Earlier in this series on SOGI we wrote about the Fairness for All compromise offered to the LGBT community by two Christian associations in the US. What would be the likely consequences of this proposed compromise?
FFA would, for the time being, provide protection from SOGI laws to certain faith-based institutions. As we have noted above, this protection would not include individuals, either as private citizens or business owners. Imposing coercive SOGI laws on everyone except certain faith-based institutions is not “fair for all.” It does nothing for individuals in their freedom of conscience, speech and religion.
Consider the florists, photographers, bakers and others who have faced lawsuits in recent years. Some have been threatened with the 
confiscation of property and financial penalties because of SOGI laws. Some have actually suffered these losses.
Christian baker Jack Phillips won his religious-freedom court case, Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, under SOGI. The tyrannical nature of SOGI is clear in what happened next: the State of Colorado immediately sued Phillips for refusing to bake a cake celebrating gender transitioning.
FFA reflects the sacred-secular divide in the church to protect religious institutions, but not the freedom of conscience and religion of individuals of faith in the public square.
It was Judeo-Christian theism that provided the foundation for freedom of religion for all: Jews and Christians, Muslims and Mormons, secularists and Hindus. Administrators of evangelical institutions who advocate “fairness for all” are undermining the very concept of religious freedom for everyone except their own institutions.
We may compromise on policy, but should never give way on principle. SOGI is founded on modernism and postmodernism. SOGI’s founding principles are based in these fundamental worldview differences, radically different (a)moral systems, and radically different concepts of freedom, justice, human sexuality and family.
Compromise at the level of paradigm and principle, as these evangelicals are proposing, will not save their churches and religious institutions. It will only postpone the day of the radical transformation—deformation may be a better word—of the church, her institutions and of the larger society.
SOGI parallels 19th-century pro-slavery arguments
President Abraham Lincoln argued in his Cooper Union Address, that the slave states insisted slavery was morally right and would refuse compromise. That’s a 19th-century parallel to today’s debate over SOGI laws. This so-called FFA compromise will not stop at the front doors of institutions. To hope so is naive at best and blatantly ignorant at worst. Those promoting SOGI will not stop until the culture as a whole affirms their position.
For more on this see Ryan Anderson’s excellent piece, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) Laws Are Not Fairness for All.
We have written about the love-truth divide coming into the church, an infection of the postmodern virus. This attempt at compromise is likely well-intentioned, but it is certainly not well thought through. I would argue that it is, in fact, naïve. It would lead to a consequence intended by LGBT activists: division in the church. The promoters of FFA have chosen love over truth, not love and truth.
A helpful counter petition
A second group of Christian leaders, attempting to maintain the biblical love-truth tension, have published a counter petition. The original 75 signatories—pastors, institutional leaders, journalists and lawyers representing the larger Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox churches—recognize the weakness of FFA and are offering a counter position: Preserve Freedom, Reject Coercion. The core affirmation of the document reads,
We affirm that every individual is created in the image of God and as such should be treated with love, compassion, and respect. We also affirm that people are created male and female, that this complementarity is the basis for the family centered on the marital union of a man and a woman, and that the family is the wellspring of human flourishing. We believe that it is imperative that our nation preserve the freedoms to speak, teach, and live out these truths in public life without fear of lawsuits or government censorship.
For more on this, including the opportunity to sign this petition, go here.
Tragically, a growing divide separates the evangelical church. As the rise of modernism led to a sacred-secular divide within the church, now postmodernism is fostering a love-truth divide.
Evangelicals compromising with SOGI have been infected with postmodernism. They have abandoned biblical orthodoxy.
I encourage my readers in the USA to review the counter petition and consider signing it as a way to preserve liberty, conscience, religious freedom and the family.
Readers outside the USA would do well to read the counter petition to help you understand the issues being driven by the LGBT global initiative.
Christians everywhere should engage proactively before these become dominant issues in your own nation.
– Darrow Miller
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