By hook, crook, the DOJ, FBI, policies, Executive Orders, courts, and laws, leftist public “servants”—both elected and unelected—have long had conservatives in the sights of their weapons of war. And they’ve had powerful allies in this battle in the legacy news media, government schools, and, more recently, social media and corporate America, including virtually all of the entertainment and publishing industries. There’s no need for an exhaustive list of the ways leftists hunt conservatives. Every conservative with eyes and an amygdala perceives the threat.

The most recent of the daily—almost hourly—predations comes to us through Congress. First, the U.S. House of Representatives under the almighty rule of potentate Pelosi, passed the Dis-Respect for Marriage Act, which, if signed into law, would reverse the bipartisan Defense of Marriage Act signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1996.

The U.S. House version of the Dis-Respect for Marriage Act redefines marriage, eliminating both the criterion regarding sexual differentiation and the criterion regarding number of partners. The House version no longer defines marriage as the union of two people of opposite sexes or as the union of two people.

Worse yet, it doesn’t provide any legal protections for people of faith. Of course, given that the free exercise of religion is guaranteed by the First Amendment, laws shouldn’t need the redundancy of religious protection language, but we now know leftists disrespect the U.S. Constitution as well.

Further, the Dis-Respect for Marriage Act requires the federal government and states to recognize any and all marriages performed in other states.

Why are leftists pursuing this? The reason is that in the Roe reversal, Justice Clarence Thomas suggested Obergefell should also be revisited because it too shares in common with Roe a lack of constitutional grounding. Now leftists, accustomed to exploiting the Court for their pet moral projects, are quaking in their kinky boots, fearing that marriage—like abortion—will be returned to the people of each state.

Anticipating the day when, Lord willing, the U.S. Supreme Court Obergefell decision that unconstitutionally imposed same-sex pseudogamy on the entire nation is reversed, Leftists seek to preemptively rob citizens in every state of their right to define marriage.

So if, in a post-Obergefell America, the moral wastelands of Illinois or California were to recognize in law the unions of two women, or three men, or five people of assorted sexes as “marriages,” leftists want to force all states to recognize homoerotic and poly unions as marriages, including states that choose to define marriage as it has been defined until the latter half of the latter half of the 20^th Century as the union of two people of opposite sexes.

The Dis-Respect for Marriage Act was voted on and passed the U.S. House in July 2022 with the help of 47 treasonous Republicans one day after being introduced.

Then the bill moved to the U.S. Senate where “cloture” (i.e., ending debate) was invoked and passed with the help of a dirty dozen treasonous Republicans. Now moves to the Senate for a final vote, likely before the end of the year.

In the days following the cloture vote, opposition to the bill has intensified because of fears over the bill’s threats to religious liberty. U.S. Senators Tammy Baldwin (a lesbian) and Susan Collins (a RINO) added a feeble amendment in an attempt to silence objectors, but the Alliance Defending Freedom has warned of the weaknesses of their proposed changes:

[R]ather than adding any new concrete protections for religious individuals and organizations threatened by the Respect for Marriage Act, the new section simply states that those Americans whose beliefs are infringed can invoke already existing legal protections, like the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). As such, this new provision does not fix the bill’s negative impact on religious exercise and freedom of conscience. Those targeted under the bill will be forced to spend years in litigation and thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees to protect their rights. …

[T]he bill can be used to punish social-service organizations like adoption or foster placement agencies that serve their communities in accordance with their religious belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. The proposed amendment does nothing to help such organizations. …

The amendment adds a new section that attempts to address concerns about the tax-exempt status of nonprofits that live out their beliefs about marriage.

Once again, the amendment fails to substantively remedy this problem. When the IRS determines whether an organization is “charitable” under the Internal Revenue Code, it asks whether the entity’s conduct is “contrary to public policy” or violates a “national policy.”

If the Respect for Marriage Act were enacted, the IRS could rely upon the bill to conclude that certain nonprofits are not “charitable.” The amendment’s new provision does nothing to prevent this.

