Leftists: Establishing a Religion

By Tom Trinko

In the case of Jack Philips, the baker who doesn’t want to be forced to support a gay “wedding,” leftists have revealed their freedom-hating fascist fanaticism and their desire to establish their faith as a government-mandated religion.
Religion interacts with politics by defining moral and behavioral codes. For example, Catholics believe murder is wrong, a moral code, and that you shouldn’t eat meat on the Fridays of Lent (a penance that was ended in 1984, but is recently making a comeback), a behavioral code. Hence establishing a religion in the context of the 1st Amendment would involve providing preferential treatment to the moral and behavioral code of one particular faith, as the English government did with the Church of England.
The Constitution was specifically designed to provide freedom of religion while preventing the government from picking one religion as the winner. Historically Americans were more divided based on behavioral issues than on morality; the Ten Commandments has always been something most Americans agree on. As a result, the morality of our laws hasn’t been much of an issue, apart from slavery, of course, until very recently. Even better, most Americans have no interest in using the power of the government to impose their behavioral beliefs on the rest of America; Catholics don’t want to force people to eat fish on Fridays, Jews don’t want pork banned from restaurants, and Protestants don’t want to require people to go to services.
Sadly, leftists are trying to impose their behavioral beliefs on all Americans.
Contrary to leftist revisionism, the Framers wrote the First Amendment not to put a wall between religion and government but to prevent the government from picking one religion over all others. They did so because many of them had suffered because of the Church of England’s oppression of other faiths.
The key point is that the government should not pick one set of behavioral beliefs, on which people can disagree, and impose it on all Americans without some very compelling reason.
Contrary to the Constitution, leftists are claiming that the government has the right to force people to go against their own moral beliefs and submit to the morals defined by leftists even when there is no compelling government interest.
 Leftists demanding that all Americans be forced to accept leftist moral precepts and leftist behavioral rules -- that marriage needs to be redefined, and that you must allow the “transgendered” into women’s bathrooms. This, in effect, is creating a government-sanctioned religion that is more equal than all the other faiths in America.
Leftists are working hard to ensure that anyone who disagrees with their morals/behaviors will be punished by the government. Precisely the sort of thing that the 1st Amendment was written to prevent.
This attack on the 1st Amendment by leftists is nothing new. Demanding that leftist morals/behaviors be allowed in schools and public settings while demanding that the morals/behaviors of all other faiths be silenced has been a key theme of leftism for quite some time.
For example, allowing teachers in public schools to extol the moral/behavioral beliefs of Nietzsche while declaring that even mentioning Jesus is verboten is nothing more than an establishment of one faith, leftist atheism, above all others.
Further, leftists demand complete obedience even in cases where no one actually suffers. No gay couple has been unable to purchase a wedding cake, for example. But leftists demand complete intellectual submission to their morals/behaviors. It’s as though Catholics were demanding that all orthodox Jewish delis serve pork.
Historically people understand that the 1st Amendment is not absolute; if one’s religion requires human sacrifice the government has a compelling interest to stop murder for example.
But in the case of the baker no sane person would argue that there is a compelling government interest in gay’s having “wedding” cakes.
What leftists are saying is that gay’s “right” to decide who will provide their “wedding” cake overrides the explicit 1st Amendment right of Americans to exercise their religion. Essentially the leftist religion overrides all other faiths in America. For example, leftists stated in their arguments to the Supreme Court that the government would have the right to force a Catholic church to host a gay wedding and for Catholic lawyers to defend gay causes.
Leftists will argue that their moral and behavioral beliefs aren’t a religion because they don’t involve a god or a formal structure. That is an invalid argument for two reasons; the Framers were concerned about the government imposing a set of moral and behavioral beliefs on the people and they used the term "religion" because at the time in America only religions had defined those things, not because they were okay with atheists imposing their beliefs. We all agree that Buddhism, which is decentralized and which does not believe in a god, is a religion. No one would think that giving Buddhist beliefs special privileges would be consistent with the First Amendment so it’s clear that giving the leftist faith special rights is wrong.
While leftists try and couch the discussion in terms of discrimination we can tell that’s a sham. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the group that ordered Christian baker Jack Philips to endorse a gay “wedding," also found that gay bakers don’t have to bake a cake with a Bible citation condemning active homosexuality. That’s a clear example of moral/behavioral beliefs that align with leftist’s faith -- being gay is good -- are protected but moral/behavioral beliefs from other faiths -- marriage is between a man and a woman -- are not.
It’s time to start condemning the left’s attack on other faiths and demand that the 1st Amendment rights of all Americans’ be protected.
There is no reason why what leftist define as moral and good behavior should be backed by the full power of the government. True diversity, which leftists constantly claim to support, means that all faiths should be on an equal footing in America. If a gay baker can refuse to bake a cake which cites Biblical condemnations of homosexuality, then a Christian baker can refuse to bake a cake that will be used in a gay “wedding”.