What are the loonies up to?

Down in Texas, they’re so overwrought about this summer’s Jade Helm 15 war games that the governor has ordered the State Guard to keep an eye on Uncle Sam’s activities.

During the training operation, it is important that Texans know their safety, constitutional rights, private property right and civil liberties will not be infringed. I am directing the Texas State Guard to monitor Operation Jade Helm 15.

Uh-huh. At least one former Republican state representative was so upset that the governor caved to conspiracy lunatics that he sent an open letter to the governor.

You are Governor of Texas! This is an open request—from a ghost of our State’s recent Republican past—that you act like it. Enough is enough. You have embarrassed and disappointed all Texans who are also informed, patriotic Americans. And it is important to rational governance that thinking Republicans call you out on it.

Ghost indeed; the Republicans abandoned rationalism a long time ago.

Meantime, over at Pyromaniacs, they’re looking for bulletproof language for church constitutions.

The “Gaystapo” is on the march. We’re where we are thanks to years of rampant relativism, the gospel of “follow your heart,” postmodernism, and Christianoid defection and/or timidity. Any day we may find it knocking at the door of our church, no matter where we are. That this is just one tentacle on an octopus of rebellion against God is beside our point, which (as is my wont here) is very focused.

I mean to pose to you the question I find surprisingly absent from the blogs I’d expect to take lead on it:

what language do we need to put in our
church Constitutions
to proof us (to any degree) against lawsuits?

I don’t ask in the interest of evading all persecution. I think that’s coming, and Christians shouldn’t be surprised.

Oh, yeah — the fearsome gaystapo. One wonders, inevitably, just what kind of persecution he thinks is coming? Did anybody persecute those churches which, just a few years ago, refused to permit interracial couples to enter their sacred precincts? No; nobody persecuted them. They did draw hoots of disdain from the whole of the civilized world — and even, I believe, from some Southern Baptists. But: Just like the church that drew no public sector interference for refusing to allow an interracial couple to attend, the public sector isn’t going to bother a church that won’t conduct same-sex weddings, or permit same-sex couple to attend.

Excepting the devout, everybody understands the vital distinction at work here: You can have any rules you like inside your own clubhouse, but you can’t expect the rest of the world to follow those same rules outside your clubhouse.

There is a legitimate tax issue: Should the public be obliged to provide a de facto subsidy to a club whose membership rules are contrary to settled public policy? No. A club can have any rules it likes — but it should not be allowed to exact a compulsory subsidy from its neighbors.