R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 301

The Briefing 08-03-15

“A Lot of People Want Intact Hearts These Days” — Planned Parenthood, Abortion, and the Conscience of a Nation

Yesterday’s release of a video showing the senior medical director of Planned Parenthood casually discussing the sale of organs from aborted babies is a moral challenge thrown right in the face of all Americans.

The video reveals Dr. Deborah Nucatola, senior director of medical services for Planned Parenthood, discussing the intentional harvesting of organs and other tissues from babies aborted in Planned Parenthood clinics. While reaching with her fork for salad, Dr. Nucatola openly tells a group she believes to be medical researchers that there is a great demand for fetal livers, but “a lot of people want intact hearts these days.”

Dr. Nucatola went on to explain in chilling detail that abortionists often plan in advance how to harvest desired organs, even telling the group that a “huddle” is sometimes held with clinic staff early in the day, so that targeted organs can be harvested from unborn babies.

Her language is beyond chilling as she described how abortions are conducted specifically to harvest intact organs: “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part. I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.” She also described using an abortion technique that appears to be partial-birth abortion.

The undercover video was released by the Center for Medical Progress, a group with ties to previous efforts to expose Planned Parenthood and the reality of its murderous work. As expected, Planned Parenthood struck back, claiming that the video misrepresented Dr. Nucatola, Planned Parenthood, and the procurement of fetal organs.

In the video, Dr. Nucatola suggests that a cost of $30 to $100 would be a likely range of charges for organs and tissues harvested from aborted babies. She also tells the group that Planned Parenthood does not want to be seen as profiting from the sale of such organs, but she makes clear that this concern is not hampering the harvesting and transfer of the organs.

The sale of human tissues is illegal in the United States, as is the timing or arranging of an abortion if the cause of the abortion is the procurement of organs or tissue. Within hours of the release of the video, Republican presidential candidates and at least two governors were calling for investigations into the involvement of Planned Parenthood in the business of selling fetal organs.

Likewise, the defenders of Planned Parenthood attacked the video and the organization behind it. But Planned Parenthood is clearly concerned about the effect of the video, and it should be. The sight of the senior medical director of Planned Parenthood reaching for salad as she explicitly discusses tearing apart babies in the womb is impossible to reduce to words.

Planned Parenthood called the video “heavily edited, secretly recorded,” and said that it “portrays Planned Parenthood’s participation in tissue donation programs that support lifesaving scientific research.”

The Center for Medical Progress also released over two hours of what it said was unedited video of the conversation. As in the case of previous revelations of wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood, the group goes after the accuser more than the accusations.

But Planned Parenthood is having a hard time keeping its story straight. Eric Ferrero, vice president of communications for the national organization, acknowledged the transfer of fetal organs and tissues, but said that it was all legal and insisted that “there is no financial benefit for tissue donation for either the patient or for Planned Parenthood.” And yet, a public relations firm supporting Planned Parenthood, also put out a release stating that “the transcript indicates that Deborah Nucatola was speculating on the range of reimbursement that patients can receive after stating that they wish to donate any tissues after a procedure.” Well, which is it?

Planned Parenthood stands at the epicenter of the Culture of Death and receives almost half a billion dollars a year in government support. They are not going to be able to explain this video away.

I have no reason to believe that the video is anything less than totally credible. But, even if Planned Parenthood somehow finds a way to evade justice in terms of criminal activity, the part of the video that Planned Parenthood does not –and cannot — deny reveals their senior medical director enjoying a conversation over a meal in which she describes tearing apart the bodies of unborn human beings in order to get the desired organ: “I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”

When the Allied forces liberated the concentration camps of the Nazi regime, General Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the ordinary German citizens of nearby towns and villages to walk through the camps and to see what they had allowed and facilitated. Eisenhower’s point was all too clear — you allowed this to happen, and you share the guilt.

So it is with all Americans. Planned Parenthood and the abortion industrial complex are funded with our tax dollars. Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, was a racist openly committed to eugenics. Millions of unborn babies have died in its facilities. The group thrives because Americans allow it to thrive.

When this video went viral yesterday, I waited to see how the mainstream media and abortion supporters would respond. That response has, for the most part, been exactly what I expected — defend Planned Parenthood at any cost.

But the video is out there, and it will stay out there. There is no way to un-see it once it is seen.

Writing at Cosmopolitan magazine, abortion supporter Robin Marty said that she had seen the video. Then she said, “Now, frankly, I’m just going to yawn.”

Maybe she will, but if so that will require a massive act of denial. Later in her own essay she stated: “I shuddered when listening to the discussion of how the fetus can be removed, and the idea of a ‘menu’ of fetal tissue and organs that could be procured depending on the gestational age of the pregnancies being terminated and the number of patients who consent to donating is one I hope I never have to encounter again.”

Once again, which is it?

We must pray that this video will mark an important turning point in our nation’s conscience. Images and words can become seared in our minds. The horrifying knowledge of harvested baby hearts must lead to our own broken hearts.

A nation that will allow this, will allow anything.

I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/albertmohler.

Ben Johnson, “Undercover Video Catches Planned Parenthood Selling Aborted Baby Parts,” LifeSiteNews, Tuesday, July 14, 2015. https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/und...

Robin Marty, “That Planned Parenthood Video Isn’t the Scandal Abortion Opponents Are Making it Out to Be,” Cosmopolitan, Tuesday, July 14, 2015. http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/...

 

Transcript: The Briefing Special Edition: Supreme Court Ruling on Same Sex Marriage

Special Edition of The Briefing

 

June 26, 2015

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

 

It’s Friday, June 26, 2015. I’m Albert Mohler and this is a special edition of The Briefing.

1) Supreme Court affirms gay marriage as constitutional right, disregards democratic process 

Released after this morning, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its decision in the same-sex marriage issue in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges. By a 5-4 decision, the United States Supreme Court effectively today redefined marriage in all 50 states. By that 5-4 decision the court found that there was a constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry, a right to which all of the 50 states are obligated in terms of the legalization and full recognition of same-sex unions as marriage. As we had anticipated, the decision was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy who was joined in the majority by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan. This majority of five, that is five out of the nine justices, effectively and largely single-handedly as one branch of government redefined marriage for the entire nation.

The decision in this case was of course expected by the end of the court’s term early next week but it wasn’t exactly expected today. Part of the reason why it may been released today is because June 26 was the anniversary of the 2003 Lawrence decision on gay rights also with the opinion written by Justice Kennedy and it was the second anniversary of the Windsor case, released June 26, 2013, with the majority opinion also written by Justice Kennedy. Most informed observers looking at the case and listening to the oral arguments looking at the trajectory on the court and in the larger culture had expected the basic shape of the decision that was released today. It was anticipated, signals had been sent by justices both as they sat in the court and as they spoke outside the court’s operations indicating that this result was likely and yet in the final analysis the decision is far more damaging, far more devastating, far more significant than even we had expected.

In one sense that’s because this decision isn’t only about marriage. That’s not its only importance. It’s hard to overestimate just what it means that the court has redefined marriage. But in the larger sense, as Justice Scalia joined by three of the dissenters made very clear, what the court effectively did in this decision was to change the way the United States government operates and how we as a nation of laws come to have the laws under which we operate. That is a more ominous development even than just the redefinition of marriage because it will not stop with the redefinition of marriage.

Justice Kennedy’s opinion follows directly in the line of his opinions written in 2003 in the Lawrence case and 2013 in the Windsor case. In the most crucial section of the argument on page 22 Kennedy writes,

“These considerations lead to the conclusion that the right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person, and under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment couples of the same-sex may not be deprived of that right and that liberty.”

Now what we need to note there is the assertion of certain things that have never been asserted before. In the first place, that marriage is a fundamental right in this sense. In the sense that it would include or even could include same-sex couples. The other thing we need to note is that the actual wording of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, the actual wording of its due process and equal protection clauses that were cited here, the actual wording never cites marriage at all. Not only does it not cite anything that would include so-called same-sex marriage, it doesn’t address marriage at all. The most important aspect of the majority opinion in this case is that it isn’t actually much of a legal argument at all. It certainly isn’t a constitutional argument and no one made that point more eloquently than the Chief Justice of the United States when he wrote in his dissent,

“The majority’s decision is an act of will, not a legal judgment. The right it announces has no basis in the Constitution.”

