Is Gay Rights Civil Rights ?

“We’re not going to change the law,” Indiana Gov. Mike Pence flat­ly said on ABC’s “This Week,” about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which Pence says is meant to pre­vent the gov­ern­ment from imping­ing on a person’s reli­gious beliefs. “I was proud to sign it into law.”

SO WHAT EXACTLY IS THE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM ACT?
In brief this is what the Act is.
The new law will pro­hib­it a gov­ern­men­tal enti­ty from sub­stan­tial­ly bur­den­ing a person’s reli­gious beliefs, unless that enti­ty can prove it’s rely­ing on the least restric­tive means pos­si­ble to fur­ther a com­pelling gov­ern­men­tal inter­est. It’s mod­eled off of the fed­er­al Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which gained noto­ri­ety in the Supreme Court’s con­tro­ver­sial Hobby Lobby rul­ing last year. That deci­sion found that close­ly-held cor­po­ra­tions wouldn’t have to com­ply with the Affordable Care Act’s con­tra­cep­tion man­date if the own­ers had a sin­cere­ly-held reli­gious objec­tion to birth con­trol.NBCNEWS.
Supporters say RFRA is designed to pro­tect people’s reli­gious beliefs from unnec­es­sary gov­ern­ment intrusion.
Opponents argue the mea­sure serves as a license to dis­crim­i­nate, par­tic­u­lar­ly against LGBT peo­ple on reli­gious grounds.
There is prece­dent which sup­ports both sides of the divide.
Until the Federal Government stepped in and changed sep­a­rate but equal, it was the law of the land. 

Blacks drank at sep­a­rate drink­ing foun­tains, ate at the back of the restau­rant, if at all, and rode at the back of the bus.
Conversely with the break-neck pace with which the gay agen­da has tak­en cen­ter stage, peo­ple opposed to the gay lifestyle find them­selves at odds with the laws in some states as well as in the court of pop­u­lar opinion.

Feb.4^th 2015:  An Oregon bak­ery will have to pay a gay cou­ple up to $150,000 for refus­ing to bake them a wed­ding cake two years ago, gov­ern­ment offi­cials announced Monday. The Sweet Cakes by Melissa bak­ery in Gresham caught heat in January 2013 when Laurel Bowman said the shop refused to make a cake for her and her fiancée, cit­ing reli­gious objec­tions. Bowman said the co-own­er, Aaron Klein, called the gay mar­riage “an abom­i­na­tion unto the lord,” KGW report­ed. Bowman filed a dis­crim­i­na­tion com­plaint with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries months lat­er, and the group said on Monday it was rul­ing against the bak​ery​.Now the bak­ers could pay up to $75,000 each to Bowman and her fiancée, with the final amount to be deter­mined in March. The Bureau of Labor said in a state­ment that it pro­vides some exemp­tions in such cas­es for reli­gious groups, but the bak­ery didn’t count as one just because of its own­ers’ beliefs.http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/oregon-bakery-pay-gay-couple-refused-cake-article‑1.2103577

But Pence push­es back against the accu­sa­tion that the reli­gious free­dom mea­sure would open the door to discrimination.“This bill is not about dis­crim­i­na­tion, and if I thought it legal­ized dis­crim­i­na­tion in any way in Indiana, I would have vetoed it,” he said. “In fact, it does not even apply to dis­putes between pri­vate par­ties unless gov­ern­ment action is involved. For more than twen­ty years, the fed­er­al Religious Freedom Restoration Act has nev­er under­mined our nation’s anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion laws, and it will not in Indiana.”
On this part of the state­ment Pence is cor­rect,” it does not even apply to dis­putes between pri­vate par­ties unless gov­ern­ment action is involved”
The Federal statute does not yet penal­ize pri­vate par­ties, what the Governor is say­ing is that as a busi­ness own­er I can refuse ser­vice to some­one if I chose to. As along as I do not tell the cus­tomer it’ is because of his/​her spe­cial cir­cum­stance , race, reli­gion, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, col­or or oth­er defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics why I refused him/​her service.
Unfortunately, it is peo­ple who have stood on their reli­gious prin­ci­ple who are being per­se­cut­ed and pros­e­cut­ed on behalf of the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty as the Oregon cou­ple has been.

The issue of Discrimination in this con­text seem to need redefining.
Each per­son is guar­an­teed cer­tain free­doms under the con­sti­tu­tion, that includes gays and les­bians. But does that mean that their rights are guar­an­teed at the expense of mine?
Seem so, if the Oregon case is any­thing to go by.
In the Oregon case the Government threw out any con­sid­er­a­tion for the bak­ers right not to work for peo­ple who engage in a lifestyle they abhor, and sup­plant­ed them with the rights of the plaintiff.

