The Manhattan Declaration, the conservative Christian manifesto nailed (metaphorically) with great fanfare to the door of the National Press Club today, ends with this orotund pronunciamento:
Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with
any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in
abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and
euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule
purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them
as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth,
as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the
family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is
Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is
God’s.
The
Declaration’s list of signatories includes not only a bunch of
Catholic, (non-Greek) Orthodox, and Protestant prelates and
denominational bureaucrats but also “Christian leaders” who are
uneluctably lay–professors like Robby George of Princeton (who helped
write the thing), editors like David Neff of Christianity Today, activists like Gary Bauer of American Values, etc.
I’m
curious to know what rules purporting to force them as individuals to
treat, say, same-sex married couples as “marriages or their equivalent”
they intend not to bend to. What acts of disobedience to Caesar, if
any, are they contemplating? What martyrdom do they seek?