I was having a discussion on an NPR website not long ago. The subject was the commentary that had played out about the proposed amendment to the Arizona religious restoration act. The amendment passed the state legislature, but was ultimately vetoed by the governor due to outside pressure. It was her prerogative and she took it, so I can't fault her for that. The media coverage, however, was biased against the amendment to the point of rank dishonesty and near hysteria. Considering their ethical obligation to inform the people, I can and do fault them for that. I'm sure that the remaining newspapers are suitably impressed.
I never expected to persuade anyone on the website to my point of view. That was not the purpose. Rather, I was there to remind some of them that not everyone able to log onto a computer thinks the same as those who frequent NPR and to gage a bit of the perspective of my liberal countrymen. I was curious if, beyond the hype and dishonesty presented in the campaign, anyone had a straightforward reason as to why a person should be forced to participate in a wedding service they thought was immoral. What I found was somewhere between discouraging and terrifying.
My case was both simple and compelling, or so I believed. Under the first amendment to the Constitution, the government by rights should not be able to compel a person to violate their religious convictions. Combine that with the thirteenth amendment, which prohibits involuntary servitude, and it would seem that there was little left to discuss. Frankly, I still can't understand how we have reached this point at all. It seems to me that common sense should have prevailed long ago, foolish person that I am.
My opponents countered my argument with hardly a pause. Their argument was also quite simple. According to them, the Constitution does not apply to businesses, but only to individuals. Therefore, as soon as you become a business open to the public, you sacrifice your first amendment rights.
I listened to this (figuratively, of course. I was reading at the time) and I was too stunned for words. Under this rationale, if a Christian, or anyone else, desires to make a living, they must sacrifice all of their Constitution protections to do so. They immediately become fair game for whatever whims the legislature can pass, regardless of how strange or capricious. The right to speak out, to redress for grievances, to an attorney - all gone. I'm listening, and I'm wondering how could this type of view ever have come to be? And then I remember how thoroughly the liberals are in control of our schools and colleges and media these days, and I sigh, and I want to weep quietly.
In the movie "A Man for All Seasons" about the life of Sir Thomas Moore, there is a scene where Sir Thomas's family is counseling him to arrest someone who plans to do him political harm. Sir Thomas refuses because the man has done no wrong before the law. When a family friend complains the man is breaking God's law, then Sir Thomas retorts "Let God arrest him." As the discussion grows heated, Sir Thomas asks the friend would he knock a road through the law to chase after the devil, and the man replies that to catch the devil he would knock down every law in England, and that is when Sir Thomas reminds him that when the law is flat and the devil turns on him, how can he possibly stand in the wind that will come?
Sir Thomas was eventually beheaded for treason. His crime was that he would not agree that the King's divorce was lawful according to the church. In order to change wives, King Henry had appointed himself head of the English clergy and approved the divorce himself. And to ensure that there was no dissent among the public, the king insisted his nobles recognize his divorce and new marriage, and all of them did. Except Sir Thomas. He kept silent. A man both loyal to his king, and more loyal to his God, he would speak against neither, love both, and do his best to serve well. It did not save him.
In time, a man named Cromwell arranged to have Sir Thomas arrested, tried, convicted, and executed. The evidence was perjury, the trial was rigged. In his zeal to get Sir Thomas, Lord Cromwell "knocked flat" every law in England. And in the end, the devil turned on him. And now, we see a new generation of "Cromwells," ready to knock flat the laws and rights that so many suffered and died for to get...people like me. And ironically, it still has to do with marriage. For the sake of holding to God's view of marriage, I am now considered worse than the devil.
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