The presidential election is still 19 months away, but the GOP field is as crowded as a D.C. sidewalk during cherry blossom time. And fortunately for conservatives, there aren’t many duds among them. Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) proved that [Monday] with a solid rollout of his 2016 campaign. Drawing from his strengths as a young (the youngest, so far), principled alternative to the current President, the bilingual Cuban-American proved that he’s just as fluent in social issues as he is in foreign policy.

While some Republicans run for cover, Senator Rubio stood and spoke unapologetically about his values. Standing in Miami’s Freedom Tower, Marco was a stark contrast to the opponent he called “a leader from yesterday,” Hillary Clinton, who spent a good portion of her candidacy ad cheering the deconstruction of the natural family.

Proving that he accepts the challenge to make values a core message, he insisted, “Our people will be prepared to seize their opportunities in this new economy. If we remember — that the family, not the government, is the most important institution in our society. If we remember that all human life deserves protection of our laws. And if we remember that all parents deserve to choose the education that’s right for their children, then we will have a strong people, and strong nation.”

Senator Rubio, who has a unique appreciation for freedom and democracy after his parents immigrated from Cuba, wasn’t the least bit uncomfortable defending that freedom for Christians. While others water down their defense of bills like Indiana’s, the newest addition to the GOP field wouldn’t back down on their importance. In a lengthy interview with NPR, Marco spoke clearly about the need for Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRAs).

Asked if he supported the RFRA concept, Rubio didn’t blink. “I don’t believe you can discriminate against people,” he explained. “So I don’t believe it’s right for a florist to say, ‘I’m not going to provide you flowers because you’re gay.’” But, he went on, “I think there’s a difference between not providing services to a person because of … who they are … and saying, I’m not going to participate in an event, a same-sex wedding, because that violates my religious beliefs… There’s a distinction between those two things.”

That doesn’t mean, he explained, “that you’re allowed to go in and disrupt a gay wedding. But by the same token, it doesn’t mean that someone’s allowed to come to you and force you to be a participant in a ceremony that violates the tenets of your faith. And to be honest, in the real world, 99.9% of the time, a same-sex couple doesn’t want a florist or a photographer at their wedding that doesn’t agree with the choice that they’ve made. So we’re really talking about an issue that in large part is really not going to manifest itself in daily life, but in the instances that it does, there are individuals that don’t want to be compelled by force of law to participate in an event that puts them in the position of violating their religious faith.”

But Rubio wasn’t done there. He also pushed back on the idea that same-sex “marriage” is supported by most Americans (a statement that helped earn him the title as the Advocate’s “most anti-LGBT candidate yet”). If they did, he said, then we’d “see it reflected in changes in state law, which has always regulated marriage. And so at the end of the day, if a majority of people in any given state in this country petition their legislature to change the definition of marriage to include the marriage of two people of the same sex, that’ll be the law of the land… Separate from that, there’s a constitutional protection of religious liberty that allows people to live by the tenets of their faith both in their public and in private life.” Let’s hope Rubio’s courage is contagious with the rest of the field!

Louisiana Needs to Turn Down Its Speaker

The legislative session in Louisiana is less than two days old, and it’s already taken a wrong turn. Borrowing a tactic of the far-Left, Speaker Pro Tempore Walter Leger has decided that the only way to win a debate is to stop it. So instead of assigning the Marriage and Conscience Act to a committee, which is standard practice, Leger has taken the highly unusual step of blocking it. In a scathing op-ed, the New Orleans Democrat blasts his colleagues for defending the most basic of all American rights: religious liberty.

Wrapping his objections in a cloak of false patriotism, he calls the RFRA-like bill a “waste of time and ink.” He goes on to invoke the words of John Adams, suggesting that we shouldn’t dictate morals to the nation — before he proceeds to dictate his own morals to the whole state. He claims what’s “happening today in Louisiana … is a perversion of the laws that have been established to reflect the beliefs of a moral and religious people.”