The Chief Justice openly accused the majority in this case of imposing their moral judgment, not any informed or rational legal judgment on the Constitution of the United States and thus on the nation. At the very end of his very eloquent dissent in a paragraph that indicates that the Chief Justice actually is for same-sex marriage, he just didn’t believe it was a constitutional right. He acknowledges that there will be those who will celebrate this decision. But then he writes quote,

“But do not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it. I respectfully dissent.”

Elsewhere in his dissent, the Chief Justice says that the majority’s reasoning has far more to do with philosophy than with the law. The Chief said,

“The Court today not only overlooks our country’s entire history and tradition but actively repudiates it, preferring to live only in the heady days of the here and now.”

The Chief Justice of the United States joined by other dissenters points to the fact that one of the most devastating aspects of today’s decision is the fact that the majority actually vilifies the opposition. It declares here that there is no rational basis for any opposition to same-sex marriage, to the right of same-sex couples to marry, and not only that, the majority claims that the only basis for opposing same-sex marriage is moral animus, that is an irrational moral judgment that should have no public consequence and should not be allowed to have any influence in terms of the life of the nation. And thus, as the Chief Justice and the other dissenters pointed out, the majority basically says that every previous Supreme Court, every previous justice of that court, every previous American and the majority of the states of the United States of America right now are operating out of a moral animus that must be corrected by the action of a 5-4 majority of the United States Supreme Court.

In so doing, as Justice Scalia was very clear, the majority on this court has simply substituted its own moral judgment for the Constitution of the United States and for the operation of a representative constitutional democracy. Whereas, just yesterday, in the Burwell decision the Supreme Court said that it was acting in deference to the legislature as Justice Scalia made very clear today in the case of same-sex marriage the court has decided to be the legislature. He then writes,

“This is a naked judicial claim to legislative—indeed, super-legislative—power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government. Except as limited by a constitutional prohibition agreed to by the People, the States are free to adopt whatever laws they like, even those that offend the esteemed Justices’ “reasoned judgment,” speaking of the majority.”

He then wrote these very chilling words,

“A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy.”

Getting right to the point, Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his dissent to the majority opinion,

“Today’s decision usurps the constitutional right of the people to decide whether to keep or alter the traditional understanding of marriage. The decision will also have other important consequences.”

He then writes these words of clear warning,

“It will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy.”

Once again, we’re not talking about someone on the margins of American political life. We’re talking about a sitting justice of the United States Supreme Court saying that this judgment will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy and not only was it said by Justice Alito, it was said by Justice Thomas, it was said by Justice Scalia, it was said by the Chief Justice of the United States, John G. Roberts Jr. All four of those justices, three Associate Justices and the Chief Justice of the United States have told us that this decision handed down today will be used to vilify those who will not join the new moral orthodoxy. Further words of warning from Justice Alito included these,

“Today’s decision will also have a fundamental effect on this Court and its ability to uphold the rule of law. If a bare majority of Justices can invent a new right and impose that right on the rest of the country, the only real limit on what future majorities will be able to do is their own sense of what those with political power and cultural influence are willing to tolerate. Even enthusiastic supporters of same-sex marriage should worry about the scope of the power that today’s majority claims.”

Even in the days leading up to the release of today’s decision, it was interesting that many in the mainstream secular media all of a sudden began publicly to acknowledge the inevitable conflict between same-sex marriage and religious liberty. Justice Thomas in his dissent wrote these words,

“In our society, marriage is not simply a governmental institution; it is a religious institution as well. Today’s decision might change the former, but it cannot change the latter. It appears all but inevitable that the two will come into conflict, particularly as individuals and churches are confronted with demands to participate in and endorse civil marriages between same-sex couples.

“The majority appears unmoved by that inevitability. It makes only a weak gesture toward religious liberty in a single paragraph.”

So we should look carefully at that single paragraph that Justice Thomas mentions as being so inadequate. If anything, his estimation of its inadequacy is an understatement. Justice Kennedy wrote,

“Finally, it must be emphasized that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned. The First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths, and to their own deep aspirations to continue the family structure they have long revered.”

Now notice very closely how Justice Kennedy in writing that paragraph limited religious liberty merely to teaching the precepts of our faith. That’s all it represents. We need to note that is not religious liberty as guaranteed in the free exercise and non-establishment clauses of the United States Constitution. The free exercise of our faith is not limited by the first amendment to the Constitution to merely teaching. Once again, it is very hard to overestimate the meaning of this decision just as it is related to the institution of marriage. That’s because in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court of United States effectively redefined marriage all across this nation in all 50 states. It states that there is a constitutional right for same-sex couples to demand to be married and thus there is no right for a state to define marriage in any way that would limit the access to same-sex couples to that institution. And so what we’re going to see, virtually immediately, is the fact that marriage is going to be redefined right before our eyes and as we have so often discussed on The Briefing when it comes to the redefinition of marriage, it is not simply a matter of including same-sex couples in an otherwise exclusively heterosexual institution. What the majority of the court did in the decision today in the name actually, stunningly enough, of acting on behalf of children was to make children incidental to marriage because what the court requires today is a definition, a redefinition of marriage, in which procreation is no longer necessarily a part of the picture at all. Not even in terms of potential or possibility.

As damaging as that legal argument is, we need to consider it’s more damaging even then it appears on its face and that was made clear by the Chief Justice when he wrote this section of his dissent,

“It is striking how much of the majority’s reasoning would apply with equal force to the claim of a fundamental right to plural marriage. If “[t]here is dignity in the bond between two men or two women who seek to marry and in their autonomy to make such profound choices,” why would there be any less dignity in the bond between three people who, in exercising their autonomy, seek to make the profound choice to marry? If a same-sex couple has the constitutional right to marry because their children would otherwise “suffer the stigma of knowing their families are somehow lesser,” why wouldn’t the same reasoning apply to a family of three or more persons raising children? If not having the opportunity to marry “serves to disrespect and subordinate” gay and lesbian couples, why wouldn’t the same “imposition of this disability,” serve to disrespect and subordinate people who find fulfillment in polyamorous relationships?”

Directly aiming himself at Justice Kennedy and his opinion with the majority, the chief then says,

“I do not mean to equate marriage between same-sex couples with plural marriages in all respects. There may well be relevant differences that compel different legal analysis. But if there are, petitioners,” that is, those who brought the case arguing for the legalization of same-sex marriage, have not pointed to any. When asked about a plural marital union at oral argument, petitioners asserted that a State “doesn’t have such an institution.”

The Chief then said,

“But that is exactly the point: the States at issue here do not have an institution of same-sex marriage, either.”

That means that the Chief Justice of the United States has set a clear warning that the logic of this case will not stop with the affirmation of same-sex marriage. That is a case that we have been making for months and for years. And now, once again, it’s not being said by someone as an observer of the court, those words were written by the Chief Justice of the United States of America. And thus, the decision handed down today by the Supreme Court of the United States of America not only is devastating to the institution of marriage, it is also devastating to the very existence of democracy in the United States of America. And we’re talking about the unexpected arrival and impact of a decision that was even worse than we might have imagined. And we’re talking about dissents offered by four sitting justices of the United States Supreme Court, including the Chief Justice of the United States warning that nothing less than democracy is at stake.

The most important development today was the decision handed down by the Supreme Court. But the other most interesting developments related to this are found in the responses that came to the decision once it was announced this morning. The President of the United States immediately celebrated the decision. Even as you’ll recall in 2008 he had run on a platform opposed to the legalization of same-sex marriage, he came to affirm it by his own process of what he called evolution by the time he ran for reelection in 2012. But the White House website today, that is the official website of the President of the United States through the White House, the White House website today openly celebrated in every way imaginable the decision handed down today by the United States Supreme Court. President Obama had put the power of his administration behind the case for same-sex marriage. His own chief lawyer, the Solicitor General of the United States, made the administration’s case before the court and almost immediately after the decision was handed down today, a portrait of the White House in rainbow colors was released on the official website of the President of the United States.

