Religious liberty cradle of rights

For the first time in American history, Christians, because of their religious convictions, feel threatened by the government of the United States. Read that sentence again, slowly. It is not an exaggeration, and it is not unduly alarmist. This is not the Republic for which the founders and framers of the Constitution mutually pledged their “lives …Fortunes…and Sacred Honor.”

As soon as the Supreme Court announced its ruling that states cannot ban same-sex marriage, the moral champions of liberal open-mindedness, tolerance, civil liberty and love launched their assault on the free exercise of religion, religious toleration and freedom of conscience. Writing for TIME magazine online (June 28), Mark Oppenheimer opined, “Rather than try to rescue tax-exempt status for organizations that dissent from settled public policy on matters of race or sexuality, we need to take a more radical step. It’s time to abolish, or greatly diminish, their tax-exempt statuses.” Never before in American history has the axiom of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall sounded more chilling: “The power to tax involves the power to destroy.”

If the federal government arrogates to itself the tyrannical authority to tax those churches and religious institutions which do not recognize same-sex marriage, then the government will have, in fact, “established” a religion acceptable to itself, represented by those churches who do not “dissent from settled public policy.” That would be the erasure of the First Amendment. And if you do away with the First Amendment, you’ve done away with the United States of America.

With regard to private businessmen and women who are bakers and florists, let us be clear that this is not about baking birthday cakes, catering cocktail parties or arranging flowers for funerals. To be compelled by the government to use one’s God-given talents and personal energies for a religious celebration which directly contradicts one’s convictions of conscience is to suffer the loss of religious liberty.

Religious liberty is not the enemy of civil liberty. Unfortunately, that is the way in which the current debate is being framed by the secularists. But that is a dreadful mistake for all of us. Any survey of world history will show that civil and individual liberties have thrived only where religious liberty has first of all been firmly established. It is no accident that among the liberties protected by the First Amendment, the free exercise of religion is the first. It is first because it is foundational to all others. The assault on religious liberty is an assault on all liberty.

John T. Mabray

Monroe