The Department of Veterans Affairs is under scrutiny for reportedly telling veterans and others not to use the words “God” or “Jesus Christ” in memorial services at Houston National Cemetery, according to a report in the Houston Chronicle.

Attorneys with the Liberty Institute representing American Legion Post 586, Veterans of Foreign Wars District 4, and National Memorial Ladies filed complaints against the Department of Veteran Affairs, charging it with “a widespread and consistent practice of discriminating against private religious speech” at the cemetery.

For example, cemetery director Arleen Ocasio reportedly told National Memorial Ladies volunteers that they could no longer say “God bless you” to mourning families or write “God bless” on condolence cards.

National Memorial Ladies founder Cheryle Whitfield spoke out against the discrimination: “I could’ve kept my mouth shut and let things happen, but when it comes to standing up for your belief in God and giving comfort to the families, I don’t want to regret not saying anything.”

This week’s allegations follow an earlier controversy over Pastor Scott Rainey’s prayer in Jesus’ name during a Memorial Day service at Houston National Cemetery. U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes ruled May 26 that the government couldn’t stop Rainey from using the words “Jesus Christ” in his invocation. He then issued a temporary restraining order to prevent Veteran Affairs from censoring Rainey’s prayer, the Chronicle reported.

Vietnam veteran Nobleton Jones spoke up yesterday at a Liberty Institute press conference, saying he has presented shell casings from the gun salute to veterans’ family members at funerals in Houston National Cemetery for the past three years. On May 16, though, Jones said a government official told him he could no longer recite the words he always says when he hands over the shells: “We ask that God grant you and your family grace, mercy, and peace.”

The 66-year-old Houstonian said, “That makes me feel smaller, even after I spent my time in the military, fighting so that people should be able to say that. . . . I did all this for my country and you are going to tell me what I can and can’t say?”

Yesterday, Mercy for Animals (MFA), an animal welfare group that encourages a vegan diet, released an undercover video shot at Iowa Select Farms. The purpose: to generate public outrage over the pork producer’s treatment of pigs.

In the video, secretly recorded this spring at an Iowa Select Farms operation in the small town of Kamrar, Iowa, sows are shown in small cages, known as gestation crates, which limit their ability to move. The video also shows workers castrating piglets and removing their tails without anesthetics.

MFA representatives said they plan to use the secret recordings to pressure large grocery chains to stop buying from suppliers that reportedly use abusive practices.

Howard Hill, a veterinarian and Iowa Select Farms’ director of external affairs, said the company was looking into the video but believes the recording gave an inaccurate picture of its operation. Hill said such undercover videos are unfair: “We feel that pork producers are hard-working, honest people, and they don’t deserve this kind of undocumented journalism, if you want to call it journalism. . . . It’s not innocent before you’re proven guilty. You’re guilty immediately because it goes on YouTube and everybody wants to believe what they see.”

John Mabry, director of the Iowa Swine Industry Center at Iowa State University, said gestation crates are commonly used, and that it’s an industry standard to castrate piglets and cut off three inches of their tails without anesthetic.

MFA’s efforts seem to be working, as several chains have either halted purchases from the targeted Iowa pork producer or expressed concern. After watching the video, officials at Pleasanton, Calif.-based Safeway said they stopped purchases from its supplier, JBS Swift, which distributes pork from the Iowa company, until completion of an iinvestigation into the conditions shown on the video.

Mabry questioned the credibility of undercover videos but said MFA’s plan to put pressure on individual companies might be effective. Such videos would put heat on retailers, but animal welfare groups won’t see lasting change until they convince farmers. “They need to work with the production sector to do that, Mabry said. ‘Grocery stores can’t do that.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The government’s labor board is suing Boeing Co. for opening a new production line for its 787 airplane in South Carolina, a right-to-work state.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) claims the aerospace giant made the move to punish its unionized workforce in Washington state for past strikes. The agency wants a judge to order Boeing to return all 787 assembly work to Washington, even though the company has already built a new $750 million South Carolina plant and hired 1,000 new workers there.

Republicans call the lawsuit a case of government overreaching at a time when the private sector is struggling to create new jobs in the face of uncertainty about government policy.

