Written by Dr. John A. Sparks

Among recent actions by the U.S. Supreme Court, a four-sentence order may set the stage for the court to eventually address the collision between free speech and religious freedom on one hand and gay rights on the other. The order voided a judgment by the state of Oregon that had imposed a $135,000 fine on Portland-area bakery owners—the Kleins—for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple. Oregon maintained that its anti-discrimination law condemned such a rebuff even when the bakery owners’ religious convictions run counter to participating in a same-sex wedding.

Besides vacating the fine, the court sent the case back to the Oregon Court of Appeals to be reconsidered in light of the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision. Masterpiece involved a similar situation in Colorado for Christian baker, Jack Phillips, when he refused, on religious grounds, to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple’s marriage. In Masterpiece, Colorado’s case against Phillips had relied on language in an earlier case, Employment Division v. Smith (1990), which said that religious liberty claims could not be used as a defense against “generally applicable” laws that were “neutrally” enforced. However, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the Colorado proceedings against Phillips were far from “neutral.” In fact, they were rife with religious hostility toward him. Besides that, the court found that Colorado had selectively enforced its anti-discrimination laws, making them less than “generally applicable.”  Now the court is ordering the Oregon court to review the Klein case looking for the same examples of unfairness it had discovered in Masterpiece.

Klein is the second case of this type that the U.S. Supreme Court has sent back to the courts below for reconsideration in light of the Masterpiece decision. Earlier, the Washington Supreme Court was ordered to make such a review in a case involving a florist, Barronelle Stutzman, and her business, Arlene Flowers. Stutzman had refused to provide wedding flowers for a gay couple’s ceremony. Just recently (June 6, 2019), the Washington court found that proceedings were not conducted with “religious animus.” The Washington court closed that review by repeating its conclusions that neither free speech, free exercise, nor freedom of expression were infringed upon by the anti-discrimination law in question.

It seems likely that the Oregon court will make similar findings of the absence of religious hostility. Once the Oregon court has spoken on the matter in the way it is expected to rule, the questions of religiously hostile proceedings and selective enforcement will have been disposed of. That will leave the central constitutional questions of free speech and free exercise of religion for the U.S. Supreme Court to face which it effectively avoided in Masterpiece. The arguments on those issues made by the Kleins and Mrs. Stutzman in their existing court filings will be brought up again.

What are the Constitutional claims supporting the positions of faith-guided commercial providers who are asked to set aside their religious beliefs by customers who ask them to offer services contrary to their convictions?

The first basis for relief from the reach of the anti-discrimination laws is the claim that such laws violate the freedom of speech of the providers. At first blush, it may seem a stretch to regard baking a cake or arranging flowers as “speech.” However, federal Constitutional cases have long recognized that protecting speech is not limited to “the spoken or written word.” Engaging in conduct that expresses a point of view or idea is speech, and that expressive conduct is protected by the First Amendment.

In addition, and important for these cases, citizens cannot be forced to deliver a message provided by the government or another person. The oldest and best-known case recognizing this idea—called the “compelled speech doctrine”—is W. Va. State Board of Education v. Barnett. There the court said that public school children could not be required to salute the American flag or say the pledge of allegiance when to do so was against their religion’s teaching. The case, though it involved religious convictions, is usually viewed as a free speech case in which the court forbade the government from making citizens express a message contrary to their beliefs. Both wedding providers—the Kleins and Stutzman—maintain that Washington and Oregon laws are, in effect, requiring them to use their artistic expression to further a conjugal union against which they have serious religious reservations, or face a legal penalty. When their only other choice is to abandon the means to make a livelihood that they have chosen, the burden placed upon them is unconstitutional.

The second constitutional claim asserted by the two wedding providers is that their religious liberty under the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment has been denied to them by the anti-discrimination laws. Employment Division v. Smith, as already mentioned above, makes that claim more difficult. The Smith defendants consumed an illegal drug—peyote—as part of a Native American religious ceremony. They were dismissed from their jobs with a drug rehabilitation organization and lost a claim for unemployment compensation. They argued that their free exercise of religion was being infringed upon by Oregon.

The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, maintaining that “neutral” and “generally applicable” regulations could not be avoided by religious liberty claims. The result was probably right: religious ceremonies do not give participants the right to use controlled substances. But, unfortunately, the court’s opinion needlessly swept away an almost three-decades-old case which had established a sensible legal formula for addressing those instances in which religious convictions clash with existing legislation. That formula, called the Sherbert test after Sherbert v. Verner (1963), protected religious believers when the court found that a law or regulation “substantially burdened” their “free exercise of religion,” and that the government had no “compelling interest” at stake, or that it overlooked a “less restrictive” way to further its interest. Congress vigorously sought to counter the Smith decision by passing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which required the restoration of the Sherbert test. However, the RFRA was ruled as only applicable to federal laws and regulations and not to the states and therefore does not help the Kleins and Stutzman.

Given the clear facts of these cases, and the uncertainty that remains for religious providers, it is high time for the court to hear and decide them. For the most part, the reasoning of Smith should be discarded and Sherbert reinstated. The court should not avoid these fundamental questions of free speech and free exercise of religion any longer. Rather, it must courageously set the cases for oral argument and address these key issues head on.

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

Written by Greg Burt

Azusa Pacific University Chaplain and the former head of the National Association of Evangelicals, Dr. Kevin Mannoia, shocked Christian leaders last week when he testified in favor of a California resolution directing pastors and counselors to affirm LGBT identities and behavior. Assembly Concurrent Resolution 99, authored by Assemblyman Evan Low (D-San Jose), calls on “counselors, pastors, religious workers, educators” and institutions with “great moral influence” to stop perpetuating the idea that something is wrong with being LGBT. ACR 99 also condemns attempts to change unwanted same-sex attraction or gender confusion as “unethical,” “harmful,” and leading to high LGBT suicide rates.

“Last year’s AB 2943 was a dangerous attack on Christian leaders, organizations, and counselors, directly targeting biblical views on sexual behavior and gender identity. That’s why it was so shocking to see a supposed leader like Kevin Mannoia supporting ACR 99, the follow-up resolution which condemns people of faith,” said California Family Council President Jonathan Keller. “California Christians love our neighbors who identify as LGBTQ. Sadly, it appears Assemblyman Low and other intolerant legislators will not stop until people of faith publicly celebrate the legislature’s preferred concept of sexual orientation and gender identity. Kevin Mannoia knows his fellow believers cannot endorse Mr. Low’s viewpoint and remain faithful to Christ. Tragically, Mannoia chose to allow himself to be used as a prop in support of ACR 99. He should know better.”

In a letter submitted to legislators, Mannoia wrote, “On behalf of some Christian pastors and church leaders, I write to express various levels of support for the Resolution ACR99 dealing with Conversion Therapy and LGBTQ persons.”

His letter also expressed his commitment to “ministry in the name of Jesus Christ rooted in the Bible as God’s word,” but he didn’t explain how Christians differ with Low on issues of sexuality. During Mannoia’s testimony in favor of ACR 99, before the judiciary committee, he reiterated his relationship with Jesus Christ as “my friend and guide” and his commitment to live “under the authority of God’s word.” But again Mannoia didn’t explain how he could believe this while supporting a resolution condemning Christian efforts to help those with unwanted same-sex attraction or gender confusion.

Mannoia testimony also commended Low for his willingness to dialog with pastors, and highlighted their shared “commitment to compassionate treatment of all peoples.” But Mannoia failed to explain how he could support a resolution that blames the “disproportionately high rates of suicide, attempted suicide, depression,” among the LGBT community on “religious groups” with biblical views on LGBT issues.

After the hearing, Low wasted no time touting Mannoia’s testimony as a gesture of full support for ACR 99 on social media. Using a staged shot of Low and Mannoia on a state Capitol balcony, the Assemblyman tweeted, “@Kmannoia, Former President of the National Association of Evangelicals & Chaplain at @azusapacific, speaks in support of #ACR99, to reaffirm our values of love and dignity while also acknowledging the harmful practice of #ConversionTherapy.”

Some Christian leaders have publically reacted to Mannoia’s actions.  Author, speaker and ordained pastoral counselor Joe Dallas expressed frustration with Mannoia’s endorsement on his Facebook page. “It’s very discouraging to hear that Dr. Kevin Manoina, Chaplain of Azusa Pacific University, has testified in support of ACR 99, a California assembly resolution which essentially tells California pastors what they should or should not say about homosexuality,” Dallas wrote. “We expect Christian leaders to be about the business of saving, not caving.”

