The ACLU is lending its full support to the reintroduction of the “Do No Harm Act” to make sure that religious freedom guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution and under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) doesn’t allow Christians and others of faith to deny services to homosexuals and transgenders. Passage of the Do No Harm Act, says the ACLU, will “prevent discrimination under the guise of religious liberty.”

But Matt Barber, founder of Barbwire.com and a constitutional attorney, says the ACLU is really fighting to create a license to discriminate against Christians.

“They presume with no real logic or history in law or any constitutional support that – as Chai Feldblum, President Obama’s appointment to the EEOC, once said – When religious liberty comes into conflict with so-called ‘gay rights’, gays win, Christians lose,” Barber says, paraphrasing Feldblum’s original remark.

He adds that nothing can be further from the truth. As he explains, the First Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the right to the free exercise of religion.

“The ACLU wants enumerated civil rights for these new-fangled gay rights, but these are not rights; they are gay wrongs,” Barber tells OneNewsNow. “These are behaviors and temptations that the Founding Fathers called a crime against nature.”

Barber concludes that imagining the Constitution supports “gay rights” is mind-boggling.

The Do No Harm Act to amend the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was reintroduced to Congress on July 13, 2017, by Democratic Congressmen Joe Kennedy (Massachusetts) and Bobby Scott (Virginia).

This article was originally posted at OneNewsNow.com

American courts are being told that certain outrageous activities are actually normal, constitutionally protected, Islamic religious behavior.

• In a Michigan court doctors are accused of mutilating young girls, some as young as seven years old, through cutting off parts of their genitals. A defense lawyer claims that this Islamic practice must be allowed, stating “I believe that they are being persecuted because of their religious beliefs and I do not make that allegation lightly.”

• A lawyer for the state of Hawaii claims that President Trump’s attempted travel ban is unconstitutional. Executive Order 13780 includes a request to collect
  

  “…information regarding the number and types of gender-based violence against women, including so-called “honor killings” in the United States by foreign nationals…”

  The lawyer argues that gathering this data discriminates unconstitutionally against Muslims.

Are these lawyers correct? In the name of religious freedom must America accommodate violent Islamic behavior? Should people here be allowed to govern themselves by Islamic law? In considering these questions we will examine:

• What it would mean to have active sharia courts.

• What virtues God requires of government.

• How American courts handle a collision between religion and civil law.

• How to prevent or neutralize Islamic courts.

Islamic law is always biased towards Muslims

A Muslim society wants to be governed by Islamic sensibilities, which are manifested in sharia. The result is a religious government, favoring Islamic believers and discriminating against non-Muslims. According to Wikipedia, sharia is

“…derived from the religious precepts of Islam, particularly the Quran and the collection of books known as the Hadith.”

Under Sharia, plaintiffs come to a religious elder, called an imam. After hearing their testimony the imam uses the Quran, with other holy books, to craft decisions to be enforced by officials.

Some elders, called mufti, are allowed to declare a fatwa. This is a pronouncement about how Muslims should handle a particular circumstance. A Muslim anywhere, not just in the jurisdiction of that mufti, can decide to obey the fatwa or ignore it. Fatwa examples include:

• Condemn the author  to death. Rushdie wrote a book that enraged Muslim sensibilities. The Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini declared a fatwa that Rushdie must die. In response to the book and the fatwa, rioters burned bookstores, Rushdie’s associates were attacked, and he himself went into hiding.

• Ban the use of polio vaccines. No, polio vaccines are OK. Both fatwas were issued.

• Forbid viewing movies about Islam.

• Wives must not leave the house except in emergencies.

Sharia is biased towards Muslim concepts of justice, rights, and equality. Americans hear these words but don’t realize how Muslims interpret the concepts. Here are some examples of sharia justice.

• A Muslim man’s testimony in court is always believed more than that of a woman (Quran 2:282, Sahih Bukhari (a Hadith book) 6:301).

