1st Amendment

Gay Baker Forced to Serve Westboro Baptist Church

Published by Papa Giorgio

“….Imagine a homosexual videographer being forced to video a speech that a conservative makes against homosexual behavior and same sex marriage. Should that homosexual videographer be forced to do so? Of course not! Then why Elane Photography?” ~ Gay Patriot

A great post from Clash Daily-Doug Giles, enjoy the not so funny point:

At least Oregon is applying its anti-discrimination laws evenhandedly. Interesting story out of Gresham: The Oregonian is reporting that Bruce Bottoms – a homosexual baker and owner of “Cakes By Cupcakes” – has been charged with anti-Christian discrimination by the Oregon Ministry of Human Rights (OMHR).

Mr. Bottoms and his partner, Lance Limpkowski, recently declined to bake a cake for the notoriously anti-”gay” Westboro Baptist Church (WBC). As a result, they’ve been forced to shut down their business.

It seems that, in another tired attempt to be provocative, representatives from the attention-starved WBC demanded that Bottoms and Limpkowski bake a cake for a Westboro fundraiser with the group’s trademark slogan, “God Hates Fags,” emblazed in rainbow frosting across the top. Mr. Bottoms, who reportedly moonlights as a part-time blogger for the homosexual activist “Human Rights Campaign,” was understandably appalled. He refused.

“Look, I’ll serve anybody, Christian or otherwise,” said Bottoms. “I just refuse to bake a cake that endorses an ideology that I find obscene. If Westboro came in and asked me to bake a birthday cake with the words ‘Happy 120th, Papa Freddy,’ it’d be my pleasure,” he said. “I didn’t decline to bake the cake because the customers defined themselves as ‘Christian’; I refused because nobody should be forced to lend their talents to endorse – whether directly or indirectly – a message or event that they find repugnant.”

Tolerance Enforcement Commissioner Brad Avakian disagreed: “We are committed to a fair and thorough investigation to determine whether there’s substantial evidence of unlawful discrimination,” he told the Oregonian. “The goal is never to shut down a business. The goal is to rehabilitate. For those who do violate the law, we want them to learn from that experience and have a good, successful business in Oregon. Everybody is entitled to their own beliefs, but that doesn’t mean that folks have the right to discriminate,” he said.

Meanwhile, churches and Christian groups across America organized a boycott of Cakes By Cupcakes, picketing the business and threatening to target other businesses that associated with Bottoms and Limpkowski. The two men have additionally reported multiple death threats, with one Presbyterian preacher leaving a voicemail: “Die bigots! You anti-Christian haters need to keep your Christophobia to yourselves!” he said.

Just kidding.

Sort of.

Although the “Cakes By Cupcakes” incident didn’t actually happen, something quite similar is happening across America. It’s a photo negative of the above scenario, but it’s equally absurd. Homosexual activists and “progressive” government officials are targeting Christian business owners – true Christians, not hateful Westboro-types – for real anti-Christian discrimination. And they’re doing it in the name of “non-discrimination.”

…read more…

McCarthyism Against Religious People in the Military

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is from the Baptist Press via Pastor Dean:

SAN ANTONIO (BP) — Due to a perceived slight against homosexuality, Senior Master Sgt. Phillip Monk is in a fight for his career. The Lackland Air Force base first sergeant was told by his commanding officer to clear out his office on Aug. 9. The point of contention reportedly is not about anything Monk said, but what he refused to say.

“It’s all because he didn’t say anything wrong. He thought it,” said Steven Branson, pastor of Village Parkway Baptist Church in San Antonio. Monk, his wife and their three teenage sons faithfully attend services each Sunday the pastor said.

Branson said he has been in touch with Monk since the sergeant told him Sunday (Aug. 11) of the untenable situation. The pastor said Monk feels abandoned by the institution he has served for 19 years. Deployed as a medic, Monk devoted himself to saving the lives of his fellow service men and women, according to his pastor.

“Now I’m in trouble,” Monk told Branson, “and everybody’s leaving me behind.”

At issue is Monk’s refusal to reveal his personal views regarding homosexual marriage to his commanding officer. According to a Fox News report, the commander, a lesbian, asked Monk to report on disciplinary proceedings for an Air Force instructor under investigation for making objectionable comments about homosexual marriage during a training session.

According to Fox News, Monk interviewed the instructor and determined his comments were not intentionally provocative. But some trainees complained. Monk suggested that his commander use the incident as a learning tool about tolerance and diversity, but to no avail.

