This is how the prosecution framed the case during the trial.

Prosecutor Anu Mantila said it is quite clear that Räsänen has a freedom of religion, but that does not exclude responsibility in using Bible verses.

“If so, the views of the Bible have supplanted the Finnish Constitution”, Mantila said.

The prosecutor made a distinction between the internal and external side of religious freedom: people are allowed to think what they want, but the expression of faith can be restricted. “I emphasise that freedom of thought and conscience is unrestricted. This court does not address the religious views of the Bible and homosexuality. It is addressing the expression of these views.”

The prosecutor reiterated her earlier position that human deeds and identity are indistinguishable. “When one judges deeds, the whole person is judged. Actions cannot be separated from identity because actions are part of identity. Understanding deeds as sin is derogatory”.

According to the prosecutor, the insulting nature of Räsänen’s expressions is obvious. Offensive is emphasised by the focus on sexual identity, the “core of humanity”. //

A decade ago, Archbishop Charles Chaput, then archbishop of Philadelphia, wrote a must-read essay on Christianity’s challenge in America.

Catholics need to wake up from the illusion that the America we now live in—not the America of our nostalgia or imagination or best ideals, but the real America we live in here and now—is somehow friendly to our faith. What we’re watching emerge in this country is a new kind of paganism, an atheism with air-conditioning and digital TV. And it is neither tolerant nor morally neutral.

As the historian Gertrude Himmelfarb observed more than a decade ago, “What was once stigmatized as deviant behavior is now tolerated and even sanctioned; what was once regarded as abnormal has been normalized.” But even more importantly, she added, “As deviancy is normalized, so what was once normal becomes deviant. The kind of family that has been regarded for centuries as natural and moral—the ‘bourgeois’ family as it is invidiously called—is now seen as pathological” and exclusionary, concealing the worst forms of psychic and physical oppression.

My point is this: Evil talks about tolerance only when it’s weak. When it gains the upper hand, its vanity always requires the destruction of the good and the innocent, because the example of good and innocent lives is an ongoing witness against it. So it always has been. So it always will be. And America has no special immunity to becoming an enemy of its own founding beliefs about human freedom, human dignity, the limited power of the state, and the sovereignty of God.

Paivi Rasanen spoke to The Federalist about her free speech case that has huge implications for Christians across the West. //

“I was happy to have the possibility to also tell the gospel—the solution to the problem of sin—in front of the court and in front of the media,” she said. Speaking about the first day of her trial, which occurred in January, Rasanen said, “When so many people were praying for the day, God also answered the prayers. It was quite a hard day, but I thought it was a privilege to stand for the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion and stand for the truth of the Bible.” //

“I would characterize the day as a modern-day Inquisition or heresy trial,” Coleman said in a phone interview from Helsinki last month after the trial’s first day. “And the heresy was that Paivi and Bishop Juhana were on trial against the new sexual orthodoxy of the day.” //

The deeply theological nature of this case has been clear throughout, Rasanen said, putting courts in a “very odd situation” of litigating permissible religious views inside a constitutional democracy that claims to guarantee the freedoms of speech and religion. //

The prosecutor also charged Rasanen falsely, she said, with believing that homosexuals are not created by God.

“According to her [the prosecutor], you cannot make a distinction between a person’s identity and his or her actions,” Rasanen said. “So she said if you condemn the act, you also condemn the human being and say they are inferior.”

On the contrary, Christians believe that all humans are sinners and have equally ineffable value to God. They believe humans’ worth can absolutely be separated from their actions. Otherwise, humans stand forever condemned for everything they’ve ever done wrong.

Christianity teaches that God is willing to forgive all sins. All that’s required is to confess those sins. This also means Christians consider homosexuals and transsexuals as they do everyone: equally precious, forgiven, welcomed, and loved by God.

Christians have lamented the shift away from businesses observing Sunday sabbath for decades. In CT’s early days, evangelical leaders complained about the uptick in “Open on Sunday” signs in grocery stores, theaters, and other businesses.

“Too largely the Sabbath day has been reduced from a holy day of spiritual replenishment, instruction, and correction, to a mere holiday for pleasure seeking or to just another day of merchandising,” Charles W. Koller, president emeritus of Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote in 1963, two years after the US Supreme Court ruled that “blue laws” restricting Sunday commerce were constitutional.

