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The Stand in Iowa
I suppose we could at least say “We told you so,” though I fear the phrase has lost the sense of smug, self-satisfaction it had when we were younger. Now, I once again see myself empathizing with Jeremiah, who had to constantly tell the people of Jerusalem how bad things would get while competing with many false prophets, even as things went exactly as Jeremiah predicted.
If anything, the current situation in Iowa only confirms what had been long predicted: The government — through bureaucracy and extralegal panels — has moved to compel religious organizations (including churches) to comply with the new progressive political morality. The religious concession supposedly in the laws isn’t even that, as a government hostile to religion and religious thought is now in the business of deciding what constitutes a legitimate religion. The more vocal and aggressive wing of the LGBT movement controls both that movement as well as the media. They will suffer no opposition, and require endorsement. Everything not forbidden is compulsory.
The [Iowa Civil Rights Commission] is interpreting a state law to ban churches from expressing their views on human sexuality if they would “directly or indirectly” make “persons of any particular…gender identity” feel “unwelcome” in conjunction with church services, events, and other religious activities. The speech ban could be used to gag churches from making any public comments—including from the pulpit—that could be viewed as unwelcome to persons who do not identify with their biological sex. This is because the commission says the law applies to churches during any activity that the commission deems to not have a “bona fide religious purpose.” Examples the commission gave are “a child care facility operated at a church or a church service open to the public,” which encompasses most events that churches hold.
The live-and-let-live crowd was either dangerously naïve or dishonest from the get-go. The progressives had no intention of allowing anyone to think other than how they required. When progressives hold power, they are the sole arbiters of what is right and wrong, of who is innocent and who is guilty. The fact that the church yields to an authority greater than Man is unacceptable. First, society must yield to progressive moral pressure, then the schools, and now the church. Soon, the family will follow, losing any rights before an ever-expanding progressive state.
Religious liberty is now where we stand, and the progressives are acting the aggressors.
Published in Law
Has a single church in the US been forced to do it, Hartmann? Activists can sue for anything.
I’ll take Hank’s deal and live with the outcome.
I think we’d have to define force but for the activists the process is the punishment. Personally I’d regard anything outside summary dismissal under First Amendment grounds, or lack of standing grounds, would qualify as force being used against churches refusing to accommodate gay marriage.
I doubt the government will any time soon try to force churches to perform weddings through direct coercion at present. I suspect it could happen sooner than you claim, Gary, but I hope I’m wrong.
I do think that the bureaucracies and various governments will put pressure on churches to endorse LGBT activism overall. I think that’s where we’re going right now. It’s already gone after individuals with religious beliefs and so far in various states the government has declared that its moral imperatives must be enforced despite individual’s religious objections.
This is beyond SSM. The Social Progressive Worldview has declared itself at odds with the Church’s Worldview and has struck on the offensive.
LOL! Fair enough. I’ll make a prediction in a similar vein. I predict that within the lifetime of many (maybe even most) of the people currently on Ricochet, a gay couple will sue a church in an effort to force it to perform a wedding ceremony for them – the stated reason being that the congregation is willing to rent out their facility to non-members for wedding ceremonies, therefore it should be willing to rent those same facilities out to them. Whether or not they’ll win the lawsuit remains to be seen. News like this tends to make me a bit pessimistic on the subject, but I’m not willing to hazard a guess yet. However, I do feel like I can almost guarantee that that sort of suit is on the way.
I hadn’t heard this when I made my last comment? Do you have any links at your fingertips that you can share?
Well, Austen Murray is your go to guy on the NAC of 2176, and I think iWe has an inside line on the Six State Compact of 2201 when Texas seceded from the NAC.
I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know what the threshhold is for summary judgment, but this sounds good to me. It should be batted out of the court system on sight.
But I don’t think that would stop religious activists or LGBT activists from working the gray areas. The trick is to minimize the gray areas when possible.