“Her very first reaction was to say, ‘We need to lop off the head of this guy.’ The commander took the position that his speech was discrimination,” Monk reportedly recounted.

Branson said the commander began to press Monk about his views on the issue.

Fox reported, “She said, ‘Sgt. Monk, I need to know if you can, as my first sergeant, if you can see discrimination if somebody says that they don’t agree with homosexual marriage.'”

Having witnessed the commander’s ire regarding the instructor, Monk declined to answer. He also understood Air Force policy demands silence from homosexual detractors.

“She got angrier and angrier with him,” Branson said. “So he got fired for something she thinks he believes.”

The action will be a mark on an otherwise spotless record. Branson called Monk “pure military” — a real “do-it-by-the-book” serviceman who also happens to be a strong Christian.

…read more at Fox News Insider…

Concepts: “The Loss of Secular Society” (Distortions from the Left)

Published by Papa Giorgio

I am amused to see a guy — John Van Huizum — mention his two-decades of writing articles, and then, follow this resume reference with this:

I think that when you put God on a U.S. issued coin or banknote, you obviously ignore what should be a separation of church and state, as many of our founders intended.

Please, besides writing crap for two decades backed by nothing more than opinion, tell me what the Founders thought of “separation of church and state” John. Tell me what books you have read to come to such a conclusion, please. And I imagine you would have read a few from each viewpoint to come to such a FIRM conclusion, like: “you OBVIOUSLY ignore what should be a separation of church and state, as many of our founders intended” (emphasis added). In a paper I did on this topic, I note that the same persons that wrote and ratified the 1st Amendment, did something that according to John they shouldn’t have done if how he views the topic is true. For instance, as soon as they finished with Constitutional issues (its creation and passage), they immediately went to their prospective states and wrote their state constitution. Here are some excerpts from them:

State Constitutions

On the day the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, they underwent an immediate transformation.  The day before, each of them had been a British citizen, living in a British colony, with thirteen crown-appointed British state governments.  However, when they signed that document and separated from Great Britain, they lost all of their State governments.

Consequently, they returned home from Philadelphia to their own States and began to create new State constitutions.  Samuel Adams and John Adams helped write the Massachusetts constitution; Benjamin Rush and James Wilson helped write Pennsylvania’s constitution; George Read and Thomas McKean helped write Delaware’s constitution; the same is true in other States as well.  The Supreme Court in Church of Holy Trinity v. United States (1892) pointed to these State constitutions as precedents to demonstrate the Founders’ intent. 

Notice, for example, what Thomas McKean and George Read placed in the Delaware constitution:

“Every person, who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust… shall… make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit: ‘I do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed forever more, and I acknowledge the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.’”

Take note of some other State constitutions.  The Pennsylvania constitution authored by Benjamin Rush and James Wilson declared:

“And each member [of the legislature], before he takes his seat, shall make and subscribe the following declaration, viz: ‘I do believe in one God, the Creator and Governor of the Universe, the rewarded of the good and the punisher of the wicked, and I do acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by Divine Inspiration.’”

The Massachusetts constitution, authored by Samuel Adams – the Father of the American Revolution – and John Adams, stated:

 “All persons elected must make and subscribe the following declaration, viz. ‘I do declare that I believe the Christian religion and have firm persuasions of its truth.’”

North Carolina’s constitution required that:

“No person, who shall deny the being of God, or the truth of the [Christian] religion, or the Divine authority either of the Old or New Testaments, or who shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the State, shall be capable of holding any office, or place of trust or profit in the civil department, within this State.”

You had to apply God’s principles to public service, otherwise you were not allowed to be a part of the civil government.  In 1892, the Supreme Court (Church of Holy Trinity v. United States) pointed out that of the forty-four States that were then in the Union, each had some type of God-centered declaration in its constitution.  Not just any God, or a general God, say a “higher power,” but thee Christian God as understood in the Judeo-Christian principles and Scriptures.  This same Supreme Court was driven to explain the following:

“This is a religious people.  This is historically true.  From the discovery of this continent to the present hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation….  These are not individual sayings, declarations of private persons: they are organic utterances; they speak the voice of the entire people….  These and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.”

…read more…

In other words, for two decades John has been writing hearsay and not doing the hard work a knowing what the “F” he is talking about. Unfortunately, due to time, I am not able to critique other issues in this short article I found wanting. That being said, I am sure the reader gets the point from this single critique (as well as my previous) that John is your typical secular liberal. I think I agree with Milton Berle’s assessment of John (*wink*), “with him, ignorance is a religion.”

