RFRA and the "Right to Happiness"

We are witnessing a fundamental transformation of our country. It was promised, and is being delivered. The right to have sex with whomever, whenever, is becoming the civil right that must trump all others. The debate over the Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRA) passed in Indiana and Arkansas illustrates this point.

The first RFRA was a 1993 federal law signed by president Bill Clinton. It unanimously passed the House of Representatives, where it was sponsored by then-congressman Chuck Schumer, and sailed through the Senate on a 97-3 vote. How many laws are that obvious, that well-supported by left and right? Before Indiana, nineteen states had substantially identical laws on their books. Illinois’ version was enacted with the “yea” vote of then-state-Senator Barack Obama.

The law reestablished a balancing test for courts to apply in religious liberty cases (a standard had been used by the Supreme Court for decades). RFRA allows a the government by its rules, laws, ordinances, etc., to "substantially burden" a person's free exercise of religion only if the law furthers a "compelling governmental interest" and uses the "least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest."

So much of the debate seems to focus on one person or group imposing their views on another. Let me illustrate:

Two people are each minding their own business. They have nothing to do with each other. Ann approaches Bob and says, "Hey, I demand that you do something for me that violates your sincerely held religious beliefs, beliefs that one or more major religions held for thousands of years." 

Bob replies, "Wow, I'd like to serve you, but could you ask someone else? Other people will help you with that. But for me, I think it might displease God if I did it. You are free to do what you want, but please don't ask me to join you." 

Ann responds: "You bigot! I'm suing you and taking everything you have!"

Since when should Ann have the right under law to force Bob to behave in conformity with her moral views and participate in her conduct? RFRA would protect Bob from having to do what Ann demands, unless the government has some compelling reason to force everyone like Bob to always do what Ann is asking. This is not a “gay” issue, but the “gay rights” militants take Ann’s side, that the government should enforce Ann’s demand on Bob.

But let’s play this out. At what point would the militants (and all politicians who are now complaining about Bill Clinton’s RFRA and the state versions enacted since) disagree with Ann? What if Ann asks Bob to:

• sing in Ann’s night club, since Bob is a singer?
• sing at Ann’s Mosque, since Bob is a singer?
• cater at Ann’s lewd bachelorette party, since Bob is a caterer?
• officiate Ann’s gay wedding, since Bob is an Imam at the local Mosque?
• take nude photos of Ann, since Bob is a photographer?
• print a porn magazine, since Bob runs a print shop?
• do the cutting for Ann’s animal sacrifice, since Bob is a butcher?
• abort Ann’s child, since Bob is an OBGYN?

Should Ann be able to legally force Bob in each of these cases? If Bob has a sincerely held conviction against the activities, he would not have to participate under RFRA unless the government shows some compelling reason that all Bobs in all circumstances must yield to all similarly-situated Anns in the world. Perhaps the government could demonstrate that, and would back Ann in her demand. Maybe in the case of baking a cake to celebrate a gay wedding, the government has a compelling interest in forcing all Bobs to do so, while in the case of animal sacrifice it does not. Perhaps in the case of singing at the Mosque it does, and in the abortion case it does not.

But these are the questions under RFRA, not the answers.

I encourage you to read the following essay from C.S. Lewis. He saw the liberals’ inconsistency in England more than 50 years ago. They said sexual freedom should be given equal footing with other freedoms, but the real proposal is to elevate it to a new and higher right that trumps all others. His insights are, as always, profound and quite applicable to the situation in which we find ourselves.

Curt

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Have We No Right to Happiness?

C.S. Lewis

 “After all,” said Clare. “they had a right to happiness.”

We were discussing something that once happened in our own neighborhood. Mr. A. had deserted Mrs. A. and got his divorce in order to marry Mrs. B., who had likewise got her divorce in order to marry Mr. A. And there was certainly no doubt that Mr. A. and Mrs. B. were very much in love with one another. If they continued to be in love, and if nothing went wrong with their health or their income, they might reasonable expect to be very happy.

It was equally clear that they were not happy with their old partners. Mrs. B. had adored her husband at the outset. But then he got smashed up in the war. It was thought he had lost his virility, and it was known that he had lost his job. Life with him was no longer what Mrs. B. had bargained for. Poor Mrs. A., too. She had lost her looks—and all her liveliness. It might be true, as some said, that she consumed herself by bearing his children and nursing him through the long illness that overshadowed their earlier married life.

You mustn’t, by the way, imagine that A. was the sort of man who nonchalantly threw a wife away like the peel of an orange he’d sucked dry. Her suicide was a terrible shock to him. We all knew this, for he told us so himself. “But what could I do?” he said. “A man has a right to happiness. I had to take my one chance when it came.”

