Tie her tubes, or we’ll sue you for sex discrimination, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) told a Catholic-affiliated hospital in California.

So after first declining to do so, Mercy Medical Center in Redding has now slated a tubal ligation for a woman after her scheduled C-section to deliver a baby in late September.

The ACLU’s demand is cut from the same cloth as the Obama Administration’s order under Obamacare to the Little Sisters of the Poor to violate their beliefs and provide contraceptives and abortifacients or pay crushing fines. That case is still in litigation.

The latest manifestation of the Left’s war on the First Amendment’s religious liberty guarantee began when Rachel Miller, a 32-year-old attorney, was rebuffed by hospital officials after she asked them to sterilize her following a planned live birth. In an Aug. 17 letter, the ACLU threatened to sue Mercy Medical Center, a facility run by the Sisters of Mercy and part of Dignity Health, which operates 40 hospitals — 22 of which are Catholic — in California, Nevada and Arizona, according to CNSNews.

Directive 53 of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops states:

“Direct sterilization of either men or women, whether permanent or temporary, is not permitted in a Catholic health care institution. Procedures that induce sterility are permitted when their direct effect is the cure or alleviation of a present and serious pathology and a simpler treatment is not available.”

Directive 70 states:

“Catholic health care organizations are not permitted to engage in immediate material cooperation in actions that are intrinsically immoral, such as abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and direct sterilization.”

Tough, said the ACLU, which regards all of the above as routine medical care, even though the procedures involve either taking an unborn child’s life, deliberately killing patients, helping them kill themselves, or rendering people sterile.

The ACLU noted that, ‘”getting one’s tubes tied,’ is the contraception method of choice for more than 30 percent of U.S. married women of reproductive age.”

Well, it’s one thing to voluntarily undergo it, as many do, but it is quite another to force others to perform it regardless of their beliefs. Given a deadline to respond by Aug. 24 or face a lawsuit, the hospital reversed its decision. In a brief statement, the hospital did not explain the about-face, other than to note, “tubal ligations are not performed in Catholic hospitals except on a case-by-case basis where a formal review by a committee of physicians and others gives permission to perform the procedure.”

The turnabout came even though the ACLU acknowledged that, “Miller’s insurance company had offered to cover her delivery at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, which would allow her to obtain the tubal ligation, but that hospital is more than 160 miles away.”

In a triumphant press release, the ACLU made it clear that this is only a small part of a larger campaign to break faith-based institutions to secular values.

“The reality remains that there is a clear conflict between the best interests of patients and the directives of the Catholic hospital system,” said Elizabeth Gill, senior attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. “Religious institutions that provide services to the general public should not be allowed to hold religion as an excuse to discriminate or deny important health care.”

The ACLU has also sued hospitals in Michigan and Washington State over their refusal to perform abortions, and has sued the federal Department of Health and Human Services to obtain documents that it claims show that Catholic relief agencies will not provide abortions or referrals to abortionists for unaccompanied immigrant children crossing America’s southern border.

On June 15, a federal district court dismissed the Michigan case as an unwarranted intrusion into religious doctrine. The ACLU has appealed.

In Washington State, in the face of an ACLU threat, the Skagit County Hospital District decided not to partner with a Catholic health provider. Later, the ACLU sued the district anyway on behalf of a woman who takes an acne drug that might cause birth defects and who wanted the option of abortion if she were to become pregnant.

This is the brave new world brought to us by social engineers who are turning the medical profession into an arm of the Left’s progressive agenda.

Don’t be surprised if the ACLU’s next move is to try to force the Sisters of Mercy to facilitate sex-change surgeries.

This article was originally posted at Townhall.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.

Written by Pastor John Piper

I don’t know Kim Davis’s heart, so I can’t assess her motives. And I don’t know her theology. It is possible to do right actions for wrong reasons, and so be wrong in doing right. So I will just try to say something about her actions and what appear to be some of her convictions and perhaps touch on some wider implications.

First, I think she is right in rejecting so-called same sex marriage as contrary to God’s design for what marriage is. And she is right in assessing this departure from God’s will as massive, not marginal, and as personally and culturally deadly, not trivial. And therefore it’s not something that you can just go along with as if that were a loving thing to do.

The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 that the endorsement of same sex practice — which is what the approval of so-called same sex marriage does — endorses the destruction of persons (along with idolatry, greed, theft, drunkenness). Those who impenitently practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Calling such behaviors “legal” in no way removes the capital punishment that will follow in eternity. Therefore this judgment of the Supreme Court is massively evil and deadly for persons. Kim Davis is right if she believes that. It seems she does.

