Press Conference Speech Against Charlotte Bathroom and Public Accommodations Ordinance
By Dr. Mark Creech
Monday, March 21, 2016
Merlin Carothers once said, “Looking only at the good side of every situation is often a dangerous way of trying to escape the reality of it.”
As a religious leader in our state, I’ve been taught by my faith to try and find the good side of circumstances. But I must tell you, that after examining carefully Charlotte’s bathroom and public accommodations ordinance, I’ve concluded that to find anything positive about this would only be an attempt to escape the exceedingly negative reality of it.
Allow me to read to you a Protestant statement on Gender and Human Sexuality, which has been adopted by numerous churches across our state and nation. It reads:
“We believe that God wonderfully and immutably creates each person as male or female. These two distinct, complimentary genders together reflect the image of God. (Gen. 1:26-27). Rejection of one’s biological sex is a rejection of the image of God within that person.”
I know that this statement is in the governing documents of many churches in North Carolina, because I helped them put it there. Such a statement is desperately needed in a time of confusion and when churches need to provide light to a culture growing increasingly dark.
But because there is no religious carve out – no exemption for churches to Charlotte’s Bathroom ordinance, the Charlotte City Council has now dictated to the religious community who they must allow into their church bathrooms. In other words, it doesn’t matter that churches have deeply held religious beliefs about gender that stretch back over thousands of years passed down to them in the tenants of their faith –it doesn’t matter if these beliefs are clearly delineated by their governing documents – no sir, it doesn’t matter, because churches too must get into lockstep with the new order – their First Amendment rights don’t apply or at the least are litigiously in question with regard to all the ways they may provide their facilities or services as a public accommodation.
The irony, at least to me, of all of this is that I can remember when churches were arguing for keeping the definition of marriage as one man and one woman, they we were reminded over and again by the LGBT community and progressives of something called “separation of church and state.” “You churches keep your morality out of the public arena. It’s not proper, they said. Don’t try to impose by legislation your morality over on us. Yet, these same influences are now by Charlotte’s bathroom ordinanceblatantly forcing their way into our churches and imposing their morality on us.
This is to say nothing about the numerous ways this egregious ordinance will trample the First Amendment rights of the people who worship in our churches and seek to live and work according to the principles of their faith. It is the overreach of government into their private businesses and coercing them, threatening them with fines, penalties and criminal prosecution, if they don’t promote ideas and participate in events that they genuinely believe God commands them to resist.
The people who came to the shores of this continent at our nation’s beginnings were searching for freedom to live by the dictates of the consciences. But if ordinances like the one in Charlotte are allowed to stand, then the very heart and soul of liberty has suffered a blow from which it may never recover. If people cannot live by their beliefs, then they cannot be free.
These words may be considered by some to be hyperbole, scaremongering, fear tactics, but let me tell you something - to put any kind of positive spin on Charlotte’s bathroom ordinance is just a dangerous way of trying to escape the negative reality of it.
The Christian Action League of North Carolina calls on Governor McCrory to call a special session of the North Carolina General Assembly and right this wrong.