“[President Barack] Obama’s NLRB has united the Republican Party and turned this government agency into a political piñata,” said GOP consultant Scott Reed. “Boeing spent a billion dollars building a plant to create thousands of jobs and it looks like the NLRB stuck their nose in and tried to pull the rug out.”

Business groups and their GOP allies say the government is interfering with the right of company managers to choose where and how to expand operations. Boeing claims it opened the plant for a variety of economic reasons. But according to The Seattle Times, one Boeing executive said the main reason to put the new line in South Carolina was “that we cannot afford to have a work stoppage, you know, every three years.”

Obama, ordinarily a supporter of organized labor, has carefully avoided taking a position on the case. White House spokesman Jay Carney said the president does not want to interfere with the conduct of an independent federal agency.

John Bryson, Obama’s pick to head the Commerce Department and a former Boeing board member, openly criticized the lawsuit during a Senate confirmation hearing last week.

“I think it’s not the right judgment,” Bryson said. He said Boeing officials thought they were “doing the right thing for the country” by keeping jobs in the United States and not moving them overseas.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

My oldest daughter, who is 12, was checking her email the other day. Before she logged in to her account, she saw the headlines on Google News and took notice of the legalization of same-sex marriage in New York. She asked me later what I thought about that.

Some sins are worse than others, right? Not in the eyes of God maybe, but certainly to most of us. For better or for worse, we tend to place degrees on sin. In doing so, cheating on a test isn’t nearly as bad as—murder, adultery (whether heterosexual or homosexual), stealing a car, or perjuring ourselves in a court of law. I don’t mean to teach my kids that some sins are worse than others, but I do it every day by my own reactions and responses to sin in both their lives and mine. They are learning early from me.

For the longest time I’ve struggled to put my finger on just what I believe about homosexuality and whether or not same-sex marriages should be allowed. Five years ago, I think I would have come down pretty solid on the line of “absolutely not”—under no circumstance should this mockery of what God ordained as union between one man and one woman be given the same status.

I’m not sure I can say that anymore. Wait a minute: It isn’t that I think homosexuality is OK and is something Scripture overlooks or agrees with. But it is that I’m understanding a little better that what is commanded of Christians is simply not the same as what we should expect from those who do not follow the ways of God.

Because of my Christian worldview, I do not agree with the practice of homosexuality, but I do not expect the government or most of our country or world to share that view. The trick for me right now is how do I explain that to my kids?

My friend Wesley Hill is a celibate homosexual Christian. His book Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality has been formative in helping me understand the struggle of Christians who find themselves wondering what it means that they struggle with a homosexual orientation. I asked him for his thoughts on the legalization of same-sex marriage, and he responded in this way:

“I tend to think the church shouldn’t behave as if its viewpoint on same-sex partnerships resonates, deep down, with everyone . . . because it doesn’t. We tend to think everyone really knows gay sex is wrong, but when we say that, we’re just not listening to gay people well enough about how their (my) orientation is ‘hardwired’ and not ‘chosen.’

“What that means in terms of specific policies, I don’t know. I’m inclined to think that Christians shouldn’t have much of a problem with American governments (state and federal) granting recognition (e.g., ‘civil unions’ at least) to non-Christian same-sex partnerships. . . . Even Focus on the Family is admitting that conservatives have pretty much ‘lost’ the culture war on this issue. (Wasn’t there a recent interview with a Focus employee in WORLD to that effect?)

“The vast majority of my generation is in favor of gay marriage, and I suspect it’s only a matter of time before it’s made legal across the board. Which should be no cause for despair among more traditional, Bible-believing Christians. As Paul Griffiths says, ‘What the Church ought do . . . is to burnish the practice of marriage by [Christians] until its radiance dazzles the pagan eye.’ Our best apologetic for ‘traditional marriage’ is the beauty of the Christian lives we live. We ought to woo people towards it rather than legislate its acceptance.”

1 Corinthians 1:18 says:

“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

Lord, how do I—and my kids—pray for Your power on behalf of the perishing?

Editor’s Note: Please see “The new calamity,” posted on Tuesday, July 5.

Congress is currently debating three freedom of conscience amendments to the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal.

The amendments would provide codified conscience protection for any chaplain or military person who believes homosexuality to be immoral, meaning that no one who expressed disagreement about the lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender lifestyle could be prosecuted.

