Law As Anti-Christian Bludgeon

     It’s been said, more often than not in the context of government, that personnel is policy. The truth of this statement is beyond reasonable dispute. The employee who disagrees with the employer’s policy will hardly be enthusiastic about implementing and maintaining it. He also constitutes a point of attack for those outside the organization who disagree with its policy: “How can you work for an organization that opposes your own staunchly held beliefs?”

     Thus, if a government wants to impose a policy change on an organization, one of the most insidious – and effective – ways to do so is to force the organization to hire people who are opposed to the existing policy. This is one of the most destructive effects of contemporary anti-discrimination law. It has particular impact upon churches and other religious organizations.

     And so we come to what’s fired my boilers this morning:

     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 “people of faith to adopt a particular government ideology under threat of punishment.” The two laws purport to prevent “discrimination” 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 ministries’ convictions.

     I can’t imagine a “law” more destructive of Christian organizations. Yet today, in the Land of the Formerly Free, “anti-discrimination” laws are seldom challenged, and what challenges there are seldom carry the day. The notion that employers should not be permitted to choose their employees according to their own criteria appears to have been raised to sacred status despite its already demonstrated pernicious effects. As we can see from the above, Virginia has openly placed “anti-discrimination” above the freedom of religion.

     I’ve written about the evil of “anti-discrimination” laws before. It’s effectively impossible to have true freedom of religion in a regime that can pass and enforce such laws. Those who support such laws claim they’re redressing a social injustice, and to this point have been loud enough and strident enough ti intimidate the opposition. Yet what was the original driver for European migration to the New World? The opportunity to practice one’s own faith, safe from government interference!

     The promoters of this plainly unConstitutional law make some of the most outrageous claims I’ve ever encountered about what a church is supposed to be and do. The following, from Delegate Joshua Cole, is representative:

     I understand we have theological disagreements and we have theological beliefs of what we’re supposed to carry out, but if you are a public organization, your doors are supposed to be open to everyone in the public.

     This is a barefaced redefinition of the religious organization as an employer. Regardless of its mission, a company that employs workers is not a “public organization,” nor is it a “public accommodation” of the sort specified in the Civil Rights Acts. If a company were deemed “public” in that sense, it could be forced to hire anyone and everyone who wants to work there, regardless of the company’s needs for personnel.

     Joshua Cole is probably just stupid. There are many stupid persons in politics and government. They only need one skill – the skill of getting voters to vote for them – and some of them can quote sacred scripture as well as I. But it’s possible that he’s as sincerely Christian as Osama bin Laden and merely seeks the power to bend genuine Christians to his will. That’s certainly the case with the odious Ralph Northam, as power-obsessed a thug as American politics knows today.

     And while we’re on the subject, would any Gentle Reader expect the “Virginia Values Act” to be enforced against mosques, madrassas, and other Islamic organizations?

     Virginians must rid themselves of Democrats wherever they may lurk. They’re already three-quarters of the way to ruining the Old Dominion, a state that gave us five of our first six presidents and a great deal of the manpower and energy for the Revolution.