Posted on 12/15/2016 8:08:36 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Last week, Utah Senator Mike Lee announced that he would re-introduce the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA) in 2017, and his office said it expects the bill to pass under a Trump presidency. Democrats and LGBT activists have attacked the bill as "anti-gay" and as a smokescreen for discrimination against LGBT people. Nothing could be further from the truth.
"Nothing in this bill enables discrimination against LGBT people in any way," Lee spokesman Conn Carroll told PJ Media in an email statement. "This bill would simply preserve the status quo, ensuring that federal bureaucrats do not take discriminatory actions against individuals, organizations, nonprofits and other entities on the basis of their belief that marriage is between one man and one woman."
FADA sets out to achieve a very limited goal — to prevent the federal government from discriminating against people or organizations due to their opposition to same-sex marriage. The bill would not protect a business owner who denies service to an LGBT person because of his or her sexual orientation — it is limited to situations that involve religious beliefs about same-sex marriage.
"Specifically, the federal government would be unable to deny or make unavailable any federal grant, contract, license, certification, accreditation, or tax exemption from individuals or groups based on their belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman," Carroll explained. This means the bill does not cover many high-profile religious freedom cases.
For instance, Carroll said the bill would not protect Aaron and Melissa Klein, owners of the bakery Sweet Cakes by Melissa. They gladly served a lesbian couple in general, but would not bake a special cake for their wedding. The Kleins were fined $170,000 and their shop went out of business because an Oregon civil rights board decided they had "discriminated" against the lesbian couple. While the Kleins were arguably in the right, this bill would not address their case, as it had nothing to do with the federal government.
Carroll also explained that FADA would not help the case of Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk who refused to sign marriage licenses for homosexual couples, and briefly spent time in jail for her conscience.
So if FADA cannot help in these cases and others like them, what exactly is it good for? The bill would protect any institution (such as faith-based colleges, hospitals, and universities) which has or is seeking federal contracts. It could help protect colleges like Brigham Young University, Wheaton College, and Pepperdine University from losing accreditation, scholarship grants, and tax-exempt status.
The bill would have no effect on state-based contracts, and would only protect such institutions from religious-based discrimination on the basis of their beliefs against same-sex marriage. "Just as Congress protected people from being punished for declining to participate in abortions after Roe v. Wade, the First Amendment Defense Act protects people from being punished for their beliefs about marriage after the Obergefell decision," The Daily Signal reported.
FADA was introduced in both the House and the Senate in 2015, but only got a hearing in the House. The bill faltered amid protests from Democrats and speculation that President Obama would veto the bill if it reached his desk. Some of those conditions are set to change next year.
"November's results will give us the momentum we need to get this done next year," Carroll told BuzzFeed. President-elect Donald Trump pledged to sign the bill in September, declaring that it would "protect the deeply held religious beliefs of Catholics and the beliefs of Americans of all faiths."
"We do plan to reintroduce FADA next Congress and we welcome Trump's positive words about the bill," Carroll added.
"The prospects for protecting religious freedom are brighter now than they have been in a long time," Texas Senator Ted Cruz told BuzzFeed. "We are having ongoing conversations with our colleagues both in Congress and leaders in the new administration about a multitude of ways we can honor the commitment made to the voters in this last election."
Cruz, who cosponsored the bill in the Senate, and Idaho Representative Raúl Labrador, who sponsored the bill in the House, did not return requests for comment from PJ Media.
While prospects for the bill may be rosy in 2017, Democrats and LGBT activists are likely to lampoon the First Amendment Defense Act as "anti-gay" and a smokescreen for discrimination. Perhaps they need to learn the importance of diversity and accept that, even though the Supreme Court has guaranteed same-sex marriage, many Americans still disagree on the issue. This bill allows Americans to live and let live.
Tolerance is a two-way street. As should religious folks be forced to celebrate the perversity of diversity, so should the LGBT crowd be forced to celebrate the and tolerate those who believe in God; even if God doesn’t condone homosexuality.
Bringing up a bill to “defend” it would allow for the bill to be removed at a later date - forever changing First Amendment protections.
Here’s the thing - even if the FADA is “anti-gay,” who cares?
It’s time for “conservatives” to start standing up for traditions and our culture, instead of trying to find ways to cravenly ameliorate the sodomites.
Behaviour should not be protected by law. Neither should bankrupting and penalising people for opposing your behaviour.
Why is it wrong to discriminate against sexual perverts?
Great.