Military Chaplains Soon Forced Into Performing Same-Sex Marriages? (Two veterans from over a year ago think so)

Published by Papa Giorgio

BigGovernment has this:

The stage is being set so that military Chaplains can and most likely will be ordered to perform same sex marriage in contradiction to their religious beliefs.

WASHINGTON, May 22, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Democrat House leaders including Nancy Pelosi have opposed a measure to ensure military chaplains are not forced to perform same-sex “marriages,” arguing that it is based on a “manufactured crisis” and therefore unnecessary – a response strongly criticized by chaplain advocates.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday echoed sentiments issued by the Obama White House regarding the conscience language, part of a defense spending bill, saying that “there’s nothing that says that chaplains act against their faith.”

The result will be that chaplains of certain faiths abandon the military as they are forced to choose between violating their faiths or being driven out for not performing such marriage ceremonies.

What is required is the respect of certain long-established and broadly supported religious beliefs. We currently lack a White House and Democrat leadership capable of providing this respect. When Leftists empowered by big government meet religion, religion loses and is ultimately diminished in size and influence.

…read more…

In a recent response to a friend post on FaceBook, I mentioned the types of areas that same-sex marriage hurts religious belief and places where faith and care and concern for the poor as well as children:

…Unfortunately, like many others, this is what Thomas Sowell calls “stage one” thinking. Emotions based policy making without asking what affect a decision will have on society. The oldest (and most successful) adoption agency in Massachusetts (80-years in the field of placing children with families, Illinois and California are sure to follow) and DC had to shut their doors because of their religious option to prefer heterosexual couples when adopting to homosexual couples, from Universities ceasing to give insurance to their students and staff, to forcing chaplains in the military to marry gay couples. These are the early consequences to stage one thinking…

You can add military chaplains to the mix. Decisions like these do not just affect “marriage,” they reverberate throughout all society. Special rights always sets up battles and shows how they destroy healthy thinking, for instance this dichotomy:

“If homosexuality is really genetic, we may soon be able to tell if a fetus is predisposed to homosexuality, in which case many parents might choose to abort it. Will gay rights activists continue to support abortion rights if this occurs?” ~ Dale A. Berryhill, The Assault: Liberalism’s Attack on Religion, Freedom, and Democracy

The question become this, then. Would conservatively religious people serving LESS in the military hurt or help our nation? Does forcing one to reject his religious conscience by Government edict good or bad for society? This is stage two thinking. About 0.1 percent of all American military personnel officially declare themselves to be atheists, while about 77% are Christians — with about 3,000 chaplains — of some flavor (Catholic, Protestant, and the like).  Would our military and national defense suffer if less-and-less Christians joined? The left never asks these questions, they merely legislate from emotional stances:

The Blaze has this portion on the matter:

According to a policy statement released by the administration yesterday, President Barack Obama “strongly objects” to provisions in a House defense authorization bill that would prohibit the use of U.S. military property in same-sex marriages and protect military chaplains who refuse to perform gay marriage ceremonies against their religious beliefs.

Arguing that the measure’s “overbroad terms,“ the Obama administration claims such a measure ”is potentially harmful to good order and discipline.”

…read more…

Commentary Magazine ends their wonderful article on this topic very astutely:

…If President Obama does veto the protections offered to chaplains by the House — as his Office of Management and Budget recommends — then it is possible to envision a future where Catholic, evangelical and Orthodox Jewish clergy will no longer be welcome as military chaplains.

At the American Conservative, Rod Dreher quotes American Jewish Congress chief counsel Marc Stern as saying that, “no one seriously believes that clergy will be forced, or even asked, to perform marriages that are anathema to them.” Yet the “sea change” that same-sex marriage will create in American law will bring with it consequences that advocates for this measure aren’t acknowledging. As Dreher writes:

The strategy of the pro-SSM side seems to be to deny that anything like this could possibly happen, and that people who say it could are being irresponsible scaremongers. Then when it actually happens, they’ll say oh, who cares; those bigots deserve what they get.

Dreher is right. The legal problem here is not so much the direct issue of redefining marriage from the traditional understanding of it being one man and one woman. Rather, it is the implications that stem from government sanction that will redefine some religious believers as being outside of not only mainstream opinion but literally outlaws and vulnerable to prosecution and/or defunding on the grounds of discrimination against gays.