U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) has proposed a beefier amendment, the Lee Amendment, and sent a letter signed by twenty other U.S. Senators to the dozen quislings asking them not to end debate on the bill unless and until the Lee Amendment is added. Lee et al. wrote,

As you are aware, we are one step closer to passing into law the Respect for Marriage Act. In the Obergefell oral arguments, there was a now infamous exchange between Justice Alito and then–Solicitor General Donald Verrilli. In response to Justice Alito asking whether, should states be required to recognize same-sex marriages, religious universities opposed to same-sex marriage would lose their tax-exempt status, General Verrilli replied, “. . . it’s certainly going to be an issue. I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that, Justice Alito, –it is going to be an issue.”

And it is an issue. Obergefell did not make a private right of action for aggrieved individuals to sue those who oppose same-sex marriage. It did not create a mandate for the Department of Justice to sue where it perceived an institution opposed same-sex marriage, but the Respect for Marriage Act will. What we can expect should this bill become law is more litigation against those institutions and individuals trying to live according to their sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions.

Should Congress decide to codify Obergefell and protect same-sex marriages, we must do so in a way that also resolves the question posed by Justice Alito. Instead of subjecting churches, religious non-profits, and persons of conscience to undue scrutiny or punishment by the federal government because of their views on marriage, we should make explicitly clear that this legislation does not constitute a national policy endorsing a particular view of marriage that threatens the tax-exempt status of faith-based non-profits. As we move forward, let us be sure to keep churches, religious charities, and religious universities out of litigation in the first instance. No American should face legal harassment or retaliation from the federal government for holding sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions.

My amendment would ensure that federal bureaucrats do not take discriminatory actions against individuals, organizations, nonprofits, and other entities based on their sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions about marriage by prohibiting the denial or revocation of tax-exempt status, licenses, contracts, benefits, etc. It would affirm that individuals still have the right to act according to their faith and deepest convictions even outside of their church or home. The undersigned ask that you oppose cloture on the Respect for Marriage Act unless the Lee amendment is added to the bill. The free exercise of religion is absolutely essential to the health of our Republic. We must have the courage to protect it.

Conservative Americans should thank Lee and the twenty U.S. Senators who signed the letter. Not so much, the dirty dozen who helped sic the hellhounds on conservatives.

Next week, the U.S. Senate will resume consideration of H.R. 8404 and vote on amendments as well as one final cloture vote, which will need 10 Republicans to pass, to end debate. Votes could occur Monday, Nov. 28.

Take ACTION: Please take a moment to urge U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth not to end debate on the H.R. 8404 unless and until the Lee Amendment is added. Without the Lee Amendment, the Dis-Respect for Marriage Act will encourage both government and individual lawsuits against people of faith. Even if we win protracted litigation, the process is the punishment.

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin
https://www.durbin.senate.gov/contact/email
Phone: (202) 224-2152

U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth
https://www.duckworth.senate.gov/connect/email-tammy
Phone: (202) 224-2854

Please send a message and then follow up with a phone call early next week.

The 2020 post-election plot thickened on Sunday when Trump legal team attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis announced that Sidney Powell was not a member of the Trump legal team. Naturally, questions and theories about the reason for the separation flooded social media full of sound and fury but signifying nothing.

It is hoped that within a few weeks, we will learn much more about the nature and degree of voter “irregularities” and electronic malfeasance, which in an ideal political world would be a bipartisan issue.

In the past Democrat U.S. Senators Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Tammy Duckworth, Ron Wyden, Richard Blumenthal, Edward Markey, Tammy Baldwin, Sherrod Brown, Michael Bennett, and Patty Murray were deeply concerned about the danger posed to election integrity via computer hacking. Ron Wyden sponsored a bill that was co-sponsored by those Democrats that would require,

election bodies to conduct audits of all federal elections, regardless of how close the election, by employing statistically rigorous “risk-limiting audits.”

There are currently no mandatory standards for election cybersecurity, which has resulted in some states operating election infrastructure that is needlessly vulnerable to hacking. The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) sets voluntary standards for voting machines, but states can and do ignore these standards. There are no standards at all for voter registration websites or other parts of our election infrastructure.

Can’t we all agree that our voting systems must be fixed before the 2022 midterm elections?

Wyden’s words echo the words of a mysterious Dominion Voting Systems security expert who seems to be missing. Just days before representatives from Dominion Voting Systems abruptly cancelled last Friday’s scheduled appearance before a Pennsylvania House Government Oversight Committee hearing, the name of their Director of Product Strategy and Security, Eric Coomer, began popping up on the Internet. Before being hired by Dominion, Coomer was the Chief Software Architect at Sequoia Voting Systems, he has his Ph.D. in nuclear physics, he loves Antifa, and he detests President Trump (just wondering, are Antifa ruffians Antiffians)?

