Could This Pastor's Strategy Shut Down Attacks on Christian Businesses?

Charisma News ^ | April 1, 2015 | CJ Conner

[concernedcitizen76]

Last week, Arlene's Flowers in Washington was fined $1,000 for declining a request to provide floral arrangements for the religious wedding service of gay men that she had served secularly for years. Citing her Christian convictions against participating in pagan rituals, grandma Barronelle Stutzman failed to prevail in her religious freedom case.

Faithful American Christians are increasingly under attack across the country by the gay lobby. Religious freedom is being radically and swiftly eroded. Remember the Houston 5, whose sermons and emails were subpoenaed as a repercussion of their opposition to the radical gay lobby in Houston, Texas.

It is a mark of national shame that the Religious Freedom Bill in Indiana—a Bill that mirrors President Clinton's Federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act—is being exploited by the gay lobby during Holy Week. The country has been forced into a national conversation on deviant sexuality during the holiest time of year for Christians.

"Even radicalized jihadis have put war on hold during Ramadan," said Rev. CJ Conner, Author of Jesus and the Culture Wars: Reclaiming the Lord's Prayer.

"I'm encouraging Christian pastors, churches, florists, bakers and boutique merchants to join together in concrete and deliberate steps to take a stand and protect the principle of American Christian Liberty," said Conner.

Here's how:

Florists, Bakers, and Other Wedding-Related Businesses

Christian merchants who serve weddings can protect their religious liberty by only offering their services to Christian Churches in exclusive, binding contracts. Merchants can continue to provide all other services as usual, but protect the free practice of their faith by contracting exclusively and specifically with Bible believing congregations to provide wedding services for their members.

Merchants would not be limited to only one faith community, but would be free from offering wedding services to the general public.

Faithful Christian Congregations

Congregations who rent space out for wedding related events or services as an outreach ministry should modify their organizational by-laws so that their facilities are only available for use to confirmed members of the congregation. This is a good general rule of thumb for every congregation. As the gay lobby expands its agenda to target Christians and houses of worship directly, congregations that rent their space to any couple are at risk for costly legal action if they do not also rent to gay couples.

Congregations should also begin to identify Christian florists, bakers, caterers and wedding boutiques that share their values and enter into exclusive, binding contracts for the service of Christian weddings. This will help ensure the success of Christian-owned businesses while also protecting the religious liberty of Christian wedding merchants and congregations.

"The burgeoning agenda of the gay lobby will soon turn to other targets on the horizon, including the 'fair use' of sacred worship spaces. In fact, the Alliance Defending Freedom/Faith has warned that the next battle-front for Christian liberty could well be where churches charter Boy Scout Troops. Congregations that allow the Boy Scouts to use their facilities either for rent or for free are at risk of legal liability should they refuse to perform a gay marriage on the basis of religious liberty. The Boy Scouts have embraced the gay lobby and their agenda."

"It is telling that during this penitential season the nation has been embroiled in a discussion over sin. I urge Christians to pray for the leaders of the gay lobby, that the Resurrected Lord may lead them out of their darkness and into His light, that they might repent, and God might forgive them for their persecution of Christians," said Rev. Conner.

"For faithful Christians, we are called to the same long-suffering as our Lord Jesus who gave His all for us on the cross on Good Friday. To the extent that we can peacefully side-step and not engage the gay lobby at all, we will be free for gospel mission—to be a holy blessing to our communities and the world."

[Springfield Reformer]

Ping for later

[1daddyoscsr]

Agree to make the cake

Tell them you think homosexuality is a sin, hand them a bible track, tell them the funds from their purchase will be donated to a traditional,marriage org., say before I take your order, I will say a quick prayer that god heal you from this perversion

If they still want it, they'll have to be tolerant of your beliefs

[major-pelham]

Let’s don’t do that - lets just enforce our 1st Amendment rights to Freedom of Association and Freedom of Religion against the Gaystapo. If a gay wedding or Aryan Brotherhood Banquet or something similar case goes to SCOTUS, the issue is whether or not their right to public accomodation supercedes an individuals 1st amendment right to Free Association. The employees of the business obviously have the right to NOT serve at an event. If that case isn’t decided properly then the United States doesn’t even exist anymore and we all need a new place to live.

[Canedawg]

Kosher delis that serve meat do not have any dairy products in the fridge.

[Springfield Reformer]

Now we need a plan that is not defensive but offensive.

We need a plan that has both offense and defense.  In any competitive contact sport, you need both to win.  You don't always have the ball, and right now we need to get our people and their businesses through this until we come up with a more effective offense.

Peace,

SR

[Springfield Reformer]

It would be far wiser to just quote very high prices and agree to do it.

Meh.  Under public accomodation you'd have to charge the same prices to everybody or it will stil come out as actionable discrimination.  But if you overcharge everybody, your business dies.  Not the way to go.

Peace,

SR

[super7man]

How about a policy of donating 10% of any cake or flowers purchased for a wedding, to one of the “get out of homesexuality” organizations?

Doesn’t descriminate, everybody pays.

[Pecos]

I was thinking that they would have two refrigerators, one for dairy, and one for meat. If that mental picture is wrong, then my analogy is wrong.

