Monday, 28 May 2018

Unintended Consequences

The Religious Wars of the 21st Century

When homosexuality or polygamy or trans-genderism or abortion become recognised as human rights, Christians and the Christian faith are immediately in the crosshairs.  Why?  Because Christian conscience and praxis deny these activities are human rights.  

John Davidson describes how this is unfolding in some states in the increasingly Disunited States.



Never mind that Philadelphia isn’t alone in its foster care crisis, that foster families are in short supply across the United States. In just the past few weeks, local news outlets have chronicled foster family shortages in Missouri, Colorado, Texas, Indiana, Washington, and Illinois. In Michigan alone, more than 13,000 kids are waiting for placement in foster homes.

Never mind all that. The only thing that matters to municipal officials in Philadelphia is that Catholic Social Services must bend the knee and abandon its deeply held religious beliefs. If orphans and abused children must go without foster homes to make a point, so be it.
Some states have moved to protect the beliefs and consciences of Christians involved in charitable work involving families and children.  They have legislated a carve-out for conscience sake.
(S)ome states have realized they must pass laws that specifically allow religiously affiliated child welfare agencies to conduct placements based on their religious beliefs. Early this month, Oklahoma became the eighth state to allow state-licensed child welfare agencies to cite religious beliefs when making placements for foster care or adoption. Last year, Texas, South Dakota, and Alabama passed similar laws.

Challenges to such laws are underway, and it’s not clear they will withstand legal scrutiny in a post-Obergefell world. In 2016, a federal judge ruled that Mississippi’s ban on same-sex couples adopting children is unconstitutional, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause—more or less the same argument that proved successful in Obergefell. 
There is deep irony at work in all this mess.  The US Civil War was fought over the issue of States' Rights--in particular, with respect to slavery.  One interpretation of the outcome of that war is that the United States determined that states' rights are not ultimately sovereign.  The Federal Government is.  Now the US Supreme Court is claiming an even higher authority over states and Congress when it comes to sexual morality.

On the other hand, the doctrine of states' rights is making a bit of a comeback on the Left.  California wants to split into three states--claiming states' rights as a warrant.  It also wants to ignore Federal immigration law and open its borders without restraint to immigrants.

Will the Union survive?  It is less and less an academic question.

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