All churches are open to the public. Sure, they lock their doors at times; I’ve yet to run into a place that doesn’t do that, but the idea of church of any denomination is that anyone is welcome to come in and pray. That applies to Christian churches, but that also applies to most other houses of worship I can list: Jewish synagogues, Buddhist temples, and Muslim mosques. After all, how is a church supposed to gain converts if they don’t allow those not already formally affiliated to enter?

All churches, and other houses of worship also allow wedding ceremonies (as well as other ceremonies) on their grounds, and these ceremonies often are officiated over by a member of the clergy for that house of worship. A fee is charged for both the use of the facilities and, usually, for the speaking of the holy words and solemnizing of the marriage.

If houses of worship are open to the public and make money from offering a service, then under liberal rationale doesn’t that make them business that are “open to the public?” I have a hard time seeing how it doesn’t. And this creates a very dangerous problem.

In Coeur D’Alene, Idaho a recent issue has caused a stir in the nationwide gay marriage debate. A wedding chapel run by two Christian ministers has been told that they must officiate gay weddings or be fined and/or serve jail time. Conservatives have lambasted this as an attack on religious freedom and the first amendment. Liberals have (mostly) reacted with glee. Despite having assured everyone that religious officials would never be coerced into performing ceremonies against their conscience, there has been strikingly little condemnation from the Left on this development so far.

There is no pragmatic reason why the Hitching Post Wedding Chapel must perform gay marriage ceremonies. It isn’t as if they are the only game in town, after all. Courtesy of judges completely misinterpreting the recent Supreme Court Windsor decision, in which they specifically did not say that there was an inherent right to marriage for gays and lesbians, lower level federal courts have taken the decision, which struck down the federal DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) to mean precisely that there is an inherent right to marriage for gays and lesbians. Idaho’s state constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman was recently struck down, and so city officials in Coeur D’Alene have decided to go full tilt. Donald and Evelyn Knapp now face an ultimatum from the local Idaho government: comply and compromise your faith, or do time.

The liberal result here is that your first amendment rights do not matter. Freedom of association, freedom of conscience, freedom to practice your faith... all are done away with if you happen to make money exercising them. You transform yourself into a place of “public accommodation” and you lose all appeals to the first amendment. Bad enough that the property rights of bakers and florists have been whittled away, but now houses of worship themselves are in the crosshairs.

This is disturbing in and of itself. The liberal penchant for blurring the lines between private property and public goes back to the 1960s under Lyndon Johnson. As part of his Great Society program, civil rights legislation from Congress unconstitutionally designated privately owned, for profit businesses (such as hotels and restaurants) as places of “public accommodation” and therefore prohibited by law from being selective about their clientele. While the result of this legislation seems mostly unobjectionable in the modern day, it was a complete evisceration of the very concept of separate public and private spheres across the nation. What was formerly private was now public and subject to the same rules as public places, such as libraries or museums. However much one might appreciate the result of desegregation, the fact remains that the method by which desegregation was implemented in the private sector, by coercion as opposed to by persuasion, was a gross abuse of government power. Though, in fairness, laws in states which mandated segregation in privately owned establishment were every bit as egregious. The whole concept of private property is predicated on the private property owner being able to do as he or she wills; being forced into or out of segregation policies in that property is problematic.

The slippery slope continues with the gay marriage movement. If the Wedding Chapel, which makes money doing weddings and is run by Christian ministers is “public,” then what house of worship doesn’t also fall under that category? And given that, how long will it be before houses of worship across the country are forced to accommodate gay marriage ceremonies or have their clerics and administrators face fines and jail time? Maybe I’m wrong and it won’t come to that, but I do see a disturbing trend here.