For Christians looking at these developments, there are many reasons for concern and for prayer for our nation. There is also a very clear alarm telling us that the context of our own lives, families, marriages and ministries has changed utterly before our eyes. That process of change did not begin with the decision handed down today. But today is a moment of undeniable importance. What happened today will change the course of history when it comes to the United States of America and as we have seen not only on the urgent question of marriage, the essential question of marriage, the question as to whether or for how long the United States of America will operate as a Constitutional Republic. But Christians also have to understand that the law, important as it is, was never the most important issue here. Even as the Chief Justice said that the majority opinion was actually a moral judgment disguised as a constitutional argument, we need to understand that it was the moral issue that was always paramount here.

The quest on the part of those who were seeking same-sex marriage was not just, it was never just, limited to access to the institution of marriage and to the any number of legal privileges that come with the institution of marriage. It was always rooted in a quest for the affirmation of their own sexual orientation and lifestyle, the affirmation of their relationships. Writing almost immediately after the opinion was released, Frank Bruni, a columnist for the New York Times, in a rather lengthy essay came down to the final paragraph, which I now read, he says,

“The Supreme Court’s decision wasn’t simply about weddings. It was about worth. From the highest of this nation’s perches, in the most authoritative of this nation’s voices, a majority of justices told a minority of Americans that they’re normal and that they belong — fully, joyously and with cake.”

Christians looking at a statement like that have to be not only concerned, but heartbroken. When we understand what is behind the quest for the legalization of same-sex marriage. It’s never been just about marriage. That’s been abundantly clear. It’s about moral sanction. It’s about moral approval. It’s about celebration of same-sex relationships. And now, Frank Bruni, writing on behalf of no doubt millions of others says, that the Supreme Court’s ruling will lead to that celebration and make no mistake, there are those in the society who would do everything within their power to coerce that celebration and to coerce it from churches, and Christian institutions, and Christian schools, and Christian citizens. But the thing we need to note with the greatest heartbreak is that declaring something normal doesn’t make it normal. Not when it runs into a head-on collision with God’s intention in creation and with God’s authority in his word, and with the gospel of Jesus Christ. One of the most devastating aspects of this is not just the damage this will do to marriage and to marriages, to children and the society at large, not only the direct religious liberty threat this now represents in the collision between same-sex marriage and Christian conviction. One of the saddest aspects is that this simply can’t deliver on the promises of those who were behind the effort in the first place. Our society may now, by virtue of the authority of the United States Supreme Court declare the legal reality of same-sex marriage, but it can’t, it can’t possibly actually normalize same-sex relationships as being the same as the conjugal union of a man and a woman in marriage.

Finally, when it comes to coercing the new moral regime, one of the most interesting developments that again came very shortly after the decision of Supreme Court was released today was an editorial statement that came from a newspaper in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The headline of their editorial,

“The Supremes got it right – It’s no longer ‘gay marriage.’ It’s ‘marriage.’ And we’re better for it”

What’s most remarkable about this editorial is how it concludes. The paper writes this,

“As a result of Friday’s ruling, PennLive/The Patriot-News will very strictly limit op-Eds and letters to the editor in opposition to same-sex marriage.”

They went on to say,

“These unions are now the law of the land and we would not entertain such criticisms that these unions are morally wrong or unnatural, any more than we would entertain criticisms of interracial marriage or those claiming that women are less equal than men in the eyes of the law.”

That paragraph is actually a somewhat softer version of the immediate statement made by the paper in which it said there would be no publication of any such letters or op-eds at all. Now they say the use of such arguments will be strictly limited and for a limited time and we need to note exactly what’s going on here. We’re being told that the Supreme Court of United States in its ruling today ended the argument. The debate is over. Same-sex marriage is now a fact. And as this newspaper says, so far as the United States Supreme Court is concerned, there is no such thing as same-sex marriage. There is only marriage and it may be enjoyed by same-sex couples or opposite sex couples. It really doesn’t matter. And this is where the church of the Lord Jesus Christ has to understand that as much as the society around us, for any number of reasons, is going to be saying the debate is over, the issue is settled. It isn’t. It can’t be. It won’t be.

Christians operating out of a biblical worldview have to understand all that is at stake here, far more than the society around us recognizes and far more even than we made anticipated just 24 hours ago. In a statement I released to the media immediately after the decision, I wrote these words with which I will conclude the special edition of The Briefing.

“In one sense, everything has changed. And yet, nothing has changed. The cultural and legal landscape has changed, as we believe this will lead to very real harms to our neighbors. But our Christian responsibility has not changed. We are charged to uphold marriage as the union of a man and a woman and to speak the truth in love. We are also commanded to uphold the truth about marriage in our own lives, in our own marriages, in our own families, and in our own churches.

“We are called to be the people of the truth, even when the truth is not popular and even when the truth is denied by the culture around us.  Christians have found themselves in this position before, and we will again. God’s truth has not changed. The Holy Scriptures have not changed. The Gospel of Jesus Christ has not changed. The church’s mission has not changed. Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.”

Thanks for listening to this special edition of The Briefing. For more information go to my website at AlbertMohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to BoyceCollege.com.

I’ll meet you again on Monday for The Briefing.

 

Transcript: The Briefing 06-30-15

The Briefing

June 30, 2015

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

 

It’s Tuesday, June 30, 2015. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Oklahoma execution method upheld by Supreme Court, despite severe questioning of death penalty

Once again, the Supreme Court of the United States was back in the headlines, actually yesterday more than once. In the first case that deserves our attention, the Supreme Court by a 5-4 ruling upheld the death penalty in the state of Oklahoma. At the center of that case was a single drug known as midazolam that was used and is now going to be used once again in lethal injections in that state. Attorney General Scott Pruitt of the state of Oklahoma said that the decision handed down on Monday means that execution dates can now be set for three convicted killers in his state. He said,

“This marks the eighth time a court has reviewed and upheld as constitutional the lethal injection protocol used by Oklahoma. The Court’s ruling preserves the ability of the Department of Corrections to proceed with carrying out the punishment of death.”

In full disclosure, I need to say that Attorney General Pruitt is not only the Attorney General of Oklahoma; he’s also a member of the Board of Trustees of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The issue of the death penalty is very controversial in this generation in America and it’s a unique issue because it not only divides Americans from other Americans in terms of a division over the question. It divides many Americans in terms internally of their own thinking. That became very evident in recent days when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving brother known as one of the Boston bombers from the Boston Marathon was sentenced to death after he received nine convictions on capital crimes and 30 total federal felony convictions for his role in the bombings. What made that situation unusual is that clearly a good number of Americans who say they are against the death penalty in principle, when it came to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have decided that they weren’t so much against the death penalty in principle when they came to the conclusion that the death penalty and the death penalty alone would be the appropriate sentence for someone who had committed those particularly horrific crimes.

When it came to the decision handed down yesterday by the Supreme Court. It was actually quite narrow. It had to do not only with just one state, the state of Oklahoma, it had to do with just one drug used in the lethal injection protocol in that state. Without going into all the details in terms of the arguments available in the case what became very clear was that at least two justices of the United States Supreme Court indicated that they were ready to revisit the entire question of the death penalty and that became very clear in their dissenting opinions. Justice Stephen Breyer, for example wrote,

“For it is those changes taken together with my own 20 years of experience on this Court, that led me to believe that the death penalty, in and of itself, now likely constitutes a legally prohibited “cruel and unusual punishment.”

He cited the United States Constitution and amendment eight. Similarly, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg announced that she also wants to reconsider the entire question of the death penalty. The dissents in this case followed a rather unusual pattern with a common dissent that had been penned by Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined by Justices Breyer, Ginsburg and Elena Kagan. And then a second dissent directed even more directly at the death penalty itself that was written by Justice Breyer joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice Breyer wrote,

“But rather than try to patch up the death penalty’s legal wounds one at a time, I would ask for full briefing on a more basic question: whether the death penalty violates the Constitution.”

He went on to say,

“It is highly likely that the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment.”

Which as you’ll recall, bars cruel and unusual punishments. The majority opinion was written by Justice Samuel Alito, he had been joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy. The majority opinion upheld the death penalty statute and the procedure used in Oklahoma and Justice Antonin Scalia responding to the dissent that had been written by Justice Breyer said that his plea for the abolition of the death penalty was in his words, “Gobbledy gook.”

