Written by Dr. Paul G. Kengor

“In 1949, some friends and I came upon a noteworthy news item in Nature, a magazine of the Academy of Sciences.” So opens Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s majestic The Gulag Archipelago, a seemingly odd start for a classic on the Soviet gulag, the nation’s forced labor camps. Readers initially wonder where the author is headed with a sort of ho-hum report from not a political journal but a science journal. He continues:

“It reported in tiny type that in the course of excavations on the Kolyma River a subterranean ice lens had been discovered which was actually a frozen stream — and in it were found frozen specimens of prehistoric fauna some tens of thousands of years old. Whether fish or salamander, these were preserved in so fresh a state, the scientific correspondent reported, that those present immediately broke open the ice encasing the specimens and devoured them with relish on the spot.”

At this point, readers might still be confused. Isn’t this a book on the Soviet gulag? Why are we reading about prehistoric fauna?

Actually, they’re learning about the gulag — its escapees, its survivors. Solzhenitsyn next explains what those present did with those ancient creatures. They didn’t rush them off to a museum; no, they devoured them. They were not doing a scientific excavation — they were escaping a communist prison camp, where millions starved and died.

“Flouting the higher claims of ichthyology,” narrated Solzhenitsyn, and “elbowing each other to be first,” they chipped away the ice, hurried the fish to a fire, cooked it and bolted it down. No doubt, said Solzhenitsyn, Nature impressed its readers with this account of how 10,000-year-old fish could be kept fresh over such a long period. But only a narrower group of readers could decipher the true meaning of this “incautious” report. That smaller club was his fellow gulag survivors — the “pitiable zeks,” as Solzhenitsyn called them. When your goal is survival, you survive, even if it means hurriedly devouring something that in a normal world would be carefully rushed to a museum.

What started as a seemingly odd opening about prehistoric fish was actually a poignant anecdote about the human horrors of Soviet communism. It was not about fish at all. It was about human beings who had been trapped in their state-constructed frozen ice lens — the frozen camps of Siberia.

I mention this now because it was 50 years ago, shortly before the publication of The Gulag Archipelago, that Alexander Solzhenitsyn received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Few recipients have so earned it.

To here summarize Solzhenitsyn’s life or book would be impossible. There was so much of note. Many might point to his Harvard commencement address in June 1978, or perhaps his less-known-but-equally-inspiring Templeton Prize speech (“Men Have Forgotten God”) in May 1983, or his reporting on the daily travails of another sufferer in his classic A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. For me, however, what endures most are his reports of religious persecution under communism.

In The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn reported on the Moscow “church trials” of the 1920s — classic communist show trials, aimed particularly at the Russian Orthodox Church. Solzhenitsyn provided a narrative account of this surreal, painful miscarriage of justice. The presiding judge was Comrade Bek, with the prosecutors Comrade Lunin and Comrade Longinov. Solzhenitsyn didn’t bother to share the first names of this dubious troika of comrades. It didn’t matter. Their names and faces and roles and duties were interchangeable in the Soviet system.

On trial were 17 defendants from the Russian Orthodox Church, including the patriarch, archpriests and laymen, accused of disseminating “propaganda” and of “hoarding” Church valuables (including everything from liturgical items to relics to icons) that the Soviet state demanded. Lenin and his Bolsheviks salivated over these “fabulous treasures” of the Church. Leon Trotsky rubbed his covetous hands together: “The booty is enormous!” he thrilled.

And thus the Church was told that it must give up everything to the state — then and there, without hesitation. That would ultimately include churches themselves, not to mention the loyalty of priests. The Soviet state was to be the new arbiter of truth.

And so, on May 5, shortly after May Day 1922, the holy day of international communism, Patriarch Tikhon was one among 17 Church officials dragged into a Moscow “courtroom” to testify for having “acted incorrectly” in disobeying the state.

Solzhenitsyn’s narrative strikes me especially today because the words echo in the United States today. In fact, what Tikhon told the judge is eerily similar to what Kim Davis, the Kentucky law clerk, told a judge post-Obergefell when she refused to issue in her name same-sex marriage licenses because doing so would violate the teachings of her faith. Many Christians will face similar interrogations for not doing what the state orders in defiance of the teachings of their faith. Here’s Solzhenitsyn’s narration:

Comrade Bek to Patriarch Tikhon: “Do you consider the state’s laws obligatory or not?”

Patriarch Tikhon: “Yes, I recognize them, to the extent that they do not contradict the rules of piety.”

Judge Bek: “Which in the last analysis is more important to you, the laws of the Church or the point of view of the Soviet government? Are we, the representatives of the Soviet government, thieves of holy things? [Do you] call the representatives of the Soviet government, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, thieves?!”

Tikhon: “I am citing only Church law.”

The Soviet atheist judge then lectured the head of the Russian Orthodox Church on a correct understanding of “blasphemy.” He told the shaken patriarch that he was a liar.

The verdict, incidentally, was already predetermined. Nonetheless, the “jury” proceeded forward with the farce, ordering criminal charges against the patriarch. He was arrested and removed from office, and he eventually died of a heart attack while under house arrest. At least he wasn’t executed on the spot — 11 of his 17 co-defendants were shot.

In my view, accounts like this are among the most memorable moral lessons in Solzhenitsyn’s great work. He documents vile examples of Soviet sacrilege and persecution of religious believers. In The Gulag Archipelago, he recorded how nuns and prostitutes were housed together in special sections of the gulag, both deemed whores by the atheistic state.

Solzhenitsyn understood that the battle against communism was not simply a political one. The roots of communism’s rage were unmistakable: “Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin … hatred of God is the principal driving force.” As Solzhenitsyn knew, Soviet communism was not merely a political and ideological threat but a spiritual threat. And few did better work exposing that dark world than he did.

It was 50 years ago that the world recognized Solzhenitsyn “for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature”—a literary achievement that went well beyond the realm of literature. Like the best of literary works, what he told us had profound moral-spiritual lessons that endure through the ages. He would not want us to forget. And we shouldn’t forget.

Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science and chief academic fellow of the Institute for Faith and Freedom at Grove City College. His latest book (April 2017) is A Pope and a President: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century. He is also the author of 11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative. His other books include The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor and Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.

This article was originally published at The Institute for Faith & Freedom.

Why is it that organizations like the SPLC can designate conservative Christians as hate groups while ignoring radical leftists like Antifa? Why is it that Facebook and Google and YouTube and Twitter appear to punish conservatives disproportionately for alleged violations of community guidelines?

The answer is as disturbing as it is simple. The left believes it is so morally and intellectually superior to the right that it can see nothing wrong with its extreme positions and hostile words. Is it wrong to be intolerant of bigots? Is it wrong to hate (or even punch) a Nazi?

In short, if I’m a member of the KKK, is it wrong for you to disparage and mock me? If I’m a dangerous homophobe, is it wrong for you to vilify and exclude me? If I’m a hate-filled propogandist spreading dangerous lies, is it wrong for you to mark me and marginalize me?

Of course, there are double standards on all sides of the debate, on the right as well as on the left. And there is more than enough hypocrisy to go around, from the most progressive to the most conservative.

All of us also have our share of blind spots, so we tend to condemn in others what we justify in ourselves. Welcome to human nature.

Still, it is conspicuous that the same behavior gets treated differently by the leftist elite (including many a university professor) and by watchdog groups like the SPLC and by the internet giants.

Back in 2004-05, when I first began to address gay activism, I was widely mocked for saying, “Those who came out of the closet want to put us in the closet.”

The response was consistent: “No one wants to put you in the closet!”

A few years back, I noticed a change in tone: “Bigots like you belong in the closet!”

But of course!

While being interviewed on a Christian TV program back in 2011, I quoted the comment of a Christian attorney. He told me that those who were once put in jail (speaking of pioneer gay activists) will want to put us in jail.

For having the audacity to say this on Christian TV, I was vilified and maligned.

Yet when Kim Davis was jailed in 2015 for refusing a court order to grant same-sex marriage licenses, there was widespread rejoicing on the left: “Kim Davis is ISIS! Lock her up!”

Again, I’m aware of double standards on all sides, and it’s a point of personal reflection and self-examination in my own life.

For example, I believed that, in 2004, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom should have been disciplined for issuing same-sex marriage licenses in violation of the law. Yet I believe that Kim Davis was within her rights in refusing to issue such licenses and her home state of Kentucky failed to protect her, under the law.

These are debates we can (and should) have.

What I’m talking about here has to do with fundamental attitudes, with the basis of our judgments, with the inability to see wrong on one’s own side. I’m talking about a dangerous hypocrisy. (For the record, I never compared Gavin Newsom to Muslim terrorists.)

