Let’s flash back 10 years ago…

This was a time when a majority of states had constitutional marriage amendments defining marriage s the union of one man and one woman – a time when support for this definition was bipartisan: from John McCain to Barack Obama, most politicians would confess their support for marriage.

As you may recall, at that time supporters of redefining marriage had a favorite talking point: what does my marriage have to do with you? Why can’t we live and let live?

This was a persuasive argument to a lot of people (And at another time, we can get into why this question fundamentally misses the point of why the government is in the marriage business in the first place).

“Live and let live.”

But once the U.S. Supreme Court redefined marriage, we can see they never really meant it.

Just look at the case of Blaine Adamson – a T-Shirt printer in Kentucky. In 2012, the Lexington Gay Pride Parade asked Blaine to print shirts for their event. As a Christian, Blaine didn’t feel comfortable promoting their message, so he declined.

This wasn’t acceptable to the Lexington LGBT community, so they sued Blaine. Blaine lossed his case in front of the Lexington Human Rights Commission, but last Friday, The Kentucky Court of Appeals overturned this decision, protecting Blaine’s first amendment rights.

Make no mistake, this is a significant victory. This is the first time in the country religious freedom has prevailed in a case like this – the first time the court understood our the issues that are truly at hand.  Blaine didn’t decline to make shirts for these clients because they were gay, in fact, he served gay customers all the time. He declined to make the shirts because they were trying to get him to promote a message he disagreed with, or in other words, they were trying to compel speech from Blaine.

If the government can force you to say something or convey a message, then you fundamentally do not have free speech.

Nation wide, the courts are full of these cases today. Here’s hoping this is the first of many “wins” to come.

According to an Associated Press report, the U.S. Senate voted to approve a $602 billion defense bill which also mandates that our daughters register for Selective Service and a possible future draft.  This gender blind, biologically indifferent proposal was sponsored by U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who also happens to chair the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee.

Both Illinois U.S. Senators, Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk, voted in favor of this irresponsible legislation.  The over all vote was 85 in favor, just 13 opposed.  U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) also voted for this atrocity.

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) spoke out in opposition to the measure, saying in an official statement that this political correct bill “is being used as a vehicle to further agendas that have nothing to do with actually defending America. Despite the many laudable objectives in this bill, I could not in good conscience vote to draft our daughters into the military, sending them off to war and forcing them into combat.”

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 (S. 2943), if passed by the U.S. House and signed into law by President Barack Obama, would require:

(1)  The duty to register imposed on male citizens and persons residing in the United States by subsection (a) shall apply to female citizens of the United States and female persons residing in the United States who attain the age of 18 years on or after January 1, 2018.

(2)  The responsibilities and rights of female registrants under this Act shall be the responsibilities and rights of male registrants under this Act, and shall be subject to such terms, conditions, and limitations as are applicable under the provisions of this Act to similarly situated male registrants.

(3)  Any reference in this Act to a registrant or other person subject to the duties, responsibilities, and rights of a registrant under this Act shall be deemed to refer to female citizens of the United States and female persons residing in the United States registering pursuant to this subsection.

The bill now heads over to the U.S. House.

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.

Click HERE to support the work and ministry of Illinois Family Institute.

I’m a Bible-believing Christian first, a conservative second and, sometimes, with rapidly dwindling frequency, a Republican third (but only when the Grand Old Party is behaving itself).

Although the GOP’s RINO establishment still controls its legislative reins, I’m mildly encouraged by some recent developments at the Republican National Committee (RNC) level. It seems that under the leadership of Chairman Reince Priebus, the party is moving – at least to some degree – back toward its historical conservative platform moorings.

It’s a popular refrain among “moderate” Republicans and libertine libertarians that the GOP “must give up the fight on ‘social issues’” (i.e., gun rights, religious freedom, protecting life and defending legitimate marriage and the natural family).

If the GOP follows through and abandons these transcendent conservative values, it’s done once and for all. The Republican Party had better run, not walk, back toward these conservative platform principles; otherwise Democrats will rule in perpetuity. The “progressive” juggernaut will finish off an America it has already maimed beyond recognition.