It is a Vice System which protects evil, dysfunctional, degrading behaviors like abortion and sodomy. We SHOULD discriminate against the nihilistic evil behaviors. Both destroy the concept of Natural Rights and Naturel Duties which is embedded in our “Justice” System. Evil should NEVER be protected actions in a so-called “Justice” System which OURS has to be-—based on Christian Ethics ONLY (only rational religion because it enshrines the Laws of Nature), where humans may NEVER give up their dignity and Natural Rights which are unalienable ALWAYS. People can’t be treated as a “Means to an End” in a system which protects Natural Rights of ALL individuals, including babies in the womb since Science proves they are human beings separate from the mother.
For a Just Law to promote sodomizing others or killing-babies is not only irrational (removes Right Reason from Just Law (impossibility), but it promotes evil, satanist behaviors-—so it DOES promote a defined demonic religion, which advocates sodomy, baby-killing (Sacrifices),
mutilation of the body, cannibalism, etc There is no protection of irrational, evil “religions”; we never allowed polygamy, unequal treatment of male and female, in mormonism. Yet, with sodomite “unions”, we eject the fundamental meanings of Natural Rights and Natural Duties and we destroy Language—the 7000 year meaning of the word “marriage” to make it irrational and to created a Brave New World where little children can’t even understand the Truth of Reality and the nature of male/female which is based in Science, not in some abused, irrational, insane person who was traumatized in childhood.
As Justice John Marshall stated, and Montesquieu and Blackstone and all our Founders knew, we have a “Justice” system (Justice is the Queen of Virtue) and as such, it has to ALWAYS promote “public virtue”.
At Nuremberg, it was stated, when laws promote evil, they are unjust law and are “null and void”, and people have the DUTY to disobey evil “laws” for they are “null and void” by definition. Judges have the DUTY to throw out evil, unjust laws, (but they never do because they get kick-backs, or money from Soros-types, or are bribed like Justice Roberts), that promote dysfunction and destruction of our civilization.
Removing Right Reason and Natural Laws from our Constituton is NOT POSSIBLE——but the evil satanists did it anyhow. They flipped a thousand years of Ethics, back to the pagan (Man/boy “love) system in Babylon/Ancient Greece and Rome. The slave systems promote evil, unjust laws. The judges need to be put in prison for Treason and destroying our Constitution.
We need to remove “laws” which are unconstitutional—not try and put bandaids on evil “law”, which Mike Lee is promoting. It makes “Law” incoherent and lengthy, and the States have NO right to deny our religious Natural Rights from God, (not Satan’s, like sodomy), which can’t be given away. The Bakers were persecuted and fined for their religion beliefs which is unconstitutional. There is no protections of evil, vile, dysfunctional behaviors and people have the Right of Association—not to expose their children to such evil, dysfunctional “ideas” so they are corrupted. But that is the point, isn’t it? To corrupt the Minds of the children, to normalize evil, dysfunctional behaviors, to collapse civil society.
To discriminate is essential in ALL religions and the Christian one is the most rational and just and is why our system of Ethics has always been based on Christian Worldview, not Satanism and paganism and Marxism-—all degrading, irrational (slave-promoting) religions which should be banned in the USA and NEVER protected in a “Just” law.
We need to take back our Constitution—purge it of all the unconstitutional “evil” unjust cronyism “laws” which are all “null and void” anyhow. We have a Justice system which is antithetical to Marxism (welfare/slavery), Satanism (sodomy/baby-killing) etc. It is already there—in our very Constitution: “Just Law”, not Evil “law”. We need to obey the WORDS of our Constitution which ENSHRINES NATURAL LAW, and cut out all the incoherent, evil garbage that the Marxist judges and lawyers/congressmen slipped in which is all unconstitutional anyhow.
With all due respect to Sen. Lee and his staff, his staff member's explanation of his bill came off as pro-conservative sophistry to me.
More specifically, since we’re coming out of eight years of corrupt, state sovereignty-ignoring Congress letting lawless Obama get away with using state powers that he stole from the states to harass Christians among other things, why did Sen. Lee wait until Obama is essentially a late-duck president before introducing his bill?
In fact, regardless that Section 5 of the 14th Amendment (14A) gives Congress the power to legislately prohibit state action which abridges constitutionally enumerated rights (Section 1 of 14A), 1st Amendment-protected religious expression in recent issues, federal lawamakers just sat on their hands is cases like the Kleins for example. Career federal lawmakers were evidently scared of Obama’s influence.
14th Amendment, Section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States [emphasis added]; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
We need to recriminalize sodomy and purge the pro-sodomite majority on the Supreme Court.
There is no peaceful coexistence with deviants. One side must prevail.
Well, you have my vote.
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