Note: At the beginning of 2007 I started a short-lived blog. My most immediate inspirations were twofold: 1) a couple of my friends had blogs I enjoyed reading, and 2) I was inspired by the example of Demosthenes and Locke in Ender’s Game, anonymous online commentators who by the power of their words were able to influence society. My blog was hosted at arthegall.com and was anonymous. The articles I posted there were the most strident pieces of political activism I have ever written. At the time I was deeply invested in electing Christian politicians and establishing Christian values in society by fiat. However over the course of the 2008 election cycle my views moderated, and I became a libertarian, shifting from strong support for Alan Keyes to strong support for Ron Paul. In addition, not long after starting the blog I joined Facebook which became for fifteen years my primary mode of online expression. The blog petered out after only a few posts. (DL, June 7, 2023).
The ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets, but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.
-Ronald ReaganAs you value your lives, your families, and your freedom, hear this:
Christians are today, this moment, in grave and imminent danger of having their civil liberties stripped from them by the U.S. government unless they forsake tenets of their faith that the state has now deemed incompatible with “engaged and productive citizens” (ruling ). Indeed, even now the shackles are being forged about their throats—while they sleep.
Last Friday federal judge Mark Wolf dismissed a civil rights lawsuit brought by Judeo-Christian parents who were denied their parental right to oversee the moral and religious education of their children in regards to homosexual behavior. Judge Wolf ruled that if parents are unwilling to have their children indoctrinated by public officials in social beliefs directly counter to their own religious views, their children do not belong in the public schools. They must turn to private schools or home schooling. He explicitly denied parents the right to opt their children out of such teaching; he found (citing Brown vs. Board of Education) that allowing Judeo-Christian parents to opt their children out of class sessions that present homosexual behavior as moral and legitimate would actually be a form of discrimination against homosexuals. They cannot even leave the room for fear of harming homosexuals. If their parents are not willing to compromise in this regard, they must pull their children from the public schools. Judge Wolf sided with arguments presented by the ACLU and other groups who filed an amici curiae brief on behalf of the schools which argued that “the rights of religious freedom and parental control over the upbringing of children . . . would undermine teaching and learning in the Lexington public schools.”
The implications of this ruling for the future should be clear to any thinking person who reflects upon them. With this ruling, the government has consciously, purposefully declared that the acceptance of homosexual behavior as moral is a characteristic of “engaged and productive citizens” and that government schools may reasonably include moral indoctrination to that effect in the curriculum—and all children who attend the schools must partake in that indoctrination. The government is willing to fight for the moral legitimization of homosexuality. Those who reject homosexuality as immoral are to be excluded from the public sphere because the expression of their belief is harmful to homosexuals and not in keeping with good citizenship. In this particular case, Christian kids cannot be opted out of homosexual indoctrination. But the motivating principles are of much wider application, and if these principles continue to motivate public policy, it is only a matter of time before more sanctions are enacted against all Christians who even tacitly oppose homosexual behavior.
Organizations that exclude homosexuals for religious reasons will lose tax protections and be subject to civil rights lawsuits. Christians who speak out against homosexuality or refuse to attend sensitivity training will be excluded from government jobs. Churches that preach against homosexuality will be quietly denied when they apply for building permits. Applications from Christian parents who wish to adopt will not be approved. And, eventually, Christian parents who do not recognize the morality of homosexuality must of necessity lose their own children.
The logical precedent of this ruling demands such an outcome. Moral condemnation of homosexuality is harmful to homosexuals and must be prevented. If, then, homosexual behavior is not a choice but a genetic fact, the children of Christian parents will need to be protected from their own parents’ harmful bigotry, as they may in fact have been born homosexuals. Consider what steps the government would take if African-American children could be born to white supremacists who took active steps to suppress their children’s blackness.
In 1983, in the face of calls for compromise with the Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan (citing Whittaker Chambers) said: “the crisis of the Western world exists to the degree in which the West is indifferent to God, the degree to which it collaborates in Communism’s attempt to make man stand alone without God” (XXX).
Judge Wolf’s ruling is part of that effort to forcefully make man stand alone without God. It is a treacherous collaboration with the evil empire which, though fallen, moves yet in the halls of American justice. The danger to the civil liberties of Christians is as clear and as present as if Red Dawn had come and the Soviets were storming our capitals and courthouses.
And Christians must act.
Times come in the course of events when those living comfortably and in peace are forced to forsake their comfort and their peace to contend for their freedom. Such a time has now come for Christians in America. No more can any Christian pursue a normal life from day to day as if all were well. They must rise from slumber and move against the forces of the evil empire at work in their government.
For the American government is not a static thing, and change is possible. If Christians will day by day pray for change, and clamor to their representatives for change, and cry out to the media outlets that change is necessary, and speak with their neighbors of the need for change, then perhaps change will come. But they must pray. And they must act—every day. If they do not, there can be no question of the outcome.
At the onset of the War on Terror, President Bush said to the nation, “History has called America and our allies to action, and it is both our responsibility and our privilege to fight freedom’s fight” (XXX).
Even now the same is true for Christians who value their civil liberties. Let them not fail to rise to the responsibility—to their privilege, that in the days to come they may say to those who come after, “When all was in danger, I did my part.”
Officium nos vocat.