Obama’s War on the Catholic Church

“It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe.” — James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance — 1785

With the Obama administration’s forcing the Catholic Church to pay for birth control and the morning after pill for employees last year you might have thought this was the last straw. When the bishops and the clergy fought back and Kathleen Sebelius, the director of HHS, did not rescind on the decision you might have thought Obama would scale back his war on the Catholic Church. But this is not the case.

While in Ireland this week he dropped a bombshell that has gone pretty much ignored by the mainstream media when he said religious schools encourage division. Barack Obama actually made this claim at a speech in Belfast on Monday, but it seems to be gaining traction overnight. His claim, aimed at both Catholic and Protestant “schools and buildings,” came in prepared remarks rather than an extemporaneous response to a question. The Scottish Catholic Observer quotes the argument accurately:

“The US President has made an alarming call for an end to Catholic education in Northern Ireland in spite of the fact that Archbishop Gerhard Müller told Scots that Catholic education was ‘a critical component of the Church.’

President Barack Obama (above), repeated the oft disproved claim that Catholic education increases division in front of an audience of 2000 young people, including many Catholics, at Belfast’s Waterfront hall when he arrived in the country this morning.

“If towns remain divided—if Catholics have their schools and buildings and Protestants have theirs, if we can’t see ourselves in one another and fear or resentment are allowed to harden—that too encourages division and discourages cooperation,” the US president said.

The US politician made the unfounded claim despite a top Vatican official spelling out the undeniable good done by Catholic education in a speech in Glasgow on Saturday and in his homily at Mass on Friday.”

I’ll quote the passage from Obama’s speech in its full context:

“We need you to get this right. And what’s more, you set an example for those who seek a peace of their own. Because beyond these shores, right now, in scattered corners of the world, there are people living in the grip of conflict -- ethnic conflict, religious conflict, tribal conflicts -- and they know something better is out there. And they’re groping to find a way to discover how to move beyond the heavy hand of history, to put aside the violence. They’re studying what you’re doing. And they’re wondering, perhaps if Northern Ireland can achieve peace, we can, too. You’re their blueprint to follow. You’re their proof of what is possible -- because hope is contagious. They’re watching to see what you do next.

Now, some of that is up to your leaders. As someone who knows firsthand how politics can encourage division and discourage cooperation, I admire the Northern Ireland Executive and the Northern Ireland Assembly all the more for making power-sharing work. That’s not easy to do. It requires compromise, and it requires absorbing some pain from your own side. I applaud them for taking responsibility for law enforcement and for justice, and I commend their effort to “Building a United Community” — important next steps along your transformational journey.

Because issues like segregated schools and housing, lack of jobs and opportunity — symbols of history that are a source of pride for some and pain for others — these are not tangential to peace; they’re essential to it. If towns remain divided — if Catholics have their schools and buildings, and Protestants have theirs — if we can’t see ourselves in one another, if fear or resentment are allowed to harden, that encourages division. It discourages cooperation.

Ultimately, peace is just not about politics. It’s about attitudes; about a sense of empathy; about breaking down the divisions that we create for ourselves in our own minds and our own hearts that don’t exist in any objective reality, but that we carry with us generation after generation.”

Does that make the context any better? Not really. He’s speaking in terms of Northern Ireland, but pretty explicitly calling for that to be a model for the rest of the world. His argument makes two very large assumptions, which is that the conflict in Northern Ireland was about religion, and that parochial schools make people inclined to violence. The first is a gross oversimplification; the conflict in recent times was political, dealing with ethnic conflict and sovereignty issues, with religion used more for tribal identification than a core of the conflict.

The second is just absurd. Catholics and Protestants have thousands of schools in the US, and we don’t have warfare in the streets in the US between the sects. The issue wasn’t the schools, or the belief systems of Catholics and Protestants that such schools teach. However, this makes a handy mechanism to call for the displacement of private education and religious instruction from education, with nothing left except state-controlled schools that indoctrinate children into whatever norms the governing/ruling class deem acceptable.

Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a foreign visit to an Islamic nation where he told people on his arrival that they shouldn’t have madrasas. Can you?

Did he say when visiting Israel, say “You Jews shouldn’t have synagogue schools and you Muslims shouldn’t have mosque schools.” I can’t remember. Did he?

If Obama wants to talk about religions causing division, hate, and war I suggest he take a look at his beloved Islam where Shia’s and Sunnis have been killing Christians, Jews, and themselves since the seventh century.

Archbishop Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, told an audience in Scotland that Catholic education provided a rare place where ‘intellectual training, moral discipline and religious commitment would come together’ while giving the prestigious Cardinal Winning Lecture on Saturday to officially launch the St Andrews Foundation for Catholic teacher education at Glasgow University. During Mass at St Andrew’s Cathedral, Glasgow, on Friday night he said that ‘the Catholic school is vitally important a critical component of the Church,’ adding that Catholic education provides young people with a wonderful opportunity to ‘grow up with Jesus.’

Obama is now insisting on enforcing an ObamaCare regulation that would force Catholic individuals, business owners and institutions to provide health care plans that cover sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs. The Catholic bishops of the United States have unanimously declared this regulation an "unjust and illegal mandate" that violates the constitutionally guaranteed right to free exercise of religion.

Dozens of Catholic business owners and institutions are now suing the Obama administration over this regulation. The University of Notre Dame and Catholic University of America are among those who have filed suit. A number of Protestant business owners and institutions have also sued the administration over this regulation because it forces them to provide abortion-inducing drugs and IUDs in contradiction to their moral and religious beliefs.

The Catholic Church and Catholic religious orders run schools in the United States and elsewhere that are designed not only to teach children reading, writing, arithmetic, history and other academic subjects, but also to teach them the theology and moral views of the faith, and to train their characters in keeping with those moral views.

As a product of a Catholic school education through the 8^th grade I can say that it taught me much more than the reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history, and civics. It also taught me morals, love of God and family, and living by the Ten Commandments — something we direly need in our schools today.

In a fit of ignorance I enrolled my three children in government schools in the early 1970s. By the time my youngest reached fifth grade all were enrolled in Catholic school where they graduated high school from. All received a fine college preparatory education allowing them to continue on to college with no problems.

Millions of children have matriculated through their K-12 education in Catholic and Christian schools. Not only has this been good for the kids it has saved the taxpayers billions in school costs if all of those children had been enrolled in our failing public school system. Just think of all of those teachers union pensions we would be on the hook for.

Obama never fails to enlist children in his secularist crusades, whether at home or abroad. Last week he trotted out two nine-year-old girls to introduce him at a White House event celebrating “LGBT Pride Month.”

“We could not be prouder of Zea and Luna for the introduction,” he said. “Zea and Luna are here with their moms, and also I think with Grandma and Grandpa — correct? And so feel free to congratulate them afterwards for their outstanding introduction.”

Zea and Luna proved useful to Obama not only as props for LGBT rights but also as mouthpieces for his gun-control agenda: “When Zea and Luna wrote me last December, they told me they would have voted for me if they could have — thanks, guys. They also laid out quite an agenda. I hope Congress is listening to them. But I want them and all of you to know that I’m not giving up the fight to keep our kids safe from gun violence.”