“Christ made allowance, within the spirit of the law, for works of mercy and of necessity, and for taking care of the occasional ‘ox in the ditch,’” Koller said. “But the moral responsibility of unnecessary Sabbath violation is not to be lightly regarded. Immeasurably greater is the moral responsibility of coaxing others away from Sabbath observance to the marts of trade. Still more serious is the policy of denying to employees the possibility of observing the Sabbath.” //

Sabbatarian Protestants—which fall in traditions ranging from Presbyterians to Pentecostals—schedule work, travel, and other activities around being at church on Sundays, avoiding what the Westminster Shorter Catechism calls “recreations as are lawful on other days.” While some fellow believers see such commitments as legalistic, Sabbatarians see it as a joyful chance to take advantage of a day set aside to draw near to God.

“Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. ‘Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened,'” 1 Peter 3:13-14 states. //

So what happens when we’re chasing social acceptance instead of Him? We become cowardly doormats.

If someone is too concerned with everybody liking them, he is afraid to be honest with others. A successful Christian community can only be achieved when the interactions are active and genuine.

While we are obviously called to love one another, the Bible also makes it clear that tough love and boundaries are necessary. On that same note, truly respecting someone includes telling them what they do not want to hear once in a while if it’s intended to be helpful.

For the parents who are reading this, it’s important to make sure that your son understands the value of living his faith inwardly and outwardly, especially when he is a teenager and young adult. It’s no secret that we all struggle, but pretending those battles do not exist is dangerous in itself. As the older generation, parents and mentors have a responsibility to encourage younger believers to be vulnerable yet strong.

Sometimes we need to be reminded that church is a hospital and not a place to “be seen” and that salvation comes from Christ, not our friends.

If the men have no spine, the church won’t either. Christian men, let’s get off autopilot and start being present for God and the communities we serve.

It is a rare instance when I almost entirely agree with anything in the Big Culture-Big Media outlet The Atlantic. But recently they published this….

America’s Gambling Addiction Is Metastasizing:

“When life feels this precarious, it’s only natural to roll the dice on just about everything.” //

“The chief benefit is that there’s a lot of money to be made, for governments and businesses both. The primary cost is that many unlucky and vulnerable people are destroyed.

“American society has (now) accepted that trade-off—big money now for social crisis later—on any number of fronts: in its banking sector, in its housing markets, in its health-care industry. The rise of gambling is simply one example of our boundless desire for risk.” //

So why not gamble your money? It appears to be the only way you can actually accrue wealth. In a country whose institutions are actively destroying your money — and corruptly working with others to steal it.

The only flaw in the article? Its apparent attack on short-term bank loans to poor people.

Marche doesn’t specifically mention the utter corruption of the 2008 housing crisis, but it fits right in with the theme he’s developed.

That crisis was caused by Big Government and Big Banks colluding to steal money out of the home mortgage market by throwing trillions of dollars at poor people everyone knew couldn’t pay it back. //

Ninja loans are another name for NINA which stands for no income, no assets….”

This was Big Banks gambling trillions of dollars — of our money — on nigh guaranteed losers, with Big Government rigging the system — so the Big Banks’ wins were guaranteed, and its losses outsourced to US.

Big Banks paid themselves obscene fees on each awful loan they made. Until it destroyed the home mortgage market — and with it the global economy.

At which point Big Government left US to die — and gave the Big Banks trillions of our dollars. Which the Big Banks immediately used to give themselves huge bonuses as reward for royally screwing US.

The lesson that should have been gleaned from this mess is: If poor people with bad credit want to borrow money, the loan terms should reflect the risk posed.

Which this article bizarrely criticizes:

“…(C)redit lines with 23 percent APR….”

These are actually short-term loan rates. If you’re poor and out of money on Tuesday — they’ll loan you money until payday Friday.

It’s a credit line for poor people. Unlike the idiotic housing crisis loans – these have an interest rate that accurately reflects the risk of lending to poor people. It’s the marketplace — accurately reflecting the marketplace.

These loans — and the people who take them — have NOTHING AT ALL to do with our society’s descent into a gambling ethos culture.

