When did religious beliefs become an excuse to discriminate against Christian believers? It hasn’t been the result of an overnight afterthought, but rather the culmination of a long series of attacks on the Creator by Satan himself. Over the last 15-20 years, this cultural battle has been taken up by a progressive monolith in America and weaponized by legislation.
It was the novelist George Orwell who pointed out that one of the ways government will lie is to offer the big lie, the giant lie. And furthermore, to use language in such a way to misuse language, that you adopt a policy that actually represents the opposite of what you call it.
Now, keep that in mind when you remember that back in the month of July, the United States House of Representatives under democratic leadership voted to approve what was known as the Respect for Marriage Act. That sounds good, right? Respect for Marriage Act, who wouldn't want to respect marriage?
But the Orwellian twist in all of this is that the legislation legalizes same-sex (homosexual) marriage—or to put it another way, it says that whatever definition of marriage a state may choose, the other states must also recognize. That’s a bad thing for believers who treasure what God says in His Word, and who lament the moral destruction of people they love, including millions of youth.
The Goal of This Bill
There is no question whatsoever as to the purpose of this bill. The purpose of this bill is twofold,
Number one, to redefine marriage, the most basic institution of human existence.
To misname it the Respect for Marriage Act.
The ultimate moral insult here is to legislatively to attempt to redefine the most basic institution of human existence, a creation order institution made by God Himself. God declared marriage to be a man and a woman united in holy matrimony. To convert it into something else that marriage has never been throughout millennia of human history and then to have the audacity to entitle your legislation, the Respect for Marriage Act is blasphemy and axiological rebellion of the highest order.
It’s pretty bad.
Because when in July the House of Representatives took that vote, 47 Republicans joined with all of all the Democratic votes in the House at the time, and voted for the so-called Respect for Marriage Act, thus seeking to redefine marriage and to get away with it legislatively. Let me remind you of the number again, 47 Republicans. That is significant, because it reveals what people in positions of power will do to keep their power. Church leaders, take note.
There is no need for this bill, given the Obergefell decision handed down by the Supreme Court in 2015. So why do it, and why now?
This is basically a way of political showboating and the party in power know exactly what they're doing. There is no current threat. There is no current case that might work its way to the federal courts, to the Supreme Court to reverse the Obergefell decision.
This is a matter of political grandstanding on the part of the political majority in Washington and of course, they're playing to one of the most vocal and powerful constituencies in their Party, the LGBTQ mob.
The leftist Senate Majority Leader is avidly pro-LGBTQ on these issues. He recently promised that he will bring before the Senate the Respect for Marriage Act and he pledged to get it through the Senate.
The Democratic leadership in the House that is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who after all represents a district in San Francisco, one of the most pro-LGBTQ districts anywhere imaginable in our nation. Both her and Chuck Schumer from New York intend for the Democratic Party to score big on this issue before the midterm elections.
The way they see it, they win either way this goes. They win by being able to claim that they were able to get the ‘respect for marriage act’ passed, or they blamed the other party as obstructionists and enemies of human flourishing who are driven by homophobia. According to the Associated Press,
"The Senate push for the historic vote and the openness by some Republicans to back it in an election year reflects a seismic shift on the issue since the Supreme Court's 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision legalizing gay marriage nationwide."
The AP story also went on to claim that 70% of US adults in a Gallup poll from June 2021 said same-sex unions "should be valid under the law."
The Moral Landscape
Huge moral changes that used to take a century to occur are now happening in the space of 7—10 years. In 2011, a majority of Americans were opposed to same-sex marriage. Seven years later, in the fall of 2018, a majority of Americans said they were now in favor of same-sex marriage.
In 1996, less than one third of Americans, a mere 27% supported same-sex marriages. A quarter century later in 2022, more than 70% of Americans support marriage equality. This is an unprecedented shift in human moral judgment in this scale of time, and the moral revolutionaries clearly feel the wind at their back.
In your lifetime, you've had this massive swing from the vast majority of Americans, about 70% against it, to a poll taken last year in which supposedly 70% or more are for it.
But that doesn't tell us a thing about the morality of same-sex marriage. It doesn't tell us anything about the definition of marriage, either what it is or what it should be. It tells us about the fickle moral choices or preferences indicated by Americans particularly to pollsters. Church leaders who naively supported C19 mandates in 2020 through 2022, will soon find themselves locked in a romantic embrace with pro LGBTQ legislation, after all “we don’t wish to become unpopular.”
Since when is truth determined by popularity?
Our (GC) religious liberty department, now almost entirely absorbed in social justice causes under the guidance of Ganoune Diop is at the precipice. Will they actively resist this God-defying moral atrocity (HR 8404) or turn a blind eye towards it in the name of open-minded religious liberty (which is licentious liberty)?
This legislation will be voted on this week, according to Schumer. If it becomes law, it will push Bible-believing Christians (and Adventists) farther into the corner of cultural coercion.
Wake up!
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“Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Cor. 15:58).
[UPDATE Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) threatened to have a cloture vote on HR 8404 yesterday or today, but yesterday, senators didn’t actually vote because Schumer is a few votes shy of the 60 he needs. This is a hopeful sign, but like the Sword of Damocles falling, this vote can happen at any point today or until a new Senate is seated in January.]
