The trials of holding our faith as christians are going to be tested with greater challenges in the coming years. As secular values continue to replace christian morals and guidelines. The following is one of such test we will see more of as the battlefield gets tougher.
ROMANS:1:21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creatorwho is forever praised. Amen.
26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
28Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
Ministry Sues to Keep Same-Sex Ceremonies Out of Its Facility
By: Administrative Account | Source: CNSNews.com
August 21, 2007 8:46AM EST
By Randy Hall
CNSNews.com Staff Writer/Editor
August 21, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - A Methodist group that refuses to let homosexuals hold civil union ceremonies at one of its retreat facilities is suing New Jersey officials to prevent the state from forcing the church to violate its religious beliefs.
Civil union ceremonies are specifically prohibited by the doctrines of the United Methodist Church, even though the State of New Jersey granted legal status to civil unions last February.
A Methodist church retreat in Ocean Grove, N.J. -- called the Camp Meeting Association (OGCMA) -- filed a federal lawsuit last week against the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights, after government officials threatened to prosecute the OGMCA for turning down requests by three same-sex couples who wanted to conduct civil union ceremonies at a pavilion owned by the Ocean Grove facility.
"Ocean Grove is legitimately acting to defend itself against a potentially intrusive arm of a state government that may try to override church policies in the name of 'tolerance,'" said Mark Tooley, director of UMAction, a group that defends traditional Christian beliefs and practices in the spirit of John Wesley. the father of Methodism.
"This matter is not just about same-sex unions," said Tooley. "It is about the freedom of a religious organization to uphold its own beliefs and establish policies for its own property."
"Religious groups have the right to make their own decisions without government interference," agreed Brian Raum, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing the Camp Meeting Association.
"[T]he Division on Civil Rights ... has violated the Plaintiff's First Amendment rights by subjecting this patently religious entity to an illegal investigation and threat of prosecution under the law," the lawsuit states.
According to the complaint, the investigation "is causing a substantial burden on, and chilling of," the Camp Meeting Association's "rights to unfettered religious expression, association and free exercise of religion."
The ADF argues that the Camp Meeting Association's pavilion -- an open-air wooden structure on Ocean Grove's boardwalk -- and other buildings on the site have hosted church and worship services for more than 100 years.
However, the pavilion is usually open to the public and it has no religious markings. Other denominations' worship services often are held there, as are organized secular events, such as concerts, debates and civil war re-enactments.
That has prompted Ocean Grove United, a group of area residents and business owners formed to combat the OCGMA on this matter, to claim that, given its multiple civic and religious uses, the pavilion is a place of "public accommodation" under the state's anti-discrimination law -- and therefore, civil union ceremonies must be allowed.
As Cybercast News Service previously reported, Harriet Bernstein and Luisa Paster applied in March to use the pavilion for their civil union ceremony, which was planned for September. The Methodist organization rejected their application and later told Bernstein in an email that it did not allow civil unions to be held in the pavilion.
"In an apparent distortion of the First Amendment, they are claiming that they have the right to discriminate against people who do not share their religious tenets," Bernstein replied.
The women then filed a complaint under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination, which states that entities which "offer goods, services and facilities to the general public" are prohibited from "directly or indirectly denying or withholding any accommodation, service, benefit or privilege to an individual" on the basis of sexual orientation.
In response, the ADF said New Jersey is still subject to the First Amendment, and state statutes that limit liberties guaranteed by the Constitution must be overturned.
Nevertheless, Lee Moore, a spokesman for the New Jersey attorney general, described the ADF lawsuit as "premature" since the division hasn't come to any conclusion about the case.
"To date, the Division on Civil Rights has asserted nothing beyond its right to initiate an investigation to determine whether there has been a violation of the law against discrimination," Moore said in a news release.
But Raum countered that the state should have "refused to entertain a complaint against a religious organization" and should have told the couple that filed it that the law against discrimination doesn't apply under these circumstances.
"Whenever the state investigates, they inherently affect your right to operate as you normally would," he added. "There's a stigma attached to an investigation. Anytime you investigate, people assume you've done something wrong.
"This is the kind of state interference Thomas Jefferson warned against when he referred to the 'separation of church and state' in his letter to the Danbury Baptists," Raum said.
Tooley from the UMAction agreed. "Not just United Methodists, but all persons concerned about religious and civil liberty should speak out in defense of the Ocean Grove Camp [Meeting] Association," he stated.
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