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.

Even before the U.S. Supreme Court announced the previously unknown constitutional “right” to impose same-sex “marriage” on all 50 states, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was readying its next volley.

For two decades, the ACLU has cited the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) as a defense of religious liberty in various worthy and some not-so-worthy cases. No more.

The ACLU has decided that the unalienable right to religious freedom embodied in the First Amendment must give way to newly coined claims by newly empowered groups.

In a Washington Post column, ACLU Deputy Director Louise Melling called on Congress to make RFRA essentially toothless. Of course, that’s not the way she put. Here’s her signature sentence:

“It’s time for Congress to amend the RFRA so that it cannot be used as a defense for discrimination. Religious freedom will be undermined only if we continue to tolerate and enable abuses in its name.”

As with the proverbial village in Vietnam, we apparently have to destroy religious freedom in order to save it. As a prime example of “abuses,” Ms. Melling cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year in favor of Hobby Lobby’s refusal to provide employees coverage for abortifacients, which she described misleadingly as “contraception.” She warned that this sort of liberty could proliferate:

“Religiously affiliated nonprofit organizations such as universities are taking the argument further,” she wrote. “They invoke the RFRA to argue not only that they should not have to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives, but also that they should not even have to notify the government that they refuse to do so.”

Can’t have that. The ACLU seems more concerned than ever that conservative religious people might retain some rights of conscience in the face of ever-increasing demands. Its website sports a “Using Religion to Discriminate” page that bemoans all sorts of religious freedom claims.

New York Times columnist Mark Oppenheimer, writing in TIME, cuts right to the chase. In his June 28 piece, “Now’s the Time to End Tax Exemptions for Religious Institutions,” he argues that,

“Rather than try to rescue tax-exempt status for organizations that dissent from settled public policy on matters of race or sexuality, we need to take a more radical step. It’s time to abolish, or greatly diminish, their tax-exempt statuses.”

Like many on the Left, Mr. Oppenheimer sees religious tax exemptions not as a recognition that the state has no authority over churches and church property, which belong to another kingdom entirely, but as a favor (“subsidizing”) that the state has extended. Viewed that way, it’s not a stretch to have the government assert taxing power over ecclesiastical property.

As for “settled public policy,” he means that the Court’s ruling is final, something that the Left never accepts when they lose. For example, the ACLU and others stepped up their legal attacks on the Boy Scouts after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000 upheld the group’s right to enforce their moral standards. Whenever the pendulum swings left, we’re told the law is “settled.” If it swings right, well, that’s just a provocation to do more.

In the coming days, conservative religious business owners, academic institutions and any individual who will not genuflect to the Left’s version of reality will face subtle and outright discrimination. The furor in Indiana over the legislature’s enactment of a state RFRA last March was only a taste of the kind of hysteria that the Left and its media enablers will gin up over any resistance to the latest demands.

Not missing a beat, atheist activist Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has uncorked yet another call for the Pentagon to weed out conservative Christians. In a Daily Kos posting, he wrote that chaplains who teach biblical marriage:

“don’t belong in the military. … At this stage, the only honorable thing that these losers can do is to fold up their uniforms, turn in their papers, and get the hell out of the American military chaplaincy. If they are unwilling or too cowardly to do so, then the Department of Defense must expeditiously cleanse itself of the intolerant filth that insists on lingering in the ranks of our armed forces.”

Given that this is what passes for tolerance, it’s not surprising that the ACLU and others on the Left want to render meaningless the free exercise of religion guarantee of the First Amendment and any federal and state laws that fortify religious liberty.

Deploying the language of inevitability, such as “being on the wrong side of history,” they seek to persuade the vast majority of Americans that resistance is futile.

Are they right? The answer will depend on a vigorous, renewed fight for liberty in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

This article was originally published at Townhall.com.

The New Rules of the Secular Left

The vast high-velocity moral revolution that is reshaping modern cultures at warp speed is leaving almost no aspect of the culture untouched and untransformed. The advocates of same-sex marriage and the more comprehensive goals of the LGBT movement assured the nation that nothing would be fundamentally changed if people of the same gender were allowed to marry one another. We knew that could not be true, and now the entire nation knows.

The latest Ground Zero for the moral revolution is the state of Indiana, where legislators passed a state version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which Gov. Mike Pence then signed into law. The controversy that followed was a free-for-all of misrepresentation and political posturing. Within days, the governor capitulated to the controversy by calling for a revision of the law — a revision that may well make the RFRA a force for weakening religious liberty in Indiana, rather than for strengthening it.

Business, political, and civic leaders piled on in a mass act of political posturing. The federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act became law in 1993 in a mass act of bipartisan cooperation. The Act passed unanimously in the U.S. House of Representatives and with 97 affirmative votes in the U.S. Senate. President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law, celebrating the Act as a much needed protection of religious liberty. Clinton called religious liberty the nation’s “first freedom” and went on to state: “We believe strongly that we can never, we can never be too vigilant in this work.”

But, that was then. Indiana is now.

Hillary Clinton, ready to launch her campaign for President, condemned the law as dangerous and discriminatory — even though the law in its federal form has not led to any such discrimination. Apple CEO Tim Cook took to the pages of The Washington Post to declare that the Indiana law “would allow people to discriminate against their neighbors.” For its part,The Washington Post published an editorial in which the paper’s editorial board condemned a proposed RFRA in the state of Georgia because the law would prevent the state government “from infringing on an individual’s religious beliefs unless the state can demonstrate a compelling interest in doing so.”

So, The Washington Post believes that a state should be able to infringe on a citizen’s religious liberty without a compelling interest? That is the only conclusion a reader can draw from the editorial.

The piling on continued when the governor of Connecticut, Dannel Mulloy announced that he would even forbid travel to Indiana by state officials, conveniently forgetting to mention that his own state has a similar law, as does the federal government. The NCAA piled on, as did a host of sports figures from across the country. More than one pundit pointed to the irony of the NCAA trying to posture on a question of sexual morality, but the pile-on continued.

Law professor Daniel O. Conkle of Indiana University stated the truth plainly when he said: “The reaction to this law is startling in terms of its breadth–and to my mind–the extent to which the reaction is uninformed by the actual content of the law.” Similarly, University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock, a proponent of gay marriage, stated: “The hysteria over this law is so unjustified.” He continued: “It’s not about discriminating against gays in general or across the board . . . it’s about not being involved in a ceremony that you believe is inherently religious.”

Nevertheless, the real issue here is not the RFRA in Indiana, or Arkansas, or another state. The real issue is the fact that the secular Left has decided that religious liberty must now be reduced, redefined or relegated to a back seat in the culture.

The evidence for this massive and dangerous shift is mounting.

One key indicator is found in the editorial pages of The New York Times. That influential paper has appointed itself the guardian of civil liberties, and it has championed LGBT causes for decades now. But the paper’s editorial board condemned the Indiana law as “cover for bigotry.” The most chilling statement in the editorial, however, was this:

“The freedom to exercise one’s religion is not under assault in Indiana, or anywhere else in the country. Religious people — including Christians, who continue to make up the majority of Americans — may worship however they wish and say whatever they like.”

There you see religious liberty cut down to freedom of worship. The freedom to worship is most surely part of what religious liberty protects, but religious liberty is not limited to what happens in a church, temple, mosque, or synagogue.

That editorial represents religious liberty redefined before our eyes.

But the clearest evidence of the eagerness of the secular Left to reduce and redefine religious liberty comes in the form of two columns by opinion writer Frank Bruni. The first, published in January, included Bruni’s assurance that he affirmed “the right of people to believe what they do and say what they wish — in their pews, homes, and hearts.” Religious liberty is now redefined so that it has no place outside pews, homes, and hearts. Religious liberty no longer has any public significance.

But Bruni does not really affirm religious liberty, even in churches and in the hiring of ministers. He wrote: “And churches have been allowed to adopt broad, questionable interpretations of a ‘ministerial exception’ laws that allow them to hire and fire clergy as they wish.”

The ability of churches to hire and fire ministers as they wish is “questionable.” Remember that line when you are told that your church is promised “freedom of worship.”

But Bruni’s January column was merely a prelude to what came in the aftermath of the Indiana controversy. Now, the openly-gay columnist demands that Christianity reform its doctrines as well.

