Author name: Craig L. Parshal

Last week, Apple Inc. once again shut down an app from its popular iTunes App Store because it promoted Bible-based ideas. This time the app that was removed belonged to Exodus International, a well-established Christian ministry that offers “freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ.”

Pro-gay groups had flooded Apple with protest petitions – reputedly containing over a hundred thousand signatures against the Exodus app. Change.org, which launched the petition-drive to block the Exodus app, called the ministry’s message “hateful and bigoted.” Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr admitted that the company’s decision to censor Exodus International was because it deemed the Christian group’s Biblical position “offensive to large groups of people.”

In a radio interview recently I heard some well-meaning objections from listeners who just couldn’t see the point in last week’s Supreme Court’s decision in Snyder v. Phelps, which upheld the free speech rights of protestors outside of a military funeral. From an empathy standpoint, I can understand why they objected to the High Court’s decision.

Just look at the parties to this lawsuit: the losing party was Mr. Snyder, the grieving father whose son was killed in Iraq while serving his country, and who had collected a multi-million dollar verdict against the protestors who picketed the funeral, until the High Court reversed it a few days ago.

The winning party was Fred Phelps and his angry, insular little group whose tortured theology and inflammatory rhetoric (declaring on placards that God killed Snyder’s son because of America’s national sin) should be denounced by respectable evangelical Christians everywhere. But this case was not about empathy. It was about the ultimate definition of liberty.