Quin Hilyer September 3, 2015 Mobile Rotary Club
“We are living in perilous times”, stated our speaker Quin Hilyer. He was referring to a statement from another era, but applicable to our times today. The founders of our country explicitly believed that our rights were originally provided by God, and therefore could only be affirmed by our new government. The fear from the writers of our Declaration and Constitution has been realized in today’s governing bodies. As Mister Hilyer told the Rotarians, our government now believes that rights come from the government, and don’t exist until the government allows them.
Hilyer said that our founders specifically set apart three freedoms. Those declarations were Freedom of Religion, Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Assembly. All three are under attack, but he believes that the most effective attack we are seeing today is the attack on the Freedom of Religion. Unfortunately, Hilyer believes that one sign of the effectiveness of this attack exhibits itself when defenders of religious freedom are branded as bigots.
One of the examples he used to show how far we’ve gone is portrayed in the unanimous ruling against President Obama’s attempt to limit hiring by church groups to the “ministerial exception.” Even though the churches won the decision, the real lesson was the boldness with which the administration attacked the ruling.
Other examples included the requirement on college campuses that Christian groups not be allowed to limit their membership to Christians. He also talked about the Little Sisters of the Poor, Hobby Lobby and EWTN as entities under unprecedented attack. Even Army chaplains have been disciplined for displaying crucifixes. Second grade students were prohibited from singing “Awesome God” in a talent contest.
According to Hilyer, Justice Elena Kagan disputes that our freedoms are simply recognition of God-given rights, but rather, rights decided by our government. Our speaker finally stated that he does not want sound alarmist, but would definitely like to “sound the alarm.”