If they normally rent out the facility, they could be forced to rent out the facility, but they can’t be required to perform a wedding. I know of churches who rent out bingo halls; I’ve never known a church that rented out its main chapel, altar and all. Even if they did, nobody could force them to provide clergy.
Bright lines are best in the law but they give precious little maneuvering room for lawyers so we get gray areas.
In my opinion SSM activists have always had a solid argument that there’s no legal principle for excluding them from having marriages recognized by governments – although I think the U.S. Constitution is silent on this matter as it is on heterosexual marriage.
My opposition to SSM, such as it is/was, was based purely on the fact that freedom of association has been greatly curtailed in America and people and organizations who did object wouldn’t merely be socially ostracized but inevitably legally punished for their beliefs.
Although upon reflection I’m not sure how much freedom of association we ever really had considering the Jim Crow laws, miscegenation laws and other ideas about how people should interact with each other we’ve had in our country’s history.
I tend to lean more towards “Freedom of Association” in this case. They shouldn’t be forced to rent out facilities against their beliefs, even if it’s “just” the social hall portion of the church. Essentially, I don’t think the government has any role in forcing one to do business with another.
Public Accommodation law has gone too far. It’s being used to punish those who don’t hold the moral beliefs of those in power at present, and I don’t think this will end well for the nation as a whole.
Most folks I know really don’t want to be in position of forcing one group to do one thing or another. It’s just a loud, very aggressive minority coupled with politicians who are interested in grabbing more power for themselves, along with a large portion of well-meaning allies who are taking the role of catspaw.
This is the core problem. All else stems from the government deciding it can compel one person or business to do work for another against its will. It is immoral and, like the prior abuses of the commerce clause, a heavy weapon wielded for political ends.
Correct. And because Public Accommodation law was incorrectly used to remedy a greater problem, that is systemic and politically-mandated racism, our thinking about how it is used has been tainted.
I’d definitely go along with backing away from the kneejerk presumption that opposition to public accommodation laws is bigotry, pure and simple.
But I’m not opposed to all such laws on a Galt’s Gulch level of principle. For example, in any America that isn’t a libertarian absolutists’ paradise, the armed forces (for example) are not going to be using govt. money to rent recruiting offices in racially segregated buildings. In 1951, that would fly; it won’t now because attitudes, not merely laws have changed. If we have the laws, we’re stuck being consistent about them.
This story is from last August, about a Mennonite wedding chapel in Iowa:
http://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2015/8/6/mennonite-husband-and-wife-say-they-have-no-hatred-toward-gays-media-say-theyre-anti-gay
further info:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/09/mother-fer-racist-sons-of-bches-from-hell-wedding-venue-gets-threats-fears-shut-down-after-refusing-gay-couples-nuptials/
Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, New Jersey: In 2012, a state judge ruled that a Methodist-owned events venue in Ocean Grove violated state law when it refused to host a gay wedding in 2007. Also, while the discrimination case was still pending, the facility lost its state tax exemption because it was deemed “no longer met the requirements as a place open to all members of the public,” the New York Times reported. (Sources: The New York Times here and here, Philadelphia Inquirer, and LifeSiteNews.)
In Idaho a private wedding chapel run by a Christian couple was targeted. The account from Snopes seems to me to be hostile to the Christians, but it contains adequate info:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/hitchingpost.asp
Those of us who were paying attention never feared that our churches will be forced to have our pastors perform same-sex “weddings” in our church. In order to prevent lawsuits, our church has stopped allowing our church to be used for weddings by non-members. In this action we have lots of company by other churches all over America, especially in blue states. This makes lots of really nice venues unavailable for weddings any more, driving up the costs for all couples who are not members of churches with suitable venues.
What I fear is not coercion about weddings but silencing our message. I fully expect that we are seeing the tip of the iceberg of the upcoming round of assaults by Big Gay and their anti-Christian Leftist sponsors. The attacks are against schools. First colleges, then high schools, and finally elementary schools.
