The Ad Council, a non-profit that has, for the most part, stayed out of super-charged political debates, has joined the crusade to convince lawmakers to force well-meaning Americans to give up their freedom of conscience when disagreeing with LGBTQ demands. Known for public service advertising like “Don’t drink and drive,” the Ad Council recently produced free advertisements implying widespread discrimination against LGBTQ people. The radio ad is running nationwide. It represents the beginning of a major push for LGBTQ to become a protected class in state discrimination laws – the same as ethnicity, age, disability, religion, etc.
LGBTQ activists recently announced that they would begin a major effort to get such laws passed in southern states. Specifically, 28 are targeted – including Missouri.
Such discrimination laws are dangerous because the LGBTQ movement has used them as weapons against people of faith who cannot celebrate their chosen lifestyle. Florists, bakers, photography businesses and other artists, have been fined and run out of business in some states for not supplying services to LGBTQ people – even when the services are readily available with businesses who gladly provide LGBTQ people with the services they desire.
Such laws are problematic for Christians – like Missouri Southern Baptists – who believe only God is Lord of the conscience. If such a law passes in Missouri, it could force the Missouri Baptist Children’s Home to hand foster care children over to LGBTQ couples or else close their doors. Hannibal-LaGrange and Southwest Baptist Universities could be threatened in numerous ways. Ultimately, our churches, most of which could ill afford a costly legal battle, could be threatened, as well.
The Ad Council advertisement is co-sponsored by The Gill Foundation. Tim Gill, a 64 -year-old homosexual from Colorado, is the foundation’s president. He accumulated his wealth after developing the software program Quark in the 1990s. Gill garnered attention on the discrimination subject in a June 23, 2017, interview with the liberal Rolling Stone magazine – headlined “Meet the Megadonor Behind the LGBTQ Rights Movement. “We have been fighting for nondiscrimination since the Sixties,” said Gill, who has poured more than $420 million into getting such laws passed. “It’s the religious right that decided to make marriage an issue … and they lost.” Then Gill said this: “We’re going into the hardest states in the country. We’re going to punish the wicked.”
The forthcoming bill in Missouri is misleadingly named the Missouri Non-discrimination Act or MONA. For many Missouri lawmakers it is viewed with dread because of pro-LGBTQ media pressure and the inevitable threats that come from well-greased lobbyists hired by the LGBTQ movement. How serious is the threat in the Missouri General Assembly? The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ organization, hired former Republican Speaker of the House Steve Tilley to handle their lobbying effort in Missouri. Senate Majority Floor Leader Caleb Rowden (R-Columbia) voted with the LGBTQ lobby in 2016 against letting Missouri citizens vote on a constitutional amendment that would have strengthened the state’s religious freedom protections.
We know the LGBTQ playbook on the issue. Realizing they cannot secure passage, they “trash” the “offending” state, attempting to bring economic and media pressure. It is usually supported with exaggerated, emotional antidotes of supposed discrimination. Then pro-LGBTQ corporations – like Monsanto and Home Depot – team up with the St. Louis and Kansas City Chambers of Commerce to threaten lawmakers with economic disaster. The LGBTQ lobby has the support of the NCAA, which oversees collegiate championship sporting events. As in the case of North Carolina, it withdraws events from states refusing to pass such laws.
What MONA supporters will not acknowledge is the real damage done to a state’s economy by creating another “protected class.” It will trigger a plethora of alleged discrimination lawsuits, crippling businesses, driving up costs of goods and services and prompting layoffs. All hurt Missouri families – and for a law we do not need.
There is no widespread discrimination against LGBTQ people in Missouri. There are occasional acts of discrimination, and those should be condemned. But if discrimination is so widespread, don’t you think the pro-homosexual St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Kansas City Star would have stories in every issue? Yet such stories are rare.
MONA is not about “discrimination” (the FBI just released its 2017 hate crimes report which shows there were a higher number of hate crimes based on religion than there were for sexual orientation). MONA is an attempt to FORCE Missourians to celebrate the LGBTQ lifestyles, leaving no room for well-meaning people to disagree without facing unjustified punishment.