Homosexual bigots commit hate crimes – Wildflower Inn
“A hate crime is usually defined by state law as one that involves threats, harassment, or physical harm and is motivated by prejudice against someone’s race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, sexual orientation or physical or mental disability.” – USLegal.com
“Harassment…is generally defined as a course of conduct which annoys, threatens, intimidates, alarms, or puts a person in fear of their safety. Harassment is unwanted, unwelcomed and uninvited behavior that demeans, threatens or offends the victim and results in a hostile environment for the victim.”
Homosexual bigots continue the “Night of the Long Knives” purge against anyone and everyone who believes in natural marriage.
The latest targets for their hatred and bigotry are the owners of the Wildflower Inn in Vermont. The inn’s owners, Jim and Mary O’Reilly, are facing a potentially crippling lawsuit for one reason and one reason only: they have a religious conviction that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.
They respectfully declined to rent out their facility used for a lesbian wedding reception. Said the O’Reillys, “Many of our guests have been same-sex couples. We welcome and treat all people with respect and dignity. We do not however, feel that we can offer our personal services wholeheartedly to celebrate the marriage between same-sex couples because it goes against everything that we as Catholics believe in.”
So the harassment of the O’Reillys is clearly “motivated by prejudice against (their)…religion.”
According to the template of the left, they have become the victims of a hate crime.
For daring to actually act on their moral convictions, they are being targeted by the ACLU, which is determined to criminalize Christianity in the United States.
The O’Reillys now face some kind of criminal or civil sanction for acting on their deeply held religious convictions. If they are fined, then their property is being plundered as a punishment for their religious views. If they are ordered to violate their own consciences in their wedding reception policies, then their God-given and “unalienable” right to liberty has been shredded.
And the fact that homosexual bigots are using the power of government to carry out their hate-driven harassment of the O’Reillys only makes it worse. Harassment is harassment no matter who’s doing it, and getting government thugs to do it for you under color of law is simply reprehensible.
Homosexual hatemongers have now created a “hostile environment” in which the O’Reillys are forced to work. They are being subjected to “conduct” which “annoys, threatens, intimidates (and) alarms” them, and have been subjected to behavior which is “unwanted, unwelcomed, and uninvited.” Hello, hate crime.
In a sane world in which the First Amendment was still the supreme law of the land, the O’Reillys’ freedom of religious expression and assembly would still be protected. Alas, the homosexual lobby is rapidly turning us into China and the former Soviet Union.
Christians are now being treated officially as second-class citizens with far fewer human and civil rights than those who engage in aberrant sexual behavior.
The words spoken by one of the lesbian bigots in this story would actually be far more appropriate on the lips of the O’Reillys. “We were saddened and shocked. It was frustrating to be treated like lesser than the rest of society.”
The homosexual agenda and religious liberty cannot co-exist. America will have to choose between the two, because we cannot have both. Every advance of the homosexual agenda comes at the expense of religious liberty. Every time – every single time – the homosexual agenda advances, religious liberty is forced into retreat.
The day has already arrived when it has become a criminal offense for a Christian to act on his convictions. The day is coming when it will be a criminal offense to have Christian convictions at all.
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(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
Bryan Fischer is the Director of Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy at the American Family Association, where he provides expertise on a range of public policy topics. He hosts the “Focal Point” radio program on AFR Talk,which airs live on weekdays from 1-3 p.m. Central on American Family Radio’s nationwide talk network of 145 stations.
