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.
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.
THERE IS NO KENTUCKY LAW AUTHORIZING ISSUANCE OF MARRIAGE LICENSES.
SCOTUS vacated relevant KY law.
A federal judge, nor a state governor, can compel a county clerk to issue a licence which is undefined and unregulated in law.
What we have is straight up despotism.
This is the hill.
Wrong. The battle of the Alamo was also unwinnable, but it was still worth fighting. We are facing pure evil and a blatant violation of the First Amendment. Even ignoring the fact that the Supreme Court ruled illegitimately, the First Amendment still morally (and under any sane legal theory) trumps that Court ruling. We stand up for what its right because it is time to fight for every inch of ground, winnable or unwinnable. I play Churchill's "fight on the beaches" speech daily, and he was right, even though things seemed bleak at the time as he faced the same forces that we face today, just with a different label.
The real problem is big government. When government is small and has little impact on your life you can vote with your feet (and pocket book) to go where you get what you want. But when the central government imposes one-size-fits-all on everyone, then people do not have the ability to vote with their feet.
Where ya going to go?
Two Words: Thomas More
http://www.americancatholic.org/Features/Saints/saint.aspx?id=1422
Dreher, as a graduate of Catholic schools, should know this.
The writer’s argument is built on the fallacy that because a court says something it is “the law.”
Every principle this country was built upon says the exact opposite.
And the Constitution conveys no such authority to the courts.
The author is a FOOL, a complete, contemptable FOOL if he doesn't understand that churches, schools, hospitals, and in fact FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION are the ultimate targets of the gaystapo.
The left knows they win by attrition. That's their game plan, and the author above is enabling them by not taking a stand right here, right now.