Corporations apparently have religious freedom if they are
against contraception, but they have no right to speak up about marriage
equality…
Ever since the Supreme Court decided on January 16
to tackle the issue, everyone is waiting to see how the SCOTUS will rule
in the matter of marriage equality. Hundreds of briefs
have been filed.
Most surprising of all, last Thursday, 300 Republicans
filed a brief asking the Supreme Court to recognize same-sex marriage.
Among the signatories
are 23 current and former Republicans members of the House of
Representatives and Senate and seven current and former Governors. Sens.
Susan Collins and Mark Kirk have signed onto the brief, as has
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman.
Other notables include former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, retired
Gen. Stanley McChrystal and billionaire GOP mega-donor David Koch.
Breitbart has determined that this brief shows the “GOP elite” wants the Supreme Court to “impose gay marriage on America.” This, despite the fact that a January
CNN/ORC International survey “showed that 57% of Americans think gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to get married.”
How conservatives love those “majority rules” situations except when they don’t work in their favor.
The court will hear oral arguments on April 28 and
rule by June. Naturally, the Religious Right is beside itself with worry
that other people they despise will suddenly have the same right they
do.
Matt Staver of Liberty Counsel says if the Supreme Court rules in favor of marriage equality
it will de-legitimize itself by somehow creating a “special right” for gays over and above the rights the rest of us have:
I’m warning them, and I
think the rest of the country is willing to come together and warn
them, that they need to come back in line with their constitutional
duty, and that is to interpret the law, not create brand new law and be
our social engineers.
The Catholic News Agency (CNA) – ironically, since
the Catholic Church was all for making corporations people with
religious rights – now talks about of “big business overreach” because, as Reuters reported last week,
[A]lmost 400 businesses
had filed a “friend of the court” brief favoring a redefinition of
marriage in a set of cases before the Court that will decide whether
states, under the Fourteenth Amendment, must grant same-sex “marriage”
licenses and recognize “gay marriages” conducted in other states.
The list of overreaching companies include Facebook
and Twitter, as well as Thompson Reuters Corporation, Disney, Starbucks,
PepsiCo, Coca Cola, Viacom, Inc., Bloomberg, Verizon, DirectTV, Google
(for once, doing no evil), Comcast, CBS, and AT&T. Even the NFL’s
Super Bowl winning New England Patriots signed the brief.
CNA quotes one “expert” as telling them, “There is
nothing in the U.S. Constitution that requires the states to redefine
marriage, and big business should not lobby the Supreme Court to say
otherwise.”
Oh dear. So corporations only have religious freedoms when their desires coincide with yours. It’s okay for corporations to oppose contraception but how dare they support marriage equality? How morally relative of you!
I am not sure who the bigger clown is. There are so many to choose from.
Wiles fled to Costa Rica three years ago because God
told him to “flee from the daughter of Babylon and not stay and
participant in her sins and not be around when the nation is destroyed.”
So much for a thirst for martyrdom! But you have to
wonder, don’t you, why God told him to flee while he’s telling other
Republicans to run for president? Just imagine how differently the Bible
would read if God had ordered all the old prophets to flee Israel.
Mysterious are the ways of the Lord.
“For Christians, there’s a really major troublesome
thing coming and it’s going to be set loose on the country sometime
between now and the end of June,” and that, Price said, is that
“same-sex marriage [will become] the law of the land.”
Wiles agreed:
I honestly believe this
is going to be the ruling that America crosses the line. What would a
human father do with a son or daughter that had been blessed, had been a
fairly good child most of his or her life and then suddenly just goes
off the rails and becomes evil, wicked, rebellious, defiant? What would
that father do? He would strip away that child’s blessings, and that’s
exactly what our heavenly father is going to do to the United States of
America. We’re about to get an old-fashioned paddling that is going to
be extremely painful for this nation.
So Wiles and Price say God is going to “paddle”
America and that “people who don’t want to be paddled” should “flee” the
country.
Good riddance. Take your friends in the KKK with you.
The Supreme Court ruling will obviously have a
serious effect on the 2016 presidential race, as Republican candidates
may be forced to decide between what SCOTUS says is the law of the land
and what their bigoted constituents want.
It is one thing for Alabama to defy the federal
government. Presidential elections are not parochial affairs decided by a
small clique of racist crackers. As the last two elections have shown,
the American people are far more open minded and socially liberal than
the GOP chooses to believe.
So you can be like Price, who claims that, “He’s a
loving God and he would allow persecution for a good purpose.” Or you
can accept that gays and lesbians are just folks like us who want the
same things we want, or at the very least bow to the inevitable, like
those 300 Republicans, and even if only out of self-interest, do the
right thing.
But if you want to flee America instead, feel free. You won’t be missed.
