AMERICAN RENEWAL PROJECT 06/17/2020 SCOTUS NOW LEGISLATES FROM THE BENCH!

“The Supreme Court declared Monday [June 15, 2020] that the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects LGBTQ employees from workplace discrimination nationwide,” reported the Los Angeles Times. “The 6-3 ruling, one of the most far-reaching civil rights advances in recent decades,” to the LA Times’ gleeful gaiety, “marked a victory for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer workers, who until now lacked legal protection in more than half the states.”1 On June 15, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court formulated and ordained “special workplace rights” for homosexuals and sufferers from gender dysphoria. Instead of on existing law, the SCOTUS edict was wholly based on the political and personal solicitude of six secularized Justices.2 At issue in the case was the owner of three Michigan funeral homes defending his right to require employees to dress at the workplace according to their biological sex. Thomas Rost, president and owner of RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes, a devout Christian, had hired Anthony Stephens in 2007 as a funeral director. In 2013, Stephens informed his employer that he was undergoing a “gender transition” and would be showing up in “female clothing” at the office each day. Stephens was terminated two weeks later and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) brought suit. If Stephens had decided to appear in beach attire or gym clothes each day, contra to the requirements of propriety and decorum in a funeral parlor, would his employer have the right to terminate his employment? It comes down to property rights. Does a specific job belong to the owner of the business who offers the job or to the employee hired for that position? Does the owner of a business have the right to set the requirements for the job according to his assessment of what is best and most profitable or are employees or perhaps even government bureaucrats empowered to determine how to fulfill the job? Before dealing with Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch’s sellout, let’s make it clear that homosexuals and transgenders are created in the image of God. While recognizing the dignity and equality of each person, both the Old and New Testament [Leviticus 18:22 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11] condemn homosexual intercourse as immoral and an “abomination.” While all men are created in the image of God, Biblical truth holds that only those who know Jesus Christ are children of God. “Behold, how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! For this cause the world doesn’t know us, because it didn't know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it is not yet revealed what we will be. But we know that, when He is revealed, we will be like Him; for we will see Him just as He is. Everyone who has this hope set on Him purifies himself, even as He is pure." [1 John 3:1-3] One may disagree with Scripture’s view on homosexuality but one can’t deny that the Word condemns sodomy from Genesis, written by Moses around 1440 B.C., down to Revelation, written by John of Patmos around 95 A.D. That said, the highly touted “conservative” Neil Gorsuch [Justice Antonin Scalia’s replacement] joined five apostate judicial activists in instituting “special rights” for homosexual and gender dysphoria sufferers in the workplace. Unimpressed with SCOTUS dictum, MO Senator Josh Hawley scoffed that “The court is legislating what they think is good policy. And that, to me though, that’s really not their role. I mean I don’t particularly care about their views on policy.”3

Judicial activism represents the clear and present danger of government by judiciary. Instead of advancing equal rights - calling “balls and strikes” according to the Constitution - these Court umpires join the game on the field by legislating from the bench, thereby unconstitutionally usurping the Legislative Branch. High-minded and imperious, they have arrogated to themselves an ivory tower throne as “rulers of the country,” renouncing the rights of the legitimate owners: We The People. In similar fashion, the radically secularized Judicial Branch has placed “sustainable freedom” in the crosshairs through dabbling in religion, ethics, philosophy and psychology over the last century. The sheer arrogance and unabashed brazenness of devising decrees and writs on who to worship [Abington School District v. Schempp], how to worship [Stone v. Graham], defining moral law [Obergefell vs. Hodges], and now detecting LGBTQ “special rights” in the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 is deeply disconcerting and alarming. God alone determines what is good and evil, regardless of the version of “truth” upon which five secular U.S. Supreme Court Justices can agree any given day. As it says in Proverbs 16:11-12: “Honest balances and scales are Yahweh’s; all the weights in the bag are His work. It is an abomination for kings to do wrong, for the throne is established by righteousness.” In the words of Jewish Hebrew scholar Dr. Michael V. Fox, “God is the ultimate source of standards, and any distortion in their accuracy offends Him directly.” For more than 100 years, U.S. Supreme Court Justices have been in the business of offending God’s standards of conduct. Neil Gorsuch’s treacherous deception was predictable, given the fact that Judge Gorsuch attended the ultra-liberal St. John’s Episcopal Church in Boulder, Colorado. His pastor, Rev. Susan Woodward Springer, is pro-LGBT, pro same-sex marriage and anti-Trump. Following the election of Donald J. Trump, she wrote that “her congregation should strive to behave as Godly people who spread hope even though ‘the world is clasping its head in its hands and crying out in fear.’” That Sunday, following Trump’s victory, Neil Gorsuch was an usher in the morning service.4 With Justice Gorsuch's unconditional commitment to “special LGBTQ workplace rights,” the second leg of President Trump’s three-legged reelection stool has been chopped off. The first leg - the economy firing on all cylinders - was removed by the medical and media mishandling of COVID-19. In his bestselling 2017 book The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, Rob Dreher writes: “The storm clouds have been gathering for decades, but most of us believers have operated under the illusion that they would blow over. The breakdown of the natural family, the loss of traditional moral values, and the fragmenting of communities - we were troubled by these developments but believed they were reversible and didn’t reflect anything fundamentally wrong with our approach to faith. “The advance of gay civil rights, along with a reversal of religious liberties for believers who do not accept the LGBT agenda, had been slowly but steadily happening for years. The U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision declaring a constitutional right to same-sex marriage was the Waterloo of religious conservatism. It was the moment that the Sexual Revolution triumphed decisively, and the culture war, as we have known it since the 1960s, came to an end. In the wake of Obergefell, Christian beliefs about the sexual complementarity of marriage are considered to be abominable prejudice - and in a growing number of cases, punishable.”5 As we have said before, if Evangelical and Pro-Life Catholic Christians don’t take their game to the next level - Jesus’ Kingdom ekklesia assignment from Matthew 16:18 - sustainable freedom is at risk. Religious liberty will be won by prayer and organizing. Sunday sermons alone are not enough. Let Gideons or Rahabs please rise!! David Lane American Renewal Project 1. www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-06-15/supreme-court-sex-discrimination-gay-and-transgender-workers 2. lc.org/newsroom/details/061520-scotus-decides-employment-cases 3. Was It All for This? The Failure of the Conservative Legal Movement; www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2020/06/65043/ 4. www.politico.com/news/2020/06/15/gorsuch-lgbt-republicans-321096 5. www.amazon.com/Benedict-Option-Strategy-Christians-Post-Christian/dp/0735213291