Directly responding to Justice Breyer, Scalia wrote,

“Capital punishment presents moral questions that philosophers, theologians, and statesmen have grappled with for millennia,” he wrote. “The Framers of our Constitution disagreed bitterly on the matter. For that reason, they handled it the same way they handled many other controversial issues: they left it to the People to decide. By arrogating to himself the power to overturn that decision, Justice Breyer does not just reject the death penalty, he rejects the Enlightenment.”

Justice Scalia also pointed to the fact that when Justice Breyer joined by Justice Ginsburg said that capital punishment itself likely violates the U.S. Constitution that runs into the bare fact that the Constitution itself mentions capital punishment and its circumstances. So once again, as so many times this term and in recent years, you have on the court two different ways of reading the Constitution, one reading it as a text and one instead reading as a so-called living document that evolves along with the society. We can count on the fact that in fairly short order, it is likely that the Supreme Court will deal more comprehensively with the question of the death penalty. But at the same time, it also is an issue that is debated at the state level in many of the states.

Christians may well be divided over specific questions related to the death penalty, but there can be no question that the background to the death penalty itself is deeply rooted in a biblical worldview that understands every single human life to be sacred because every single human life is a gift of a divine creator who has made every single human being in his image. In the Noahic covenant found in Genesis 9, the biblical principles established that homicide means that the one who was murdered forfeits his own right to life. But finally we need also to understand that the death penalty is one of those issues that never stands alone. It is so connected to so many other moral issues that a major debate at the national level especially, when it comes to the death penalty is going to put many, many other issues on the table. And it will be very interesting to see how many Americans believe that the death penalty is wrong until all the sudden a crime comes to attention in which they say the death penalty is right.

2) Supreme Court stay against Texas abortion restrictions mean more infants will die

This is one of those moral conversations that’s going to continue for some time to come, so will also the issue of abortion. The Supreme Court yesterday blocks Texas from enforcing new restrictions on abortion providers that would’ve forced many clinics to close, according to Richard Wolf of USA Today and it would have made abortions harder to obtain. One of the things we see in this particular action is that the Supreme Court has signaled that it is probable or likely that it will take up the issue of abortion in the next term. As Richard Wolf reported,

“The decision proved as divisive for the court as all the others it reached Monday on the 2014 term’s final day. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they would have denied the stay application from abortion proponents.”

That’s very interesting because when there are justices who would not have granted a stay like this, the fact that their names are reported publicly is only due to the fact that they wanted their names released in this way. This tells us that they were signaling a significant split on the court. The Texas legislation is very, very important; it represents one of the most significant gains of the pro-life movement in recent years. It was recently upheld by the fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and that’s why it has now been appealed by the supporters of abortion all the way to the Supreme Court. And this is also a signal that the case in itself is likely to be heard by the Supreme Court in its next term. Those who are committed to the sanctity of human life should be very concerned about this block that was put on yesterday by the U.S. Supreme Court. This law would have saved unborn lives, but it is also very telling that those who are opposed to this Texas law seem to be so opposed that they are opposed to any law that might prevent any abortion under any circumstance at any time. And that is actually even more telling than the decision by the Supreme Court on this issue yesterday.

3) Christians cannot shirk responsibility to speak biblicly about gay marriage

Next, in the aftermath of Friday’s decision by the Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage, an interesting series of articles both in local newspapers and in the national media about how pastors, preachers, how evangelicals in particular are responding to the court’s decision. And one of the things that becomes very interesting in terms of the coverage offered in the mainstream media is the fact that as the Louisville Courier-Journal indicated the court probably didn’t change anyone’s mind in terms of anyone in the ministry when it comes to the issue of same-sex marriage. But the decision is presenting a moment in which silence is going to be increasingly difficult to sustain. Michael Paulson of the New York Times yesterday wrote a front-page story that in which he says the churches are grappling with a new era. Also yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, Zusha Elinson wrote an article celebrating or grappling with a new reality, in which she also looked at the response of several ministers and churches.

These national stories followed a rather predictable and common pattern. They found people in the ministry on both sides of the issue. They went to liberal denominations, liberal churches, they spoke to more liberal ministers and got the liberal case for celebrating the legalization of same-sex marriage. No real news there. They went to conservative churches, conservative denominations and conservative ministers and asked them why they could not celebrate and would not celebrate the legalization of same-sex marriage. Again, there was no news there. But whether it was intentional or not, what most of these stories actually revealed is the impossibility of finding any middle ground on this and that is very important and very revealing.

Those liberal ministers who are ready to voice their support of homosexuality and same-sex marriage were ready to tell reporters just how happy they were about the Supreme Court’s decision handed down on Friday. Those in particular, biblical evangelicals who could not support same-sex marriage and cannot define marriage as anything other than the union of a man and a woman found themselves once again answering the questions as Christians have answered the same questions for a series of millennia. This is why we believe that marriage is and can only be the union of a man and a woman. It was just good journalism to go to people on both sides of the issue, but in reality there was no surprise in either of these patterns of responses. But what was really interesting was the difficulty faced by so many ministers who didn’t want to take sides on the issue. By so many who didn’t want their churches to be identified as having a policy or a belief or a conviction one way or the other. One pastor in Georgia was cited in the Wall Street Journal saying that he and his church didn’t,

“Have an official position on same-sex marriage.”

That same pastor was quoted as saying,

“We gave a call today for love and decorum and respect, not only towards the Supreme Court but also towards others who might hold various viewpoints.”

Well, it goes without saying that various viewpoints cover an entire waterfront but it’s not going to cover for long. As I have said repeatedly on The Briefing and in every other context, there is no place to hide on this issue. Eventually every single church, every single denomination, every single pastor is going to have to answer the question. If anything, the decision handed down by the Supreme Court on Friday just makes that situation more acute. It is now virtually impossible to duck the issue or to hide or as is in the case with some the actual story becomes the attempt to hide or the attempt to evade the question. In terms of the political context, I think we can all understand why there might be a reluctance on the part of some to speak to an issue that will be divisive. But when it comes to the responsibility of the Christian pastor to preach the word in season and out of season there is no room for equivocation on something to which the Bible speaks clearly. And if the Bible speaks clearly to anything, it speaks clearly to the reality of marriage. Of course, as is so often the case, the problem isn’t that people are unclear or uncertain about what the Bible as the word of God teaches, rather they’re trying to find a way not to have to say everything the Bible teaches on these crucial questions. And even just at the level of practical ministry, churches that say they don’t have a policy, well, you can count on this, they are about to.

4) Individualized use of religion in weddings effort to escape morality-binding authority

Speaking of the ministry and the issue of same-sex marriage, Saturday’s edition of the New York Times had a truly interesting article. It was written by Samuel G. Freedman, the title was,

“Couples Enlist Online-Ordained Officiants, Redefining Nuptials.”

Speaking here of the fact that so many people who are seeking to obtain same-sex unions before more liberal denominations allow their clergy to celebrate them, they instead turn to people who had received an online or mail order ordination from a church known as the Universal Life Church. Freedman writes,

“Admittedly, it is tempting and even routine to treat the Universal Life Church as a folly. The church pumps out ordinations at an assembly-line pace, almost mocking a process that usually requires years of seminary study. Celebrities like Conan O’Brien, Joan Rivers, Steven Tyler of Aerosmith and Rob Dyrdek of MTV, have all boasted about their ordinations by Universal Life.”

And then Freedman writes and I’m going to quote him directly here,

“Yet the church does propound a theology of interfaith coexistence.”

Here’s the statement of the church,

“Yet the church does propound a theology of interfaith coexistence — ‘We are all children of the same universe’ — and its leaders write thoughtful essays on issues of social justice and equality. Those qualities, when combined with the ease of ordination, have helped the Universal Life Church carve out a place in a contemporary America where denominational borders are ever more porous and traditional dogma is increasingly disparaged as divisive.”

Now this story is more interesting about what it says about Samuel Freedman and the New York Times, looking at traditional Christianity, than it does about the Universal life Church and all of its ridiculousness. Again the main doctrinal issue that Freedman cites about the Universal life Church is that statement,

“We are all children of the same universe.”

