Is First Amendment Only For Odd Balls And Muslims Or For The Rest Of Us? It Is For ALL Americans Regardless Of Religious Orientation!

1ST AMENDMENT IS FOR EVERYONE

Exclusive: Joseph Farah warns of cases where state 'splits hairs over religious freedom'

 JOSEPH FARAH

Do Christians have a First Amendment right to be Christians in their everyday life when their convictions place them at odds with Obamacare, anti-discrimination ordinances, hate-crimes laws and a rash of legislation and judicial rulings that have elevated progressive secular humanism to the status of state religion?

That is the real question that confronts America in light of two stunning incidents:

• Houston Mayor Annise Parker, a radical lesbian activist, used organized clergy opposition to a city ordinance that would permit “gender-confused people” to use any public restroom they choose to issue subpoenas for the sermons and other writings of five city pastors.
• City officials in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, threatened to prosecute under an ordinance prohibiting discrimination on the basis sexual orientation a husband and wife team of evangelical pastors for refusing to conduct a same-sex wedding in their chapel.

While there are signs some city officials and judges are backing down from prosecuting and harassing specific Christians for following their faith dictates, they are doing so in a way that effectively eliminates First Amendment religious freedom guarantees to 99.9 percent of the population.

What do I mean?

In Coeur d’Alene, city officials are artificially moving the bar to avoid the ugly controversy they created. They are hinting they will not prosecute – but not because it’s illegal to coerce Christians to violate their religious convictions. They are only open to making an exception because the pastors actually perform Christian weddings in their chapel, not secular weddings. They would also make an exception, the city officials say, in the case of a nonprofit operation, which the Coeur d’Alene chapel is not.

Likewise, at the federal level, Obamacare abortion mandate exceptions have been granted to some corporations, notably Hobby Lobby, that have had the burden of proof on them to establish that they operate on Christian principles. The U.S. Supreme Court examined evidence for this including the ownership stake of the principals. It’s clear that the Hobby Lobby decision might have been much different for a new company, a sole proprietorship by a Christian layman or a corporation whose board of trustees favored operating on Christian principles but whose ownership included non-Christians.

Hello?

Does anyone notice the danger of getting the state involved in splitting hairs over religious freedom – especially given the fact that everyone in America operates within the confines of some kind of religious view, even if it is atheism or secularism? Religious freedom is for everyone in America. That’s the guarantee of the First Amendment. It’s not just for clergymen, nonprofits and businesses solely owned by Christians.

Having bared their contempt for Christian values in passing “non-discrimination laws” that discriminate against Christians, the secular progressives and their LGBT allies are now attempting to carve out loopholes for Christians who get their limited seal of approval. That’s not the way religious freedom operates.

This is a disturbing pattern emerging among the judicial and progressive elite.

It’s designed to divide and conquer.

After all, few want to see people go to jail or pay exorbitant fines for merely following their religious convictions.

Yet that is what is happening across the country today to ordinary Christians who don’t have the resources of the Hobby Lobby ownership, who don’t operate as religious nonprofit ministries, who aren’t pastors or clergymen but who have just as much right to follow their religious convictions as anyone else.

Freedom of religion is not for a professional class only. Freedom of religion is not for the rich only. Freedom of religion is not for nonprofit, tax-exempt organizations only. Freedom of religion is for everyone.

And that’s the way attacks on freedom of religion need to be addressed – by everyone and for everyone.