LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 2016, Page 126

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discrimination ordinance. Remember that phrase:
sexual orientation and gender identity. The acronym
is SOGI. Those are the laws that say if you believe
we are created male and female and that male and
female are created for each other, you’re discriminating. You’re either discriminating on sexual orientation or you’re discriminating on gender identity.
And so in all those jurisdictions, Catholic and Lutheran adoption agencies can no longer do the important work they do. And frequently, it’s these religious
agencies that have the highest track record, the best
track record, at placing the hardest-to-place children into loving homes. Many people want to adopt
newborn babies. They’re cute, and they’re cuddly. Not
as many people want to adopt an 11-year-old boy who
spent the past several years bouncing around from
foster home to foster home.
What’s remarkable is that, in Boston, Catholic Charities had one of the highest success rates at placing the
hardest-to-place kids. Chalk this up either to Catholic guilt or to grace. But one way or the other, the
religious agency was able to do something that the
government-run agency couldn’t do. They got more
people to open up their hearts and their homes to
more children.
If you’ve ever renewed your driver’s license at the
DMV, then you know what that experience is like.
It might give you a reason to think that the DMV of
child protective services might not provide all of the
services that a family could want during an adoption
process. Religious agencies can minister to the entire
person and minister to the entire family, both the
material needs and the spiritual needs of welcoming
a new human being into the home. Religious agencies
can no longer do this in those jurisdictions.
Then we’ve seen schools come under assault. And we
saw that for the past year, Gordon College, an evangelical school outside of Boston, was under investigation by its accrediting agency as to whether or not it
will retain its accreditation as a four-year liberal arts
college because they had a campus policy that said
we expect chastity from all members of the Gordon
community. So both faculty and students were expected to reserve sexual behavior for marriage. And
the complaint that was lodged with the accrediting
agency was that this discriminates against gay stu-

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dents and gay faculty members because they can
never get married and, therefore, never have sex. This
is discriminatory on the basis of sexual orientation,
they say.
And it was only after a year’s struggle with the president being very prudent in how he responded to this
investigation, and with the media placing pressure on
the accrediting agency, that Gordon prevailed. The
accrediting agency said we see no reason at this time
to revoke Gordon’s accreditation.
Brigham Young University, the Mormon school out
in Provo, Utah—its law school is currently being
investigated by the American Bar Association. And
during oral arguments, Justice Samuel Alito asked
the solicitor general of the United States, “What’s
going to happen to the nonprofit tax status of Christian schools who continue to teach that marriage is
the union of husband and wife? Will they be treated the way that Bob Jones University was treated?”
Recall that the IRS stripped Bob Jones University
of its nonprofit tax status because it had a campus
policy against interracial dating. So the question from
Alito is, “Are you going to treat traditional Christian schools the way that the IRS has treated racist
schools?” And the answer from the solicitor general
was somewhat chilling. He said, “I don’t deny it, Justice Alito, that’s going to be an issue. I don’t deny it,
it’s going to be an issue.” He repeated himself.
The easy response, especially when you are trying to
get the Supreme Court to vote in your favor to redefine marriage, is to say, “Of course not, Justice Alito.
We’ll never treat Orthodox Jews and Roman Catholics and evangelical Christians and Latter-day Saints
and other people of faith who believe marriage is the
union of husband and wife, we’ll never treat them as
if they are racists.” He could have said that. He didn’t
say that. And so whether that’s for the remaining
months of the Obama presidency, whether it’s for
the next eight years of a potential Hillary Clinton
presidency, he left that card on the table to be played
should the moment become opportune.
And in fact, California is voting as we speak to decide
whether or not to play that card. It has passed the
California House. It’s now in the California Senate.
It’s a bill that would deny Cal grants—the state’s
version of a Pell grant, which gives the student up

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