In my May, 2016, article “Is Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg a Well-Intended Liberal with a Massive Blind Spot?”, I referenced the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann, the notorious Nazi mass murderer, who was apprehended by two Israeli agents while living quietly with his family in Argentina.

They had to wait for several weeks before smuggling him out of the country, during which time they spent many hours in private conversation with him, somehow managing to restrain themselves from taking the law into their own hands.

During one of the conversations, one of the agents realized that Eichmann had given the order to exterminate the village in which his wife’s family lived, killing every single one of them.

When asked how he could do such a thing, Eichmann seemed perturbed, responding, “But they were Jews.”

Of course he gave the order to kill them. What else was he to do?

Again, to be clear, I am not comparing the SPLC or Facebook or Google to Eichmann and the Nazis. That would be as bad as leftists comparing conservatives to Nazis. Not a chance.

I’m simply pointing out that in Eichmann’s twisted world, he was only following orders and doing what was right.

So also, in Antifa’s twisted world (although, again, I emphasize, not as twisted as that of the Nazis), they are doing what is right in violently opposing the tyrannical right. Somebody’s got to do it!

Thankfully, there is an ongoing, healthy push-back against this liberal hypocrisy. In fact, just this week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions called out the SPLC for using hate group labels to “bully” conservatives. Let their hypocrisy be exposed.

But remember: You have been prejudged as guilty, so your mistreatment is well-deserved.

It is this highly bigoted attitude we must overcome with truth, reason, determination, and love.

This article originally posted at Townhall.com.

Written by Samuel Smith

While the legal case will continue to work its way through the courts, the bottom line is this: Kim Davis has won. The homofascists have lost.

Last Tuesday, Kentucky’s new governor, Matt Bevin, issued an executive order that eliminates the names of all county clerks from marriage licenses and protects the unalienable constitutional rights and religious freedoms of Kim Davis and all other clerks in Kentucky.

“This action is a fulfillment of a campaign promise by Gov. Bevin and is directly what our client Kim Davis has been requesting for months,” said Mat Staver, Davis’ attorney and founder of the Christian civil rights firm Liberty Counsel. “This promise will enable her and other clerks to do their jobs without compromising religious values and beliefs.”

The governor’s statement reads in part:

“To ensure that the sincerely held religious beliefs of all Kentuckians are honored, Executive Order 2015-048 directs the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives to issue a revised marriage license form to the offices of all Kentucky County Clerks. The name of the County Clerk is no longer required to appear on the form.”

While the First Amendment alone should be enough to ensure these safeguards, the unconstitutional actions of five “progressive” lawyers on the U.S. Supreme Court, who, back in June, presumed to capriciously redefine the immutable meaning of marriage, has created legal and moral chaos from coast-to-coast, making fixes such as that issued by Gov. Bevin necessary. Furthermore, these extremist lawyers’ subjective and unprecedented opinion will require additional fixes in all other states to reaffirm Christians’ objective and constitutionally guaranteed rights. Although the fight to repair the perversion of marriage committed by the high court will continue, this is an important step in the right direction.

You may recall that Davis was arbitrarily imprisoned for five days earlier this year by federal Judge David Bunning for exercising her religious liberties and refusing to violate her conscience by signing her name to, and, thereby, giving her official approval of, counterfeit “gay marriage” licenses. These licenses, of course, violate both natural law and the manifold biblical proscriptions against the sin of unnatural same-sex deviancy. Bunning’s tyrannical move backfired tremendously, earning Davis’ the support of tens-of-millions of Christians worldwide, as well as both a private audience with, and the express support of, Pope Francis.

“This is a wonderful Christmas gift for Kim Davis,” continued Staver. “This executive order is a clear, simple accommodation on behalf of Kim Davis and all Kentucky clerks. Kim can celebrate Christmas with her family knowing she does not have to choose between her public office and her deeply held religious convictions. What former Gov. Beshear could have done but refused to do, Gov. Bevin did with this executive order. We are pleased that Gov. Bevin kept his campaign promise to accommodate the religious rights of Kim Davis. We will notify the courts of the executive order, and this order proves our point that a reasonable accommodation should have been done to avoid Kim having to spend time in jail.”

“Bah humbug!” cried the ACLU.

“Governor Bevin’s executive action has added to the cloud of uncertainty that hangs over marriage licensing in Kentucky,” claimed ACLU of Kentucky Legal Director William Sharp.

“The requirement that the county clerk’s name appear on marriage licenses is prescribed by Kentucky law and is not subject to unilateral change by the governor,” he demanded, proving that the anti-Christian left’s goal was never about so-called “marriage equality” but, rather, was to force Christians to deny marriage reality and personally affirm, under penalty of law, mock “gay marriages.”

The ACLU will soon have little more to say on the subject as lawmakers are poised to further codify and build upon Bevin’s executive order. “Next month, the Kentucky legislature is expected to update the state’s marriage laws and will consider a provision exempting county clerks from having to issue them,” reports ABC News. “Davis said Kentucky’s marriage laws have been ‘completely eviscerated’ by the Supreme Court’s ruling and said she would be willing to come to the state Capitol to testify about any changes.”

Other state legislatures, as well as the U.S. Congress, must soon follow suit if any progress is to be made into the impasse between secularist change agents hostile to religious freedom, and the faithful Christians who enjoy it as a matter of law.

“In an interview with the Associated Press about her year at the center of one of the biggest social changes in decades, Davis described it as ‘a very emotional and a very real situation to all people.’ But she said simply telling others about her faith was not ‘going to make anybody believe anything.’ And so she put her faith in action by refusing to issue the licenses,” added ABC.

“‘No one would ever have remembered a county clerk that just said … ‘Even though I don’t agree with it, it’s OK. I’ll do it,’ Davis said. ‘If I could be remembered for one thing, it’s that I was not afraid to not compromise myself.’”

Kim Davis will certainly be remembered for her steadfast refusal to compromise herself. But she, along with Gov. Bevin, will also be remembered for helping, this Christmas season, to re-establish the gift of religious freedom for the people of Kentucky.

Even so, the war for our culture will continue into the New Year and well beyond.

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Media bias is less about slanted stories than about what’s covered – or not.

For example, when a Muslim extremist cut off a woman co-worker’s head in Oklahoma City in September 2014, there was minimal coverage. A year later, the media went crazy over a Muslim boy’s suspension in Texas for bringing a clock to school that authorities mistook for a bomb.

The first incident undermined the progressives’ theme of America’s evolution toward seamless “diversity.” The second reinforced the narrative of a racist, nativist America, so they went big. The same with shootings by police.

Or take November 3rd’s stunning, off-year conservative election victories. The media are spinning a tale of low turnout, vowing that 2016 will be different.

Missing is the subtext of many conservative wins, from Republican Matt Bevin’s upset victory in the Kentucky governor’s race to the GOP’s retention of the Virginia state Senate, to the defeat in Ohio of marijuana legalization and in Houston of a gay/transgender nondiscrimination ballot measure.

How about the ouster of the pro-sanctuary San Francisco sheriff? Pay no attention, folks. There’s nothing to see here.

The progressive media’s “super story” is always about how America is getting over its reactionary past and embracing redistributive economics, alternative lifestyles, multiculturalism, limitless immigration and gun control. Never mind that when citizens actually get a chance to vote, they tend to ignore the cultural elites’ instructions.

Events merit extensive coverage only if they go the progressive way. If you don’t hear much media chatter, that usually means the progressives lost. If you hear a lot, they’ve either won or are denouncing the outcome.

Any speed bumps on the way to the New Age of Equality are treated as outrageous anomalies, not rejections of leftist ideology. The New York Times, which is to progressives what Mao’s Little Red Book was to Chinese communists, was furious over the overwhelming, 2 to 1 vote of Houstonians against what opponents called the “bathroom bill.” The gender identity component, the critics said, would open women’s restrooms and locker rooms to males who think they are female.

Headlined, “In Houston, Hate Trumped Fairness,” the Times editorial began with this accusation: “Sometime in the near future, a transgender teenager in Texas will attempt suicide — and maybe succeed — because vilifying people for their gender identity remains politically acceptable in America.”

We need to pray that some poor, confused teen doesn’t take a cue from this reckless assertion. The Times editorialists seem positively eager for just such an incident so they can editorialize again about other people’s “hate.”

A subtext ignored by the media was that Houston Mayor Annise Parker had ordered a city attorney to subpoena the sermons, notes and e-mails of five pastors who had led opposition to the ordinance. The First Amendment? That’s for pornographers, not men of the cloth.

Speaking of totalitarianism, the Times editorial did find a bright spot in the U.S. Department of Education’s stunning order last week to an Illinois high school to allow a transgender boy, against parents’ wishes, to use the girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms – or lose federal funding.

