Religious Freedom Restoration Act
Only Secular Ideas Can Be Protected Under Law ~ Colorado
I love ALL people who love freedom! >>> “Gay Woman Apologizes To Christian-Owned Indiana Pizzeria, Sends Donation.” See also this story: “Two Lovely and Freedom Loving Lesbians Stand Up To Gay Bullies!“
Breitbart notes that discrimination, seemingly, can only be in one direction:
…Last March, Jack went to Azucar Bakery and requested two cakes to be decorated with biblical messages. “I requested two cakes, each in the shape of an open Bible. On the first cake I requested on one page, ‘God hates sin — Psalm 45:7,’ and on the facing page, ‘Homosexuality is a detestable sin — Leviticus 18:22,’” Jack said.
Jack also said:
On the second cake I requested on one page, “God loves sinners,” and on the facing page, “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us – Romans 5:8.” I also requested a decoration of two groomsmen holding hands with a cross in the background with a ghostbusters symbol over it to illustrate that such a union is unacceptable biblically.
On Good Friday, the Department of Regulatory Agencies handed down its decision that refusing such a request did not constitute discrimination.
Jack has decried what he calls the “hypocrisy” of the decision, after the same department found a Christian baker guilty of discrimination for declining to bake a cake for a gay wedding….
In a conversation on my FaceBook, this question was posed:
Not saying it’s morally right, but isn’t that where people come in, to either purchase goods or not purchase goods from a business?
To which I replied:
Correct. Even below the Constitutional idea of Conscience objections due to religious objections… which the Federal and 20 state laws would make it incumbent on the cake shop owner to show a real religious foundation for their objection [withholding of services] to a specific event. LIKE the federal government allows the person not going to war in a draft because of deeply held religious convictions, they as well have to show the burden of their religious objection…
…there is the Constitutional idea of entering into contractual agreements with your fellow man without the government getting involved. This idea was found in early Christian thinking, grew immensely in Reformational thinking, influenced heavily the Western idea of law, and was a legal foundation to the philosophy that penned our Founding document:
▼ See my bibliography I used for a final paper in a seminary class.
So, the person wanting the service, if they cannot get it through an agreement with “said-shop-a,” there is always “said-shop-b.” If the consensus of the free market works against shop-a, then shop “a” will close due to free market values if they refuse to supply what the people want.
Both videos in a recent post of mine explain this concept of the free-market well. And this article explains a bit the “freedom of contract” in relation to the current issue.
The same issue is hitting across the pond as well. One point that I think goes well with the above idea that discrimination can happen to both the secular and religious person is this, via National Review:
“If supporting same-sex marriage is a protected political opinion, so is supporting traditional marriage,” Simon Calvert, deputy director of the Christian Institute, which is supporting the bakery, told the Telegraph. “Is the commission seriously saying that all business owners have to be willing to promote every political cause or campaign, no matter how much they disagree with it? Does a printer have no right to refuse to print posters for the BNP or Islamic State?”
Gay Patriot comments on the above that:
- “some animals are more equal than others”
…One set of rules for the politically favored, a different set of rules for everybody else. That’s America under the Obamacrats.
Note: According to a liberal polling outfit, only 32% of Americans support punishing people for refusing to take part in gay weddings. Unfortunately, those 32% control the media, academia, the courts, and the government.
When Liberals Use WWJD Against RFRA ~ MachoSauce
See more at Alfonzo’s site:
The American Experiment Wanes ~ Indiana and Religious Discrimination
Here is the discussion between Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service at Chapman University Fowler School of Law, John Eastman, and Dennis Prager about the law in Indiana and the failing American experiment:
In the second hour Dennis ruminates on the first hour and the discussion he had with Professor Eastman:
And as a bonus, I isolated Prager admitting that he was wrong and Barry Goldwater was right:
Gov. Jindal Talks About Religious Liberty and America’s Founding
Tammy Bruce Calls Em’ Gay Fascists As Well
The above comes with a hat-tip to GayPatriot, who themselves hat-tip both: Weasel Zips and Truth Revolt. Again, GP has me laughing: “Don’t call them Nazis, call them ‘Socialist Totalitarians in Fabulous Uniforms’.”