Since he is an expert in cyber security who works at Dominion and has a dozen patents and pending patent applications pertaining to voting systems, Coomer may be someone lawmakers and reporters should talk to about voting integrity in this recent and future elections. Dominion Voting Systems website and social media, however, seem to have been scrubbed of a lot of information by and about Coomer, so finding him may prove challenging. Maybe Mando the Mandalorian can find him.

As I’ve said before, I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of a conspiracy theory group. For that reason, I’ve ricocheted between wondering if Trump’s legal team and/or Sidney Powell has the goods to prove the diverse about election integrity that have been alleged and the sense that there are sufficient reasons for concern to justify the pursuit of all legal challenges.

Watergate was unthinkable until it wasn’t.

The decades-long secret government UFO program, now called the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force, was unthinkable until it wasn’t. Gaslighting by the government about that was intense and sustained.

Corrupt collusion between the Democrat Party, the FBI, the CIA, and mainstream press outlets to manufacture and propagate a hoax in order to impeach a duly-elected president would have once been deemed the fever dream of tinfoil-wearing conspiracy theorists. And now we know that not only did it happen but also that the colluders then engaged in a widespread, massive campaign to gaslight all of America into believing this widespread massive coup attempt didn’t happen.

The powerful and the uber-cool that strut among us are trying to prevent a full investigation into possible vote-tampering by mocking and intimidating those who say, “Wait just a doggone minute, bub. Let’s take a peek behind the papered-over windows and inside all those Bozoputers.”

Coomer may be a familiar name to some Illinoisans. On September 1, 2016, Sharon Meroni writing for Defend the Vote summarized the now-underground Eric Coomer’s appearance before an Illinois State Board of Elections (ISBE) meeting:

On Friday, August 26^th, during a meeting at the Illinois State Board of Elections, the Vice President of Engineering for Dominion Voting, Dr. Eric Coomer, was asked if it was possible to bypass election systems software and go directly to the data tables that manage systems running elections in Illinois. His response was, “Yes, if they have access.”

Bypassing the election systems software means whoever has access can potentially manipulate the vote without many risks of detection. 

When asked who might have such access, Coomer responded, “‘Vendors, election officials, and others who need to be granted access.’”

Meroni explained what such access means:

Dr. Coomer’s statement is an admission that various vendors, election officials, and others have access to the back end data tables that permit bypassing the operating system’s configuration. It is notable that when someone accesses these systems from a data table, their actions are not logged by the system; thereby making detection much more problematic.

Coomer also shared this troubling information with the ISBE:

We are constantly assessing different threat models against all of our systems we have fielded across the US and internationally as well. Due to the certification environment … we are not allowed to do routine updates without having to go through re-certification efforts, but we do … give guidance on how to best secure systems and … the final mitigation against all of this is a robust auditing canvasing process which all of our jurisdictions have implemented.

According to Meroni,

Dr. Coomer’s statement brings to light a very serious issue all voters should understand. Voting systems must be re-certified each time they make changes to the hardware or software. Recertification is … expensive and time consuming. … What Dr. Coomer told the Board is that Dominion Voting does not go back for recertification of software when threats to their code are discovered. Rather, they rely on post-election audits and providing advice to election jurisdictions about security. …

This is the reality of the security of your vote. Software systems that count and record the vote across Illinois and throughout the USA are not updated to address security problems, and even if they were, the software can be completely bypassed by going to the data tables that drive the systems.

In light of Coomer’s statements, those with the ability to thrash their way through the weeds on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s voluntary voting system certification process, may find these website pages illuminating: Click HERE and HERE.

As Darryl Cooper wrote about the dubious and mysterious Eric Coomer for The American Conservative,

[I]f it was Joe Biden contesting the election results, and the Director for Strategy & Security at a major voting machine provider turned out to be a Proud Boy with decades of involvement in extremist, even violent, right wing political groups. … [Democrats] would ask how such a person ended up in such an important position of public trust.

If everything is on the up and up, why the massive freak-out by leftists (and some Never-Trumpers) over millions of Americans wanting all available legal and constitutional means pursued to ensure the election was fair and honest? Surely, tolerant, inclusive, fair-minded leftists don’t care about cost or inconvenience; they were willing to spend $38 million of taxpayer money on their elaborate ruse to get rid of a man they detest with unhinged intensity.