Second, I think she is morally right and probably legally right to refuse to put her name on the marriage license of two men or two women. She is morally right because God has given civil authorities to the world to reward the right and punish the evil. So when those authorities promote evil and punish good, those authorities may rightly be disobeyed for the sake of obeying God. Here are the two key texts.

1 Peter 2:13–14, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good.” So be subject to governors as they are sent to punish evil and do good.

Romans 13:1, 3–4, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God. . . . For [here is the ground] rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. . . . He is God’s servant for your good.”

Now I don’t think Peter and Paul are naïve in writing this way. This is what governments do. They reward the good. They punish the evil. What they mean is that this is what governments ought to do. This is the way it ought to be. For example, when Paul says, “Rulers are not a terror to good conduct” (Romans 13:3), we are liable to scratch our heads and think of a hundred cases where governments have slaughtered people in great wickedness. What in the world, Paul?

Well, Paul says rulers are not a terror to good conduct, like when a dad says to his children, “We tell the truth in this family.” That is the indicative statement ofwhat ought to be. “We treat other with kindness in this family. That is what we do.” He doesn’t mean sin never happens in this family. The kids are not always good. He means this is what we ought to do. And when we don’t act this way, we are acting out of character. It ought not to be. Something should change. So it is with governments. They exist to support the good and resist the bad.

And here is an interesting thing: A few verses later in 1 Peter 2:18, 20, Peter gives an illustration of how slaves are to be subject to masters. So he is carrying this submission theme through for governments and slaves and wives and husbands and children and so on. And then he says, “Servants, be subject to your masters, even to the unjust. . . . For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God.” Peter envisions someone under authoritydoing something good that gets him a beating. Authorities don’t ordinarily punish people for being completely compliant.

Now of course, it may be the slave was slandered and then punished for something he did not do. That is possible. But that is not what the text says. It seems to me he has done something good. Maybe he stood up for a fellow Christian slave or maybe he shared the gospel. Or maybe he refused to have sex with the master. When you do good, suffer, and endure, this is a gracious thing with God. So it may well be that this slave or citizen or wife knew he would pay a price. And that was a gracious thing with God to suffer for doing good.

Now I think Kim Davis was right not to sign the marriage licenses and thus to not treat evil as marriage. It is not marriage! If she blesses with her authority and her signature a union which leads to destruction, she endorses and participates in that destruction. Encouraging homosexual behavior is the participation in someone’s destruction. I think she is right not to do that. Now I said she may be also legally right and not just morally right. This thinking is complicated, but here are just a few observations:

Was she legally bound to resign instead of obstructing the licensing process? Now there are two angles on this question — two ways to come at it. One is to observe that perhaps she is not the one breaking the law, but that that Supreme Court broke the law by their ludicrous claim that they found in the Constitution a right to the non-existent illusion called “same sex marriage.” That is absolutely ludicrous that they could find such a thing in the Constitution. They came up with that out of thin air, because they want it to be. There comes a point when people with eyes look at the Supreme Court and say: This strutting court has no clothes on. They may wear a tiny little one-inch-across tyrannical crown on their heads, but they are not robed with the royal power to make the Constitution condone the killing of children nor to condone so-called ‘same sex marriage. It cannot be done. Out of nothing they create mirages.

The other angle that suggests Kim Davis was not only morally right, but, perhaps, legally right, is that she was drawing the line — the hill to die on — not at whether so-called “gay marriage” could be authorized by anyone in Kentucky, but by whether it would have to be authorized by her. The specific issue was whether her name or her official authority as clerk was put on the licenses.

So the legal question is, “Does an employee, even an elected employee, have to comply with every aspect of the job description if it compromises the conscience? Or are there legal — that is the key word here — legal provisions that mandate an employer adjust the employee’s job requirements to avoid a conflict with conscience?” And the answer is yes. Both the federal Civil Rights Act and Kentucky’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act have such provisions in them. And so the question for the court, if she pursues it this way, is whether the adjustment in her job description can be made without an undue burden on that office — on the employer.

Kim Davis’s case is not unique. People need to really be aware of this issue. Can she keep her job and not do part of her job because of her conscience? All of these are real litigations:

• Can nurses, who have religious objections to participating in abortions, keep their jobs and not participate in abortions, even though the hospital says they must?
• Can Muslim truck drivers not transport alcohol?
• Can a pacifist postal worker not process draft registration forms?
• Can a Jehovah’s Witness employee not be required to raise the flag at the school?
• Can a vegetarian bus driver not be required to hand out hamburger coupons?

Those are all real cases I read about — whether or not legally one can have his job description adjusted without resigning so as to avoid the conflict with conscience.

