[In America,] we have the Liberty Bell, not the Equality Bell.
—Dennis Prager, at about 37:40 into his speech at the University of California at Irvine—
Key point: When rights are created and manipulated by the government, government is playing god. The surest safeguard against this tyranny is a societal consensus rooted in the understanding of rights as inherent and God-given. This was the consensus in America when it was founded, and it is the consensus to which America must return if liberty and authentic rights are to be preserved long-term.
To access additional Word Foundations articles on social justice, go here.
Almost three years ago, I wrote a series of articles on rights. I contrasted the modern American perspective on rights to the view of rights held by America’s founders. Our Founders saw rights as “unalienable” and God-given. To them, it was government’s responsibility to protect rights—to prevent an individual’s fellow citizens from thwarting or hindering his or her opportunities to move about freely or act in accordance with his or her convictions and conscience. This meant people could attempt any and all endeavors that might lead to success, as long as those actions did not thwart or hinder the natural rights of others.
Today, however, most Americans, if not almost all, view rights as entitlements. They believe it is the government’s role to manipulate and create privileges and scenarios that give them what they want and what they believe they need or deserve. They do this in the name of engineering equality, or equal outcomes. Yet government cannot create or manage rights for some without running roughshod over the authentic, inherent rights of other people.
The modern American view of rights sets its sights on equal outcomes, but the original view sought to preserve equal opportunities.
Taxing and Redistributing Wealth
Implementation of “rights” according to this modern view often is made through taxation and redistribution of wealth. Here’s one example. In 2017, Oregon Governor Kate Brown
signed a landmark bill to provide free abortions for all, including illegal immigrants, by requiring insurance companies to cover the procedures and putting taxpayers on the hook for the tab.
While this isn’t technically taxation directly taken by the state, it is a state-mandated form of taxation that involves a redistribution of resources to those considered to be in “need.” Thus, in Oregon, a woman has a “right” to a free abortion at the expense of the ordinary citizens of Oregon—not to mention also at the expense of the lives of aborted children.
Do you hear alarm bells sounding? You should! If government can grant rights, the government also can take them away! It can manipulate them according to the whims of its elite politicians, men and women who moisten their fingers and lift them into the air to determine which direction the cultural winds are blowing. Or they have coercive agendas of their own they can’t wait to implement. These despots include unelected judges as well, a significant number of whom have no regard for the Constitution and feel no obligation to it whatsoever, despite what they said when they took their oaths of office. Their view of rights assumes rights don’t come from God but from government. Thus, the government, in creating, enforcing, and manipulating rights, is effectively playing god.
Redefining Marriage: The Most Extreme Example Yet
I believe the most egregious example of government’s playing god in this way is the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell, decided on June 26, 2015. That decision redefined marriage to include same-sex couples. Justice Thomas understands this as few other people do. In his dissent, he wrote,
The Court’s decision today is at odds not only with the Constitution, but with the principles upon which our Nation was built. Since well before 1787, liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement to government benefits. The Framers created our Constitution to preserve that understanding of liberty. Yet the majority invokes our Constitution in the name of a “liberty” that the Framers would not have recognized, to the detriment of the liberty they sought to protect. Along the way, it rejects the idea—captured in our Declaration of Independence—that human dignity is innate and suggests instead that it comes from the Government. This distortion of our Constitution not only ignores the text, it inverts the relationship between the individual and the state in our Republic. I cannot agree with it.
A Ripple Effect
While the “right” to same-sex marriage tramples on
- the natural order of human and societal relations,
- the view of rights held by America’s Founders,
- the rights of individual states to establish and maintain marriage and family law, and especially
- the rights of children to have both a mother and a father,
from that SCOTUS-created counterfeit right also flows a poison that, if unchecked, will prove lethal to a multitude of authentic rights we previously have assumed to be in place for ordinary citizens.
Free speech is not the least of these. In fact, it is primary.
Even before the Obergefell ruling, the pressure to accept homosexuality as normal came like a tidal wave and invaded our culture at every level.
Meet Emily Brooker
Not much more than a decade ago, Emily Brooker was a senior at Missouri State University. A professor gave her and her classmates an assignment she knew she could not complete. He told them they had to write to their state senator expressing support for including same-sex couples in the foster care system and as potential adoptive parents. Brooker told her professor, a Dr. Kauffman, that she would research the topic and write the letter—but she neither would sign the letter nor mail it because she did not agree with the position she was told she had to support. Dr. Kauffman filled a grievance against Brooker, who later faced questioning by an ethics committee. “Do you think gays and lesbians are sinners?” she was asked. One individual on the committee even inquired, “Do you think I’m a sinner?”