That’s interesting, since the bill was intended to protect the beliefs of a minority group of citizens (see Rights, Bill Of.) If anyone isn’t reflecting a “moral and religious people,” it’s those who want to destroy the entire idea of marriage and family, and then violate the consciences of those who don’t agree! He goes on to suggest “(f)ederal and state laws already exist to protect religious liberty” — a claim which is hyperlinked to the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Actually, there are no “federal and state laws” that would protect people like Louisiana’s HB 707 would.

Whether his misrepresentation is willful or not is uncertain — but one thing is certain: this bill has no impact upon transactions between individuals and or businesses. The measure only restricts the state government from discriminating against individuals, organizations, or businesses based upon their religious view of marriage.

Just as troubling, Leger misrepresents Scripture to support his anti-religious freedom position. “I myself am guided by a deep faith, and I am all the more appalled at the length to which some people will go to ignore the lessons of love and acceptance that Jesus lived and died for and twist them into an excuse to discriminate. To use a religion founded upon the premise of ‘love thy neighbor’ to promote intolerance is deplorable.” The whole point of civil laws isn’t to dictate individual moral behavior, but to protect freedom (even for those we disagree with). Still, he insists, “Preventing a business from discriminating does not hinder the freedom of the business owner to hold his sincere religious beliefs in his heart and in his home.”

Leger must have gone to President Obama’s School of Religious Liberty, where the slogan is: believe what you want, but don’t act on it outside the home. Like most liberals, he thinks that surrendering your beliefs is the price of doing business. On one point Leger is correct: “We must ensure that Louisiana lives up to the ideals of a life lived free of government-sanctioned discrimination.” I agree. But the only way of ensuring that is by passing HB 707 and treating everyone‘s views with the respect the Left’s already enjoy.

In Marriage Debate, Children Should Be Seen and Heard

If there’s one thing the Left has done well, it’s story-telling. That’s why it’s especially ironic that liberals — and their friends in the media — consistently turn their backs on the powerful testimonies of the marriage debate’s many victims. From persecuted businesses to children in homosexual homes, there’s suddenly no room for real anecdotes of hurting people. It’s an unfortunate double standard, especially since these stories (unlike many of the Left’s) don’t come at the expense of the facts — but as evidence of them.

The movement that claims to care so much for children has done a masterful job ignoring them, as survivor after survivor of same-sex homes come forward — each with a tale more disturbing than the last. Dawn Stefanowicz’s case, like too many others’, struggled with the decision to come forward. “Due to media silencing, political correctness, GLBT lobbying efforts and loss of freedom of speech, it is very hard to tell my story,” she explains in the Daily Signal. “But I am not alone. Over 50 adult children from alternative households, plus ex-spouses with children, and parents who have left the ‘gay’ lifestyle have contacted me. Very few children will share their stories publicly. For many of us adult children of gay parents, we have come to the conclusion that same-sex marriage is more about promoting adults’ ‘desires’ than about safeguarding children’s rights to know and be raised by their biological parents…”

She was exposed, she explains, to “a lot of expressed sexuality in the home and subcultures… Gender was supposed to be boundless; yet, I did not see my father and his partners valuing, loving and affirming women. My father’s preference for one gender (male) created an inner sense of inequality for me… In 1991, my father died of AIDS. None of my father’s partners/ex-partners are still alive.”

As a Canadian, she worries about where America is headed. And Dawn knows all too well where that is, having watched her own country slip into a nightmare of thought-policing, media censoring, religious liberty-suppressing, and parental rights-devaluing from which it cannot wake.

> Freedom to assemble and speak freely about man-woman marriage, family and sexuality are restricted. Activists often sit in on religious assemblies, listening for anything discriminatory towards GLBT, so a complaint can be made to the Human Rights Commission. Most faith communities have become politically correct to avoid fines and loss of charitable status. Canadian media is restricted by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the media censoring arm of government and similar to the Federal Communications Commission. If the media air anything considered discriminatory towards GLBT, broadcasting licenses can be revoked, and Human Rights Commissions can charge fines and restrict future airings.

Read her story here — and then do your part to pass it on.

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This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.