It just so happens that Zea and Luna also support additional funding for Arne Duncan’s Department of Education. According to Obama, Duncan has lots of innovative ideas on how to jumpstart America’s sluggish schools and needs more money to enact them. Chicagoans may remember one of them: his thwarted plan to start a “gay high school” in the Windy City that he hoped to call “Social Justice Solidarity High School.”

This week Obama took his Brave New World propaganda to the youth of Northern Ireland. He has visions of a secularist utopia for them too. With uniformed school children arrayed behind him, he in effect called for the elimination of religious education in Northern Ireland:

“If towns remain divided — if Catholics have their schools and buildings, and Protestants have theirs — if we can’t see ourselves in one another, if fear or resentment are allowed to harden, that encourages division. It discourages cooperation.”

Obama’s presumption knows no bounds. The Northern Irish, already enjoying a “chic” culture, as he put it, are evidently capable of his level of enlightenment, provided that they listen to their youth. Apparently referencing his own claimed evolution on gay marriage — recall that he credited his daughters with stimulating his moral imagination by bringing over to the house the adopted children of homosexual couples — he urged Northern Irish youth to keep liberalizing their elders:

“Politicians oftentimes follow rather than lead. And so, especially young people helped to push and to prod and to protest, and to make common cause with those who did not look like them. And that transformed America — so that Malia and Sasha’s generation, they have different attitudes about differences and race than mine and certainly different from the generation before that. And each successive generation creates a new space for peace and tolerance and justice and fairness. And while we have work to do in many ways, we have surely become more tolerant and more just, more accepting, more willing to see our diversity in America not as something to fear, but as something to welcome because it’s a source of our national strength.”

If the point wasn’t clear enough, Obama said that he hoped that one day they could “fall in love with whomever” they want.

Gay marriage, abortion on demand, free contraceptives, Plan B at the local drug store, an all-pervasive secular culture — this is the glorious future Obama implied for the Northern Irish. But he sternly warned the teens that the choice is theirs: “Whether you let your kids play with kids who attend a different church — that’s your decision.”

For Obama, “peace” and secularism are always one and the same, and if you don’t choose the latter you are a violent bigot. The arrogant Brave New World babble he dumped on these children is impossible to comprehend apart from that assumption. Never mind that plenty of blood, flowing from “chic” addresses like those of his friends at Planned Parenthood, gushes in secularist countries too.

Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, once remarked, “In order for Israel to be counted among the nations of the world, it has to have its own burglars and prostitutes.” In Northern Ireland’s case, pace Obama, it can’t be considered civilized until it has fewer religious schools and more abortionists.

However, Obama’s arrogance did not go unnoticed by the Irish. Far-left Irish politician Clare Daly, formerly a leader in the country’s Socialist Party, is being called “disgraceful” by her compatriots after lashing out against President Obama in the wake of his visit to Ireland for the G-8 Summit.

A member of Parliament of Dublin North, Daly mocked the Obama family for repeatedly referring to Ireland as “home” before ripping into the U.S. president’s foreign policy.

“It’s hard to know which is worse,” she added, “the outpourings of the Obamas themselves, or the sycophantic fawning over them by sections of the media and political establishment.”

She called Obama the “hypocrite of the century” for telling Irish youths the United States supports those who choose peace, while providing arms to Syrian rebels and increasing drone strikes by 200 percent.

“The reality is, by any serious examination, this man is a war criminal,” Daly declared. “He has just announced his decision to supply arms to the Syrian opposition, including the jihadists, fueling the destabilization of that region, and continuing to undermine secularism and knock-back conditions for women.”

She proceeded to excoriate the country’s Prime Minister Edna Kenny, for making Ireland “a nation of pimps, prostituting ourselves for a pat on the head” and a “lapdog of U.S. imperialism.”

We cannot hear him liken Catholic and Protestant schools to racial segregation in America without a sense of alarm. Clearly, President Obama dismisses religious freedom as a basis for parents' choosing different schools for their own children.

Mr. Obama's own grandparents exercised their choice in sending him to Honolulu's prestigious Punahou Academy. This pricey ($20,000/year) prep school was founded by Congregationalist missionaries. With roots in the faith-based community, it hardly qualifies as a segregation academy. Similarly, the president and Mrs. Obama have chosen Washington, D.C.'s very posh Sidwell Friends School for their daughters. They have every right to do so, but no one would credit this Quaker-founded school as part of a segregation system.

Mr. Obama has been zealous in trying to block other parents' exercise of education choice. His administration has been eager to shut down Washington, D.C.'s Opportunity Scholarships. This program permits low-income parents of area students to choose a private or parochial school for their kids. Most of these scholarships go to minority students and many of them choose Catholic schools where a majority of their classmates are non-Catholic.

It is a shocking thing for the President of the United States to show such open hostility to faith-based schooling. As their motto goes, these are "schools you can believe in." And the record of religious schools in America is a great one.

We need to view Mr. Obama's comments in the context of his other policies. His administration is pushing for ever more pre-K programs nationwide. Despite the documented failure of Head Start, he wants to enlist more very young children in school programs that will replace church-based child care and care in the home.

This is what secularists have wanted in our country, too: All children under the guise of the all-powerful state. This has always been a goal of Marxists.

We should not be surprised that President Obama, who attended Marxist scholar’s conferences in New York City when he was a student at Columbia University in 1983, is so openly hostile to schools you can believe in.

The fact is that in Northern Ireland, the religious schools have been leaders in reconciling historic antagonisms. And this is true in America, too. Here, for example, Evangelicals, Lutherans, Orthodox Christians, and Orthodox Jews have joined with Catholics in resisting the menacing HHS Mandate. That mandate is the gravest threat to religious freedom in this country since 1786.

Mr. Obama should reread his Constitutional Law texts. There, he would find the landmark ruling of the Supreme Court in 1925, in Pierce v. Society of Sisters. The KKK had pushed through an Oregon referendum that outlawed private and religious schools.

Unconstitutional, said the high Court:

“The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments of this Union rest excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only.”

President Obama continues his relentless drive to "fundamentally transform America." He does not appreciate the historic fact that religious freedom was the foundation for civil liberty in our country. Washington, Jefferson, and Madison all believed this. So did Protestants, Catholics, and Jews of the Founding Era. Respect for the convictions of others does not breed hostility. It is the beginning of civility.

The Pierce Court decision concluded with this ringing affirmation of parental rights and religious freedom:

“The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations. Those "obligations" included then, and continue to include, our obligations to our Creator.”

President Obama continued his War on Christianity Monday and the broadcast networks continued to ignore it. Obama used a town hall meeting for youth in Belfast to show his contempt for religious education. The president criticized separate religious schools for promoting “division.”

The story drew attention in conservative media outlets and was linked on the Drudge Report. But no major network news show covered the event in the two days that followed. ABC, CBS and NBC all skipped the story, even though it made the rounds in conservative media especially on Wednesday.

