Feeling decidely un-Christian tonight
Last night, amid much media attention, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer announced that she had vetoed S.B. 1062, an anti-gay bill that would have quickly meant that gays in Arizona would be forced to sit at the back of the bus, be banned from Woolworth's lunch counters, prevented from attending state colleges, be harassed and probably lynched.
At least, that's what you would think if you listened to the anti-Christian, liberal, mainstream media. (Every year I'm out of the business, I'm not sure if I become more conservative or they become more odious and despicable.)
Let's make this perfectly clear, contra just about every major newspaper in this nation: This is about gay "marriage." Nothing more, nothing less. It's not about a local coffee shop refusing to serve a gay person a double-half-caf-venti-soy-latte. It's not about a restaurant refusing to serve dinner, or a caterer refusing to do a birthday party. It's about gay "marriage." Full stop.
The truth? The proposed bill closely mirrors the Clinton-era Religious Freedom Restoration Act that passed Congress two decades ago overwhelmingly. The media response, starting with the execrable Kirsten Powers, that this was a "Jim Crow" law is dishonest and slanderous.
SB1062 would amend the Arizona RFRA to address two ambiguities that have been the subject of litigation under other RFRAs. It would provide that people are covered when state or local government requires them to violate their religion in the conduct of their business, and it would provide that people are covered when sued by a private citizen invoking state or local law to demand that they violate their religion.
But nothing in the amendment would say who wins in either of these cases. The person invoking RFRA would still have to prove that he had a sincere religious belief and that state or local government was imposing a substantial burden on his exercise of that religious belief. And the government, or the person on the other side of the lawsuit, could still show that compliance with the law was necessary to serve a compelling government interest. As a business gets bigger and more impersonal, courts will become more skeptical about claims of substantial burden on the owner’s exercise of religion. And as a business gets bigger, the government’s claim of compelling interest will become stronger.
Number of times the words "gay," "homosexual," or "same-sex marriage" appear in the bill? Zero.
Two decades ago, gays would go on TV, write op-eds, give speeches insisting that all they wanted was civil unions. They didn't want to change the definition of marriage. Marriage was inherently religious and they they just wanted to be able to be counted as family and visit their partner in the hospital.
That didn't last long. For the past 10 years, they've been pushing hard for "marriage," and thanks to a compliant and sympathetic media, they moved the unwashed masses and various judges around the nation and they got that too.
You'd think they'd be happy with all they've accomplished in just a couple of decades. But they're not. They know there's quite a few Americans—Christians, Muslims, Orthodox Jews—that, while not supportive of their cause, have resigned themselves to having lost this battle in the culture war and adopted a live-and-let-live attitude. That cannot stand.
It's not enough to live-and-let-live on the gay "marriage" issue. You need to agree, you need to participate, and if you don't you'll be forced out of the public square, if you've got a business, you'll have the almighty power of the state come and take it from you.
Because, shut up!
But it's the mainstream media that most disgusts me in this situation. One wag on Twitter noticed this:
As w/ everything, there are vastly different ways to spin the SB1062 story. That is neat @samsteinhp #arizonabill pic.twitter.com/bkERix23He
— Brianna Gavio (@bgavio) February 27, 2014
Which, of course, prompted the enlightened journalists to bring us our news to furrow their brows and wonder why the Washington Post Wall Street Journal was so out of line.
I'd encourage you to give these two analyses over at Newsbusters a look to see just how bad professionally trained, unbiased journalists treated the story. And remember, it's not just print media.
Even left-of-center Bernard Goldberg, who has written some really good books on media bias, has decided that in this particular war on Christians, he'd like to sign-up.
Should the government, with its immense power, force someone to violate deeply held convictions? If I owned a catering business, I wouldn’t want to put food on the table for a neo-Nazi convention – or risk a hefty lawsuit if I didn’t. (Maybe the Arizona law, instead of focusing on religious rights, should have dealt more generally with issues that violate our conscience — like being forced to cater a neo-Nazi function. Maybe that kind of “conscientious objector” law would have been more acceptable to more people, even with its potential for abuse.)
Lazy journalist. That's exactly what the proposed law did.
But we all give up some rights when we join society and when we open a business on Main Street that purports to do business with the general public.
You can find that in the Constitution right after the part about the 2nd Amendment only applying to muskets.
I can see the endgame on this even if Goldberg can't or won't: This will stop when Christians are driven from the public square and churches are required to perform same-sex "marriages" or have their tax exempt status stripped from them and every federal, state and local government can use it tax, zoning and whatever other law they can locate, to drive churches out.
The goal is to create a two-church system, much like what exists in China today. You have official, state-sanctioned churches (these will be the ones that will go all Thomas Jefferson on Leviticus, Romans 1 and others), then you'll have underground house churches.
Kirsten Powers will be attending the former, I'll be attending the latter.
One comment on “Feeling decidely un-Christian tonight”
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I am a born and raised Arizona girl, so when I saw the media blow up about SB 1062 and that it was an anti-gay bill, I had to look into it. I completely agree, the media took this case way out of hand. It is not far to twist the words of this bill, which clearly state that it is all about religious practices, and turn it into another way to make the Republicans look like the enemies and that they can not be in the presence of a gay person. This bill got to a point where celebrities across the nation were constantly tweeting about how Arizona was not morally right for considering the bill. Besides the fact that the bill does not mention the word gay at all, but the fact that Governor Jan Brewer herself said it would have a negative impact. The point is that the bill did not pass so there is no need to get all worked up about it. No one should look poorly on the state because it gave a proposition that easily did not pass because it would divide the state and not morally be dignified.