Indiana and RFRA: A Glimpse of Post-Christian America
The United States of America, founded by Christians on a legal system (common law) rooted in the Old and New Testaments and institutions (military in particular) based on same, has sustained a seismic shift of foundation beginning in the middle of the 20th Century. Today the recent upheaval in Indiana and Arkansas, whose governments passed state versions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), has given Christians a glimpse of the hostility that awaits them in a nation now considered post-Christian.
The gay rights movement, in concert with their allies in state governments (Washington, Connecticut), academia (NCAA), and corporate America (Angie’s List, NASCAR, Google, Starbucks, Apple), attacked Indiana and Arkansas with overwhelming fury. While it did not help that Gov. Mike Pence (R-IN) fumbled in his interview with George Stephanopoulos, his performance would not have mattered: the backlash was so severe that the legislatures of Indiana and Arkansas backtracked and passed weakened versions of what was already a benign RFRA law.
I’m not going to focus on the particulars of the RFRA laws; at this point, that is a secondary issue. Even then, small businesses are hardly out of the woods on this. More on that later.
If you are a Christian, you need to pay serious attention to what just happened in Indiana and Arkansas.
Corporate America is not on your side.
Many Americans suffer from the illusion that Big Business leans conservative. In fact, Big Business is completely on board with Progressive government agendas.
(Planned Parenthood has many corporate donors spanning all sectors of the economy, and the Human Rights Campaign—which has spearheaded the efforts to redefine marriage to include gays—has a vast corporate base of support including IBM, BP, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Credit Suisse, Dell Computers, Morgan Stanley, Pepsico, Shell, Starbucks, Google, Bank of America, Delloite, Ernst and Young, Lexus, Prudential, Apple, Citi, American Airlines, The Coca Cola Company, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, and Nationwide.)
Homosexuals, as a demographic group, have very high per capita income, and represent many high achievers in the corporate world. Ditto for feminists, who have been climbing the corporate ladder for decades. Moreover, corporations often embrace government “diversity” standards in return for lucrative government contracts (some of which are “no-bid”).
In the government world, “diversity” is about mass re-education—promoting a leftist social agenda—and not about equitable race relations.
Big Business also has an economic incentive to support the sodomy agenda: it crushes small businesses. Yes, you read that correctly: the gay agenda crushes small businesses.
Here’s how…
For one thing, any small business that refuses to bow to the sodomy lobby is going to face litigation in a hostile court system. Hiring a legal team and fighting court battles is not value-added activity, and many small businesses will lack the resources to fight those battles. And while RFRA provides some protection—the verbiage is exactly the standard that allowed Hobby Lobby to prevail with SCOTUS—there are still many particulars that the gay lobby is anxious to test in court. Small businesses are going to be ground zero in that fight.
If you own a bakery and refuse to cater a gay “wedding”, you are still at risk of being sued. While RFRA appears to be on your side, that is no guarantee that the federal court system won’t decide that the “compelling government interest” test requires you to cater the wedding. And fighting that battle requires money, which leads me to…
Secondly, corporations have the economies of scale to handle the non-value-added activity of managing Human Resources (HR) policy, often at the direction of in-house legal counsel. If you’re a mom-and-pop shop that ekes out a marginal profit, you cannot afford that, and the big corporations know it. If the sodomites drive you out of business, then that’s good for the big businesses.
That dynamic is, in point of fact, the essence of the old-school Fascism of Mussolini’s Italy and the National Socialism that Germans embraced in the wake of their economic collapse.
If you work in corporate America, your job is not safe.
The corporate backlash against Indiana is very instructive; when have corporations ever made such waves against benign laws? Angie’s List canceled a planned expansion in Indiana; Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple Computers, penned an op-ed denouncing RFRA laws; Google, Microsoft, and even NASCAR released statements affirming the “LGBT” community and opposing the Indiana RFRA law.
If you work for a corporation, then you’d better trod very carefully. This is a perfect opportunity to be wise as a serpent. If you haven’t studied Proverbs in a while, then this is a good time to get re-acquainted with it. As you do, I will admonish you as a friend once admonished me when I was in a crisis: Keep your eyes and ears open, and your mouth shut. Pick your battles wisely, and prepare for the worst.
If you’ve ever given money to a cause that supports historical marriage, then you could be a target. Brandon Eich, whose record at Mozilla was stellar, was forced to resign his post as CEO. After a gay activist employee outed Eich for giving money in support of California’s Proposition 8, his board wouldn’t support him: he was done.
Even if you’re not an officer of a company, you’re still fair game. When layoffs become necessary, the HR department may put you at the top of the pecking order. Even if you are in a union-protected job, the union might cut a deal and throw you under the bus. You may find yourself passed over for promotions and pay raises.
If you belong to a church or religious group that defines homosexuality as sin, then you could be a target. All it will take is one activist who baits you into expressing your views, after which you could be at risk of termination for “promoting a hostile work environment.” It will not matter if your prior job evaluations are sterling. Just ask Lt. Cmdr Wes Modder, a Navy Chaplain whose latest evaluation rated him “the best of the best”, who now risks being drummed out of the service—short of his 20 year retirement—all because he stuck to the Biblical understanding of sexuality. His great performance and respect among his peers does him nothing; he’s still being targeted because he won’t click his heels and bow to the sodomy lobby.
While the anti-Christian tide in America pales in comparison to the slaughter of Christians at the hands of ISIS, Boko Haram, and the Muslim Brotherhood, make no mistake: Christians in America are facing marginalization on the home front, and that situation is getting more—not less—hostile.
Just as ISIS is destroying Christian artifacts and relics and churches in the Middle East, the secular left in America is destroying every vestige of Christianity that made America exceptional.
This is a time for sobriety among the Christians of America. The same country that won the Cold War—because of the Christian—is now embracing the very secularist agenda that has led to barbarism on scales that would have made Ghengis Khan blush, all at a time when the Islamic world is advancing against the West.
It is on the Christian to provide the answer to the Islamist and the Secularist.
While the penalty for doing so will be costly, the penalty for silence will be magnitudes worse.
