The future roadmap of religious persecution in America
The article describes the inevitable legal consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage. Some key quotes:
The first attacks will be on small churches that don’t have the wherewithal to mount a legal defense against the IRS and against civil lawsuits. They will be confronted with a loss of their tax exempt status and the personal bankruptcy of their corporate officers if they do not allow homosexual weddings. The effect this will have on small congregations will be profound. Some will become “house churches”, much like what you see in Communist China. Many, however, will fall in line. The larger Protestant denominations will toe the line. Some, like the Episcopalians, are only nominally Christian as is. The Lutherans (ELCA variety) have had actively homosexual clergy for some time as have the Methodists. The two big targets for the government will be the Southern Baptist Convention — which is a voluntary association of independent churches — and the Roman Catholic Church. The pressure will ratchet up on them until they are confronted with confiscation of property or “discovering” hidden meanings in Scripture that reveal homosexual marriage has always been allowed.
Churches won’t disappear but the churches that you will see on Main Street will be peddling a warmed over and watered down version of Christianity that is a combination soup kitchen and twelve step program sans belief in a higher power. Real Christian churches will go underground but it will be a rearguard action. Christianity that chooses to ignore the very Word of God is not a religion, it is a cultural artifact.
The real price will be paid by those of us who are not actually employed by our churches. Organizing to resist homosexual marriage will bring down the FBI upon you as surely as if you were organizing a KKK chapter and with more alacrity than if you were an al Qaeda cell or blocking a polling station in Philadelphia. If you work for a large corporation or are in the military you can look forward to having your affirmatively support of homosexual marriage becoming an item on your performance appraisal. [emphasis mine]
And then there’s this:
Rather consistently local judges and others have said that religious liberty does not prevail for individuals who own businesses or engage in commerce. In effect, you can have religious liberty, so long as you don’t own a business. Here too there are legal nuances, but the fundamental trajectory is clear: Anyone who opposes the celebration of same-sex unions and lifestyle are going to be increasingly entangled in the courts and face more and more charges. [emphasis mine]
Read it all. If you don’t believe it will happen you are living in a fool’s paradise. Either Americans stand up now and defy the tyrannical strain that is beginning to dominate our society, or we will find all of our remaining but shrinking freedoms gone.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The article describes the inevitable legal consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage. Some key quotes:
The first attacks will be on small churches that don’t have the wherewithal to mount a legal defense against the IRS and against civil lawsuits. They will be confronted with a loss of their tax exempt status and the personal bankruptcy of their corporate officers if they do not allow homosexual weddings. The effect this will have on small congregations will be profound. Some will become “house churches”, much like what you see in Communist China. Many, however, will fall in line. The larger Protestant denominations will toe the line. Some, like the Episcopalians, are only nominally Christian as is. The Lutherans (ELCA variety) have had actively homosexual clergy for some time as have the Methodists. The two big targets for the government will be the Southern Baptist Convention — which is a voluntary association of independent churches — and the Roman Catholic Church. The pressure will ratchet up on them until they are confronted with confiscation of property or “discovering” hidden meanings in Scripture that reveal homosexual marriage has always been allowed.
Churches won’t disappear but the churches that you will see on Main Street will be peddling a warmed over and watered down version of Christianity that is a combination soup kitchen and twelve step program sans belief in a higher power. Real Christian churches will go underground but it will be a rearguard action. Christianity that chooses to ignore the very Word of God is not a religion, it is a cultural artifact.
The real price will be paid by those of us who are not actually employed by our churches. Organizing to resist homosexual marriage will bring down the FBI upon you as surely as if you were organizing a KKK chapter and with more alacrity than if you were an al Qaeda cell or blocking a polling station in Philadelphia. If you work for a large corporation or are in the military you can look forward to having your affirmatively support of homosexual marriage becoming an item on your performance appraisal. [emphasis mine]
And then there’s this:
Rather consistently local judges and others have said that religious liberty does not prevail for individuals who own businesses or engage in commerce. In effect, you can have religious liberty, so long as you don’t own a business. Here too there are legal nuances, but the fundamental trajectory is clear: Anyone who opposes the celebration of same-sex unions and lifestyle are going to be increasingly entangled in the courts and face more and more charges. [emphasis mine]
Read it all. If you don’t believe it will happen you are living in a fool’s paradise. Either Americans stand up now and defy the tyrannical strain that is beginning to dominate our society, or we will find all of our remaining but shrinking freedoms gone.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
I want to see the response(both sides) when a mosque refuses to perform a same-sex wedding.
