Marriage equality is a ‘tyrannical impulse,’ says Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer --- By Kyle Harris - June 26, 2015
Many on the evangelical right are mourning what they see as an attack on freedom — each state’s right to make its own laws, organizations’ right to refuse services based on sexual orientation, religious adoption agencies’ right to deny same-sex couples children to adopt, bakers and florists right to refuse to make cakes and arrange flowers for same-sex weddings.
This is the first time one constitutional right has directly conflicted with another, said Doug Wardlow of the Arizona-based religious liberties organization and legal ministry the Alliance Defending Freedom, which has a strong presence at the Colorado Statehouse and much experience arguing [...]
Several historical examples that challenge Wardlow’s perspective includes the constitutional abolition of slavery which clashed with certain pro-slavery Christians’ religious belief that owning and controlling other people based on racial hierarchies was a God-given right. Certain activities protected by the First Amendment – say, the right to make and sell pornography or create anti-Christian art – also clashed with Christian notions of obscenity.
But what makes today’s Court ruling unique, from Wardlow’s perspective, is that the decision will do more than give individuals rights. It will actually strip away the rights of Christians who believe that marriage should be defined as a monogamous relationship between one man and one woman. They may no longer be exempt – based on their religion – from non-discrimination laws.
Clearly the entire point sophists dance around is believe what you want, but do not act in ways that deny basic decency to others.
The item continues:
Government overreach has been a constant fear of conservatives, and Alliance Defending Freedom has waged legal battles on behalf of florists and bakers, protecting clients from a government that wants to tell them how to operate their businesses, who they can serve and how, Wardlow says.
Business is regulated. Those very Christian bakers need to follow health codes and be inspected, shut down even, if facilities and goods sold imperil customer health. They have to pay rent or the law helps landlords evict them when they do not, independent of creed or outlook, be it of the bakers or the landlords. They are taxed, as a business form unlike their churches, (and that is an inequality which might need to be revisited). They cannot aim a firearm at customers from the visiting public and threaten "sinners" with hostile violent actions, belief notwithstanding. They cannot form lynch mobs. They can suggest others should boycott kosher or halal food outlets; but they cannot obstruct public access to such other food providers much as their operating sites cannot be so obstructed. If they believe they can lynch others, their belief would not be a defense against lynchings. If they believe in lynch law, without acting upon that belief, they can continue baking strudel. All the while free to make it apple strudel, or cherry strudel; they are not without freedoms.
The item continues:
With today’s Supreme Court decision, Aliance [sic] Defending Freedom will have a harder time waging its legal battles. Wardlow characterized the Court’s decision as a “totalitarian impulse.”
“Once you have the government coming in and telling people what they have to believe, we’re not many steps from tyranny,” he told The Colorado Independent this morning.
Reaching "totalitarian impulse" would be saying, "Only apple strudel, the other strudels are unnatural." Ditto, missionary position.
But I digress, the item next saying:
His hope is that the country will experience a “culture shift” and return to what he sees as the United States’ historical roots in Judaeo-Christian beliefs and the idea that marriage is an exclusively heterosexual institution.
That idea remains. Wardlow holding it being fine proof. But he is not really bitching over "idea" or "culture," he is wanting to impose his own narrow viewpoint on others as a matter of law. He is a lawyer working toward that goal, independent of any cultural inclinations. He likely is unable to read Greek or Latin, which some define as essential to being "a cultured person."
He misuses words. (Some might call that "anti-semantic" but again I digress.) Some might deem Wardlow ham-handed and ignorant in the extreme, but nobody is compelled to share a "belief" of mine, at least I do not "believe" that they must, nor do I argue for it as a way to run a nation.
Wikipedia. Nobody is telling these Wardlow people what to believe. They can believe themselves superior to others; to believe they have the one true way with all else being delusion. They can think they own a pipeline to some inexact deity who tells them daily what to do and that they are special; i.e., that they hear voices.
They, in turn, are wanting to impose upon the freedom of belief and action of the rest of us. Including those believing in secular humanism as a basis for a moral code, i.e., that we're all in it together and we owe one another fair treatment.
Clearly they will believe sophistry if self-serving, or at least spew it. But the fact is they are being told they cannot impose their beliefs upon others, as law. That the law is not owned by Christian evangelicals, despite their wishes. They should shut up and accept it because it is fair to treat others with the same respect they'd want from others. If recollection is correct, someone once said, "Do unto others as you'd have others do unto you." They must have missed Sunday School during that lesson, as with moneychangers being driven from the temple rather than having it sold to them by Rome, (along with a convenient tax exemption secular humanists do not have, and do not believe wrongly that they deserve).
_____________UPDATE____________
The burning of the Branch Dividians to a crisp was the one recent instance of limiting freedoms based in large measure upon a cult belief, as well as Clinton-Reno ATF wanting to appear proactive in avoiding a budget cut with the Dividians deemed a fair game target for their accumulating weapons without any known tangible acts of violence toward anyone outside of the cult or inside; but Wardlow's pulpit-masters let that one go without a peep. Go figure that one, since it makes no sense to me. Where was Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson then? In the counting house, counting out their money?
You tell me.