Why the Jury Is Still Out on Trump Supreme Court Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett

On July 2, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from Baronnelle Stutzman, the florist from the state of Washington, whose religious liberty and constitutional rights were violated by Washington state’s Attorney General Bob Ferguson in 2013. In essence, Ferguson pronounced, “You will take part in same-sex weddings, or the state will bankrupt you.” And it did.

Stutzman’s plight consisted of either agreeing to provide a flower arrangement celebrating same-sex marriage, thereby conveying approval for something God condemns, or politely declining services to Robert Ingersoll and Curt Creed, the couple to be wed, and recommending another florist in town.

Surrounded by a “hostile and intimidating environment,” tyrannized by a militant state official enforcing a secular worldview, Stutzman chose to stand. Like Rahab of Joshua 2:1-21, she stood “for the unseen against the seen,” a dictum derived from 2 Corinthians 4:18b (NIV): “What is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

The caustic incongruity of the case was that Stutzman had served and befriended practicing homosexuals Ingersoll and Creed for more than 10 years.

Scripture recognizes the dignity and equality of each individual as created in the image of God, as expressed in Genesis 1:27: “God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.” While all are created in the image of God, only those who know Christ are children of God, according to 1 John 3:1.

Still and all, Jehovah God condemns homosexual intercourse in both the Old and New Testaments as immoral and an “abomination” (Lev. 18:22, 1 Cor. 6:9-11).

The July 2 kick-the-can-down-the-road decision was a blow to religious freedom in America, not only for custom-cake designers, floral arrangers and photographers, but especially for those seeking to embrace, follow and obey Jesus Christ’s inerrant scriptural instructions.

The Supreme Court’s ruling to turn down Stutzman’s case ran counter to the American Founding Fathers, who made the Bible the foundation on which law-making, enforcement and adjudication should be based.

Instead of scriptural principle and truth, 19th- and 20th-century jurisprudence has now become the standard for American law and justice. It comes down to what a majority of nine U.S. Supreme Court justices can agree to on any given day.

Whereas Stutzman’s case before SCOTUS required four justices to agree to authorize a review of the case, only three voted in favor: Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas. This provides yet another example of the invalid argument that Republican presidents opting for the Federalist Society’s brightest and best full-spectrum conservatives will be advantageous to the nation.

Half of the nominations for the U.S. Supreme Court by Republican presidents since 1981 have been disappointments, turning out to be supporters of the left, as is evidenced by the voting behavior of Sandra Day O’Connor (nominated by Reagan), Anthony Kennedy (Reagan), David Souter (Bush Sr.) and John Roberts (Bush Jr.).

The jury is still out on President Trump’s three nominations: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

It’s the culture, stupid. Praising and celebrating the supposed virtues of gayness, transgenderism, queerness and their own special brands of diversity, equity and tolerance, secularism’s priests and priestesses currently dominate the intellectual, educational, economic and vocational levers of power and influence in America. Meanwhile, the florist and those who stand for biblical truth are portrayed as evil discriminators. In Stutzman’s case, the deplorable state ruling dictated that she “attend, facilitate and create custom floral art celebrating all marriages or none.”

Which brings us to Mark Steyn’s clear thinking at Hillsdale College:

“For well over a year now, we have been living in a world in which it’s accepted as normal that the state has essentially unlimited power—and in which our freedom to decide for ourselves has been diminished almost to invisibility. Why do these conservative politicians think the words ‘radical socialist agenda’ still scare anyone in a time when the state can tell us whether we can have Aunt Mabel over for Christmas? They are completely out of touch.

“Think of it. Your daughter has been training since she was a little girl to run in school sports. Now at 17, she’s in the state high school track championships, and you are forbidden even to notice that she’s competing against a woman who is 6 feet, 2 inches in height with thighs like tugboats, a great touch of five o’clock shadow on her face and the most muscular bosom you’ve ever seen. You’re not supposed to notice the craziness of this, and the craziness is at its craziest right here in America.

“In general, our leaders are urgent about nothing that matters and not in the least bit urgent about things that matter very much.”

We have arrived at this point, our kairos, because American Christendom abandoned the public square over the last 100 years. With its heretical and flawed operating model of “butts, budgets and buildings” the church’s impact on the culture has been so small as to be meaningless.

All that there is to dominate is now dominated by secularism’s ekklesia, altering and distorting the values, views, politics, and laws of the nation. Culture, after all, is nothing but the public manifestation of religion.

The National Education Association, the nation’s largest teacher’s union, recently approved a plan to implement critical race theory. in 14,000 school districts across all 50 states. It teaches children to hate each other and to hate their country, all in the spirit of cultural Marxism.

Washington State’s Attorney General Bob Ferguson, the secularized U.S. Supreme Court and NEA Marxists would do well to heed the Scriptural warning that “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God” (Heb. 10:31, ESV). Cautioning those who defy His unending order, Solomon in Proverbs 17:11 warned that “a cruel messenger will be sent against him.”

In the words of Jewish Hebrew scholar Michael V. Fox: “If a man rebels against the king, a human messenger is sent to punish him. If he rebels against God’s word, punitive angels are dispatched. It is possible that the punishment is executed by angels, because God himself, as this socially conservative book sees it, defends the political order, if it is just.”

With the removal of the Bible from public education by the radicalized secular Warren Court in 1963—labelled “the most liberal court in U.S. history” —contemporary America is devoid of any spiritual discernment, along with its piddling understanding of the things of God.

Spiritually, we find an emasculated church, a dejected nation, a desecrated heritage and history and a morally defunct Sanhedrin (the U.S. Supreme Court), having been beguiled by Satan’s “deceitful workers.”

Would the NEA want to learn that boys and girls in public education are “dead in trespasses and sins“? Or that man should live and be instructed by Christ? Or how men and women are made alive spiritually? Or how a man can’t live before he is born; nor can a dead man regulate his behavior?

With God removed from it in the 20th century, public education is caught up in an absolute death spiral and beyond the possibility of rehabilitation. Early American education, which launched the meteoric rise of America, fully understood that no man can live Godward until he has been born again. Or as Charles Spurgeon put it, “Ever is it the nature of the disease of sin to proceed from bad to worse; men never weary of sinning but rather increase their speed in the race of iniquity.”

Lulled to sleep by Satan, American Christendom can recover or come to life again by returning prayer to America’s churches, prioritizing disciples of Christ over converts and relocating Jesus’ ekklesia kingdom assignment of Matthew 16:18 from inside the church building to the public square outside.

If we are to make it through, every church all across America should nominate a pastor, elder, deacon or congregant to run for local office—city council, school board, county commissioner, parks and recreation and so forth—in 2022, 2024, 2026 and thereafter.

Gideons and Rahabs are invited to please stand. {eoa}

David Lane is the founder of the American Renewal Project.

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