Tag Archives: Religious Liberty

News

Court forces baker to make gay wedding cakes and undergo sensitivity training

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Todd Starnes covers the story at Fox News.

Excerpt:

A family owned bakery has been ordered to make wedding cakes for gay couples and guarantee that its staff be given comprehensive training on Colorado’s anti-discrimination laws after the state’s Civil Rights Commission determined the Christian baker violated the law by refusing to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, in Lakewood, Colorado was directed to change his store policies immediately and force his staff to attend the training sessions. For the next two years, Phillips will also be required to submit quarterly reports to the commission to confirm that he has not turned away customers based on their sexual orientation.

[…]Nicolle Martin, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom, called the ruling Orwellian and said they are considering an appeal.

“They are turning people of faith into religious refugees,” Martin told me. “Is this the society that we want to live in – where people of faith are driven out of business?”

Martin said it was “truly frightening” that Phillips will be forced to submit quarterly reports to the government disclosing whether he turned away any wedding cake business.
“There will be some reporting requirements so that Jack can demonstrate that he doesn’t exercise his belief system anymore – that he has divested himself of his beliefs,” she said.
He will also be required to create new policies and procedures for his staff.

“We consider this reporting to be aimed at rehabilitating Jack so that he has the right thoughts,” Martin said. “That’s offensive to everything America stands for.”

Phillips, who is celebrating his 40th year in business this week, told me he’s not going to create any new policies.

“My old ones are pretty adequate as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “I don’t plan on giving up my faith and changing because of that.”

The controversy started in 2012 when a gay couple asked Phillips to make their wedding cake. Phillips politely declined, saying he could not make a cake promoting a same-sex ceremony because of his faith. He offered to make them any other baked item they wanted.

Charlie Craig and David Mullins filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission alleging they were discriminated against because of their sexual orientation. For the record, same-sex marriage is against the law in Colorado.

The commission affirmed a civil court’s ruling that the bakery cannot discriminate against persons in a public place based on sexual orientation.

“You can have your beliefs, but you can’t hurt other people at the same time,” Commission Chairwoman Katina Banks told The Denver Channel.

ACLU attorney Amanda Goad, who heads up the organization’s LBGT group, heralded the ruling.

“Religious freedom is undoubtedly an important American value, but so is the right to be treated equally under the law free from discrimination,” she said in a statement.

[…]“Jack doesn’t turn people away,” Martin told me. “There are just some events that he won’t lend his artistry to.”

[…]Martin said the Alliance Defending Freedom will “continue to stand with Jack against overreach and tyranny by the state.”

“Jack has gone out on a limb and taken this stand – and not capitulated to the government’s demands,” she said. “That speaks volumes about him.”

And should the highest court in the land force Jack to do the bidding of homosexuals?

“There’s civil disobedience,” Phillips told me. “We’ll see what happens. I’m not giving up my faith. Too many people have died for this faith to give it up that easily.”

Meanwhile, the bullying tactics of the militant gay rights community have not hampered the bakery’s bottom line. They’ve gotten so much business from the sales of cookies and brownies, they’ve temporarily stopped making wedding cakes.

“Obey Christ rather than worry about what man can do to you,” Phillips said.

There you have it, folks. In Colorado, you can’t have your cake and religious beliefs, too.

The most alarming thing that I see in the culture is the astonishing speed at which religious liberty is being crushed by the government in order to force everyone to promote gay rights. I don’t mind that people have a different sexuality than I do, but I don’t want to be forced to participate in a celebration of it.

News

Catholic doctors in the UK advised to emigrate

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From The Tablet. (H/T Jay Richards)

Excerpt:

Catholic doctors who follow church teaching on sexual ethics cannot work as gynaecologists in Britain, the Catholic Medical Association (CMA) conference was told.

Charlie O’Donnell, a consultant in emergency and intensive care medicine, said the best advice he could give to an “orthodox” Catholic wishing to specialise in obstetrics and gynaecology would be to “emigrate”.

Dr O’Donnell told the conference at Ealing Abbey, west London, on 17 May that a Catholic training to be a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology would soon find he or she had conscientious objections to such tasks as prescribing artificial contraceptives, giving unmarried couples fertility treatment or Viagra to gay couples.

He said that supervising consultants do not have the backup to allow trainees to opt out if they have moral objections to such work. However, conscientious objection to abortion is allowed because of specific provision in the 1967 Abortion Act.