Some of the news Wednesday night wasn’t particularly compelling. ABC “World News with Diane Sawyer” took two minutes to devote to “flash mobs for hire.” NBC “Nightly News” found 36 seconds to devote to the decline of the Houston Astrodome, the “cathedral of sports once known as the eighth wonder of the world.”

The Obama administration has angered people of faith on several issues from gay marriage and abortion to birth control mandates and hiding a cross when Obama was speaking at Georgetown. This time, his attack was directed at Catholic and Protestant education.

A Virtuous Government

“[T]he only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.” — Benjamin Rush, On the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic — 1806.

Super Bowl advertisers paid as much as $4 million for 30 seconds of time in hopes of making a lasting impression. And they tried every gimmick in the book to do it. But one of the ads everyone is still talking about is the Dodge Ram Trucks ad, featuring images of American farmers set to a speech written and delivered by a giant of radio, Paul Harvey. It was called “God Made A Farmer.” Viewers so young that they might not even remember Paul Harvey were moved to tears by the commercial. Because amid all the CGI effects, vulgar jokes and sexual innuendo, what proved the most memorable was the power of Paul Harvey’s words and his unique, heartfelt delivery. By the way, if you’d like to hear the full speech, you can find it by clicking here. Paul Harvey made it in 1978 — 35 years ago.

This was a rare time where you would see God 11 times in 2 minute and 36 second TV Commercial. While watch the Super Bowl with a group of rowdy friends who mocked most of the commercials when the Dodge Ram Truck commercial began and the voice of Paul Harvey boomed out of the TV set the rowdy bunch of football fans fell silent. This was the few times in 15 years of our traditional Super Bowl party this has ever occurred. The other times usually were during the Budweiser commercials portraying their famous Clydesdale horses.

Another event over the weekend was the murder of former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle by a deranged veteran who was suffering from PTSD at a gun range. Eddie Ray Routh, a former Marine and Iraq veteran said: “He "traded his soul for a new truck." Why Kyle was working with Routh at a gun range may be questionable, but evidently the psychiatrist who was treating Routh cleared him for such activities. What made this event more horrific was a Tweet attributed to former Congressman Ron Paul. Dr. Paul tweeted: “Chris Kyle's death seems to confirm that "he who lives by the sword dies by the sword." Treating PTSD at a firing range doesn't make sense.”

Yesterday, according to a report in the Blaze, on his nationally syndicated radio show Glen Beck took Dr. Paul to task for his ill-advised tweet. The Blaze report states:

“Rather than coming from the lips (or keyboard, in this case) of a seasoned elder statesman, Beck said that Paul’s tweet sounded like something that would come from radical groups like Code Pink or Westboro Baptist Church, calling the social media statement “beneath” the former representative. The host said that one of the main problems that abounds in today’s society is a failure for individuals to treat one another decently and he even wondered if Paul regrets his “serious, serious error in judgment.

Acknowledging that some would potentially point the finger at him as someone who has fallen prey to uttering unfavorable statements in the past, Beck admitted that “we’ve all said things that we shouldn’t have said,” but that people should learn and grow from these experiences. And while he stands fervently against Paul’s statements, the host affirmed that he is a big believer in the First Amendment.

“I find Ron Paul’s speech ugly and offensive, but I defend his right to say it and I would not violate it or ask anyone else to violate it by having him silent,” Beck proclaimed “More speech — not less speech — but it requires all of us in responsible ways to respond because that is the right that so many like Chris Kyle fought for.”

The host also noted that for those wondering why he has never — and could never — support Paul, this example provides both explanation and corroboration.

“This should finally answer your question,” Beck said.”

On one hand we have a car company willing to use the words of a conservative radio host to promote it’s truck and the American Farmer and on the other hand we have a former Libertarian congressman using social media to make a comment beneath his dignity and doing harm to his reputation.

Yes we have free speech, but we also have responsibilities in exercising that right. Why post a disparaging comment about a recently murdered decorated SEAL while his family and friends are grieving his death. To me this is not only in poor taste it is a cruel exercise of the First Amendment. Dr. Paul may think this and discuss it with his followers, but why put such a comment on public social media for millions of people to read. Why cause more pain to his family. As a medical doctor Ron Paul should have known better. On the political side of the issue Dr. Paul’s comment will no doubt haunt his son, Rand Paul, in a future run for the presidency.

This is the problem with today’s social media. Politicians, celebrities, and just everyday folks are able to post ill-advised, nasty, vicious, and false statements on Facebook and Twitter without giving thought to what they are saying. These comments do harm to others and themselves. Where has virtue and honor gone?

A nation without virtue and honor is a nation without a future. Today the United States finds itself in a quagmire of ever-increasing self-doubt and foreboding. Chief among the factors that have brought America to this point has been the abandonment of a sense of what is right, just and true as it relates to the duty imposed by conscience. Virtue and honor is being abandoned and replaced by duplicity, avarice, self-aggrandizement, cowardice, and an unbridled lust for power and notoriety.

These characteristics are symptomatic of the bulk of the American governing class that has increasingly adopted, as their sacrosanct tenet, the concept that the end justifies the means. In their position atop the societal pyramid they have been devastatingly influential in undermining the morality and integrity of the citizenry. As Herbert Hoover once observed: "When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned."

As the greatest fear of the founding fathers comes to pass — an overwhelmingly powerful central government — the base nature of the human race comes increasingly to the fore. This evolutionary process, while underway for some time, has thoroughly permeated society as the nation is now reaching the tipping point.

Whether in the various state capitols or the once hallowed halls of Congress or the now tarnished grandeur of the White House, the acquisition and retention of political power by any means necessary, and the attendant access to ever larger sums of money, either borrowed, created out of whole cloth or coerced from the taxpayers, has become firmly entrenched in the nation's political psyche. Party identity notwithstanding, in order to achieve this end, nothing is beyond the pale — be it fraud, corruption, outright lies, or immorality.

No one person on the American landscape today more epitomizes this descent into dishonor than Barack Obama. His earliest days in politics were marked with unethical and oftentimes dishonest tactics in eliminating his opposition. He has revealed an untroubled willingness to prevaricate and make up so-called facts to suit his personal agenda. He has proven himself to be untrustworthy and a man whose word is meaningless. His narcissism knows no bounds as he oversees the premeditated decline of the United States concurrent with seeking to transform the nation into his vision of a socialist state. All the while exploiting his skin color as he calculatingly divides Americans into groups which he coldly and with forethought pits against each other.

The recent re-election campaign of Barack Obama encapsulated all these traits into the strategy employed as he set out to not only personally destroy his opposition by innuendo and falsehoods but to hoodwink the American voter. Unfortunately, the voters have become receptive to these tactics as they have been conditioned over the past forty years by an education establishment — dominated by greed, self-absorption and fealty to statist ideology — to believe that government, as controlled by the American left, is the source of wealth and salvation. Adding to this indoctrination, the entertainment industry, whose primary concern is an unfettered lifestyle, has slowly but surely convinced a near majority of the people that there are no moral absolutes. Honor and virtue are not words in their vocabulary.

