The Gay Rights Movement: ISIS Without the Bullets?
The title to this article might seem extreme in comparing the gay rights movement to killing Christians and burning down their churches.
But the effect is nearly the same minus the bloodshed. Christians are persecuted, their businesses are shut down through intimidation, and renegade judges are levying massive punitive fines when Christians refuse to deny their faith and then demanded to serve a sexual religion they believe is false and immoral.
Today’s liberal, pro-homosexual judges are our nation’s mullahs. The law, what’s left of it, is interpreted by the dictates of the gay narrative. The First Amendment is no longer an operating freedom. It has been usurped by a homosexual version of the Quran written to exclude all competing religions.
Consider some of these examples that can be found at WND:
- Family-owned Memories Pizza in Indiana came into the crosshairs of homosexuals when an owner was interviewed by a local TV station in the aftermath of the adoption of the state’s religious freedom law. Responding to a reporter’s question, the owner said that while her restaurant serves gays, her Christian faith wouldn’t allow her to cater a “gay wedding.” The restaurant immediately became a focal point of outrage toward the law, with threats of death and destruction, causing the owners to shut down their business.
- The Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association no longer is used for weddings because a lesbian duo was denied permission to use it, and a state discrimination complaint was filed.
- The owners of a Christian farm in upstate New York recently were fined $10,000 and assessed $1,500 in damages for not allowing a lesbian duo to use their land and home for a wedding.
- The Colorado Civil Rights Commission ordered Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop to use his artistry to celebrate homosexual unions in violation of his Christian beliefs. . . . A state commissioner, Diann Rice, likened Christians to slaver owners and Nazis.
- The Hitching Post wedding chapel in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, was ordered to perform same-sex weddings in violation of their faith.
- In Washington state, florist Barronelle Stutzman has been penalized $1,001 for declining to support a same-sex wedding with her floral talents.
- David and Jason Benham were en route to a new HGTV television show when homosexual activists made an issue of their belief in biblical marriage. The network canceled their real estate show, which was to be called “Flip it Forward.” The Benhams maintain that the RFRA is “a shield to protect companies, like, for instance, a Jewish-owned jewelry. It keeps the state from forcing him to create rings with the Nazi symbol on it. Or a Muslim-owned apparel company. It prevents the state from forcing him to maybe make T-shirts with the cross over the crescent. Or even a gay-owned apparel company from creating T-shirts that say Leviticus 18:22. Homosexuality is a sin.” Very simply, “the state should never force business owners to promote a message or an idea that conflicts with their beliefs.”
- In a New Mexico dispute, courts ordered that a photographer could not refuse to use her talents to memorialize a homosexual wedding.
- Brendan Eich, the chief executive officer of Mozilla, the company best known for creating Firefox, was attacked by homosexual activists and eventually lost his position because he donated $1,000 to support the 2008 Proposition 8 marriage-definition initiative that was approved by the majority of voters of progressive California.
- Vermont’s Wildflower Inn paid a settlement and closed its wedding reception business after the ACLU won a $10,000 civil penalty for two lesbians. The settlement also requires the inn’s owners to place $20,000 in a charitable trust for the lesbians.
- Oregon’s “Sweet Cakes by Melissa” bakery shut down after declining to bake for a “gay wedding.”
- A Christian T-shirt maker in Kentucky was targeted by the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission for refusing to print “gay pride” designs for a local homosexual group.
- Chris Penner, owner of the Twilight Room Annex bar in Portland, was fined $400,000 under the Oregon Equality Act for excluding transsexual men who, dressed as women, had been alienating other customers by using the women’s restroom. According to the Seattle Times, 11 people – calling themselves the “T-girls” – “will get the money, with awards ranging from $20,000 to 50,000.”
And the list continues to grow.
Robert George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and co-author of What Is Marriage?: Man and Woman: A Defense, wrote the following:
“The lynch mob came for the brilliant mild-mannered techie Brendan Eich.
“The lynch mob came for the elderly florist Baronelle Stutzman.
“The lynch mob came for Eastern Michigan University counseling student Julea Ward.
“The lynch mob came for the African-American Fire Chief of once segregated Atlanta Kelvin Cochran.
“The lynch mob came for the owners of a local pizza shop the O’Connor family.
“The lynch mob is now giddy with success and drunk on the misery and pain of its victims. It is urged on by a compliant and even gleeful media. It is reinforced in its sense of righteousness and moral superiority by the “beautiful people” and the intellectual class. It has been joined by the big corporations who perceive their economic interests to be in joining up with the mandarins of cultural power. It owns one political party and has intimidated the leaders of the other into supine and humiliating obeisance.”
Of course, there are some homosexuals (e.g., Tammy Bruce and Courtney Hoffman who donated $20 to the GoFundMe campaign for Memories Pizza) who have denounced what many of these media-hungry “gay” activists are doing and the media are promoting as “gay” leaders, but like so-called moderate Muslims not enough of them are standing up to the bullies.