Other than the Times’ loony editorial board, does anyone think America’s founders had this kind of thing in mind when they wrote the Constitution as a limited set of powers shared by the national and state governments? Sexual politics aside, this speaks volumes about the Obama Administration’s voracious appetite for abusing power.

Getting back to election coverage, suffice to say the real “super story” of American pushback against societal decline was either ignored, downplayed or recast as the work of misguided hicks who could have starred in President Obama’s 2008 crack about rural Pennsylvanians who “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment ….”

In Ohio, where pro-marijuana legalization forces spent $20 million and created a mascot named Buddie (a cartoon character based on a pot plant bud), Buckeye State voters burned down the proposed constitutional amendment, 64 to 36 percent. Proponents complained that the wording had confused the voters.

In Kentucky, Tea Party favorite Matt Bevin, who trailed Democrat Jack Conway in election eve polls by five points in the governor’s race, confounded not only the pundits but Establishment Republicans who darkly warned GOP candidates to stay away from social issues.

Bevin ignored them, and even visited jailed county clerk Kim Davis, who had refused to ignore Kentucky law and issue same-sex marriage licenses. Mr. Bevin’s ad campaign hammered Obamacare and tied his opponent to President Obama, who is as popular in coal country as a cave-in. But the religious liberty issue, as in Houston, was a major concern the media suppressed.

In Virginia, an anti-gun group founded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg spent $700,000 in a failed attempt to gain an open Richmond area Senate seat. Incumbent conservatives such as Dick Black and Bob Marshall also defeated Democrats, preserving GOP control of the Senate.

Finally, even in San Francisco, voters fired pro-sanctuary Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi. The sheriff had a record of bungling, but he was best known as chief law enforcement officer in a city where an American woman, Kate Steinle, was gunned down by an illegal immigrant criminal who had been turned loose.

Across America, voters dealt the elites and the media some stinging losses.

But don’t expect them to alter the narrative. They’ll report some of the news, but only in a manner that advances the progressive “super story.”

This article was originally posted at Townhall.com.

For some time now I’ve been saying that gay activists will overplay their hand and that the bullying will backfire. I’ve also said that we can outlast the gay revolution and ultimately, by God’s grace, turn the moral tide in America.

Of course, to speak like that is to invite all kinds of scorn and ridicule, not to mention the ugliest death wishes you could imagine. How dare we not roll over and die!

But events from the last 10 days remind us that, even though the cultural battles promise to be long and difficult, many Americans are ready to push back.

To begin with, the significance of the election results from last Tuesday can hardly be overstated.

In Kentucky, while the liberal media mocked Kim Davis the people of her state stood with her, electing Matt Bevin as governor in a crushing and unexpected victory over Attorney General Jack Conway.

And make no mistake about it: This was a direct statement about religious freedoms and redefining marriage.

After all, it was Conway who rose to national fame last year when he refused to defend the state’s ban on same-sex ‘marriage,’ despite his oath of office, explaining to Time magazine that, “Once I reached the conclusion that the law was discriminatory, I could no longer defend it.”

I guess the people of Kentucky didn’t get the memo that the ship has sailed and the culture wars are over.

Then, in Houston, lesbian activist mayor Annise Parker suffered a stinging defeat when her “anti-discrimination” bill, which focused on LGBT “rights,” was crushed by the voters.

In the aftermath of the massive defeat – 62 to 38 percent – Parker was reduced to insulting those who voted against the bill, calling them “transphobes” and more.

So, the people of Houston, America’s fourth largest city, are a bunch of transphobes.

Or, perhaps the triumph of LGBT activism is not so inevitable and there are real issues that having nothing to do with “homophobia” and “transphobia”? And perhaps there’s something to the fact that some strongly conservative Republican presidential candidates are polling better than Hillary Clinton?

Perhaps this really is time for pushback?

And what should we make of the fact that the NFL has decided to bring the Super Bowl to Houston in 2017 despite the defeat of Parker’s bill, even though proponents of the bill had warned that Houston would lose the Super Bowl if the bill was defeated? Perhaps even the NFL, well-known for preaching LGBT “inclusion,” sees the bigger picture?

In the aftermath of the Houston defeat, there were also small signs of a breach between gay activism and transgender activism, as indicated by a petition launched on Change.org by “a group of gay/bisexual men and women who have come to the conclusion that the transgender community needs to be disassociated from the larger LGB community; in essence, we ask that organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, Lambda Legal and media outlets such as The Advocate, Out, Huff Post Gay Voices, etc., stop representing the transgender community as we feel their ideology is not only completely different from that promoted by the LGB community (LGB is about sexual orientation, trans is about gender identity), but is ultimately regressive and actually hostile to the goals of women and gay men.”

The petition was named “Drop the T,” and it’s a reminder of the fact that transgender activists have often felt left out by mainstream gay activism, as reflected in headlines like “Why The Transgender Community Hates HRC” (2007) and “Even After All These Years, HRC Still Doesn’t Get It” (2013).

This too is noteworthy, reminding us that there are cracks in the foundations of LGBT unity that could become wider in the coming years.

There’s one more story from Houston which is of interest, providing yet another example of LGBT overreach, this time in a case involving two Christians who were fired from the daycare center at which they worked when they refused to call a little girl a boy.

The girl in question, just 6-years-old, is being raised by two gay male parents, and we can only wonder if that has something to do with the child’s gender confusion.

As explained to Breitbart Texas by one of the fired workers, Madeline Kirksey, “the problem was not so much with the transgender issue as it was with telling young children that the little girl was a boy when she was not, and with calling her ‘John’ (not the name given) when that was not her name.”

Kirskey also noted that, “sometimes the little girl refers to herself as a little boy, and sometimes she tells the other children to not call her a boy or to refer to her by her masculine name.”

This child is clearly confused and needs professional help.

Instead, rather than getting help for the child, two Christians have lost their jobs, and I cite this example to say again that Americans will only put up with madness like this for so long, just as the selection of Bruce Jenner as Glamour’s woman of the year drew sharp criticism from a wide spectrum of women, including one well-known feminist.

The pushback continues, and the more that LGBT activists overplay their hand, the quicker the tide will turn against them. It’s only a matter of time.

And so, while as followers of Jesus we should seek to be peacemakers in our communities, loving our neighbors (including our LGBT neighbors) as ourselves, we should also stand tall against aggressive LGBT activism.

This too is part of our calling to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world (Matthew 5:13-16).

This article was originally posted at TownHall.com

Big news this week as “progressives” worldwide learned, to their utter shock and mournful consternation, that the pope is Catholic. Rumors are they will next examine wild bears, the woods and certain mysteries therein.

On Wednesday the Vatican confirmed what a handful of us knew days before. Pope Francis secretly (and privately) met with Kim Davis at Washington’s Vatican Embassy to personally offer his broad support for her bold stand against that insidious and “intrinsically disordered” counterfeit called “gay marriage.”

Does Pope Francis really support Kim Davis?

While specifics of Davis’ legal case were not discussed during the private meeting, days later Pope Francis publicly affirmed Kim’s “human right” as a “conscientious objector” to refuse to sign her name to “gay marriage” licenses – even in her official capacity as an elected official. This human right, incidentally, is an unalienable right protected by the First Amendment. “Stay strong,” the pope told Kim after the two embraced during the tearful meeting. He thanked her for her courage and asked her to pray for him. She likewise asked him to pray for her. These facts are not in dispute.

On Friday the Vatican issued another statement to clarify what was, or, better still, was not, discussed during the meeting: “The pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis, and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects,” said Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi.

As Austin Ruse of Breitbart.com notes, “The Vatican spokesman chose his words carefully. By stating that the meeting should not be considered support for her position ‘in all of its particular and complex aspects,’ Lombardi is allowing the notion that the meeting can be understood as general support for Davis’ cause, but not necessarily papal support for every detailed aspect of the legal case.”

Indeed, neither Kim Davis nor anyone on her legal team ever suggested that the pope supports, or is even aware of, “her position in all of its particular and complex aspects.” Still, based upon his own words and the official position of the Catholic Church, we can know, for sure, of at least three “positions” on which the pope does support Kim Davis. They are: 1) Homosexual behavior is sin; 2) Marriage is exclusively between one man and one woman; and 3) No “human person,” whether a government official or not, should be forced to violate his or her conscience by affirming sin-based “gay marriage.”

Who asked for the meeting?

There has likewise been much speculation and liberal wishful thinking as to how this meeting came about, with some pundits desperately clinging to hopes that the pontiff was “actually swindled into meeting Kim Davis.”

Let’s end the speculation.

