‘Gay Marriage’ Ruling: Evil with a Silver Lining

Well, that was predictable. On Friday, with its majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, five judicial imperialists perched high atop the U.S. Supreme Court bench called the Supreme Being a liar. They presumed to invent, out of thin air and through judicial fiat, a “constitutional right” to sin-based “gay marriage.” (Father God, as you exact Your perfect justice on America, please have mercy upon Your faithful.)

The horrific nature of this illegitimate decision cannot be overstated. It makes a mockery of the institution of marriage, something of which God alone has the authority to design and define. It represents a level of judicial activism unmatched since Dred Scott, Buck v. Bell or Roe v. Wade.

Man-woman marriage, as He designed it, is the metaphor God uses for the relationship between Christ and His Church. In addition to mocking marriage, this decision mocks God.

Which is by spiritual design.

Satan is laughing himself silly right now. His demonic minions, both above and below, are popping the bubbly and clinking the champagne flutes.

Evil has triumphed.

For now at least.

But not in the end.

Because God will not be mocked.

And victory is His.

Still, on top of being an arrogant affront to Almighty God, this opinion of five unelected and unaccountable justices is also a constitutional disaster. “The Court’s decision fundamentally rewrites the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution to radically redefine the cornerstone institution of marriage, which is older than the Court itself,” said Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel.

The decision also drew sharp criticism from the Court’s four dissenting justices. Chief Justice John Roberts, for example, rightly observed that the activist majority opinion hijacks the democratic process and is not based on the rule of law: “[D]o not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it,” wrote Roberts.

Justice Scalia similarly called the ruling a “threat to American democracy.” The “pretentious” and “egotistic” decision, he railed, “robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”

But I promised a silver lining, and there is one. One that is sure to infuriate the anti-Christian left. The majority opinion emphasized that this newfangled “right” to “gay marriage” should not be construed to trump religious liberty:

“Finally, it must be emphasized that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned. The First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths, and to their own deep aspirations to continue the family structure they have long revered. The same is true of those who oppose same-sex marriage for other reasons.”

I’m not naïve. We’ll have to see what this actually means in coming years, but when filtered through any honest reading of the First Amendment’s “free exercise” clause, what it means is that Christians cannot be forced to violate their conscience through compulsory participation in, or recognition of, counterfeit “gay weddings” or “marriages.”

Ever.

Of course there’s nothing honest about the five liberals on this court, and Chief Justice Roberts makes that point in his dissent. He expresses skepticism as to the majority’s sincerity: “The majority graciously suggests that religious believers may continue to ‘advocate’ and ‘teach’ their views of marriage,” he writes. “The First Amendment guarantees, however, the freedom to ‘exercise‘ religion. Ominously, that is not a word the majority uses.”

“Hard questions arise when people of faith exercise religion in ways that may be seen to conflict with the new right to same-sex marriage,” he continues. “[W]hen, for example, a religious college provides married student housing only to opposite-sex married couples, or a religious adoption agency declines to place children with same-sex married couples. Indeed, the Solicitor General candidly acknowledged that the tax exemptions of some religious institutions would be in question if they opposed same-sex marriage. There is little doubt that these and similar questions will soon be before this Court.”

Little doubt indeed.

As many of us have long warned, all this “gay marriage” nonsense was never about “marriage equality.” It was, and remains, a spiritual battle camouflaged in the formal attire of judicial and public policy wrangling. It was always about forcing Christ’s faithful followers, under penalty of law, to abandon biblical truth and embrace sexual sin. The goal of “LGBT” activists and secular progressives has long been to pit the government directly against the free exercise of religion – Christianity in particular – and to silence all dissent.

Let me be clear. You will never silence us, and we Christians don’t need liberty crumbs tossed down from some temporal bench on high. Christians, faithful Christians (as opposed to the apostate variety), will not, indeed cannot, have anything whatsoever to do with the wickedness that is “gay marriage,” and we will disobey any man-made law or ruling that presumes to make us do otherwise.

That said, it does provide some consolation to have, in the spirit of Hobby Lobby, this court at least pay lip service, inelegant though it may be, to every American’s God-given constitutional right to freedom of conscience. The one positive thing that came from this ruling is the reaffirmation of First Amendment protections guaranteeing, for instance, that the Christian baker, florist, photographer, et al., cannot be penalized by the government for refusing to participate in sin – for declining to provide goods or services for “gay weddings,” or for otherwise refusing to recognize “gay marriage” for anything other than the evil it represents.

Even so, let us not don our rose-colored glasses. Friday’s ruling comes straight from the pit of Hell. Even with its religious liberty “silver lining,” it has not ended the debate; it has only just launched it. It has opened the floodgates to anti-Christian persecution. Leftist lawsuit abuse against Christian individuals and organizations will now flow hot like the River Styx.

But don’t despair, my brothers and sisters in Christ. For we who are God’s children have already overcome.

Because greater is He Who is in us, than he who is in the world.

And greater is He who created marriage, than he who perverts it.

Matt Barber is founder and editor-in chief of BarbWire.com. He is an author, columnist, cultural analyst and an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. Having retired as an undefeated heavyweight professional boxer, Matt has taken his fight from the ring to the culture war. (Follow Matt on Twitter: @jmattbarber).