• A man can be convicted of rape only if there are multiple male witnesses against him (Quran 24:4). But if a female accuses a man of rape then the female gets punished. Her testimony isn’t valid against the man, but is a confession of her having sex outside of marriage.

• Non-Muslims are barely tolerated in society. They can live only by continual payment of ransom (jizya, Quran 9:29). They must also watch what they say: witness an Indonesian governor, a Christian, convicted of blasphemy for suggesting that Muslims could vote for him.

• A Muslim can’t leave the faith without incurring a death sentence.

• If a man kills a Muslim it isn’t a criminal matter. Rather, the offender must work out a deal with the deceased’s family, perhaps buying them off with blood money (qisas, Quran 2:178). If that doesn’t work the deceased’s family may personally kill that offender.

• If a man kills a non-Muslim deceased’s family has fewer paths to justice than do Muslims (Sahih Bukhari 9:83:50).

According to American courts, Sharia is not actually a legal system. In successful arguments before the United States Tenth Circuit court the plaintiff argued:

Furthermore, plaintiff has presented testimony that “Sharia Law” is not actually “law”, but is religious traditions that provide guidance to plaintiff and other Muslims regarding the exercise of their faith. Plaintiff has presented testimony that the obligations that “Sharia Law” imposes are not legal obligations but are obligations of a personal and private nature dictated by faith. Plaintiff also testified that “Sharia Law” differs depending on the country in which the individual Muslim resides… Based upon this testimony, the Court finds that plaintiff has shown “Sharia Law” lacks a legal character, and, thus, plaintiff’s religious traditions and faith are the only non-legal content subject to the judicial exclusion set forth in the amendment.

Because Sharia isn’t based on legal precedent, you might present a Sharia court the same argument multiple times and get a different decision each time. The court relies on the judgment of its imam, who isn’t required to be consistent.

Because of its pro-Muslim bias, an unprepared American plaintiff coming before a Sharia court ought to be in for quite a shock. But even if the plaintiff appeals the verdict to regular civil courts, a Muslim tendency to “take the law into their own hands” might make any appeal moot.

Freelancing Islamic justice

Regarding justice, existing Muslim societies have a dual personality. On one hand is the usual deference to rulers and established government. On the other hand is an acceptance, even encouragement, of vigilantism. It is fairly easy to find instances of mob action, where people are attacked, and even killed, for defaming Islam. No trial, just the lynch mob.

Encouragement to autonomous action is built into Islam. Here the Quran says:

“And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they should repent, establish prayer, and give zakah, let them [go] on their way. Indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.” (Quran 9:5)

This verse spurs continuing attacks on non-Muslims, including Christians. It is just one verse among a multitude that encourage action independent of judges and courts.

A recent European development is the appearance of Sharia patrols. These gangs roam through neighborhoods, intimidating and assaulting residents into sharia-compliant behavior. There were even attempts to start these in Minneapolis and Dearborn.

Once you recognize this tendency towards independent, often violent, action you’ll better understand why there are so many “lone wolf” attacks, and “you offended Islam” riots, by Muslims around the world.

Honor killing is another aspect of this vigilantism. Somehow, Islamic or family honor is restored if you kill a rebellious child, the daughter who is seeing a non-Muslim, or somebody who insults Islam. Some scholars think that Islamic support for honor killing arises from an Islamic parable about Moses (Quran 18:65-81). Through its lawyer, the state of Hawaii claims that honor killing is part of Islamic religious expression.

Whether or not honor killing is explicitly supported in Islam, it is accepted in Islamic societies. This is evidenced by the lack of Muslim mass outrage, and the absence of condemnation from imams, when such killings occur. Because of sharia’s concept of qisas (killing is a civil, not government, problem) there isn’t anything there that discourages taking revenge through independent action.

This tendency towards freelancing the verdicts of Islamic justice suggests why authorizing sharia courts could be dangerous to American communities.

