What in the world is going on down in Georgia? Put another way: What’s the “deal” with the governor down in Georgia? Evangelicals, you need to understand what’s going on in this country. Read below from The Los Angeles Times:
When Joshua McKoon learned that AT&T, Bank of America and hundreds of other companies had taken out a full-page newspaper advertisement to protest Georgia's "religious liberty" bill, the Republican state senator took to Twitter.
"How grotesque," he wrote.
The ad, which appeared Easter Sunday in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "sends a very clear message to the Christian community on where these corporations stand in respect to people of faith," said the 37-year-old Catholic.
To much of corporate America, the bill amounted to legalized discrimination against gay people by allowing them to be denied certain services and protections.
But to McKoon, he and other religious conservatives are the ones under assault as the country moves to the left on social issues. Even with Republicans controlling both chambers of the Georgia Legislature, as well as the governor's office, they increasingly feel that their voices are being ignored.
Their fears seemed to be confirmed Monday when Gov. Nathan Deal announced he was vetoing the bill, known as the Free Exercise Protection Act.
Religious conservatives still play a major role in American politics, with evangelical Christians holding steady over the last decade or so at just over a quarter of the U.S. adult population. In Georgia, that figure is 38%, according to the Pew Research Center.
Their power was on display when the Georgia Legislature approved the bill this month. Only 10 of 157 Republican lawmakers voted against it.
But as major corporations began their protest and entertainment industry powerhouses threatened to stop film production in Georgia if the bill was signed into law, moderate conservatives began to fear that the legislation could cost the state billions of dollars.
Only California and New York have more television and movie production than Georgia, which has lured Hollywood with tax breaks and cheap labor costs.
The governor said he could see no compelling need for the bill. His veto sent a clear message to many religious conservatives: Economic considerations carry more weight than the will of rank-and-file voters.
"This is a prime example of why Republicans across the nation are concerned and upset," said Don Hattaway, 51, senior pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church in Cartersville in north Georgia. "We vote for politicians according to what they say, and then when they get in office they do the contrary. It's come to the point in Georgia that we don't know who to trust."
The bill would have ensured that a pastor could not be forced to perform a same-sex wedding and that nonprofit faith-based organizations could legally refuse to rent or lease property for events they found objectionable. It also would have given such groups the right to fire or not hire people whose practices they opposed on religious grounds.
Though critics pounced on the bill as discriminatory, its proponents said they merely wanted to provide people of religious faith with modest protection from mounting pressure to accept gay marriage.
"We simply want to act out our faith," Hattaway said. "We don't want to harm anyone. We minister to people and we feed the hungry, and we don't ask what lifestyle people are living. But we also don't want people telling us to embrace a lifestyle that is clearly immoral and denounced in Scripture."
"A lot of people feel betrayed" by the veto, he said. "If a Republican governor, put in office by people who are conservative, Bible-believing Christians, can't stand boldly and protect our basic liberties, I think we are all threatened."
He and other Christian conservatives said their religious liberties were increasingly being put at risk by a series of legal decisions over the last decade, culminating with the Supreme Court's ruling last year legalizing same-sex marriage.
Folks, we have gotten to the point now where a republican, conservative, Baptist governor is now coming against Christians and the church and plopping down on the side of political correctness. Please, someone tell me what in the world is wrong with legislation that gives pastors protection so they don't have to perform same-sex weddings or faith-based organizations the CHOICE to not only gay friendly events inside their church/religious doors? This isn't about skin color which you CAN'T change. This is about someone's sexual preference. That's a CHOICE. If it's not a choice, then show me the "gay gene" that proves it is not a choice. The God of the universe WOULD NOT call homosexuality a sin and then allow someone to be born into a sinful state that they are trapped in forever. It doesn't comport. I'm going with the Bible.
Governor Nathan Deal is not running for re-election so he has nothing to lose here. That’s part of the reason he did what he did. But the more dangerous trend is that conservative Christians of all stripes (politicians, regular citizens and yes even some pastors in the church) are getting sucked in to calls for tolerance and making sure they don’t “discriminate.” This is utter nonsense. Below are remarks by Bishop E.W. Jackson, a prominent black leader and preacher who sums it up best:
“The citizens of Georgia, like citizens around the country are tired of being told by elites that if we take our faith seriously, if we believe in God and the Bible, we are ignorant bigots and haters. We are tired of being made to feel that we have to apologize for going to church on Sundays and taking the Bible seriously. If they are going to trample our first Amendment rights and treat Christians and observant Jews like second class citizens, they are in for a fight…this is not a political battle, but a moral and spiritual one. This is not about Republican versus Democrat, but right versus wrong. All Americans should stand together against this vicious attack on our First Amendment freedoms.
For as Georgia goes so may go the nation. However, black ministers are in a unique position to say that while we oppose discrimination, the issue of so called "gay rights" is not the same as the struggle for black civil rights. The majority of black citizens are offended by the analogy because personal sexual behavior, preferences or orientation cannot be compared to skin color.
That said, the bill passed by the legislature in Georgia does not provide some blanket right to deny employment or housing or services to people based on their sexual orientation. All it says is that ministers, churches and faith based organizations cannot be sued for refusing to perform same-sex ceremonies or declining to rent our facilities for gatherings in support of homosexuality or rejecting an applicant for employment whose views and lifestyle contradict our sincerely held religious beliefs.
The framers of the Constitution would turn over in their graves to learn that the Bill of Rights has been perverted to guarantee something they would have found abhorrent while the very first right they secured - freedom of religion - is being destroyed.
Five Supreme Court Justices gave us a constitutional fiction conjured up by their own wicked and self-righteous imaginations. We refuse to bow to this judicial arrogance and tyranny.
Although the Governor of Georgia has bowed, we will never give in because doing so would be dishonoring God. So we fight on!
We want to say to Governor Nathan Deal that he is on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of the Constitution and the wrong side of the people of Georgia.
We want to say to the NFL and to corporations arrayed against us, we will not allow you to marginalize citizens who are asking for nothing more than that their First Amendment freedom be protected.
The First Amendment protects the free exercise of one's religion, not the right to force one's sexual orientation and its related values and ceremonies on others. This is anti-Christian bigotry, and it must be stopped.
As strange as it sounds, they actually believe that clergy should be forced to perform same-sex ceremonies, that churches should be forced to rent their facilities to homosexual activist groups and that faith based organization should be forced to hire people whose lifestyle violates their sincerely held religious beliefs.
What they are telling Christians is that we do not have a right to live out our biblical faith.
This is not about discriminating against homosexuals. This is about discrimination against Bible believing Christians.
And with that, Bishop Jackson and The Brody File drop the mic and walk off.