The blue states have established a State Morality. By teaching a morality that says that the State-Established Morality is in error, we are now teaching something that is directly opposed to what the state teaches. The states will require that we include their approved diversity curricula, which will be tailored to teach our kids things that reverse the messages we wish to teach.
This could play out in two ways. One is that we could lose accreditations by refusing the state’s moral teachings. Or else, we could be forced to close our schools to nonmembers.
Either way is a disaster for Christian schools.
Witness the way California has put Christian colleges and universities in their sites.
All traditional religious colleges are under attack in California over LGBT and gender confusion; here are articles from May about the proposed legislation: http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/27574/
https://edsource.org/2016/california-bills-take-aim-at-religious-colleges-that-seek-to-bar-transgender-students/564869#comments
Last month (June 2016) my favorite media critic TMatt got so frustrated at the near complete lack of coverage of this story that he finally posted on the topic being ignored by mass media:
http://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2016/6/11/christian-colleges-on-chopping-block-why-are-california-newspapers-ignoring-story
Finally the LA Times actually printed a version of the story:
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-religious-freedom-bill-20160622-snap-story.html
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-religious-freedom-bill-20160622-snap-story.html?track=lat-pick
This Christian couple in New York have a farm where they have a really nice pavilion that they used to rent out as a wedding venue. The State of New York assessed tens of thousands of dollars in fines and put them out of the wedding business.
http://nypost.com/2014/11/10/couple-fined-for-refusing-to-host-same-sex-wedding-on-their-farm/
No pastors or churches were directly affected. Lots of New York churches simply quit providing their buildings for weddings by non-members.
The goal here is to reduce the free exercise of religion down to the “freedom of worship.” We will be allowed to practice the free exercise of our religion, but only in our homes and churches. Not in our businesses or workplaces or public spaces.
Of all the problems associated with this whole mess, this is one I don’t care about. If you can’t be bothered to be a member of a church, why do you even care if you’re married in one? A church isn’t movie set, and I’m quite okay with everyone — gay or straight — figuring that out.
No. No. Skip. It wasn’t a slippery slope. It was a shove over a cliff.
My thoughts exactly.
At what point are they going to tell us that our religious doctrine cannot ‘offend’ the LGBT… community?
Gee, wait for one only one? Shouldn’t we wait until they go after a few or most churches? Shouldn’t we wait to make sure it’s a broad cultural persecution and a sustained, grossly un-American use of government power rather than a few hundred random instances of such abuse?
The point of the thread was not to re-litigate the SSM issue but to make the point that the left (who invented “privacy” as a constitutional entity) have openly declared war on any private sector belief organization or activity that does not expressly endorse and conform to their ideology and that they have successfully transformed “tolerance” into a weapon of cultural warfare.
Rob Dreher’s Law of Merited Impossibility: “That’s never going to happen cuz we’ve got the First Amendment…and when it does you bigots will deserve it.”
This.
Whatever happened to Americans wanting to head off tyranny before it happens?
I should have read the comments before commenting:-)
Gee, wait for just one? Shouldn’t we wait until they go after most churches? Shouldn’t we wait to make sure it’s an active, broad cultural persecution and a sustained, grossly un-American use of government power rather than a few hundred random instances of petty abuse?
The point of the thread was not to re-litigate the SSM issue but to make the point that the left (who invented “privacy” as a constitutional entity) have openly declared war on any private belief, organization or activity that does not expressly endorse and conform to their ideology and that they have successfully transformed “tolerance” into a weapon of cultural warfare and are using government power to conduct that war.
Marriages performed by “intolerant” clergy no longer recognized? Non-profit tax status removed, liability for prima facie theological hate crimes? The only issue will be how far they can push, how fast and when does harassment expand into full-scale suppression?
There was a time when I would have laughed off this bureaucratic idiocy by saying that any federal judge would toss this out as unconstitutional in a heartbeat but that is no longer true after Stormans v. Wiesman and especially not after Hillary gets to pick judges.
Sorry for multiple posts–must have hit send before I was finished typing…