Religious Freedom & ‘Gay Marriage’ Cannot Coexist

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.”

Albert Einstein once said, “Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.”

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.

When the republican party ran the Governor who gave the nation “gay marriage”, and who has campaigned for almost 20 years to homosexualize the military and the Boy Scouts, and who ran pro-choice ads in some states, then we knew that 2012 was a year of moving the entire political discussion left.

“For some voters it might be enough for me to simply match my opponent’s record in this area. But I believe we can and must do better. If we are to achieve the goals we share, we must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern. My opponent cannot do this. I can and will.

We have discussed a number of important issues such as the Federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which I have agreed to co-sponsor, and if possible broaden to include housing and credit, and the bill to create a federal panel to find ways to reduce gay and lesbian youth suicide, which I also support. One issue I want to clarify concerns President Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue” military policy. I believe that the Clinton compromise was a step in the right direction. I am also convinced that it is the first of a number of steps that will ultimately lead to gays and lesbians being able to serve openly and honestly in our nation’s military. That goal will only be reached when preventing discrimination against gays and lesbians is a mainstream concern, which is a goal we share.

As we begin the final phase of this campaign, I need your support more than ever. By working together, we will achieve the goals we share for Massachusetts and our Nation.

Sincerely,

W. Mitt Romney”

What is being debated is the ability to force third parties to provide them with benefits based on that status.

I have said this many times, and I wish conservatives would shout it from the rooftops. The left has been able to spin "gay marriage" as "giving gays the same freedoms as everyone else", rather than as a "forbidding people's right to voluntarily offer benefits to those they like without forcing them to offer such benefits to those they don't."

I'd like to see some "gay marriage" advocates asked a relatively simple three-part question:

Does a mother who is considering voluntarily giving her child up for adoption have the right to refuse any prospective adoptive parents for any reason whatsoever she sees fit?
Should such right apply even if the mother couldn't articulate any basis for such refusal other than a desire to have her child raised by one parent of the same sex and one of the opposite sex, and a belief that particular candidates would not provide that?
Should a mother who is seeking the help of an agency to find adoptive parents for her child be allowed to ask such agency to filter applicants using any criteria she sees fit, subject only to the constraint that if her criteria are unreasonable the agency may not find any candidates that meet them?

I don't know that many people would want to go on record as opposing a mother's absolute right to refuse prospective adoptive parents for any reason whatsoever that she sees fit. On the other hand, gay-power groups are already pushing to punish adoption agencies that want to supply each child with both a mother and a father. While I don't think that states should restrict adoption to married man-woman couples (in some situations, such as where an orphan's only surviving relative is gay, adoption by that relative might be better than adoption by a husband and wife who are not related to the child), that doesn't mean they should restrict private agencies' ability to do so should the mothers who place children with such agencies desire them to apply such criteria.

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