Gay rights continue to advance at the expense of religious freedom. In February of this year the
Arizona legislature passed a bill that would have provided legal protection for businesses and individuals who refused service to customers based on religious objections. They felt a need to do this because of several instances in other states where business owners were being forced by law to violate their religious beliefs. (
This has previously been discussed here.) In the case of a New Mexico photographer who refused to provide their services to a gay couple's commitment ceremony, they were sued and the case made it to the state supreme court. In the words of a supreme court justice of New Mexico who ruled against the photographer, they "
are compelled by law to compromise the very religious beliefs that inspire their lives". This bill that would have prevented this from happening in Arizona and was vetoed by the governor of Arizona after much opposition from outside groups
such as the NFL who were threatening to move Super Bowl XLIX from Arizona to California if the bill was passed.
It also appears that if you are a
CEO of a large company you no longer have the right to support the belief that marriage should only be between a man and a woman--in other words, affirming the definition of marriage that has existed for thousands of years. The CEO of Mozilla Firefox had to resign because he supported proposition 8 in California that reaffirmed the definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman. Mozilla said that it stands for diversity and equality and therefore can not have a CEO that supports marriage as being between a man and a woman.
As society's acceptance and support of homosexuality increases religious freedoms are decreasing. Eventually, holding and expressing beliefs against homosexuality will lead to you never getting a job, loosing your current job, and eventually imprisonment. Being arrested for speaking out against homosexuality is already a fact of life in some European countries. (NBA players are being fined for gay slurs.) In the not-too-distant future, a blog post such as this won't be allowed to be posted on the internet. This slow acceptance and submission to an ever encroaching tyranny by a society is how countries end up like the old Soviet Union and China as it existed under Mao. While the tyranny in those countries were brought about by violence, this new tyranny--and undermining of the foundations of our society-- is being advanced in the name of "love", "diversity", "tolerance", and other feel-good words. Who can be against love in all its forms and manifestations?
