What’s truly troubling is how the 1st Amendment now is coming under fire, particularly the freedom to practice a religion of your choice.
Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn pointed this out last week in a piece about the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Chairman Robert Castro and a report he released recently. It was titled “Peaceful Coexistence: Reconciling nondiscrimination principles with civil liberties.”
In the report, he wrote, “The phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance.”
Really.
Evangelical Christians who strive to live by the Bible as the living word of God hold to the Bible’s teaching that marriage is between one man and one woman. Thanks to four progressives on the Supreme Court and Justice Anthony Kennedy, the law of the land no longer aligns with that viewpoint. That doesn’t change my or their convictions about what is right.
Even more troubling in the report is: “Civil rights protections ensuring nondiscrimination, as embodied in the Constitution, laws and policies are of pre-eminent importance in American jurisprudence.”
In other words, the free exercise of religion clause in the First Amendment is trumped by a policy of some group such as the civil rights commission.
We do live in troubling times when rights enumerated in the Constitution can be over-ridden by the opinions of bureaucrats.
My friend Frank Capilla, founder of Can-Am Plumbing in Pleasanton, emailed last week with the following:
“This morning our estimator at Can-Am Plumbing received an email from one of our customers, Pulte Homes. We are no longer to refer to the master bathroom as the "Master bathroom". They said that some of their customers find the word "master" offensive. From now on we are to refer to the master bathroom as the "owners" bathroom. I have been in the plumbing trade for 54 years and my own business for 44 years. I thought I've heard it all, however, this really takes the cake.
I think I'm getting old because I'm really getting tired of this politically correct X$%#, or should I say politically correct feces.
PS: I wonder if they have this problem in Texas."
This evening at 6:30 p.m., Pleasanton Gardens will host its biennial candidates’ night at 251 Kottinger Ave. The forum will focus on issues of particular concern to senior citizens. It is open to the public.
If you have a question you would like asked as it relates to seniors in Pleasanton, please respond to this blog.