Vatican officials reached out, unsolicited, to Davis through her attorney, Mat Staver, and arranged the meeting out of the blue before Pope Francis even arrived in the U.S. for his whirlwind tour. The Davis team was led to believe that the request came from the pope himself. Not only did Pope Francis know who Kim Davis was when he told reporters on the plane ride home that conscientious objectors have a “human right” to decline participation in sodomy-based “marriage,” he had personally met Kim privately, and embraced her both physically and ideologically, before he did so.

The meeting was temporarily kept “secret” during the pope’s visit so as to avoid the predictable media circus that would, and later did, ensue. Both Davis’ representatives and the Vatican agreed that news of the meeting would be released upon the pope’s departure. He wasn’t “embarrassed” by the meeting, as some have suggested, but, rather, held it discreetly for logistical reasons alone.

What does the pope believe about homosexuality and “gay marriage”?

While protestant Christians obviously don’t agree with Pope Francis and the Catholic Church on everything, all faithful Christians, both protestant and Catholic alike, are nonetheless indebted to him for validating Kim’s courageous obedience to God. By extension, the pope has likewise validated every other Christian who refuses to be forced to participate in, or otherwise affirm, this sinful pagan rite. “Gay marriage” is an affront to Christ, the Church and God’s natural order. No faithful believer who wishes to remain in obedience to God can have anything to do with it.

But why? Why is “gay marriage” an affront to God? Why must Christians oppose it?

While the reasons are manifold, it seems most wish to avoid the primary issue surrounding any discussion on “same-sex marriage.” That is, the fundamental wrongness of homosexual behavior itself. If homosexual behavior is not wrong, as it goes, then what justification is there for refusing to redefine marriage around it?

But it is wrong. It’s always, and in every way, wrong.

So says the pope.

So says the Bible.

And, most importantly, so says the very Creator of marriage itself.

On the question of homosexual sin, the Catechism of the Catholic Church offers a clear and biblically sound summation: “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”

And so Kim Davis refuses to approve them.

Despite progressives’ best efforts, there’s simply no way to get around words like, “intrinsically disordered” and “grave depravity.”

As for those who struggle with same-sex attraction and define their identity as “gay” or “lesbian” based upon these aberrant temptations and proclivities, the Catechism ads, “This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity.”

“They” must be accepted. Their disordered and sinful behavior must not.

On progressives’ push for “gay marriage,” Pope Francis has said, “The family is threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life.”

“Gay marriage” is inherently sterile – a dead end.

“Children have a right to grow up in a family with a father and a mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child’s development and emotional maturity,” the pope has added, further calling all attempts to impose “gay marriage” on society “ideological colonization which are out to destroy the family.”

“The complementarity of man and woman … is the root of marriage and family,” he observes.

Amen, pontiff sir. Amen.

On Sept. 24, after Kim Davis and Pope Francis met privately, I had the distinct privilege of joining Kim and her husband, Joe, for dinner. In addition to sharing the pope’s views on sexual morality, marriage and freedom of conscience, I saw firsthand that they likewise share the pope’s profound love and compassion for those afflicted by these “trials.”

Kim Davis is an accidental hero.

Pope Francis is to be commended for honoring her as such.

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Written by Harry Torres

Recently, someone asked for my thoughts on Kim Davis (in fact, at a baseball game I recently attended) and I really haven’t given it much thought – until now. Mahatma Gandhi once said, “There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts.”

He was partly right. Liberty of conscience is indeed sacred. There is, however, a higher court before which Mr. Gandhi – before which we all – will ultimately stand. It is Kim Davis’ inevitable turn in the dock at this Supreme of all supreme courts that drives her steadfast refusal to mock God through mock “marriage.”

Let’s set aside for a moment all the legal and political wrangling over religious freedom. What is it about Kentucky’s Kim Davis that really has secularists, even some misguided and ill-informed church-goers, yanking their hair out in clumps?

While it may feel personal to them, it’s not. The “throw-Kim-Davis-in-jail!” crowd doesn’t hate this humble, non-assuming Democratic Christian wife and mother of four so much for who she is (though many elitists insist upon sophomorically deriding her as some kind of intolerant, backwoods hick); they hate her more for what she represents – for Whom she represents – and, most especially, because, while making her stand, she has been, to date, immovable.

After nearly a week in jail, Kim didn’t budge. Neither will she resign. Neither should she resign. If she did resign, you see, the precedent would be set. They want the precedent set.

And that’s what’s got them steaming.

If Kim Davis steps down from her elected position as Rowan County clerk, it would represent exile through attrition for her and her fellow believers. Christ follower? Seeking elected office? Looking for a government job? Forget it. Christians need not apply. All the same, if you do apply, be sure to keep your mouth shut, your Bible closed and your First Amendment at home.

To Kim Davis and her supporters, this courageous stand represents unwavering faithfulness to the ultimate Law Giver. To her detractors, it represents stubborn indifference to the laws of man. (The law, incidentally, remains unchanged and on the books as codified. Sections 402.005 and 402.020 of the Kentucky Revised Statutes have yet to be amended by the legislature and, even now, restrict marriage to “the civil status, condition, or relation of one (1) man and one (1) woman”).

Whatever your perspective, Kim’s stand is bold. It is that boldness that has at once encouraged biblical Christians and terrified secular-”progressives.” These things have a way of catching on, you see. This is how movements are born.

Before she was arrested, shackled and imprisoned by U.S. Marshals for her “crime” of conscience, Brian Beutler, senior editor of the New Republic, was among the torch-waving leftists demanding the government “throw Kentucky clerk Kim Davis in jail.”

“Any attempt to force her hand risks making her a bigger martyr on the religious right than she already is,” he wrote, “but that risk is small compared to the risk that allowing her to continue abusing her power without consequence will create a terrible precedent.”

And so she was thrown in jail.

It backfired magnificently. So much so, in fact, that Judge David Bunning suddenly and inexplicably walked back his contempt order and released her with no indication by Kim or her legal team that she intends to change her position one iota.

They aimed to make an example of her. Instead, they made martyr of her. And she set the example for others to follow. So, if jail won’t do it – if being thrown in jail won’t compel this brave woman to disobey God and violate her conscience, then what will?

Who knows how far we will regress as a Nation – They’ll have to burn her at the stake.

Time to ask yourself – Do you believe in God? Do you believe in Heaven and Hell? And what are you doing to prepare?

Harry R. Torres served in the United States Navy for 22 years and retired in 2006.  Mr. Torres has over 25 years of security management experience.  His hobbies include golf, hunting & fishing, baseball, rugby, classic cars, travel, music, entertaining and cooking.

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts.”

He was partly right. Liberty of conscience is indeed sacred. There is, however, a higher court before which Mr. Gandhi – before which we all – will ultimately stand. It is Kim Davis’ inevitable turn in the dock at this Supreme of all supreme courts that drives her steadfast refusal to mock God through mock “marriage.”

Let’s set aside for a moment all the legal and political wrangling over religious freedom. What is it about Kentucky’s Kim Davis that really has secularists, even some misguided and ill-informed church-goers, yanking their hair out in clumps? It seems many don’t merely dislike this accidental civil-rights stalwart; they hate her with a white-hot hatred reminiscent of that levied against blacks during another civil-rights struggle.

It was Rosa Parks then.

It’s Kim Davis now.

Even so, while it may feel personal to them, it’s not. The “throw-Kim-Davis-in-jail!” crowd doesn’t hate this humble, non-assuming Christian wife and mother of four so much for who she is (though many elitists insist upon sophomorically deriding her as some kind of intolerant, backwoods hick); they hate her more for what she represents – for Whom she represents – and, most especially, because, while making her stand, she has been, to date, immovable.

After nearly a week in jail, Kim still won’t budge. Neither will she resign. Neither should she resign. If she did resign, you see, the precedent would be set. They want the precedent set.

And that’s what’s got them steaming.

If Kim Davis steps down from her elected position as Rowan County clerk, it would represent exile through attrition for her and her fellow believers. Christ follower? Seeking elected office? Looking for a government job? Forget it. Christians need not apply. All the same, if you do apply, be sure to keep your mouth shut, your Bible closed and your First Amendment at home.

To Kim Davis and her supporters, this courageous stand represents unwavering faithfulness to the ultimate Law Giver. To her detractors, it represents stubborn indifference to the laws of man. (The law, incidentally, remains unchanged and on the books as codified. Sections 402.005 and 402.020 of the Kentucky Revised Statutes have yet to be amended by the legislature and, even now, restrict marriage to “the civil status, condition, or relation of one (1) man and one (1) woman”).

Whatever your perspective, Kim’s stand is bold. It is that boldness that has at once encouraged biblical Christians and terrified secular-”progressives.” These things have a way of catching on, you see. This is how movements are born.