I went away thinking about the concept of a “right to happiness.”

At first this sounds to me as odd as a right to good luck. For I believe—whatever one school of moralists may say—that we depend for a very great deal of our happiness or misery on circumstances outside all human control. A right to happiness doesn’t, for me, make much more sense than a right to be six feet tall, or have a millionaire for your father, or to get good weather whenever you want to have a picnic.

I can understand a right as a freedom guaranteed me by the laws of the society I live in. Thus, I have a right to travel along the public roads because society gives me that freedom; that’s what we mean by calling the roads “public.” I can also understand a right as a claim guaranteed me by the laws, and correlative to an obligation on someone else’s part. If I have a right to receive $100 from you, this is another way of saying that you have a duty to pay me $100. If the laws allow Mr. A. to desert his wife and seduce his neighbor’s wife, then, by definition, Mr. A. has a legal right to do so, and we need bring in no talk about happiness.

But of course that was not what Clare meant. She meant that he had not only a legal but a moral right to act as he did. In other words, Clare is—or would be if she thought it out—a classical moralist after the style of Thomas Aquinas, Grotius, Hooker and Locke. She believes that behind the laws of the state there is a Natural Law.

I agree with her. I hold this conception to be basic to all civilization. Without it, the actual laws of the state become an absolute, as in Hegel. They cannot be criticized because there is no norm against which they should be judged.

The ancestry of Clare’s maxim. “They have a right to happiness,” is august. In words that are cherished by all civilized men, but especially by Americans, it has been laid down that one of the rights of man is a right to “the pursuit of happiness.” And now we get to the real point.

What did the writers of that august declaration mean?

It is quite certain what they did not mean. They did not mean that man was entitled to pursue happiness by any and every means—including, say, murder, rape, robbery, treason and fraud. No society could be built on such a basis.

They meant “to pursue happiness by all lawful means”; that is, by all means which the Law of Nature eternally sanctions and which the laws of the nation shall sanction.

Admittedly this seems at first to reduce their maxim to the tautology that men (in pursuit of happiness) have a right to do whatever they have a right to do. But tautologies, seen against their proper historical context, are not always barren tautologies. The declaration is primarily a denial of the political principles which long governed Europe; a challenge flung down to the Austrian and Russian empires, to England before the Reform Bills, to Bourbon France. It demands that whatever means of pursuing happiness are lawful for any should be lawful for all that “man,” not men of some particular cast, class, status or religion, should be free to use them. In a century when this is being unsaid by nation after nation and party after party, let us not call it a barren tautology.

But the question as to what means are “lawful”—what methods of pursuing happiness are either morally permissible by the Law of Nature or should be declared legally permissible by the legislature of a particular nation—remains exactly where it did. And on that question I disagree with Clare. I don’t think it is obvious that people have the unlimited “right to happiness” which she suggests.

For one thing, I believe that Clare, when she says “happiness,” means simply and solely “sexual happiness.” Partly because women like Clare never use the word “happiness” in any other sense. But also because I never heard Clare talk about the “right” to any other kind. She was rather leftist in her politics, and would have been scandalized if anyone had defended the actions of a ruthless man-eating tycoon on the ground that his happiness consisted in making money and he was pursuing his happiness. She was also a rabid teetotaler; I never heard her excuse an alcoholic because he was happy when he was drunk.

A good many of Clare’s friends, and especially her female friends, often felt—I’ve heard them say so—that their own happiness would be perceptibly increased by boxing her ears. I very much doubt if this would have brought her theory of a right to happiness into play.

Clare, in fact, is doing what the whole western world seems to me to have been doing for the last 40-odd years. When I was a youngster, all the progressive people were saying, “Why all this prudery? Let us treat sex just as we treat all our other impulses.” I was simple-minded enough to believe they meant what they said. I have since discovered that they meant exactly the opposite. They meant that sex was to be treated as no other impulse in our nature has ever been treated by civilized people. All the others, we admit, have to be bridled. Absolute obedience to your instinct for self-preservation is what we call cowardice; to your acquisitive impulse, avarice. Even sleep must be resisted if you’re a sentry. But every unkindness and breach of faith seems to be condoned provided that the object aimed at is “four bare legs in a bed.”

It is like having a morality in which stealing fruit is considered wrong—unless you steal nectarines.