Dean Broyles, an attorney with faith-based National Center for Law and Policy, called Mannoia’s actions heresy. “This unorthodox and aberrant behavior by one of our purported evangelical “leaders” highlights the dangers of the strategy of appeasing the enemies of the gospel and freedom in Christ,” Broyles wrote. “ To shamefully join forces with the enemies of Christ, to defame all change-allowing therapy, and to surrender to the idea that people can’t change is to surrender to the satanic lie that the Gospel has no actual transformative power.  For biblically orthodox evangelicals, that is heresy.”

Last year, Assemblyman Low pulled a bill he authored outlawing “conversion therapy,”  AB 2943, after widespread complaints from Christian leaders. The bill declared “advertising, offering to engage in, or engaging in sexual orientation change efforts with an individual” as illegal under state’s consumer fraud law. Sexual orientation change efforts were defined as “any practices that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation. This includes efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”

Just because Low withdrew his bill from consideration, doesn’t mean he has softened his views against “conversion therapy,” which includes Christian efforts to help people leave their LGBT identities and behavior to find their worth, identity, and happiness through a relationship with Jesus. Low has just changed his strategy as he explained in a recent interview with the Desert Sun.

“My intent is still to stamp out conversion therapy, but rather to do it in a more deliberate fashion, enlisting the support of evangelical and faith leaders,” he said. “There are those in the LGBTQ community that say we shouldn’t compromise, but I think this is the best approach to changing hearts and minds.”

Two pastors who testified against ACR 99 last week haven’t changed their minds. Elizabeth Woning, pastor and former lesbian took issue with the resolutions accusation that helping people change does harm. “Because of my past, I seek to guide Christians into understanding, honor, and compassion for LGBT people.  Nevertheless, I take exception to the belief that religion is central to the high rates of suicide among LGBT youth. For me, and many others, faith rescued us from suicide. The experience of discovering you are different than most other people is traumatic and troubling whether you have faith or not. Hopelessness causes suicide, ” Woning said. (read hearing transcript)

Joining Woning at the hearing was Ken Williams, pastor, father of four, and former homosexual. He co-leads a ministry called Equipped to Love with Woning to help those wanting to leave LGBT identities. “And there are many people that find respite in LGBT community,” Williams told the committee.  “There are also many that have tried that and it did not bring what they were looking for. We encounter those people all the time.”

Concluding his testimony, Williams spoke directly to the ACR 99 author. “Assemblyman Low I am asking you, you may have the votes to pass this, but I don’t believe that you have the right to… tell [people] what they need to believe.”

“I totally support your right and everyone you represent to experience whatever in life you would like to. I have no intention to take that away. I’m just asking that my rights and my people group would also be respected.”

ACR 99 passed the Assembly Judiciary Committee with a vote of 6-2, with one legislator not voting. The resolution will now go before the entire State Assembly sometime this week before making its way to the Senate for consideration.

Other articles in opposition:

• Elizabeth Woning article on ACR 99 “THE [NOT SO] SUBTLE DISCRIMINATION OF ACR-99,”
• Ken Williams article on ACR 99, “Controlled by the State,”
• Pastor Joe Dallas published, “PRIDE OF OWNERSHIP,”

A coalition of professional counselors, doctors, attorneys, and faith-based non-profits, have also signed onto a letter pointing out the resolutions inaccuracies, and its threats to basic liberty.

This article was originally published at CaliforniaFamily.org.

A few weeks ago, I shared the findings of an extensive national survey conducted by the Barna Group covering religious freedom, religious monuments and displays.

They have passed along the internals of another large national poll looking at attitudes toward sexual orientation, gender identity and religious freedom.

These results are timely given the U.S. Supreme Court’s move this week to scold the Oregon Court of Appeals for imposing a $135,000 fine on Aaron and Melissa Klein, a Christian couple who owned a bakery and did not want to participate in a homosexual wedding.

The Kleins lost their life savings and were forced to shut down their business because of the conflict over their religious beliefs. They were also the victims of vandalism, threats, and public harassment.

The U.S. Supreme Court is asking the state to review their actions in light of a ruling involving a similar situation in Colorado where the nation’s highest court found that baker Jack Phillips’s 1^st Amendment rights were violated by the Colorado Equal Rights Commission.

While people’s views on homosexuality and gender are clearly in a fluid state, U.S. adults overall are against radical changes being made to accommodate LGBTQ demands and expectations.  Most adults do not want the government punishing people of faith, especially Christians, for following their beliefs, and most do not want the government to impose standards of belief or behavior simply to appease LGBTQ desires.  They want the government to remain neutral in its dealings with religion.

Here are a few of the findings from this March 2019 survey:

• The highest response to any question or statement, with 84% agreement, was “Each law must respect every citizen’s freedoms, no matter who they are.”

• Three out of four adults (77%) agreed that the government should remain neutral when it comes to religion, it should not be in the business of deciding whose faith is or is not acceptable because such decisions amount to discrimination against people of faith.

• Seven out of ten (72%) of adults agree that the government punishing individuals for living out their deeply-held religious beliefs is a form of discrimination.

• Two out of three adults (65%) disagreed that the government should have the right to ban personal, gender specific pronouns such as him, her, his, hers, male or female and to punish people using those terms.

• Sixty-four percent (64%) agreed that the vast majority of Christians and other people of faith who believe homosexuality is wrong do not hate gay and lesbian people.

• Six out of ten adults (60%) agreed that laws that punish people who hold traditional views on gender identity and sexual orientation with fines, censorship or jail are unjustly discriminatory.

• Sixty-one percent (61%) of adults agree that there are only two genders – male and female – not a range of genders

• Nearly six out of ten adults (59%) said that state governments should not have the legal authority to force Christian-owned businesses to close if the business chooses to not serve a same-sex wedding or event.

• Roughly the same portion (58%) agreed that there is no reason to single out and punish adoption providers who believe that the best home for a child includes a father and a mother.

• Surprisingly, only half (51%) say that it is not appropriate for a biological male who now identifies as a female to compete in women’s sporting events.

People seem the most agitated by the possibility of the government cracking down on people simply because they hold to traditional views on sexuality, or because they use traditional language to communicate about homosexual issues and gender.

The pollsters note that a large share of people hold opinions on matters that they do not feel strongly about, so under pressure, it is possible that their views could be changed to a different position.  What was once not even an issue for public discussion has become a morass of feelings, facts, and beliefs that many do not know how to resolve.

This article was originally published at AFA of Indiana.

Written by Michael Foust

The U.S. Supreme Court handed religious liberty advocates a victory Monday when it vacated a lower court’s opinion that had ordered a Christian baker to design a cake for a same-sex wedding.

At issue was a ruling by the Oregon Court of Appeals that upheld a state decision forcing Aaron and Melissa Klein to pay a $135,000 penalty after they refused to design a cake celebrating a wedding for a lesbian couple. The Kleins eventually closed their business, known as “Sweet Cakes by Melissa.”

The U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday issued a one-paragraph order vacating the judgment and sending it back down to the Oregon Court of Appeals.

“The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the Court of Appeals of Oregon for further consideration in light of Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Comm’n,” the unsigned order read.

Masterpiece was a 2018 ruling in which the Supreme Court sided with a Colorado baker who refused to design a wedding cake for a gay couple. Former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy ruled the Colorado Civil Rights Commission demonstrated hostility toward religion when it ordered bakery owner Jack Phillips to design the cake.

The Kleins are represented by First Liberty Institute.

“This is a victory for Aaron and Melissa Klein and for religious liberty for all Americans,” said Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of First Liberty. “The Constitution protects speech, popular or not, from condemnation by the government. The message from the Court is clear, government hostility toward religious Americans will not be tolerated.”

First Liberty had hoped the Supreme Court would hear oral arguments and expand on its Masterpiece decision. The high court, though, punted on that decision.

First Liberty filed suit after the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) ruled the Kleins had violated a law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. The BOLI also handed down a $135,000 penalty. The Oregon Court of Appeals ruled against the Kleins, and the Oregon Supreme Court declined to take the case.

“The State of Oregon drove Melissa and Aaron Klein out of the custom-cake business and hit them with a $135,000 penalty, because the Kleins could not in good conscience employ their artistic talents to express a message celebrating a same-sex wedding ritual,” First Liberty’s petition to the U.S. Supreme Court read.

The Kleins “opened and operated” their baker as an expression of their Christian faith,” the petition said. Further, they believe “God instituted marriage as the union of one man and one woman.”

They served all customers “regardless of sexual orientation.” They even had sold a cake to one of the lesbian complainants in the case for her mother’s marriage to a man. But they could not, the petition said, create a cake celebrating a same-sex wedding.

“The Kleins created these cakes, in part, because they wanted to celebrate weddings between one man and one woman,” the petition said. “The Kleins do not believe that other types of interpersonal unions are marriages, and they believe it is sinful to celebrate them as such.”

The state’s order violated the First Amendment, the First Liberty petition argued.

