Tag Archives: Religious Liberty

News

Georgia goes after Christian medical doctor over the content of his sermons

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Gay activist vandalizes pro-marriage sign
Gay activist vandalizes pro-marriage sign

I had friends who have been trying to get me to move to Georgia. Sure glad I didn’t listen to them – it’s turning out to be a very bad state for liberty.

Here’s the latest from religious liberty hero David French, writing at National Review.

He writes:

This morning, the First Liberty Institute filed a lawsuit in federal court that makes chilling claims against Georgia’s Department of Public Health, claims backed by a host of damaging documents. The Institute represents Dr. Eric Walsh, a California physician and former director of public health for the city of Pasadena, Calif. Walsh is also a devout Christian, a Seventh-day Adventist who sometimes preaches in his spare time.

Walsh, a former member of the President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, had accepted a job in Georgia as a district health director when Georgia officials became aware that he’d delivered a number of “controversial” sermons on his own time — sermons where he articulated orthodox Seventh-day Adventist positions on, among other things, human sexuality, Islam, evolution, and the corrupting influence of pop culture.

In California, Walsh had been attacked by student activists who objected to his selection as a commencement speaker at Pasadena City College. To these activists, working for former president Bush and President Obama to combat AIDS, serving as a board member of the Latino Health Collaborative, and starting California’s first city-run dental clinic for low-income families dealing with HIV/AIDS wasn’t sufficient to overcome the horror at Walsh’s Christian views. Under fire, Walsh canceled his commencement speech — while the city, incredibly, put him on administrative leave. The college replaced him with a gay screenwriter.

When Georgia officials learned of Walsh’s California controversy, they responded by immediately violating the law. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits government employers from considering an applicant’s religion in employment decisions, but Georgia officials not only evaluated Walsh’s religious views, the director of human resources wrote an e-mail to department employees giving them the “assignment” of listening to his sermons.

And so they did. E-mails indicate that health-department employees split the sermons up, listened to Walsh’s religious views, and took notes. Walsh asserts that one department official called and told him that “you can’t preach that and work in the field of public health.”

[…][T]wo days after health-department officials carried out their “assignment” to watch his sermons, they terminated Walsh — informing him through a mocking voice-mail message that a termination letter was on its way.

Previously, I wrote about how Georgia fired their highly-respect Fire Chief, because he wrote a book in which he supported moral views consistent with the Bible in areas of sexual behavior.

The story is from the Daily Signal.

Excerpt:

Former Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran lived the American dream. That is, until he was fired from his childhood dream job for writing a book during his own private time.

Cochran’s book, published in 2013 and called “Who Told You That You Were Naked?,” expresses a biblical view on marriage and addresses homosexuality from his Christian perspective.

[…]Fast-forward a few months, and Cochran received a 30-day suspension without pay, after an LGBT activist group started to protest the book.

[…]After 34 years as a firefighter, Cochran’s fairy-tale career came to a halt in January due to his personal views on gay marriage.

[…]Cochran had worked his way up, and out from the poverty he grew up in, to be named Atlanta fire chief in 2008. In 2009, he was appointed administrator of the United States Fire Administration under President Barack Obama. Less than a year later, he was back to his position as chief in Atlanta.

Investigation into Cochran found that he did not show discrimination against anyone during employment, yet he was terminated anyway.

[…]“The part that got me in trouble was the fact that in the book I dealt with sexual challenges that Christian men have and spoke of biblical marriage and biblical sexuality,” Cochran said in August while speaking at a religious liberty rally in Iowa.

Pretty every day now I am getting a message from someone who is asking me how to have an alias, whether they need an alias, and so on. I hope that these cases show you that no amount of excellence in education or ability or work history will protect you from the fascists of the secular left. They don’t care whether you are the best at doing this job or that job – it’s more important to them that you share their personal opinions on moral issues. Specifically, it’s more important to them that you believe that when it comes to sexuality, there are no rules. That is, that the selfishness of the adults must override all moral rules, especial moral rules around sexual behavior. There are no marriage rules, there are no children’s needs, there is no chastity, there is no fidelity, there is no self-control.

When it comes to expressing your views in order to have an influence, my advice is simple. First, don’t listen to anyone who is reckless about the consequences and is more interested in prancing around praising their own supposed bravery. The object of this game is to share your views with the right people as persuasively as you can, and not to find yourself silenced or sidelined because the other team hammers you and undermines your ability to be effective. Handing the other side your real name, real address, and so on, undermines your effectiveness with no compensating increase in effectiveness. It’s a net loss, and not one that you should choose to take.