And if you protest against this view you are usually met with chatter about the legitimacy and beauty and sanctity of “sex” and accused of harboring some Puritan prejudice against it as something disreputable or shameful. I deny the charge. Foam-born Venus … golden Aphrodite … Our Lady of Cyprus… I never breathed a word against you. If I object to boys who steal my nectarines, must I be supposed to disapprove of nectarines in general? Or even of boys in general? It might, you know, be stealing that I disapproved of.

The real situation is skillfully concealed by saying that the question of Mr. A’s “right” to desert his wife is one of “sexual morality.” Robbing an orchard is not an offense against some special morality called “fruit morality.” It is an offense against honesty. Mr. A’s action is an offense against good faith (to solemn promises), against gratitude (toward one to whom he was deeply indebted) and against common humanity.

Our sexual impulses are thus being put in a position of preposterous privilege. The sexual motive is taken to condone all sorts of behavior which, if it had any other end in view, would be condemned as merciless, treacherous and unjust.

Now though I see no good reason for giving sex this privilege, I think I see a strong cause. It is this.

It is part of the nature of a strong erotic passion—as distinct from a transient fit of appetite—that makes more towering promises than any other emotion. No doubt all our desires makes promises, but not so impressively. To be in love involves the almost irresistible conviction that one will go on being in love until one dies, and that possession of the beloved will confer, not merely frequent ecstasies, but settled, fruitful, deep-rooted, lifelong happiness. Hence all seems to be at stake. If we miss this chance we shall have lived in vain. At the very thought of such a doom we sink into fathomless depths of self-pity.

Unfortunately these promises are found often to be quite untrue. Every experienced adult knows this to be so as regards all erotic passions (except the one he himself is feeling at the moment). We discount the world-without-end pretensions of our friends’ amours easily enough. We know that such things sometimes last—and sometimes don’t. And when they do last, this is not because they promised at the outset to do so. When two people achieve lasting happiness, this is not solely because they are great lovers but because they are also—I must put it crudely—good people; controlled, loyal, fair-minded, mutually adaptable people.

If we establish a “right to (sexual) happiness” which supersedes all the ordinary rules of behavior, we do so not because of what our passion shows itself to be in experience but because of what it professes to be while we are in the grip of it. Hence, while the bad behavior is real and works miseries and degradations, the happiness which was the object of the behavior turns out again and again to be illusory. Everyone (except Mr. A. and Mrs. B.) knows that Mr. A. in a year or so may have the same reason for deserting his new wife as for deserting his old. He will feel again that all is at stake. He will see himself again as the great lover, and his pity for himself will exclude all pity for the woman.

Two further points remain.

One is this. A society in which conjugal infidelity is tolerated must always be in the long run a society adverse to women. Women, whatever a few male songs and satires may say to the contrary, are more naturally monogamous than men; it is a biological necessity. Where promiscuity prevails, they will therefore always be more often the victims than the culprits. Also, domestic happiness is more necessary to them than to us. And the quality by which they most easily hold a man, their beauty, decreases every year after they have come to maturity, but this does not happen to those qualities of personality —women don’t really care two cents about our looks—by which we hold women. Thus in the ruthless war of promiscuity women are at a double disadvantage. They play for higher stakes and are also more likely to lose. I have no sympathy with moralists who frown at the increasing crudity of female provocativeness. These signs of desperate competition fill me with pity.

Secondly, though the “right to happiness” is chiefly claimed for the sexual impulse, it seems to be impossible that the matter should stay there. The fatal principle, once allowed in that department, must sooner or later seep through our whole lives. We thus advance toward a state of society in which not only each man but every impulse in each man claims carte blanche. And then, though our technological skill may help us survive a little longer, our civilization will have died at heart, and will—one dare not even add “unfortunately”—be swept away.

This was reportedly the last published article by C.S. Lewis before his death. He must be rolling over in his grave.

Protecting Marriage: Invest Time in Each Other

He sits on the park bench while she strolls the arboretum path. Checking the news on his iPhone, he’s patient…just doesn’t have a thing for flowers. She wishes he would walk with her. Beautiful colors and aromas, why can’t he enjoy them, too? “But,” she admits, “I don’t really care much for politics, either. Oh well, it was nice of him to bring me here.” She sighs wistfully. “It’s normal for men and women to enjoy different things.” Before walking on, she checks her watch to see how long until they planned to meet at the car.

Does this sound like your marriage? Is this all we can expect? 

Should we resign ourselves to doing our duties to, and expecting little more than that from, the one person we promised to love and to cherish until death do us part? Or, were the vows, “until hunting season do us part” or “until Facebook do us part”? Is this one to whom we pledged our life the same one who plays second fiddle to a tee time? 