So for Kim Davis the legal question is, Can she be given an exemption so that she can carry out her clerk’s duties while not giving any of her official authority to the licensing of so-called “same sex marriage”? And the answer is, We will see. I don’t know what is going to happen.

Morally, she is in the right. She is, of course, just one prominent case of what will be hundreds in the months and years to come as Christians and others draw a line of conscience beyond which they will not go. And the upshot for us, all of us, is that we should all be pondering now what that line is in our vocation, in our schooling, in our civil life, in our finances, and in our friendships. Because if we are not fixed and strong in our resolve and we are taken off guard with the threat of loss, we will cave in. Now is the time to be clear and resolved — before they knock on your door.

This article was originally posted at the desiringgod.org website.

Pastor John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books.

Written by Joe Rigney

Written by Phyllis Schlafly

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled by the narrowest possible margin that Kentucky’s definition of marriage is unconstitutional, the Court’s decision was qualified by its assurance that religious freedom would not be jeopardized. “The First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection,” the Court solemnly intoned on June 26.

In the Appalachian hills of eastern Kentucky, one brave woman is testing whether Justice Anthony Kennedy really meant it when he wrote those words. But the local federal judge for eastern Kentucky, David Bunning, has wrongly sent Kim Davis to jail for her beliefs, without respecting or accommodating her sincere Christian beliefs.

Local officials are required to support the laws of the United States, but no federal law requires every county official to issue marriage licenses, which are available in many other offices throughout Kentucky. Even Judge Bunning admitted that “plaintiffs have one feasible avenue for obtaining their marriage licenses” by traveling to another county, so the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling was not violated by the clerk’s decision to suspend all licenses while she seeks accommodation under the Kentucky Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Judge David Bunning previously came to national attention when he required the students and staff of the public schools in neighboring Boyd County to attend mandatory diversity training, “a significant portion of which would be devoted to issues of sexual orientation and gender harassment.” Bunning, who also ruled against a law banning partial-birth abortion, was nominated for his lifetime job at the age of only 34, and was confirmed because his father was a Senator, despite having inadequate legal experience and an “unqualified” rating from the American Bar Association.

As an elected public official, Kim Davis should not have been sent to jail by an unelected federal judge who can cite no federal law that she ever violated. Her imprisonment is the result of a judicial supremacy unrestrained by the checks and balances that apply to all other branches of government.

Described by Alexander Hamilton in 1788 as the “least dangerous” branch, federal courts are so out-of-control today that he would barely recognize them. A federal court has imprisoned a county official to force her to change the way she does her job, without any federal statute to justify such an order.

It is not “rule of law” to imprison someone based on judge-made law; it is “rule by judges.” Kim Davis is not committing civil disobedience, because she has not violated any law. She was arrested, humiliated with a mug shot and imprisoned, merely for abiding by state law and the Bible.

As an elected Democratic official, Kim Davis should be defended by her own party leaders, but the Democratic candidate for governor of Kentucky, Jack Conway, declines to defend her. As Attorney General, Conway refused to defend his own state’s constitution when it was challenged in the Supreme Court.

Republicans should look for guidance to the roots of our Party about 160 years ago, when it rose from obscurity by criticizing the judicial activism of the Dred Scott decision. Abraham Lincoln was a political loser until he started hammering the more popular Stephen Douglas about that ruling which extended a pro-slavery view nationwide.

Douglas, himself a skilled attorney and orator, tried to seek a middle ground between the pro-slavery federal court system and a populace that was increasingly fed up with the judicial supremacy. Douglas finally lost his credibility when he could not give coherent answers to questions posed by Lincoln in Freeport, Illinois, about what the full impact of the Dred Scott decision would be.

When one branch of government oversteps its power, the remedy under our Constitution is for the other branches of government to push back or refuse to comply, as multiple presidents and Congresses have done throughout American history. In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln repudiated the Dred Scott decision as wrong and declared that it was not binding on the other branches of government or on anyone who was not a party to the case.

The Republican Party platform of 1860 flatly objected to how Democrats were imposing their agenda through use of “the Federal Courts [in matters] of a purely local interest.” By standing up against the abuse of power by federal courts, Republicans quickly became the majority party.

When the Supreme Court ruled that all 50 states must license same-sex unions on the same terms as marriage, the court was implicitly declaring that Christianity and the Bible are wrong. If San Francisco can be a sanctuary city, let’s allow Rowan County, Kentucky to be a “sanctuary county” where the Biblical view of marriage continues to be honored and respected.