• In a Philadelphia mosque its leaders detained a man accused of theft. They tried to chop off his hand, a sharia penalty for theft. They were unsuccessful, the man was hospitalized with severe cuts, and one of the mosque leaders was arrested.

Had the mosque leaders succeeded in their punishment the man would certainly have recourse in state courts. He’d also be permanently without his hand, something no legal appeal can fix.

Godly government and American law

God told us what He requires of a righteous society and its government. I touched upon this topic in a previous article. In summary, the rulers must:

• Provide even-handed and truthful justice (Amos 5:12).

• Give judgments that don’t favor either the rich or the poor (Leviticus 19:5).

• Be even-handed in our treatment of the aliens in our midst (Deuteronomy 10:17-19).

This is God’s standard for Christian society, Islamic society, and indeed any society.

American law is deeply rooted in English common law, which grew from the Christianized English society. Judges still look to common law when making decisions. Why, then, worry about Islamic courts if America has a Christian foundation? Because American Christians have, by and large, abandoned the public square. We tell ourselves, and are told by others, to leave our religion in the church building. Without the continual guidance of God’s church, which is a preserving salt to society, its guiding light (Matthew 5: 13-16), we’ve accepted all sorts of nonsense and called it justice.

Rulers are to be a terror to wrongdoers, and God’s servants in avenging wrongdoing (Romans 13:3-4). How will our rulers and judges know what must be avenged unless they understand God’s mind on the matter? And who will tell them if the Christians don’t (Romans 10: 14)? It’s high time we again do our duty to preserve and guide American society.

When religion and civil law collide

Soon a judge must decide if an Islamic practice, or a Sharia court, should be allowed in America. The framework used to make this decision will be the Lemon test. From Wikipedia:

• The statute must have a secular legislative purpose. (Also known as the Purpose Prong)

• The principal or primary effect of the statute must not advance nor inhibit religion. (Also known as the Effect Prong)

• The statute must not result in an “excessive government entanglement” with religion. (Also known as the Entanglement Prong)

The government’s claim of compelling interest in its law is measured by these three tests. The law is upheld if it passes all three tests; otherwise, the law’s restrictions are deemed unconstitutional.

The claim of government compelling interest has been tested many times. Here are a few important decisions.

• The Mormons are persistently banned from practicing polygamy in the United States. Utah couldn’t become a state until polygamy was officially banned there. Among the many points of the points that were decided is (from Wikipedia):

“The Court recognized that under the First Amendment, the Congress cannot pass a law that prohibits the free exercise of religion. However it held that the law prohibiting bigamy did not meet that standard. The principle that a person could only be married singly, not plurally, existed since the times of King James I of England in English law, upon which United States law was based.”

• The state of Oregon passed a law insisting that all children must attend public schools. Leaders of Catholic church schools objected and the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the law. From Wikipedia:

“He stated that children were not “the mere creature[s] of the state” (268 U.S. 510, 535), and that, by its very nature, the traditional American understanding of the term liberty prevented the state from forcing students to accept instruction only from public schools. He stated that this responsibility belonged to the child’s parents or guardians, and that the ability to make such a choice was a “liberty” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.”

• When instituting Obamacare the government insisted that all health plans must include contraceptive coverage. The Little Sisters of the Poor objected to this requirement, citing long-standing Catholic opposition to these products. After many court fights the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in their favor, remanding the case back to a lower court where the Little Sisters could negotiate a plan not having the objectionable requirement.

• A non-Christian religious group sued for the right to use a certain tea, deemed to be a prohibited Schedule 1 drug, in their worship services. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in their favor.

“The Court found that the government was unable to detail the government’s compelling interest in barring religious usage of Hoasca when applying strict scrutiny as the RFRA demands of such regulations.”

The lawyers opposing Islamic practices, such as sharia courts, will need to prove that the government has a compelling interest in banning them.

Preventing or neutralizing Islamic courts

Muslims coming to America bring with them their possessions and their cultures. Those that successfully assimilate learn what part of their cultures must change in their new home. The others try to recreate their cultural practices here. One of those practices might be a sharia court.

