Posted on 04/05/2014 2:23:06 PM PDT by Kaslin
Unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock, you’ve noticed the growing clash between religious freedom and issues like same-sex marriage and forced funding of abortion. Last week, the Supreme Court heard a landmark case on whether the federal government can compel a business to fund abortion drugs in defiance of the religious beliefs of the business owner. It’s merely one such case amid a flurry of lawsuits that even includes the Little Sisters of the Poor. Or, consider these situations involving gay marriage:
In Oregon, a couple that owns a bakery, the Kleins, are being sued and called before the state for not making a wedding cake for a same-sex ceremony. The Kleins note that being forced to make such a cake against their will would violate their Christian beliefs and freedom of conscience.
In Colorado, another bakery owner, Jack Phillips, awaits a possible jail sentence for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple.
In Washington State,a florist is being prosecuted by the state’s attorney general for declining to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding.
In Ocean Grove, New Jersey, a Methodist camp meeting association lost its tax-exempt status for declining its wedding pavilion to two lesbians for a same-sex ceremony.
In New Mexico, the state Supreme Court ruled against the owners of Elane Photography, judging that they violated the state’s Human Rights Act by refusing to take pictures for a same-sex ceremony. The ACLU opposed Elane Photography, as did one of the justices, who recognized that the ruling violated Elane’s religious freedom but argued that such is the price of “citizenship” in America today.
In Massachusetts and Illinois, Catholic Charities, one of the oldest and most established private adoption agencies in America, has been forced to cease services because it will not provide adoptive children to gay couples.
And then there’s any number of figures demonized, boycotted, picketed, pressured, or fired for expressing their opposition to gay marriage: the president of Chick-fil-A, the owner of Barilla pasta, Craig James of Fox Sports, or Arizona’s governor.
These are merely a few of many examples. All involve religious believers invoking their sacred First Amendment rights, only to have those rights rejected by those describing themselves as “liberal” and professing “diversity” and “tolerance.” In truth, you are not free to disagree with liberals on this issue. They won’t let you. They will compel you. They will see you in court, in bankruptcy, maybe even in jail.
Liberals tolerate only what they agree with.
But what’s really going on here? What’s the bigger picture? Well, these actions of liberals/progressives aren’t a surprise when you delve deeper into the logic of their ideology. Consider:
Liberals/progressives have a hierarchy of rights. They don’t look at competing rights in a pluralist system in the typical way that we’ve long been accustomed to in America. For instance, Americans typically—through the political and judicial process—have carefully sought to balance competing rights: property rights, civil rights, religious liberty, freedom of conscience, speech, press, federal rights, state rights, the right to life, and so forth. Picture all of these rights laid out in a line, with each prudently considered among the others, and with respect to the others.
Unfortunately, that is not how liberals/progressives operate. They act according to a hierarchy of rights that—consistent with progressivism—is always progressing, or changing, or evolving. Right now, for liberals/progressives, sitting atop the totem pole in this hierarchy are so-called “marriage rights” and “abortion rights.” In the past, they called these things not rights but “gay marriage” or “freedom of choice.” Quite shrewdly, however, they’ve framed these “freedoms” as “rights,” along the lines of “civil rights.” Equally shrewd, they push them forward under the mantra of “tolerance.” It’s a brilliant move that’s working extremely effectively with millions of Americans.
But here’s the main point: for today’s liberals/progressives, the likes of “marriage rights” and “abortion rights” rise superior to other rights, certainly above religious rights and property rights. We see this in the gay marriage examples listed above. It also applies to the Obama HHS mandate requiring religious believers to fund abortion drugs. In all these cases, there’s one commonality: liberals/progressives disregard the religious rights and property rights that they are steamrolling in the name of gay marriage and abortion. Religious rights and property rights are subjugated to a kind of liberal/progressive gulag. They are deemed bottom-of-the-barrel, and in no way nearly as important or worthy of consideration.
Again, the startling irony is that these same people fancy themselves champions of tolerance, diversity, and “equal rights.” That has never been accurate, and they are proving it now with special uncompromising rigidity. They are pursuing what they’ve always pursued: selective tolerance, selective diversity, and selective equal rights. Religious rights are not among their select.
A quotation that sums up this thinking comes from gay activist, law professor, and EEOC Commissioner Chai Feldblum. When asked about the conflict between gay rights and religious rights, Feldblum said, “I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win.”
That’s very clear. An attorney colleague of mine says of Feldblum: “Supposedly a Constitutional Law scholar, she holds that view despite the fact that religious freedom is actually in the Constitution!”
Yes, but to liberals/progressives it doesn’t matter. They have a hierarchy of rights, one that’s always changing. And right now, religious rights are their bottom-dwellers. For religious believers who disagree with them, too bad. They’ll see them in court.
Gay trumps black, which trumps woman, which trumps everyone else.
THIS is why gun control is so important to them...
The bottom photo was taken during the disgraceful mob scene at the Texas State Capitol in Austin when supporters of Wendy Davis (aka “Abortion Barbie”), candidate for Governor, caused Leftists to wet themselves with glee. Supporters also shouted, “Hail, Satan!” in the faces of Christians who quietly held anti-baby-killing signs. It was, however, an appropriate motto for these ungodly cretins and their agenda.
