On Sundays most Christians get up, get ready, and head to church. And we don't slip quietly into hidden buildings. Rather, many of our churches are in prominent places in our communities. There are no government agents taking down license plate numbers in the church parking lot. And we don't typically fear reprisal from those who don't share our religious convictions.
All seems merry and bright for religious liberty in the U.S. Unfortunately not only Christians, but all other religious believers need to be on guard. That is, all believers whose faith, as someone put it, "has not petrified into politics and social service." The prospects for religious freedom in the future are neither merry nor bright. They are, in fact, more than a little scary.
Consider these recent events:
Exhibit A: In June a federal court ruled that New York City may legally ban churches from using school buildings for worship. Opting to forgo rent and leave the buildings empty, the financially strapped city is evicting churches as of the end of June (barring the churches receiving an emergency stay). All other community groups are free to rent space at the city's thousands of public schools.
Exhibit B: Santa Monica, California, has banned male circumcision. San Francisco's ban will be a November ballot initiative and other communities across the country are considering a ban. It is, proponents of the ban argue, unnecessary surgery (in spite of inconclusive Center for Disease Control research). As for Jews and Muslims who believe circumcision is a necessary religious ritual, it's tough beans. The bans permit no religious exceptions. And this is not an oversight. In case someone missed the anti-religious motivation, the campaign to ban circumcision in San Francisco is using a comic book called Foreskin Man in which the drawings of the heartless evildoers—religious Jews—are, as Wesley Smith points out, arereminiscent ofanti-Semitic Nazi propaganda.
Exhibit C: Catholic Charities has been in the adoption and foster care business for decades. They have often taken the hardest cases—older children and children with disabilities—who are hardest to place. Now changing laws on same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination policies are forcing the group to choose between their faith and continuing to provide adoption and foster care services.
The definitions of "marriage" and "family" are, from a Christian perspective, fixed. The Bible makes it clear that marriage is one man and one woman. Families are related by marriage, blood, or adoption. This means that "a group of individuals who live together" does not a family make except perhaps in some metaphorical sense. Thus, same-sex couples cannot be married because marriage is by definition one man and one woman. These are religious assertions as well as natural law assertions.
Some people (including, no doubt, some readers of this article) will disagree. But religious freedom permits people to hold religious opinions even if contrary or unpopular. At least you'd think so.
But when Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., declared that gay and lesbian couples had the right to marry, they made it clear that any foster care or adoption agency that refused to place children with same-sex couples would need to close. Illinois insisted on the same rules in their civil union regulations. In all three cases, legislators were asked, but refused, to add any religious exceptions to their bills.
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