The successful establishment of sharia courts, rendering enforceable judgments, amounts to colonization, replacing the existing civil authority with their own. Of all of a government’s compelling interests, keeping its own sovereignty is utmost. What approaches can we take to prevent or neuter sharia courts?

No sponsored, or parallel, sharia courts

Sometimes a sharia court is called an arbitration council, which provides advice voluntarily followed by its participants. However, changing its name doesn’t change its character. A sharia court is an Islamic religious proceeding, and government must have nothing to do with it.

• A government body that works with a sharia court, refers clients to it, or accepts results of its judgments, breaches the U.S. Constitution’s Establishment Clause. It favors one religion over another.

• The sharia court renders its judgments by Islamic standards. A plaintiff acting on the court’s advice will inevitably hurt someone else who expected an action compliant with civil law.

• The sharia court is abetting breaking the law if its “voluntary counseling” causes people, knowingly or not, to use it to evade the civil courts. This “parallel law” court challenges the sovereignty of the existing government. If a sharia court is a conduit for law evasion then its use must be somehow blocked.

If you can’t ban the sharia court, ban its results

Many states have tried banning sharia. However, such bans might not stand up to legal scrutiny. The state of Oklahoma forbade its courts from considering or using sharia. Its ban was overturned by the Tenth Circuit court, largely because it violated the Establishment Clause. That ban mentioned sharia by name, targeting one religion while not affecting any other.

The plaintiffs in the Oklahoma case successfully argued that the ban didn’t define sharia well enough to target it. With that guidance in mind, we should ensure that harm can’t arise from sharia court judgments. If all a sharia court did was provide a chance for Muslims to get together and argue then it would be harmless. Only when its decisions spur criminal action does it become dangerous. If a fear of prosecution deters such actions then the sharia court is neutralized.

Here are approaches that are religion neutral and serve compelling government interest:

• Honor killing: Stripped of its emotional content, this is cold-blooded murder. It’s also premeditated, thanks to the imam’s decision, and the court’s participants can be prosecuted for being co-conspirators. There is no “religious practice” exemption for murder. Aggressive investigation and prosecution can deter honor killings. However, plea deals would merely tell these Muslims that the government is willing to accept a form of blood money (qisas).

• Acid attacks: This is an ambush attack, dousing someone’s face with a caustic substance. This disfigures the victim and demoralizes the community. Europe is subject to a plague of them. These attacks aren’t a religious practice, but grow in number where vigilantism goes unpunished. Because the resulting disfiguring severely alters the victim’s life there must be strong laws that cover these attacks. I pray that smart police street work can detect perpetrators before they can ambush their victims.

• Female genital mutilation (FGM): This act is done on very young girls with the complicity of her parents. Doing this procedure is already a federal crime, but that shouldn’t prevent states or localities from passing their own laws proscribing it. The government has a compelling interest in preventing child abuse. Detecting that the crime has occurred involves cooperation between doctors, hospitals, school officials, and perhaps others in the child’s life. They can look for behaviors and signs that a girl might be suffering from this deed.

• Sharia patrols: These patrols are just a street gang. Time for the police anti-gang squad.

No blasphemy laws

Muslims worldwide have called for a ban on speech critical to Islam. To the Muslim world criticizing Islam is blasphemy (Quran 33:57-61). Some people hope to ban criticism in the United States by framing it as a ban on “hate speech.” Such a ban would restrict religious freedom and free speech, and a law banning Islamic criticism runs afoul of the Establishment Clause.

Finale

The best defense against sharia in America might be aggressive enforcement against evils done in the name of Sharia. Do we have the fortitude and persistence to prevail?

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-and, please-

Over the past few years Hoosiers have witnessed a rather obvious groveling of political leaders at state and local levels who bend over backwards to please high tech companies in meeting their political demands.  One only need to remember the “RFRA fix” that was rushed through the Indiana state legislature at lightening speed.  Many politicians and groups like the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce now claim that embracing a radical sexual agenda is going to create jobs or grow a local economy . . . even if it comes at the expense of religious liberty.