Before she was arrested, shackled and imprisoned by U.S. Marshals for her “crime” of conscience, Brian Beutler, senior editor of the New Republic, was among the torch-waving leftists demanding the government “throw Kentucky clerk Kim Davis in jail.”

“Any attempt to force her hand risks making her a bigger martyr on the religious right than she already is,” he wrote, “but that risk is small compared to the risk that allowing her to continue abusing her power without consequence will create a terrible precedent.”

And so she was thrown in jail.

It backfired magnificently. So much so, in fact, that Judge David Bunning suddenly and inexplicably walked back his contempt order and released her with no indication by Kim or her legal team that she intends to change her position one iota.

They aimed to make an example of her.

Instead, they made martyr of her.

And she set the example for others to follow.

So, if jail won’t do it – if being thrown in jail won’t compel this brave woman to disobey God and violate her conscience, then what will?

They’ll have to burn her at the stake.

To be sure, and based on the scores of death threats both Kim and her attorneys continue to receive, it seems many would love to see just that. In fact, it’s exactly what the Week Magazine senior correspondent Michael Brendan Dougherty has suggested, if only satirically, in a column headlined, “Burn Kim Davis!”

“Any normal punishment [i.e., jail] rewards her with the comfort of solidarity from right-wing Christians, or her own sense of moral self-approval,” he writes. “Therefore the only way to avoid granting her such ‘martyrdom’ is to actually martyr her. That’s the really perverse thing about Christians who make a spectacle like this. The only way the state can really punish them is to inform them that their suffering is meaningless and proving that God doesn’t exist by sending them to the darkness of oblivion in torment. Justice Kennedy has issued his theological bull; let Kentucky officials in defiance of it be put on a pyre.”

Mr. Dougherty, a practicing Catholic, is being facetious, of course, and illustrating his point via reductio ad absurdum. Still, his point is well taken. Throughout the history of both Christendom and the United States, Christians have, with full knowledge and acceptance of the potential consequences, exercised a rich legacy of peaceful civil resistance to tyranny over conscience (e.g., Daniel, Mordecai, Christ’s apostles, the signers of the Declaration of Independence, Martin Luther King Jr., et al.).

That’s exactly what Kim Davis has done. I suspect, as she sees it, she would sooner be burned at the stake than face the flames of hell. For that, she is to be both admired and emulated. Imagine the possibilities if thousands of clerks, judges, pastors, photographers, bakers, inn keepers, florists, parents and other believers across this great nation came together, dug in their heels and said, “No! I will not violate my Christian conscience. Do as you may. Throw me in jail if you must, but I will not call evil good and good evil.”

Indeed, throughout history Christianity has been shown to both blossom and flourish when Christ followers are persecuted – when others attempt to quash their free exercise of faith.

In his “letter from the Birmingham jail,” Martin Luther King Jr. famously declared, “One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”

“A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God,” he explained. “An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.”

As it was with the national sin of systemic racism, there can be few things more “out of harmony with the moral law” than the inherently immoral notion of sodomy-based “marriage.”

We are at an impasse.

Something has to give.

And something will.

A revolution of passive resistance is at hand – another great awakening.

Christians will, once again, be “free at last.”

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Written by John C. Eastman

Until her release [last week], Kim Davis, the clerk of rural Rowan County, Kentucky, was confined to a jail cell because she refused to issue marriage licenses over her name to same-sex couples. She has been pilloried in the media for “lawlessness” and compared not to Martin Luther King Jr. for her civil disobedience but to Governor George Wallace of Alabama. Michael Keegen of the grossly misnamed People for the American Way called her actions an “abuse of power” and proposed instead that she should “find another line of work” — that is, resign her elected office — if she “can’t in good conscience fulfill [her] duties.”

The double standard on display is palpable. I don’t recall Keegen or any of the other self-righteous, newfound devotees of the rule of law calling for the resignation of Kentucky’s attorney general when he refused to defend his state’s marriage law — or any of the other state attorneys general who did the same, from California’s Jerry Brown to Pennsylvania’s Kathleen Kane, and several others, including perhaps most notoriously Oregon’s Ellen Rosenblum, who was caught actively colluding with plaintiffs to ensure judicial invalidation of the Oregon marriage law she disliked.

“But Davis was refusing to comply with a decision of the Supreme Court,” it will be argued. So, too, did all those illustrious attorneys general. All of them refused to do their duty and defend their state’s man-woman marriage laws, even though the binding precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court at that time, a 1972 case called Baker v. Nelson, was that such laws were constitutionally valid.

Ms. Davis’s position has also been mischaracterized as asserting that because the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision is contrary to God’s authority, she cannot be compelled to comply with it and therefore can prevent same-sex couples from getting married in her county. Her position — so described — has been belittled by simpletons across the political spectrum as nothing more than the misguided stance of a crazy evangelical clinging to her Bible. But that is not her legal argument at all (however much merit it might have as a reaction to an illegitimate decision by the U.S. Supreme Court). Her actual argument is much more restrained.

Kentucky has a Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which expressly prevents the government from imposing a substantial burden on someone’s religious beliefs unless the government’s mandate is narrowly tailored to further a compelling governmental interest. Because this lawsuit is pending in federal court, the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which contains the same protection, is also applicable. Ms. Davis’s lawyers have simply argued that these federal and state laws require that her religious objection to issuing same-sex “marriage” licenses over her own name be accommodated.

There is no compelling interest here. Even assuming the validity of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision holding that right to same-sex “marriage” is a fundamental right, no one is being denied the right to marry. As a matter of Kentucky law, the couples seeking to compel Ms. Davis herself to issue them a marriage license can obtain a marriage license from any other county in Kentucky. They can also get one from the county executive of Rowan County. And if the governor would simply call the legislature into special session to deal with the problem that has arisen since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June, it would likely even be possible for other clerks in Ms. Davis’s office to issue a marriage license without its being issued on Ms. Davis’s authority (the legislature could simply remove the problematic “under [her] authority” language from the statewide uniform form), or for marriage licenses to be obtained via a statewide online system.

But none of those options would accomplish what the same-sex couple and its chorus of advocates are really after, which is not the “marriage” but forcing Ms. Davis and everyone like her to bow to the new, unholy orthodoxy. In other words, this controversy has all the hallmarks of the one that engulfed Thomas More, who silently acquiesced in but would not condone King Henry VIII’s illicit marriage.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, both the federal law and Kentucky’s version of it, required that Ms. Davis’s religious objection be accommodated as a matter of law. The federal court’s refusal to respect those laws is where the real lawlessness lies in this case. And of course, that lawlessness is quite apart from the not insignificant question of whether the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision is itself lawless. Such claims did not originate with Ms. Davis, but with the four U.S. Supreme Court Justices who stridently dissented from Justice Kennedy’s diktat, calling it “illegitima[te],” “indefensible,” “dangerous for the rule of law,” “demeaning to the democratic process,” “a naked judicial claim to legislative — indeed, super-legislative — power,” “pretentious,” “egotistic,” a “judicial Putsch,” “deeply misguided,” a “usurp[ation of] the constitutional right of the people,” a “perhaps irremediable corruption of our legal culture’s conception of constitutional interpretation,” and an “extravagant conception of judicial supremacy.”

That latter point is important to put to rest the other charge that has been leveled against Ms. Davis, namely, that she is violating her oath of office by not upholding the law she swore to uphold. The Constitution requires that all officials, both federal and state, take an oath to “support this Constitution,” and the Constitution itself provides that “this Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof . . . shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” Neither the oath clause nor the supremacy clause requires fealty to an erroneous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that is contrary to the Constitution itself. That is not constitutionalism, or the rule of law, but the rule of judges; a claim that although the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, the Constitution is whatever the judges say it is, even if what they say is a patently erroneous interpretation of the Constitution.

Reacting to a similar piece of judicial tyranny in the Dred Scott case, Abraham Lincoln famously said, in his first inaugural address, that although judicial decisions are binding on the specific parties to a case, “the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”

In short, Ms. Davis was much more faithful to her oath of office, and to the Constitution she vowed to support, than the federal judge who jailed her for contempt, the attorney general of the state who refused to defend Kentucky’s laws, and Justice Anthony Kennedy, who usurped the authority of the states and the more than 50 million voters who had recently reaffirmed the natural definition of marriage, in order to impose his own more “enlightened” views on the nation. One can only hope that Ms. Davis’s simple but determined act of civil disobedience will yet ignite the kind of reaction in the American people that is necessary to oppose such lawlessness, or at the very least bring forth a national leader who will take up the argument against judicial supremacy in truly Lincolnian fashion.

This article was originally posted at the National Review Online.

