Americans celebrating our 245th birthday this weekend largely fall into two groups. Those in the first will simply take it for granted that freedom rings—assume that the liberties we’ve traditionally enjoyed are liberties we will always enjoy—turn on the ball game, hit the pool, and look for the fireworks. That’s a choice most Americans will happily make.
Those in the second group will do something many of us do when we hit one of our own personal milestone birthdays—30, 40, 50, etc. We can pause, if only for a moment or two, to assess where we are, and where we’re going.
Things are changing fast in the land long considered the bastion of liberty, and those who haven’t been paying attention may be surprised, on second glance, to see how many of our personal freedoms are being taken from us. Government officials across the country are increasingly bent on limiting those freedoms—and rapidly becoming as formidable an opponent to many of its citizens as King George III and Parliament were to our Founders.
Consider the cases of four of our fellow citizens:
·Jack Phillips, a Colorado cake artist, happily serves all people—but he cannot create cakes that express messages that violate his faith. For example, Jack cannot create cakes celebrating same-sex weddings or gender transitions. He also cannot create cakes celebrating Halloween, promoting anti-American themes, or disparaging others—including those who identify as LGBT. For more than 200 years, his government would have honored his freedom to follow his own conscience…his “inalienable” right not to be forced to advocate for something he doesn’t believe in.
Instead, Phillips has been forced to spend nearly a decade in court due to activists and government officials who have targeted and harassed him simply for wanting to live consistent with his religious beliefs.
·Tanner Cross, a Virginia physical education teacher, joined parents and others from his community in expressing concern at a May school board meeting over a policy being considered in his school district. The policy would force teachers to use a child’s preferred pronouns, rather than the ones corresponding to his or her biological sex—and to do so without notifying parents or securing their consent.
For expressing his personal views at a public microphone, Cross was placed on administrative leave and banned from teaching classes or attending any school district events.
·Dr. Allan Josephson had been for 15 years a highly acclaimed Division Chief of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Louisville when he suddenly found himself demoted, ostracized, and effectively fired.
Why? During a panel discussion on treating gender dysphoria in children, Dr. Josephson said he would first try to understand some of the underlying psychological issues affecting such a child rather than rushing to irreversible medical procedures.
That was it. Some colleagues objected to this common-sense response, and the rest—including Dr. Josephson’s career—was history. Yet public universities have no business punishing people simply because they hold different views than their colleagues or administrators.
·Emilee Carpenter is challenging New York laws that require her to create photos and blogs celebrating same-sex weddings because she creates them to celebrate weddings between one man and one woman.
The same laws forbid her from explaining—on her own website—why celebrating such events violate her religious beliefs. Stating those beliefs, the government says, might make website visitors feel “unwelcome.”
Four individuals, four states across the country—all of them locked in legal combat over the rights of individual Americans to hold religious convictions…make personal choices relating to their own creativity…run their business in sync with their conscience…speak their beliefs in public forums…think for themselves, believe for themselves, choose for themselves how to live their lives.
What is America about, if not these things? How would we explain to the Founders that the descendants of those they delivered from the stifling control of an invasive, oppressive government are ever more accepting of the limitation, and even the elimination, of the freedoms they won?
How do we stand against the hostility so many are fomenting against religious faith, against moral tradition, and against free speech? How long can we cheer for freedom in a country where intolerance is increasingly celebrated—in the name of tolerance?
Enjoy the holiday. But find a few moments to realize that what we’re celebrating is less and less “liberty and justice for all” and more and more the growing power of our government and its allies to determine who is worthy of liberty and justice, and who isn’t.
We might also want to give thanks for those brave souls, like the ones mentioned above, who still share our forefathers’ vision of personal liberty, and are willing to stand in the dock to keep our freedoms a reality.
“Eternal vigilance,” the old saying goes, “is the price of liberty.” The price is going up.
Ryan Bangert is senior counsel and vice president of legal strategy at Alliance Defending Freedom(@AllianceDefends).