This article was originally posted at EagleForum.org

“Haters are going to hate” is how Shepard Smith of Fox News referred to supporters of Christian clerk Kim Davis on his Tuesday afternoon show. It was another example of the anti-Christian bias that has been rearing its ugly head on a channel that many conservatives had looked to for “fair and balanced” coverage of the issues they care about.

But calls to several Fox News officials, asking for reaction to Smith’s anti-Christian comments, were not returned.

In other controversial comments about a pro-Davis rally being broadcast during his show, Smith ripped conservative Christians for “a religious play again,” saying, “This is the same crowd that says, ‘We don’t want Sharia law, don’t let them tell us what to do, keep their religion out of our lives and out of our government.’ Well, here we go again.”

Smith seems not to understand the difference between Christianity, a foundation of the American system that protects religious rights and liberty, and Islam, an authoritarian religion which wants to impose its values on others.

It was expected that the liberals in the media complaining about “mass incarceration” would make an exception for Davis to go to jail. That’s just the way the liberals are. But it was somewhat unexpected that Fox News would break its promise to air “fair and balanced” coverage of the issue by permitting Smith to take such a crude stand against Davis on the “Shepard Smith Reporting” 3:00 p.m. ET show.

All that Davis had asked for from the beginning was the right to have her religious views respected by the government, and for her name as county clerk to not be put on marriage licenses for homosexuals. She was let out of jail on Tuesday despite the federal judge in the case, David L. Bunning, having failed to resolve the issues in the case. As a result, she could return to her job and decide again not to authorize gay marriage licenses.

With his reckless comments, Smith, regularly featured by Out magazine as a powerful homosexual media personality, has embarrassed his channel and turned himself into a liability with the channel’s conservative viewers. He has completely dropped any pretense of objectivity on his show, by apparently taking it personally that many people find the gay lifestyle to be morally repugnant.

His coverage of the pro-Davis rally on Tuesday was openly hostile to the clerk, as he denounced her and her supporters as the equivalent of racists who objected to interracial marriage. The idea of comparing blacks to homosexuals is a frequent claim made by the gay lobby and its adherents. However, skin color is a fact of life, and sexual orientation can be learned, chosen, and even rejected.

It was during her legal counsel Mat Staver’s defense of Davis at the rally that Smith said “haters are going to hate.”

But rather than being a “hater,” Staver is a well-respected attorney and legal scholar who “holds Bachelor, Master, and Juris Doctorate degrees and an honorary Doctorate of Laws and a Doctorate of Divinity,” his bio states. “He has argued two landmark cases before the United States Supreme Court as lead counsel and written numerous briefs before the High Court. Mat has argued in numerous state and federal courts across the country and has over 230 published legal opinions.”

Despite his liberal and pro-homosexual views, Fox News says that Smith “has played a major role in the network’s innovation of the way news is presented.”

If so, this can only continue to hurt the image and reputation of Fox News, which still promotes the slogan of being “fair and balanced” in order to maintain its conservative viewers.

A recent edition of Out said about Smith that his “sexual orientation and centrist ideology are some of Fox News’ worst kept secrets.” The magazine went on, “Despite 2014 reports that his desire to come out led to his demotion, Smith continues to provide nuanced, grounded, and logical reporting as managing editor of Fox’s breaking news division, and host of Shepard Smith Reporting.”

But with his bashing of Kim Davis for her Christian actions and views, the idea that Smith provides “grounded” reporting will be increasingly difficult to believe. The venom which came from him is something Fox viewers would expect from MSNBC.

While it cannot be confirmed that Smith was demoted “for his desire to come out” publicly as a homosexual, he might as well come out since he has really left no doubt in the minds of viewers how he feels on this very personal matter. He has confirmed with his wild and opinionated statements that he is not an objective news anchor who can be counted on to fairly report the news.

In addition to attacking Christians as “haters,” Smith complained on the air that those turning out in support of Davis were being “divisive,” and that Davis was surrounded by “grandstanders,” such as the “ridiculous” Mike Huckabee, a presidential candidate and former governor of Arkansas who served as a host of a talk show on the Fox News Channel. He is a Southern Baptist pastor who helped lead the “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day” for the restaurant when its CEO was criticized for supporting traditional marriage.

On his show last week Smith had mocked Davis for having been married several times and having kids out of wedlock, not mentioning her religious conversion to Christianity four years ago that turned her life around and led to her take a stand against signing the gay marriage licenses.

Smith said, “Ms. Davis apparently believes in the sanctity of marriage to the degree that she’s been married a total of four times. In fact, she got pregnant with her third husband’s children while married to her first husband. But fear not: her second husband adopted them.”

Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth called the comments a “cheap shot” that ignored her born-again experience in becoming a Christian four years ago. “She knows that that’s her past. She’s probably ashamed of it,” he noted. “But she now has a strong allegiance to the Bible and to her God and wants to follow her God.”

Despite her religious conversion, Greg Gutfeld repeated the smear of Davis, based on her previous marriages, on the Fox News show “The Five” on Tuesday afternoon. Not one member of the panel took Davis’s side during the discussion or mentioned how Christianity had changed her life.

The basic facts of the case, given short shrift by Fox and other media, are simple: Davis had objected on religious liberty grounds to putting her name and government title on licenses for homosexual marriages. Legal experts also noted that a Supreme Court decision “legalizing” same-sex marriage was not sufficient to alter Kentucky law and the Kentucky constitution, which forbid legal recognition of same-sex marriages.

Nevertheless, Davis was found in contempt by Judge Bunning, who claims to be a Christian, and was put in jail without bail, only to be freed after five days.

Despite what the Supreme Court said in its ruling, dissenters called it a threat to democracy and predicted resistance from the people, who are supposed to have the power in our Constitutional system through elected representatives to make the law. That resistance, as far as the media are concerned, has started with the Davis case. It is shocking that religious conservatives cannot count on Fox to respect their side of the argument.

However, this isn’t the first time that Shepard Smith has been able to spout pro-homosexual views on the air. He denounced Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day as the “National Day of Intolerance” because supporters of the restaurant chain turned out in support of the CEO’s pro-traditional marriage views.

Fox actually pours money into the homosexual lobby. As reported by AIM, Smith and other Fox News personalities, including Megyn Kelly, have raised money for the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA), a special interest lobby which has guided pro-homosexual coverage in virtually all major media organizations. In April, the Fox News Channel joined CBS News and CNN as “silver” sponsors of the NLGJA 20th annual New York “Headlines & Headliners” fundraising event. A male stripper performed at the event.

This columnist, who tried to cover the affair, was told that if he recorded the event he would be thrown out.

“When I tried to reach Roger Ailes, Chairman and CEO of Fox News at the switchboard number of 212-301-3000, I was told he was unavailable for comment and that his office would not even accept my inquiry.”

Post originally found at aim.org

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway, here they are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, precisely what was Huppke’s purpose?

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

Was he mocking Christians for taking Scripture seriously?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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For the first time in American history a woman has been imprisoned by the government for merely exercising her Christian faith. War has been declared on Christ and His followers.

And there’s no turning back.

Anti-Christian persecution is the civil rights cause of our time. The cultural Marxists in power have seceded from our constitutional republican form of government, with its Judeo-Christian moorings, and have supplanted, in its place, a secular-socialist oligarchy. Like Union troops hunkered at Fort Sumter, faithful Christians are now exiles in our own land. Anti-Christian “progressives” have demanded unconditional surrender, and federal Judge David Bunning has fired the first mortar.

Even as I write, a kind, soft-spoken and well respected civil servant of 27 years sits languishing, like some violent criminal, in a Kentucky prison. She is confined, indefinitely and without benefit of a trial, to a tiny cell. She is a political prisoner in a spiritual war. Like so many accidental civil-rights heroes that came before her, Davis, a Democrat who was overwhelmingly elected as Rowan County clerk, has peacefully and graciously refused to violate her Christian conscience. She has declined to sign her name to marriage certificates that defy God’s natural design for the timeless institution and has requested, as a simple accommodation, that either her name be removed from the marriage licenses, thus eliminating her personalized acquiescence to the Supreme Court’s novel attempt to usurp God’s authority and redefine this cornerstone institution, or, alternatively, “to allow licenses to be issued by the chief executive of Rowan County or [by] developing a statewide, online marriage license process.”

That’s it. Simple, reasonable and fair. Our nation has a rich history of respecting the rights of conscientious objectors, and Kim Davis, like tens-of-millions of her brothers and sisters in Christ, is exactly that.

“There is absolutely no reason that this case has gone so far without reasonable people respecting and accommodating Kim Davis’ First Amendment rights,” said Mat Staver, Davis’ attorney and head of Liberty Counsel, a Christian civil rights organization.

“This is a heaven or hell issue for me and for every other Christian that believes,” Davis said on Thursday. “This is a fight worth fighting. … I’ve weighed the cost and I’m prepared to go to jail.”

And so she has.

Reasonable people can disagree on the propriety of Kim’s actions. Some say that she was right in refusing to violate her conscience by signing her name to a legal document that presumes to solemnize that which God condemns. Still others say that she needs to either “do her job” or resign – that she took an oath and is violating that oath.

