In the context of acute and radical moral change, we now face an inevitable conflict of liberties that is excruciating, immense, and eminent. The conflict of liberties means that the new moral regime, with the backing of the courts and the regulatory state, will prioritize erotic liberty over religious liberty.

Over the course of the last several decades, we have seen this revolution coming. Erotic liberty has been elevated as a right more fundamental than religious liberty. Erotic liberty, foreign to the founders of this nation, now marginalizes, subverts, and neutralizes religious liberty — a liberty highly prized by the builders of this nation and its constitutional order. We must remember that the framers of the Constitution did not believe they were creating rights within the Constitution, but rather acknowledging rights given to all humanity by “nature and nature’s God.”

Erotic liberty emerges directly from arguments made in opinions handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In Griswold v. Connecticut, Justice William O. Douglas’ “finding” of the right to privacy, and thus a right to contraceptives within the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, laid much of the groundwork for the advancement of erotic liberty. As Douglas acknowledged, this right is by no means explicit or even present in the text of the Constitution but is drawn from “penumbras” emanating from the Constitution.

Similarly, in the Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey decision on abortion in 1992, Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter declared, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

A direct line can be drawn from Casey to the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision striking down all laws against sodomy. In his majority opinion, Kennedy said, quoting from Casey:

These matters [personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education], involving those most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.

Kennedy added, “Persons in a homosexual relationship may seek autonomy for these purposes, just as heterosexual persons do.”

In the Proposition 8 (Hollingsworth v. Perry) and Defense of Marriage Act (United States v. Windsor) cases in 2013, the line was extended to advancing the momentum toward the total normalization of homosexuality and the legalization of same-sex marriage. In Windsor, Justice Antonin Scalia announced that the imposition of legalized same-sex marriage coast-to-coast was now inevitable. He accused Justice Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion, and his colleagues of failing in their willingness to state this boldly. As Scalia anticipated, all we are waiting for now is for the other shoe to drop.

On Oct. 6, 2014, that shoe effectively has dropped. This day in U.S. legal history will be remembered for many years to come as a landmark day toward same-sex marriage. It was the day the nation’s highest court took one of the lowest paths of least resistance. It now seeks to maintain its prestige by avoiding the backlash the Court experienced in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade in 1973. It wants to have its victory without taking further risks to its reputation.

Consistent throughout all of these legal arguments is the assumption that erotic liberty is central to the project of defining “one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life,” as Kennedy found in Casey.

The use of that language demonstrates how erotic liberty typifies the freedom most cherished by the culture and most respected by the courts in the context of the secular age. A liberty that did not even exist when the Constitution was written now supersedes protections that are explicit in the Constitution. This explains the trajectory of court decisions and developments in the law and, at the same time, reveals the trajectory we can expect in the future.

In his withering dissent in Lawrence, Scalia argued that Kennedy set the stage for the legalization of same-sex marriage, which Kennedy denied. Scalia clearly found no joy in being right when the Windsor decision struck down the federal government’s law defining marriage exclusively as the union of a man and a woman.

Otherwise prescient in his analysis of the law, Scalia was incorrect about one matter. Scalia argued the succession of cases representing the progress of the gay liberation movement effectively meant the end of all morals legislation.

But it does not. The present trajectory of the courts only means the end of all morals legislation recognizable to American society just a matter of decades ago. Indeed, we can anticipate new morals legislation put into place that will reinforce the significant gains made by the sexual liberationists. Christians and other religious citizens will have to pay careful attention as these new laws are established, for religious liberty will be at stake and at risk in each of them.

The “take no prisoners” approach now demanded by the moral liberationists and increasingly accepted by the courts means that any exceptions are likely to be tenuous and very narrow, even when laws and regulations supposedly allow “religious exceptions.” We have already seen this in the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act. Obama administration authorities spoke of religious exemption only in terms of “houses of worship,” demonstrating the determination to narrow even allowed exceptions.

The aftermath of the Supreme Court decision siding with Hobby Lobby against the contraception mandate — an important exception to the rule of erotic liberty trumping religious liberty — nevertheless demonstrated that large sectors of American society and American political life have shifted their position in the contest of liberties.