“Unless this Court enforces the First Amendment,” the petition said, “similar cases will continue to arise, as creative entrepreneurs are compelled, under the guise of public accommodations statutes, to participate in same-sex marriage rituals that violate their sincerely held religious beliefs, or – as the Kleins did – to sacrifice their livelihood.”

The Thomas More Society, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Cato Institute were among the groups that asked the Supreme Court to side with the Kleins. The attorneys general for 11 states also issued a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the Kleins. Those states were Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia.

This article originally posted on ChristianHeadlines.com

Written by Paul G. Kengor

One of the major U.S. Supreme Court decisions we’ll soon hear about is the Bladensburg cross case. This is the case in which secularists are demanding the removal of a large cross that memorializes veterans in the town of Bladensburg, Maryland because the cross resides on public property.

It’s crucial to realize that the cross wasn’t erected yesterday. The “Peace Cross” was constructed in 1925 in honor of 49 fallen veterans of World War I. It was designed by the Gold Star mothers and erected by the local post of the American Legion.

The case is known as The American Legion v. The American Humanist Association. The “humanists” argue that the memorial is unconstitutional because it’s fashioned in the shape of a cross on government property, and thus stands in violation of “separation of church and state”—a phrase, of course, not found anywhere in the U.S. Constitution. That language was expressed by Thomas Jefferson in his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists, and has been badly abused and misinterpreted ever since.

The fact that the cross is a cross is what makes it unacceptable. (Replace it with a statue of Barney the purple dinosaur and the humanists would withdraw their objections.) Secularists appeal to the First Amendment of the Constitution, which says, in part, that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Obviously, allowing the old cross to continue to stand would not create a congressional “establishment of religion.” Anyone who thinks allowing this cross to remain means that the feds are conspiring to implement a national theocracy needs to have his head examined. As they invoke that select handful of words from the First Amendment, the secularists misleadingly do what they always do, namely—avoid the remainder of what the First Amendment says about freedom of religion: the government “shall not prohibit the free exercise thereof.” The American Legion and Gold Star mothers of Bladensburg exercised their freedom of religion in 1925 to honor their fallen brothers and sons. They naturally commemorated them with the cross that represents their faith.

The secularists, however, refuse to view it that way. And that’s quite unfortunate. They would never view themselves and their actions as hostile, but, in reality, that’s what they are. This is hostility toward religion. They likewise would never view themselves and their actions as intolerant, but, in reality, that’s likewise what they are. This is yet another remarkable example of their intolerance. How can people who preach diversity be so blatantly intolerant of the beliefs of others?

For a sense of the lack of respect, consider one of the worst affronts in the case:

A federal appeals court in October 2017 had ruled the cross unconstitutional, asserting that it “excessively entangles” the government with religion. That verdict was rendered in a 2-1 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, which argued that the Peace Cross “aggrandizes the Latin cross” and thereby constitutes a U.S. government endorsement of Christianity. So said a 33-page opinion written by Judge Stephanie Thacker and joined by Judge James A. Wynn Jr.

Thacker’s overall opinion demonstrated a troubling lack of historical-theological awareness. Worst of all was the insensitivity displayed during oral arguments. Thacker, an Obama appointee approved by the U.S. Senate in 2012 by a vote of 91-3, offered a truly novel solution. During oral arguments, Thacker asked the attorney defending the memorial: “What about … my suggestion of chopping the arms off?”

Yes, the judge offered a compromise: slice off the horizontal arms. You heard that right: slice off the arms from the cross of Christ.

Can you imagine? Can you picture it? Grab a photo of the memorial and do your own airbrush. How does it look?

For the record, the Peace Cross, mercifully, does not have a corpus. Thus, the demolition crew wouldn’t be sawing off the arms of Jesus. Nonetheless, imagine the precedent proposed. Presumably, using the Thacker Solution, similar large memorial crosses on government property could all be targeted for arm-removal.

In fact, that prompts this thought: in the interest of fairness and equality, why stop with crosses? Shouldn’t we thus also target the horizontal parts of the Star of David—another religious symbol—if we find them as similarly large memorials on government property? Should they be hunted down? Should they be permitted to remain only if we sawed off the horizontal parts? Of course, the star would no longer be a star, but apparently dismembering it would be a triumph in this greater good of not “entangling” government with religion.

Do we go down this road?

I pose a serious question to Judge Thacker and the secularists: Do you not see how your objections to the cross of Christ might be offensive? In the name of not offending, you’re offending. In the name of inclusion, you’re excluding. In the name of tolerance, you’re engaging in intolerance.

It isn’t like this cross was planted yesterday or is being scheduled for construction in 2020. It has been there for nearly a hundred years. It’s as much historical as spiritual. Can’t you leave it alone at least for that reason? This isn’t a bronzed statue of a Confederate general who whipped slaves on a plantation. This is a testimony to the faith of the men who died for their country in World War I—for peace. Do you not see the aggression in your actions? Why go on the offensive with bulldozers? Leave it alone.

If this was a giant Star of David on public land, I’d be the first to stand with a group of rabbis demanding that secularists back off and respect a century-old memorial. I will fight for the rights of every Christian and Jew and cross and Star of David. The same isn’t true for secular liberals. They pick and choose. They’re the first to harass, fine, sue, shut down, and toss in jail the Christian baker, florist, or marriage clerk. I will defend the liberty of a Muslim baker in Dearborn as well as a Christian baker in Colorado. I will defend the right of an Orthodox Jewish caterer to decline a wedding on the Sabbath just as I’ll defend the right of a Christian florist in Washington state to decline a same-sex wedding ceremony that violates the teachings of her faith and her freedom of conscience.

Far too many secular liberals, however, will not. To this day, Jack Phillips, the Christian baker in Colorado, is hounded with new legal challenges. Militant secularists will not back off from badgering him.

And yet, a colleague of mine who’s an attorney on religious-liberty cases tells me he’s unaware of a single case in which a same-sex couple has sued a Muslim baker for declining a same-sex wedding ceremony. Progressives will not pursue Muslims, even as Muslim bakers likewise openly refuse homosexual couples. They leave them alone. It’s a double standard they impose against Christians.

If they insist there’s no double standard, then let’s see it. Prove otherwise by having the decency to leave the Bladensburg memorial cross alone.

A version of this article first appeared at The American Spectator.

On May 4, Australian rugby star Israel Folau, who was expected to play at the World Cup this fall, will come before a three-member panel of Rugby Australia following his firing by the organization for allegedly committing “a high-level breach of the Professional Players’ Code of Conduct.” His high-level offense is this Instagram post:

Those that are living in Sin will end up in Hell unless you repent. Jesus Christ loves you and is giving you time to turn away from your sin and come to him.
_______________

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
Galatians 5:19-21 KJV

Accompanying his Instagram post is the image seen here on the right.

Does anyone think his “high-level breach” had anything to do with saying that unrepentant drunks, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists, and idolaters will go to hell? Yeah, me neither.

Folau’s unspeakable sin is including homosexuals in a biblically-derived list of sinners whom God says will not see his kingdom. No matter that Folau’s (and St. Paul’s) hope is to save people from eternal damnation. In the eyes of the fallen world, Folau (and I guess St. Paul) is a hater.

Folau, whose contract doesn’t expire until 2022, stands to lose his salary of well over one million dollars per year. Despite the huge financial and personal costs, the Daily Mail reports he has no regrets:

When asked if the fallout has made him reconsider his comments, Folau, a devout Christian, replied: ‘Absolutely not. I’ll stand on what the Bible says.… First and foremost, I live for God now. Whatever He wants me to do, I believe His plans for me are better than whatever I can think. If that’s not to continue on playing, so be it. In saying that, obviously I love playing [rugby] and if it goes down that path, I’ll definitely miss it. But my faith in Jesus Christ is what comes first.’

Now that statement took courage, unlike the statements of athletes who announce their homoerotic attraction, which take no courage at all.

Another rugby player, Michael Leitch, posted a video on social media calling Folau a “bully,” but is he?

As I wrote last year, Random House Dictionary defines a bully as “a blustering, quarrelsome, overbearing person who habitually badgers and intimidates smaller or weaker people.” American Heritage Dictionary defines it as “a person who is habitually cruel, esp. to smaller or weaker people.” Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “a tyrannical coward who makes himself a terror to the weak.” Oxford American Dictionary defines it as “a person who uses strength or power to coerce others by fear.” The spanking new Leftist redefinition of “bully” omits all references to smaller or weaker people, coercion, and intimidation.

Bullies are those who possess cultural power and wield it against those with little or no cultural power. In Western societies like Australia and America, it is “progressives” who control government schools, academia, the arts, professional medical and mental health organizations, mainstream media, social media, and the increasingly expansive, invasive world of corporate mega-monopolies.

