Catholic farmer ousted from Michigan market over same-sex marriage views

Thought-criminal dissent from the prog zeitgeist will not be tolerated.

A Catholic farmer in Michigan is suing the city of East Lansing after he was barred from a municipal farmers market over his views on same-sex marriage.

Stephen Tennes filed a lawsuit at a federal court on Wednesday (May 31), seeking his reinstatement.

In it, Tennes says he was prohibited from selling his products after his business, Country Mill Farms, refused to host a lesbian couple’s wedding at its orchard in Charlotte, 22 miles outside the city and he stated on Facebook “his Catholic belief that marriage is a sacramental union between one man and one woman.”

Country Mill Farms had sold fruit and produce at the market for six years, but after city officials learned about the Facebook post, they “strongly and immediately pressured us not to return to the farmers market,” Tennes told a news conference at the state Capitol.

According to the lawsuit, Country Mill is the only business to have been prohibited under the market’s anti-discrimination policy.

In a statement, the city of East Lansing said the farmer’s refusal to host a same-sex wedding violated a “long-standing ordinance that protects sexual orientation as well as the Supreme Court’s ruling that grants the right for same-sex couples to be married.”

The Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian-based nonprofit legal organization representing Tennes, said his religious views have no bearing on his involvement at the market and said the city’s actions amounted to a First Amendment violation.

“Steve and his farm have been singled out and excluded from full participation in the life of the community for only one reason,” said ADF counsel Kate Anderson. “Steve expressed a viewpoint the city did not like.”

Flanked by supportive state lawmakers at the news conference, Tennes insisted his views on marriage had not prevented him from serving all farmers market customers equally.

“It’s our faith that informs us how to treat all who come to our farm and the farmers market with dignity and decency … serving customers of many races, religions, cultures and those who identify with the LBGT community,” he said.

His farm is outside of the city, and it’s his own property, but the city government considers his actions there to nevertheless be their business, when of course it’s none of their damned business.

But, that’s progs; no-one is safe, anywhere, from dissent, if they decide on a whim to bring the weight of the state to bear upon you.

Nevertheless, let’s pray that he wins his lawsuit.

 

Western versus Eastern Europe

May the Lord have mercy on the West… … and may He bless and keep the East.

 

 

Video: Muslim in Canada defends pedophilia

So Muslims in the West are still defending their founder’s marriage of a six-year-old girl, and consummation when she was age nine…

Their worldview is not compatible with ours.

It’s as simple as that.

Philosophies of a Disenchanted Scholar

They’re getting so bold, aren’t they?

I think the only sensible reply to this is Deus Vult.

“Silence is consent.”

The feminists say nothing.

This completely contradicts the notion of consent, which is a positive construct that must be actively given, in all law, so I would question the translation of that word. It must mean something else, Islam knows no such thing as consent. There is only its meaning, ‘submission’. Submission is never consensual, it is coerced. Coercion is like blackmail in another signed (non-marital) contract, it vitiates consent, it becomes invalid. One must be free to consent.

Lying about the conjoined medical phenomena of menstruation and puberty is another strike against reason.

This entire sham of a religion is merely an excuse for war. No other religion is warmongering. It is totally incompatible with the West and its culture and people.

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More reasons to disagree with chaplaincies

From here:

Peter Berger notices a sector of American religiosity where true inclusion and diversity reigns — the military chaplaincy:

One particularly interesting development is that the military chaplaincy, in its Protestant group, is increasingly filled with Evangelicals, who feel more at home in the military than among largely liberal mainline clergy, whose concerns over gender and multiculturalism Evangelicals don’t resonate with. Some years ago I presided over a seminar dealing with whatever issues members of the seminar were concerned about. One of the seminar students was an Evangelical Air Force chaplain. This was the issue she wanted to think through: She served on a small base in the Arctic where she was the only Protestant chaplain. Of course she was not expected to perform religious services that did not agree with her own beliefs. But she was expected to facilitate services for any group of Air Force personnel. A group of Air Force women wanted to perform the rituals of Wicca, which defines itself as a modernized version of the old witches’ Sabbath. How, she asked, could she help organize a worship service of the devil without betraying the core of her Christian faith? I tried to convince her that the devil part was not to be taken seriously, that Wicca was a rather harmless form of nature worship—dancing naked in the moonlight and showing respect for menstrual blood. She said that the way I spoke about this showed I did not take the religious beliefs of this group seriously. I’m afraid she was quite right. In the end she had no choice unless she wanted to resign from the chaplaincy—so the would-be witches did their thing as facilitated by a nonsectarian Evangelical minister. (Religious freedom bears strange fruit, including the struggle of conscience of an Evangelical pastor ordered to go against her conscience by her commanding officer.)

