BYÂ TYLER O’NEIL
Three Christian schools and a Christian network of pregnancy centers are suing Attorney General Mark Herring (D-Va.) in order to prevent Virginia from implementing two pro-LGBT laws that force âpeople of faith to adopt a particular government ideology under threat of punishment.â The two laws purport to prevent âdiscriminationâ against LGBT people but, in reality, they force Christian ministries to choose between violating their sincerely held religious beliefs or paying hefty fines, as much as $100,000 per offense.
The so-called Virginia Values Act (S.B. 868), which Gov. Ralph Northam (D-Va.) signed on Holy Saturday (the day before Easter Sunday) in the middle of a pandemic, compels churches, religious schools, and Christian ministries to hire employees who do not share their stated beliefs on marriage, sexuality, and gender identity. A companion law (H.B. 1429) requires ministries and others like them to pay for transgender surgery in employee health care plans, a procedure that violates these ministriesâ convictions.
âThe faith of many Americans inspires them to act for the good of their neighbors and also requires them to abide by its teachings,â Denise Harle, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the law firm representing the Christian ministries, said in a statement. âOur clients offer spiritual guidance, education, pregnancy support, and athletic opportunities to their communities because of the religious beliefs that motivate them. But Virginiaâs new law forces these ministries to abandon and adjust their convictions or pay crippling finesâin direct violation of the Virginia Constitution and other state laws.â
âSuch government hostility toward people of faith has no place in a free society,â Harle argued.
The lawsuit
The ministries filed a pre-enforcement challenge, a lawsuit designed to convince a court to prevent the government from implementing an unconstitutional law.
In the lawsuit, ADF is representing Calvary Road Christian School in Alexandria (preschool through 6th grade, 250 students), Grace Christian School in Staunton (preschool through 12th grade, 320 students), Community Christian Academy in Charlottesville (K-9, 50 students), and Care Net, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that supports a network of 1,100 pregnancy centers, churches, and other ministry organizations and has approximately 22,000 volunteers.
âFor the Ministries, personnel is policy; and so they intentionally employ staff and recruit volunteers who further their respective Christian missions. Virginiaâs new laws, however, make this free religious exercise and association impossible â and label these liberties âdiscrimination,’â the lawsuit argues.
S.B. 868 and H.B. 1429 require the ministries to hire employees who disagree with their beliefs on marriage, sexuality, and gender; mandate that the ministries hire employees whose beliefs and lifestyles are âantagonistic to the ministriesâ convictionsâ; prohibit the ministries from firing employees who oppose their missions; require the ministries to provide services in a manner that violates their beliefs; ban the ministries from even communicating their biblical beliefs; make the ministries use their facilities in a way that contradicts their beliefs; and force the ministries to pay for âgender reassignmentâ procedures in their health plans, even though the ministries object to these procedures.
These laws put the ministries âin an impossible position: they must either abandon the religious convictions they were founded upon, or be ready to face investigations, an onerous administrative process, fines up to $100,000 for each violation, unlimited compensatory and punitive damages and attorney-fee awards, and court orders forcing them to engage in actions that would violate their consciences.â
The lawsuit brings five claims against AG Herring. It claims the LGBT laws violate the ministriesâ right of free exercise of religion under the Virginia Religious Freedom Restoration Act; violate their right to free exercise of religion under the Virginia Constitution; violate their right to free speech under the Virginia Constitution; violate the Virginia Constitutionâs Establishment Clause; and violate the state constitutionâs Due Process Clause.
While the state constitutionâs âEstablishment Clause requires the government to act with a secular purpose and to neither promote nor inhibit religion,â the Virginia Values Act âtargets the Ministries by singling out their religious speech and belief for hostility, and by showing favoritism towards, preferring, and promoting religious beliefs that approve of same-sex marriage and transgender ideology.â
The pro-LGBT law âalso singles out the Ministries based on disfavored religious views and sends a message that religious persons with beliefs like the Ministriesâ are second-class citizens, outsiders, and not full members of the community.â
Anti-religious bigotry fueled the Virginia Values Act
The lawsuit notes that the Virginia legislators who supported the Virginia Values Act expressed hostility to those who view marriage as between one man and one woman.
