For more than a decade, Kelly Shackelford has been working to protect freedoms and strengthen families.
He's the president of Texas' Free Market Foundation, which is associated with Focus on the Family. He's also chief counsel of Liberty Legal Institute.
Shackelford has argued before the U.S. and Texas Supreme Courts and has testified before Congress and the Texas Legislature. He has been an adviser to the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
He told CitizenLink that Americans need to be prepared for President Barack Obama's radical agenda.
"It's going to affect every state," he said. "It’s going to affect religious freedom. It’s going to affect your business, your radio. It’s going to hit the whole country."
1. Kelly, you wrote a commentary recently about some of the things we might expect under a Barack Obama administration. Let’s talk about the Freedom of Choice Act, specifically.
Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) is incredibly radical. This is not like a suggestion or something people are coming up with. This is something that candidate Barack Obama promised. He promised it would be one of the first things in his administration. Certainly, we hope he won’t fulfill that promise. But it’s a very radical act.
It would essentially wipe out every pro-life law in the country. And by that I don’t just mean it would wipe out the partial-birth abortion ban at the federal government level and federal government protections that we have against spending taxpayer money for abortions. It would wipe out every state law. We’re talking about like 300 laws, like parental notification — basic things that most Americans agree on. It is a really extreme piece of legislation, and if he fulfills his promise, it would be disastrous for the country.
2. Obama made a lot of promises throughout the campaign, and one of those was to the gay lobby. He said he would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, yet he says he’s not in favor of same-sex "marriage." Can you unpack the rhetoric for us?
I wish I could. What you just described is inconsistent. If you really weren’t in favor of same-sex "marriage" and forcing it on the country, then you would never say that you would want to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The Defense of Marriage Act is widely popular; President Clinton signed it into law. It says if some state goes off and redefines marriage to now mean same-sex couples can be married, that’s fine. They can do that. But they can’t then force that on other states.
You can see how radical you would have to be to want to force things on people that they don’t vote for and to force a redefinition of marriage. There would be no reason to want to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act unless you’re trying to force same-sex "marriage" on the rest of the country.
3. We have a lot of laws on the books that protect our citizens from harm and personal attacks, yet Obama says the U.S. needs a national "hate-crimes" law to protect gays and lesbians. What can we expect if he gets his way?
The hate-crimes law is really not about any so-called hate crimes. It’s really about putting race on the same level as sexual orientation. Because once they do that, that is the Step 1; Step 2 is to overturn marriage laws. The rationale is once race and sexual orientation are considered on the same level federally, then it would be irrational, it would be discriminatory, it would be just like racial discrimination, to not allow two men to marry or two women to marry. That’s what it’s ultimately about.
But it has disastrous effects, and this is the problem. In other countries, and even in our own country, where they’ve put these kinds of hate-crimes laws or hate-speech laws on the books, pastors usually are some of the first victims. You’ve got Ake Green in Sweden, who was sentenced to up to a month in jail for preaching out of Romans. You have the Philadelphia Seven, who, for sharing the Gospel at the homosexual "Outfest", were (facing) up to 99 years in prison. These laws are used in a way to intimidate, to chill speech.
4. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is another piece of legislation that pertains to homosexuals. Tell me what this legislation does and how it would affect Christian businesses and churches.
People don’t understand that it’s very likely ENDA is going to come down the pike, and it’s going to be very difficult to stop it. Last legislative session, the only reason it didn’t pass is President Bush promised to veto it. Now you have a president who has promised to support it and increased numbers in the House and the Senate who will most likely be in favor.
It essentially forces a national homosexual-rights law into businesses across the country. The original bill included "transgendered" individuals — in other words, a man who dresses like a woman, who feels like he’s a woman that day. This would affect everything. It would mean your teacher in your child’s school, if they were a male and felt like a female, they could go into the women’s bathroom.
It’s very extreme, but it is very likely to pass, and it has huge implications on religious liberty. There are a lot of Christian businesses that try to follow their beliefs and morality, and it would be the federal government forcing their view of morality on everybody and it would trump religious freedom.
It’s not just Christian businesses; it would even do it to nonprofit organizations. It would even affect, depending upon the exemption, church schools. So you can see how invidious this could be because it really is a direct attack on religious freedom.
5. Focus on the Family has been talking about the Fairness Doctrine for some time. If some form of that doctrine passes, what would that do to shows like our daily radio broadcast?
It would have a dramatic impact. It would be really dangerous. And people need to understand it has an effect that people don’t even think about. Let’s just talk about economics. If the federal government were to come in and say, “Any time you, as a station, were to put on a Rush Limbaugh, you had to provide equal time to the other side.” The listeners to your station are probably conservative and that’s why they listen to Rush Limbaugh. If you then put on a liberal, they’re not going to listen. So the station can’t afford that dead air time where they can’t do commercials; they can’t make money.
Commercial stations have already stated that if this were to come into place, they would simply stop talk radio because they could not afford to continue with basically having half their air time taken away from them.
It would really be an anti-free speech move across the country. But for religious freedom, it’s especially poignant. Can you imagine all the Christian stations around the country being told they have to put on the opposite viewpoint? Focus on the Family and other groups who broadcast would be told that while they’re pro-life, they now have to put on the pro-choice person to provide equal perspective. People of good conscience can’t do that. They can’t put on something they know is wrong, they know violates Scripture.
This is really a direct attack right into the belly of not only religious freedom, but basic free speech. The thing people need to understand is it doesn’t take a law; Congress doesn’t have to pass anything. Barack Obama appoints to the FCC his commissioners, and those commissioners can simply implement the regulation. That’s how it came into place the first time many years ago, and that’s how easily it can be done again.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Visit the Texas Free Market Foundation Web site.