“To be a sound Catholic regarding sexual ethics it is not possible to train as a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist but this is not because of discrimination against Catholics. There is a total conflict of culture of what is good sex, a dichotomy of belief between what we as Christians believe is good overall for the individual and what secular society believes,” said Dr O’Donnell.

Last week the president of the CMA, Dr Robert Hardie sought clarification concerning reports that doctors and nurses with conscientious objections would be barred from obtaining a diploma from the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Health (FSRH). Medical staff normally need the diploma to work in sexual and reproductive healthcare.

The Catholic Church is an interesting case. Although some Catholics are economically conservative, by and large Catholics tend to vote for bigger government, higher taxes and more regulations. Many now think that the point of their religion is to help the poor, and there is generally less emphasis on truth, theology and apologetics than in Protestantism. Well, what happens when lay Catholics begin to think their faith is about spreading the wealth around? They vote for secular politicians who promise to do that. As the secular government grows larger and larger, there is less room for faith commitments in the public square. The very Catholics who voted for Labour and the Liberal Democrats to “help the poor” are the ones running into problems now. I wonder if they have learned their lesson.

News

Disgusting: Pakistani woman murdered just for marrying the man she loved

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From ABC News, a story to chill you and anger you.

Excerpt:

A pregnant woman was stoned to death Tuesday by her own family outside a courthouse in the Pakistani city of Lahore for marrying the man she loved.

The woman was killed while on her way to court to contest an abduction case her family had filed against her husband. Her father was promptly arrested on murder charges, police investigator Rana Mujahid said, adding that police were working to apprehend all those who participated in this “heinous crime.”

Arranged marriages are the norm among conservative Pakistanis, and hundreds of women are murdered every year in so-called honor killings carried out by husbands or relatives as a punishment for alleged adultery or other illicit sexual behavior.

Stonings in public settings, however, are extremely rare. Tuesday’s attack took place in front of a crowd of onlookers in broad daylight. The courthouse is located on a main downtown thoroughfare.

A police officer, Naseem Butt, identified the slain woman as Farzana Parveen, 25, and said she had married Mohammad Iqbal, 45, against her family’s wishes after being engaged to him for years.

Her father, Mohammad Azeem, had filed an abduction case against Iqbal, which the couple was contesting, said her lawyer, Mustafa Kharal. He said she was three months pregnant.

Nearly 20 members of Parveen’s extended family, including her father and brothers, had waited outside the building that houses the high court of Lahore. As the couple walked up to the main gate, the relatives fired shots in the air and tried to snatch her from Iqbal, her lawyer said.

When she resisted, her father, brothers and other relatives started beating her, eventually pelting her with bricks from a nearby construction site, according to Mujahid and Iqbal, the slain woman’s husband.

One of these days I am going to write a post contrasting the Christian view of courtship and marriage, where the man has to PROVE that he is trained and ready to love the woman, provide for her needs and raise the children to be moral and spiritual, and the Islamic view.

Meanwhile, there was this horrible story about the pregnant woman in Sudan who is in chains in jail just because she is a Christian, not a Muslim.

Excerpt:

A doctor who is facing execution in Sudan for marrying a Christian gave birth to a baby girl in prison today.

Meriam Ibrahim, who has spent the past four months shackled to the floor in a disease-ridden jail, gave birth five days early.

The baby was born in the hospital wing at Omdurman Federal Women’s Prison in North Khartoum and is said to be healthy.

Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, her lawyer Mohaned Mustafa Elnour said: ‘This is some good news in what has been a terrible ordeal for Meriam.

‘I am planning to visit her with her husband Daniel later today. I think they are going to call the baby Maya.’

Meriam, 27, was sentenced to death by hanging earlier this month after being found guilty of converting from Islam to Christianity and marrying a Christian man, U.S. citizen Daniel Wani, who lives in Manchester, New Hampshire.

She will receive 100 lashes before she is executed – sometime in the next two years.

Before the birth, Meriam made the defiant claim that she would rather die than give up her faith.

In a heart-wrenching conversation with her husband during a rare prison visit, Meriam told him: ‘If they want to execute me then they should go ahead and do it because I’m not going to change my faith.’

An Islamic Sharia judge said she could be spared the death penalty if she publicly renounced her faith and becomes a Muslim once more.

Meriam insists she has always been a Christian and told her husband she could not ‘pretend to be a Muslim’ just to spare her life.

Another areas where Christianity is in sharp contrast to Islam is the area of evangelism. We don’t have to respond to people changing their minds, because in Christianity, the truth stands clear from error. Each person should decide for themselves – there is no compulsion in Christianity. But Islam is conversion by the sword, or by the threat of the sword.