[ilovesarah2012]

“I verily believe Christianity necessary to the support of civil society. One of the beautiful boasts of our municipal jurisprudence is that Christianity is a part of the Common Law … There never has been a period in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying its foundations.”

- Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, Harvard Speech, 1829

http://www.usachristianministries.com/us-history-quotes-about-god-and-the-bible/

[Canedawg]

They would also need two sets of dishes- one for dairy and one for meat. It’s not likely in a restaurant. Mixing meat and dairy is not keeping kosher.

[Pecos]

And that was the point of my original post.

[C. Edmund Wright]

Wedding cakes are custom items......so your argument doesn’t hold. Besides, the whole point is, these transactions will NEVER actually happen. Why is this so hard for people to understand?

[C. Edmund Wright]

Too complicated, and missed the point.....which is that these transactions will hardly ever, if ever, actually take place. These people don’t want cake and flowers from Christian businesses, they want the “no” and then to harass them.

[EternalVigilance]

As Lincoln said of slavery in 1858, so it applies to religious liberty and marriage. We’re going to be ‘all of one thing or all of the other.’

Such is the always the way of things that involve core moral principles.

I don’t want any special protection or special privileges based on lawyerly cleverness.

I simply want to live in a moral, just, secure, free republic, under God.

That will not be possible if the “children” of Sodom and their enablers are allowed to win this cultural, political, and legal war.

And don’t kid yourself, it is a war. One that the enemies of God and liberty aggressively launched against us and our children.

[SaraJohnson]

Better to just accidentally provide terrible service so they don’t come back.

[Canedawg]

I read your point to be that a Kosher deli would keep both dairy and meat on their premises. That is incorrect.

[Springfield Reformer]

Wedding cakes are custom items

Irrelevant.  For example, if you overcharged blacks consistently versus other groups, custom item or not, you're still going down hard under public accommodation law.  Sorry to burst your bubble.  

And yes, these transactions will happen.  I interned with Liberty Counsel doing constitutional law for mostly people of faith defending themselves from a wide variety of attacks.  If you leave a gap in your strategy, they will find and exploit it.  This is "Gayhad," total war.  Prepare for it, or prepare to lose.

Peace,

SR

[aimhigh]

The response of Christians to these events, although understandable, is misplaced. It's not like they weren't warned about the price of discipleship.

I agree. When whipped, the apostles didn't stop and develop a survival plan. They praised God that they were count worthy of suffering for Him.

Phil 1:29 "For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake, having the same conflict which you saw in me and now hear is in me."

2 Tim 3:10 "Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution."

[Springfield Reformer]

Better to just accidentally provide terrible service so they don’t come back.

I understand the sentiment totally, but it is a terrible legal strategy.  Learn the term "disparate impact."  Under public accommodation law as it is presently handled, if they can show a pattern such that one particular group always gets the "poor service," and everybody else gets the standard service, that will go down as a denial of service.  All they need is the discrepancy, the two levels of service, and during discovery they will have no trouble finding that.  But if you treated everybody equally badly, that would be legally defensible, but terrible for your business model.  The trick, as far as I been able to think this through so far, is to come up with a business model where service to gay signature events is simply not part of what you do for anybody.  Give people kits to do their own writing on cakes.  Lower the price, let the customer do the customizing.  Sell a quality, stackable cake, and treat everybody the same. I'm not definite on that, mind you, just kicking around some ideas.  But that's the direction we probably need to go short term.  

Long term, we have to beat this back, and it has to ultimately come in at at least two levels, cultural and legal.  Not to forget spiritual, because this really is a spiritual war more than anything else.  But culturally we need to do some judo on the gayhadis' "death star" technology, the power of enormous, highly focused economic punishment for non-conformity.  Look what they did to two supposedly conservative governor's and their legislators.  We have to find a weakness in that death star and put it out of operation. Legally, we have a lot of fronts to cover, the make up of the courts, the trending of current law (Hobby Lobby, etc.), finding points of influence and making a legally, morally, pragmatically sound argument for religious liberty, etc.  

That's a lot to digest, and I'm sure there are some think-tank Christian or religious liberty groups working through these very questions.  That's something I'd like to see more of on FR.  We can disperse these ideas pretty well.  We should be looking for them and giving them some air time.  Time for pretending we can get through this without fighting back is over.  Let it begin.

Peace,

SR

[C. Edmund Wright]

First of all, you apparently do not understand the term “custom” - because you are still stuck in this mindset - there is no such thing as over charging on custom items or services, because they are by very definition DIFFERENT and unique...one - offs. You didn’t burst anything but your own bubble.

Second, I fully understand the gayhad and the gaystapo. And frankly, where do you draw the line? How about the janitorial service that cleans up the wedding? How about the landscaping company that spruces up the place prior?

I fully respect the right of business owners to operate their businesses in the manner they choose - but that doesn’t mean every hill is a hill to die on. If you’re not officiating the service, you’re just selling a commodity. Perhaps some of these folks over estimate their part in the esoteric nature of these events.

Cakes are cakes. Flowers are flowers. By “standing up for principle” here, we’re already losing the very nature of property rights.