— John C. Eastman is the Henry Salvatori Professor of Law and Community Service, and former dean, at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law. He is also the founding director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence and chairman of the board of the National Organization for Marriage.

Written by Joe Rigney

Senior editor of The American Conservative, Rod Dreher, opposes Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis’ act of civil disobedience. As most adults know—with the possible exception of those interviewed on Watters’ World—Kim Davis is refusing to issue marriage licenses with her signature to couples whose unions are inherently non-marital. After being denied even the teeny tiniest religious accommodation, Davis was thrown in the brig, which is a penalty that liberal government officials who have engaged in far more egregious acts of civil disobedience have not suffered.

In his post, Dreher predicts this parade of hypothetical horribles will result from Kim Davis’ action:

1.) Gay marriage will still be the law of the land.

2.) A huge number of secular and/or liberal people in this country will be far less disposed to listen to anybody talk about religious liberty, and will be more willing to regard all religious liberty claims as Kim Davis-like special pleading.

3.) A non-trivial number of conservatives will lose patience with and sympathy for religious conservatives, because whatever they think about same-sex marriage, they will see this as fundamentally a law-and-order issue.

4.)A huge number of conservative Christians will become ever more alienated from America and angry at the government. This will hasten their exodus from the public square, and the fraying of the social fabric.

Well, Dreher is not arguing that horrible #1 will be a result of her action. Rather, he’s suggesting that since “gay marriage” will still be the law of the land, Davis’ act of civil disobedience is an exercise in futility.

Ending “gay marriage,” however, is not her goal. Clearly she, like many Americans, desires that “gay marriage” not be legal, but that isn’t her goal. Her goal in refusing to issue marriage licenses to those in non-marital unions is simply to have her name removed so that there is not even an appearance of complicity in the absurd and offensive act of recognizing same-sex unions as marriages. It remains to be seen whether she will succeed in achieving that goal.

But with regard to Dreher’s somewhat irrelevant point on the inefficacy of one act of civil disobedience: Did anyone think that Rosa Parks’ refusal to move to the back of the bus would in one fell swoop change Jim Crow laws (and no, I’m not equating the injustice Kim Davis faces with the injustice Rosa Parks faced)? Does the failure of one act of civil disobedience to change laws undermine its value?

I agree with Dreher that following Kim Davis’ action, we will see horrible #2 and #3, because those already exist. Nice bit of rhetorical tricksiness on Dreher’s part to attribute existing cultural phenomena to Kim Davis’ act of civil disobedience. Does anyone think that most secularists and/or liberals are currently disposed to listen to conservative Christians talk about religious liberty when it comes to things sexually deviant? Does anyone think that non-religious conservatives (I assume that’s who Dreher is referring to in that he contrasts “conservatives” with “religious conservatives”) currently have patience with and sympathy for religious conservatives?

With regard to horrible #4: Perhaps a huge number of conservative Christians will become ever more alienated from America and angry at the government, but blaming that on Kim Davis is a bit like heaping blame on the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Kim Davis’ civil disobedience has alerted conservative Christians to the reality that the cultural air we breathe is noxious. Her action has exposed the alienating actions and hostility of those in and out of government who are hell-bent on subordinating First Amendment protections to the pagan sexual revolution that, like the “corpse flower,” is coming into full fetid bloom.

While we’re speculating about the effects of Kim Davis’ civil disobedience, I would like to posit my parade of hypothetical lovelies—or would it be terrifics?

Anyway, here they are:

1.) Her action may spur conservatives of all stripes to read and think more deeply about the separation of church and state, a concept that secularists and/or liberals have successfully perverted almost beyond recognition, persuading people of faith that it is constitutionally impermissible for religious belief to inform political decisions.

2.) Her action may increase the number of people concerned about the usurpation of the rights of citizens to govern themselves.

3.) Her action may motivate citizens to think about the principles that justify civil disobedience.

4.) Her action may lead Christians to think more deeply about what should be rendered unto Caesar and what price they’re willing to pay for holding fast to truth.

5.) Her action may help illuminate the erosion of First Amendment rights that jackbooted “LGBTQQIAP” activists are seeking in their quest to limit the exercise of religion to hearts, homes, and pews

Such a parade of terrifics would be a lovely antidote to both pessimistic parades of horribles and rainbow shame parades.

Dreher concludes his article by claiming that Kim Davis is the political Right’s Michael Brown (the Ferguson, Missouri thug who became a dubious martyr and embarrassment for the political Left). Here’s Dreher’s conclusion: “Kim Davis is the Michael Brown of the Religious Right. Don’t underestimate the political potency of that. You watch, this is not going to end well for religious liberty in America.”

Things are, indeed, shaky for religious liberty–for orthodox Christians–in America, but not because of Kim Davis. Things are shaky because of “LGBTQQIAP” activists, their ideological allies, and the complacency and cowardice of the church.

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If Chicago Tribune columnist and arch-defender of all things sexually deviant, Rex Huppke, had the humility to know that he doesn’t understand the Bible, he might refrain from using it foolishly to mock Christians.

In a column last week, he took a verse from Exodus out of a biblical context which he clearly doesn’t understand in order to ridicule Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis. In this column, he used Exodus 16:12 as the basis for an analogy intended to indict Kim Davis for her act of civil disobedience in refusing to issue marriage licenses with her name on them to those whose unions are inherently non-marital.

There are two important reasons for responding to Huppke’s “argument”: First, he has a large audience and, therefore, the potential to influence people. Second, his feckless ideas are, unfortunately, not unique to him.

Exodus 16:12 says, “’I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, ‘At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God.’”

After citing Exodus 16:12, Huppke feigned abhorrence at the announcement that McDonald’s will start serving breakfast all day. In his bootless burlesque, Huppke abhorred that McDonald’s would serve the same type of meal all day when God “separates” breakfast from dinner.

Here’s more snark from Huppke, who can’t tell when a metaphor has been extended waaay too long:

I realize my opinion might seem old-fashioned in an anything-goes age when most young people think it’s “A-OK” to eat a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit at 4 p.m….

LeeAnn Richards, an Arizona franchisee who led a task force that studied the all-day breakfast concept, said: “It’s nice when you can give people what they want, what they’ve been asking for.”

Maybe it’s nice for you, LeeAnn Richards of Arizona, but my beliefs cannot be swayed by public opinion, and they certainly won’t be changed by Big Burger’s cavalier redefinition of breakfast or by human belief in the separation of church and steak.

The question is: Will people of faith, the ones charged with serving scrambled eggs at immoral hours, stand up to this assault on religious liberty? I have hope that they might, thanks to the actions of Kim Davis, a county clerk in Kentucky who has refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that makes “issuing same-sex marriage licenses” part of her job description.

On Tuesday, Davis defied a federal court order and again denied marriage licenses to gay couples, saying she works under “God’s authority.”

“It is not a light issue for me,” Davis said through her lawyers. “It is a heaven or hell decision.”

Amen, sister! It’s crucial that you keep the government that pays you from imposing its will on the faith you are willfully imposing on everyone else. (That’s definitely in the Bible somewhere.)

I hope Davis’ resilient belief that marriage is between a man and a woman will inspire McDonald’s workers who share my belief that a breakfast is between 5 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. And I hope those workers will stand strong and refuse to issue Egg McMuffins to customers outside of traditional breakfast hours.

You must stay strong, McDonald’s workers. Let Kentucky’s most famous county clerk be your inspiration. And remember this other verse from the Bible:

“Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother.”

On second thought, forget that one. Just believe that your religious convictions trump everyone else’s rights and don’t give anybody breakfast after 10:30 a.m.

Of course, more literate biblical readers know that multiple literary genres are found in the books of the Bible. The first 18 chapters in Exodus constitute history, and the verse Huppke chose is not a prescription or command regarding what to serve at breakfast and dinner. It is, rather, an historical account of what God did. God provided manna—that is, bread—in the morning and quail in the evening to the Israelites whom he had recently freed from bondage.

In contrast, both the Old and New Testaments tell us what marriage is, and expressly prohibit homoerotic activity.

Literate readers of Scripture also recognize a metaphor when it knocks them upside the head. The manna from Heaven that God promises and provides is also an image and prefigurement of Christ who is the bread of life.

When Huppke cites Romans 14:13 (“Therefore, let us not pass judgment.…”), he exposes his ignorance again. In the book of Romans, Paul is discussing how to unify Gentile followers of Christ with Jewish followers of Christ who came with prior customs, like dietary practices, that are no longer required. Paul is instructing Gentiles not to cause division over these non-essential matters. If this verse were a general or absolute prohibition of all moral judgments, Paul would be guilty of violating his own words because the book of Romans is rife with moral judgments about essential matters.

