Hippies, Commies and other assorted lefties used to chant “Smash the state! Smash the church!” Now they don’t use that chant so much, probably because it’s too honest, and because they have figured out that they can use the one as a weapon to smash the other, which they hate more.
They’re making progress. Serious progress. Remember the baker who refused to participate in a gay wedding in Colorado because of his Christian faith? Such weddings remain illegal in that state, as they were at the time he made his decision. Yet he is being forced to undergo sensitivity training, and to report to the state on his business practices — for two years. Because a judge says so.
[Jack] Phillips appealed the verdict to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which stood by Spencer’s decision and ordered May 30 that Phillips be required to bake wedding cakes for same-sex couples in conflict with his moral Christian convictions. Additionally, Phillips and his staff will have to submit to a regimen of state-sanctioned sensitivity training to make sure they are in line with Colorado’s non-discrimination statute.
Over the next two years Phillips will also be required to submit quarterly reports to Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission concerning his business practices, informing the commission whether he has turned any business away, most importantly homosexual customers. “So if his shop is closed or he’s out of flour, he needs to report to the commission,” explained Nicolle Martin of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the conservative Christian legal advocacy group that represented Phillips in the case, to Fox News on June 5.
He will also be forced to train his staff to comply with the left’s whim, including his 87-year-old Christian mother.
So in the name of tolerance, the state is stepping into this man’s business and even straight into his family relations.
On the other side of the country, a national symbol of the Christian faith is declaring its allegiance.
The most visible Episcopal church in the U.S. is hosting its first openly transgender priest this month.
The Rev. Cameron Partridge is set to give the June 22 sermon at the Washington National Cathedral in Northwest.
Dean of the cathedral, the Rev. Gary Hall, said in a statement that he hopes Mr. Partridge’s presence sends a message of support for the transgender community.
“We at Washington National Cathedral are striving to send a message of love and affirmation, especially to LGBT youth who suffer daily because of their gender identity or sexual orientation,” he said. “We want to proclaim to them as proudly and unequivocally as we can: Your gender identity is good and your sexual orientation is good because that’s the way that God made you.”
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Mr. Hall also announced that the Right Rev. Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Episcopal priest, would be presiding the same service with Mr. Partridge. He retired from his post as a bishop in New Hampshire and now works at the Center for American Progress.
Apparently it’s too much to ask the Cathedral to offer a message of love and affirmation for traditional Christian beliefs.
Pretty soon there won’t be any room left in our Christian churches for Christian beliefs about marriage and family.
A friend of mine proposed a solution yesterday, one that I’ve heard before and you probably have too. It would have the state “get out of the marriage business” by declaring that henceforth, all unions are merely civil in nature, and the church alone has the right to use and define the word “marriage.” That proposal is equally naive and radical. Naive, because marriage is not really the end game for the radicals behind today’s dispute. Redefining marriage is a means to an end — observe the National Cathedral and Jack Phillips’ plight to see a glimpse of the end they have in mind. There will be no room for any sort of objection. You will be forced to care, and you will be forced to approve. It’s also naive because the most liberal churches have already redefined marriage, while the traditional ones have not. That creates space for disagreement, and in our litigious society, that’s an invitation for lawsuits. Through lawsuits, judges will end up imposing their own definition on the rest of the churches anyway.
The proposal is radical, because 1) we’ve been told that gay marriage is fine “because it doesn’t effect my marriage,” and 2) because it would give the government an angle to attack family law at its foundation. Obviously if we sweep away the state’s current definition of marriage and push that word off into a purely religious context, we’re changing everyone’s marriage whether they like it or not. Without a vote, without even having had a serious debate about it. As for the second, when we open up the family to a redefinition, we’re giving the government a window to re-examine millions of relationships and billions if not trillions of dollars of private property. Who in their right mind believes that our deeply in debt government will not take that opportunity to go on a confiscation spree? That’s to say nothing on how it might choose to start re-defining the parent-child relationship. Cue Melissa Harris-Perry, the leftist professor and MSNBC host who wants us all to give up the idea that our children belong to us. To whom do they belong? Why, the state, of course.
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