Just more of the crap that happens with chaplaincies in the U.S. military these days (see previous examples here, here, here, and here), which, along with the aspect of in effect blessing the State’s wars, have made me wonder why churches bother sending chaplains to the military. (I’ve also wondered why should the State bother having chaplaincies, but I get why they do; to invoke God’s blessing upon their enterprise, though whether to use such to garner support for imperialism or to convince themselves they’re doing right, I don’t know nor care.)

 

Should traditionalist congregations rent space from organizations we otherwise find problematic?

In the Reformed tradition of which I am a part, many if not most of our churches have their own buildings, but some rent space for worship and/or midweek church activities in other spaces, of various kinds; sometimes in school gymnasiums (sometimes from Christian schools but other times from secular, public schools); other times in ethnic community halls, or service club / fraternal organization halls (e.g. Lions or Rotary; or Shriners / Masons, Orange Order, etc.). And other times, congregations rent church buildings belonging to other denominations, sometimes evangelical churches but more often than not old mainline Protestant churches; sometimes these are hardly used at all any more by the denominations to which they belong; other times they are still used regularly, and so our service times have to be planned to be sufficiently separated from their own, if possible, so you don’t have overlap of cars in the parking lot (space limitation issues), etc.

And I know this is not only true for my tradition, but for other Reformed denominations / federations, and not only, but there are many other cases of various denominations renting space in other churches. (For that matter, a Reformed church I previously belonged to had an Asian evangelical congregation renting space in it. And that scenario, of newer ethnic congregations renting older churches’ buildings, is fairly common.)

Returning to the specific subject of conservative, traditionalist churches renting space in church buildings belonging to often heretical, if not outright apostate, mainline Protestant denominations, or to secular public schools (which already get government money, and which all too often attack the beliefs we hold, and those students in them that are faithful believers), fraternal organizations we may find problematic (whether Freemasons or Orangemen or other lodges), part of me wonders: should we be giving them regular financial support this way, week by week? I mean, I understand the way elders in our churches must be looking at it: simply as an economic transaction. They have a space they’re not using or not using all the time at least; we need a space, therefore let’s rent from them. I get that, but OTOH, when I’ve been part of a congregation meeting in, say, a mainline Protestant church building, and I see their sign out front reading ‘Minister: Rev. Jane Smith’; their ‘inclusive’ songbooks or worse, ‘inclusive’ ‘Bibles’ in the pews (even though we’re not using them), their stupid multiculturalism-and-‘diversity’-promoting banners on the walls, and I think, many of these congregations are or would likely be struggling but get regular life-saving injections of money from us traditionalist conservative confessional orthodox Protestants, I wonder why the hell we are subsidizing our enemies. Same with when we meet in a secular, public school gymnasium; we’re giving more money to a beast that already has its own means of financing, including against our will, in the form of our tax dollars, and is often teaching godless, atheistic secular humanist anti-Christian worldview prog agitprop, against everything we believe; why should we give them one red cent more than is extorted from us by the State through our taxes?

If we can’t afford our own buildings at a particular time, shouldn’t we at least find a space to rent space from that either supports something we believe in (e.g. a Christian school gymnasium) or at least something we’re neutral towards (e.g. a Lions Club International or Rotary International hall)? Wouldn’t that be the most godly use of our money, even if it isn’t necessarily the cheapest place to rent? Would not God be more honoured by such a decision, rather than giving money to our enemies?

I mean, surely it’s one thing to buy an old building outright from an apostate / heretical mainline Protestant denomination that isn’t using it, giving them a one-time injection of wealth, then owning the building for ourselves thereafter; it’s another to regularly financially support those who oppose the true Triune God and His ways and His people and what we believe in, stand for, and practice, in our day to day lives, voting, etc.

Of course, until we have our own buildings, we could alternately meet in each others’ homes – like the early church did (see here, here, here, and here). (I’ve myself belonged to churches that have done this, and have found it a blessing.) I don’t know why that alternative isn’t more popular, given that it is directly Biblical…

 

A Happy and Blessed Easter, to all!

Hallelujah, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth, Hallelujah! The Kingdom of this world is become the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever, Hallelujah! King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, and he shall reign for ever and ever, Hallelujah!

(Revelation 19:6; 11:15; 19:16)

 

Good Friday