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Judge Greenlights BO Attack on Religious Freedom -Federal Ruling Against Marriage Clerk Advances Homosexual Agenda
by Bob Unruh
A federal judge’s order that a county clerk must violate her Christian faith and issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples to meet the constitutional right to homosexual unions newly created by the U.S. Supreme Court now is under challenge at the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The notice of appeal was filed by attorneys with Liberty Counsel immediately after U.S. District Judge David Bunning ordered Rowan, Kentucky, County Clerk Kim Davis to violate her deeply held religious beliefs, protected by the First Amendment, and issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
The judge’s ruling appeared to advance President Obama’s ongoing campaign to replace “freedom of religion” with “freedom of worship.”
WND has reported that for years the Obama administration has referenced the First Amendment constitutional protection in new language.
Most recently, a big list of prominent faith leaders joined to ask Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to fix a problematic document that references “worship” rather than “religion.”
“We … write to you with deep concern about the wording of the answer to question 51 on the study materials for the civics portion of the naturalization exam. The question asks students to provide two rights guaranteed to everyone living in the United States, and listed among the possible correct answers is ‘freedom of worship.’ We write to you requesting that this answer be immediately corrected to the constitutionally accurate answer – ‘freedom of religion,’” the recent letter said.
“We believe that the wording change we are requesting represents much more than a ‘distinction without a difference.’ Many totalitarian forms of government have allowed for the freedom of worship in their governmental documents but in practice severely restricted individual religious freedoms. The phrase freedom of worship, as it has been used throughout history, articulates an intentionally limited freedom that restricts a citizen’s rights to the four walls of a government-sanctioned house of worship and only for specific times and events.”
The letter was issue by the Weyrich Lunch participants. The group is named after the late chairman of the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation Paul Weyrich.
Bunning wrote that Davis can live out her beliefs privately. But he ruled she cannot exercise her “freedom of religion” publicly. Homosexual activists early Thursday demanded marriage licenses from Davis’ office but were turned away.
“The state is not asking her to condone same-sex unions on moral or religious grounds, nor is it restricting her from engaging in a variety of religious activities. Davis remains free to practice her Apostolic Christian beliefs. She may continue to attend church twice a week, participate in Bible study and ministry to female inmates at the Rowan County Jail. She is even free to believe that marriage is a union between one man and one woman, as many Americans do,” the judge wrote.
“However, her religious convictions cannot excuse her from performing the duties that she took an oath to perform as Rowan County Clerk,” he said, citing the same-sex marriage right that was created only weeks ago by the Supreme Court.
WND has reported on the federal government’s use of “freedom of worship.”
Early in President Obama’s tenure in the White House, Catholic Online and other media outlets reported what appeared to be a deliberate attack on the Constitution’s “freedom of religion” protections.
The report noted a crucial change in Obama’s language between his June 2009 speech in Cairo, Egypt, where he spoke of a Muslim America and its “freedom of religion,” and the November 2009 memorial for the Fort Hood soldiers gunned down by a radical Muslim, where he termed it “freedom of worship.”
From that point on, “freedom of worship” has become the term of choice, the report said.
The use of the term in the naturalization process recently drew attention in Congress.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., charged during a recent hearing that included Johnson that the government is “misrepresenting” the First Amendment.
“We in the United States actually have freedom of religion, not freedom of worship,” Lankford said.
View video & read more at WND:
http://www.wnd.com/2015/08/judges-order-for-christian-to-violate-faith-under-challenge/
