A quick glance at our founding document reveals that that it doesn’t
say a thing about churches. What the Constitution does say is that
Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion, a
concept applied to all levels of government via the incorporation
doctrine of the fourteenth amendment. It’s entirely irrelevant if that
exercise is taking place between the four walls of a church.
Yet lawmakers and law-interpreters continue to imagine an invisible
caveat attached to our first amendment. Yes, your free exercise is
sacrosanct…
. The founders apparently never intended freedom to permeate society as a whole.
Bakery owners Aaron and Melissa Klein found out the hard way that
they don’t have constitutional rights while operating their own
business. The Christian couple was hauled into court after refusing to
make a cake for a same-sex wedding, supposedly in violation of Oregon’s
nondiscrimination statute. They believed that the first amendment would
protect them but, unfortunately, Oregon allows exceptions to
nondiscrimination laws only for churches and religious schools.
The Left’s latest disingenuous position is that they love freedom of
religion and all that jazz but it must never be allowed to seep beyond
the confines of a church. It’s disingenuous because there is mounting
evidence that the statist Left respects no limits on governmental
authority, not even the threshold of your church. Priests have been
exposed to legal pressure to make them violate the sanctity to the
confessional, the mayor of a major American city has tried to subpoena
church sermons, Catholic adoption services have been forced out of
existence by demands that they give children to same-sex couples. So the
idea that they respect churches is just another despicable lie.
Churches are where the “bigots” are and the Left allows “bigots” no
sanctuary.
This whole concept of churches as a haven of free exercise is
simultaneously extra-constitutional, unconstitutional, and perhaps even
anti-constitutional. But it isn’t without precedent. It’s actually part
of a terrifying trend I call “freedom in a cage,” meaning the official
toleration of basic constitutional rights only in small and
ever-contracting niches.
Who on earth would want to cage our freedoms? People who hate those
freedoms but won’t admit it, that’s who. The tolerance bullies claim
that they fully support your right to be a moral monster worse than
Hitler as long as you stay in your church. If freedom were ever allowed
out of its cage they might have to see it, hear it, and even be
inconvenienced by it, which they won’t stand for.
grant business owners a license to discriminate against the “LGBT” community?
