George Neumayr writes in the American Spectator about what he believes pro-marriage Americans can expect under a second term of President Obama:
"...Under this coercive secular state, Christian values are no longer American values. Obama's former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has made this view official by threatening to ban Christian businesses like Chick-fil-A that appear out of step with "Chicago values."
If Obama wins a second term, Americans will be expected to conform not only to Chicago-style politics but also to "Chicago values." Opponents of gay marriage will be treated as enemies of the state. Obama's military already tells chaplains and privates who dissent from Obama's agenda to "get out.""
23 Comments
American values, as documented in our Constitution, have never been exclusively Christian values, but inclusive of everyone's right to be free from government meddling in their chosen religious beliefs & practices.
The effort by private individuals to intimidate their fellow, equal citizens for failing to share the same beliefs is, unfortunately, nothing new and still very present in our society. We've seen it displayed yet again in the very recent attack on people of the Sikh faith in their place of worship.
Organizations pushing the dominion of the Christian faith, as if it should rule over those who don't subscribe to those beliefs, is likewise an act of intimidation. It's just a matter of degrees.
Your fellow citizens are not so timid, though. They will not acquiese to these attempts at redefining religious freedom as something belonging only to Christians.
The inflammatory rhetoric of those whose opinions NOM is nakedly promoting is equally transparent. It is nothing more than hatemongering against non-Christians through a false claim of victimization.
There is room for everyone, including Christians, at the table. There is, however, no place in American values for those who promote the exclusion of differing faiths from their equally deserved place at the table.
I am forced to conclude that NOM's values are indeed not American values.
We're already treated as enemies of the state. And this is with Obama holding back. In a second term he'll show no restraint. The outrages we're now seeing from this socialist will seem like child's play in comparison.
Goodbye Bill of Rights. We'll miss you.
If Obama is reelected, and persecution comes, then may Jesus Christ be praised!
Nothing could possibly be a more deadly mistake for the enemy, than to allow the Spirit of God to work once again through His faithful, to help them make their witness (marturia).
If Obama wins, we will have the opportunity to follow the example of the cloud of witnesses who have come before us.
If that is God's Will, then so be it.
Barb. The Bill of Rights will apply to all, gay and straight. You will be fine after Obama is relencted. Nothing will change in your life.
@JR
The 1st amendment applies to established religions; not transitory cults that have yet to establish a firm basis, or rational from which to draw from.
You will find no willing victims here.
J.R. (writes)
"The Bill of Rights will apply to all, gay and straight. You will be fine after Obama is relencted. Nothing will change in your life."
The Bill of Rights already applies to gays & straights alike.
The Problem comes from a trasparent results oriented jurisprudence that has created a protected class out of homosexuals and in doing so mangeled legal reasoning beyond any reasonable thought.
So, in the end it is possible to imagine that the "first of our first freedoms" mentioned in the Bill of Rights will not protect (as promised and speciffically enumerated) Americans free excercise of religion but will require the redifining of the insitution of marriage,; itself an unenumerated fundemental consitutional right in its own regard.
When the clash begins (as it already has) between Religious Americans excercising their religious freedoms to recognize marriage as the legal and religious proscriptions understand it, they will be facing a new definition of marriage that was created out of whole cloth and is anethema to the original understanding of marriage that caused it to be declared a fundemental right to begin with.
They also will be subject to a religious excercise jurisprudence that finds the presence of nativity scenes on public propert a threat & treats homosexuality being introduced to public school children as not within the consitutional right to educate ones children.
In short, any sypathetic rulings in suport of the free excercise of religion will have to debart 180 degree's from the last thirty years of narrowing that right... and all the while this is being done in the name of a newly redifined right to "marriage" foisted on those very believers through more activist judicial opinions unsupportable at law.
Barb,
See http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/07/5897
for a discussion of religious freedom under fire.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the Obama administration’s cramped and strange view of the Bill of Rights in the Hosanna-Tabor case. I would seriously miss religious freedom if these assaults from the Obama administration succeed.
Don't let enumerated rights and the rule of law be replaced by "Chicago values" (whatever that means) and the arbitrary rule of men like Rahm Emanuel.
Nothing in your life will change if Obama is reelected? How is that for a campaign slogan? We will be many years paying for the Obama deficits, but getting our freedoms back once lost could take much longer.
Barb: 'enemies of the state'. Can that be a serious allegation? Is there truth in that?
In what way?
Also to Rick: your language is a touch inflamatory. As if someone was going to come at you with a weapon. Or a call of martyrdom. Can you walk down your street? CAn you worship on a Sunday in your church without the state intervening?
What is Neumayr talking about? It is reported that the number of chpalains leaving as a result of repeal of DADT is a handful at most and their actionw as voluntary. DId a gun point at them to leave? Did they get asked to change their beliefs? (No, just to change who they spoke them to).
This is unjustified inflamatory propaganda. It is not NOM.
"Nothing will change in your life." What a great slogan for Obama 2012!
See http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/07/5897 for a discussion of threats to religious liberty.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court unanimously rebuked the Obama administration's view of religious liberty in the Hosanna-Tabor case.
Can you worship on Sunday without the state intervening? It depends on how the IRS views your pastor. Maybe one day it will depend on "Chicago values."
@ Paul Mc #4:
"Also to Rick: your language is a touch inflammatory."
>> Inflammatory? It seems to me to be completely truthful.