Just two decades ago, legislation known as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) was put in place. That act required the federal government to respect religious liberty by demanding that all laws or restrictive regulations serve a legitimate and rational social purpose and be crafted so as to avoid conflict with the religious conscience of every citizen. That law, co-sponsored in the U.S. Senate by Orrin Hatch and Edward Kennedy, passed in the House of Representatives without a single dissenting vote and with 97 votes in the Senate. The fact that a conservative Republican and a liberal Democrat co-sponsored the legislation indicated the comprehensive support for RFRA represented at the time.

In the Hobby Lobby decision, Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, cited RFRA to show that Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties had a religious liberty right that trumped the contraception mandate. In response, Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the U.S. Senate, advocated legislation, supported by a large number of Democratic senators, to repeal RFRA or amend it so that it no longer had any legal teeth.

The challenge we now face consigns every believer, every congregation, and every religious institution to an arena of conflict where erotic liberty and religious liberty now clash. This poses no danger to theological liberals and their churches and denominations, which have accommodated themselves to the new morality and find themselves quite comfortable within the context of the new moral regime. Furthermore, some of these liberal denominations and churches style themselves as defenders of the new morality and actually advocate legal modifications that restrict the religious liberty rights of more conservative churches and denominations.

The arenas of conflict are already numerous and multiplying. Christian colleges and universities will face the immediate threat of being further marginalized in the larger culture. Some will be threatened with the denial of accreditation and labeled outlaws simply because they remain true to historic Christian conviction and biblical accountability. Given the fact that accrediting agencies and organizations such as the NCAA are identified as voluntary associations, they can make a legal claim to discriminate on that basis. But the “voluntary” nature of organizations such as regional accrediting agencies is undermined by the fact that, in many jurisdictions, colleges and universities are required to have such accreditation in order to have legal authority to conduct their programs.

The church’s freedom is not only the freedom to preach and teach within the confines of its worship service. Even as there are those now arguing to restrict or sanction speech by preachers, the more pressing threat is that the ministry of the church will be constricted by means of other regulations and discriminatory policies. Christians in the business world must watch very carefully as legislation such as the Employment Nondiscrimination Act comes into view. Without protection for religious liberty and Christian conscience, these laws will be used in a way that requires many Christians in business to decide between compromising conviction or going out of business.

Employees and executives in many corporations and American institutions already face this threat. They must either endorse the new moral regime or get out of the way. Christian humanitarian organizations face being cut off from access to ministry, unless they endorse the new sexual morality and operate by its precepts. Students in public schools face the denial of religious liberty rights, free association rights, and religious liberty rights as speech, thought, and conduct are increasingly defined in accordance with the new sexual morality. Christian couples may well face severe headwinds as they attempt to adopt children. As the revolution continues, they may find a host of secular family experts threatening to invade the sanctity of family life by asserting a moral authority contrary to that of the parents.

These are not idle threats or issues of hypothetical concern. Every one of these threats is rooted in arguments already made in the public square or political and legal processes already in play.

Interestingly, one of the early advocates of gay marriage warned his fellow moral revolutionaries that they must be careful lest they trample upon the conscience rights of their adversaries. In his book, Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, Jonathan Rauch said:

Today, I fear that many people on my side of the gay-equality question are forgetting our debt to the system that freed us. Some gay people — not all, not even most, but quite a few — want to expunge discriminatory views. “Discrimination is discrimination and bigotry is bigotry,” they say, “and they are intolerable whether or not they happen to be someone’s religion or moral creed.”

Rauch counters: “I hope that when gay people — and non-gay people — encounter hateful or discriminatory opinions, we respond not by trying to silence or punish them but by trying to correct them.” Very few signs, however, are signaling that Rauch’s hope is being heard.

A review of the religious liberty challenges already confronting the conscience, conduct, and belief rights of convictional Christians shows us how daunting all this really is. We can be sure this is not the end of our struggle. It is only the beginning.

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R. Albert Mohler Jr. is the 9th president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. This article is adapted from his forthcoming book, Aftermath: Life, Love, and Liberty in the Wake of a Sexual Revolution (Thomas Nelson, September 2015). You can connect with Dr. Mohler on Twitter at @albertmohler, on Facebook or at AlbertMohler.com. This article originally appeared in the winter 2015 issue of Southern Seminary Magazine.