The mainstream media, also concerned with an unfettered lifestyle but more importantly with access to the politically powerful, have chosen sides and become an extension of the state propaganda machinery as well as pawns in the hands of Barack Obama and the Democrats. Many in the media, also greatly influenced by the education and entertainment establishment, have left any semblance of honor at the doorway of cronyism as they safeguard their standard of living.

Far too many in the corporate and financial sphere have cast their principles aside as they too are increasingly operating their enterprises with the end justifies the means mindset. Further, as much of the free market is effectively under the thumb of government bureaucrats and politicians, many are convinced that in order to survive and prosper they must "play the game" with Washington D.C. and financially support those who have amassed the power to destroy them. Others have willing prostituted themselves and openly become crony capitalists eerily reminiscent of the relationship between industry and the government in fascist Italy and Germany.

This debasement of honor has extended its tentacles into many religious institutions who are now preaching the gospel of big government, abortion, euthanasia, and the toleration of any lifestyle. They are doing so in order to maintain some semblance of a congregation and the income derived from the same as well as groveling before the almighty monolith on the shores of the Potomac River.

The ultimate bulwark of honor and independence is supposed to be the Judiciary. Yet it has become what Thomas Jefferson feared: "an irresponsible body". Far too many judges have increasingly allowed their personal biases and ideological beliefs to dominate their decision making process as they usurp legislative power. They have allowed themselves to be swallowed into the vortex of self-aggrandizement and faux omnipotence rather than adhere to the Constitution and act as men and women imbued with humility, virture, and honor.

After the defeat in the 2012 presidential election, the primary and only topic of conversation among the conservatives and the Republican Party establishment is how to regain the White House and the Senate in future elections. These discussions invariably center on tactics and campaign strategy to counter the tactics and campaign strategy of the Democrats. To many principles are not part of the conversation. They want to win!

But all the grand plans to win elections cannot reverse the course the United States is presently on; only by being brutally honest with the American people and offering viable political/economic alternatives as well as emphasizing the overarching importance of honor can the nation be potentially rescued. That, first and foremost, requires honorable men and women to step forward and suffer the slings and arrows certain to come their way. Unless and until that happens all else is meaningless and America will continue to careen down it's self-destructive path.

As George Washington stated in his 1796 Farewell Address:

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labor to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness.”

I leave you with the words of William Henry Harrison, words he spoke during his inaugural address in 1841:

“Limited as are the powers which have been granted, still enough have been granted to constitute a despotism if concentrated in the Executive branch. The tendency of power to increase itself, particularly when exercised by a single individual would terminate in virtual monarchy. The tendencies of governments in their decline is to monarchy. The spirit of faction in times of great excitement imposes itself upon the people as the genuine spirit of freedom, and, like the false Christs whose coming was foretold by the Savior impose upon the true and most faithful disciples of liberty. It is in periods like this that it behooves the people to be most watchful of those to whom they have entrusted power."

Religious Liberty in the Administrative State

“No person, demeaning himself in a peaceable and orderly manner, shall ever be molested on account of his mode of worship, or religious sentiments, in the said territories.

Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” The Northwest Ordinance, 1787.

The Northwest Ordinance (formally An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio, and also known as the Freedom Ordinance or "The Ordinance of 1787") was an act of the Congress of the Confederation of the United States, passed July 13, 1787. The primary effect of the ordinance was the creation of the Northwest Territory as the first organized territory of the United States out of the region south of the Great Lakes, north and west of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi River.

On August 7, 1789, President George Washington signed the Northwest Ordinance of 1789 into law after the newly created U.S. Congress reaffirmed the Ordinance with slight modifications under the Constitution. The Ordinance purported to be not merely legislation that could later be amended by Congress, but rather "the following articles shall be considered as Articles of compact between the original States and the people and states in the said territory, and forever remain unalterable, unless by common consent.

Arguably the single most important piece of legislation passed by members of the earlier Continental Congresses other than the Declaration of Independence, it established the precedent by which the federal government would be sovereign and expand westward across North America with the admission of new states, rather than with the expansion of existing states and their established sovereignty under the Articles of Confederation. It is the most important legislation that Congress has passed with regard to American public domain lands. The U.S. Supreme Court recognized the authority of the Northwest Ordinance of 1789 within the applicable Northwest Territory as constitutional in Strader v. Graham, 51 U.S. 82, 96, 97 (1851), but did not extend the Ordinance to cover the respective states once they were admitted to the Union.

The prohibition of slavery in the territory had the practical effect of establishing the Ohio River as the boundary between free and slave territory in the region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. This division helped set the stage for national competition over admitting free and slave states, the basis of a critical question in American politics in the 19th century until the Civil War.

The Natural Rights provisions of the ordinance foreshadowed the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Many of the concepts and guarantees of the Ordinance of 1787 were incorporated in the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In the Northwest Territory, various legal and property rights were enshrined, religious tolerance was proclaimed, and it was enunciated that since "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." The right of habeas corpus was written into the charter, as was freedom of religious worship and bans on excessive fines and cruel and unusual punishment. Trial by jury and a ban on ex post facto laws were also rights granted.

The Northwest Ordinance was a clear, unambiguous expression of the beliefs of our Founders. There could be no doubt that this new Congress believed that education and morality should go hand in hand and that as long as the religious practices of one did not violate the social compact or encourage criminal acts such as human sacrifice or refusal to support the common defense of the nation. Religion was not only to be tolerated, it was to be encouraged.

In his 1781 Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVIII: Manners Thomas Jefferson said:

“With the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.--But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one’s mind. I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.”

Here Jefferson is referring the immorality of slavery and the wrath of God that will descend on those who support this policy. Jefferson made no bones in referring to God, as he did in the Declaration four times, and warning that an immoral nation devoid of God would no doubt perish.

In his 1796 Farewell Address to the nation George Washington stated:

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labour to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. ’Tis substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free Government. Who that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric.”

Washington, however, offered on caveat to absolute religious freedom in his September, 1789 letter to the Annual Meeting of Quakers when he gently reminded them of their obligation to support the common defense. In his letter Washington stated:

“Government being, among other purposes, instituted to protect the persons and consciences of men from oppression, it certainly is the duty of rulers, not only to abstain from it themselves, but, according to their stations, to prevent it in others.

The liberty enjoyed by the people of these states of worshiping Almighty God agreeably to their consciences, is not only among the choicest of their blessings, but also of their rights. While men perform their social duties faithfully, they do all that society or the state can with propriety demand or expect; and remain responsible only to their Maker for their religion, or modes of faith, which they may prefer or profess.

Your principles and conduct are well known to me; and it is doing the people called Quakers no more than justice to say, that (except their declining to share with others the burden of the common defense) there is no denomination among us, who are more exemplary and useful citizens.

I assure you very explicitly, that in my opinion the conscientious scruples of all men should be treated with great delicacy and tenderness; and it is my wish and desire, that the laws may always be as extensively accommodated to them, as a due regard to the protection and essential interests of the nation may justify and permit.”

Once again we see how our Founders viewed the value of religion in the life of the nation and its schools.

Even the Wilsonian Progressives believed in the value of religion and morality in our national affairs and government policies. They believed in criminal and civil laws that would protect one citizen from the actions of another. This changed with the advent of the Post 1960s Progressives when they embarked on a campaign of anything goes sexual liberation and a complete intolerance for religious institutions.