He opened his column in the paper’s edition published Easter Sunday with this:

“The drama in Indiana last week and the larger debate over so-called religious freedom laws in other states portray homosexuality and devout Christianity as forces in fierce collision. They’re not — at least not in several prominent denominations, which have come to a new understanding of what the Bible does and doesn’t decree, of what people can and cannot divine in regard to God’s will.”

Bruni issued an open demand that evangelical Christians to get over believing that homosexuality is a sin, or suffer the consequences. His language could not be more chilling:

“So our debate about religious liberty should include a conversation about freeing religions and religious people from prejudices that they needn’t cling to and can jettison, much as they’ve jettisoned other aspects of their faith’s history, rightly bowing to the enlightenments of modernity.”

There you have it — a demand that religious liberty be debated (much less respected) only if conservative believers will get with the program and, mark his language, bow to the demands of the modern age.

Christianity and homosexuality “don’t have to be in conflict in any church anywhere,” Bruni declared.

He reduced religious conviction to a matter of choice:

“But in the end, the continued view of gays, lesbians and bisexuals as sinners is a decision. It’s a choice. It prioritizes scattered passages of ancient texts over all that has been learned since — as if time had stood still, as if the advances of science and knowledge meant nothing. It disregards the degree to which all writings reflect the biases and blind spots of their authors, cultures and eras.”

So the only religion Bruni respects is one that capitulates to the modern age and is found “rightly bowing to the enlightenments of modernity.”

That means giving up the inerrancy of Scripture, for one thing. The Bible, according to Bruni, reflects the biases and blind spots of the human authors and their times. When it comes to homosexuality, he insists, we now know better.

This is the anthem of liberal Protestantism, and the so-called mainline Protestant churches have been devoted to this project for the better part of a century now. Bruni applauds the liberal churches for getting with the program and for revising the faith in light of the demands of the modern age — demands that started with the denial of truths such as the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection of Christ, miracles, the verbal inspiration of Scripture, and other vital doctrines. The liberal churches capitulated on the sexuality issues only after capitulating on a host of central Christian doctrines. Almost nothing is left for them to deny or reformulate.

It is interesting to see how quickly some can get with the program and earn the respect of the secular gatekeepers. Bruni cites David Gushee of Mercer University as an example of one who has seen the light. “Human understanding of what is sinful has changed over time,” Bruni quotes Gushee. Bruni then stated that Gushee “openly challenges his faith’s censure of same-sex relationships, to which he no longer subscribes.”

But David Gushee agreed with the church’s historic condemnation of same-sex relationships, even in a major work on Christian ethics he co-authored, until he released a book stating otherwise just months ago. Once a public figure gets with the program, whether that person is David Gushee or Barack Obama, all is quickly forgiven.

Bruni also notes that “Christians have moved far beyond Scripture when it comes to gender roles.” He is right to understand that some Christians have indeed done so, and in so doing they have made it very difficult to stop with redefining the Bible on gender roles. Once that is done, there is every reason to expect that a revisionist reading of sexuality is close behind. Bruni knows this, and celebrates it.

Taken together, Frank Bruni’s two columns represent a full-throttle demand for theological capitulation and a fully developed reduction of religious liberty. In his view, stated now in full public view in the pages ofThe New York Times, the only faiths that deserve religious liberty are those that bow their knees to the ever most costly demands of the modern age.

It is incredibly revealing that the verb he chose was “bowing.” One of the earliest lessons Christians had to learn was that we cannot simultaneously bow the knee to Caesar and to Christ. We must choose one or the other. Frank Bruni, whether he intended to do so or not, helps us to see that truth with new clarity.

Sources:

Frank Bruni, “Your God and My Dignity,” The New York Times, Sunday, January 11, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-religious-liberty-bigotry-and-gays.html

Frank Bruni, “Bigotry, the Bible, and the Lessons of Indiana,” The New York Times, Sunday, April 5, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-same-sex-sinners.html

This article was originally posted at the AlbertMohler.com website.

Only six of 54 Republican members of the U.S. Senate signed a pro-traditional marriage legal brief to the U.S. Supreme Court that was submitted on Friday. USA Today noted, “By contrast, 44 Democratic senators and 167 Democratic House members filed a brief last month urging the court to approve same-sex marriage. The brief included the full House and Senate [Democratic] leadership teams.”

These developments strongly suggest that while the homosexual movement remains solidly in control of the Democratic Party, the tactics of harassment and intimidation that we saw wielded against the religious freedom bill in Indiana last week are taking their toll on the Republican Party as a whole.

In the Indiana case, a conservative Republican governor, Mike Pence, abandoned the fight for religious freedom in the face of homosexual and corporate pressure.

It appears that more and more elite or establishment Republicans are simply deciding to give up on the fight for traditional values and marriage.

While this may seem politically expedient, this dramatic move to the left by the GOP could result in millions of pro-family conservatives deciding to abandon the Republican Party in 2016, a critical election year.

USA Today also noted that “…while some members of the 2012 Republican National Convention platform committee filed a brief against gay marriage Friday, it notably did not include GOP Chairman Reince Priebus.”

The Republican senators signing the brief included:

• U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas
• U.S. Senator Steve Daines of Montana
• U.S. Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma
• U.S. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma
• U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky
• U.S. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina

Fifty-one members of the House of Representatives signed the brief. But U.S. House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) name was not on it.

Taking the lead for traditional marriage in the House was U.S. Representative Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), who not only signed the pro-marriage brief but has also introduced U.S. House Joint Resolution 32, the Marriage Protection Amendment, to amend the United States Constitution to protect marriage, family and children by defining marriage as the union between one man and one woman. The resolution has 33 co-sponsors and has been referred for action to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary.

Huelskamp is the only Member of Congress who has authored one of the 30 state constitutional amendments that prohibits homosexual marriage and polygamous marriage. In 2005, when he was a state senator, 71 percent of Kansans voted for the state constitutional amendment that he authored.

In reintroducing the federal marriage amendment, Huelskamp said, “In June 2013 the Supreme Court struck down section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which had defined marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman, but upheld the right and responsibility of states to define marriage. Since then, though, numerous unelected lower court judges have construed the U.S. Constitution as suddenly demanding recognition of same sex ‘marriages,’ and they struck down state Marriage Amendments—including the Kansas Marriage Amendment—approved by tens of millions of voters and their elected representatives.”

However, on April 28 the U.S. Supreme Court will review the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which upholds marriage laws in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. A ruling is expected in June.

USA Today noted that scores of prominent Republicans last month joined a brief on the homosexual side filed by former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, a former lieutenant to Karl Rove who came out of the closet and announced in August of 2010 that he was a homosexual. He has since launched a “Project Right Side” to make the “conservative” case for gay marriage.

Big money Republican donors such as Paul Singer, David Koch, and Peter Thiel have either endorsed homosexual rights and same-sex marriage or funded the homosexual movement. Thiel is an open homosexual.

A libertarian group funded by the Koch brothers, the Cato Institute has been in the gay rights camp for many years and its chairman, Robert A. Levy, wrote a “moral and constitutional case for a right to gay marriage.”

Other signatories to the Mehlman brief included Governor Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, U.S. Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Mark Kirk of Illinois, and former presidential candidates Rudolph Giuliani and Jon Huntsman.

The signers of this brief at the U.S. Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage were described as “300 veteran Republican lawmakers, operatives and consultants.” Some two dozen or so had worked for Mitt Romney for president.

One of the signatories, Mason Fink, who was the finance director of the Mitt Romney for president campaign, has signed on with a super PAC promoting former Florida Republican governor Jeb Bush for president. In another move signaling his alignment with the homosexual movement, Bush has reportedly picked Tim Miller, “one of the most prominent gay Republicans in Washington politics,” as his communications director.

A far-left media outlet known as Buzzfeed has described Bush as “2016’s Gay-Friendly Republican,” and says he has “stocked his inner circle with advisers who are vocal proponents of gay rights.”

But some conservative Christians are fighting back against the homosexual movement.

A brief to the court filed by Liberty Counsel notes that, in the past, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld marriage as “a foundational social institution that is necessarily defined as the union of one man and one woman.” It cites the case of Skinner v. Oklahoma, in which marriage was declared to be “fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race,” and Maynard v. Hill, in which marriage was declared “the foundation of the family and of society, without which there would be neither civilization nor progress.”