Laura and I had the privilege of writing an article on the topic of spending time together as a married couple. We believe that a conscious choice to spend quality time together not only pays rich dividends in a stronger marriage, but also helps each of us be more like our example, Jesus.

The complete article can be found on pages 24 and 25 of this online "Protecting Marriage" edition of God's Revivalist magazine.

Obama: Now a Bible-Thumper?!

The hypocrisy of the left is breathtaking. President Obama’s invocation of God's word to support his illegal actions on illegal aliens is only the most recent example. If the law of the United States doesn't allow him to do what he wants, then he appeals to a Higher Authority?
Obama's constitutional duty is to faithfully execute the laws. The President and his administration are the “executive branch”—get it? In case you are unclear as to what "execute" means, here you go:

1: to carry out fully :  put completely into effect <execute a command>

2: to do what is provided or required by <execute a decree>

3: to put to death especially in compliance with a legal sentence

4: to make or produce (as a work of art) especially by carrying out a design

5: to perform what is required to give validity to <execute a deed>

Do what the law commands and carry out what has been decreed...by the legislative and judicial branches. What if the next President decides not to enforce capital gain tax collection? Or corporate tax collection? Or environmental protection laws? Or minimum wage laws? Or unpopular elements of ObamaCare…oh, wait, Obama's already used that one.
The Patriot Post wrote the following [Patriot Post November 24, 2014].
Curt

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Politicians -- Please Read All of God’s Word

Thursday evening’s executive decree by Barack Obama marked a particularly significant reversal. But it’s not what you might think.
In September 2012 at their nationally televised party convention, Democrats loudly booed the mention of God and the proposal by former Democrat Governor Ted Strickland to add the Judeo-Christian God, Jehovah, to the party’s platform written and approved every four years. Despite delegate opposition to the amendments, Los Angeles Mayor and DNC Convention Chairman Antonio Villaraigosa overruled the vocal crowd to return this statement to the 2012 platform: “We need a government that stands up for the hopes, values and interests of working people and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential.”
Now, just two years later, the president evokes Scripture in announcing policy. It wasn’t from the New Testament, which leftists frequently select – especially the Sermon on the Mount – for the purpose of pushing “social justice,” but from Exodus, that book where Jehovah handed down the Law to Moses to govern the conduct of the nation of Israel and its people.
Flowing across the lips of one of the most secular leaders in our nation’s history came, “Scripture tells us that we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger – we were strangers once, too.” He was paraphrasing Exodus 22:21 and Exodus 23:9, the former of which says, “You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” He did this merely to add moral authority for his unconstitutional action.
Will America soon see Barack Obama’s newfound application of the Bible in other policies such as monogamous marriage between a man and a woman or the protection of the life of the unborn?
Let’s pray to see that miraculous conversion.
On Thursday, America witnessed a despicable demonstration of grazing from the oft-used Biblical Buffet, picking and choosing Holy Scripture to fulfill one’s argument, justify a narrative, and, yes, even to justify sin.
To Obama, progressives and all those who worship the secular triune of me, myself and I, plucking Holy Scripture out of context is deemed useful and is employed to rationalize select agendas. However, they say employing those same Scriptures in their entirety to govern one’s behavior, applying virtues in the corporate world, selection of education, entertainment, relationships, et al, should be viewed as extremist and not be permitted in the public square of debate or civic engagement.
All of Scripture testifies to Jehovah’s characteristics of mercy, grace, compassion, limitless love – and righteousness, justice and wrath toward sin. Selective application of God’s Truth is exposed as false teaching and bearing a false witness to the Gospel.
Those of us watching Obama use God’s teaching in such a craven way winced. He supports the murder of the unborn; he has scrambled domestic and military policy to normalize homosexuality in our culture; he was disciplined in racial hate and leftist “liberation theology” by Jeremiah “God D___ America” Wright; he has openly mocked those who “cling to religion”; and he supports all manner of activism contrary to our nation’s Judeo-Christian foundation.
To see the president flippantly use his momentary public profession of faith to Christianity in justifying the disregard for America’s laws as he evokes a commandment of Jewish law was too rich. Remember, this is the same president who refuses to identify and work to eradicate Islamic terrorism while hundreds and thousands of Christians in the Middle East are persecuted and executed for their refusal to denounce Christ as Lord.
Yet, the reality is raw: Gone are the Olympic-god-invoking Greek columns of Obama’s coronation in Chicago’s Butler Field in 2008. Gone are the screaming, fainting crowds of hundreds of thousands in Germany. Gone are the soaring statements of great intellect and political prowess amongst media and colleagues after the merry-go-round of scandals.
After having his six years in office, Obama’s policies and his team of fellow progressives overwhelmingly rejected on Nov. 4, this former political messiah has been exposed. He has no personal authority that remains credible – he’s broken the trust of those he was elected to serve.
While all who watched Thursday’s proclamation know that the policy of legal immigration must be reformed and enforced with humanity, we witnessed a failing leader attempt to justify his own lawlessness and that of millions by standing on a moral platform that, until now, he has openly mocked and betrayed.
The pitiful display of the countless who continue to defend Obama and practice the overt disdain for truth, integrity and goodness should send those of us who abide in the Almighty to our knees and on our faces in prayer. America deserves leadership that is not double-minded and is rooted in honor – on both sides of the political aisle.