When “progressives” call theologically orthodox Christians ignorant, hate-filled bigots for their belief that homosexual acts are immoral, they are bullies. When a homosexual man sues an elderly florist for declining to provide custom-made floral arrangements for his anti-wedding ceremony, he’s a bully. When two lesbians force a Christian couple with five young children to choose between violating their religious beliefs or losing their livelihood, they’re bullies.

If Scripture and the historical witness of the church are true, every affirmation of homosexual desire, homosexual acts, or homosexual relationships by non-Christians, apostate Christians, or Christian heretics (also known as wolves in sheep’s clothing) constitutes a pernicious act by virtue of its road-to-hell-paving implications.

If Scripture is true, these daily affirmations grievously harm people, so should all those who proclaim that lies are truth and wickedness is righteousness lose their jobs, be fined, or be jailed?

As should be clear, the offensiveness of a claim depends centrally on whether it is true—not on whether others like to hear it. It should also be clear that neither the rugby governing board, nor the Human Rights Campaign, nor any wolf in sheep’s clothing has any proof that Scripture is false or that their moral claims are true.

And by now it should also be clear to Christians exactly where sexual revolutionaries in Western nations are leading—or pushing—us. Before long anyone who expresses conservative beliefs on sexuality will be unable to work. Anyone who does the following will be fired and fined or jailed:

• Publicly quotes Scripture passages about homosexuality or cross-dressing

• Publicly expresses the view that homosexual acts or masquerading as the opposite sex is immoral

• Uses grammatically correct pronouns rather than the “preferred” pronouns of opposite-sex passers

• Publicly expresses criticism of the legal recognition of intrinsically non-marital relationships as marriage

• Refuses to hire cross-dressing men or women

• Publicly criticizes the invasion of women’s sports by biological males

• Publicly states the reality that “transwomen” are men and “transmen” are women

“Progressives” in America issue self-serving rationalizations for their dangerous efforts to eradicate First Amendment protections for theologically orthodox Christians, asserting that speaking freely doesn’t guarantee absence of consequences. But in a world controlled by mega-monopolies, what if those consequences include an inability to earn a living? What kind of protection does the First Amendment provide for speech or religious free exercise (as distinct from freedom to worship only) if Americans who exercise those rights can’t earn a living?

In his second letter to Timothy, Paul wrote,

“In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”

And we learn this in Mark:

“Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions….”

Since everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, and since no one who follows Jesus will fail to receive persecution in this age, what might it signify that so many Christians in Western societies never experience persecution?

Christians should ask themselves now if they’re willing to take up their crosses daily to follow Christ.

They should ask themselves if—for Christ—they’re willing to be hated by the world just as Christ—for us—was willing to hated by the world.

And they should prepare themselves for the criminalization of Christianity, because it rapidly approaches.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Criminal-Christians-3.mp3

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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Written by Peter Heck

As I read the enraged responses from professing Christians at the news that Vice President Mike Pence would be the commencement speaker for Taylor University (a leading private, Christian institution located in tiny Upland, Indiana) I realized something.

Keep in mind that Pence has been one of the most outspoken Christian public servants in recent decades.  He makes no effort to hide his faith, acknowledging himself as, “A Christian, a conservative, and a Republican…in that order.”  Therefore, it is completely logical that a Christian institution would invite him to speak, in addition to the fact that he was a long-time Congressman from the Hoosier state, as well as its Governor, before ascending to the second highest office in the land.

The odds of students at Taylor University getting the opportunity to have a sitting U.S. Vice President deliver their commencement speech are minuscule at best.  To say this was a coup for University President Lowell Haines and the rest of his administration would be a gross understatement.  Haines announced the news by posting:

“Mr. Pence has been a good friend to the University over many years, and is a Christian brother whose life and values have exemplified what we strive to instill in our graduates.”

And that, the fact that a professing Christian, native Hoosier, and sitting Vice President would give the inaugural address at their school gave a number of alumni and current students the shakes.  No, seriously:

“I have never been made to feel so physically ill by an email before. Taylor University, you should be ashamed of yourselves,” Claire Hadley, who graduated from Taylor in 2015, began in a long Facebook post. “I am physically shaking. The fact that the school who claims to love and support me, and each of it’s [sic] students and alum, would invite such a vile individual to speak on the most important day of the year??”

“The fact that Taylor would invite Pence as a speaker honestly kills me a little bit,” Austin Linder wrote on the petition. “I can’t imagine what it must feel like for lgbt students to have to see this man’s harmful bulls**t be honored on the Taylor stage. Really disgusting stuff, Taylor. Really ashamed to be an alum right now.”

Claire and Austin weren’t alone.  A few thousand signed a Change.org petition calling on the university to rescind its invitation.  And that’s when it dawned on me – when the criminalization of Christianity comes to this land (and it is coming), it will be championed by and met with the fanfare of many professing Christians.

The number of supposedly Christian individuals whose moral compasses are calibrated to the spirit of the age rather than the authority of Scripture has become astounding.  Leaning on their own understanding they choose the attributes of a god they want to worship, one who seems “worthy” of their worship, and they bow to it.  The God of Scripture is too narrow-minded.

When another Christian actually clings to the words of Scripture, not only are they reviled by the world, but a sense of guilt triggered by conviction prompts the culturally compromised Christians to react with bitterness, condemnation, and (ironically) a judgmental contempt.  I say ironically given that being judgmental is the go-to condemnation heaped upon Bible-believers by this crowd. All this leads to a surreal spectacle of Christians attacking other Christians as terror-inducing, vile, and stomach-churning.  And that’s just at Taylor University; Chick-fil-A could tell you a bit about this as well.

A couple years ago when my local city council was preparing to enact a non-discrimination law for sexual orientation and gender identity, several Christians in the community spoke out against the unintended consequences – everything from opening up girl bathroom facilities to the grown men, to the potential violation of the conscience rights of Christian florists, bakers, and photographers.

When I stood for my public comment, I asked the council a simple question.  “Your ordinance exempts ministers from this non-discrimination policy, ostensibly meaning that if a minister doesn’t want to participate in a gay wedding, he doesn’t have to.  I’m curious as to why you’ve done that?  What makes a Christian minister’s right to conscience any less offensive, bigoted, or discriminatory than a Christian baker’s?”

While no councilman could or would answer my question, it sparked a conversation in which a culturally compromising Christian journalist in the town admitted on Twitter that he thinks ministers should have to perform such weddings.  And if they don’t?  “Government fines, jail, and/or loss of tax-exempt status for the church.”

That’s why I often tell fellow Christians that when the day comes that the government is telling them how they can and can’t exercise their faith, the kind of beliefs that are acceptable and the kinds that aren’t, and the type of public expression that will be allowed and the type that won’t, don’t be surprised when it comes accompanied by the raucous cheers of many wearing the name of Jesus.

This article was originally published at PeterHeck.com

UPDATE: The sponsor of HB 3023 has “tabled” this bill.
This proposal is dead for the session.

America was birthed as adventurous. Persecuted people braved an Atlantic crossing to establish new lives with new opportunities and freedoms in a wild and unknown land. Initially, many had the blessing of England and the Crown, and were seen as emissaries founding new colonies for the glory of England and The Gospel of Jesus Christ.

For the Pilgrims and the Puritans, and some other Protestant families, this new land was a merciful opportunity to live and worship away from the ever-increasing tyranny of King George III.

Government schools rarely mention the devout beginnings of our nation. Consider a distributed tract published by the Virginia Company (circa 1606) titled, “True and Sincere Declaration of the Purposes and Ends of the Plantation” which stated their purpose:

First to preach and baptize into Christian religion and by the propagation the Gospel, to recover out of the arms of the devil a number of poor and miserable souls wrapped up unto death in almost invincible ignorance; to endeavor the fulfilling and accomplishments of the number of the elect which shall be gathered from out of all corners of the earth; and add to our mite the treasury of heaven.

Even the new King James applauded and encouraged the spiritual mission in 1606:

We greatly commend and graciously accept their desires for the furtherance of so noble a work, which may, by the providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the glory of His Divine Majesty, in propagating of Christian religion to such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God and may in time bring the infidels and savages living in those parts to human civility and a settled, quiet government.

However, by 1775, George III, a young and poorly advised monarch, “turned the screws against the Americans. To cut off the colonists’ ability to resist at the source, George III decreed a ban on export of arms and ammunition to America, with orders to his Royal governors to prohibit the import thereof in the colonies. At the same time, General Gage instituted general searches and seizures for arms and gunpowder…” [The Founders’ Second Amendment]

On April 19, 1775, the Shot Heard Round the World propelled America into a revolution. As noted in a 2018 article, Stephen P. Halbrook (foremost authority on the Second Amendment in America) writes in his excellent (and indispensable) book, The Founders’ Second Amendment: Origins of the right to Bear Arms:

The militiamen of Lexington and Concord consisted of all able-bodied males aged 16 through 60, from its gentlemen and yeomen to its laborers and apprentices, excluding the town’s Harvard students and a dozen African American slaves. All provided their own arms except for a few poor men who had to borrow them.