One of the amendments, introduced by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., would require the approval of the Army, Marine, Navy, and Air Force branch chiefs before the repeal would go into effect. A second amendment, from Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., would reaffirm the Defense of Marriage Act. And the third amendment, initiated by Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., would protect military personnel from having to perform same-sex marriages on base.

All three amendments have successfully cleared the Armed Services Committee and are now awaiting a vote in Congress.

Twenty-one retired chaplain endorsers wrote to the military chiefs asking them to “join us in urging [the Defense Department] and Congress to adopt such specific and intentional conscience protections.” Retired chaplain Douglas Lee, director of the Presbyterian and Reformed Joint Commission on Chaplains and Military Personnel, was first to sign the letter. He said that if Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is fully repealed without any protective amendments, military chaplains would experience increased pressure to restrict the free exercise of their faith-group’s beliefs

After 30 years in the service, Lee continues to work with individuals who feel called to serve God and country as military chaplains. He is concerned that without First Amendment assurances from Congress, chaplains would lose their ability to fulfill their calls in good conscience.

Intellectually, I understand the Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision that the First Amendment protects the most violent of video games. Experientially, I don’t.

It’s fine for the majority to say parents have ultimate control over what their children see, but how many members of the Supreme Court have experienced “real” life? Chief Justice John Roberts spoke at the Fourth Circuit Judicial Conference last Saturday and said, “I don’t think any of us have a Facebook page or a tweet—whatever that is. But technology is making inroads.” It certainly is.

According to the Huffington Post, at least one justice—Stephen Breyer—has a private Twitter account, which he said he used “to track the so-called Green Revolution in Iran following the country’s 2009 presidential elections. But he told a House Appropriations general government subcommittee he was testifying in front of that he had been unsure how to erase the account.”

Justices live in an unreal world. They have little experience with cyberspace and violent video games. They bring law school minds to a subject that requires practical experience.

Justices enjoy security that protects them from the kind of assaults depicted in games like Mortal Kombat and others in which children are allowed to emulate school shooting sprees or virtually carry out assassinations, decapitations, rape, torture, and every other unimaginable horror one human being can inflict upon another.

In his dissent, Justice Breyer asked the right question: “What sense does it make to forbid selling to a 13-year-old boy a magazine with an image of a nude woman, while protecting the sale to that 13-year-old of an interactive video game in which he actively, but virtually, binds and gags the woman, then tortures and kills her?”

Justices should step out of their safety zones and experience life on urban streets where mortal combat is for real and shootings are as commonplace as corrupt politicians. Where do armed teenagers in roving gangs get the idea that life is cheap and can be so easily taken without regard to social mores? Children aren’t born this way. They must be taught these things, and if parents aren’t teaching them—or more accurately “parent,” since fathers are usually absent and it doesn’t take a sociologist to see a connection—a violent and life-denying culture is happy to fill the moral void.

Does anyone believe Thomas Jefferson could have foreseen a day when violent images of the worst sort ought to be protected by the First Amendment? When he wrote about freedom of the press, did “press” mean blood and gore? And if it did, should anything be banned? Should any child be told “no”?

There are a number of laws governing childhood behavior that have never been successfully challenged. Minors are told they can’t smoke or drink until a certain age. Why does the state consider it injurious for minors to take alcohol into their stomachs and nicotine into their lungs, but not harmful for them to absorb the most violent images into their minds?

If alcohol produces a reaction in minors the state finds harmful and if cigarettes injure developing lungs and contribute to rising healthcare costs—and so the state imposes age restrictions—what do violent images produce and why can’t the law impose age restrictions on those?

Minors can’t sign contracts. The state won’t let kids drive cars until a certain age, believing, rightly, that they are not mature enough to handle the responsibility. Some argue that even at age 16, the legal driving age in most states, children are still not sufficiently mature enough to drive, as evidenced by the high accident rate among teens.

Anyone who has tried to stop an adolescent from ignoring a parent’s wishes knows what I’m talking about. In a perfect world, children would listen to, respect, and obey their parents. But this is far from a perfect world and parents could use occasional help from the state in preventing violent culture from undermining what’s in the best interest of the child, and the country. This ruling by the Supreme Court does not achieve that end.

© 2011 Tribune Media Services Inc.