This verse does not prohibit Christians from expressing a view of marriage with which someone may disagree. And it doesn’t prohibit Christians from expressing moral propositions regarding what constitutes right or wrong behavior. Paul, who condemned homoerotic acts in Romans 1, wrote this to stop conflicts among Christians on non-essential matters.

“Progressives,” displaying the kind of biblical ignorance Huppke displays, often try to play “gotcha” with Christians who believe that Scripture condemns homoeroticism. These “progressives” will cite scriptural passages about slavery, or Old Testament prohibitions of shellfish-eating, or of mixing fabrics in clothes, thinking that they’ve offered foolproof evidence of the Bible’s moral unreliability when actually all they provide is evidence of their own foolishness.

While “progressives” erroneously argue that conservative Christians read every word of Scripture literally, it is actually “progressives” who are guilty of that. No Christian—at least none that I know of—reads every word of Scripture literally.

The Christians I know are able to distinguish, for example, history from poetry. They’re able to distinguish language that should be read metaphorically from language that should be read literally. They’re able to distinguish Old Testament ceremonial laws codes applicable only to ancient Israel from civil laws and both from universal, eternal moral laws that still appertain. They’re able to distinguish prescriptions and proscriptions from descriptions. Finally, they understand that context is king.

Huppke erred in another way. He pointed to the marital failures of Kim Davis as a way to, I guess, suggest that she has no right to make distinctions about the nature of marriage based on Scripture. While Huppke ridiculed Davis’ marital transgressions, he declined to share reports that her marital failings occurred before she became a Christian.

Apparently, Huppke believes only morally perfect humans are entitled to express ontological or moral propositions or try to live in accordance with them. In the service of moral and intellectual consistency then, perhaps Huppke, who quite frequently expresses his moral propositions, should provide evidence of his moral perfection.

Perhaps Huppke could share too what he thinks about Martin Luther King Jr. It is well known that he was unfaithful to his marriage vows and plagiarized significant portions of his doctoral dissertation, and yet most Americans view him as a towering moral leader, who, by the way, advocated civil disobedience when manmade laws fail to conform to God’s laws and the natural law. I’m not suggesting that Kim Davis’ actions are equivalent to the work of Martin Luther King Jr. Rather, I’m suggesting that moral failings don’t necessarily render persons incapable of acting in the service of truth. Just ask Bill Clinton.

In Huppke’s risible attempt at an analogy, he describes the change in McDonald’s menu as an “abomination,” a term that is used in the Bible to refer to homoerotic acts—not to God’s provision to the Israelites of manna in the morning and quail at night. In so doing, Huppke brings into even starker relief not only his biblical ignorance but also his ignorance of the nature and public purposes of marriage.

Marriage has an inherent nature central to which is sexual differentiation. Children have an inherent right to be raised whenever possible by a mother and a father, preferably their own biological parents. And the public good is served in incalculable ways by recognizing and protecting marriage and children’s rights.

So, precisely what was Huppke’s purpose?

Was he mocking the Bible in its entirety—a compilation of texts the meaning of which he seems not to grasp?

Was he mocking Christians for taking Scripture seriously?

If he is offended by Christians who take seriously God’s design for marriage and God’s prohibition of homoerotic acts, is he equally offended by Christians who take seriously God’s prohibition of consensual adult incest and bestiality? After all, the verses that condemn homoerotic acts are the same verses that condemn incest and bestiality.

And what about Christians who take seriously the verse in Exodus 20 that says, “You shall not murder,” or the one that says, “You shall not commit adultery,” or the one that says, “You shall not steal.” Does Huppke think opposition to adultery is analogous to opposition to serving breakfast all day at McDonald’s?

Both conservatives and “progressives” agree that elected government officials, those employed by the government, and citizens in the private sector ought to obey laws. Both sides also agree that civil disobedience is occasionally morally justifiable. The two sides just disagree on which laws (or Supreme Court decisions) are so egregiously unjust and irrational that civil disobedience is warranted or justifiable.

So, when conservatives waxed angry about President Obama’s or Eric Holder’s refusal to defend the duly enacted Defense of Marriage Act, they—conservatives—were not angry about Obama’s, Holder’s civil disobedience per se. Conservatives were angry that they refused to defend a just and rational law—one which, to paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., conformed to both God’s law and natural law.

Let’s imagine that five unelected U.S. Supreme Court justices were to apprehend within the Constitution’s emanations and penumbra a phantasmagorical justification for prohibiting interracial marriages. Would Huppke become incensed if a county clerk were to continue to issue marriage licenses to interracial couples? And what would Huppke think if she, like Martin Luther King Jr., were to cite her religious beliefs as justification for her action?

Regardless of what happens in Kentucky, it’s just a matter of time before another case of civil disobedience arises and perhaps one that will be less fraught with intellectual and moral complexity. Imperious “LGBTQQIAP” activists who demand that even the First Amendment yield to their social and political agenda will brook no dissent. As New York Times lefty Frank Bruni hopes, soon the exercise of religious liberty will be restricted to heart, home, and pew. Dare to trot it out in the public square, and in the brig you will go.

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The federal judge who threw Christian clerk Kim Davis in jail previously “oversaw a legal settlement that included anti-harassment sessions” for students in Boyd County, Kentucky, The New York Times reports. In fact, the judge, David Bunning, had denied free speech rights to those students.

The so-called “anti-harassment sessions” in the Boyd County case were actually designed to instruct students “to withhold Christian viewpoints about homosexual behavior,” the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), the legal group representing the students, reported.

Bunning’s ruling against the students, a direct ban on free speech, was overturned on appeal.

The Times admitted this fact only later in the story, noting that Bunning’s ruling forcing students into the “anti-harassment sessions” was “overruled by an appellate court.”

The fact that he “was overruled by an appellate case” demonstrates how wrong his ruling was.

It is this out-of-control judge who is at the center of the Kim Davis case. Ironically, the media are reporting that Bunning is a Christian. If so, he has no fundamental understanding of how Christians helped create this nation, and are entitled to the rights and liberties guaranteed to them under the Constitution.

The Times’ handling of this case reflects how the actions of Davis have also been distorted by most of the media. The Times said Bunning sent Davis to jail for “refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses.” In fact, she had simply exercised her religious rights and liberties in refusing to sign the gay marriage licenses.

Her attorneys at Liberty Counsel noted, “Davis only asked that the Kentucky marriage license forms be changed so her name would not appear on them.” This simple request was deemed to be “contempt” and she was thrown in jail.

What we see in the case of Judge Bunning, under pressure from the gay lobby, is a pattern of discrimination against Christians, a pattern we also see in the coverage of the cases in which he has ruled. The media have refused to respect the rights of free speech and freedom of religion that Americans are supposed to have under the Constitution.

A rally in support of county clerk Kim Davis has been announced for Tuesday, September 8, at the Carter County Detention Center in Grayson, Kentucky at 3:00 p.m. The address is 13 Crossbar Road, Grayson, Kentucky.

Heather Clark of the Christian News Network first noted that Bunning, appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush, had, in the Boyd County case, “ordered Kentucky students to be re-educated about homosexuality despite their objections.”

In the case, she noted, a number of students objected to being forced to watch a video that asserted that it is wrong to oppose homosexuality and that a person’s sexuality cannot be changed. Clark reported, “They discovered that they could not opt-out of the training without being penalized, and contacted the legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) for assistance.”

That began the process of filing suit, and eventually the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Bunning’s ruling in October 2007.

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has sided with Davis, saying she not only has the right to object on religious grounds to signing gay marriage licenses, but that the Supreme Court did not in any sense make gay marriage the “law of the land.”

Numerous experts have pointed out that, under the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court cannot make law. The U.S. Supreme Court’s “power to offer opinion does not equal the power to make law,” notes the Tenth Amendment Center. Generally speaking, experts say, the Supreme Court can overturn laws and executive actions but it cannot enforce its rulings. The power to make law is given to the representatives of the people in the national and state legislatures.

Huckabee says Davis, a county official elected as a Democrat, should be immediately released from federal custody. “Exercising religious liberty should never be a crime in America,” he says. “This is a direct attack on our God-given, constitutional rights.”

Huckabee said, “Kim is asking the perfect question: ‘Under what law am I authorized to issue homosexual couples a marriage license?’ The Supreme Court cannot and did not make a law. They only made a ruling on a law. Congress makes the laws. Because Congress has made no law allowing for same sex marriage, Kim does not have the Constitutional authority to issue a marriage license to homosexual couples.”

Kentucky passed Amendment 1 in 2004, prohibiting recognition of same-sex marriages. It passed by a 75-25 percent margin.

Another Republican presidential candidate, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, called the order issued by Bunning to use federal marshals to arrest and jail Davis “judicial lawlessness [which] crossed into judicial tyranny.” He explained that “the government arrested a Christian woman for living according to her faith. This is wrong. This is not America.”