To that I can only ask the question, in what possible universe is that taken to be a significant and meaningful not to mention deep statement. But what we are seeing here is the fact that in a post-Christian highly secularizing America, there are those who want to maintain the trappings of religion and even in this sense of legally ordained clergy without any theology whatsoever, without any doctrine, without any binding moral authority. Freedman cites Andrew Cherlin, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins, who said,

“It shows a very personal, individualistic attitude toward marriage. Yet even secular Americans still think that a religious presence matters. And having an online-ordained friend gives you more control over the ceremony rather than bowing to the restrictions that a real clergyman would impose.”

Well that, Professor Cherlin, is exactly the point isn’t it? Here you have the intentional effort to try to escape the binding moral authority, the moral judgments, the doctrine, the theology of any church that is tied to orthodox biblical Christianity. That’s exactly what’s going on here. Then Professor Cherlin actually in this article also offered an indictment of so many weddings that indeed are held in more traditional churches and are overseen and celebrated by more traditional ministers. He writes,

“The ceremony is now a personal celebration,” Dr. Cherlin said. “Marriage used to be the first step into adulthood. Now it’s the last step. And when people do it, they want to celebrate how well they’re doing in their lives. But that can’t explain it all. There are couples who still want a thin veneer of religion on what’s essentially a secular ceremony. It matters somehow that the officiant has a religious connection.”

Once again, that’s an amazingly insightful statement, it’s actually far more insightful I think than Professor Cherlin intended in terms of his statement to the New York Times. That is exactly what’s going on and my point is that that’s actually what’s going on amongst many people who haven’t turned to a so-called universal life minister to officiate at their wedding, but instead think they’re having a Christian wedding. But it’s simply because they’re standing in what’s identified as a Christian building. There are far too many weddings that people would identify as Christian weddings that are just as secular as the secular weddings overseen by ministers of the Universal Life Church. That’s an even greater tragedy. Also revealing was one statement made by one of those ministers of the Universal life Church, in this case the woman’s name is Meghan Gurley, she said,

“If you get ordained through a mainline church, you have to follow their rules,” she said. “If you are ordained through Universal Life, then you can do any kind of ministry you want to do. And I felt there was a gap in wedding ceremonies for people who wanted to write their own vows or people from two different faiths.”

Once again, I simply have to say, she’s more profound than she recognizes when she says,

“If you get ordained through a mainline church, you have to follow their rules.”

That’s kind of the point, isn’t it? But that just points to the fact that there are so many Americans who don’t want any rules whatsoever. They especially don’t want binding moral rules. They especially don’t want rules they know have been given to us by a living and holy God and they don’t want doctrine and theology they have to receive is true when that would make demands upon them that they do not want to accept. And yes, as this article makes all too clear, it often is revealed in unexpected places. One of those unexpected places is a wedding and just calling it Christian doesn’t make it Christian.

5) Celebration of chimps as relatives key test of worldview division of America

Finally, from a worldview perspective, a very interesting editorial appeared in the New York Times having to do with the fact that the United States Fish and Wildlife Service has reclassified chimpanzees from being merely threatened to now being endangered. But what’s really interesting is how the editors identify chimpanzees. In the initial paragraph they say that they are,

“Humans’ close relatives in evolution.”

But what’s really interesting is how they end the editorial. They end by citing Yuval Noah Harari, the recent author of the book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.” And the quote is this,

“Just 6 million years ago, a single female ape had two daughters. One became the ancestor of all chimpanzees; the other is our own grandmother.”

Now you can divide human beings in any number of ways. But right now, I’m willing to divide Americans between those for whom that sentence makes sense and for whom that sentence is manifest nonsense. We need to note that the worldview implications of that sentence are absolutely massive, infinitely more massive than seems to be recognized by those were quoting it in this editorial in the New York Times. If you really believe that just 6 million years ago, a single female ape had two daughters, one became the ancestor of the chimpanzees and the other became your grandmother, then who I simply have to ask do you think you are? That’s a truly frightening question. And that just reminds us all over again, that the only true, the only satisfying, the only consistent answer to that question, the only answer that underlines and affirms human dignity is the answer that is found in the Bible and affirmed by biblical Christianity. And it doesn’t begin with the chimp and it doesn’t begin 6 million years ago.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. And as we go into the summer season I want you to know that I mean that every single time I say it. I thank you for listening to The Briefing. I hope that together because of this program we are thinking more biblically, we are thinking more faithfully, we are thinking more accurately as Christians. And as we go into the summer season, this edition of The Briefing is the very last for the 2014-2015 season. And as this season of The Briefing comes to an end, I want to offer special appreciation to Jonathan Pentecost, our producer and Forrest Strickland, our engineer. It would be impossible to do this program without them. As always, I want to thank my dear wife Mary for supporting me in all things, including from the very beginning The Briefing. And as we go into the summer season, I pray that you and your family and your church have a wonderful, faithful, safe, God honoring experience, enjoying this particular season and all that it affords us. But even as this season of The Briefing comes to an end, I look forward to the 2015-2016 season of The Briefing that will begin on Monday, August 3, 2015.

 

Thanks once again for listening to The Briefing. For more information go to my website at AlbertMohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boycecollege.com.

 

I’ll meet you again on Monday, August 3, 2015.

 

Genesis 37:29-38:30

The Briefing 06-30-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Oklahoma execution method upheld by Supreme Court, despite severe questioning of death penalty

Supreme Court upholds use of controversial execution drug, Oklahoman Daily (AP)

2) Supreme Court stay against Texas abortion restrictions mean more infants will die

Supreme Court blocks enforcement of Texas anti-abortion law, USA Today (Richard Wolf)

3) Christians cannot shirk responsibility to speak biblicly about gay marriage

How gay marriage ruling affects local churches, Louisville Courier-Journal (Andrew Wolfson)

With Same-Sex Decision, Evangelical Churches Address New Reality, New York Times (Michael Paulson)

Supreme Court Gay Marriage Ruling Creates a New Reality, Wall Street Journal (Zusha Elinson)

4) Individualized use of religion in weddings effort to escape morality-binding authority

Couples Personalizing Role of Religion in Wedding Ceremonies, New York Times (Samuel Freedman)

5) Celebration of chimps as relatives key test of worldview division of America

Belated Protection for Some Close Relatives, New York Times (Editorial Board)

Transcript: The Briefing 06-29-15

The Briefing

June 26, 2015

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

It’s Monday, June 29, 2015. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Ending of New York prison break reminder sin is never as beautiful as it promises

The story pretty much ended where we knew it had to end. The story ended yesterday with the apprehension of David Sweat, one of two hardened murderers who would escape from one of most high-security prisons in America, the Clinton correctional institution in Dannemora, New York. They had been on the loose for approximately 3 weeks.

The stories that captivate our attention say a great deal about us and until Friday’s Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage, the story of these two escaped murderers had led most news accounts for most of the days that they had been missing from that correctional institution. We’re talking about David Sweat and Richard Matt, two hardened criminals, two murderers convicted of absolutely heinous crimes who had plotted for some time a very intricate and sophisticated breakout from prison. We now know that at least two employees of the prison were implicated in the plot and have now been arrested and they themselves are being held on charges of assisting the two murderers to escape. But America was fascinated with these two murderers who seemed to escape into thin air after breaking out of what had been considered one of the most high-security prisons in the entire nation.

On Friday, Richard Matt, age 49 was killed by law enforcement. Just two days later, David Sweat was apprehended and also shot but not killed as he was evidently attempting to cross America’s border with Canada. At the end of the day, the two hardened criminals had not gotten very far, escaping into the thickly wooded area around the Dannemora facility, they had gotten less than 60 miles. It was speculated early on that the sophistication of the plan might have indicated that the two had a way to get far beyond the prison once they made their escape. And we now know that that was probably the case because a woman who been working with them inside the prison didn’t go along with the plan to provide them with a vehicle after they had escaped from the prison facility.

From a Christian worldview perspective there are a couple of key insights here. In the first place, you will note the absolute absence of moral relativism in the press coverage concerning these two criminals. No one was at the time suggesting that we shouldn’t be worried about the fact that two convicted criminals were on the loose in New York. People throughout upstate New York into Canada and in neighboring states were living in fear and they were understanding that the police were very serious as was the Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo in arguing that these two men were inherently dangerous and were considered to be a threat to anyone who might encounter them after their escape from the prison. You will note that just about everyone commenting on this case agreed with the fact that these were two very evil men who simply could not be allowed to escape from this maximum-security prison.

