Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
The U.S. Supreme Court has decided that homosexual and transgender individuals are covered by the anti-discrimination provision, Title VII, of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in his opinion: “An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.”
When I read the reasoning of Gorsuch, I feel less surprised by the chaos in our cities, and our great difficulties and challenges in enforcing the law.
How indeed can we expect sanity in enforcing our laws when such confusion exists in our nation’s highest court about what our law is, and even what our country is about?
The key words in our nation’s Declaration of Independence are “all men are created equal.”
Created equal.
The horrible history of racial oppression and discrimination in America flew in the face of that great founding premise. People were rejected because of how they were created, not because of how they behaved.
This was exactly the sentiment Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. expressed in his famous dream, that his children would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
King dreamed that his children would be judged by their choices, not the condition, outside of their control and choice, in which God put them on this Earth.
Abraham Lincoln got to the heart of the matter when he mocked Stephen Douglas’ claim that states should vote on whether they would permit slavery because this was based on the biblical principle that man has the power of choice.
“God did not place good and evil before man, telling him to make his choice,” said Lincoln. “On the contrary,” continued Lincoln, “he did tell him there was one tree, of the fruit of which he should not eat, upon pain of certain death.”
Man has choice, said Lincoln. But only in a country where there is no standard and conviction of right and wrong does it not matter what you choose.
The essence of a free country is allowing citizens freedom to make and be responsible for their own choices.
To limit that freedom because of circumstance of birth — race or sex — is to make a mockery of freedom.
But to claim, as Douglas did, that once given freedom, it doesn’t matter what individuals choose — that there are no standards for right and wrong, good and evil — is to also make a mockery of freedom.
Gorsuch equates our protection against discrimination because of one’s circumstances of birth with discrimination against the choices individuals make.
This is a formula for exactly what we have today: chaos.
America must be free. Individuals must be free to choose their behavior. But we undermine our religious freedom and all our freedoms when we prohibit private individuals from rejecting behavior they find immoral.
This moral chaos is exactly what has caused such damage in our at-risk communities.
Rampant abortion, promiscuity and the collapse of marriage — all of which have caused so much damage in our nation, particularly in our at-risk communities — are the result of reasoning like what we now have heard from Gorsuch.
Sen. Tim Scott strikes at the heart of the matter in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal. “If you have two parents in the household, you reduce poverty in the African-American community by 85%. That’s a stunning truth that needs more oxygen.”
The right choices lead to better lives.
A society that cannot distinguish between what God creates and what man chooses is a society not capable of being free. This is what our very confused Supreme Court is delivering to us.
COPYRIGHT 2020 STAR PARKER
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Photo credit: Tim Evanson (Creative Commons) – Some rights reserved
Star Parker is the founder and president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and author of the new book “Necessary Noise: How Donald Trump Inflames the Culture War and Why This is Good News for America,” available now at starparker.com
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