Next Up: Force the Churches to Perform Gay Weddings

Hello, “gay rights” proponents.

I’d like to ask you a question.

Think very carefully before you respond, because I will hold you to your answer.

It’s a two-parter, and here it is:

Do you believe in freedom of association? Do you believe in freedom of expression?

Wait! It’s a trap! Mind your step, my friends. Think about this. Take a break, meditate on the question, and then come back to it.

OK, now, after careful consideration, I ask again:

Do you believe in freedom of association? Do you believe in freedom of expression?

You do? Of course you say you do. Your entire philosophy is built on these two freedoms. Personally, I don’t think either are actually relevant to the fundamental question of whether or not the union between two men can be equal to the union between a man and a woman, and therefore whether two men can actually be “married,” but I’m accepting your premise for the sake of argument.

Freedom of association. Freedom of expression. The latter explicitly protected under the First Amendment, the former implicitly. Both, in my mind, pretty unrelated to this subject, yet consistently trotted out by gay marriage advocates.

So, alright, let’s go with it.    Continue at Matt Walsh

Attorney General Sues Florist for Refusing to Provide Flowers for a Same-Sex Wedding

Attorney General Bob Ferguson of Washington State is suing Arlene’s Flowers & Gifts for refusing to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding. The owner of the flower shop, Barronelle Stutzman, says she is a Christian and cannot in good conscience participate in a same-sex wedding ceremony. Nevertheless, Attorney General Ferguson says the refusal is illegal and told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer the following:

As Attorney General, it is my job to enforce the laws of the state of Washington. Under the Consumer Protection Act, it is unlawful to discriminate against customers based on sexual orientation. If a business provides a product or service to opposite-sex couples for their weddings, then it must provide same sex couples the same product or service.

So Ferguson is suing to fine Arlene’s Flowers & Gifts for every infraction of Washington’s Consumer Protection Act. It would cost the company $2,000 per infraction. That means that, if enough gay couples were refused service, Arlene’s Flowers & Gifts could go out of business.

Robert Ingersol and Curt Freed are the gay couple in question, and they had been customers of Stutzman for over ten years. So the florist wasn’t refusing service to gay people in general. The florist simply didn’t want to participate in a same-sex ceremony. She describes what happened when Ingersol asked for her to provide flowers for his wedding:

He said he decided to get married and before he got through I grabbed his hand and said, ‘I am sorry. I can’t do your wedding because of my relationship with Jesus Christ.’ We hugged each other and he left, and I assumed it was the end of the story.   Continue at Denny Burk

Driving the Churches Away

Earlier this week I posted a short article showing how the Toronto District School Board has chosen to effectively drive churches out of the public schools by pushing through a massive fee hike. In a city of small congregations and expensive real estate, renting space from public schools has long been one of the few affordable options for churches. Grace Fellowship Church of East Toronto, a recent plant of the church I attend, is faced with a 391% increase in the fee they pay to rent a gymnasium for their worship services; Grace Toronto, another local church with which we have a close association, has seen their fees rise by 142%, up to $192,000 a year for just four hours of weekly use. Many other local churches face similar circumstances.

At the time I wrote the article I asked for action and for prayer. Both must have happened in abundant measure!

I posted the article on Monday morning and by the next day I had been contacted by several local and national newspapers, radio stations, and television channels. I opted to direct all media inquiries to Julian Freeman and Dan MacDonald, the pastors of those two churches. In the few days since, it has been a thrill to see those men appear all over the news.

• CTV News covered the issue immediately and headlined their article “Churches scramble after school board raises rental fee.” They published another titled “Church stunned by major TDSB rental fee hike.”
• The Toronto Star published an article titled “School rental hike wallops small faith groups.”
• The National Post went with the long headline “Church groups see rent for meeting rooms spike as much as 400% as Toronto schools try to fill budget gap.”
• WORLD Magazine titled an article “Blatant Discrimination.”
• Christianity Today published a brief story titled “Toronto Churches Face Eviction As School Rental Fees Skyrocket”   Continue at Tim Challies

• See also: Questions the TDSB Is Not Answering

Get Ready for Christians Going to Jail

Twenty-three years ago when I was going to jail for civil disobedience, a pastor told me he believed Christians shouldn’t go to jail. I told him I thought the day would come when he would go to jail, not for refusing to go along with abortion, but for refusing to go along with homosexuality. I said the courts would demand that his church not discriminate against homosexuals when hiring teachers for their church school. And eventually they would tell him he must not speak against homosexuality from the pulpit, because that would be hate speech. That seemed far-fetched to many at the time. To show how far we've come since then, read John Piper’s blog posted in July:

Some Foreseen Effects of Legalizing So-Called Same Sex Marriage

When I preached on the implications of the legalizing of so-called same sex marriage I said, “Pretending that [marriage] can exist between people of the same sex will send ripple effects of dysfunction and destruction in every direction, most of which are now unforeseen.”

Here is an example you may not have foreseen. There are hundreds of others on the way.

It has been reported that in the case of Elane Photography v. Willock (NM Ct. App., May 31, 2012) a New Mexico state appeals court held that a photography firm's refusal to provide its services to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony violates the New Mexico Human Rights Act's prohibition on discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation.   Continue at EPM