The second insight from the Christian worldview here has to do with the nature of sin. Sin is itself a form of irrationality, it is never beautiful and it is never as sophisticated as it appears to be. In this case you’re talking about two men who had committed absolutely horrifying murders, in the case of one of them a series of brutal murders, in the case of the other the murder of a law enforcement officer. They also undeniably had a very sophisticated plan to escape from prison. But it wasn’t sophisticated in the end. The final picture for these two had nothing to do with sophistication and had everything to do with the brutal reality of sin. One of them is now dead, the other was shot twice by a police officer. Both of them were believed to have been ill and acting at least partly irrationally because of the effects of deprivation during the time they were running away from the police. Americans may be adopting moral relativism on an entire spectrum of sin, but when it comes to murder, it turns out that Americans aren’t really embracing moral relativism at all. It finally also comes to show us that when you have two men who think they have nothing to lose they act like it and sometimes they die like it.

2) Outrage directed at social conservatives, not terrorist attacks, exposes priorities 

Also as we went into the weekend, a horrifying story from three different continents tied together by the threat of terrorism. As Ben Hubbard of the New York Times reported,

“In a matter of hours and on three different continents, militants carried out attacks on Friday that killed scores of civilians, horrified populations and raised thorny questions about the evolving nature of international terrorism and what can be done to fight it.”

Hubbard went on to say,

“On the surface, the attacks appeared to be linked only by timing.

“In France, a man stormed an American-owned chemical plant, decapitated one person and apparently tried to blow up the facility. In Tunisia, a gunman drew an assault rifle from a beach umbrella and killed at least 38 people at a seaside resort. And in Kuwait, a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a mosque during communal prayers, killing at least 25 Shiite worshipers.”

As the front page story Saturday, the New York Times make clear, international observers of terrorism are now looking at the events that took place in this one day on three continents and are coming to a new and humbling realization that we’re not winning the war on terror. We are actually falling further and further behind. And this leads to the importance of an opinion piece that ran in Saturday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal by Bari Weiss entitled,

“Love Among the Ruins.”

It ties together so many of the stories that have rightly captivated our attention in recent days. But Bari Weiss finds some very deep lessons here that ought to interest us as well. She writes,

“On Friday my phone was blowing up with messages, asking if I’d seen the news. Some expressed disbelief at the headlines. Many said they were crying.

“None of them were talking about the dozens of people gunned down in Sousse, Tunisia, by a man who, dressed as a tourist, had hidden his Kalashnikov inside a beach umbrella. Not one was crying over the beheading in a terrorist attack at a chemical factory near Lyon, France. The victim’s head was found on a pike near the factory, his body covered with Arabic inscriptions. And no Facebook friends mentioned the first suicide bombing in Kuwait in more than two decades, in which 27 people were murdered in one of the oldest Shiite mosques in the country.

“They were talking about the only news that mattered: gay marriage.”

Now, very interestingly, Bari Weiss says that she herself is a long-term supporter of the legalization of same-sex marriage, but she writes about this quandary demonstrated in America’s attention to the one rather than to the other, and she writes,

“Moral relativism has become its own, perverse form of nativism among those who stake their identity on being universalist and progressive.”

She writes about the fact that the outrage that was offered by so many on Friday by so many Americans was expressed not toward those who had killed so many in three different continents on that very day, but rather as she says on anyone who dared to have any problem with the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage that was handed down on Friday. She points to the fact that on so many sexual issues, America has genuinely sought to embrace an ethic of moral relativism that centralizes the issues on which Americans have become increasingly relativistic in terms of morality. That’s not just a recent development but it has recently accelerated, culminating in Friday’s decision at the U.S. Supreme Court. But she writes about something that’s also very important. Every single culture expresses outrage and she finds it even as a defender of same-sex marriage, she finds it very telling that the supporters of same-sex marriage directed their outrage, not at terrorism, but rather at the defenders of traditional marriage.

She writes this very perceptively,

“The barbarians are at our gates. But inside our offices, schools, churches, synagogues and homes, we are posting photos of rainbows on Twitter. It’s easier to Photoshop images of Justice Scalia as Voldemort than it is to stare evil in the face.

“You can’t get married if you’re dead.”

3) Religious liberty immediately denigrated, questioned following Supreme Court decision

And make no mistake; the floodgates are now open for outrage towards any defender of traditional marriage, of marriage as defined in Scripture and in millennia of human experience in virtually every civilization throughout history as exclusively the union of a man and a woman. This moral revolution is taking no prisoners and it is moving with breathtaking velocity. Evidence of this came just hours after the Supreme Court decision on Friday. Evidence of this comes in a series of opinion pieces and news analyses that came in the immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court decision handed down on Friday. For example, in the New York Times on Saturday, Evan Wolfson, one of the most eager advocates for same-sex marriage from the very beginning, wrote an article entitled,

“Gay rights, what comes next?”

Now remember, this is just the day after the Supreme Court decision on Friday. He writes,

“Securing protections from discrimination for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans needs to be our priority.”

Wolfson has identified, even in this article, as the founder and president of a group entitled Freedom to Marry. As he himself has acknowledged, that group has now met its immediate goal, but not his long-range goals. And those long-range goals are no longer long-range. They are now focused on the immediate future. When he writes about securing protections as he says from discrimination for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans, he’s talking about pressing forward, especially at the federal level with something like ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and also going to the Civil Rights Act and including gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered person as protected classes. And make no mistake; those who are pressing for this kind of legislation understand that the religious liberty of millions of Americans is directly at the center of their concern. Wolfson wrote,

“The classic pattern in our history is that when opponents fail to block civil rights gains, they try to subvert them, often abusing the banner of religion. But the American people know that religious freedom is protected in the Constitution and is fully compatible with civil rights.”

But Evan Wolfson makes that statement without acknowledging with any specificity at all how he would respect the religious liberty of Americans who disagree with them on the issue of sexuality and same-sex marriage. But in reality, it’s not just this article we have from Evan Wolfson, we have an entire library of materials he’s written for the past several years and that gives us ample evidence to know that when he writes about religious liberty being enshrined within the U.S. Constitution, he means basically and essentially what New York Times columnist Frank Bruni called,

“The freedom to believe virtually anything on the basis of religion so long as you keep it in your home, your heart or in your congregation.”

No public significance whatsoever. This puts all religious institutions, all Christian colleges, schools, adoption agencies; it puts the entire world of those who are committed to a traditional understanding of marriage on warning that religious liberty is now to be considered a private issue with no public significance. This goes back to the fact that the decision that was handed down on Friday with the majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, limited religious freedom as it was even mentioned within the majority opinion to what is taught and advocated by churches. What disappears is the Constitution’s assurance of the free exercise of religion. The free exercise clause is not even mentioned in Justice Kennedy’s opinion. But it’s clear that Wolfson believes and he has every reason to believe this that momentum is on his side. He writes,

“Happily, the freedom to marry will be a gift that keeps on giving.”

Similarly, Sunday’s edition of the New York Times had a front page story by Erik Eckholm entitled,

“Next Fight for Gay Rights: Bias in Jobs and Housing.”

The subhead,

“Focus turns to new protections for sexual orientation and gender identity.”

It basically tells us the very same thing. That the advocates for same-sex marriage are now going to be translating that energy into efforts to achieve in law and mandatory nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. What’s really interesting about this New York Times article is how it acknowledges in its own way the religious liberty implications. Here’s the second paragraph by Eckholm,

“The proposals pit advocates against many of the same religious conservatives who opposed legalizing same-sex marriage, and who now see the protection of what they call religious liberty as their most urgent task.”

Well let’s just pause there for moment. Here you have an expression on the front page of the New York Times in which Eckholm speaks of those who are opposed to same-sex marriage and speaking “what they call religious liberty.” That’s very telling in itself. He goes on to write,

“These opponents argue that antidiscrimination laws will inevitably be used to force religious people and institutions to violate their beliefs, whether by providing services for same-sex weddings or by employing gay men and lesbians in church-related jobs.”

