Whitlock: Respect for Marriage Act outlaws your religious beliefs

The Silicon Valley-generated social media apps elevated the importance of feelings and diminished the value of beliefs.

The engineers of Twitter and Facebook laughed off Ben Shapiro’s facts-don’t-care-about-your-feelings declaration and retorted with “our feelings don’t care about your religious beliefs.”

Shapiro’s slogan burnished his brand as the voice of establishment conservatives. Social media’s retort empowered a movement that legalized same-sex marriage, justified Black Lives Matter, and normalized kid-friendly drag queen shows, children choosing genders, and doctors prescribing puberty blockers and surgical mutilation.

The engineers of social media won in a landslide. They’re in the process of taking another victory lap.

Chuck Schumer, the majority leader of the Senate, has gathered enough votes to federally codify same-sex marriage into the law of the land. Twelve Republicans joined 50 Democrats in pledging to federalize marriage and make gay people a protected class of American citizens.

They’re calling it the Respect for Marriage Act.

After the overturn of the left’s abortion golden calf, Roe v. Wade, the uniparty (the undercover alliance of Republicans and Democrats) wants to take steps to protect its same-sex golden calf, Obergefell v. Hodges. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas insinuated that the 2015 decision is unconstitutional.

The truth is, the uniparty believes religious beliefs are unconstitutional and immoral. The establishment has partnered with northern California’s tech companies to outlaw beliefs and set up a system that protects feelings.

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I’ve argued from the outset of social media that Twitter and Facebook prioritize thoughts and feelings above beliefs. There’s a major difference between what a human being thinks or feels and what he believes.

I wake up most days thinking I’m as handsome as Idris Elba. The truth is, I believe I more closely resemble Cedric the Entertainer.

Our thoughts aren’t nearly as important as social media makes us believe. Humans think and feel all sorts of stupid and inaccurate things. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are great places to test what we think and sharpen what we believe. They’re practice facilities.

The devil resides in our thoughts. Our beliefs should reflect God’s wisdom. The founders understood this and designed a system that granted us the freedom to think and say whatever we want while respecting the self-evident truths of the equality of man and unalienable rights granted by our Creator.

Social media is the devil’s pulpit. We’re building a culture that protects thoughts and feelings and criminalizes beliefs.

The Respect for Marriage Act criminalizes biblical scripture. The concept of marriage is taken directly from the Bible. Marriage is explicitly explained in the Bible. It’s a covenant between man and woman.

I get that two men or two women think and/or feel they should be allowed to marry. That’s their American right to think, feel, and express whatever they want. But people of religious faith have the right to believe what God and the Bible teach.

Believers run the risk of loss of employment or lawsuits for acting on their beliefs. If a cake baker refuses to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, he can be sued.

Seven years ago, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed fired the city’s fire department chief, Kelvin Cochran, because he distributed a book he wrote that contained his religious views on homosexuality. Reed classified the book as discriminatory against the LGBT community.

It’s a mistake to maintain a culture that has more reverence for feelings than for beliefs. That’s where we are. Social media trained many of us to feel that the police were randomly killing black men across the country. Statistics and facts did not and do not support that feeling. We ignored the facts and worked to assuage feelings. We demonized and defunded law enforcement.

It’s foolish to act on emotion and feelings. Emotions and feelings change at a whim. The 7-year-old little girl who feels like a little boy is likely going to feel like a girl in a year or two. We shouldn’t confirm her misguided feelings.

We shouldn’t confirm the misguided feelings of two men or two women who want to marry. Marriage isn’t for them, just as marriage isn’t for men and women who refuse to practice monogamy.

Social media drives our overemphasis of feelings and our hostility toward religious beliefs. Emotion powers feelings. You arrive at beliefs after years of deliberation and more deliberation.

Our society was more unified when we judged beliefs and were less concerned with protecting feelings. Social media turns everything into a slogan or hashtag. Slogans burnish brands and manipulate truth.

The Respect for Marriage Act disrespects marriage and the faith that created the institution.