Women and children assisted the militiamen in preparing for the conflict. On the eve of the clash, Militia Colonel James Barrett’s 15-year-old granddaughter Meliscent taught the other young women of the town how to assemble cartridges.

. . .

The patriots made good many shots at various distances. The Redcoats fired more rounds per hit than did the Americans. Some 50 Americans were killed, 39 wounded, and 5 missing, for a total of 94 casualties. According to Gage, the Redcoats suffered 65 killed, 157 wounded, and 27 missing, for a total of 272 casualties.

The patriots exhibited excellent marksmanship for shooting flintlocks in anger, many for the first time in their lives.

Again, knowing this history equips us with the context of our Second Amendment.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The Second Amendment bolstered the First Amendment which bestowed the Free Exercise clause.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

As the U.S. Constitution was being debated and written, there were those who thought it inconceivable that future leaders and government bodies would ever seek to disarm the populace. After all, a high price — the blood of patriots — had secured America’s independence from the tyranny of King George, and they all well-remembered the indispensable part firearms played in the costly victory.

According to some historians, an armed citizenry also precluded Japan attacking the U.S. mainland following the Pearl Harbor attack. The well-known, though debated, quote by Japanese Admiral Yamamoto, “…an American behind every blade of grass with a rifle.”

Thus, America has a storied tradition (Roe v. Wade notwithstanding), of protecting life. Our Founders wrote our Constitution from a biblical worldview which condemned murder — the killing of innocents — but supported killing as an act of protecting innocents.

Thou shalt not kill [murder innocents]. [Exodus 20:13]

Today the socialist Left pushes daily to eradicate our national history of protecting life AND of an armed citizenry warding off governmental tyranny.

An unarmed populace makes a controllable populace, and control is the end game.

Illinois State Representative Yehiel “Mark” Kalish (D-Skokie) has introduced House Bill 3023, which would prohibit good citizens who hold valid concealed carry permits from exercising their 2nd Amendment civil right at their church or other place of worship.

Illinoisan patriots/Christians must react and react strongly. Note — there are already far too many locations in Illinois where citizens are not able to exercise their concealed carry rights (incomplete list):

• a public or private elementary or secondary school
• a preschool or child care facility
• a circuit court, appellate court, or the Supreme Court, or any building or portion of a building under the control of the Supreme Court
• a public or private hospital or hospital affiliate, mental health facility, or nursing home
• any bus, train, or form of transportation paid for in whole or in part with public funds
• any public playground
• any public park, athletic area, or athletic facility

Illinois leftists, with anti-conceal carry legislation, create target-rich environments for thugs, terrorists, and other ne’er-do-wells. Under HB 3023, churches and churchgoers become soft targets.

HB 3023 countermands our U.S. Constitution — specifically our Second Amendment rights — as well as our God-given right and instruction to protect innocent life.

And of course, HB 3023, in addition to being absolutely dangerous, enables the Left to more fully control conservatives and Christians in every aspect of their faith and lives.

Citizens of Illinois must NOT be silent! We must contact our representatives and demand our public servants reject this horrible bill and repel any future attempt to disarm lawful citizens!

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state representative to ask him/her to reject HB 3023. Ask them not to strip law abiding citizens of their right to protect themselves, their families and their church family.

You may want to remind your state representative that the 2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the 22nd section of Article 1 of the Illinois Constitution both guarantee the civil right of law abiding citizens to “keep and bear arms.”

America’s history remembered includes the heroic actions of ordinary citizens standing up to tyranny. Those Americans equipped themselves first with prayer, then with firearms.

We would do well to remember the lessons learned, of victories that secured the liberty we enjoy today to live and worship freely.

Remain vigilant. Remain prayerful. And speak up against any and all unconstitutional and ungodly measures!

IFI Worldview Conference!

On Saturday, March 16, 2019, the Illinois Family Institute will be hosting our annual Worldview Conference. This coming year, we will focus on the “transgender” revolution. We already have commitments from Dr. Michelle Cretella, President of the American College of Pediatricians; Walt Heyer, former “transgender” and contributor to Public Discourse; Denise Schick, Founder and Director of Help 4 Families, and daughter of a man who “identified” as a woman; and Doug Wilson, who is a Senior Fellow of Theology at New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho, and pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho .

The Transgender Ideology:
What Is It? Where Will It Lead? What is the Church’s Role?
Click here for more information.

The intellectually incoherent U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) sought to apply an unconstitutional religious test for office today when interrogating nominee to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Neomi Rao. Perhaps hoping everyone listening were idiots, he first attempted an indirect tactic by asking her this irrelevant question, the answer to which is none of his business: “Are gay relationships in your opinion immoral?”

Word to the seriously unwoke Booker: Americans—including judicial nominees and judges—are entitled to think sexual activity between persons of the same sex is immoral.

When Ms. Rao questioned the relevance of his inquiry, the smug Booker responded,

I think it’s relevant to your opinion. Do you think African American relationships are immoral? Do you think gay relationships are immoral?

Seriously, he actually said Rao’s opinion on the morality of homosexual relationships is relevant to her opinion on the morality of homosexual relationships.

But his reasoning—if it can be called that—is worse than circular. His questions imply an analogy between race and homosexuality when there are literally no points of correspondence between the two conditions. Does he understand what an analogy is and what it requires?

Here’s a primer regarding this particular and particularly unsound analogy for the dull-witted “progressives” among us: Race—as understood in such analogies—is a 100% heritable, non-behavioral condition, immutable in all cases, and objective. In contrast, homosexuality is a non-heritable, and in some—perhaps many–cases mutable condition that is constituted by subjective feelings and volitional behaviors that are legitimate objects of moral assessment.

A far better analogue for homosexuality would be polyamory, so, if Booker wants to continue his  moralistic and judgmental line of questioning on irrelevant matters with judicial nominees, he should ask them if they think polyamorous relationships are immoral, to which nominees should respond, “What possible relevance are my beliefs on the morality of particular types of sexual unions?”

Then Booker transmogrified from arbiter of morality to constitutional ignoramus by asking Rao,

Do you believe [“gay” relationships] are a sin?

Whoa, hold up there, cowboy.

The Constitution expressly prohibits religious tests for office, so what the heck was he doing asking Rao for her theological position on homosexual relationships?

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) took Booker to task for his egregious line of questioning:

The Senate Judiciary Committee should not be… an avenue for persecution.

We’ve seen a growing pattern among Senate Democrats of hostility to religious faith…. I was deeply troubled a few minutes ago to hear questioning of a nominee, asking personal views on what is sinful.

In my view that has no business in this committee. Article Six of the Constitution says there should be no religious test for any public office. We have also seen Senate Democrats attack what they have characterized as religious dogma, we’ve seen Senate Democrats attack nominees for their own personal views on salvation.

I don’t believe this is a theological court of inquisition. I think the proper avenue of investigation is a nominee’s record. So let’s look at your record, which is what this committee should be looking at, not our own personal religious views, or your religious views, whatever they may be.

Presidential-hopeful Booker nervously responded to Cruz’s remarks, defending himself with this patently absurd claim:

I would defend—die for—to protect the ideals of religious freedom in our country. And I was in no way trying to attack the nominee’s religious freedom. I was simply saying that discrimination under any standpoints, whether it’s religion, someone’s race, someone’s sexual orientation, should not be tolerated….[R]eligion was used as a ruse to discriminate against African Americans.

For someone who wasn’t trying to attack the nominee’s religious freedom, he did a pretty darn good job of doing just that by framing his question in a way that implied her unfitness to serve on the court. The hubris of Booker’s attempt to reframe his accusatory question about Rao’s moral and theological beliefs is mind-boggling. He would no more die for the right of theologically orthodox Christians to freely exercise their religion than CNN would fact-check anti-Trump news stories.

As Cruz alluded to, Booker’s not alone among U.S. Senate Democrats who engage in open religious discrimination. U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Diane Feinstein (D-CA), Bernie Sanders (D-VT) Kamala Harris (D-CA), and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) have all revealed their brazen religious bigotry and attempted to apply a religious test for public office during U.S. Senate hearings over the past two years.

During the campaign, someone should ask armchair theologian Booker if he thinks theologically orthodox views of homosexuality are immoral and sinful.