There is a remarkable new study that should put this myth into a better perspective.  An analysis from Georgetown University finds that the economic value of religion in American society is bigger than any of the top 10 tech companies combined revenue, including Amazon, Apple and Google.

The study, entitled The Socioeconomic Contributions of Religion to American Society: An Empirical Analysis, finds that religious faith accounts for up to a jaw dropping $4.8 TRILLION in economic value to the United States.

The study breaks down its findings into three estimates of economic value.  The first, and lowest, estimate only takes into account the revenues of faith-based organizations, which are around $378 billion annually.   The second, middle, estimate includes the fair market value of the goods and services that religious organizations and its members provide, boosting religion’s economic impact up to $1.2 trillion.  The third, and highest $4.8 trillion figure includes the household incomes of religiously affiliated Americans.

Casting aside the value of faith in order to embrace politically correct sexual anarchies that are opposed by every major world religion’s teachings seems shortsighted and politically foolish.  Still, we have seen numerous Indiana city councilors and mayors do just that with so-called “non-discrimination” ordinances since the RFRA fix.

The authors make another point tied to the decline in religion and its cost.  They write:

“Understanding the socio-economic value of religion to American society is especially important in the present era characterized by disaffiliation from organized religion . . . “Given the division of opinion on religion’s contribution to American society, this present study seeks to shed light on the topic by making an estimate of religion’s socio-economic value to society. Indeed, we should know if the decline in religion is likely to have negative economic consequences.”

The study reminds readers of the massive economic footprint of faith upon America.  It also seems to confirm that attacking religion and religious freedom has no economic benefit.   Wanting people to keep their faith within the walls of their home or church, as the mayor of Carmel, Indiana suggested, could have an adverse economic impact over time.

If people of faith ever flex their economic muscles like tech companies do, the idea of a $50,000 fine against Christians who believe in natural marriage would never even be proposed by politicians, let alone passed unanimously, as happened in Columbus, Indiana.

She was only 17 years-old when she died. Her father cut out her tongue and burned her alive.

What was her crime, and why did this man kill his own daughter in the most horrific imaginable way?

He was a Saudi Arabian official who worked with the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice – the religious police – and when his daughter became a Christian, he butchered and murdered her.

What does this have to do with Starbucks and Apple?

Both these companies blast Americans who stand for religious liberties and conservative moral values, even threatening states that will protect those liberties and values, claiming this discriminates against gays and lesbians.

Yet they have stores all over Saudi Arabia, a country where gays can be executed and where Muslims can kill their own family members if they convert to Christianity, as happened with this 17-year-old in 2008.

What sickening hypocrisy.

Last year, when Indiana passed a religious freedoms bill, ensuring that its citizens would not be forced to violate their consciences and participate in things like gay weddings, Tim Cook, the openly gay CEO of Apple, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post, stating, “There’s something very dangerous happening in states across the country.”

Cook opined that, “America’s business community recognized a long time ago that discrimination, in all its forms, is bad for business. At Apple, we are in business to empower and enrich our customers’ lives. We strive to do business in a way that is just and fair.”

His words sounded noble: “This isn’t a political issue. It isn’t a religious issue. This is about how we treat each other as human beings. Opposing discrimination takes courage. With the lives and dignity of so many people at stake, it’s time for all of us to be courageous.”

And so Cook, acted “courageously,” threatening Indiana with a loss of business if the state did not reverse itself, and in a matter of days, the governor and legislature caved in to the pressure, as Apple, along with other major players, succeeded in bullying the people of Indiana.

But when it comes to countries like Saudi Arabia, where adulterers are beheaded on Friday afternoons in city squares, where thieves have their hands cut off, where those who speak against the government can be lashed 1,000 times, where someone posting openly gay messages on social media can be imprisoned, and where the beheaded victims are hung on crosses and displayed publicly for days, Apple is silent, content to make its money and not rock the Muslim boat.

