So imagine his plight right about now. Phil Bryant has championed religious liberty bills in the past, and justifiably and emphatically so. Now he's faced with one that not only will never survive the legal challenges already warming up against it, but will undermine the cause of religious freedom itself by handing our enemies all the propaganda ammunition to use against us that they could ever want. It's all pain, no gain. And yet ensconsed among all the overreach are worthy items very much, indeed desperately, in need of enacting.
Brothers and sisters, if ever there was a situation tailor-made for the line-item veto, this would be it.
I hope Mississippi has one. Because otherwise, Phil Bryant's will constitute one more job that I'm glad I don't hold.
- Me, four days ago
Color me....at least mildly surprised:
Mississippi's governor has signed a law that allows public and private businesses to refuse service to [homosexual] "couples" based on the employers' religious beliefs.
Governor Phil Bryant signed House Bill 1523 on Tuesday, despite opposition from [homosexual]-rights groups and some businesses. Some conservative and religious groups support the bill.
The measure's intention is to protect those who believe that marriage should be between one man and one woman, that sexual relations should only take place inside such marriages, and that male and female genders are unchangeable.
I'll give Governor Bryant his due credit: He's got way bigger grapefruits than his Georgia counterpart Nathan Deal does "peaches". But whereas the Georgia religious liberty bill was more taut and far better targeted, which made Deal's veto of it all the more craven, Bryant's signature of Mississippi's loose-as-a-goose version, as courageous as it is, will most likely get it court-injuncted by the end of the week.
Of course, so would Georgia's have been if Deal had signed it. So is this a "shoot for the moon/in for a penny, in for pound" moment? If your cause is as worthy as it is doomed, why settle for half-measures, I suppose.
Perhaps a better description of it would be "last, dying gasp":
Christians have become increasingly anxious about the state of religious freedom in the United States, with a big majority saying they're facing growing levels of persecution, a newly released poll shows.
The LifeWay Research survey finds 63% of respondents say they're facing more persecution — with 38% saying they "strongly agree" with the statement, an increase from 2013, when 50% thought persecution was growing, and 28% strongly agreed.
Sixty percent said religious liberty is on the decline in America, up from 54% in 2013, the poll found.
The survey's margin of error is plus or minus 3.6%.
Hard not to reach that conclusion when we see things - gaystapo-ism, militant "transgenderism," Christian businesspeople and clergy deliberately and specifically targeted for "discrimination" entrapment and forcible participation in pagan, perverted rituals like sodoweddings that are mockeries of biblically and divinely ordained family and societal institutions that have stood the test of time for thousands of years, and are now all being degraded, debased, thrown out and banned by forcible government diktats. Remember Kim Davis? How was she not jailed for her faith?
Our enemies here at home aren't burying us alive, burning us alive, or crucifying us - yet - but they're definitely making progress in that direction.
No comments:
Post a Comment