By Brad Dacus
The fight for traditional marriage is not yet over in California — or across the nation — but the outlook is certainly sobering. You wouldn’t know it from listening to the media, but there is actually no solid basis for county clerks to be issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples just yet.
But since the California Supreme Court shirked its duty this week (that sure sounds familiar!) and declined to stop state and county officials from becoming a law unto themselves … there is no time to waste in protecting churches in the exercise of their First Amendment rights.
About five years ago, the Pacific Justice Institute saw this threat coming and drafted model policies and bylaw language for churches to adopt in order to give themselves the best possible protection against lawsuits by homosexual activists.
Many of you have already been proactive in ensuring that your congregations have acted on our recommendations. But since we continue to be contacted by pastors whose churches are now facing possible lawsuits without having taken adequate precautions, we want to strongly encourage each of you to make sure that your church is protected.
Please forward this e-mail to any fellow believers, pastors and churches who might not have taken these steps.
Note that we cannot send out our specific recommendations and policy updates in a mass e-mail or post them on our website — they must be requested on an individual basis to limit the possibility that they will fall into the hands of LGBT activists bent on destroying religious freedom as we know it.
E-mail us via pji@pji.org to request these documents. We do not charge for these recommendations or any follow-up advice from our attorneys; it is our honor and calling to serve the people of God and do everything possible to maintain our God-given freedoms.
Our model policies are designed to anticipate a broad range of scenarios, including not only same-sex weddings, but same-sex couples signing up for marriage retreats, transgender use of restrooms, and same-sex couples seeking to enroll children in church-run schools or preschool.
These are not merely hypotheticals — we have dealt with them all and don’t want to see any more churches caught off guard.
Will you help us spread the word? I look forward to hearing from you!
Brad Dacus is president of the Pacific Justice Institute
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