Posted on 04/15/2013 7:29:47 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence. – Psalm 73:6
“Gay pride” necessitates anti-Christian hate. It must. “Gay marriage” and other “sexual orientation”-based laws do violence to freedom and truth. They are the hammer with which the postmodern left intends to bludgeon bloody religious liberty and the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic.
According to the unequivocal moral precepts of the Judeo-Christian tradition – explicit throughout both the Old and New Testaments – homosexual behavior is a sin. Sin is evil. Homosexual behavior is the central, defining characteristic of so-called “gay marriage.” Therefore, “gay marriage” is evil. Christians are obligated to avoid sin – to “do no evil.”
I know; it’s not popular to speak such simple truths in today’s politically correct world. But I’m not out to win a popularity contest.
Neither is Ms. Barronelle Stutzman. Ms. Stutzman is the Christian owner-operator of Arlene’s Flowers in Richland, Wash. She is, by all accounts, a lovely, sweet, elderly woman who both employs and regularly serves open practitioners of the homosexual lifestyle. Sadly, she has become the latest victim in a fast-growing string of secularist attacks against Christians and other morally minded people. If “same-sex marriage” becomes the law of the land, I can assure you that we will soon see a virtual explosion in the same kind of anti-Christian persecution Ms. Stutzman now suffers.
Recently, one of Ms. Stutzman’s frequent homosexual customers requested that she provide flower arrangements for his same-sex “wedding.” She politely declined, saying that her Christian conscience and “relationship with Jesus Christ” prevented her from any involvement with counter-Christian “same-sex marriage.” She was, quite simply, a Christian being Christian. The two hugged and parted ways.
Unfortunately, in our ever-”progressive” culture, being Christian has fast become a most dangerous proposition. As each homofascist demand is checked from liberals’ sin-centric wish list, it only gets worse.
As a result of her constitutionally guaranteed religious free exercise, Washington State’s newly elected Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed charges against Ms. Stutzman, seeking both a monetary judgment and an injunction to physically force her to violate her Christian conscience. He would compel her to either lend her artistic expression in support of counterfeit “gay marriage” – something Christianity steadfastly recognizes as mortal sin – or face further charges.
Speaking of steadfast, to her credit, Ms. Stutzman has stood firm. She has refused to cave under Ferguson’s tyrannical torment. Ferguson, on the other hand, has revealed himself a creep and a coward – a “progressive” bully who apparently gets off on abusing elderly women. He’s a disgrace to Washington State and should be thrown out of office and disbarred.
Still, this type of government persecution must be expected. Ferguson is a liberal. The liberal viewpoint is that any viewpoint, save the liberal viewpoint, must be criminalized and prosecuted.
Like many of us, Joseph Backholm, with the Family Policy Institute of Washington, has long warned about the consequences of radically deconstructing the institution of natural marriage. “Now that the law says marriage is genderless,” he recently wrote of Ms. Stutzman’s ongoing abuse, “those who think otherwise [must] … conform or be punished. … Now liberals believe they are legally entitled to someone else’s labor.”
To homosexuals I say this: Yes, you are equal in God’s eyes. You are loved. These things are true, not because of your homosexual lifestyle, but, rather, they are true in spite of it.
Most homosexuals know intuitively, I think, that their lifestyle is unnatural and immoral and that the oxymoronic notion of “same-sex marriage” is a silly farce. Thus, they must force others to affirm both their self-destructive lifestyle and their mock “marriages” under penalty of law. They must physically compel everyone to engage their “emperor’s new clothes” delusion, so they can feel better about bad behavior.
Well, my friend, making everyone else “call evil good and good evil” won’t fill that dark void in your soul. Only repentance and redemption through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ can do that.
When we give deviant sexual conduct preferred status in law, Christian morality becomes illegal. If you think government-recognized “gay marriage” is harmless to society, you’re playing the fool. It places the Christian sexual ethic and free exercise of religion in direct conflict with law. It’s my sense that many liberty-minded people are finally coming awake to this disturbing reality.
Although we all sin, Christians are commanded to neither support nor engage in evil. Hence, Christians – true Christians – cannot engage in nor condone the unrepentant practice of homosexual behavior. Neither can we support sin-centric “gay marriage.”
This rudimentary equation is built upon the natural laws of moral physics. Christianity is magnetically charged truth. Homosexual behavior is a magnetically charged lie – a spiritual and biological falsehood. Christianity and homosexual sin are as north to south. Polar opposites cannot occupy the same position in time and space. They repel one another. It’s physically, spiritually and legally impossible for religious freedom and preferred legal status for sexual sin to coexist in harmony. Ms. Stutzman’s persecution is just the latest example of this timeless reality.
Why are Christians so afraid to call sin sin? It’s time for invertebrate believers to grow a backbone. Truth, in love, is the balance. Yes, the world will hate you, because it first hated Christ. So what? Count it a blessing – even unto death.
Here’s my recommendation: When those who are lost to the world hate on you, laugh at them. Then cry for them. Then pray for them. Follow Christ’s example and ask, as did He, that God “forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Then get up, dust yourself off and get back in the fight.
Albert Einstein once said, “Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.”
He was right.
Barronelle Stutzman followed this advice and – though she currently faces government persecution for her choice – she has also become an accidental hero. Pray for her. I know God will surely bless her faithfulness.
Still, know this: If you are a Christian in today’s America, you too will almost certainly find yourself with a similar decision to make. When man’s law violates God’s law, you will have to choose which to obey. Choosing God can mean persecution.
I’ve made my choice.
How will you choose?
