Matt Barber - Religious Freedom and ‘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 a 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.”

To homosexuals I say this: Yes, you are equal in God’s eyes. You are loved. These things are true, not because of your homosexual lifestyle, but, rather, they are true in spite of it.

Most homosexuals know intuitively, I think, that their lifestyle is unnatural and immoral and that the oxymoronic notion of “same-sex marriage” is a silly farce. Thus, they must force others to affirm both their self-destructive lifestyle and their mock “marriages” under penalty of law. They must physically compel everyone to engage their “emperor’s new clothes” delusion, so they can feel better about bad behavior.

Well, my friend, making everyone else “call evil good and good evil” won’t fill that dark void in your soul. Only repentance and redemption through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ can do that.

When we give deviant sexual conduct preferred status in law, Christian morality becomes illegal. If you think government-recognized “gay marriage” is harmless to society, you’re playing the fool. It places the Christian sexual ethic and free exercise of religion in direct conflict with law. It’s my sense that many liberty-minded people are finally coming awake to this disturbing reality.

Although we all sin, Christians are commanded to neither support nor engage in evil. Hence, Christians – true Christians – cannot engage in nor condone the unrepentant practice of homosexual behavior. Neither can we support sin-centric “gay marriage.”

This rudimentary equation is built upon the natural laws of moral physics. Christianity is magnetically charged truth. Homosexual behavior is a magnetically charged lie – a spiritual and biological falsehood. Christianity and homosexual sin are as north to south. Polar opposites cannot occupy the same position in time and space. They repel one another. It’s physically, spiritually and legally impossible for religious freedom and preferred legal status for sexual sin to coexist in harmony. Ms. Stutzman’s persecution is just the latest example of this timeless reality.

Why are Christians so afraid to call sin sin? It’s time for invertebrate believers to grow a backbone. Truth, in love, is the balance. Yes, the world will hate you, because it first hated Christ. So what? Count it a blessing – even unto death.

Here’s my recommendation: When those who are lost to the world hate on you, laugh at them. Then cry for them. Then pray for them. Follow Christ’s example and ask, as did He, that God “forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Then get up, dust yourself off and get back in the fight.

Albert Einstein once said, “Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.”

He was right.

Barronelle Stutzman followed this advice and – though she currently faces government persecution for her choice – she has also become an accidental hero. Pray for her. I know God will surely bless her faithfulness.

Still, know this: If you are a Christian in today’s America, you too will almost certainly find yourself with a similar decision to make. When man’s law violates God’s law, you will have to choose which to obey. Choosing God can mean persecution.

I’ve made my choice.

How will you choose?

Matt Barber

Matt Barber served as Policy Director for Cultural Issues with Concerned Women for America before joining Liberty University School of Law in 2008. In addition to his Juris Doctorate degree, Dean Barber holds a Master of Arts in Public Policy from Regent University and a Bachelor of Science in Organizational Management from Colorado Christian University.

Matt Barber is a published freelance writer, many newspapers and online publications run his columns, including the Washington Examiner, Washington Times, Insight magazine, WorldNetDaily.com, TownHall.com and many others.

Matt Barber was a law enforcement officer for three years and a corporate fraud investigator for five years.

Matt Barber served twelve years in the Army National Guard, and was an undefeated professional boxer, retiring in 2004. Several times prior to turning pro, he was a state and regional Golden Gloves champion, competing in the 1992 Western Olympic Trials and winning a Gold Medal in the 1993 Police and Fire World Games.

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Mike Adams - Transforming Normalcy

Dr. Jennifer Morse recently gave a perfectly civil and thoroughly Christian talk to a group of Catholic college students in Iowa. In a speech deeply rooted in compassion, she urged students to reach out to same-sex attracted classmates and offer them friendship. She thought they could benefit from chaste friendships, and that they would not necessarily get much of that type of support from others on campus.

The response to Jennifer's speech was predictable. The Gaystapo took to the internet with a series of egregious mischaracterizations of the speech - all of which were intended to intimidate those who would dare show compassion for those struggling with same-sex attraction. Among the lowlights were:

1. The claim that Jennifer somehow exploited the death of Tyler Clementi by mentioning his name in one sentence of her talk.
2. Pretending to believe that telling Catholic students to reach out to their same-sex attracted classmates in chaste friendship would amount to anti-gay bullying.
3. Organizing their usual swarming technique of sending people to attack Jennifer's Facebook page, although most had not listened to any part of her remarks.

