The twisted minds of many U.S. lawmakers enjoy concocting ironic nomenclature for legislation that will have the opposite impact of what it would imply.
The “Patriot Act,” the “Equal Rights Act” and the “Inflation Reduction Act” are just a few examples that allude to something noble while, in reality, unleashing horrors.
The latest horror that Democrats and a number of turncoat Republicans helped advance in the Senate this last week is something called the “Respect for Marriage Act,” co-sponsored by Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.
This bill not only would effectively repeal the 1996 “Defense of Marriage Act,” which defined marriage at a federal level as being the union between a man and a woman, but also would open up Christians and religious institutions to litigation.
A summary of the House version of the legislation says it “repeals and replaces provisions that define, for purposes of federal law, marriage as between a man and a woman and spouse as a person of the opposite sex with provisions that recognize any marriage that is valid under state law.”
The bill also “allows the Department of Justice to bring a civil action and establishes a private right of action for violations.”
According to Fox News, the Heritage Foundation pledged more than $1 million to run an ad exposing the anti-Christian legal agenda to millions of football fans over the Thanksgiving holiday.
The 30-second ad was set to air in local broadcasts during the three NFL games Thursday — Buffalo Bills vs. Detroit Lions, New York Giants vs. Dallas Cowboys and New England Patriots vs. Minnesota Vikings — as well as several NCAA games, including Iowa vs. Nebraska on Friday and Indiana vs. Purdue on Saturday.
Heritage believes this legislation and its vague wording would allow people like Biden administration Attorney General Merrick Garland to use federal agencies to target Christians and their church’s tax-exempt statuses.
“America’s religious liberty is under attack with this impending vote in the Senate,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said, according to Fox News.
“This legislation does not add one additional benefit to same-sex couples in the United States; it’s an attack that sets the stage to take rights away from people of faith,” he said. “What it does accomplish is deputizing radical activists to target Americans who cannot in good faith endorse anything other than a man-woman marriage. The American people deserve all the facts.”
The Heritage ad also highlighted the fact that 12 Republican senators betrayed their constituents in voting to approve the bill.
The “Respect for Marriage Act” should have been dead in the water as it faced a 60-vote filibuster in the Senate, which meant it needed the support of at least 10 Republicans in the 50-50 upper chamber.
In addition to Collins, the GOP senators who backed the bill were Roy Blunt of Missouri, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rob Portman of Ohio, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Todd Young of Indiana.
The Heritage Foundation said Democrats were “hurrying to cram through their far-left agenda” through Congress before Republicans hold a majority in the House in January following the midterm elections, Fox News reported.
This haste also is inspired by Justice Clarence Thomas’ comments about overturning other “erroneous” Supreme Court rulings that were incorrectly based on the 14th Amendment in the same manner as Roe v. Wade was.
In his concurring opinion on overturning Roe in June, Thomas wrote that “in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous’ … we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents.”
Do you think releasing this ad during a football game will make a difference?
Obergefell v. Hodges is the 2015 ruling that said states were required to license and recognize same-sex marriage.
It would appear Democrats are attempting to quickly codify same-sex marriage before constitutionally sound justices like Thomas can strike down the court’s ruling on the subject.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah offered an amendment to solidify religious liberty protections in the bill. It says the federal government “shall not take any discriminatory action against a person, wholly or partially on the basis that such person speaks, or acts, in accordance with a sincerely held religious belief, or moral conviction, that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or two individuals as recognized under Federal law.”
Without such protections, the “Respect for Marriage Act” would turn religious practices into prosecutable acts of “persecution.”
We have seen how eager LGBT activists are to bring legal action against business owners who refuse on moral grounds to cater to same-sex weddings.
If this bill is enacted, the left will have effectively emboldened every such activist in the country to attack Christians and their institutions with the full weight of a corrupt Department of Justice and a weaponized IRS behind them.
Pray that enough Americans watching football over this Thanksgiving holiday will be roused to action by Heritage’s ad before their constitutionally protected religious rights become prosecutable offenses.
Reporting by The Western Journal.