Maybe, just maybe the deplorables and ugly folks would believe the words of presumed-but-not-elected Joe Biden’s calls for “unity” if his string-pullers would calm down and let all investigations and court proceedings proceed—oh, and maybe get rid of their blacklists.

If you see this man, have your camera at the ready. Ask him some hard-edged questions, like “What kind of milkshakes do you like,” and then run for your life. He may be an Antiffian armed with a black satchel full of Molotov cocktails.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/The-2020-Post-Election-Plot-Thickens.mp3

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We understand that we are accountable before you and God to honor your trust. 

IFI is supported by voluntary donations from good people like you.

One of the more grotesque demonstrations of leftist non-sense and hypocrisy was demonstrated a week ago following an episode of the wildly popular Disney show The Mandalorian when “Baby Yoda” eats the unfertilized eggs of a Frog Woman who is transporting her eggs to her husband so he can fertilize them thereby preventing their species’ imminent extinction. Fans of Baby Yoda freaked out, incensed at the lighthearted treatment of what they deemed genocide by the beloved Baby Yoda.

The moral incoherence and hypocrisy should be obvious. In the Upside Down where leftists live, when a human mother hires someone to dismember her own fertilized human egg—aka human fetus/embryo/baby—they demand that society affirm, celebrate, and shout the execution of those tiny humans. In fact, the voluntary dismemberment of fertilized human eggs at any gestational age is so morally innocuous and such an unmitigated public good that leftists think all Americans should pay for the executions of humans in utero.

In the Upside Down, the genocidal killing of all fertilized human eggs with Down Syndrome is at best morally neutral if not morally good, but the fictional devouring of unfertilized Frog Critters’ eggs is morally repugnant. Just wondering, if fertilized human eggs are parasites so devoid of personhood as to render them morally legitimate objects to kill, if it’s okay to dismember them because they’re imperfect non-persons, would there be anything wrong with eating their remains?

Leftists views on the slaughter of fertilized human eggs is just the most grotesque of their many morally incoherent views. Here are a few more:

• According to leftists, concerns of conservatives about possible 2020 election “irregularities”—including via computer malfeasance and malfunction—are evidence of paranoid conspiracy theories, but when leftists express such concerns, they’re sound, reasonable, and legitimate. In 2019, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden proposed an amendment titled “Protecting American Votes and Elections Act” to the “Help America Vote Act of 2002.” His proposed amendment was signed by 14 co-sponsors—all Democrats—including a who’s who of presidential wannabes: Richard Blumenthal, Edward Markey, Jeff Merkley, Tammy Duckworth, Brian Schatz, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Tammy Baldwin, Bernie Sanders, Maria Cantwell, Kamala Harris, Sherrod Brown, Michael Bennet, and Patty Murray. Wyden provided a summary of his amendment that includes the following:

Votes cast with paperless voting machines cannot be subjected to a manual recount, and so there is no way to determine the real election results if they are hacked. H.R. 1 …  mandates paper ballots.

In order to detect hacks, this bill requires election bodies to conduct audits of all federal elections, regardless of how close the election, by employing statistically rigorous “risk-limiting audits.”

There are currently no mandatory standards for election cybersecurity, which has resulted in some states operating election infrastructure that is needlessly vulnerable to hacking. The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) sets voluntary standards for voting machines, but states can and do ignore these standards. There are no standards at all for voter registration websites or other parts of our election infrastructure.

• Leftists heartily endorse bodily damage and disfigurement as sound “treatment” protocols for those who experience a mismatch between their internal feelings and their sexual embodiment as male or female, but bodily damage and disfigurement of those who experience a mismatch between their internal feelings and their whole or healthy bodies (i.e., those with Body Integrity Identity Disorder who identify as amputees or paraplegics) are considered barbaric and ethically prohibited.

• Leftists condemn conservatives as “science-deniers” for disagreeing with them on the degree to which climate change is caused by human action or on how to respond to climate change. At the same time, the purported science-worshippers claim that men can menstruate, become pregnant, and “chestfeed,” and they claim that the product of conception between two persons is not a person. Anyone who refuses to concede to such nonsense is mocked, reviled, de-platformed, and fired. Just ask Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling or Wall Street Journal writer and author of Irreversible Damage, Abigail Shrier.

