Kentucky tells prison chaplains: Sign pledge to never say homosexuality is a sin, or you're out

I know what some of you are going to argue. The Commonwealth of Kentucky is not telling preachers they can't preach 1 Corinthians 6:9-10. They can do that in their churches all they want, no problem. But if they want to work in the prisons on behalf of the commonwealth, they have to agree not to go there. It's not about the right to freedom of religion. It's about your right to a gig with the commonwealth.

That's your argument. And the fact that you believe it is really the best argument against the expansive scope of big government that I can possibly think of. First, here are the details from Todd Starnes:

Chaplain David Wells was told he could either sign a state-mandated document promising to never tell inmates that homosexuality is “sinful” or else the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice would revoke his credentials. “We could not sign that paper,” Chaplain Wells told me in a telephone call from his home in Kentucky. “It broke my heart.” The Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice revoked his volunteer credentials as an ordained minister – ending 13 years of ministry to underage inmates at the Warren County Regional Juvenile Detention Center. “We sincerely appreciate your years of service and dedication to the youth served by this facility,” wrote Superintendent Gene Wade in a letter to Wells. “However, due to your decision, based on your religious convictions, that you cannot comply with the requirements outlined in DJJ Policy 912, Section IV, Paragraph H, regarding the treatment of LGBTQI youth, I must terminate your involvement as a religious volunteer.”

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Wells said that every volunteer in their church received the letter – as did a Baptist church in a nearby community. The Kentucky regulation clearly states that volunteers working with juveniles “shall not refer to juveniles by using derogatory language in a manner that conveys bias towards or hatred of the LGBTQI community. DJJ staff, volunteers, interns and contractors shall not imply or tell LGBTQI juveniles that they are abnormal, deviant, sinful or that they can or should change their sexual orientation or gender identity.”

The goal of the left at the moment is establish that freedom of religion only applies inside the church building. You can say whatever you want at your services, but your freedom to practice it ends when you walk out those doors if what you say, think, believe or do conflicts with what secular leftists think is acceptable. (They'll get around to attacking what happens inside the church building when they're ready to start using the tax code for that purpose. Don't worry. It's coming.) The mission of a church is to impact the world for Christ, not just to preach on Sunday. That involves going out into communities and finding people who have needs, and ministering to them. Needless to say, an awful lot of those people are caught up in systems run by government. They're in the criminal justice system. They're in the welfare system. That's an obvious place where churches can find the folks who need help and minister to them. If government is going to be responsible for taking care of every person in need, and government is going to demand fealty to a pro-gay agenda as a condition for offering spiritual assistance - you see the problem here, right? Obviously no one who is committed to the Word of God can agree to that. And just like that, people who have ministered to prisoners for more than a decade and have gained experience and expertise in the task are out the door. I want to say the gay activists didn't think through their plan to ban all speech that might be critical of them and what they do - didn't think through unintended consequences like this. But I don't think that's true. I think they did think it through. They knew exactly what they were doing. And I don't think this consequences was unintended at all. I think was the point.