In order to fully understand the extent to which the homosexual left is trying to make perfectly normal mainstream opinion seem hateful and offensive, click on the following link to hear Morse's "offending" speech. Any fair-minded person who listens to the whole 30 minute podcast will arrive at the same conclusion: there is nothing there for any normal person to take offense from.

But the homosexual left is anything but normal. It is a movement that relies upon hysteria to breed intimidation. Take a few minutes to compare what you saw in Morse's speech with the reactions from the Gaystapo. Here are links to two of the more egregious articles from the other side:

1. Please bear in mind that Huffington Post gets more traffic than the New York Times, Fox News, and NRO. Their report on the Morse speech can be accessed here.
2. The Advocate reports that the Clementis think it is “cruel” and in fact constitutes a "new low" to reach out to those struggling with homosexuality. In fact, they are furious over the idea of extending compassion toward and forming friendships with homosexuals. They demand an apology here.

Those witnessing the emotional meltdown of the Gaystapo might be tempted to think of Orwell's 1984. More specifically, they might recall the two minutes hate. It isn't difficult to imagine crowds of homosexual activists sitting around watching clips of Morse's speech and screaming at their monitors in a show of solidarity. Take the time to log on to a comment thread on the Huffington Post or on the Advocate. We're already there. Jennifer Morse has become Emmanuel Goldstein.

But the Jennifer Morse controversy is more than a foretelling of the future. It is also a reminder of the past. One cannot easily dismiss the similarity between the Morse episode and the Salem witch trials that characterized another dark period in the history of our civilization.

As C.S. Lewis once observed, the witch trials are misunderstood. Many believe they represented a time when people administered justice according to antiquated principles. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those trials happened merely because people applied a different set of facts to the same principles. They thought witches could fly to gatherings where they could consort and cast spells and destroy innocent lives. And so the courts tried them and sometimes executed them. The principle that people who did such things deserved to die was correct. The belief that they were actually doing them was incorrect.

There are no witch trials today because we do not believe a self-proclaimed witch when she says she will cast a spell upon us. When she says she has the power to transform us we merely laugh and walk away.

That explains all the hysteria in response to Jennifer Morse. Her opponents say she is wrong because homosexuality is genetic and unalterable. But they react to her with hysterics because they know in their hearts that the Gospel transforms. They know the Truth has power over all things. At some level they know that if they we were made in the image of God they cannot consent to their own destruction and call it good.

Of course, once convinced they are not made in the image of God, people have a difficult time loving themselves. That struggle hardens the heart and transforms loving your neighbor as yourself from a virtue into a vice. Eventually, tolerance becomes letting people destroy themselves and then destroying those who try to help them.

Mike Adams

Mike Adams

Mike Adams is a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and author of Feminists Say the Darndest Things: A Politically Incorrect Professor Confronts "Womyn" On Campus.

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Star Parker - Could Dr. King Have Given the Inaugural Benediction?

The Rev. Louie Giglio, designated to give the benediction at this year’s presidential inauguration, has withdrawn, under apparent pressure, after the surfacing of remarks he made, some 25 years ago, about the sinfulness of homosexuality.

Note that the pastor of the evangelical Passion City Church in Atlanta has been pushed off the stage not because of a deed, but because of words he said -- words expressing a widely held Christian belief that homosexuality is a sin.

Let’s recall that freedom of religion appears in the First Amendment of our constitution, alongside the protection of freedom of speech.

So what kind of irony do we have before us that two key aspects of American life, protected by our constitution, are up in smoke and the venue is inauguration of an American president, who will put his hand on a Bible and swear to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”?

Adding more bitter irony, Rick Warren, who gave the benediction at the 2009 inauguration of this same president, America’s first black president, recently said that “the battle to preserve religious liberty for all, in all areas of life, will likely become the civil rights movement of this decade.”

And in what context did Warren -- pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. -- make this observation? In context of the refusal of Hobby Lobby, a firm owned by evangelical Christians, to comply with a new mandate, signed into law by this president, forcing firms, regardless of their religious convictions, to pay for employees’ contraception and abortion -inducing pills.

What we have is the ongoing march forward of tyranny in America, a tyranny of the left, in which moral chaos and political power are becoming a new national religion, and what was once understood as religion and tradition is now called bigotry and pushed off the stage.

One wonders if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday coincides with this second inauguration of America’s first black president, would not himself wind up today pushed off the stage because of his Christian convictions.

A hint of how to think about this may be gleaned by visiting the new memorial in Washington, D.C., honoring King.

Visiting the memorial, what immediately struck this black Christian was the complete absence of any hint that King was a Christian pastor, who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and who led a movement animated and inspired by biblical conviction and imagery.