Also from Michael Brown at Townhall:
Consider Illinois Senator Mark Kirk, who on April 2nd announced his support for same-sex “marriage.” He explained that “Same-sex couples should have the right to civil marriage. Our time on this earth is limited, I know that better than most.” (Senator Kirk recently had a serious stroke.)
Then, for his intended coup de grace: “Life comes down to who you love and who loves you back — government has no place in the middle.”
What? These are the words of an elected U.S. senator?
Does Kirk not understand that the government does not get involved with the question of “who you love and who loves you back” but rather with the institution of marriage?
Does he not understand that the reason society conveys benefits on marriage is because marriage conveys benefits on society, namely, the ability (as a rule) to produce children for the next generation and to join those children to their mother and father? (Newsflash: It still takes a man and a woman to produce a child, and that is why it has always taken a man and a woman to constitute a marriage.)
And does Kirk really believe that the government should redefine marriage based on “who you love and who loves you back”? If so, then the government needs to recognize any loving relationship as “marriage,” regardless of age, number, or gender. But this is what Senator Kirk proudly declared.
Behold the effects of drinking the same-sex “marriage” Kool-aid!
“Choosing God can mean persecution”
American Christians. The next Coptics.
Jim Wallis of Sojourners, had argued that “justice” requires us to support (and even bless) same-sex unions, he also stated clearly that, “I don’t think the sacrament of marriage should be changed. Some people say that Jesus didn’t talk about homosexuality, and that’s technically true. But marriage is all through the Bible, and it’s not gender-neutral.”
Now, Wallis has declared his support for the radical redefinition of marriage, explaining, “I think we have to talk about, now, how to include same-sex couples in that deeper understanding of marriage. I want a deeper commitment to marriage that is more and more inclusive, and that’s where I think the country is going.”
What? These are the words of a noted Christian leader?
How seriously can Jim Wallis be taken when he tells us in 2008 that “marriage is all through the Bible, and it’s not gender-neutral” and then in 2012 wants to make it gender-neutral? And how can he imagine that by removing the most essential components of marriage, namely one man and one woman, marriage will be made stronger? This would be like suggesting that, since car sales are down, we’ll say that bicycles and motorcycles are cars. (This is not meant to be a precise analogy but rather illustrative.)
And if Wallis truly wants to make marriage “more and more inclusive,” then he needs to embrace polygamous marriage and polyamorous marriage and more. Does he really mean what he says?
And has Wallis forgotten that as Christians, we do not determine our values by looking at where “the country is going”? Instead, as followers of Jesus, we are called to swim against the conformist, worldly tide of the age, calling society back to the timeless ways of God. Yet Jim Wallis wants to redefine marriage and make it “gender-neutral” based on where the country is going.
Behold the effects of drinking the same-sex “marriage” Kool-aid!
Well there you have it! Gay “marriage” is trending. What else are politicians to do?
Revolt is coming.
Right after revulsion.
> Religious Freedom & ‘Gay Marriage’ Cannot Coexist
EXACTLY!!
This has been my argument against it the WHOLE TIME!
Again! America has looked EVIL in the face and embraced it. I look for more and more “Christian” leaders to capitulate to the other side.
If two homosexuals want to call themselves married and live accordingly, they are allowed to do so anywhere within the United States. Thus, if its not illegal, its legal.
What is being debated is the ability to force third parties to provide them with benefits based on that status.
If people were allowed to interact or not interact as they chose, then gay marriage would be a non-issue.
homosexual marriage and science can not exist together
Atheism believes in science
therefore
Atheism and homosexual marriage can not exist together.
>> Religious Freedom & ‘Gay Marriage’ Cannot Coexist
>
> EXACTLY!!
>
> This has been my argument against it the WHOLE TIME!
And this means the END of legally preaching the whole Gospel, because if you can’t identify SIN, then you don’t need a Savior!
As Billy Graham said, before you can get people saved, you need to get them lost, first. And you can’t get them lost, if you’re not allowed by law to tell them what sin is.
I read a Freeper post where she described her feelings as homo-nasium. Perfect description, right?
I do not care what the gays want to do to each other in private. Just keep it out of my family's face and pay for it yourselves.
And they can call it anything they like, but its not marriage. Just like a donkey wearing a saddle is not a Mustang.
Jim Wallis is a socialist first. Keep that in mind.
The whole “gay rights” thing is just a façade and a tool of the left to criminalize Christianity.
It’s not about tolerating them...
There’s another agenda.
If taking a round to the head for having a relationship with Jesus Christ is my destiny, I can't think of a more honorable way to leave this world.
And there are a startling amount of child predators when you look behind the veil.
America's Founders expressed in our Declaration of Independence, and throughout their writings and speeches, a "reliance on Divine Providence."
After decades of neglect, censorship, and outright attempts to obliterate their ideas of liberty from the minds of America's citizens by the enemies of freedom, technology suddenly has brought about a revival of those ideas. The movement known as the Tea Enough Already party groups is proof that the so-called "progressives'" 100+-year effort to impose a counterfeit set of ideas is encountering and engaging an informed "remnant" in defense of liberty.
Perhaps this Nock piece may serve to remind today's citizens of some things they need to consider, especially the implications of paragraphs five and seven.
The seedbed of ideas which produced the Declaration of Independence may yet yield its harvest, as it is kept alive in the minds of citizens.
When an elected band of ideologically-opposed officials begin to impose their will on the rights of conscience to the degree we see today, perhaps the enlightened "remnant" who have read and understand the Constitution's protections will articulate those protections to new generations.
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