The US Supreme Court, which arbitrarily redefined human life in the Roe decision, and redefined marriage in Obergefell, has now redefined sex.
In the Bostock decision, the Supreme Court interpreted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to mean things that not a single member of Congress intended at the time the bill was enacted. At any time in the 56 intervening years, Congress could have amended that Act, or passed other legislation, to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Congress never did so. This decision by the Supreme Court is a pure act of judicial legislation.
The 6-to-3 ruling holds that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, by extension protects gay and transgender individuals from being fired for reasons related to their sexual orientation or gender identity.
“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex,” says the opinion, which was authored by Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was appointed by President Trump. “Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.”
Our colleges (except perhaps La Sierra) have rules against hiring LGBT employees and view sexual activity outside the bounds of a marriage between a man and a woman as grounds for termination. Our world Church policy is to not hire active homosexuals as employees.
Advocates for religious colleges see their ability to consider sexual orientation and gender identity in employment decisions as matters of religious liberty, and they worry that opening up a new front for individuals to sue religious colleges over their policies on LGBTQ employees under federal anti-discrimination law will make them more vulnerable to lawsuits.
Some say that religious colleges wouldn’t be defenseless in such lawsuits. Title VII includes an exemption for religious employers, including religious educational institutions, giving them the right to prioritize members of their own religion in hiring, and there are other established legal avenues through which colleges can seek exemptions from federal and state antidiscrimination laws. None of the employers whose cases were before the Supreme Court claimed religious exemptions — one of the employers, a funeral home, unsuccessfully pursued a defense based on religious freedom grounds, but it had not sought review of its religious liberty claim by the Supreme Court — and Gorsuch wrote that future cases would have to take up questions regarding the applicability of such exemptions.
“But how these doctrines protecting religious liberty interact with Title VII are questions for future cases too,” Gorsuch wrote.
The Council of Christian Colleges and Universities submitted an amicus brief in the case arguing that Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination should not be interpreted to include discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The religious colleges argued in the brief that “altering the settled meaning of Title VII would negatively impact faith-based institutions of higher education in significant and far-reaching ways.” They also argued that Congress, not the Supreme Court, "is better suited to address issues concerning LGBTQ rights in employment, while protecting the ability of religious educational institutions to continue pursuing their unique religious missions."
The people who signed onto the brief at various Christian schools, are all pretty serious about the way they run their universities,” John Garvey said. “It’s a matter of bringing up young men and women to live their lives in a certain way, and we don’t like to be hypocritical in doing that. So we take seriously the fact that marriage is a sacrament that we administer for men and women and not others, and we take seriously the idea that God created men and women and separate sexes and that’s part of the natural order of things.”
This Supreme Court ruling raises significant religious liberty questions, in spite of what some people say.
Predictably, Spectrum Magazine and Atoday praised the ruling, while Fulcrum7 views the ruling with concern.
Our Response
Christians/Adventists, more clearly than others, can see the tidal wave of pain that is on the way. Sin carries in it its own misery: “Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error” (Romans 1:27).
On top of sin’s self-destructive power comes, eventually, the final wrath of God: “sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming” (Colossians 3:5–6).
Let’s be honest. As believers, we don’t claim to be sinless. We believe the Bible premise that you reap what you sow. Our marriages, our children, our churches, and our institutions are all troubled when sin flourishes and is celebrated. That concerns us.
The difference between us and those who applaud the legislative promotion of sin is this: We weep over our sins. We don’t celebrate them. We don’t institutionalize them. We turn to Jesus for forgiveness and freedom. We cry to The Lord, “who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:10). We mourn for the sins done in the camp—including our own (Ezekiel 9:4). To all of us who sorrow over over the proliferation of sin, know this. God is using these things to separate wheat from the tares; sheep from goats.
What is needed is not political action, but love for the name of God and compassion for the city of destruction. May the Lord be with our Seventh-day Adventist Church as we see these things come to pass. May we stand for the right though the heavens fall.
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“My eyes shed streams of tears, because people do not keep your law” (Psalm 119:136).