PM: "As if someone was going to come at you with a weapon."
>> In fact this is already happening in Canada and the UK; that is, people are being arrested and imprisoned on the basis of proclaiming the gospel, on grounds that this is hate speech.
There is no doubt at all that similar fascism lies in store for us, or any polity which accepts pseudo-marriage as the basis for its laws, and hence the indoctrination of its children.
Parents who are serious about what the Bible teaches concerning homosexuality will *inevitably* be faced with the choice of surrendering their children to homosexualist indoctrination in public schools, or else being arrested at the point of a gun and taken to prison.
That is precisely what is at stake in this election.
If Obama is re-elected, pseudo-marriage will become law (he will likely have at least two SCOTUS nominations in a second term).
If pseudo-marriage becomes law, children will be indoctrinated in homosexualist anti-values in public schools.
Parents who object will be arrested.
Vote accordingly.
Or a call of martyrdom. Can you walk down your street? CAn you worship on a Sunday in your church without the state intervening?
You will be allowed to exercise your freedom of religion, but you will not be given dominion over government and secular society, as you would be under the tea party and the right-wing Republican Party.
Claude, can you back up your statement with a direct quote from the Constitution? Thanks. PS, "separation of church and state doesn't appear in the Constitution.
@Claude,
Your "secular" religion is not the official faith of the Government of the United States. Fortunately for us our Constitution forbids government of the people from imposing your "secular" Dogma on a free society.
DoE: You're not the only person who knows that the words "separation of church and state" does not appear in the Constitution, but rather in an interpretation by Thomas Jefferson. Please don't be condescending.
We know, however, that many American settlers were fleeing religious persecution.
This is why it is particularly important for a diverse society, as it exists in the US, not to allow a single religion to hyjack government, and why we must be vigilant for government and society to remain secular.
If the citizens of the United States of America choose to elect a majority of representatives who happen to share their Christian views, who are you to deny them that right? While there may not be a state-sponsored religion, there is nothing in the Constitution which says that a government cannot consist predominantly of men and women who more or less share a common religious background. That's the beauty of government by representation. If you want a secular-driven government, you might check out North Korea.
Claude puts himself as the judge, telling us what we will be given in the scenario on point. He/she puts it so bluntly: 'you will not be given dominion over government and secular society'. So, who will be given dominion, instead? Ah...he/she is not saying. Who ever talked about getting dominion? Secular society INCLUDES religious people. If we cannot participate you got a big problem on your hands. Free speech is 'getting dominion'? In a representative republic the majority gets dominion. What Claude wants and thinks he can get is dominion by minority, notwithstanding the votes of the majority. It's either dominion by the majority or civil war. Take your pick.
DoE. Get real... North Korea? You will realize that Americans do not want a theocracy, even though the fundamentalist religious right was given a lot of power and influence for a couple decades. Even Barry Goldwater, a very conservative presidential candidate, is quoted saying that the rising influence of the fundamentalist religious right is worrysome. He was a fiscally conservative social libertarian. I respect that.
Little M: Of course, secular society includes religious people. They exercise their religious freedom, but do not impose a theocracy on the rest of us. And drop the he/she smart alec stuff. My avatar clearly sports a mustache, and I'm a male.
No, the Obama administration is the enemy of the state.
Claude: Why do you think somebody is trying to impose a theocracy? Those of us who are opposed to redefining marriage simply want what we've always had: the traditional definition of marriage. It served this country very well for more than 230 years and is, in fact, the very foundation of society - pre-dating all of Western culture. Sticking with that definition does not impose a theocracy.
How soon we all forget...our country was founded on Christian beliefs and values. That's why America's currency portrays "In God We Trust" on it. After being blessed (by God) with one of the most wonderful and safest places to live in the world, we are ready now to throw God out of America or put him on the back burner and hope he will go away. What a sad day for America, as it says in the bible...When he (God) returns will he find any faith left on Earth?..chances are there will not be much if any... if America continues on her current path of Christian persecution.
It looks like "JR" (comment #3) also buys into the whole "economy is doing fine" spiel from the Owebama socialist regime.
It's also quite clear that "Claude" is a male who is attracted to males, and is one of those gay advocates who scour sites like this one for anything he deems fit to refute. A key part of the gay agenda is to be vigilant for any comments that differ from the party line, and they have an extensive, pre-packaged repertoire of insulting refutations to hammer them down with.
This is a pluralistic society, not a secular society, and so our laws are expressed in secular language. But secularism is not privileged as the font of wisdom and legitimacy in lawmaking.
What Claude promotes is a peculiar sectarianism. It is anti-thetical to pluralism and to the secular expression of the principles of good governance.
Freedom of conscience is intrinsic to the human being; it is protected by our form of government precisely because this is the basis for our form of governance. How else to explain the notion of voting on representation; how else to explain the notion of liberty protected by the checks and balances of our framework?
Sectarianism, on the other hand, is the rule of special interests. This is something that the Founding generation debated, hotly, and hammered out an inspired statement of the highest laws written by citizens -- the US Constitution. But above that law, and above society itself, is a much higher lawmaker.
Under that lawmaker -- call it Nature or Nature's God or something else -- there is a discernible order to human activity and to human happiness. To corrupt governance to promote sectarianism, as Claude's remarks do, stands against the entire American enterprise.
Indeed, it stands against the just civilization itself.