Worldnutdaily Fudges First Amendment

Tom Ambrose is the commentary editor of the Worldnutdaily. Given the extraordinary number of awful commentary pieces WND publishes, especially the "exclusive commentaries" which are generally so bad that one assumes they are "exclusive" because no one else would publish them, he's not very good at his job. But now he's joining in the absurdity himself with his own "exclusive" commentary. Homosexual Nazis are Savaging the Church, screams the headline, with the subtitle Tom Ambrose on Episcopal preists denied their 1st Amendment rights. Now let's see if the facts support this breathless description:

On Sunday, the Associated Press reported that six Episcopal priests in Connecticut may be removed as rectors of their parishes by their bishop because they have actively opposed the election of the first openly "gay" bishop, Vickie Gene Robinson of New Hampshire...

Apparently, the six churches had the audacity to try to "break away from Smith's authority and be supervised by another bishop." One of the priests being threatened, the Rev. Christopher Leighton, has referred to the threat as "spiritual gag orders."...

These priests are being threatened with the loss of their jobs because they are refusing to kowtow to a conspiracy to terminate their constitutional First Amendment rights.

Perhaps Mr. Ambrose has misplaced his copy of the Bill of Rights, but my copy has a first amendment that begins with the clause Congress shall make no law..., which has since reasonably been applied to states as well. Under no circumstances could it possibly be interpreted as barring churches from telling ministers within that church what they can say and how they may behave. Indeed, for the government to impose such restrictions on a church would violate the free exercise clause of the first amendment.

One cannot help but wonder where Mr. Ambrose was when Bishop Righter was put on trial for heresy by this same Episcopal Church in 1996 for ordaining a gay priest. Surely if an Episcopal priest has a first amendment right to make statements against homosexuality, they also have a first amendment right to make statements for homosexuality. First amendment rights are supposed to be content-neutral, right? Alas, Mr. Ambrose was dead silent on that question. He also did not bravely stand up for the "first amendment rights" of Jimmy Creech, a Methodist minister from Omaha who was subject to two heresy trials by his church rulers, acquitted in the first and convicted in the second, thereafter stripped of his ministry in the church. Nor did he defend the "first amendment rights" of Terry Gray, a biochemist who was convicted of heresy by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church where he was an elder for the horrible crime of teaching evolution at Calvin College, not far from me. He was also silent regarding the heresy trials of David Benke (Lutheran), Stephen Van Kuiken (Presbyterian), or C. Joseph Sprague (Methodist). The Chicago Tribune noted in 2003 that the Presbyterian Church USA alone had 28 heresy trials going on. As far as I can tell, Mr. Ambrose is bothered by none of them, as apparently only those he agrees with are protected by the first amendment against the actions of the church they belong to.

The truth, of course, is that none of these people have first amendment protection against those churches. Churches are entirely free to set their own doctrine and police their own clergy and membership without any restrictions from the government. The church may do what the government may not, which is decide on whatever grounds it wishes who may enter and what they may say upon doing so. Indeed, the first amendment protects the church's right to do so.