Protecting your church from the “Gay Gestapo”

Your church may be the next one approached to host a gay wedding and your pastor asked to perform the ceremony. So what can you do to fend off the lawsuits that are certain to follow when you refuse?

Homosexual activists, called the “Gay Gestapo” by lesbian Tammy Bruce, are busily suing or harassing every Christian business owner and wedding vendor they can find. So far they have gone after wedding photographers, bakers, florists, wedding chapel operators, counselors and now even wedding planners.

Lana Rusev, who runs Simply Elegant Wedding Planning in Jacksonville, Florida, turned down a lesbian ceremony because of her deeply held conviction that marriage is exclusively a one-man, one-woman institution.

Rusev’s family fled Ukraine 26 years ago just to find freedom from this kind of anti-Christian hatred and oppression. Welcome to the land of the free, eh?

For taking a stand on biblical principle, she has been blistered, demonized and vilified on her company’s Facebook page, and her business has been added to the LBGT no-go-zone directory.

Mean-spirited and bigoted members of what Bill Maher calls the “gay mafia” won’t rest until every Christian who supports natural marriage is under virtual house arrest, exiled from polite society and forbidden to engage in commerce of any kind.

Your church may be next. Do not think for one minute that the First Amendment all by itself will guarantee your church’s protection from rabid gay activists and their minions in the court system. The courts have already shredded the First Amendment virtually beyond recognition, and as far as protecting your church’s religious liberty, it may be hardly worth the parchment it’s printed on.

A church in Lakewood, Colorado, is under fire from the gay lobby for canceling a funeral for a lesbian when her family insisted on including in the service pictures of her kissing her lesbian lover. The family is considering a lawsuit against the church, and given the predilection of the courts and its “Gay Rights Uber Alles” mindset, we can expect such a lawsuit to find a sympathetic ear.

What can your church do to make its stance abundantly clear and head off possible lawsuits at the same time? The elders of my church have formally recommended to our church family an amendment to the Constitution and bylaws that spell out in no uncertain terms the church’s stance on homosexuality and gay marriage. (The elders have wisely provided church members with a 30-day comment period before the statement becomes official.)

In part, the intention here is to anticipate the possibility that the church will be approached to host a gay wedding and its pastor asked to perform a same-sex ceremony.

Here’s how the addition reads:

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Proposed Change for Statement of Faith

We believe that the term ‘marriage’ has only one meaning and that is marriage sanctioned by God which joins one man and one woman in a single, exclusive union, as delineated in Scripture.

We believe that God intends sexual intimacy to only occur between a man and a woman who are married to each other. We believe that God has commanded that no intimate sexual activity be engaged in outside of a marriage between a man and a woman.

We believe that any form of sexual immorality, such as adultery, fornication, homosexuality, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, pornography or any attempt to change one’s sex, or disagreement with one’s biological sex, is sinful and offensive to God.

We believe that God offers redemption and restoration to all who confess and forsake their sin, seeking His mercy and forgiveness through Jesus Christ.

We believe that every person must be afforded compassion, love, kindness, respect, and dignity.

Hateful and harassing behavior or attitudes directed toward any individual are to be repudiated and are not in accord with Scripture nor the doctrines of the church.

Gen. 2:24; Lev. 18:1-30; Rom. 1: 26-32; 1 Cor. 5:1-2; 6:9; 1 Thess. 4:1-8; Heb. 13:4; 1 Cor. 7:10; Eph. 5:22-23; Mark 10:6-9

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To be forewarned is to be forearmed. It might be wise for every church in America to formally adopt this statement or one like it to prepare with prudence and foresight for a litigiously uncertain future.

Thomas Jefferson’s famous wall of separation, as he articulated it, was designed to protect the church from the intrusion and interference of the state (not, you will note, to protect the state from the influence of the church). Jefferson’s wall, erected by the Constitution itself, was intended to prevent the very thing we are witnessing: the state breaking down that protective barrier and barging into the affairs of Christians, Christian business owners and churches and telling them what they must believe and do.

It’s time to rebuild Jefferson’s wall, and this statement just might be the place to start.

Originally published at OneNewsNow.com.