My mind still goes back to it. It's been almost a decade and yet every time I see another account of the disproportionately powerful LGBT political lobby bullying another corporation, intimidating another small business, or destroying the rights of conscience of another private individual, I'm reminded of it.
It was around the time that she had been named the 2014 Senior Soros Fellow that I hosted "black, lesbian, immigrant, and police misconduct attorney and organizer" Andrea J. Ritchie on my old radio program for a discussion about the increasingly hostile relationship between her movement and the conscience rights of Christian citizens. To be fair, I thought Ritchie did an admirable job of articulating why she felt the LGBT lobby was justified in its overt hostility, having been – in her estimation – on the receiving end of such antagonism for years.
To her, Christians had used political power to silence, delegitimize, and dehumanize LGBT citizens for the first two centuries of the country's existence. Turnabout, she argued, was fair play.
But it was towards the end of the conversation that Ritchie said something that at the time seemed chilling, but now appears downright prophetic. I asked her, "Moving forward, do you believe there can be a peaceful coexistence between the conscience rights of Christians and the political demands of the LGBT movement?"
She responded, "Sure, if Christians will give up resistance to our cause."
That isn't peaceful coexistence she's talking about. It's unconditional surrender.
Not that anyone needs to puzzle over that reality these days. The sexual revolution has total control of every major facet and institution in America:
- Corporate America falls all over itself as every corporation in the country wants to sell itself as the most flamboyantly gay-friendly, particularly during "pride" month.
- Public universities and colleges worship at the altar of "inclusion," provided that means full acceptance of any and all self-proclaimed gender identities and sexual orientations, and not religious convictions.
- Media boardrooms are disproportionately dominated by LGBT activists and allies, rendering a near blackout on all news and narratives that fail to paint the revolution in anything but positive colors.
- Government officials and the bureaucrats' shadow regulatory regime all promote a new generation of so-called non-discrimination policy that flagrantly violates the freedom of association and freedom of conscience of private citizens.
- Hollywood is transfixed by the movement and so overzealous in their commitment to normalizing the pushed envelope, they comically overrepresent the community and draw up absurd storylines that fetishize the "cause."
- Even major league sports has adopted a Seinfeld-esque "you must wear the ribbon" mentality within its culture:
Leatherwood is right, of course. The rights of conscience were of the utmost significance to our founders.
Thomas Jefferson noted, "No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority." Yet, as Andrea Ritchie foretold, if you refuse to participate in a gay wedding ceremony, don't think you'll be allowed to maintain your photography or cake business.
And even though the father of the nation, George Washington himself, stated his "wish and desire" that "the laws may always be extensively accommodated" to "the conscientious scruples of all men," today a well-organized, shockingly well-funded movement of sexual revolutionaries wants to make sure there are dire social, cultural, emotional, and financial consequences for baseball players whose scruples compel them to demur from donning the mark of the spirit of the age.
I'm not a Catholic, but I've been intrigued by watching the debate over Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone's denial of communion to the abortion-obsessed Nancy Pelosi. More than one progressive activist has rejected the move, appealing to the "primacy of conscience" on matters of moral questions.
It's remarkable how quickly that primacy becomes bigotry depending on the political issue in question.