These people aren’t borrowing this money to bet the ponies. They are borrowing it to fix their car so they can keep getting to work.

These loans are lifelines for the people who take them. And they are often the only lifelines they are offered. //

jeffs
an hour ago
Americans’ greater acceptance of — and penchant for
Fill in the blank with any moral degradation from divorce to abortion to shacking up to slothfulness to the alphabet soup agenda, et. al.

Breitbart was correct but forgot culture is downstream of faith and religion; the Christian faith. Churches, pastors, denominations are ultimately to blame for our current judgment. God has handed us over to our vices which will consume us.

This is why there is no political answer to the problems plaguing our Nation.

The evangelical movement flourished in this relatively anti-institutional country at a particularly anti-institutional time. Evangelical ministries and churches fit the “spirit of the age,” growing rapidly in the 1970s, and retaining more of their members even as many mainline denominations declined.

At the same time, Keller argues, that anti-institutional tendency makes evangelical communities more prone than others to “insider abuse”—corruption committed by leaders who have almost no guardrails—and “outsider-ism,” in which evangelicals simply refuse to let their church form them or their beliefs. As a result, they are unrooted—and therefore susceptible to political idolization, fanatical ideas, and conspiracy theories.

“What we’re seeing is massive discipleship failure caused by massive catechesis failure,” James Ernest, the vice president and editor in chief at Eerdmans, a publisher of religious books, told me. Ernest was one of several figures I spoke with who pointed to catechism, the process of instructing and informing people through teaching, as the source of the problem. “The evangelical Church in the U.S. over the last five decades has failed to form its adherents into disciples. So there is a great hollowness. All that was needed to cause the implosion that we have seen was a sufficiently provocative stimulus. And that stimulus came.”

“Culture catechizes,” Alan Jacobs, a distinguished professor of humanities in the honors program at Baylor University, told me. Culture teaches us what matters and what views we should take about what matters. Our current political culture, Jacobs argued, has multiple technologies and platforms for catechizing—television, radio, Facebook, Twitter, and podcasts among them. People who want to be connected to their political tribe—the people they think are like them, the people they think are on their side—subject themselves to its catechesis all day long, every single day, hour after hour after hour.

On the flip side, many churches aren’t interested in catechesis at all. They focus instead on entertainment, because entertainment is what keeps people in their seats and coins in the offering plate. But as Jacobs points out, even those pastors who really are committed to catechesis get to spend, on average, less than an hour a week teaching their people. Sermons are short. Only some churchgoers attend adult-education classes, and even fewer attend Bible study and small groups. Cable news, however, is always on. “So if people are getting one kind of catechesis for half an hour per week,” Jacobs asked, “and another for dozens of hours per week, which one do you think will win out?” //

But when people’s values are shaped by the media they consume, rather than by their religious leaders and communities, that has consequences. “What all those media want is engagement, and engagement is most reliably driven by anger and hatred,” Jacobs argued. “They make bank when we hate each other. And so that hatred migrates into the Church, which doesn’t have the resources to resist it. The real miracle here is that even so, in the mercy of God, many people do find their way to places of real love of God and neighbor.” //

He’s heard of many congregants leaving their church because it didn’t match their politics, he told me, but has never once heard of someone changing their politics because it didn’t match their church’s teaching. He often tells his congregation that if the Bible doesn’t challenge your politics at least occasionally, you’re not really paying attention to the Hebrew scriptures or the New Testament. The reality, however, is that a lot of people, especially in this era, will leave a church if their political views are ever challenged, even around the edges.

On a plane returning from a four-day trip to Budapest and Slovakia, the Bishop of Rome took questions from the press.

As reported by the Catholic News Agency, he spoke of respect:

“Abortion is more than an issue. Abortion is murder. Abortion, without hinting: Whoever performs an abortion kills. You take any embryology textbook of those students that study in medical school. At the third week of conception, at the third, many times before the mother notices, all the organs are already there. All of them. Even the DNA. […]

“It’s a human life, period. This human life must be respected. This principle is so clear.” //

“To those who can’t understand it, I would ask two questions: Is it right, is it fair, to kill a human life to solve a problem? Scientifically, it is a human life. Second question: Is it right to hire a hitman to solve a problem? I said this publicly […] when I did, I said it to (Spanish radio station) COPE. I have wanted to repeat it. … Scientifically, it’s a human life. The textbooks teach us that. But is it right to take it out to solve a problem? This is why the Church is so strict on this issue because accepting this is kind of like accepting daily murder.”