This isn’t Booker’s first religious-test rodeo. Remember the Booker inquisition of Mike Pompeo in which Booker asked Pompeo if he thinks “it’s appropriate for two gay people to marry,” and asked, “Is being gay a perversion,” and asked, “Do you believe gay sex is a perversion? Yes or no.”

Someone should also ask Booker what he thinks should happen in cases where the rights of those whose Christian, Orthodox Jewish, or Muslim beliefs are central to their identity come into conflict with the purported rights of those whose homoerotic desires are central to their identity.

Lesbian Chai Feldblum, until recently a commissioner on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission whose reappointment was thankfully blocked by U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT),  said this about such conflicts long before the Obergefelle decision legalized same-sex faux-marriage:

[L]et us postulate that the entire country is governed – as a matter of federal statutory and constitutional law – on the basis of full equality for LGBT people….

Assume for the moment that these beliefs ultimately translate into the passage of laws that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation… [G]ranting this justified liberty and equality to gay people will likely put a burden on… religious people….

Let me be very clear…in almost all the situations…I believe the burden on religious people that will be caused by granting gay people full equality will be justified….

That is because I believe granting liberty to gay people advances a compelling government interest, that such an interest cannot be adequately advanced if “pockets of resistance” to a societal statement of equality are permitted to flourish, and hence that a law that permits no individual exceptions based on religious beliefs will be the least restrictive means of achieving the goal of liberty for gay people….

In blocking Feldblum’s reappointment Lee, said, “Don’t think for a second that you, your family, and your neighbors will be left alone if Feldblum gets her way.” The same can be said about Booker.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Booker-4.mp3

Christian Life in Exile
On February 22^nd, IFI is hosting a special forum with Dr. Erwin Lutzer as he teaches from his latest book, “The Church in Babylon,” answering the question, “How do we live faithfully in a culture that perceives our light as darkness?” This event is free and open to the public, and will be held at Jubilee Church in Medinah, Illinois.

Click HERE for more info…

Written by Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon 

In a blog post titled “‘Fairness For All’: Smart Politics, Or A Sellout?” (Dec. 13), Rod Dreher, senior editor at The American Conservative,  reports a defense of the recent decision by the boards of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) and the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) to support “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” “federal antidiscrimination law in exchange for religious liberty guarantees written into the same law.” The defense was made by “a prominent conservative Evangelical political strategist who works at both the national and state levels” and whom Dreher calls “Smith.” Rod himself professes to be unsure about the whole subject; an uncertainty that appears to be fueled by his usual belief that voting Republican changes nothing.

The substance of the defense is essentially born of naïve utilitarianism, overlaid with a veneer of high rhetoric about standing up for the “rights” of LGBTQ persons. In effect: We are losing the battle over human sexuality in the culture so, while we still can, let’s cut a deal with proponents of all things “gay” and “transgender” that gives us something in return. They will (allegedly) recognize our good will and then become favorably disposed to protect our “religious liberties” in both the short- and long-term.

The problem with the argument is that it amounts to a policy of appeasement with sexual extremists who advocate (from our perspective) a grossly immoral sexual policy and have never exhibited a “we’ll stop here approach” before. It is an appeasement that requires us to sacrifice our basic principles to get some statutory assurance that can easily be retracted by legislative vote after a full-court indoctrination surge, predicated on the new law, overwhelms remaining resistance. In addition, it is an appeasement that provides only the narrowest of exemptions for religious institutions while throwing under the bus the vast majority of Christians who work and live outside those institutions.

It requires us to sign our own persecution warrant by conceding on a federal level that homosexual practice, “gay marriage,” and sexual mutilation surgery are (as Houghton College President Shirley Mullen, who sits on the boards of both evangelical organizations argued in a position paper) “basic human rights.” Elevating these high acts of sexual immorality to the status of “human rights” in turn slanders reasoned moral arguments against such acts as virulent prejudice akin to racist views.

It gives jurists and legislators the ammunition they need to dismiss any remaining Evangelical resistance to a program of coerced indoctrination and enforcement as inconsistent residual bigotry rather than an instance of rational moral conviction. As Lydia McGrew has pointed out,

[T]his could sabotage any attempt to get an even clearer baker/florist, etc., religious liberty ruling from the Supreme Court in a subsequent case…. A *federal* law enshrining “public accommodations’ non-discrimination rules for sexual orientation could be just what would influence someone like Kavanaugh and possibly others to reverse course rather than going more clearly in the direction of the Masterpiece [Cake] ruling.

Once Evangelical “elites” support special “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” legislation they have conceded (whether they know it or not) that a man having sex with another man and a man subjecting himself to voluntary castration and adopting a female persona are honorable life decisions deserving full government promotion and support.

When the Czechs were compelled to give up the Sudetenland in the Munich Agreement of 1938 in exchange for a contractual assurance of German respect for their sovereignty, they gave up the most defensible and defended part of the country, relying solely on the “good will” of someone who had shown absolutely no previous interest in respecting territorial boundaries. LGBTQ advocates won’t be rounding us up in concentration camps to be gassed, to be sure. Yet they will continue to press for the elimination of every last vestige of “homophobia” and “transphobia” in society by every and any legislative and judicial means. By their own rhetoric they will still regard as hateful ignorant bigots on the level of the Klu Klux Klan, all the more given new federal “anti-discrimination” legislation from which we now seek immoral exemption.

Evangelicals who think otherwise are foolish in the extreme, giving our enemies the club with which to beat us and then taking them at their word that (for the moment) they won’t beat us with it. Then why give them the club in the first place?

According to Smith, “pluralism is about accommodating deep difference” and that requires Evangelicals to “accommodate sexual minorities” and to acknowledge the latter’s “rights.” It is evident already in Smith’s own language that he has given up the store. He has appropriated language of “minorities” and “rights” previously associated with the cause for African American civil rights and applied it to the “LGBTQ” agenda. By definition, then, any resistance to that agenda is “heterosexist” and “cis-sexist.”

Race is about an intrinsically benign, non-behavioral, and immutable facet of human existence. Don’t confuse rhetoric rightly used to support the cause of racial justice with rhetoric that promotes desires (however innate) to do things at fundamental odds with one’s biological design. Contrary to what Smith claims, it is not part of the “common good” to provide special rights for such behavior that will invariably lead to severe state indoctrination and attenuation of both freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion (whatever exemptions we are briefly granted in the law by LGBTQ powers for our detestable prejudices). Smith says that “gay people have a right to be wrong.” They already have that right. What they want is the right to compel others to do things that violate conscience.

Pluralism has its limits. Would Smith apply the same argument to Evangelical hostility against polyamory and adult-consensual incest (these too involve “sexual minorities” and questions about “rights”)? In a pluralist society must we eventually accommodate these “deep differences” too once there is a societal push for such acceptance? How could he possibly argue otherwise given the fact that moral logic predicates opposition to such behavior on a male-female prerequisite for sexual relations and the integrity of a biologically based sexuality, an opposition now surrendered in the public sphere?

Homosexual practice and transgenderism are not “run of the mill” sexual offenses. They are extreme sexual offenses that attack the very foundation of all sexual ethics. The CCCU and NAE want us to promote legislation that honors and protects such behavior and provides the legal reasoning for coercing acceptance in the whole population.

Smith even admits that LGBT activists believe that

Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 dealt a powerful blow to their hopes…. Now they have Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, and Justice Ginsburg aged and frail. LGBT strategists believe that the likelihood of litigating their way to preferred policy outcomes is low under this Court.

Then Smith argues that, despite this perspective, our cause is hopeless because Trump and a Republican-led Congress haven’t done everything in two years. He completely ignores the fact that we haven’t lost federal ground in the sexuality wars and are on the road to strengthening materially our position vis-à-vis the Court without having to surrender our moral convictions in the public sector.

Smith assures us,

I don’t think they’re doing it as a bad-faith stalling tactic.

How ridiculous. Every political example points in the direction that LGBTQ activists will continue their inexorable pursuit of stamping out homophobic and transphobic prejudice (so-called) by all means necessary. These Evangelical appeasers have the “innocent as doves” demeanor down but not the “wise as serpents” part. California moved from outlawing sexual orientation “change therapy” on the part of licensed clinicians for minors to five or six years later making a concerted effort to outlaw it for adults on the part of pastors where an exchange of funds is involved. LGBTQ politicians will push their agenda to the bitter end.

Once we abandon the moral conviction that homosexual and transgender immorality are not “human rights” requiring state promotion, we have no basis for opposing our further persecution. Bigots (in the thinking of LGBTQ activists) are not entitled to exemptions in the long run for a bigotry that harasses “sexual minorities” and induces suicide attempts. LGBTQ activists won’t think us to be any less bigoted because of our surrender. They will simply view us as conviction-less and unprincipled bigots who deserve what is coming to them.