• Leftists claim that marriage has no connection to either sexual differentiation or reproductive potential. They vociferously claim that marriage is solely constituted by love, and that “love is love.” And yet most leftists don’t think two brothers in a consensual loving relationship should be able to legally marry.

• Leftists claim there’s no story behind or within Hunter Biden’s emails and texts that prove Joe Biden straight up lied to the American public, and yet they claimed there was a story of such magnitude and enormity within Christopher Steele’s imaginative “dossier,” that it necessitated 24-hour coverage for years.

• Leftists claim that eliminating the Electoral College and filibuster and packing the U.S. Supreme Court constitute necessary changes to enhance “democracy,” but implementing legal processes to ensure an election was fair undermines democracy.

• Every gathering of leftists, including mostly violent protests, a takeover of six city blocks, trips to hair salons (Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi), a post-election street celebration (Lori Lightfoot), a holiday boating excursion (attempted by husband of Michigan Governor Christine Whitmer), restaurant dining (California Governor Gavin Newsom, CNN narcissist Chris Cuomo), a funeral/Democrat campaign event (i.e., John Lewis’ faux-funeral) are COVID-immune and justifiable. But an Orthodox Jewish funeral, an entirely peaceful protest of draconian COVID restrictions, and a march in support of a transparent and fair election are denounced as super-spreader events.

• Serial killer of senior citizens, Andrew “Quietus” Cuomo, commands citizens to “admit” their “mistakes” and “shortcomings” with regard to how they responded to the Chinese Communist virus even as he refuses to apologize for his policies that killed scores of elderly.

• To leftists, social science is the god that determines all moral truth, and yet despite social science demonstrating repeatedly that children—especially boys—need fathers, the left refuses to discuss how fatherless families may be contributing to the anti-social behavior that is destroying our cities.

• Leftists claim to value free speech, religious liberty, inclusivity, diversity, tolerance, and unity while condemning not just the beliefs of those with whom they disagree, but also the persons themselves. Many leftists share an uncharitable, presumptuous, ugly, tyrannical, oppressive, and scary desire that those who believe homosexual acts are immoral, who believe marriage has an ontology, who believe biological sex is immutable and meaningful, and who believe bodily damage and disfigurement are improper treatment protocols for gender dysphoria should be unable to work anywhere in America.

To create the illusion that they’re not hypocrites and to defend their intolerance, exclusion, divisiveness, hatred of persons, book banning, speech suppression, demand for ideological uniformity, and efforts to circumscribe the  exercise of religion—which for Christians extends far outside the church walls—leftists resort to fallacious reasoning. The fallacies they employ are too numerous to list, but two of their faves are the ad hominem fallacy and the fallacy of circular reasoning.

Ad hominem is an informal fallacy in which an irrelevant personal attack replaces a logical argument. It proves nothing about the soundness, truth, or falsity of a claim. Instead it appeals to emotion and silences debate through intimidation.

The fallacy of circular reasoning occurs when the conclusion presumes the premise (i.e., the initial claim) is true without proving it true. So, for example, leftists–ignoring their purported commitment to the First Amendment–argue that homosexual acts are moral acts and, therefore, there is no need to tolerate the expression of dissenting views. But the intolerance they are trying to defend is based on the truth of their premise that homosexual acts are moral—a premise they simply assume without proving is true.

Here’s another: Leftists assert that marriage is constituted solely by subjective romantic and erotic feelings, and, therefore, the government has no reason not to recognize unions between two people of the same sex as marriages, because such couples can experience love and erotic desire. But the premise—i.e., that marriage is constituted solely by subjective romantic and erotic feelings—hasn’t been proved.

And here’s yet another claim about marriage based on circular reasoning: Leftists argue that the reason government is involved in marriage is to grant public legitimacy or provide “dignity” to erotic/romantic unions and, therefore, the government has an obligation to recognize homoerotic unions as marriages. The problem is that those who make this argument fail to prove their claim that the reason government is involved in marriage is to recognize, provide, or impart “dignity” to unions. Those who make this argument just assume their premise is true.

After employing fallacious circular reasoning and hurling ad hominem epithets at their opponents, leftists sanctimoniously wipe the dust off their dirty hands and assert that their hypocrisy isn’t really hypocrisy after all.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Ideological-Non-Sense-and-Hypocrisy-of-Leftists.mp3

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We understand that we are accountable before you and God to honor your trust. 