I tend to think that before the Roman Catholic Church is successfully attacked the Eastern Orthodox Churches will be attacked and effected if not forced to change.
I have a lot of orthodox friends and many orthodox churches in the area. They are already talking about possible coming problems.
They have also followed all of our local Roman Catholic churches lead in no longer renting out their event halls to the public. Renting only to members.
Local churches are no longer even election or poling places because of the government/public connections.
I feel the Evangelical/Protestant church will have a harder time of it since they seem to be actively working to stop gay marriage.
There are some catholic churches accepting open and active LBGT members but they are not members of their parent churches.
The Jewish faith stands as much chance of attack. Their Orthodox do not accept homosexuality either.
Islam is safe(out of fear) until attacks on the other succeed.
A unified defense fund among the 3 religions would be a great thing. A unified defense is the strongest.
Islam is safe.
For the obvious reasons. They will be the last openly attacked.
G’day,
How does marriage work in America? In Australia a marriage celebrant is required to preform a legal marriage. Most clergy are celebrants. So if they had too they can stop being legal celebrant but still preform a religious sacramental marriage. It just makes it more difficult for couples as they would need to marry in a registry office as well o make it legal.
At least if you understand the strategy of those who would force their will upon you in this changing “progressive” environment you have an opportunity to reconfigure and counter, blunt or eliminate that strategy. Where this whole thing will really goes down the drain is if the Supreme Court, who we can now reliably say have developed an activist agenda related to it, would rule that churches and religious organizations are mandated to comply with the now strengthened Obamacare. The court now has an investment in Obamacare.
And how likely is that to happen? (Sarcasm alert for those sarcasm challenged nerds that may read this)
A perfect example of bureaucracy creep and how once the government establishes a power it can only get worse and worse, its just the nature of the beast. The politicians are pushing back but land management who they have empowered may have something else to say about it.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150626/us-burning-man-requests-6a7736905f.html
In the US a marriage is not official and by the state legal, unless a state marriage license is filled out, signed and filed in a court.
There is no need for a member of the clergy. Nor is there any type of ceremony, just file the paper work.
They call it a marriage certificate in most states but in fact its just a legal civil union.
If the powers to be had just officially changed the name of the paperwork to a civil union and required everyone to get it most of this gay marriage problem would not have happened. Most of the arguments centered around the religious word ‘marriage’.
Neither the LBGT community nor some on the religious right wanted to make that change and thus make the state/religion separation.
In fact there is some rumblings that the next step for the LGBT community is to force churches to officiate gay unions or lose tax exempt status.
They have no need to do this because there are many religious institutions or churches that will officiate.
The supreme Court discussion really just made gay marriage legal for insurance, retirement benefits, property ownership, inheritance and state to state acceptance of each state issued civil union/marriage certificates.
Pretty much nothing legal to do with religion. Yet.
Ralph asked, “How does marriage work in America?”
We Americans are not yet sure.
It used to be that someone could become ordained for the sole purpose of officiating over a wedding of one of our friends. It could even be done easily online. Now, however, it may be possible that becoming ordained strictly for the one occasion could soon make us subject to being required to marry any couple that requests it, even if we desire to not be associated with that couple’s wedding (a request that is a requirement is actually a demand, making our language even more Orwellian).
The United States has already seen court rulings for wedding-related businesses, requiring them to make associations with those they do not wish to associate with. Forcing someone into an unwanted association is just as tyrannical as telling someone who he must or must not love, and makes him into a virtual slave.
The Supreme Court was unclear on the actual consequences of fundamentally transforming a once well understood institution or how it believes that marriage should now work.
As with most other government-initiated social engineering projects, this will likely take years, much legislation, and many, many court cases to work out a final unworkable solution that is bad for everyone.
There is a poorly formed hypothesis that a law must be good if everyone involved dislikes it. By that poor reasoning, nuking New York would be considered good.
No sarcasm intended.
I ‘m afraid Bob is on target with this prediction. The Convention of States project is the best hope I see for the power of the Federal government to be reined in.
A convention of states is NOT the right answer.
First off those of the other side get their representation also.
How are those we send to the convention chosen? By vote?
I guess the rich will pay for the elections again. Or at least the advertising.
At this convention exactly what do you hope to be accomplished? And please state it exactly, not some general “affirmation of the constitution”, or ‘we will repeal a few laws we do like.’