Liberty Counsel said the court is being asked to affirm a false notion of marriage based upon fraudulent data about homosexual activity in society. It said, “For the past 67 years, scholars, lawyers and judges have undertaken fundamental societal transformation by embracing Alfred Kinsey’s statistically and scientifically fraudulent ‘data’ derived from serial child rapists, sex offenders, prisoners, prostitutes, pedophiles and pederasts. Now these same change agents, still covering up the fraudulent nature of the Kinsey ‘data,’ want this Court to utilize it to demolish the cornerstone of society, natural marriage.”

The homosexual movement has long maintained that Kinsey validated changes in sexual behavior that were already taking place in society. In fact, however, the evidence uncovered by Dr. Judith Reisman shows that Kinsey deliberately exaggerated those changes in a fraudulent manner by using data from pedophiles and prisoners.

Commenting on the impact of the acceptance of the fraudulent Kinsey data, Accuracy in Media founder Reed Irvine noted, “Gradually over the years, acceptance of the Kinsey morality has grown to the point where premarital and extramarital sex raise no eyebrows, where, in some communities, out-of-wedlock births are in the majority, homosexuality is glorified and aggressively promoted in our schools and the last taboo—adults having sex with young children—is now under attack in some of our institutions of higher learning.”

The Mattachine Society, a gay rights organization started by communist Harry Hay in 1950, cited the flawed Kinsey data in an effort to convince the public that homosexual behavior was widespread in American society.

The book, Take Back! The Gay Person’s Guide to Media Action, said the Kinsey Report on male sexuality “paved the way for the first truly positive discussion of homosexuality in the mainstream media.”

Today, this same Kinsey data is being used to convince the Supreme Court to approve homosexual “marriage” as a constitutional right.

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

Written by Kevin D. Williams

In Indiana, in Arkansas, and in the boardroom

There are two easy ways to get a Republican to roll over and put his paws up in the air: The first is to write him a check, which is the political version of scratching his belly, and the second is to call him a bigot. In both cases, it helps if you have a great deal of money behind you.

Tim Cook, who in his role as chief executive of the world’s most valuable company personifies precisely the sort of oppression to which gay people in America are subjected, led the hunting party when Indiana’s governor Mike Pence signed into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, while Walmart, a company that cannot present its hindquarters enthusiastically enough to the progressives who hate it and everything for which it stands, dispatched its CEO, C. Douglas McMillon, to head off a similar effort in Arkansas, where Governor Asa Hutchison rolled over immediately.

There are three problems with rewarding those who use accusations of bigotry as a political cudgel. First, those who seek to protect religious liberties are not bigots, and going along with false accusations that they are makes one a party to a lie. Second, it is an excellent way to lose political contests, since there is almost nothing — up to and including requiring algebra classes — that the Left will not denounce as bigotry. Third, and related, it encourages those who cynically deploy accusations of bigotry for their own political ends.

An excellent illustration of this dynamic is on display in the recent pronouncements of columnist and gay-rights activist Dan Savage, who, in what seems to be an effort to resurrect every lame stereotype about the shrill, hysterical, theatrical gay man, declaimed that the efforts of those who do not wish to see butchers and bakers and wedding-bouquet makers forced by their government at gunpoint to violate their religious scruples is — you probably have guessed already — nothing less than the consecration of Jim Crow Junior. “Anti-black bigots, racist bigots, during Jim Crow and segregation made the exact same arguments that you’re hearing people make now,” Savage said. Given the dramatic difference in the social and political position of blacks in the time of Bull Connor and gays in the time of Ellen DeGeneres, this is strictly Hitler-was-a-vegetarian stuff, the elevation of trivial formal similarities over dramatic substantial differences. The choices for explaining this are a.) moral illiteracy; b.) intellectual dishonesty; c.) both a and b.

Adlai Stevenson famously offered this definition: “A free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.” We do not live in that society.

Originally published at NationalReview.com

In the wake of a pro-LGBTQ, media-driven campaign against Indiana’s new Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), Gov. Mike Pence and leaders of the Indiana legislature are backtracking to appease the liberal political mob that has cynically recast the law as the “License to Discriminate.”

Good people everywhere are now intimidated from speaking plain truths about the homosexual-bisexual-transgender agenda. Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) is not. The distortions and media hype attacking Indiana’s religious freedom law are obfuscating some key fundamentals in this debate. It is not the purpose here to dig into the “legaleze” about the law (for that, see this Reason.com piece) but rather to expose the core hypocrisy of pro-LGBTQ progressives on “discrimination.”

Homosexual activists and their sycophants in the media (e.g., CNN’s homosexual anchor/activist Don Lemon) are cunningly building upon their distortions of the RFRA to demand a pro-homosexual special-rights law in the Hoosier State.

It would be the cruelest of ironies if the media-driven backlash against Indiana’s religious freedom law were used to push through a statewide “gay rights” law in Indiana. Such pro-homosexual laws and corporate policies have been the engine driving PRO-LGBT DISCRIMINATION against people of faith for decades—all in the sweet-sounding name of “equality.” For example, the “gay” movement’s bullying of the Boy Scouts of America began with a lawsuit that relied upon New Jersey’s pro-homosexual “sexual orientation” law.

The pro-family movement has long referred to so-called nondiscrimination laws based on “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as “special rights” because genuine civil rights are not based on disordered, immoral sexual behavior and gender confusion. These Orwellian laws and corporate policies actually foment discrimination in the name of “non-discrimination.” That’s liberalism for you.

Our cherished American freedoms come ultimately from God, as recognized by our national charter, the Declaration of Independence, which appeals to “Nature and Nature’s God.” Homosexual behavior–which cannot produce life–is against both. Witness the grossly disproportionate STD rates linked to “men who have sex with men.”

It is ludicrous to posit “civil rights” based on homosexuality and gender rebellion as “constitutional.” But it is downright un-American to argue—as many LGBTQ activists do—that in a nation founded by people fleeing religious oppression, “rights” based on sexual sin should trump Americans’ freedom to uphold biblical sexual morality and real marriage between man and woman.

The LGBT Lobby and the media have raised the issue of potential discrimination in Indiana. Let’s talk about discrimination.

With the rise of “gay power” in the West has come an abundance of victims of pro-homosexual Political Correctness. All over the world, Christians and moral-minded citizens have been victimized by a liberal, elitist pro-homosexual orthodoxy that increasingly brooks no dissent. The media have trivialized the zero-sum conflict between “gay rights” and freedom of conscience as being merely about wedding cake bakers–but the escalating “LGBTyranny” goes far beyond that:

–> People are losing their jobs or being denied entry into their desired profession (e.g., counseling) because they espouse truth that homosexual behavior is immoral. Allstate Insurance Co. fired Christian Matt Barber (founder of Barbwire.com) after he wrote a column—on his own time—critical of the militant “gay” agenda.

–>  Christian students have been denied entry into college counseling programs simply because their conscience does not permit them to affirm homosexual relationships. In the United States today you are more likely to be punished or fired for OPPOSING homosexuality than you are for “being gay.” (Meanwhile, many corporations and colleges—egged on by the “gay” lobby–are now engaging in pro-homosexual Affirmative Action—giving special preference to homosexuals. So much for LGBTQ victimhood.)

–>  Homosexual activists have successfully lobbied for laws in California, New Jersey and the District of Columbia that BAN minors with unwanted same-sex attractions from pursuing healthy, heterosexual change through therapy. The leftists at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) are using their bevy of lawyers to sue a tiny Jewish ex-“gay” group called JONAH — to drive them out of business. The LGBT activists’ animus toward EX-homosexuals belies their phony rhetoric touting “diversity” and “inclusion.”

–>  In the name of transgender “rights,” “non-discrimination” laws are allowing biological men to use public women’s restrooms, and boys to use girls restrooms and locker rooms in schools. Thus women and girls are losing their safe spaces and their right to privacy.

–>  Homosexual activists and the Religious Left are demanding that even Catholic schools hire (or not fire) openly homosexual and even “gay-married” teachers whose lifestyles defy historic Catholic teachings.

If government can compel a Christian or Orthodox Jewish businessman to participate in a ceremony that attaches sinful homosexuality to “marriage,” then the State can compel ANY American citizen or institution to violate ANY of their cherished beliefs. That is the essence of tyranny.