Cultural Marxism Key in Wedding Cake Fascism of the Left
I recently updated my defining of fascism here, reading that in total will help in understanding why gay men and women call these actions of laws against Christian bakers and photographers as fascism. To wit I wish to put in part here two posts by Gay Patriot and encourage you to click through to finsish the reading.
The first one is entitled, “The Gay Left Becomes a Hate Group,” it reads in part:
A pizza shop owner made the mistake of saying publicly that they didn’t care to be forced into catering a gay wedding. The left-wing MFM ginned up a fake story about a pizza shop that refused to cater gay weddings. Within a day, death threats… including a threat of arson from a public school teachers … forced the pizza shop to close.
And the gay left celebrated how effective they have become in their bullying.
[….]
Once it gets decided that certain people can have rights taken away from them by those who have power, violence follows inevitably.
Just imagine, for a second, if a gay-owned business had been forced to close because Christians threatened to burn it down and murder its employees.
The gay left has become the KKK, in 600 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets.
Here is the second article by GP that I recommend… IT is entitled, “Nobody Ever Died From Not Having a Wedding Cake“:
One aspect of the debate over whether Christians and others who don’t support gay marriage should be forced by the State (and threatened with violence) for declining to participate in gay weddings is … what’s the big deal with a wedding cake anyway? To the activist left, declining to bake a cake is no different than a lynching in the Jim Crow south. But does it really cause anyone any real quantifiable harm to send them to a different bakery? Or a different photographer? Or a different florist? Or a different wedding chapel?
If you really believe in liberty, then you have just accept that liberty means that people are going to make choices and do things that you may not agree with. And so long as they are not harming anyone else, they should be allowed to do so.
[….]
Bruised feelings do not rise to the level of actual harm.
Destroying someone’s livelihood through threats of violence —that is actual harm….
And this from the Canadian Free Press:
Bakers, photographers and florists are being forced to shut down their businesses unless they accede to demands that they join in the celebration of gay “marraiges,” but so far no one has faced jail time for putting commitment to the Word of God ahead of the demands of homosexuals and their cultural champions.
Until now. A couple in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho who own a wedding chapel there declined the request of a gay couple that they perform their “wedding.” They couple did what gay couples seem to do a lot in these situations. They didn’t just go find someone else. They complained to authorities, who are now threatening to throw the pastors in jail. That’s how out of control this has gotten:
The Idaho case involves Donald and Evelyn Knapp, both ordained ministers, who run Hitching Post Wedding Chapel. Officials from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, told the couple that because the city has a non-discrimination statute that includes sexual orientation and gender identity, and because the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Idaho’s constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman, the couple would have to officiate at same-sex weddings in their own chapel.
The non-discrimination statute applies to all “public accommodations,” and the city views the chapel as a public accommodation.
On Friday, a same-sex couple asked to be married by the Knapps, and the Knapps politely declined. The Knapps now face a 180-day jail term and $1,000 fine for each day they decline to celebrate the same-sex wedding.
Note how the secular left is trying to create a fascimile of the civil rights movement in turning these pastors into criminals, and doing so very disingenuously….
[….]
The Christian who believes homosexual sex is an abomination in the eyes of God cannot perform a gay wedding ceremony, or take photos of Bob and Gary, or write “Congratulations Anna and Shirley” on a cake without compromising his or her devotion to God. That is not the same thing as making them sandwiches.
The left wants the state to use the notion of “public accommodations” to force business owners to do things that directly violate their faith. The state is complying….
Just How Much Have Democrats Changed in 20-Years? (Mark Steyn)
Mark Steyn (http://www.steynonline.com/) responds to the question of how far the Democrat Party has moved in 20[+] years in regards to its extremism. Senator Ted Cruz notes how far, for example, the Democrats have moved leftward from Ted Kennedy on the First Amendment (below).
For more clear thinking like this from Hugh Hewitt… I invite you to visit: http://www.hughniverse.com/
If you asked a student to listen to Kennedy’s inaugural speech — without letting them know who was giving it, do you think they would say it was a Republican or Democrat?
