Opponents of Indiana law impose their values | LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Published 10:34 am Saturday, May 9, 2015

To the editor:

What should Christians in America make of the protests over Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA)?

Pointedly, that Romans 1:18-32 is no longer permitted to Christians in the formation of their conscience, that they “must” violate the moral law found in its last verse: “(they) are deserving of death; not only those who commit such acts, but those who countenance such a manner of living (Rom 1:32).”

The verb “countenance” means to accept, support or approve. To cater a same-sex marriage clearly constitutes approval, and, according to St. Paul, would warrant the death of the soul. Coloring the Christian refusal as a “civil rights” issue is necessitated here because the usual “secular” hullabaloo of “you’re imposing your religious values” cannot be invoked as those who protest are clearly the ones intent on imposing their values.

In fact, in the related protests over San Francisco Archbishop Cordileone’s “morality clauses” California’s civic leaders have distinctly trampled on the First Amendment’s Freedom of Religion by precipitously rallying to the supposed “values of San Francisco”; homosexuality, contraception, abortion, etc.

Trouble is, those values are pagan through and through. St. Paul (Rom. 1:18-31) makes that abundantly clear.

This, then, is what the 78 percent of Americans who say they’re Christian should make of the protests over RFRA:

That America’s civic/corporate leaders formally forsake Judeo-Christian virtue for pagan values; and thus render “secular” to mean “pagan” in unambiguous contravention of the First Amendment’s “establishment clause.”

PETER BRADY

Bainbridge Island