To recap: Tim Cook (please, please click this link) and the left are happy to do business in countries that stone to death or otherwise jail gay people, but will not do business with Indiana, which merely passed a law insisting that the “free exercise” clause of the first amendment be on the same legal footing in courts as the “free speech” clause of the first amendment.

The Supreme Court, in Perry Educ. Ass’n v. Perry Local Educators’ Ass’n, 460 U.S. 37 (1983), ruled that for a state to restrict content based speech, it must have a compelling governmental interest. But the Court subsequently ruled that the free exercise clause, also in the First Amendment, need not fall under the compelling governmental interest” standard. President Bill Clinton and a near unanimous Congress disagreed and passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

31 states similarly moved to protect religious practice and 20 have explicit copies of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Indiana is the latest. Georgia’s Governor, Nathan Deal, just tucked tail and ran from putting religious expression on the same legal footing as speech. The cowards of the Georgia Republican Party decided they would rather serve Mamon and have the checks to prove it.

What we are learning in the controversy, though, is simple: you will be made to care. There will be no middle ground. Many people would like to find middle ground. Many churches would like to find middle ground. But there will be none because homosexuals and their culture war warriors on the left are unwilling to have a middle ground.

The gay rights movement has decided their rights are equivalent to the Civil Rights movement and, through their interpretation of the Civl Rights movement, there can be no accommodation with the “free exercise” clause of the First Amendment. The “free exercise” clause is not limited to worship. It is “free exercise of religion.” It applies, or should, to the business owner who views his job as missional. It applies, or it should, to the religious school whose faculty honor the tenets of its faith. But the left, in recent years, has taken to calling it a “right to worship” instead of a “right to religion.”

The gay rights movement cannot abide a middle ground and a free exercise of religion for a simple reason — homosexuality is not normal in nature, in historic relationships, or in the sacred texts of almost all religions. The gay rights movement must therefore censor and subjugate dissent. Any who point out the lack of historic or religious acceptance or the lack of its ready existence in nature or, for that matter, the lack of scientific evidence showing homosexuality is a birth trait as opposed to a choice or external factors, must be shut up.

Homosexuals and the gay rights movement crave not tolerance, but the veneer of normalcy. To tolerate them means to allow them to be. But that also equates to heterosexuals being in a better position — one that decides who to tolerate. They have moved to demanding “equality” for now.

You can generally look at a woman or a person of a different race and tell immediately that the person is a woman or of a different race or ethnicity. One does not need a rainbow sticker on the back of their car to let people know they’re black. Or Asian. Or a Woman. The struggle for equality and civil rights between genders and races is inherently and objectively different from the gay rights movement. It is also why the gay rights movement is so invested in arguing that gender, though not sexuality, is a choice.

The gay agenda depends on equating the various struggles. Through mythology [insert your favorite historic person and he’ll probably be declared gay], pseudoscience [you’re born gay, but you pick your gender], and organized harassment of critics, the gay rights movement silences dissent to establish legitimacy in their quest for normalcy. The Stonewall riots are their Selma. Pay no attention to the lack of dogs in the street, poll taxes at the voting booth, and “heterosexual only” water fountains.

In Macon, Georgia, a Catholic School was okay with a gay band teacher until he wanted to get married. The Catholic Church views marriage as a church sacrament. The school dismisses teachers who get divorced for violating the sacrament and dismissed the gay band teacher for marrying in violation of the sacrament. The Obama Administration has decided the Catholic Church cannot set the standards of conduct for its faculty.

Around the country, gay rights activists have attacked Christians for daring to put their faith ahead of the wants and desires of homosexual marriage advocates. The Christians must be silenced and punished. Their faith cannot be respected. Legislation designed to allow diversity of religion and the free exercise thereof must be stopped and must be decried as discrimination.

The move to put “free exercise” on the same footing with “free speech” must be opposed because most major faiths recognize homosexuality as outside normal behavior. The logical outcome of this will eventually be to reduce free speech. People and faiths are going to have to be shut up for homosexuals to have the veneer of normalcy.

But it won’t stop there. Over time, the gay rights movement will move to pushing churches to marry gays because normally people get married in churches. Over time, it will move to push religious schools to abandon standards on sexuality. Over time, it will mean religious institutions lose their tax exempt status. Over time, it will require Bible believing churches be labeled hate groups and orthodox Christianity be forced to the sidelines. Over time, it will mean that the state must intervene and protect children from parents who want to raise them as orthodox Bible believing Christians.

Essentially, replacing the prohibition on religious tests clause of the Constitution will become an enforcement of a secularism clause. People of faith need not apply for jobs, political appointments, or elected office. People of faith will be the new bigots because their God said “go and sin no more” and dared list homosexuality as one of those sins.

Ultimately, over time, two thousand years of Christianity will be forced to be treated as the deviant lifestyle. You will be forced to pick a side. If you remain true to your God, you will be outside the bounds of acceptable conduct. You will be made to care.

If you pick the wrong side, you will be punished. Gay rights activists cannot show you tolerance and cannot treat you equally, because that means you and your faith that suggests homosexuality is a sin would be allowed to remain in the public square. And in the quest for the veneer for normalcy, that cannot stand.

For any who suggest this is hyperbole, a college is having its accreditation threatened because of its religious views on sex and a seventy year old is losing her home and business because she did not want to provide flowers to existing, regular customers for a gay wedding.

The good news, however, is this — Christianity is growing worldwide, even in places like China and Saudi Arabia. People of faith continue to have more kids and, in fact, can actually naturally procreate. The gay rights agenda may demand the veneer of normalcy, but nature itself will deny the gay community natural reproduction. And the religion that withstood Nero and even now withstands ISIS can withstand a bunch of angry people in comfortable shoes who need stickers on their cars to tell us who they are.

The wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes his teeth at him, but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he sees that his day is coming.

Psalm 37:12-13