The Indiana smokescreen
By Tom Quiner
The game has changed.
Why is the Left so infuriated by Indiana’s passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act? After all, a liberal Democrat, President Bill Clinton, signed a very similar bill into law at the federal level back in 1993.
After all, left-wing Democrat, Barack Obama, supported a similar law in Illinois when he was a State Senator.
And after all, 20 states already have similar laws on the books, and a dozen more states have similar legislation pending.
So why the outrage now?
The game has changed.
Up to now, the Left has targeted the First Amendment with increasingly shrill attacks on free speech and religious liberty fronts. Conservative speech on college campuses is quickly shutdown by simply being labeled ‘hate speech.’ Conservative speakers, if they actually do get invited, are often times disinvited by college leftists who fear the power of conservative thought. Supporters of traditional marriage are shouted down as ‘haters.’
Up to now, the Left has targeted religious liberty by demanding that the faithful, specifically, the Christian faithful, sacrifice their convictions by bowing to government-coerced funding of human abortion and contraception. The ‘accept gay marriage or else’ mantra is their latest salvo at targeting and taking down Christianity.
By any objective evaluation, they have been wildly successful.
Emboldened, they have changed the game.
Their target now is another piece of the First Amendment, the Establishment Clause, which constitutes the very first words of the Bill of Rights:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
The Left DOES want to establish a state religion, and they are well on their way to succeeding.
What are the tenets of their faith?
Sexual hedonism. As Cole Porter put it, “Anything Goes!”
Child sacrifice, in the guise of human abortion. Creation isn’t a fruit of the union of one man and one woman in their theology, it is a disease that needs eradication when it is inconvenient. Even more, too much ‘human creation’ is bad for Mother Earth, which leads to the third tenet of their trinity…
Nature worship. First it was the coming Ice Age, as featured on the cover of Time Magazine in 1977. When that proved wrong, the theologians on the Left warned of global warming. When that proved wrong, they warned us of a more nebulous ‘climate change.’
Here’s the thing: the data doesn’t matter. Faith in their gods and high priests are what matter.
The best name I can come up with for this growing religion is Neo Paganism. Their flock is faithful, fervent, and fanatical.
Make no mistake: it is a religion, and the Neo Paganists want it enshrined as THE established religion of the United States of America.
Indiana is a mere dust-up, a smokescreen to their real endgame: the death of their historic adversary, Christianity, and the permanent establishment of their religion as the official state religion.
I made the argument 20 years ago in my college newspaper that we had entered “the Age of Hedonism”. “If it feels good, do it” is the mantra. Shortened, it sounds like Nike’s slogan: “Just do it!” I was scoffed at, but in the end, I think I was right.
You were ahead of your time! Thanks for writing, Shawn.
Your thoughtful explanation hits the bulls-eye, Tom. Allow me to puncture the dartboard more fully. These neo-pagans have been compensated for their lack of faithfulness to God by Him. He allowed their minds to become perverted.
Romans 1: 28-32
“And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.”
And that is why, Tom, what is hardly believable, to those of us who have reverence for God, has become the standard of society. These godless creatures actually believe that good is evil and evil is good. And they are making headway, with the aid of those Christians who are lukewarm, in enshrining evil into law.
I shudder and recoil daily at the abominations. Sadly, my husband (who is a cradle Catholic by the way) thinks that all of us who bemoan the state of the world need to take a “chill pill.” He believes the world is just fine and as long as he is a “good” person God will reward him. He believes we should practice our faith once a week in Church and definitely not in the public square. I argue with him about the social issues almost daily (I confess, lol). I just can’t get through to him (or most of my friends and relatives).
I am filled with wonder and awe that God chose us, those who truly believe that the Church is the authority on all things to do with faith and morals, to be awakened to His truths. However, it is an onerous responsibility and I am exhausted.
I wish you could’ve sat in on our Catechism & Coffee group yesterday! You would have fit right in. We spent an hour and a half discussing the last petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Deliver us from evil,” which the Catholic Church teaches as meaning ‘deliver us from Satan.’ I made the comment that we must not despair, because despair flows from Satan. We may experience tribulation, but God will prevail. His love is more powerful than Satan’s evil.
As a reader of this blog, you know how exasperated I get with liberals. In my view, their thinking takes society down the wrong path, especially in regard to human abortion. But who should we blame? The great Catholic apologist, Dr. Peter Kreeft, said it is ultimately Satan, the author of lies, who deceives us. Liberals, I believe, have been especially deceived. I pray as much for my liberal friends, family, politicians, and yes, even our president, as I do my conservatives friends. Thanks again for writing. It’s always great to hear from you.
One of the variations of the above in my day (MANY years ago!!) was “turn on, tune in, drop out”!!
I remember that hippy mantra from yesterday. I didn’t like it then. Don’t like it now, unless we paraphrase it to ‘turn on Catholic radio to tune in to the Truth dropping out of heaven.’