Someone needs to thump some sense into syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts for his claim that the now-vetoed Arizona religious freedom bill would have allowed “businesses to refuse service to gay people on religious grounds.” Not so, but more on that in a minute.

Nine times in Pitts’ short column he repeats the mantra “Boycott Arizona,” perhaps hoping to hypnotize an intellectually and morally slothful public. One wonders how far Pitts and his ideological ilk will take their march against diversity and tolerance. Can Arizona citizens express their conservative views on issues related to homosexuality and gender confusion in letters to the editor without Pitts ordering a boycott? Can public libraries order books from conservative scholars without Pitts caterwauling “Boycott Arizona”? How do citizens employ their speech rights—which were intended to protect even unpopular speech—if promoters of tolerance like Pitts try to make it impossible to earn a living if they do so?

What makes his command to boycott Arizona even more troubling is he doesn’t seem to  understand what the law actually entails. Eleven law professors of diverse political persuasions and perspectives on same-sex “marriage” sent a letter to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to correct the media’s misrepresentation of the law, which they describe as “egregiously misrepresented”:

SB1062 does not say that businesses can discriminate for religious reasons. It says that business people can assert a claim or defense under [Religious Freedom Protection Act], in any kind of case (discrimination cases are not even mentioned, although they would be included), that they have the burden of proving a substantial burden on a sincere religious practice, that the government or the person suing them has the burden of proof on compelling government interest, and that the state courts in Arizona make the final decision.

These law professors also explain that “The federal government and eighteen states have Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRAs). Another twelve or thirteen states interpret their state constitutions to provide similar protections.”

This bill would have merely clarified an Arizona law that has been on the books for fifteen years. National Review editor, Rich Lowry, explains that “A religious freedom statute doesn’t give anyone carte blanche to do whatever he wants in the name of religion. It simply allows him to make his case in court that a law or a lawsuit substantially burdens his religion and that there is no compelling governmental interest to justify the burden” (emphasis added).

In his fervor to command Americans not to vacation in or do business with Arizona, Pitts forgot to mention the federal equivalent of Arizona’s proposed law, which was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by then U.S. Representative Chuck Shumer (D-New York) and signed into law by President Bill Clinton twenty years ago. Pitts is going to be hard-pressed to find somewhere to vacation now that the entire country is off-limits.

Pitts accuses opponents of same-sex “marriage” of going “bughouse” over comparisons to the Civil Rights Movement, but he spends no time explaining why such a comparison bothers opponents—including African American opponents of same-sex “marriage.” And he glaringly fails to provide any evidence for his implicit claim that homosexuality per se is equivalent to race or skin color, which is necessary to justify his comparison of the push to normalize homosexuality to the Civil Rights movement.

Pitts does, however, provide evidence of his theological ignorance:

Don’t be fooled by pious babblespeak that claims these laws only protect the rights of religious people who object to homosexuality. No one seeks to compel any preacher to perform a same-sex marriage if doing so violates his conscience. But if that pastor works for a bakery during the week, it is none of his business whether the wedding cake he bakes is for John and Jan or John and Joe.

Pitts’ theological ignorance is evident when he says that the content of one’s labors is religiously irrelevant to people of faith. For true followers of Christ, there should be no area of life untouched by their faith.

Pitts may not be familiar with these verses:

• “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men…”
• “Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established.”
• “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”
• “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
• “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.”

It is at minimum oxymoronic to argue that in the service of bringing glory to God, a Christian can take part in and profit from a ceremony that God detests.

Christians are also commanded to “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness.” This means in part that though Christians may love, spend time with, and provide goods and services to homosexuals (and all the rest of sinful humanity), they should not take part in any way with same-sex pseudo-wedding ceremonies, which are, indeed, unfruitful works of darkness.

Further, Pitts’ assertion that the sex of the partners seeking to marry is none of the baker’s business is just silly. It becomes the baker’s business when the “grooms” tell him that he will be baking a cake—in other words, using his labors and profiting from—their unbiblical pseudo-wedding.

What Pitts is really saying is that the baker shouldn’t care about whether the cake is for a same-sex pseudo-wedding or a true wedding, but what the baker cares about is not Pitts’ business.

Pitts did offer this conciliatory message: “it’s time those of us who value comity, concord and tolerance make our voices heard.”

Yes, nothing says comity, concord, and tolerance quite like these preceding words from Pitts:

[T]hese laws amount to little more than temper tantrums by last-ditch bigots who don’t realize history has passed them by as a Ferrari does a traffic cone. But perhaps there is something to be said for inflicting economic pain as a way of saying, “Cut it out.” Perhaps the right wing’s proud embrace of ignorance and intolerance has grown so toxic they demand to be confronted.   

Pitts closes with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr., so I will too: “How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.”

To which I say, Amen.

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Arizona Governor Jan Brewer vetoed the law that would have protected the right of people of faith to refuse to be part of homosexual faux-weddings. In so doing, she helped chisel out another chink in the constitutional wall that protects the free exercise of religion. Apparently, she does not possess the spine to withstand pressure from corporations and feckless politicians like John McCain and Mitt Romney who urged her to veto the bill.