The only way for advocates of same-sex marriage to avoid the stigmatizing of some faiths in this manner is to agree to legal stipulations that remove any possibility that religious institutions could be compelled to sanction behavior their religion regards as immoral. But if they refuse to do so, as the White House is indicating with its opposition to House protections for military chaplains, then gay marriage ceases to be a civil rights issue and becomes the focal point of a kulturkampf in which religious freedom is on the line. If that is the way things are heading, then military chaplains won’t be the last victims in the purge of believers.

…read more…

 

Democrats Hurting Majority In Drive To Egalitarian “Special Rights” Utopia

Published by Papa Giorgio

One Franciscan University employee said:

“But there you have it: thanks to the government’s firm desire to make sure the one or two women left in the country who did not have easy and cheap access to contraceptives, abortofacients [sic], and sterilization procedures, our 2,500 students will no longer have an insurance plan ready and waiting for them.”

[….]

Franciscan’s refusal to comply with the HHS edict shows that this issue will not go away quietly for Obama among Catholics and members of other faiths less inclined to vote Democrat.  As more Catholic institutions opt out, the issue will get more and more acute for Obama as bishops press hard for freedom of religious conscience.

…READ MORE…

Earlier (Feb 6, 2012), the Archdiocese of Boston said it may stop offering insurance:

The Archdiocese of Boston says it may stop offering health insurance for its employees if the Obama administration does not relax a new rule that requires many church-affiliated employers to cover the cost of birth control in employee health plans.

In a sharply worded letter sent to parishioners, Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley called the rule a violation of Catholic consciences. Citing the Church’s longstanding opposition to contraception, O’Malley wrote:

In its ruling, the Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty.

O’Malley’s letter was one of many sent out to parishes across the country at the behest of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

…READ MORE…

What a rotten consequence of Democratic leftism! It — liberal ideology — makes many unintelligent to the real problems and ways to fix them with common sense (like inter-state insurance competition, tort law reform, and the like).

Here is a great example from 2006 of how leftists ideology harms the people they purport to say they help. In this example, children:

(Washington Times, 2006) The recent decision by Catholic Charities of the Boston Archdiocese to stop offering adoption services to avoid placing children with homosexuals is reverberating through child welfare circles and sparking fears that other Catholic Charities agencies may follow suit.

“Everyone’s still reeling from the decision,” Marylou Sudders, executive director of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (MSPCC), said yesterday.

“Ultimately, the only losers are the kids,” said Maureen Flatley, a Boston adoption consultant and lobbyist. If other Catholic Charities agencies withdraw from public adoption, “you can’t even begin to talk about what the impact of that will be nationwide,” she said.

[….]

A spokeswoman for the state DSS said it was already working to “transition” hundreds of foster children to new agencies. The Boston Catholic Charities’ contract expires June 30.

[….]

Ms. Sudders of MSPCC said that by not renewing its state license, Boston Catholic Charities will be opting out of myriad services, including recruitment of adoptive parents, training, home studies, managing adoption placements and working with special needs adoptions. She said the loss of the state’s biggest and most experienced adoption agency is “a very big deal for Massachusetts and a very big deal for the kids.”

The Democratic Party, enslaving, hurting, and killing the innocent since 1812!

Democratic Drama Queens! Stopping the Leftist Narrative from Taking Hold in the American Psyche

Published by Papa Giorgio

Gateway Pundit astutely mentioned the truth in the matter, as, you can see the narrative immediately above and below set by liberals:

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing today on Barack Obama’s unprecedented attack on religious freedom. Democrats invited the notorious Christian-hater Barry Lynn to represent them. Then they withdrew his invitation. And, then they stormed out of the committee hearing hoping to deflect all of the media’s attention away from Barack Obama’s assault on religious organizations.

Think Progress predictably reported that the Republicans would not allow any females on the panel. Not true. Rep. Darrell Issa (R_CA) the committee’s chairman explained to Greta Van Susteren On The Record tonight that the minority party historically is allowed one panelist at a typical hearing. The democrats picked Christian-hater Barry Lynn. Then they switched and chose a young woman to come in and talk about birth control. That was not the topic of the hearing so Issa told democrats they could not bring her in to represent them. Then they walked out. It was all planned.

Of course, the state-run media will never report these important facts.

After the hearing started democrats still tried to disrupt the proceedings and turn it into a sideshow. They were determined to hide from the American people their disdain for religious freedom.

…read more…

Just a few years ago this narrative may have been embedded in the psyche of the general public, but the new media (sites like these) and Fox News, can correct the leftist media in their attempt to create a story:

Kirsten Powers & Peggy Noonan School Mainstream Media`s Perception of Contraception Debate (Updated: George Will & Liz Cheney)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Via NewsBusters & MRCTV



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