Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is the
program that brings you
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up-to-date news,
views, information, discussion
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and analysis on
religious liberty events
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in the United States
and around the world.
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My name is Lincoln Steed
and I edit Liberty Magazine
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and my guest on the program
is Attorney Allen Reinach,
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Executive Director of
the Church State Council
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and someone who in California
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was very much involved
with Proposition 8, right?
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We did advocate,
try to teach people
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why marriage is a
good thing in the law.
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Right, and so as a
natural consequence,
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I'm sure you have opinions over
recent Supreme Court decisions
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and a particular
one really setting aside
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through lack of
standing the California case.
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You know, and I have to say,
Lincoln, my real concern is not
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that same sex
couples are gaining rights.
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I have no problem
with extending rights
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to same sex couples.
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What my concern is,
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is if this is gonna
be the knockout punch
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to the rights of conscience.
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The first knockout
blow was the Peyote case
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more than 20 years ago
where the Supreme Court,
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you know, Scalia's rhetoric was,
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well, if we protect
free exercise of religion,
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then every conscience
becomes a law unto itself.
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And so from a traditional
Roman Catholic perspective,
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he was much more concerned about
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the authority of the community
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than the rights
of the individual.
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So you explain
what happened--peyote,
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what is peyote?
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Well, peyote is cactus.
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Is that another
name for marijuana?
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It's a hallucinogenic cactus
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that is used by some
Native American physicians.
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As part of their
religious spiritual traditions.
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And what was the
logic of the conclusion
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or how does it state there?
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The logic was that religious
conscience has no standing,
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no right to object
to laws, in this case,
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a criminal
prohibition on the use of peyote
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that applies
broadly to everybody.
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It completely
turned the whole concept
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of the first
amendment upside down,
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that we no
longer have any respect
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for free exercise of religion.
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I agree with you,
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I mean it's
just patently obvious
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because that
cited in so many cases
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that it's a negative effect
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on the free
exercise of religion.
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So first we
devalue free exercise
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and the rights of conscience
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and now what we're doing legally
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is we are elevating the rights
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of same sex
relationships and homosexuals,
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so that their rights
are respected legally
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are greater than
religious freedom.
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And so we have an
imbalance in the legal system.
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It's a neither or isn't it?
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That since religious viewpoint
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toward homosexuality
holds moral stands on it,
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therefore it must be removed
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since it's at odds
with this new found right.
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Well, before...
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So it's pitting one
right against the other
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which is not good.
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There is a conflict but
let me say at the outset,
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I don't think there's a
necessary conflict because..
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And that's what we need to
discuss no need whatsoever.
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In my view if you are going to
respect the individual's right
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before God to
have their own values,
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their own beliefs to worship God
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according to the
dictates of conscience,
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then it means
that the same right
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that you extend
to the Christian,
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you extend to the gay to
order their own lives peacefully
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according to their own values,
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a right, basic right
of self determination.
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Now you put a loaded word there,
the Christian and the gay.
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Well, it's not
just the Christian,
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I mean it's the
Jews, it's the Muslims,
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it's people with many faiths.
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There are gays who
take the name Christian,
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obviously this
are, taken at the plain
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reading the Bible
enjoins Christians
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not to behave that way,
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but I know that many gays
would like to say, you know,
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I'm a Christian, boy, you
can't say I'm not a Christian
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because so it isn't
really gays versus Christian,
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it's a Christian viewpoint
or Christian community viewpoint
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that should be
protected as it normally
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or in the past was
by the first amendment.
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Here's society
and its civil sphere
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has chose to give new rights
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that historically were
not available to a group
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that even secular
society saw as immoral
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but that's been granted.
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And just because
that's been granted
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should not be used to
restrict the thoughts,
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behavior and
prerogative religious people
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and neither
should they try to...
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But that's where
the danger comes.
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In California as in
other parts of the country,
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religious freedom has been sent
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to the back of the civil
rights bus and even though
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religious freedom is
a constitutional right,
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free speech is a
constitutional right,
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our court has
elevated gay rights as a stand
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which is protected
by statue is trumps,
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these fundamental
constitutional rights
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and they said so
explicitly in a case
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where family planning
doctors in a clinic declined
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to provide
in-vitro fertilization
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for a lesbian woman
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and the court said explicitly
that the rights of gays
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trump free speech
and religious freedom.
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And it's very ironic to me
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because you've
mentioned civil rights,
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the civil rights movement didn't
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just come from
a Christian basis,
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it arrived, it's very logic
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from Christian
imperatives, right?
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And so to use that model
and then tend it on religion,
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to me it's not just
dangerous, it's illogical.
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And I think the point of illogic
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is to call the
movement for gay rights
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as civil rights
movement, it's not the same,
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it's certainly legitimate,
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I mean from the
secular point of view,
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if these are
people protected by law,
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you know we long ago
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decriminalized
homosexual behavior,
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people tend to forget
there's a two step here.
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I think many Christians are
really in fact trying to stop
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and condemn and
argue against gay behavior
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but we're way over that,
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the gay marriage thing is
really just civil construct.
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It's not really
talking about morality anymore,
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that's talking about things
like inheritance, visitation
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and you know with the staple
register this arrangement,
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but it's not moral in itself.
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It's the human behavior there,
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but I just do not like the fact
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that African-Americans
brought into slavery
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in the United
States during, you know,
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whole period
before the Civil War,
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where they were
chattel after the Civil War,
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with Jim Crow and the
lynching here and so on,
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you know right up to the
'60s when I came to the USA,
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it was still,
I've been down at south
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where there were different
water fountains and over it.
