Posted on 09/04/2015 4:15:38 PM PDT by yongin
have said these past couple of days that as gay rights and the ideology at its heart continues to conquer our culture, I expect us small-o orthodox Christians to have to take a hard, sacrificial stand against the state and society, for the sake of religious liberty. Kim Davis’s situation, I’ve said, is not the hill to die on.
The reason for this is certainly contestable, but here it is, in a nutshell.
1. Kim Davis’s position is unwinnable. Nobody seriously expects her to get gay marriage overturned, or even to succeed in carving out a special zone of protection for public officials who, for reasons of conscience, refuse to carry out lawful decisions of the courts. Even if we believe that the Obergefell decision lacks moral legitimacy, there can be no doubt that as a matter of legal procedure, the Supreme Court’s decision is the law. Our side lost that battle decisively. Kim Davis’s stance, while it may be personally courageous, is going to result in another defeat, because it cannot be otherwise in our system. The only point of backing it is to flip the bird to the state and to the broader culture — something I have great sympathy for, but it’s a pointless gesture that can only hurt us in the battles to come.
(Excerpt) Read more at theamericanconservative.com ...
2. This is because the cause of religious liberty will become synonymous in the public’s mind with a government official refusing to obey the law because it conflicts with her Christian beliefs. It matters a great deal that Kim Davis is an official of the state. By definition, her role is to execute the laws of the state. Many people, even many conservatives who may well oppose Obergefell, and who care about religious liberty, hold it to be unreasonable to expect state officials to reserve the right to decide which of those laws they will enforce. The political danger here is that when the public hears “religious liberty,” they will think about Kim Davis and her special pleading for a right that, if it existed, would mean anarchy. Angry Christians should consider how they would feel if “religious liberty” meant that a sharia-observant Muslim elected official refused to grant a building permit to a congregation for a new church because it conflicted with his religious beliefs. This is how many people in this post-Christian country — and it is that — see us re: Kim Davis.
3. The day is fast coming when we will have to fight big and important battles that have not yet been decided. When that happens, we will need the support of fair-minded Americans who may disagree with us on gay marriage, but who still, in some way, hold to the unfashionable belief that religious liberty really does matter. If we have wasted our already-diminishing political capital on vain protest gestures like Kim Davis’s stance, we are going to find it much harder to win the legal and political contests to come.
So, if Kim Davis isn’t a hill to die on, what is? It’s a fair question. Broadly speaking, my answer is this: when they start trying to tell us how to run our own religious institutions — churches, schools, hospitals, and the like — and trying to close them or otherwise destroy them for refusing to accept LGBT ideology. This is a bright red line — and it’s a fight in which we might yet win meaningful victories, given the strong precedents in constitutional jurisprudence.
But court decisions do not come from some Platonic realm; judges are shaped by the same cultural forces that shape all of us. Many, many Americans — certainly those in the media, and other opinion-shaping institutions — see our stance as motivated solely by bigotry, and therefore morally illegitimate. These judges, and the elected representatives who appoint them, will lose the ability to understand why “bigotry” should be tolerated. Similarly, we are already losing many Christian institutions — like colleges and universities — who have embraced the new order, and who by their example, signal to judges and the wider culture that Christianity is compatible with affirming LGBT ideology. More and more, the small-o orthodox Christians are going to be seen as being weird, backwards holdouts.
Die on the hill in yer front yard. If you go looking for a hill the guy on your right will be FBI and the guy on your left will be ATF.
The winning hill: illegal immigration. It is the winning issue.
...“Democrats have opened our borders to all manner of horrific Third World violence, crime, and disease. The GOP has supported and endorsed this vile activity every single step of the way. Trump has tapped into the fury of the American people over the unrelenting anti-American NWO push of our paid employees in government. Trump could win this on this one issue alone. Americans are tired of being betrayed by their government on both sides of the aisle.”...
The line was drawn when the USSC ruled a few months ago. Didn’t you know this would be the consequence?
It’s not what hill WE die on, it’s what hill we make THEM die on.
Why are their so many moronic opinion peddlers in this day and age?
Listen Rod Dreher, Rosa Parks was also in a lose-lose unwinnable situation but she had had enough. It wasn’t that she thought that she could win or that anyone thought she could win, it was that she had had enough and wasn’t going to take it anymore.
Kim Davis reached the same point, she has had enough. And just as Rosa Park’s defiant stand led to a revolution in race relations, Kim Davis’ defiance will be on the history pages as an event that led to reigning in the abuses of the US Supreme Court.
In our culture, I chose Lawrence v. Texas (2003). Haven’t looked back. Will die with my face toward the battle. In the greater battle, I chose God v. Satan. Will live forever.
They are right. Legally and politically speaking this is not the case to build our counterattack around. The cases of the cake bakers and similiar private individuals who have had their religious liberties violated give us better ground. Kim Davis is a martyr. She should be honored, recognized and supported financial, morally and spiritually. More people need to step forward and put their values before their careers and personal freedom like she has done. That is how the moral war will be won but the legal war is not to be won with her case.
This thread explains the case well.
Is this guy serious? Does he even keep up with news?
"Yes, we should wait till Kristallnacht because then we will know they mean to hurt us. Let's not do anything till then, shall we? "
Unfreakin Real. Neville Chamberlainesque.
Huckabee will visit Kim Davis in jail next week. I respect Huckabee, but he did a bad job defending Kim Davis on Morning Joe this morning. Huckabee said the High Court ruling is unjust, and people should be free to ignore it. That does not make the case for religious liberty when the person is a govt official.
First pubbie to quote MLK and Letter from a Birmingham Jail on the value of civil disobedience in fighting immoral laws climbs up my list!
I agree. Also she is not allowing any marriage licenses to be processed for anyone. How many couples have planned and paid for weddings, at the cost of thousands of dollars, and now can’t get a license? How does that square with her personal religious liberty? And how are those tearful stories going to be portrayed in the media? She will be widely portrayed as a crackpot who is ruining people’s lives over her personal beliefs. And it will stick with a lot of people, and not just liberals.
It sounded like Boehner or McConnell wrote the article to me.
It is and never has been my goal to die on a hill for my principles. Like the General said, let the other sons of bitches do the dying. Figuratively of course.
I often think these laws that are repugnant to Christians are designed that way to get Christians out of the government. Same for the military. Sideline the Christians, make them “non-persons”.
I feel Christians are living in a movie combination of the original PLANET OF THE APES and FELINI-SATYRICON. A “madhouse” of perversion.
"A trip of a thousand miles begins with the first step", Confucius
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