Mr. Benney, the flip side is of course: unique persons in a hierarchical community of love. Marriage is a subset of that type of community. Such a community can only be maintained with great diligence and reliance of the incarnate Lord, God and Savior. Once the participation in sacrament becomes either perfunctory or non-existent, the nihilist vision of radical egalitarian individualism and the rights that go with such a vision begins to assert itself. Tyranny and slavery are the outcome.

In fact we have no rights to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness or property. Such things are ideological constructs meant to destroy genuine Christian faith.

The seeming oxymoron that our freedom lies in loving obedience to God is a hard saying for all of us. All power-centric entities will attack such freedom despite promises to the contrary.

The point that liberty does not do well in practical politics is not something new. It has been shown by such writers as Hans Hoppe (Democracy: The God that Failed), David Harsanyi (The People Have Spoken (and They Are Wrong)) Arthur C. Brooks and Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn.

In a nutshell, the conflict is that excepting regions with an extreme abundance of flat land in a hot climate, “Main Street” will always tend to support radical egalitarianism, or rigid equality of result. To avoid turning into tyranny where people have no choices as found in the Stalinist regimes, this radical egalitarianism requires radical individualism, or a complete erosion of moral law to allow not only homosexual sex and marriage or abortion, but even murder, bestiality, and non-consensual sex. Thus, contra Robert Bork, egalitarianism and individualism almost always complement one another – a fact which traditional Christians themselves have in effect recognised in the past, only to lose that recognition when confronted with the extremely difficult problem of maintaining their faith in a universal-suffrage democracy.

Yes, Christopher you are correct. The political erosion of the Constitution began with John Adams our second President and its inconvenient limits on the accumulation and use of central government power have gnawed at the hearts of all who seek power ever since. Indeed, no good crisis since has gone unused to erode the Constitutional limits further and further. The absolute limits placed upon central power by the first two amendments were the first challenged.

Nevertheless it has to be mentioned from time to time that the government is not our friend. Any power they can take they will and it does not matter which party.

If only the constitution mattered to political left, the LGBT religion, and most anyone who falls for the New Anthropology. Certainly Row vs. Wade reveals (shoot, even Dred Scott v. Sandford to a certain extant) the ability to “discover” novel truths in the Constitution where they don’t actually exist. When “gay marriage” is “discovered” in the constitution this summer, it will be the same old story…yet more evidence that our constitutional order broke down a long time ago – Lincoln (despite the righteousness of the abolition movement) showed us how to destroy the constitution…

James, the Constitution makes if pretty near absolute: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

That is pretty all encompassing AND the feds have made it clear that they think the first clause is absolute interpreting any thing a government employee says, does of thinks about God an “establishment” of religion. Nevertheless the feds (and under the 14th amendment that means every other law making body) are prohibited from making ANY LAW that restricts the free exercise of religion. Now, only the current interpretation of the first clause creates a conflict. The founders understood that “establishment” was the legal enshrinement of a specific church as the national church to be establishment–as in England even today or, in fact most other countries around the globe in various ways. The free exercise clause was/is essential to no establishment. It is patently illegal for the feds or any other part of the government to demand any restriction on the expression of one’s faith.

Other than the basics of murder, theft, assault, etc which are already illegal acts–no there is no circumspection on the exercise of one’s faith. That is not simply “freedom of worship” either. We are not to be locked away in a building somewhere to worship out of sight where we cannot bother anyone. Christianity is intended to bother folks. “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” still is the foundational call of our faith. Christ is Risen! yet another. Yet in England and Canada if I were to put either of those two phrases on public display, I would risk prosecution by “The Crown”

The fact that our opponents want to banish every image and every word and every thought about the Lord Jesus from the public is indicative of the fact that even in the lukewarm faith of the present west—He bothers people.

So the Constitution will be continue to be violated to suppress the offense of Jesus’ name at which they will eventually bow anyway. How ironic is that?

James, only a little time before Paschal services so I need to be brief:

Calling the requirement to deny core beliefs “legal” does not make it right – just makes “gays” violent in that they use the power of government (which is the power of the gun) to force their religion on others who disagree with them.

Personally, I would not have a “violent” response to the violence that gays are doing to me/my family/my Church, but it would not surprise me if one day this war gets into a “hot” phase – that is just fallen human nature. Yes, trying to coerce others into your unholy religion (by the violence of the state) will probably lead to…more violence.

Your right, what you call “moral outrage” (funny way of putting it – never heard the simple traditional religious worship and way of life called a “moral outrage” before), which is simply the observance of our beliefs, is in a conflict with the “gay religion” in a way that it is not with the “heterosexual divorcee” religion or the “interfaith couple” religion, for the obvious reason that neither of those groups are an organized religion like the “gay religion”, and even if they were, they are not as yet trying to force Traditional Christians into their unholy rites. Traditional Christians who are divorced don’t have any rites, and “interfaith couples” don’t present a problem (excepting for some Jews – you will have to ask them if these Jews are being forced by the power of the gun into “interfaith couple” rites – I have not heard of that myself).

Also, you use the term “fundamentalist” wrong – it does not mean what you think it means. Also, to be clear, “gays” are the religious fanatics as it is they who are imposing their religion on Christian bakers, photographers, and candlestick makers – that is the mark of fanaticism…

Christopher, you’re tap-dancing around my question. I understand your worldview, believe me. Nothing is “insignificant” or trivial. Asking one of you to bake a cake is analogous to asking you throw six million Jews into an oven the size of Texas. I get it.