Pastor and theologian Doug Wilson has this  to say about the Arizona debacle:

When [the Holy Spirit] is manifest, when the wind stirs, the church has the mojo. When it is not, then the GOP, and Romney, and the NFL, all feel safe in saying that Arizona should much rather provoke the evangelicals than provoke the gayboys.

Christians aren’t refusing to “serve gays and lesbians” as the media reports. Some Christians are refusing to use their labors in the service of a ceremony that God detests—as they should. These same Christians who don’t want to use their labors in the service of a ceremony that mocks marriage will serve and have served those who identify as homosexual. These faithful followers of Christ will sell baked goods and flowers to any particular individual including those who identify as homosexual. They won’t, however, use their gifts and labors in the service of a ceremony that mocks marriage and displeases the God they serve. This critical distinction is an inconvenient truth for “progressives.”

The Left persists in exploiting the stupid and dishonest comparison of homosexuality to race (or skin color) because it works. And it works in part because conservatives are too cowardly or lazy to challenge it every time a “progressive” trots it out, which is daily.

Skin color is 100% heritable, in all cases immutable, not constituted by subjective feelings, and carries no behavioral implications amenable to moral assessment.

Homosexuality, in contrast, is not 100 percent heritable, is in some cases mutable (or fluid as queer theorists describe it), and constituted centrally by subjective feelings and volitional sexual acts that are legitimate objects of moral assessment.

So, if the Left wants to construct a sound analogy, they need to find a suitable analogue like perhaps polyamory or consensual adult incest. Will the government at the behest of sexual transgressives one day require Christian bakers and florists to use their labors in the service of polyamorous or incestuous ceremonies, which are arguably less perverse than homosexual “weddings”?

Christians need to strengthen their rubbery spines and find their lost chests, which is difficult to do with the church’s anemic preaching. Doug Wilson paints a dark picture of what much of contemporary preaching portends:

When men preach boldly—as when they declare that sin is bad and Jesus is good—it is easy to represent them as having a go-to-hell dismissiveness about them. But it is actually the opposite. Those ministers who crawl on hands and knees in order to obtain the respect of the world—an odd way of proceeding, I should think—are those whose mealy-pulpitoons amount to a wish that the world would continue on its way to Hell, not warned, not rebuked, not hindered in any way. And those who try to stand across the way are accused of having engineered the way in the first place, and of harboring a not-so-secret wish that all non-Christians would tumble headlong into the Abyss.

If our preachers manage to hoist themselves off their hands and knees, here are some anchoring (and bracing) thoughts from Wilson to help them preach boldly:

As conservative Christians, we are accustomed to discuss homosexual issues in the light of Romans 1. There Paul tells us that our gay pride parades are the result of refusing to honor God as God, and refusing to give Him thanks. Nothing is plainer to exegetes—who are not selling out, or who don’t have a gun to their head—than the fact that an apostle of Jesus Christ taught us that for a man to burn with lust for another man was unnatural, and that for a woman to burn with lust for another woman was even more unnatural. But that is not the point I would like to make, although the point I need to make assumes this. We need to go on to see that this chapter teaches us something else quite important about our current controversies.

The wrath of God is described in this chapter, and it is described as God giving people over to their desires. The mercy of God is found in the restraints He places on us, and His wrath is revealed from heaven whenever He lets us run headlong, which is what is happening to us now. This wrath is described this same way again a couple verses later. God gave them up to dishonorable passions. It is repeated a third time just a moment later. God gave them up to a debased mind. When God lets go, that is His wrath. As Lewis says somewhere, Heaven is when we say to God “thy will be done.” Hell is when He says that to us.

So what consequences follow when He lets go? What does this wrath look like when it is visited on a culture?

The next point is often missed. This progression amounts to the wrath of God being revealed against us because we are being delivered up to the tender mercies of the wicked, which are cruel. Notice Paul’s description of what these people are like outside the bedroom. Right after his observations on men burning in lust for men, and women for women, he gives us an additional character description.

“And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful . . .” .

Now who do you want to put in charge of the new civility? Who do you want as an arbiter of true sensitivity in speech? Who should run the training seminars for all the big corporations on what “hate” is? Who should set the boundaries for acceptable public discourse? Who should be the appointed gatekeepers on what constitutes tolerant speech? For any Christian who has read Romans 1 rightly, not these people.

They don’t know what tolerance is. They don’t know how to spell it. They hate the very idea of it. They have taken the biblical doctrine of tolerance and have filed it into a shiv, so that they might smite us all under the fifth rib, as Joab did to people. This should not be surprising to us. Someone who finds the anus of another the object of his desire is not someone that I would trust to determine whether or not this sentence is a hate crime. They are liars and filled with all malice. They are backbiters, overflowing with malignity. They are implacable.

So if you want to form a brigade of tolerance cops, that is bad enough, but then, when you want to staff the whole brigade with these people, the entire spectacle turns into how the right panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights would look if Bosch had just taken three hits of acid just before painting it. The way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. The only thing that their lawlessness can really do well is breed more lawlessness . So I know! Let’s put them in charge of civility in public discourse.

This is the wrath of God upon us, and the wrath of God delivers us over to more than just our demented lusts. It delivers us over to the ministrations and judicial processes of those who refuse to tolerate any rebuke of their lusts, whether the rebuke is express or implied.

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