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And it was purely because of
the racial origins of someone,
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they look
different, they are different,
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I mean I'm different from
an African, from an Asian,
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whatever this is a human state,
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an inherit state,
you can't change it.
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Remember what
does the Bible says
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the leopard change its spots.
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Well, and of course that...
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So to equate that with behavior
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and of course some in
the gay and human behavior,
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Rome tried to
argue that it's inherent,
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we don't even need to
definitely define that.
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The facts are its behavior,
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that human
beings have control over
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and they've opted for that
and we now respect it civilly
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but to equate that with
the Civil Rights movement,
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I think it's
wrong on many fronts.
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So let's take a
look at some examples
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of how it is that
gay rights have worked
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to disadvantage
religious freedom.
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Our case in point,
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I've been a lifelong member
of the Christian Legal Society
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which is a
fellowship of Christian Lawyers.
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I joined our Student Chapter
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University of North
Carolina Law School in the '80s,
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when I was in law school.
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CLS, Christian Legal Society
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has a very broad statement
to faith that does two things.
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You affirm, your faith in Christ
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as your savior and
you pledge yourself
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to biblical faithfulness
and sexual relations.
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Well, not surprisingly it was
in San Francisco of all places
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at the University of
California Hastings Law School
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that the Christian
Legal Society was excluded
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because of their
statement of faith.
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And the case went all
the way to the Supreme Court
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and the Supreme Court
ruled in favor of the University
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in a case that many
of us really thought
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was a no-brainer,
because here for the first time,
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a religious group is being told
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that it cannot determine
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who deserves to be a member
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based on their
religious beliefs and practices,
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that they have to,
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you know they can
call themselves Christian,
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but effectively
they have to allow
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anybody of any belief to join.
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Now the school...
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It's one of the worst
decisions that ever came down.
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The school had
never applied this policy.
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For example, there
are Asian students groups,
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black students
groups, Latino student groups,
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had they require these groups
to open up their membership?
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These are groups that
effectively discriminated
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on the basis of
race, on national origin
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and they were
permitted to do so,
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but the Christian
group could not discriminate
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on the basis of
religion and I think the thing
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that really set off
the administration was
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that they would effectively
exclude practicing homosexuals
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because of their sexuality.
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And so we see
here a very clear case
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where religious
freedom takes a backseat
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to the right of gays to
be free of discrimination.
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And by the way,
I'm a big believer
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in the right of gays not
to be discriminated against.
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I don't think that Christians
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should discriminate or
anybody should discriminate
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against gays, that's not right.
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It's not just gays
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and this is the one
aspect of this discussion
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that always makes me
increasingly uncomfortable.
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You know, there's
the-- in of the world
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in the flesh of the devil,
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you know we call the
holiness to godly living,
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but out there
anybody that doesn't
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take the name of
Christ or profess
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the same moral construct as me,
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they do many,
many things all the way
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from eating sometimes
different food than me,
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they operate
differently on the moral thing,
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their priorities are different.
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Yes, homosexuality is
a sort of lightning rod
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for many of us
not just on religion,
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you know, it has a baggage
but why we should focus on this?
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I mean we're forced to now,
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but we need to keep
explaining to people
00:12:17.41\00:12:19.44
that it's not the only
prohibition in the Bible,
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it's not the
only marker of someone
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who hasn't come on
to a biblical idea.
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Well, you know, Lincoln,
you were to reminding them.
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I teach church audiences
00:12:31.86\00:12:33.66
that if you want
to join our church,
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you have to
learn to sin like we do
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because all churches, you know,
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and our Seventh-day
Adventist church among them,
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you know, there are certain sins
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we will exclude you
because of those sins,
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but then there's other sins
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that run rampant
within the church and...
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And to be morally consistent
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and to be morally
consistent as a Christian is
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what Jesus said to the
woman found in adultery,
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who was a fellow believer,
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she was a Jew,
she wasn't a Gentile.
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But He says, I don't condemn you
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but go and sin no more.
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So the most we
can say to someone is,
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you know, this is
not good behavior,
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you shouldn't be doing it,
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but if they have made
a profession of Christ,
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we have no right to
even say that, we just,
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our message should be
to clarify what we believe
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that we believe to follow God is
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to follow certain moral norms,
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but we can't
condemn a non believer.
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The tragedy of
the culture wars is it
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somehow Christianity
has become exclusive
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and hostile to homosexuals.
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The fact is Christ
died to save everyone.
00:13:38.13\00:13:41.64
And we're all sinners.
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All have sinned
and fallen short.
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The gospel is inclusive
and we have somehow made
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the gospel made
Christ the enemy of gays
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and that's just wrong.
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But I do
believe, and we're running
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out of time in the first thing,
00:13:53.73\00:13:55.03
but prior to what's
going on here in United States
00:13:55.06\00:13:57.40
where there's the most
opposition is this assumption
00:13:57.43\00:14:00.57
that this is a
Christian republic
00:14:00.60\00:14:03.10
and even our civil society
00:14:03.13\00:14:04.70
is an extension of a
Christian America, and it's not.
00:14:04.73\00:14:08.83
I wish it we're more societally,
uniformly Bible believing.
00:14:08.86\00:14:14.57
That's another
question but it's certainly not
00:14:14.60\00:14:16.70
governmentally or
in a structure way
00:14:16.73\00:14:19.84
religious old Christian.
00:14:19.87\00:14:21.96
We'll be back
after a short break
00:14:21.99\00:14:23.31
to further this discussion.
00:14:23.34\00:14:24.51
Stay with us.
00:14:24.54\00:14:25.72