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Written by Ryan T. Anderson

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of gay marriage, a question arises: Should we protect the rights of Orthodox Jews, Roman Catholics, Evangelical Christians, Latter-Day Saints and Muslims who believe that marriage is a union of husband and wife? Two bills recently introduced in Congress show diverging answers. One seeks to promote tolerance and peaceful coexistence; the other adds fuel to a culture war by treating that traditional belief as racism.

Last week, U.S. Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., and U.S. Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.; and Cory Booker, D-N.J., introduced what they call the “Equality Act.” The legislation would add “sexual orientation and gender identity” to more or less every federal law that protects against racism.

Do we really need the federal government to coerce every last baker, florist and adoption agency to violate their beliefs about marriage? The market is already sorting these things out. The Human Rights Campaign reports, for example, that 88 percent of Fortune 500 companies voluntarily do not consider sexual orientation in employment decisions.

The bill also requires that biological males who identify as women be able to use women’s bathrooms and locker rooms. Shouldn’t these decisions be made closer to the ground? By parents, teachers, principals—not federal bureaucrats? Most outrageously, the bill specifies that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act cannot be used to defend people against its requirements. Rather, it treats decent people of faith as irrational bigots, simply for believing that we’re created male and female, and that male and female are created for each other in marriage.

Whether you agree with this belief or not, it’s easy to see that the “Equality Act” is bad public policy. It fuels the culture war rather than seeking peaceful coexistence.

As I argue in my new book, “Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom,” there is an alternative.

The First Amendment Defense Act would prevent the federal government from discriminating against citizens or organizations because they believe that marriage is the union of husband and wife. It would ensure that no federal agency will ever revoke non-profit tax-exempt status or deny grants, contracts, accreditation or licenses to individuals or institutions for following their belief that marriage is a union between a man and a woman.

This bill simply continues the practice of the United States for all of our history. It takes nothing away from anyone. It changes nothing. It protects pluralism amid disagreement.

And it is necessary. In the oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year, Justice Samuel Alito asked Solicitor General Donald Verrilli whether a school might lose its tax-exempt status because of its conviction that marriage is the union of husband and wife. Verrilli’s response was chilling: “It’s certainly going to be an issue. I—I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that, Justice Alito. It is—it is going to be an issue.”

This shouldn’t be an issue. Schools should be eligible for non-profit tax status, government contracts, student loans and other forms of support as long as they meet the relevant educational criteria.

As I explain in Truth Overruled, government policy should not trample on the consciences of citizens who dissent from official policies on sexuality. Government discrimination against social service providers who believe marriage is a male-female relationship undermines our nation’s commitment to reasonable pluralism and diversity. The First Amendment Defense Act would prevent this.

Predictably, the left has attacked this bill. The Sunday after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling, Mark Oppenheimer wrote a column for Time magazine headlined “Now’s the Time to End Tax Exemptions for Religious Institutions.” Oppenheimer, the New York Times’ religion columnist, argued: “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.”

But it has long been understood that the power to tax is the power to destroy. Americans who believe that marriage is a union of husband and wife should be free to live and work in accord with their convictions.

When he “evolved” on the issue in 2012, President Barack Obama insisted that there were reasonable people of goodwill on both sides of the marriage debate. Supporters of marriage as the union of a man and a woman “are not coming at it from a mean-spirited perspective,” he insisted. “They’re coming at it because they care about families.”

He added that “a bunch of ’em are friends of mine … you know, people who I deeply respect.” But as the stories of bakers, florists, photographers and adoption agencies show, there’s good reason to worry about the government’s respect for the beliefs of all Americans.

America is in a time of transition. The court has redefined marriage, and beliefs about human sexuality are changing. Will the right to dissent be protected? Will our right to speak and act in accord with what Americans have always believed about marriage—that it’s a union of husband and wife—be tolerated?

Most Americans say yes, they want ours to be a tolerant, pluralistic nation. They want peaceful coexistence. We must work together to protect these cherished American values, despite the ideologues and activists who would sow disharmony by having the government coerce those with whom they disagree.

The First Amendment Defense Act is one way of achieving civil peace even amid disagreement. To protect pluralism and the rights of all Americans, liberals should forswear coercion and embrace tolerance.

Originally published in National Review Online.