Disagreeing morally with homosexuality is not “bigotry,” “hate” or “animus.” Since when did sodomy—which has been taboo for centuries; is condemned unequivocally in Scripture; and is defined by American wordsmith Noah Webster as “a crime against nature”—become sacrosanct?

Legalized homosexual “marriage” is a grave moral evil and an unprecedented sign of decadence in the West. It is the right and duty of every true Christian to oppose it. But no small business owner—whether religious or not–should be compelled to participate in a same-sex “wedding” that not only glorifies homosexual sin but often does it in God’s name.

Liberals and homosexual activists love to cry “Bigot!” but there is plenty of anti-Christian bigotry on their side: see this nasty Tweet by influential Indiana LGBTQ activist Bil Browning mocking “Jeebus” (Jesus Christ) and this article about the National LGBTQ Task Force celebrating a documentary about a play that portrays Christ as “gay” and the one-time homosexual lover of Judas.

Politically speaking, it seems bigotry is OK as long as it advances the “progressive” agenda to impose mandatory acceptance of homosexuality and gender confusion on everyone.

First Annual IFI Worldview Conference
featuring Dr. Del Tackett
April 10-11, 2015

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Written by R.R. Reno

None of the dire outcomes predicted by those campaigning against the Indiana RFRA have materialized in jurisdictions that already have versions of the law. Aside from the specific matter of participation in a gay wedding, there has not been a single case in which someone has claimed a religious right to refuse to serve or sell to gays or lesbians. Employment? There exists only one case from 1985—and in that case the court denied the claim to a religious exemption from anti-discrimination laws. Facts belie the outcry and expose it for the propaganda effort that it is.

This campaign of misinformation comes at a cost. For some people, RFRA protection is a matter of life and death.

Take Mary Stinemetz, a Jehovah’s Witness in Kansas who needed a liver transplant but would not accept a blood transfusion for religious reasons. To get such an operation, she would have to go a hospital in Nebraska. Kansas Medicaid, which had a policy of only covering in-state procedures, refused to cover the transplant (even though the Omaha procedure would have cost less than the in-state one with a blood transfusion).

Stinemetz litigated, claiming religious exemption from the policy, but Kansas had no RFRA. State attorneys argued she had no right to the exemption. After going through the appeal process, the Kansas Supreme Court determined that the state constitution implied RFRA-like protections and granted her the exemption. But it was too late. Her health had deteriorated to the point where a transplant was futile.

She died in October 2012.

We don’t hear about Mary Stinemetz. That’s because the propaganda about the Indiana law and other RFRA laws blankets reality and hides the true human costs of inadequate protection of religious freedom. This epitomizes the elitism of the gay rights movement, which is in many respects a lobby for the One Percent. Two rich lawyers from New Jersey simply have to be able to compel a florist in Denver to make arrangements for their wedding.

If getting rid of Indiana’s law comes at the cost of the lives of people like Mary Stinemetz, well, that’s too bad.

R. R. Reno is editor of First Things.

Angie’s List, the online service that provides consumer reviews of service professionals, publicly endorsed anti-Christian bigotry by opposing an Indiana law designed to protect religious liberties and freedoms.

Last week, Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) after the state legislature overwhelmingly supported it. Twenty states now have passed the law, with Arkansas and Georgia currently considering it.

The Indiana law is identical in all fundamental respects to the 1993 federal RFRA signed into law by President Bill Clinton after it passed the U.S. House unanimously and the Senate 97-3.

Unfortunately, Angie’s List has joined with thousands of homosexual activists (including lesbian Ellen DeGeneres) in opposing religious freedom for all people in Indiana.

In response Angie’s List CEO Bill Oesterle announced the company is immediately putting plans “on hold” for a $40 million expansion of its headquarters in Indianapolis.

Angie’s List implies support for the concept that Christian business owners should be prosecuted by law if they don’t violate their deeply and sincerely held religious beliefs by bowing to homosexual activist demands, as is already happening in states without RFRA:

• Washington: Florist Barronell Stutzman fined by the state for not providing flowers for a “gay” wedding. Now her home and personal savings are at risk.
• New Mexico: Photographer Elaine Huguenin was ordered by the state to give a lesbian $7,000 for declining to take pictures of a lesbian wedding.
• Oregon:  Aaron and Melissa Klein were fined $150,000 by the state for refusal to bake a cake for a lesbian wedding based on religious objections.
• Kentucky: Blaine Adamson was ordered by the city of Lexington to undergo ‘sensitivity training” for refusing to print T-shirts for a gay pride festival.

Angie’s List is a bully, plain and simple. They have chosen to bully the city of Indianapolis, the state of Indiana and Christians everywhere by financial intimidation and threats.

TAKE ACTION:  If you have an account with Angie’s List, we urge you to cancel it right away in defense of religious liberty in America. Be sure to let them know why you’re leaving.

Even if you don’t have an account, click HERE to send an email to Angie’s List CEO Bill Oesterle. Or you can call them at (888) 944-5478.  Let them know that his company’s support for religious discrimination is an affront to Christians.

First Annual IFI Worldview Conference
featuring Dr. Del Tackett
April 10-11, 2015

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Intellectual frustration is boiling over—mine, that is.

Opponents of RFRA laws would like these laws to protect religious liberty as long as religious liberty protections never trump the wishes of those who affirm a homosexual identity. Homosexual activists seek to effectively neuter the First Amendment. They seek to enshrine in law the right to discriminate based on religion and then have the audacity to say—as Apple CEO Tim Cook has—that RFRA laws “go against the very principles our nation was founded on.” Say what? Last time I checked, this nation was founded on religious liberty—not homoerotic privilege.

“Progressives” fret with feigned hysteria that Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act is really about homosexuality, which points to the unsavory truth that the only current threat to religious liberty in America is posed by the social and political movement to normalize homoeroticism. If the jackboot fits, homosexual activists should just wear it.

Here are my responses to two of the fatuous arguments that the Left produces in their effort to amend the Constitution without having to go through the work of amending the Constitution. Getting rid of that pesky First Amendment Free Exercise Clause would be oh so tedious and intellectually challenging. It’s much easier to hurl epithets, concoct absurd analogies, and redefine terms trusting that few will bother to think carefully about the glittering new redefinitions.

Bad argument 1. This law is designed to discriminate against “gays.”

Christian owners of wedding-related businesses are not refusing to serve homosexuals, nor do they desire to refuse to serve homosexuals.  Some are refusing to use their gifts, labor, and time in the service of a type of event that God they serve abhors.

Barronelle Stutzman, the elderly florist in Washington state who is being sued because she wouldn’t make floral arrangements for a same-sex “wedding,” had served the homosexual man who requested flowers for his faux-wedding. In fact, she was friends with him and had sold him flowers on multiple occasions knowing that he was homosexual.

There is a huge difference between discrimination against persons and discrimination between types of events or actions—a difference liberals refuse to acknowledge for strategic reasons.

Refusing to sell pastries or tulips to a customer who happens to be homosexual or bisexual (or black or white or a man or a woman) would constitute an immoral, unbiblical, indefensible act. Refusing to create and provide a cake or floral arrangement for an event that celebrates a union that your faith teaches is abhorrent to the God you serve is a biblically warranted, morally defensible act.

The Left claims that since both homosexual couples and heterosexual couples are requesting the same product, the discrimination present in the refusal to provide goods or services for a homosexual “wedding” constitutes discrimination based on their “sexual orientation.” But such a claim requires assent to the embedded, unspoken proposition that a homosexual “marriage” is, in reality, identical to a sexually complementary marriage. Orthodox (small “o”) Christians reject that claim as false.

What “progressives” are really claiming is that outside their homes and pews, orthodox Christians may enjoy religious liberty, but they, “progressives,” get to define all the terms of the debate. If they, “progressives,” claim that there are no ontological differences between non-marital, same-sex “weddings” and marital, sexually complementary weddings, then abracadabra, there are no ontological differences. In the faith-based, presuppositional, totalitarian universe of “progressives,” refusal to provide goods or services for the celebration of non-marital, same-sex “weddings” is not discrimination between two different types of events (because the Left has ordained them identical), but, rather, discrimination against persons. Very tricksy rhetorical game.