Nevertheless, all reasonable people must agree that imprisoning this innocent woman for her conscience is both an absolute outrage and gross violation of her constitutional liberties. Even the ACLU thought it was a bridge too far. The fact remains that people don’t shed their First Amendment rights when they become government employees. Kim Davis swore to uphold the U.S. Constitution, the Kentucky Constitution and the laws of the Bluegrass state. When she took her oath, United States law, the Kentucky Constitution and the Kentucky Revised Statutes all reflected the millennia-old definition of natural marriage: “Only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Kentucky.”

The Kentucky Legislature has yet to change this law one jot or tittle. Instead, five left-wing extremist lawyers in Washington, D.C., issued an opinion presuming to move the goalposts mid-game. Court opinions are not “the law of the land.” Judges don’t make laws – only the legislature can do that. Kim Davis is not defying the law; she is upholding it as codified.

Accordingly, she has repeatedly asked, “Under what law am I authorized to issue homosexual couples a marriage license?”

Neither Judge Bunning nor anyone else can answer.

Because no such law exists.

In a statement on Friday, Mat Staver made the same point: “Not long ago 75 percent of Kentuckians passed the state’s marriage amendment. Today a Christian is imprisoned for believing what the voters affirmed: marriage is between a man and a woman. Five people on the Supreme Court imposed their will on 320 million Americans and unleashed a torrent of assaults against people of faith. Kim Davis is the first victim of this tragedy.”

Indeed, many scoffed at our warnings that Christians will someday be forced to either endorse “gay marriage” or go to jail. Well, scoff no more. That day has arrived. In just two months since the high court’s disgraceful Obergefell v. Hodges opinion, the full-on criminalization of Christianity has begun. You must either bow a knee before the false gods of same-sex “marriage” and “gay rights,” or face the fiery “contempt of court” furnace. We have moved from anecdotal instances of anti-Christian discrimination to systemic religious persecution.

Here’s the formula: 1) Force affirmation of homosexual behavior, abortion or some other institutionalized sin via judicial fiat; 2) Christian objects, refuses to disobey God and requests a reasonable religious accommodation; 3) Accommodation is denied and Christian is jailed for “contempt of court.”

You’re going to hear that term a lot in coming days, weeks, months and years – “contempt of court.” It’s the straw man charge that will be utilized to imprison not just Christian public officials, but others as well. Christian business owners, lawyers, private sector employees, parents of school-age children who don’t want their children indoctrinated by sexual anarchist propaganda and many others will be held in contempt of court, denied due process and incarcerated indefinitely.

The persecution isn’t coming.

The persecution has arrived.

And that’s what it means to be a Christ follower.

So pray for a million more like Kim Davis.

Become like Kim Davis.

Is she perfect? Certainly not. None of us is. Indeed, before Kim’s transformational Christian re-birth four years ago, she was thrice divorced and “played in the devil’s playground” for much of her life.

She was lost.

But now she’s found.

God has an amazing way of taking empty, broken vessels, rebuilding their lives and then using them mightily for His glory and honor.

Stand, like Kim, fearlessly, lovingly and boldly for Christ, declaring, as did the apostles when faced with a similar decision, “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (see Acts 5:29).

Indeed, as the Bible’s Daniel, a “public official,” boldly refused to disobey God and commit sin by worshiping a pagan king, so too has Kim Davis honored our Lord by refusing to bow before a pagan court – by refusing to call evil good and good evil.

They wanted to make an example of her.

Instead, they made a martyr of her.

And awakened a sleeping giant in the process.

There is yet another recent poll finding significant public support for the protection of religious liberty—especially when special rights based on homosexuality are being pushed at the expense of religious freedom.

Most Americans still appear to want a high degree of freedom and individual rights protection.  According to Caddell Associates, “when asked which was more important, by a four to one ratio, voters said protecting religious liberty over protecting gay and lesbian rights.”

Support for religious freedom jumps even higher in the context of wedding vendors. Eighty-three percent said “yes” when asked whether a Christian wedding photographer with “deeply held religious beliefs opposing same sex marriage” has “the right to say no” to a same-sex couple asking him or her to photograph their wedding.

Surprisingly, even “80 percent of Agnostic and Atheists said the photographer had the right to say no.”  That’s four out of five of those who reject faith for themselves saying those who have faith deserve protection from homosexual activists and an overreaching politically correct branch of a local, a state or the federal government.

When asked if “the federal and state government should be able to require by law a private citizen to provide a service or their property for an event that is contrary to their religious beliefs” . . . “[m]ore than two-thirds (68 percent) disagreed,” according to Caddell.