A constitutional convention is to rewrite a whole new constitution and in so doing also getting everyone to agree on it.
I think the first one took officially something like 10 years until it was signed and voted on. How will you run this nation without representatives and or a constitution for the next 5 years? We are not the almost totally agrarian and independent and somewhat isolated 13 colonies we used to be.
All I can see with a constitutional convention would be growing anarchy and eventual totalitarianism in order to reign it in. The rich building private armies and city states rising up to bring about order and control.
The military not getting paid on time and falling into total disorder. The US dollar not being trusted on the world stage drop to zero in value and the US being forced revert to barter and trade even on a global scale.
The whole time we are worrying about outside nations and influences getting into the country and creating their own areas of law and influence.
What if the Muslims of Detroit were threatened by a few idiots and called on a few Saudi prince to send help. And they ended up sending in fully trained and equipped troops to create a Sharia state.
Or the drug cartels takeover Dallas and turn it into a little Mexico fully run by them?
This might sound like fantasy but what parts would never happen and why?
One of the more enlightened writers of our era remarked that the greek state also puts out volumes of rules, regulations, laws, etc, and that the population typically ignores them unless enforced constantly at gunpoint. The greeks wisely grew cynical of their “leaders” after being disappointed time and again. The only difference with the US and greece is a common ethnicity and language, and greece’s descent took 93 years. It will not take that long for revulsion and disappointment to turn into cynicism
pzatchok wrote: “A constitutional convention is to rewrite a whole new constitution”
I believe that you have misunderstood the concept. It is not a constitutional convention but an alternate method of creating amendments. from Article V: “… or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, …”
Although the danger is that “the other side” will get their way, they already get their way. No one in the federal government is on the side of We the People, and all have demonstrated that they are willing to turn the US into a tyranny. Our options are limited to the state governments calling an Article V Convention or We the People emulating an earlier defining document, The Declaration of Independence, in order to remain the world’s beacon of liberty — or to regain the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.
Or, we can just sit here and be content to live in a tyranny and forsake all hope of liberty anywhere in the world.
pzatchok wrote: “At this convention exactly what do you hope to be accomplished? And please state it exactly”
Mark Levin, who popularized this idea when he realized that Article V was about amending the Constitution rather than about rewriting it, wrote a book explaining his proposed amendments. Please consider reading it; it is likely at your local library.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/mark-levin-states-should-call-convention-propose-amending-constitution
However, once such a Convention is convened, the states may propose what they wish. Hopefully, their proposals will include a new Bill of Rights for We the People and a renewal their power (per the now-ignored Tenth Amendment) and repeal the Seventeenth Amendment, which removed much of the states’ influence in the federal government.
It is clear that several (mis)interpretations of the Constitution have led to a degradation of the Bill of Rights, and clarifications are necessary to ensure that the Supreme Court does not violate our liberty again. They have forgotten that they have a fiduciary responsibility to us to protect our liberty.
Will “religious persecution” come to mean also “by”, and not simply “of”, given the Roman Catholic Pope’s recent encyclical, which, taken seriously regarding “Climate Change”, would have a very real chance to gravely harm the worlds poor by dashing badly needed energy production and very closely related economic growth on which those poor, most of all, so critically depend?
Very curious to hear Bob’s take on this question.
Thank you,
I was wrong.
But I still cannot see it ever happening.
What about a block by the SC?
All they have to do is reinterpret the meaning of a convention and then ignore anything coming out of one.
Or they determine that anything coming out os a CC still needs the same ratifications that anything coming out of the senate or congress needs. I,E, everyone gets to vote on it and the president still must sign it.
The problem with the courts, when a judge can not even uphold a Federal law which protects little girls from abuse. “Unconstitutional based on the commerce clause to the Constitution.”
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2018/11/20/female-genital-mutilation-michigan/1991712002/
This is a despicable patriarchal Islamic practice that violates a young girls rights to not be tortured in America and this Federal judge from Detroit can not see the laws logic and justification.
Might this be something that the two party’s can agree on to rewrite a law that would meet this judges requirements? Or might this go to the Supreme Court? I say Supreme Court.