Most galling of all is that Smith even cites the Golden Rule to justify his position:

In Smith’s view, in a pluralistic society like America 2018, ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ is a good rule for religious liberty advocates and gay rights supporters alike.

Jesus didn’t formulate the Golden Rule to provide special legal protections for, and promotion of, immoral behavior. He formulated it to encourage us to act in the best interest of others rather than to engage in vengeful behavior as a response to wrongs committed against one’s self. Since no true Evangelical can possibly believe that self-dishonoring homosexual behavior and attempted erasure of one’s biological sex are positive goods in the best interests of the practitioners, no Evangelical can support the kind of legislation that the CCCU and NAE are now endorsing.

With this kind of reasoning on the part of Smith, it is little wonder that he wants to remain anonymous.

Robert A. J. Gagnon is Professor of New Testament Theology at Houston Baptist University. He has a B.A. degree from Dartmouth College, an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School, and a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. His main fields of interest are Pauline theology and sexual issues in the Bible. He is a member both of the Society of Biblical Literature and of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas [Society of New Testament Studies]. He is the author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001; 520 pgs.); co-author (with Dan O. Via) of Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003; 125 pgs.); and, as a service to the church, provides a large amount of free material on his website dealing with Scripture and homosexuality.

In stunning semi-secretive decisions motivated by fear of religious persecution, the boards of two major evangelical organizations, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), have voted to pass motions that represent an unacceptable compromise with homosexuals and the science-denying “trans” cult. These two influential organizations passed motions that would ask the government to add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as protected classes in federal anti-discrimination law in exchange for religious liberty protections that many people know would merely be stepping stones yanked out from under people of faith eventually.

According to World Magazine, in October, the NAE board unanimously passed its motion, titled “Fairness for All” (first discussed in Christianity Today in 2016), which asks “Congress to consider federal legislation consistent with three principles,” the problematic one which says this:

No one should face violence, harassment, or unjust discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

Of course, no one should face violence on the basis of any condition. So far, so good. But the rest of this principle is a theological, philosophical, political, and rhetorical mess. To illuminate the mess, here are a few questions for the Christian leaders who passed motions based on it:

1.) While this compromise may—for a short time—protect Christian colleges and universities, how might the religious liberty of ordinary Christians in, for example, wedding-related businesses, be affected if under federal law, homosexuality becomes a protected class?

2.) How are the terms “harassment” and “unjust discrimination” defined now? Could they be redefined or “expanded” later? Would a refusal to provide goods or services for the unholy occasion of homoerotic faux-marriage constitute unjust discrimination? Would opposition to co-ed restrooms and locker rooms constitute unjust discrimination? Would refusal to use incorrect pronouns when referring to those who masquerade as the opposite sex constitute harassment?

3.) Would those Christian leaders who voted for these motions have done so if, instead of the euphemisms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” in which are embedded false assumptions, the motions had used plain-speaking or even biblical terms? Let’s give the Fairness for All statement above a less-sanitized whirl:

No one should face unjust discrimination on the basis of their volitional choice to exchange natural sexual relations with persons of the opposite sex for unnatural relations with persons of their same sex, or for choosing to appear as the sex they are not.

How would that more accurately phrased statement have sat with the Christian leaders?

4.) Unlike other protected classes that are constituted by objective conditions that are in all cases immutable and carry no behavioral implications (e.g., sex and nation of origin), homosexuality, bisexuality, and opposite-sex impersonation are constituted by subjective and often fluid feelings and volitional acts with moral implications. Therefore, what other conditions similarly constituted will eventually be deemed protected classes? Why should homosexuality be included and polyamory or Genetic Sexual Attraction (aka incest) excluded?

To fully grasp the magnitude of the potential effect of these motions requires knowledge of the size of the organizations that passed them. The NAE “is an association of evangelical denominations, organizations, schools, churches and individuals. The association represents more than 45,000 local churches from nearly 40 different denominations and serves a constituency of millions.”

The CCCU “is a higher education association of more than 180 Christian institutions around the world,” including Bethel University, Calvin College, Colorado Christian University, Dallas Theological University, Franciscan University of Steubenville, Fuller Theological Seminary, Gordon College, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Houghton College, Houston Baptist University, Judson University, Messiah College, Moody Bible Institute, Regent University, Taylor University, The King’s College, Trinity International University, and Wheaton College.

To be clear, we must not assume any of these colleges and universities supported the motion passed by the CCCU board. For example, Dr. Benjamin Merkle, president of New Saint Andrews College, which is a CCCU member, explained that “I’ve registered my opposition to this move, as have several other CCCU presidents.” 

While the CCCU and NAE boards capitulate to the Left’s relentless demand to have disordered sexual desires and deviant sexual behavior deemed conditions worthy of special protections, 75 prominent religious leaders oppose capitulation to such demands.

A document titled “Preserve Freedom, Reject Coercion” signed by religious leaders including Ryan T. Anderson, Rosaria Butterfield, Charles Chaput, D.A. Carson, Jim Daly, Kevin DeYoung, Tony Evans, Anthony Esolen, Robert A. J. Gagnon, Robert P. George, Timothy George, Franklin Graham, Harry R. Jackson Jr., James Kushiner, John MacArthur, Eric Metaxas, Al Mohler, and John Stonestreet explains why SOGI laws are dangerous:

In recent years, there have been efforts to add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classifications in the law—either legislatively or through executive action. These unnecessary proposals, often referred to as SOGI policies, threaten basic freedoms of religion, conscience, speech, and association; violate privacy rights; and expose citizens to significant legal and financial liability for practicing their beliefs in the public square. In recent years, we have seen in particular how these laws are used by the government in an attempt to compel citizens to sacrifice their deepest convictions on marriage and what it means to be male and female….

SOGI laws empower the government to use the force of law to silence or punish Americans who seek to exercise their God-given liberty to peacefully live and work consistent with their convictions. They also create special preference in law for categories based on morally significant choices that profoundly affect human relations and treat reasonable religious and philosophical beliefs as discriminatory. We therefore believe that proposed SOGI laws, including those narrowly crafted, threaten fundamental freedoms, and any ostensible protections for religious liberty appended to such laws are inherently inadequate and unstable.

SOGI laws in all these forms, at the federal, state, and local levels, should be rejected. We join together in signing this letter because of the serious threat that SOGI laws pose to fundamental freedoms guaranteed to every person.

In a recent interview, John Stonestreet used the recent firing of a Virginia high school French teacher for his refusal to use incorrect pronouns when referring to a “trans”-identifying student to illustrate the potential danger SOGI laws pose to Christians in the work place:

Every version of the Fairness for All proposals that I have seen would not help Peter Vlaming at all. In fact, it would put us on the wrong side of that…. Here you have a government employee working at a public school who serves the public interest that has already been defined by Fairness for All and SOGI legislation as including “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as a category of human being, and that basically sets Peter Vlaming up for failure.

It’s astonishing that time and again the experts—people like Ryan Anderson, Anthony Esolen, Robert Gagnon, Robert George, and Doug Wilson—who have been writing presciently for years on cultural/political issues related to disordered sexuality are ignored by those who spend far less time thinking and writing about them.

Shirley Mullen who is president of Houghton College and a member of the NAE Board, wrote that “the most viable political strategy is for comprehensive religious freedom protections to be combined with explicit support for basic human rights for members of the LGBT community.” What are the “human rights” of which members of the “LGBT” community are currently deprived? Near as I can tell, they are deprived of no human or civil rights. (Anticipating an objection, I will add that no man has a human or civil right to access women’s private spaces—not even if he pretends to be a woman.)

On his American Conservative blog, Rod Dreher quotes a pseudonymous friend called “Smith” who has been working behind the scenes for years on the Fairness for All compromise with “LGBT” activists. Smith argues that this compromise is necessary because conservatives—who have lost the cultural battle on sexuality—cannot count on either statutory or judicial protections of their free exercise of religion. But Smith revealed something more troubling:

[T]here really is a question of justice within a pluralistic society that conservative Christians have to face. We may sincerely believe that homosexuality is morally wrong, but at what point does the common good require that we agree that gay people have a right to be wrong?

First, since when do conservatives deny that “gay people have a right to be wrong”?

Second, since Smith isn’t really arguing that the common good demands that conservatives agree that gay people have a right to be wrong, what specifically is it he believes the common good demands of conservatives? In a consistently dismissive tone, Smith suggests that conservatives demonstrate an absolute rigidity but fails to identify the specific ways conservatives are being intolerantly inflexible and in so doing harming the public good. He seems to be suggesting that standing firm against SOGI laws—which put at grave risk religious liberty and constitute complicity with both moral and scientific error—is the issue that threatens the common good and on which we must capitulate compromise.

