For many Americans who have been clueless about the homosexual agenda and its ultimate goal for American culture, the rapidity of recent events has caused their understanding to become clearer as the relevant features of the agenda reveal the big picture. Much like connecting the dots on a child’s line art puzzle, Americans are increasingly able to connect the dots of the homosexual agenda as each event/demand/right is connected with a preceding event/demand/right until what was once a jumble of seemingly unrelated and innocuous platitudes, occurrences, demands, and actions becomes a recognizable and frightening reality.
One of the major tools for winning concessions for the homosexual agenda is the plea/demand/right for tolerance and equality as defined by humanism. The humanists would force all to bend their knees at the altar of tolerance and equality, but that altar requires bowing to the god of humanism and embracing the consequent moral relativism which provides no means for finding truth or judging something based on the concept of right and wrong. For those that fail to bow, they become the objects of intolerant harassment through restrictions on free speech (speech codes), coercion, intimidation, and loss of religious freedom.
Current examples of the sacrifice of religious freedom upon the altars of humanist tolerance are legion. One of the many is the effort to crush religious freedom at Gordon College, a 125 year old nationally ranked liberal arts Christian college with 1700 students located in Wenham, Massachusetts, just north of Boston. The college’s website states that it “…combines an exceptional education with an informed Christian faith.”[1] However, the college’s effort to fulfill its promise regarding the provision of an informed Christian faith has caused it to run afoul of the New England Association of schools and Colleges‘ Commission on Institutions of Higher Education. Gordon is being charged with potentially violating the standards of the accrediting agency because of Gordon’s longstanding policies prohibiting gay activities among students, faculty, and staff, both on and off campus and its public opposition to hiring protections for gays and lesbians. Loss of accreditation typically results in loss of U.S. Department of Education federal financial aid for students which tends to be a death knell for colleges.[2]
Commission director Barbara Brittingham states that the commission has not dealt with a case involving potential sexual orientation-related discrimination but that, “It’s a matter of looking at the information we have and deciding if the institution is meeting our standards.”[3] [emphasis added] One wonders if the commission’s standards include consideration of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom.
But that is not the end of the story. It seems that the tentacles of humanistic tolerance must reach into all levels of society to choke out perceived discrimination. The City of Salem now refuses to let Gordon use its city-owned Old Town Hall because of the college’s policies violate a municipal ordinance that prohibits Salem from contracting with entities that discriminate. The mayor of Salem was exceptionally sharp in his criticism of the college. “The clear message is that homosexuals are not worthy of employment, or even recognition of their existence, in the Gordon community. It is a slap in the face of every gay and lesbian person, particularly every gay and lesbian Christian, that says you are somehow less of a human being, you do not belong in the embrace of God’s merciful arms.”[4] Apparently, the mayor has never read the Apostle Paul’s epistle to the Romans in which God condemns homosexual behavior.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth…Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves… [Romans 1:18, 24. RSV]
A planned White House executive order will bar federal contractors from discriminating in hiring on the basis of sexual orientation and include colleges such as Gordon whose students receive federal financial aid. Numerous Christian leaders have requested the President to include a religious exemption.[5] If an exemption is not allowed, Christian colleges and universities across the nation will be forced to accept students and hire teachers whose beliefs contradict the beliefs, mission, and goals of those institutions.
One Gordon graduate and subsequent employee left Gordon because he could not come out as openly gay. He subsequently formed GordonOne, an LGBT organization. He believes that Gordon’s president “has made Gordon a fortress of faith rather than a place where the doors are open to people who want to be part of a conversation about what it means to be a Christian.”[6] [emphasis added] It is apparent from this former student-employee’s comment that we must begin any conversation about what it means to be a Christian with three assumptions: the Bible is not the final authority on what it means to be Christian, the Bible’s explicit condemnation of homosexuality cannot be accepted, and the doors of Christianity are not open to homosexuals. Only after these suppositions and assumptions are accepted can the conversation begin. In other words, Gordon’s goal of providing an “informed Christian faith” is acceptable only after being sanitized by the LGBT community to meet their litmus test of tolerance and equality. To pass that test, Gordon must surrender beliefs in unchanging biblical truth and that it must accept practicing homosexuals as Christians.
Gordon is not the only one in the crosshairs of the homosexual agenda. No organization is too large or too small to be strangled by the tentacles of its intolerant agenda. We’ve heard of the woes of various cake bakers who, based on their religious beliefs, had the effrontery to refuse to bake cakes for homosexual weddings. Now we have the case of the Kentucky tee shirt decorator who refused to make tee shirts for participants in a local gay-pride parade. After two years, Lexington’s Human Rights Commission ruled that the tee shirt maker violated the city’s “fairness” ordinance and was ordered to attend “diversity training” for re-education. The commission’s Executive Director Raymond Sexton believes that Christians in the marketplace must “…leave their religion at home.” Otherwise, he warned, “you can find yourself two years down the road and you’re still involved in a legal battle because you did not do so. We’re not telling somehow how to feel with respect to religion, but the law is pretty clear that if you operate a business to the public, you need to provide your services to people regardless…”[7] [emphasis added] But the Human Rights Commission is telling someone how to feel with respect to their religion. That is the purpose of diversity training…to tell someone how they ought to feel and think.
As the dots are connected on the picture of the homosexual agenda in America, it becomes increasingly evident that it portrays the suppression and consequent eradication of Christianity from the public square in America. The first amendment to the Constitution states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” Religious beliefs and feelings translate into exercise thereof, and the Constitution protects not only religious feelings and beliefs but free exercise as well. Commissioner Sexton and others promoting the homosexual agenda would prohibit both.
In light of the Constitution’s guarantee of free exercise of religion, how can the President, the New England Commission on Higher Education, the City of Salem, the City of Lexington, and a legion of others sidestep the Constitution by requiring Christians to abandon the exercise of their most deeply held religious beliefs? They cannot unless we allow them to do so. If we allow the demagogues of humanistic tolerance and equality to prevail, then the free exercise of religion will mean little more than that which can be practiced behind the closed doors of a silent church or in the muzzled confines of one’s heart. This certainly cannot be the intent of the Founders.
Larry G. Johnson
[1] Gordon College, http://www.gordon.edu/ (accessed October 8, 2013).
[2] Matt Rocheleau, “Accrediting agency to review Gordon College,” The Boston Globe, July 11, 2014.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/07/11/agency-review-whether-gordon-college-antigay-stance-policies-violate-accrediting-standards/Cti63s3A4cEHLGMPRQ5NyJ/story.html (accessed October 8, 2014).
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Evan Allen, “Gordon College joins request for exemption to hiring rule,” The Boston Globe, July 4, 2014.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/07/03/gordon-college-president-signs-letter-asking-for-religious-exemption-from-order-banning-anti-gay-discrimination/79cgrbFOuUg7lxH2rKXOgO/story.html (accessed
October 13, 2014).
[6] Ibid.
[7] Tony Perkins, “Intolerance fits liberals to a T (Shirt),” Tony Perkins’ Washington Update, October 9, 2014.
http://www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/intolerance-fits-liberals-to-a-t-shirt (accessed October 13, 2014).