Cotour, FGM is not an Islamic practice or a patriarchal practice. “In Niger 55 percent of Christian women and girls had experienced it, compared with two percent of their Muslim counterparts” . . “it is usually initiated and carried out by women,”. . . “In 2007 the Al-Azhar Supreme Council of Islamic Research in Cairo ruled that FGM had “no basis in core Islamic law or any of its partial provisions”. (wiki)
In Liberian an overwhelmingly Christian nation, in which not far short of 50% of girls are subjected to the practice, women in traditional villages have threatened violence against anyone attempting to stop them performing FGM.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-liberia-fgm-law/liberia-bans-female-genital-mutilation-but-only-for-a-year-idUSKBN1FE1N7
Cotour–
(just as an aside– the Supreme Court, is not your friend. Not anymore…. not for a LONG darn time. Circa– the minute they declared “not growing wheat,” to be a market event influencing the price of wheat.)
“Welcome to Dearbornistan:
2012
https://youtu.be/D71KvShP3p4
4:53
“Shariah Compliant Dearborn, Michigan, this is what 46% muslim population looks like….”
(and it’s only gotten worse. Have friends who have lived their since 1950.)
Andrew_W:
You sir, will apologize and explain away, practically anything! Right!? As long as it’s anti-American, you are on board!
Wayne, unlike you I try not to get captured by other peoples narratives, FGM predates Islam and in sub-Sahara where you have both Muslim and Christian populations it’s often practiced more by the Christians.
Oh, and Wayne, the reason this is America’s first case of a FGM prosecution, despite there being millions and millions of Muslims living in America, is because FGM isn’t a Muslim thing.
Andrew W:
Where do you think a horrific practice like female genital mutilation comes from? And, cleaning the practice up by using only letter designations, “FGM”, makes it sound so much more acceptable doesn’t it? Say the words “Female” “Genital” “Mutilation” forced on young girls with no say in how their own bodies should be treated.
How would you feel about it if it was something new practiced only in New Zealand and it was called “Male Penal head removal”? And it was deemed to be retroactive. Where would you be on the line to get it done as per the new practice?
Not much to say about it now no doubt.
There must be lines drawn in the Western world / culture and just because some other culture practices some barbaric form of patriarchal control over their women for what ever reason they choose to continue it does not mean that we in the modern Western world need to respect it and in addition allow and foster it. Religious freedom like freedom of speech has its limitations, especially when they are forced upon the innocent.
There is something off about you sir, your tendency to support anything deemed “politically correct” is knuckleheaded to say the least.
It seems to me that Cotour and wayne are not reading what Andrew_W is writing here. He has not indicated any approval of female genital mutilation. All he has been doing is clarifying that its roots do not exclusively come from Islam, nor is it clear that it is a practice of that religion.
In this I agree with him. This barbaric custom is linked more to barbaric cultures, even those that have adopted Christianity, in part. That Islam is centered in Arab culture, which in itself is generally barbaric by modern western standards, is why there is a correlation of one with the other.
And thats Penile, not penal.
I just can’t spell, you Andrew W, just can’t think.
Thank you Mr. Zimmerman, but from what I can gather FGM is practiced more by the “country cousins” rather than in more urban communities where established religions (both Christianity and Islam) are more organized.
What is the point of arguing the origins of this particular bararric religious practice when it is being forced on innocent American little girls or young girls who are under American law?
“The defendants are all members of a small Indian Muslim sect known as the Dawoodi Bohra, which has a mosque in Farmington Hills. The sect practices female circumcision and believes it is a religious rite of passage that involves only a minor “nick.””
(Its only “Minor”. I have heard of much more than a “Minor nick”.)
In the context of this case that I posted the people forcing the act on innocent young girls happen to all be Muslim doing it in America so the religious connotation in the context of this post is specific and relevant.
So arguing the proper historical origins of the practice is IMO in fact an intellectual distraction and is irrelevant to this specific issue posted here on BTB.
Andrew W is in fact stealthily dismissing the practice and minimizing it and in doing so is approving of it to my thinking. And that is just wrong headed and politically correct / SJW like.
It comes as no surprise that the perpetrators “are all members of a small Indian Muslim sect”, as I said, country cousins. There are many forms of FMG, some equivalent to traditional male circumcision – involving the removal of the clitoral hood or labia minora, other far more objectionable, equivalent to the removal of the penile head. I don’t know which form was practiced in this case, but the judge does.
I’m curious Cotour, do you object to traditional male circumcision as a religious practice?
Your histrionics and cultural “understanding” and stealth approval is what it is, but it does not belong in America. Be it Muslim, Christian or what have you.
Period.
“Histrionics” Cotour?
lol.
Let me put it this way, if your explaining it then you are justifying it.