Let me be more pointed: does a legal requirement for business owners to service all customers merit a violent response on the part of fundamentalist Christians such as yourself towards the government or other American citizens? If so, please define which impositions merit it. Please be specific.

For most religious fanatics in America, I’m going to guess that this moral outrage is only ignited when gays enter the equation (as opposed to heterosexual divorcees or interfaith couples).

I’d be happy to be proven wrong, but I’m not holding my breath for that.

Actually, no need to be sarcastic about the American civil war as you are exactly right, it is an example of the break down of the peace I was talking about and it shows just how fragile and precious that peace is, and how even under very good circumstances (such as the largely fortuitous nexus of circumstances and ideas that is the American project) history is always punctuated by times when the peace fails.

As far as all your questions, I think they can be answered best by my response to your last question:

“I’m sure that your fear of bloody retribution by Christians has something to do with more than just having to give a cake to gays, right?”

I talked before about nominalism. You see, only a nonimanlist would see a cake as a mere cake, that is simply a collection of ingredients and a product to be sold in the marketplace, actually meaning nothing more than than perhaps a pleasurable taste on the tongue (and such pleasure is nothing more than a collection of electro-chemical impulses in an organic brain that, while it has a psychology and some sort andf ill defined self awareness, it is not actually a “soul” or something capable of immortality in a non-modern sense).

Traditional religious people on the other hand, are realists. This is a non-modern understanding of the world (i.e. cosmology). We understand that a cake is not just a physical cake, but has symbolic meaning. This “unseen” meaning is actually (and this is something that will be very difficult for you to understand but if you do you will have gotten a key aspect of this conflict) more REAL than the physical ingredients/fact of the cake itself. Yes, the cake could kill me (say, if it is frozen solid and shot out of a canon into my chest) but it’s underlying unseen REALITY is actually more real and more important (just as my unseen soul and eternal meaning is more REAL than my physical body and organic brain).

Thus, we will never bake that cake because it is blasphemy to do so, and blasphemy is more REAL than a mere cake. Blasphemy (and all sin) and love (and all good things) are more REAL than physical existence itself.

Modernists deny the realism, the inner telos of things – up to the point until they are persecuting someone, at which point they acknowledge it by their behavior because it is real and they have to try to destroy these reality’s. Thus from the Romans all the way through the Communists to the modern day illiberal secularists will try to force Traditional Christians (and Jews, Muslims, etc.) to bake that cake because they intuitively understand that they have to force us to perform these unholy acts to break us and get us to conform to whatever religion it is that they hold. Thus, the Holy Martyrs are our guide, because they did not bake that cake. It would have been so easy to do so (it was after all just a mere idol, just an image or a statue that represented nothing real, right?). Some of us, being imperfect, will not go easily to our martyrdom and will fight back.

To understand what a nominalist view of the world does and how utterly different it is from a non-modern understanding, you might like:

https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2015/03/06/the-disenchanted-world/

Christopher writes: “the New Anthropology is destroying the peace of Classical Liberalism ”

Are you referring to the “peace” of early America when this nation was torn apart by a protracted and bloody civil war?

Sarcasm aside, I have to wonder if you’re being purposely obtuse. What are the reasonable limits of religious freedom? Can you do literally anything so long as you do it in the name of Jesus (and you personally happen to agree with it)? What exactly are you suggesting?

What do you want to do that you are unable to do? What can’t you do that you think you should have free reign to do?

I’m sure that your fear of bloody retribution by Christians has something to do with more than just having to give a cake to gays, right?

Someone is going to have to make some effort to meet halfway

We in America have been very fortunate to have lived in a country and a culture/legal system that understands (at least up until the day before yesterday) that “liberty”, and “religious liberty” in particular, is not really an object that does well in the the “compromise”, give-and-take tug of war of practical politics. That is of course because some Truths are not subject to the democratic process, as everyone understood (until the day before yesterday). Now, the modernist/secularist does not understand this. Well, that’s not quite true, as they have their sacred cows as well – mostly centered around the notion that all suffering is evil, and the elevation of “fairness” to a sacred right.

Will the modernist illiberals “compromise” and return to a Classical Liberal understanding of religious liberty – the one that is found in the Constitution? I suspect not. No, they will speak of “compromise” and “tolerance” while they hold a gun to your head – probably believing in their own deceptions.

James, if it looks “ideological” and like a war, that’s because it is – not because traditional believers are “ideological”, but rather because the New Anthropology is destroying the peace of Classical Liberalism and is forcing its religious terms on everyone else. This war might even one day end up bloody…

Yes, I happen to think that someone who will sue a baker for not providing a cake when they can go down the street to get one is a jerk.

Let’s face it, though: given the fact that the Christian Right has lobbied for the last several decades to oust service men and women from the military, have fought any legal protections for gays in employment and housing and have rejected any proposal for any legal recognition for their relationships, we can’t really say that they’re somehow above the fray and are more willing to compromise on anything.

Someone is going to have to make some effort to meet halfway. What compromises are those who oppose gay rights willing to make? If you’re not willing to make any, do you think it’s all that realistic to expect it in return?