Smith continues:

If pluralism is about accommodating deep difference—if conservative Evangelicals are going to ask for accommodation of difference, then they can’t turn around and say in every single case when they are asked to accommodate sexual minorities, ‘No, we will fight to the death.’ That’s not pluralism if all you’re doing is protecting your own rights and saying error has no rights when it comes to you. Pluralism has to be seen by others who disagree with you as fair.

Yes, pluralism is about accommodating differences, but there are differences on which accommodation is impermissible for Christians. I doubt Smith would have made such an ambiguous claim about Christians who rigidly refused to compromise on the nature and intrinsic worth of enslaved blacks or who will not accommodate Planned Parenthood’s views of humans in the womb. The nature, meaning, and value of biological sex, marriage, and children’s rights are other issues on which it is impermissible for Christians to compromise, even if that inflexibility results in persecution.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/SOGI_Compromise1.mp3

End-of-Year Challenge

As you may know, thanks to amazingly generous Illinois Family Institute partners, we have an end-of-year matching challenge of $100,000 to help support our ongoing work to educate and activate Illinois’ Christian community.

Please consider helping us reach this goal!  Your tax-deductible contribution will help us stand strong in 2019!  To make a credit card donation over the phone, please call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.  You can also send a gift to:

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 876
Tinley Park, Illinois 60477

When Bill Clinton was running for president in 1992, his campaign strategist James Carville gave him the formula for success: Focus on the economy. In Carville’s famous words, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Today, President Donald Trump could easily campaign with a similar mantra, since many Americans are pleased with the economic uptick under his leadership.

But, in terms of a lasting legacy, in terms of societal impact, the real mantra should be, “It’s the courts, stupid.” You can be assured that Trump and his Republican colleagues have a good grasp on this already.

And now, with a strengthened majority in the U.S. Senate, the sky is the limit with the good they can do.

As noted (with great concern) by Jennifer Bendery in the Huffington Post, “With a newly strengthened Senate majority, Mitch McConnell can plow ahead with reshaping the nation’s courts.”

Yes, “McConnell has said all along that judicial confirmations are his No. 1 priority as Senate leader. That won’t change going forward.”

And this, in fact, is a major reason many of us voted for Donald Trump: U.S. Supreme Court appointees and, more broadly, federal court appointees at all levels. Transforming the courts was our No. 1 concern.

How much has been done already?

Bendery writes, “To date, the Republican leader has confirmed two U.S. Supreme Court justices, 29 circuit judges and 53 district judges. He’s confirmed so many circuit judges, many of whom are strongly anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ rights and anti-voting rights, and nearly all of whom are ideologues handpicked by the conservative Federalist Society, that 1 in 7 seats on the U.S. circuit courts are now filled by judges nominated by Trump.”

Some might say, “But this is not healthy. The courts will now become distinctly conservative. They’re supposed to be neutral and impartial.”

To the contrary, the goal is to get the courts back to where they’re supposed to be, namely, rightly interpreting our Constitution rather than creating new laws. Yet for decades, many of the courts have swung dangerously left, leading to rampant (and dangerous) judicial activism.

Judicial activism, in turn, has become a direct threat to our freedoms. (For Mark Levin’s now classic exposé, see here.)

A lengthy, 2013 article published by the Heritage Foundation gave three glaring examples of judicial activism whereby the courts were guilty of “Contorting the Text” (meaning the First Amendment), “Playing Legislator,” and “Abusing Precedent.” (For the liberal argument that it is conservatives who are the judicial activists, see here. For an effective rebuttal to this position, see here.)

Since 2013, we have seen the courts redefine the very nature of marriage (in 1,000 lifetimes, the Founders would have never envisioned this) as well as rule against fundamental freedoms of conscience and speech. And it was judicial activism that made abortion legal in 1973.

Sixty-million slaughtered babies later – far more than the population of Canada (about 38 million), even more than the population of England (about 55 million), and roughly equal to the population of Italy – our nation is still reeling from this unjust and unconstitutional ruling.

It’s about time we had a reformation in our courts.

More recently, what if the U.S. Supreme Court had ultimately ruled against Hobby Lobby? Against the Little Sisters of the Poor? Against Jack Phillips?

Back in 1962, without any legal precedent, the U.S. Supreme Court removed organized public prayer from our schools.

Fifty years later, on June 16, 2012, the Saturday Evening Post ran this story: “Atheists v. Evangelists: The School Prayer Decision of 1962.”

“50 years ago, school prayer was declared unconstitutional, causing Billy Graham to wonder if we were becoming a spiritually-bankrupt nation.”

The article begins with these simple but striking lines: “How much has America changed in the past 50 years? Imagine kids in American public schools now starting each day with a prayer.” (For my answer to the question of how much America has changed since the early 1960s, see here.)

Earlier in the year, Graham had warned Post readers that “if the Court decrees negatively, another victory will be gained by those forces which conspire to remove faith in God from the public conscience.

“American democracy rests on the belief in the reality of God and His respect for the individual. Ours is a freedom under law. But it is also a freedom that will evaporate if the religious foundations upon which it has been built are taken away.”

Of course, he was right, although he had no idea of just how radically the society would be transformed in the decades that followed.

As for prayer in the schools, from the founding of our nation until 1962, it never occurred to the courts that this was a violation of separation of church and state. It was judicial activism that made this landmark decision.

And even though the prayer itself was quite generic and any student could opt out of praying, it was the symbolism that mattered. Prayer no longer belonged in our schools.

All of which leads us back to where we started: It’s the courts, stupid.

Thank God President Trump is keeping his promise to nominate conservative justices – meaning, Constitutionalists – to the courts. Keeping this up for two more years (or, better still, 6 more years) could well be his greatest legacy, not to mention the greatest legal bulwark against the loss of our fundamental freedoms.

As for those who protest, “Trump and the Republicans have no right to do this!”, to the contrary, the American people elected them to office.

They are doing what we the people have empowered them to do.

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.com.

Written by John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera

Forty years ago, a group of evangelical leaders and scholars took a clear and unapologetic stand on a fundamental tenet of the faith.

This month marks the fortieth anniversary of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which was signed in October of 1978 by more than 200 evangelical leaders, including R.C. Sproul, J.I. Packer, and Francis Schaeffer.

The Chicago Statement was not only a landmark document in evangelical history, it played an important role in the work of the late Chuck Colson and our ongoing work at the Colson Center.

Here’s a bit of history to set the stage. If there was one phrase that summed up the ethos of the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was “Question Authority.” The phrase emerged out of opposition to the Vietnam War and Watergate, but then it spread well beyond the world of politics into various arenas of culture, even into the church.

We know, for example, the story of how liberal “mainline” churches doubted the Bible and its claims of supernatural miracles. But the culture-wide distrust of authority crept into Evangelicalism, as well, which has—given its diversity and independent congregations—kind of always struggled with ecclesial authority.

Phrases such as “Christianity isn’t a religion; it’s a relationship” entered the lexicon and became an excuse for some to radically privatize the faith, to reject historical teaching, and even embrace new ways of reading and interpreting the Bible.

For instance, a survey of students at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the mid-70s found that the longer a student attended the seminary, the less likely he was to agree with the statement “Jesus is the Divine Son of God and I have no doubts about it.”

In 1971, messengers at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting passed a resolution that supported abortion, not only in cases of rape and incest, but also in cases where there is “clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”

This was just two years before Roe v. Wade.

I don’t mean to pile on the SBC. First, by no means were they alone… this stuff was in the air. Second, the SBC has since experienced quite a renewal, which is at least partly due to the Chicago Statement.

The Statement was about more than a particular way of reading and interpreting the Bible: It was an unequivocal assertion of biblical authority over the lives of believers and the Church, in an age when all authority was being questioned.

It was an unequivocal assertion that Christianity, while it does involve a relationship with God, is also a “religion,” in the original sense of the Latin word “religio,” which means “bond,” “obligation,” and “reverence.” It’s a faith, in other words, with content, not just a warm fuzzy feeling.

Anyone who followed Chuck Colson can see how he was indebted to this effort. For him, Christianity was objectively true, and that truth could be communicated to others, both inside and outside the Church.

And the primary way God had revealed truth to His Church was the Scriptures. Not personal experience, and certainly not popular intellectual fads.

The need to reassert biblical authority may be more urgent today than it was forty years ago. When we hear things like “the Gospel is about radical inclusivity,” that just means the Gospel is being defined without Scripture. When we hear that “Jesus would’ve baked the cake,” that Jesus is not the Jesus of Scripture.  When we hear, “It’s a relationship, not a religion” still, that often means we are ignoring the significant portions of Scripture that describe the people God is calling out to restore and activate for His Kingdom.

This article originally posted at BreakPoint.org