Homosexual “weddings” are not identical or equivalent to true weddings. In reality, they are the anti-thesis of true weddings. Homosexual “weddings” imitate or, rather, mock true weddings. When two men asked Baronelle Stutzman to make floral arrangements for their “wedding,” they were asking her to make a product she had never made before: an anti-wedding floral arrangement.

Bad argument 2. (ad nauseum) This RFRA law is the equivalent of Jim Crow laws that permitted restaurants to refuse to serve blacks.

For the umpteenth time, homosexuality is not analogous to race. Race is 100 percent heritable and immutable in all cases. Most important, race is not constituted by subjective desire or volitional acts.

In contrast, homosexuality is not 100 percent heritable, is in some cases mutable, but most important, homosexuality is constituted centrally by subjective desire and volitional activity, which is perfectly legitimate to assess morally. Much better analogues for homosexuality are polyamory or consensual adult incest.

Therefore, if homosexuality is included as a protected category in anti-discrimination policy and law, shouldn’t other conditions constituted by subjective desire and volitional acts be included in anti-discrimination law? Shouldn’t polyamory and consensual adult incest (or paraphilias which too are constituted by powerful unchosen and seemingly intractable desire and volitional acts) be considered, alongside race, as constitutionally protected categories? Shouldn’t business owners be compelled to use their gifts to help them celebrate their polyamorous and incestuous commitment ceremonies?

And what about bisexuality, which has been deemed a “sexual orientation”? Should Christian bakers, florists, and photographers be compelled to create and provide goods or services for a commitment ceremony between two women and a man who identify as bisexual?

As a fix, some conservatives are recommending that Indiana pass a law that prohibits discrimination based on “sexual orientation.” Such laws are misguided for three reasons:

• First, “sexual orientation” really means homosexuality and bisexuality because in any objective sense, all humans are heterosexual, and, therefore, discrimination based on heterosexuality is nonsensical.
• Second, as mentioned, laws that specifically protect one condition constituted by subjective desire and volitional acts (e.g., homosexuality or bisexuality) open the legal floodgates to other conditions similarly constituted.
• Third, homosexuals will use such laws to prohibit people of faith from discriminating among different types of actions and events, as is happening to Christian owners of wedding-related businesses.

Not including “sexual orientation” in anti-discrimination laws no more constitutes legal carte blanche to refuse service to homosexuals or bisexuals than does the absence of the categories of paraphilias, polyamory, gluttony, or adultery constitute legal carte blanche to refuse to serve frotteurists, zoophiles, polyamorists, gluttons, or adulterers.

As a Christian, I shouldn’t refuse to serve whites, but I should refuse to provide cakes for a celebration of white superiority.

I shouldn’t refuse to sell tulips to a woman who affirms a bisexual identity, but  I should refuse to create and provide floral arrangements for her commitment ceremony to a man and woman.

I shouldn’t refuse to serve Muslims, but I should refuse to photograph a pro-ISIS rally.

I shouldn’t refuse to sell a pastry to a homosexual, but I should refuse to bake a cake for his anti-wedding.

By the way, remember this news story next time someone asks, “How will same-sex marriage hurt you?”

First Annual IFI Worldview Conference
featuring Dr. Del Tackett
April 10-11, 2015

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It’s Hoosier David versus rainbow-clad Goliath.

Indiana Governor Mike Pence recently signed into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in a small, humble ceremony—unlike the prideful, garish, gay ceremony that former Illinois Governor Pat Quinn staged for the signing of Illinois’ marriage-deconstruction law (invited 2,300 guests, used 110 pens, imported Abraham Lincoln’s desk from Springfield for the signing, and quoted from the Gettysburg Address.)

The contrast is marked. Pence has acted humbly in the service of truth. Quinn acted pridefully in the service of lies.

In the wake of Governor Pence’s courageous act, he and Indiana have been the recipients of blistering attacks, both verbal and fiscal.

As usual when blustery homosexual activism is involved, ironies abound. Marc Benioff, CEO of San Francisco-based company Salesforce has canceled “all programs that require our customers/employees to travel to Indiana to face discrimination” (while it continues its business dealings in China—the font and source of human rights protections).

Since the Indiana law is similar to the federal RFRA law sponsored in the U.S. House by New York Democrat Chuck Shumer, passed by the U.S. Senate 97-3, and signed into law by President Bill Clinton, what, pray tell, is Benioff worried about? Does he worry that during a business trip, his customers or employees will suddenly decide to order a wedding cake to be transported back to San Francisco?

John McCormack, writing on the Weekly Standard blog clarifies what RFRA will actually protect:

RFRA allows a person’s free exercise of religion to be “substantially burdened” by a law only if the law furthers a “compelling governmental interest” in the “least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.” 

The law does not provide absolute, unfettered freedom to people of faith to do just anything they want. Nor are people of faith seeking absolute unfettered freedom to do just anything they want. This law reinforces First Amendment protections against the increasing encroachment of government impelled most often by homosexual activists.

RFRA laws would permit religious liberty to be limited only if there exists a compelling government interest in doing so and only if the burden on religious liberty is the least restrictive means of furthering that government interest. Court cases have gone both ways. Sometimes courts have decided in favor of religious liberty; sometimes they’ve ruled against it.

Indiana’s RFRA is carefully worded to protect the right of people of faith who are engaged in commerce to allow their business decisions to be informed by their faith. Christians understand what many homosexual activists and their ideological allies seem not to, which is that the totality of life should conform to biblical principles. The free exercise of religion is not limited to hearts, homes, and pews.

Governor Mike Pence has the U.S. Constitution on his side. He has court precedent on his side. He has the precedents set in 19 other states that have RFRA laws, including blue Illinois. But opposition to this law include marauding bands of hate-mongering homosexual activists, arrogant Hollywood lemmings, and feckless captains of industry.

Homosexual activists, fancying themselves the heir apparent to the great civil rights leaders, are in the vanguard of the assault on the Hoosier state.

Following close behind is Hollywood—widely known for arrogance, ignorance, immorality, vanity, and cool-crowd-following.

And then bringing up the rear with powerful reinforcements are business leaders—rarely noted for their deep thinking on matters moral, ethical, or philosophical.  With their pockets lined with lucre, they’re responding to the vitriol from homosexual activists with reflexive knee jerks that enhance their pride in their own pretense of moral courage. Does anyone believe these business leaders have thought deeply about the First Amendment, homosexuality, or marriage? One of the chief goals of business leaders is to make business decisions that increase profits, but no responsible business leader can divorce profit from principle—and by principle, I mean right principle.

What is astounding in this brouhaha is the deceit of the Left. Homosexual activists and their media sycophants continue to proclaim—without evidence—that, for example, Christians owners of wedding-related businesses are seeking to refuse to serve homosexuals. But refusing to use their gifts, labor, and time to produce a product or provide a service for a celebration that violates their religious beliefs does not constitute a refusal to serve homosexuals. In fact, the cases that have been in the press actually expose the Leftist lie, because the owners of the wedding-related businesses have, indeed, served homosexuals on multiple occasions prior to the wedding-related requests.

Religious-owners of businesses should be allowed to discriminate between types of events and products when making business-decisions regarding the provision of their goods and services. Experiencing homoerotic desire and affirming a homoerotic identity does not give men and women absolute dictatorial authority to command what kinds of events religious owners of businesses will serve or what types of products they will make. Homoerotic desire does not supersede religious liberty—or in a sane and moral universe, it would not.

Christians, Jews, and Muslims should be allowed to refuse to provide goods and services for bisexuals’, polygamists’, or polyamorists’ commitment ceremonies or in the near future, weddings (which could be construed as discrimination based on “sexual orientation.”)

Christians and Jews should be allowed to refuse to provide goods and services for pro-Hamas events (which could be construed as discrimination based on religion).

Christians should be allowed to refuse to provide goods and services for events sponsored by eugenics organizations like Planned Parenthood (which in the mad, mad, mad, mad world of feminism that sees a war on women everywhere could be construed as discrimination based on sex).

And Christians should be allowed to refuse to provide services for GLSEN events. Though dogmatic Leftist ideologues would likely construe such refusal as discrimination against homosexuals, it would, in reality, reflect the kind of business decision that Mark Benioff thinks he’s making. Refusing to provide goods and services for a GLSEN event would reflect a principled objection to the event—not the people hosting it.