Post-1960s Progressivism has steadily eroded religious liberty and the freedom of association in America. Measures such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and many anti-discrimination laws express a new understanding of rights that rejects the Founders’ view of religious liberty and the freedom of private associations to govern themselves. Recent Progressivism follows the early Progressive belief that effective freedom requires government to redistribute resources in order to provide equal access to the goods that promote mental development and that make life comfortable. This redistributive agenda is combined with a new emphasis on the empowerment of victim groups, sexual liberation, and an aversion to traditional Christianity and Judaism that requires government intervention in the internal affairs of private organizations. Religious liberty today is divorced from the freedom of association and the free exercise of religion, which the Founders understood to be essential for a free society.

The Founders’ conception of religious liberty was anchored in the belief that the natural right of liberty—and religious liberty—meant not only that all persons may worship God in the way each thinks best, but also that all are permitted to follow what they believe to be God’s laws in their daily life outside of church. The Founders understood, however, that actions based on religion are limited by the purpose of the social compact—the security of rights. No one has a right to disturb the public peace, to obstruct others in their religious worship, or to incite crimes.

While the Founders believed that religion, especially Christianity, is helpful to the cause of liberty because it encourages the virtues necessary for the survival of a free society, they held that government involvement in religious organizations must be limited by the very purpose of government: to secure the equal natural rights of citizens to life, liberty, and property. Denial of the rights to religious liberty and to freedom of association violates the right to liberty.

In practice, liberty—including religious liberty—means that individuals are free to organize and conduct their affairs as they see fit through self-governing private associations. Contrary to today’s practice, the Founders understood that churches, businesses, and other private associations had the right to determine all internal policies, including rules for membership, employment, and conduct, free from government interference. As long as these entities do not harm the rights to life, liberty, or property, they should be free to manage their internal affairs.

After 1965, Progressives adopted a new attitude towards religion and private associations, viewing both as threats to effective or positive freedom. The redistributive agenda of early Progressivism required the violation of the natural right to property, but in general the early Progressives supported the traditional family and liberal Christianity. Post-1965 Progressivism (in the interest of sexual liberation) explicitly attacks Christianity and rejects the older morality which supported the traditional family.

One of the first steps along this road to the rejection of morality in our public education system was the 1963 Supreme Court case of Abington v. Schempp. This was a case in which the Court decided 8–1 in favor of the respondent, Edward Schempp, and declared school-sponsored Bible reading in public schools in the United States to be unconstitutional. Associate Justice William Brennan wrote in his concurring opinion:

“[I]t is implicit in the history and character of American public education that the public schools serve a uniquely public function: the training of American citizens in an atmosphere free of parochial, divisive, or separatist influences of any sort. Attendance at the public schools has never been compulsory. [The Constitution reserves] such a choice to the individual parent. The choice which is thus preserved is between a public secular education with its uniquely democratic values, and some form of private or sectarian education, which offers values of its own.”

Not only did this decision fly in the face of the Northwest Ordinance and the intent of the Founders it set the stage for most of the tyrannical laws against religious beliefs we live with today. Used as stare deices for lower courts to follow in subsequent decisions involving the free practice of religion in public schools and the public square such as; banning the singing of Christmas Carols, not allowing Christmas trees on public property, punishing students for wishing a fellow student a “Merry Christmas” or exchanging a Christmas Card. This is tyranny by a minority group that views itself as victims as they feel offended by these practices — practices that do them no harm. This was not the intent of the Founders when speaking of religious tolerance.

Another landmark case along the road to our throwing organized religion’s moral convictions and tenants was the 2003 case of Lawrence v. Texas, decided by a 6-3 vote of the Court.

In this case the Court struck down the sodomy law in Texas and, by extension, invalidated sodomy laws in thirteen other states, making same-sex sexual activity legal in every U.S. state and territory. The Court overturned its previous ruling on the same issue in the 1986 case Bowers v. Hardwick, where it upheld a challenged Georgia statute and did not find a constitutional protection of sexual privacy.

Lawrence explicitly overruled Bowers, holding that it had viewed the liberty interest too narrowly. The Court held that intimate consensual sexual conduct was part of the liberty protected by substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. Lawrence invalidated similar laws throughout the United States that criminalized sodomy between consenting adults acting in private, whatever the sex of the participants.

In this case Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority:

“These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.”

It seems that the Court uses the 14^th Amendment time and time again to override the 10^th Amendment

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a dissent, which Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas joined. Scalia objected to the Court's decision to revisit Bowers, pointing out many decisions from lower courts that relied on Bowers that might now need to be reconsidered. He noted that the same rationale used to overturn Bowers could have been used to overturn Roe v. Wade, which the Justices in the majority in Lawrence had recently upheld in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Scalia also criticized the majority opinion for failing to give the same respect to stare decisis that three of those in the majority had insisted on in Casey.

Scalia wrote that if the court was not prepared to validate laws based on moral choices as it had done in Bowers, state laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity would not prove sustainable.

He wrote that:

“Today's opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct. The Court has taken sides in the culture war, departing from its role of assuring, as neutral observer, that the democratic rules of engagement are observed.”

He cited the majority opinion's concern that the criminalization of sodomy could be the basis for discrimination against homosexuals as evidence that the majority ignored the views of most Americans:

“So imbued is the Court with the law profession's anti-anti-homosexual culture, that it is seemingly unaware that the attitudes of that culture are not obviously "mainstream"; that in most States what the Court calls "discrimination" against those who engage in homosexual acts is perfectly legal.”

He continued: "Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means." The majority's "invention of a brand-new 'constitutional right'", he wrote, showed it was "impatient of democratic change."

The case attracted much public attention, and a large number of amici curiae ("friends of the court") briefs were filed. Its outcome was celebrated by gay rights advocates, who hoped that further legal advances might result as a consequence. And it did!

Now we have another special victim group demanding a redistribution of resources and special protection under the color of law. If a religious institution or secular organizations like the Boy Scouts they are taken to court by the Gay Rights activists demanding their rights to be a part of the organization even if they are not welcomed. If a business like the photographer in New Mexico refuses to photograph a same sex wedding the photographer is fined $6,637.97. What if a Gay photographer would only photograph same sex commitment ceremonies? Would they suffer the same government sanctions. I doubt it. In this case Gay Rights trump religious rights.

To implement the new view of freedom from Christianity and moral self-restraint, government involves itself ever more pervasively in the internal affairs of churches and businesses. Since these private associations all have employees, they are thus subject to anti-discrimination provisions that actively promote affirmative action policies geared toward sexual liberation and the redistribution of resources to supposed victim groups. Private associations are not allowed to govern themselves, and businesses are often prohibited from treating religion as a positive good. Religious liberty is increasingly confined to the freedom to worship. The natural right to liberty and the specific application of that right as religious liberty and the freedom of association are denied by the contemporary Progressive view of religious liberty.

The Religion of Peace – Not

“Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the (Jews) people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them – even though they exaggerated this issue – he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers.” — Yusuf al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, 2009.