President Obama's speech in response to the Ferguson Grand Jury's Decision

President Obama's speech tonight, in response to the Ferguson grand jury's decision, was appropriate and going well, UNTIL he mentioned that "communities of color aren't just making these problems up." Did he not just hear the prosecutor confirm that many "witnesses" gave false, sworn testimony claiming that Michael Brown was shot in the back, while running away, amongst other lies, when the forensic evidence, especially the autopsies, along with credible witnesses' testimony, proved those claims to be false? In actuality, the evidence substantiated that Brown acted like a thug to the store owner he stole from, and to the police officer who responded appropriately to Brown's violent and aggressive behavior. No, President Obama, the lessons that need to be learned from the Ferguson tragedy are that race baiting leaders promoting false narratives are not helping anybody. In fact, they're unnecessarily exacerbating racial tensions. These leaders, and President Obama, should instead preach that behaving badly has serious consequences. If you steal, you go to jail. If you attack a cop or neighborhood watch volunteer doing their job, you risk getting shot. If you riot and loot when you don't like a clearly just result, you worsen a tragedy. The more these leaders point to cases that don't prove their claims of police brutality and racism, the more it highlights the real source of the problem.

~Steve Campos

Vote YES to Retain Justice Karmeier

Few political races ever fired me up--and flat out made me angry!--as much the issue of retaining Illinois Supreme Court Justice Lloyd Karmeier this year. A man of integrity is being unjustly attacked by attorneys who are trying to buy the judiciary.

I don't have the time to go into all of the details, but you can investigate this for yourself. The trial lawyers have a huge case pending before the Illinois Supreme Court. Cases don't get to the Illinois Supreme Court unless there is some legitimate doubt about their outcome. There are reportedly $1.7 billion dollars in attorney's fees that are contingent on this case. The seven justices on the Illinois Supreme Court, based on their positions in similar cases, appear to be about split on it. Karmeier and three other justices seem likely to rule against trial lawyers, while the remaining three justices seem likely to rule in their favor. Karmeier happens to be up for retention vote this year, so if the trial lawyers could get him off the court, they would at least have a 50-50 chance of getting someone who would rule their way to replace him...and if they can get that done, they are likely to win the $1,700,000,000 in legal fees when this big case gets decided in the next few months. 

Let's put that number in perspective.  If there are 50 lawyers working on the case, that means each one of them will make around THIRTY FOUR MILLION dollars! Or, if there are 100 lawyers working on the case, they can each easily retire on their $17,000,000 take. If there are 600 lawyers working on the big case, that means they will take nearly $3,000,000 apiece! Even if the fees are spread among 1,700 lawyers, each gets a million bucks ...if Justice Karmeier is no longer on the Illinois Supreme Court.

So these lawyers are going to stoop to about any depth to remove Justice Karmeier! Based on the many mailings received in my household, that depth is sickeningly low. They are resorting to gross misrepresentation of rulings he has been involved in for many decades. One of the things that even these mailings prove: Justice Karmeier rules based on the law, not on feelings. He decides cases based on what the law actually says, not based on how popular a ruling might later be when analyzed by political opponents.

Note that for the last ten years, he is just one of seven justices on the Illinois Supreme Court, so he has no power to do anything alone...any decision of the court has to have the concurrence of at least three other justices. Karmeier is not out of the mainstream, as the dirty mailings would like to imply.

Don't be suckered by the emotional garbage ("Oh, you couldn't vote for someone who was soft on a murderer, would you?"). Just follow the money, and you know what is behind the false demonizing of this good man. As yourself what might you be tempted to do for seventeen hundred million dollars? Do you think the trial lawyers might succumb to that temptation? They have. Don't let them buy the judges who will hear their cases!

Vote YES to retain Justice Karmeier.