Other organizations threatening to reconsider their involvement with Indiana include, Eli Lilly, Yelp, Angie’s List, the NCAA, and (irony of ironies) the Disciples of Christ denomination, which apparently supports religious discrimination.

Where do we witness courage? We are witnessing courage through the heroic actions of Mike Pence and every Hoosier who defends him and this law with unwavering steadfastness in the face of withering assaults. Another biblical allusion comes to mind. It appears the citizens of Sodom are clamoring at Lot’s door.

But we can do something.

Take ACTION:  Express with courage, boldness, and grace your support for Governor Mike Pence.

1.)  Call  his office and thank him for standing for religious liberty and freedom.   His office telephone number is (317) 232-4567.

2.)  Get on social media.  Click here to access his Facebook page.  Send this article out by Twitter, include these hashtags in your tweet:  #StandwithIndiana  and  #RFRA

3.)  Contact Eli Lilly; Yelp (415) 908-3801; Angie’s List; the NCAA at (877) 262-1492 ; and, if you’re a member, the Disciples of Christ.

4.)  Support Indiana businesses.

The Truth Project

First Annual IFI Worldview Conference
featuring Dr. Del Tackett
April 10-11, 2015

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“Tumultuary”: Marked by confusion and disorder

Maybe there’s a silver lining to the cloud created by U.S. Senator Harry Reid’s tumult of confused and disordered thinking. Maybe he has just inadvertently made a case for his own political demise.

Reid, the U.S. Senate Majority Leader from Nevada, was thrown into a paroxysm of anger over the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in the “Hobby Lobby” case, which held that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) protects the right of Christian business owners to refuse to be complicit in the deliberate killing of innocent human life. His anger resulted in Tumultuary Harry’s odd claim that “five white men” must not be permitted to  “determine” “women’s lives.”

How many ways can one sentence be wrong? Well, let’s add ‘em up:

• First, and most obvious, one of the five men is not like the others—including hue. Reid may need his vision checked. Or perhaps Reid is using “white” figuratively. Perhaps “white” is a metaphor for all things Reid hates. 

• Second, someone needs to tell Reid that he is…um, gulp…white. 

• Third, Reid has revealed not only his distaste for whiteness (aka self-loathing) but also his diminished view of women. In Reid’s confused worldview, women’s paths in life are set in stone (i.e., “determined”) if their bosses don’t subsidize their birth control. In Reid’s wacky world, poor widdoe girls can’t chart their own course if their mean bosses don’t pay for their IUDs. Reid views women as so impotent that the refusal of their knights in shining armor (aka employers) to pay for their contraception for their volitional sexual activity signifies an absolute loss of agency in their own lives. Maybe women aren’t so inherently powerful after all. 
  
  Instead of railing against the five “white” men who are attempting an existential coup of women the scope of which hasn’t been seen since the slave era, perhaps Harry could remind trembling women of the lives of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Eleanor Roosevelt, Maya Angelou, Betty Friedan, Coretta Scott King, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg whose fertile years were not ones during which contraception was subsidized by employers or the government. 

• Fourth, what does Reid think of other decisions by white men that have “determined” the lives of Americans some of whom were women, you know, men like Joseph Story, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Louis D. Brandeis, William O. Douglas, Earl Warren, William Brennan, and Hugo Black.

Keep your chins up, women! Ignore the bespectacled, tumultuary, only-white-in-a-literal-sense man behind the lectern who thinks you’re feeble and dependent. You can do it! I know you can! You can eke out a life of meaning with even the little reserve of female power you have left after your Scrooge-y bosses withhold that 20 bucks a month. Your bossy patriarchal oppressors trampling on your uteruses (or in Deb Wasserman’s creepy description, “reaching into” your bodies) cannot keep a good woman down.

And, ladies, while you’re exercising your little remaining vestige of power, maybe you can figure out a way to give that confused white man the heave-ho.

Stand with Illinois Family Institute! 

While reams have already been penned examining the implications of last week’s Hobby Lobby decision, most of what’s been written, particularly in the liberal press, has missed the point entirely.

Though I’m mildly pleased that the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is not quite ready to take gasoline to both the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), signed into law by Bill Clinton, a liberal, in 1993, I am alarmed, and so too should you be, that only 56 percent of our sitting SCOTUS justices are still willing to give the U.S. Constitution a modicum of the respect, recognition and compliance it not only deserves, but requires.

America was dragged before Emperor Obama’s counter-constitutional, secular-”progressive” firing squad and remarkably, miraculously, they missed.

But it’s a false sense of security. As we Christians and conservatives celebrate with chest bumps and high fives, we remain bound, gagged and blindfolded while these “progressive” fascists reload. The next volley of cultural Marxist lead is but moments away.

Tick, tick goes the judicial-supremacy time bomb.

I don’t mean to throw a wet blanket on the party. There is much to celebrate, and this ruling’s broader implications are profound indeed. The opinion simply doesn’t go far enough.

Yes, Hobby Lobby was, in part, about the non-negotiable fact that government cannot compel religious business owners of private, closely held corporations to be complicit in abortion homicide. It was also, tangentially, about the self-evident reality that women are not, never have been and never will be, entitled to expect Christian men, who are not their husbands, to pay for their birth control and abortion drugs so that they can have consequence-free sex or otherwise murder their pre-born babies.

Hobby Lobby was chiefly about one of our very first freedoms: religious liberty.

How is it that this was a 5-4 decision? Even an elementary understanding of American history and a cursory analysis of both our U.S. Constitution and RFRA establish that this opinion should have been roundly unanimous. The majority decision merely recognized, in the weakest of terms, Americans’ God-given, inalienable, constitutionally guaranteed right to religious free exercise (yes, even for those pesky Christian business owners).

Still, while lovers of freedom rejoice across the nation, the reality is that there are at least four domestic “enemies within” currently sitting on the highest bench in the land, not the least of whom is Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Ginsburg tells you everything you need to know about Ginsburg: “I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a Constitution in the year 2012,” she disgracefully vomited a couple years back in an interview about the fledgling Egyptian government. “I might look at the Constitution of South Africa. That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights. … It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done. Much more recent than the U.S. Constitution.”

Ginsburg hates the America of our founding. She hates our constitution and, like all true “progressives,” endeavors to circumvent it at every turn.

And that’s the prism through which we must interpret the parade of hyperbolic horribles in her scathing Hobby Lobby dissent. She excoriated the constitutionalist majority for its ruling, calling it a “radical” decision “of startling breadth.” Still, when you cut through the alarmist tripe, she actually gets to the meat of the matter.

“In a decision of startling breadth,” she wrote, “the Court holds that commercial enterprises, including corporations, along with partnerships and sole proprietorships, can opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

Uh, yeah, and?

Here’s what Ginsburg actually meant: “I hate the First Amendment. It’s broad, inalienable, and I want to alienate it. Oh, and dead babies. Lots of dead babies.”

Ginsburg is right. This decision was “of startling breadth,” but only if you happen to be a secular elitist hell-bent on marginalizing Christians and wielding unchecked power over your fellow Americans.

Indeed, the secularist left’s utter meltdown over having but a small measure of control over others wrested away is highly instructive. Still, why would we expect lefties to understand the First Amendment when these Rhodes Scholars are calling a decision penned by Justice Samuel Alito “#ScaliaLaw” on Twitter?

In his concurring opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy, who more often than not gets it wrong, got one right:

In our constitutional tradition, freedom means that all persons have the right to believe or strive to believe in a divine creator and a divine law. For those who choose this course, free exercise is essential in preserving their own dignity and in striving for a self-definition shaped by their religious precepts. Free exercise in this sense implicates more than just freedom of belief. … It means, too, the right to express those beliefs and to establish one’s religious (or non-religious) self-definition in the political, civic, and economic life of our larger community.

Wow. And now for the pink elephant in the room: Although the Hobby Lobby decision did not directly address the raging cultural debate over counterfeit “gay marriage” and the irreconcilable friction this modern, sin-centric novelty has with the long-established and inalienable right to religious free exercise, it doesn’t take a Phi Beta Kappa to read between the lines and discover, as Ginsburg and Kennedy evidently agree, that the “startling breadth” of the decision most assuredly touches and concerns the debate head on. (And not in favor, I might add, of the homofascist “you-have-to-affirm-my-faux-marriage-or-go-to-jail” crowd.)

