Friday, November 18, 2022

IN the NEWS - Elections Have Consequences

Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?
Luke 18:8
 
"For years, liberals have perverted the meaning of Thomas Jefferson’s “absolute wall of separation” for keeping the state out of the church to keeping those in the church who uphold the Bible’s definition of marriage out of the public square.
The occasion for this teachable moment is the “Respect for Marriage Act” now before the Senate. Democrats claim the proposal is required to make same-sex marriage legal nationwide, even though the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision in 2015 did precisely that.
 
For liberals, government is the source of individual rights, and that means government defines those rights and has the power to redefine them as desired by whoever happens to be in control at any given time.
And since liberals are in control of the government, they intend to do precisely that—define the right of religious expression and practice so as to exclude from the public square all of those whose sincere faith requires them to reject same-sex marriage.
Simply put, the liberals are saying to millions of Americans that they have no right to disagree in the public square with same-sex marriage and the state can and indeed soon will take their property via taxes and use them to support the enforcement of same-sex marriage as a political right.
 
That enforcement is the second element here that commands attention. The bill includes provisions that authorize the IRS to jerk the tax exemption of any church or non-profit that opposes same-sex marriage. The bill also encourages litigation to be brought against those same institutions in the court system to enforce the right to same-sex marriage.
Here’s what that means: Soon after Biden signs the bill into law, there will begin to be same-sex couples demanding to be married in evangelical churches they know to be opposed to the practice.
If the pastor refuses to perform the ceremony, the church will be sued and it will lose in court. That litigation will then be used by the IRS as justification for ending the church’s tax-exempt status, as well as the tax-deductibility of congregants’ tithes and contributions.
But that’s not all. The IRS is being primed to be ready for action against evangelical and traditional Catholic social service institutions as well. As Heritage Action for America explains:
Just months after Democrats used the Inflation Reduction Act to fund 87,000 new IRS agents, the Respect for Marriage Act would be giving those new agents carte blanche to harass and target religious schools and other faith-based entities that oppose same-sex marriage and eventually strip them of their tax-exempt status.
Worse, it would create a roving license to sue anyone acting “under color of law” – a loosely defined term that would include those providing government-funded or -regulated services. As a result, adoption centers and foster care providers with religious objections to same-sex marriage would have to close down." pjmedia