Being found in violation of ethical standards would give Emily a bad mark on her academic record, setting the stage for her to have difficulty launching her social work career. Thankfully, Alliance Defending Freedom, then known as the Alliance Defense Fund, became Emily Brooker’s ally. Shortly after she had graduated, Emily filed a lawsuit with ADF’s help. Subsequently, Missouri State University and Ms. Brooker agreed to an out-of-court settlement. The school issued a statement saying it would clear Emily’s record,
pay her $9,000, and cover the costs of a two-year Masters degree course, plus living expenses, at any state university in Missouri.
It [further] said Kauffman had voluntarily stepped down from his administrative duties as director of the Master of Social Work program. He would also not be teaching for the remainder of the semester.
Students should not lose their First Amendment rights when they enroll in colleges or universities, yet Emily Brooker nearly lost hers. Be aware! Schools of higher learning frequently are places where free speech is threatened at best, but far more often trumped by political correctness and intolerance.
Trashing First Amendment Rights
There’s something extremely important we need to realize about this case. While a great many First-Amendment cases have involved efforts to keep people from speaking out, this case and an increasing number of others are about coercing people to speak or otherwise express messages against their wills and contrary to their deepest convictions. Oregon’s “free abortions statewide” legislation falls in this category. As ADF attorney Jeremy Tedesco has declared, “A government that tells you what you can’t say is bad enough, but a government that tells you what you must say is even worse.”1
A government that tells you what you can’t say is bad enough, but a government that tells you what you must say is even worse.
—Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Jeremey Tedesco—
Liberty at Stake: Thankfully, Jack Phillips Wins Again!
The case leftist activists tried to make against Jack Phillips is yet another example of efforts to coerce people into making statements they don’t want to make, trashing their First-Amendment rights. Remember, Phillips is the Colorado cake artist who in 2012 politely declined a request to create a cake celebrating a same-sex union. Jack was sued for violating Colorado’s anti-discrimination law. He lost at every level his case was heard—until it landed at the Supreme Court where he won. On June 4, 2018, the Supreme Court handed down its ruling. It
held that the state of Colorado was “neither tolerant nor respectful” of Phillips’ beliefs about marriage. The court pointed out that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission showed “clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs motivating his objection.”
That, however, wasn’t the end of the story, nor was it the end of harassment and discrimination against Jack because of his religious beliefs. Only a short time after Jack won at the Supreme Court, the State of Colorado launched another legal maneuver against him. Months earlier, on the very day the Supreme Court announced that it would take Jack’s case, a Colorado attorney called Masterpiece Cakeshop and requested a cake showcasing two colors—pink on the inside and blue on the outside. The cake was to signify, affirm, and celebrate an individual’s gender transition. As with a same-sex “wedding” cake, creating this kind of cake also would have violated Jack’s conscience and religious beliefs, so he turned down the request. Jack wasn’t singling this attorney out. He’d politely decline such a request from anyone.
The attorney subsequently filed a complaint against Jack with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The Commission went after him yet again, despite his Supreme Court win. Thankfully, though, on Tuesday, March 5, 2019, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission announced it was dropping its suit against Jack. In turn, Alliance Defending Freedom, which had countersued on Jack’s behalf, dropped its legal challenge against the Commission. In this four-and-one-half-minute video, ADF’s Bob Trent and Jim Campbell discuss this important victory. In the following one-and-one-half-minute audio clip from the video, Jim Campbell talks specifically about the Commission’s decision to drop its case.
Campbell says, in part,
We don’t know for sure why the state decided to do this, but we do know that over the course of the last few weeks we’ve found a lot of additional evidence showing the state’s anti-religious hostility. So, for example, a few weeks ago, a state legislator told us that he had a conversation in November of 2018 with a current commissioner who indicated a belief that there is anti-religious bias on the commission. And then you follow that up with, last week, we found out that two of the current commissioners made statements publicly indicating that they agreed with hostile commission statements that the Supreme Court condemned in Jack’s first case. So, we’re finding more and more evidence of the state’s hostility towards Jack’s faith, and to religious freedom in general; and as a result of that, we were able to press forward and, for whatever reason, the state decided to back down.
While we welcome this news, let’s make sure we understand that anti-Christian hostility and bigotry still is out there with a vengeance—due in no small way as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision on marriage. And again, let us further understand that with America’s departure from a view on rights as inherent and God-given, leftist elites in government are salivating and poised to establish “rights” according to their own whims and to coerce people to speak and act in ways consistent with their own beliefs—even if their efforts violate the beliefs of those they are trying to manipulate. As Dennis Prager declared approximately 38 minutes and 50 seconds into his speech at the University of California at Irvine, “The bigger the government the less the liberty. That’s why you need a big God.…You won’t have liberty if God disappears.” Instead, as we have indicated, the elites will be playing god!
The bigger the government the less the liberty. That’s why you need a big God.…You won’t have liberty if God disappears.