I was praying with a friend and was struck that she asked God to forgive her for being “lazy” toward her husband. Afterward, she explained that there are a few little areas in his life she feels she should talk to him about, but she has not. It isn’t that she is afraid to, exactly. It’s more that life is already so busy and wearisome, and it’s just easier to let things slide.

We more often repent of the things we have said than the things we have not said. But what about those unspoken words that should be spoken? As I remember my own marriage, I see my neglect in pointing out to my husband some worrisome areas that I, as the person closest to him, would have done him a favor to mention. Who else would?! And I see that it was not love but laziness and a lack of love behind my omission.

We all know that “whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him” (Proverbs 13:24). Paradoxically, both the unpleasantness of parental discipline and of other personal confrontations are greater outlays of love than holding one’s peace.

When the Lord warns us not to be “sluggish” (Hebrews 6:12), He is not primarily talking about getting the dishes done. There are all kinds of spiritual sloth, and withholding important insight into your brother’s life is one of them. To ask him out to Dunkin’ Donuts so you can have a chat is a way of dying to your desires, stepping outside your comfort zone, and trusting God with bread cast on the waters.

Listen to commentaries by Andrée Seu.

Happy last day of June.

Welcome to our daily open thread, where you, the commenters, get to choose the topics of conversation.

Have a blessed day.

Last Friday, at five minutes before midnight, and just in time for the weekend’s Gay Pride parade, the New York state Senate, with the help of four Republicans, voted to establish same-sex marriage in the third largest state in the union. New York is the sixth state to make it legal for homosexuals to marry, more than doubling the proportion of the country by population that now recognizes this arrangement, almost all of it concentrated in the extreme northeast.

In the face of this unholy alliance between government authority and the morally irresponsibly progressive fringe, it is tempting to “get government out of the marriage business” and privatize the whole matter.

It reminds me of the school prayer issue back in Canada. When I was a boy in Ontario, like everyone else at the time, I attended public school. There were no “Christian schools,” and there was certainly no homeschooling movement. We began each day with what we called “opening exercises.” We would stand beside our desks for the national anthem, bow our heads for the Lord’s Prayer, and then sit down for the principal’s announcements. There was nothing in Canada like the American First Amendment to prevent these daily religious observances, and I was unaware of any objection to them.

Some years after I graduated, the cultural consensus had disintegrated to the point where schools began alternating between a Christian prayer or reading and readings from other religious holy books, native Indian prayers, and even song lyrics from people like John Lennon. At that point it was best just to dispense with the activity altogether.

Where there is a Christian cultural consensus, civil authorities are wise to reinforce that moral foundation for the sake of the citizen character it fosters. But when we can no longer agree on our moral foundation, a hodgepodge of religious expressions serves only to undermine religion by relativizing it. Of course, a society without a moral foundation on which it can agree is no society at all, which is a more fundamental problem.

With the passage of this same-sex marriage law in New York and with California teetering (will Texas hold?), are we at the same point of moral collapse where marriage is concerned? Where the cultural consensus is so shattered and the government, accordingly, is so morally adrift that it cannot discern between the union of a man and a woman, homosexual cohabitation, a motorcycle gang, and who knows what else when recognizing marriage, has the time come to remove the question entirely form the purview of government responsibility? Should the government limit itself to recognizing private contracts regarding inheritance, legal custody of children and property, hospital visitation rights, etc.?

A study by the Council on Family Law, “The Future of Family Law: Law and the Marriage Crisis in North America,” points out the difficulties with this initially attractive “separationist” approach.

The state has an interest in promoting marriage whether by officially recognizing and honoring it or by facilitating it with tax advantages. The state’s interest is in strengthening that social arrangement that brings people into the world and then forms them morally into emotionally stable, law abiding, neighbor blessing, productive members of society who in turn become capable of forming future families.

Yes, the nagging fact about natural sexual relations is that they produce children. It is chiefly this that draws the state into the recognition and regulation of marriage. It is responsible for protecting people, especially the most vulnerable, like children, and thus it oversees the marriages that produce and nurture them. The state has no interest in granting special advantages to certain people simply on the basis of how and with whom the practice sexual intimacy.

Furthermore, the study points out that “the disestablishment of marriage would support a troubling and already all too common perception that marriage may be a nice ceremony but is no longer a key social institution.”

