced to pay legal fees for both parties, forced to apologize, force to pay fines, and forced to participate in something they oppose are having someone else’s views forced on them. It used to be that the gay activists talked about tolerance. Where is their tolerance now? Where is their rainbow of diversity now? It’s very important to understand that the people on the gay rights side do not recognize Constitutional rights, and they are not tolerant of other people’s views. And they are willing to use the power of the government to force people to celebrate their sexuality.