But if my guess is correct, this week’s news cycles will be all about hate speech. Ours. Or what they want to represent as ours. You see, with a Friday ruling, and so much near-instant access to our churches’ sermons, you can almost bet that they will be trolling our sermons for sound bytes. You see, while there will be much trumpeting that Kennedy’s majority opinion states the following:
Finally, it must be emphasized that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned. The First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths, and to their own deep aspirations to continue the family structure they have long revered. The same is true of those who oppose same-sex marriage for other reasons. In turn, those who believe allowing same sex marriage is proper or indeed essential, whether as a matter of religious conviction or secular belief, may engage those who disagree with their view in an open and searching debate. The Constitution, however, does not permit the State to bar same-sex couples from marriage on the same terms as accorded to couples of the opposite sex.
Note that it also says this:
Many who deem same-sex marriage to be wrong reach that conclusion based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises, and neither they nor their beliefs are disparaged here. But when that sincere, personal opposition becomes enacted law and public policy, the necessary consequence is to put the imprimatur of the State itself on an exclusion that soon demeans or stigmatizes those whose own liberty is then denied.
Now, when the right to advocate is the only one specifically mentioned – does that include the right to refuse to perform such marriages? It simply does not say. As far as I can tell, that simple fact means that it is almost inevitable that someone will challenge that. They may have even done so today, so that they might file suit tomorrow. As Thomas points out in his dissent:
The majority appears unmoved by that inevitability. It makes only a weak gesture toward religious liberty in a single paragraph, ante, at 27. And even that gesture indicates a misunderstanding of religious liberty in our Nation’s tradition. Religious liberty is about more than just the protection for “religious organizations and persons . . . as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths.” Ibid. Religious liberty is about freedom of action in matters of religion generally, and the scope of that liberty is directly correlated to the civil restraints placed upon religious practice.
Roberts says this, about the same section in Kennedy:
The majority graciously suggests that religious believers may continue to “advocate” and “teach” their views of marriage. . . . The First Amendment guarantees, however, the freedom to “exercise” religion. Ominously, that is not a word the majority uses.
So, two things for next week.
There will be some hoopla about a homosexual couple requesting marriage at a dissenting church. Probably not reported on in the mass media, but I could be surprised.
Secondly, there will be a consistent, repetitive mass media saturation concerning hate speech from churches and/or religious institutions – and at first, the crazier the better. From there, they will move on to the folks from the SBC and their like. I might be wrong, but everywhere else this has been instituted, there have been hate speech laws enacted swiftly thereafter. We’re on the accelerated track, so I do not expect this to be slow, at all. It will follow inevitably.
I know what you might be thinking. Isn’t this alarmist? Why should we expect anything different? Has human nature changed lately? We are seeing glowing examples every day that it hasn’t.
Expect things to progress swiftly and precipitously. If they don’t, and we are granted a small measure more of common grace, we will be pleasantly surprised. However, you have no more time to wait before you start preparing your children, your spouse, and yourself for the wrath of God being poured out on this nation.
Be prepared with counters to the common objections. Comparison to racism? Race doesn’t exist. It is a societal invention, of whole cloth – just like SSM. Judge not? Certainly that doesn’t mean we judge the merits of nothing. After all, we are told to judge with righteous judgement. We just posted about the silliness of the mixed fabrics objection.
There are a host of resources here, at AOMin.org, AskDrBrown.org, and a wealth of other places for you to make your preparations, for those who truly thought it would “never happen here.” They thought that a lot of places, and in a lot of times. Now that you know it is happening here, be wise, and get to work.
Now a short warning for those who support SSM, however:
Make no mistake: the political implication of the recent fiat from scotus is disastrous; but not because of any expectation of a loss of power or influence. It is just another evidence, along with Roe, that this nation is under the judgement of God. Barring a Jonah for our Nineveh, it means that we will perish as a nation. Like Babylon, Egypt, Assyria, Rome, or any other in history. It has nothing to do with the political element of the equation save a warning to flee the wrath to come. The judgement has been plain to see since I was a child, despite claims of any majority, moral or otherwise. All we have “accomplished,” for lack of a better term, has been at best, limited; a temporary holding action. There are all the claims of progress, progress; but the only progression has been toward the grave.
If you are currently celebrating a “civil rights” victory, this is merely emblematic of the root issue between what you and we consider good, peaceful and just. I am sure that pleases you. I am equally sure that it grieves me. The root difference is that a rather large percentage of what you call a laudable good, we call a monstrous. Our ideals are the enemy of yours, and vice versa. If you haven’t grasped that we truly are at odds on the majority of what we believe, then please, understand that we are not angry, except in the sense that we are cognizant of the wrath of God hovering over your shoulder that will crash down upon us all, and we know that you don’t see it. My children and yours will suffer for our collective rebellion as a nation. You will scoff at this. You will find it to be madness. We know. We expect that too. We also expect you to participate in that madness when it occurs. When you do, remember what you are reading now.
We also, incidentally, and with full understanding of the history we hold dear, expect not only to suffer hardship, but actual persecution – maybe even to die for expressing these very thoughts you read, within a very short time frame, if that judgement is swift. We hope not, because that will give us more time to prepare our children for something outside our recent experience, but well within our historical experience. Yet we expect, very soon, to face persecution, prison, death, and the forcible removal and reeducation of our children. Mock if you must, but remember; we have experienced this for millennia. We don’t expect better from people now. Why should you be any different from the people whose history you are currently repeating, and even exceeding in evil? Your “shining beacon” of modernistic subjectivism changes opinion like sand or tide. The only direction this country has moved for the last century is toward an orgiastic self-immolation.
These are the things we speak of out of your hearing. That we not only expect to stand up to you, but to be imprisoned or killed for it. We are well aware of the ones who claim our name but are happy to accede to your cultural demands. There have been the same sorts at every point in history, too. We read our history, and take note of it. Remember these words when you see the things you scoffed at happening all around you, and begin to wonder how it all happened to us all. It happens because we forget what men are capable of, and believe them good and great, not petty and vicious. When we trust ourselves to do rightly and justly. Remember, once we start to disappear, our children are relocated next door, when you stop hearing our voices, because you clamored for them to be silenced – and when you start to join us at the whim of others. We warned you of the wrath to come.
It won’t happen because of this decision alone. We’re already guilty, millions of times over, for allowing (and celebrating!) the wholesale murder of innocent children on a scale that will soon dwarf Auschwitz and the rest of the concentration camps combined. That, my friends, is a national evil of which very few of the worst hated regimes in history can be said to be guilty of. This particular issue, our opposition to a wealthy, influential, and popular minority with über-rights will, however, be the excuse used to silence us. We will not say Cæsar est kurios in this land any more than we did in others. We are, however, not surprised, athough some have been sleeping in their unprecedented comfort. This is why we are told to be vigilant. While some have been negligent, perhaps, others have been sounding warnings of this for years – for decades. We are told to expect persecution, and we know that the recent past of this nation has been a historical aberration. Remember, though, when the things you scoffed at become commonplace, and the barbarians are at the gates. It has happened before. The difference is, we knew it would happen again, and why. Mock if you will. But remember. We can not be silent. So you will silence us, because you cannot bear to hear the truth. Oh, we know you say you won’t do it. We don’t believe you. Remember.