Note: This post is from 2016. Dr. Ronnie Floyd is the former President of the Southern Baptist Convention.
In the video below Southern Baptist Convention President and Pastor Ronnie Floyd discusses the work of Family Council and the importance of ministers being engaged in the public arena.
John Stonestreet with the Colson Center for Christian Worldview has released an excellent commentary on the growing intolerance for basic religious liberty.
Exhibit A is the new Mississippi law that ensures that churches and other religious groups aren’t punished for declining to participate in weddings against their convictions, or for setting personnel and housing policies based on their deeply held beliefs.
Further, this law allows private businesses and schools to set their own policies for bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms. In that sense, the law models peaceful coexistence on very contentious social issues.
But one corporation, IBM is claiming that, “(T)his legislation will permit discrimination against people based on their marital status, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression.”
Not so, according to Jennifer Marshall. The law protects those with religious scruples from being discriminated against. “What the new law does,” she points out, “is to prevent discrimination by ensuring the government will not force people to violate their consciences in very specific contexts spelled out by the law.”
You can read Stonestreet’s full commentary here or listen to it below.
[audio:http://www.breakpoint.org/images/content/breakpoint/audio/2016/042116_BP.mp3|titles=No Tolerance for Religious Tolerance?]Photo Credit: By Nevadaresident (Own work) via Wikimedia Commons.
Over the past several weeks we have seen a lot of questions–and misinformation–about North Carolina’s so-called “bathroom bill”. What is this bill, and does Arkansas need one like it?
In a nutshell, North Carolina’s proposed H.B. 2 primarily does five things:
It is entirely reasonable for the State of North Carolina to pass a law governing how government-owned and operated restrooms and similar facilities are utilized.
It is entirely reasonable for the North Carolina Legislature to reserve the power to recognize protected classes of citizens.
And it is entirely reasonable for businesses to decide biological males must use the men’s room and biological females must use the women’s room.
As to whether or not Arkansas needs a law like North Carolina’s, Arkansas passed a law in 2015 that prevents local governments from creating or recognizing any protected classes not found in state law; this should effectively prevent cities and counties from giving special rights or protections to people based on sexual orientation or gender identity–just as North Carolina’s bill does.
As far as the “bathroom” aspect of North Carolina’s bill is concerned, Arkansas’ lawmakers may want to look into legislation that would prevent some of the madness we have seen in states whose legislatures have not addressed public restrooms.
For example, last February a Seattle man entered the women’s locker at a pool twice–once while a girls’ swim team was present. When confronted, he told staff, “the law has changed, and I have a right to be here.” The police were not called, and no one was arrested. Our friends at the Family Policy Institute of Washington also recently wrote about a convicted sex offender trying to gain access to women’s restrooms and locker rooms.
Given the situations other communities are facing, it’s easy to understand why a state legislature would want to clarify the laws surrounding sex-specific facilities.