He added, “I stand with Kim Davis. Unequivocally. I stand with every American that the Obama administration is trying to force to choose between honoring his or her faith or complying with a lawless court opinion.”

Cruz went on, “In dissent, Chief Justice Roberts rightly observed that the Court’s marriage opinion has nothing to do with the Constitution. Justice Scalia observed that the Court’s opinion was so contrary to law that state and local officials would choose to defy it.”

Indeed, as AIM reported, Scalia had called the Supreme Court decision in the same-sex marriage case a judicial “Putsch,” an attempt to overthrow our form of government. Scalia said the court was a “threat to American democracy.”

In the face of this emerging judicial dictatorship, Kentucky clerk Kim Davis exercised her religious rights and liberties, only to be sent to prison.

Her attorney, Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel, reports, “Despite being held as a prisoner for her religious beliefs, her conscience remains unshackled. Liberty Counsel will challenge Judge Bunning’s contempt order and her unlawful confinement. Kim is resolute in her decision to challenge the issuance of any marriage certificate bearing her name without her authority.”

As the coverage by The New York Times indicates, however, Judge Bunning is being greeted with fawning attention in the Davis case because he had muzzled Christians previously for standing up for their faith. The coverage demonstrates that there is a pattern of anti-Christian activity on the federal bench and in the media.

This article was originally posted at the Accuracy in Media blog.

A consensus appears to be developing among otherwise reasonable people that Kim Davis, of Rowan County fame, either needs to start issuing marriage licenses or quit her job.

For those just joining us, a county clerk in Kentucky is refusing to issue marriage licenses against her conscience and is also refusing to resign. Her name, which should be on a bronze plaque on the side of the courthouse, is Kim Davis. A federal judge has ordered her to appear in his courtroom Thursday to explain why Davis should not be held in contempt of court for refusing to issue marriage licenses.

File this under sentiments which seem extreme at the time, but heroic when the danger is over, and you are reading them inscribed on the base of a polished marble memorial.

But there is a difference between contempt of court and seeing that the courts have become contemptible.

Now while florists and bakers and photographers enjoy a great deal of active support from the broader Christian world, the most people like Davis will get is a sympathetic lack of sympathy. It falls out this way because Christians generally understand the private sector — that’s where they live, after all — but they don’t understand the nature of government. They don’t understand the public sector and the relationship of God’s  Word to it. Their theology develops a distinct limp as soon as they step into the public square, but it is not the kind of limp you might acquire by wrestling with God at Peniel. It is more like what might happen if you dropped the Collected Works of Immanuel Kant on your foot. That results in quite a distinctive limp, one  you see everywhere.

Here is a quick sampling of that sympathetic lack of sympathy:

Carly Fiorina says the clerk needs to comply or move on. Ed Morrissey says the same. Ryan Anderson generally agrees with that, as does Rod Dreher. Note particularly the last comment in Dreher’s piece — that there are hills to die on, but that this is not it.

Update: After Ryan Anderson objected, I went back and reread him. His position is more nuanced than I let on, and so my apologies to him. I still have objections to his solution, but that will require a separate post.

So I want to begin by making an observation about that hill-to-die-on thing, but then move on to discuss the foundational principle that is at stake here. After that, I want to point out what it would look like if more government officials had the same understanding that Kim Davis is currently displaying — despite being opposed by all the intoleristas and also despite being abandoned by numerous Christians who admire her moxie but who don’t understand her moxie.

First, whenever we get to that elusive and ever-receding “hill to die on,” we will discover, upon our arrival there, that it only looked like a hill to die on from a distance. Up close, when the possible dying is also up close, it kind of looks like every other hill. All of a sudden it looks like a hill to stay alive on, covered over with topsoil that looks suspiciously like common ground.

So it turns out that surrendering hills is not the best way to train for defending the most important ones. Retreat is habit-forming.

This brings us to my second goal this morning, which is to highlight the principle. Pick some absurd issue — admittedly a dangerous thing to do in these times that defy the tender ministrations of satire — and that means that to be sufficiently absurd it would have to be an issue like legalized cannibalism. Now let us say that we live in a time, some weeks hence, when cannibalism can be practiced generally on established free market principles (Dahmer v. Illinois, 2023). But if you want to have a BBQ of that nature in a city park, on city property, then you are going to need a permit. Now say that you are Kim Davis’s granddaughter, and your office issues the permits for all activities in all the city parks. Do you issue the permit? Or do you arrange for a compromise? Find somebody in the office not nearly so squeamish as you are? “Hey, Queequeg! Can you handle this one?”

I interrupt this post to anticipate an objection to my choice of illustrations. “Are you saying, Wilson, that same sex marriage can be equated with cannibalism?” Well, no, they are very different sins. That said, they are both very wicked and God hates them both, and county clerks ought not give either one the sanction of law. But I am not trying to equate anything here — I am simply trying to illustrate how a believer’s conscience ought to work if he is employed by a government that tries to sin grievously through the instrumentality of a godly magistrate. This is just how I paint illustrations, with bright yellows and gaudy greens. I do that so that people can see them.

So, follow me closely here. Chesterton once said that art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere. We have a set up where a line must be drawn at some point. And in the abstract all evangelical Christians would almost certainly agree that when that line was crossed, wherever it is, the revolt of the county clerks would be a good thing. With me?

Let me spell it out further. Back in the thirties, if a county clerk had refused a marriage license to a couple because they attended a church where the pastor baptized people with heads upstream, instead of her preferred way, with heads downstream, we would all agree that said clerk had gotten above himself. And if a county clerk expedited and stamped all the processing papers for trains full of Jews headed to Auschwitz, we would all have no problem with said clerk being prosecuted after the war. And when he was prosecuted, “it was entirely legal” would not be an adequate defense. Got that? Two positions, marked clearly on the map, and there is a line somewhere between them.

Where is that line? Why is that line there? By what standard do we make that determination? Who says? These questions cannot be answered apart from the law of God, and that is why we are having such trouble with them. We want a pagan society to respect our sentimental religiosity, and that is not going to happen any time soon.

The point here is not just private conscience. The right to liberty of conscience is at play with florists, bakers, and so on. But Kim Davis is not just keeping herself from sinning, she is preventing Rowan County from sinning. That is part of her job.

Every Christian elected official should be determining, within the scope of their duties, which lines they will not allow the state to cross. When they come to that line, they should refuse to cross it because “this is against the law of God.” They should do this as part of their official responsibilities. This is part of their job. It is one of the things they swear to do when they take office.

This is nothing less than Calvin’s doctrine of the lesser magistrates (Institutes 4.20.22-32), which I would urge upon all and sundry as relevant reading material. And as Calvin points out, after Daniel — a Babylonian official — disobeyed the king’s impious edict, he denied that he had wronged the king in any way (Dan. 6:22-23).

Now this takes me to my citation of Jefferson above. Some might say that it is a shame that I, a staunch Calvinist, have taken to quoting a Deist on the relationship of righteousness to government. And I say that it is a shame that a 18th century Deist has a better grasp of the relationship of righteousness to government than do two and a half busloads of 21st century Reformed seminary professors. The striking inconsistency might have two possible causes, in other words.

If just ten governors treated Obergefell the same way Kim Davis is treating it, that entire unrighteous and despotic imposition would collapse and fall to the ground. And if they did so, they would not be sinning against the United States. Rather, they would be preventing the United States from sinning.

The end game here is not armed revolution. The end game is simply a refusal to cooperate with their revolution. Make them fire or impeach faithful officials. Once removed, such faithful officials should run for office again with a promise to continue to defy all forms of unrighteous despotism. As one friend of mine put it, “Lather. Rinse. Repeat.”

Some might ask what the good in that would be. Wouldn’t it just result in no Christians in such positions? Perhaps, but it would be far better to have godless results enforced by the godless than to insist that the godly do it for them. It would be far better to have the “no Christians in power results” when it was actually the case that no Christians were in power. I would rather have non-Christian clerks acting like non-Christian clerks than to have Christian clerks do it for them. I mean, right?

Don’t tell believers to stay engaged so that they can make a difference, and then, when they start making a difference, tell them that this is not a hill to die on. Make the bad guys reveal themselves. Make them crack down on evangelical county clerks, while continuing to wink at sanctuary cities and local defiance of federal pot laws. Why do they apply their “It’s the law! Bow down!” standard so inconsistently? Well, mostly it is because evangelicals are sweet and naive enough to let them get away with it.

So it is ironic that this valiant stand is being taken by a clerk, because those sidling away from her provide a standing example of our real problem — the trahison des clercs.

Article was originally posted at douglaswilson.com