Masterpiece Cakeshop and future life in the Catacombs

Rod Dreher is not optimistic.  Neither am I.  The inevitable loss of freedom and liberty in America, if not the world, is coming.  It can't be denied.  Much of the world would gladly live in a more timeful age, when God made rulers and kings and subjects to grovel before them.  In the West, the leftist desire to eliminate any freedoms that our self-proclaimed betters don't bestow upon us has been inching forward.

Regarding homosexuality, I'm of the opinion that there are three groups.  There are those who fully support anything to do with sex.  That is a growing segment of society since everything in our culture preaches it: scientists and scholars, academics and educators, the press, the entertainment and arts culture, many religious and political factions.  They say the emperor is not naked, and so it is true.

The second group makes up that dying breed of orthodox (little 'O') Christians, and others in the great religions, who reject such a model of humanity.  They are simply dying by generational elimination.  They aren't going to change, but their time - it appears - is coming to an end.

The third group is seldom acknowledged, but I have a feeling it is larger than we think.   That's the group that personally, deep down, doesn't think the various digressions from heterosexual normality are healthy, right, normal, or whatever, they just don't want to be pegged a Nazi bigot, lose their jobs, or face lawsuits or prison time.  These are the ones who were pretty sure about 70 years ago that something was wrong in the German woods, but went on with their days, insisting they didn't smell anything strange.  Nothing, it turns out, encourages apathy like threatening people.

There is a fourth group of course.  That would be those in the second group who can tell the way the wind is blowing.  While technically they don't accept the coming storm, they aren't going to give up suffering for Jesus on six figures a year either.  They believe that they can compromise just enough so that if the barbed wire fences ever go up, they'll own a plot of land on the outside looking in.  If they have to turn on their brethren and sistren, that's the price they have to pay.  But we won't talk about them because you have to exercise a certain level of judgmentalism in order to presume who makes up this group, since naturally they won't be admitting their true motives.

That third group is the group you want.  They're not bad, evil, or dumb.  They just don't have the time to care.  I'm not saying those in the first group are bad or evil, but with each passing day, they make it clear that this country - if not this world - is not big enough for them and those who don't conform 100% to their world view.    It's that third group, however, that makes it possible for them to essentially overthrow the 2500 year march toward democracy, equality and freedom, and replace it with yet another Utopian vision doomed to fail.

BTW, if you're waiting for the Left to stand up and declare that an elimination of freedoms is the end game, then you're going to wait until it's happened.  Nothing in history occurs that way.  Nobody ever says 'follow us, and we promise we'll put you in shackles and send you to the cotton fields.'  They get there by the ages old tendency we have of wanting to hope against hope that the obvious that is happening isn't really happening.  Or, to be blunt, it happens because enough people decide that when the team is losing, it's time to jump ship and join the winning team, even if it's the one they used to oppose.

One more thing.  For those poo-pooing this idea that Christians are in any way being persecuted, consider this story.  A gym owner in Indianapolis chose not to host a Gay Pride event.  A significant number of his staff quit over that.  He's now out of business.  Merely one of a growing number of similar cases regarding those who refuse to accept liberal values.  The whole 'nobody is hurting Christians' comeback that keeps our Group #4 and Group #3 blissfully apathetic is only going to last so long.  Eventually, they'll need to admit the obvious.  You can't wait until people are rounded up and sent to camps before you finally admit to things.  That's because if you wait until then, it's too late.

Bonus if you notice Mark's typical embrace of the modern acceptable racism that will get you invited to all the best parties and accolades from all the beautiful people.  But that's how evil often works, and it's why Christians have so often embraced it through the ages.