Southern Baptist Demands Restrictions on Religious Freedom

Richard Land

Recently the Pentagon said that military chaplains
are free to participate in marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples, if they wished. There is NO requirement to do, just the freedom to do so, according to their own personal religious convictions. Southern Baptist "ethicist" Richard Land has demanded that such religious freedom be taken away from any chaplains who disagree with the Southern Baptist view of marriage.

Land said "we are outraged by the brashness of this attack on traditional marriage. We urge swift action to repeal these decisions." Land spewed out a lot of hate and made general comments about how this "degrades both the tradition of high moral conduct in the military and the vital and exclusive role of traditional marriage."

At precisely the same time that Land was calling for federal legislation to strip religious freedom away from chaplains he was whining that they need more protection of "religious freedom." Apparently in the mind of Mr. Land "religious freedom" is defined entirely by how much one agrees with the Southern Baptist Convention—a denomination founded to protect human slavery from abolitionists and awful people like that. Land says he wants stronger protections for "military chaplains who object to same-sex unions," at the same time he wants to strip away rights from chaplains who don't object. Hypocritical, of course, but then moral hypocrisy is a Baptist tradition.