What’s really important about that is that Eckholm raises the issue. He articulates it rather clearly. He doesn’t answer it by saying in any way that it will not happen. But Eckholm’s article takes an even more ominous turn later when he writes,

“What outrages social conservatives is not only the narrow issue of same-sex marriage rights, but also what they see as a violation of religious liberties that they believe are intrinsic to the country.”

Well, here you have religious liberty that is by any historical measure intrinsic to the country. There’s a great deal more to the religious liberty front that will demand our attention.

4) Presentation of tax exemption as government subsidy threatens separation of church and state

But an article that appeared on Sunday at the website of Time magazine is most urgent. It’s by Mark Oppenheimer, the headline is this,

“Now’s the Time to End Tax Exemptions for Religious Institutions.”

As I said, it turned out it was only a matter of hours after Friday’s decision that this article appears and that it appears with that headline. While the headline is an accurate representation of Mark Oppenheimer’s argument, his argument is actually broader than the headline itself. Oppenheimer writes a biweekly beliefs column for the New York Times. He’s also identified as editor at large for The Tablet, he reports for The Atlantic, The Nation, This American Life and elsewhere. He’s one of the most insightful reporters in the secular media when it comes to religious life in America today and that’s why this article is actually so important. Mark Oppenheimer’s not writing from some kind of secular fringe, he’s writing from the secular mainstream, from the very heart of the mainstream media. The magazines heading under the headline says,

“The Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriage makes it clearer than ever that the government shouldn’t be subsidizing religion and non-profits.”

That gets to the larger issue of Mark Oppenheimer’s column. In much of the column, he criticizes the fact that not only religious institutions and churches are given a tax exemption, but also nonprofits in general. But by the time he comes to the end of his article, he’s allowing for exemptions to continue for a number of nonprofits. As he writes,

“I can see keeping some exemptions; hospitals, in particular, are an indispensable, and noncontroversial, public good.”

Let’s just point out that when it comes to many issues of biomedical ethics, Catholic hospitals and abortion for example, hospitals are anything but noncontroversial. But it’s really interesting that even as he’s arguing in general for removing tax exemption from nonprofits and religious institutions, there are a significant number of nonprofits that would continue to be tax exempt under his theory. He even expands it when he writes,

“And localities could always carve out sensible property-tax exceptions for nonprofits their communities need. But it’s time for most nonprofits, like those of us who faithfully cut checks to them, to pay their fair share.”

He actually begins his article by citing Senator Mike Lee of Utah, who introduced what’s called the First Amendment Defense Act. Oppenheimer writes,

“Which ensures that religious institutions won’t lose their tax exemptions if they don’t support same-sex marriage. Liberals tend to think Senator Lee’s fears are unwarranted, and they can even point to Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion in Friday’s case, which promises “that religious organizations and persons [will be] given proper protection.”

But then Oppenheimer writes very honestly,

“But I don’t think Sen. Lee is crazy.”

He goes on to write,

“I’m a gay-rights supporter who was elated by Friday’s Supreme Court decision — but I honor Senator Lee’s fears.”

Then his article takes a very crucial turn. He writes,

“I don’t, however, like his solution. And he’s not going to like mine. Rather than try to rescue tax-exempt status for organizations that dissent from settled public policy on matters of race or sexuality, we need to take a more radical step. It’s time to abolish, or greatly diminish, their tax-exempt statuses.”

Now we need to note really carefully that in that paragraph he says,

“It’s time to abolish, or greatly diminish, their tax-exempt statuses,” organizations he defines as those “that dissent from settled public policy on matters of race or sexuality.”

That’s his argument and then he writes,

“This system of tax exemptions and deductions took shape partly during World War I, when it was feared that the new income tax, with top rates as high as 77%, might choke off charitable giving. But whatever its intentions, today it’s a mess, for several reasons.”

Well, indeed, it is a mess because America’s total tax system is a mess. But even as he’s right, historically to point in 1909, 1913 and 1917, a tax exemption for religious institutions, churches, synagogues and temples in particular, actually goes back to ancient history and in terms of American law; it is directly settled upon precedents that come from England. The first reason Oppenheimer cites for eliminating the exemption is what he says is the difficulty of requiring the IRS to decide what is a religion. Next he goes on to argue that many nonprofits and here he doesn’t limit his case to religious institutions are actually quite wealthy. Oppenheimer writes,

“Defenders of tax exemptions and deductions argues that if we got rid of them charitable giving would drop. It surely would, although how much, we can’t say. But of course government revenue would go up, and that money could be used to, say, house the homeless and feed the hungry. We’d have fewer church soup kitchens — but countries that truly care about poverty don’t rely on churches to run soup kitchens.”

In the next paragraph he writes,

“Exemption advocates also point out that churches would be squeezed out of high-property-value areas. But if it’s important to the people of Fifth Avenue to have a synagogue like Emanu-El or an Episcopal church like St. Thomas in their midst, they should pay full freight for it. They can afford to, more than millions of poorer New Yorkers whose tax bills the synagogue and church exemptions are currently inflating.”

Earlier in the article he says,

“In a real sense, you and I are subsidizing Mormon temples, Muslims mosques, Methodist churches.”

That’s a very important issue. He uses the word subsidizing and that is exactly what the tax exemption is not doing. The key statement on these issues was made by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1970, in the case Walz versus Tax Commission of the City of New York; it was a stunning 8-1 decision. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Warren Burger made very clear that a tax exemption is not a subsidy that was affirmed by other justices in concurring opinions. A subsidy would be the transfer of tax money to institutions. That’s not what’s going on here that would be a completely separate issue. Rather, the tax exemption is granted with respect to institutions the government does not feel that it has the right to tax on the one hand and on the other hand, institutions that it believes are essential to the Commonwealth and to the commonweal, the well-functioning of society.

One the most basic principles that is deeply embedded in American jurisprudence is the fact that the government cannot do everything. This gets to the fact that mediating institutions including churches, synagogues, temples and other religious institutions fulfill a function the government actually cannot fulfill so well. Again, in his majority opinion Chief Justice Burger wrote,

“The grant of a tax exemption is not sponsorship since the government does not transfer part of its revenue to churches but simply abstains from demanding that the church support the state.”

That is extremely important language. Here Chief Justice Burger was affirming that the most basic fundamental and important reason that the government does not tax churches is that by taxation the church will be required to support the state. Members of synagogues, temples and churches are already taxpaying citizens. It would be a different thing altogether to require the synagogue, the temple or the church actually to fund and support the state. Those who supposedly believe in a separation of church and state have to recognize the dangers inherent in the proposal that the government tax the church. Furthermore, as Justice William Brennan said in that same case in 1970 in a concurring opinion,

“It cannot realistically be said that termination of religious tax exemptions would quantitatively lessen the extent of state involvement with religion.”

He also warns that taxing religious institutions would require investigations “in the church operations and finances.” Chief Justice Burger and Justice Brennan in writing their opinions in this case understood that taxing churches and religious institutions would inevitably put those churches and institutions in the position of funding the government and would put the state in the position of entangling itself in religious organizations and churches. There is so much more to talk about on this issue and we will, but we need to recall the fourth Chief Justice of the United States, the longest-serving chief Justice in American history, Chief Justice John Marshall, who wrote famously

“The power to tax involves the power to destroy.”

In a twitter exchange with Mark Oppenheimer on Sunday, he indicated to me that he did not base his argument on the decision that was handed down Friday by the Supreme Court. I take that statement at face value. He does cite the case in the opening paragraph, but whether it was his intention or not, Time magazine ran his article with the headline I quote again in full,

“Now’s the Time to End Tax Exemptions for Religious Institutions.”

And again the subhead, placed no doubt by an editor at Time magazine who wrote,

“The Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriage makes it clearer than ever that the government shouldn’t be subsidizing religion and nonprofits.”

As always, Mark Oppenheimer’s article demands a carefully reasoned response. We better be up to that challenge. But what’s perhaps even more telling is that this article appeared at time.com, with the headline and the subhead the magazine attached, hardly two days after the Supreme Court handed down its decision on Friday. Again it is just a matter of time. We just didn’t know it was this short of a matter of time.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. Remember that on Friday, we issued a special unannounced edition of The Briefing just on Friday’s Supreme Court decision. For information, go to my website AlbertMohler.com where you will find a major article I posted late on Friday entitled, “Everything Has Changed and Nothing Has Changed — The Supreme Court Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage.”