'Hasa Diga Eebowai" is the hit number in Broadway's hit musical "The Book of Mormon," which won nine Tony awards last year. What does the phrase mean? According to the Urban Dictionary it is a Ugandan phrase, translated literally into English as "F**k you, God!"

The "Book of Mormon" — a performance of which Hillary Clinton attended last year, without registering a complaint — comes to mind as the administration falls over itself denouncing "Innocence of Muslims." This is a film that may or may not exist; whose makers are likely not who they say they are; whose actors claim to have known neither the plot nor purpose of the film; and which has never been seen by any member of the public except as a video clip on the Internet.

So let's get this straight: In the consensus view of modern American liberalism, it is hilarious to mock Mormons and Mormonism but outrageous to mock Muslims and Islam. Why? Maybe it's because nobody has ever been harmed, much less killed, making fun of Mormons. This can be said about Christians and Jews. One of the most Anti-Semitic books every published was the “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” purporting to describe a Jewish plan for global domination. I have never heard of Jews rioting in the street. Or when a Crucifix is displayed in a bucket of urine at an art exhibit paid for by the National Endowment for the Arts Christians did not riot and kill people. When a statue of Virgin Mary was displayed covered in dung and the popular film the Da Vinci Code suggested Jesus had sex with Mary Magdalene and produced a child Catholics did not burn images of Tom Hanks and protest in the street of Hollywood or San Francisco. When Bill Maher constantly mocks Catholics, Jews, and Christians they do fire-bomb the studios of HBO.

This is for two reasons. 1.) American Christians, Jews, and Mormons believe in the First Amendment, and 2.) Christians, Jews, and Mormons are able to ignore these blasphemous attacks, shake their heads in disgust, and walk away believing in their religion and pray for forgiveness for the offenders.

On the other hand those professing to believe in the religion of peace will not tolerate any mocking or disrespect of Islam. They believe that those who mock and disrespect Islam should be killed, their property confiscated, and they should riot in the streets burning flags, attacking embassies, firebombing newspaper offices, and blowing up buildings and school buses. Yes this is truly a religion of peace.

Pamela Geller is the founder, editor and publisher of Atlas Shrugs.com and executive director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and Stop Islamization of America (SIOA). She is the author of Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance (WND Books) and The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America with Robert Spencer (foreword by Ambassador John Bolton), (Simon & Schuster). She is also a regular columnist for World Net Daily, Andrew Breitbart's Big Government and Big Journalism, the American Thinker, and other publications.

Pamela Geller received the Annie Taylor Award for Courage in 2010 from the David Horowitz Freedom Center. In October 2011, the United States Marine Corps presented her with the flag flown on September 11, 2011 over Camp Leatherneck, "amid the battlefields of Afghanistan during decisive operations against enemy forces in Helmand Province."

In a recent blog she stated:

“This is what voices for freedom have to live with for speaking in defense of freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion and individual rights.

The media sanctions the motive (blasphemy laws under the sharia) and invariably targets innocent civilians not the violent jihadists. Eric Allen Bell has gone into hiding

Islamic Supremacists Seek to Settle Score by Framing Filmmaker September 20, 2012, FrontPage Magazine.

What if there was one historical figure that just simply could not be lampooned? I’m not talking about a George Orwell book now. I’m talking about reality. What if people in the free world, who had the right to free speech, would not dare lampoon this figure, because so many people on the planet had become brainwashed into thinking he was a “prophet”? Maybe this seems just too mind-numblingly absurd to even entertain, but what if – what if the fear that these people would be offended, and then hurt you, or kill you, kept everyone silent – kept everyone afraid to poke fun at the imaginary holy man and to shudder in fear at the thought of exercising their right to free speech?

Is there even a word for something so absurd, so incredibly ridiculous? In fact there is. It is called being “Sharia-compliant.”

Here are a few reason why Islam should not be considered the Religion of Peace.

The mosque and state are not separate.

To this day, Islamic nations that are deeply rooted in Sharia, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, do not adequately separate the two realms, giving a lot of power to courts and councils to ensure that legislation does not contradict the Quran (never mind whose interpretation).

Jihad may be waged against injustice or an unjust nation, as Islam defines the terms.

Classical texts say Islam is justice, and no Islam is injustice. Therefore, a "just war" can be waged against a nation or people who do not submit to Islam.

Yet we are told in the 1990 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights, which is based on sharia, that humane rules must be followed (Article Three). Does that article offer hope that modern Islam can move past old Islam? Maybe.

However, the Quran, sacred traditions, classical law, and historical Islam contradict or balance out some elements in Article Three. Would there be a conflict between the old Islam and modern Islam if war broke out? Many Islamic clerics issue fatwas (religious rulings) to wage jihad.

Jihad may be waged to spread Islam and force conversions -- a holy war.

Waging jihad to spread Islam and force conversions is a perfect description of "holy war." See Quran 8:39, 9:5, 9:11-12, 9:14, and 9:29; and then see 9:33, 61:9, and 48:28.

Yet we have been told for many years now that holy wars and forced conversions were never done in Islam. That's a myth imagined by Westerners.

However, read those verses and click on the back-up articles.

Reference: Jihad and Qital, The Mission of Muhammad and the Sword, and The Early Muslim Community and the Sword .

A captive in jihad may be executed, enslaved, ransomed for money, exchanged for other prisoners, or released freely.

Quran 47:4, 33:25-27, and 4:24 say these things (and the last option -- free release — is positive). Yet we are told that in a jihad today, everything must be done humanely and justly.

However, as stated before, the back-up article, this fourth item, and the next four items in this list balance out that claim. One must ask whether there be a conflict between old Islam and modern Islam in the event of a war.

Reference: Jihad and Qital and Slavery

A woman captive of jihad may be forced to have to sex with her captors (now owners).

Quran 4:24 and especially the sacred traditions and classical law allow this. The sacred traditions say that while out on military campaigns under Muhammad's leadership, jihadists used to practice coitus interruptus with their female captives.

Female soldiers fighting terrorists today must be forewarned of the danger.

Reference: Jihad and Qital and Slavery

Property can be destroyed or confiscated during jihad.

Quran 59:2 and 59:5 discuss those rules.  Sacred traditions and classical law expand on the Quranic verses. Modern Islamic law officially improves on the Quran: see Article Three of the 1990 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights, which is nonetheless based on sharia but outlaws wanton destruction of property. Once again, would there be any conflict between old Islam and modern Islam in a war today?

Reference: Jihad and Qital and The Quran and the Sword

Jihad may be waged to collect spoils.

Quran 8:1, 8:7, 8:41, and 48:20 show this clearly.  Early Islam followed the old Arab custom of raiding caravans, but as its military grew, the raids were elevated to jihad. The spoils of war were coveted. Which Islam would prevail in a war today — the old one or the modern one?

Reference: Jihad and Qital and The Quran and the Sword

The Quran promises gardens for martyrs dying in jihad.

Throughout the Quran, Muhammad promises the men in his fledgling Muslim community that if they die fighting for Allah and for him, Allah will reward them with a "virgin-rich" garden (Quran 44:51-56; 52:17-29; 55:46-78).

