Recently, I was listening to a
Michael W. Smith song, Breakdown, and
was struck by a line he used, “One nation over God, is that what we’ve now
become?” Morality is now defined by the
consensus of society, and those in the minority are scorned, belittled,
criminalized and denied the freedoms our founding fathers fought so laboriously
to ensure. Morality is no longer viewed
as a fixed standard established by an immutable God, but a sliding scale
determined by focus groups, polls, and social media.
A short time ago the Kansas
legislature was presented with a bill, not yet voted on, by Charles Macheers
that would have exempted any private business or public employee from providing,
“…any services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods or privileges…”
related to any “…marriage, domestic partnership, civil union or similar
arrangement…” if those actions would conflict with that person’s “sincerely
held religious beliefs.” Another proposed
Arizona law, vetoed by the governor, was similar, though perhaps more
expansive. The point of both efforts was
to protect the First Amendment right to freely exercise religious beliefs. Both were specifically, though unmentioned in
either bill, written in reaction to the growing number of states legalizing
homosexual marriages.
My limited understanding of both
pieces of legislation leads me to conclude that the authors’ intents were
honorable, but the practical applications would have been onorous. The freedoms delineated in the First
Amendment were not intended to be unlimited.
The framers of the Constitution knew there must be limitations on
speech. We all know we can’t maliciously
shout, “Fire!” in a crowded theater. The
press are not free to print libel. And
though it may be a sincerely held tenet of one’s religion, people can’t be
sacrificed on any religious altar. All
of our rights must be balanced on the scale of fairness to others. The pieces of legislation referred to above, while
submitted with good intentions, appear to unfairly limit the freedom of others
for the sake of “religious liberty.”
However, after reading an op-ed
in the Sunday, February 23, 2014 edition of the Sacramento Bee, I had some
concerns that the authors of these bills must have had as well. The article was written by Leonard Pitts,
Jr., a writer for the Miami Herald. He likened the Kansas bill to the Jim Crow
laws that allowed wide-spread discrimination against Blacks in this
country. If passed, both the Kansas and
Arizona bills had potential to substantially discriminate against homosexuals,
allowing people with “sincerely held religious beliefs” to refuse them
everything from haircuts to hotel accommodations. I agree with him that we should not allow
such generalized discrimination.
However, I wrote to him and asked if he thought a Jewish baker should be
forced to decorate and deliver a cake for the installation ceremony of some
Imperial Kludd? Should a Muslim caterer
be forced to provide alcohol and pork for a National Hog Farmers
convention? Two of the most reported
examples of religious freedom versus discrimination against homosexuals
involved Christian bakery owners in Colorado and Arizona. They didn’t want to supply wedding cakes for
same sex weddings because it violated their sincerely held religious
beliefs. Mr. Pitts, Jr. never answered
my questions. I have to contemplate that
if there are limits to the First Amendment rights to protect the minority,
shouldn’t there be limits to the Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection
to protect those whose freedoms under the First Amendment are at risk?
But it was something else in Mr. Pitts, Jr.’s article that jolted
me (beside the fact that he placed quotation marks around the word “Christian”). He likened the introduction of the Kansas
legislation to “locking the garage door after the car has been stolen, the
fence fixed after the cows have wandered off.
Consider: The bulk of the country
now supports gay rights. Most young
conservatives now support gay rights.
The federal courts now support gay rights.” In other words, morality is determined by a
consensus of the people living in a country, the majority of a particular
sub-group of a political grouping, and the actions of a government body. And, as he implies later, moral standards
change over time and we must all do our best to keep up. There is, apparently, no objective, immutable
standard of morality.
We are now, as Michael W. Smith
puts it, “One nation over God.” He no
longer is recognized as the determiner of moral standards of behavior. His book no longer holds the unchangeable
truth that only he can delineate.
Acceptable or unacceptable behavior are no longer his to judge. He is no longer the giver of “certain
inalienable rights” as our founding documents indicate. He has been replaced by the ego-centric
individual, or by a collection of such individuals. Without an objective standard of right and
wrong, everyone is free to decide how to define morality. And if enough people generally agree with
each other, they have the right to force their morality on everyone else, even
people outside their society. Mr. Pitts,
Jr. believes he has the right to condemn Russia and Uganda because those
countries have policies that differ from his standard of morality.
It’s a slippery slope we are
descending. The last time everyone did
what was right in their own eyes, the great flood stopped them all.