No, the Dr. King celebrated at this memorial on the National Mall is a political activist and community organizer. Try to find a hint that this was a pastor, try to find a biblical quote, try to find a reference to God.

Absent is the Dr. King who concluded his “I have a dream” speech on the same National Mall pleading for the day “when all of God’s children … will be able to join hands and sing the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”

In King’s famous letter written in 1963, while locked in a jail in Birmingham, Ala., beginning with the salutation “My fellow clergyman,” he asks the question, “How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust?” The answer given by King was this: “A just law is a manmade code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.”

Would a law such as the one forcing the evangelical Christian owners of Hobby Lobby to pay for contraception and abortion inducing pills of employees, and exposing them to fines of $1.3 million per day for noncompliance -- qualify as “just” under Dr. King’s definition?

Would the Rev. Dr. King be ejected from the stage of this president’s inaugural if he called this law, produced by this administration, unjust?

Would there even have been a civil rights movement without the Christian values that today’s left calls bigotry?

Star Parker

Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.

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Michael Brown - The Day of Silencing

The Day of Silencing

On April 20th, in thousands of schools across America, your hard-earned tax dollars will help underwrite the homosexual indoctrination of your kids. Yes, April 20th will mark the annual Day of Silence, described on its website as “a student-led national event that brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools.” As for those who do not support a special school day devoted to gay indoctrination, they are the ones who can expect to be silenced.

Originally the brainchild of some college students in 1996, the Day of Silence has been aggressively promoted for the last 12 years by GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network. (Based on its activities, GLSEN would better be described as the Gay & Lesbian Sexual Education Network.) GLSEN calls on students to remain silent during non-instructional school times on the Day of Silence, thereby standing in solidarity with LGBT youth who are silenced through bullying and harassment.

But don’t some schools already have generic, anti-bullying programs in place along with special, daylong events to highlight the destructive effects of bullying, a subject that should concern all of us? Of course they do, but that’s not enough. GLSEN insists that a special focus must be put on LGBT kids, as if bullying a gay kid was worse than bullying a fat kid.

But there’s more that takes place on the Day of Silence: A pro-homosexuality message is often sent to the students, with teachers and administrators frequently promoting homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgenderism over the course of the day. That’s why thousands of schools (and not just students) officially participate in the event, with the explicit backing of GLSEN. What about other messages being introduced during the day to balance the discussion? Perish the thought.

Just ask PFOX (Parents and Friends of ExGays and Gays), which announced its intention to hand out literature on the Day of Silence. According to PFOX president Greg Quinlan, “PFOX is calling on students to distribute flyers promoting acceptance of ex-gays. Former homosexuals and their supporters are ridiculed and forced to live in silence. Our nation’s schools deny students with unwanted same-sex attractions any support or fact-based information that feelings can and do change.”

How was this announcement welcomed? According to one gay journalist, “the fact that they are attempting to sneak in their harmful message on the Day of Silence, a day which is supposed to show support for those who are forced into silence by outside pressures, shows just how deceptive their message truly is.”

How dare they introduce their message on the Day of Silence! As expressed in 2004 by gay activist Kevin Jennings, founder of GLSEN and most recently President Obama’s Safe School Czar, “Ex-gay messages have no place in our nation’s public schools. A line has been drawn. There is no ‘other side’ when you’re talking about lesbian, gay and bisexual students.” Ah yes, the voice of tolerance speaks once again.

What about the Day of Dialogue, sponsored by the evangelical Christian organization Focus on the Family, and scheduled this year for April 19th, the day before the Day of Silence? This event encourages “student-initiated conversations about the fact that God cares about our lives, our relationships and our sexuality. . . . [Jesus’] example calls us to stand up for those being harmed or bullied while offering the light of what God’s word says.”

Surely this event will be welcomed, right? Not a chance. As expressed by a professing Christian woman with a self-described “hair-trigger sensitivity for the protection of LGBT youth,” the Day of Dialogue has something “very rotten” at its core. She writes (on LGBTQNATION.com), “Allowing Focus on the Family to export their historical and counter-productive sacred discrimination of the LGBT community to Christian youth is a mistake.” To repeat the words of Kevin Jennings, “There is no ‘other side’ when you’re talking about lesbian, gay and bisexual students.”

Last week an elementary school teacher from Florida called into my radio program, identifying himself as a black male but not wanting to give any specifics about the grade he taught at school. He was concerned that his job could be in jeopardy if he dared speak out against the Day of Silence. (Other elementary school teachers have told me privately that they dare not speak out against the overt homosexual activism they see on a regular basis in their schools – remember, we’re talking about elementary schools – for fear of losing their jobs.)

