In March 2013, nearly a decade ago, in this space, I made a prediction.
“Within the next few months,” I wrote, “Justice Anthony Kennedy will likely rule that same-sex marriage is mandated by the Constitution of the United States… states will be forced to recognize same-sex marriages; same-sex marriage will enter the public-school lexicon; religious institutions will be forced to recognize same-sex marriages or lose their tax-exempt status. Religious Americans will be forced into violating their beliefs or facing legal consequences by the government.”
Welp.
This month, the Congress is poised to pass a bill that would sanctify same-sex marriage; that same bill essentially argues that opposing same-sex marriage is akin to opposing interracial marriage, an act of bigotry. It provides no explicit bar on removal of tax-exempt status from religious institutions; it does not protect religious individuals in their daily lives.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court considers whether to force a religious web designer to make a website celebrating a same-sex marriage. Several of the more conservative justices seek to draw a line between anti-discrimination law — laws on the state and federal level preventing “discrimination” on the basis of “sexual orientation” — and religious freedom. They do so by creating distinctions on the basis of expressive behavior (say, artistic expression in making a website) versus simple services provision (say, running a restaurant); they do so by distinguishing between services that require a message (say, baking a wedding cake) and serving gay couples without any message attached.
All of this legal hairsplitting is being done in an attempt to craft a form of the so-called Utah Compromise. That compromise put in place an anti-discrimination law with specific religious exemptions. But the Utah Compromise creates two additional problems: first, it stigmatizes belief in traditional marriage as a sort of vestige of religious bigotry we allow out of an outdated sympathy for the antiquated Bible-believers; second, it does not extend the rights of religious people outside of religious institutions. And, as it turns out, most religious people spend most of their time outside of religious institutions.
None of this would be necessary had we not undergone a complete transformation of the constitutional order over the past few decades. The Constitution of the United States provides zero power to the federal government to violate freedom of speech or association or religion. But, as Christopher Caldwell has pointed out in “The Age of Entitlement,” the Civil Rights Act created a “rival Constitution” dedicated to violating those freedoms in the name of anti-discrimination. One can agree that racial bigotry is evil while still recognizing that the intrusion of the CRA into private behavior — not merely in ending state-sponsored discrimination, which was necessary and appropriate — amounts of a massive expansion of federal power in violation of the Constitution.
The legal obliteration of the distinction between governmental and private activity was only one prong of the new societal remolding. The second was the philosophical obliteration of the distinction between immutable characteristics and behavior. The case can easily be made morally that people ought not be victims of discrimination based on their immutable characteristics, like race; rejecting moral disapproval of particular behavior, however, means destroying the basis for any moral system. Yet that is what the law does when it likens race to sexual orientation philosophically.
These twin attacks on traditional American society — vitiation of the distinction between private and public, and elimination of the distinction between innate characteristics and behavior — are predicates to tyranny. The new secular system sets up government as a new god, determining right and wrong and cramming it down on every subject. You will be forced to celebrate the behaviors of others; you will be treated as a bigot if you do not. The Supreme Court may hold back the legal ramifications of the new tyranny for now, but anyone who relies on the court to do so forever will be sorely disappointed.
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God created man and woman to pro create. A man with man and woman with woman can’t! That is a fact. They may adopt, or have a surrogate have a child for them but it’s still done by a man’s seed with a woman to have a baby. The gay and lesbian and whatever letters they call themselves try to force their beliefs on people who disagree with them. They call them haters and homophobic for having their own beliefs. God is against that lifestyle and hasn’t changed his mind all through the Bible. He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and all the cities round about. The only one he left was a City he left for Lot and his daughters to go to but it was also full of evil so they left it. Every nation who has promoted that lifestyle has diminished and made it more wicked by its debauchery. America is being brought down by this minority of people and if this passes the Supreme Court, you will see judgement on this country like never before! You can thank the heathen left for this when it happens. But it’s coming. “Righteousness exalts a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people.”
The primary reason that Roe vs. Wade was overturned is that the Supreme Court said that abortion was not a Federal Government issue but up to the states and their respective legislators to decide. It was neither a pro or anti abortion decision. So here we go again with 47 House Republicans and 12 Republican Senators supporting the Democrat bill that the definition of Marriage and who gets to use a men’s or women’s bathroom should be a Federal government issue. Just stop it. They should be focusing on stopping the RHINO supported Omnibus spending bill that essentially allows the government to continue their out of control money printing with no accountability that is driving inflation and bankrupting the middle class in America.
Not to mention that this bill will open the door for unlimited lawsuits against religious and Christian individuals and groups that don’t support the ultra liberal ideology; such as the Christian baker who didn’t want to bake a cake for a gay wedding or the “The Little Sisters of the Poor” Catholic nuns being forced to accept HHS mandates or even force people to accept that biological sex is just a “mental construct”. The Federal government has no business legislating issues of personal conscience or religious conviction.