While Justice Kennedy is anything but predictable on these matters, this ruling makes it pretty clear that, as both the First Amendment and RFRA already assure, the Christian baker, photographer, florist or any other business owner, is protected from being forced, under penalty of law, into indentured servitude – from having to give their God-given time and talent to create goods or services that require they violate sincerely held religious beliefs.

In other words, both the First Amendment and RFRA trump any and all so-called “sexual orientation” laws. Or, as Ginsburg put it, private businesses “can opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

Darn skippy.

Furthermore, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act expressly protects religious free exercise while ignoring newfangled notions of “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.”

When religious belief comes into conflict with sexual identity politics, religious belief wins every time. Period.

Let me be clear so there’s no misunderstanding. I’m a Christian. If I’m a business owner and someone comes in requesting goods or services that would require me to violate my conscience – especially my biblically based, sincerely held religious beliefs – I will not, under any circumstances, provide those goods or services. This is my absolute, non-negotiable, constitutionally guaranteed right.

No debate. No question. No compromise.

The language of the Hobby Lobby decision simply acknowledges this reality.

On Monday at the Aspen Institute’s “Aspen Ideas Festival,” Hillary Clinton offered some ideas that could have floated right out of the pot-clouded mind of a Colorado stoner.

She discussed the recent U.S. Supreme Court Decision which held that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) exempts closely held companies from being compelled to violate their religious beliefs by providing abortifacients to their employees.

When a conservative makes an inartful or boneheaded statement, it’s trumpeted around the country by our unbiased “journalists” at CNN, MSNBC, and CNBC, and by the huffing and puffing posters at HuffPost. But when one of their own makes an utterly preposterous statement the sound of crickets chirping is deafening. And when the preposterous statement issues from their political high priestess, Hillary Clinton, you can almost see the glistening flop sweat as they try to figure out how to avoid addressing it.

Here’s what the Pythia Clinton prophesied in response to the recent Hobby Lobby decision:

Just think about this for a minute: It’s the first time that our court has said that a closely held corporation has the rights of a person when it comes to religious freedom, which means that the …corporation’s employers can impose their religious beliefs on their employees and, of course, denying women their right to contraception as part of their health care plan. I find it deeply disturbing that we’re going in that direction.

Part of the reason I was so adamant about including women and girls in our foreign policy, not as a luxury, but as a central issue is because they are often the canaries in the mine. You watch women and girls being deprived of their rights. Some of them never had them. Some of them lose them. And among those rights is control over their bodies, control over their own health care, control over the size of their families. And it is a disturbing trend that you see in a lot of societies that are very unstable, that are anti-democratic, that are, frankly, prone to extremism, where women and women’s bodies are used as the defining and unifying issue to bring together people—men—to get them to behave in ways that are disadvantageous to women, but which prop up them because of their religion, or sect, or tribe, or whatever.

So to introduce this element into our society—We’re always going to argue about abortion. It’s a hard choice and it’s controversial, and that’s why I’m pro-choice. I want people to be able to make their own choices.

And it’s very troubling that a sales clerk at Hobby Lobby who needs contraception, which is pretty expensive, is not going to get that service through her employer’s health care plan because her employer doesn’t think she should be using contraception.

I know it’s a spectrum, but all these decisions about women and women’s rights and women’s bodies and women’s roles are on that spectrum. Thankfully we’re far away from a lot of countries that don’t even issue birth certificates to girls because “they’re so worthless, why would we record their births.”

So, we’re very far from that, but, this kind of decision raises serious questions.

Say what?

Allow me to summarize the priestess’s overwrought—make that, bizarre–claim: The very narrow decision that permits Christian owners of businesses to act in accordance with their religious beliefs which prohibit the taking of innocent human life is akin to the actions of primitive, tribalistic, unstable, anti-democratic, extremist societies, in which men seek to use women’s bodies to prop themselves up. Further, this judicial decision butters up the slope which will send America hurtling toward a culture in which little girls are deemed so devoid of human worth as to be denied a birth certificate.

And this from the woman who supports the “right” to kill girls in utero. In Clinton’s twisted moral universe, denial of a birth certificate is a greater moral evil than denial of birth.

Clinton claims that abortion is a difficult, controversial issue on which individuals should have the right to  decide, except of course those Christians who decide they don’t want to subsidize it.

When the interviewer pointed out that the Supreme Court’s decision was based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act signed by her husband, Mrs. Clinton interrupted abruptly and defensively, explaining that RFRA was passed “because at that point there were real cases of discrimination against religious people.”

Yes, real cases, unlike the fake ones in which the government tries to compel Christians to subsidize the taking of innocent lives (or to use their labor in the service celebrations that God abhors.)

Why is Clinton not “very troubled” and “deeply disturbed” about the government compelling the owners of Hobby Lobby to facilitate the killing of innocents, an act which the God they serve forbids (Ex. 20:13)?

Clinton wrongly claims that a hypothetical Hobby Lobby employee will be denied contraception because “her employer doesn’t think she should be using contraception.” The employers’ thoughts about whether their employee should use contraception are completely irrelevant and were never part of the case. The case was about what the employers thought they should be compelled to provide to their employees.

Why did Clinton have nothing to say about the employers’ choice to spend their income in ways that are consonant with their beliefs, especially on an issue of such grave consequence? Even Clinton has acknowledged the grave implications of abortion when many years ago, she asserted that abortion should be rare (which raises the question, if incipient life is so devoid of personhood that it doesn’t deserve constitutional protection, why should it be rare?).

The demurral of owners of companies to pay for contraception does not rob women of their right to access it any more than the demurral of my employer to pay directly for my food robs me of the right to access it. People work in order to earn money to pay for the stuff they need and want. Employees have  a right and responsibility to set priorities and make spending choices in accordance with those priorities.

As to Clinton’s claim that contraceptives—and she must mean only the 4 types of contraceptives (out of 20) to which the Hobby Lobby owners objected—are “expensive,” here is what Planned Parenthood says:

The IUD is the most inexpensive long-term and reversible form of birth control you can get. Unlike other forms of birth control, the IUD only costs money in the beginning. The cost for the medical exam, the IUD, the insertion of the IUD, and follow-up visits to your health care provider can range from $500 to $1,000. That cost pays for protection that can last from 5 to 12 years, depending on which IUD you choose.

Worst case IUD scenario, it would cost $200 per year (less than $17 per month). Best case: $60 per year ($5 per month).

Plan B and Ella are two other forms of contraception that Hobby Lobby does not have to cover. These are more expensive than IUDs but they’re used only for emergency contraception—not for a woman’s regular mode of contraception, so if used properly, the annual cost would be insubstantial.

According to the Consumerist, the average American worker spends $20 per week on coffee and $37 per week on midday meals (rather than packing their lunches, which would cost about $15 per week). A Netflix subscription is $9 per month and the average monthly cost of an HBO subscription is $16. Without even looking at clothing, accessories, cosmetic, gift, travel, or dining out expenditures, I’ve just saved the average American $144 per month—more than enough to purchase Cadillac contraceptives.

And let’s not forget that women who want contraceptives have male sexual partners who have a far greater obligation to subsidize their partner’s contraceptives than do the owners of Hobby Lobby.

Maybe if the Clintons weren’t so broke, they could pay for the IUDs and Plan B and Ella prescriptions for those Hobby Lobby employees who want them.

Clinton frets about men using women to “define” and “unify” some societal constituency in order to achieve a cultural advantage. Can she with a straight face claim that Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and she are not “using women” to define and unify the Democratic Party in the service of their political advantage? Isn’t that just what these head-scratching and offensive comments from Clinton were intended to do?

Perhaps the reason for the cricket-chirping we hear from the direction of the “progressive” press is worse than merely a desire to protect Clinton’s presidential aspirations. Maybe “progressives” can’t even see how preposterous her comments are.

Help us be your voice for pro-family values! 

This morning, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) handed down a highly anticipated ruling that affirmed First Amendment  protections of religious liberty and freedom of conscience.  In this particular ruling it means that our government does not have the authority to force family businesses like Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Woods to provide abortifacient drugs and contraceptives in their health care plans.