News

Christian student expelled for quoting the Bible on marriage on Facebook page

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Anti-marriage gay activists vandalize church
Anti-marriage gay activists vandalize church

This article is from the Christian Post, and I’m blogging about it to warn you all about Facebook, and how to use it.

Story first, though:

A Christian student expelled from England’s Sheffield University because he quoted the Bible’s stance on homosexuality in a Facebook post supportive of controversial Kentucky clerk Kim Davis has lost his appeal.

Felix Ngole, a 38-year-old in his second year of study for a master’s degree in social work at the University of Sheffield in South Yorkshire was told that he is no longer a student at the university after a committee ruled he “may have caused offense to some individuals” by issuing a Facebook post last September quoting Leviticus on the Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality.

Ngole’s post came in defense of Davis, the clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, who became the center of a media firestorm last year when she refused to allow her office to issue same-sex marriage licenses with her name and title on them because of her religious objection to same-sex marriage.

Although Ngole’s Facebook page is private and can only be seen by his friends, his post was brought to the attention of administrators at the university months later.

Ngole’s future at the university was then subjected to the “Fitness to Practice” committee, which ruled that his conservative Christian beliefs about marriage would negatively impact his “ability to carry out a role as a social worker” and that his post “transgressed boundaries which are not deemed appropriate for someone entering the social work profession.”

The committee ruled that Ngole was to be “excluded from further study on a program leading to a professional qualification.” In late February, the school informed Ngole that he would no longer be recognized as a university student.

“Your student record will be terminated shortly and your library membership and university computer account withdrawn,” Ngole was told. “You may wish to contact your funding body for advice on your financial position.”

That’s actually not such a  strange thing, as similar things have happened in the United States. Alliance Defending Freedom has a post up about one case from Eastern Michigan University.

Secret Agent John Drake
Secret Agent John Drake

So what’s the solution to this?

Three points:

  1. Don’t post anything publicly on your Facebook account.
  2. Don’t use your real name on your Facebook account, use an alias instead.
  3. Don’t friend everyone who sends you a friend request unless you know them personally and know that they are sympathetic to your views on controversial issues.

Obviously, there are degrees of risk. Someone in an academic environment who doesn’t follow the news about what Christians are facing in different countries is the most at risk, especially compared to working in a private company. Not only are Christians in academia mingling with intolerant secular leftists, but you pay your money up front when you go to school, and getting into another school after being expelled is much harder than finding another job.

I actually have a friend who is a Christian apologist. He writes all about controversial subjects like intelligent design, gay marriage and Islam under his real name. And he friends pretty much anyone who sends him a friend request, including people who disagree with him on controversial issues. He likes to have a lot of friends, although I wouldn’t classify him as someone who invests deeply in other people’s lives. Publishing controversial views under his own name has actually caused him some trouble academically, where he lost a world-class PhD supervisor. And he has ignored all my warnings. Don’t be like that guy. The goal of your life is not to behave recklessly, and then get destroyed before you accomplish anything. The goal of your life is to accomplish a lot over the long term, and pray that the other side never lays a finger on you.

I used to attend an Anglican church in my home town when I was an undergraduate student. The church (St. Alban’s) was a wonderful stone building in the middle of downtown, with a frightfully small parking lot. The pastor (George) was excellent, and I remember many one-off things that he said. But most of all I remember this statement that George got out of the Book of Common Prayer:

O God, from whom all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works do proceed; Give unto thy servants that peace which the world cannot give; that our hearts may be set to obey thy commandments, and also that by thee, we, being defended from the fear of our enemies, may pass our time in rest and quietness; through the merits of Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen.

And he would always dismiss us with this blessing:

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields
and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

When I was in my early 20s, I used to scoff at this talk of “rest and quietness” and “wind always at your back”. I had already experienced persecution twice by that time – once in the workplace, and once at school. But I thought I was invincible. However, even back then I was tracking the censorship and persecution of Christians in countries like Canada. As time passed, I saw more cases in more countries where the secular left expelled students, got people fired, vandalized churches and private property, put people on trial, and I watched the government fine Christians for offending others with unwelcome speech. The limits on their desire to be praised for sinning disappeared. Every act of coercion became permissible in order to take away the shame and guilt.

Now that things have accelerated out of control, and even the pious pastors in their comfortable churches finally understand that secular leftism is on a collision course with free speech and freedom of religion, I find myself wishing more and more to pass my life in rest and quietness. I was careful to make a difference starting when I was young. But now rest and quietness seems like a wonderful idea as I get older. A word to the wise for you youngsters who think that you will never face persecution. Take it from someone who has faced it: it’s something to be avoided if you can, so long as you can still make a difference.

Commentary

Why are social conservatives unable to exert political pressure?

