At any rate, legalizing "gay marriage" definitely puts a country in danger of the wrath of G-d. As for male homosexuality being a capital offense, that's what it is. I was referring to Halakhah, not secular law, and that can't be changed.
I read it very thoroughly, and I tried to use it to point out the mechanisms that we're all actually up against. Your examples are mine as well - you worry about "gay marriage," while I point out that marriage is religio/spiritual, and not a governmental grant. Should Jewish marraiges be subject to the approval of the State for their legitimacy? And as for executing gays, would you push for the replacement of the Constitution with Halakhah?
America is under attack, and that attack is of a very specific kind - the replacement of common law with administrative law, and the use of volatile issues in culture and religion as dividing cover stories for this unadmitted transfer of legal venue. Getting irritated with me for pointing it out doesn't change anything.
You ended your essay with: "I do know that we need to cry out to Heaven for a rescue . . . and having done that, stand up and fight back. If we do not . . . though HaShem's ultimate World Purpose cannot be defeated, we will be . . . and we will deserve to be."
Well what if God's answer doesn't require a Biblical Event? What if it just require the courage to look at what is actually being done, and how it's being done? Do firefighters ruminate on the morality of various bahaviors that can cause fires, or do they study how fires actually work, and how they can be stopped and prevented no matter what anyone believes?
::Sigh:: I did not intend to go there. Why do you want to do this? Do you really want to completely derail this thread and turn it into a "Thomas Jefferson vs. the ee-vils of Theocracy" thing? My initial post was a cry of existential angst, not a theological treatise.
Nevertheless, since you insist on going there, I will do my best to satisfy you.
In all honesty, I believe that secular conservatism has failed. Secular conservatives (and religious conservatives who think they have to be secular conservatives when they're in the "public square") have argued "natural law" and the Constitution with our enemies till we're all blue in the face. Absolutely nothing has been accomplished, for two reasons. First, our enemies have no respect for natural law or for the Constitution because their Hegelian dialectic outranks everything. So what if "natural law" says so and so or a bunch of dead slave owners said so-and-so? And secondly, our Founding Fathers did not create the universe and had no authority to create new moral laws or abrogate old ones. The religious beliefs of the Founding Fathers has no more to do with Ultimate Truth (to which we owe ultimate loyalty) than the religious beliefs of the founders of Saudi Arabia. Prior to recently, almost every state and locality in the country (if not the world) regarded homosexual activity as criminal, even if the laws were for all practical purposes unenforceable. Their existence acknowledged the Laws of G-d concerning such activity.
How were such local laws concerning "sodomy" unconstitutional? They were not and never were so considered until very recently. What does the Constitution do? It establishes the form, procedures, and rules of the federal government. It creates a bicameral legislature, a chief executive, a federal judiciary, and describes their powers. Local laws against sodomy have no more to do with the Constitution than local laws against littering. Furthermore, as you surely know, the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government. State and local governments by definition could not violate any of the rights enumerated in it. Each and every state could have an official state religion and it would not violate the Bill of Rights. Yes, believe it or not, this is actually one of those things that Ron Paul is right about!
The Bill of Rights was a gigantic mistake. It was lobbied for by the Southern slave owners who feared a moralistic federal government might interfere with their peculiar institution. And what has happened? Although the Bill of Rights were obviously intended as mere enumerated restrictions on the federal government (we'd all have been better off if they had been dubbed the "Bill of Restrictions"), they have evolved over the years (as was inevitable) into actual government "grants" of rights--grants which the government is empowered to enforce. The end result of this this historical process is that the First Amendment fails to protect the free speech rights of conservatives (because according to the Hegelians who took over our courts generations ago, conservatives have no rights since they represent the "antithesis" rather than the "thesis" of history), but a high school principal cannot edit the "f-word" out of a student newspaper without the federal leviathan terrorizing him (because each and every use of the "f-word" pushes "history" forward another notch). This is the end result of the Jeffersonians and their precious "Bill of Rights."
My religious beliefs are statutory, not salvational. And my Bible has no "render unto Caesar" in it. One of the seven great commandments on all humanity is the prohibition of allowing miscarriages of justice by creating courts of law--not secular courts as we know them today, but courts that enforce Divine law. This has nothing to do with the Constitution. Any locality could theoretically adopt such a structure and it would be none of the federal government's business . . . were it not for the Hegelian dialecticians who currently appear to rule the world (they only appear to do so, of course).
If it puts your mind at ease at all (which it probably doesn't), these courts which are commanded by Divine authority work differently from our secular courts. Most of the things our secular courts accept would be inadmissible--circumstantial evidence, hearsay, even confessions. The only thing that can be legally admitted as evidence in a capital offense is an eye-witness. Nothing else will do. This means that for all practical purposes the death penalty would be extremely rare and difficult to incur. But it would still be on the books and should the criteria be met it would have to be carried out. And also if it's any comfort to you, such "merciful" means of execution as gas chambers, electric chairs, and firing squads could never be used. Non-Jews are permitted one and only method of carrying out capital punishment--"the sword" (this refers to beheading, which means that hanging technically fulfills this).
Really, there is no such thing as a tiny little compartment called "religion" that can be differentiated from the rest of life. There is only G-d Who rules over everything. In ancient Israel everything--not just the sacrificial cultus but also jurisprudence--were regulated by Torah.
Furthermore, religious truth isn't some harmless little subjective sentiment or ethn-cultural thing. It is Objective. History is not open-ended; in fact, our enemies are actually correct in their belief that history is teleological--it's just not going to end where they think it's going to. At the end of history the Truth will be vindicated and will govern all things while all falsehoods will be repudiated. And so far as I know, aside from the bizarre eastern religions, all religions believe that they will be vindicated in the end as the "one true religion."
I am a Thenomic positivist. That means I believe that right and wrong come from G-d's Decrees and from nothing else whatsoever--not reason, not instinct, not pragmatism, not mutual agreement, not "natural law," and certainly not the "iron laws of history" the Hegelians believe in. We've argued natural law and the Constitution with our enemies till we're blue in the face and absolutely nothing has been accomplished. It's time to stop arguing with Thomas Jefferson and "natural law." The dialectic is not a valid basis for morality or ethics. Neither is any other non-theistic system in the world, whether it is Marxist, Randian, or anything in between. Our enemies need to understand that G-d is not an opinion some people have. He is the ONLY reason right and wrong exist at all. Only His Laws determine which is which. Flesh and blood are tyrants; only submission to the True G-d can save us from tyranny at the hands of fellow humans.
There . . . I've said it. I hope you'll be happy now, though I doubt it.
I mentioned "gay marriage" in my initial post. How you turned that into an "anti-gay tirade" I don't know. But Truth is what it is. There is nothing you, I, or anyone else can do about it. And that includes Thomas Jefferson.