Lastly, the report argues that “outside of marriage, the state is necessarily drawn into greater and more intrusive regulation of family life.” It is because of the natural bonds and family ties of marriage that the state leaves so much discretion in child rearing to parents. Expect that to change under disestablishment.

Tactically, it’s also a dead end. Now that homosexuals in New York have access to the social legitimacy of marriage they will cling to it tenaciously. It will also serve as a useful legal base from which to promote their way of life in public schools, force institutions across society to affirm the moral legitimacy of their sexual activity, and punish those who hold traditional views. If Christians and moral traditionalists cannot win the battle for true marriage, they have no reason to think a battle for marriage disestablishment will be any more successful. If you can’t win one debate, what makes you think you can win the other?

The way forward has to lie elsewhere.

In the Protestant Reformation sola scriptura was meant to make the case that the Bible is the ultimate and final authority on matters related to salvation and faith. This often gets misunderstood as the Bible being the only authority Christians use for matters of faith in the Christian life. But as R.C. Sproul teaches in What Is Reformed Theology, the doctrine properly understood means that “only the Bible has the authority to bind the conscience of believers.”

While the Bible is the primary and final authority of Truth and the Christian faith, our faith is also mediated, explained, and delivered through a particular tradition and perspective. For centuries Protestants have recognized the authority of their confessions of faith. These confessions, which remain subordinate to what is plainly taught in the Bible and are open to questioning in ways the Bible is not, are regularly used to evaluate pastoral candidates and church membership on the basis of subscription to those documents. For example, Presbyterians use the Westminster Confession of Faith, Lutherans use the Augsburg Confession of Faith, and Anglicans use the Book of Common Prayer.

The Wesleyan tradition takes a different approach, challenging the sola scriptura misapplications and pointing to what Christians do in practice, namely, follow Jesus while negotiating the authorities of Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. Wesleyans call it the Wesleyan Quadrilateral; I call it “honesty.”

Wesleyans do not teach that these four authorities are all equal but that they describe the actual sources Christians use to situate faith in subordination to the primacy of the Bible. For example, we use our rational faculties (reason) to interpret and apply what we read in the Bible as well as the guidance provided by our particular traditions. We use reason to test what tradition teaches according to what is plainly revealed in the Scriptures. We use experience, as Steve Wilkens and Mark L. Sanford explain in Hidden Worldviews, not as something subjective but with the understanding that “an idea passes the test of experience if its claims are consistent with the facts, observations and actual life events.” Experience, then, compliments the Bible and our God-given reason.

The Wesleyan approach has led Don Thorsen, a professor at the Haggard Graduate School of Theology at Azusa Pacific University, to prefer prima gratia, prima fide, and prima scriptura instead of the sola gratia, sola fide, and sola scriptura celebrated from the Protestant Reformation. Thorsen believes that the Latin word prima (“primarily”) “makes more sense in describing the complex understanding of Protestant Reformers and their nuanced articulation of salvation and religious authority.”

Thorsen continues:

“Although the sola principles remain important for understanding the history of Protestant Christianity, they are best understood theologically from a Wesleyan perspective as representing prima principles because Protestants—past and present—think that salvation and religious authority include more than grace, faith, and scripture alone. Salvation should be thought of in terms of prima gratia—initiated primarily by God’s grace—and prima fide—accepted primarily through faith. Likewise, religious authority should be thought of in terms of prima scriptura; scripture represents the primary religious authority of Protestantism but not its exclusive religious authority. Church tradition, logical reflection, and relevant experience all play important and authoritative roles in the founding and continuation of Protestantism.”

While much of this may seem to be merely semantics, it seems that Thorsen is seeking ways to bring better unity among Christians by putting on the table what Christians do in practice. Claiming that your church or denomination’s teaching is “biblical” and according to the Bible alone while another group’s is not is neither intellectually nor historically honest according a Wesleyan perspective. No church or denomination uses the Bible as its only authority, and unfortunately it seems that only some are willing to admit that.

Perhaps being honest about our sources of authority, and how we use them, could foster a type of solidarity and humility that could unite Christians in what we share in the Kingdom instead of glorifying the distinctions that can create a posture of arrogance and pride about being “right.”