As I’ve noted before, Ronald Reagan often spoke of a “three-legged stool” that undergirds what I call “complete conservatism.” The legs symbolize a strong national defense, strong free-market principles and strong traditional social values. For the stool to remain upright, it must be supported by all three legs. If you snap off even one leg, the stool collapses under its own weight.

A Republican, for instance, who is conservative on social and national defense issues but liberal on fiscal issues is not a complete conservative. He is a quasi-conservative socialist.

A Republican who is conservative on fiscal and social issues but liberal on national defense issues is not a complete conservative. He is a quasi-conservative dove.

By the same token, a Republican who is conservative on fiscal and national defense issues but liberal on social issue – such as abortion, homosexual activism or the Second Amendment – is not a complete conservative. He is a socio-liberal libertarian.

Karl Rove represents the embodiment of this kind of mushy moderate false pragmatism – a Democrat-lite mindset embraced by the GOP’s socio-liberal establishment. If you run into Karl and his ilk, don’t forget to thank them for President Bob Dole, President John McCain and President Mitt Romney.

Indeed, if the Republican Party ever hopes to occupy the Oval Office again, it’s going to have to nominate a complete conservative and adopt a legislative agenda that reflects the values shared by the tens-of-millions who make up the GOP’s complete conservative base. I don’t mean by simply paying empty lip service either. I mean through unwavering legislative practice.

As Mitt Romney might tell you, if the base ain’t fired up, the base ain’t going to the polls.

In 2012, the GOP approved a platform that, at least in writing, re-established a firm position on – as they say – “guns, ‘gays’ and abortion.” It’s now time for the Republican Party to stand firm atop that platform. As a complete conservative who shudders at the thought of a President Hillary Clinton, I’m cautiously optimistic that some in leadership are beginning to scale the platform once more. The RNC, under Priebus, has recently taken steps that seem to indicate the message of the GOP’s majority base is finally getting through.

For example, the Washington Times recently reported: “In an unprecedented show of opposition to abortion, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is delaying the start of the party’s annual winter meeting so he and other committee members can join the (Jan. 22) March for Life on the Mall. …”

“‘I saw that there was a real interest among a significant portion of our members to attend and support the Rally for Life,’ Mr. Priebus said in an email to the Times. ‘This is a core principle of our party. It was natural for me to support our members and our principles,’” he said.

Moreover, this past Thursday was National Religious Freedom Day. In recent years we’ve seen religious freedom under attack at unprecedented levels through things like the HHS abortion mandate, so-called “gay marriage” and “sexual orientation” laws that target religious business owners. The RNC released the following statement indicating that the GOP intends to defend religious freedom:

“Today we celebrate National Religious Freedom Day and honor the vision of our founders, who ensured every American would have the right to ‘the free exercise’ of his or her faith. As a party, Republicans are committed to preserving and defending the protections enshrined in the First Amendment so that future generations will always enjoy religious freedom in America.”

This move back toward the GOP’s conservative platform has made some socio-liberal Republicans unhappy. In fact, it recently drove homosexual RINO Jimmy LaSalvia, the founder of GOProud, a tiny “gay activist” outfit, to announce that he was defecting from the party.

LaSalvia told Time magazine that, “he could no longer take his own party’s refusal to stand up to bigotry: he was leaving the Republican Party and had registered as an Independent.”

By refusing to “stand up to bigotry,” of course, LaSalvia, like all “gay” activists, means that he can no longer abide the Republican platform’s support for religious freedom and pro-family values.

LaSalvia’s frustration and defection bode well for the Republican Party in general. It means that the GOP is moving slowly – ever so slowly – back toward its conservative roots. This is good news indeed. The more conservative this prodigal GOP becomes; the more successful it will be going forward.

Keep it up, Mr. Priebus, and in November your base just might grill up the fatted calf.

Click HERE to support Illinois Family Institute (IFI). Contributions to IFI are tax-deductible and support our educational efforts.

Click HERE to support Illinois Family Action (IFA). Contributions to IFA are not tax-deductible but give us the most flexibility in engaging critical legislative and political issues.