The Illinois Family Institute celebrates this important decision in favor of religious liberty and freedom of conscience. The Court ruled that private companies cannot be forced to comply with onerous federal government mandates that violate their religious beliefs. 

Read or download the entire SCOTUS decision HERE.

No one in America should be forced to violate their deeply held beliefs in order to keep their jobs or run a business.  We should be free to live and work according to our religious beliefs, not the government’s religion.  To put it more bluntly, our government has no business compelling pro-life citizens to bow at the altar of Leftism.  It is a foundational principle on which this country was founded.

In a free, diverse and tolerant society, the government should respect the freedom of citizens to live out their convictions, not just in private but in the way citizens conduct their lives in public as well. 

It must be noted that this was a 5 to 4 vote on ideological lines, which means that barely a majority of the Justices understand that government shouldn’t suppress religious freedom.  On some level it is distressing to know that it took three years and millions of dollars of legal action to affirm what the First Amendment clearly states: that people have a right to live by the dictates of their faith. And in this case, the right not to partake in the destruction of an innocent human life.   While the victory is important and one for which we should be thankful, the fact is that we were within one vote of a significant loss of religious liberty for individuals who own their own business. Don’t misunderstand, I’m very grateful for this victory, but his vote was too close for comfort.

Key to the decision was the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).  This federal law does not give license to discrimination, as many on the Left have mistakenly claimed.  Today, the SCOTUS directly repudiated this false notion and specifically reiterated that RFRA provides no defense to discriminate in hiring. No federal or state RFRA has ever been used to discriminate against someone.  In fact, RFRA is actually about preventing discrimination against any American due to their religious beliefs.

Locally, reaction was swift and jubilant.   “I am proud that our Supreme Court has upheld the fundamental religious liberties of American citizens to engage in the free exercise of their religious beliefs, not only in their houses of worship, but also in their day to day lives, in business as well as at home,” said Thomas Brejcha, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Society.  “Our Justices have affirmed that Americans must not be compelled to put aside their religious beliefs and values as a pre-condition to their entering into the sphere of commerce and making a living for themselves and their families.”

“This ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby is a victory for all who cherish religious freedom,” said Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life Action League and one of the national directors of the Stand Up for Religious Freedom rallies. “The movement that began with hundreds of protest rallies outside federal court buildings has just won a great victory inside the nation’s highest Court.”

Response from national organizations was no less enthusiastic.  Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council had this to say:

The Supreme Court has delivered one of the most significant victories for religious freedom in our generation. We are thankful the Supreme Court agreed that the government went too far by mandating that family businesses owners must violate their consciences under threat of crippling fines.

All Americans can be thankful that the Court reaffirmed that freedom of conscience is a long-held American tradition and that the government cannot impose a law on American men and women that forces them to violate their beliefs in order to hold a job, own a business, or purchase health insurance.

The unfair HHS mandate gave family businesses two non-choices: either violate your deeply held moral beliefs and comply by paying for drugs and services to which you object, or pay crippling fines of up to $100 per day, per employee, for non-compliance. This mandate threatened the jobs, livelihood and healthcare of millions of Americans and forced those who stood up for their conscience, like Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood, to either comply or be punished.

Thankfully, the threat the HHS mandate imposed on Americans has been deemed unlawful today as a violation of core religious freedom rights.  While we celebrate this landmark decision, it is our hope that lower courts will follow the Supreme Court’s lead and protect non-profits like Little Sisters of the Poor, Priests for Life, and Wheaton College from the unfair HHS Mandate.

Dr. Russell Moore of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission sums it up well, “Hobby Lobby [and Conestoga Wood Specialities] refused to render to Caesar what belongs to God: their consciences. The Supreme Court agreed.” 

Help us be your voice for pro-family values! 

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled today that the Christian-run Hobby Lobby doesn’t have to obey the HHS mandate that is a part of Obamacare that requires businesses to pay for abortion causing drugs in their employee health care plans.

The Obama administration was attempting to make Hobby Lobby and thousands of pro-life businesses and organizations comply with the HHS mandate that compels religious companies to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs for their employees. However, the U.S. Supreme Court today issued a favorable ruling in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., a landmark case addressing the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of business owners to operate their family companies without violating their deeply held religious convictions.

Writing for the 5-4 majority, Justice Samuel Alito handed down the decision for the high court, saying, “The Supreme Court holds government can’t require closely held corporations with religious owners to provide contraception coverage.”

“HHS’s contraception mandate substantially burdens the exercise of religion,” the decision reads, adding that the “decision concerns only the contraceptive mandate and should not be understood to mean that all insurance mandates.” The opinion said the “plain terms of Religious Freedom Restoration Act” are “perfectly clear.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion saying that government itself could provide the coverage for contraception and the abortion-causing drugs if a company declines to do so.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued a dissent that claims the decision is “of startling breadth,” a claim the majority denies. The major decision indicates it applies to the abortion mandate, not blood transfusions or other practices to which people may have religious objections.

The Hobby Lobby decision only applies to companies, including Conestoga Wood Specialties, which had a companion case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. Non-profit groups like Priests for Life and Little Sisters are still waiting for a ruling about their right to opt out of the mandate.

The Obama administration said it was confident it would prevail, saying, “We believe this requirement is lawful…and are confident the Supreme Court will agree.”

Responding to the decision, Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel David Cortman told LifeNews: “Americans don’t surrender their freedom by opening a family business. In its decision today, the Supreme Court affirmed that all Americans, including family business owners, must be free to live and work consistently with their beliefs without fear of punishment by the government. In a free and diverse society, we respect the freedom to live out our convictions. For the Hahns and the Greens, that means not being forced to participate in distributing potentially life-terminating drugs and devices.”

In July, a federal court granted Hobby Lobby a preliminary injunction against the HHS abortion-drug mandate. The injunction prevented the Obama administration from enforcing the mandate against the Christian company, but the Obama administration appealed that ruling. Hobby Lobby could have paid as much as $1.3 million each day in fines for refusing to pay for birth control or abortion-causing drugs under the mandate.

After the appeals court ruling, U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton issued a preliminary injunction and stayed the case until Oct. 1 to give the Obama administration time to appeal the decision.

In an opinion read from the bench, the court said, “There is a substantial public interest in ensuring that no individual or corporation has their legs cut out from under them while these difficult issues are resolved.”

A December 2013 Rasmussen Reports poll shows Americans disagree with forcing companies like Hobby Lobby to obey the mandate.

“Half of voters now oppose a government requirement that employers provide health insurance with free contraceptives for their female employees,” Rasmussen reports.

The poll found: “The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 38 percent of Likely U.S. Voters still believe businesses should be required by law to provide health insurance that covers all government-approved contraceptives for women without co-payments or other charges to the patient.

Fifty-one percent (51 percent) disagree and say employers should not be required to provide health insurance with this type of coverage. Eleven percent (11 percent) are not sure.”

Another recent poll found 59 percent of Americans disagree with the mandate.

The Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, grew their family business out of their garage. They now own stores in 41 states employing more than 16,000 full time employees. They have always operated their business according to their faith.

Kristina Arriaga, Executive Director of the Becket Fund, tells LifeNews, “In fact, the Greens pay salaries that start at twice the minimum wage and offer excellent benefits, as well as a healthcare package which includes almost all of the contraceptives now mandated by the Affordable Care Act. Their only objection is to 4 drugs and devices which, the government itself concedes, can terminate an embryo.”

“Their rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act should be protected by the government. Instead, the government has threatened them with fines and fought them all the way to the Supreme Court,” Arriaga added.

“The government has already exempted tens of millions of Americans from complying with the mandate that forces employers to provide certain specific drugs and devices. However, it refuses to accommodate the Green family because the Green family’s objections are religious.  We believe that the government’s position is not only extreme and unconstitutional; it presents a grave danger to our freedoms,” she continued.

“My family and I are encouraged that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide our case,” said Mr. Green, Hobby Lobby’s founder and CEO.  “This legal challenge has always remained about one thing and one thing only: the right of our family businesses to live out our sincere and deeply held religious convictions as guaranteed by the law and the Constitution. Business owners should not have to choose between violating their faith and violating the law.”

This article was originally posted at the LifeNews.com blog.