In Quran 4:74, 9:111, and 3:140-143, the Arabic word "jihad" (root is j-h-d) is the means or currency to trade in this life for the life to come in an economic bargain.

Reference: Martyrdom and the Sword

A second-class submission tax, called the Jizya, must be imposed on Jews and Christians (and other religious minorities) living in Islamic countries.

Quran 9:29 offers three options to Jews and Christians: (1) fight and die, (2) convert to Islam, or (3) keep their religion, but pay a tribute or submission tax, the Jizya, while living under Islam.

In Islamic history, vanquished Jews and Christians became known as dhimmis. This word appears in Quran 9:8 and 9:10, meaning a "treaty" or "oath," but it can also mean those who are "condemned," "reviled," or "reproved" (Quran 17:18, 17:22, 68:49). The word "submission" in Quran 9:29 can also be translated as "humiliation," "utterly humbled," "contemptible," or "vile." It can mean "small" as opposed to "great."

Islamic nations today still seek to impose this second-class religion tax.

Reference: Jihad and Qital and The Quran and the Sword

A male owner may have sex with his slave-women, even prepubescent slave-girls.

See Quran 4:24 and 23:1-7 — but it is classical law that permits sex with prepubescent slave girls and describes them as such. Some Muslim religious leaders and others still advocate this practice, taking the slaves as concubines (though sex with prepubescent slave-girls is another matter).

Reference: Slavery

Apostasy laws, including imprisonment or execution, may be imposed on anyone who leaves Islam (an apostate).

Normally this is a prescribed punishment, but it is also political, since it is about freedom of religion. Surprisingly the Quran does not cover punishing apostates down here on earth, though in the afterlife they will be punished. Does this mean modern Islam can reform old Islam? Quran 4:88-89, 9:73-74, and 9:123, read in that sequence, might deal with earthly punishments. Mainly, however, the sacred traditions and classical law permit harsh treatment for anyone who leaves Islam.

Islamic courts and laws still impose these punishments today, or religious scholars today argue for the law.

Reference: Freedom of Religion

Blasphemy laws, including imprisonment or execution, may be imposed on critics of Islam or Muhammad.

These verses should be read in historical sequence, as follows, for they show that as Islam's military power increased, the harsh treatment of mockers and critics also intensified: Quran 3:186, 33:57-61, 9:61-66, 9:73, and 9:123. Sacred traditions, classical laws, and historical Islam are unambiguous about the punishments, recording the people, and often their names, who were assassinated for mocking Muhammad and the Quran.

Islamic nations and pockets of Islam in non-Muslim countries still impose these punishments today.

Reference: Free Speech

Perhaps, if Obama gets reelected he will offer a proposed Constitutional Amendment that will change the language in the First Amendment to:

“Congress shall make laws respecting all religions, and prohibiting the free exercise thereof, except Islam; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances, except when petitioning against Sharia Law.”

I am sure the liberal press, Obama, and Hilary will support this change 100%

Eat More Chicken

“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” — Leviticus 20:13, 1769 Oxford King James Bible.

According to the Wall Street Journal the Muppets are severing their connection with the fast food chicken chain Chick-fil-A.:

“The Jim Henson Company, the force behind the Muppets, recently announced that it’s cutting ties with Chick-fil-A because of the fast-food chain’s stance against same-sex marriage. The company posted this note on its Facebook page: “The Jim Henson Company has celebrated and embraced diversity and inclusiveness for over fifty years and we have notified Chick-fil-A that we do not wish to partner with them on any future endeavors. Lisa Henson, our CEO is personally a strong supporter of gay marriage and has directed us to donate the payment we received from Chick-Fil-A to GLAAD.”

The fact that Chick-fil-A is a company that espouses Christian values is no secret. The fact that its 1,600 fast-food chicken restaurants across the country are closed on Sundays has long been testament to that.

CNN reported on July 19^th that the comments of company President Dan Cathy about gay marriage to Baptist Press on July 16^th have ignited a social media wildfire:

"Guilty as charged," Cathy said when asked about his company's support of the traditional family unit as opposed to gay marriage.

"We are very much supportive of the family - the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that," Cathy is quoted as saying.

Strong feelings of support and disagreement have followed, making Chick-fil-A the top Google trend on Thursday morning as the company's Facebook and Twitter pages were burning up with arguments.

"Hate mongers! Never again! Not another $ from me," Duke Richards wrote on Facebook.

"Goodbye Chikkk-fil-a! [Sic] your food was delicious, but I can no longer eat nuggets filled with hate!" read a post by Blake Brown.

……

But the support for the company was just as vehement.

"Just wanted to say I'm proud that you stand firm in your beliefs. You knew the risks, and still took the plunge. May God bless this company with abundance. Never back down!" said a Facebook post from David Jones.

"Thank you for standing up for what you believe. The truth is not hate. It's just the truth," wrote Sharon R Boyd.

"I love the values that this restaurant stands for and will support it every dang chance I get! Pay no attention to the morons spewing hate!" read a post from Raymond Joy.”

Dan Cathy oversees one of the country's most successful businesses. As president and chief operating officer of Chick-fil-A, Cathy leads a business with 1,608 restaurants that had sales of more than $4 billion dollars last year. They sell chicken and train employees to focus on values rooted in the Bible.

His father, S. Truett Cathy started the business in 1946, when he and his brother, Ben, opened an Atlanta diner known as The Dwarf Grill (later renamed The Dwarf House). In 1967, his father opened the first Chick-fil-A restaurant in Atlanta. Today, Chick-fil-A is the second largest quick-service chicken restaurant chain in the United States based on annual system-wide sales.

Dan Cathy's success has not erased the biblical values he learned as a child in a Baptist church. He is a warm, common man who is deeply committed to being a faithful Christian witness. And he is fully involved in New Hope Baptist Church in Fayetteville, Ga. He drives Chick-fil-A's efforts to provide genuine hospitality, ensuring that customers have an exceptional dining experience in a Chick-fil-A restaurant. Based on Matthew 5:41, Cathy is on a mission to provide customers with "second-mile" service — exceeding even the highest expectations of a typical fast-food restaurant. The Baptist Press reported:

“We don't claim to be a Christian business," Cathy told the Biblical Recorder in a recent visit to North Carolina. He attended a business leadership conference many years ago where he heard Christian businessman Fred Roach say, "There is no such thing as a Christian business."

"That got my attention," Cathy said. Roach went on to say, "Christ never died for a corporation. He died for you and me."

"In that spirit ... [Christianity] is about a personal relationship. Companies are not lost or saved, but certainly individuals are," Cathy added.

"But as an organization we can operate on biblical principles. So that is what we claim to be. [We are] based on biblical principles, asking God and pleading with God to give us wisdom on decisions we make about people and the programs and partnerships we have. And He has blessed us."

Rather than leading from his corporate office in Atlanta, Cathy chooses to spend the majority of his time traveling to the chain's growing family of restaurants and interacting with Chick-fil-A's committed team members. His actions stem from a belief that working in the field provides a clearer understanding of the needs of Chick-fil-A customers. Leading from the front line also enables him personally to convey his servant spirit to the chain's 61,000-plus employees.

