GAY TRUTH

January 6, 2014 ( Public Discourse ) - Last November marked the twentieth anniversary of the  Religious Freedom Restoration Act . At an event hosted by the  Newseum  and the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty , RFRA’s champions shared stories of how the statute came into being and the long odds it had to overcome. Though no one was resting on his or her laurels, there was a general sense of a job well-done. And then  Douglas Laycock , one of the primary architects of RFRA, began to speak. He warned that millions of Americans view religious liberty as their enemy because they resent religion’s interference in their sex lives. Even though RFRA is a “super statute,” it will offer religious believers little protection if the nation turns against religious liberty. Statutes can be repealed. Courts can empty them of their meaning. Laycock’s warning may seem overwrought, but consider just a few news items. In New Mexico, multiple organs of state governmen...

Marriage and religious freedom will stand or fall together. In recent essays here at Public Discourse , Mark Regnerus argued that same-sex marriage would harm marriage for everyone, and John Smoot argued that it would be bad for children in particular. Today I want to show the damage that redefining marriage does to religious freedom. At bottom, even the defense of religious liberty is a struggle over what is true and false about the meaning of marriage. Should the truth about marriage—that it unites men and women so that children will have fathers and mothers—be defied by the laws of the land, we cannot expect the religious freedom of those who believe in that ancient truth to be respected under the new dominion of falsehood. After all, if redefining marriage to include same-sex couples accords with justice and moral truth, there is no good reason for the new legal order to make room for “conscientious” religious dissenters, for clearly their consciences are malformed an...

Image via Wikipedia Is it time for the “marriage battleground” to shift to religious freedom ? That’s the question posed by a recent Christianity Today article in the wake of New York ’s approval of same-sex “marriage.”  According to University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock , the answer is “Yes.”  He says, “Religious conservatives who advocate traditional marriage must shift their focus to fighting for religious freedom.” That’s because Laycock and, sadly, many others mistakenly believe in the inevitability of same-sex “marriage.” They think that the best Christians can do now is make sure gay “marriage” laws at least provide a modicum of protection for the freedoms of those of us who believe in traditional marriage. Yes, same-sex “marriage,” so-called, poses a grave threat to religious freedom. There have already been cases where photographers and others have been sued for refusing to participate in same-sex “wedding” ceremonies.  Catholic Charities ...