View of the new frontier

Right-wing religious extremists keep losing debates to law, tolerance, freedom and progressive thought.

Yet they keep plugging away--as they deem themselves commanded--for their narrow and negative version of the Lord. They persist in contending that the rest of us must accede through our government to their version.

So what we will endure now is their latest tactical ploy in service to the fundamentalist theocracy they seek.

They will define a new frontier in the great American cultural and political war. It will be presented as holy resistance to heathen liberal attacks on their constitutional freedom to espouse religious beliefs.


The spiel will go as follows: If we let gays receive equal treatment under the 14th Amendment, then we will be applying unequal treatment to people professing as their religion under the First Amendment that gays must not receive equal treatment under the 14th Amendment.

Haven't you heard? This new U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gay people may marry each other means the police will now arrest your pastor if he won't perform same-sex weddings. Authorities will now take even congregants into custody if they decline to sing Village People hymns.

Actually, the Supreme Court ruling affects no one directly other than gays wanting to marry and the governmental bodies or regulated institutions--which churches aren't--that must recognize the marriages.

There is chatter that some county clerks in Arkansas may resign rather than run offices that issue marriage licenses to gay people. But that's not a restriction on their religious freedom. It's an exercise of their freedoms of expression and employment.

If the police storm a church service and arrest the preacher in the pulpit for saying gayness is sin, then we'll have an issue. Please get in touch with me if that happens.

Otherwise it's like this: If you are of a religious opinion that lying is a sin, then your First Amendment freedom to hold that religious view is not violated or impaired by a liar receiving the benefit of constitutional rights as well. A free society is for both of you. It's breathtakingly arrogant to think that your perfectly free personal religious view trumps someone else's rights.

For arrogant nonsense of an uncommonly entertaining variety, we can always turn to Mike Huckabee and Jason Rapert.

They were last heard fretting that five Supreme Court justices were going to notice that they were perfect for each other and force them to marry each other.

Or maybe it only seemed that way from their shrillness.

Rapert is the state senator, ordained minister, financial adviser and son Ricky Skaggs and Jimmy Swaggart might have had. He went on local television Friday to say that the Supreme Court, by allowing gays to have equal protection under our Constitution, "imposes on the ability of a man, or a woman, to stand in his pulpit and preach the gospel."

You haven't heard? Beginning on Sunday the five prevailing Supreme Court justices intend to fan out across the country with muzzles to place on preachers.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is personally coming for Rapert, I hear. The word is that she's bringing a specially made jumbo muzzle.

Rapert put out a 21-minute video Friday deploring the ruination of the country that had been fashioned by five evil Supreme Court justices presuming to give equal rights to people who disagree with him.

I didn't watch all of it and I challenge any of you to try. But I did hear Rapert say early in it that the nation was founded on the principle of being "under God, indivisible, with freedom and justice for all."

That's actually the Pledge of Allegiance, which was written more than a century after the nation was founded. "Under God" was added in 1954, and without reference to anyone's favored version. "Indivisible" was proven true in 1865 after a hard fight.

Freedom and justice? They were there all along, except in regard to:

• Slaves, who got some measure of freedom on or about the time of that hard fight over whether the nation was indivisible.

• Gays, who galled Brother Rapert by getting some added measure of it Friday.

Meanwhile, Huckabee, the former governor and current presidential pretender who mostly gabs for a nice living, suggested we disobey federal law, as Orval Faubus and George Wallace disobeyed back when it was a sin to treat black people fairly.

Huckabee is not going to do diddly, of course, except talk as usual.

But here is what Republicans holding office will now do tactically to oblige and motivate the vital right-wing base that keeps them paralyzed in fear against pragmatic governing: They will propose a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

It will amount to a typical charade in that no such proposal would ever win ratification of 38 states.

You ought to get a load of some of these states. Several of them are very advanced and very free.

John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 06/30/2015

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