A TALE OF TWO STATES

Many of us saw the Confederate battle flag solemnly lowered from its place of honor on the South Carolina Capital grounds this week.

How many of you noticed the make-up of the honor guard of the S.C. Highway Patrol that handled the ceremony so well? Black members and white members did the job. Don’t you suppose many of them had conflicting emotions, conflicting beliefs (religious and otherwise) about what they were doing? Especially in a state such as South Carolina, first to secede from the Union, with its history of racial injustice---long before the murders in Charleston.

Yet they went ahead, in part because it was their job, and in part because the lawful authority in that state, the legislature and governor had told them to. (I must point out that Republican Governor Nikki Haley had strongly opposed taking the flag down, just a few days before the massacre, only to quickly jump on the newly popular take-it-down bandwagon. Apparently her beliefs can change quickly.)

Contrast that with protests in Kentucky, where a handful of clerks have so far, refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, citing their opposing religious beliefs. That is the same basis cited in Deep South states for not granting black couples various things...from marriage licenses  to tickets to concerts to votes (yes, votes!) to anything the local official wanted to dream up.

(The Courier Journal quotes a lawyer for the Kentucky plaintiffs  as saying "these clerks have issued plenty of licenses to couples who engage in a whole host of behaviors they might find unbiblical, immoral…” Indeed in many of these counties couples live together for years before kids, family, society get them to finally ask for a marriage license. Should these objecting clerks now decide it’s their business to check on that unbiblical behavior before issuing a license? The lady clerk in one county has been married four times. Need I tell her a lot of her fellow Christians consider that “lifestyle” to be unchristian?)

While I have major objections to the way our Supreme Court operates, it is the way our system of justice now works...and all of these clerks knew, or should have known, when they ran for office, it was possible the court would approve same-sex marriages, and so require them to issue those couples licenses. They were not elected the Baptist clerk of Rowan county, but the county clerk (for all the people of that county.)

Gov. Beshear, who lost, remember,  before the Supreme Court here, is totally right when he told the Casey County clerk to issue them or resign. As for a special session, at $63,000 a day for 5 or more days, ridiculous!

We are a nation under God.  Not a Christian God. Not a Protestant God, and certainly not a Southern Baptist God---but God. There is a difference.

See Mark 12:17 (KJV) for an importance difference.

I'm just sayin'...