What “courage.”

Or, more accurately, what hypocrisy.

Starbucks has also been an outspoken advocate of “gay rights,” with CEO Howard Schultz telling those “who support traditional marriage over gay marriage that their patronage is not needed at the coffee chain.”

Earlier this month, Starbucks joined more than 100 companies (including Apple) in urging North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory to repeal the bathroom safety bill, which allegedly discriminates against LGBT rights.

How bold and courageous of Starbucks.

But when it comes to Saudi Arabia, not only does Starbucks operate all over this religiously-oppressive country, but the coffee giant completely capitulated to strict Islamic standards, removing the mermaid from its corporate logo.

Yes, you read that right.

Starbucks changed its logo so as not to offend Muslim sensibilities, since the mermaid image apparently displayed too much flesh.

But when it comes to offending Christians, Starbucks could care less, introducing “Holiday” cups last December in place of “Christmas” cups and trashing Christian sensitivities when they are in conflict with gay sensitivities.

Now, I don’t doubt that Cook and Schultz feel strongly about their views and actually believe that these important religious liberties bills are a threat to LGBT rights.

But their selective outrage is sickening and their moral hypocrisy glaring.

And so, when they pull their businesses from countries like China, with all its human rights violations, and Saudi Arabia, with its atrocities carried out in the name of Islam, we can take their indignation seriously.

Until then, the louder they protest here in America, the louder they shout their hypocrisy.

This article was originally posted at TownHall.com

Written by Ryan T. Anderson and Roger Serverino

On Wednesday night, the Georgia legislature introduced new language to its religious freedom bill and passed the bill in mere hours. Haste makes waste. This new language significantly waters down a religious freedom bill that had real force even though it was, as we pointed out three weeks ago, already lacking in certain respects.

The new version of the bill provides Religious Freedom Restoration Act levels of protection for certain protected persons, but it explicitly says these protections cannot apply in cases of “invidious discrimination.” Of course, no one is in favor of invidious discrimination, but the problem is that in the hands of a liberal judge, everything looks like invidious discrimination even when it is not, such as religious universities or adoption agencies that want their policies to reflect their teachings on marriage. This apes the bad “fix” that gutted the Indiana religious freedom bill.

What this “fix” means in practice is that if a new or existing law creating special legal privileges based on sexual orientation and gender identity conflicts with a sincere religious belief, the Georgia religious freedom bill may provide no protection—not even the standard balancing test that is the hallmark of religious freedom restoration acts. So in an area where we most need religious liberty protection, the new Georgia law goes out of its way to disclaim it.

The Georgia bill also provides First Amendment Defense Act-style protections with respect to beliefs about marriage for certain faith-based organizations. But here again, what it gives in one sentence, it takes away in another.

The new version of the bill adopts a very narrow definition of faith-based organizations, covering only churches, religious schools, and “integrated auxiliaries.” Indeed, Georgia’s constrained definition of religious organization mimics the one used by the Obama administration to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to help provide abortion-inducing drugs in their employee health plans because they don’t qualify for an exemption as a religious organization. Faith-based organizations come in all shapes and sizes, and there is no reason for Georgia to adopt such a cramped vision of religious organization.

Finally, the new Georgia bill provides no protection for bakers or florists or other similar wedding professionals who cannot help celebrate a same-sex wedding. While it does provide protections for priests and pastors not to have to perform same-sex weddings and for everyone not to attend them, the U.S. Constitution already provides such protections. So the bill doesn’t protect those who most need it, but it protects those who already have it.

It is unfortunate that the Georgia legislature caved to pressure from big business and special interests to water down their weakened bill even further. Other states must be vigilant against such cultural cronyism.

This article was originally posted at TheDailySignal.com

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

CLICK HERE for Details

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

CLICK HERE for Details

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

CLICK HERE for Details