One has to be a seriously holy society to make this stick. Hypocrisy provides an insufficient platform. And “the sin of rebellion is as the sin of sorcery.”
When confronted by God’s Holiness we find Isaiah — who must have been mighty in the holiness that could come from the Law in its time ... not just morally as if some mere upright Israelite but also ceremonially and positionally (as ministering priest) — despairing of life as a man of unclean lips among a people of unclean lips.
What this specifically means (though I suspect it may have had something to do with being too quick to vow or say things like as The Lord lives) isn’t so much important to the point I’m trying to make as that it was a recognition that something he’d thought harmless, maybe even good, when he say Holiness he realized it was anything but.
And here our society is one of unclean “what have you got?” (say it eagerly out loud as if hopeful, to get the effect I’m hoping to convey) but because it judges itself by itself I can’t help but have the feeling that many Americans might imagine, were they suddenly in Isaiah’s shoes, that they would come off smelling like a rose, or even get a pat on the back for being “nice” and “tolerant”.
Never mind those who are functionally insane like so many PCdiots are.
That said, what restrains the mortal saints, their own issues aside (you do not have to be anything but struggling to try to stand against evil and in fact struggling is far BETTER than these unrepentant unhypocritical worldlings), is a civil law: we are not Israel under the Law. Yet it is much better that we use our influence against the like of witches in a most intolerant way than to say, oh, we’re just hypocrites and let slide. That would be part of the salt losing its saltiness.
Do not fall for the suggestion that those who don’t live up to every jot and tittle should be the ones to make due: that’s just things like when an Alinskyite demands you put up or shut up knowing he can cause shame in some and shut up those who might resist them.
So legally we have to leave witches to God, and hope that they repent, but towards those that are active and unrepentant ... they should be opposed in a manly fashion.
Frankly, the federal government has NO lawful power to ever require a private citizen or other non-State Actor to respect federal civil rights. It is not rebellion to resist lawlessness in high places.