Comments made by Mat Staver (Founder – Liberty Counsel) during a March 10th conference call with more than thirty deeply concerned church leaders. This is a must read for all Christians.

Once you elevate same-sex marriage to the level of protected status, whether on the federal or the state level, you begin to change and transform the face of society. In my view, it will result in the beginning of the end of Western Civilization.

When you make a government policy that says that this is a relationship between humans that is so critical, so fundamental, and so essential to our society and to our future that we are going to protect it by law and surround it with laws and benefits that are designed to protect that relationship as a policy matter, you are taking a big step. You are essentially saying that boys and girls don’t need moms and dads—that moms and dads are irrelevant.

Gender becomes pointless when government adopts same-sex marriage. It creates a genderless relationship out of a very gender specific relationship. It says that it doesn’t matter and that two moms or two dads are absolutely equivalent to a mom and a dad.

Immediately, when elevated to that level of a constitutionally protected category, it is given the same status as race. What you cannot legally do with respect to race, you will not be able to do legally with respect to same-sex unions and sexual immorality.

Think of race in the context of religious expression or conscience expression and replace it with sexual immorality, transsexualism or so-called gender identity. For example, churches and other religious organizations are exempt from the religious discrimination provisions of federal, state, or local nondiscrimination laws. But they are not exempted from the race provisions. So Catholics can hire Catholics, and Baptists can hire Baptists, but they cannot hire only “white” Catholics or only “white” Baptists. They would face significant penalties. You can’t have separate restrooms or drinking fountains for people of a different color. If a church did that, they would be liable for a significant amount of damages because of discrimination on the basis of race.

Same-sex marriage or laws including sexual orientation or gender identity as a non-discrimination category directly impact religious organizations and churches. If a man wants to use the women’s restroom and a church official told him he could not, then that act would be like telling people of color they cannot use the “white only” restroom. You will also have the same issues with tax exemption over sexual preference as you have now over race.

Already a Methodist church association in New Jersey lost its property tax exemption status because it refused to allow use of their facilities for a same-sex union. Although the church then obtained a religious exemption instead, it ceased all weddings on its boardwalk pavilion. Bob Jones University lost its tax exemption status because it refused to allow mixed-race dating. They have since abandoned that false doctrinal belief, but they still lost their tax exemption at the Supreme Court. It will not be long if same-sex marriage is adopted that other universities could lose tax exemptions if they maintain a policy based on natural marriage and biblical morality.
Anything that you can imagine on the basis of race discrimination will apply to this issue of sexual preference. There is a huge collision coming. Those examples will be intensified significantly.

Roe v. Wade was a time when the church should have said no, regardless of what seven Supreme Court justices said. The difference is Roe was a wrong decision that resulted in a loss of life, but people were not forced to participate. With this issue, people will be forced to participate and affirm it. It will affect licenses for counselors, attorney disciplines, and every licensing profession will be affected.

In the history of the Supreme Court, they have reversed themselves about 230 times, and other Supreme Court decisions have been overruled by new laws or Constitutional amendments. Two were especially bad decisions. There was the Dred Scott decision in 1857. The Supreme Court told Scott he was not entitled to full citizenship, because people believed that “blacks are inferior human beings.” That was contrary to the Constitution, natural law, and revealed law, but we still went along with it, and we ended up in a civil war.

Today no one would agree that was right. Why did we obey it then? In the case of Buck v. Bell a lady in Virginia was forcibly sterilized as part of the eugenics movement. This was promoted by Planned Parenthood because they wanted to get rid of the “undesirables,” which according to Planned Parenthood at the time included blacks, the infirmed, and those with low IQs.

They did this because there was a history of low IQ in her family. The Supreme Court said that there is no justice for her because “three generations of imbeciles” in her family was enough, so they upheld the decision. When the Nazis were put on trial at the Nuremberg trials, they cited the Buck v. Bell decision to justify their use of forced sterilization. To this day, that Supreme Court decision hasn’t been overturned, though no one would justify that decision today. It wasn’t right then, and it isn’t right now.

Next Week: Part II

Dinner Table Discussion Questions: If your church or university lost its’ tax exemption status would that make a difference in whether you give to them at the same level? In what ways does the tax exemption status stifle free speech of Pastors and churches?