Q:

The Mormon church claims to be the true church and yet there have been billions of people that have become Christian in the last 2,000 years based on what Jesus Christ did on that cross.

The Apostle Paul put it this way at 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, "Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, vs2, BY WHICH YOU ARE SAVED if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you have believed in vain, vs3, For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, vs4, and that He was buried and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures."

So why do we need "Another Testament of Jesus Christ" when the first testament, i.e the Bible, (specifically the New Testament) has proven sufficient to save one's soul?

In fact, Jude 3 says, "Beloved while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints/holy ones."

Jude is urging Christians to struggle to defend the Faith. The Greek word "Epagonizesthai" comes from the fierce competition of the athletic field. Believers must fight with all their strength to preserve "the faith" which was handed down to them. "Hapax" means "once for all." The gospel is fixed, not to be revised or have somebody else with another "gospel/testament" show up.(Galatians 1:8-9).

A:

Mormonism teaches that salvation comes through Jesus Christ, like any Christian faith.

A:

What does Mormonism have to offer in regards to salvation that Jesus Christ had not already accomplished?

In some sense, nothing. The atonement of Jesus Christ is what saves us. Faith in Jesus Christ is what saves us. The scriptures, however many they may be, can only lead us to Christ but never save. An illiterate person can be saved. But in this sense you have to question what any denomination has to offer, or what the visible church had to offer that made it a good idea to establish one in the New Testament. Or even what 98% of the Bible "has to offer".

However, Jesus has also said that we need to be baptized (John 3:5). In his time, he gave his apostles authority to baptize in his name. Without this authority, a baptism is just going through the motions. We believe this authority was lost early in the church history and restored by angels who conferred this authority to Joseph Smith. So in that sense, the true church should have authority to perform ordinances that Christ described as necessary for salvation.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints claims to be a restoration of the original church Christ founded. Literally the church of Jesus Christ. Whatever it was that having a church in the first place offered, is what "Mormonism offers".

Andrew T. Walker
@andrewtwalk
I could dunk on this, but honestly, look at what our culture does to our young. This video is of prey, not predator. By destroying normative, life-giving boundaries, we are subjecting our young to endless delusion and vain searching. Revival, revelation, and reason can heal.

Libs of Tik Tok
@libsoftiktok
Not a single word in this video makes sense //

Scott Douglas
@ScottMDouglas
·
Aug 3
Replying to
@andrewtwalk
Every time I think we've reached the line of despair, there's further to go. Had to look up what nounself was. Didn't even know this was a thing. May the Church proclaim the delight and joy in being "fearfully and wonderfully made" by our loving and good God. //

Joseph Bradley
@jbbradley31
·
Aug 3
Replying to
@andrewtwalk
One of the most heartbreaking things about being in youth ministry today is this exact problem: teenagers have dramatically declined into anxiety, confusion, and disassociation with the foundations of reality. It is truly “freedom into slavery”, and many don’t realize it.

Music is one of the greatest things man creates. A single song can define a generation, influence billions, establish worldviews, activate emotions, and create unforgettable memories. It’s one of the most powerful forces on Earth and one of the biggest things we have in common with angels in terms of activities.

Christian artists should be very attentive to what kind of effect their music is having, but if I had to guess, many were seeing two things; cheering and energetic kids dancing and singing their songs, and their bank accounts filling up. Many pushed forward believing they were on the right track, most with good intentions.

They weren’t. //

As I said earlier, music has a powerful impact on those who hear it. People took in the Hillsong-esque lyrics about how “nothing compares to your embrace” and “your love is relentless” with all the lights and sounds and performances, and then…felt nothing later. These aren’t songs that you can necessarily carry into your daily life. The display plays well at the moment, but it’s hard to lean on them when you’re facing down the darkness.