Although the Day of Silence had not yet been introduced to this gentleman’s school in Florida, the faculty members were discussing strategies for its future implementation, with explicit instructions to present this as a civil rights issue. (Needless to say, this black American also did not approve of equating gay activism with the civil rights movement.) And what should the teacher do if a student raised a religious or moral objection to homosexuality? The conversation, he was told, should immediately be turned back to gay civil rights, and no religious or moral objections should be entertained.

Yes, the Day of Silence has become the Day of Silencing – unless parents and educators and students determine to let their voices be heard. Now would be a good time to start.

Dr. Michael Brown

Michael Brown holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and is the author of 20 books. He has served as a professor at a number of seminaries and hosts the nationally syndicated, daily talk radio show, the Line of Fire.

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Mike Adams - Dean Faces Bad News for Banning Good News

Dear Dean (Name Withheld):

I am writing today with some very bad news for you. It would appear that, by the end of the year, you may be removed from your position as Dean of Students at (University Name Withheld). But, first, let me share the Good News – that is, if you will promise not to prosecute me for it.

I used to be an atheist. When people tried to share the Gospel with me, I would hurl profanity at them. I would even use a word that begins with “f” and ends with “u-c-k.” (I’m not talking about “fire-truck,” by the way). The Gospel offended me, so I told people to take a hike whenever they tried to share it with me. Now that I have converted, I no longer suffer from that kind of extreme emotional insecurity. And that is Good News. Now it’s time for the bad news.

Recently, a student at your university tried to share the Gospel with another student at your university. That makes sense. You do work at a Christian University. But then three things happened that made little sense. I will present them in chronological order – and in order from the least to most ridiculous event:

1. The student who was hearing the Gospel told the one sharing the Gospel that it was “offensive.” Of course, the Gospel has always been offensive. They would not have nailed Jesus to a cross if it were not. Then, the student demanded that the sharer of the Good News end the conversation. Fair enough. Maybe he was just having a bad day.
2. The next day, the still-offended student filed a speech code complaint over the Gospel sharing incident. The conduct he was engaged in, by the way, is considered sin by the Bible and “diversity” by the student handbook. At many “Christian” universities, the pages of the student handbook that deal with diversity carry more weight than the pages of the Bible that deal with sin. So the real sin is often using the word sin. And that is tantamount to banning the Gospel, which is the only means of dealing with sin – in part, because it confronts sin directly. So you have a choice between the speech code and the Gospel – unless, of course, you were born with the speech code gene.
3. Finally, and most ridiculously, you actually took the complaint seriously and forced the student to stop sharing the Gospel unless someone specifically asked to hear it. The incident was isolated. There was no accusation of harassment. The offending student had no intention of speaking to the offended student again. But you had to permanently ban him from initiating conversations about salvation at a so-call Christian university. The more universities speak of tolerance, the more they reek of intolerance. The paradox is that you’ve demonstrated that principle with your indifference to principle.

But this is the last time you are ever going to silence a student who wishes to share the Gospel. By my count – I have been talking with and mentoring the “offending” student daily - you had approximately five meetings in which you threatened disciplinary action. At each one of these meetings you spoke. Each time you spoke, you offended the Gospel-sharing student. And, worse, now that other Christians are hearing of the incident, they are also offended and intimidated into silence. Put simply, they are now afraid to share the Gospel at your “Christian” university. One could say you are bullying them with the speech code. And you can’t defend yourself by saying this was an “isolated” incident. You prosecuted the Gospel-sharer based on an isolated incident. Remember?

So I have done what I must do. I have begun by organizing a series of five counter-claims against you – one for each time you spoke to the Gospel-sharing student. These five claims will come from five different students whose speech has been chilled by your conduct. They will all be delivered at once in the form of hate speech charges. In other words, you have used the speech code as a sword against others and now the sword is about to be taken from you. And it will be pointed directly toward your heart. Unless you relinquish it voluntarily you will die by it.

Let me be very specific – even at risk of repeating myself: If you don’t get rid of the campus speech code within the next ten weeks we are coming after your job. That is only bad news if you do not repent of your sinfully censorious ways and allow students to share the Good News. As always, your fate depends upon your courage and willingness to do the right thing. It is my fervent prayer that you will learn from the example of your student-accusers. They are showing what it means to be bold in the face of emotional weakness masquerading as intellectual diversity.

You’ll be hearing from us soon,

Mike S. Adams

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Mike Adams

Mike Adams is a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and author of Feminists Say the Darndest Things: A Politically Incorrect Professor Confronts "Womyn" On Campus.

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