It’s important for conservatives to always make the distinction between natural rights and government given rights. Natural rights are irrevocable. Government rights come and go.
1) Rights of citizens are natural. Rights of corporations are government given, and must be distinguished as such, never confused with natural rights.
2) Foreigners and illegal aliens still have natural rights, but they may be denied all government given rights.
I can’t wait to see what happens when they finally find the gay gene (which doesn’t exist IMO) and then the mother wants to abort her child because of that. Will they actually deprive a woman of her “Right to Choose” in that instance?
probably the same thing will happen when a man finally gives birth to a baby
I should note I really haven’t read this yet.
We are finally getting to the point of questioning why there is ANY law against discrimination of any kind for any reason.
I should not have to prove I don’t approve of homosexuality because I am religious. I should not need a religion to assert my feelings about any given issue. I should be able as an atheist to reject homosexuality, including from my business.
Maybe all this nonsense of the last 50 years of lists of whom we do not discriminate against will finally reach the boiling point. Maybe we will finally start discussing real freedom again.
Excellent point
I would assume that if there were such a thing as a “gay” gene that it would be prohibited to even screen for the presence of it in a fetus, and a “capital crime” to abort that fetus.
To a liberal, a “constitutional right” is any right other than one that is specified in the Constitution.
Thank you. And that means conservatives. Too often people say “constitutional rights” when really they are NATURAL rights. The purpose of the BOR was not to GRANT rights, but RECOGNIZE natural rights.
Liberalism always provides many opportunities for Schadenfreud, because it makes for all kinds of strange bedfellows.
"Man ... must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator.. This will of his Maker is called the law of nature.... This law of nature...is of course superior to any other.... No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this: and such of them as are valid derive all their force...from this original." - Sir William Blackstone (Eminent English Jurist)
The Founders DID NOT establish the Constitution for the purpose of granting rights. Rather, they established this government of laws (not a government of men) in order to secure each person's Creator endowed rights to life, liberty, and property.
Only in America, did a nation's founders recognize that rights, though endowed by the Creator as unalienable prerogatives, would not be sustained in society unless they were protected under a code of law which was itself in harmony with a higher law. They called it "natural law," or "Nature's law." Such law is the ultimate source and established limit for all of man's laws and is intended to protect each of these natural rights for all of mankind. The Declaration of Independence of 1776 established the premise that in America a people might assume the station "to which the laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them.."
Herein lay the security for men's individual rights - an immutable code of law, sanctioned by the Creator of man's rights, and designed to promote, preserve, and protect him and his fellows in the enjoyment of their rights. They believed that such natural law, revealed to man through his reason, was capable of being understood by both the ploughman and the professor. Sir William Blackstone, whose writings trained American's lawyers for its first century, capsulized such reasoning:
"For as God, when he created matter, and endued it with a principle of mobility, established certain rules for the...direction of that motion; so, when he created man, and endued him with freewill to conduct himself in all parts of life, he laid down certain immutable laws of human nature, whereby that freewill is in some degree regulated and restrained, and gave him also the faculty of reason to discover the purport of those laws."
What are those natural laws? Blackstone continued:
"Such among others are these principles: that we should live honestly, should hurt nobody, and should render to every one his due.."
The Founders saw these as moral duties between individuals. Thomas Jefferson wrote:
"Man has been subjected by his Creator to the moral law, of which his feelings, or conscience as it is sometimes called, are the evidence with which his Creator has furnished him .... The moral duties which exist between individual and individual in a state of nature, accompany them into a state of society . their Maker not having released them from those duties on their forming themselves into a nation."
Americas leaders of 1787 had studied Cicero, Polybius, Coke, Locke, Montesquieu, and Blackstone, among others, as well as the history of the rise and fall of governments, and they recognized these underlying principles of law as those of the Decalogue, the Golden Rule, and the deepest thought of the ages.
An example of the harmony of natural law and natural rights is Blackstone's "that we should live honestly" - otherwise known as "thou shalt not steal" - whose corresponding natural right is that of individual freedom to acquire and own, through honest initiative, private property. In the Founders' view, this law and this right were inalterable and of a higher order than any written law of man. Thus, the Constitution confirmed the law and secured the right and bound both individuals and their representatives in government to a moral code which did not permit either to take the earnings of another without his consent. Under this code, individuals could not band together and do, through government's coercive power, that which was not lawful between individuals.
America's Constitution is the culmination of the best reasoning of men of all time and is based on the most profound and beneficial values mankind has been able to fathom. It is, as William E. Gladstone observed, "The Most Wonderful Work Ever Struck Off At A Given Time By he Brain And Purpose Of Man."
We should dedicate ourselves to rediscovering and preserving an understanding of our Constitution's basis in natural law for the protection of natural rights - principles which have provided American citizens with more protection for individual rights, while guaranteeing more freedom, than any people on earth.
"The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom." -John Locke
BTTT for another excellent post
You’re very welcome
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