September 16, 2015
By: Linda Case Gibbons
What ever happened to "No shirt, no shoes, no service?"
It's gone.
What ever happened to religious freedom?
It's gone.
Today the First Amendment is taking a beating.
Back in King James I's time, the Pilgrims called it religious persecution. Today we call it gay rights.
When the Supreme Court handed down its same sex marriage ruling, (Obergefell v. Hodges), it was feared it would unleash a Pandora's box of problems.
And it has.
The ruling was intended to extend protection to "certain personal choices central to individual dignity and autonomy." Instead small businesses are dropping like flies.
And it's all happening in the name of Love and Marriage.
"Serve us or else," gay and lesbian couples are saying to Christian shop owners, as they demand their wedding cakes, photos and flowers.
It makes you wonder what love's got to do with it.
The owners of Memories Pizza, an Indiana pizza joint, had to go into hiding because the owners said they wouldn't, probably, in the future, cater a same sex marriage.
Sweet Cakes by Melissa, an Oregon bakery, has had to operate out of their house. They were slammed with a $135,000 fine by the Department of Labor and Industries for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple.
A photographer. Another baker. A florist. New Mexico, Colorado, Washington State. These businesses were deliberately targeted and harassed because their owners decided to practice their Christian religion.
Some fought back.
Barronelle Stutzman, a florist in Richland, Washington, did.
She was fined $1,000 for refusing to sell wedding flowers to a same sex couple because it conflicted with her Baptist religious beliefs.
The state's attorney general offered her a settlement if she promised not to discriminate in the future. The 70-year-old grandmother, facing personal and professional financial ruin, said no.
"It's about freedom, not money," she said. "Washington's constitution guarantees us 'freedom of conscience in all matters of religious sentiment.' I cannot sell that precious freedom."
Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk, was thrown in jail for refusing to issue same sex marriage licenses, because of her religious beliefs. Since then, she has been roundly shamed and ridiculed by just about everyone.
FOX's Anna Kooiman called her a "hypocrite," and FOX's Martha MacCullum did an intro with the tag line: "Religious freedom. How much is too much?"
Her accusers exhibited a level of anger for violating the rule of law, anger that was never vented when the president repeatedly, and blatantly disregarded the law.
Could it be true no one cared that Christians were being persecuted? They had seen the president's silence on the subject. Did that dampen Americans' fervor for protecting the Bill of Rights?
No one noticed it, but there was a historic parallel. Dr. Martin Luther King was also incarcerated for his beliefs, which, at that time were also called "unwise and untimely," by no less than his fellow clergymen.
Why'd he do it? He said it was because "injustice is here."
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
Yet the media, presidential candidates and late night talk show hosts attacked, not defended, the people who were being hounded by the gay and lesbian community for practicing their faith.
No awards were given to them for their courage, unlike the Arthur Ashe Courage Award given to Bruce Jenner.
No one asked, "What is this doing to our Constitution? And where will it all end?"
Maybe these modern-day, persecuted Christians should have done it differently. Maybe they should have constructed homemade "clocks," that looked like bombs and presented them to their teachers, in a school house full of children.
Then they'd be invited to the White House.
Maybe they should have burned homes and businesses to the ground in Baltimore. Then they would have been praised for their "community organizing," by the president and congratulated by Valerie Jarrett for their "leadership."
And been invited to the White House.
And maybe someone, perhaps someone in the media, could have asked U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning the question: "Yo, Judge! If Kim Davis had been a Muslim, would you still have thrown her in jail?"
But I guess not. That would be politically incorrect. Ask Dr. Ben Carson.
Hold the line, America.
*Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.