Our world has turned upside down and everything is going crazy. Every day brings an atrocity worse than the day before and I believe it will only get worse. Just a week and a day before our country celebrates Independence Day, the Supreme Court lands a blow to our freedoms.
Now before you get up in arms, let’s all just calm down and take a few deep breaths and try to sort out the recent Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage with as much common sense as possible without screaming the word “hate” at everyone who doesn’t agree with you?
One thing the ruling did not do, in case you are wondering, is redefine marriage. The five Justices may think so but marriage was defined by our Creator and nothing changes that, not even how you feel about it. Now with that out of the way, let’s apply some common sense.
First of all your stance on marriage has to do with your morals and the government has no right to force someone else’s morals on others. And as much as they try, they can’t regulate morals with laws as a person’s moral stance begins in the heart.
Secondly, the Bible I read tells me that homosexuality is a sin, along with adultery, lying, cheating, gossiping, etc. God doesn’t place degrees on sin. Sin is sin and as such, can be forgiven. We are to love the sinner and hate the sin. God is no respecter of persons so no one is better than anyone else in His eyes even if some of us happen to think so.
The Bible also tells us to be careful about whom we hang out with as the immorality of others can rub off and wear a moral person down after a while. So there is a fine line between loving the sinner and being perceived as condoning the sin. Christians cannot and should not condone sin of any kind. We do not have to compromise our convictions for our passion.
We have come to accept things as normal and therein lies a bigger problem. When something is accepted as normal, it is no longer seen as wrong.
Each one of us will stand before our Creator one day to give account of our lives. That includes how we react to this current trend as well. Do we show love, or do we give them another reason to point the finger at “Christians”?
Just because I have my belief which disagrees with yours doesn’t make me a hater either. I can disagree and still show love to you. When you get angry with me because my opinion differs from yours, you have just done what you accused me of  because I don’t agree with you– hating.
I am entitled to my opinion, just like everyone else and I am not offended if it doesn’t agree with mine.
On a positive note, the Supreme Court ruling gives us a chance to start taking back our individual rights. It’s something the government never should have begun taking in the first place and we should be able to get everyone to agree on individual rights! Ha-Ha; that’s just my wishful thinking I know. Not many people today are willing to truly take a stand on anything. But if all of this energy which is going around could be pooled into a concerted effort to get our country back away from government intervention, imagine what could be accomplished.
One of the troubling issues of the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage is that our religious liberties will now come into play. Just watch and see. A minister who refuses to perform a ceremony for a same sex couple will be taken to court and then if the minister still refuses, he or she will be put in jail. Nothing will be sacred any longer.
I personally don’t feel the government should be able to tell a business what they can or cannot do and who they can or cannot serve. But it is happening across our country every day. It is not longer government by and for the people but the government who lords over the people and tells them what to do. It is the same tyranny which our forefathers fought against in 1776.
But most of us Americans have our heads buried in the sand and don’t truly understand what is going on around us. Just as most don’t really understand who God is.
The Supreme Court was divided on this decision and it passed 5-4. These nine justices are not elected but appointed and therefore their decisions, in my opinion, are many times slanted. I whole heartedly agree with Justice Antonin Scalia who was one of the dissenting votes. He declared that this Supreme Court has become a “threat to American democracy.
He said in his brief and again, I agree. “Those civil consequences—and the public approval that conferring the name of marriage evidences—can perhaps have adverse social effects, but no more adverse than the effects of many other controversial laws. So it is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage. It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me. Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact—and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court’s claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”
All I can say is heaven help us all. We need to stay on our knees until we hear from heaven. And remember God is still in control. Blessings.

VICTORIA SIMMONS is an author, columnist, motivational speaker, minister and publisher of The Georgia Post/Byron Buzz. vsimmons54@gmail.com