When considering SB 41 2016, a bill that would have allowed religious persons to object to solemnizing a marriage âin accordance with a sincerely held religious belief ⊠that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman,â State Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-30) condemned the bill, claiming it âcarves out a space for bigotry cloaked under the guise of religious freedom.â Ebbin was the chief patron of the Virginia Values Act in the Senate.
During a debate in the Virginia House of Delegates over an amendment to the Virginia Values Act that would have excluded âa religious corporation, association, society, or unincorporated house of worshipâ from the definition of public accommodations, Delegate Joshua Cole (D-28) asserted his view of Christianity as the correct one in opposing the amendment:
I understand we have theological disagreements and we have theological beliefs of what weâre supposed to carry out, but if you are a public organization, your doors are supposed to be open to everyone in the public. Now I donât know what type of Christianity you come from, but the type of Christianity I come from, the Apostle Paul said âTry with everything within you to live peaceably with all men.â
âŠThe Bible also says âAnd they shall know us by our love.â What are we doing with our witness when we allow organizations to say just because we have St. Peterâs behind it, or Christian behind it, ⊠that we donât like you so donât come over hereâŠ. Madame Speaker as an ending thought, I will let you know that in Jesusâ day the sinner was not his enemy. It was the church.
These and other Virginia Democrats showed the very same kind of hostility to conservative religious beliefs about marriage that members of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission showed toward Christian baker Jack Phillips, who refused to bake a cake celebrating a same-sex wedding. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that the commission had violated Phillipsâ right to the free exercise of religion by subjecting him to âreligious hostilityâ in its application of the law.
This hostility is not limited to the legislators, however. AG Herring has repeatedly insisted that if wedding photographers refuse to help celebrate same-sex weddings, they are discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. Mark Herring said as much in amicus curiae briefs in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018) and in Telescope Media Group v. Lindsey (2019), two cases on the issue of whether or not bakers and photographers have the free speech and religious freedom right to refuse to serve same-sex weddings.
Christian ministries were not pushing bigotry
Yet the ministries suing to stop the Virginia Values Act are not pushing bigotry â they merely intend to operate on the basis of their religious convictions.
The lawsuit explains why each of the ministries cannot simply adopt the government ideology on LGBT issues.
For example, Calvary Road Baptist Church, which operates Calvary Road Christian School, âbelieves that the Bible is the Word of God, divinely revealed and without error.â
âCalvary Road believes that God wonderfully and immutably creates each person as male or female, and that these two distinct, complementary genders together reflect the image and nature of God. Calvary Road believes that rejection of oneâs biological sex is a rejection of the image of God within that person,â the lawsuit explains. âCalvary Road believes that marriage has only one meaning: the uniting of one man and one woman in a single, exclusive union, as delineated in Scripture, and that God commands that sexual intimacy occur only between a man and a woman who are married to each other.â
âTo preserve its function and integrity, Calvary Road believes that all employees and volunteers must agree to and abide by its beliefs on marriage, sexuality, and gender,â and the school runs athletics based on biological sex. âCalvary Road maintains separate facilities like bathrooms and locker rooms for males and females. Access to private facilities is limited to those of the same biological sex in accordance with Calvary Roadâs teaching on sexuality.â
âCalvary Road welcomes workers of any race, color, ethnicity, and national origin in any of its ministries, so long as the potential workers share Calvary Roadâs religious values and doctrinal beliefs,â but it cannot employ those who disagree with its fundamental beliefs.
ADF is also representing a wedding photographer, Chris Herring, who also brought a pre-enforcement challenge against the Virginia Values Act.
Anti-religious bigotry seems on the rise, with Democrats adopting extreme pro-LGBT and pro-abortion policies and legacy media outlets reporting Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrettâs mainstream Christian beliefs as some sort of extreme religious insanity.
Arrest this bribed / blackmailed freak and hurry with the enlarged all white Christian 2nd Confederacy wherein this ( and so much more, ) could never happen.
Or don’t, and wait 4 to 7 years till goons are AT YOUR DOOR to try and take your guns force vaccinate chip and mark you or take you to a camp where you’ll be beheaded.