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Hillary Clinton and her ally, the Human Rights Campaign
Hillary Clinton and her ally, the Human Rights Campaign

Right now, social liberals are having great success pushing through their agenda. Social conservatives seemed to be getting coerced and/or punished so effectively that many are wondering whether the tide can be turned at all.

Ben Shapiro, who writes at the Daily Wire, explains what’s been happening lately:

Leftists, the most tolerant people in America, are now demonstrating their tolerance by boycotting entire states that do not govern in accordance with leftist social policy. On Tuesday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that he would bar non-essential state-funded travel to Mississippi after the state passed a bill re-enshrining First Amendment protections for freedom of religion and association. Cuomo, who termed the law “sad, hateful,” isn’t the only big government leftist to utilize the power of taxpayer-funded nastiness: the mayor of San Francisco, Ed Lee, did the same.

Lee and Cuomo also announced travel bans to North Carolina, where the governor recently signed a bill that mandates that local governments may not allow people to use single-sex bathrooms based on subjective gender identity rather than biological sex; that bill also makes state anti-discrimination law supreme and exclusive over local anti-discrimination laws that would compel businesses to hire people regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

It’s not just government, either. Icons like the wildly overrated Bruce Springsteen are cancelling concerts in North Carolina; businesses like PayPal, which do business in countries like Saudi Arabia and Malaysia, which actually prosecute homosexuality. States like Virginia and Georgia have vetoed similar legislation out of fear of corporate and governmental blowback from companies ranging from Apple to Disney.

The left has ratcheted up their pressure on states to crack down on Americans who don’t want their daughters peeing next to grown men, to prosecute businessowners who don’t want to cater same-sex weddings. They’ve utilized their economic power to punish private actors who may or may not even agree with the left in an attempt to coax those actors into putting indirect pressure on their representatives.

Maggie Gallagher, a pro-marriage activists who has written some great books on marriage that I really liked, has some practical advice for social conservatives in National Review.

She has five points – here are four and five:

4) Social conservatives aren’t doing politics.

Before I explain what I mean, let me ask you to answer a simple question: What is the national organization that fights for religious-liberty protections by spending money in federal elections? Currently, there is none. There are many good nonprofits who issue voter guides or get pastors together. There are public-interest law firms galore. These are all good things to have — but there is a hole in the center of our movement.

How big is the hole? For my own amusement, I tried to figure out how much money social conservatives (excluding pro-life groups) spent in national elections in 2014 compared to what they spend on 501(c)3 and other nonprofit strategies. I looked for every organization I could find that has marriage or religious liberty in its mission statement and then compared it with election expenditures by either c(4)s or political-action committees (PACs). Then I asked around to major social-conservative donors I know to see if I had overlooked any major organization.

How big is the hole in the center of our movement?

In 2014 pro-family social conservatives invested $251,633,730 in tax-deductible 501(c)3 efforts (excluding pro-life efforts).

How much was spent on direct political engagement, counting both state and federal organizations? $2,484,359.

That 100-to-one ratio of doing politics by indirect versus direct means explains a lot about the relative powerlessness of social conservatism.

Social conservatives can’t get much out of politics because we aren’t in politics. We just talk like we are on television, when the Left allows us to get on television. Meanwhile, we don’t build political institutions that matter.

Social conservatives need to think like a minority and organize politically to protect our interests. Which leads me to Maggie’s fifth Big Truth of social-conservative politics:

5) The most important thing social conservatives could do in the 2016 cycle is to demonstrate to Democrats that extremism in pushing unisex showers on public schools or oppressing gay-marriage dissenters will cost them the White House.

In theory, this shouldn’t be hard to do: A July 2015 Associated Press–GFK poll showed that 59 percent of independents and 32 percent of Democrats agree that when gay rights and religious liberty conflict, religious liberty should have priority. Social conservatives should use the issue on offense — not just to gin up “the base,” but to persuade soft Democrats to abandon the party of anti-religious aggression. If intensive messaging to Democratic voters in a key swing state could move just 10 percent of them to switch their votes, the whole political dynamic of this issue would change.

But proving that would require raising a significant amount of money — say at least $2 million — and demonstrating in a key swing state, such as Ohio or Pennsylvania or Florida, that the Democrats’ anti-religion intolerance against gay-marriage dissenters could cost them something they care about: The White House. Power.

I see no signs yet that any such thing is happening among social conservatives.

But it could.

We should fill the hole in the center of the social-conservative movement by getting into politics for the first time in 50 years. It could happen.

I noticed that Maggie’s web site “The Pulse” is very pro-Cruz. They do not like John Kasich at all on social issues, and they were not fans of Marco Rubio’s tepid response to the gay marriage ruling.