Tag Archives: Freedom Of Conscience

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There's a case in Michigan that just had closing arguments on Friday; the judge will rule within a couple of weeks on whether or not Michigan will become the next state to fall to this madness.

Part one:

In an article from February 24, this caught my eye

"Nothing says family like a marriage license," DeBoer told reporters before entering the courthouse hand-in-hand with Rowse, her partner of eight years.

I've worked in public schools for a number of years and I've seen many (politically correct) books say that this is NOT true.  We've been pushing the idea that "families come in all forms" - if a child is being raised by a single mom, that's a family.  If a child is being raised by a single dad, that's a family.  If a child is being raised by his or her grandparents, that's a family.  If a man and a woman (or a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, or a person and their cat) are living together without children, that's a family.  Mom and boyfriend/Dad and girlfriend...family.  You get my drift.

What a surprise to find out that it's a "marriage license" that says "family!"

What about faith?

The point of this madness is not to give gay folks the "right to marry" - it's not only to normalize that which has never been "normal."  It is to GLORIFY that lifestyle choice, and to force EVERYBODY to accept it, applaud it, normalize it.

remember the Borg?  "You will be assimilated."

People of faith who do not agree that "government sanctioned gay relationships" are wrong?  Via Tammy Bruce

Having been a liberal “community organizer” in my past, I immediately recognized the strategy being employed. This is an effort to condition the public into automatically equating faith with bigotry.

To make faith in the public square illegal and dangerous, you need legal cases and publicity. Voila, lawsuits against small business resting on the notion that acting on genuinely held faith is bigotry per se.

Under these rules, freedom of conscience is squashed under the jackboot of liberals, all in the Orwellian name of “equality and fairness.” Here we are dealing with not just forcing someone to do something for you, but forcing them in the process to violate a sacrament of their faith as well.

If we are able to coerce someone, via the threat of lawsuit and personal destruction, to provide a service, how is that not slavery? If we insist that you must violate your faith specifically in that slavish action, how is that not abject tyranny?

And now, we wait.

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Government sanctioned same-sex relationship edition (since I can't bring myself to call it "marriage") - we can shorten it to GSSR

BRUCE:Why the veto of Arizona’s religious freedom bill is alarming:

To make faith in the public square illegal and dangerous, you need legal cases and publicity. Voila, lawsuits against small business resting on the notion that acting on genuinely held faith is bigotry per se.

Under these rules, freedom of conscience is squashed under the jackboot of liberals, all in the Orwellian name of “equality and fairness.” Here we are dealing with not just forcing someone to do something for you, but forcing them in the process to violate a sacrament of their faith as well.

Refusing to Photograph a Gay Wedding Isn't Hateful:

Some opposition to same-sex marriage is rooted in bigotry and some isn't. Assuming otherwise is itself prejudice rooted in ignorance.

Thwarting the Wedding Cake Fascists Passive Aggressively

Maybe the response for florists, bakers and photographers is to tell gay couples if they hire their services for their weddings that they will be donating 100% of the profits to a sanctity of marriage group.

Drops the bomb right into the laps of those who for whatever reason want to force religious bakers to bake cakes and photographers to take pictures.

Religious Freedom Reframed So Gay Rights Trump Them:

“Freedom loses when fear overwhelms facts and a good bill is vetoed,” he said in a statement. “Today’s veto enables the foes of faith to more easily suppress the freedom of the people of Arizona.”

Business and Conscience:

Yet Christ's call to servanthood is for us to yield our desire to live for ourselves and instead submit to him, in doing so we live for others. But this is not a call for others to demand of us what they desire.

What will be the terms of our surrender?

Douthat is right. What unfolded last week reveals that this latter scenario is the most likely outcome. Gay activists and gay marriage supporters seem to have very little interest in a live-and-let-live diversity of opinion on the issue of marriage. They are making sure that the government imposes coercive sanctions on anyone who fails to affirm the moral goodness of gay unions. As last week revealed, the press has been happily passing along the propaganda of gay marriage supporters without any thoughtful consideration of the other side of the argument. They are backing us into a corner.

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"We've laid down our blood to have a free exercise of religion in this country and will continue to do so."

Working from a variety of sources, I really don't wonder very much what the motive is.

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent.” Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis

The claim:

Just as the spectacle of an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee’s stern questioning of her in the 1990s drew women voters to the polls, these lawmakers and women’s groups say Thursday’s House hearing on the Obama administration’s contraception rule — with an all-male panel testifying before a largely male committee — could provoke the same kind of response

 

First thing:  There were two panels, the second panel included two women.

Second thing:  it's not about contraception, it's about religious freedom and it's fitting that religious leaders were on the panel.

"The real issue here, it's not birth control; it's religious liberty, it's freedom of conscience, [and] it's the freedom of individuals and their churches to determine their own positions and their own policies about contraception and abortion,"

From the Catholic News Agency (quoting Pamela Haag):

“The phrase 'women’s health' in the birth control dispute is the latest nimble euphemism,” author and blogger Pamela Haag wrote in a Feb. 17 essay published on the “Marriage 3.0” blog.

Access to contraception, she said, “isn’t really about my 'health.' It’s not principally about the management of ovarian cysts or the regulation of periods.”

“Birth control isn’t about my health unless by 'health' you mean, my capacity to get it on, to have a happy, joyous sex life that involves an actual male partner,” wrote Haag, criticizing White House supporters for discussing contraceptives mainly as “preventive services” for women's health.

Even the folks who support the mandate (who are not following the administrations party line) know that it's not about health, it's about the ability of women to have sex without responsibility or consequences.

From Timothy George and Chuck Colson , via Christianity Today:

But Catholic institutions aren't the only ones affected by this mandate. Prison Fellowship, for example, which employs 180 people, could not purchase insurance for its employees that covers abortifacients. Nor could the world's largest Christian outreach to prisoners and their families afford the fines we would incur.

Three years ago, when we co-authored the Manhattan Declaration, we predicted that the time would come when Christians would have to face the very real prospect of civil disobedience—that we would have to choose sides: God or Caesar.

Certainly for the Catholics and for many of us evangelicals, that time is already upon us.

Rev. Matthew Harrison, president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod:

Harrison's goal Thursday, he said, was to tell Congress to "get the federal government out of matters of conscience for religious people, particularly in life issues where there's long-standing moral and ethical church precedent."

But he also wanted to drive home the intense feeling of alienation that, he said, conservative people of faith feel under the Obama administration. He said he would rather go to jail than comply with even the modified mandate, and that he would "give up my sons to fight" for the First Amendment.

On Friday, he explained those comments: "We've laid down our blood to have a free exercise of religion in this country and will continue to do so."

Harrison told the committee of the charitable work of the Missouri Synod and its members, calling the church "a machine which produces good citizens for this country, and at tremendous personal cost."

The members of his church "work, pay taxes, are charitable and responsible, take care of their children, participate in their communities and government, and serve in military," Harrison said. "The state should be interested in religion for this purpose: We produce good citizens. So stop attacking us. We are in every way a blessing for this country. We feel attacked for our fundamental convictions as if we're a detriment to our country. And that is a lie."