In a moment when you’re down low, today’s Christian music has no “Flood” songs to empathize with you and speak to your pain. Instead, you have a woman wearing a sundress, sun hat, and also a scarf for some reason, repeating the words “you’re the air I breath” ad nauseum. //

Nobody wants to be real here. The mainstream Christian entertainment industry is too busy playing it safe to produce anything that might damage its status quo, and what’s more, anger a Christian establishment too unwilling (read afraid) to allow people to ask very real questions about faith, darkness, and the wars we have to fight on a daily basis against a world trying to strip us of our reliance on God. //

God is important to both the individual and society, and we need to understand our emotions about Him and our place with Him, and good music will be able to talk to us about that over and over again in ways our mind and souls can understand. If we, and especially the youth, are constantly served substanceless Christian music, then the impression it will give is that Christianity has no substance.

I know differently. The relationship I’ve had with God and Christ has been a grounding force in my life. I’ve been through the highs and the lows with faith, and I’ve been fortunate to encounter what I have in the arts to help me ground myself there. The thing is, I can’t help but wonder what my faith would look like if I was subjected to the church culture of today with all its lights and sounds and performances that seem more made to make money than make a difference, tell a story, or resonate with emotion.

The church is likely going to beat this dead horse for a while and people will continue to leave the church and lose faith. At some point, something has to break and a change has to happen.

Christians can survive without good Christian cinema, but it absolutely needs good Christian music. The sooner this collapse of the modern Christian trend happens, the better.

The last time such a serious moral and theological divide separated Southern Baptist churches, a massive and successful 10-year campaign to retake the convention was launched.

On Friday, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops voted by a 168-55 margin to proceed with drafting a document on “Eucharistic coherence” to be debated and voted on at the November meeting of the USCCB. This document, as currently discussed, would encourage priests to refuse Communion to Catholics who they know to be in a state of mortal sin.

This is a battle that has been brewing for a couple of decades, and it is only the insertion of Joe Biden into the presidency that has brought it to a head.

The significance of 75% of US bishops agreeing to move forward on an issue vehemently opposed by the progressive caucus is hard to overstate. The hard work to develop such a statement remains ahead, but the fact that a body that is usually timorous at the mere mention of anything that is not consensus is little short of amazing.

A pastor who endorses claims of racial 'systemic injustice,' Ed Litton, has been elected president of the largest U.S. Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention.

The church is more concerned with answering to God than a Twitter mob. In my opinion, this is the church caving to politics, not politics caving to the church. To be sure, when it comes to deciding how a Catholic should act, modern sentiment shouldn’t play a part. At some point, that sentiment will pass, but God will still be there, unchanging, and looking not too pleased about the whole ordeal.

This doesn’t just apply to the Catholic church either. This applies to every church.

A church should be welcoming everyone it can through its doors. Unbelievers should be able to find seats and hear what Christ has to say. Gays and lesbians should be able to hear the gospel and realize that they do have a choice. If they don’t, they don’t, but at least they’ll be showing up and hearing the actual gospel.

God’s word isn’t going to make everyone happy, and not everyone is going to want to follow Christ based on personal opinion. In the end, they’ll either say to God “thy will be done,” or God will say to them “thy will be done.” But let either of these people let them hear the word first honestly. Giving the young a false idea of God or the church will only breed resentment down the line as they find out they were lied to in order to get them in the doors so the church would seem more popular.

The church needs to remember who it is, and more importantly who it answers to.

Biden likes to talk a big Catholic game when he’s campaigning, but like most Democrats, the moment power is achieved is the moment that Catholicism gets tossed out of the window. As a result, American bishops are going to have a meeting to discuss whether or not he should be denied Holy Communion. //

According to The Hill, the Vatican has already warned these bishops not to deny Biden communion over abortion.

“The concern in the Vatican is not to use access to the Eucharist as a political weapon,” Antonio Spadaro, Jesuit priest, and ally of the pope told the New York Times.

An argument can be made that it’s not being used as a weapon, so much as making sure that the church not punishing this actual act against Catholic teachings isn’t seen as a tacit endorsement. The church could lead on the issue by seeing to it that when the question is asked how the church feels about abortion, the answer is clear and present.

By and large, members of my generation were raised in households with two parents, and we were taught how to deescalate and talk things out when problems arose. Today, that no longer seems to be the case.

