In a conference call held by E.W. Jackson’s group Staying True to America’s National Destiny (S.T.A.N.D) last week, Liberty Institute president Kelly Shackelford said that the advancement of LGBT rights and laws protecting against anti-LGBT discrimination have led to a loss of religious freedoms and other fundamental rights in the U.S.
Shackelford, whose group works against antidiscrimination laws and represents those who claim to have been hurt by them, described how LGBT equality supporters have been “taking over the airwaves” in order to pressure people into supporting their cause.
“People are afraid to speak up, which is the opposite of our country — our country is all about people having different beliefs,” he said. “And the scary thing to me is how quickly it moved from the GLBT [community] having some victories on this issue of marriage to having complete intolerance, of trying to force people to violate their faith. This is antithetical to our country and anything we’re about.”
He claimed that Christians have explicitly been targeted and ostracized for their views. “Whether you’re a baker, or a photographer, or a florist, or who else. It’s not that there aren’t plenty of people to do a wedding for two women or two men in the states where that’s legal. They sniff around to find out the one person who has a religious conscience objective and then try to destroy them,” he added. “It kind of shows you how, once you lose your religious freedom, you lose all freedom.”
