And the case of Pastor Ake Green—arrested in his native Sweden for daring to preach a sermon in his own church on what the Bible says about homosexual behavior—gives an ominous preview of coming attractions, once religious liberty falls afoul of the homosexual movement’s aggressive intolerance—an intolerance demanding religious liberty give way to the homosexual agenda.
That intolerance is building like a tsunami, just off the shores of federal law. It’s all well and good for some United States senators to mount a high horse, wrap themselves in the flag, and sidestep their responsibilities, grandly announcing that marriage amendments should be handled at the state level. They know that no matter how many citizens approve such amendments, leftist federal judges—urged on by the ACLU and radical homosexual advocates—will continue to try to nullify the referendums.
Furthermore, the precedent of federal protection of marriage is long established. Western states like Arizona and Utah had to proscribe polygamy in their constitutions to come into the union. This was in the 19th and 20th centuries, as part of the Republican national platform.
Soon enough, what’s left of marriage will be engulfed by politically-correct edicts.
It’s amazing to realize how much has come to hinge on this amendment, and in such a short time. Once, and not so long ago, religious freedom was understood as a priority – indeed, as the fundamental right protected by the Constitution. But that was back when Divine directives were acknowledged as both prescient and legal precedent; the horrors of persecution weren’t so far removed but that people—even judges—recognized how precious it is, this freedom to preach and pray.
Even those who had no real intention of putting God before salacious satisfaction understood that, in sidestepping thousands of years of holy revelation and moral conviction, they were deliberately choosing “the dark side.” They recognized their hypocrisy, in Matthew Arnold’s famous phrase, as “the tribute vice pays to virtue.”
These days, vice is widely regarded as the virtue, and it’s receiving tributes galore from judges, academes, actors, and even pastors too besotted with the glories of humanism to recognize the freedoms slipping fast through their fingers.
The problems with same-sex “marriage” are myriad—the emotional implications for children, the permanent physical and psychological dangers for those engaging in homosexual behavior, the structural cracks in society, the precedent for government intrusion in profoundly personal arenas.
But even the most sobering of these social ripples pales beside the very real threat that court-decreed homosexual “marriage” poses for the future of religious liberty in America.
The couples themselves can talk all they like about love and benefits. But what they really want isn’t marriage at all.
It’s a divorce of Americans from their most basic freedom.