So who is right?
A Minister of the Gospel (who is not a char­la­tan sold out to the dic­tates of the world) who decides on prin­ci­ple “I will not mar­ry a LGBT cou­ple”, what then does the state do, fine him, imprison him or worse”?
Isn’t that Religious per­se­cu­tion? The very rea­son we are told the pil­grims ran away from England.
Isn’t that dis­crim­i­na­tion against his fun­da­men­tal reli­gious belief?
It absolute­ly is, yet it appears that is the way this issue is heading.
 Brooke Tucker, staff attor­ney at the ACLU of Michigan, told msnbc last December. “For the land­lord who vio­lates the Fair Housing Act, a lot of times it’s the gov­ern­ment who goes after him. The gov­ern­ment takes a lot of steps to pro­tect peo­ple from dis­crim­i­na­tion by oth­ers, and that’s some­thing that could be severe­ly impact­ed by this bill.”
All of this is true, but this was not the case with Oregon’s sweet-cakes by Melissa. That com­pa­ny was a small busi­ness, owned by two small business-owners .
Why did the Government step in and tram­ple on their right not to pro­vide ser­vice to the gay cou­ple as is their reli­gious belief?

The LGBT com­mu­ni­ty and it’s sup­port­ers have man­aged to effec­tive­ly tie their cru­sade for legit­i­ma­cy to the civ­il rights struggle.
Nothing is wrong with any group demand­ing to be treat­ed fair­ly. What is objec­tion­able is when oth­ers are forced to acqui­esce to the dic­tates of such groups, or are made pari­ahs for dissenting.
Isn’t the gay com­mu­ni­ty more than guilty of the same dis­crim­i­na­tion and char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion it claims it is exposed to?
They argue they have no con­trol over who they love.
Many in the evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty , par­tic­u­lar­ly many black church­es are offend­ed that gays and les­bians have hitched their wag­ons to the civ­il rights struggle.
LGBT prac­ti­tion­ers, their sup­port­ers and oth­ers who want to gain recog­ni­tion, accep­tance and fame from this cause, have effec­tive­ly dis­tort­ed, and in some cas­es negat­ed the hun­dreds of years of injus­tice done to blacks in America.
Even so, some reports have indi­cat­ed there is a grow­ing accep­tance of the gay lifestyle even with­in the black church. Those reports may well be from gays with­in the church.
Others believe that the church has com­pro­mised it’s prin­ci­ples in order to get along, as well as not to incur the wrath of the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty, which may result in the church los­ing it’s tax-exempt status.
Either way, the church has capit­u­lat­ed to the dis­tor­tion that the two issues are intrin­si­cal­ly the same.

Even as gay pro­po­nents argue they have no choice regard­ing their sex­u­al­i­ty, many with­in that com­mu­ni­ty are active­ly using sci­ence to alter and change their gender.
One can­not change one’s race.
Racial seg­re­ga­tion has many ille­git­i­mate chil­dren in America , this issue being one of them.
Was there no issue of racial seg­re­ga­tion and the abhor­rent ills asso­ci­at­ed with that prac­tice, this debate would have been moot.
In fact it may not have exist­ed at all.
Indiana’s Governor Mike Pence and oth­er con­ser­v­a­tives would have legs to stand on when they make the argu­ments about peo­ple’s fun­da­men­tal rights to stand on their reli­gious principles.
But we have seen the ugly side of dis­crim­i­na­tion, as such, a large cross sec­tion of the coun­try made up of peo­ple with dif­fer­ent pecu­liar­i­ties are unit­ed in oppo­si­tion to Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
As a chris­t­ian who love Homosexuals and all peo­ple, I believe we have all sinned and come short of the glo­ry of God.
The church has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to wel­come all peo­ple, as Christ Jesus the head of the Christian church did.
I have to fol­low the teach­ings of Christ which instruct me to love the sin­ner but hate sin. Therefore it is un-Christ-like to preach/​teach that you may come as a sin­ner and remain thus.

The real ques­tion is whether any­one act­ing in a pri­vate capac­i­ty have the right to say,” as a result of my reli­gious beliefs I have to decline serv­ing you”. It is a thorny ques­tion which requires seri­ous soul searching.
As a black chris­t­ian that may very well be my belief, do I sup­port pas­tors who mar­ry gays against bib­li­cal teachings?
No !!!
When con­flat­ed how­ev­er with race, does a white per­son have a right to refuse me ser­vice in his/​her busi­ness establishment?
I would cry discrimination!!!
So where is the line drawn? Who decide where it stops?
Can we even remove Government from this issue with­out slid­ing back into seg­re­gat­ed drink­ing foun­tains and seg­re­gat­ed restau­rants, hotels, schools and buses.

There needs to be seri­ous dis­course on this sub­ject. We should nev­er allow our­selves to go back to seg­re­ga­tion and wan­ton dis­crim­i­na­tion, yet we must guard against impos­ing on the indi­vid­u­al’s right of dis­sent. The right to say “no I do not want to be forced to bake you a cake”, or “no I do not want to mar­ry you , it is against my reli­gion to do so”.
Those rights are sacro­sanct and should nev­er be open to inter­pre­ta­tion by any gov­ern­ment. Those rights are inalien­able rights giv­en us by God Almighty , not to be tri­fled with by government.