Religious Freedom & ‘Gay Marriage’ Cannot Coexist
“Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence.” – Psalm 73:6
“Gay pride” necessitates anti-Christian hate. It must. “Gay marriage” and other “sexual orientation”-based laws do violence to freedom and truth. They are the hammer with which the postmodern left intends to bludgeon bloody religious liberty and the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic.
According to the unequivocal moral precepts of the Judeo-Christian tradition – explicit throughout both the Old and New Testaments – homosexual behavior is sin. Sin is evil. Homosexual behavior is the central, defining characteristic of so-called “gay marriage.” Therefore, “gay marriage” is evil. Christians are obligated to avoid sin – to “do no evil.”
I know; it’s not popular to speak such simple truths in today’s politically correct world. But I’m not out to win a popularity contest.
Neither is Ms. Barronelle Stutzman. Ms. Stutzman is the Christian owner-operator of Arlene’s Flowers in Richland, Wash. She is, by all accounts, a lovely, sweet, elderly woman who both employs and regularly serves open practitioners of the homosexual lifestyle. Sadly, she has become the latest victim in a fast-growing string of secularist attacks against Christians and other morally minded people. If “same-sex marriage” becomes the law of the land, I can assure you that we will soon see a virtual explosion in the same kind of anti-Christian persecution Ms. Stutzman now suffers.
Recently, one of Ms. Stutzman’s frequent homosexual customers requested that she provide flower arrangements for his same-sex “wedding.” She politely declined, saying that her Christian conscience and “relationship with Jesus Christ” prevented her from any involvement with counter-Christian “same-sex marriage.” She was, quite simply, a Christian being Christian. The two hugged and parted ways.
Unfortunately, in our ever-”progressive” culture, being Christian has fast become a most dangerous proposition. As each homofascist demand is checked from liberals’ sin-centric wish list, it only gets worse.
As a result of her constitutionally guaranteed religious free exercise, Washington state’s newly elected Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed charges against Ms. Stutzman, seeking both a monetary judgment and an injunction to physically force her to violate her Christian conscience. He would compel her to either lend her artistic expression in support of counterfeit “gay marriage” – something Christianity steadfastly recognizes as mortal sin – or face further charges.
Speaking of steadfast, to her credit, Ms. Stutzman has stood firm. She has refused to cave under Ferguson’s tyrannical torment. Ferguson, on the other hand, has revealed himself a creep and a coward – a “progressive” bully who apparently gets off on abusing elderly women. He’s a disgrace to Washington state and should be thrown out of office and disbarred.
Still, this type of government persecution must be expected. Ferguson is a liberal. The liberal viewpoint is that any viewpoint, save the liberal viewpoint, must be criminalized and prosecuted.
Like many of us, Joseph Backholm, with the Family Policy Institute of Washington, has long warned about the consequences of radically deconstructing the institution of natural marriage.
“Now that the law says marriage is genderless,” he recently wrote of Ms. Stutzman’s ongoing abuse, “those who think otherwise [must] … conform or be punished. … Now liberals believe they are legally entitled to someone else’s labor.”