Do Christians Have a Future in LGBTQ America?
In 2014, high-tech executive and CEO of Mozilla Brendan Eich was forced to resign from the company he helped found and build, because he made a $1,000 contribution to support traditional marriage in the California marriage referendum.
According to accounts,
Eich was subject to vicious attacks through social media for his contribution in the marriage campaign.
Mozilla chairwoman,
Mitchell Baker, observed,
"Mozilla believes in both equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech.
And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard."
That Mozilla's chairwoman could offer such a confused, vacuous explanation for Eich's dismissal sheds light on why the overall state of affairs in the country is such a mess.
Free speech is not about equality. Free speech is about the pursuit of truth. The equality necessary for free speech is equality under the law, where everyone receives equal protection. But when politics is the aim rather than truth, objective law protecting free expression gets flushed, and political operatives, like Baker, determine who lives and who dies.
Two years earlier, Crystal Dixon, a black Christian woman, was fired from her human resources position at the University of Toledo because she penned an op-ed for the local newspaper challenging the proposition that the gay rights movement is a new chapter of the black civil rights movement.
Carefully reasoned discourse -- which is what Dixon offered in her fatal op-ed -- is not welcome in a politicized society, because the pursuit of truth is no longer relevant. Only behavior consistent with predetermined political ends is.
This slippery slope leads in one direction. Less freedom and more oppression. Exactly what our nation is not supposed to be about.
It shouldn't surprise us, then, that Gay Pride Month has become a time for LGBTQ storm troopers to pursue political enemies. Not much different from the infamous Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany, when Nazi brown shirts took to the streets to smash windows of shops owned by Jews.
Thus among the stories of this Gay Pride Month: Another high-tech executive, the CEO of Twitter, with an estimated net worth of $5 billion, was forced to offer a social media apology for eating a chicken sandwich in Chick-fil-A. Patronizing a fast-food establishment whose CEO is a devout Christian, with the temerity to have criticized the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, is a high crime in the eyes of the LGBTQ judges and jury.
Russell Berger, chief knowledge officer of CrossFit, was fired for tweeting his support of a company decision to cancel participation of a CrossFit gym in Indianapolis in Gay Pride Month events. Berger, a seminary trained pastor, was perhaps excessively inflammatory because he used the word "sin." If there is any "sin" in today's politicized America, it is to claim that sin, in the biblical sense, exists.
A Muslim Uber driver was fired for asking two lesbian passengers to leave his car after they began kissing and embracing.
Last year, my office in Washington had to temporarily close because of threats when, in a cable TV interview, I equated the LGBTQ rainbow flag to the confederate flag. From my point a view, it's a totally reasonable assertion. As a black American, the Confederate flag communicates to me that I am not welcome. As a Christian American, the rainbow flag communicates to me that I am not welcome.
According to a recent Gallup survey, 41 percent of Americans identify as evangelical Christians. Will the course of events in LGBTQ-controlled America preclude them from shopping, working, speaking, existing in our nation's public spaces?
The preamble of our constitution says that "We the people" establish this constitution in order to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
Star Parker is an author and president of CURE, Center for Urban Renewal and Education. Contact her at www.urbancure.org.