December 3, 2004 - The First Amendment protects your freedom to speak out; to get together with like minded individuals; to disseminate your ideas freely and without government restraint; to worship as you please free from government imposed orthodoxy; and to be assured that your government will not use its resources to promote religious doctrines that you find abhorrent. The First Amendment defines the core of the founding fathers’ appreciation of the social liberty for which their fathers and grandfathers has braved the hazards of the seas to plant a new nation in the wilderness,

The self-defined Christians of the Religious Right are using the First Amendment as a sword to advance the political agenda that they espouse. According to them its prohibition against government interference in religious expression is their key to the public treasury. Restrictions on public funding of religious institutions, they say, are improper restraints upon their right to free speech. They claim that government is discriminating against them because they are Christians.

Religious speech by a Christian group is being restricted. The United Church of Christ is being prevented from airing television ads promoting their Church. The central message of their advertisement is “Jesus didn’t turn people away. Neither do we.” That seems innocuous enough. It is, after all, a message of inclusion and welcome. The problem seems to be the visuals that precede the message. The scene is the entrance to a church guarded by velvet ropes and muscle-bound bouncer. There is a line of worshipers waiting to go in. Two men who are holding hands are told, “Step aside please.” A Black girl is told, “I don’t think so.” A Hispanic man and a wheelchair bound worshiper are also turned away as the screen goes blank and the message is displayed. NBC and CBS have refused to air the ads citing a policy against “issue advocacy ads” that first surfaced at last years Super Bowl.

Let me emphasize that this is not a First Amendment issue. NBC and CBS are not government agencies. The First Amendment does not apply to them and they are free to rent their facilities or refuse to rent them to anyone who wants to use them to disseminate speech and no government action is involved in their refusal to air the ads. What we are looking at is something more dangerous than government censorship – social censorship borne by fear of commercial retaliation. The problem is with the image of the two men holding hands and being turned away. The networks see the ad as taking sides in the “gay marriage” issue. What we are seeing, or in this case – not seeing, is social terrorism more sophisticated perhaps than that of the nightriders of the KKK but just as pernicious.

My religious training taught me that the Church was a hospital for sinners and not a resort for saints. From childhood I was taught that the doors of the sanctuary and the fellowship of communion was not to be restricted to an exclusive few but to be open to all who might come. Jesus opened his embrace to everyone, Jew and Gentile, sinner and saint alike. His ministry was not exclusive and His blessing, like the rain, fell on saint and sinner alike. The answer to the question, “Who would Jesus ban” is no one.