The march of the LGBT totalitarians continues.
The latest example of the erosion of religious liberty comes as a judge recently ruled that the owners of Christian online dating service ChristianMingle.com, Spark Networks Inc., must begin including gay persons as part of their dating pool to pursue same-sex relationships.
Because the dating website didn’t allow new users to specify their search to include a seeker status for gays looking for same-sex relationships, two gay men decided to sue the site’s owner claiming the limited, heterosexual options violated the Unruh Civil Rights Act – a California anti-discrimination law that requires businesses to provide, “full and equal accommodations” to people regardless of their sexual orientation.”
As a result, not only will ChristianMingle.com be forced to include and accommodate homosexuals as part of their dating service, CatholicMingle.com and AdventistSinglesConnection.com, two other Christian-oriented dating sites must also include gays in their relationship-seeking pool of dating hopefuls.
This decision to compel these Christian matchmaking websites to contribute and create relationships that contradict religious, biblical ideals and beliefs is reminiscent of what happened to Neil Clark Warren’s Christian dating and marriage service eHarmony. Warren was also sued for “discrimination” because eHarmony didn’t incorporate gay matchmaking for same-sex relationships that could potentially lead to marriage, and he was forced to create a new dating service that included and served same-sex clientele.
To be clear, Christians are being compelled against their wills and in violation of their constitutionally protected right to religious liberty to “tolerate” ideas and positions that contradict their religious beliefs. More so, they’re also being forced to participate in and/or contribute to those things that infringe upon their religious and theological beliefs. As Princeton professor Robert P. George recently said, religious freedom continues to be under assault by the new court-enforced establishment religion of a revolutionary, sexualized ideology.
So Christian matchmakers, cake makers, photographers, florists, gift shop and venue owners, pizzerias, bed and breakfast owners, bakers, pizza shop owners, carpenters, and other Christian-run businesses and organizations have been targeted, harassed, retaliated against via prosecution (which in many cases has forced closure) and/or legally required to engage in activities that contradict their religious faith for the sake of legitimizing homosexual behavior through a secular and sexualized agenda.
This cultural and judicial coercion isn’t simply relegated to Christian family business owners. The California legislature is attempting to pass a bill that threatens the state’s Christian colleges and schools with the loss of accreditation and federal funding for simply upholding distinctly Christian teachings in regards to sexual and gender identity and orientation. As the lie goes, Christian teachings constitute sexual and gender-based “discrimination” and must be stamped out.
It wasn’t too long ago when so-called gay rights advocates began their social and political campaign to normalize homosexuality, they claimed that publicly accepting gay relationships and civil unions – a deliberate and calculated step toward the eventual redefinition of marriage – wouldn’t injure society or interfere with other people’s lives or relationships. They morally emotionalized their message as being one of “love” against “hate.” They recast their social experiment and crusade against traditional sexual norms and cultural values as one in pursuit of “justice” and civil “rights.” They simply wanted, they claimed, to be treated “equally” like everyone else.
This public relations campaign was clearly and predictably dishonest. Promoters and supporters of the homosexualized agenda didn’t want social acceptance or tolerance, and they surely didn’t want “equal treatment” or “equal rights.” Gay rights advocates and their rainbow flag/pink equal sign supporters wanted special rights created out of thin air for their benefit (at the expense of everyone else), special considerations, and legal protections. They didn’t want their “love” to be merely recognized or else they wouldn’t have intentionally politicized it.
No, the sexual totalitarians demanded that homosexual behavior, relationships and “marriage” be publicly celebrated and affirmed, regardless of the religious beliefs and commitments that morally informed those who disagreed. The radical sexual conformists intended to intimidate people, specifically Christians, into participating, contributing to and endorsing the gay agenda – up to and including subjecting the resistance to an unavoidable unfaithfulness to their religious convictions or the loss of their livelihood.
All the talk about Christians trying to force their morality and beliefs onto unbelievers simply isn’t true. In actuality, it’s the gender and sexual revolutionaries who are hell-bent on forcing their distorted view of (homo)sexuality onto people who differ with them through the passage of so-called anti-discrimination legislation and through the tyrannical use of the judiciary.
This is why the issue of religious liberty combined with a faith-filled public and political witness by Christians is so important. Court-enforced coercion and social marginalization of Christians is not going away. It will get worse. More Christian businesses will be sued, fined, undermined and closed in the pursuit of stamping out all forms of religious defiance. And if Christians continue to stay quiet and refuse to fight back while this kind of sexual and judicial despotism gains wider influence, they become complicit in their religious liberty being taken away.
Comment by Nutstuyu on July 5, 2016 at 2:25 pm
Easy solution: just block all users with California locations or zip codes. Or simply ignore the court like our illustrious “leaders” do all the time.
Comment by Mike Ward on July 5, 2016 at 9:27 pm
California won’t be the last state to pass a law like this. And how long before the federal courts make it a national law?
Comment by John S. on July 16, 2016 at 6:35 pm
Ignoring court orders equals civil or criminal penalties. Blocking a location probably runs afoul of half a dozen or more federal regulations and laws with the same result. Welcome to the real world.
Comment by CDGingrich on July 16, 2016 at 8:53 am
I guess ChristianMingle settled for money over principle.
Comment by Paul on July 17, 2016 at 2:47 pm
As s gay married Christian, it does occur to me…
1. On the one hand, why would I use a website that is clearly for men and women who are attracted to the opposite sex.
2. It’s like damn gay wedding cake thing. So long as there is another cake making place, just go there instead! Or, have the cake made plain and don’t shove the gayness thing in the shop owner’s face! (It’s bizarre to me as I never had heard of this back in the UK, and for our wedding we had plenty of cake making options from several businesses in our home town)
2. It’s a shame and unChristlike in my opinion to shut out people who are simply looking for like minded soles of the same orientation. People don’t choose to be gay. Not in my era anyway. It was awful having to lie to my friends when I had no interest in the girls in school/college or in my first years in a career. Awful, embarrassing etc. Would have been great to be taught that it is normal for some of us to be the way we are!
Comment by Duke Ferris on September 12, 2017 at 9:31 pm
As an atheist (also straight and white, if you must know), I feel this is a more complicated issue than what you present here. While I disagree with your conclusions, I feel you also make some good points.
An an objective observer, it seems to me that the Christian bible (notably Leviticus) is pretty clear about their god’s position on homosexuality. It’s bad. So why should a Christian dating site allow it? Why should we force them to?
It would seem to me that forcing the racists at KKK-date.com (not a real site) to allow black people access would be similarly preposterous. They don’t believe in that, and why would black people want to date there anyway?
However, for me it comes down to the example of the lunch counter sit-ins in segregated North Carolina. The government was right to step in and force those businesses to provide equal treatment to everyone. The fact that there were other sandwich shops (other cake shops, other dating sites) is not relevant to a fair and just society.
And before you accuse me of false equivalency, I would like to point out that there is a genetic component to both race and homosexuality, and there has been historical discrimination in both cases.
That is all.