Cathy believes strongly that Christians are missionaries in the workplace. "Jesus had a lot of things to say about people who work and live in the business community," he said. His goal in the workplace is "to take biblical truth and put skin on it. ... We're talking about how our performance in the workplace should be the focus of how we build respect, rapport and relationships with others that opens the gateway to interest people in knowing God.

"All throughout the New Testament there is an evangelism strategy related to our performance in the workplace. ... Our work should be an act of worship. Our work should be our mission field. As long as we are stateside, let's don't think we have to go on mission trips by getting a passport. ... If you're obedient to God you are going to be evangelistic in the quality of the work you do, using that as a portal to share [Christ]," he said.”

In yet another example of progressives attempting to curtail the rights of those they do not agree with Boston mayor, Thomas Menino, wants to ban the opening of any new Chick-fil-A restaurants. The Los Angeles Times reports:

“Also not a fan of Chick-fil-A’s position: Boston Mayor Thomas Menino. In an interview with the Boston Herald, Menino vowed to block the chain from opening up shop in his city, promising to make it extremely difficult for the company to procure the required licenses.

“Chick-fil-A doesn’t belong in Boston,” Menino told the publication. “You can’t have a business in the city of Boston that discriminates against a population. We’re an open city, we’re a city that’s at the forefront of inclusion.”

Nearly 4,000 people have signed a pledge to boycott Chick-fil-A.”

The Times report continues:

“But Chick-fil-A has its share of supporters, including Mike Huckabee. On his Facebook page this weekend, the former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate wrote that he has “been incensed at the vitriolic assaults on the Chick-fil-A company.”

He called the Cathy clan “a wonderful Christian family who are committed to operating the company with Biblical principles and whose story is the true American success story” – one “that is being smeared by vicious hate speech and intolerant bigotry from the left.”

Huckabee declared Aug. 1 “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.”

“Too often, those on the left make corporate statements to show support for same sex marriage, abortion, or profanity, but if Christians affirm traditional values, we're considered homophobic, fundamentalists, hate-mongers, and intolerant,” Huckabee wrote.

On Thursday, Chick-fil-A said in a statement that it would “leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena” and refrain from “proactively being engaged in the dialogue” on the subject.”

The majority of people in the United States believe marriage is between a man and a women. This has been proven in California, Oregon, Maine, and North Carolina where anti-gay marriage initiatives have been passed with the approval of the voters. It is only in states where the legislature and governor’s mansion is dominated by Democrats that pro-gay marriage laws have been enacted.

In North Carolina, the latest state to outlaw gay marriage, the voters approved Amendment One by 61%. Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council — a conservative Christian organization — released a statement applauding the vote.

“We applaud North Carolina voters for joining voters in 31 other states upholding the historic and natural definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman” the statement said. “At every opportunity, the American people have demonstrated a deep appreciation for the unique benefits that marriage between a man and a woman brings to families and society. They recognize that marriage is the only kind of union that results in natural procreation and keeps a mother and father together to raise the children produced by their union.”

North Carolina had previously been the only Southern state that did not have a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Some 29 states already have statutes or constitutional amendments outlawing same-sex marriage. Additionally, in Hawaii, the state legislature has the power to define marriage, though the state does not currently explicitly ban same-sex marriage. North Carolina will now become the 30th state with such a law. Same sex marriage is currently legal in six states, plus Washington, D.C.

For his statement, Cathy is accused of potentially offending his customers (Washington Post) and of not liking "gay people" (Ed Helms). Moreover, Helms has been joined by Jane Lynch, Deepak Chopra, Miley Cyrus, Lindsay Lohan, and the Kardashians in announcing a boycott of Chick-fil-A.

It appears Cathy's crime isn't so much that he holds the convictions he holds, but that he has the courage to voice them.

As Jena McGregor asserted in her Washington Post column:

“On the one hand, you could argue leaders of businesses, particularly private, family-owned ones, should be able to speak their minds. But when a business leader elects to take a public and vocal position on a hot-button political issue in an election year, he or she also risks losing the support of many of its customers.”

Note that McGregor's line of thinking doesn't cross over for businesses like Office Depot, which shares its convictions with every customer via signs in their stores that read, "Be Brave," along with the tagline, "We Support Bravery."

For the record, the signs are not referencing Office Depot's support of the military, but of Lady GaGa's "Born This Way Foundation" — a foundation supporting same-sex "marriage" and which Office Depot has guaranteed a $1-million donation.

Don't hold your breath for a Washington Post column criticizing Office Depot for this anytime soon. And don't expect to hear anything negative from the celebrities who were so quick to criticize Cathy for possessing the courage of his convictions.

It's all part of the duplicity we've watched the progressive left demonstrate for decades, but it's also part of a larger, more recent phenomenon that should trouble every American. Those on the left are insisting that those in business have no right to have convictions of their own if they don't mirror what the left believes. This is the tyranny of political correctness. If you do not believe as I then we will sanction you.

What Cathy is experiencing is the tip of the iceberg. Right now, people are in court and being severely fined simply because they wish to exercise their faith convictions in how they run their businesses. Elane Photography is in court because the co-owner of the small New Mexico photo company couldn't in good conscience user her artistic skills to beautify a same-sex "commitment" ceremony. Hercules Industries is in court in Colorado because the Obama administration wants to force its owners to abandon their faith convictions when it comes to providing health insurance that covers abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception. Hands On Originals, a T-shirt company in Kentucky, has been dragged before a human rights commission because it wouldn't print T-shirts to promote a "gay pride" festival. The list goes on and on.

Never mind that none of these events has caused anyone a problem in getting the goods or services he or she wanted. The goal is strictly to punish those who won't go along and approve of leftist orthodoxy.

Just ask the Susan G. Komen Foundation, after it incurred the wrath of Planned Parenthood for simply saying that it wouldn't fund the abortion giant anymore with a small amount of grant money to which Planned Parenthood has absolutely no right. Of course, that didn't stop the liberal politicians whose campaigns Planned Parenthood supports from demanding that Komen bow to the abortion agenda.

Sadly, Planned Parenthood at least partially succeeded in bringing about a concession from the Komen Foundation. Let's hope Dan Cathy continues to stand strong and resist whatever pressures are wrongfully applied to him for staying true to his convictions. He has a great record of charity and community service to millions that people should not ignore just because a few on the left put their social agenda above all else.

We are living an America dominated by the tyranny of factions. No business or person should be punished by government for adhering to their beliefs as long as those beliefs do not translate to actions that adversely affect the rights of others. This goes for Chick-fil-A, Office Depot, and Elane Photography. Chick-fil-A is not refusing service to people who do not believe as their president nor is Office Depot refusing service to me because I do not agree with their slogan or involvement in LGBT issues. (I shop for my office supplies at Staples because I like the service there). As the owner of a small photography business I would not sanction a same sex marriage ceremony with my camera. People have a right to shop and eat where they wish and government has no right to interfere with their choice, Boston mayor, Thomas Menino included.

I have never eaten at a Chick-fil-A restaurant but I surely intend to do so, and soon.