Pat Caddell, a Democrat, who has worked for President Jimmy Carter, U.S. Senator George McGovern, U.S. Senator Joe Biden and Governor Jerry Brown runs Caddell Associates.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Article was originally posted at douglaswilson.com

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said “Every public official in our democracy is subject to the rule of law. No one is above the law. That applies to the president of the United States and that applies to the county clerk of Rowan County, Ky., as well.”

Really? That applies to the president? Well, did it apply to President Barack Obama when he instructed Attorney General Eric Holder to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which was the law of the land—a bipartisan law passed by huge majorities in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives and signed into law by Bill Clinton?

Did those who now oppose Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis‘ actions also oppose Attorney General Eric Holder’s refusal to defend the Defense of Marriage Act?

What about the refusal of Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez and state-attorney’s general in Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Virginia to defend DOMA?

What about the refusal of California Governor Jerry Brown’s and California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ refusals to defend Prop 8.

The Obergefelle decision, in which 5 unelected justices imposed same-sex faux-marriage on all of America, was as little grounded in the text and history of the Constitution as Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade. Does defying a lawless act constitute lawlessness?

Those who oppose Kim Davis’ actions ought to read Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in order to better understand when civil disobedience is justified:

One may well ask, “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just laws, and there are unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “An unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law.

Despite what some conservatives argue, neither religious liberty nor civil disobedience is  reserved for just those employed in the private sector.

When Eric Holder announced that the Department of Justice would no longer defend the duly enacted DOMA law, he said, “decisions at any level not to defend individual laws must be exceedingly rare. They must be reserved only for exceptional – truly exceptional – circumstances.’”

My friends, such a time is this.

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Mauck & Baker is a well-respected Chicago law firm committed to protecting religious liberty through the application of biblical principles. In the service of this commitment, they have issued a statement regarding Republican Governor Bruce Rauner’s deeply troubling abandonment of conservative principles through his enactment of a controversial, anti-autonomy law that prohibits mental health professionals from helping minors who seek assistance in resisting unwanted, unchosen same-sex attraction, rejecting a “gay” identity, and/or accepting their physical embodiment:

Rauner Signs Bill Restricting Sexual Orientation Counseling for Minors

(Chicago, Illinois) Late last Friday, Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner signed into law the deceptively titled “Youth Mental Health Protection Act,” becoming one of only three states to make it illegal to counsel minors on how to cope with or overcome unwanted same-sex attraction. The Act further provides that “no person or entity may, in the conduct of any trade or comer… represent homosexuality as a mental disease, disorder, or illness.”

The law is written broadly enough to put at risk not only licensed counselors but also pastors and others  who are in “commerce” (compensated for counseling) and refer to homosexuality as an illness or “disorder” (i.e. sin) to any counselee, minor or adult, with the purpose of helping the counselee be free from same-sex attractions. Those who continue to provide such counseling and care will face disciplinary actions by the state and are subject to suit under the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act.

Attorney John Mauck, partner at the law firm Mauck & Baker responded, “According to Scripture, it is possible for all of us who have sinful tendencies and compulsions to change and become holy in God’s sight. The Apostle Paul indicates this is also true for those involved in homosexual conduct. In 1 Corinthians 6:11, speaking of ‘homosexual offenders’ and others, Paul writes, ‘such were some of you.’”

Licensed counselors, minors who struggle with same-sex attraction, or pastors, are encouraged to contact Mauck & Baker to discuss their civil rights and join with others interested in challenging the law. Also, the full length documentary, “Such Were Some of You” from Pure Passion Media is a valuable resource for testimonies of ex-gays and how Jesus helped them leave the gay lifestyle. To purchase the DVD for $15, call (312) 726-1243 or email info@mauckbaker.com.

It’s never fun to be proven right when warning of some impending wrong. Many in the pro-family movement have long stressed that the cultural Marxist left’s belligerent push for the judicial fiction that is “gay marriage” was never about gaining “equal access” to this biologically exclusive male-female institution, as they profess, but, rather, is, and has always been, about control.

While there are many layers to unfold, the almost instant explosion in government-sanctioned, anti-Christian extremism on display post Obergefell v. Hodges, confirms the poisonous three-fold agenda that underlies the “social justice” mob’s flowery “marriage equality” propaganda. That is: (1) the ultimate destruction of marriage, (2) forced affirmation of sexual deviancy under penalty of law, and (3) the eventual criminalization of Christianity.

The destruction of marriage

Here’s the bottom line: Homosexual activists don’t want the white picket fence; they want to burn down the white picket fence. The endgame is not to achieve so-called “marriage equality” but, rather, to render marriage reality meaningless.