We have a moral and social failing in our country that has caused an increase in mass shooters, predominantly young men. One has to pause to think about what’s different today from 30 or 40 years ago. It certainly isn’t guns, because it’s harder to get guns today than it was in the past, when you didn’t have to go through nationalized background checks. When I was growing up, you could purchase a firearm with no questions asked, yet we didn’t see so many mass shootings.

America’s young men are struggling with mental health issues or are broken and living in poverty with single mothers struggling to survive. Many of them are clearly crying out for help, and we owe it to them to listen. //

Another important facet of this dialogue is religion. I know we don’t often talk about religion these days, but it instills moral and ethical values that are key to a society’s success. It creates boundaries that inform us of what is good and what is bad.

Many of the greatest thinkers known to man have talked about the importance of morality and ethics for all civilized people, how they are key to a good life and setting boundaries against bad behavior. ///

God and the church are the answer that we are looking for to the ills of society

Contemporary megachurch-style worship is a self-worshiping, self-referential, nearly auto-erotic pursuit. //

Reader Heidi, in a comment on my post 8 Reasons the Worship Industry Is Killing Worship, frames the problem exceptionally well:

I think the phrase masturbatory worship is very apropos. There is often a lack of community, of recognition or responsiveness to the others present; and a strong prioritization of my personal experience and preference–indeed, a genuine selfishness– in worship rather than the give-and-take that belongs within the communion of saints, the Body of Christ. Christianity is relational–us with God in Christ; us with others, united in Christ. The minimally interactive, highly sensual nature of modern praise worship is not relational in the same way; and in a way, intentionally so–relationships are hard work.

Obviously when one masturbates, the chief end is the pursuit of ones own pleasure. Likewise, the contemporary worship movement, with its jettisoning of biblical, historic, liturgical elements of worship in favor of commercial pop music, has drawn an understanding of worship that is little more than a personal pursuit of pleasure through emotion and self-actualization. “Worship sets” of jesusy power ballads, aimed at carrying the individual away from the corporate body on waves of emotional euphoria, have replaced true worship, in which God is present with us in Word and Sacrament.

Chaplain Mike of the fabulous Internet Monk blog talks about such masturbatory worship this way:

It is designed to be “an experience” for me, not a thoughtful expression of obeisance to God.

It does not enable me to consider my duty to respond to God in daily life, but rather fools me into thinking this wave of emotion I’m feeling is the proper response to God. //

The masturbatory worship they hold dear is merely a narcissistic journey to nowhere, one in which we are left crowning our own individual selves as lord of all. We’ve already been told that we are like sheep, each one wandering its own way. The church’s historic liturgy presents us corporately with the solution. Masturbatory worship proclaims a subjective gospel, a situational Christian ethic, and a selfish mission.

Chaplain Mike again:

Commercialized, formulaic, self-centered “worship” is as far from what that word is supposed to signify as possible.

Where are the pastors, artists, and wise leaders who will move us toward maturity? Who will get us to stop playing with ourselves and grow up so that we can truly love God and our neighbors?

In the remote mountains of northern Ethiopia, a lone priest scales a 250m cliff each day to reach his church and study ancient books containing religious secrets.

Churchgoers across the country are reasserting their fundamental rights of conscience—rights that too many political leaders have forgotten or denied. //

On Friday, President Trump said churches and houses of worship are “essential” and called on governors nationwide to allow them to open this weekend. If they don’t, Trump said he would “override” governors, citing forthcoming guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In remarks Thursday, the president criticized some governors who have “deemed liquor stores and abortion clinics as essential” but not churches. “It’s not right. So I’m correcting this injustice and calling houses of worship essential.” //

At the end of Thomas Jefferson’s life, in typical Jeffersonian fashion he designed his own tombstone and wrote his own epitaph: “Author of the Declaration of American Independence / of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom / and Father of the University of Virginia.”

It’s easy to see why Jefferson included the Declaration, which gave birth to a new nation, and the University of Virginia, which was—and is—a monument to his genius. But why include a state statute for religious freedom?

Because Jefferson understood what Walz, Newsom, Murphy and others have forgotten or rejected: that “our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to God.”

There's defiance and then there's Defiance.