We are getting glimpses of the future, and it is not looking too good. We are seeing how radical political agendas are being implemented throughout the Western world, along with the ugly consequences which inevitably follow. Indeed, some nations are more advanced (or should we say, more degenerate) than others in this rampant coercive utopianism.
Consider the UK and its recently passed ‘equality’ legislation. Some people who were awake enough to see how bad this law would be fought it as it was being debated, but unfortunately many – including many believers – were simply asleep at the wheel. They did not know or did not care about how these draconian laws would radically impact their society. And now pro-family and pro-faith folk are beginning to feel the full weight of this coercive legislation.
Two examples can be cited here, both having to do with the misnamed Equality Act 2006, which makes illegal any discrimination on the grounds of sexuality, and a particular part of it, the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations. This of course is really just a Special Rights for Homosexuals Act. It uses the blunt instrument of the law to coerce ordinary citizens to embrace, support and promote the homosexual lifestyle.
The two recent examples demonstrate how these laws are a frontal attack on the rights of citizens to follow their conscience, to exercise free speech, and to practice their faith. The first has to do with a Christian magistrate who was compelled to resign rather than give in to the reigning pro-homosexual orthodoxy.
The 63-year-old Family Court judge refused to place children in the care of homosexual couples, and he sought to exempt himself from cases involving homosexual applicants, which would force him to compromise his Christian convictions. But the new laws meant he had to go. He is now appealing a decision which said he could not opt out of these cases. He complained that the UK Labor Government was treating vulnerable children like “guinea pigs” by legalising homosexual adoption.
The second incident involves an elderly couple who have been fostering children for years, but now are finding they can no longer do so because of the new laws. The Daily Mail describes the events this way:
“They are devoted foster parents with an unblemished record of caring for almost 30 vulnerable children. But Vincent and Pauline Matherick will this week have their latest foster son taken away because they have refused to sign new sexual equality regulations. To do so, they claim, would force them to promote homosexuality and go against their Christian faith. The 11-year-old boy, who has been in their care for two years, will be placed in a council hostel this week and the Mathericks will no longer be given children to look after. The devastated couple, who have three grown up children of their own, became foster parents in 2001 and have since cared for 28 children at their home in Chard, Somerset.”
The article continues, “Earlier this year, Somerset County Council’s social services department asked them to sign a contract to implement Labour’s new Sexual Orientation Regulations, part of the Equality Act 2006, which make discrimination on the grounds of sexuality illegal. Officials told the couple that under the regulations they would be required to discuss same-sex relationships with children as young as 11 and tell them that gay partnerships were just as acceptable as heterosexual marriages. They could also be required to take teenagers to gay association meetings. When the Mathericks objected, they were told they would be taken off the register of foster parents. The Mathericks have decided to resign rather than face the humiliation of being expelled. Mr Matherick, a 65-year-old retired travel agent and a primary school governor, said: ‘I simply could not agree to do it because it is against my central beliefs. We have never discriminated against anybody but I cannot preach the benefits of homosexuality when I believe it is against the word of God’.”
Increasingly those who support freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, and freedom to affirm traditional views of marriage and family will find themselves at the wrong end of the law. These sorts of cases are simply going to increase, and soon we will find more and more believers and rebels against the new political correctness being fined, imprisoned, and turned into the new pariahs in society.
And much of this has happened – and will happen – because we were not willing to stand up for what is right in the first place. Too many people have just not entered into these culture wars, and it may now be getting too late.
We are losing our liberties fast, and religious freedom is quickly beginning to crumble in the West. How much worse must things get before we all stand up and be counted? I remind us all of the words of Martin Luther King Jr: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
And an earlier Martin, who paid a heavy price for faith and freedom, is also worth quoting: “In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up” (Martin Niemoller, German pastor and Holocaust survivor).
How long before we wake up and realise that the very freedoms which we fought so long and hard for are quickly unravelling before our very eyes? The day is getting late, and action is needed. We need to become involved, before we find that we no longer can take a stand.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=489125&in_page_id=1770
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=489285&in_page_id=1770
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