—Dennis Prager—
Meet Carl and Angel Larsen
Let’s consider one more case. Carl and Angel Larsen are Minnesota residents and the founders of their family-run business, Telescope Media Group (TMG). According to the TMG website, “Telescope Media Group exists to glorify God through top-quality media production.”
Telescope Media Group exists to glorify God through top-quality media production.
—purpose statement, Telescope Media Group—
The Larsens’ work currently involves using their media equipment and talents to help their clients promote and hold concerts, conferences, banquets, and other events. Significantly, their clients come from a variety of backgrounds and hold to a wide range of beliefs. At the same time, “just because they are willing to work with all different kinds of people doesn’t mean they can express a message that contradicts” their most cherished convictions.
Carl and Angel love their present work, but they have a passion to do more. The husband and wife media team believes God’s glory is reflected in and through natural marriage, and that people need to know more about the God who created and established marriage and the family. Carl declares, “I want to tell stories that are going to matter for eternity. I want to tell marriage stories. I want to tell stories about the glory of God in marriage, because not many people are.”
One would think that people would applaud the Larsens’ plans, be indifferent to them and oblivious to their work, or disagree with them but respect their freedom to pursue their own dream. One especially would think the State of Minnesota would care little or nothing about substance of TMG’s projects. Instead, the state is standing in the Larsens’ way. According to the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, state law demands that if they make films celebrating and affirming man-woman marriage, they also must create films affirming same-sex marriage. Further, the law imposes heavy penalties, including fines and even possible jail time, for failure to comply.
Carl and Angel cannot comply—because they are beholden to an Authority higher than the State of Minnesota. In their situation, they have found Alliance Defending Freedom to be a great friend. In December of 2016, ADF took action by filing “a pre-enforcement challenge,…a lawsuit [initiated] before entering the wedding field, seeking a court order that says Minnesota cannot threaten them with severe penalties and jail time if they exercise their First Amendment right to decline to promote a message with which they disagree.”
The following trailer from ADF summarizes the Larsens’ story and the court challenge the religious liberty law firm has initiated on their behalf.
Pray for this case, that the Larsens will receive affirmation from the state that their First-Amendment rights will be recognized.
Educate Yourself and Your Children
There is so much more to this than we are able to cover in this one post. And so much more is involved than just First-Amendment rights, as important as this single issue is.
Let’s review. In the past, we Americans broadly understood that our rights were innate, and that it was the government’s responsibility to protect them. Today, people are demanding that the government create all kinds of “rights” for them; and unfortunately, leftist elites are all too eager to work to grant these requests. When bureaucratic leaders comply with these demands, their actions inevitably will violate the innate rights of others, people who want not to be bothered and want not to be forced into lending their support or resources to causes in which they don’t believe.
Here are some important steps we can take to get our country back on the right track.
First, Americans desperately need to become reacquainted with the Founders’ view of rights and the specific reasons a Bill of Rights was added to the US Constitution. I believe the series I wrote on this subject in 2016, Misinformed and Misled: A Series of Articles on America’s Distorted Perspective on Rights, to be a helpful introduction to this subject for both adults and young people. I hope you’ll use this series to learn about America’s drift away from its founding principles and the consequences of that drift. Help your children understand this issue and its implications as well.
Second, Americans, and evangelicals in particular, need to educate themselves regarding the Social Justice movement (SJM) and its dangers. The SJM is obsessed with equal outcomes at the expense of equal opportunities. Moreover, it twists the meaning of justice, actually remaking it into something unbiblical. Here is a must-see video that’s only four minutes long. The speaker, Greg Koukl, is founder and president of Sand to Reason, an apologetics ministry.
Here are a few other short resources you’ll find helpful.
- “If We Lose the Meaning of ‘Justice,’ We Lose the Gospel” by Amy Hall
- Social Justice: How Good Intentions Undermine Justice and Gospel by Calvin Beisner, published by Family Research Council and several other pro-family organizations
- Christian Answers Against Social Justice by Jacob Brunton; the website “For the New Christian Intellectual” asks you to subscribe to the articles it posts in exchange for this resource
- Also visit www.enemieswithinthechurch.com and learn about a project that is in the works to expose the perils of the SJM. Consider supporting this upcoming film.
Third, as you learn about these issues, tell others.
Finally, pray for our country and its leaders. Pray for the electorate as well, that people will vote with knowledge, wisdom, and insight. And pray for a national spiritual awakening as well.
If we don’t return to God, we won’t remain a free people.
It’s that simple—and that ominous.
Copyright © 2019 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.
top image: Davis Gray, The arrival of the Liberty Bell at Zions Church, in Northampton Towne, (later Allentown) Pennsylvania on 24 September 1777
Notes:
1Jeremy Tedesco’s statement is captured in this Alliance Defending Freedom video.
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