Masha Gessen, a lesbian journalist, activist and author, expressly admitted this fact in a 2012 interview with ABC Radio: “It’s a no-brainer that [homosexuals] should have the right to marry,” she said. “But I also think equally that it’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist. … [F]ighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there – because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie.”

Homosexual activist and pornographer Clinton Fein echoes Gessen’s candid sentiments: “Demand the institution [of marriage] and then wreck it,” he once wrote. “James Dobson was right about our evil intentions,” he quipped. “We just plan to be quicker than he thought.”

The goal is to water down marriage until marriage is pointless. And as evidenced by the burgeoning legal push for polygamous and incestuous “marriages” – even for the “right” to“marry” a robot – sexual anarchists are well on their way to achieving this goal.

Forced affirmation of sexual deviancy

Here’s what Christian America is already experiencing from coast to coast. On Wednesday, civil rights law firm Liberty Counsel filed a request for a stay and an appeal of U.S. District Judge David Bunning’s opinion ordering Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis to issue same-sex “marriage” licenses both in violation of her First Amendment right to religious free exercise and the biblical mandate that she must not participate in this explicitly sinful activity. Davis had been sued by the ACLU and two lesbian political activists.

“The plaintiffs in this case only sought licenses from Ms. Davis after learning of her religious objections to same-sex ‘marriage,’ and they refuse to obtain a license elsewhere,” said Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel. “Just as Justice Alito predicted in his dissent in Obergefell, secularists are trying to ‘stamp out every vestige of dissent’ by targeting people of faith who do not agree with same-sex ‘marriage.'”

Judge Bunning wrote, “Davis remains free to practice her Apostolic Christian beliefs. She may continue to attend church twice a week, participate in Bible study and minister to female inmates at the Rowan County Jail. She is even free to believe that marriage is a union between one man and one woman, as many Americans do. However, her religious convictions cannot excuse her from performing the duties that she took an oath to perform as Rowan County Clerk,” the ruling said.

“Judge Bunning’s decision equated Kim’s free exercise of religion to going to church. This is absurd!” responded Staver. “Christianity is not a robe you take off when you leave a sanctuary. The First Amendment guarantees Kim and every American the free exercise of religion, even when they are working for the government.

“Kim Davis did not sign up as a clerk to issue same-sex ‘marriage’ licenses. Her job duty was changed by five lawyers without any constitutional authority. At a minimum, her religious convictions should be accommodated,” concluded Staver.

Indeed, Davis’ oath as county clerk was to defend and protect the U.S. Constitution and the constitution of Kentucky. As Chief Justice John Roberts rightly observed in his Obergefelldissent, the activist majority’s opinion actually hijacks the democratic process and is in no way rooted in the Constitution: “[D]o not celebrate the Constitution,” he said. “It had nothing to do with it.”

The fact is that if Ms. Davis were to issue counterfeit same-sex “marriage” licenses, she would not only be disobeying God and directly participating in expressly sinful activity, she would be violating her constitutional oath.

The criminalization of Christianity

To her credit, Ms. Davis is standing her ground while the decision is appealed. Predictably, many leftists are now clamoring for her imprisonment. They want her held in contempt of courtand thrown in jail for refusing to at once affirm homosexual sin and violate God’s commands. This is the new pagan orthodoxy. It’s “here, it’s queer, get used to it.”

Meanwhile, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) reports on “a Colorado Court of Appealsdecision Thursday in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Craig, regarding a cake artist who declined to use his artistic abilities to promote and endorse their same-sex ceremony even though other cake artists were willing to do the job.”

“Americans are guaranteed the freedom to live and work consistent with their faith,” observed ADF attorney Jeremy Tedesco. “Government has a duty to protect people’s freedom to follow their beliefs personally and professionally rather than force them to adopt the government’s views. Jack simply exercised the long-cherished American freedom to decline to use his artistic talents to promote a message with which he disagrees. The court is wrong to deny Jack his fundamental freedoms.”

The court affirmed an earlier order wherein Phillips and his Christian staff were not only ordered to bake homosexual “wedding” cakes against their will, but were additionally forced into pro-homosexual “sensitivity” propaganda classes.

And if they refuse?

Then they go to jail.

That’s how it works. Christian free exercise isn’t outlawed all at once. Judges across our fruity plain simply order from the bench that millions of Christians, just like Kim Davis and Jack Phillips, must either deny recognition of God’s natural order and Christ’s admonition to “go and sin no more,” or face prison for “contempt of court.”

Welcome to America 2015, where evil is good, men are women, judges are tyrants, and Christians are persona non grata. There is no more in between. The anti-Christ left has thrown down the “gay marriage” gauntlet. It’s either God or man.

“But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve …. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 24:15).