You can also follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to BoyceCollege.com.

I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

The Briefing 06-29-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Ending of New York prison break reminder sin is never as beautiful as it promises

David Sweat shot and captured alive after New York manhunt, CNN (Deborah Feyerick, Alexandra Field and Dana Ford)

2) Outrage directed at social conservatives, not terrorist attacks, exposes priorities 

Terrorist Attacks in France, Tunisia and Kuwait Kill Dozens, New York Times (Ben Hubbard)

Love Among the Ruins, Wall Street Journal (Bari Weiss)

3) Religious liberty immediately denigrated, questioned following Supreme Court decision

What’s Next in the Fight for Gay Equality, New York Times (Evan Wolfson)

Next Fight for Gay Rights: Bias in Jobs and Housing, New York Times (Erik Eckholm)

4) Presentation of tax exemption as government subsidy threatens separation of church and state

Now’s the Time To End Tax Exemptions for Religious Institutions, TIME (Mark Oppenheimer)

Everything Has Changed and Nothing Has Changed — The Supreme Court Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage

Everything has changed and nothing has changed. The Supreme Court’s decision yesterday is a central assault upon marriage as the conjugal union of a man and a woman and in a five to four decision the nation’s highest court has now imposed its mandate redefining marriage on all fifty states.

As Chief Justice Roberts said in his dissent, “The majority’s decision is an act of will, not a legal judgment.”

The majority’s argument, expressed by Justice Kennedy, is that the right of same-sex couples to marry is based in individual autonomy as related to sexuality, in marriage as a fundamental right, in marriage as a privileged context for raising children, and in upholding marriage as central to civilization. But at every one of these points, the majority had to reinvent marriage in order to make its case. The Court has not merely ordered that same-sex couples be allowed to marry – it has fundamentally redefined marriage itself.

The inventive legal argument set forth by the majority is clearly traceable in Justice Kennedy’s previous decisions including Lawrence (2003) and Windsor (2013), and he cites his own decisions as legal precedent. As the Chief Justice makes clear, Justice Kennedy and his fellow justices in the majority wanted to legalize same-sex marriage and they invented a constitutional theory to achieve their purpose. It was indeed an act of will disguised as a legal judgment.

Justice Kennedy declared that “the right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person, and under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment couples of the same-sex cannot be deprived of that right and that liberty.” But marriage is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. As the Chief Justice asserted in his dissent, the majority opinion did not really make any serious constitutional argument at all. It was, as the Chief Justice insisted, an argument based in philosophy rather than in law.

The Supreme Court’s over-reach in this case is more astounding as the decision is reviewed in full, and as the dissenting justices voiced their own urgent concerns. The Chief Justice accused the majority of “judicial policymaking” that endangers our democratic form of government. “The Court today not only overlooks our country’s entire history and tradition but actively repudiates it, preferring to live only in the heady days of the here and now,” he asserted. Further: “Over and over, the majority exalts the role of the judiciary in delivering social change.”

“The majority,” he made clear, “lays out a tantalizing vision for the future for Members of this Court. If an unvarying social institution enduring over all of recorded history cannot inhibit judicial policymaking, what can?”

That is a haunting question. This Chief Justice’s point is an urgent warning: If the Supreme Court will arrogate to itself the right to redefine marriage, there is no restraint on the judiciary whatsoever.

Justice Antonin Scalia offered a stinging rebuke to the majority. “This is a naked judicial claim to legislative–indeed super-legislative–power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government,” he stated. Justice Scalia then offered these stunning words of judgment: “A system of government that makes the people subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy.”

The Chief Justice also pointed to another very telling aspect of the majority opinion. The Kennedy opinion opens wide a door that basically invites looming demands for the legalization of polygamy and polyamory. As Chief Justice Roberts observed: “It is striking how much of the majority’s reasoning would apply with equal force to the claim of a fundamental right to plural marriage.” Striking, indeed. What is perhaps even more striking is that the majority did not even appear concerned about the extension of its logic to polygamy.

As the decision approached, those of us who have warned that the redefinition of marriage will not stop with same-sex unions were told that we were offering a fallacious slippery-slope argument. Now, the Chief Justice of the United States verifies that these concerns were fully valid. You can count on the fact that advocates for legalized polygamy found great encouragement in this decision.

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the land, and its decisions cannot be appealed to a higher court of law. But the Supreme Court, like every human institution and individual, will eventually face two higher courts. The first is the court of history, which will render a judgment that I believe will embarrass this court and reveal its dangerous trajectory. The precedents and arguments set forth in this decision cannot be limited to the right of same-sex couples to marry. If individual autonomy and equal protection mean that same-sex couples cannot be denied what is now defined as a fundamental right of marriage, then others will arrive to make the same argument. This Court will find itself in a trap of its own making, and one that will bring great harm to this nation and its families. The second court we all must face is the court of divine judgment. For centuries, marriage ceremonies in the English-speaking world have included the admonition that what God has put together, no human being – or human court – should tear asunder. That is exactly what the Supreme Court of the United States has now done.

The threat to religious liberty represented by this decision is clear, present, and inevitable. Assurances to the contrary, the majority in this decision has placed every religious institution in legal jeopardy if that institution intends to uphold its theological convictions limiting marriage to the union of a man and a woman. This threat is extended to every religious citizen or congregation that would uphold the convictions held by believers for millennia. Justice Clarence Thomas warned in his dissent of “ruinous consequences for religious liberty.”

One of the most dangerous dimensions of this decision is evident in what can only be described as the majority’s vilification of those who hold to a traditional view of marriage as exclusively the union of a man and a woman. Justice Samuel Alito stated bluntly that the decision “will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy.” According to the argument offered by the majority, any opposition to same-sex marriage is rooted in moral animus against homosexuals. In offering this argument the majority slanders any defender of traditional marriage and openly rejects and vilifies those who, on the grounds of theological conviction, cannot affirm same-sex marriage.

In a very real sense, everything has now changed. The highest court of the land has redefined marriage. Those who cannot accept this redefinition of marriage as a matter of morality and ultimate truth, must acknowledge that the laws of this nation concerning marriage will indeed be defined against our will. We must acknowledge the authority of the Supreme Court in matters of law. Christians must be committed to be good citizens and good neighbors, even as we cannot accept this redefinition of marriage in our churches and in our lives.

We must contend for marriage as God’s gift to humanity – a gift central and essential to human flourishing and a gift that is limited to the conjugal union of a man and a woman. We must contend for religious liberty for all, and focus our energies on protecting the rights of Christian citizens and Christian institutions to teach and operate on the basis of Christian conviction.

We cannot be silent, and we cannot join the moral revolution that stands in direct opposition to what we believe the Creator has designed, given, and intended for us. We cannot be silent, and we cannot fail to contend for marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

In one sense, everything has changed. And yet, nothing has changed. The cultural and legal landscape has changed, as we believe this will lead to very real harms to our neighbors. But our Christian responsibility has not changed. We are charged to uphold marriage as the union of a man and a woman and to speak the truth in love. We are also commanded to uphold the truth about marriage in our own lives, in our own marriages, in our own families, and in our own churches.

We are called to be the people of the truth, even when the truth is not popular and even when the truth is denied by the culture around us.  Christians have found themselves in this position before, and we will again. God’s truth has not changed. The Holy Scriptures have not changed. The Gospel of Jesus Christ has not changed. The church’s mission has not changed. Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.

I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/albertmohler.

The Briefing Special Edition: Supreme Court Ruling on Same Sex Marriage

1) Supreme Court affirms gay marriage as constitutional right, disregards democratic process 

Obergefell, et. al., v Hodges, et. al., Supreme Court

Transcript: Obama’s remarks on Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage, Washington Post (Pres. Barack Obama)

#LoveWins: Show Your Support for Marriage Equality Everywhere, White House

Our Weddings, Our Worth, New York Times (Frank Bruni)

The Supremes got it right – It’s no longer ‘gay marriage.’ It’s ‘marriage.’ And we’re better for it: Editorial, PennLive (Editorial Board)