Intolerance on the Left
By Jack Kelly
- April 12, 2015
I admired him for it. The rabbi would have done just about anything for my fiancee — except that. He took his faith, and his office, seriously. To preside over our wedding would have mocked both.
I don’t think a person’s sexual preference has anything to do with character — or is any of my business.
I applaud gays in long-term, monogamous relationships. They ought to have the same legal protections as if they were married. But I’m against gay marriage, because God said marriage is between a man and a woman, and I take Him at His word.
President Barack Obama compared the “struggle” for gay marriage to the struggle for civil rights in his speech last month commemorating the 50th anniversary of the march in Selma, Ala.
The marchers 50 years ago sought the right to vote, to be served in restaurants, to get a hotel room, said Bishop E. W. Jackson, who is black. It’s “intellectually dishonest” to compare them to people who want to have their sexual behavior recognized as “some kind of civil right,” he said.
The Bible makes clear what God thinks of homosexuality. That’s no reason for heterosexuals to feel superior, because God thinks no better of adultery and fornication.
I’ve never committed adultery, but I’ve fornicated. We are all more in need of God’s mercy than of His justice.
Gays suffered social opprobrium in years past. That was un-Christian. We are to hate the sin but love the sinner, Jesus said.
But gays haven’t ever been denied the right to vote or equal access to public accommodations.
“Gays have not had fire hoses or dogs unleashed at them,” said Rev. William Owens of the Coalition of African American Pastors. “They have not been hung from trees or denied basic human rights.”
“Selma envy” is chiefly why his fellow millennials support gay marriage, wrote Hans Fiene, a Lutheran pastor in Illinois.
“My generation hungered for a cause that would make us as righteous as the saints who marched on Selma,” he said. “We have found that cause. We couldn’t care less if it’s real.”
Many who marched for civil rights in the 1960s were beaten or jailed. Some were murdered. But support for gay marriage is strongest among the rich and powerful.
The only Americans whose civil rights are endangered are the devout who are punished for refusing to participate in a ritual they consider an affront to their faith.
It’s been smooth sailing so far for gay-rights advocates chiefly because devout Christians and Jews don’t want to restrict the civil rights of gays. The ease of advance is causing overreach.
“We have seen how swiftly the demands have moved from tolerance to compulsory approbation of behavior historically rejected as contrary to morality and faith by virtually all the great religious traditions of the world,” wrote Robert George, who teaches constitutional law at Princeton. “And now it is not only approbation that is demanded, but active participation.”
“Church leaders must be made to take homosexuality off the sin list,” gay philanthropist Mitchell Gold told New York Times columnist Frank Bruni.
That won’t happen. The faithful will never submit, said Yuval Levin, because “religious freedom is not the freedom to do what you want, but a freedom to do what you must.”
“If the Left tries to snatch liberty from tens of millions of Americans, it can expect prolonged and vigorous resistance,” wrote David French of the American Center for Law and Justice.
A big majority opposes punishing fellow citizens for declining to participate in gay weddings. The faithful ultimately will prevail, Mr. French predicts.
I agree. I’ve been a lousy Christian. I wonder if I’d have the guts to die for my faith, as so many have in the Middle East. But I won’t be intimidated by the dime store Nazis of the secular left.
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