Will This Republican Governor Refuse to Protect His Christian Constituents?

Lawmakers who respect the U.S. Constitution’s religious freedom clause and understand why it exists know that the U.S. Supreme Court’s homosexual “marriage” ruling infringes on that religious freedom.

The God of the Bible, Creator of the universe, declares homosexuality a sin, and so-called homosexual marriage is a mockery of a God-ordained institution that spiritually binds a man and woman as one and reflects His relationship with the people He came to save. Christians have a natural and lawful right not just to believe but to live according to this principle.

Lawmakers in North Carolina created a religious exemption law to protect magistrates and court officials opposed to the redefinition of marriage. Georgia lawmakers are trying to do something similar. They’ve passed a bill that would provide legal protection to pastors and other religious organizations. From Christian News Network:

The First Amendment Act of Georgia mandates that “[g]overnment shall not take any discriminatory action against wholly or partially on the basis that such person believes, speaks or acts in accordance with a sincerely-held religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”

It also states that faith-based non-profit organizations cannot be forced to hire those whose beliefs and behaviors conflict with the entity, and that such organizations have a right to decline to host objectionable events.

Mayor Kasim Reed of Atlanta, who terminated fire chief Kelvin Cochran over his self-published book criticizing the sin of homosexuality, said he “can’t express the amount of damage that is being done to Atlanta and Georgia’s reputation as the business center and cultural center of the Southeast. I’m not going to pretend that this bill or the amendments to the bill will mitigate the terrible harm that is being done to our city, our region, our state by this legislation.”

Money and image versus protecting the rights of the people.

How much more damaging would it be to force Christians to perform homosexual “marriages” or face burdensome government fines and possibly jail? If people oppose religious freedom, a fundamental right enumerated in a founding document, how will they justify freedom of speech or of expression, and the freedom not to speak or express a point of view?

Is Nathan Deal, Georgia’s Republican governor, on his Christian constituents’ side? He called such measures discriminatory. The bill is on his desk. Will he sign it and protect Christians from the homosexual lobby and the government? He said:

“I think what the New Testament teaches us is that Jesus reached out to those who were considered the outcasts, the ones that did not conform to the religious societies’ view of the world and said to those of belief, ‘This is what I want you to do,’” he said at a ribbon cutting ceremony earlier this month. “We do not have a belief—in my way of looking at religion—that says we have to discriminate against anybody. If you were to apply those standards to the teaching of Jesus, I don’t think they fit.”

The same Christ also told sinners to repent. The least loving thing a Christian can do is help the lost celebrate their sin, sin that sent Christ to the cross. The world might change, but His word doesn’t.

Photo credit: Matt Popovich (Creative Commons) – Public Domain